The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Report on the First Public Anthroposophical Congress in Stuttgart

My dear friends!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To-day we must bring our observations to a sort of conclusion; and the natural and proper conclusion of them will of course be, as I indicated yesterday, to consider the necessary consequence to be drawn for the conduct of the Anthroposophical Society in the future. In order to form a clearer notion of what this conduct should be, let us just look back once more and see how Anthroposophy has grown up out of the whole modern civilization of the day.

You will have seen from the course of our observations during this past week, that in a way the public for Anthroposophy had necessarily to be sought in the first place amongst those circles where a strong impulse had been given towards a deepening of the spiritual life. This impulse came, of course, from many different quarters. But here one needed to look no further for the main impulse for these homeless souls, than to the things which Blavatsky, so to speak, delivered as riddles to this modern age.—Well, we have discussed all that. If, however, we must go back to this in the first place as the impulse for the Anthroposophical Society, on the other hand it must also have been plain, that for Anthroposophy itself such an impulse, or this particular impulse, was not the essential matter; for Anthroposophy itself goes back to other sources. And although—for the very reason that its public happened to come in the way I said—Anthroposophy at first employed outward forms of expression—even for its own wealth of wisdom—that were terms already familiar to these homeless souls, as coming from the quarter connected with Blavatsky,—yet these were just outward forms of expression. If you go back to my own first writings, Christianity as Mystical Fact, Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought, you will see, that in reality these writings are in no way traceable to anything whatever coming from Blavatsky, or indeed from that quarter at all, with this one exception of the fact, that the outward forms of expression have been selected incidentally with a view to finding understanding.

One must distinguish, therefore, between what was actual spiritual substance, flowing all through the anthroposophic movement, and what were outward forms of expression, incidentally required by the conditions of the time. That mistakes can arise on this point is simply due to the fact, that people at the present day are so disinclined to go back from the form of outward expression to what is the real heart of the matter.—Anthroposophy can be traced back in a straight line to the note already struck in my Philosophy of Freedom (though then in a philosophic form),—to the note struck in my Goethe writings of the 'eighties.

If you take what is in these writings on Goethe and in the Philosophy of Freedom, the dominant note struck in them is this: That Man, in the innermost part of his being is in connection with a spiritual world; that therefore, if only he looks deep enough back into his own being, he comes to something within himself to which the usual natural science of that day, and also of this, is unable to penetrate, and which can only be contemplated as direct part of a spiritual world-order.

And in face of the terrible, what I might call spiritual chaos of language which this modern civilization has created in all countries, it might really be recognized as inevitable, if one was sometimes obliged to have recourse to what sounded paradoxical terms of expression.

And so I let glimmer faintly, so to speak, through these Goethe writings, that when one rises from contemplation of the world to contemplation of divine spirit, it is necessary to introduce a modification in the idea of Love. Already in these writings on Goethe, I indicated, that the Divinity must be conceived as having shed Itself abroad in infinite love through all existence, and that it has now to be sought in each particular existence;—which leads to something totally different from a confused pantheism.—Only, at that date, there was absolutely no possibility in any way of finding what one might call a philosophic ‘point of connection’. For, easy as it would have been to gain a hearing for a spiritual world-conception such as this, had the age possessed any philosophic ideas on to which to connect, it was equally difficult with the sort of warmed-up Kantianism that at that time existed,—with this sort of philosophy, it was difficult to find any point of connection. And accordingly it was necessary to seek this point of connection in a fuller, more intensive stream of life, in a spiritual life inwardly saturated, so to speak, with spiritual substance.—

And this kind of spiritual life was just what one found manifested in Goethe. And therefore, when I had first had to make public these particular ideas, I could not connect-on with a Theory of Cognition to what was then to be found in the civilization of the day: one had to connect-on to the world-conception of Goethe; and by aid of this Goetheistic world-conception it became possible to take the first step into the spiritual world.

In Goethe, one finds two doors which in a way open into the spiritual world,—which, to a certain degree, give access to it. One finds the first of these doors at the point where one enters upon the study of Goethe's natural-science works. For with the scientific conception of nature which Goethe worked out, he was able, within the bounds of the vegetable-world, to overcome just that disease under which the whole of modern natural science down to this day is suffering. He succeeded in putting living, flexible ideas in place of the dead and dried ones, for the observation of the vegetable-world. And then it was possible to go further, and indicate at any rate ... even though Goethe himself failed with his theory of metamorphosis when he came to the animal king-dom, still it was at any rate possible to indicate a prospect that a similar, only intensified, method of observation, not worked out so far by Goethe, might be applied to the animal kingdom as well. And in my book, Goethe's World-Conception,¹ I tried to show how it was possible—only as a sketch to begin with—to push on as far as history, as far as historic life, with the live and live-making ideas from the source.—That was the first door.

Now, in Goethe, one finds no direct line of continuance leading on from this starting-point into the actual spiritual world; from this starting-point one can only work on, as it were, to a certain definite level. And whilst thus working one has the feeling then of grasping the sensible world in a spiritual fashion. When employing Goethe's method, one is moving, rightly speaking, in a spiritual element. And though one is applying this method to the sensible plant-world, or the sensible animal-world, one grasps by this method the spiritual element living and weaving in the plant or in the animal-world.

But Goethe had another door besides in contemplation. And this was most strikingly apparent when one started out from something which Goethe was only able to indicate pictorially,—half symbolically, one might say; when one started out, namely, from his Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily,² through which he wished to show how spirit, spiritual agencies, are at work in the evolution of the world, and how the several spheres of the True, the Beautiful, the Good, work together, and that they are actual Spiritual beings one must grasp, not mere abstractions of the mind, if one wants to arrive at a view of the actual life of spirit.

The possibility therefore existed, of connecting-on, to begin with, to this point in Goethe's world conception. Rut then, however, there followed a very particular necessity. For there is one thing above all, you see, which must necessarily present itself to anybody to-day, when it is a question of a world-conception for these homeless souls; and that is the moral and ethical problem, the moral conduct of life.

¹ ‘Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung.’

‘Cognitive Theory of Goethe's World-Conception.’

² See: ‘Goethes Geistesart in ihrer Offenbarung usw.’

In those old times, when men arrived by original clairvoyance at their view of the divine spirit-world, it was, then, a matter-of-course that this divine spiritual world, of which men could rise to a view, was the source of their ethical impulses also. If we look back to very old periods of human evolution, we find a state of things in which, when Man gazed up, say in the good old times, in his first primitive clairvoyance, to the world of Divine Spirit above him, he beheld on the one hand, those living Beings, those Powers, who rule the phenomena of the natural world; and in the phenomena of the natural world, in the workings of wind and weather, in the workings of earth, in mechanic workings, this man of a primal age could see the continuance, the prolongation of what he beheld in the divine spirit-world. But at the same time he could receive from this divine spirit-world the impulses for his own actions.

This is the peculiar thing about the old world-conceptions, which still went along with a primitive clairvoyance, that, if we take, say, the Ancient Egyptian Age, men looked up to the skies in order to learn the workings of the earth, even to learn what they needed to know about the flooding of the Nile; they looked up to the stars; and from the courses of the stars, from the laws of the stars in their courses, they deduced what concerned them for the earth-world,—I mean, for the order of Nature in the earth-world.

And in the same way, too, these people calculated—if I may use the expression—what the impulses should be for ethical life. The impulses of ethical life, too, were drawn from observation of the stars.

And if we then look at things as they are now in recent times, we shall say: Observation of the stars is now carried on in its mathematical aspect only; which amounts to nothing more, than that men carry the mathematics of earth up into the stars of heaven. And they look on earth, and find on the earth what are called ‘laws of nature’.

Well, these ‘laws of nature’, which Goethe found, too, in his time, and which he converted into live ideas,—these ‘laws of nature’ have a certain peculiarity, directly it comes to a view of the world,—to a world-conception. The peculiarity namely is this: that Man,—to go by the laws of nature,—is himself excluded from the World,—that he then, in his own truest, most characteristic being as Man, has no longer any place in the World.

Picture to yourselves the old world-conceptions and how it was there. On the one side we have the world of Divine Spirit. This world of Divine Spirit permeated the phenomena of the natural world. People discovered laws for the natural phenomena; but these laws were recognized as being a kind of reflection from the action of Divine Spirit in the world of Nature. And Man, too, was also there. The same divine spirit-world shed its rays into Man. And so Man had his place within the whole order of the world. He derived, so to speak, the substance of which he was made from the same divine spiritual element of which the substance of the natural world was made.—What happened then?—My dear friends, what then happened, is something that one must regard in all its gravity; for what happened was, that, in a sort of way, a cut was made by natural science across the link that joined the world of Nature to the world of the Divine. The Divine is gone,—gone from the world of Nature. And in the world of Nature the reflections of Divine action are statuated as natural laws, and people speak of ‘laws of Nature’.

To the people of old, these Laws of Nature were the Thoughts of Cod. To the men of to-day they are still of course thoughts, for one has to comprehend them by thoughts; but the explanation lies somehow or other in the phenomena of Nature, which of course are themselves contained under the laws of Nature:—law of gravitation, law of the refraction of light, and all these fine things,—these are what people talk of to-day. But all these things have nothing whatever underneath them, or rather, nothing whatever above them; for there is no sense in talking of all these laws; unless one can talk of them as reflections from the Divine Spirit's action in the natural world.

This is what is felt by minds of greater depth, by homeless souls, in all the talk of the present day about Nature: they feel, with these people who talk about Nature, that one might rightly apply to them the words of Goethe,—or, more correctly, the words of Mephisto: they ‘laugh at themselves, and never know it’.¹ People talk of laws of Nature, but these laws of Nature are what has been left behind from the views of the men of old. Only, the views of the men of old had something else beside these laws of Nature, something, namely, that made these laws of Nature possible.

Suppose for a moment that you have a rose-bush. You can always go on having roses from this rose-bush. When the old roses wither, new ones grow again. But if you pick the roses and let the rose-bush die, you cannot still go on having new roses.

But this is just what happened with the science of nature. A rose-bush was once there; it had its roots in God. The laws which men found in the natural world, were the separ-ate roses. These laws, men have picked; they have picked the roses; the rose-bush they have let die. And so we have now in the laws of Nature, something that remains like roses without a rose-bush. And people are blind to it; they have no notion of it in their heads, upon which they set such store in these days. But those people, who are homeless souls, have a very strong notion of it in their hearts: for they can make nothing of these laws of Nature; they feel: These laws of Nature are withered: they shrivel up, when one tries to look at them as a human being.

And so the men of modern times, in so far as they can feel, in so far as they have hearts in their bodies, suffer unconsciously under an impression: ‘They tell us about Nature; but what they tell us withers in our grasp; indeed, it withers us, ourselves, as human beings.’ And mankind is compelled

to accept this as pure truth. Mankind is compelled by fearful force of authority to believe,—whilst in their hearts they feel, that the roses wither, they are compelled to the belief that these roses are the eternal living World-Beings. And people talk about World-Laws! The phenomena pass away, the laws abide for ever!—Natural science, this ‘science of Nature’, ... since what Man is seeking to express as his own consciousness of Human Self is Anthroposophy, then natural Science is,—Anti-Anthroposophy!

But let us look at the other side of it, at the ethical and moral side. The impulses of ethical and moral life came from the same divine source; but just as men had made withered roses of the laws of nature, so they made withered roses of the ethical impulses. The roots were everywhere gone; and so the ethical impulses went fluttering about the civilized world as moral commandments and customs, of which nobody knew the root. How could people possibly help feeling, ‘The moral commandments and customs are there;—but the divine origin is not there.’ And now arose the inevitable question: ‘Yes!—but what is to come of it, if these customs and commandments are not obeyed? It will come to chaos and anarchy in human society! ‘Whilst on the other side, again, there was this question: ‘What is the force of these commandments? What is at the root of them?’—Here, too, people felt this same withering and drying-up.

¹ He has the bits then all in his hand:

—One thing, alas! is missing however:

The bond of the spirit to hold them together!

• Encheiridion, Chemistry calls it;—

Laughs at itself, and never knows it!

(‘Faust’ I.)

That, you see, became the great question. That came to be the question, which arose out of Goetheanism, but to which Goetheanism, in itself, could give no answer.

Goethe gave, so to speak, two starting points, which converged upon one another, but did not meet. What is wanted,—what was wanted,—is the Philosophy of Freedom.

It needed to be shown that Man himself is the seat of the divine impulse, since in Man lies the power to go to the grounds of the spiritual principle both of the natural, as well as the spiritual principle of the moral law.

This led to the intuitionalism of the Philosophy of Freedom; it led to what people termed ethical individualism; ‘ethical individualism’, because in each single human individual was shown to reside the source of the ethical impulses,—in that Divine First Principle to which every man in the innermost part of his being is united.

Now that the age had begun, when the laws of Nature on one hand, and on the other, the moral commandments, had lost all life for men, because the Divine Principle was no longer to be found in the external world—(it could be no otherwise in the age of freedom!)—it was now in Man for we meet with Man in the first place in individual form ... it became now necessary to look in Man for the Divine Principle.

And with this, one has reached a world-conception which,—if you only consider it clearly, you will see,—leads on in straight continuation to what to-day we call Anthroposophy.

Suppose ... it is rather a primitive sketch, but it will do! ... that these are men. (Sketch in coloured chalks on the blackboard.) These men are connected in the inmost part of their being to a divine spiritual principle. This divine spiritual principle assumes the form of a divine, spiritual order in the world. And by looking at the inside of all men, conjunctively, one penetrates, now, to the divine spiritual principle, as, in old days, one penetrated to the divine spiritual principle when one looked outside one, and by primitive clairvoyance discovered the divine spiritual principle in the outer phenomena.

What had to be done then, was to follow up what was given by Goethe's world-conception on the one hand, and, on the other, by the sheer necessities of human evolution at the end of the nineteenth century; and so push on to the spiritual principle;—not to push on by any external, materialistic means, but by actual direct apprehension of Man's essential being.

Well, with this, the foundations were really laid of Anthroposophy,—if one looks at the matter in life and not in theory. For if anybody were to suggest that the Philosophy of Freedom is very far short of being Anthroposophy, it must seem to one exactly as though somebody said: ‘There was once a Goethe. This Goethe wrote all sorts of works. By “ Goethe ” we understand to-day the creator of Goethe's works.'—And another person were to answer, ‘That's not a logical sequence; for in 1749 there was a baby in Frankfort-on-Main; the baby indeed was quite black at its birth, and they said it couldn't live. If one considers this baby, and all the circumstances connected with it, it is impossible, logically, to deduce the whole of these “Goethe” Works. It is inconsequent:—one must trace Goethe back to his origin. And see whether you can discover Faust in the black-and-blue little boy who was born in 1749 at Frankfort-on-Main!’

You will agree that it is not very sensible to talk like this; but it is just as little sensible to say that Anthroposophy cannot logically follow from the Philosophy of Freedom. The black little baby in Frankfort went on living, and from its life proceeded all that to-day lives in the world's evolution as Goethe. And the Philosophy of Freedom had to go on living; and then, out of it, proceeded Anthroposophy.

Just think what it would be if, instead of actual life, there were to come a professor of philosophic logic, and say that everything which is in East and Wilhelm Meister, etc., must be deduced logically from the blue-and-black little boy of 1749! Do you think he would be able to deduce anything? By no means! He would only demonstrate contradictions—terrible contradictions! ‘I can't make the two things agree! ‘he would say; ‘I find no sequence between this Faust, as written at some time by somebody or other, and the blue-black little boy, as he existed in Frankfort-on-Main.’

And so, too, say the people who deal in fusty book-worm-logic, not in life: ‘From the Philosophy of freedom there is no logical sequence to Anthroposophy.’—Well, my dear friends, if the sequence had been a logical one, then you might have seen how all the schoolmasters would have been busy in 1894, deducing Anthroposophy from the Philosophy of Freedom! They just did nothing of the kind! And afterwards they come, and confess that they cannot deduce it, that they can't bring the two together; and make out a contradiction between what came after and what went before.—The fact is that people in these days have absolutely no capacity,—at a time when so-called logic is cultivated, and philosophy, and such things,—they have absolutely no capacity for entering into real life, for observing what is springing and sprouting up around them, and has more in it than can be seen by the pedantry of logicians.

The first thing to be done, then, in the next place, was to come to relations with all that was pushing its way up, so to speak, out of the present life of the day towards a progressive development of human civilization.

Well, as you know, I tried to do this by picking out two very striking and remarkable instances as subjects for discussion.—The first of these was Nietzsche. Why this particular case should he chosen will be obvious to you from what has gone before. For Nietzsche, namely, presented a personality on the top-surface of the modern stream of civilization, who had grown into the whole evolutionary tendency of world-conception at the present day, and who, in opposition to all the rest, was honest.

What did all the rest say? What did one find to be the general verdict, so to speak, in the 'nineties of the nineteenth century. The general verdict amounted to this:—Natural science must, of course, be right. Natural science, as constituted, is the great authority. We take our stand on the abiding ground of Natural science and peep up at the stars.—Well, of course as a leading instance, even before this, there was the conversation between Napoleon and the famous astronomer Laplace. Napoleon could not understand how, by looking up at the stars with a telescope, one can find God. And the astronomer replied: ‘I do not need the hypothesis’.Of course he didn't need such an hypothesis to see the heavens and their stars with a telescope. But he needed it, the moment he wished to be a man. But the sight of the heavens and the stars with a telescope gave man's own nature nothing, absolutely nothing. The heavens were full of stars; but they were stars of the senses. Otherwise they were empty.

And men looked through the microscope as far as ever one can see, into the tiniest life-germ, into the tiniest part of a life-germ, and ever further. And the microscope was made more perfect, and more perfect still.

But the soul they didn't find. They might look never so long into the microscope; it was empty of any soul. There was nothing there, either of soul or spirit. Neither in the stars was there anything of soul or spirit; nor under the microscope could they find any soul or spirit. And so it went on.

And with this Nietzsche found himself faced.—What did the rest of them say?—They said: ‘Oh, well, one looks through the telescope at the stars, and one sees so many worlds of the senses,—nothing else. But then we have a religious life, a religion, and this tells us that there is a spirit all the same.’ David Friedrich Strauss may talk as much as he pleases and ask at the end: ‘Where, then, is this spirit to be found along any scientific road!’ We stand by the fact, that in the writings handed down to us they talk of the Spirit all the same. We don't find him anywhere, it is true; but nevertheless we believe

¹ ‘Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Starke.’

‘The sight gives strength unto the Angels,

Though none may sound the depths thereof;’

(‘Faust,’, Prologue in Heaven.)

in him. Science finds him nowhere; and we are bound to believe in Science; which is what it is, because it is bent upon reality;—if it were different, it would have no reality,—and there-fore everything that searches along any other road will come to no reality. We know about reality; and we believe, ... we believe in what is not indeed discovered to be a reality, but what old times tell us about as being a reality.

It was this, you see, that in a soul like Nietzsche's, which was honest, worked downright distraction. There came a day when Nietzsche said: ‘One must cut the account!’—How did he do it? He did it thus: he said: ‘Well then, we have now the reality. The reality is discovered by natural science. All the rest is nothing. Christianity taught that Christ is not to be sought in the reality that one investigates with telescopes and microscopes. But there is no other reality. Therefore, there is no justification for Christianity. Therefore,’ said Nietzsche, ‘I shall write the Anti-Christ.’

When one looks through the microscope and telescope, one discovers no ethical impulses, People accept the old ethical impulses, however, as commandments that flutter around in the air, or are ordered by the official authorities. But they are not to be discovered by scientific research. And so Nietzsche proposed, as the next book to his Anti-Christ, which was the first in his Revaluation, of all Values, to write a second book, in which he showed that all ideals exist, strictly speaking, in Nothing,—for they are not to be found in Reality; and that, therefore, they must be abandoned.

And he proposed then to write a third book: The Moral Principle, certainly, is not derived from the telescope and microscope; therefore, said Nietzsche, I shall argue the case for the Immoral principle.—And accordingly the three first books were to have been called: Revaluation of all Values; first book, The Anti-Christ;—second book, Nihilism, or The Abolition of all Ideals;—third book, Immoralism, or The Abolition of the Universal Moral Order.

It was a dreadful thing, of course. Rut it is the ultimate honest consequence of what are really the other people's premises. One must put things in this way before one's soul in order plainly to perceive the inner nerve of modern civilization.—And this was something that required to be dealt with. One required to show in what a terrible error Nietzsche was involved, and how it must be rectified in each case by assuming Nietzsche's own starting-point, and showing that these starting-points must be taken as leading, in actual fact, not to Nothing, but to a Spiritual Principle.—It was a necessity, therefore, to settle relations with Nietzsche.'

And the same, too, with Haeckel. Here again was a phenomenon with which it was necessary to enter into discussion. Haeckelism had followed up with a certain consequentiality all that natural science can make out of the evolution of sense-organisms. And this was a point to be connected onto in the manner I described to you at the beginning. I did it, as I said, by the aid of Topinard's book, in the very first anthroposophical lectures that I ever gave. One only needed to proceed in this way, and the actual progressive steps led on of themselves into the concrete spiritual world. And the details then came afterwards simply through further investigation, further life with the spiritual world.

I have told you all this for the following reason, namely, to show this:—that in tracing the history of Anthroposophy one must go back to illustrations from the life of our modern civilization.—If one traces back the history of the Anthroposophical Society, one must go back and ask: Where were the people in the first place, who had received a kind of impulse that made them ready to understand spiritual things?

And these were just the people who, from the character of their peculiarly homeless souls, had received such impulses from Blavatsky's quarter.

¹ Fr. Nietzsche, ein Kampfer gegen seine Zeit. ( Nietzsche, the Antagonist of his Age.) Phil. Anthr. Verlag.

You see, my dear friends, what at the beginning of the century,—simply from the circumstances of the time,—had gone on side by side: the Theosophical Society and Anthroposophy, was something that now, in this third period (which began, as I told you about 1914), was completely outgrown and done with. There was absolutely nothing left, indeed, to remind one in any way of the old theosophist days. Down to the very forms of expression there was nothing, really, left. As it was, quite at the be-ginning of anthroposophic working, the tendency of the stream itself led the direction of spiritual study on to the Mystery of Golgotha, to the penetration of Christianity; and so, on the other side, the tendency which now set in brought these same spiritual means to bear upon natural science. Only,—I would like to say,—the acquisition of the spiritual means, by which true Christianity could be restored to its place before the eyes of the age,—the acquisition of these means belongs, as a fact, to an earlier time. It begins in the first period already, and is more peculiarly cultivated in the second. What was required for work in the various other directions did not really come out, in the manner I have been describing in these last few days, until the third stage. There then came to be people within the anthroposophic movement itself, who were seeking along the scientific path.

Now for those who are seeking along this scientific path, it is quite necessary, ... I say this in order that fresh misunderstandings may not continually be introduced into the anthroposophic movement ... especially for those who are pursuing this scientific path it is pre-eminently necessary that they should be absolutely filled through and through with what I spoke of yesterday and this morning again, namely, this working from the central source of Anthroposophy. It is here really necessary that people should be quite clear about these things.

My dear friends, it was in the year 1908, I think, that I said once in Nuremberg,—to give a quite definite fact as illustration:—We undoubtedly have a very great evolution in science, owing to the experiments made in recent times. Such investigations made by aid of experiment have brought an enormous amount to light. They turn out well everywhere, for the reason that all through the experimental process a spiritual element is at work, in the form of spiritual beings. For the most part, what happens is,—as I said then,—that the learned scientist goes up to the table of operations, and simply really goes through the manual performances, according as the practice may be, according to the regular methods of the mechanic routine. And then, besides him, there is a whole army at work,—so to speak—of spiritual beings. And it is they, who really do the thing. For, as for the person experimenting at the table, he only provides the opportunities, so that the different things can come out, bit by bit. If this were not the case, the thing wouldn't have gone so particularly well in recent times.

For you see, whenever anybody struck upon something,—like Julius Robert Mayer on his voyage,—he proceeded to clothe it in exceedingly abstract formula. But the other people didn't even understand it. And when, in course of time, Philip Reis was forced upon the telephone: then again the other people didn't understand it. There is really an enormous gulf between what folks understand and what is continually being dug out by experiment. For the spiritual impulses are not the very least under Man's control.

The fact of the matter is this:—Let us go back again to that very distinguished man, Julius Robert Mayer, who to-day, of course, as I said, is a great scientific discoverer, universally acknowledged, but who, so long as he was at school, was always at the bottom of his class. When he was attending the University at Tubingen, they thought of advising him to leave before taking his degree. With pain and grief, however, he succeeded in becoming a doctor, enlisted then as a ship's surgeon, and went on a voyage to India. They met with very rough weather on the voyage, the sailors fell ill, and on arrival he had to bleed a number of them.

Now a doctor, of course, knows that there are two sorts of blood vessels: veins and arteries. Arterial blood spurts out red; veinous blood spurts out bluish. When one lets blood, therefore,—makes an incision in the vein,—the blood. that comes out should be bluish. Julius Robert Mayer had very often to bleed people. Rut with all these sailors, who had made the voyage with him and fallen ill from the exciting times they had gone through at sea, something very curious happened when he made the incision. ‘Good heavens!’ he said to himself, ‘I've gone and struck the wrong place; for it's red blood spurting out of the vein! I must have struck an artery!’ And now the same thing happened again with the next man; and he got quite perplexed and nervous, thinking each time that he must have struck the wrong place; because each time the same thing happened. Finally he came upon the idea that he had made the incisions quite rightly after all; but that the sea, which had made the people ill, must have had some effect upon them, which gradually caused the veinous blood to come out red instead of blue, or at least approximately red, approximately the colour of the arterial blood.

And so, quite unexpectedly, in the process of blood-letting, a modern man, without any sort of spiritual motive leading him to look for any particular mental chain of connections, discovers a stupendous fact. But what does he say to it? As a modern man of science he says: ‘Now I must carefully consider what exactly takes place: Energy is converted into Heat, and Heat into Energy. It will be the same, then, as with the steam-engine. One heats the engine, and the result is Motion, Work; Work produced by Heat; and it will be the same in Man; and because Man is in the tropical zone (the ship had sailed to the tropics), where he is under other conditions of temperature, he therefore does not need to perform the process of con-version into blue blood. According to the law of the transformation of forces in nature, the thing takes place differently. The conditions of temperature in the human organism are different; the blood does not turn so blue in the veins, but remains red.’—The law of the transformation of substances, of forces, which to-day is a recognized law, is deduced from this observation.

Suppose for a moment that something of the kind had happened to a doctor, not in the nineteenth century but, let us say, if we imagine quite different conditions, to one perhaps in the eleventh or twelfth century only. It would never have occurred to this doctor, when he observed such a fact, to deduce from it the ‘mechanical equivalent of heat’. It would never have entered his head to connect anything so abstract with a phenomenon of the kind.

Or even, indeed, if you think of later times:—Paracelsus would certainly never have thought of such a thing,—not even in his sleep; although Paracelsus in his sleep was still a great deal cleverer, of course, than other people when awake,—but such a thing would most certainly not have occurred to him, my dear friends. A doctor such as Paracelsus might have been (and for the nineteenth century, Julius Robert Mayer was much the same as Paracelsus was for his age),—or a hypothetical doctor that lived, let us say if you like, in the tenth, or eleventh, or twelfth century,—what would he have said?

Well, even van Helmont still talks of archeus, that is, of what to-day we should call, conjointly, the etheric and astral bodies; (we have to discover it again by means of Anthroposophy; these terms had been forgotten) ... . A doctor of the twelfth century would have said: ‘In the temperate zone we find in Man a very pronounced inter-action between red blood and blue blood. When we take Man to the torrid zone, the veinous blood and the arterial blood no longer make themselves so vigorously distinct from one another; the blue veinous blood has become redder, and the red arterial blood more blue. There is scarcely any distinction left between them. What can be the origin of this?’—Well, there the doctor of the eleventh or twelfth century would have said (in those days he would have called it archeus, or something of the sort,—what we to-day call the astral body): With Man in the torrid zone,—he would have said,—the archeus sinks less deep into the physical body than it does with Man in the temperate zone. A Man of the temperate zone is more saturated with his astral body, more densely permeated by it; with the Man of the torrid zone, the astral body remains more outside him, even when he is awake. And, as a consequence, this differentiation, which takes place through the action of the astral body upon the blood, takes place more strongly with the Man of the temperate zone, and less strongly with the Man of the torrid zone. The Man of the torrid zone, therefore, has his astral body more free. We have a sign of this in the lesser thickening of the blood. And so he lives instinctively in his astral body, because this astral body is freer. And he becomes, accordingly, not a mechanically-thinking European; he becomes a spiritually-thinking Indian who, at the full flower of his civilization (not now, when it is all in decadence, but at its full flower) naturally has a quite different, a spiritual civilization, a Veda-civilization; whereas the European naturally has a Comtist, or Darwinist, or John Stuart Mill-ist civilization.

Yes, indeed, my dear friends; from this blood-letting a doctor of the eleventh or twelfth century would have arrived at some contemplation, such as this, of the Anthropos. He would still have sailed on into Anthroposophy. He would still have found his way on to the spiritual reality, to the living spirit. Julius Robert Mayer,—the Paracelsus, if you will, of the nineteenth century,—found, in his day, the law: ‘Nothing comes from nothing; therefore, there is a transformation of forces’,—an abstract formula.

The spiritual principle in Man, which can once more be found by means of Anthroposophy, this spiritual principle leads on in turn to Epics. Here we link up with that quest for the moral principles which we started on in the Philosophy of Freedom. Thereby the way is once more opened to Man for a spiritual activity in which he no longer has a gulf between Nature and Spirit, Nature and Ethics, but in which he finds the direct union of both.

One thing, however, will be plain from all I have been showing you, which is this:—The leading lights of modern science arrive at their abstract formulae. And these abstract formula are, of course, buzzing about in the heads of all the people to-day who have received a scientific training. The people who give this scientific training regard this tanglewood of abstract formula as something in which the modern man has to believe. And they look upon it as sheer lunacy for anyone to talk of leading up from the composition of the red and the blue blood to the spiritual principle of Man.

From this, however, you can see all that it means for an actual scientist, if he proposes to come into Anthroposophy. It means something more, besides the mere goodwill. It means, in reality, immense and devoted application to a profundity of study to which people are not accustomed at the present day,—and least of all accustomed, when they have passed through a scientific training.

What is wanted then, here, more especially, is courage, courage, and ever again courage. And with this we touch on the element which we above all things need for our souls, if we are to meet the necessary life-conditions of the Anthroposophical Society. This Society stands, in a way, to-day in diametrical opposition to all that is popular in the world. If it wants to make itself popular, therefore, it can have no possible prospect of succeeding. And therefore what we must not do,—more particularly if we want to spread Anthroposophy through the various branches of actual life; which has been the constant attempt since the year 1919,—we must not take the line of trying to make ourselves popular, but we must go out straight from the centre and essence, and pursue the road marked out by the life of the spirit itself,—as I described to you with reference to the Goetheanum this morning, in this one particular case.—But we must learn to think in this way in all matters; otherwise, we slide off the path; otherwise, we slide off it in such a way that people continually, with more or less justice, confuse us with other movements and judge us from the outside. But if we give ourselves with all energy our own form of structure, then, my dear friends, then we shall be following the road that runs in the direction of the anthroposophic movement and the conditions of its life. But we must teach ourselves the earnestness from which then the needful courage will come.

And we must not forget what is made simply necessary by the fact that we to-day, as Anthroposophists, are only a little handful. It is the hope, truly, of this little handful, that what they are the means of spreading abroad to-day will spread to ever larger and larger numbers of people; and, amongst these people then, there will be a certain direction of mind and knowledge, a certain moral and ethical, a religious direction.

But all these things, which will exist amongst people then through the impulses of Anthroposophy, and will be looked upon as, matters of course,—these things need to exist in a very much higher degree amongst those to-day who are only a little handful; these people must feel the very gravest obligations incumbent upon them towards the spiritual world. And one must understand that, quite instinctively, this will find expression in the verdict of the world around them.

By nothing can the Anthroposophical Society do itself more harm,—intense harm,—than if this Anthroposophical Society fails to give itself, in its members, a general form and style, through which people outside are made aware that, in the very strictest sense of the term, the Anthroposophists will this and that; so that they are able to distinguish them from all other, sectarian or other, movements.

So long as this is not the case, however, the Society cannot fail to call forth the kind of verdict from the outer world, which it does to-day. People don't really quite know what the purpose is of this Anthroposophical Society. They make acquaintance with some of the individual members; and in these there is nothing to be seen of Anthroposophy. Now suppose, let us say, that the Anthroposophists were to proclaim themselves by such a fine and marked sense for truth and circumstantial accuracy, that everybody saw at once: That's an Anthroposophist; one notices that he has such a very delicate sense in all he says, on no account to go further in his statements than strictly accords with the facts;—that, now, would give a certain impression.—However, to-day I don't wish, as I said, to make criticisms, but only to point out the positive things.—Are there signs of this happening? that is the question to be asked.

Or, again, people might say: Yes, those are Anthroposophists! They are very particular in all little matters of good taste. They have a certain artistic sense; the Goetheanum in Dornach must have had some effect after all.—Then again people would know: Anthroposophy certainly gives its members a sort of good taste: one can distinguish them by that from other people.

This is the kind of thing you see,—not so much what can be put into clearly defined propositions, but things of this kind,—that are all part of what the Anthroposophical Society, must study to develop, if it is to fulfil the conditions of its life.

Oh, there has been a great deal of talk about such things. But the question that has again and again to be raised, and one that should occupy a great place in all that is discussed amongst Anthroposophists, is this: How to give the anthroposophic society a quite distinct stamp, so that everyone can tell: Here is something by which this society is so completely distinguished from all the others as to leave no possibility of confusion.

One can only indicate these things as matters more of feeling; for where there is to be life, there can be no fixed programmes. Rut just ask yourselves whether, in the anthroposophic society, we have altogether got beyond the old: ‘One has to do this’, ... ‘One always does that’,... ‘One must be guided by this or the other’, and whether the impulse is always a strong one on every occasion to ask: What does Anthroposophy herself say?—There is no need for it to be set down in a lecture. But the things set down, or spoken, in lectures sink into hearts,—and this gives a certain tendency of direction.

I must say it once more, my dear friends: Until Anthroposophy is taken as a living being, who goes about unseen amongst us, and to whom each feels himself responsible,—not until then will this little band of Anthroposophists go forward as a model band that leads the way. And they should lead the way as a model band,—this little band of Anthroposophists.

When one came into any of the theosophic societies (of which there are many) they had, of course, the three well-known ‘principles’. I have spoken of these yesterday and how we must look upon them. The first principle was the establishment of universal human brotherhood, without distinction of race or nation, etc. I pointed out yesterday that it is a matter for consideration whether in future this should be set up in the form of a dogma. But still, my dear friends, it is significant that people make such a principle at all. Only it must become a reality. It must, little by little, become a reality in actual fact. And this it will do, when Anthroposophy herself is regarded as a living, supersensible, invisible being, going about amongst the Anthroposophists. Then perhaps there may be less talk of brotherhood,—less talk of universal love of mankind, but this love will be more living in men's hearts; and the world will see, from the very tone in which they speak of that which binds them together in Anthroposophy, from the very tone in which one tells the other this or that, it will be evident that it signifies something for the one, that the other too is a person who, like himself, is linked to the Unseen Being, Anthroposophy.—My dear friends, we can choose instead to take another way. We can take the way of simply forming a number of cliques, of going on as the fashion is in the world,—coming together for five-o'clock tea-parties or other social gatherings of the kind, where people drop in just for the purpose of mutual conversation, or at most to sit in company and listen to a lecture. We can do that, too, no doubt, instead. We can form little cliques, of course, instead,—little private circles. Rut an anthroposophic movement, of course, cannot live in a society of this kind. An anthroposophic movement can only live in an Anthroposophical Society which is a reality. But, in such a society, things need to be taken with very serious earnestness; there, one must at every moment of one's life feel that one is an associate of the Unseen Being, Anthroposophy.

If this could become the tone of mind, the tone of actual practice; if,—not in twenty-four hours perhaps, but after a certain length of time,—this could become the tone of mind, then,—let us say in twenty-one years,—there would most certainly arise a certain impulse: The moment people heard anything like what I mentioned yesterday again from the opponents, then the needful impulse would awake in people's hearts;—I am not saying by any means that it need lead at once to any practical action, but the necessary impulse would be there, in people's hearts; and then in good time the actions would come too.

When the actions do not come; when only the opponents act and organize; then it must be that the right impulse is not there; it must be that people still prefer well ... to live on in peace and comfort,—and of course to sit in the audience, when there are lectures on Anthroposophy. But this, at any rate, is not enough if the Anthroposophical Society is to prosper. If the Anthroposophical Society is to prosper, Anthroposophy must really live in it. And if that is the case, then indeed, in the course of twenty-one years, something of importance might come to pass,—or even in a shorter period. When I come to reckon,—why, the society has already existed twenty-one years!

Well, my dear friends, since I do not wish to make criticisms, I would merely ask you yourselves to carry your self-recollection so far as to ask, whether really each single individual at each single post has done that which must be felt to proceed from the very centre of all that is anthroposophic? And if you should happen to find that one or other of you has not as yet felt this, then I would beg you to begin at once, tomorrow, or this very evening; for it would not be a good thing if the Anthroposophical Society were to go to pieces. And it will most certainly go to pieces if (now that in addition to all the other things it already has on hand, it proposes to rebuild the Goetheanum), it will most certainly go to pieces, if that consciousness does not awake, of which I have been speaking in these lectures,—if this self-recollection is not there. And then, my dear friends, if it does fall to pieces, it will fall to pieces very rapidly.—But that is entirely dependent on the will of the people who are in the Anthroposophical Society.

Anthroposophy will quite certainly not be driven out of the world. But it might sink back for tens of years and more, so to speak, into a latent state, and then be taken up again later. An enormous amount would be lost for the evolution of mankind.—This is something to think over, if one intends in earnest to set about that self-recollection which was really my meaning with these lectures. It certainly was not my meaning, however, that there should again be a lot of big talk, and all sorts of programmes set up again, and declarations that ‘should this or that be wanted, we place ourselves entirely at disposal!’ ... those things we always did. What now is needed is that we should look into ourselves and find the inner centre of our own being. And if we pursue this search for the inner centre of our being with aid of the spirit to be found in the anthroposophic wealth of wisdom, we shall then find, too, that anthroposophic impulse, which the Anthroposophical Society needs as a condition of its life.

I particularly wanted in these lectures, my dear friends, not to deal so much in criticism, of which there has been plenty in these last times;—a great deal has been said, scattered about, on one or the other occasion. This time I wanted rather, by a historical review of one or two things,—if I tried to say everything, these lectures would. not be long enough;—but by a historical review of just one or two things, I wanted really through a study of anthroposophical affairs to give just a stimulus towards the actual handling of them in the right way. And these lectures especially, I think, can afford occasion for being thought over, reflected upon, so to speak. That is a thing for which one can always find time; for it can be done between the lines of life,—the lines of a life that brings with it the calls of the outer world.

This, my dear friends, is what I wanted to put before you in these lectures more especially, as a sort of Self-Recollection for the Anthroposophical Society, and to lay it very urgently to your hearts. We have absolute need to-day of this kind of self-recollection. We should not forget that if we go to the sources of anthroposophic life, very much can be done by means of them. If we neglect to do so, we are simply abandoning the paths on which it is possible to do anything.

We are about to enter on tasks of so great a magnitude as the rebuilding of the Goetheanum. Here, truly, our hearts' considerations can go out only from really great impulses; here we can go out from no kind of pettiness. This is what I said this morning to those who were there; and this is what I wished to put before you again to-night from a particular aspect.

From the ‘News Sheet’ (Nachrichtenblatt) Year I. No. 22, June 8th, 1924

During the time from the middle of May to the middle of June, Frau Marie Steiner with the eurythmists from the Goetheanum is undertaking a eurythmy tour through the towns of Ulm, Nurnberg, Eisenach, Erfurt, Naumberg, Hildesheim, Hanover, Halle and Breslau. The accounts of this journey, which I receive here in the Goetheanum, speak of a profound interest which the comparatively large audiences take in the art which has arisen out of the anthroposophical movement.

That here and there a few noisy disturbers bring discord into the otherwise very gratifying reception cannot alienate him who knows the obstacles which must always, in every sphere of life, be contended with when that to which people are accustomed is faced by something new.

One would like to expect from the Anthroposophical Society that it should bring its full inner support towards the endeavours which are active in the art of eurythmy. For only with such inner support can the warmth be sustained which is necessary for those who dedicate themselves to these endeavours.

It is not everywhere known within the Anthroposophical Society upon what foundations such endeavours are built up. At the Goetheanum, under the direction of Marie Steiner, constant work is going on in order to carry out all the practices necessary before the performances. In all this work great devotion is indispensable from all those taking part. And from outside it is not always apparent how wearing it is, in artistic work, to make tiring journeys from town to town, how fretting to unfold the artistic mood during these fatiguing journeys. To succeed in carrying out such endeavours in the available circumstances certainly needs much devotion and a true enthusiasm for the cause.

Eurythmy as an art is the fruit of the spiritual impulse working in the anthroposophical movement. That which lives in the human organisation as soul and spirit comes to visible manifestation through eurythmy. Its effect upon those watching it depends upon the inner perception that in the externally visible movements of people and groups of people soul and spirit visibly unfold themselves. He only who has the artistic conception of what lies in the audible word can unfold the right sense for how the audible can, in eurythmy, be transformed into the visible. One has, as it were, the human soul-being before one’s eyes.

And into this evident revelation of the human soul-being resound the arts of recitation and of music. It can be said that the art of recitation experiences in the strivings of eurythmy the essential conditions of its being. Recitation is, of course, connected in the first place with the word. But the word easily succumbs to the temptation to stray away from the artistic. It tends to become the content of understanding and feeling. It is, however, only the formation of this content which can have artistic effect. When recitation appears at the side of the eurythmic art of movement it has to unfold its formative character in full purity. It must reveal what can work formatively and musically in language. Necessary for eurythmy, therefore, was the development of the art of recitation, as this has been made possible by the devotion of Marie Steiner to this part of the anthroposophical movement. Within the Anthroposophical Society one should follow up what has arisen since the time when Marie Steiner, with a few eurythmists, began the work in 1914 in Berlin. Eurythmy could only unfold itself as a visible art of speech side by side with the artistically conceived audible art of speech. He only who has the artistic conception of what lies in the audible word can unfold the right sense for how the audible can, in eurythmy, be transformed into the visible. From the side of the public that only can be of interest which shows artistic merit. For the members of the Anthroposophical Society the point is intimately to share in the becoming of such a striving. For this is a part of the anthroposophical life.

In such a sharing the noblest human elements will be able to develop. And in such a development lies indeed one of the grandest tasks of the Anthroposophical Society.

Our musicians who place their artistic gifts at the service of eurythmy are bringing, I am convinced—through the way in which they do this and through the great enthusiasm which ensouls them in their work with the related art—they are bringing music forward in a quite special direction. I believe, indeed that the musical sense which lives in them finds its true liberation when placed in this connection. In any case, in the work of our musicians within the framework of eurythmy activity there is a deeply satisfying expansion of the musical into the general sphere of art. And its fruitfulness is shown again by the beautiful working-back upon the specifically musical.

From Marie Steiner’s efforts in the sphere of eurythmy there has arisen the Eurythmeum in Stuttgart. This is based upon the idea of a eurythmy conservatorium. Eurythmy in all its branches is taught there, lectures being also given in such auxiliary subjects as poetry, aesthetics, history of art, music theory, etc. All this in accordance with that artistic conception in the light of which eurythmy must stand. What has arisen in this way in Stuttgart carries within itself many possibilities of further upbuilding. It is deeply satisfying to see how many members from the circle of our society devote themselves with the warmest participation to the furtherance of eurythmy endeavours. This participation is in process of growing in a gratifying way. Through this there has entered into our movement a feature which is entirely consistent with the fundamental conditions of its life. For art stands midway between the revelations of the sense-world and spiritual reality. It is the aim of anthroposophy to place the spiritual world before mankind. Art is the reflection of the spirit in the sense-world. If art did not grow upon anthroposophical soil this could only result from some lack in this soil itself. In anthroposophical circles insight into this has been steadily increasing; it is to be hoped that such understanding will ripen more and more.

But even if anthroposophy initially has its roots in the insights already gained into the spiritual world, these are only its roots. Its branches, leaves, flowers and fruits grow into all fields of human life and activity. With the thoughts that reveal the essence and laws of spiritual existence, it reaches into the depths of the creative human soul, and its artistic powers are evoked by the call. Art receives all-round inspiration. It allows the warmth that radiates from the contemplation of the spiritual to flow into the hearts: and the religious sense awakens in true devotion to the divine in the world. Religion receives a deep internalization. It opens its sources, and the human will, borne by love, can draw from them. It brings human love to life and thus becomes creative in impulses of moral action and genuine social practice. It fertilizes the view of nature through the driving seeds of spiritual insight, thereby transforming mere knowledge of nature into true knowledge of nature.

In all of this, anthroposophy generates a wealth of life tasks. These tasks can only reach the broader circles of human life if they start from their point of origin in a caring society.

The leadership of the Goetheanum in Dornach called upon those individuals who believe that the anthroposophy cultivated at this Goetheanum seeks to correspond to the characterized tasks to bring the long-standing attempts to form anthroposophical societies to a satisfactory conclusion in a Christmas conference.

The call was answered in a way that could not have been expected. Seven to eight hundred people appeared at the “laying of the foundation stone” of the “General Anthroposophical Society”. What they did will be described in this supplement to the “Goetheanum” bit by bit.

It fell to me to open and preside over the meetings. And it became easy for my heart – this opening. The Swiss poet Albert Steffen sat next to me. The assembled anthroposophists looked to him with grateful souls. It was on Swiss soil that they had gathered to found the Anthroposophical Society. In Albert Steffen, they have long had a leading member in Switzerland to whom they look up with true enthusiasm. I saw in him Switzerland in one of her noblest sons; my first word was to give him and our Swiss friends the warmest greetings, and the second was to ask him to open the meeting.

It was a deeply moving beginning. Albert Steffen, the wonderful painter in words, the poetic visualizer, spoke. One heard and saw soul-stirring images like visions before one.

The laying of the foundation stone of the Goetheanum in 1913 stood there before the soul's eye. I cannot find words to express how it was for me in my soul when I saw this process, in which I was privileged to work ten years ago, in Steffen's painting.

The work at the Goetheanum, in which hundreds of devoted hands moved and hundreds of enthusiastic hearts beat, conjured up artistically perfect words before the mind.

And - the burning of the Goetheanum: the whole tragedy, the pain of thousands, they trembled when Albert Steffen spoke to us.

And then, in the foreground of another picture: the essence of anthroposophy itself, transfigured by the poet soul of Albert Steffen. In the background are its enemies, not being criticized, but simply presented with the creative power.

“Ten Years of the Goetheanum”; Albert Steffen's words about it went deep - one felt it - into the hearts of those gathered.

After this dignified prelude, it fell to me to speak of the form that the Anthroposophical Society will now have to take.

What should take the place of a conventional statute was to be said. A description of what people in a purely human context - as an anthroposophical society - would like to accomplish should take the place of such a “statute”. Anthroposophy is cultivated at the Goetheanum, which since the fire has only had makeshift rooms made of wood. What the leaders of the Goetheanum understand by this care and what effect they expect it to have on human civilization should be stated. Then how they envision this care in a free university for spiritual science. Not principles to which one should profess, but a reality in its own way should be described. Then it should be said that anyone who wants to contribute to what is happening at the Goetheanum can become a member.

The following is proposed as a “statute”, which is not a “statute” but a description of what can arise from such a purely human and vital social relationship:

1. The Anthroposophical Society shall be an association of people who wish to cultivate the soul life in the individual human being and in human society on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world.

2. The core of this Society consists of those individuals and groups who were represented at the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum, Dornach, 1923. They are imbued with the conviction that a true science of the spiritual world, developed over many years and already published in important parts, really does exist at the present time and that today's civilization lacks the cultivation of such a science. The Anthroposophical Society is to have this task. It will try to solve this task by making the Anthroposophical spiritual science cultivated at the Goetheanum in Dornach, with its results for fraternity in human coexistence, for the moral and religious as well as for the artistic and general spiritual life in the human being, the center of its endeavors. ¹

3. The personalities assembled in Dornach as the basis of the Society recognize and approve of the view of the Goetheanum leadership, represented by the Executive Council formed at the founding meeting, regarding the following: “The anthroposophy cultivated at the Goetheanum leads to results that can serve as a stimulus for the spiritual life of every human being, regardless of nation, class or religion. They can lead to a social life truly built on brotherly love. Their appropriation as a basis for life is not tied to a scientific level of education, but only to an unbiased human nature. Their research and the appropriate evaluation of their research results, however, are subject to spiritual scientific schooling, which is to be attained in stages. These results are as exact as the results of true natural science. If they are generally recognized in the same way as the latter, they will bring about the same progress in all areas of life, not only in the spiritual but also in the practical realm."

4. The Anthroposophical Society is not a secret society, but a completely public one. Anyone can become a member, without distinction of nationality, class, religion, scientific or artistic conviction, who sees something justified in the existence of such an institution as the Goetheanum in Dornach as a free school of spiritual science. The Society rejects all sectarian aspirations. It does not regard politics as part of its remit.

5. The Anthroposophical Society sees a center of its work in the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. This will consist of three classes. Society members who have been members for a period of time to be determined by the leadership of the Goetheanum will be admitted to the School upon application. They will then enter the first class of the School of Spiritual Science. Admission to the second and third classes will follow if applicants are deemed suitable by the leadership of the Goetheanum.

6. Every member of the Anthroposophical Society has the right to participate in all lectures, other presentations and meetings organized by it under the conditions to be announced by the board.

7. The establishment of the School of Spiritual Science is initially the responsibility of Rudolf Steiner, who is to appoint his co-workers and his eventual successor. 8. All the Society's publications will be public, as are those of other public societies.²

The publications of the School of Spiritual Science will make no exception to this public nature; however, the leadership of the School claims that from the outset it disputes the legitimacy of any judgment about these writings that is not based on the training from which they emerged. In this sense, it will not grant any judgment that is not based on corresponding preliminary studies, as is usual in the recognized scientific world. Therefore, the writings of the School of Spiritual Science will bear the following note: “Printed as a manuscript for members of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum Class... No one will be granted competence to judge these writings who has not acquired the foreknowledge claimed by this school through them or in a way recognized by it as equivalent. Other judgments will be rejected insofar as the authors of the corresponding writings do not enter into discussion of them.

9. The aim of the Anthroposophical Society shall be to promote spiritual research, and the aim of the School of Spiritual Science shall be to carry out this research. Dogmatism in any field shall be excluded from the Anthroposophical Society.

10. The Anthroposophical Society holds an ordinary annual meeting at the Goetheanum every year, at which the Executive Council gives a full report. The agenda for this meeting is announced by the Executive Council with the invitation sent to all members six weeks before the conference. The Executive Council can convene extraordinary meetings and set the agenda for them. It shall send invitations to the members three weeks in advance. Applications from individual members or groups of such members must be submitted one week before the meeting.

11. Members may join together in smaller or larger groups in any local or professional field. The Anthroposophical Society has its seat at the Goetheanum. From there, the Executive Council is to provide members or groups of members with what it regards as the tasks of the Society. It deals with the officials elected or appointed by the individual groups. The individual groups take care of the admission of members; however, the confirmations of admission are to be submitted to the Executive Council in Dornach and signed by it in confidence with the group officials. In general, each member should join a group; only those for whom it is absolutely impossible to find admission to a group should be admitted as members in Dornach itself. 12. The membership fee is determined by the individual groups; however, each group is required to pay [15 francs] for each of its members to the central administration at the Goetheanum.

13. Each working group shall draw up its own statutes; however, these shall not contradict the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society.

14. The Society's organ is the weekly journal “Goetheanum”, which for this purpose shall include a supplement containing the official communications of the Society. This enlarged edition of the “Goetheanum” will be distributed only to members of the Anthroposophical Society.³

The opening meeting on the morning of December 25 was closely connected with the festivities on the morning of the 25th, which bore the name: “Laying of the Foundation Stone of the General Anthroposophical Society”.

This could only be an ideal and spiritual laying of the foundation stone. The soil in which the “foundation stone” was laid could only be the hearts and souls of the personalities united in the Society; and the foundation stone itself must be the attitude that springs from the anthroposophical way of life. This attitude forms, in the way it is demanded by the signs of the present time, the will to find the way to the contemplation of the spirit and to life from the spirit through human soul-penetration. I would like to start here, with which I tried to shape the “foundation stone” in verse form and give the further description of the opening meeting in the next issue of this newsletter.

Human soul!
You live in the limbs
That carry you through the world of space
Into the being of the spiritual sea:
Practice spirit-remembering
In the depths of the soul,
Where in the ruling
Creator of the world
the own I
in the God-I
reveals itself;
And you will truly live
in the human-world-being.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights rules
in the depths of the world, generating being:
You power-spirits
Let from the heights resound
What finds the echo in the depths;
This speaks:
From the divine, humanity exists.
The spirits in the east, west, north, south hear this:
May human beings hear it.

Human soul!
You live in the heartbeat of the heart and lungs,
which guides you through the rhythm of time
into your own soul being:
Practice spiritual reflection
in soul balance,
where the surging world-becoming-deeds
unite the own I
to the World-I
unite;
And you will truly feel
in the work of the human soul.

For the Christ-will rules in the surrounding
in the rhythms of the world, bestowing soul;
You spirits of light
Let the east inspire
What is formed by the West;
This speaks:
In the Christ, life becomes death.
The spirits in the east, west, north, and south hear this:
May human beings hear it.
Human soul!
You live in the resting head,
Which opens up to you the thoughts of the world from the reasons of eternity.
the world thoughts:
Practice spirit-seeing
In thought-rest,
Where the eternal divine goals of world-being-light
To one's own self
To free will
Give;
And you will think truly
in human spirit reasons.

For the spirit world thoughts prevail
in the world being, light-invoking:
you soul-spirits
let from the depths request,
what is heard in the heights:
This speaks:
In the spirit's world-thoughts, the soul awakens. This is heard by spirits in the east, west, north, and south: May men hear it.

At the turning point of time
the light of the world's spirit
entered the earthly stream of being;
night-darkness
had been fully developed;
day-bright light
shone in human souls;
light,
which warmed
the poor hearts of the shepherds;
light,
which enlightened
the wise heads of the Magi.

Divine light,
Christ-sun
Warmth
Our hearts;
Enlighten
Our minds;
That good will come
From what we
From our hearts,
What we
From our minds
Want to lead.

• 1. The Anthroposophical Society is linked to the Anthroposophical Society founded in 1912, but seeks to create an independent starting point for the goals set at that time, one that corresponds to the true spirit of the present.
• 2. The conditions under which one comes to the School for training have been publicly described and will continue to be published.
• 3. Members may purchase the bulletins individually. The conditions for doing so can be found at the beginning of this first issue. Everything that relates to the implementation of the statutes in detail will be given in a special “rules of procedure”. These will be included in one of the next numbers of the announcements.

MY DEAR FRIENDS! Movements such as our spiritual scientific movement have always been fostered in such a way that something that was to be impressed upon the spiritual culture of the times, or on culture in general, was first cultivated on the level of some formal social organization or society. And since the conditions of human interaction are the same today as they have been throughout history, it is also necessary for us, to a certain extent, to cultivate our spiritual scientific strivings within the framework of a formal organization.

Now, it has been the experience of almost all such organizations that it is difficult, at least in actual practice, to understand the concept of the society needed to foster a particular spiritual current like this. Time and again we're presented with evidence that there are very many people who actually do not like having to join a society. They admit that they feel uncomfortable about joining such a society; they would prefer to absorb its spiritual wealth through reading or listening to lectures not bound to any organized society, or through still other means. Only this morning, for example, I received a letter to that effect.

The kinds of reasons people give for taking this position have to be taken seriously. But let me emphasize again that a spiritual movement like this one is of necessity very different in its impulses and its whole way of thinking, feeling, and doing from the thinking, feeling, and doing of the other people around it. Therefore, to introduce such a movement to humanity with no help from a formal organization would be much more difficult than to do this by means of a society whose members are preparing, through their interactions and their ongoing absorption of spiritual scientific thoughts and concepts, to be a kind of tool or instrument for disseminating our spiritual science. As a consequence, however, the concept of a society of this kind has to be taken extremely seriously, because in quite practical terms this society has to become a vehicle for the spiritual current in question.

You need only look at our own Society as an example and examine how different it is from other societies, associations, or organizations that people have called into existence. This difference will be particularly noticeable if you keep one thing in mind. Just suppose that recent events confronting us had made us entertain the thought of disbanding the Anthroposophical Society as such. Let's assume hypothetically that we wanted to dissolve the Society because of problems within it. Now, if the Anthroposophical Society were simply an organization like many others, of course it would be possible to simply dissolve it, set something else up in its place, and eliminate the disgraceful circumstances in the process.

However, our Anthroposophical Society is different in a very significant respect from other organizations or societies founded on the basis of some program with a certain number of points and statutes. That kind of society can be dissolved at any moment. If we were to dissolve the Anthroposophical Society, however, it would not be dissolved in actual fact. As the Anthroposophical Society, as a society existing on behalf of a spiritual scientific movement, we are different from other societies in that our Society is founded, not on a program of abstract and therefore unreal points, but on something very real. Our basis is a real one.

Just look at the fact that each member of the Anthroposophical Society is entitled to have access to our lecture cycles, while other people are not.¹ That's a very real basis, because dissolving the Anthroposophical Society would do so in name only; it would not do away with the fact that a certain number of people are in possession of these cycles. And it is an equally real fact that a certain number of people are carrying a specific wealth of wisdom in their heads. I cannot tell exactly how great the percentage is of people who have the things we talk about in their heads—in contrast to those who only have them in “visions”—but that's not the important thing as far as the Society is concerned. It remains a reality that a certain wealth of wisdom, a sum total of things that really exist, are present in the hearts and minds of people who have belonged to the Anthroposophical Society until now. That cannot be taken away from them even by dissolving the Society.

So the Anthroposophical Society is different from other societies in that it will not tolerate any figments of the imagination in its organization, but is constructed on the basis of reality. Thus, dissolving it would have absolutely no immediate effect on its continued existence as far as reality is concerned. Our Society compares to other societies and organizations as something real compares to things that are merely thought out. We must keep this weighty difference in mind in order to understand the concept of our Society in the right way. And it is only because a large number of members have counted, more or less consciously, on our Society's solid grounding in reality, on its basis in something more than programmatic points, that we see an institute of higher learning for spiritual science being built on this hill, a building that will further enhance our connection to something real.

It would be possible for some group of dreamers to get together and decide not to wear collars and ties, to wear only sandals on their feet, and perhaps to simplify life in other ways by disregarding certain other social conventions or “prejudices,” as they might call them. (I have chosen a hypothetical example so that no one present needs to feel put on the spot.) Disbanding a group like that would not change anything significant. But we are not simply a group of dreamers; we are different in that we are fully aware of the weight and importance of our grounding in reality.

Without getting into splitting hairs, we also need to distinguish between the concept of a society such as the one in which we develop a specific spiritual teaching, and that of a club or similar organization. We have to admit that the appropriate concept of a such a society eludes many of us when we think about the conditions of our life in this Society, and we are left contemplating the concept of a club or similar organization. In that kind of organization, statutes and conditions are set up that have to be met. In a Society like ours, however, that is not enough. It is different from a club in much more than name only.

In our Society, the important thing, as I have explained several times in the last few weeks, is that the concept of the society really be taken seriously.² This means that all members must be aware that belonging to the Society involves more than simply receiving membership cards and being entitled to call themselves members of the Society. In fact, they are all organs of the Society. Because of that, something subtle and yet very specific has to live among the members, something for which each member should feel a certain responsibility. As individuals, they must be aware of both the obvious and subtler needs and well-being of other members of the Society, and experienced members must be ready and willing to use their experience in supporting those who have joined more recently. These more experienced members do not necessarily have to reveal their experience; after all, what matters is how they apply their experience in daily life.

The word “trust” often comes up in this connection. In the course of a lecture I gave a few weeks ago, I explained that we do not need to have trust in our teachings, because these teachings will try to justify our confidence in them through every single practical measure they give rise to.³ However, we do need to try to have trust in each other and to make sure that trust is justified. We must try to bring about real connections between members. It goes a long way toward developing the kind of “ideal aura” necessary in a Society such as ours if each experienced member, without snooping around like a spy or a detective—that is, without violating anyone's privacy—can really keep an eye on the ups and downs of only ten other members, and do it without having to tell them they are considered less experienced. Of course, it's impossible to legislate trust; it has to be earned. Our more experienced members need to make a concerted effort to win the trust of those who have been in the Society for only a short time.

Such things have been mentioned often in the course of our Society's years of activity, but it has never been as necessary to speak about them as it is here and now. When members of the Anthroposophical Society were scattered among the rest of the population in various cities, that was a very different state of affairs from so many of us living here on top of each other, on display for everyone else, so to speak. This situation makes it imperative that we take a long and serious look at the basic premises of how we live together in the Society.

Of course, a society such as ours will never be able to please all the people living outside it. It will never be able to prevent some of these people from indulging in all kinds of slander, ridicule, unjustified attacks, and so on. But that's not the point; what I am going to say now is independent of all that. The important thing is that the members of the Society really do everything possible in each single instance to show up the attacks as unjustified and lacking any basis in fact. To do this, we have to look at details, my friends. It's not enough to just pay attention to the major issues in our outer life. We have to be equally aware of the little things.

For instance, if some of our members are sitting among other people on the trolley on the way back to Basel at night, and they talk loudly about every little twinge in their ether body, that is not exactly a crime. If someone criticizes them for it, we might well reply, “So what? Is it all that important?” In fact, however, it is really very important because it puts the dignity and seriousness of our movement in question. Thus, even though such incidents are only trifling matters, they ought to be avoided. We ought to start reforming ourselves wherever that change can have a real effect. Above all, we have to realize that when we talk in front of other people about things only we can understand, those people will not be able to avoid getting wrong impressions.

We can assume that we know what we are talking about when we speak about the ether body, but the people who may be listening do not. They may be in the same situation as a maid whom some of my closer acquaintances know well. This woman worked for anthroposophists, and because she was interested in finding out what anthroposophy was all about, she attended an introductory course given by one of our members, and came home saying, “Well, I learned that I have four bodies, not just one. But I have this tiny little room and a very narrow bed, and now I don't know how all those bodies are going to fit in!” This is a true story. It took place in the house of people I know quite well. So you see, people who hear you talking about all the little twinges of your ether body will naturally think that you're talking about the ether body as if it were a physical body; thus, you are actually leading them astray and keeping them from developing any closer connection to our movement.

That's why it is important for us to learn to take the things we talk about seriously and precisely. Even if they are only minor matters in themselves, they can raise a virtual wall of prejudices around us, and that can and should be avoided. In a society like this, it is important for us to learn to speak really precisely, or else it may gradually become impossible to foster what should be fostered within this Society.

Today I feel compelled to mention a number of things that will probably seem totally superfluous to most of you, simply because the natural response is, “Well, what is that supposed to mean—we need to be precise in our way of speaking? Of course we do.” But just keep your eyes and ears open next time something happens somewhere or other, when something has been said and one person passes it on to the next. If you really pay close attention to whether or not things are being presented accurately, in many instances you will easily notice the deviation from what is strictly accurate. When something someone has heard or seen gets passed on to the next person and then to the next, and so on, what comes out can be a monstrous caricature of what actually happened or was actually said. This experience is all too common in our Society.

We have to take into account that, in a spiritual scientific movement, we can work constructively only if we get used to being exact, to really understanding things precisely. Spiritual science forces us to focus spiritually on things that have nothing to do with the outer physical world, and in order to develop the right relationship to them, we need a counterbalance of some kind. The only suitable counterbalance is to approach things on the physical plane as realistically as possible. After all, accuracy belongs to reality.

Some time ago I gave a public lecture in Munich that really startled a number of people.⁴ Its subject was the nature of evil. In that lecture, I explained that the forces at work in evil on the physical plane are in a sense nothing else but forces that have been transferred from higher planes of existence to the physical plane. Certain forces that can lead us to recognize and master the spiritual if applied up there in the spiritual world can turn to evil down here in the physical world.

The force that enables us to understand the spiritual world belongs only in the spiritual world; this same force causes all kinds of harm if it is directly and thoughtlessly transferred to the physical plane. For what is the nature of this force? It consists in making one's thinking independent of the physical plane. When this capacity is applied to the physical plane itself, it turns into deceit and dishonesty. Thus, people who were called upon to disseminate spiritual science have always seen great danger in doing so, because what is needed for understanding higher planes of existence is harmful when applied directly to the physical world.

That is why a counterbalance is needed: in order to keep our ability to understand the spiritual world suitably pure and beautiful, we must develop our feeling for truth and exactitude in the physical world as thoroughly as possible. If we do not count on exactitude on the physical plane, then in a so-called occult society certain tendencies developed through spiritual scientific practices immediately mingle inappropriately with the very lowest aspects of the physical plane.

Let's look at ordinary materialistic society in a broader sense of the word. As you know—or you may have heard about it even if you have no firsthand knowledge of it—there are certain social circles where gossip prevails. At least from hearsay, you will be aware that this gossip or tittle-tattle is going on, that it prevails in ordinary materialistic bourgeois society. The quality of this gossip is usually not very high and much can be said against it, but at least for the most part no esoteric contents get mixed up with it. But when gossip is the general rule in an occult society, esoteric ideas are the first to get drawn into it.

I hope it is possible to really talk about things like this in our circle, because it should be possible to say something within our Society without having it immediately spread abroad in places where it is then misunderstood. Our experiences in this regard, however, are also not the best, and if they continue, we will indeed have to organize our Society differently. Things that are said within the Society have to remain in the Society in the strictest sense of the word, because it really must be possible from time to time to say things that could not simply be said casually outside our Society.

Of course, in our Society we often have to talk about the karmic relationships between people. It may well be that such relationships exist—in fact, of course they exist—but if we continually get our views on karma mixed up with our ordinary everyday relationships, we are not taking the concept of truthfulness literally enough, and the result is not only nonsensical but also harmful. Truthfulness is a concept that has to be applied extremely strictly.

I can think of any number of cases in esoteric circles, both inside and outside our Society, where subjective matters that take place as a matter of course on the physical plane have been studded and embellished with esoteric truths. Let me mention one extreme example that may not happen very frequently in our Society, but it is one of the things that can be experienced. Indeed, it has happened numerous times.

Many people have learned about reincarnation, and they have also learned that Christ was alive on Earth at a certain point in time. I have experienced more than once that women who have become aware of these two spiritual facts—reincarnation and Christ's incarnation—have in all seriousness imagined that they have been chosen to give birth to the Christ and have attempted to arrange their lives to make this possible. It is unpleasant to have to mention these things and call a spade a spade, but we must do it to protect the Society, which we can do only if we don't close our eyes to the harm people can cause by applying occult truths on the physical plane.

Granted, the case I just mentioned is extreme, but it has happened not only once, but over and over again. I have described it drastically because things like this happen very frequently on a smaller scale, and it is important to notice the minor instances as well as the more blatant ones. Of course, it is a major issue if someone thinks she is going to give birth to the Christ, because the consequences can be extremely unfortunate. On a smaller scale, however, things like this are happening again and again.

Now, in ordinary bourgeois life, it happens that people fall in love, that a man falls in love with a woman. People simply call it “falling in love,” and that's the plain and simple truth. In esoteric societies men and women also fall in love; the possibility cannot be ruled out, as some of you know from experience. But in that case, what you hear about it is not as simple as, “X has fallen in love with Y.” Ordinary people just say that they're going together, which is usually a very accurate description as outward observation goes. But in esoteric societies, what you hear about it often goes something like this: “Having thoroughly examined my karma, I find that another personality has entered it, and we have realized that karma has destined us to be with each other and to intervene in the destiny of the world in a particular way.”

People fail to notice how much deception has crept in between this assertion and the simple matter of falling in love. This deception has developed in the following way: In bourgeois materialistic society, it's considered quite normal for two people to fall in love. But in an esoteric society, this is often not considered normal; instead, it is something people feel slightly ashamed of. But people do not like to feel ashamed. We don't need to go into why that is the case; there can be any number of reasons. People simply do not like to feel ashamed, so instead, they say that karma has spoken and has to be obeyed. Of course they are not acting out of pure selfishness or pure emotion—far from it; karma has to be obeyed! But if they were truthful, they would just admit that they have fallen in love, and having admitted it, they would find their way through life much more readily than by getting the truth mixed up with all kinds of karmic nonsense. The basic mischief of embellishing personal matters with esoteric truths leads to ever greater harm because it makes people lose their inner sense of limits, the limits we have to accept when we adopt a spiritual scientific philosophy.

This is not to say that we should introduce the worst principles of uncultured circles into our Society. In certain social circles, it is said that being human begins with being a baron. We must not establish our own version of this by saying that being human begins with being either a spiritual scientist or an anthroposophist—with being an “anthropop,” as others are starting to call it. We must not do that. We have to admit that even before we became spiritual scientists, we were people with certain ways of looking at things, people who would have done certain things and abstained from others.

In the very early days of our movement, I pointed out how important it is that we do not use our spiritual scientific views to sink down below our earlier level of moral standards, but that we must rise above it in all respects. That is why I said many years ago that when we entered the Society, each of us was equipped with a certain stock of moral standards and habitual ways of doing things, and that we should allow these habits to remain as they are until some clear and incontrovertible inner necessity compels us to change them. Generally, this happens only much later on. It can be extremely detrimental if, after having learned a little bit from spiritual science, we take what we have learned and use it to excuse or embellish what we do in life. You have to be perfectly clear on one point, my friends, namely that the outer circumstances of our life also come about through karma of a certain kind. And how people out in the world think and act is also a matter of karma.

Now, as you know, I prefer to talk about concrete cases because they are the most telling. For example, the following once happened to me: Not long ago, I was sitting in a barber shop—excuse me for talking about things like this, but what I'm going to tell you is not all that indiscreet or intimate. I was sitting in front of the mirror, so I could see the people as they came and went. The door opened, and in came a man who had on some kind of shoes that were nothing more than pieces of soft leather tied together; above that, he was wearing leggings and some kind of cape-like garment draped at a coquettish angle. In addition, his hair was swept back with some kind of a headband. Coincidentally, as it were, I knew the man very well.⁵

The barber let go of the razor he had just started to apply to my face and bought something from the man for five pennies. He showed it to me once the man had gone out—it was a poem he had composed himself. It was a simply terrible poem, but that man was going around the streets and stores in that get-up, selling the thing and imagining himself to be infinitely superior to all the people around him. He thought he was following some great ideal, but in reality he was only following an exaggerated and hysterical form of vanity. The basic impulse behind his conduct, his whole way of being, was nothing more than a gross exaggeration of the principle at work among the vainest and most superficial ladies.

But just consider how many among us might once have been tempted—for courtesy's sake, I will not suggest that they might still be tempted today—to say that in his own way, that man was only trying to do the right thing. True enough, but it was still absolute and total nonsense, and bound to make a mess of a person's life if he made it the principle of a lifetime. We have to realize to what extent vanity can be a motivating factor in what people do, and how difficult it is to notice it. If we take seriously what we can gain from spiritual science and accept it with respect, we have to admit that vanity is a very strong force in that man. If we do something or other out of vanity, not to mention other drives and impulses, other people are offended, though not necessarily for the reasons we might suspect. Nonetheless, there is a connection between ourselves and what other people say about us, a connection that is very easy to find if we look carefully. And we can only get beyond things like that if we develop a strict sense of exactitude as a counterbalance, an attitude we also need for understanding esoteric truths.

Although it's only a detail and no major issue, in esotericism it is extremely important to know and to observe, when people are recounting things, whether they are recounting their own observations and thus have a right to be talking about them as facts, or whether they are passing on things they heard from someone else. We must be able to tell the difference. But in hundreds of cases, people say things to others who in turn tell someone else, but in such a way that the person third in line gets the impression that they are not simply passing on something they've heard, but are talking about their own direct experience and have a right to be talking about it as if it were actual fact. This lack of precision is less important in ordinary materialistic society than it is among us. In materialistic circles, it may be pedantic to be so precise in how one speaks, but in our Society, more so than anywhere else, we need to observe such things strictly and exactly. And above all, we need to make a practice of being precise about ourselves.

If any of you need to be convinced of the implications of what I am saying, you are welcome to make the following experiment: Choose some topic—vegetarianism, for example—and observe how certain adherents of spiritual science talk about this topic in the outside world. Make a chart, and each time you hear spiritual scientists telling other people that they are vegetarians, jot down the reasons they give. It will soon become clear that on the subject of vegetarianism, adherents of spiritual science often say absolutely scandalous things to people in the outside world. When the outside world then comes to the conclusion that we are a society of fools, it should come as no great surprise.

In anthroposophical circles, I have frequently mentioned a very simple way of responding to the question of why you are a vegetarian without antagonizing people around you. If someone asks why you are a vegetarian, and you know that person would never eat horsemeat, you simply respond with the question, “Well, why don't you eat horsemeat?” Now the two of you are on the same footing, and the person who has to give a reason for not eating horsemeat will probably not come up with any highly theoretical reasons, but will say something like “The thought of it makes me sick.” Then you can say, “That's just how any meat makes me feel.” And as long as you say this in an appropriately conciliatory way, people will understand your point of view. The main thing is not to let the other person get the impression that you feel superior because of not eating meat. You might still want to add, although only if you can honestly admit it to yourself, that you are too weak to eat meat; you're handicapped when it comes to eating meat. When this question has come up, I myself have often said that a lot of things are simply easier to get through if you don't eat meat. Meat weighs people down, and if you need to use your brain in a precise way, it is simply easier to do if you don't eat meat. In the end, it all comes down to the question of what is easier and more convenient.

I have often emphasized that it is impossible to eat your way into the higher worlds, either through what you eat or through what you abstain from eating. Achieving access to spiritual worlds is a spiritual matter, and both eating and abstaining from food are physical matters. If this were not the case, people might get grotesque ideas about what would happen if they did or did not eat certain foods. It might occur to them to eat salt one week and no salt at all the next week in order to descend to the depths of the elemental world during the week when they were eating salt and come back up again in the course of the week when they were doing without. It's quite possible for people to get stupid ideas like that. In our Society, of course, people will not get ideas that are as stupid as that, but similar things might still occur to them.

But to get back to the subject of vegetarianism, if we are as modest as possible in how we discuss it in the presence of outsiders, we will find that eventually no one will hold the fact that we are vegetarians against us. On the other hand, if we consider vegetarianism to be something to our credit, the outside world will never forgive us for it. And in fact, being vegetarian is not a credit to anyone; it is simply an easy way out.

There are many other similar examples, and we really have to talk about things like this, not to preach morality, but to establish certain basic principles for our life in an esoteric society vis-à-vis the outside world. What it all comes down to is that we need to seriously consider how we relate to the outside world, and the result of our deliberations must be both a bridge and a protective wall between us and the outside, especially in the case of a society like ours. It happens again and again, for instance, that members say to people on the outside, “Dr. Steiner said this and such.” Just put yourself in the place of the person you're talking to, and imagine what it feels like!

For example, if someone says that Dr. Steiner is taking so-and-so's spiritual development in hand, how are outsiders supposed to understand that? What can they possibly imagine except a society of fools who all subordinate themselves to a single individual? That kind of thing really does happen. I cannot even pretend that it does not occur. And just imagine what it means to the outside world. We really must talk about these things from the point of view of how a society should be set up if a spiritual scientific movement like ours is to inhabit it. First and foremost, we must take this spiritual scientific movement seriously, and we must not do anything that could be detrimental to it in the eyes of the outside world.

I will go into this subject more deeply tomorrow, and you will see how intimately this all relates to certain specific impulses of spiritual science. I do not want to simply lecture you sternly; I want to explain how these things relate to the central impulses of spiritual science.

• 1. In Stuttgart on September 4, 1921, at the first Members' Assembly after World War I, Rudolf Steiner addressed the question of the lecture cycles as follows: “Actually, every member has taken on the responsibility of seeing that the cycles stay within the Society. I am not so concerned about the cycles being read outside the Society; what matters to me is that these cycles in the form in which they were printed stay among people who understand the circumstances, because lack of time kept me from correcting the proofs.” (Mitteilungen des Zentralvorstandes der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, Stuttgart, November 1921, No. 1, p. 27). And in The Course of My Life, GA 28, (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1986): “I would have preferred it if the spoken word could have been left in that form, the members wanted to have the lectures printed privately, and that is why the talks now exist in print. If I had had time to make corrections, there would have been no need for the 'for members only' restriction right from the beginning.” (Chapter XXXV, Anthroposophic Press, 1986).
  
  However, since the members did not feel bound by this responsibility and Steiner's opponents in their writings often showed themselves to be better informed about the lecture cycles than the members themselves, Rudolf Steiner was obliged to lift all restrictions and declare the printed lecture cycles available to the general public at the Christmas Foundation Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in 1923.
• 2. See the explanations Steiner gave on August 21 and 22, 1915, printed in Part Two of this volume.
• 3. August 22, 1915, in Part Two of this volume, p. 144.
• 4. “The Origin of Evil in the Light of Spiritual Science,” Munich, March 29, 1914. Only incomplete notes of this lecture are extant.
• 5. Gustav Gräser, 1879–1958, who became well known as an apostle of nature in the 1920s. Cf. Ulrich Linse, Barfüssige Propheten. Erlöser der zwanziger Jahre, Berlin, 1983. (“Barefoot Prophets: Redeemers of the Twenties”) Rudolf Steiner mentioned Gräser in a letter to Marie von Sivers on January 6, 1906 (in Rudolf Steiner/Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Correspondence and Documents 1901–1925, GA 262, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1988), saying that Gräser had attended a lecture of Rudolf Steiner's and taken part in the discussion afterward.

[ 1 ] In future there will be found in these columns something in the nature of anthroposophical ‘Leading Thoughts’ or principles. These may be taken to contain advice on the direction which members can give to the lectures and discussions in the several Groups. It is but a stimulus and suggestion which the Goetheanum would like to give to the whole Society. The independence of individual leading members in their work is in no way to be interfered with. We shall develop healthily if the Society gives free play to what leading members have to offer in all the different Groups. This will enrich and make manifold the life of the Society.

[ 2 ] But it should also be possible for a unity of consciousness to arise in the whole Society—which will happen if the initiative and ideas that emerge at different places become known everywhere. Thus in these columns we shall sum up in short paragraphs the descriptions and lines of thought given by me in my lectures to the Society at the Goetheanum. I imagine that those who lecture or conduct the discussions in the Groups will be able to take what is here given as guiding lines, with which they may freely connect what they have to say. This will contribute to the unity and organic wholeness of the work of the Society without there being any question of constraint.

[ 3 ] The plan will become fruitful for the whole Society if it meets with a true response—if the leading members will inform the Executive at the Goetheanum too of the content and nature of their own lectures and suggestions. Then only shall we grow, from a chaos of separate Groups, into a Society with a real spiritual content.

[ 4 ] The Leading Thoughts here given are meant to open up subjects for study and discussion. Points of contact with them will be found in countless places in the anthroposophical books and lecture-courses, so that the subjects thus opened up can be enlarged upon and the discussions in the Groups centred around them.

[ 5 ] When new ideas emerge among leading members in the several Groups, these too can be brought into connection with the suggestions we shall send out from the Goetheanum. We would thus provide an open framework for all the spiritual activity in the Society.

[ 6 ] Spiritual activity can of course only thrive by free unfoldment on the part of the active individuals—and we must never sin against this truth. But there is no need to do so when one group or member within the Society acts in proper harmony with the other. If such co-operation were impossible, the attachment of individuals or groups to the Society would always remain a purely external thing—where it should in fact be felt as an inner reality.

[ 7 ] It cannot be allowed that the existence of the Anthroposophical Society is merely made use of by this or that individual as an opportunity to say what he personally wishes to say with this or that intention. The Society must rather be the place where true Anthroposophy is cultivated. Anything that is not Anthroposophy can, after all, be pursued outside it. The Society is not there for extraneous objects.

[ 8 ] It has not helped us that in the last few years individual members have brought into the Society their own personal wishes simply because they thought that as it increased it would become a suitable sphere of action for them. It may be said, Why was this not met and counteracted with the proper firmness? If that had been done, we should now be hearing it said on all sides, ‘Oh, if only the initiative that arose in this or that quarter had been followed up at the time, how much farther we should be today!’ Well, many things were followed up, which ended in sad disaster and only resulted in throwing us back.

[ 9 ] But now it is enough. The demonstrations which individual experimenters in the Society wished to provide are done with. Such things need not be repeated endlessly. In the Executive at the Goetheanum we have a body which intends to cultivate Anthroposophy itself; and the Society should be an association of human beings who have the same object and are ready to enter into a living understanding with the Executive in the pursuit of it.

[ 10 ] We must not think that our ideal in the Society can be attained from one day to the next. Time will be needed, and patience too. If we imagined that what lay in the intentions of the Christmas meeting could be brought into existence in a few weeks' time, this again would be harmful.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts given out as suggestions from the Goetheanum

[ 11 ] 1. Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in man as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need. He alone can acknowledge Anthroposophy, who finds in it what he himself in his own inner life feels impelled to seek. Hence only they can be anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and thirst.

[ 12 ] 2. Anthroposophy communicates knowledge that is gained in a spiritual way. Yet it only does so because everyday life, and the science founded on sense-perception and intellectual activity, lead to a barrier along life's way—a limit where the life of the soul in man would die if it could go no farther. Everyday life and science do not lead to this limit in such a way as to compel man to stop short at it. For at the very frontier where the knowledge derived from sense perception ceases, there is opened through the human soul itself the further outlook into the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] 3. There are those who believe that with the limits of knowledge derived from sense perception the limits of all insight are given. Yet if they would carefully observe how they become conscious of these limits, they would find in the very consciousness of the limits the faculties to transcend them. The fish swims up to the limits of the water; it must return because it lacks the physical organs to live outside this element. Man reaches the limits of knowledge attainable by sense perception; but he can recognise that on the way to this point powers of soul have arisen in him—powers whereby the soul can live in an element that goes beyond the horizon of the senses.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 14 ] 4. For certainty of feeling and for a strong unfolding of his will, man needs a knowledge of the spiritual world. However widely he may feel the greatness, beauty and wisdom of the natural world, this world gives him no answer to the question of his own being. His own being holds together the materials and forces of the natural world in the living and sensitive form of man until the moment when he passes through the gate of death. Then Nature receives this human form, and Nature cannot hold it together; she can but dissolve and disperse it. Great, beautiful, wisdom-filled Nature does indeed answer the question, How is the human form dissolved and destroyed? but not the other question, How is it maintained and held together? No theoretical objection can dispel this question from the feeling soul of man, unless indeed he prefers to lull himself to sleep. The presence of this question must incessantly maintain alive, in every human soul that is really awake, the longing for spiritual paths of World-knowledge.

[ 15 ] 5. For peace in his inner life, man needs Self-knowledge in the Spirit. He finds himself in his Thinking, Feeling and Willing. He sees how Thinking, Feeling and Willing are dependent on the natural man. In all their developments, they must follow the health and sickness, the strengthening and weakening of the body. Every sleep blots them out. Thus the experience of everyday life shows the spiritual consciousness of man in the greatest imaginable dependence on his bodily existence. Man suddenly becomes aware that in this realm of ordinary experience Self-knowledge may be utterly lost—the search for it a vain quest. Then first the anxious question arises: Can there be a Self-knowledge transcending the ordinary experiences of life? Can we have any certainty at all, as to a true Self of man? Anthroposophy would fain answer this question on a firm basis of spiritual experience. In so doing it takes its stand, not on any opinion or belief, but on a conscious experience in the Spirit—an experience in its own nature no less certain than the conscious experience in the body.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 16 ] 6. When we look out on lifeless Nature, we find a world full of inner relationships of law and order. We seek for these relationships and find in them the content of the ‘Laws of Nature.’ We find, moreover, that by virtue of these Laws lifeless Nature forms a connected whole with the entire Earth. We may now pass from this earthly connection which rules in all lifeless things, to contemplate the living world of plants. We see how the Universe beyond the Earth sends in from distances of space the forces which draw the Living forth out of the womb of the Lifeless. In all living things we are made aware of an element of being, which, freeing itself from the mere earthly connection, makes manifest the forces that work down on to the Earth from realms of cosmic space. As in the eye we become aware of the luminous object which confronts it, so in the tiniest plant we are made aware of the nature of the Light from beyond the Earth. Through this ascent in contemplation, we can perceive the difference of the earthly and physical which holds sway in the lifeless world, from the extra-earthly and ethereal which abounds in all living things.

[ 17 ] 7. We find man with his transcendent being of soul and spirit placed into this world of the earthly and the extra earthly. Inasmuch as he is placed into the earthly connection which contains all lifeless things, he bears with him his physical body. Inasmuch as he unfolds within him the forces which the living world draws into this earthly sphere from cosmic space, he has an etheric or life-body. The trend of science in modern times has taken no account of this essential contrast of the earthly and the ethereal. For this very reason, science has given birth to the most impossible conceptions of the ether. For fear of losing their way in fanciful and nebulous ideas, scientists have refrained from dwelling on the real contrast. But unless we do so, we can attain no true insight into the Universe and Man.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 18 ] 8. We may consider the nature of man in so far as it results from his physical and his etheric body. We shall find that all the phenomena of man's life which proceed from this side of his nature remain in the unconscious, nor do they ever lead to consciousness. Consciousness is not lighted up but darkened when the activity of the physical and the etheric body is enhanced. Conditions of faintness and the like can be recognised as the result of such enhancement. Following up this line of thought, we recognise that something is at work in man—and in the animal—which is not of the same nature as the physical and the etheric. It takes effect, not when the forces of the physical and the etheric are active in their own way, but when they cease to be thus active. In this way we arrive at the conception of the astral body.

[ 19 ] 9. The reality of this astral body is discovered when we rise in meditation from the Thinking that is stimulated by the outer senses to an inner act of Vision. To this end, the Thinking that is stimulated from without must be taken hold of inwardly, and experienced as such, intensely in the soul, apart from its relation to the outer world. Through the strength of soul thus engendered, we become aware that there are inner organs of perception, which see a spiritual reality working in the animal and man at the very point where the physical and the etheric body are held in check in order that consciousness may arise.

[ 20 ] 10. Consciousness, therefore, does not arise by a further enhancement of activities which proceed from the physical and etheric bodies. On the contrary, these two bodies, with their activities, must be reduced to zero—nay even below zero—to ‘make room’ for the working of consciousness. They do not generate consciousness, they only furnish the ground on which the Spirit must stand in order to bring forth consciousness within the earthly life. As man on Earth needs the ground on which to stand, so does the Spiritual, within the earthly realm, need a material foundation on which it may unfold itself. And as a planet in the cosmic spaces does not require any ground beneath it in order to assert its place, so too the Spirit, when it looks—not through the senses into material—but through its own power into spiritual things, needs no material foundation to call its conscious activity to life.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 21 ] 11. The Self-consciousness which is summed up in the ‘I’ or ‘Ego’ emerges out of the sea of consciousness. Consciousness arises when the forces of the physical and etheric bodies disintegrate these bodies, and thus make way for the Spiritual to enter into man. For through this disintegration is provided the ground on which the life of consciousness can develop. If, however, the organism is not to be destroyed, the disintegration must be followed by a reconstruction. Thus, when for an experience in consciousness a process of disintegration has taken place, that which has been demolished will be built up again exactly. The experience of Self-consciousness lies in the perception of this upbuilding process. The same process can be observed with inner vision. We then feel how the Conscious is led over into the Self-conscious by man's creating out of himself an after-image of the merely Conscious. The latter has its image in the emptiness, as it were, produced within the organism by the disintegration. It has passed into Self-consciousness when the emptiness has been filled up again from within. The Being, capable of this ‘fulfilment,’ is experienced as ‘I.’

[ 22 ] 12. The reality of the ‘I’ is found when the inner vision whereby the astral body is known and taken hold of, is carried a stage further. The Thinking which has become alive in meditation must now be permeated by the Will. To begin with we simply gave ourselves up to this new Thinking, without active Will. We thereby enabled spiritual realities to enter into this thinking life, even as in outer sense perception colour enters the eye or sound the ear. What we have thus called to life in our consciousness by a more passive devotion, must now be reproduced by ourselves, by an act of Will. When we do so, there enters into this act of Will the perception of our own ‘I’ or Ego.

[ 23 ] 13. On the path of meditation we discover, beside the form in which the ‘I’ occurs in ordinary consciousness, three further forms: (1) In the consciousness which takes hold of the etheric body, the ‘I’ appears in picture-form; yet the picture is at the same time active Being, and as such it gives man form and figure, growth, and the plastic forces that create his body. (2) In the consciousness which takes hold of the astral body, the ‘I’ is manifested as a member of a spiritual world whence it receives its forces. (3) In the consciousness just indicated, as the last to be achieved, the ‘I’ reveals itself as a self-contained spiritual Being—relatively independent of the surrounding spiritual world.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 24 ] 14. The second form of the ‘I’—first of the three forms that were indicated in the last section—appears as a ‘picture’ of the I. When we become aware of this picture-character, a light is also thrown on the quality of thought in which the ‘I’ appears before the ordinary consciousness. With all manner of reflections, men have sought within this consciousness for the ‘true I.’ Yet an earnest insight into the experiences of the ordinary consciousness will suffice to show that the ‘true I’ cannot be found therein. Only a shadow-in-thought is able to appear there—a shadowy reflection, even less than a picture. The truth of this seizes us all the more when we progress to the ‘I’ as a picture, which lives in the etheric body. Only now are we rightly kindled to search for the ‘I’, for the true being of man.

[ 25 ] 15. Insight into the form in which the ‘I’ lives in the astral body leads to a right feeling of the relation of man to the spiritual world. For ordinary consciousness this form of the ‘I’ is buried in the dark depths of the unconscious, where man enters into connection with the spiritual being of the Universe through Inspiration. Ordinary consciousness experiences only a faint echo-in-feeling of this Inspiration from the wide expanse of the spiritual world, which holds sway in depths of the soul.

[ 26 ] 16. It is the third form of the ‘I’ which gives us insight into the independent Being of man within a spiritual world. It makes us feel how, with his earthly-sensible nature, man stands before himself as a mere manifestation of what he really is. Here lies the starting-point of true Self-knowledge. For the Self which fashions man in his true nature is revealed to him in Knowledge only when he progresses from the thought of the ‘I’ to its picture, from the picture to the creative forces of the picture, and from the creative forces to the spiritual Beings who sustain them.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 27 ] 17. Man is a being who unfolds his life in the midst, between two regions of the world. With his bodily development he is a member of a ‘lower world’; with his soul-nature he himself constitutes a ‘middle world’; and with his faculties of Spirit he is ever striving towards an ‘upper world.’ He owes his bodily development to all that Nature has given him; he bears the being of his soul within him as his own portion; and he discovers in himself the forces of the Spirit, as the gifts that lead him out beyond himself to participate in a Divine World.

[ 28 ] 18. The Spirit is creative in these three regions of the World. Nature is not void of Spirit. We lose even Nature from our knowledge if we do not become aware of the Spirit within her. Nevertheless, in Nature's existence we find the Spirit as it were asleep. Yet just as sleep has its task in human life—as the ‘I’ must be asleep at one time in order to be the more awake at another—so must the World-Spirit be asleep where Nature is, in order to be the more awake elsewhere.

[ 29 ] 19. In relation to the World, the soul of man is like a dreamer if it does not pay heed to the Spirit at work within it. The Spirit awakens the dreams of the soul from their ceaseless weaving in the inner life, to active participation in the World where man's true Being has its origin. As the dreamer shuts himself off from the surrounding physical world and entwines himself into himself, so would the soul lose connection with the Spirit of the World in whom it has its source, if it turned a deaf ear to the awakening calls of the Spirit within it.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 30 ] 20. For a right development of the life of the human soul, it is essential for man to become fully conscious of working actively from out of spiritual sources in his being. Many adherents of the modern scientific world-conception are victims of a strong prejudice in this respect. They say that a universal causality is dominant in all phenomena of the world; and that if man believes that he himself, out of his own resources, can be the cause of anything, it is a mere illusion on his part. Modern Natural Science wishes to follow observation and experience faithfully in all things, but in its prejudice about the hidden causality of man's inner sources of action it sins against its own principle. For the free and active working, straight from the inner resources of the human being, is a perfectly elementary experience of self-observation. It cannot be argued away; rather must we harmonise it with our insight into the universal causation of things within the order of Nature.

[ 31 ] 21. Non-recognition of this impulse out of the Spirit working in the inner life of man, is the greatest hindrance to the attainment of an insight into the spiritual world. For to consider our own being as a mere part of the order of Nature is in reality to divert the soul's attention from our own being. Nor can we penetrate into the spiritual world unless we first take hold of the Spirit where it is immediately given to us, namely in clear and open-minded self-observation.

[ 32 ] 22. Self-observation is the first beginning in the observation of the Spirit. It can indeed be the right beginning, for if it is true, man cannot possibly stop short at it, but is bound to progress to the further spiritual content of the World. As the human body pines away when bereft of physical nourishment, so will the man who rightly observes himself feel that his Self is becoming stunted if he does not see working into it the forces from a creative spiritual World outside him.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 33 ] 23. Passing through the gate of death, man goes out into the spiritual world, in that he feels falling away from him all the impressions and contents of soul which he received during earthly life through the bodily senses and the brain. His consciousness then has before it in an all-embracing picture-tableau the whole content of life which, during his earthly wanderings, entered as pictureless thoughts into his memory, or which—remaining unnoticed by the earthly consciousness—nevertheless made a subconscious impression on his soul. After a very few days these pictures grow faint and fade away. When they have altogether vanished, he knows that he has laid aside his etheric body too; for in the etheric body he can recognise the bearer of these pictures.

[ 34 ] 24. Having laid aside the etheric body, man has the astral body and the Ego as the members of his being still remaining to him. The astral body, so long as it is with him, brings to his consciousness all that during earthly life was the unconscious content of the soul when at rest in sleep. This content includes the judgements instilled into the astral body by Spirit-beings of a higher World during the periods of sleep—judgements which remain concealed from earthly consciousness. Man now lives through his earthly life a second time, yet so, that the content of his soul is now the judgement of his thought and action from the standpoint of the Spirit-world. He lives it through in backward order: first the last night, then the last but one, and so on.

[ 35 ] 25. This judgement of his life, which man experiences in the astral body after passing through the gate of death, lasts as long as the sum-total of the times he spent during his earthly life in sleep.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 36 ] 26. Only when the astral body has been laid aside—when the judgement of his life is over—man enters the spiritual world. There he stands in like relation to Beings of purely spiritual character as on Earth to the beings and processes of the Nature-kingdoms. In spiritual experience, everything that was his outer world on Earth now becomes his inner world. He no longer merely perceives it, but experiences it in its spiritual being which was hid from him on Earth, as his own world.

[ 37 ] 27. In the Spirit-realm, man as he is on Earth becomes an outer world. We gaze upon him, even as on Earth we gaze upon the stars and clouds, the mountains and rivers. Nor is this ‘outer world’ any less rich in content than the glory of the Cosmos as it appears to us in earthly life.

[ 38 ] 28. The forces begotten by the human Spirit in the Spirit-realm work on in the fashioning of earthly Man, even as the deeds we accomplish in the Physical work on as a content of the soul in the life after death.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 39 ] 29. In the evolved Imaginative Knowledge there works what lives as soul and spirit in the inner life of man, fashioning the physical body in its life, and unfolding man's existence in the physical world on this bodily foundation. Over against the physical body, whose substances are renewed again and again in the process of metabolism, we here come to the inner nature of man, unfolding itself continuously from birth (or conception) until death. Over against the physical Space-body, we come to a Time-body.

[ 40 ] 30. In the Inspired Knowledge there lives, in picture-form, what man experiences in a spiritual environment in the time between death and a new birth. What Man is in his own Being and in relation to cosmic worlds—without the physical and etheric bodies by means of which he undergoes his earthly life—is here made visible.

[ 41 ] 31. In the Intuitive Knowledge there comes to consciousness the working-over of former earthly lives into the present. In the further course of evolution these former lives have been divested of their erstwhile connections with the physical world. They have become the purely spiritual kernel of man's being, and, as such, are working in his present life. In this way, they too are an object of Knowledge—of that Knowledge which results with the further unfolding of the Imaginative and Inspired.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 42 ] 32. In the head of man, the physical Organisation is a copy, an impress of the spiritual individuality. The physical and the etheric part of the head stand out as complete and self-contained pictures of the Spiritual; beside them, in independent soul-spiritual existence, there stand the astral and the Ego-part. Thus in the head of man we have to do with a development, side by side, of the physical and etheric, relatively independent on the one hand, and of the astral and Ego-organisation on the other.

[ 43 ] 33. In the limbs and metabolic part of man the four members of the human being are intimately bound up with one another. The Ego-organisation and astral body are not there beside the physical and etheric part. They are within them, vitalising them, working in their growth, their faculty of movement and so forth. Through this very fact, the limbs and metabolic part of man is like a germinating seed, striving for ever to unfold; striving continually to become a ‘head,’ and—during the earthly life of man—no less continually prevented.

[ 44 ] 34. The rhythmic Organisation stands in the midst. Here the Ego-organisation and astral body alternately unite with the physical and etheric part, and loose themselves again. The breathing and the circulation of the blood are the physical impress of this alternate union and loosening. The inbreathing process portrays the union; the out-breathing the loosening. The processes in the arterial blood represent the union; those in the venous blood the loosening.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 45 ] 35. We understand the physical nature of man only if we regard it as a picture of the soul and spirit. Taken by itself, the physical corporality of man is unintelligible. But it is a picture of the soul and spirit in different ways in its several members. The head is the most perfect and complete symbolic picture of the soul and spirit. All that pertains to the system of the metabolism and the limbs is like a picture that has not yet assumed its finished forms, but is still being worked upon. Lastly, in all that belongs to the rhythmic Organisation of man, the relation of the soul and spirit to the body is intermediate between these opposites.

[ 46 ] 36. If we contemplate the human head from this spiritual point of view, we shall find in it a help to the understanding of spiritual Imaginations. For in the forms of the head, Imaginative forms are as it were coagulated to the point of physical density.

[ 47 ] 37. Similarly, if we contemplate the rhythmic part of man's Organisation it will help us to understand Inspirations. The physical appearance of the rhythms of life bears even in the sense-perceptible picture the character of Inspiration. Lastly, in the system of the metabolism and the limbs—if we observe it in full action, in the exercise of its necessary or possible functions—we have a picture, supersensible yet sensible, of pure supersensible Intuitions.

Anthroposophical Society (Theosophical Society)

Dear Members of the Anthroposophical Society.

Dear Friends!

The Central Council of the Anthroposophical Society takes pleasure in inviting you to the second general meeting to be held on January 18 and the following days of 1914.

The proceedings will be as follows:

Saturday, January 17, 3 p.m. (Motzstr. 17): ordinary board meeting;

8 p.m. social gathering at the branch office at Geisbergstraße 2.

Sunday, January 18, at 10 a.m. (architect's house, Wilhelmstr. 92/93), the business part will take place with the following program:

1. Opening of the meeting by the central committee.

2. Reports of the board members and the auditors.

3. Motions from the floor.

4. Reports from the representatives of the branches.

5. Miscellaneous.

On Sunday, January 18, at 4 p.m. (Architect's House, Wilhelmstr. 92/93), there will be a factual-theosophical part with the following program:

1. Free lectures and discussions by members. (Mr. Bartsch, Mr. Daeglau, Dr. Sexauer, Mr. Arenson, Dr. Unger, Mr. M. Bauer, Mr. J. v. Rainer, Ms. Wolfram, Mr. W. Selling and others have announced lectures so far).

2. Sunday, January 18th, 6 p.m., social gathering of members at the architect's house (Wilhelmstraße 92/93).

Sunday, January 18th, 8 p.m., the JohannesBauverein will hold its general assembly.

Monday, January 19, at 10 a.m. and again in the afternoon, the factual-theosophical part (free lectures by members) will continue.

Monday, January 19, 7 p.m., continuation of the general assembly of the Johannes-Bauverein. This will be followed by a concert for the benefit of the Johannes-Baus. Tuesday and the following days of the week, the factual-theosophical part can be continued as needed and desired.

A series of lectures by Dr. Steiner is planned for the evenings of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. (Topic: Human and Cosmic Thought).

For information about the apartment, please contact: Mrs. Clara Walther, Miss Emmy Ehmek, Mr. Wilhelm Selling, Berlin Wilmersdorf, Motzstraße 17.

Members are requested to notify Miss Marie von Sivers, Berlin Wilmersdorf, Motzstraße 17, of their attendance at the General Assembly as soon as they receive this invitation.

Proposals for the General Assembly and registrations of individual members for lectures, speeches, etc. are requested by January 12, 1914.

Hoping to welcome as many of our dear members as possible on the days mentioned above,

With theosophical greetings
On behalf of the Central Committee
Marie von Sivers.

In the lectures to the Anthroposophical Society which I am now giving at the Goetheanum, I am seeking to give expression to the root-questions of the inner life of Man. The underlying point of view has been indicated in the first five ‘Leading Thoughts’ published in the News Sheet. My object has been to meet the fundamental need of an anthroposophical lecture. The listener must feel that Anthroposophy is speaking of what he, when he holds counsel with himself most deeply, realises as the essential concern of his soul. If we can thus find the right way of representing Anthroposophy, there will arise among the members the feeling that in the Anthroposophical Society the human being is truly understood.

And this is the fundamental impulse in those who become members. They want to find a place where the understanding of Man is duly cultivated.

When we earnestly seek to understand the human being, we are indeed already on the way to recognition of the spiritual being of the World. For we are made aware that, as to Man himself, our knowledge of Nature affords no information but only gives rise to questions.

If in representing Anthroposophy we tend to lead the soul away from love of Nature, confusion alone is the result. The true starting-point of anthroposophical thoughts cannot lie in the belittling of what Nature reveals to Man. To despise Nature, to turn away from the truth which flows to Man from the phenomena of life and the world, or from the beauty that pervades them and the tasks they offer to man's will: this frame of mind can at most produce a caricature of spiritual truth.

Such a caricature will always be tinged with the personal element. Even if it is not composed of dreams, it will be experienced in a dreaming way. In waking life man lives with other men, and his effort must be for mutual understanding on things of common interest. What one man states must have some meaning for the other; what one achieves by his work, must have a certain value for the other. Men who live with one another must have the feeling that they are in a common world. But when a man is living in his own dreams he cuts himself off from the common world of men. The dreams of another—even his nearest neighbour—may be utterly different from his. In waking life men have a world in common; in dreaming each man has his own.

Anthroposophy should lead from waking life, not to a dreaming, but to a more intense awakening. In everyday life we have community indeed, but it is confined within narrow limits. We are banished to a certain fragment of existence, and only in our inner hearts we bear a longing for life's fullness. We feel that the true community of human life extends beyond the confines of the everyday. We look away from the Earth to the Sun when we would see the source of light common to all earthly things. So too we must turn away from the world of the senses to the reality of the Spirit to find the true sources of humanity where the soul can experience the fullness of community it needs.

Here it may easily happen that we turn away from life instead of entering it more fully and more strongly. The man who despises Nature has fallen a victim to this danger. He is driven into that isolation of the soul, of which ordinary dreaming is a good example.

Let us rather educate our minds by contact with the light of truth which streams into the soul of man from Nature. Then we shall best develop the sense for the truths of Man, which are at the same time the truths of the Cosmos. The truths of Nature, experienced with free and open mind, lead us already toward the truths of the Spirit. When we fill ourselves with the beauty, greatness and majesty of Nature, it grows in us to a fountain of true feeling for the Spirit. And when we open our heart to the silent gesture of Nature revealing her eternal innocence beyond all good and evil, our eyes are opened presently to the spiritual world, from whence—into the dumb gesture—the living Word rings forth, revealing good and evil.

Spirit-perception, brought up in the loving perception of Nature, brings to life the true riches of the soul. Spiritual dreaming, elaborated in contradiction to true knowledge of Nature, can but impoverish the human heart.

If one penetrates Anthroposophy in its deepest essence one will feel the point of view here indicated to be the one from which all anthroposophical descriptions should take their start. With this as our point of departure, we shall come into living touch with the reality, of which every member will say, ‘There lies the true reason why I entered the Anthroposophical Society’.

It will not be enough, for the members who wish to be active in the Anthroposophical Society, to be theoretically convinced of this. Real life will only enter their conviction when they unfold a warm interest in all that goes on in the Society. As they learn of what is being thought and done by active individuals in the Society, they will receive the warmth they need for their own work in it. We must be filled with interest in other human beings, to meet them in an anthroposophical way. The study of ‘What is going on in the Society’ must gradually form the background of all our activity in it. Those above all who wish to be active members will stand in need of this.

As one of the results of the Christmas Foundation Meeting, those who take upon themselves to work actively in the Society should make increasingly plain in the eyes of the world the real nature of Anthroposophy, what it is and what it is not. The following is frequently heard: Ought not this or that anthroposophical truth to be introduced here or there without frightening people by saying it is Anthroposophy? So long as such a question is still a matter for discussion, much in the Society will fail to have the effect it should.

Now it is most important to strive for clarity in this matter. There is a difference between advancing, in a sectarian spirit, something which one has laid down for oneself as dogmatic Anthroposophy, and the straightforward, open, unconcealed and unembellished standing for the knowledge of the spiritual world which has been brought to light through Anthroposophy in order that men may be able to reach a relation to the spiritual world, worthy of humanity.

It is the task of the Executive at the Goetheanum, unceasingly to carry on the work of Anthroposophy with this understanding. Moreover this task in its peculiar nature must be fully understood by those members who undertake to work actively in the Society. As a result of the Christmas Foundation Meeting, Anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical Society should become ever more and more united. This can never be the case as long as the seed continues to flourish which has been disseminated through continual distinction being made in anthroposophical circles between what is ‘orthodox’ and what is ‘heretical’.

Above all one must know what the true standard and content of Anthroposophy should be. It does not consist of a sum of opinions which must be entertained by ‘anthroposophists’. It ought never to be said amongst anthroposophists, ‘We believe this’, ‘We reject that’. Such agreement may arise naturally as the result of our anthroposophical study, but it can never be put forward as an anthroposophical ‘programme’. The right attitude can only be: ‘Anthroposophy is there. It has been acquired by persistent effort. I am here to represent it, so that what has thus been acquired may be made known in the world.’ It is still much too little felt in anthroposophical circles what a difference—indeed as between day and night—exists between these two standards. Otherwise the grotesque remark would not be heard continually: ‘The Anthroposophical Society holds this or that belief.’ A remark of this sort is absolutely meaningless, and it is most important that this should be realised.

Were a person to ask—with the intention of obtaining a clear idea of Anthroposophy—let us say, the following question: ‘What is the opinion or standard of life of some particular member of the Anthroposophical Society?’ he would be taking quite a wrong direction to arrive at the nature of Anthroposophy. Yet many would-be active members act in such a manner that this question is bound to arise. Rather should the thought arise: ‘Anthroposophy really exists in the world, and the Anthroposophical Society provides opportunity to become acquainted with it.’

Each one entering this Society should have the feeling: I enter simply in order to learn about Anthroposophy. The normal development of this feeling can be effected by the attitude of the would-be active members. But as things are, something quite different is often produced. People are afraid of joining the Society because, from the attitude of the would-be active members, they receive the impression that they must subscribe with the inmost core of their soul to certain dogmas. And naturally they shrink from this.

The good-will must be developed to efface this impression. Many would-be active members think that if people are received into the Society merely in order that they may become acquainted with Anthroposophy, they will leave again when they have learned what they desired, and we shall never have a compact Society.

But this will never happen if the Anthroposophical Society is rightly comprehended by its would-be active members. It will however come about if we try to make membership of the Society depend upon the acknowledgment of even the smallest dogma—and in this connection every point in a ‘programme’ is a dogma. If the members of the Anthroposophical Society are simply directed to become acquainted with Anthroposophy by virtue of their membership, then, whether they remain in the Society or not will depend upon something entirely different, namely on whether they feel they can hope to continue learning more and more in the Society.

That again will depend upon whether the kernel of the Society is really alive or dead, and whether in the circles of the Society the conditions exist for the living kernel not to die away when it tries to expand into the Society. It is the concern of the Executive at the Goetheanum that the kernel should be alive. The Executive does not administer dogmas; it feels itself solely as the vehicle of a spiritual possession, of the value of which it is fully aware, and it works for the spreading of this spiritual possession. It is happy if anyone comes and says, ‘I wish to share in what you are doing’. As a result of this, the Anthroposophical Society will have a living form. And this will be kept alive if the general attitude and way of working of all the would-be active members is in unison with the Executive of the Goetheanum.

All that one is justified in calling ‘confidence’ in the Society can only flourish on such a foundation as this. If this foundation exists it will not happen again and again that the Anthroposophical Society appears to the world as something quite different from what it really is.

I know quite well the judgment that will be passed by many would-be active members when they read the above. They will say: ‘This we cannot understand; now we really do not know what is wanted.’ But to say this is the worst prejudice of all. The above words only require to be read exactly, and it will then be found that they are neither indefinite nor ambiguous. To catch their spirit does indeed require a certain sensitiveness of feeling; but this ought surely not to be absent in those who wish to be active in the Anthroposophical Society.

Anthroposophical Society (Theosophical Society).

Dear Members of the Anthroposophical Society.

Dear Friends!

The Central Council of the Anthroposophical Society takes pleasure in inviting you to the first General Assembly to be held on February 3, 1913 and on the following days.

The first item on the agenda will be:

Monday, February 3, 3:30 p.m. (Architects' House, Wilhelmstraße 92/93) there will be a lecture by Dr. Rudolf Steiner on the following topic:

The Essence of Anthroposophy.

On this and the following days there will also be: Free lectures and discussions by members (registrations for these are requested as soon as possible). On the evenings of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, there will be a lecture cycle by Dr. Rudolf Steiner on:

The Mysteries of the Orient and of Christianity.

(Further details will be announced at the meeting).

On Thursday evening at 8 p.m., there will be a public lecture by Dr. Steiner.

Members are requested to notify Miss Marie v. Sivers, Berlin Wfilmersdorf, Motzstr. 17, of their attendance at this General Assembly immediately upon receipt of this invitation.

Registrations for speeches etc. by individual members are requested to be sent to Miss v. Sivers.

Hoping to be able to welcome as many of our dear members as possible on the days mentioned above,

with warm Theosophical greetings
On behalf of the Central Board
Marie v. Sivers