The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It was in August, 1831, that Goethe sealed up a packet and handed it to his faithful secretary Eckermann and prepared his testamentary directions for the editing of this sealed-up treasure. This packet contained in a comprehensive way the whole striving of Goethe's life. It contained the second part of Goethe's Faust; which was not to be published until after Goethe's death. Goethe was aware that in this work he had given the contents of his rich, many-sided, far-reaching and deeply-penetrating life to human existence, and the importance of this moment for him may be gathered from the words he uttered at the time, ‘I am now finished my life's true work, anything I do further and whether I do it or not, is all the same!’ If we permit a fact such as this to work on the soul we can say: It would not be easy for a human life to become fruitful for the rest of humanity in a more beautiful, harmonious way, or indeed to become fruitful in a more conscious manner. There is something deeply affecting in the thought of Goethe's life at this point of time—for he lived barely one year longer—in that he should have visited Ilmenau once more and there re-read the beautiful verse he had written on the 7th of September, 1783, when he was still a comparatively young man.

‘Above all heights
Is rest,
In the tree tops
Thou feelest
Scarce a breath,
The birds are silent in the woods,
Only wait, soon
Thou too shalt rest.’

One may well ask whether these lines may not have signified at that time a frame of mind regulating Goethe's ideas in a new way as he re-read them in the evening of his life with affecting tears.

Goethe's Faust is truly a testament of the very first order when considered with reference to its literary and intellectual standpoint.

In 1831 Goethe finished the work which had occupied him from his earliest youth, having worked energetically from the year 1824 at the second part of Faust. We find that Goethe knew from the beginning of 1770 that he had what may be called the Faust disposition and that he began in 1774 to write down the first part of Faust, returning again and again to this poem in the most important moments of his life.

Notably he took the first part of Faust with him when he went to Weimar and owing to his position there entered the great world. Certainly it was not produced there. But because one of the Weimar Court ladies, Fräulein von Göchhausen, preserved a copy of the Faust which Goethe took with him to Weimar, we to-day possess the form in which it was when he took it there. We therefore know the form in which Faust was printed for the first time and published in 1790, and further we know the setting in which the whole of Goethe's works appeared in 1808 in the first edition. All that we have of Faust, including that very important document which Goethe left as his testament, shows us the different stages of Goethe's growth. It is endlessly interesting to observe how these four stages of Goethe's Faust-creation appear to us in different ways, according to its inner nature, and how they represent a crescendo in the whole of Goethe's life-endeavour. What Goethe took with him to Weimar is a literary work of a quite personal character into which he had poured the feelings, the degrees of knowledge and also the despair of knowledge, as they went with him through the Frankfort time into the Strassburg time and also into the first Weimar period. It is the work of a man hotly striving after knowledge, striving to feel himself into life, experiencing every despair that an upright honourable man can go through, and all this he had poured into this work. All this is in the first part of Faust. But when Faust appeared in 1790 as a fragment, it was recognized that Goethe had worked at it and transformed it out of a longing lying deep in his soul and inner life which had become enlightened through his contemplation of Italian nature and of Italian works of Art. Out of this personal work of one who had been tossed to and fro in life's storms there emerged the work of one, who to a certain degree, had become unshackled and who had a very clear view of life before his soul.

Then came the time of Goethe's friendship with Schiller. The time when in his inner being he learned to know and experience a world which had long become rooted within him. A world of which one can say that he who experiences it has had his spiritual eyes opened, so that he can see into the surrounding spiritual world. And now Faust's personality becomes a being placed between two worlds, between the spiritual world to which man can raise himself through purification, through the ennobling of himself and that world which drags him down. Faust becomes a being placed between the world of good and the world of evil. And while previously we saw in Faust the life of the single striving personality, now we see before us a great conflict carried on between the good and evil powers around man. Man is thus placed in the centre as the worthiest object for which the good and evil beings fight in the world. Though in the very beginning Faust is seen as a man doubting all knowledge, he now comes before us as one placed between heaven and hell. Thus the poem reaches an essentially higher stage and a higher existence.

In the form in which Faust appears in 1808 it seems as if thousands of years of human development resound. We are reminded of the great dramatic representation of man's life produced in ancient times in the Book of Job, where the evil spirit went among men and stood up before God, and God said to him: ‘Thou hast been to and fro on the earth, hast thou considered my servant Job?’ What is here said we find in the poem, ‘The Prologue in Heaven’ where God speaks with Mephistopheles, the messenger of the evil spirituality:

The Lord: Know'st Faust?

Mephistopheles: The Doctor Faust?

The Lord: My servant, he—

So out of what Goethe wrote in order that his Faust Mystery should appear in its right light there sounds an echo of the Book of Job, ‘Dost thou know my servant Job?’

Then Goethe's fine, full life continued further, going ever deeper into the human existence of which the world to-day knows so little. And having brought to expression in many different ways what he had experienced in his soul, in 1824 he looked back on his whole life, and once more sat down and described Faust's passage through the great world, but in such a way that the second part is a complete character picture of the inner human development of the soul.

Looking back to the first part we can see how completely true to life and to the reality of life is this description of a striving soul. Everything that meets us in the first part, especially in the beginning, is full of deep truths regarding nature, but much in it resembles a kind of theory of art—as if someone spoke of things that his soul had not yet fully experienced.

And the second part: Here everything is the inward experience of his own soul. Here are the highest experiences of a spiritual kind by means of which man climbs the stages of existence, passes through the physical world and penetrates to the place where the human soul is united with the spirituality of the world, dissolves together with it and knows wherein it finds peace and at the same time that which gives freedom, dignity and self-dependence. All this is given in the second part of Faust as his own inner experience. The time will come when Goethe's Faust will be understood in quite another way from what it is to-day, when people will understand what Goethe wished to say when he said to Eckermann on 29th Jan., 1827: ‘All in Faust is of the senses, material, thought out in terms of the theatre to please everyone and I wished for nothing more than that. If the crowd of onlookers takes pleasure in its appearance, the higher meaning will not escape the observation of the initiated.’

Though the first part in many ways appears to be theoretical and not worked down into life, the second part is one of the most realistic of those pieces of world literature which go most deeply into reality; for everything in the second part of Faust is experienced, though not with the physical eye, because to have such experiences, spiritual eyes and spiritual ears are necessary. It is for that reason that the second part of Faust has been so little understood. People merely saw symbols and allegories in what is for the spiritual inquirer, who can experience it in the spiritual worlds, something far more true and real than anything that can be seen with the outer physical eyes or heard with the outer physical ears. From such a work we can promise ourselves much, and the task of the lectures to-day and tomorrow will be to consider something of what lies in it. To-day we will consider the matter more from the outer side, but tomorrow we will show how Goethe's Faust poem, in the true meaning of the word, is a picture of an inner esoteric life and intuitive vision of the world. Step by step we will endeavour to penetrate into that which is within and to look behind the curtain where the deepest secrets of Goethe's life lie hidden.

The Faust mood was in Goethe even when he was a student at Leipzig, and we know that at that time he had a very serious illness, bringing him very near death. Much that a man's soul can grasp at such a time passed before Goethe, but many other things had already preceded this. He had learnt to know the way in which outer science looked at life. Certainly he had troubled himself very little about his own profession at Leipzig, but had occupied himself with many other sciences, more particularly with natural science. A strong faith never left Goethe that it would be possible to look into the deeper secrets of life through natural science; but at Leipzig at that time he stood full of despair before all that an outer knowledge could give him, in many ways a mere jumble of ideas and disconnected observations of nature. Nowhere could he find what he had already looked for as a boy, when at the age of seven he took a writing desk, placed on it some minerals and other geological products and plants, a wax taper and a burning glass. Then waiting for the morning, as the first rays of the sun came in, he took the burning glass, let the sun rays fall through it on to the wax taper and in this way lighted a fire on the altar which he had erected to the ‘great God’ of Nature, a fire which should have come from the foundation and source of life itself. But how far away were these sources of life from what Goethe met in the different branches of knowledge of the High School (Hoch-Schule), how far these ‘sources of life’ were removed from all such striving!

Goethe then went to Frankfort and came into touch with thoughtful, sensible men who possessed above all things through their developed soul life, something of the flowing together of the human inner life with the spiritual weaving and living in the world; men who in the fullest meaning of the word, felt in themselves what Goethe expresses in the words: ‘The self in them expands to a spiritual universe.’ At that time at Frankfort he had the feeling, ‘Away from the mere striving after ideas! Away from the merely perceptive sense observation! There must be a path to the sources of existence!’ and he came into touch with what one can call alchemistic, mystical and theosophical literature. He himself attempted the practice of alchemy. He relates how he came to know of a work through which many sought for similar knowledge at that time, Welling's ‘Opus Mago-Cabalisticum et Theosophicum.’ This book was much thought of then as giving a knowledge of the sources of existence. Goethe studied by degrees Paracelsus, Valentinus and above all a work which from its whole method must have produced a deep impression on all those who strove after such knowledge, ‘Aurea Catena Homeri.’ This was a representation of nature the Mystics in the Middle Ages believed to see. The study of these mystical, alchemistic, theosophical books must have had a similar effect on Goethe to that which a man striving to-day after the same things would experience if he took up the books of Eliphas Levy or any other thinker on the same lines. Indeed at that time these things must have had an even more bewildering effect upon Goethe because these different writers no longer really understood the magic, theosophy, etc., of which they wrote. It was impossible to speak in direct way of the real grandeur and meaning of these things, proceeding from an ancient wisdom which had lived in human souls, for the meaning was hidden under an outer garb which included all kinds of physical and chemical forms. For those who merely saw what appeared outwardly in these books it was the greatest nonsense, and at that time it was most difficult to penetrate behind these secrets and arrive at the real meaning. But we must not forget that Goethe from his deep striving for knowledge had developed an intuitive mind. He must have been greatly pleased when on opening the ‘Aurea Catena Homeri’ he saw on the first page a symbol which had a deep effect on his soul; two triangles interlaced; in the corners the signs of the planets, drawn in a wonderful way, a flying dragon wound round in a circle, beneath which another dragon had fixed stiffening itself, and when he read the words on the first page, saying that the flying dragon symbolizes the stream which sends those forces which stream down from out of the Cosmos to the stiffened dragon, showing how heaven and earth hang together, or as it is expressed there: ‘How the spiritual forces of heaven pour into the earth's centre.’

These mysterious signs and words must have made a great impression upon Goethe. For instance, those which depict the whole growth of the earth: ‘From chaos to that which is called the universal quintessence’—a remarkable sentence, curiously mixed up with signs of a chaotic nature, still undifferentiated right through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, right up to man and to that perspective to which man is developing in ever greater refinement. But it was not easy to find a way of penetrating to the deeper meaning. So Goethe left Frankfort in a frame of mind which can be described in the following words: I have found nothing. These seekers into nature can only give me dry, empty ideas; anything that can be squeezed out of them is but life's water. I have busied myself with much that has come down to us from the past from those who declare that they saw into the secrets of life. But the way, the way drives one to despair!

This was sometimes the mood in Goethe's soul. He was not to be bewitched by easy speculations or philosophizing, or by confused symbols and explanations from those old books, which worked so wonderfully and forebodingly on him. They looked at him with their mysteries as something to which he could find no way. But anyone who knew Goethe's soul, knew the seed was already sown in his soul which was to germinate later. But he felt himself as one who was rejected and unworthy to unravel the secrets of life. Then he went to Strassburg.

There he met people who must have interested him in one way or the other. He got to know Jung-Stilling with his deeply mystical soul, who owing to the development of peculiar forces generally found sleeping in men, had looked deeply into the hidden side of existence. He met Herder at Strassburg, who had gone through similar moods and who in times of desperation had often been at the point of a denial of future life. In Herder he learnt to know a man who suffered from a surfeit of life and who said, I have studied much, discerning sundry things connected with men's works and men's strivings on the earth. But he was unable to say to himself, I have had one moment when my longing after the sources of life has been satisfied. This was when he was ill and inclined to deny everything with bitter irony. Yet it was Herder who pointed out many depths in the riddles of life, and Goethe found in him a truly human Faust. But that side of negation which is not the outcome of mockery and scorn Goethe learnt to know later through his friend Merck. Goethe's mother who disliked criticism of people and all moralizing said of Merck, he can never leave Mephistopheles at home, in him we are quite used to it. In Merck Goethe found a disclaimer of much that is worth striving for in life. Over against all these impressions which Goethe received from the Strassburg people, it was through Nature and his observation of Nature that many of life's puzzles were cleared up for him.

At the same time we must think of Goethe as a man possessed of a sharp, penetrating mind; he was not an unpractical man. He was an advocate, but only practised for a short time. Those who knew Goethe's work as an advocate and later as a Minister, were acquainted with his eminently practical mind. As advocate he knew little more than what he had learnt by heart from law books. But he was a man able to decide very quickly on any point laid before him; such a man can also map out clearly life's course.

So Goethe comes before us with, on the one side, faculty for the clearest thinking with relation to the world; and on the other, for feeling in the deepest way the sorrow attached to an unsatisfied pursuit of knowledge, seeking for the deepest things and yet defeated by them.

And then there came something else. Goethe had learnt to know that frame of mind which we can only characterize as the feeling of guilt! He felt guilty in respect of the simple country girl, Friederike at Sesenheim, in whose soul he had awakened so many hopes and desires and whom he had all the same to forsake later. All this was mixed up in Goethe's soul in the most remarkable way and out of these feelings there grew within him a poetic figure, which had its rise in the perception of a form which at that time followed him step by step. This was the figure of Faust, that remarkable character who had lived in the first half of the sixteenth century. This Faust had been the object of innumerable folk-plays and pantomimes and through Christopher Marlowe had reached a literary significance and had become a living problem for poets, especially for Lessing and Goethe. How did it happen that Goethe connected his own sorrow and his own feelings with this figure of Faust?

It is related that Faust lived in the first half of the sixteenth century, at a time when for history much had been decided. If we compare this time with the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when studious lives were led, we find a great difference. In the twelfth century it was possible for those minds to unite the knowledge of what the times offered them with what they could find in their own souls. When they raised their spiritual vision to the creative power of the world, enthroned in the heights, and out of it formed their ideas, they were able to unite them with what they had learnt to know through external Natural Science. What they learnt was like a natural process. On the lowest step they studied what they called physical knowledge, on the next step they learnt to know what was taught of the higher mysteries of life, the hidden mysteries of existence, which could be reached through the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear; and on the highest step they reached to the recognition of the sublime, through ideas which were fine and transparent as crystal, but full of life, and working powerfully on the soul. These were the steps to the divine knowledge and were all connected with each other. Man may shrug his shoulders and look down on the minds of that time, but their way was one which never suffered intermission. If for instance we take up the ‘Way of Knowledge’ by Albertus Magnus, we find it begins with a description of the lowest part of nature and ends in a vision of God. You find here no dry, empty ideas, but ideas which enlighten the heart and warm the soul. When Faust lived this time had passed. Ideas then became dry and empty; though they had the stamp of the theologian, they were abstract or drawn from thought. They were ideas which could be studied by men and into which the reasoning of the understanding could sink, but no connection could be found by reason between these ideas and the living existence lying around us, or any possibility of enlightening the soul or bringing warmth to the heart. And then it came to this, that the science of that time—a mysticism, a magic, a theosophy, treating of things which are only to be perceived through spiritual eyes and spiritual ears—was caught in a complete decline, chiefly because much that was previously hidden in handwriting, was now published in print, and thus read by minds understanding nothing of it and who merely copied it. Humbug and nonsense of all kinds went on in the laboratories. What should have been experienced in a spiritual manner, was understood merely according to the words appearing in the books, although they were really only an outer form, but possessing a very deep meaning. Through formulae and retorts all kinds of stuff was made, with the result that what at that time was called theosophy, magic and the occult, came very near to being what we should now look upon as swindling and imposture. In a certain sense the way to the spiritual is connected with danger. Those whose striving has not been honest, whose understanding and reason has not been purified, who are unable to arrive in thought at ideas freed from the physical, may easily stumble and easily fall into the abyss. Therefore it was possible for those who still knew something or who studied the writings of the mystics with great pains, to miss the way and being unable to find it to be deceived by the swindling and charlatanism then prevalent. But it could also happen that the opposite view was taken by many people. This striving for higher things was denounced as witchcraft, and men such as Sponheim, Agrippa von Nettesheim and many others who sought honourably and blamelessly for the spiritual forces in nature, were branded as black magicians and swindlers, as men who had quitted the right path given them through religion. Faust lived during this time in the sixteenth century, a time when many saw the setting of an old spiritual movement as a rosy evening which at the same time became the rosy dawn of a new time bringing out such stars as Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Copernicus and others. Such times are called periods of transition. But of all these periods, none deserves the name so much as the time of Faust.

From what we know of Faust he appears as one who felt very deeply the insufficiency of the knowledge of that time concerning the spiritual world. Theology he had studied and had turned away from it. He sought for the sources of existence from the mediaeval remnants of magic and similar things from the Middle Ages; and because Faust was a brilliant figure oscillating between an honourable striving after knowledge and those limits which passed over into charlatanism, it is better to consider him in this way and not attempt to understand him with sharper outlines. As he really was, the spiritual tendency at that time failed to understand him, and the general popular striving of the time was regarded as the outer garment of this Faust-figure in the sixteenth century. So he meets us as a legendary figure or dramatically as a man fallen away from the old traditions of religion and theology, who had given himself up to an endeavour, which owing to the narrow-minded ideas of that time could not possibly lead to any good in life. The opinion of the world between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries is expressed in the words from a popular book of that time on Faust: ‘He has for a time put the Holy Scriptures behind the door, and laid them under the bench, and wishes to hear no more of Theology, as he has become a man of the world and calls himself a D. Medicinæ.’

What was felt and thought about Faust was expressed in such words. It was felt that he sought in his own breast for the source leading to the depths of life and his own origin, and that he wished to free himself in his own way from the old traditions. Anything in the old folk-plays or pantomimes referring to this figure of Faust was little adapted to give more than his outward appearance. But all that had remained as the tradition of Faust influenced Goethe, and he entrusted to this character his life's striving and his urgent desire for knowledge. So we find him in his 70th year beginning to see himself in the character of Faust. In this character he expressed all the dissatisfaction, and all the sorrow proceeding from the desire for knowledge which remained unsatisfied. And when we look at the first monologue in ‘Faust’ we see clearly what was described at the beginning of to-day's lecture. We see a man who having occupied himself deeply in outer science had reached a state of despair which threatened to shatter his life completely. We see how he seizes on the old book—Goethe called it the Book of Nostradamus, but anyone acquainted with the literature of magic also known to Goethe, will clearly recognize the book to which he referred—in which Faust perceived the sign of (lie macrocosm and of which he says:

‘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.’

Faust, Scene I.

and then added to these words a description of feeling, a kind of rapture that passed through him at the sight of this page.

Through all this we see what at that time worked on Goethe. It was possible for such moods and ideas to flow into Goethe's soul, that he could truthfully describe them. When he stood before the remarkable sign of the two interlaced triangles and the two dragons—the upper one representing the spiritual and the lower one the physical—with the signs of the planets in the corners of the interlaced triangles, such forces penetrated through them that he really had the shining planets before him as the golden urns, with the forces flowing between them and filling the All with harmony unceasing.

When we consider Goethe's soul with its deep and honest striving for knowledge, we begin to doubt whether it is possible to have clear ideas or to speculate much about it. We can only try to place the fact before our souls so that any feeling for such things may be satisfied. But anyone understanding life and the way in which it develops through age, knows that in spite of such battles, Goethe was a man in whose soul a germ had been laid which would ripen and bear fruit very much later, in years to come. We see too how the germs which developed later so wonderfully in Faust were really there, and much can be gained from the study of this life by those who have a distinct leaning to spiritual science.

To-day unfortunately such striving is very superficial. We see many people taking it up in a hurry, but they drop it again after having acquired a few ideas. The riddles that exist are only known to one who can look back to a time twenty or thirty years previously when a fluid was poured into his soul and then stored over by the events of the following years and by many experiences, so that only thirty years later he is able to give an approximate answer respecting what was poured in his soul so long before. From this point of view we cannot look too deeply into Goethe's life. We see the echo of his feeling in relation to the ‘Aurea Catena Homeri’ or ‘The Golden Chain of Homer.’ We see it expressed when Faust breaks forth into the words, ‘What a show!’ Yes, a very powerful show, when the soul sinks deeply into these pictures, without even a guess of what they will become in the future. It is a show. But does it stop at mere guessing?

Then these words necessarily follow:

... but only a show! ...

At that time Goethe did not understand the deep meaning of these words, but a shade of that feeling already lived in his soul, for ‘All that is transient is but a semblance!’ and having these remarkable pictures before him, he could say as if in pain, ‘However artistically these characters are drawn, they are but outer symbols!’

‘How grand a show! But, ah! a show alone.
Thee, boundless Nature, now make thee, my own.’

Each line is deeply felt:—only a show, something which copies the great world. But Goethe had studied the many problems of natural science and had learnt the deep experience given to man, when he has to say to himself: ‘Thou art guilty!’ Having experienced this, he could hope for more depth of feeling on perceiving other signs closely connected with man's life. This feeling is expressed by Faust:—The book is turned over and in place of the sign of the great world, there appears the sign of the little world, the pentagon, and its surroundings. Then the magic word, which if rightly applied can awake certain slumbering forces, appears before Goethe's soul. Goethe certainly had a premonition that there is something, characterized here as slumbering forces in man, and that through gazing at certain symbols and images these forces could be awakened, so as to make it possible for him to look into the spiritual world. He could believe that he came into contact with that which stands very near to man's soul and expresses itself in the signs of the microcosm, the little world. He expresses this through his ‘Faust’ when he says that if man gives himself up to deeper inner meditation certain inner experiences develop and the ‘earth spirit’ appears, that spirit which quickens the earth and which sees to it, that out of the general life and stream of the world man comes to be and increases. Goethe understood in a marvellous way how to compress into a few words what are the secrets of the earth spirit, and in what way he belongs to the whole earth—just as each human soul and human spirit is related to the physical body of man—who is, we might say, the ruler of all the natural development, increase and historical growth of man. This ruler has no visible form, but can appear to a man whose spiritual eyes are opened, so that he can perceive and know that there is such a spirit of the earth. Goethe has characterized Him in a wonderful way:

Spirit:
‘In the tides of Life, in Action's storm,
A fluctuant wave,
A shuttle free,
Birth, the Grave,
An eternal sea,
A weaving, flowing
Life, all-glowing.’

‘Thus at Time's loom 'tis my hand prepares
The garment of Life that the Deity wears!’

If we could penetrate every word of this formula we should find that what is described by Goethe, can be really experienced by anyone whose development has brought his soul to the requisite stage of existence. But all know what comes to pass: Faust does not feel himself and cannot feel himself as developed to what thus presents itself. He has not found the way to the secret depths of life. What ‘flows in life and lives and weaves in action's storm’ exists for him as a ‘terrible face.’ He turns away and hears the words:

Spirit:
‘Thou'rt like the spirit thou comprehendest, Not me!’

Out of the old traditions he gained the belief that he was the exact image of the Divinity, and now he had to say to himself, ‘Not even thee!’

‘Thou resemblest the mind thou canst grasp.’ If only people could once feel this sentence! That it was felt by Goethe can be seen from the whole situation in the first part of ‘Faust.’ Man can understand nothing beyond that point to which he has developed himself.

On another occasion Goethe said, ‘As one is, so is one's God,’ and this resembles a confession on Goethe's part, that he had not, up to that time, found the way to the source of life. A confession which he here connects with Faust. When we consider Faust in this first form, we see what difficulties Goethe had to contend with in order to connect his world with the spiritual world towards which he was striving. We find in this first ‘Faust’ immediately afterwards, and without any real transition, the meeting of Mephistopheles with the student.

What is Mephistopheles? Anyone who knows the way into the spiritual world, knows that there really is a Mephistopheles, that he is one of the two tempters who meet man when he desires to enter the road to the spiritual land, when he seeks the way to the spiritual world. There are two potencies or powers whom man meets. One power we call Lucifer. He lays hold of man in a more inward way, in the centre of his soul, seeking to drag him down through his passions, desires, lusts, etc., into the lower scale of the personal and ignoble. All that works on man himself is Luciferic, and because man was once caught in his earthly life by this Luciferic principle, he was delivered up to another principle. If man had never been seized by this Luciferic principle, the outer world would never have appeared to him in its merely material outward form, but would have presented itself in such a way that man could have said from the beginning that all outward things were physiognomic expression of the Spirit. Man would have seen the Spirit behind all physical material things. But because matter became condensed through the influence of the Luciferic power that which was false became mingled with (lie outer appearance, so that its outward form seemed Maya or illusion, as if it were not the outer physiognomic expression of the spirit. This power presenting the outer world to the view of a man in an untrue form was first recognized in its complete depth by Zarathustra. Under the name of Ahriman, Zarathustra first presented this being as the opponent of the God of Light. In everything connected with the teaching of Zarathustra, Ahriman was the deceitful being, who hid everything in mist and smoke which otherwise would have been visible to man as a transparent, spiritual splendour. To express it plainly, this being who caused the ruin of man, because he forced him into the fetters of matter, and also deceived him about its true form, was called Mephistopheles. This figure was called in Hebrew, Mephiz, the spoiler, and Topel, the liar. This being passed over into the West in the Middle Ages in the form of Mephistopheles. In the books on Faust, we see as opposed to Faust this Power, also called the ‘old serpent.’

Goethe learnt to know this Mephistopheles. The later traditions of Faust no longer distinguished properly between the forms of Lucifer and of Mephistopheles. In the age following the sixteenth century there was no longer a clear idea of these forms. Men no longer knew how to distinguish between Lucifer and Ahriman, and they united them in the form of the Devil or Satan; and because nothing was known of the spiritual world, no particular difference was made. But to Goethe, all that he received through the outer senses, and through the human understanding, with its physical instrument the brain, by which he gained perception of the outer world, appeared to him as Mephistopheles. The man appealing to these qualities of the ordinary understanding, was the same to him as one who through the ego strove to enter the spiritual world. So that for Goethe—as also for Merck or Herder—all that appealed merely to the understanding is represented in a wonderful way in the figure of Mephistopheles, who does not believe in a world of the good, or consider it significant or important. In Goethe himself was this second ego, which could be brought to a state of doubt concerning the spiritual world, and sometimes he felt in himself the discord caused by what we may call the Mephistophelian power. He felt himself placed in conflict between this evil power raging in his soul and the truly honourable striving of his soul for the heights. Goethe felt both these forces in his soul. But in what position to place himself with regard to the spiritual world Goethe at that time did not know. He was a long way from that experience which we find in the second part of ‘Faust’ in such a magnificent way. In the scene ‘The way to the Mothers’ we see the man striving inwardly for the spiritual heights but detained by a deceptive picture and captivated by reason of what Mephistopheles has placed before him through trickery. Mephistopheles represents all that can be found in outer physical science which is bound up with the understanding. He stands there with the keys—this knowledge is certainly good, for it leads to the door of the spiritual world.—But within Mephistopheles cannot go. Therefore he describes that into which Faust must go as a ‘nothing,’ And we hear from the words of Mephistopheles, spoken in a classic, grandiose manner, what is thrown by the materialistic minds of men in the face of those who are striving to discover the foundations of life out of spiritual science. He says: ‘Thou art a dreamer and a fantastic. We are not going to be taken in by what such dreamers tell us about the spiritual foundations of things. We care nothing for that!’ And the spiritual enquirer can reply as did Faust to Mephistopheles, ‘In thy nothing I hope to find the all!’

But Goethe was experiencing that boisterous youth out of which he had just brought Faust and was far from possessing at that time such clarity of soul. He did not know then how to bring Mephistopheles into touch with Faust, for Mephistopheles is there in the original Faust as Goethe had experienced him as the power that drags man down, and represented him as a mocker in the ‘student scene.’ Only later did Goethe find the means for Mephistopheles by degrees to approach Faust though his changing forms.

We find next that Faust is drawn by Mephistopheles and falls into the abyss of sensuality in the scene in ‘Auerbach's wine cellar’ and the road begins down which Faust is led to evil. The end of the ‘prison scene’ is not given in the fragment which appeared in 1790; Goethe kept it back, but this terribly affecting scene was in the first fragment. It was in what we may call the tragedy of Gretchen that Goethe placed that side of his life which can be expressed by the words ‘I am guilty.’ What Goethe expresses in the first part of ‘Faust’ is the word ‘Personality.’

It was in that Goethe, who travelled to Italy, that a part of the seed sown in his soul first began to develop. He found a wonderful road during his Italian journey; it can be followed step by step. He said when he wrote at last to his friends at Weimar, ‘So much is certain, the old artists had quite as great a knowledge of nature and just as good an idea of that which we see and the manner in which it should be seen, as Homer had. Unfortunately the number of works of art of the first order is much too small. But anyone able to see them, need wish for nothing further than the right to recognize them and then go in peace. These great works of art were produced according to true and natural laws; the arbitrary, the fanciful collapses; here is necessity; here is God!’—‘I have an idea that the creators of these works of art acted according to those laws which guide nature, and on whose tracks I am.’ He is no longer the same Goethe who was full of an abstract longing, but is filled with self-denial and resignation, ready to investigate existence step by step along the road by which he hopes to discover the problems of life revealed.

It is not surprising if nothing is discovered of the great spiritual aim of mankind, if it is only sought in an abstract way, but which if sought for in the right way leads directly to the highest problems of life. Those who have no inclination to compare one plant with another, one animal with another, one bone with another, or to consider life, step by step, as they go through the world in order to find the spirit in each single being, in such people an abstract longing will lead to nothing.

Let us consider Goethe when during his Italian journey, he gradually arrived at the discovery of the primeval plant, he collected stones, prepared himself diligently to take up the work of research, and did not seek to know immediately ‘how one thing strives to enter another’ but said to himself: ‘If you would gain a premonition’ of ‘how one thing works and lives in another’ as heavenly powers rise and fall, offering each the ‘golden urn,’ examine the vertebras of the spinal column and the way in which one bone is connected with the next; and how one faculty helps another. Seek in the smallest thing the picture of the greatest.

Goethe became a very diligent student during his travels in Italy, examining everything. He formed the opinion that if an artist acted ‘according to the laws which are followed by nature herself’ and understood by the Greeks, the divine will be present in his works even as it is in the works of creation. For Goethe, art is a ‘manifestation of the secret laws of nature.’ The creations of the artists are works of nature on a higher stage of perfection. Art is man's continuation and conclusion of nature. ‘For since man is the head of nature so he regards himself as a complete nature, but also as one which can call forth a further rise. He strives for this through the acquisition of all accomplishments and virtues which call for choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and at last rises to the production of the work of art.’

We can say that during the Italian journey everything that came before Goethe took on definite forms and through inner soul experiences appeared clearly before him. So once again he took up ‘Faust,’ and we perceive how he endeavoured to bring the separate parts into union. But we also perceive how he interested himself in an objective manner in what Faust could become for the people of the North. In Italy he became particularly conscious of the great difference between people who had been brought up amid classical surroundings and those who had not. He found it strange that so little should be heard in Rome of ghost stories such as were common in the North. In the Villa Borghese he wrote at this time the ‘Witches Kitchen’ scene, as one who had lost touch with all such things, but also as one who recalled to memory the spirit of the earth. When he had previously written about the earth spirit, he represented it in such a way that Faust turned away from it, as from a ‘hideous worm.’ But the fact of turning away from it, even without understanding why, remains in the soul and works on further, as it did in Goethe. But those who become impatient and refuse to wait until after long years the seed grows, are unable to see the way clearly. And when in Italy Goethe knew that a turning away from the terrible countenance would have its effect upon his soul, and now these words arise:

‘Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me all
For which I begged. It was not without reason
That thou didst turn thy face in fire to me
And for a kingdom gavest me the glorious nature
With strength to feel it and to enjoy it. Not
A coldly astonished gaze didst thou grant to me
But didst permit me to look into her profound bosom
As into that of a friend.
Past me didst thou lead the ranks of the living
And didst teach me to know, in the quiet bushes,
In air, and in water, my brother.
And when the storm roared and rattled in the woods
And there fell the neighbouring branches of the giant fir
Squashing the undergrowth and in their fall
Sounding like thunder in the hollow of the hills,
Thou didst lead me to a safe Grotto, where
Thou didst show me myself and opened my heart
To deep and secret wonders.’

Before Goethe, there stands the possibility of the human soul, through its own development expanding to a spiritual universe. Through a patient sacrificial resigned search, the fruits stand before his soul which as germs were planted when he came into touch with the earth spirit. We can see through this monologue in ‘Wald und Höhle’ (wood and grotto) what a forward jerk this was towards the ripening of the fruits in his soul, for it shows us that the seed already sown was not sown in vain. And as a warning to have patience, to wait until such seeds had ripened in his soul, that fragment of ‘Faust’ meets us which appeared with this setting in 1790. And now we see how Goethe finds the way step by step after being led to his ‘safe grotto where the secret deep wonders of his own heart were opened to him,’ he obtains that comprehensive survey which bids him no longer abide with his own sorrow, but teaches him to rise above his sorrow, to send his foreseeing spirit out into the Macrocosmos, watch the fighting of the good and evil spirits and see men on their battle ground. And in ‘Faust’ in 1808 he sent out beforehand the ‘Prologue in Heaven:’

Raphael:
‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’

We next see how the macrocosmic Mights oppose the forces of the great world. We see too from out the experiences of Goethe's soul, what a remarkable light falls on the two dragons with which at one time in his youth he came in touch.

‘Faust’ is such a universal poem because it contains so many warnings. It also gives us that golden saying: ‘Wait in confidence for the development of thy inner forces, even if that means waiting a very long time!’ These words also sound as a warning which stand as an attribute before Faust, when Goethe looks back to those ‘fluctuating figures which in early days had once shown a troubled countenance’ but which now are flooded with light. Now he had waited so long that the friends who had taken such a vivid interest in Faust as he had appeared to them in the first form, had died, and those who had not died were very far away. Goethe had been obliged to wait for the development of the seed already sown in him.

Now these striking words meet us:

‘My sorrow speaks to an unknown crowd,
Their applause e'en makes my heart feel heavy,
And those who once delighted in my song
If they still live, in other lands are scattered.’

No longer did it matter to those who in youth had felt with him. He had had to wait, as the last lines of this dedication so beautifully express it—‘What was once a reality to me, has gone into the unreal: but what has remained for me and appears to outer vision as unreal, that to me is now true, and it is only now that I can give it as truth.’ So we see how this poem, even if only looked at in such an external manner as we have to-day, leads us into the depths of the human soul.

‘Faust’ was begun in a desultory manner, some parts being pushed in between others, and therefore Goethe was unable to show in a continuous way what he had experienced in his soul. But something else led to the fact that Goethe expressed his deepest experiences in ‘Faust.’

The ‘Helena scene’ also belongs to the first part of ‘Faust’ written by Goethe. But we find it was not included even in the ‘Faust’ of 1808. Why not? Because the manner in which Goethe had finished ‘Faust’ at that time would not allow it. What Goethe wished to say through the Helena scene was the expression of such a deep premonition of the deepest riddle of existence, that the first part was not sufficiently prepared to allow of this. Only when Goethe had reached an advanced age, was he able to give a true form to what really was the inner work of his life.

We see how his mind had expanded so that he was able to grasp the worlds of the macrocosm, as expressed in the ‘Prologue in Heaven.’ We shall also see the way in which Goethe represents the stages of the soul's experience, leading men from the first stage up to that of imaginative vision, where the soul penetrating ever deeper and deeper, bursts at last the doors of the spiritual world, which Mephistopheles would close. Goethe also represents these inner experiences. For he places in the second part of ‘Faust’ the experiences of a soul through secret scientific study, and we see here one of the deepest riddles of existence, which if recognized, would be found to be an announcement of Western spiritual science given in imposing language. One is tempted to place such a poem as the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ and the second part of ‘Faust’ side by side. For great and powerful wisdom speaks out of such Eastern writings. It seems as if the gods themselves desired in them to speak with men to express the wisdom out of which the world was formed. Indeed it is so.

Now let us look at the second part of ‘Faust.’ Here we see a striving human soul which has raised itself to spiritual vision from outer physical perception; we see how it has worked its way up to true clairvoyance when Faust enters the spiritual world and finds the spiritual choir around him ...

‘Hearken! Hark!—The Hours careering
Sounding loud to spirit-hearing.
See the new-born day appearing!
Rocky portals jarring shatter,
PhSbus' wheels in rolling clatter,
With a crash the Light draws near!
Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes—
Eye is blinded, ear amazes:
The Unheard can no one hear!’

Faust II, Act I.

to that passage where Faust is outwardly dazzled, so that the outer world is lost to his perception and he says to himself: ‘Only within shines clear light! ...’ up to that passage in which the soul works itself up to the spheres of world existence, where the spiritual worlds are to be seen in all their purity, and the riddle of the world discloses itself to the soul. This is a way which we must designate as an esoteric one.

The way in which we can penetrate from the outer to the inner life of Goethe's world enigma, we shall see tomorrow, and we shall also see from out of what depths Goethe spoke the word which at last gave him the certainty he needed with reference to all the longings, all the sorrows, pains and strivings for knowledge in his life.

‘Whoever zealously strives
We can redeem him;
And if love from above
Feels an interest in him,
The blest choir will be there
With a friendly greeting.’

We shall consider tomorrow how Goethe solved this riddle of existence, and how that which lives in the soul can rise up to its true home. It will give us the answer to what Goethe placed as the riddle of his existence and about which he gives us such a hopeful answer at the end of the second part of ‘Faust:’

‘For the spiritual world,
That noble member,
Is saved from evil.
Whoever strives zealously
We can redeem him! ...’

This tells us Faust can be saved and those spirits will not conquer who by bringing men into the material bring them also to destruction.

After the studies we have been conducting recently, a basic fact of human life and nature will be able to stand clearly before our soul. It is precisely when we consider a more exact relationship of the human being to his environment that the riddle always arises: how did it come to be that one cannot penetrate into the real nature of the outer world? This outer world lies before us in its phenomena, in its events, and even if we have only a feeble need for knowledge we must presume that behind these phenomena that lie before us as colored, as resounding, as warming world, and so on, the real nature of reality is concealed. There is, as it were, a veil there, and only behind this veil is the nature of reality to be found.

A similar riddle exists in relation to what is within the human being. In the last few days I have suggested that this inner element of the human being reveals the riddles of its organs only if one really arrives at this inner element. The fact is, however, that to begin with in ordinary consciousness one cannot see so deeply down into one's own inner being that one is able really to penetrate the nature of the lungs, liver, and so forth, in the way we described yesterday.

This fact of the existence of two riddles—the riddle regarding the unknowableness of the outer world and the riddle of the unknowableness of the inner world—can be understood out of the knowledge of the whole being of man, if one permits oneself to consider once the whole human nature, which shows only one side between birth and death, having its other side between death and a new birth.

Let us study the human being as he presents himself to us here between birth and death. We need only look at an aspect of the inner soul that is connected with our entire, normal daily life. We need only consider the inner fact of memory. I spoke yesterday of how this memory actually is based upon a reflecting-back on the outsides of the inner organs. We need this memory, however, for our soul life. I have often pointed out facts that show how the disturbance of this memory can undermine the entire normal life between birth and death. I told you of an example showing that the capacity for memory can extinguish itself in the human being. Such cases are well known. You can read in psychological literature of numerous such cases. It is a well-known fact that this can occur, and in a lesser degree this phenomenon is much more frequent than is generally realized. With such human beings, you need only picture that these processes—without the person knowing it in the ordinary sense of the word—are just as they are for you during sleep every night: consciousness is extinguished. Such an abnormal discontinuity of consciousness, however, has an extraordinarily significant influence upon the whole consciousness of the personality. A human being who has undergone such an experience is not quite able to get along with himself; there is something horrifying in his life afterward. From this you can see how important it is for the ordinary life between birth and death—except during the sleeping state—to have continuity of consciousness.

This continuity of consciousness is closely connected with our memory. We need this memory, therefore, in order to maintain our ordinary life normally. When one undergoes an occult development, another fact arises, the fact that it is necessary to develop soul forces that actually, during the moments of spiritual seeing, also extinguish ordinary memory. As long as one maintains this ordinary memory, one is basically unable to see into the spiritual world. Pupils of an occult development usually experience that when they begin to work on their development they have certain visions; then later they begin to complain that they no longer have these visions—the visions stay away. The reason for this is that for such visions—if they are genuine, true visions, and not hallucinations—there is really no memory. It is not possible to recall a vision, for the vision is something real. If you look at a piece of chalk and then look away, you have a memory picture. If, however, you wish to have the chalk before you, the real chalk, then you must return again to the perception; you must have the reality before you again. To experience this reality, memory is of no help at all. If you touch a hot iron, you burn yourself. Regardless of how much heat you retain in your memory, however, you cannot burn yourself. You must return to the real experience, because the vision brings you into connection with something real and not a mere picture. It is a matter, then, of returning to the vision and not merely recalling it, for a real seeing is a real occult experience and cannot become recollection; one can come to it again only in an indirect way. One can say to oneself that before the vision appeared we had gone through this or that in ordinary consciousness. This can be recalled, and one must call this stage back to the point when the vision appeared. One returns to this point. The vision cannot appear directly; rather one must retrace the path, as it were. This is not taken into account by many people, who believe that a vision can be recalled in the ordinary sense.

One must therefore undermine memory in a certain respect in occult development. This is absolutely necessary and cannot be prevented. It therefore must be said that one who strives for such an occult development must above all be certain that in ordinary life he is a reasonable person, that is, that he has no false mystical tendencies but has a healthy intellect and a sound memory. He who in ordinary life already has a tendency to wallow in unclarity and sentimentality is not fit to undergo an occult development. One absolutely must have the ability to recall the events of the day in full clarity before one can risk pressing forward to visions for which there is no such recollection.

The precautions that are recommended for an occult development are actually rooted in the nature of occult development itself. You thus can say that for the ordinary consciousness there is memory, and it is part of normal life between birth and death to have this memory.

Now I can sketch for you how human nature relates to the possession of this memory. Let me sketch it in this way (see drawing, pg. 84). What I am drawing now does not exist in this way but can be perceived in the etheric body. With this line I am indicating schematically that which is really extended over the whole body, and you would have to picture that from the head—and therefore from the sense perceptions, the sense organs—up to this line is what is outside the organs. This line represents the schematic borderline for the organs of the human being: this is the point of reflection, and beyond this line, therefore, lie heart, lungs, liver, and so on. Here (arrows) is where the reflection occurs. This line is symbolic of the human memory. You can actually picture that we have within us a kind of membrane that is really the membrane separating the etheric body from the astral body; in reality, however, it is not spatial—I have merely indicated it schematically. What is perceived is thrown back by the force of the organs that are behind it. It is thereby reflected, but reflected here, and we cannot see through it in ordinary consciousness; we cannot see through this memory membrane into the inner element of the human being; the memory conceals from us the inner element of man. It must conceal man's inner being, for otherwise the human being would not be normal in the ordinary life between birth and death. Memory is what closes off for us our ordinary consciousness from what is within. As soon as this memory is interrupted, as soon as it is torn, as happens through occult development, we see into our organs, as I described it yesterday.

Now, you see, we have the answer to the riddle of the not-being-able-to-look-within. This inner element must be concealed, for otherwise we would not be able to be normal in life between birth and death. We need this memory. The inner element of our self is thus hidden by our memory reflection. This understanding is what is necessary for a solution to this riddle.

From the other side, from the direction of the outer world, we see the veil of the senses spread out, as it were, and we do not see behind it. Let us look at the matter in this way, asking ourselves: how would it be if we were not to perceive the veil of the senses, behind which lies the essence of the world: let us say that the sense veil were perforated everywhere—if one could look through it everywhere, how would it be then? We would always flow with our perception, with our observation, into the objects. We would merge with'the objects. We would not be able to differentiate ourselves from the objects. What would be the result? We would never be able, if we were not able to differentiate ourselves from the objects, to develop feelings of love, for love is based upon the fact that one does not flow over into the other but rather remains an individuality, separated and yet “feeling across” (hinueberfuehlt). We are organized in such a way that we are capable of love between birth and death. In occult development this capacity for love must be replaced by Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition; we must, so to speak, break through the capacity for love. It would ruin our life totally and we would become brutal and cold if in our ordinary life we did not have love. Therefore it is necessary for one who attempts an occult development from this direction to develop above all, to the highest degree, the capacity for love. If he has developed it in such a way that he cannot lose it through occult development, that he maintains it in spite of this occult development, then he can dare to penetrate through the veil of the senses and look into the real objectivity. You thus see the second riddle placed before your soul. The human being must be organized in such a way that he is able to have memory and able to love. Because he must be capable of love, he is unable with his ordinary consciousness to see behind the veil of the senses, and because he must be able to remember, he is unable to look into his own inner being.

This is really the truth of the Kantian philosophy that is so erroneous. Kant wished to investigate human subjectivity, and he concocted a few abstract concepts that actually do not say anything. In reality it is so that we must understand the human being between birth and death as a being capable of both memory and love. In this life the human being learns to know what lives in sensation; he learns to know what lives in love, and this he must carry through the portal of death. We are here on earth, therefore, in order to bring to fruition in ourselves these two faculties.

Now, if the human being, through memory, must hold apart his perceiving and thinking being, which pushes against the veil of the senses here, then he develops, primarily through the head (though the human being is head in total), the life that we designate as the life of consciousness. This life of consciousness goes no further than the thought. The thought becomes memory picture, but we do not penetrate any further than to the memory picture. There the thought is stopped. Only through the fact that it is stopped there can it return again as memory. There the thought is stopped, and our normal life between birth and death actually consists of preventing the thought from descending into the organs. Its forces do descend, as I described yesterday, but the thought as such, as it lives in us as picture, we must not allow to descend into the organs. At the moment when we die, the thought becomes what it should not become in the ordinary consciousness; the thought then becomes Imagination. This Imagination, which in occult development is striven for with all one's effort, occurs when the human being passes through death. All his thoughts become pictures; the human being then lives entirely in pictures. One therefore can understand the dead only if one learns to know this picture-language. Immediately after death the thoughts transform themselves into pictures. The human being lives with these pictures for some time between death and a new birth. Then the pictures gradually become Inspiration. The soul thus in fact grows further. The pictures become Inspiration; then the human being begins to perceive the music of the spheres. The music of the spheres becomes something real for him: he lives in the world of world-tones. Finally he grows together with the objective-spiritual universe: his soul becomes entirely Intuition. He becomes, as it were, one with the universe.

When this Intuition has existed for some time, we are at the same point at which the world Midnight Hour occurs, of which I also spoke yesterday. Now the return path begins, and Intuition is suited to take up something of what the human being has left behind in having lived here on earth. When the human being goes through the portal of death, he lives by virtue of forces other than those that here on earth we call the will. He lives into more cosmic forces. The will becomes absorbed, let me say; the will gradually disappears. When the human being has arrived at the Midnight Hour of the world, however, that is after he has gone through the Imaginative stage, the stage of Inspiration, the Intuitive stage, and arrives, as it were, at the height of life between death and a new birth, then Intuition fills itself again with will. The thought again becomes permeated by will, and this will saturates the soul more and more; the soul wrestles through again to Inspiration and then to Imagination, undergoing Imagination for some time; then it is again ripe to be embodied here. Out of the pictures is formed, in the way I have described, what appears as the transformed metabolic-limb man of the previous incarnation. You see, therefore, that through those stages that are striven for in occult development, the human being ascends to the Midnight Hour of the world and then takes the reverse path down again to Imagination, arriving again at thought formation when he embodies himself (see drawing).

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

During this entire time the human being absorbs the will, and now, coming again into physical existence, we see how what works in out of the cosmos, what he absorbed from the previous incarnation, is as in a picture, and the will is still within this picture. We thus have here will-saturated Imagination.

When the human being therefore arrives at a new physical life, still before his conception, he does indeed have an Imagination, but a will-saturated Imagination. Out of the Imagination, which is essentially what existed already as picture, arises the head and what belongs to it, as well as the will, which takes hold now of the new limbs and the metabolism. This thus distributes itself over the head and the rest of the human being. The head is essentially, let me say, crystallized, frozen thought; what lives in the rest of the human being is organized will. Actually the human being can truly awaken only in the head. After all, you know your thoughts—your mental images in ordinary consciousness—one can say this about all present-day human beings. What happens in the will, as I have often mentioned, is just as unknown to man as what happens in sleep. How does one know, when one lifts an arm in ordinary consciousness, what is taking place? One perceives that an arm is lifted—we have this mental image—but the act of will as such remains in sleep, similar to the period between falling asleep and awakening. One therefore can say that regarding the metabolic-limb system, man also sleeps during the day. He awakens actually only in relation to the head-man. This all works together again.

You see, official science today speaks of a certain logic. It speaks in the logic of the mental image, of making judgments, and of drawing conclusions. Picture such a conclusion. The well-known conclusion, which resides in all logic, is related to the famous logical personality: all human beings are mortal; Caesar is a human being; therefore Caesar is mortal. This is the conclusion, and every part of the conclusion is a judgment: “All human beings are mortal” is a judgment; “Caesar is a human being” is a judgment; “therefore Caesar is mortal” is a judgment. The whole is a conclusion. Man, Caesar, are mental images. If you question a person today who is one of the very clever people—we must always consider the very clever people, for they determine the prevailing tone—he says, “Everything actually takes place in the nervous system; the nervous system is the mediator of the mental image, judgment, conclusion, even of feeling and will.” Already with this kind of forming mental images, making judgments, drawing conclusions, things are not as present official thinking believes them to be. Only forming mental images as such is actually the concern of the head. When you make a judgment, then you must feel, through the mediation of the etheric body, how you stand on your legs. You do not really make judgments with your head at all; you make judgments with your legs, although with the legs of the etheric body. He who makes judgments even when he is lying down stretches his etheric legs. Making judgments is not based on the head; it is based on the legs! Of course nobody believes this today; nonetheless it is true. Drawing conclusions is based on the arms and hands, and generally upon that which lifts man out of what the animal also has. The animal stands on its legs; the animal is itself a judgment, but it does not draw conclusions. The human being draws conclusions; for that purpose his arms have been liberated; that is what his arms are there for, not for walking. The human being has his arms free so that he can be a being that can draw conclusions. What happens when one stretches one's etheric legs or when one moves one's astral arm is a judgment, is a conclusion, which merely reflects itself in the head as mental image and then actually becomes a mental image. One thus needs the entire human being, not merely the nerve-sense human being, in order to arrive at judgments and conclusions.

Now, if you take this into consideration, you will say to yourself: the human being really lifts judgments and conclusions out of his limb system. These are fundamentally already acts of will, and this comes out of a much more indefinite state than forming mental images. We basically experience the same thing when we finish drawing a conclusion as when we wake up in the morning: we have lifted it out of the depths of our being. That which has become old from the previous life to this life, which lives itself out in the head, leads us to be able to have mental images. In the head we are old in relation to the cosmos when we are born. Our will is able to renew itself because in relation to the cosmos we have become young. What we carry with us as our head is always reminiscent of the previous incarnation. It is the old element. The metabolic-limb system, however, has been conquered by the will in entering this incarnation. It is actually mediated by the mother's body. The rest of the body—this can be confirmed by an outer, empirical study of embryology—is actually constructed from out of the cosmos in the mother. The head is simply a copy of the cosmos, brought about by outer forces. Whoever wishes to deny this should also say that it is nonsense that the magnetic field of the earth positions the needle of the magnet. The physicist goes beyond the magnet's needle if he wishes to explain it; the physiologist, the embryologist, the biologist, remains in the mother's body when he wishes to explain the embryo. That is just as nonsensical as if one wished to explain the needle of the magnet only out of itself. One must proceed out to the whole cosmos.

In development we have, to begin with, the head, and the rest of the body is only attached to it; this part the will conquers for itself, having approached Imagination during the passage through life between death and a new birth from the Midnight Hour of Existence onward. Now, when we study this human being (see drawing, page 84) we find that everything pertaining to thinking and perception lies above the membrane of memory, while everything pertaining to willing lies below this membrane. The will works up from below, works up out of the unconscious, and one finds it only in the way that we explained yesterday. There the will works upward. In regard to the will, we are sleeping. We thus actually have the human being as a duality in the life between birth and death. It is true the human being is a monad, but he is this in regard to the whole world, and this monadic quality must be brought about in becoming; he must renew it again and again. In reality, however, the human being between birth and death is dualistic: the thought, to some extent, with the perception on one side, the will with the feeling (Gemüt) on the other side.

The human being is thereby actually the average, I would like to call it, of two worlds. Be honest and ask yourselves, in every moment of your lives what do you have in consciousness? Your memory pictures—what you experienced at age two, three, five, or six—are the content of your consciousness. What comes through from below, welling up out of the will, is love, the capacity for love. The human being is actually nothing other than what in the average of two worlds appears as memory pictures and love. Basically the human being is organized in such a way that above is a world that is cosmic thought, while below is a world that is cosmic will. The human being is continually a point of attack for Lucifer from the side of will and a point of attack for Ahriman from the side of thought (see drawing, page 84). Ahriman continually strives to make the human being all head. Lucifer continually strives to cut the head off so that the human being cannot think at all, so that everything streams out in warmth by way of the heart, overflows with world love, flowing into the world as world love, as an excessively sentimental cosmic being flows out.

In our age, in our highly praised civilization, it is chiefly Ahrimanic influences active in us. These Ahrimanic influences have always been sensed by sensitive human beings. When I was still a very young man, I spoke once with an Austrian poet who was quite well known at that time; he had a fine feeling for what is emerging in our civilization, and he expressed it in a half-pictorial way; this half-pictorial quality was for him, however, a reality. He said to me—and it seems to me as if it were happening today—“Considering how we human beings are today, and especially if things continue along the lines they are going now, humanity will actually be confronted by a terrible fate, for the human being will gradually lose the agility of his limbs; he will no longer be able to walk properly; he will always want to ride a bicycle and to travel mechanically. He will lose the agility of his hands, and everything will become technical. Just as a muscle atrophies if it is not used, so everything in the human body will atrophy and the human being will become merely a head. The head will become bigger and bigger until finally the human being will just roll along, with the rest of his organism totally crippled.”

This picture hovered like a nightmare before this Austrian poet—Hermann Rollett was his name—and he described it very visually, for it weighed upon him terribly, this picture that human beings will become rolling heads due to our civilization. There is something quite true underlying this picture, however. What underlies it is that, in fact, in our time the powers are extraordinarily strong that would like to develop our heads more and more. With the physical head they will not succeed so well, but with the etheric head they will be more successful. It is therefore so, in fact, that in our time the Ahrimanic powers would like to make us thoroughly head-men; they would like to transform us completely into mere thinkers.

For the human being in a healthy development, however, the other pole exists, the will pole, which always counteracts this so that when we die the will has grasped the thought. Thought must not yet be alone. You see, when we are born, we have gathered new will, but the thought separates itself and finds our head; the will takes hold of the rest of the body. While we live on the earth there is within us a continual interaction between will and thought. The will takes hold of the thought, and we must carry this fusing of will and thought through death. Ahriman would like to prevent this. He would like for the will to remain separate, for the thought alone to be particularly cultivated. We would lose our individuality if we were finally to arrive at the point toward which Ahriman strives. We would completely lose our individuality. We would arrive, in the moment of death, at an excessively, intensively cultivated thought. We human beings would be unable to hold this thought, and Ahriman could lay hold of it himself and integrate it into the rest of the world so that this thought would work further in the rest of the world. This is, in fact, the destiny that threatens humanity if we persist in the present-day materialism; then Ahrimanic powers would become so strong that Ahriman could steal thoughts from the human being and incorporate them into the earth in their effectiveness, so that the earth, which actually ought to come to an end, would become consolidated. Ahriman works toward consolidating the earth, toward the earth remaining as earth. Ahriman works against the saying, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” He wishes the words to be cast aside and heaven and earth to remain. This can be accomplished only if the thoughts of human beings are stolen, if human beings are deindividualized.

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If Ahriman could continue to work as he has been able to especially since the year 1845, human brains would become more and more rigid, and human beings would live as though subject to compulsive thoughts, to materialized thoughts, as I explained yesterday. This would show itself particularly in human beings being guided in their education in such a way that they would no longer have mobile thoughts; rather, when they reached a certain age, they would have completely fixed thoughts. Now ask yourselves whether that is not already true to a great extent in our time! Just think how fixed the thoughts of many human beings are today. Is it possible to teach much to human beings today? Their thoughts are so rigid, so solid, that it is almost impossible to teach them very much. This is already being used by Ahriman. Ahriman strives more and more to intensify the process of making thoughts into compulsive thoughts. An active product in the scientific realm of these compulsive thoughts is atomism. In atomism, the spirit behind the veil of the senses is not intimated but only atoms, everywhere vibrating, whirling atoms. Of course you cannot reach behind the veil of the senses in any other way than with thoughts. Ahriman, however, has confused people so much already that they have materialized their thoughts. They no longer believe that they themselves have actually merely constructed a world with thought-atoms; they consider this as reality. They therefore have externalized the thoughts. This is a thoroughly Ahrimanized world. Today we have an Ahrimanized science, Ahrimanized through and through.

That this is actually the case can sometimes be encountered in a frightening way. I received, for example—maybe thirty-five years ago—a manuscript. It was a very scholarly manuscript. It intended to give the human differential—I am telling you a true story! By the human differential was meant the differential that if one integrates it will result in the human being. If one therefore integrates from foot to head, one will get the human being. It was a very scholarly treatise, and the physician who brought it to me said, “You may meet the author personally,” for he was in his clinic. When I became acquainted with the man, he said, “Yes, this is so; I have experienced it myself. I consist altogether of differential atoms. Everywhere there are differentials, and I am only an integral.” He conceived himself as differentiated exclusively into atoms; that was an intellectual-Ahrimanic form of consciousness. In the last analysis, however, it is merely the system of atomism grown rigid. When this manuscript was brought to me, I was led to recall that there is a LaPlacian world formula: according to it, it should be possible, by integration from the processes of atoms, to calculate, by inserting a specific value, when, let us say, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or something similar! Here one does not integrate from foot to head, but rather one merely needs to integrate from the world's beginning to its end. This can be done simply by bringing atoms into the world formula in the appropriate way. This whole way of thinking looks suspiciously similar to the treatise of the man who considered himself an integral locked in between the borders of foot and head. By viewing such matters correctly, one can receive clear insight into the progressively Ahrimanic nature of our culture.

This must, of course, be counteracted, which can happen only if our concepts are again led to have a pictorial quality, so that we do not merely work with abstract concepts but rather bring to our concepts a pictorial quality. Then, when passing through the portal of death, we will already be bringing pictures with us, and we will find the connection to what the world demands. Otherwise humanity approaches the danger of losing itself. What actually ought to be individualized by the flowing of the will into the thoughts will become mineralized, will be made into universal earth. The earth thus would become a world- being, but humanity would in terms of its soul flow into a great cemetery.

Such overviews of civilization must occasionally be made. In our time it is absolutely essential to make such overviews, for whoever is able to oversee more precisely the matters of evolution today knows how rapidly this ossification of our civilization is approaching us. On this occasion I would not like to forget to mention that until the year 869 A.D., until the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, man's members were considered to be body, soul, and spirit. At this Eighth Ecumenical Council, the following formula, to which I have repeatedly drawn attention, was established for the West: it must not be believed that man consists of body, soul, and spirit, but only of body and soul, and the soul has a few spiritual properties. This decision then passed into the world. In the Middle Ages it was heresy to believe that man consisted of body, soul, and spirit. Today philosophy professors discover by means of "unprejudiced science" that man consists only of body and soul. This "unprejudiced science" is nothing but a decision by the Eighth Ecumenical Council. That, however, strives toward something else. One could say that through this Eighth Ecumenical Council humanity has lost the consciousness of the spirit, which must be regained. If we proceed further along the path I have just described to you, however, humanity will also lose consciousness of the soul.

Among the materialists of the nineteenth century, this consciousness of the soul had already disappeared to such an extent that it was said that the brain secretes thoughts just as the liver secretes bile. It seemed, therefore, as if only a consciousness of the bodily processes remained. In fact, already today, without people knowing it, there are all kinds of underground societies that work toward things that lead in a direction similar to the one decided upon in 869 at the Council of Constantinople. They work to explain that man does not consist of both body and soul but rather that man consists only of the body and that the soul is merely something that develops out of the body. It is therefore impossible, if you take this viewpoint, to educate man from the aspect of soul; one must find a substance, a material substance, that can be injected into a human being at a certain age; then he will develop his talents by injection. This tendency definitely exists. It is right in line with the Ahrimanic development: no longer establish schools in order to teach, but inject certain substances instead. This is possible. It is not as if it were not possible. It is indeed possible, but the human being is made thereby into an automaton. One would speed up immensely what would otherwise be achieved by means of developing ready-made thoughts, with an education that overpowers thinking. There are already such substances that can be developed, substances that if injected at seven years of age, for example, could make the public schools altogether expendable; the human being would then become a thought automaton. He would become exceptionally clever but would not have a consciousness of it. This cleverness would just run off like a machine. What do many people today care, however, whether the human being has an inner life or not, as long as outwardly he walks around and does this or that? Such human beings that submit themselves by preference to the Ahrimanic civilization—and they do exist today—strive for such ideals. After all, what could be more tempting than the attitude, such as today is spreading far and wide, which would prefer to find an injectible substance to struggling with the children for years and years? One must present these things as being drastic. If one does not present the situation as being drastic, humanity today would not notice toward what goals it is striving. By such an injectible substance, one would simply achieve a loosening of the etheric body in the physical body. As soon as the etheric body is loosened, the play between the etheric body and the universe would become exceedingly lively, and man would become an automaton. The physical body here on earth must be developed through spiritual will.

Out of the full consciousness that one faces when confronting the automization of the human being, the methods for the Waldorf School, the pedagogical methods for the Waldorf School, were discovered. In this regard they should be motors of civilization that will lead again to a spiritualization, for basically—one can already say this—today above all it is necessary for the spiritual life among human beings to be particularly nurtured. One therefore should look courageously upon all that appears as symptoms of the improvement of individual human beings. I have often mentioned before how humanity strives today to place routine in place of a real practice of life—routine, which is truly the mechanization of life.

I was overjoyed recently when I read that there are still people who, going beyond the ordinary routine of life, have already perceived the practical life as something important. Recently a news item spread through the world, describing how Edison tested the people he wished to prepare for some sort of practical work. It did not interest him at all whether or not a merchant was able to keep books. That, he said, can be learned in three weeks if one is a reasonable, intelligent person. None of these specialties interested him at all; these one can learn. When Edison wished to know whether people would be of any use in practical life, however, he tested them by asking them questions like, "How large is Siberia?" Thus when he wished to discover whether someone was a good bookkeeper, Edison did not ask whether he could conduct an audit properly, but he asked, “How large is Siberia?” or “If a room is five meters long, three meters wide, and four meters high, how many cubic meters of air are contained in this room?” and similar questions. He posed questions like, “What is standing at the place where Caesar crossed the Rubicon?” and so on, just general questions. And according to the extent to which a person could answer such questions, Edison hired him as a bookkeeper, or whatever. He knew that if a person could answer such a general question this was a proof that his schooling had not been in vain, that as a child he had developed mobile thoughts, and this is what Edison demanded.

This is how practical life really should be conducted, whereas in recent times we have steered precisely in the opposite direction, succumbing more and more to specialization, so that finally one could really despair of finding the people needed for practical life. It is impossible to get anyone to do something outside the pigeonhole into which he wants to fit. Already today it must be said that in this way too we must work toward the mobility of thoughts. If there is such a working toward the mobility of thoughts, then these thoughts will not harden, and Ahriman will be in a difficult position. You can see yourselves, if you look at life, how few Edisons there are who have such practical principles. It is necessary to work toward a pictorial quality of concepts; whoever works toward the pictorial quality of concepts will no longer be able to say that he does not understand spiritual science. It is precisely that tug which a person giyes himself in order to receive from abstractions the pictorial quality of concepts that presents on the one hand the possibility of grasping that the earth evolved out of ancient Moon, Sun, Saturn; on the other hand, for the inner life, the life of feeling intermingles with the pictorial conceptions, with the imagination. The fully human being thus will arise.

We will now try to imagine how what is said about the woes, etc., in the Apocalypse often plays into our time, and how the consciousness soul can be taken hold of by this and how it of course points back to previous experiences on earth at a certain level,—germinally indicating tremendous upheavals in advance. We should realize that what I interpreted for you yesterday has an important influence on the overall shaping of human evolution.

We should consider that although the things that take place in the spiritual sphere are not taken into account very much by our contemporaries and by our age in general, they nevertheless have a very strong and much more extensive effect upon things than people think; people generally think that the effects of spiritual events are restricted to the spiritual sphere. For instance, when I said yesterday that certain leading personalities in eastern Europe are developing thoughts which really represent a force that should only be active in cloud formations, it indicates that what is going on in the heads of Russian leaders will someday be something that will appear as events in the clouds after it develops out of its present germinal condition. So that one can say that the current upheavals in Russia will later be tremendous stormy revolutions that will occur above the heads of men.

We're now coming to another secret of Apocalyptic vision that should explain a certain passage. Thereby we're getting ever closer to a real interpretation of the mighty visions in the Apocalypse. We're coming to what we with our present way of experiencing things should make clear to ourselves. If we look at life over the short span of time that people usually consider today without going back to the starting condition of the earth or to its final one through daring and usually foolish hypotheses,—if one surveys this without the aid of spiritual observations, one can say: Nature's processes take their course in the outer world; we see lesser natural events that occur over the years and we see greater events in nature such as earthquakes, floods and volcanic eruptions.

However, what we call historical events such as the 30 years' war, Louis XIV, etc., run alongside these, although we don't feel the need to connect the two series because we only have a limited overview of these events. They follow each other, and they occur simultaneously, and no one feels an urge to make a connection between the two series, because one thinks that they run parallel. However, one only has to look at a longer span of time and one will see that this parallel idea leads one astray. For if one looks back from the present life on earth to a previous one—which must of course be understood in a theoretical way as long as it is not grasped by the Imaginations which the spiritual investigator gives—if one brings repeated earth lives into one's real experience one gets the impression. One looks over a meadow and into the woods and one notices how different these things are from what they were during one's past incarnation on earth. One notices this even if one is far away from the place where one was last time. For everything on earth is changing continuously, and no matter where one was before, the plants and animals have taken on a very different character.

One feels this as soon as one becomes aware of, something from the previous incarnation and one then looks out into nature again in a free way. One feels that this is very astonishing and bewildering. One gets the inner feeling that what one sees in one's environment didn't come from what was there at the time of the previous incarnation, but that the main part of it originated elsewhere. It's like this: someone, with the customary scientific world view looks upon what happens in nature as a straight line (See drawing). For instance, one has the years 343, 895, 1260, 1924. Then one thinks that what is growing on the meadow today came from the seeds of what grew before and so on back to 1260, 895, etc. One follows the generations of seeds from one to the next and one thinks of this as a straight line. But this is not so. At the moment I mentioned one discovers that this is not so. I have often pointed out that the body which one carries around today is not the same as the one, one had 7 to 8 years ago, with the exception of a few inclusions. Some things harden during the course of one's life as I mentioned in the other course but in any case none of the substances that are in your body now were in it when you were a three-year-old child; all of the physical matter has been exchanged.

Likewise, nothing of what was present in former ages is present, in the meadow with all its flowers. Instead one gets the idea that the present meadow came down from spiritual worlds, and that what was a meadow in previous times also came down from spiritual worlds, etc., and that what was a meadow centuries ago has perished completely. Spiritual seeds that come down from the upper regions are continuously replacing what existed previously, and it's not just a matter of physical seeds that are handed down by heredity.

Once one has grasped that what is a meadow today was not a meadow in, say, the 13th century, but that there was another meadow there which has perished in the meantime, one gets an idea of the mission of snow: It is I the bearer of a continual dying process. One gets more snow every year, and ice is continually renewed from above, as nature dies into this whole, elementary shaping process that is present in the dynamics of snow and ice formation. This is the way things are in our time. However, this state of affairs will eventually change. We will say more about this shortly. However, I would first like to mention the following.

As soon as one notices that the meadow out there came down from super-terrestrial spheres via snow and ice—and it makes no difference which region one was previously incarnated in—one knows: you helped to create this meadow in the time between your last incarnation and now. You helped to build up everything in nature that is around you in your present incarnation. That is something one notices. And then one also becomes aware that this is only a temporary state of affairs.

Scientists are always saying that the processes you find out in nature are something permanent. But this is really nonsense. In reality nothing out there remains. The fact is that everything changes including the laws of nature. That is why today's scientists have gotten to the point where they only look upon the most abstract laws of nature as permanent ones. Generalities like: Every effect has a cause. Matter is constant—that really say nothing are considered to be eternal laws of nature.

This alternation on earth between the greening summer which dissipates moisture into warmth and the withering winter that solidifies moisture into ice and snow, did not always exist, and a time is coming when it will no longer exist. Instead a condition will arise in which there will be something that doesn't exist today.

You see, we have the alternating states today—I would like to emphasize this and I would like it if you grasp this quite clearly—we have the present state of affairs: Firstly, summer, which evaporates watery things through warmth, and secondly winter, which uses cold to harden the same watery things into ice and snow. Fall and spring is a condition that oscillates between these two. All of this will gradually become evened out. Summer will no longer evaporate aqueous things as much, and winter won't harden them into ice and snow as much. Instead there'll be an intermediate condition where watery things will have a different consistency, namely a considerably thicker one than in the summer time, where it remains and doesn't just pass over into another one. Snow and ice will not look like they do today; they will look like a reflective, transparent mass that will remain in both summer and winter. This is the emergence of the “glassy sea” which the Apocalypticer refers to.

We have pointed to a natural phenomenon which we grasped through an observation of events in nature and we have placed it in time. Now since we know that everything that is done around us really comes from us, and that we help to make the meadows on which our karma places us when we incarnate, we should also be able to extend this to the great transformation of the earth. And it is quite correct to say that men will contribute ever more towards the creation of the glassy sea through their inner dynamic qualities and through the intellectuality that they experience and develop in the consciousness soul age, so that men will work together on the great events of the future. Here you have a unified working of what occurs in men and of what takes place outside in nature and not just a parallelism.

Now you will also be able to understand something else, and that is the following. We should realize that when we come into the divine element that is connected with human evolution and into the state of equilibrium between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces that is continually being maintained,—if we grasp the real essence of this, then whenever we rim into this, when we rightly perceive what is not an influence from Lucifer and what is not an influence from Ahriman, that is, when we perceive what comes from this progressive, divine spirituality that is really connected with human evolution,—if we approach the divine element that keeps a balance between the realms where Luciferic elements are continuously flowing in and Ahrimanic things are continuously flowing in, we find that the basic force in everything that is streaming through here and which forms men outwardly, and which inwardly ensouls them and permeates them with spirit—is pure love. This fundamental force is pure love.

The universe consists of pure love, as far as its inner substance and being is concerned and in so far as it relates to human beings. It is nothing else; we don't find anything besides pure love in the divine things that are assigned to men. However, this love is an inner element and it can be experienced by souls in an inner way. It would never become outwardly manifest if it didn't create its body from the etheric elements that we know as light. If we really look at the world in an occult way, we get to the point where we tell ourselves: the fundamental essence of the world is inner love substantiality that becomes manifest outwardly as light.

That is not an opinion or a belief for someone who has an insight into these things; it is knowledge that was gained in a quite objective way. To the extent that man Is rooted in the universe, the latter is essentially love that becomes manifest outwardly as light. Essentially, because we have to do with all the essences or beings of the higher hierarchies who are carried by this love and who experience this love inwardly, which however becomes manifest as love, if we want to use an abstract idea. The outer sheen of beings is love and the outer sheen of love is light. That is something that one repeatedly emphasized in all the mysteries, and which is real knowledge that has been acquired by every true occultist, and it is not just an opinion or a belief.

Now the fact is that this is one stream in the universe, and it is important to us as human beings, but it is only one stream. If we look at the age of materialism since the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, at the climax of materialism during the 40's of the 19th century and at the development of materialism afterwards with everything that people think and do and with all the terribly destructive forces that have been raging in humanity since the middle of the 19th century, although many people haven't even really noticed them yet,—we can well imagine that divine love which unfolds in light weaves above all of this.

However, if you take some very clean water, some absolutely crystal clear water and dip a dirty sponge in it and squeeze it, and let the water run out again, you will see that it is cloudy and dirty. You have let the dirty sponge suck up the crystal clear water and you have squeezed it out again and it has become dirty water. The crystal clear, pure water can't help it that it flows out as dirty water when one squeezes the sponge. And the divine love that is springing up in pure light can't help it that it is being absorbed by the age of materialism, by a sponge that is permeated by impurities and that it thereby becomes something quite different when it reemerges. So when crystal clear water is absorbed by a dirty sponge it becomes cloudy, undrinkable water, and by analogy we can imagine that when divine love that appears in light is sucked up by all the evil ingredients that are latently or openly raging in humanity, it becomes divine wrath.

The secret of the next age is that divine love will appear in the form of divine wrath through what happens in humanity. It will appear in the form of the divine wrath that will stop the harmful effects of the materialistic arrangements that are arising in our materialistic, consciousness age by destroying them. Proceeding from what appears to the Apocalypticer in pictures, he speaks of the pouring out of the vials of wrath in the next age. That is something that was expressed in the mysteries in a sentence that had a terribly shocking effect upon the neophytes: Divine love appears in the form of divine wrath in the sphere of human illusions.

That is a statement that was handed down in the mysteries many millennia ago and it lives in a prophetic way in John's visions in the Apocalypse. He describes how divine love becomes sullied through the preceding events and what will have to happen as the necessary fulfillment of the preceding, namely, the pouring out of divine wrath in an age when men's actions will have a much greater effect upon events in nature than they do today. For the parallelism that gives men the illusory idea that nature and man's soul and spirit run side by side, only applies in the middle parts of evolutionary periods. Even in the smaller evolutions such as the present period between the Atlantean catastrophe and the war of all against all, men had a greater influence upon events in nature at the beginning and end of these periods through what went on in them. Hence it is not just a fable that a large part of humanity was using black magic on a large scale near the end of the Atlantean period of evolution. The consequence of the crimes that men committed through their dealings with black magic was the events in nature that brought about the Atlantean catastrophe.

Therefore, many things that are happening now will give rise to later events in nature. One of these is the Russian revolution, which also had many occult causes; its storms of thunder and lightning will pour out over the heads of men all summer long for years to come. Other world elements that are gathering in our time are clouding the gods' love, and will appear as events in nature that we can only look upon as a transformation of divine love into divine wrath through the illusions of men.

Looked at from a real and true point of view, the divine wrath that is poured out over men is still a manifestation of divine love, and that is why the sentence was formulated in the way that I gave it. If divine love would become weak and if it would seemingly take pity on men in this age, it would be no real compassion, for it would ignore the necessary consequences of human thoughts and actions. That would be very loveless, for then humanity would become corrupt. The deleterious things that men did and that would have an unspeakably harmful effect on further human evolution can only be eliminated by the outpouring of divine wrath, which is a metamorphosis of divine love. This sentence in the manuscripts is so old that it is often stated in its oriental form in Europe, so that one says: In the region of mayadivine love becomes manifest as divine wrath. Here again one can see how completely the Apocalypse is taken from the really active ingredients in the world. The deeper one goes into it the more one realizes that one can really rely on this Apocalypse; although that is a rather trivial way of putting it. It is basically something that tells priests what is happening in the course of human and world evolution. It was originally given to priests as the really esoteric part of Christianity in addition to the other part that was exoteric.

This is lecture 3 of 14 in the lecture series entitled, Experiential Knowledge of the Supersensible. It is also lecture 3 of 5 included in the collection of lectures known as, Psychoanalysis in the Light of Anthroposophy, Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology, or Freud, Jung, and Spiritual Psychology.

When public lectures are held for a larger public, certain things must be dealt with differently than at Group-meetings, because the members of a Group who have worked together and have studied these matters for some time, are prepared to accept such things differently than a larger public. Yesterday we saw that we can speak of hidden aspects of man's soul-life and we must place these hidden sides of human soul-life against the facts ascertained through ordinary, everyday consciousness.

If you were to observe superficially what lives in your soul, from the morning when you awake until the evening when you fall asleep—what lives in it in the form of ideas, feelings or moods, and impulses of the will-including of course all that enters the soul from outside through sense-perception—if you observe all this, then you will obtain all that can be termed as forming the contents of ordinary consciousness. We must now realise that everything which is thus contained in the life of our consciousness, is dependent as far as this ordinary consciousness is concerned upon the instruments of the physical body. The nearest and most obvious fact proving what has just been said, is that man must awake in order to live within the course of events, ascertained through an ordinary consciousness. This signifies that man must dive into the physical body with that part of his being which is outside the physical body during sleep, and that this physical body with its instruments is then at his disposal. He should be able to use these instruments in order to ascertain the happenings which are accessible to ordinary consciousness. The following question immediately arises:—How does man, as a spirit-soul being, use his bodily instruments—the sense-organs and the nervous system? How does he use his bodily organs in order to live within his everyday consciousness? In materialistic spheres it is held that the physical or bodily instruments constitute for man something which produces the facts of his consciousness. I have often pointed out that this is not the case; we should not imagine that the inner structure of our body, namely the sense-organs or the brain, produce the facts of consciousness, just as a candle, for instance, produces a flame. The relationship of what we call consciousness to the bodily instruments is entirely different; we may compare it with the relationship of a man who sees his reflection in a mirror, to this mirror. When we are asleep, we live within our consciousness as if we were walking, so to speak, in a straight line. If we are walking in a straight line, we do not see what our forehead, etc. looks like—but the very moment that someone holds a mirror in front of us, we can see ourselves. Then that which is already a part of us, comes toward us; it begins to exist for us. The same thing occurs in the case of the facts in our ordinary consciousness. They live in us continually, but in reality they have nothing to do with our physical body. Just as we ourselves have nothing to do with the mirror, so the facts in our consciousness have nothing to do with our physical body. The materialistic theory in this sphere is not even an acceptable hypothesis—it is sheer nonsense! For in this connection the materialist states something which may be compared to nothing less than this—namely, that someone who sees himself in a mirror, declares that he has been produced by the mirror. If you wish to delude yourself that the mirror has produced you, because you can only see yourself when a mirror is held before you, then you may also believe that various parts of the brain, or your sense-organs produce the contents of soul-life. Both things are equally clever and equally true. The truth, that a mirror can produce a man, has just the same value as the other truth, that a brain can produce thoughts. The facts that live in our consciousness have their own existence. It is necessary however that our ordinary organisation should perceive these existing facts of consciousness. To render this possible, we must be faced by something which reflects the facts of consciousness—namely, our physical body. Thus we possess in our physical body something which we may call a mirroring apparatus for the facts of our ordinary consciousness. These live in our spirit-soul being, and we perceive them because the mirror of our corporeality is held in front of what lives in us and is part of us, but cannot be perceived by us through the soul (just as we cannot see ourselves unless a mirror is held before us). This is the true aspect of things, But the body is not merely a passive mirroring apparatus—it is something in which processes take place. You may therefore imagine at the back of this mirror—instead of the dark coating which brings about the reflections—all kinds of happenings which take place there, behind the mirror. This comparison may be used to characterise the true relationship between our spirit-soul being and our body. Hence we must bear in mind that the body is a mirroring instrument for everything we experience within our normal, everyday consciousness and that moreover the physical body is a true mirror. Behind—or if you like—beneath these normal facts of consciousness, lie all those things which rise to the surface of our ordinary soul-life, which must be designated as the facts contained in the hidden depths of the soul.

Something of what lives in the hidden depths of the soul is experienced—let us say—by the poet, by the artist. If he is a real poet, a real artist, he will know that he does not attain what comes to expression in his poetry in the usual way—he does not attain it through logical thinking, or in the way in which we come to the facts of consciousness through outer perception. He knows that things arise out of unknown depths and are there, really exist, without having been formed by the forces of ordinary consciousness. But other things also arise out of these hidden depths of soul-life. These are things which play a part in normal consciousness, although we do not know anything about their origin, as far as ordinary life is concerned. But yesterday we saw that we can descend more deeply into soul-life—as far as the region of semi-consciousness, the region of dreams, and we know that dreams lift something out of the hidden depths of soul-life which we would be unable to lift up in the usual, normal way, through an effort of consciousness. If something, which has been buried in memory long ago, rises before a man's soul in the form of a dream-picture, as happens again and again—then, in most cases, this man would never have been in a position to lift these things out of the hidden depths of his soul-life by trying to recollect them—because ordinary consciousness does not reach as far as this. What can no longer be reached through normal consciousness, can however be reached through sub-consciousness. In this semi-conscious state during dreams, many things are brought to the surface which have remained behind, as it were—which have been stored. They surge up—but only those things surge up which could not become active, in the same way as other things become active, which dive down into hidden soul-depths, from out the experiences gained in life. We acquire health or we grow ill, we become bad-tempered or glad—but this takes place so that we do not notice it in the normal course of life, because it constitutes bodily conditions, determined by what has dived down into the soul out of our life-experiences—something which we cannot remember, but which is nevertheless active in the depths of soul-life, making us into what we then become during the course of life. We would understand many human lives if we were to know what has entered the hidden depths during the course of life. We would understand many a human being in his 30th, 40th, 50th year—we would know why he has this or that inclination, why he feels so deeply the cause of his dissatisfaction—we would understand many things if we were to trace the life of such a man back to his childhood. In his childhood, we would see how parents and surroundings influenced him; what was called forth during childhood in the form of sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure—things perhaps that are completely forgotten, but influence a man's entire state of health and of mind. For what surges and rolls down into the hidden depths of soul-life out of our consciousness, continues to be active there below. The strange part of it all is that these forces which are working there, first work upon ourselves and do not abandon—so to speak—the sphere of our personality. Hence, when clairvoyant consciousness descends to these depths (this occurs through imagination, through what we call imaginative knowledge), when it descends to the depths where these forces are active in sub-consciousness, as just described, then man always finds his own self. He finds what surges and lives within him. And this is a good thing. Indeed, in a true self-knowledge, man must learn to know himself; he must contemplate and learn to know all the impulses which are active within him.

If man does not pay attention to this fact, if he pays no attention to the fact that first of all he will find his own self with all that constitutes it and is active within it, he will be exposed to all kinds of errors when his clairvoyant consciousness penetrates into sub-consciousness through the exercises of an imaginative knowledge. Through a form of consciousness resembling the ordinary consciousness, man cannot be aware at all that he comes across his own self when he descends into the depths of soul-life. At a certain stage of development it will be possible to have visions—let us say—to see shapes which are unquestionably something new, when we compare them with what we have learnt to know through the experiences of life. Such a circumstance can indeed arise. But if we were to imagine that such things belong to the outer world, this would be a great illusion. These things do not arise in the same way in which the facts connected with our inner life generally arise in ordinary consciousness. If we have a headache, this is a fact which enters usual consciousness. We know that the pain is in our own head. If we have a stomach-ache, the pain is experienced within our own self. If we descend to the depths which we call the hidden soul-depths, we can only be within our own self—yet we can see things which appear to us as if they were outside our own selves. Let us take, for instance, a striking case. Let us suppose that someone desires most intensely to be the reincarnated Mary Magdalene, (I once mentioned that I have already met twenty-four reincarnated Magdalenes in my life); let us assume that someone desires most intensely to be Mary Magdalene. But let us also assume that this person does not confess this wish to himself (we need not confess our wishes to ourselves—this is unnecessary). Well—someone may read the story of Mary Magdalene and may like it immensely. In his sub-consciousness the desire to be Mary Magdalene may now immediately arise. He is aware of nothing in his usual consciousness except that he likes this character. The person in question has a liking for this character. He is aware of this in his upper consciousness. But in his sub-consciousness lives the burning desire to be himself this Mary Magdalene—yet he knows nothing about this. He does not bother about this. He is guided by the facts of his usual consciousness; he can go through the world without being compelled at all to become aware of this erroneous fact in his consciousness—the intense wish to be Mary Magdalene. But let us suppose that such a person has attained, in some way or other, a kind of occult training. This would enable him to descend into his sub-consciousness—but he would not become aware of the fact, “in me lives the desire to be Mary Magdalene”—he would not become aware of this in the same way that he becomes aware of a headache. If he were to notice this desire to be Mary Magdalene then he would be sensible and assume toward this desire the same attitude as toward a pain—namely, he would try to get rid of it. But through an irregular descent into sub-consciousness, this does not take place, because his desire acquires the form of something which is outside his own personality, and to the man in question it appears as the vision: “You are Mary Magdalene”. This fact stands before him, is projected outside his own being. Moreover, a human being at this stage of development is no longer able to control such a fact through his Ego. This lack of control cannot arise when we undergo a regular, sound and absolutely careful training; for then the Ego accompanies all experiences in every sphere. But as soon as the Ego no longer accompanies all our experiences, the fact described above can arise in the form of an objective outer happening. The observer believes that he can remember the events connected with Mary Magdalene and feels himself identified with this Mary Magdalene. This is unquestionably possible. I emphasize this possibility, because it shows you that only a careful training and the conscientiousness with which we penetrate into occultism, can rescue us from falling into error. If we know that we must first see before us an entire world, that we must see around us facts, not something which we apply to our own selves, but something that is in us, and yet appears like the picture of a whole world—if we know that we do well to consider what we first see before us is the projection of our own inner life—then we possess a good shield against the errors which can beset us along this path. The best thing of all is to consider at first everything that rises out of our inner being as if it were an exterior fact. In most cases these facts arise out of our desires, vanities, ambition—in a few words, out of all the qualities connected with human selfishness. These things above all project themselves outside and now we may ask:—How can we escape from such errors? How can we save ourselves from them?

It is not possible to save ourselves from error through the usual facts of consciousness. Error arises because we cannot, so to speak, come out of ourselves at the moment when we are being faced by a world picture; we remain entangled within ourselves. This will show you that the essential thing is to come out of ourselves, to distinguish in one way or another that here we have before us one kind of vision, and there another. Both visions are outside; one is perhaps merely the projection of a wish, and the other one is a real fact. Yet they do not differ as much as things differ in ordinary life—for instance, when one person states that he has a headache and we ourselves have a headache. For our own inner life, as well as that of another man, are both projected outside into space. How can we discriminate between them?

We must learn to investigate the occult sphere—we must learn to distinguish a true impression from a false one, although all impressions are mixed together and arise as if they were all equally entitled to be taken for true impressions. It is just as if we were to look into the physical world and were to see there, beside the actual trees, other imaginary trees, and as if we were unable to discriminate between them. The true facts outside and the facts which arise only within ourselves are mixed together, just as if false and true trees were standing side by side. How can we learn to distinguish one sphere from the other? We do not learn this at first through our consciousness. If we remain only within the life of thoughts we cannot possibly discriminate, for this possibility is given to us only through a slow occult training of the soul. If we progress more and more, we reach the point where we learn to distinguish one thing from another—that is, we do in the occult what we would have to do if we were to see actual trees beside imaginary ones. If we walk toward imaginary trees, we do not strike against them, but we do collide with real trees! Something similar also occurs—but as a spiritual fact, of course—in the occult sphere. If we proceed in the right way, we can learn to discriminate in a comparatively easy manner between what is true and false in this sphere; but we cannot do this through thoughts—only through a decision of the will. This decision of the will can arise as follows:—If we survey our life, we find in it two distinct groups of events. We often find that this or that thing in which we succeed or fail, is connected quite normally with our capacities. In other words—we can understand our failure in a certain direction because we are not particularly clever in that sphere. On the other hand, we can understand our success in this or in that direction because we know that we have certain capacities which account for it. Perhaps it may not always be so strictly necessary to realise this connection existing between our actions and our capacities. There is also a less clear way of realising it. For instance, when misfortune strikes someone at some later stage in life and he then thinks about this, he may say to himself:—“I have been a man who has done very little in order to become more active ... ” Or else he may admit to himself:—“I have always been such a happy-go-lucky fellow ... ” In both cases he will be able to say that he did not realise immediately the connection between his failure and his past actions, but he did realise that a light-hearted lazy man will not succeed in all things as well as a conscientious, diligent one. There are things where we can see quite well their connection with our successes or failures, but there are others where it seems impossible to find a connection—where we must say:—In spite of this or that capacity which should have guaranteed our success in this or in that direction, we have not succeeded. Evidently there are also certain kinds of successes or failures where we can not see at once the connection with our capacities. This is one aspect. The other one is that in the case of certain things which we encounter, such as blows of destiny, we may sometimes say:—“Well, this seems justified; for we ourselves have supplied the conditions for it.” But for other occurrences we find that they happen without our being able to discover anything which could be indicated as their cause. Thus we have two kinds of experiences—experiences which come from us, and where we can see the connection with our own capacities—and the other kind of experience which has just been described. In the case of some experiences which come to us from outside, we find happenings of which we cannot say that we ourselves have given rise to them, and again there are others of which we know that their foundation lies in us. Let us look about us in life and make an experiment which is very useful for every human being. This experiment can be made as follows. We place together all things the causes of which are unknown to us, and also all the things in which we have succeeded and of which we can say that they have happened in some unaccountable way—things for the success of which we are not responsible at all. But also failures which we can remember may be placed together in this way. Then we look upon outer events which have met us by chance, for which we cannot find any influence on our part. Now we may make the following soul-experiment. Let us imagine that we build up in thoughts an artificial man (bear in mind that first of all we make this grotesque soul-experiment)—we construct this artificial man; he is made in such a way that all the things in which we have succeeded in an unaccountable way are brought about through his capacities. Hence when we find that we have succeeded in something which requires wisdom, whereas we are stupid in this very thing, we build up an imaginary man who is particularly wise in this very sphere and who would therefore have met with success in it. We may also apply this experiment as follows in the case of an outer event. Let us assume that a brick falls on our head. At first we cannot realise the cause of this. Let us now construct an imaginary man who brought about the falling of this brick, as follows:—First of all he ran up on to the roof and pulled out a brick so that it would necessarily fall down soon afterwards. Then he quickly ran down again and the brick struck him. This is exactly what we do in certain happenings, although we know quite well in accordance with the usual course of events that we have not caused them; in fact these happenings may even be very much against our will. Let us suppose that someone has struck us at a certain time in our life. To facilitate matters, let us place this occurrence in our childhood; let us suppose that someone engaged to look after us, has beaten us. And let us imagine that we did all we could to deserve this beating. In short, we now construct an imaginary person in whom all those things are centred which are impenetrable to our understanding. You see, if we wish to progress in occultism, we must carry out several things which are in contrast to ordinary facts. But if we only do what appears to be sensible in the usual meaning of the word then we do not come much further in occultism, for the things connected with the higher world may at first seem foolish to an ordinary human being. But it does not matter if the method may appear foolish to a superficial sober-minded man. Let us therefore construct this imaginary human being. At first this may appear grotesque, and perhaps we do not realise its purpose. Yet we shall make a discovery within ourselves; everyone who makes this experiment will discover that it is impossible to get rid of this man whom we have built up in our thoughts—he will begin to interest us. Indeed, when we make this experiment, we will find that we cannot rid ourselves any more of this artificial man—he lives in us. Strange to say, he does not only live in us, but transforms himself within us; he changes greatly. He transforms himself so that in the end he differs entirely from what he was before. He becomes something, of which we cannot but say that after all it is contained in us. This is an experience which we all can have. What has now been described—not the imaginary human being which we have first constructed, but what has become of him—may be designated as a part of what is contained within ourselves. It is exactly that part which has, so to speak, brought about those things in life which apparently have no cause. Thus we find within ourselves something which really brings forth the things that cannot be explained otherwise. What I have described to you constitutes in other words a way enabling us not only to gaze into our own soul-life and to find something in it, but also to tread a path leading out of this soul-life into the surrounding world. For the things in which we fail do not remain in us, but become a part of the world around us. We have taken from it something which is not in keeping with the usual facts of our consciousness. But we have obtained something which appears as if it were contained within us. Then we feel as if we had after all some connections with the things that apparently arise with no real cause. Thus we begin to feel how we are connected with our destiny, with what is called karma. This soul-experiment is a true path, enabling us to experience karma in a certain way.

You may argue:—“I cannot quite understand what you say.” But when you say this, it is not because you think that you cannot understand; you say it because you fail to understand something which is in reality quite easy to understand—but you do not think about it. It is impossible to understand such things unless we have carried out the above mentioned experiment. Hence, these things can be looked upon merely as the description of an experiment which can be made and experienced by everybody. Through this experiment we can all realise that in us something lives which is connected with our karma. If we were to know this beforehand, it would not be necessary to be given directions showing us how to attain it. It is quite natural that this cannot be realised unless we have made the experiment. However, it is not a question of “understanding” things in the usual meaning of the word, but of accepting a communication concerning something which our soul can experience. If our soul treads such paths, it will grow accustomed to live not only within itself, within its wishes and passions, but it will grow accustomed to look upon exterior happenings and to connect them with its own self. Our soul will grow accustomed to this. The very things which we have not desired are those which we ourselves have brought into the occurrences. Finally, if we are able to face our whole destiny so that we accept it calmly, if in the case of things about which we generally grumble and protest, we think instead—“let us accept them gladly, for we ourselves are responsible for them”—if we are able to do this, then we develop a particular frame of mind. This frame of mind will enable us to distinguish the true from the false when we descend into the hidden depths of soul-life, to discriminate with absolute certainty; then what is true and what is false will appear with wonderful clearness and certainty.

If we look upon a vision with the spiritual eye and are able to dispel it simply through the fact that we dispel or conjure away all the forces which we experience as our inner being and which we learn to know anew in this form—if we can dispel them as it were through a mere glance—then this vision is nothing but a phantasm. But if we can not eliminate it in this way and are able to dispel only that part which reminds us of the outer sense world—that is the visionary part—if the spiritual element remains as an undeniable fact, then the vision is a true one. This distinction however cannot be made before we have accomplished what has already been described. Hence, on the super-sensible plane the true and the false cannot be distinguished with certainty unless we have undergone the above mentioned training. The essential fact during a soul-experience is that our usual consciousness is in reality always contained in what we desire, so that through this soul-experiment we become accustomed to consider as our own will what we do not wish at all as far as our ordinary consciousness is concerned—what usually goes against our will. In a certain connection we may have reached a definite stage of inner development; if however such a soul-experiment does not induce us to place this connection with what we have not wished, against the wishes, pensions, sympathies and antipathies living within our soul, then we shall make one mistake after another. The greatest mistake of this kind was made just in the Theosophical Society by H. P. Blavatsky. She observed the field where the Christ may be found, and because her wishes and desires—in a few words all that constituted her upper consciousness—contained antipathy, indeed hatred for everything Christian and Jewish, whereas she had a predilection for all that had spread over the earth as spiritual civilisation, excluding the Christian and the Hebrew, and because she had never passed through the training described today—she was faced by an entirely false idea of the Christ. This is quite natural. She handed this idea over to her more intimate disciples and it is still alive today, coarsened into a grotesque picture. These things reach into the highest spheres. We can see many things on the occult plane, but the capacity of distinguishing them is higher than merely seeing or perceiving them. This must be emphasized sharply.

Now the following problem arises: When we dive down into our hidden soul-depths (every clairvoyant must do this), we first reach our own self. We must learn to know ourselves by passing really and truly through that stage where we are at first faced by a world in which Lucifer and Ahriman continually promise us the kingdoms of the world. This signifies that we are placed before our own inner world and that the devil tells us—this is the objective world. This is the temptation which even the Christ could not escape. The illusions of the inner-world were placed before Him. But through His own strength He was able to see from the very beginning that this was not a real world, but something contained in man's inner world. Through this inner world, in which we must distinguish two parts—one which we can eliminate, namely, our true inner content, and another which remains—we reach the objective super-sensible world through the hidden depths of our soul-life. Just as our soul-spiritual kernel must use the mirror of the physical body in order to perceive the things outside, or what constitutes the facts of ordinary consciousness, so the human being must use his etheric body as a mirror, as far as his soul-spiritual kernel is concerned, in order to perceive the spiritual super-sensible facts which he at first encounters. The higher sense-organs, if we may use this expression, appear in the astral body, but what lives in them must be reflected through the etheric body, just as the soul-spiritual content which we perceive in ordinary life is reflected through the physical body. We must learn to use our etheric body. Since our etheric body is generally unknown to us, although it is that part which really gives us life—it is quite natural that we should first learn to know this etheric body before we learn to know what enters into us from the super-sensible world outside, and before this can be reflected through the etheric body.

You see, what we thus experience by reaching the hidden depths of our soul-life—when we experience, so to speak, our own self and the projection of our own wishes—this very much resembles the life which we usually call Kamaloca. It differs from Kamaloca-life through the fact that during our ordinary life we progress as far as an imprisonment (for we may call it thus) within our own self; yet our physical body is there and we can always return to it, whereas in Kamaloca the physical body no longer exists. Even a part of the etheric body no longer exists—that part which during life throws back to us a reflection; we are surrounded by the general life-ether which is now the reflecting instrument and mirrors everything that is contained in us. During the Kamaloca-period our own inner world is built up around us, with all its wishes and passions. All that we experience and feel within us, is now around us as our objective world. it is important that we should realise that Kamaloca-life can first of all be characterised through the fact that we are enclosed within ourselves and that this constitutes a prison; all the more so, as we cannot return to any form of physical life, which constitutes the foundation of our whole inner life. When we experience our Kamaloca-life so as to realise gradually (we gradually realise this) that everything contained in it can only be eliminated when we begin to feel in a different way, when we no longer have within us passions etc.—only then do we break through the walls of our Kamaloca-prison.

In what sense can this be understood? In this sense:—let us suppose that someone dies cherishing a certain wish. This wish will be part of what is then projected outside; it will be contained in one of the formations that surround him. As long as this wish still lives in him he will not be able to open the gates of Kamaloca with any key, as far as this wish is concerned. When he realises that this wish can be satisfied only by eliminating it, by giving it up, by not desiring any more—only when this wish has been torn out of the soul and he assumes toward it the very opposite attitude, only then everything that imprisons him in Kamaloca, including this wish, will be torn out of the soul. At this stage between death and a new birth we reach the sphere which is called Devachan: we can also reach it through clairvoyance if we have learned to know what forms a part of us. Through clairvoyance we reach Devachan, when we have obtained a definite degree of maturity; during Kamaloca we reach Devachan in the course of time, just because time torments us through our own desires, so that they are gradually surmounted in the course of time. Through this, all that is conjured up before us, as if it were the world and its glory, is burst asunder.

The world of real, super-sensible facts is what we generally call Devachan. How do we generally encounter this world of real, super-sensible facts? Here on the earth we can speak of Devachan only because we can penetrate through clairvoyance (if the Self has really been overcome) into the world of super-sensible facts which actually exist, and these facts coincide with what is contained in Devachan. The chief characteristic of Devachan is that moral facts can no longer be distinguished from physical facts, or physical laws; moral laws and physical laws coincide. What is meant by this? In the ordinary physical world the sun shines over the just and the unjust; one who has committed a crime may perhaps be put in prison, but the physical sun will not be darker because of this fact. This signifies that the world of sense-reality has both a moral order of laws and physical one; but they follow two entirely different directions. In Devachan it is otherwise—there, this difference does not exist at all. In Devachan everything that arises out of something moral, or intellectually wise, or esthetically beautiful, etc., leads to a creation, is creative—whereas everything that arises out of something immoral, intellectually untrue, or esthetically ugly, leads to destruction, is destructive. The laws of Nature in Devachan are indeed of such kind that the sun does not shine equally brightly over the just and the unjust. Speaking figuratively, we may say that the sun actually is darkened in the case of an unrighteous man, whereas the righteous man who passes through Devachan really finds in it the spiritual sunshine, that is, the influence of the life-spending forces which help him forward in life. A liar or an ugly-minded man will pass through Devachan in such a way that the spiritual forces withdraw from him. In Devachan an order of laws is possible, which is not possible here or earth. When two people, a righteous and an unrighteous one, walk side by side here on the earth, it is not possible for the sun to shine upon one and not to shine upon the other. But in the spiritual world the influence of the spiritual forces undoubtedly depends upon the quality of a human being. In Devachan this signifies that the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws do not follow separate directions, but the same direction. This is the essential thing which must be borne in mind—in Devachan the laws of Nature and the moral and intellectual laws coincide.

As a result of this, the following will arise:—When a human being enters Devachan and lives there, with all that is still contained in him from his last life on earth—righteousness and unrighteousness, good and evil, esthetic beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood—all this becomes active in such a way that it immediately takes possession of the laws of Nature existing in Devachan. We may perhaps compare it to the following fact in the sense-world. Let us suppose that someone has stolen, or has told a lie here on earth and then goes out into the sunshine; but the sun no longer shines upon him, he cannot find sunshine anywhere, so that through the want of sunlight he gradually becomes ill ... Or let us suppose—this can also serve as a comparison,—that someone who has told a lie here on earth cannot breathe any more—all these cases would be similar to what actually happens in Devachan. One who is guilty of this or that sin, will find there, as far as his soul-spiritual being is concerned, that the laws of Nature coincide with the spiritual laws. Consequently, when this man continues to develop in Devachan as described above, and he progresses more and more, then such laws and qualities will live in him, that what he now becomes in Devachan, corresponds to the qualities which he has brought with him from his preceding life. Let us suppose that someone lives in Devachan for 200 years; he has peered through Devachan, and if he told many lies during his life on earth, then the Spirits of Truth will withdraw from him in Devachan. Something in him will then die, whereas in another truth-loving soul this will instead flourish and come to life.

Let us suppose that someone passes through Devachan with a pronounced vanity, which he has not set aside. In Devachan this vanity will be a most foul exhalation, and certain spiritual beings avoid such an individuality that exhales these foul odours of ambition or vanity. This is not described figuratively. Vanity and ambition are indeed most foul exhalations in Devachan, so that certain beings, who withdraw because of this, cannot exercise their beneficial influence. It is just as if a plant were to grow in a cellar, whereas it can flourish only in the sunshine. The vain person cannot prosper. He develops under the influence of this quality. Then, when he reincarnates, he has not the strength to take into himself the good influences. Instead of developing certain organs soundly, he develops an unsound organic system. Thus, not only our physical condition, but also our moral and intellectual condition, show us what we will become in life. On the physical plane, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws go separate ways. But, between death and a new birth they are one—the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws are one. Destructive forces of Nature enter our soul, as the result of immoral deeds during a preceding life; but life-spending forces enter it, as the result of moral deeds. This is not only connected with our inner configuration, but also with what we encounter in life, as our karma.

The characteristic element of Devachan is that there is no difference between the laws of Nature and spiritual laws. The clairvoyant who really penetrates into the super-sensible worlds experiences this. The super-sensible worlds differ very much from the worlds here on the physical plane. It is simply impossible for a clairvoyant to make the distinction usually made by a materialistic mind, namely, that there are merely objective laws of Nature. Behind the objective laws of Nature there are in reality always spiritual laws; and a clairvoyant cannot, for instance, cross a dry piece of meadow land, or a flooded region, or perceive a volcanic eruption, without realising that spiritual powers, spiritual beings, are behind all phenomena in Nature. A volcanic eruption is for him also a moral deed, although the moral element may perhaps lie on an entirely different plane than we may, at first, imagine. Those who always confuse the physical and the higher worlds will say:—“If innocent people perish through a volcanic eruption, how can we suppose this to be a moral deed.” But at first, we need not consider this opinion; for it would be just as cruelly narrow-minded as the opposite one—namely, to consider this eruption as a punishment inflicted by God upon the people who live near the volcano. Both opinions are only the result of the narrow-minded mentality here on the physical plane. But this is not the point in question; far more universal things must be taken into consideration. Those people who live on the slopes of a volcano and whose possessions are destroyed through an eruption, are perhaps without any guilt in this life. But this will find its balance later on, and does not imply a merciless attitude on our part (to consider it as such would again be a narrow-minded interpretation of the facts). In the case of volcanic eruptions, for instance, we find that in the course of the evolution of the earth human beings cause to certain things; and because these things occur, the entire evolution of humanity is held up. For this very reason, good Gods must work in a certain way in order to establish the balance—and such phenomena in Nature sometimes bring about such a balance. Very often, this connection can be seen only by penetrating into occult depths. Thus, adjustments occur in the case of things brought about by human beings—things which are in opposition to the spiritual course of mankind's true development. All events, even if they are mere phenomena of Nature, have something moral in their depths, and the bearers of this moral element; which lie behind the physical facts, are spiritual beings. Thus, if we imagine a world where it is impossible to speak of a division between the laws of Nature and spiritual laws—in other words, a world where justice rules as a law of Nature—then this world would be Devachan. And in Devachan we need not think that actions which deserve punishment are punished arbitrarily; for there, the immoral element destroys itself and the moral one progresses, with the same necessity with which a flame sets fire to combustible material.

Thus, we see that just the innermost characteristics, the innermost nerve, so to speak, of existence, varies in the different worlds. We cannot form a picture of the various worlds unless we bear in mind these peculiarities which differ radically in each world. Hence, we may characterise the physical world, Kamaloca, and Devachan, as follows: in the physical world, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws constitute a series of facts which take their course in separate directions. In the world of Kamaloca, the human being is imprisoned within his own self, enclosed in the prison of his own being. The world of Devachan is the very opposite of the physical world. There, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws are one and the same thing. These are the three characteristics; and if we bear them carefully in mind, if we try to feel the radical difference between our world and one where the intellectual laws, and also the aesthetic laws, are at the same time laws of Nature, then we shall have an inkling of what is contained in Devachan. If we meet an ugly person, or a beautiful one, here in the physical world, we have no right to treat the ugly man as if he had something repulsive in his soul-spiritual being, nor can we place a beautiful human being on a certain height, from a soul-spiritual aspect. But in Devachan it is entirely different. There, we never meet anything ugly, unless it has been caused by something; and the human being who owes his ugly face to his preceding incarnation, but strives to be true and upright in this life, cannot possibly meet us in Devachan with an ugly face. Such a human being will indeed have transformed his ugly face into beauty. On the other hand, it is just as true that one who tells lies and is vain and miserly wanders about in Devachan with an ugly form. Something else, however, must also be borne in mind. In ordinary physical life we do not find that something is continually being destroyed in an ugly face, and that a beautiful face continually adds something to its beauty. But in Devachan we see that ugliness is a destructive element, and whenever we perceive something beautiful we are compelled to realise that it brings about a continual growth, a continual fructification. Hence, in the world of Devachan we must have entirely different feelings than in the physical world.

It will be necessary to find the essential element in these feelings, and to acquire the capacity of adding to the outer description of things these feelings and experiences which are described in spiritual science. If you strive to experience a world wherein the moral, the beautiful, and the mentally true elements appear with the same necessity as a law of Nature, you will attain the experience of Devachan. It is for this reason that we must collect so many facts and work so hard, in order to melt down to a living experience what we have thus acquired through study. Without effort it is impossible to attain a true knowledge of the things which must gradually be made clear to the world through spiritual science. Today there are undoubtedly many people who argue:—“Why should we learn so many things through spiritual science? Must we become schoolboys again? Feelings or experiences seem to be the most important thing in it.” Indeed, feeling is precisely what should be taken into consideration—but, first of all, the right kind of feeling must be acquired. The same thing applies to everything. A painter also would find it far more pleasant if there were no need for him to learn the elements of his art, and so forth, and if he were not obliged to paint his final picture slowly and gradually on the canvas. It would be far more pleasant if he could just breathe on the canvas, and so produce his finished picture! The peculiar thing in the world today is this—that, the more we reach the soul-spiritual sphere, the more people fail to understand that a mere breathing on the canvas does not suffice! In the case of music, few people will admit that a man who has learnt nothing at all can be a composer; this is quite obvious to them. They will also admit this in the case of painting—although less strictly than in the case of music—and in the case of poetry they will admit still less that study and training is necessary. This is why there are so many modern poets. No age has been so unpoetical as our present age, in spite of its many poets! Poets need not learn much—they are simply expected to write (although this has nothing to do with poetry)—at least orthographically; it suffices if they are able to express their thoughts intelligibly! And less still is expected from philosophers. For it is taken for granted that anyone may express his opinion concerning all kinds of things which belong to a conception of the world, or life-conception. Everybody has his own point of view. Again and again we find that careful study, entailing the application of all means available to an inner activity, in order to investigate and know at least something of the world, counts for nothing in the present day. Instead, it is taken for granted that the standpoint of one who has toiled and worked in order, to venture to say at least a few things concerning the secrets of the universe is equivalent to the standpoint of one who has simply made up his mind to have an opinion! Hence today everybody has, so to speak, his own conception of the world. And a Theosophist above all others! In the opinion of some people, still less is required to be a Theosophist. In their opinion, all that is needed is not even to acknowledge the three principles of the Theosophical Society, but only the first one—and this entirely according to their own liking! Since all that is required is to admit with more or less truthfulness that love toward others suffices—whether or not one is really filled with love does not count so much—it is easy enough to be a Theosophist, and then of course one has the right kind of feeling! Thus we descend continually. We begin with an estimation of music and expect a certain standard from those who wish to have an opinion on music—we descend continually and require less and less, until we finally reach Theosophy, where least of all is required! For we think that what is generally considered inadequate in the case of painting, for instance, is sufficient in the case of Theosophy—no effort is needed here, yet we lay the foundation for a universal brotherhood, and then we are Theosophists! We need not learn anything else! But the essential point is this—we must strive with all our might to transform into living experiences what we gather in the form of study—for the shadings of these feelings will give us the highest and truest knowledge. You should direct all your efforts toward the attainment of an experience such as the impression derived from a world where the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws coincide. If you work in full earnestness (let the people believe that you have only studied theoretical facts!), if you have spared no effort in comprehending this or that theory, then an impression will be left behind in Devachan. If an experience, a real feeling, exists not only in your fancy, but you have really acquired it through careful work, then this experience, these nuances of feeling, will reach further than they can reach merely by themselves—they will become real through earnest, diligent study. And then you are not far distant from the point where this nuance of feeling will acquire life, and Devachan will really lie before you. For this nuance of feeling becomes a perceptive capacity if it is worked out truthfully. Our groups, our working centres, are what they should be, only if the work within them is really carried out without any sensation and on an honest basis. In this case our groups and centres are schools which are meant to lead man into the spheres of clairvoyance. Only someone who does not wish to attain this and is unwilling to work can have a false opinion concerning these things.

Dr. Steiner: If things had not gone as they went, the course of the general assembly would have been quite different; we would have come to completely different things earlier. But it is quite good for our members to have to get an idea of how it is done, if you absolutely have to make the affairs of the company your own, and how it is still possible - if you don't encourage the customs of the outside world to be carried into our circles, just as you can carry pseudo-science into them. You may know that if you want to stop any proper work in parliaments, you have the system of “urgency motions”. If you use this system appropriately, you can paralyze all other work. There is no other way: since we have stopped at a certain point, I must also bring to your attention everything that has happened during the proceedings. If we had dealt with these matters earlier, they would have arrived too late.

So, before I get back to the agenda, I have to read out some letters that have arrived:

[Gap in the handwriting]

Miss von Sivers: As a representative of Mr. Horst von Henning, who is the one forming the attacked party here, I would like to say a few words in his defense. Because it is quite clear from Mr. von Henning's letters that these are not contradictions, but rather that he, after perhaps standing for a while under other mind suggestions, has now found the courage to say: A few years ago he thought differently than he does now. - So first of all, he thinks differently about the meaning of the matter. But now it is also clear, after he wrote a letter to Mr. Boldt in the first instance – which is included in the brochure – that Mr. Boldt interpreted the words more in his favor than Mr. von Henning intended. The same is also evident from the letter of Mr. Deinhard, who says that it was only a very fleeting remark, which, made fleeting, hardly contained any recognition. Then it further emerges from the letters of Mr. von Henning that he attaches importance to the fact that he absolutely condemns exerting even the slightest pressure in this direction on the resolution of our great teacher.

But Mr. Boldt wants that because we have not taken sufficient interest in his cause. Mr. von Henning objects above all to coercion and then says that he has never given the importance that Mr. Boldt ascribes to his own writing.

Mrs. Wolfram: I would first like to draw attention to something that is clear from Mr. Boldt's letter that was just read out. In this general assembly, no one had a different opinion than we did, as was made visible by the show of hands. How is it possible that Mr. Boldt suddenly knows that it is necessary to send another letter? One might ask: how did Mr. Boldt have contact with this general assembly? This raises the question: He finds it necessary to do a little more than before – through what contact from here to Munich did he get this impulse? You will see from this that it might be a good idea after all if my request were approved, so that from the outset we would be dealing with a request from a group, not from a single individual.

I would like to respond to what Mr. Novak said. It certainly cannot be denied that we have been able to learn an infinite amount through the Boldt case in this General Assembly. But perhaps we could have learned in a different way if Dr. Steiner had not been forced to talk about this.

Then I would like to point out that my motion was not so much about eliminating motions that are factually unfounded, but rather about eliminating motions that are presented to us in an utterly unqualifiable way. I would like to emphasize that it goes without saying that the point is not to reject any problem as “impossible to address”. If Mr. Boldt had presented the motion to us in a dignified, respectful, and proper manner: “I would like to know how the General Assembly or Dr. Steiner stands on the sexual problem,” I would have signed this motion with pleasure. Any motion can be signed if it is presented in a proper, objective manner.

Once again, I would like to ask you to consider, if possible, how much time we have lost despite everything we have learned, through discussions that have arisen not from the problem itself but from the improper way in which the motion was put forward, the impertinence of which is unparalleled.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to note that the letters I have read could just as easily belong to the Wolfram motion, which we are supposed to deal with now. In response to what has just been said, I would like to note that the words spoken by Ms. Wolfram are deeply rooted: that with us, everything can be discussed if it is in the spirit of our cause. These words are not only deeply rooted, but you should also have the example and, if time permits, hear a lecture from our friend Dr. Max Hermann on this very problem. You will see from this that a man who has studied it scientifically can give a presentation and will be heard here. But you will also notice the difference between what can be said to you here and what wants to penetrate our circles as pseudo-science.

Of course, I would have made a different comment regarding what Mrs. Wolfram said first if I had had the impression that it was clear from Mr. Boldt's letters that he had been informed of the course of the proceedings. But I do not have this opinion. Mr. Boldt comes voluntarily – and may consider his matter important enough that everything that is sent in writing – without him knowing the proceedings of the General Assembly – is taken seriously by his personality and sent to the General Assembly. It is not stated in the letter that he has heard from the General Assembly. He sends it of his own free will; and you could experience that he would send much more if it did not give the impression that it was based on the indiscretion of members sitting here. Otherwise it would have to be treated quite differently according to the rules of procedure.

Ms. Wolfram: The Theosophical Society's headquarters in Adyar has decided to organize lectures in the adjoining room on the days of our general assembly. Since the members gather in the foyer during the breaks between the meetings, it is quite possible that the result of the negotiations could have been overheard in their conversations and passed on to Mr. Boldt.

Dr. Steiner: A written document regarding the Wolfram motion has been submitted:

Modification of the Wolfram motion:
Several members have asked me [gap in the transcript]

Fräulein von Sivers: It still seems to be misunderstood that it is not the executive committee that is sitting here that is meant, but the executive committee of some lodge. We have 107 branches, and it concerns the executive committees of these 107 branches. From several statements I have noticed that this has not been understood at all yet. So we are talking about the boards of all the branches scattered throughout Europe and now even all over the world; we can turn to all of them.

Dr. Steiner: I would be most happy if not we – the board – would plead for it, but [he] could leave it to the free decision of the plenum.

Mr. Hamburger: I do not support the Wolfram motion because the matter is being presented in a way that does not correspond to how Dr. Steiner wants to lead us. Since we are dealing with spiritual matters, we should prescribe more and more and less and less paper for our affairs. This will shake us out of our lethargy.

Ms. Wolfram: I would like to note objectively that, if we look closely, Mr. Ulrich's proposal is much more rigorous than my own. In Mr. Ulrich's proposal, you are dependent on the board of the working group. You have the greatest possible freedom if you accept my proposal to look for whomever you want. Of course, I can only agree with what Mr. Hamburger said, insofar as he presents us with the ideal of anthroposophists as they should be. Unfortunately, however, this ideal has not yet been realized! And we have to deal not with the desired ideal anthroposophist, but with the Anthroposophical Society as it is now, which includes Mr. Boldt and, as he says, 25 percent of his like-minded members. To prevent what Mr. Hamburger thinks from happening, we must now vigorously create conditions that make a “Case Boldt Number II” impossible.

Director Sellin: Since the executive council has just expressed the wish that resolutions be passed by the plenary assembly, I would like to propose that we fully endorse Wolfram's motion and would like to have this motion adopted as my own.

Mr. Schuler: When the “Bund” was founded and then the “Anthroposophical Society”, the ideal was expressed that we would manage without statutes if possible. When the Anthroposophical Society was founded, some statutes were then drawn up. Both must be seen as a great step forward. But we should not go on to set up points, provisions and statutes in the further course; because we know very well from ordinary life that – to put it somewhat drastically, to be understood – the laws are only there to be circumvented. The more laws, statutes and paragraphs there are, the more they are circumvented. Who among us has said that we do not take it for granted that the board is entitled, indeed obliged, to examine all proposals and present them with the opinion it deems appropriate? Who among the members who come to the general assembly can be prepared to think on their feet so quickly when something is proposed to them? Or who would not be grateful if the board, in which they previously had confidence, pointed out this or that? I therefore believe it is right, in a general sense and in the sense of the meeting, that the board can do this on its own initiative. So what should we decide, when we think about it, other than to say: “The board can do that, that is its duty! – So we take the matter on board.” That is what every parliamentary board does: it first discusses the proposals that have been received and presents them with its [gap in the transcript]. Then the general assembly can still do whatever it wants. For example, yesterday we were so quick to dismiss a motion on the agenda: we could perhaps say more about the way Dr. Steiner could be discharged than we are now supposed to say about the Wolfram motion. The motions are only there to be misunderstood. They are misunderstood, no matter how well they are meant. And if a motion or resolution now comes up that still mentions the Boldt case, then we should also move on to the agenda. - I move to move on to the agenda!

We naturally have the confidence; it is written in our hearts – so I also support the words of Mr. von Rainer. Regarding what has been said about the resolution... well, we sometimes have to adopt a resolution; but the one that has been adopted should suffice, and all further ones should be dropped.

[Rudolf Steiner:] Before we discuss the “transition to the agenda”, [Mr. Kühne] is still noted down as a speaker.

Mr. Kühne: As I did yesterday, I would like to point out some difficulties that would arise from accepting the Wolfram motion. Motions must be submitted three to four weeks before the Annual General Meeting. Later motions, which might be recognized as “urgent” at the Annual General Meeting, could not be discussed.

The board, which meets shortly before the general assembly, could not put forward any motions to the general assembly on its own initiative because they were not known three weeks in advance. At the general assembly itself, someone who wants to impose themselves on the assembly could, for example, bring up something in the discussion that they might have thought the board would not let approach the general assembly as a motion to be dealt with at the general assembly. No proposals could be made regarding the proposals that would be discussed at the General Assembly. Proposals from the floor to the General Assembly would be inadmissible. This is how management and procedural difficulties arise.

Dr. Steiner: I have to address something about the rules of procedure. There are now two motions from Ms. Wolfram and a motion to “move to the agenda” from Mr. Schuler. If a motion is legally submitted, as in the case of Ms. Wolfram's motion, you cannot move on to the motion to the agenda; further discussion must be given to it. I must now open the discussion on the motion to move on to the agenda, which means that in this case no further speakers should be signed up. Whether or not this is desirable, I would ask you to consider voting on a motion without being completely clear about it, because not only the motion itself is on the table, but also a modification of it. We will then have to vote on each individual proposal; otherwise the General Assembly would not be properly conducted; it would be legally contestable, and anyone could declare it invalid.

Mr. Arenson: As much as we all want to avoid unnecessarily prolonging the proceedings, I think it is too important an issue for us not to discuss it. Even if we talk it over, we can avoid lengths; but to break off briefly does not seem right to me. There is too much at stake for the future in the form in which motions can be tabled for us to be tempted to rush through it.

Mr. von Rainer: It may perhaps help to clarify this matter if I mention something. I would like to have had more time to speak about the concepts of “Roman law” for our time. But I would like to mention just a little about it here because it is relevant to the present.

It is well known that the “Codex Justinianus” is the summary of Roman law. What is this summary? It is the summary of the legal pronouncements made by the praetors at the Roman Forum. These legal pronouncements came about because there was no “written” law at that time; rather, as was generally the case in older times, case law was such that people who were thought to have a special power of judgment over right or wrong decided the case in question in one way or another, depending on whether they considered it right or wrong. There were no general principles of law yet. Now these legal pronouncements, which were made in the Roman Forum, have been collected and principles of law have been made out of them, although originally they were pronounced only for the individual case by the praetors concerned. From this, under the Emperor Justinian, the “Codex Justinianus” was later derived. Our entire legal system today is based on this, which, if you can judge it, consists more and more of laws and offers less and less opportunity to individualize the individual case. I just wanted to point out what the truth is: that it is not possible at all to express a “legal principle” because each individual case would always have to be treated individually.

But what Mrs. Wolfram expresses with her motion also has the character of wanting to express a “principle,” while each individual case must be treated individually. In the Boldt case, the board proved that it did not exercise the right to which it is fully entitled to drop a motion and not bring it before the general assembly, but to deal with it itself. Our situation is such that we do not need the proposal at all. And it would be a continuation of what Roman law has done wrong in jurisprudence if we were to establish such principles again. It is indeed easier for the board if it can invoke the fact that the general assembly has given it the right to deal with proposals on its own initiative; but after all, it will still have to individualize itself.

But now that a “free word to free Theosophists” is being addressed, they will say: “They may have got the motion under control, but they are already working to ensure that no more free bolders can be addressed in the future.” — With that, I also agree that we should not go back to business as usual, because the matter needs to be clarified. But on the other hand, I would like what can be considered a fact, Roman law, to be taken into account as an example.

Dr. Steiner: It will be very good if we discuss these matters thoroughly this time. I must confess that the Annual General Meeting, which is now scheduled for Thursday, has left me with a strange feeling: a feeling of sorrow for those members who have come here to take part in the results of anthroposophical work and to go home with these results. If we were to have only general meetings like this one, it would only serve to make these general meetings longer and longer: this time it is a week, the next time it will be two weeks, and we will no longer be here, but after 52 years it would be 52 weeks!

It would be necessary for you to authorize the board – this is not a motion, but rather concerns a practice – to set the first day or one and a half days for the business negotiations, and to dedicate the remaining days to the Theosophical work. Otherwise, I fear that we will be sitting in front of empty benches at the next General Assembly; I don't think that many members who have to travel long distances to the General Assembly to hear such things will be satisfied.

Ms. Wolfram: I would like to remind everyone that Mr. von Rainer has encouraged us to discuss the delusion and value of laws. What purpose have laws actually had and do have? They have always been children of necessity; man has built a defense against the enemy in them, a barrier against him. If you accept my proposal, we will be doing exactly what Mr. von Rainer wants: we will create a very individual law for the “Individual Anthroposophical Society” that is supposed to protect it.

And it is not because I enjoy developing a law out of myself that I have submitted my proposal, but because I think that something concrete must be done now to stop the current situation. Yes, the board has agreed to take on these long discussions so that this case can be handled as a “typical” one. It is not intended to serve as a model for other general meetings, and the question is whether we want to draw a conclusion from all this or not?

If you listen to what Mr. Schuler said, you will see: in theory, Mr. Schuler is happy to admit that we have the right to consider proposals. But he himself says afterwards: the board will bring it up - and then we'll talk about it! But that's not the point, that a proposal is still being discussed that the board has dismissed after conscientious consideration at its meeting.

We must therefore be clear from the knowledge of the case we have dealt with that it must come to the law, if you want to call it that. There must be a barrier precisely because people are not as they should be, but as they are; we must take this into account. Because the facts are such, we must build a kind of barrier that can later be torn down, when the ideal society has been realized. Building this barrier is truly our duty now.

Dr. Steiner: What is the consequence of such a correspondence between Mr. Boldt and the undersigned, Pschorn, [Zormaier] and Petri, as read out earlier? I will be very brief. In Mr. Boldt's brochure, it says that I have committed the great sin of not speaking to the members as he thinks fit. And these members, Pschorn and so on, write to Mr. Boldt in agreement, so that I should be forced to speak about what Mr. Boldt likes. The consequence would be that I would not be able to determine the topics I speak about, but the members of the Anthroposophical Society. This is the consequence, even if people do not consider it.

It is the sin that people do not consider the consequences of their assumptions! So in the future, it will be necessary to take a closer look at these things and be clear about the consequences of such things. These may be people who mean well, as I said about Mr. Boldt; but the point is that we have the opportunity to move our Anthroposophical Society forward!

Mrs. Wöbcken: Seven years ago, I attended the General Assembly and now, after everything I have heard, I have to say that, in terms of how we handle external matters, we are in exactly the same position as we were seven years ago. Yes, I even have to say: in an even worse position! For this reason, I would like to ask the members to leave it to those who have a true insight into the matter and vote in favor of the motion that Fräulein von Sivers has made.

Fräulein von Sivers: What motion? I would like to consider this not as a matter for the board, but as a matter for the plenary assembly; the general assembly should decide on it and all those who travel here from faraway countries should decide whether they agree with it, or whether we can act somewhat independently for once.

Mr. Lévy: Since I am one of those who have traveled here from faraway countries, I would like to say something for practical reasons. What Mr. Schuler and others have said is, of course, entirely defensible. But it is not a matter of saying something “right”; because from a correct, theoretical point of view, one can also defend the Wolfram proposal. I just want to shed light on the practical side, because we will meet again in a year and want to have learned something from that. The Wolfram proposal says: The board should be informed three to four weeks before the general assembly of the motions to be put forward at the general assembly. One can only say that it would have been very salutary for the Boldt case if that had happened, because the members were required to study a book and a brochure in order to form an opinion about it. So here, if you look at the practical side, there is a necessity to do something. If you also consider that a motion needs to be supported by at least seven people, then you can only say: if a member does not have seven friends in the whole society who support the matter that they want to raise, then they are not being entirely serious about it. These seven people could, after all, be in other countries. But then it turns out to be a settled matter that can be raised. We have already been together for seven hours in the board meeting. So everyone should be able to come and present something to the General Assembly that makes sense. And then the proposals to the General Assembly must be prepared in such a way that they contain sufficient material, and that not just proposals are received that are categorized without anyone thinking about them. Such provisions have already been introduced wherever there are assemblies.

So, for example, I know that the French [Lücke in der Mitschrift] committee has also made such arrangements – and much worse ones than those proposed by Ms. Wolfram.

Mr. Schuler withdraws his proposal and instead makes the following proposal:

The General Assembly may decide that it is left to the board to submit the received proposals with appropriate justifications to the General Assembly or not to submit them. Furthermore, the board determines in advance the duration of the General Assembly.

Mr. Lévy: That would be an infringement of the rights of the plenary. In any case, it should be possible to see what is contained in the proposals. However, it would not be right for the plenary not to see what proposals are coming in.

Dr. Steiner: Since the Schuler proposal is the more far-reaching one, it is necessary to discuss it.

Ms. Wolfram: I would like to know how Mr. Schuler thinks it would work in practice if we were to decide to set aside one or two days for negotiations? Let's assume there are ten or twenty motions; not all motions can be dealt with. So if we only have a limited amount of time, so many motions will have to be dropped, and we would have to deal with each motion for so many minutes, according to the bell. How do you think this can be practically implemented?

Dr. Steiner: If the time for the business negotiations were set, for example, at one and a half days, then the General Assembly would be strictly broken off after one and a half days, and the motions that had not been dealt with would then be “deferred to the next General Assembly”. This would mean that at the next general assembly, we would only be able to discuss items from the previous year's general assembly, and at the following one only matters from the year before last, and so on, as the old Reichskammergericht in Wetzlar did – which is where the phrase “law and rights are inherited like an eternal disease” comes from. Mr. Hubo proposes closing the debate on the Schuler motion. The end of the debate is approved.

Dr. Steiner: We will now vote on the Schuler proposal. I would like to point out that the first part of this proposal would exclude the Wolfram proposal, but not the proposal to determine the duration of the Annual General Meeting.

Mr. von Rainer: I would like to take this opportunity to request that the Board of Management abstains.

Dr. Steiner: You can't make a decision about whether a number of members, who are also members of the board, should have a say or not.

The Schuler motion is rejected.

Dr. Steiner: We will now move on to the further discussion of the Wolfram motion, and I would first ask Ms. Wolfram to determine the exact wording of her motion.

Ms. Wolfram: The motion reads:

The General Assembly may decide that any motion from a member of the General Assembly be submitted to the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society at least three weeks before the General Assembly, and that each applicant must have supported his application by seven members of the Society and three members who are on any board of a working group or on the broader board of the Anthroposophical Society.

Mrs. von Ulrich wishes to amend that only one member of the executive council of any group should support the proposal and no special members, and that furthermore a proposal should be submitted only ten to twelve days after the announcement of the General Assembly.

Mr. Hubo: It seems to me that the matter has now been sufficiently illuminated from “twelve standpoints” and I move that the debate be closed.

[Rudolf Steiner:] Mr. Selling has also requested the floor.

Mr. Selling: We have two points of view here. One sees the society-endangering living from the formal side and wants to contain it. For the other, life is more important; he is against the restriction. The fact that both points of view exist gives them a right to exist and they both have something to say to us. If we look more closely, both can be quite well reconciled. From a practical point of view, it would be foolish not to make use of the experience gained here for the future: that Dr. Steiner was unable to change the title of his lecture in time because he only found out about Boldt's brochure too late, although he would otherwise have done so. This can be avoided in future cases by accepting Wolfram's proposal, which, to a certain extent, represents the last safety valve to be activated in time. But it is much more important that we keep our eyes open and pay constant attention throughout the year, so that we immediately know when a little Boldt is about to start wiggling! (General amusement.) We have to be outwardly conservative, that is, conservative, but at the same time inwardly quite liberal, that is, respectful - not disrespectful - of the life germinating in souls. Then such exuberant life will not harm us, but only serve as a necessary resistance for our development and be guided back into the right direction itself. Boldt has just, as it so often happens, confused the “test” with the “mission”.

The motion to end the debate is approved.

The vote is taken on the Ulrich motion, as it is the most extensive:

The General Assembly may decide that any motion to the General Assembly be submitted to the Board at least ten to twelve days after the announcement of the General Assembly to the members, and that each applicant have the signature of any board member under his application.

This proposal is rejected.

The Wolfram proposal is adopted in its latest wording.

Thereupon the proceedings are postponed until 4 p.m. except for four items.

Continuation

At 4:30 p.m., the proceedings that were adjourned at noon are resumed.

Mr. Bauer: The last “resolution” that was introduced has been withdrawn. Instead, a third version will be read:

The General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, meeting in Berlin between January 18 and 24, 1914, hereby declares that it has the deepest compassion for the aberrations into which Mr. Boldt's thinking has fallen. It sees him as a victim of certain thought suggestions and pseudoscientific influences of our time. In contrast to this, it sees itself as an association of people who consciously and resolutely reject such influences.

The discussion of this resolution begins. Dr. Unger will take over the presidency for the duration of the discussion.

Mr. Lévy: In view of the spirit of the resolution, which refers to Dr. Steiner, I would like to ask the Friends that we express our opinion on it not by raising our hands, but by standing up or staying seated.

Ms. von Ulrich also supports this.

Mr. Lévy's proposal is adopted.

Mr. Baron Walleen: It is a little difficult for me to talk about this matter, because there is no doubt that the content of the resolution expresses our most intimate feelings. But I do wonder whether it is always necessary to emphasize our trust in Dr. Steiner on every occasion? The matter that arose with Mr. Boldt is not of such overwhelming importance. It is self-evident that we have trust in the relevant personalities within our society. I think: too much talking is not good. I just want to recall a healthy word that Mr. Bauer spoke when the “Bund” was founded; it was:

“Who wants to come with me?” Many had the trust, and it has probably only grown stronger since then. And I think: as long as it remains silent, it has a stronger effect on the world than all fine words. The resolution is very fine; but I would like to leave it to you to decide whether it would not be better not to speak about it.

Mr. Bauer: In the resolution proposed yesterday, the final sentence contained something like an expression of trust. It was the echo of the first version. The idea was that this trust on our part should be made known in the circles to which the resolution would reach without our intervention – namely, to the outside world. Ultimately, however, it had to be said that this would have the opposite effect. It is certainly not necessary to declare trust within our ranks. But not to make any statement at all would not be right. Firstly, because we have already made a statement, and secondly because of the threats, insults and so on that are said about Dr. Steiner in the brochure. If we were to leave unchallenged this darkening of our acceptance of masks, the right or duty to disguise ourselves and so on, then we would be reproached with it over and over again, and it would be said, “So it is probably true after all.” But if we have a ready-made explanation for this, then that is a ready-made answer for all those who want to reproach us with the story of the mask-like nature of our great educator.

Mr. Arenson: If we are to pass a resolution at all, then it would not be right if we left out one point — and especially the point that is addressed to Dr. Steiner. We have responded to the other things! So, in view of these allegations by Boldt, we must once again clearly identify our direction, so that three quarters are answered and one quarter simply remains unanswered. The form in which the reply is now presented seems to me to be extremely favorable, because it emphasizes independence from authority. Therefore, we should clearly state the direction in which we are marching. This is not only good, but necessary – and must not be missing from a resolution that we adopt at all in response to this Boldt motion.

Baron Walleen: Mr. Bauer said that this resolution should have an external effect. Then it would have to be published; because the “Mitteilungen” are not written for the outside world. But then I think that everything that could be said has been said in the resolution that Dr. Steiner submitted. I cannot help but feel that this resolution is somewhat superfluous. It would be a different matter if the “Mitteilungen” were really written for the outside world. But they are only for us, and we cannot speculate that they will end up somewhere unlawfully.

Fräulein von Sivers: I would just like to say that it is a fact that the brochures are read. But then it is above all necessary that the members make themselves heard, who are not 75 percent sheep, and that they also clearly express that they are aware of their own judgment and do not go along as sheep.

Mr. von Rainer: Although I have said before how much I am against resolutions, I must say that in the present situation I am not against it. What has prompted us to this resolution now is what is stated in the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” No other attack against Dr. Steiner has been brought forward at this General Assembly. And the resolution is a rejection of this brochure. So it is actually only about the brochure by Mr. Ernst Boldt and nothing else. And if you reject what is in the brochure, you have actually done everything you can with the brochure. If the resolution turns out to be the one that the majority will adopt, I would like to say that it emphasizes what particularly characterizes Boldt's attack: that Dr. Steiner adopts masks and gestures. We must guard against this!

Mr. Selling: It seems necessary, after all, that we show that we can think things through to the end. When we have begun to formulate, we must also bring this point into the form; otherwise it forms the gateway for hostile attacks that come not only from outside but also from within society. Lucifer and Ahriman are also inside and ready to invade again at any moment.

Mr. Levy: If we adopt a resolution here, it is certainly with the absent members in mind. We can only make them understand the way in which the first part of the resolution emerged for us by adding the second part: Not only that we firmly and consciously reject the brochure, but also on the basis of our own judgment and independently of Dr. Steiner. We must also say this to those who are not present; otherwise they might come to a completely false view. And after all, they must also represent the matter externally.

Mr. Hubo: I would like to point out one thing first. Only a small part of the total number of members of the Anthroposophical Society is gathered here, and this resolution in particular would summarize the overall result of our position in short paradigmatic sentences regarding this case and the whole essential question that underlies it. Secondly, it is necessary for the larger number of members who are not present here to read this in black and white, so that what is expressed in the resolution is repeatedly deepened, this ability to judge, which may not yet be very well developed in some people.

Dr. Noll: It seems possible, however, that we take a positive position on Mr. Boldt, especially in view of the fact that Boldt's brochure will continue to be read and may also fall into other hands. This could be done in such a way that, after everything we have now understood, we ask Mr. Boldt to withdraw his brochure. This would be the strongest way for us to express our disagreement with his arguments; so that perhaps the resolution can be worded to request Mr. Boldt to withdraw his brochure.

Dr. Unger: It is not appropriate for us to express a “request” to a person within a “resolution”. This would have to be treated as a special motion afterwards.

Dr. Grosheintz: When Dr. Steiner explained the injustices perpetrated by Mr. Boldt, he divided them into four points: injustice against the board of the Munich Lodge, injustice against Director Sellin, injustice against the Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House, and the injustice against himself was the fourth point. We also agreed that Mr. Boldt should not have written what he did in his brochure. Until now, we have only supported

the first three points and expressed that we have recognized the injustices. We can clearly see why nothing can be said about the fourth point in Dr. Steiner's motion. And I do not understand why Baron Walleen considers Dr. Steiner's motion to be perfectly adequate. Dr. Steiner could not include in the proposal what should be said about the injustice against him. That should come from the plenary! And I believe that it is very nicely expressed in the resolution that is now on the table. I would therefore like to make a motion that we simply vote on this “fourth point” now and close the debate.

Fräulein von Sivers: In response to the previous speaker, I would like to associate myself with what was said by Messrs Selling, Hubo and Lévy. I would like to say to Mr. von Rainer that all the answers to the accusation of “mask-like quality” in the resolution are already implicit in it; but perhaps something can still be changed, and the resolution can then be read again with the addition of a word. Then it will be seen that the things that are desired are already in it. Regarding Dr. Noll's suggestion, I would like to say that we do not have any “requests” to make to Mr. Boldt! The acquaintance with it – even if the resolution is printed in the “Mitteilungen” – where it is said that we have confidence in our own judgment, can be spread throughout the world. We certainly don't need to hide behind an explanation of what is merely a fact when we are being assailed from outside!

The “resolution” will be read again with an amendment in the following form:

Resolution

The General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, meeting in Berlin between January 18 and 24, 1914, hereby expresses its deepest sympathy for Mr. Boldt, who has lost his way in thought. It sees him as a victim of certain thought suggestions and pseudoscientific influences of our time. In contrast to this, it regards itself as an association of people who consciously and resolutely reject such influences. Its greatest obligation towards Dr. Steiner arises from the fact that he has opened up to it the sense of freedom and truth in the field of scientific, moral and spiritual research and endeavour. She turns to Dr. Steiner out of her own sense of judgment and critical sense of truth, in recognition of the broad cultural significance of the treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom he offers. By duly emphasizing her independence from his authority, she believes she is acting in the best way in his interest.

Dr. Grosheintz: We have now reached the point where we have to decide whether we want to make a statement at all or not. It seems to me, after having discussed this matter for so long, that we could also draw a conclusion. And a “conclusion”, a complete conclusion, would be reached, in my opinion, if we were to adopt this statement. This declaration is, in a sense, a counter-declaration. Consider this: another declaration has been made by a member of the Anthroposophical Society, stating that Dr. Steiner has made certain “gestures” towards us, and that this member claims to have the support of 25 percent of the members of the Anthroposophical Society! Four or five of the 3,700 have found themselves fortunate enough to support his cause. This will be proudly announced to the outside world, that “one” person from our circles has stood up and said what so many others outside the Society are saying! Mr. Boldt went a step further: In the “preliminary remarks” of his brochure, he threatened that the inclusion of his writing in the general assembly would depend on whether it would later be incorporated into a larger work, which has been temporarily omitted from this announcement.

I believe that we should also give a response to this answer and take a position on it. It is not really clear to me why we should not dare to make this statement, which so clearly expresses what we all live by, and thus draw the conclusion from all that has been discussed so far.

Dr. Unger: Please allow me to point out that a motion to end the debate has been tabled!

Mr. von Rainer: I really do not think it is appropriate to put this motion to the vote with a motion to end the debate. Everyone who has signed up to speak would have to be given the floor. I am against the motion to end the debate.

Mr. Bauer: Before we vote, I would like to say: Without doubt, we need to explain something. An explanation given by Dr. Steiner during the proceedings would mean nothing to people who think similarly to Mr. Boldt. They would say: “There is also the fact that he was once obliged, due to his ‘arch-archangel activity’, not to make a gesture!”

In any case, Mr. Boldt will count us among those who cannot count themselves among the “Archarchangels”. We will merely have to rely on our logic and our sense of truth. And based on our sense of truth and our logic, and with regard to our guiding principle “Wisdom is only in truth”, we want to reject the view that somehow the truth cannot be upheld by archangels. What has already been done is not enough. We must do it! Actually, no one disagrees with the content of the resolution. So why hesitate to adopt it?

Mr. Toepel criticizes the fact that the resolution is not specifically linked to the Boldt case with regard to the points concerning Dr. Steiner's personality. Based on the brochure, one would have to reject the book “Sexual Problems”. That would be an objective rejection of the “authority”. Since Mr. Boldt is accused of untruthfulness, the resolution would have to address the personality of Dr. Steiner, who would be able to educate us to see through pseudoscientific activities. This should be submitted as a new resolution, to which he would be happy to contribute.

Dr. Unger: The end of the debate is still up for discussion! No new proposals are to be allowed within this proposal.

Mr. Lévy rejects Mr. Toepel's objections because this way of arriving at a result would create dependencies. First, on Mr. Boldt's brochure, and second, on the way in which Dr. Steiner introduced his first resolution. It is always better for us to focus on ourselves. If we went into all the details, as we are otherwise opposed, we would not get any positive work done. Mr. Walther proposes the motion to close the debate. The motion to close the debate is adopted.

Dr. Unger: The debate on the content of the resolution is closed. We will now vote on the resolution itself. However, an “additional motion” has been submitted. Since a separate vote cannot be taken on an additional motion, I would like to put it to the vote beforehand.

Mr. von Rainer: I would like to formulate the additional motion in such a way that it could be inserted at a suitable point in the resolution: “The General Assembly is convinced that Dr. Steiner, true to the motto: ‘Wisdom lies only in truth!’ is acting loyally in the face of all external and internal attacks.

Mr. Hubo: I believe that it is not in keeping with our feelings that we should put what Mr. von Rainer has said into words.

Mrs. von Ulrich: The additional motion is useless because the word “truth”, which was added by Miss von Sivers, contains exactly the same thing – only in a shorter form.

The “additional motion” is rejected.

Dr. Unger: We will now vote on the resolution itself. It has been decided that the vote will be taken by standing up from our seats. I therefore ask that all those in favor of adopting the resolution stand up!

The assembly stands.

Dr. Unger: I hereby declare the resolution adopted unanimously by the General Assembly in the wording that has been read out!

Dr. Steiner (after he has resumed the chair): It did not seem to me that this resolution was somehow a vote of no confidence against me, but rather that it expressed a kind of summary of what I actually endeavored to do in these negotiations: to make it clear what was at stake.

We could have kept quiet about the whole matter if the “75 percent” had not necessarily given themselves a vote of confidence. Whether this is more or less a matter of course – just as “more or less” as it seemed necessary to me to express a special vote of confidence within the company – it still seems very important to me. And let me emphasize that such a document, in which our dear friends declare that they want their own judgment, is available. The objection that has been raised to the effect that this declaration would only be published in our “Mitteilungen” and therefore could not be found by the outside world seems incomprehensible to me. For no one is prevented from using in the broadest public what he finds in the “Mitteilungen” about our positions and views. It is something different from the case of Mr. Casimir Zawadzki, for example, and not as if we were embarrassed to use what is in the “Mitteilungen” to defend our positions in the broadest public. I would just remind you that in repeated cases it has been used in defense of our matters, which have been discussed here, in the broadest public. And it will even be very nice if our members say to certain ongoing attacks: “We passed this resolution back then!” - I don't know why it couldn't be rubbed in everyone's face when dependence and belief in authority are mentioned again! Regardless of what the resolution says about me, I would like to correct this; and I believe that the tenor of this resolution is truly not a vote of confidence in me, and I will therefore have no reason to thank for this resolution as if it were a vote of confidence in me. But it is a summary of why we spoke at all – a rallying cry. If it had not been there, I would not know what we had been trying to do.

Since our time for the business negotiations is up, we have to postpone the continuation until tomorrow at ten o'clock. I had assumed, however, that we would deal with what we have now in three minutes - instead of five quarters of an hour!

The proceedings are suspended at half past five, and the deliberation on the remaining points is set for Friday, January 23, at ten o'clock in the morning.

My dear friends,

Once again there comes to life in our hearts the verse that has resounded through the centuries, of the Divine Mysteries manifesting in the Heights and of the peace on Earth for men of good-will. And at this moment I imagine, especially in our time, the question will arise within our hearts: What then does mankind need, over the whole Earth's round, for the prospering of earthly evolution and of that peace of which the Gospel tells? Well, my dear friends, we have been speaking for weeks past of what is needful to mankind all the Earth over, especially in this our time—questionable as it is and so fraught with questions. And if we would gather up into a single sentence what has been passing through our souls in recent weeks—then we may say: It is necessary for men to strive ever more and more for a full mutual understanding.

This quest of a true mutual understanding among men coincides with what we explained yesterday as to the fundamental impulse underlying what we here call Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science strives for an insight into those things which can only be seen by spiritual vision in the world and in the evolution of the world. What is it that shall come to birth in human souls through this cosmic understanding? It is the true—not the apparent and illusory, but the true content of the social demands of the present time, and it consists in calling forth mutual understanding among men. We must strive for this understanding of humanity over the whole Earth—strive for it on the one hand with sincerity and on the other hand with strength. And this can only be done today with an active spiritual life, I mean a spiritual life which does not merely wish to devote itself to the world passively, but seeks to be inwardly active, partaking in the inner impulses of all existence and so arriving at an understanding of the world and man. Yesterday I told you, we are living in an age when new revelations of the Spirit are penetrating through the veil of outward phenomena. We cannot take this truth too earnestly. For he alone who takes it in full earnest will prove equal to the task which our age requires, of every single human being who claims to be awake in life.

If you will think back over many things which we have considered in the last few weeks, you will realize that this understanding of man over the whole Earth cannot be attained so easily as many people think. We have tried to throw light on the peculiarities of the groupings of peoples in the Western and Eastern regions of the Earth and in the Middle. Without letting sympathies or antipathies come into play in the very least, we have tried to understand what are the deepest characteristics of the peoples of the West, the Middle and the East respectively. Why did we do so? To take an example, we pointed out that our age is characterized especially by the development of intellectuality, and that in the Western—especially the English-speaking—peoples, this intellectuality comes to expression in such a way that it acts, as it were, instinctively. Whereas in the Middle peoples, intellect does not work instinctively—in fact, to begin with, it is not innate in them at all; they must acquire it by education. This, we showed, is a very significant difference between the peoples of the West and of the Middle. Thereafter we pointed to the peoples of the East and we said: There, the evolution of intellect comes to expression in such a way that, to begin with, the Eastern peoples actually recoil from it. They are loath to awaken this intellectuality to life within them; they want to preserve it for the knowledge of the Spirit-Self in the future. We pointed to other differentiations also, over the earth. Today let us ask ourselves: Why do we indicate these differentiations? Why do we seek from our point of view to characterize the different groups of people over the Earth? We do so, my dear friends, because in future the mere “Love one-another” will no longer suffice. In future, men will only attain mutual understanding as to their several tasks over the whole Earth if they know what is working in one or in another territory of the Earth. They must be able to look consciously at the several characteristics of the different groups of people. Once we can rise to the inner feeling, which is indeed essential to such understanding, this understanding will indeed be brought about. The feeling to which I refer, my dear friends, is this; the moment we begin to characterize human beings all the Earth over in this way, we must rid ourselves of the impulse to judge and value in the way we judge and value an individual human being as to his moral qualities. In seeking to characterize the nations it simply will not do to judge of their worth as we do in the case of a single human being. It is the very essence of the evolution of the individual human beings on Earth, that man develops the moral qualities as an individual being. Morality can only be evolved by the individual, not by groups of human beings. It would be the worst of illusions if we continued to believe that groups of human beings—or, as one likes to call them nowadays, nations—can enter into a like relationship to one another as man to man. One who can understand concretely what groups of human beings (nations, too, therefore) are in reality, will see the nations guided, as you know from our lecture cycle on the Folk Souls, by those Beings of the Hierarchies whom we call Archangels. He will never ascribe to the mutual relationship of nations that which he must see in the relation of one human being to another. What the nations are, they are in face of the Divine Beings. Here there arises a very different valuation from that which obtains as between man and man. It is for this very reason that man becomes an individual in the course of his evolution. He wrests himself free from the mere folk or nation, so that he may enter fully into what we call the moral order of the world. This moral order of the world is a concern of the individual man.

Such things must be understood by real spiritual knowledge. The true progress of Christianity itself in our time consists in this. I said the other day: We are living in a time when the Spirits of Personality rise in a sense to creative activity. They become Creators. This is exceedingly important, for inasmuch as they become Creator-Spirits there penetrates through the veil of phenomena what we described yesterday as a new revelation. The Spirits of Personality, therefore, are taking on the character of Creators. They become different in a sense from what they were before. They in their being take on a character like that which certain other Spirits (the Spirits of Form) possessed, for earthly evolution, since Lemurian times. This means that in a certain sense man will henceforth confront an altogether changed world-picture. We must become conscious of this, for this is the great thing in our time. Man is beginning to confront an altogether changed world picture, one that comes forth—to use a Goethean expression—out of the gray depths of the Spirit. If we look back with Spiritual Science into the historic evolution of mankind—we may look back into pre-Christian times—the farther we go back, the more we find that men possessed in an old instinctive way an extensive cosmic knowledge, which inspires us with all the greater reverence the more we learn to know it. For the seer it becomes a fact that at the outset of earthly evolution an immense Wisdom was poured out as it were over the earthly life of man. In course of time this Wisdom gradually filtered away. And strange as it may sound, my dear friends, yet it is true, it had reached a kind of zero level at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha came with a blessing to mankind. During that time all that humanity had known in former ages fell into a kind of chaos in the consciousness of man. Those who have understanding of these matters express themselves with perfect agreement on this fact. During that time, they say, the evolution into which man is woven had reached once more the point of utter ignorance. Yet into this gray ignorance which overlay mankind there fell the greatest earthly revelation—the Mystery of Golgotha—the starting point of new knowledge, new revelations for humanity.

Nevertheless, through many centuries, as concerns man himself, the dark gray ignorance persisted in a sense. It does enlighten us, my dear friends, in the deepest sense, if, looking back on the last two thousand years, we ask ourselves with understanding: What, after all, did men produce out of themselves during these last two thousand years? All they possessed by way of Wisdom (independent of the Mystery of Golgotha) was old tradition—inheritance from old traditions. Let us understand one another aright. Needless to say, I will not say humanity has had no Wisdom at all during the last two thousand years, nor will I cast aspersions on the Wisdom which they had. The point is this: The Wisdom that was present in the old pre-Christian times—whose relics are still observable in the last centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha—this Wisdom was seen, albeit instinctively, seen in the Spirit of the olden times. Now however they had lost the power of relating themselves, with independent spiritual vision, to the content of the cosmic Wisdom. What had existed in olden times was preserved, as it were, in a historic memory. Even the Mystery of Golgotha, as I said yesterday, was clothed in the old Wisdom, expressed in the conceptions of the old-remembered Wisdom.

All this went on through many centuries. An advance-guard—albeit only an advance guard—for a renewed penetration of man into Cosmic Wisdom emerged in the mode of thought of modern Natural Science. True, to begin with it emerges in an apparently godless form; yet it is so. It is something which man seeks to acquire by his own activity of soul. Have I not often emphasized that for the future men must learn to regard the spiritual world anthroposophically, even [as], since Copernicus, they have regarded the purely mechanical, external order of Nature? To learn to behold the Divine just as men learned to behold the outer mechanical aspect of the universe since Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno—this is the task that must permeate us if we would come to a true understanding of our time.

Of course there are many things against this true understanding of our time. Towards such understanding, as you know, such things are necessary as are said for instance in my book on Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment where we have shown what ways the soul must take to penetrate into the spiritual world even as Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno sought to penetrate the outward mechanical order of Nature. Those who have no deeper understanding for human aspirations may well be astonished that the most vigorous opposition arises out of the spirit of the old religious faiths (if we may call them so) against this endeavor to show what ways the human soul must take to find the spiritual world. It is especially so when the old spirit appears in the form of Jesuitism.

Among the many stupid accusations which have appeared in three articles in the Stimmen der Zeit this year, the following also occurs: “The Church,” they say, “forbids this treatment of the human soul to find the paths into the spiritual world.” My dear friends, for many a modern believer in authority this may sound like something new; but they fail to remember that the very same Church also forbade the researches of Copernicus and Galileo! The Church dealt with external scientific research in exactly the same way. We need not therefore wonder if it metes out the same treatment to the inner researches of spiritual science. It is only remaining true to its old habits. Even as the Catholic Church rebelled until 1827 against the Copernican doctrine, so it rebels against the conscious penetration into the spiritual world. This penetration into the spiritual worlds is no mere talking in abstractions; it is something real and concrete. It means that we transcend in fact once more the state of dark, gray ignorance and penetrate with knowledge into the underlying spiritual content of the world. Was it not also part of this gray ignorance that man looked out upon the world and saw the nations—the groups of human beings—and spoke of them as of a formless chaos. They spoke of the peoples of the West, of the Middle and of the East, but they did not distinguish nor characterize them. At best they knew that the leaders of the nations were Archangeloi, but they did not strive really to know the specific characters of the several nations—of the Archangeloi themselves. This belongs to the new revelation:—we must now observe and understand how the several Archangeloi are working over the face of the Earth. And this will be a real enrichment of man's consciousness all the Earth over. Through the very inability to rise from the dead level of gray ignorance to real differentiation, the gulf has been brought about which I described yesterday, between the subject of the Sunday sermons and what is regarded as the business of everyday life in the outer world. Within the sphere of the religious faiths they talk about the Divine World and its relation to mankind, but all this talking proves too feeble to penetrate the life and business of men on Earth. It can say no more to them than “Love one another,” which is about as sensible as if I were to say to the stove: Warm the room, that is your duty as a stove. Such teaching has not power really to take hold of the hearts of man. They cannot unite their knowledge of everyday affairs with what is brought down to them in this way as abstract precepts, customs, dogmas about the spiritual world. This gulf is there, my dear friends, and the religious faiths would only like to hold it fast.

The strangest flowers spring from the presence of this gulf and from the conscious desire to maintain it. The Jesuits, for instance, object to anthroposophical Spiritual Science because it looks for something in the human being which is capable of inner evolution so as to lead man to the Divine. To do so, they say, is heretical, for the Church teaches us and forbids us to say anything different from this—that God in His Being has nothing to do with the world, nay more, that in substantial identity He has nothing to do with the soul of man. He who declares that the soul of man bears something of the Divine Being within it in any respect whatever, is for the Catholic Church—as conceived by the Jesuits—a heretic.

Into such statements is instilled the inmost tendency of that Church, which is not to let the human beings reach to the Divine but to shut them off from it. Dogma itself assumes a form such as to prevent man from reaching the Divine. No wonder, therefore, since they have not been permitted to reach to the Divine, if in the fifth Post-Atlantean age (which had to bring the Spiritual Soul, once and for all) World-knowledge has become not a Divine but a pure Ahrimanic knowledge. For that which is recognized as Natural Science today is a purely Ahrimanic achievement. We have often characterized it thus. Strange, that the Catholic Church should prefer the Ahrimanic Natural Science to the anthroposophical; for the Ahrimanic Natural Science is no longer considered heretical today, while the anthroposophical Natural Science is anathematized.

A truly enlightened man of today needs to be clear about these things. He must recognize that the same thing must now need to be undertaken on the path of the Spirit as has hitherto been undertaken on the path of Nature. Only so can the path of Nature be saved from its aberration into a purely Ahrimanic realm. It has already suffered this aberration, because in fact the path of the Spirit could only be added to it at a later stage. But from now onwards and for the future of mankind, the path of the Spirit must be added to it, so that Natural Science may be lifted again to its Divine Spiritual height; so that the life in which we live between birth and death be reunited with the life of which the science of the Spirit has to tell, namely that life in which we live in the time between death and a new birth. Yet this will only happen in our time if we have the will really to understand this life all the Earth over, to understand it as it works in man himself.

Moreover we can only understand the single human being if we understand the character of human groupings. Only so shall we be enabled to see into the true reality.

Not long ago I drew your attention to a strange fact which may well surprise many people. I will repeat it briefly. You know that here in Switzerland there lived a worthy philosopher, Avenarius, who undoubtedly regarded himself as a good, law-abiding bourgeois citizen; who did not think himself in the remotest degree a revolutionary. He founded a school of thought written in so difficult a language that very few people can read it. Moreover, writing a rather more popular language, but in a similar sense, there lived a philosopher in Vienna and in Prague—Ernst Mach, who equally regarded himself as a good law-abiding citizen. Truly, neither of them has a vein of revolution in them. Yet the fact is, these two philosophers have become the official philosophers of the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks have adopted them as their State Philosophers—so we may put it, if we do not misunderstand the expression. True, Avenarius and Mach would turn in their graves if they were to discover that they are now looked up to by the Bolsheviks as their State Philosophers. As I said on the former occasion, we only do not understand such a phenomenon because we confine ourselves to abstract logic instead of holding fast to the logic of realities, the logic of facts, the logic of things seen. Though you may think that this lies far afield from your point of view, I will nevertheless refer to it again from another aspect. In particular, I will mention one point in the philosophy of Avenarius which may help us to answer the interesting questions: How could it be that Avenarius and Mach became the State Philosophers of the Bolsheviks? The very fact is after all significant enough of the utter confusion of our time.

Avenarius, you see, raises various questions. If we spoke in his technical language—of “introjections” and the like, of all the purely epistemological concepts he evolved—we should be speaking a pretty unintelligible language for most people. Yet in this unintelligible language he raises a question which is after all very interesting from the point of view of Spiritual Science. Avenarius asks: If a man were all alone in the world, would he still speak of the distinction between that which is in his own soul and that which is outside in the world? Would he still distinguish the subjective and the objective? Richard Avenarius is clever enough to declare: We are only tempted to speak of the difference between “subjective” and “objective” through the fact that we are not alone in the world. When we stand face to face with another man, we assume that that which we carry in our brains—of a table or of any other object—is in him too. By projecting into his brain the same picture which we carry in ourselves, the whole thing acquires a picture-like character, and this leads us to distinguish the things in our soul from the things outside—the things that we confront. Avenarius opines that if there were not other people outside us in the world we should not speak of the differences between that which is in our own soul and that which is outside us. We should regard ourselves as one with the things, merged with the things of the world. We should not distinguish ourselves from the world.

We may truly say, my dear friends, from a certain point of view Avenarius is right in his assertion, but from another point of view appallingly mistaken. It is indeed of some importance that in the course of our earliest childhood (though in our conscious memory we know nothing of that time) we came into touch with human beings. Our whole ideation—our whole way of thinking—was influenced by this. It is quite true, things would be very different if we had not come into touch with others; but they would not be as Avenarius supposes. He who can apprehend the underlying facts by spiritual vision arrives at the real truth. Our whole world-picture would indeed be different if at the time in life when we cannot yet think consciously we did not meet with other human beings. But this is the curious thing, my dear friends. The different world-picture which we then should have would contain the spiritual Beings who underlie the world. It would not be as Avenarius supposes. Incidentally, what a dreadful abstraction! We should not fail to distinguish ourselves from the world if we were alone in the world and there were no other human beings. Behind the minerals and plants (for there would have to be no animals, they too would disturb the world-picture by their presence) we should perceive the Divine-Spiritual World. In other words, my dear friends, our living-together with other men is the reason why, in the ordinary way of life, we do not perceive the spiritual world behind the plants and minerals. Our fellow-men place themselves before this spiritual world and hide it from us. Think what this means! At the cost of not perceiving the Divine world of the Hierarchies, we acquire all that comes to us through our living together with other men on the physical Earth. Our fellow-men place themselves before the world of the Gods and hide it from us, as it were. Naturally, Avenarius was unaware of this, hence he carried the question in an entirely wrong direction. He imagined that if no human being were there we should see ourselves unseparated from the world—should not distinguish ourselves from the world. The truth is we should distinguish ourselves—not indeed from other men or from plants and minerals—but from the Gods whom we should then have all round us. That is the truth.

If you consider this you will realize what is very important to realize in our time. Strange to say, it is in many respects our destiny today! Precisely the most penetrating spirits of our time will often touch on the most vital questions—yet always so as to lead them in the most wrong direction, so as to lead away from the perception of the Spirit. It would indeed be difficult to lead away from the perception of the Spirit more radically than Avenarius does. His philosophy is extremely sharp-witted—written with all the refinement of professorial language—and it is therefore well-adapted to lead men away from the Spirit in a state of sleep. And when men are led asleep away from the Spirit they regard this leading away from the Spirit as a necessity—a kind of mathematical necessity. So long as they do not observe that they are being led away from the Spirit, they take it all as scientifically proven. That is the one thing, my dear friends.

Here we have a philosopher (and much the same could be said of Mach) the inmost nerve of whose thought is to found a system which shall lead man radically away from the Spirit. In Bolshevism, my dear friends, the intention is to found a social order to the exclusion of all things spiritual—to group mankind in their social life so that the Spiritual plays no part in it at all. That is the real inner connection of the two, and it makes itself connection of the two, and it makes itself felt in the logic of facts. Not for a mere external reason but by a deep inner kinship, Avenarius and Mach became the State Philosophers of the Bolsheviks.

You see, it is quite possible—with judgments that are prevalent today—to stand more or less fixedly before these things in blank astonishment. How do the Bolsheviks come to have Avenarius and Mach as State Philosophers? For us however it is possible even now to see the real inner connections. Only to do so, we must look for the underlying spiritual facts, as we have done in this instance, where we perceive how it would be in reality if man [were] alone on the physical Earth without any other men. There are many facts and phenomena entering into our life today—especially in the mutual relationships of men—which paralyze men's minds to contemplate, because they can gain no understanding of them without Spiritual Science. I have just given an instance from the spiritual life; quite everyday facts, however, might also be mentioned in this way.

Do not imagine that it was so in all ages. Such phenomena also existed in ancient times, but they were instinctively intelligible to men—intelligible by the old instinctive clairvoyance. Then, through the long gray period of ignorance, such phenomena were absent from the mutual intercourse of men. Now they are making their appearance once more. Not that the souls of men are evolving; the world is evolving. The world itself is changing, and it reveals its change to begin with in the mutual intercourse of men. In the next epoch it will also reveal the change in the relation of man to the other kingdoms of Nature. Life will remain unintelligible to men, in the present and in the immediate future, so long as they are unwilling to consider it through Spiritual Science. Illusion after illusion will take hold of the soul, if man will not have recourse to the spiritual-scientific concepts. There are some here present to whom at the outbreak of the present War-catastrophe I repeated one thing again and again. It is quite possible, I said, to write of the so-called world-historic facts of the last few centuries according to the records in the archives—by looking up the records and writing histories in the style of Ranks of the rest. But of the outbreak of this War-catastrophe it is impossible to write so. However much they delve into the archives, if they do not observe what was the mood of soul of those who were concerned in the outbreak of this War, and how this mood of soul gave entry for the Ahrimanic powers into the Earth's affairs, and how thereby the causes of this War-catastrophe came from an Ahrimanic side—if, in a word, they are willing to observe the starting-point of this catastrophe with Spiritual Science, it will remain forever dark. This War-catastrophe, my dear friends, is a real challenge to mankind, to learn from it. Much can be learned from what happened during the last four or five years as a consequence of the preceding events. Above all things, we should learn to put certain questions, not so one-sidedly as heretofore, but in keeping with the real needs of the time.

As I have often said, we have no reason to comfort ourselves too lightly about the misfortunes of our time, still less to shut our eyes to them. But we have also no reason to be pessimistic. Only consider the following. We can say to ourselves: immense and terrible events have taken place in the last four or five years over the Earth. And yet, what is the essential thing in all these terrors? It is what human souls have experienced through them. That is the essential thing—what human souls have experienced through these events, with respect to their soul's evolution, needless to say throughout all Earth-existence. Seen in this light, a question fraught with deep significance emerges. The question is strange and paradoxical, but so only because it is fraught with such deep meaning, unaccustomed to our everyday thought. Could we really desire that mankind should have lived on without any such catastrophe, in the way they had grown accustomed to live until the year 1914? Can we really say that that would have been desirable? In putting this question I may be permitted once again to point to what I said before the outbreak of this War, in my lecture cycle at Vienna (April 1914, Cycle XXXII). I said: If we really see what is living in the world of man today, the mutual relationship of men, their social life, appears to us like a social carcinoma—a cancerous growth—eating its way through mankind. Men had only shut their eyes to this carcinoma of the social commonweal. They were unwilling to look the real facts in the face. No one who sees things at their deepest could say that it would have been good for mankind to go on in that way. For on the lines which I have indicated they would have gone more and more downhill, farther and farther from the Spirit. And as to those to whom we look with souls full of pain—the millions who have been swept away from the physical plane by this dread catastrophe and who are now living on as souls—they it is who ponder most of all how different now their situation is, inasmuch as they are spending the rest of their life in the spiritual world; how different it would have been if their Karma had still kept them on the physical Earth.

Sub specie aeterni—from the aspect of eternity—things after all appear quite different, and this must not be left unsaid. Only on the other hand we must not take these things lightly or superficially. True as it is, it is infinitely sad that this catastrophe has taken place, yet it is no less true, my dear friends; by this very catastrophe man has been preserved from an appalling downfall into materialism and utilitarianism. And though it does not yet show itself today, yet it will show itself—above all in the Middle Countries and the East, where, in place of an order that had been imbued with materialism, a state of chaos is now developing. Truly we cannot refer to this chaos without an undertone of pain and suffering. I mean the social chaos which has overcome the Middle and Eastern countries, and that shows outwardly little prospect of transforming into any kind of harmony. And yet there is another aspect. Wherever this chaos exists, the world in the near future will give men very, very little through the purely physical plane. The blessings of the physical plane will truly not be great in the Middle and the Eastern countries. Of all that can be given to man so that he feels his life sustained by external powers—of this there will be precious little. Man will have to take hold of himself in his own soul in order to stand fast, and in the very act of doing so he will be able to set forth along the path into the spiritual world. He will resolve to go towards the Spirit, whence alone the salvation of the future can come. This, my dear friends, will be the essential thing for the future. Our outer bodily existence will, as it were, be slipping away from us. The outer bodily nature, as I said yesterday, will no longer be so sound and healthy as in times past; it has more death in it than it had in bygone ages. The content of the World-riddle is not to be found with that with which our bodily nature is connected; no, we must rise into the spiritual world to find the necessary impulse, and also the impulse which we need for the social order. This insight will arise when men are able to find as little as possible in the physical world. For the physical world itself will only be able to assume a form of harmony when it seeks for this form out of the spiritual life.

The Bible, my dear friends, in its first pages, does not tell us that is was Lucifer or Ahriman who drove man out of Paradise; it was the Jahve—God Himself who did so. And as we know, this very expulsion from paradise signifies man's becoming free—the conscious experience of freedom by mankind. The possibility, the seed of freedom, was given by the expulsion from Paradise. Is it then contrary to the Biblical wisdom if we say: Once more, it was Divine Wisdom which drove men out of the present age that was leading them down into materialism and utilitarianism, thus planting seeds, which, spiritually taken hold of, can really help the world. It sounds to us out of the painful depths of the last four-and-a-half years: “Spiritual life is wishing to reveal itself through the veil of the outward phenomena; men shall learn through misfortune to turn their eyes to these revelations of the Spirit, and it will be for their salvation.”

This too is a language which will seem paradoxical to many a modern man and yet, it is the language which Christ Himself is guiding us to speak. Today it lies inherent in the very progress of Christianity to grasp the Christian truths in a new way. This can only be done if they are taken hold of spiritually. The Mystery of Golgotha, my dear friends, is a spiritual event which has entered into the evolution of the Earth. It can only be fully understood by a spiritual way of knowledge. As in the last resort it was through misfortune that mankind found the Christ, we too shall have to seek through our misfortune for the Christ through the new way of comprehension.

I admit, my dear friends, this is no ordinary comfort. Yet if we are ready to put all trivialities aside in the deeper sense of the word it is after all no little comfort, nay perhaps, it is the only comfort in our time, worthy of the dignity of man. It is not the kind of comfort which says to man: Only wait, and without your cooperation all the divine things will be vouchsafed to you! Rather does it say: Make use of your own forces, and you will find that the God is speaking and abounding in your souls. Then, through this God, you will also find the God in the great Universe, and—which is the most important—you yourselves will be able to work in communion with Him. We must depart from the mere passive attitude to super-sensible knowledge. Man must bestir himself within to find himself, and as he does so, recognize himself as part of the World-Order. Let the religious faiths rebel, which want to make things nice and comfortable for lulling a man's spirit to sleep in clouds of incense (I speak figuratively) so that he may then find his way to the Divine passively and without active cooperation on his part. Let them rebel however much against the call that now springs forth out of the spiritual worlds!—“Man shall now look for his true worth in inner spiritual activity—in the active inner development of spiritual life!”

This, my dear friends, must be; and it must be so especially if we are to reckon with the social demands of our time. I have said so already in these weeks. We are living—at any rate, a great part of our educated humanity are living—from the achievements of Greek culture; but we do not always remember how these achievements, by which we live, were created. Greek civilization was unfolded on a basis of slavery. A great proportion of mankind had to live as slaves in order to bring about at all what we now feel as the blessings of Greek culture. Let us face the fact fully and clearly. All that Greek Art, Greek learning signifies—all this and many other things arose on the foundation of slavery. Then, my dear friends, we shall ask ourselves with renewed intensity: What is it that has brought about the inner change? We today no longer think as did the great philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, who took slavery as an absolute matter of course. At that time it went without saying, even for the wisest of men, that nine-tenths of mankind must live as slaves. For us today it no longer goes without saying. On the contrary, we regard it as an offence against the dignity of man that anyone should think so. What was it then that brought it about for Western humanity—this radical change in men's way of thought? It was Christianity which freed men from slavery and led them to recognize, at least in principle, that all men are equal before God, as to their soul. For this was the principle which uprooted slavery out of the social order of mankind. But as we know—for we must refer to it again and again from many points of view—one thing has been left behind until our day. It is that of which I told you that it is the salient point in the consciousness of the modern working man. One thing has been left behind, namely the possibility—in our social order—for a part of the human being to be bought as a commodity and sold by himself as a commodity. Moreover it is a part of man that takes its course in his very body. The salient point of the social question—the perpetual irritant, the thing that continually incites—is the fact that human labor-power can be paid for. This too creates at the very foundations of all our social order the character of Egoism. For egoism cannot but prevail in the social (I say once more, in the social order—please understand me aright) if to obtain what he requires for his own needs a man must get his labor paid for. He is obliged to earn for himself.

This is the next and necessary stage—after the overcoming of slavery—it must be made impossible for any man's labor to be a commodity. This is the true salient point of the social question, and it is this which the new Christianity will solve. In recent lectures I have told you something of the solving of the social question. For that three-folding of the social order, of which I told you there, sets free the commodity from the labor-power of man. In future, men will only buy and sell commodities—outer objects, things separate from man himself—which (as I wrote already in my essay on Theosophy and the Social Question which appeared in 1905) one man will work for another from motives of brotherly love.

It may be a long way to go to attain this end. Yet this and this alone will solve the social question. Whoever will not believe today that this must come about in the world-order is like a man who would have said, at the time of the origin of Christianity: “Slaves there must always be.” Even as he would have been wrong at that time, so likewise today the man is wrong who says: “Labor must always be paid for.” At that time it seems unimaginable that a certain number of men should not be slaves. Not even Plato or Aristotle could conceive it. Today the cleverest of men cannot conceive a social order wherein Labor would have quite another value—quite another meaning than of being paid for. Needless to say, even then the product will proceed from the labor, but the product alone will be able to be bought and sold. Socially, this very fact will be the salvation of men.

To realize these things it is indeed necessary to have the knowledge of spiritual vision, the logic of things seen. Without it humanity will not go forward. The logic of spiritual vision is the fuel to create what must arise among mankind in future, namely that human love which springs from the understanding between man and man. Strange as it sounds, my dear friends, today, when all manner of atavistic remnants are still there in men in one way or another—today everything is still regarded with sympathies and antipathies. So it is, for instance, when we explain such distinctions as I here did a little while ago. I said that of the three members of human nature the Western peoples are called especially to develop the abdominal nature, the Middle peoples the heart-nature and the Eastern peoples the head nature. Nowadays, such things are nearly always treated as judgments of relative value, in one way or another. At least, somewhere inside him every man still has a little pigeon-hole where he does so. Such valuation must absolutely cease, for this very vision of the differentiations of mankind over the whole Earth's sphere will become the basis of sympathetic, understanding love. From understanding, not from ignorance, true human love—reaching over the whole Earth—will spring, during this age of the Spiritual Soul. Then will men know, over the whole Earth, how to find themselves in Christ. Christ is no concern of one nation or another. He concerns all mankind; but to recognize this, many an illusion must first give way.

Men must be able to raise themselves, to look without illusions into the true nature of things. Today, in many spheres of life, they are unwilling to do so. And yet, I know I am speaking in the spirit of the true Christmas peace in placing the following paradox before you. My dear friends, you know well that I am not speaking of the individual human beings but of the nations as a whole when I refer to these differentiations. It is so easy to misunderstand these things unless one has good will. As I have pointed out so often, the single human individuality who grows out of the nation is not intended; only nations as such. I beg you to bear this in mind when I now say the following:—

You see, my dear friends, let us consider the one or other of the judgments which have been passed during the last four years on the countries, or States, of the Middle of Europe. I can thoroughly understand such feelings. I do not want to say anything in the least against those who are filled with enthusiasm for the Entente. Far be it from me—everyone has his opinion, and that is justified from a certain point of view. But, my dear friends, suppose we now look away from the opinion which prevailed in the past few years and consider its prolongation in the present time. Then after all, perhaps we may find something rather hard for understanding. For we may ask ourselves: Is it necessary for the judgments which were passed, while the potentates of the middle countries held the reins of power, to be continued now? Nay is it necessary to do all that one can—and by the most refined of methods—so as to be able to prolong these judgments? Is it necessary? Is it equally explicable? Superficially considered, it is certainly not so easy to explain as many such things were before. More deeply considered however, it is still explicable, my dear friends. More deeply considered we can understand it—albeit not out of the character of the individuals (for the individuals themselves in Western countries will want to bring about a healing of these matters). Those, however, whose judgments merely spring from their respective nationalities, or rather, national prejudices—they have in their subconsciousness something which we may characterize as follows:—

Some weeks ago I explained that in our conception of the world and notably our way of thinking at the present time much that belongs to the Old Testament is still alive, while the essential nerve of Christianity has only entered to a slight extent as yet. Now it is characteristic of Jahve-worship that it concerns all those things to which we do not bring ourselves up between our birth and death, but which are given to us as an inheritance—i.e., the things which lie inherent in our blood, which in the normal course only have influence on us while we sleep, while we ourselves are outside the body. This Jahve-conception still lives and throbs in our time to a very large extent, and it can only rise into the Christ-conception if we turn in this intellectualistic age with all our power to the conquest of the spiritual world, not through birth, not through what is inspired into us with our birth, but through our own self-education in this life. Now by nature the West is not predestined to pass from the service of Jahve to that of Christ. Such predestination only begins in the Middle of Europe and goes towards the East. This applies once more, needless to say, not to the individual but to the nation. Hence, my dear friends, the characteristic form of Wilsonian thought, steeped as it is entirely in Old Testament conceptions. However much it may deny the fact, the form of thought stands out as though it would fain exterminate what is trying spiritually to emerge in the Middle Countries and in the East. Hence it is outwardly so hard to understand. Under all manner of pretexts, these people still prolong the same hostile spirit, though they have swept away what they professed they wanted to sweep away, and only the peoples themselves are left, against whom—so they assured us—they had no ill intentions. They do so because in reality they are resisting what has arisen in spiritual evolution in the Middle Countries and in the East during the last few centuries, which, nonetheless, is necessary to mankind. Subconsciously, they want to expunge it. They do not want to enter into these things.

We are now living in a most important crisis of the world. I have often heard people ask; how is it that the men of the West especially the English and the French—have such a dreadful hatred of the Germans? There is a very simple answer, my dear friends, and yet it is an exhaustive answer. Man always sees himself differently (especially himself as member of a nationality) than he sees his fellow men. I can assure you, my dear friends, such thoughts as Mach had when he got into the bus or walked along the street are very often there in the subconscious lives of men. You know how Mach himself relates the story. Once, very tired, he got into a bus and did not notice that there was a mirror on the side opposite the door. Someone else, he thought, got in at the same time from the other side, and he said to himself: What a horrid old schoolmaster that is! He knew himself very little in his outward person and when he saw himself he did not like it at all.

Now, my dear friends, observe the spiritual history of Middle Europe—not in its more intimate features but as a whole. Down to Lessing, far down into the last third of the 18th century, the Germans took pains to be like the French. You could see it in everything. From a certain moment onward (approximately in the 12th century) till far beyond the middle of the 18th century, the Germans endeavored to be like the French—to behave in such a way that they also might become Frenchmen. What the French could not see in themselves—or, if they saw it, were inclined to rate it highly—all this they hated with a dreadful hatred when they saw it in the imitation. Unconsciously, man does indeed practice a strange form of self-knowledge. At bottom, in their deepest being, the Germans were never hated by the French. The French only hated themselves when they saw their mirrored image in the German soul.

Since then a very remarkable English influence has arisen, the extent of which is by no means adequately realized. The English naturally see themselves just as little as Mach did; but they notice themselves well enough when they see themselves in this mirrored image which has entered so strongly into the German soul since the 18th century. It is the Englishman whom they now judge in the German. There is the simple psychological solution, my dear friends. If the world-crisis had not arisen, this state of affairs would have gone on for a long time, and we should have a great mixture, as it were a broth, out of which single individualities would nevertheless have arisen, possessing the intimate qualities of the true German. Now, however, out of the world-crisis, chaos and misfortune will cause to arise what must arise: that which was always present, though under the power of the West it was unable to unfold. These are the real facts. There is no ground for pessimism, even in Middle Europe. We must only dive to the deeper foundations which underlie the process of evolution.

My dear friends, what the Entente Powers are doing today may appear thus, or thus. It matters very little how it appears, for at the bottom of their hearts they are wanting what is quite impossible. They are wanting to prevent the rise of something which absolutely must unfold in the Middle of Europe and in the East, for it is connected with the spiritual progress of mankind; it cannot be prevented. But it must also call forth this, my dear friends:—If man is to take the future of the Earth in earnest he must truly have faith in the Spirit; only out of the power of the Spirit will there come what must come, even for the solving of the burning social needs of our time. In the machine age it was necessary for these 50 million invisible human beings—that is to say, human beings visible as machines—to arise, so that men might gradually learn to feel that they must not be paid like machines are paid. And it was also necessary for this appalling catastrophe to arise, wherein the machine age has celebrated its greatest triumphs. Out of this catastrophe man will begin to unfold his real strength, and as he does so, he will gain a certain power once more to unite himself with the Divine and Spiritual. If we may now compare what many people have rightly called the most appalling event in the Earth's history with the beginning of Earth-evolution we may say: just as it was no mere misfortune for men to be driven out of Paradise, so too it is no mere misfortune that such a catastrophe has overtaken mankind.

In the end, my dear friends, the most valuable truths are paradoxes today, as I have often pointed out, we may well say: Men were so infamous as to nail to the Cross the greatest Being Who ever appeared on the Earth—Jesus Christ. They killed Him. We may well say that it was infamous of them. And yet this Death, my dear friends, is the very content of Christianity; for through this Death there took place what we call the Mystery of Golgotha. Without it there would be no Christianity. This Death is the good fortune of men; this Death is the abounding strength of earthly man. So paradoxical are things in their reality. For on the one hand we may say: how infamous it was of men to nail Christ to the Cross; and yet, with this Death—this nailing to the Cross—the greatest event on Earth is brought about. A misfortune is not always merely a misfortune; often it is the starting-point for the achievement of human greatness and of human strength.

Yesterday I drew attention to the way in which a man is able with the higher members of his being - his etheric body, astral body and ego—to leave his physical body; and I pointed out how, having left his physical body, he then makes his first steps in initiation, and learns that what we call man's spiritual activity does not come only with initiation but, in reality, is there all the time in everyday life.

We had particularly to emphasize that the activity which enters our consciousness through our thoughts actually takes its course in man's etheric body, and that this activity taking its course in man's etheric body, this activity underlying the thought-pictures, enters our consciousness by reflecting itself in the physical body. As activity it is carried on in soul and spirit, so that a man when he is in the physical world and just thinks—but really thinks, is carrying out a spiritual activity. It may be said, however, that it does not enter consciousness as a spiritual activity. Just as when we stand in front of a mirror it is not our face that enters our consciousness out of the mirror but the image of our face, so in everyday life it is not the thinking but its reflection that as thought-content is rayed back into consciousness from the mirror of the physical body. In the case of the will it is different.

Let us keep this well in mind—that what finds expression in thinking is an activity which actually does not enter our physical organism at all, but runs its course entirely outside it, being reflected back by the physical organism. Let us remember that as men we are actually in our soul-spiritual being all the time.

Now this is how it might be represented diagrammatically. If this (a) represents man's bodily being, in actual fact his thinking goes on outside it, and what we perceive as thoughts is thrown back. Thus, with our thinking we are always outside our physical body; in reality spiritual  knowledge consists in our recognizing that we are outside the physical body with our thinking.

It is different with what we call will-activity.  This goes right into the physical body. What we call will-activity enters into the physical body everywhere and there brings about processes; and the effect of these processes in man is what is brought about by the will as movement.

We can thus say: While living as man in the physical world there rays out of the spiritual into our organism the essential force of the will and carries out certain activities in the organism enclosed within the skin. Between birth and death we are therefore permeated by will-forces; whereas the thoughts do not go on within our organism but outside it. From this you may conclude that everything to do with the will is intimately connected with what a man is between birth and death by reason of his bodily organization. The will is really closely bound up with us and all expressions of the will are in close connection with our organization, with our physical being as man between birth and death. This is why thinking really has a certain character of detachment from the human being, a certain independent character, never attainable by the will.

Now for a moment try to concentrate on the great difference existing in human life between thinking and what belongs to the will. It is just spiritual science that is capable from this point of view of throwing the most penetrating side-lights on certain problems in life. Do we not all find that what can be known through spiritual science really confronts us in life in the form of questions which somehow have to be answered? Now think what happens when anyone goes to a solicitor about some matter. The solicitor hears all about the case and institutes proceedings for the client in question. He will look into all possible ingenious grounds—puts into this all the ingenuity of which he is capable—to win the case for his client. To win the case he will summon up all his powers of intelligence and reasoning.

What do you think would have happened (life will certainly give you the answer) had his opponent outrun the client mentioned and come a few hours before to the same solicitor? What I am assuming hypothetically often happens in reality. The solicitor would have listened to the opponent's case and put all his ingenuity into the grounds for the defense of this client—grounds for getting the better of the other man. I don't think anyone will feel inclined to deny the possibility of my hypothesis being realized.  What does it show however?

It shows how little connection a man has in reality with his intelligence and his reason with all that is his force of thought, that in a certain case he can put them at the service of one side just as well as of the other. Think how different this is when man's will-nature is in question, in a matter where man’s feelings and desires are engaged. Try to get a clear idea of whether it would be possible for a man whose will-nature was implicated to act in the same way. On the contrary, if he did so we should consider him mentally unsound. A man is intimately bound up with his will—most intimately; for the will streams into his physical organism and in this human physical organism, induces processes directly related to the personality.

We can therefore say: It is just into these facts of life which, when we think about life at all, confront us so enigmatically, that light is thrown by all we gain through spiritual science.  Ever more fully can spiritual science enlighten men about what happens in everyday life, because everything that happens has supersensible causes. The most mundane events are dependent on the supersensible, and are comprehensible only when these supersensible causes are open to our view.

But now let us take the case of a man going with his soul through the gate of death. We must here ask: What happens to his force of thinking and to his will-force? After death the thinking force can no longer be reflected by an organism such as we bear with us between birth and death. For the significant fact here is that after death this organism, everything present in us lying beneath the surface of our skin, is cast off. Therefore, when we have gone through the gate of death, the thinking cannot be reflected by an organism no longer there, neither can an organism no longer there induce inner processes. What the thinking force is continues to exist—just as a man is still there when after passing a mirror he is no longer able to see his reflection. During the time he is passing it his face will be reflected to him; had he passed by earlier the reflection would have appeared to him earlier. The thinking force is reflected in the life of the organism as long as we are on earth, but it is still there even though we have left our physical organism behind.

What happens then? What constitutes the thinking force cannot, in itself be perceived; just as the eye is incapable of seeing itself so also is the thinking, for it has to be reflected-back by something—and the bodily organism is no longer there. When a man has discarded his physical organism what will then throw back the thinking force for whatever the thinking force develops in itself as process? Here something occurs that is not obvious to human physical intelligence; but it must, be considered if we really want to understand the life between death and rebirth. This can be under stood through initiates' teachings. An initiate knows that even during life in the body knowledge does not come to him through the mirror of his body but outside it, that he goes out of his body and receives knowledge without it, that therefore he dispenses with his bodily mirrors. Whoever cultivates in himself this kind of knowledge sees that what constitutes the thinking force henceforward enters his consciousness outside the body; it enters consciousness by the later thoughts being reflected by those that have gone before.

Thus, bear this well in mind—when an initiate leaves his body, and is outside it, he does not perceive by something being reflected by his body, he perceives by the thinking force he now sends out being reflected by what he has previously thought. You must therefore imagine that what has been thought previously—not only because it was thought previously—mirrors back the forces developed by the thinking, when this development takes place outside the body.

I can perhaps put it still more clearly. Let us suppose that someone today becomes an initiate. In this state of initiation how can he perceive anything through the force of his thinking? He does this by encountering, with the thinking forces he sends out, what, for instance, he thought the day before. What he thought the day before remains inscribed in the universal cosmic chronicle—which you know as the Akashic record—and what his thinking force develops today is reflected by what he thought yesterday.

From this you may see that the thinking must be qualified to make the thought of yesterday as strong as possible, so that it can reflect effectively. This is done by the rigorous concentration of one's thought and by various kinds of meditation, in the way described from time to time in lectures about knowledge of the higher worlds. Then the thought that otherwise is of a fleeting nature is so densified in a man, so strengthened, that he is able to bring about the reflection of his thinking force in these previously strengthened and densified thoughts.

This is how it is also with the consciousness men develop after death. What a man has lived through between birth and death is indeed inscribed spiritually into the great chronicle of time. Just as in this physical world we are unable to hear without ears, after death we are unable to perceive unless there is inscribed into the world our life, with all that we have lived through between birth and death.  This is the reflecting apparatus.

I drew attention to these facts in my last Vienna cycle.¹ Our life itself, in the way we go through it between birth and death, becomes our sense-organ for the higher worlds. You do not see your eye nor do you hear your ear, but you see with your eye, you hear with your ear. When you want to perceive anything to do with your eye you must do so in the way of ordinary science. It is the same in the case of your ear. The forces a man develops between death and rebirth have the quality of always raying back to the past earth-life, so as to be reflected by it; then they spread themselves out and are perceived by a man in the life between death and rebirth.

From this it can be seen what nonsense it is to speak of life on earth as if it were a punishment, or some other superfluous factor in man’s life as a whole. A man has to make himself part of this earthly life, for in the spiritual world in life after death it becomes his sense-organ.

The difficulty of this conception consists in this that when you imagine a sense-organ you conceive it as something in space. Space, however, ceases as soon as we go either through the gate of death or through initiation; space has significance only for the world of the senses. What we afterwards meet with is time, and, just as here we make use of ears and eyes that are spatial, there we need temporal processes. These processes are those carried out between birth and death, by which the ones developed after death are reflected back. In life between birth and death everything is perceptible to us in space; after death everything takes its course in time, whereas formerly it was in space that we perceived it.

The particular difficulty in speaking about the facts of spiritual science is that, as soon as we turn our gaze to the spiritual worlds, we have really to renounce the whole outlook we have developed for existence in space; we must entirely give up this spatial conception and realize that there space no longer exists, everything running its course in time—that there even the organs are temporal processes. If we would find our way about among the events in spiritual life, we have not only to transform our way of learning; we must entirely transform ourselves, re-model ourselves, acquire fresh life, in such a way that we adopt quite a different method of conception. Here lies the difficulty referred to yesterday, which so many people shun, however ingenious for the physical plane their philosophy may be. People indeed are wedded to their spatial conceptions and cannot find their bearings in a life that runs its course entirely in time.

I know quite well that there may be many souls who say: But I just cannot conceive that when I enter the spiritual world this spiritual world is not to be there in a spatial sense.—That may be, but if we wish to enter the spiritual world the most necessary thing of all is for us to make every effort to grow beyond forming our conceptions as we do on the physical plane. If in forming our conceptions of the higher worlds we never take for our standards and models any but those of the physical world, we shall never attain to real thoughts about the higher worlds—at best picture thoughts.

It is thus where thinking is concerned. After death thinking takes its course in such a way that it reflects itself in what we have lived through, what we were, in physical earthly life between birth and death. All the occurrences we have experienced constitute after death our eyes and our ears. Try by meditating to make real to yourselves all that is contained in the significant sentence: Your life between birth and death will become eye and ear for you, it will constitute your organs between death and rebirth.

Now how do matters stand with the will forces? The will-forces bring about in us the life-processes within the limits of our body—it is our life-processes which they bring about. The body is no longer there when a man has gone through the gate of death, but the whole spiritual environment is there. True as it is that the will with its forces works into the physical organism, it is just as true that after death the will has the desire to go out from the man in all directions; it pours itself into the whole environment, in the opposite way to physical life when the will works into man. You gain some conception of this out—pouring of the will into the surrounding world, if you consider what you have to acquire in the way of inner cultivation of the will in meditation, when you are really anxious to make progress in the sphere of spiritual knowledge.

The man who is willing to be satisfied with recognizing the world as a merely physical one sees, for example, the color blue, sees somewhere a blue surface, or perhaps a yellow surface; and this satisfies the man who is content to stop short at the physical world. We have already discussed how, even through a true conception of art, we must get beyond this mere grasping of the matter in accordance with the senses; how when we must experience blue as if we let our will, our force of heart, stream out into space, and as if from us out into space there could shine forth towards what shines forth to us as blue something we feel like a complete surrender—as if we could pour ourselves out into space. Our own being streams into the blue, flows away into it. Where there is yellow, however, the being, the being of the will, has no wish to enter—here it is repulsed; it feels that the will cannot get through, and that it is thrown back on itself.

Whoever wishes to prepare himself to develop in his soul those forces which lead him into the spiritual world, must be able in his life of soul to connect something real with what I have just been saying. For instance, he must in all reality connect the fact that he is looking at a blue surface with saying: This blue surface takes me to itself in a kindly way; it lets my soul with its forces flow out into the illimitable. But the surface here, this yellow surface, repels me, and my soul-forces return upon my soul like the pricks of a needle. It is the same with everything perceived by the senses; it all has these differences of color. Our will, in its soul-nature, pours itself out into the world and can either thus pour itself out or be thrust back. This can be cultivated by giving the forces of our soul a training in color or in some other impression of the physical world. You will discover in my book "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds" how this may be done.

When, however, this has been developed, when we know that if the forces of the soul float away, become blue (becoming blue and floating away are one and the same thing), this means to be taken up with sympathy whereas becoming yellow is to be repelled and is identical with antipathy—well, then we have forces such as these within us. Let us say that we have experienced this coloring of the soul when we are taken up sympathetically and that we do not, in this case, confront a physical being at all, but that it is possible through our developed soul-forces for a spiritual being with whom we are in sympathy to flow into us. This is the way in which we can perceive the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies and the beings of the elemental world.

I will give you an example, one that is not meant to be personal but should be taken quite objectively. We need not develop merely through the forces in our color-sense, it is possible to do so through any forces of the soul. Imagine that we arouse in our self-knowledge a feeling of how it appears to our soul when we are really stupid or foolish. In everyday life we take no notice of such things, we do not bring them into consciousness; but if we wish to develop the soul we must learn to feel within us what is experienced when something foolish is done. Then we notice that when this foolish action occurs will-forces of the soul stream forth which can be thrown back from outside. They are, however, thrown back in such a way that on noticing the repulsion we feel we are being mocked at and scorned. This is a very special experience. When we are really stupid and are alive to what is happening spiritually we feel looked down upon, provoked.  A feeling can then follow of being provoked from out of the spiritual world. If we then go to someplace where there are the nature-spirits we call gnomes, we then have the power to perceive them. This power is acquired only when we perceive in ourselves the feeling I have just described. The gnomes carry-on in a way that is provoking, making all manner of gestures and grimaces, laughing, and so on. This is perceptible to us only if when we are stupid we observe ourselves. It is important that we should acquire inward forces through these exercises, that with our will forces we should delve deeply into the world surrounding us; then this surrounding world will come alive, really and truly alive.

Thus we see while our life between birth and death becomes an organ, an organ of perception, within the spiritual organism that we bear between death and rebirth, our will becomes a participator in our whole spiritual environment. We see how the will rays back in initiates (in the seeing of gnomes, for example) and in those who are dead. When gnomes are seen it is an example of this, out of the elemental world.

Now consider how there once lived a philosopher who in the second half of the nineteenth century had a great influence on many people, namely, Schopenhauer. As you know, he exercised a great influence both on Nietzsche and Richard Wagner. Schopenhauer derived the world—as others have derived it from other causes—from what he called conception, or representation, and will. He said: Representation and will are what constitutes the foundation of the world.

But—obsessed by Kant’s method of thinking—he goes on to say that representation are never more than dream-pictures and that it is impossible ever to come to reality through them. It is only through the will that we can penetrate into the reality of things—this is done by the will. Now Schopenhauer philosophises in an impressive manner about representation and will; and, if one may say so—he does this indeed rather well.  He is, however, one of those who I have likened to a man standing in front of a door and refusing to go through it. When we take his words literally—the world is representation, the world is a mere dream-picture—we have to forgo all knowledge of the world through representation and can then pass on to knowledge of the representations themselves, pass on to doing something in one's own soul with the representations—in other words to meditate, to concentrate. Had Schopenhauer gone a step further he would have reached the point of saying: "I must renounce representations! If a representation is something produced within me, I must put it to an inward use.’ Had he made this step he would have been driven to cultivate his representations, to work upon them in meditation and concentration.

When he says: The world is will—when, as in his clever treatise on the "Will in Nature", he goes on to describe this will in nature, he does not take his own proposition in earnest. In describing the will we seek the help of representations and he denies those all possibility of knowledge. This reminds us of Munchausen who to pull himself out of a bog catches hold of his own pigtail. What would Schopenhauer have been obliged to be if had taken in earnest his own words—the world is will? He would have had to say: Then we ought to pour out our will into the world; we must use our will to creep inside things. We must delve right into the world, send into it cur will, no longer taking the color blue as mere representation, but trying to perceive how the will sinks down into it; no longer thinking of our stupidity as a representation, but realizing what can be experienced through that stupidity.

You can see that here too it is possible to arrive at a description which needs only to be taken in earnest. Had Schopenhauer gone further he would have had to say: If the representation is really only a picture we represent to ourselves, then we must work upon it; if the will is really in the things, then we must go with it right into the things, not just describe how things have the will within them.

 You see here another example of how a renowned Philosopher of the nineteenth century takes men to the very gates of initiation, right up to spiritual science; and how this philosopher then does everything he can to close these gates to men. Where people really take hold of life they are shown on all sides that the time is ripe for picking the fruits of spiritual science—only things must be taken in earnest, deeply in earnest. Above all we must understand how to take people at their word. For it is not required of spiritual science to stand on its own defense. For the most part this is actually done by others, by its opponents, though they do not know this, have no notion of it.

Now consider a certain class of human beings to which very many in the nineteenth century belonged—the atomistic philosophers, those who conceived the idea that atoms in movement were at the basis of all the phenomena of life. They had the idea that behind this entire visible and audible world there was a world of atoms in movement, and through this movement arose processes perceived by us as what appears in our surroundings. Nothing spiritual is there, the spiritual is merely a product of atomic movement, and all—prevailing atomic activity.

Now how has the thought of these whirling atoms arisen? Has anyone seen them? Has anyone discovered them through what they have experienced or come to know empirically?  Were this the case they would not be what they are supposed to be, for they are supposed to be concealed behind empirical knowledge.  Had they any reality, by what means would they have to be discovered? Suppose the movement of atoms were there—the understanding cannot discover them in what is sense-perceptible. What would a man have to be in order to possess the right to speak of this world of atoms?  He would have to be clairvoyant; the whole of this atom-world would have to be a product of inner vision, of clairvoyance. The only thing we can say to the people who have appeared as the materialists of the nineteenth century is: There is no need for us to prove that there are clairvoyants for either you must be silent about all your theories, or you must admit that to perceive these things you are possessed of clairvoyant vision—at least to the point of being able to perceive atoms behind the world of the senses.  For if there is no such things as clairvoyance it is senseless to speak of this material world of atoms. If you find it a necessity to have moving atoms you prove to us that there are clairvoyant human beings. 

Thus we take these people seriously, although they do not take themselves seriously when they say things of this kind.  If Schopenhauer is taken in earnest we must come to this conclusion—“If you say the world is will and what we have in the way of representation is only pictures, you ought to penetrate into the world with your will, and penetrate into your thinking through meditation and concentration.  We take you seriously but you do not take yourselves so.” Strictly speaking, it is the same with everything that comes into question.

This is what is so profoundly significant in the world—conception of spiritual science, that it takes in all earnest what is not so taken by the others—what they skim over in a superficial way. Proofs are always to be found among the opponents of spiritual science. But people never notice that in their assertions, in what they think, at bottom they are at the same time setting at naught what they think. For the materialistic atomist, and Schopenhauer too, set a naught what they themselves maintain.

Schopenhauer nullifies his own system when he asserts: Everything is will and representation. The moment he is not willing to stop there, however, he is obliged to lead men onto the development of spiritual science. It is not we who form the world-conception of spiritual science; how then does this world-conception come into being? It enters the world of itself—is there, everywhere, in the world. It enters life through unfamiliar doors and windows; and even when others do not take it in earnest, it finds its way into men’s cultural life.

But there is still something else we can recognize if, through considerations of this kind we really have our attention drawn to how superficially men approach their own spiritual processes, and how little in a deeper sense they take themselves seriously—even when they are clever and profound philosophers. They weave as it were a conceptual web, but with it they shy away from really fulfilling the inner life’s work that would lead them to experience the forces upon which the world is founded. Hence we see that the centuries referred to yesterday, during which ordinary natural science has seen its great triumphs, have also been the centuries to develop in human beings the superficial thinking. The more glorious the development of science, the more superficial has become investigation into the sources of existence.

We can point to really shining examples of what has just been touched upon here. Suppose we have the following experience—a man, who has never shown any interest in the spiritual world undergoes a sudden change, begins to concern himself about the spiritual world and longs to know something about it. Let us suppose we have this experience after having found our way into spiritual science. What will become a necessity for us when we experience how a man, who has never worried about the spiritual world, having been immersed in everyday affairs, now finds himself at one of the crossroads of life and turns to the spiritual world? As spiritual scientists we shall interest ourselves about what has been going on in this man’s soul.  We shall try as often as possible to enter into the soul of such a man, and it will then be useful for us to know what has often been stressed here, namely, that the saying in constant use about nature making no sudden jumps is absolutely untrue. Nature does make sudden jumps.  She makes a jump when the green leaf becomes the colourful petal, and when she so changes a man who has never troubled himself about the spiritual world that he begins to interest himself in it, this too is like a sudden jump; and for this we shall seek the cause.  We shall make certain discoveries about the various spiritual sources of which we have spoken here, and see how anything of this kind takes place. 

When doing this we shall ask: How old was the man? We know that every seven years something new is born in the human being: From the seventh year on, the etheric body; from the fourteenth year on, the astral body, and so on.  We shall gather up all that we know about the etheric and astral bodies, taking this particularly from an inner, not an outer, point of view.  Then we shall be able to gain a good deal of information about what is going on in a human soul such as this.

It is also possible to proceed in another way.  We can become interested in the fact that men in ordinary life suddenly go over to a life concerned with spiritual truths, and the profundities of religion. Some men may look upon spiritual science as a foolish phantasy, and when we examine into what is going on in the depths of his soul it is possible for us to discover what makes him find it foolish. But we can then do the following. We write, let us say 192, or even more, letters to people whom we have heard about as having gone through a change of this kind. We send these letters to a whole continent, in order to learn in reply what it was that brought about this change in their life.—We then receive answers of the most diverse kind….someone writes: When I was fourteen my life led me into all manner of bad habits. That made my father very angry and he gave me a good thrashing; this it was which induced in me a feeling for the spiritual world.—Others assert that they have seen a man die, and so on. Suppose then that we get 192 answers and proceed to arrange them in piles—one pile for the letters in which the writers say that they have been changed by their fear of death or of hell; a second pile in which it is stated that the writers come across good men, or imitated them; a third pile—and so on. In piles such as these matters easily become involved and then we make an extra pile for other, egocentric motives.  Then we arrive at the following.  We have sorted the 192 letters into piles and have counted how many letters go into each one; then we are able to make a simple calculation of the percentage of letters in each pile. We can discover, for example, that 14 per cent of the changes come about through fear, either of death or of hell; 6 per cent come from egocentric motives; 5 per cent because altruistic feelings have arisen in the writers; 17 per cent of them are striving after some moral ideal—supposedly those belonging to an ethical society; 16 percent through pangs of conscience, 10 per cent by following teachings concerning what is good, 13 per cent through imitating other men considered to be religious, 19 per cent by reason of social pressure, the pressure of necessity and so forth.

Thus, we can proceed by trying with love to delve into the soul who confesses to a change of this kind; we can try to discover what is within the soul; and for this we have need of spiritual science.  Or we can do what I have just been describing. One who has done this is a certain Starbuck who has written about these matters a book which has aroused a good deal of attention. This is the most superficial exposition and the very opposite of all we must perceive in spiritual science.  Spiritual science seeks everywhere to go to the very root of things.  A tendency that has arisen to the materialistic character of the times is to apply even to the religious life this famous popular science of statistics.  For, as it has clearly pointed out, this means of research is incontrovertible. It has one quality particularly beloved by those people who are unwilling to enter the doors of spiritual science—it can truly be called easy, very easy.

Yesterday we dwelt on the reason for so many people being unwilling to accept spiritual science, mainly, its difficulty.  But we can say of statistics that it is easy, in truth very easy. Now today people go in for an experimental science of the soul; I should have to talk about this science at great length to give you a concept of it.  It is called experimental psychology; outwardly a great deal is expected from it.  I am going just to describe the beginning that has been made with these experiments. We take, let us say, ten children and give these ten children a written sentence—perhaps like this: M… is  g… by st… We then look at our watch and say to one of the children: “Tell me what you make of that sentence.” The child doesn’t know; it thinks hard and finally comes out with “Much is gained by striving.” Then it is at once noted down how much time it took the child to complete the sentence. Obviously there must be several sentences for effort has to be made to read them; gradually this will be done in a shorter space of time. Note is then made of the number of seconds taken by the various children to complete one of these sentences, and the percentages among the children are calculated and treated further statistically. In this way the faculty of adaption to outer circumstance and other matters, are tested.  This method of experimental psychology has a grand-sounding name, it is called “intelligence tests”; whereas the other method is said to be the testing by experiment of man’s religious nature.

My dear friends, what I have given you here in a few words is no laughing matter.  For where philosophy is propounded today these experimental tests are looked upon as the future science of the soul to a far greater extent than any serious feeling is shown, not for what we subscribe to here, but for what was formerly discovered by inner observation of the soul.  Today people are all for experiment.

These are examples of people’s experiments today and these methods have many supporters in the world.  Physical and chemical laboratories are set up for the purpose of these experiments and there is a vast literature on the subject.  We can even experience what I will just touch upon in passing.  A friend of ours, chairman of one of our groups, a group in the North, had been preparing his doctorate thesis.  It goes without saying that he went to a great deal of trouble (when talking to children one goes to a great deal of trouble to speak on a level with their understanding) to leave out of his thesis anything learnt from spiritual science. All that was left out.  Now among the examiners of the thesis there was one who was an expert in these matters, who therefore was thoroughly briefed in these methods; this man absolutely refused to accept the thesis. (The case was even discussed in the Norwegian Parliament.) Anyone who is an experimental psychologist is firmly convinced that his science of the soul is founded on modern science and will continue to hold good for the future.

There is no intention here of saying anything particular against experimental psychology. For why should it not be interesting once in a way to learn about it? Certainly one can do so and it is all very interesting. But the important thing is the place such things are given in life, and whether they are made use of to injure what is true spiritual science, what is genuine knowledge of the soul. It must repeatedly be emphasized that it is not we who wish to turn our back on what is done by people who in accordance with their capacities investigate the soul—the people who investigate what has to do with the senses, and like to make records after the fashion of those 192 replies. This indeed is in keeping, with men's capacities; but we must take into consideration what kind of world it is today in which spiritual science takes its place. We must be very clear about that.

I know very well that there are those who may say: Here is this man, now, abusing experimental psychology—absolutely tearing it to shreds! People may seek thus just as they said: At Easter you ran down Goethe's "Faust" here and roundly criticized Goethe. These people cannot understand the difference between a description of something and a criticism in the superficial sense; they always misunderstand such things. By characterizing them I am wanting to give them their place in the whole sphere of human life. Spiritual Science is not called upon to play the critic, neither can what has been said be criticism.

Men who are not scientists should behave in a Christian way towards true spiritual science.

Another thing is to have clear vision. Thus when we look at science we see how superficially it takes all human striving, how even in the case of religious conversion it does not turn to the inner aspect but looks upon human beings from the outside.

In practical life men are not particularly credulous. The statisticians of the insurance companies—I have referred to this before—calculate about when a man will die. It can be calculated, for instance, about when an 18-year-old will die, because he belongs to a group of people a certain number of whom will die at a certain age. According to this the insurance quota is reckoned and correctly assigned. This all works quite well. If people in ordinary life, however, wanted to prepare for death in the year reckoned as that of their probable death by the insurance company, they would be taken for lunatics. The system does not determine a man’s the length of life. Statistics have just as little to do with his conversion.

We must look deeply into all these things. Through them we strive for a feeling which has within it intuitive knowledge. It will be particularly difficult to bring to the world-culture of today what I would call the crown of spiritual science—knowledge of the Christ. Christ-knowledge is that to which—as the purest, highest and most holy—we are led by all that we receive through spiritual science. In many lectures I have tried to make it clear how it is just at this point of time that the Christ-impulse, which has come into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha, has to be made accessible to the souls of men through the instrument of spiritual science. In diverse ways I tried to point out clearly the way in which the Christ-impulse has worked. Remember the lectures about Joan of Arc, about Constantine, and so on. In many different ways I tried to make clear how in these past centuries the Christ-impulse has been drawn more into the unconscious, but how we are now living at a time when the Christ-impulse must enter more consciously into the life of man, and when there must come a real knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha. We shall never learn to know about this Mystery of Golgotha if we are not ready to accept conceptions of the kind touched upon at Eastertide²—about Christ in connection with Lucifer and Ahriman—and if we do not permeate these conceptions with spiritual science.

We are living in a terribly hard time, a time of suffering and sorrow. You know that for reasons previously mentioned I am not able to characterize this time; neither do I want to do so but from a quite different angle I will just touch upon something connected with our present studies.

This time of suffering and sorrow has wakened many things in human souls, and anyone living through this time, anyone who concerns himself about what is going on, will notice that today, in a certain direction, a great deepening is taking place in the souls of men. These human souls involved in present events were formerly very far from anything to do with religion, their perceptions and feelings were thoroughly materialistic. Today we can repeatedly find in their letters, for one thing, how because of having been involved in all the sorrowful events of the present time they have recovered their feeling for religion. The remarkable thing is that they begin to speak of God and of a divine ordering when formerly such words never passed their lips. On this point today among those people who are in the thick of events we really experience a very great religious deepening.

But one fact has justly been brought before us which is quite as evident as what I have now been saying. Take the most characteristic thing, in the letters written from the front, in which can be seen this religious deepening. Much is said of how God has been found again but almost nothing, almost nothing at all—this has been little noticed—of Christ. We hear of God but nothing of Christ.

This is a very significant fact—that in this present time of heavy trial and great suffering many people have their religious feeling aroused in the abstract form of the idea of God. Of a similar deepening of men's perception of the Christ we can hardly speak at all. I say “hardly", for naturally it is to be met with here and there, but generally speaking things are as I have described.  You can see from this, however, that today, when it behooves the souls of men  to look for renewed connection with the spiritual world, it is difficult to find the way to what we call the Christ-impulse, the Mystery of Golgotha.

For this, it is necessary for the human soul to rise to a conception of mankind as one great whole. It is necessary for us not merely to foster mutual interest with those amongst whom we are living just for a time; We should extend our spiritual gaze to all times and beings, to how as souls we have gone through various lives on earth and thorough various ages. Then there gradually arises in the soul an urgent need to learn how there exists in man a deepening and then an ascending evolution. In the evolution of Time we must feel one with all mankind; we must look back to how the earth came originally into being, focus our gaze on this ascending and descending evolution, in the centre point of which the Mystery of Golgotha stands; we must feel ourselves bound up with the whole of humanity, feel ourselves bound up with the Mystery of Golgotha. Today the souls of men are nearer the cosmos spatially than they are temporally, that is, to what has been unfolded in the successive evolutionary stages. We shall be led to this, however, when with the aid of spiritual science we feel ourselves part of man's whole course of evolution. For then we cannot do other than recognize that there was a point of time when something entered the evolution of mankind which had nothing to do with human force. It entered man's evolution because into it an impulse made its way from the spiritual world through a human body—an impulse present in the beginning of the Christian era. It was a meeting of heaven with the earth.

Here we touch upon something which must be embodied into the religious life through spiritual-science. We shall touch upon how spiritual science has to sink down into human feeling so that men come into a real connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, and find the Christ-impulse in such a way that it can always be present in them not only as a vague feeling but also in clear consciousness. Spiritual science will work. We have recognized and repeatedly stressed the necessity for this work. In reality, the fact of your sitting there is proof that all of you in this Movement for spiritual science are willing to put your whole heart into working together. When in the future hard times fall again upon mankind, may spiritual science have already found the opportunity to unite the deepening of men's souls not only with an abstract consciousness of God but with the concrete, historical consciousness of Christ.

This is the time, my dear friends, when perceptions, feelings, of a serious nature can be aroused in us and they should not avoid arousing in ourselves these serious, one might say solemn, feelings. This is how those within our movement for spiritual science should be distinguished from the people who, by reason of their karma, have not yet found their way into this Movement—that the adherents of spiritual science take everything that goes on in the world—the most superficial as also the profoundest—in thorough earnest.    

Just consider how important it is in everyday life to see that with our ordinary understanding bound up with our brain and with our reason we are outside what mostly interests us in ordinary physical experience, and that hence—as is the case with our hypothetical solicitor—we are strangers to our own thinking, strangers to ourselves. When we enter spiritual science, however, we develop a heart outside our body, as we said yesterday, and what we thoroughly reflect upon will once more be permeated by what is full of inner depth and soul. We can make use both of the understanding bound up with our body and of our reason, in various directions, only if we do not draw upon what unites us most deeply with the spheres in which we live with our thinking. Through spiritual science we shall draw upon this, and in what we think we shall become, with our understanding and with our reason, men of truth, men wedded to the truth; and life has need of such men. What we let shine upon us from the sun of spiritual science grows together with us because we grow together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Then our thinking is not so constituted that like that solicitor we can apply it to either party in a legal case. We shall be men of truth by becoming one with those who are spiritual truth itself. By discovering how to grasp hold of our will in the way described today, we shall find our path into the very depths of things. This will not be by speaking of the will in nature as Schopenhauer did, but by living ourselves into things, developing our forces in them.

Here we touch upon something terribly lacking at the present time, namely, going deeply and with love into the being of things. This is missing today to such a terrible degree. I might say that over and over again one has to face, the bitter-experience in life of how the inclination to sink the will into the being of things is lacking among men.

What on the ground of spiritual science has to be over-come is the falsifying of objective facts; and this falsifying of objective facts is just what is so widespread at the present time. Those who know nothing of previous happenings are so ready to make assertions which can be proved false.

When a thing of his kind is said, my dear friends, is to be taken as an illustration, not as a detail without importance. But this detail is a symptom for us to ponder in order to come to ever greater depth in the whole depth that is to be penetrated by our spiritual movement. This spiritual movement of ours will throw light into our souls quite particularly when we become familiar with what today cannot yet be found even by those whose hearts are moved by the most grievous events of the times in which they are living, and who seek after the values of the spiritual world. Spiritual science must gradually build up for us the stages leading to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha—an understanding never again to be lost. This Mystery of Golgotha is the very meaning of the earth. To understand what this meaning of the earth is, must constitute the noblest endeavor of anyone finding his way step by step into spiritual science.

• 1. see..{"The Inner Nature of Man and Life between Death and Rebirth."
• 2. (*see Festivals of the Seasons)

My dear Friends,

I had intended to make a few remarks from the artistic point of view about the scenes from “Faust” which were to have been performed today. Since, however, on account of illness, the performance is not taking place and the lecture can therefore be independent of it, I shall arrange matters rather differently. My lecture will have to do with the scene to be given next Sunday, but I wish to stress the fact that I shall not be speaking from the standpoint of art, but from quite another point of view. It is more that to the presentation of the scene as Goethean achievement I shall add some Spiritual-Scientific observations that will also in some respect link up with what has already been said here during the autumn.

Anyone allowing this scene—“On the Upper Peneus as Before” to pass before his soul, has an opportunity to look deeply into Goethe's soul, in that this scene—as also the following one which leads to the phantasmagoria of Helen—specially shows how Goethe divined and felt the truths of Spiritual Science even though these truths did not yet come to him in clearly defined ideas. A poet whose understanding did not reach up to the truths of Spiritual Science would certainly never have created these scenes in the way Goethe has done. It would lead us too far even to speak briefly of the path by which Goethe arrived at his insight into Spiritual Science. I can do this some other time. I shall only say enough to make it clear to you that Goethe must have seen certain things in the spiritual world to be able to give this scene the form it has. It is true that what I was explaining to you a few days ago about the evolution of man as a physical-temporal being could not have been known to Goethe in definite ideas. Nor can it be said that there is anything in the course of Goethe's development pointing to definite knowledge that not until the middle of life man first gains, through his bodily organism, the capacity for self-knowledge. From our studies during the past weeks we know that it is only at about the end of his twenties that man, through the forces he develops out of his own bodily organisation, becomes capable of achieving self knowledge. If we wish to learn the truth about these matters, we have to bear in mind that man is really a complicated being. We only understand man by first becoming clear to what extent he is a creature—if I may use a term much assailed by modern science—and that this creature points us back to his creators, his spiritual creators.

Now, by a kind of spiritual chemistry, so to say, we can extract from man what he is solely by virtue of his dependence on his own particular spiritual creators, on those beings among the hierarchies of the cosmic order whose special mission in the universe reaches its culmination in the creation of man, on those beings with whom man, as man, must therefore feel himself quite specially connected. If we separate man out in this way—(we wish our understanding of these things to be exact) we can show him diagrammatically as follows:

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Let us suppose that this circle represents man at a given point in his evolution; if we then trace the human being indicated by this circle backyards in the line of his emergence from his spiritual creators we have this stream which I will colour orange. Were we to go back and examine now man has evolved through Moon, Sun and Saturn ages and later through the Earth age, we should find the special characteristics of the several beings of the higher hierarchies, as they are made known to you in my book “Occult Science”. We should discover the working-together, the mutual relations, of these hierarchies; and were we to look deeply enough into this connection of man with the hierarchies, we should perceive how he is, in a sense, the goal of divine creation. I have shown how this is so in a conversation between Capesius and the Hierophant, in the first scene of the second Mystery Play, “The Soul's Probation.” I have also pointed out there the hazardous side of such knowledge for those who are insufficiently prepared.

But suppose we go on to ask what man would be like in the course of his physical development between birth and death if he were only subjected to the influence of these creators of his? He would then be the being who only becomes ripe for self-knowledge in the physical world at the end of his twenties. For these creative beings set themselves the task of so forming man that in the course of his earthly development he should attain what is to be attained on the basis of his bodily organisation, that organisation that is itself derived from the earthly and thus is akin to earthly substances and to the interplay of earthly forces. I mean that these divine beings intended to give man the opportunity through his bodily organisation to go through a period of sound, all-round preparation for self-knowledge and for the knowledge of the world derived from self-knowledge right up to the end of his twenties. Then, in the second half of his life, they intended to give him the opportunity to pursue this self-knowledge in a very different measure from that in which man, as he now is as earthly man, can pursue it. If man had only first awakened to self-knowledge at the time that the spirits of the hierarchies concerned with him intended, at the end of his twenties, it would admittedly have been late, but he would have attained self-knowledge and the world-knowledge bound up with it in enhanced splendour. He would have been able from his innermost being to give a solution to the question: What am I as man? This under ordinary conditions at the present time he cannot do. e would have had this self-knowledge as insight, as vision, he would not have had to acquire it through abstract concepts.

Neither of these things has come about. In the first half of life we do not find that state of subdued consciousness. If he had it, man, rayed through by higher intelligences and not by his own, in a life not of sleep but of twilight, would build up his bodily organisation in a very different way, in order then to awaken to self-knowledge. But such a twilight condition does not exist. On the contrary, a certain self-knowledge appears comparatively early in man, though not with the radiance originally intended by his creators. Again, the self-knowledge that arises after the middle of life is not the self-knowledge that man's creators intended. And when we ask where the blame lies for this, we come to the other currents influencing man. We come to a stream that does not actually belong to man's nature, but which is, so to say, for the time being associated with him; we come to the Luciferic stream (yellow in diagram), we come to that stream which makes it possible for man to have a certain self-knowledge in the first half of his life, although it is not the luminous self-knowledge just described.

As you know, there is another current which unites for a time with man somewhat later; it is the Ahrimanic stream (blue). This stream prevents man, as he is on earth at present, from attaining in the second half of his life that luminous self-knowledge to which his creators had destined him. According to their intentions, the consciousness of man should have been in a much more enlightened state than the one he actually enters upon during the second half of his life, which is dimmed by ahrimanic influences. Naturally we need not think that luciferic influences are present only in the first half, ahrimanic influences only in the second half of life; they both persist throughout the whole of life. But these two influences are respectively concerned at the times in human life I have mentioned, with what I have just been describing. At other periods they have to do with something else. It is very important that no wrong conclusions should be drawn from what has been said. For instance, no one ought to say he has been told here that in the first half of his life man is luciferic, in the second half, ahrimanic. That would be completely untrue. Such misunderstandings often arise and it is important that no one should be misled by them. That is why over and over again I emphasise that in Spiritual Science we shall strive to speak accurately. Much harm is done by the way in which accurately given information about Spiritual Science is then repeated in public in another form, changed through preference or carelessness.

Thus, man stands in a threefold stream, to only one of which he really belongs. The other two were not originally in human evolution but have united themselves with it for a time. We can even say exactly when these influences entered in; you will find it in my “Occult Science”—the luciferic influence in the Lemurian age, the ahrimanic in the Atlantean age.

Now we cannot say that Goethe definitely knew anything of that phase of development, peculiar to man, beginning in the middle of his life. But he felt, he divined—divined very clearly—that through impulses inherent in the world-order man is a different being in the second half of his life from what he is in the first. And if we look into Goethe's soul-life more deeply than modern superficiality generally desires to do, we see his intense longing to gain something quite exceptional for his own life from the culture of the south—the culture of Italy. And if we follow up what he himself records of the benefits he reaped from the Italian tour, for himself, for his knowledge, for his art, we begin to feel hoe Goethe wished to make the transition into the second half of his life fruitful for himself through a deeply penetrating influence which he believed it impossible to experience by always remaining in his old surroundings. Goethe was conscious that in the forties something takes responsibility for the human soul which throws a very different light upon the nature of man than a man can gain through the human forces of the first half of life. And this knowledge, so clearly divined, flowed into the creation of the second part of his “Faust”. It was always particularly difficult for Goethe to approach the question: How does one acquire self-knowledge? If we follow his development aright, we may see his struggle for self-knowledge in a most interesting, most significant light. And little by little—not in the beginning, when he was still writing the youthful part of Faust, but later, gradually—the creation of Goethe's Faust-figure, and the whole poem, acquired such a stamp that the struggle for human self-knowledge may be said to find in “Faust” its most outstanding expression.

It was in this connection that Goethe thought out the figure of Homunculus, As I said before, I am not speaking to-night from the artistic standpoint but am relating to “Faust” a few remarks out of the essence of Spiritual Science. Thus Goethe thought out the figure of Homunculus in connection with his endeavour to depict in Faust man struggling towards self-knowledge. And what did the Homunculus-figure become under the influence of this preoccupation? The answer is that it came to represent all that man knows about man. What can we know about man by collecting together that knowledge which we have about the substances and forces of the earth? How can anyone imagine that those ingredients of earth-existence surrounding us in the kingdoms of nature can combine to form man? How is it possible to think that? For Goethe this became a burning question.

Remember how, when Schiller made friends with Goethe, he wrote him a most significant letter. I have often quoted this letter because it is characteristic both of the friendship between Goethe and Schiller and of the whole character of Goethe's soul. Schiller writes

“Though from some distance, I have for a long time been watching, with ever increasing admiration, the nature and course of your spiritual life. And I have seen that you are striving, so to say, to gather together all that is offered by the rest of nature, in order at length in your mind to put together man out of the sum-total of nature's works. This is a heroic undertaking before which any other intellect would have quailed. Had you been born a Greek, or even an Italian, an imaginative force enabling you to think of man as made up of the various ingredients of nature would have lived within you from your earliest youth. Since, however, you were born as a Northerner, you have been obliged to produce a spiritual Greece in your soul, and to supply by means of your imagination what did not exist in your surroundings.”

Thus Schiller attributes to Goethe this striving to obtain a knowledge of man by piecing together all the details to be gleaned from a knowledge of the kingdoms of nature. And that is actually the ideal which Goethe had before him. What can man know about man? But then there came to him at certain times the thought that the knowledge of man possible to acquire by earthly science is in truth small, that'll is no scan that comes into being through,this knowledge—only a manikin, a Homunculus. And Goethe was often assailed by the burning, tormenting thought: “We are in the world as men, feeling, thinking and willing as men, but we really only know something about Homunculus, not about Homo. The ideas we form concerning man bear as little relation to what man is in truth as does a little manikin in a glass test-tube”.

And for Goethe this burning question was associated with another: How can that element in knowledge which does not correspond to nature, to cosmic existence, be quickened so that it may, in knowledge at least, grow near to what in reality man is—of which he knows so little that actually it only amounts to knowledge of a Homunculus. That is why Goethe makes Wagner produce this manikin, Homunculus. Then, in the further development of his poem, he undertakes to show what sort of experience a man can have whereby his knowledge of man is widened, so that out of Homunculus there may grow something at least approaching Homo.

Now it was a belief of Goethe's that the only ideas which could be acquired in his day, the ideas which could be acquired from the culture of the North, were not sufficiently pliant and flexible to carry the Homunculus-knowledge further. Goethe believed that one could do better by endeavouring to clothe the knowledge of man that it,was still possible to acquire in one's soul life in such ideas as existed in an age that was nearer nature—such as the Greek age. It, was Goethe's firm belief that, by entering into the style and the form of Greek thought, one receives a deep, significant and vivifying impression, one's ideas acquire an added truth. This feeling lies at the root of his taking Faust to Greece, of his wanting to take him to Greece, to live there as a human being and to acquire Greek culture. Had Goethe been asked to state on his honour—I put it thus strongly on purpose—what he believed the men of his circle actually thought and felt, or had thought and felt, about the Greeks, he would probably have answered: “Oh, I should think more rubbish! They talk of Greek life, but have no ideas with which to grasp it. All that our pundits”—this is the sort of thing Goethe would have said—“all that our pundits think, write and print about Helen of Greece in modern times is just philistine trash, for in spite of it all they know nothing of Helen, nor of any other Greek, man or woman, as the Greeks really were”. But that was precisely what Goethe was striving after—to get nearer Greece in his soul. Hence his Faust had to get nearer Greece and had to live as a man among Greek men. Helen—as a Greek and the most beautiful of Greek women, as an outstanding Greek about whom so much strife and discord had arisen—Helen only supplied the point of contact for this. It the heightening, widening, strengthening of the knowledge of man, of the conception of man, that Goethe wants to accomplish in Faust.

Now in that Goethe kept all this clearly before him, (but as a kind of dim apprehension that became at the same time a torment for him) he was conscious that the abstract, philosophical path to knowledge, the path of science, regarded by many as the only right one, is all the same only one way of knowledge, and he dimly felt that there are many ways,. And whoever believes that Goethe was a rationalistic philistine—as really all upholders of modern science must be, otherwise they would not be genuine scientists, for science in the modern sense is itself pedantic, philistine, and rationalistic—whoever believes that Goethe was this kind of pedantic, rationalistic, philistine, understands nothing of him. He understands nothing at all of Goethe, my dear friends, who believes that he could for a single instant have supposed that, through ordinary scientific reflection any real knowledge could be acquired of the nature of man in his fulness. Goethe knew well that the human soul cannot discover truth merely on the path of thought or even on the path of that activity which takes place on the physical place; he knew that the soul of man has to find its way into reality and truth by several paths. Goethe was well acquainted with that approach to truth which takes a deeper course than the ordinary life of waking consciousness. This conscious, waking life in which our bright ideas run round, this life so highly valued by all the pedants, lies fundamentally very far from all that lives and weaves in the world as the basis of existence. In a certain respect man approaches nearer what lives and weaves below the surface of existence if—but this must not be misunderstood—out of his subconscious he sees and feels the arising, however chaotically, however sporadically, of significant dreams. In former years I have often told you that the content of dreams is of little importance; what is of importance is the inner drama, the connection between dream-life and deep human reality.

In a pamphlet, called “Dream-Fantasy”, a philosopher, Johannes Volkelt, in the seventies of last century, ventured timidly to suggest that man in his dreams comes near the riddle of the worlds. If only he had not later rectified this terrible professorial error by respectable pedantic works on the theory of knowledge! But then he never would have become Professor Johannes Volkelt, nor been allowed to teach philosophy in Basle, Würzburg, Jena, Leipzig. For it is a heinous sin against modern science to hint such a thing as that during his sleep-life man sinks into a real, cosmic stream, and that out of this experience things emerge which to be sure show themselves only in pictures, chaotically, and are therefore not to be accepted in their immediate form, but which nevertheless reveal how man, in the weaving of his sleep, is in a sphere that brings him nearer to the fulness of the living and weaving from which the physically visible springs than do his waking moments.

Now when a man plunges into this world—a world that the man of today only comes to know through his dreams, which do interpret it for him, even if badly—his situation within the entire world-order is different from what it is in ordinary waking consciousness. Of course the dream-life alone does not enable us to perceive the difference between the life in waking consciousness and the life we live down there in the sphere whence the dreams arise. But spiritual science can guide us into this sphere. Down there even language ceases to have its correct significance. That is why it is so difficult to come to an understanding. Down there in that sphere the words which we have formed for use in the sense-world cannot be properly applied to what takes place down there. Take for instance what used to be called the elements. Today we call them physical conditions describing them rather differently, But we can quite well understand if the old names earth, water, air, fire or warmth are used. We know these things from “Occult Science”; we can call what is solid, a solid physical condition, the earthly; what has a fluid physical condition, water; what has such a physical condition that, when it is not enclosed, it expands, we call air; whereas what permeates these three substances we call warmth or fire. Yes, my dear friends, we may call them so when, from the point of view of our waking consciousness, we speak here about our surroundings, because, if I may so express it, the things we denote by these words—earth, air, fire, water—are present with us. But if we plunge into the world out of which dreams are working, there are no such things as earth, air, fire, water, they do not exist; these words applied in the same way as for the world in which we are with our waking consciousness, no longer have meaning. As soon as we enter a different sphere of existence, a sphere that has to be grasped by a different consciousness, we see at once the relativity of these things. There—the things regarded by the ordinary materialistic consciousness as absolute—no longer exist. There earth is not earth. It has no meaning at all to talk of such things when we immerse ourselves in the world that, although also a reality, must be grasped by a quite different consciousness. To be sure, there is something there which may be said to stand midway between air and water; it is experienced in this different consciousness, through quite different forms of thought. Air is not air, water is not water, but there is something midway between air, and water; we might call it a sort of watery vapour, (German – Rauch) still called Ruach in the old Hebrew language. It does not mean the physical vapour or the mist we have now, but this intermediary something between water and air.

And another intermediary thing is there between earth and fire. This you must picture as though our metals were gradually to become so glowing and fiery that at last they become actually nothing but fire, fire through and through. And these things—intermediary between earth and fire and between air and water—are down there in the world out of which dreams come whirling. As you will easily understand we could not exist in that world in our physical body, we could not breathe in that world; we have to enter it with our souls, between falling asleep and waking. With our physical body we could not breathe in that world for there is no air. I have pictured in one of my Mystery Plays (“The Guardian of the Threshold”) a being who can breathe in this world, a being having no need of air, for he breathes light. Such beings may indeed be pictured by one who knows them. But no man may take his physical body into this world, for he could not breathe there and would be consumed by the fire. Nevertheless, man is united with this world, from falling asleep to waking, and out of it spring dreams.

Now this world that man encounters beneath the threshold of his consciousness is quite unlike the world we see today during our waking hours but it is not so unlike those worlds from which the present one has evolved. Former worlds, certainly the Sun-world—and this you can gather from the description in my “Occult Science”the Sun-world was even so formed as a physical world that in it fire-earth, earth-fire and water-air whirled and simmered together, not conveniently separated as they are today. Thus, if we are to grasp world-evolution cosmically and historically, we must picture earlier conditions of our evolution as similar to what we find today when we dive down into the world to which we belong between falling asleep and waking.

These worlds, however, that were formerly physically present, just as now our world is physically present, can only be experienced today in sleep, and no one can penetrate to them unless he imagines what is no longer visible in our present world to be visible and manifest. You cannot think of water-air in the same way as today you have to think of water and air as existing side-by-side. Today you think of water and air as separate. That has come about because the water-air, substantially one in former times, has now been differentiated. Water-air is now separated into the two polaric opposites—water and air. Formerly it was a unity, water-air, but was permeated instead by another pole. Today, man has so to say descended, and has completely lost the other pole of the water-air, instead the water-air has itself separated into the two poles—water and air. If we want to get an idea of what the other pole of the water-air was, we must imagine something having reality also experienced in the world where man is between falling asleep and waking, the world from which dreams arise. But too if we go back to the old Sun-existence, we have to think of the water-air as having had side by side with it something of a spiritual nature, something of the essence of the elemental spirits. You still find the elemental spirits belonging to the water-air in mythology, where echoes of ancient truths still remain. And among the beings associated with the water-air are those that in Greek mythology—or indeed in any ancient mythology—are called Sirens. So that when out of real knowledge we say of the world we are referring to that there are in it water-air and Sirens—that it is composed of water-air and Sirens—we are speaking with as much truth as when we say of our external world that it contains water and air. Thus the Sirens belong to those elemental beings who are the other pole of water-air.

The other thing in the old Sun existence was earth-fire or fire-earth, Whereas today we have earth that has been pushed down below the level of the water, with fire or heat above it, formerly these two were one. And among those beings who were related polarically to the earth-fire as are fire or warmth to earth today, is that being whom Goethe, following the Greeks, called Seismos. By bringing Sirens into the relevant scene, Goethe points at the same time very clearly to their connection with water; not however with water as it is today, for that has grown denser and is only one pole of the old water-air. The Sirens feel themselves related to water only in a spiritual way. If we think of water as the old water-air, the Sirens belong to that water as air belongs to the water of today. And as the air produces chaotic sounds in the wind, so the spiritual element in the Sirens produces what belongs to water or water-air; the spiritual element is combined with water-air as air is with our water. And the activity of the Seismos, regarded as cosmic force, is the part played by fire in nature's economy. This is what the myth means, this is what Goethe means. And his presentation of the matter makes everyone acquainted with the reality feel that Goethe had a dim apprehension of these things. He knew that things are thus in the world we enter between falling asleep and waking, the world we find again if with understanding we turn our gaze back to the primal sources of our present existence.

But consider, my dear friends, what a shock you would have if you were suddenly in full consciousness—not as in dreams but quite consciously—transported into an element, into a sphere, where you had no solid earth beneath your feet, a sphere where everything that should be earth was fire, and where there was no earth! There you could even melt if you wished, and become hot or cold in the element of fire. And in the water-air, where you could not breathe but only experience alternations of light and darkness—think how alarmed you would necessarily be at first by the insecurity into which you had plunged, in all this surging and whirling. What then entered into man in those cosmic epochs when the earth solidified (as must once have happened, for at one time men had been living in this surging and weaving element I have described) so that he too could stand firm? What was it that took hold of man? The Sphinx-nature! This gives the firm centre of gravity in the surging element. The same force that gave to the earth the form whereby it has become this solid planet on which man can stand, at the same time wove into man what can be described, pictured, as the nature of the Sphinx.

Now in this scene Goethe introduces what can actually only be experienced between falling asleep and waking. And he believed this can best be presented not in the concepts of our modern waking consciousness, but in Greek concepts. He finds them more flexible and more suitable. Therefore he transfers the whole scene to Greece, thinking that with ideas taken from Greek nature he will be better able to characterise all that man experiences today between falling asleep and waking, all that he experienced in ancient times when air was not opposed to water, nor fire to earth, but when the Sirens formed the opposite pole to water-air, and some being like the Seismos formed the opposite pole to earth-fire or fire-earth.

So now he allows this world to make its appearance in his “Faust”. And why does he do this? It is all a question of proceeding from Homunculus to Homo, the point is that Homunculus should be given a prospect of not remaining merely Homunculus but of becoming Homo—of understanding enough to become man. Therefore his experience of the world has to be enlarged. And so aptly does Goethe bring this about that when he introduces Homunculus to this ancient cosmic world he at once places Sphinxes in it. “The Sphinxes have taken their seat”, and these form the solid element. There is a surging all around that, in these days, could not be suffered, for mortal terror would assail mankind. Everything is surging. But though the whole of hell break loose when the spirits behave as the Sirens and Seismos are doing it is pointed out that man has found his foothold—his centre of gravity:

“What a sickening thrill hereunder!”

Here is pictured the world of which I have been speaking,

“What a dire and dreadful thunder!
What a heaving, what a quaking,
Rocking to and fro and shaking,”

Were you to plunge into this world you would soon experience the ‘rocking to and fro’.

“What unbearable annoy.”

But now comes the reflection:

“Yet we” (the the Sphinxes) “budge not, though the nether
Hell should all burst forth together.”

Into the ideas of men something of such a conception perpetually flows. Men do not know it, but their ideas are influenced by what dwells at the foundations of existence. And this is the cause of many fanciful theories. The theory that the mountain ranges were formed by fire, is quite right for more ancient epochs of cosmic evolution, but this was earth-fire, fire-earth, not fire as we know it. This has introduced an element of confusion into modern ideas. And from a higher point of view, most modern ideas are confused. They can only be understood—however strange this may sound, my dear friends, it is true—these ideas, these theories can often only be understood if they are translated. They are heard in the ordinary, common-place, philistine language of men; they first begin to have meaning when translated into the language that must have been used between falling asleep and waking, for then it becomes clear that these theories bear within them faint indications of earlier earth-epochs. And the only way to understand the scene beginning here, is to realise that Goethe wanted to show the experience man would have were he conscious from falling asleep to waking, an experience that would develop in him a consciousness of a former cosmic condition of the earth.

Think how clearly Goethe must have foreseen the knowledge of Spiritual Science, to have presented these things so correctly. And that is not all. Homunculus is to be introduced to this world. Goethe seems to say—if once more I may be permitted to express it rather strongly—“Now when I turn to the ideas of philistine science, I naturally find nothing able to make a Homo of Homunculus; I can get nothing from that quarter. But if I make use of such ideas as can be acquired when a man consciously experiences the world he enters between falling asleep and waking, and, absorbing them into my soul, embody them into the scene of ‘Faust’, then perhaps I shall be more successful in acquiring, a wider knowledge of man, so that Homunculus may become Homo.”—Therefore Goethe makes Homunculus plunge, not into the philistine, scientific world experienced by man today, but into another world, introduced here, the world man experiences from the time he falls asleep to the time he wakes. In that world a man experiences so many things; curiously enough, he experiences something of how unequal in their evolutionary stages are the beings who live close to us in the cosmos. We understand nothing, literally nothing, of this world, when we consider these beings side-by-side, giving them all an equal value. When we observe ants or bees, or the whole unique insect-world in general, then, my dear friends, we arrive at the conclusion (I have put this before you at other times, in other places, as the view of Spiritual Science) that these are either forms left behind from former epochs, or forms anticipating what is to come later—like the bees, the hive of bees; they are beings projected into our epoch, though by their form they actually belong to another.

You see, when scientific nit-wits describe the world—as for instance Forel who made such a study of ants, then one finds most amazing things said. For if these people cling to their crude scientific methods, and never come to Spiritual Science, of course they are unable to give any explanation of what is really to be wondered at in this world—this world permeated everywhere by reason; not over the single ant, but over the ant-hill as a whole, over the whole ant-world, over the whole bee-world, cosmic reason, so much wiser than brain reason, is outpoured. And, in a certain respect these all really belong to a former world. Just think how aptly Goethe describes it when he brings in the ants, the emmets; and when he makes a mountain arise, as it was in an earlier cosmic evolution, and as one sees it in another sphere of reality, during the time between falling asleep and waking, he makes ants appear and begin to busy themselves with what the mountain has brought into existence. But, as companions for these ants, he makes other strange beings. For in fact the ants together with pretty well the whole of the insect-world constitute a race that does not properly belong to the earth as it is at present. This world of the ants feels itself as an anachronism in the present world. The ants have not much in common with it and have no real companions. The other animals are of quite another kind. There are tremendous differences between the soul-spiritual quality of the insect-race, for example, the ants, and that of other animals. The companions of the ants are actually not the physical animal-forms of today, but spiritual elemental beings that Goethe introduces as Pygmies, as dwarfs, as Dactyls; though the ants have succeeded in acquiring a physical nature on earth, the pygmies and the dactyls are more closely akin to them than to the beings of the present day. Thus, Goethe knows of this ant-race belonging to an ancient cosmic epoch, and introduces it covertly into this scene.

Now how has this world of ours arisen? As you know, its present condition has developed out of the old. We have now spoken of the old condition, and the present one only needs to be mentioned, for it is all that surrounds us on the physical earth. But this present earth has not come about without a struggle. It was through a mighty cosmic conflict that the old developed into the new. And the question arises: Can one observe this struggle? The answer is that we observe it when we can become conscious of waking from a very vivid dream to a condition of half-wakefulness; when we are aroused from a state of deep sleep to one less deep, and though not quite awake, are on the way to being so. We are approaching the sense-world but have not completely left the world below, and we find ourselves in a struggle closely resembling the conflict that went on when the old world was changing into the new. Again Goethe presents it all so faithfully that, while to express the old world-order he makes a dream arise, he also represents the waking from the dream by describing a struggle in the cosmos. The present comes into conflict with all that belongs to the past. The pygmies belonging to the old world come into conflict with the herons belonging to the waters of the present. The sight of this conflict as it takes place is at the same time an awakening. And Goethe makes it so clear that we are concerned with an awakening that he even alludes to what often happens on waking: one hears something that appears to be still in the dream spiritually, in imaginative picture form, and which then passes over into external reality—the coming of the cranes of Ibycus that appear in this scene. In the first part of the scene, Goethe shows us what can be experienced in dream-consciousness when it is fully developed, something which points to earlier earth-conditions; and this he believed he could more easily accomplish with Greek ideas than with those of the present day.

And now, for Homunculus. He has not yet got so far as this, for the man of today is not able to become fully conscious of what takes place in that lower sphere. Goethe intimates this quite clearly. Man today is hampered by fear, by anxiety, even though these may be unconscious. I have often spoken of this. Homunculus will not venture into that world and says so quite clearly. When he makes his re-appearance in the scene, he declares that he will not go in; he wishes to rise, that is, he wishes to become Homo, but into that world he refuses to enter.

“From place to place I flit and hover,
And fain would I in the best sense exist.
Impatiently I long my glass to shiver.
To risk me though I do not list
in aught I yet have seen. ...”

Thus it is a dangerous world into which Homunculus will not plunge. He would like to take the step from Homunculus to Homo in a less perilous world.

Now, had someone asked Goethe “Then you don't think much use can be made of the dream-world, the sleep-world, in changing Homunculus to Homo in the human head; but what about philosophy? Philosophers reflect upon the riddle of the world. What about philosophy? How would it be if Leibnitz or Kant were asked about true manhood?” Then Goethe would have put on a very sceptical expression—very sceptical indeed. He ascribed all kinds of good qualities to modern philosophers, but he did not believe them capable of penetrating into the being of man, of contributing anything to enable Homunculus to become Homo in a human life-time. Here too he thought one would get nearer by using Greek ideas. Goethe was well acquainted with the life of ancient Greece, with the times in which Anaxagoras and Thales lived. Their ideas came nearer the old Mystery outlook, they still retained some knowledge of those spiritual worlds from which for man only dreams arise. For this reason he makes Homunculus meet two ancient Greek philosophers, of whom the one, Anaxagoras, still knew a great deal of the old Mystery-wisdom, especially of the secrets of the fire-earth. Into the thinking, into the wise philosophy of Anaxagoras, ideas still rose up of the ancient Mysteries connected with what happened in the fire-earth.

With Thales, too, there were still recollections of old ideas, associated with the secrets of the water-air; but at the same time Goethe makes it clear that the conceptions of Anaxagoras though loftier, are becoming superseded, and that with Thales the new age is beginning. The history of the new philosophy, the history of philosophy in general, begins rightly with Thales. I have mentioned this in my “Riddles of Philosophy”. He is, it may be said, the original philistine, as Goethe's shows him here; he has to introduce the philistine outlook of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch that indeed in a certain, but only shadowy, way is connected with the secrets of the water-air.

Thus, in the first part of this scene in which he is describing things out of experiences of the dream-world,the world of Seismos, to which the pygmies belong, Goethe is describing all that is associated with the creative forces of Seismos. And the element of water that he uses to make the transition to the present time, describing it not as water-air, but as water, with herons and so on—this element of water he places in contrast to fire; water versus fire, actually water-air versus fire-earth. And water and fire come into conflict—pygmies versus herons. And it is the same battle, only in another sphere, transferred into the sphere of reason, that takes place between Anaxagoras, the philosopher of fire, and Thales, the philosopher of water, as has previously taken place between the pygmies as representing the earth or earth-fire, and the herons, as representing the water or water-air.

So good is the parallelism that, in this second stage of his representation, Goethe correctly shows how Homunculus, who has not ventured himself below into the subconscious element with a view to becoming man now takes refuge above in the conscious. He wants to learn how to become Homo from the philosophers, from those who would still preserve in consciousness much that should be experienced in the subconscious. But it turns out that, because the philosophers derive their impulses from different spheres of experience, they do not agree, and themselves come into conflict, the same conflict of ideas as those that lie at the foundation of cosmic conflicts. There is the same conflict between the views of Anaxagoras and those of Thales as between the pygmies and the herons—the very same.

And what is Goethe doing? He first pictures what goes, on down in the unconscious world, and then leads up to the world of consciousness but associates this world with the recollections arising from the unconscious, recollections specially clear in Anaxagoras. This is why Thales looks upon Anaxagoras as a visionary.

But we have already had to do with a second stratum, with the sphere in which the waking consciousness too is intermingled, albeit in a more or less spiritual fashion, or as I have described it, half-asleep and half awake. This is the second layer of experience that Goethe has shown. And it is very significant that he gives what is experienced in this sphere in a different form from that in which he gave the first. He makes the scene open with the Sirens. We are in the world of sleep, the world of dreams; to be in this world, there is no necessity to do anything; Goethe, therefore, simply places it before us. Then we wake up out of this world, and in waking come to our ordinary-consciousness. For a special reason Goethe has combined Lucifer and Ahriman into the one Mephistopheles. This waking he shows in the experience of Mephistopheles, and it is interesting that, as long as Mephistopheles represents the condition of being but half-awake, he is still down below, experiencing it through the Greek Lamiae. Then the scene rises into conscious life, But if Homunculus-Mephistopheles is now to enter fully conscious life, the life of reason, the man must rouse himself, he must pull himself together, and wake out of dreams to reality. Hence, when he wakes, Mephistopheles meets the Oread, who indicates very clearly in Goethe's language that this is so,

“Up hither,up; My mount is old,
And still loth keep its primal mould,
Honour the rude cliff-stair ascending,
Last-spur of Pindus, far extending.
Already thus firm-stablished
I stood as Pompey o'er me fled.
That fabric of a dream will fade
At cockcrow with the nightly shade.”

While sleep-consciousness is being shaken into waking consciousness, the Oread points out that a transition is now taking place from the world called the world of illusion—though in one way it is, as I have shown, a world of reality—a transition to the world where mountains stand firm, and everything does not rock up and down. And Goethe does not hesitate to indicate quite clearly how one wakes out of this world. Think how often we are wakened out of the world from which dreams surge by the crowing of a cock. Goethe makes it perfectly clear that we are coming up into the waking world where philosophers have to hold forth, where through what they have to say it is expected that Homunculus will become man.

There is much I could add, perhaps tomorrow. In the meantime I shall only draw your attention to the fact that, after we have done with this world, Goethe still points us to a third. And just as it was the mountain nymph, the Oread, who gave the first indication of this waking world, so now it is another nymph, that is, an elemental being, who does the arousing. The tree nymph, the Dryad, leads Mephistopheles to a third layer of consciousness, in which understanding and clairvoyance are united: unconscious, conscious, super-conscious. And, in a certain respect, Goethe already points to the world we also would point to through Spiritual Science. Only, he does so in a quite unique way. The beings whom Mephistopheles finds next are the Phorkyads.

From our coming performance you will see what pleasant, beautiful beings these Phorkyads are, and particularly what an impressive, heart-stirring language they speak! And yet, anyone realising what experiences a man must be prepared to meet, on consciously winning through to the spiritual world, will understand this meeting of Mephistopheles with the Phorkyads.

This matter cannot be completely dealt with in one lecture; we will speak further about it tomorrow.

We shall begin to-day by studying a Northern poem that we considered in this group some time ago. The whole content of this poem is connected with Christmas and the Christmas season. It treats of the Legend of Olaf Åsteson and contains the fact that Olaf Åsteson, a legendary person, passed the thirteen days between Christmas and the Day of Epiphany in a very unusual way. And we are reminded thereby how within the world of these Sagas there lives the perception of the primitive clairvoyance formerly existing in humanity. The story is the following: Olaf Åsteson reaches a church door one Christmas Eve and falls into a sort of sleep-like condition. And during these thirteen nights he experiences the secrets of the spiritual world; he experiences them in his own way, as a simple primitive child of nature. We know that during these days when in a sense the deepest outer darkness prevails over the earth, when the growth of vegetation is at its lowest ebb, when, in a sense, everything external in physical earth-life is at a standstill, that the earth-soul awakens and attains its fullest waking consciousness. Now, if a human soul mingles its spiritual nature with what the spirit of the earth then experiences, it can, if it still retains the primitive conditions of nature, rise to a vision of the spiritual world such as humanity as a whole must gradually re-acquire through its own efforts. We then see how this Olaf Åsteson actually experiences what we are able to bring from out of the spiritual world. For whether he says Brooksvalin and we say Kamaloka or soul-world and spiritual world, or whether we use different images to those of the Saga, is of no consequence. The chief thing is that we should perceive how humanity has proceeded in its soul evolution from an original primitive clairvoyance, from a state of union with the spiritual world, and that this had to be lost so that man could acquire that thinking, that conscious standing in the world through which he had to pass, and from and beyond which he must again develop a higher perception of the spiritual world. I might say that this spiritual world which the primitive clairvoyance has forsaken is the same in which the evolved perception again lives; but man has passed through a condition which now causes him to find his way into this spiritual world in a different manner. It is important to develop the feeling that in reality the inner spiritual psychic development of a spiritual psychic being is connected with the transformation of the earth at the different seasons of the year; a psychic spiritual being is connected with the earth as a man's soul with his physical being. And anyone who merely regards the earth as the geologists do, as that which the usual Natural Science of to-day in its materialistic attitude so easily explains, knows as much of this earth as one man knows of another, of whom he is given a model in papier-maché, and which is not filled with all that the soul pours into the external nature of man. External Science really only gives us a mere papier-maché image of the earth. And he who cannot become conscious that a psychic distinction prevails between the winter and summer conditions of the earth are like a man who sees no difference between waking and sleeping. Those great beings of nature in whom we live, undergo states of spiritual transformations as does man himself, who is a microcosmic copy of the great macrocosm. Nature and the experiencing of it, the spiritual living with it has a certain significance. And he who can evoke a consciousness that just during these thirteen nights something transpires in the soul of the earth which man can also experience, will have found one of the ways through which man can live more and more into the spiritual world. The feeling for this experience of what is lived through in the great Cosmic existence has been lost to humanity to-day. We hardly know any more of the difference between winter and summer than that in winter the lamps must be lit earlier, and that it is cold in winter and warm in summer. In earlier times humanity really lived together with nature, and expressed this by relating in pictorial fashion how beings traversed the land while the snow fell, and passed through the country when the storm raged but of this in its deepest sense the present-day materialistic mind of man understands nothing. Yet man may grow into this frame of mind again in the deepest sense, if he turns to what the old Sagas still relate, especially in as profound a myth as that of Olaf Åsteson, which shows in such a beautiful way how a simple primitive man, while losing his physical consciousness grows into the clear light of spiritual vision. We shall now bring this Saga before our souls, this Saga which belongs to bygone centuries; which has been lost, and has now been recorded again from the Folk-memories. It is one of the most beautiful of the Northern Sagas, for it speaks in a wonderful way of profound, Cosmic mysteries—in so far as the union of the human soul with the world-soul is a Cosmic mystery.

(The Legend was here recited.)

As we are able to meet here to-day, we may perhaps speak of a few things which may be useful to some of us when we look back to what have learnt through Spiritual Science in the course of the year. We know and this has lately been emphasised even in our public lectures—that at the back of what is visible to external perception as external man, there lies a spiritual kernel of man's being which in a sense is composed of two members. We have learnt to know the one as that which meets our spiritual vision on undergoing the experience usually designated as the “Approach to the Gate of Death”; the other member of the inner life appears before the human soul when we become aware that in all the experiences of our will there is an inner spectator, an onlooker, who is always present. Thus we can say: human thought, if we deepen it through meditation, shows us that in man there is always present in the innermost of his own spiritual being a something which, as regards the external physical body, works at the destruction of the human organism, a destruction which finally ends in death. We know from the considerations already put forward that the actual force employed in thinking is not of a constructive nature, but is rather, in a sense, destructive. Through our power of dying, through our so developing our organism in our life between birth and death that it can fall into decay and dissipate into the Cosmic elements, we are enabled to create the organ by means of which we develop thought, the noblest flower of physical human existence. But in the depths of a man's life between birth and death there is a kind of life-germ for the future which is especially adapted to progress through the gates of death; it is that which develops in the currents of Will and which can be regarded as the ‘spectator’ already characterised. It must continually be urged that what brings spiritual vision to the soul of man is not something which first develops through the spiritual vision itself, but something which is always present; it is always there, only man in our present epoch should not see it. This may be said, that one ought not to see it. For the evolution of the spiritual life has made much progress, especially in the last decades, so that anyone who really gives himself up to what in our materialistic age is designated ‘the spiritual life’ spreads a veil over that which lives in his inner nature. In our present age those concepts and ideas are chiefly developed which are best calculated to conceal what is present spiritually in man. In order to strengthen ourselves aright for our special task, we who follow Spiritual Science may point, just at this significant season, to the particularly dark side of present-day spiritual life, which must indeed exist, just as the darkness in external nature must also exist; but which we must perceive and of the existence of which we must become aware. We are living through a relatively dark period of civilisation in regard to the spiritual life. We need not constantly repeat that in no wise do we undervalue the enormous conquests of which—in this epoch of darkness, mankind is so proud. Nevertheless with regard to spiritual things the fact remains that those concepts and ideas which are created in our epoch, absolutely conceal that which lives in the souls of men—especially from those who immerse themselves most earnestly in these ideas. In reference to this the following may be mentioned. Our epoch is specially proud of its clear thinking, acquired through its important scientific training. Our age is very proud of itself. Of course not so proud as to lead all men to want to think a great deal: no, its pride does not lead to that. But it results in this, that people say: ‘In our epoch we must think a great deal if we want to know anything of the spiritual world.’ To do the necessary thinking oneself is very difficult. But that is the task of the theologians. They can ruminate on these things. Thus, our epoch is supposed to be very highly evolved and is exalted above the dark age of belief in authority; and so we must listen to the theologians, who are able to think about spiritual things. Our epoch has also progressed with respect to the concept of right and wrong, of good and evil. Our epoch is the epoch of thought. But in spite of this advance from the belief in authority, it has not led each man to think more deeply on right and wrong; the lawyers do that. And therefore because we have got beyond the epoch of belief in authority we must leave it to the enlightened lawyers to think over what is good and evil, right or wrong. And with reference to bodily conditions, to bodily cures, because we do not know what is healthy or unhealthy in this epoch which desires to be so free from belief in authority, we go to the doctors. This could be exemplified in all domains. Our epoch is not much inclined to despair, as was Faust, thus:

‘I have studied, alas! Philosophy
And Jurisprudence and Medicine too.
And saddest of all Theology!
With ardent labour through and through!
And here I stick, as wise, poor fool!
As when my steps first turned to school.’

One thing results: our age actually refuses to know anything of the things which perplexed Faust, but desires to know all the more of those things already clearly cognised in the many different departments in which the weal and woe of humanity are decided. Our epoch is so terribly proud of its thinking, that those who have brought themselves to read a little Philosophy in the course of their lives—I will not go so far as to say they have read Kant, but merely some commentary on Kant—are now convinced that anyone who asserts anything about the spiritual world in the sense of Spiritual Science, sins against the undeniable facts established by Kant. It has often been said that the whole work of the Nineteenth Century has been directed to developing human thought and investigating it by means of critical knowledge. And many to-day call themselves ‘critical thinkers’ who have only taken in a little. Many men to-day, for instance, assert that man's knowledge is limited, for he perceives the outer world through his senses; yet these senses can merely yield what they produce through themselves. Thus man perceives the world by its effects on his senses, therefore he cannot get behind the things of the world, for he can never transcend the limit of his senses! He can only receive pictures of reality. And many, speaking from the depths of their philosophy, say: ‘The human soul has only pictures of the world;’ and thus it can never arrive at the ‘Thing in Itself.’ One may thus compare what we obtain through our senses, our eyes, ears, etc.—to pictures in a mirror. Certainly, if a mirror is there and throws back pictures, the image of one man, the image of a second man, etc., and we behold them, we have then a world of images. Then come the philosophers, and say: ‘Just as anyone who sees a man, or two in a mirror, in a reflected image, has a picture world of his own, and as he does not behold the “Thing in Itself,” the man, but merely his image, so we really have only images of the whole external world, when the rays of light and colour strike the eye, and the waves of air strike our ear, we have only images. All are images! Our critical epoch has resulted in this: that man forms nothing but images in his soul, and can never through these images reach to the “Thing in Itself.”’

Infinite sagacity (I now speak in full earnestness) has been applied by Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century in order to prove that man merely has images and can never reach the ‘Thing in Itself.’ What is really the origin of this critical resignation, of this passivity as regards the ‘limitations of our knowledge,’ when we thus discover the image nature of our perception? Whence does it originate? It arises from the fact that in many ways the thought of our epoch, of our enlightened age, is devoid of truth, and short sighted. Our thinking throws out an idea in a pedantic fashion and cannot get beyond it. It holds up this idea like a wooden mannequin and can no longer find anything which is not given by the mannequin. It is almost incredible how rigid thought has become in our time. I shall just make clear to you, by means of the same comparison of the reflected image, the whole story of this image nature of our perception, and of what the so-called critical progressive thought has produced. It is quite a correct premise that the world, as man has it here in sense existence, is only here because it impresses itself on man and throws up images in his soul. And it is well that humanity should have reached this point, through the critical philosophy of Kant. We are well able to say: The images we have of the outer world are such that we can compare them with images of the two men in a mirror. Thus, we have a mirror and two men stand before it. We do not see the men but their pictures. We thus have images of the world through what our souls know of the outer world. We have images which we compare with the two men whose reflected pictures we behold. But some one who had never seen men, but only images, would be able to philosophise thus: ‘I know nothing of the men, but their lifeless images.’ Thus conclude the critical philosophers. And with this conclusion they remain satisfied. They would find themselves refuted in their own being, if they could get a little further away from their mannequin of thought, out of the dead into the living thought. For, if I am in front of a mirror in which are reflected two men, and I see in it that the one strikes the other so that he is wounded, I should be a fool to say: ‘The one mirror-image has struck the other.’ For I no longer see merely the image in the mirror, but through the image I see real events. I have nothing but the image, but I see an absolutely real occurrence through the mirror image. And I should be a fool to believe that that only took place in the mirror. Thus: critical philosophy seizes the one thought that we have to deal with images, but not the other thought, that these images express the facts of something living. And if we grasp these images in a living way, they give more than pictures, for they point to the ‘Thing in Itself,’ which is the real outer world.

Can one still say that the people who produce this ‘Critical Philosophy’ really think? Thought is to a great extent lacking in our time. It is really at a stand-still. And we have stood still at this ‘Criticising of Thought.’ I have often mentioned that this criticism, this critical philosophy, has even progressed in our culture, and that a man making a noble effort (they are all honourable men and their efforts entirely praiseworthy) has produced a certain ‘Criticism of Language.’ Fritz Mauthner has written a ‘Criticism of Language’ in three thick volumes, and even a philosophical dictionary written from this standpoint, in two still thicker volumes. And Mauthner, himself a journalist, has a whole journalistic train of followers, who naturally regard it as a great work. And in our time, in which ‘Belief in Authority’ is supposed to be of no importance, very many who have reached that standpoint, consider it a significant work, as does even the press for which Fritz Mauthner wrote; for to-day ‘there exists no belief in authority!’

Now, Mauthner finally explains how man actually forms nouns, adjectives, etc., but says they all signify nothing real. In the outer world one does not experience what words signify. Man so lives himself into words that we really do not have his thoughts and soul images, but merely words, words, words. Humanity finds itself entangled in the language which gives him his vocabulary. And because he is accustomed to attach himself to the language, he only reaches the symbol of things as given in words! Now, that is supposed to be something very significant. And if one reads these three volumes by Mauthner, and if you have something to reproach yourself with, it is a good penance to read half of them! Then one finds that their author is profoundly convinced—indeed one cannot put it otherwise—that he is cleverer than all the clever men of his time. Of course a man who judges of his own book is naturally cleverer than the others. So Fritz Mauthner finally concludes that man has nothing but signs, signs, signs. Indeed, he goes still further. He goes so far as to say the following: Man has eyes, ears, sense of touch, etc., that is, a collection of sense organs. And in Mauthner's opinion man might have not only organs of sight, hearing, touch, taste, but quite different senses. For instance, he might have another sense besides the eye. He would then perceive the world quite differently with this sense from what he does by receiving pictures through the eyes. Then much would exist for him which is not perceptible to the ordinary man. And now this critical thinker feels a little mystically inclined, and says: “The immeasurable fullness of the world is conveyed to us only through our senses.” And he calls these senses ‘Accidental Senses,’ because in his opinion it is a Cosmic accident that we should have just these very senses. If we had other senses the world would appear differently. Thus it is best to say: “We have accidental senses! Thus an accidental world!” Yet he says the world is immeasurable!—It sounds beautiful. One of the followers of Fritz Mauthner has written a brochure called Scepticism and Mysticism. In this special attention is drawn to the fact that man may even become a mystic in the depths of his soul, when he no longer believes what these accidental senses can give. A beautiful sentence is given us on the twelfth page of this book.

‘The world pours down on us; through the few miserable openings of our accidental senses we take in what we can grasp, and fasten it to our old vocabulary, since we have nothing else to retain it with. But the world streams further, our language also streams on further, only not in the same direction, but according to the accident of language, which is subject to no laws.’

Another philosophy! What does it want to do? It says: The world is immeasurable, but we have merely a number of accidental senses into which the world streams. What do we do with what thus streams in? What do we do according to this gentleman's doctrine of accidents? We remind ourselves of what he calls memory. We fasten that on to the words transmitted to us through our language, and the language then streams on again further. Thus what streams to us from the immeasurable Cosmic Being through our accidental senses, we speak of in our word-symbols. A sagacious thought. I repeat it in all earnestness. It is a sagacious thought. One must be a clever man in our age to think thus. And it can really be said of these people that not only are they all honourable and praiseworthy; ‘they are also remarkable thinkers.’ But they are entangled in the thought of our epoch, and have no will to transcend it.

I have experienced a kind of Christmas sadness—one cannot call it joy for it has become grief, through having once more to consider certain of these matters in this connection. And I have written down a thought, formed exactly after the style of the above thinker who wrote what has just been read. I have applied exactly the same thought to another object with the following results: ‘Goethe's genius is poured on to the paper. With the few miserable forms of its accidental letters the paper takes up what it can, and lets itself express what it can take up with its old store of letters, since there is nothing else to express it with. But Goethe's genius streams on further, the writing on the paper also streams on further, not only in the same direction, but according to the accidents in which letters can group themselves, being subject to no laws.’ It is exactly the same thought, and due regard has been given to each single word. If one maintains that: ‘the immeasurable Cosmos pours down to us, and we take it up with our few accidental senses, as well as we are able, and fix it into our vocabulary: the Cosmos then streams on further, while language streams in another direction, according to the accidents of the history of language, and thus human perception flows on.’ Then this is exactly the same thought as if one said: ‘Goethe's genius flows through the twenty-three accidental letters, because the paper can only receive things in that way. But Goethe's genius is never within them, for it is immeasurable. The accidental letters cannot take that up. They stream on further. What is on the paper also streams on further and groups itself according to the formations possible to the letters, the laws of which cannot be perceived.’ If now these extremely clever gentlemen conclude from such suppositions that what comes to us in the world is merely the result of accidental senses, that we can never get to what really underlies the world in its depths—that is the same as thinking that in reality one can never reach that which lived in the genius of Goethe. For they make it clear—that of this genius nothing exists but the grouping of twenty-three accidental letters. Nothing else is there! These gentlemen have a precisely similar thought, only they are not aware of it. And there is just as much sense in saying: ‘One can never know anything at all of Goethe's genius, for you see that nothing of it can flow to you. You can have nothing but what the different grouping of twenty-three accidental signs can give.’ There is just as much sense in this as in the discussion on the Cosmos that these men bring forth, concerning the possibility or impossibility of Cosmic knowledge. There is just as much sense in this whole train of thought—which is not the thinking of simpletons—but the thinking of those who are really the clever men of to-day, but who do not wish to raise themselves above the thought of our epoch.

The matter has, however, really another aspect. We must be clear that this manner of thinking, which meets us in the example in which it determines the limitations of knowledge, is our own mode of thought in the present age. It prevails, and is to be found everywhere to-day. And whether you read this or that apparently philosophical book intended to solve the great riddles of the universe—or disguise them—or whether you read the newspaper, this style of thinking is everywhere prevalent. Its methods dominate the world. We drink it in to-day with our morning coffee. More and more daily journals appear with such opinions. And in the whole web of our social life this same manner of thought prevails. I have attempted to expose this thinking in its philosophical development, but it could also be traced in those thoughts which one evolves in every possible relation in life, in everything man reflects upon, this thinking prevails to-day. And this is the cause of man's inability to evolve the will to experience in its reality what, for example, Spiritual Science seeks to give. For Spiritual Science is not incomprehensible to true thinking. But what it has to give must naturally always remain incomprehensible to those men who are built after the pattern of Fritz Mauthner. And the majority of men are fashioned thus to-day. Our contemporary science is absolutely permeated through and through with this thinking. Nothing is here implied against the significance and the great achievements of Science. That is not the point, the essential question is how the soul lives in our age, in our present civilisation. Our age is utterly lacking in the power of fluidic thought, unable really to follow what must be followed if these thoughts are to grasp what Spiritual Science has to impart.

Now we can ask ourselves: ‘How does it come about that such a book as Gustav Landauer's Scepticism and Mysticism can be written, when it simply oozes with self-complacency?’ I might say that the reader himself beams with the whole tone of self-satisfaction within it, as one does on reading Mauthner's Criticism of Language or the article in the Philosophical Dictionary. How is this? One does not learn how this comes about by following the thinking. I can imagine very clever men reading such a book and saying: ‘That is a thoroughly clever man!’ They would be right, for Mauthner is indeed a clever man. But that is not the point; for cleverness expresses itself by a man forming in a certain logical manner those ideas of which he is capable, turning them one after the other into nonsense, and reconstructing them again in some fashion. One may be very clever in some branch or other, and possess a really right sort of cleverness, but if one enters a life which is permeated with the consciousness of spiritual knowledge, then with each step there develops such a relation to the world that one has the feeling: ‘You must go further and further. You must perfect your ideas each day. You must develop the belief that your ideas can lead you further and further.’ One has the feeling that the cleverness of the man who had written such a book is of the following nature: ‘I am clever and through my cleverness I have accomplished something definite. I will now write that in a book. That which I now am I shall inscribe in a book, for I am clever on this the 21st of December, 1915. The book must be finished and will reproduce my cleverness.’ One who really knows never has that feeling. He has the feeling of a continual evolution, of an eternal necessity to refine one's ideas, and to evolve higher. And he certainly no longer has the feeling: ‘On this 21st of December, 1915, I am clever; now, through my cleverness I shall write a book that will be finished in the course of months or years.’ For if he has written a book he truly does not look back to the cleverness which he had when he began to write it, but through the book he acquires the feeling: ‘How little I have really accomplished in the matter and how necessary it is for me to evolve further what I have written.’ This ‘journeying along the path of knowledge,’ this constant inner labour, is almost entirely unknown to our materialistic age; it believes it knows it, but in reality it knows it no longer. And the deepest reason for this can be clothed in the words: ‘These men are so excessively vain.’ Man is tremendously vain, for, as I said, such a book really oozes with vanity. It is clever, but terribly vain. The humility, the modesty, that results from such a path of knowledge as has been laid down, is utterly lacking to these men. It must be utterly lacking when a man unconditionally ascribes cleverness to himself on this 21st December, 1915. Humility must be lacking. Now you will say: ‘These people must be stupid if they regard themselves as clever.’ But they do not consider themselves stupid with the surface consciousness, but with the subconsciousness. They never learn to distinguish between the truth which lives in the subconsciousness, and what they ascribe to themselves on the surface, and thus it is the Luciferic nature which really urges the men of to-day to desire to be clever, to attain a definite standpoint of cleverness, and from this point to consider and judge everything. But when a man bears this Luciferic nature within him, then, while he beholds the external world with Lucifer he is led to Ahriman. He then naturally sees this outer world materialistically in our epoch, quite naturally he looks at it in a materialistic manner. For when a man with Lucifer in his nature begins to contemplate the world, he then meets Ahriman. For these two seek each other out in man's intercourse with this world. Therefore such radically vain thinking never reaches the possibility of this conviction, ‘if I use a word, I naturally use merely a symbol for that which the word signifies.’ Mauthner made the great discovery that no substantives exist. There are none. They are no reality. Of course not. We grasp certain phenomena, think of them rightly for a moment and call them substantives. Certainly substantives are not reality: neither are adjectives. That is quite understood. That is all true: but now if I join a substantive and an adjective together, if I bring speech into movement, it then expresses reality. Then what the image represents transcends the image. Single words are no reality in themselves, we do not, however, speak in single words, but in groups of words. And in these we have an immediate presence within the reality. Three volumes have to be written to-day, and a two-volumed dictionary added, in order to expound all these things to man by means of thoughts of infinite cleverness, which simply overlook the fact that although single words are only symbols, the connecting of several into groups is nevertheless not merely symbolical, but forms part of the reality. Infinite wisdom, infinite cleverness is to-day used to prove the greatest errors.

Now, finally, that such errors should be manifest in a criticism of speech or even in a criticism of thought, is not in itself so bad, but the same kind of thought expressed in these errors—in these very intelligent and clever mistakes—lives in the whole thought of our present-day humanity. If we do but grasp the task which is comprised in our spiritual movement, it really forms part of it that we should become conscious of the necessity for those who wish to be Spiritual Scientists, to look at their era in the right way, and really place themselves in the right attitude to it. So that really, I might say: the practical side of our spiritually scientific movement demands that we should seek to transcend that thinking which answers to the above description, and not follow along those lines of thought, but try to alter them. We shall immediately approach the understanding of Spiritual Science with the simplicity of children if we only remove those hindrances which have entered the spiritual life of the civilisation of our present age through the stiffened and petrified forms of thought. Everywhere we should lay aside in our own souls that belief in authority which to-day appears under the mask of freedom. That should form part of the practical life of our Spiritual Science. And it will become more and more necessary that there should be at least a few people who really see the facts as they are and as they have been characterised to-day—and not only see them, but take them in real earnestness all through life. This is the essential. One need not display this externally, but much can be done if only a small number of persons will organise their lives—in whatever position they may occupy, in accordance with these explanations.

We can see in one definite respect how absolutely our age demands that we should again make our thinking alive. Let us briefly place before our souls something that we have often considered. In the beginning of our era that Being whom we have frequently characterised, the Christ Being, took on the life of a human being and united Himself with the earth aura. Through this there was given to the earth, for the first time, the right purpose for its further evolution, after it had been lost through the Luciferic temptation. The Event of Golgotha took place. The Evangelists, who were seers, though for the most part seers in the old style, have described this Event. Paul also described this Mystery of Golgotha;—Paul saw the Christ spiritually through the event of Damascus. His seership was different from that of the Evangelists. As a result of these descriptions a number of men united their souls with the Christ-Event. Through this connection of single individuals with the Christ-Event Christianity was spread abroad. At first it lived beneath the earth; so that in reality the following picture may continually appear in our souls: In ancient Rome, beneath the earth, those who had grasped the Mystery of Golgotha with their souls, maintained their Divine Service. Above, the civilisation and culture of the age, then at its summit, was carried on. Several centuries passed; that which was formerly carried on below in the catacombs, concealed and despised, now fills the world. And the civilisation of that time, the old Roman intellectual culture has disappeared. Christianity is spread abroad. But now the time has come when men have begun to think, when they have become clever, and free from authority. Thinkers have appeared who have examined the Evangelists. Honourable and clever thinkers: they are all worthy of honour. They have concluded that there is no historical testimony in the Gospels. They have studied them for decades, with earnest and critical labour, and they have come to the conclusion that there is no actual historical testimony in the Gospels, that Christ Jesus never lived at all. Nothing is to be said against this critical labour: it is industrious. Whoever knows it, knows of its industry and of its cleverness. There is no reason to despise lightly this critical wisdom. But what does it imply? What is at the bottom of it all? This: that humanity does not in the least see the point of importance! Christ Jesus did not intend to make things so easy for men that subsequent historians should arise and comfortably verify His existence on the earth as simply and easily as the existence of Frederick the Great may be verified. Christ did not wish to make things so easy as that for men—nor even would it have been right for Him to do so. As true as is the fact that this critical labour on the Gospels is clever and industrious, so true also is it that the existence of Christ may never be proved in that way, for that would be a materialistic proof. In everything that man can prove in external fashion, Ahriman plays a part. But Ahriman may never meddle with the proof as to Christ. Therefore there exists no historical proof. Humanity will have to recognise this: although Christ lived on the earth, yet He must be found through inner recognition, not through historical documents. The Christ-Event must come to humanity in a spiritual manner, and therefore no materialistic investigations of truth, nothing materialistic may intervene in this.

The most important event of the earth evolution can never be proved in a materialistic manner. It is as if through Cosmic history humanity were told: Your materialistic proofs, that which you still desire above all in your materialistic age, is only of value for what exists in the field of matter. For the spiritual you should not and may not have materialistic proof. Thus those may even be right who destroy the old historical documents. Just in reference to the Christ-Event it must be understood in our epoch that one can only come to the Christ in a spiritual way. He will never truly be found by external methods. We may be told that Christ exists, but to find Him really is only possible in a spiritual manner. It is important to consider that in the Christ-Event we have an occurrence concerning which all who will not admit of spiritual knowledge must live in error. It is extraordinary that certain people go wild when one utters what I have just said: that the Christ can be known by spiritual means—thus that which is historical can be recognised spiritually—certain people affirm that it really is not possible; no matter who says it, it cannot be true! I have repeatedly drawn your attention to this fact.

Now, our worthy Anthroposophical members still let many things leak out here and there in unsuitable places because they do not always retain this in their hearts, nor give forth in the right way what they have in their hearts. For instance, a person was told—this reached him in a special form—(this is certainly a personal remark, but perhaps I may make it this once), he was told that I had said that personally, as regards my youthful development, I did not begin with the Bible, but started from Natural Science, and that I considered it as of special importance that I had adopted this spiritual path, and had been really convinced of the inner truth of what stands in the Bible before I had ever read it; for I was then certain of it when I had read the Bible externally; that I had thus proved in myself that the contents of the Bible can be found in a spiritual manner before finding it subsequently in an external manner.

This has no value because of its personal character, but it may serve as an illustration. Now that came in an unseemly way to a man who could not understand that anything of the sort is possible, for he (pardon the word) is a theologian. He could not understand it. Since he wanted to make this matter clear in a lecture to his audience he did so in the following way. He read in a book that I once assisted at Mass. (These assistants are boys who give external help at the Mass.) Then he said to himself: ‘whoever assisted at Mass cannot possibly have been ignorant of the Bible. He overlooks the fact that he learnt to know the Bible there. Later on these things come back to him, from his Bible knowledge.’ Yes but there is indeed a plan in all this. In the first place the whole story is untrue, but people to-day do not object to quoting a fact which is untrue. In the second place, the assistants at Mass never learn the Bible but the Mass-book, which has nothing to do with the Bible. But the essential is to attend to this: the man could not conceive that a spiritual relation exists, he could only imagine that one comes through the letters of the alphabet, to the spiritual hanging on to them. It is very important for us to know these things and to have practical knowledge of them. For our spiritual movement will never be able to thrive until we really—not merely externally but in the very depths of our soul—find the courage to enter into everything connected with the whole meaning and significance of our conception of the world. And with reference to this uniting oneself with the spiritual world a critical situation has really arisen just in our time. The very men who regard themselves as the most enlightened feel themselves least united with the spiritual world. This is not stated as a reproach or criticism but as a fact. It is, therefore, especially important in our time to arouse an inner understanding for such significant Cosmic symbols as meet us in everything which surrounds the mystery of Christmas. For this can unite itself very deeply with a man's nature without the help of letters or learning. We must be able to make the Christmas Mystery alive in every situation in life, particularly in our own soul.

While we awaken this Mystery in our souls we look up and say: ‘Christmas reminds us of the descent of Christ Jesus on to the earth plane, and of the rebirth of that in man which was lost to him through the Luciferic temptation.’ This rebirth occurs in different stages. One stage is that within which we ourselves stand. That which for the sake of further evolution had to be lost—the feeling in the human heart of union with the spiritual world: ‘the birth of Christ within us’ is only another word for it—that has to be born again. Just that, which we desire and ever strive for, is intimately connected with this Christmas Mystery. And we should not merely regard this Christmas Mystery as that day of the year on which we fix up our Christmas tree, and, beholding it, take into ourselves all sorts of edification, but we should look upon it as something present in our whole existence, appearing to us in all that surrounds us.

As a symbol I should like in conclusion to present something which a remarkable poet, who died many years ago, wrote of his feeling about Christmas.

‘Our Church celebrates various Festivals which penetrate our hearts. One can hardly conceive anything more lovable than Whitsuntide or more earnest and holy than Easter. The sadness and melancholy of Passion week and the solemnity of that Sunday accompany us through life. The Church celebrates one of the most beautiful Festivals, the Festival of Christmas, almost in mid-winter, during the longest nights and shortest days, when the Sun shines obliquely across our land, and snow covers the plains. As in many countries the day before the Festival of the Birth of our Lord is called the Christmas Eve, with us it is called the Holy Evening; the following day is the Holy Day and the night intervening the Sacred Eve. The Catholic Church celebrates Christmas Day, the Day of the Birth of the Saviour, with the greatest solemnity. In most regions the hour of midnight is sacred to the hour of the Birth of the Lord, and kept with impressive nocturnal solemnity, to which the bells call one through the quiet solemn air of the dark mid-winter night, and to which the inhabitants go, with lanterns along the well-known paths, from the snow mountains and through the bare forests, hurrying through the orchards to the church, which with its lighted windows dominates the wooded village with the peasants' houses’ (Adalbert Stifter, Berg Kristall). He then describes what the Christ Festival is to the children and further, how in the old and isolated village there lived a cobbler who took a wife out of the neighbouring village, not out of his own; how the children of this couple learnt to know Christmas as was customary there. That is; someone said to them ‘The Holy Christ has brought you this gift,’ and when they were sufficiently tired of the presents, they were put to bed, very tired, and did not hear the midnight bells. These children had thus never yet heard the midnight bells. Now they often visited the neighbouring village. As they grew up and were able to go out alone they visited their grandmother there. The grandmother was especially fond of the children, as is often the case. Grandparents are often more devoted to the children than the parents. The grandmother liked to have the children with her, as she was too frail to go out. One Christmas Eve, which promised to be fine, the children were sent over to their grandmother. The children went over in the morning and were to return in the afternoon to follow the custom of the country, calling at the different villages, and were then to find the Christmas tree at home in the evening. But the day turned out different from what was expected. The children were overtaken by a terrible snowstorm. They wandered over the mountains, lost their way, and in the midst of a dreadful snowstorm they reached a trackless country.

What the children went through is very beautifully described; how during the night they saw a phenomenon of nature. It is desirable to read you the passage, for one cannot relate it as beautifully as it is described there. Each word is really important. They reached an ice field on a glacier. They heard behind them the crackling of the glacier in the night. You may imagine what an impression that makes on the children. The story continues:

Even before their very eyes something began to develop. As the children sat thus a pale light blossomed in the sky, in the centre underneath the stars, and formed a delicate arch through them. It had a greenish shimmer which moved gently downwards. But the arch became clearer and clearer until the stars withdrew and faded away before it. It even sent a reflection into other regions of the sky, a pale green light, which moved and coated gently among the stars. Then arose sheaves of various lights above the arch, like the spikes of a crown, and they flamed. The neighbouring spaces of the heavens were flooded with light, gently scintillating, and traversing long stretches of the heavens in delicate quiverings. Had the “storm-substance” of the sky so expanded through the snowfall that it flowed out in these silent glorious streams of light, or was it some other cause in unfathomable nature? Gradually the whole became fainter and fainter, the sheaves becoming extinguished first, until slowly and imperceptibly it all became fainter and nothing remained in the sky but the hosts of simple stars.

The children sat thus through the night. They heard nothing of the bells beneath. They had only snow and ice around them in the mountains and the stars and the phenomena of the night above them. The night drew to a close. People grew anxious about them. The whole village set out to find them. They were found and brought home. I can omit the rest and merely say that the children were almost stiff with cold, were put to bed and told that they should receive their Christmas gifts later. The mother went to the children, which is related as follows:

‘The children were confused by all this agitation. They had been given something to eat and were put to bed. Towards evening, when they recovered a little, while certain neighbours and friends gathered in the sitting-room and spoke of the event, the mother went into the bedroom and sat on Sanna's bed, caressing her. Then the little maid said: “Mother, while I sat on the mountain to-night, I saw the Holy Christ.”’

This is a beautiful presentation. The children had grown up without any instruction about the Christmas Festival. They had to pass Christmas Eve in that terrible situation, up above on the mountains, amid snow and ice, with only the stars above them, and this phenomenon of nature. They were discovered, brought back to the house, and the little maid said: ‘Mother, I have seen the Holy Christ to-night.’ ‘I have seen the Holy Christ.’ Seen Him! She had seen Him, so she said.

There lies a deeper meaning in this when it is said—as we have continually emphasised in our Spiritual Science, that Christ is not only to be found where we find Him, in the evolution of the earth epoch, historically inserted into the beginning of our era, where civilisation shows Him to us, but He is to be found everywhere! Especially when we are confronted with the world at the most serious moments of our life. We can surely find the Christ then. And we ourselves, we spiritual disciples, as I might say, can find Him, if we are only sufficiently convinced that all our efforts must be directed to the rebirth of the spiritual in the development of mankind, and that this spiritual, which must be born through a special activity of the souls and hearts of men, is based on the foundation of what was born into the earth's evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. That is something which we must realise at this season. If you can find during the days of which we have spoken to-day, and which are now approaching, a correct inner feeling of the evolving and weaving of external earth existence in its similarity with the sleeping and waking of man; if you can experience a deeper communion with external events, you will then feel more and more the truth of the words ‘Christ is here.’ As He Himself said: ‘I am with you always, unto the end of the earth epochs!’

And He is ever to be found, if we only seek Him. That thought should strengthen us, and invigorate us at this Christmas Festival if we celebrate it in this sense. Let us carry away these thoughts which may help us to find that which we have to regard as the real content, the real depth of our spiritual scientific efforts.

May we bring to this epoch of ours a soul so strengthened that we can place ourselves in the right attitude to it, as we now desire to do. Thus let us turn from the general consideration we have brought forward concerning the spiritual world, to the feeling of strengthening that can come to us from these considerations—strengthening for our soul.

Now let us turn our attention to those on the fields where the great events of our time are taking place:

Spirits ever watchful,
Guardians of their souls!
May your vibrations waft
To the Earth-men committed to your charge
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

And for those who in consequence of these events have already passed thro' the gate of death:

Spirits ever watchful,
Guardians of their souls
May your vibrations waft
To the Men of the Spheres committed to your charge
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

And that Spirit whom we are seeking thro' the deepening of Spiritual Science—the Spirit with whom we desire to unite, who descended on to the Earth and passed thro' earthly Death for the salvation of mankind, for the healing, progress and freedom of the Earth—may He be at your side in all your difficult duties.

We have been trying to come to grips with the following question: Why does man not notice how different—different spiritually and in their culture—are the several periods in which, during our present earth-cycle, he has spent his repeated earth-lives. We need to understand clearly why it is so widely believed that Man has altered very little during thousands of years, since history began, whereas Spiritual Science shows how greatly souls changed in their essential character during the third; fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean epochs—the fifth being our present one. These changes are confirmed by Spiritual-Scientific knowledge, but we find very little trace of them if we scan outer history, as usually presented and written.

I have already tried to show, in approaching this question, that, if one pays a little attention to the soul-element in history the changes spring to lisht. I have endeavoured to make comprehensible the difference between the feelings of the human soul, in, for instance, the eleventh or twelfth centuries, and those of the of the human soul of to-day. As an example I tried to illuminate for you the soul of Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century. Such examples might be multiplied, but before we go further in this direction, we will revert once more to the kernel of our question: What is it that prevents man from observing rightly how his various earth-lives differ in this respect?

He is chiefly prevented by the circumstance that, as constituted in the present earth-era, he has exceedingly little perception of his real ego, his true human self. But for certain hindrances, he would have quite a different idea of his nature and being, We will deal with these hindrances presently. For the moment I would like to point out,—you can take it, to begin with, simply as an hypothesis—how man would appear to himself if his real being were revealed to him.

If this were possible, he would above all notice a great and constant change in his personal life between birth and death. Looking back from whatever age—20, 30, or 50—towards his birth, he would see himself in perpetual metamorphosis. He would perceive by-gone changes morn clearly and realise hopefully that further changes are in store for him in the future. These I have mentioned in other lectures.

Because present-day man is too little inclined to realise himself as a soul-being, he has not much idea of how he has altered in the course of time. Strangely, but truly, his idea of himself is divided into two parts. He sees his bodily part on the one hand, a more or less constant factor in his life between birth and death. He is conscious, of course, that he “grows”, that he was tiny and became bigger, but that is almost all he knows consciously about his outer physical being. Take a simple example. You cut your nails—why? Because they grow. That shows, if you think about it, that a continual process of shedding takes place in your organism as regards the outer bodily part of it. In fact you drive that part out, so that in a certain time, at most in six or seven years, the material of the body is completely changed. You continually get rid of your material outfit. Man, however, is not conscious of this outer dissolution and continual reconstruction from within. Just fancy, how differently we should know ourselves, if we were conscious of how, as it were, we shed the external part of our physical body, dissolve it, and rebuild ourselves anew from within—we should be observing the metamorphosis of our own being!

Something else would be linked with this. If we really took into our consciousness that the body we bear is our possession for only seven years, that we have thrown off all we possessed of it before that, we should appear to ourselves much more spiritual. We should not have the deceptive notion, “I was a little child to begin with—then I grew bigger and different”—but we should know that though the material of the child-substance is somewhere, what has remained is not material, but absolutely super-substantial. If man could bring this metamorphosis into consciousness, he would be looking back at something retained ever since childhood. He would recollect himself as a spiritual being. If we knew what takes place in us, we should have much more spiritual conceptions of ourselves.

Yet again—suppose we looked at ourselves much less abstractly, we talk about ourselves as though we had a “Spiritual centre.” We speak of our Ego and we have the idea: “Our Ego was there in our childhood, and accompanied us further,” and so on; but we really picture it simply as a kind of spiritual centre. If only we could rise to the other conception—that of outer dissolution and inner reconstruction—we could not help regarding the Ego as the efficacious, active cause of it. We should see ourselves as something very real and inwardly active. In short, we would look upon our Ego not as something abstract, but would survey its inwardly active work on our body, leading this from one metamorphosis to another. We should correct any erroneous conceptions which we cherish on the subject at present. They are even embodied in the expression of speech. We say “we grow,” because we have the notion that we were to begin with, children, and have grown taller; but the matter is not as simple as that. The truth is that in a tiny child the bodily and the soul-spiritual activities are experienced more as a unity wherein the head-organism and the reproduction-organism (sex-organism) are closely associated. The two experiences of head and body separate later, becoming alien to one another. The material organism of childhood does not increase, for it is thrown off, dissolved; but the two poles of our own being grow wider apart. By this means, later on, in a fully formed body, in which the poles have separated from one another, our substance is organised from within. It seems to us as mere growth, but that is not so; we are organised inwardly, therefore we are connected with different outward things in earlier and later periods of life. As time goes on, the head-organism needs to move itself further away from the immediate earth-forces. The head rises; consequently, we “grow.”

All these conceptions would change if we accepted the actual truth—which we do not do. We leave out of account the constantly changing body, the body that is always becoming different we ignore it and imagine that it grows of itself and becomes larger; and so we fail to notice what a rich, mobile, living, inward entity is the ego, which works on us unceasingly between birth and death. Such a conception would give us a really coherent idea of ourselves if we could but grasp it, but modern man is not capable of that. This is to some extent connected with the destiny of the human race, with the whole development of our epoch. Man does not really identify himself with his living, active, ego, which actually builds his organism from year to year, but he divides it; on the one side he looks at his organism, which he imagines to be solid and enduring, and on the other at his ego, which he makes into an abstraction, a figure of straw. Such a man says: We have on the one side a sense-organism, a bodily one, through which we cannot approach things because they can only make “impressions” on us: the essential nature of the thing does not reveal itself to us at all; the “thing-in-itsef!” cannot be apprehended, we have only phenomena. Certainly, to look on the body as enduring substance gives this argument some justification. Then he looks at this insubstantial ego and says: There, within, there is something like a “feeling of duty,” and he sums it up as the “categorical imperative.” The unity is split up. If we thus divide the unity in human nature, criticising it from two sides, we become followers of Kant. What I am now saying goes into the very depths of present-day human thought.

Man of this age is little fitted to comprehend himself as a complete being in the word. He divides himself in the way I have described. The result is that we never contemplate our real soul-being with the eye of the spirit, or we would see that this part of ourselves is what continually works upon and changes the body. We look merely at the abstract body and the abstract ego and do not trouble about what the whole undivided human being may be. To become aware of that would at once lead us to recognise that this undivided being is different from incarnation to incarnation. The true, genuine human ego, concealed as it is, hidden at present from the soul's gaze, differs from life to life. Of course, if we are thinking of the abstraction, “ego,” not of the concrete human ego, we cannot arrive at the idea of the ego being so different from life to life. The result of thinking abstractly in this way is that things which are in any way similar are ultimately reduced to a featureless uniformity. Souls of course are similar in successive earth-lives; but on the other hand, they also differ, because from life to life a man passes through the course of human development. Because man does not in truth behold either the mutability of his body, or the real, whole activity of his ego, he does not see his true being. This is, as it were, a golden rule for gaining real knowledge of man and insight into his nature. And why?

The answer to this question lies in what you know of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic elements. We divide our being in such a way that on the one side we place our body, which we regard as having been small once and having expanded and grown, whereas it has in reality continually renewed itself. What is it that appears to us if we look at the body in this way? The Ahrimanic element, active within ourselves. But this Ahrimanic element is not our real human being; it belongs to the species and indeed remains the same though all ages. Therefore in looking at the body, we are really looking at our Ahrimanic part, and this is all that modern scientific anthropology describes in man. That is one thing we see—the corporeal part of ourselves, which we hare conceived of as being dense. The other is the abstract ego, which is in reality fluctuating, living strongly within us only; while we form a conception of ourselves, between birth and death. There we have our individual education, our uselessness and also our value,—there we survey our own personal life between birth and death; but we do not see our ego as it is in reality, as it works upon the metamorphoses of our physical body; we see it as Lucifer shows it to as, rarified. We see our physical part materialised, densified by Ahriman; our soul-spiritual part rarified by Lucifer.

If this was not so, if we did not divide ourselves so that one pole of our being is Ahrimanic and the other Luciferic, we should have a much more intimate connection with the dead who are always among us, because we should be more closely related to the spirituel world. We should comprehend the complete reality, to which belongs also the world in which man is after he passes through the gate of death, and before he returns to this world through the gate of conception.

Thus we never have our real being before us, but on the one side the physical-corporeal Ahrimanic phantom, on the other the soul-spiritual Luciferic phantom; two phantoms, two delusive images of ourselves, yet between that, imperceptible to us, lives the real man, that being to which we must refer when we say “man,” because this is the true man, progressing from life to life.

We must in all seriousness consider what this means for human knowledge. In this way we shall come to understand why it could be imagined that throughout the various epochs man remains the same. What we see are the incorrect thoughts about man; on the one side the idea of what does remain true to the species through long ages, and on the other, the real soul-spiritual psychic being, which is supposed not to extend beyond the life between birth and death. An understanding of how the soul-spiritual element alters the body from year to year would lead to a grasp of the mighty transition which occurs when it envelopes itself in the physical-corporeal through conception or leaves it again through death. We pay no heed to the work performed by the soul-Spiritual element on the body.

All this can be expressed in a different way. What we conceive of as our complete organism is but a small part of what we are as human beings. We only “dwell” in this organism. What we are accustomed to look upon as our organism, densified through Ahriman as we see it, has its real origin much more in our last incarnation than in this one. From the various studies of this year and former years you will gather that your physiognomy, in its present form, results from your preceding incarnation, your last earth-life. In a person's physiognomy we can really see a connection with his former life. Everything belonging to the physical corporeal organism is much more deeply connected with the last life than with the present one. Man of to-day is easily beguiled into saying: inasmuch as we have had no previous life, it cannot give us our present form, whether great or small. That is only self-persuasion. If we were to understand ourselves correctly, we should be obliged to look back to a former life. Paying attention to what forms our organism, in the way I have set forth, would bring enlightenment. A sudden light would be thrown on what we ourselves cannot form, and we would see how it has been formed by an earlier life. We can really have insight into someone if we know how his soul-spiritual part has fashioned his organism. This comes forth, as it were, out of his personality, and behind it remains what Ahriman makes visible as the result of th earlier embodiment.

For anyone who is accustomed to look upon man as a real living being, it is, when meeting a fellow-man, as though an entity emerged from him. Ths entity is his present self: only as a rule it is invisible. The other entity remains a little behind the first, and this it is which was formed from the past life. In the emerging entity something soon presents itself. At first, this entity is, I might say, perfectly transparent, but it rapidly becomes opaque, because the soul-spiritual element, appearing as an active power, densifies the entity which has just emerged. And then appears something else, which seems to be a seed for the ensuing earth-life.

For him who can perceive the connections, present-day man is seen as threefold. All sorts of myths convey this in their symbols. Call to mind numerous descriptions in which three consecutive generations are set forth, obviously to illustrate the threefold nature of man. Remember many of the renderings of Isis, also various Christian portrayals in which three figures are described as belonging together. Man's threeford nature is what is really meant. Of course a materialistic interpretation is possible—“Grandmother, Mother and Child,” if you like; but the threefold character is put there because it corresponds to a reality which can be perceived. We can most truly picture earlier times if we divest ourselves of the fantastic ideas of modern learning (which always tries to spin a meaning round pictorial representations), and take notice of what humanity's perceptions were in a past not so very far behind us, and how these were expressed artistically.

This kind of consideraticn is of the utmost importance. if we are to bring home to ourselves that the Christ, Who went through the Mystery of Golgotha, has His relation (of which we speak so often), to the true human ego. If we consider St. Paul's words, “Not I, but Christ in me,” this “in me” refers to the true, hidden ego, invisible to view as yet. Man must in a sense look on it as a Spiritual being if he would find the right connectiona with the Christ. One would like to know how certain passages in the Gospels can possibly be understood, if this is not taken into account. For instance, the passage at the very beginning of the Gospel of St. John, where John speaks as go the Christ came to man as to the abode where He belongs. The (German) translators usually construe it “He came unto His own estate, and his own people received Him not,” yet the Gospel goes on to say: “But to as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His Name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John I. 12,13.). And it is made quite clear that He desired to come to all men who had this consciousness; yet those without, indeed all men, are certainly born “of blood” and “of the will of man”. The being I have been describing as the “true man”, not born of blood nor of the will of man, comes indeed from the spiritual world, and clothes himself in physical heredity. The Gospel is speaking of the man of whom I have told you to-day, and that is why it is so difficult to understand and is so erroneously expounded, fettered as it is by the conceptions current, to-day. Without the conceptions conveyed by Spiritual Science, the underlying, aspects of the Gospels cannot be understood; with them, a sudden light breaks in.

In respect of all these relationships, something tremendous happened at the Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of humanity. Before then, as you know, the complete human ego lived differently in the body. The Mystery of Golgotha marked a point of time in which the whole consciousness of man was changed, as the result of the Union of the Christ-Being with earthly evolution. Now the time has , for an increasing comprehension of the Mystery of Golotha and its conneetion with mankind.

A knotty point for the many expositors of the Gospels, for instance, is the saying which, however epressed or translated., always has the same ring—the saying that “The Kingdom of Heaven has descended.” Amongst those who have entirely misconceived this expression is H.P. Blavatsky, who seized upon it and asserted that Christians therefore maintained that with the Mystery of Golgotha a sort of heavenly kingdom had come down to earth, and yet nothing different has happened—the ears of corn and the cherries have not become twelve times is large, etc.; intimating that on the physical earth nothing is altered. This “descent of the Kingdom of Heaven,” of the spiritual kingdom, crates great difficulties for many commentators of the Gospels, because they do not clearly understand it. The meaning really is that until the Mystery of Golgotha, men had to experience what they could of the spiritual on the physical plane by means of atavistic clairvoyance. After that, they had to lift themselves up to the spiritual, and discern things in the Spirit, which really has drawn near to them. There is no need for the word-spinning arguments which are brought forward from all quarters; the' truth must be recognised, and this truth is as follows:—

The effect for men of Christ having passed through the Mystery of Golgotha is that they can no longer receive spiritual life mearly through the fact of their physical existence, but only by living in the spiritual world. Anyone who now lives only in the physical world, is no longer living on the earth, but below the earth; because from the Mystery of Golotha onwards, the possibility is given us of living in the spirit. The spiritual kingdom has in truth come among us. Taken in this sense; the expression is at once understood, but only in connection with the Christ. This, however, was to be temporarily hidden. As man made the effort to acquire it, it would be gradually communicated to him; and only by gaining insight into it can the real course of, modern history since the Mystery of Golgotha be understood. Christianity, as it had come into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha, was in its early centuries implanted in the Gnosis, which was then more or less still in existence. It embodied very spiritual views of the real nature of Christ Jesus. Then the Church took on a defined form. This form can be traced historically, but you must bear in mind what its task was from the third, fourth, fifth century onwards. The explanation now given must not on any account be misunderstood. Spiritual Science, as here advocated, stands on the ground of genuine, active tolerance for all existing religious revelations. Spiritual Science must therefore be able to discover the relative truth of the different religious creeds. It is not that Spiritual Science leans more or less sympathetically towards this or that creed; its aim is to distinguish the truth contained in the different religious denominations; it weighs them all with care, and refuses to be one-sided. Spiritual Science must not be proclaimed as leaning towards this or that Creed: it is the Science of the Spirit. It can for instance, fully appreciate that it is a pity that for many people the inner content of Catholic ritual is lost. It knows how to appreciate the special virtues of Catholic ritual in relation to the course of civilisation, and also that a certain artistic output is closely related to Catholic ritual, which indeed is only a continuation of certain other religious creeds, much more so than is commonly thought. In this ritual there resides a deep element of the Mysteries. However, what I have to say essentially concerns sonething else, at all events not the Catholic ritual, which has its full inner justification as an extraordinary impulse for human creative achievement. What I now have to set forth is this: that ecclesiastical forms were given certain tasks—which are indeed still theirs to a certain extent, but were given for the most part at the time when such ardent souls as Bernard of Clairvaux found their way to their God through the Church. We must always discriminate between the Churches and such personalities as Bernard of Clairvaux and multitudes of others. What then, was the task of the Church? Its task was to keep souls as far away as possible from an understanding of Christ, to bring it about that souls should not approach too near to Him: The history of Church-life in the third or fourth century, and later on, is substantially the story of the estrangement of the human mind from a comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha; in the development of the Church there is a certain antagonism towards an understanding of Christ. This negative task of the Church has its justification in the fact that men must always strive anew through the force of their own minds and souls to reach the Christ, and fundamentally through all these centuries man;s approach to the Christ has been a continual struggle of the individual against ecclesiasticism. Even with such men as Bernard of Clairvaux, it was so. Study even Thomas Aquinas. He was reckoned a heretic by the orthodox; he was interdicted, and only later did the Church adopt his teaching. The path to Christ was really always a “defensive action” against the Church, and only slowly and gradually could men win their way to Christ. We have but to think, for instance, of Petrus Waldus, the founder of the so-called sect of the “Waldenses,” and his associates in the twelfth century, none of whom at that time had any knowledge of the Gospel. The spreading of Church-life had come on without the Gospels. Just think of it! From those around Petrus Waldus a few persons were chosen who could translate something of the Gospels; thus they learnt to know the Gospels, and as they learnt, a holy, lofty Christian life flowed to them from the Gospels. The outcome was that Petrus Waldus was declared a heretic by the Pope, against the will of his contemporaries. Up to this time a certain amount of gnostic knowledge had spread even in Europe, as for instance among the “Catharists” translated as “Purified Ones;” it was directed to acquiring concepts, concrete concepts, about the Christ and the Mystery theof Golgotha. From the standpoint of the official Church this was not allowed, therefore the Catharists were heretics: “hetzer” (German for “heretic”) is only an alteration of their neme—it is the same word.

It is very necessary to take that of which I am now speaking in its full strictness, in order to distinguish the path of Christianity from that of the Church, and thus to grasp how, in our age, through the principles of Spiritual Science, a way must be paved tothe true Christ, to the real Christ-concept. Very many features of the present day become clear when we realise that not all that called itself Christian was intended to communicate the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, but that much was even intended to hinder that understanding, to raise a barrier against it. Does this barrier exist to this day? Indeed it does! I would like to give you a case in point.

Manifold endeavours, including that of Protestantism, were always in opposition to the Church, because the Church in many ways had the task of erecting a barrier against the understanding of Christ, and men could do no other than strive for that understanding. Petrus Waldus felt that need when he had recourse to the Gospels. Until then, there was only the Church—not the Gospels. Even now, many strange opinions are held about this relation of the Church to the Gospels. I want to read you a passage from a modern writer, very characteristic of this state of things, from which you will recognise that the opinion which condemnned Petrus Waldus to excommunication is deeply rooted even now. Take it as an example of what is being said even to-day:

“The Gospels and Epistles are for us incomparable written records of revelation but they are neither the foundation on which our Faith was built, nor the unique source from which the content of the latter is spontaneously created. In our view the Church is older than the sacred writings; from her hand we receive them, she guarantees their trustworthiness, and as regards the dangers of hand-written transcriptions, and of the changing of the text in translation into all languages of the earth, the Church is the only authoritative interpreter of the sense and import of every particular utterance.” (“The Principles of Catholicism and Science”, by George von Hertling, Freiburg 1899.)

This means that the actual content of the Gospels is irrelevant; all that matters is what the Church declares is to be found in them. I have to say this, for the simple reason that even in our own circles there is much simple mindedness on the subject. Again and again one hears the view that it would be useful if we could approach the Catholic Church, saying that our interpretation is entirely favourable to the Christ. But that would not help us at all, it would only blacken us in the eyes of the Church, because she allows nothing to be upheld about the Christ, or about any conclusions beyond those of Natural Science, unless the Church herself recognises it as in agreement with her doctrine. Whoever among us upholds a conception of Christ, and believes thereby to vindicate himself in the eyes of the Church, really accuses himself—is indeed regarded as having done so, because he has no right to declare anything about the Christ from any other source than the Church's owm doctrine .

The same author from whose work I have just read, speaks very clearly on the subject: “Believers are in just the same position as is the investigator of nature with the facts of exoerience.” He means that the believer must receive what the Church dictates to him about the spiritual world, just as the eyes take in the facts of nature.

“He must neither take anything away nor add anything, he must take it as it stands; above all the very purest reception of the true content of the matter is expected of him. The truths of revelation are something given, for him who grasps them in faith. For him, they are conclusive and complete. No enrichment of them has been possible since Christ: their volume cannot to decreased, and any change in their content is out of the question”.

So speaks one who subscribes fully to the genuine orthodox Catholic view—a view which must dissociate itself, for instance, with a certain aversion from any train of thought such as Lessing's, which leads-towards a renewed search for the Spiritual. Lessing's views went as far as to embrace repeated earth-lives; they are a product of modern spiritual life. The bitterest opposition is bound to exist between the Catholic Church and such Cerman spiritual life as flowed through Lessing, Herder, Goethe and Schiller. This same person (von Hertling) writes further:

“The edifice of Church dcctrine, as it appears to the Theologian of to-day and is presented by him, was not complete and ready-made from the beginning. What Christ imparted to the Apostles, what they proclaimed to the world, was not a methodical, fully prepared system, developed at all points: it was a rich store of truths, all united as in a focus in one event of sacred history: the story of the Redemption, of the Incarnation of the Divine Logos; but the instruction of the believers, and the necessary defence against heathen assaults, as well as against the misrepresentations of heretics, made it necessary tc unite these truths in a system, to develop their full content, to determine their purport.—This was done by the unwearying proclamation of the doctrine by those specially chosen as instruments, according to the Catholic interpretation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but at the same time vith the co-operation of the learning of the early Church.

“No new language was creeted by this revelation, but what was already current was used; the sense and meaning of individual words being recoined and heightened. Theology, which undertook to think out the content of Revelation while setting it in order for expository purposes, needed for the task certain tools and resources: sharply circumscribed ideas for organising the subject-matter; special exnression for making comprehensible relationships which far exceeded the experience of everyday life. A new task in the history of the world thereby devolved upon Greek philosophy. It had the vessels ready Prepared, into which an infinitely richer content, springing from a higher source, was to be poured. Platonism was the first source of this creative work. The drift of its speculation on the super-sensible distinctly singled it out for the task. Much later, after the lapse of more than a thousand years, when the most important essentials of revelation had at last been formulated in dogma, the close union of theological science with Aristotelian philosophy was completed and exists to this day”.

(Because, therefore, the philosophy of Aristotle was united with the Church as long ago as the Middle Ages, its value for the Church today is beyond question!)

“With its help, the sainted Thomas Aquinas, the greatest master of system known in history, raised the great edifice of doctrine, which, only modified here and there in detail, has determined Catholic theology as to form, expression and method of teaching ever since.”

The author in question regards what he calls Church doctrine as having come about by means of a certain union between the Christian wisdom-element and Greek Aristotelian Philosophy. He does recognise the possibility that in a very distant future, (he says expressly “in a future by no means near as yet”), Christianity might be approached through quite different ideas He says: Supposing that Christianity had not been spread abroad throurth Greek philosophy, but as it might have been, through the Indian, it would have come forth in an entirely different form. However, it must remain in the form it has received: it must not, be changed by any novel view, arising in modern times. But he in certainly aware that there are points where he is treading on thin ice:—

“I am only against a spiritual disposition which, in realms where full freedom is accorded to Scientific investigation, is deaf to all the fundamental objections, and holds fast to tradition.”

Yet he holds strongly enough to tradition!

And finally, it is then necessary to give way, as was done in the case of the Copernican system."

That waseonly in 1827! He turns away from legitimate endeavours to understand Christianity afresh, with a modern consciousness. That is remarkably little to his taste. He says:

“I could conceive that a far-distant future might loosen the union of Theology and Aristotelian philosophy, replacing it's no longer comprehensible or satisfying concepts with others, which would correspond to a knowledree improved in many ways.” He “could conceive”—that what nobody in any case understands to-day might be replaced by something equally incomprehensible.

“It would not be offending against the warning of the Gospel, because it would not be pouring new wine into old skins, for on the contrary new vessels would be produced, to preserve therein the never-failing wine of the doctrine of salvation, in its essential character, and to purvey it to the faithful.”

But that must not happen. He goes on:

“But the vessels must be chosen ones. The attempts made by Cartesianism in the seventeenth century, and by the philosnphy of Kant and Hegel in the nineteenth, exhort us to prudence. A school of ideas which would replace Aristotelianism would have to arise, just as that did, From fulness of knowledge and contemporary consciousness.”

Then these same men would oppose it, because they at any rate are not the offspring of “fulness of knowledge and contemporary consciousness”.

“It would have to acquire equal authority over wide circles of thinking humanity, and even then its transformation into ecclesiastical theology would hardly be attained without errors and perplexities on all hands.”

It would be necessary to “labour” to bring about understanding. “As, for instance, in the thirteenth century, when through the Arabs the complete philosophy of Aristotle was brought to the Christian West. Its reception aroused severe opposition. Even a Thomas Aquinas was not spared hostility. He was held by many to be an innovator, against whom the champions of the well-tried old order had to marshal their forces.”

It is remarkable how it is with this principle of over coming an old way of understanding. “Christianity—men may think it quite a good principle, but they absolutely will not admit its validity in their own epoch. It cannot be said that such a thing is done in simplicty. It is very learned, for the pamphlet concludes with a really significant reference—a reference to an Order which has at all times had reputation for shrewdness—a brotherhood which has a different standing from that of Bernard of Clairvaix or Francis ef Assisi, whose reputation rested or a certain mystical tendency. This other Order reckoned mystical piety aad such-like of less value than a certain shrewdness and understanding of worldly affairs. Hence the pamphlet says in conclusion:

“I end with an utterance of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which has been incorporated into the constitution of the Jesuit Order, and has ben referred to of late in different quarters: “Scientific pursuits, if they are undertaken with pure stiving in the service of God, are on that account, because they comprehend the whole of humanity, not less, but more pleasing to God than pennance.”

The endeavour has been made in our own time to awaken clear understanding on all sides. I will prove this to you by an example. I have been reading to you from this author so that you may see the position taken up by those who hold certain views, as regards a movement I was describing. This attitude of theirs was perceived by a writer who published a short time ago, (it is importent to note that it is of recent date) an article on the author of this pamphlet. I will read an extract from it:

“At the Conference in 1893, on the subjct of Catholic Science and the position of Catholic savants at the present day this declaration was made:

“We Catholic-Scientists of the nineteenth century are convinced that there is no antagonism between Science and Faith, but that they are ordained to combine in inner harmony. We are convinced that no two sides of truth exist, or can exist. God is the source of all truth; He has spoken to us through the Prophets and the incararnated Logos; He speaks to us through the ordained ministry of the Church, and no less in the laws of logic, which we must hold to when we strive for knowledge of the truths of Nature. eBcause God cannot contradict Hinself, therfore no antagonism can exist between supernatural and natural truths; between the teachings of revelation and a science which earnestly, honestly brings to light the laws and the rules of method.”

“This really means, however, that philosophy is reduced to silence. Its freedom is just the same for us as that of a flock of sheep in its enclosure, or the prisoners within walls. Philosophy, as regards its own principles, is just as little free under the determining, limiting rule of faith as they—who are allowed to walk about on their own feet, to use their own-hands and to move as they like, but in a strictly—enclosed space. The phrase “Catholic philosophy” embodies a direct contradiction, for by its own account of itself it is not unconditionally free.”

If our Spiritual Science were not independent, it would not be what it ought to be.

“Catholic philosophy has to follow a prescribed line of march. A philosophy claiming to be based. on scientific method must hold firm, regardless of consequences, to nothing outside the results of its own researches and its own thinking. It is bound by strict rules of investigation and verification, and is forbidden to take its stand within any particular religion or on any point of ecclesiastical dogma. Otherwise it is not science but unscientific dogmatism, governed not by principles of knowledge, but by faith and the power of faith. In that case it does not go its way unhindered and uninfluenced, nor does it follow impartially its own laws, but it acknowledges as a matter of course an ordained truth, and, in relation to that, resigns its independence.” (Dr. Bernhard Münz. “The German Imperial Chancellor as Philosopher” in the “Austrian Review”, 15th April 1918.)

That is precisely the task of the present time, to find the way for every hman being to stand on his own feet. A man who maintains such things as you have just heard quoted stands in sharpest contradiction to this task. There are neople who see that such opinions preclude any possibility of a scientific view of the universe; but it seems very difficult at the present time to prove the impartiality of one's judgment, however necessary it may be. The further progress of civilisation will depend on men comin to learn how in their soul-being they are connected with the Spiritual world; whoever shuts his eyes to this, hinders the most important task of his own day. There is no escape from this conclusion. The remarkable thing to-day is that people can look at the matter, and in a marvellous way draw other conclusions from it. The author of this article writes of the man from whose pamphlet I have read to you, which culminated in the confession of Jesuitism. The “subject” of the article is Georg von Hertling, now “Count” Hertling.—The author of the article, however, in spite of having said that the outlook he is criticising “excludes all science”, adds in conclusion:

“Count Hertling is a decided, strongly-marked individuality. Individuality literally means indivisibility, but in this case it implies divisibility, inner blending, universal organisation. Individual soul, family soul, and nation-soul meet and are accentuated side by side in this man: this trinity-of soul it is that makes him so strong and stamps him as the predestined Chancellor of the German Empire.” A need of our time is to find a way of touching the nerve through which the current of Spiritual Science must flow, and this can be none other than the one which enables the soul to find its onn way to the spiritual world. This must be thoroughly understood, for it is bound un with the deepest needs, the most indispensible impulses, our age. Our time demands of man that he should be able, in noticing a thing, to admit it, and to draw the real conclusions from it. Spiritual Science can be genuine only in those who have the courage to face truth and to maintain it; otherwise such experiences as I have described will become more frequent. I must add this, because more and more simple minds are to be found amongst us who hear with joy any praise of Spiritual Science, or what appears like it. Discrimination precisely in these very points is necessary. “Praise” can be far more hurtful and run far more counter to our efforts, than adverse criticism, when honestly meant.

Hermann Heisler, a protestant theologian, gave seventeen sermons in Constance and published them afterwards under the title of “Vital questions of the Day”. By chance a characteristic review of his book fell into my hands, and our unsophisticated friends would perhaps count it as something to be pleased with, inasmuch as it is unadulterated praise:

“These sermons deserve particular attention, on account of their authorship. Heisler was for ten years an evangelical Pastor in Styria and Bohemia, then, alarmed at the danger of becoming numbed by the routine of his office, resigned it for the time being, in order to devote himself for a year to studying the fundamentals of natural science and philosophy. Finally, urged by an inner call, he returned to his spiritual sphere with new joyfulness and love. As he could not serve his country with the colours, he offered his spiritual services to the Church of his native Baden, and was entrusted with a cure of souls at Constance, where these seventeen addresses were given in 1917. They are remarkable as regards their substance. They are all based on deep spiritual effort, and expect hearers and readers alike to share in it. They are not, designed to arouse beautiful feelings but to lead through earnest thinkins to convinced knowledge. They avoid the sermonising tone, and read almost like scientific treatises developed in a popular way about religious problems. I would instance the sermon on that many-sided conception, freedom. It arrives at the true conclusion: ‘Of course there always remains as absolute necessity which directs us. Even as free human beings, we still follow the aim which most attracts us; but the divine gift of freedom which Christ brings us is that the lower attractions of the sense-world lose their constraining power over our souls, and the majesty of the spiritual world gains inner sovereignty over us.’ ” The peculiar feature of Heisler's preaching, however, does not lie in the powerful grasp of his thinking, but in its special content: Heisler is a convinced, inspired Theosophist. He himself would rather use the term, “follower of Spiritual Science”. That must not be confused with the spiritualistic belief in the materialisation of spirits. It calls for a purely spiritual activity, bound to no material means. Our thoughts are forces, which, invisible yet powerful, stream out from us and impress the seal of our being on the whole of Nature, beneficially or the reverse. This belief in the imperishable power of the spirit is set forth for our comfort in the address, ‘Our Dead are Alive;’ it takes an amazing form in the one on ‘Destiny.’ Based on the account in St. John's Gospel of the man born blind, the old Indian and Orphic doctrines of the soul's pilgrimage, its reincarnation in an earthly body, is taught; the preacher would thereby solve the riddle of how fate so often seems unjust, and, like Lessing in his “Education of the Human Race,” would arouse a belief in a carefully planned divine education of humanity. When I add that Heisler looks upon this teaching, indeed on all his Spiritual Science, as a return to the New Testamet, lecturinrg upon it as science, and consciously overstepping the Kantian boundary between knowledre and faith, I have sketched his schene of thoght it its main features.”

“Well, we might say, what more is wanted! Really nothing better could be written! But the author of the review concludes his considerations thus: “I myself reject this Spiritual Science and abide by Kant; but after all, the sermons contain so much that is good, and Theosophy is for the moment agitating theology in so significant a way, (cf. for example, Rittlemeyer's writings in the Christliche Welt), that I believe I do many theologians and laity a service by drawing attention emphatically to these addresses.” (D. Schuster in “The Hanover Courier”, 18th July, 1913.)

That is often the way of thought in our age: inner force and courage are lacking in it. The man has “nothing but good” to say; one notices that he has insight into the good, because he can define it in charming words; but then—“I personally reject this Spiritual Science”! There you have the fruits of what I began by describing, and much in the present time is connected with these “fruits”. In the next lecture I will deal further with the tendency I have been discussing, and its effpcts in social democacy and Bolshevism.