The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If we were not a society whose task it is to observe all things from the point of view of deeper knowledge, indeed of profound spiritual knowledge, I would obviously now bring to a close the discussions we have been having and which were requested from so many different quarters. If it were a matter of anything other than deeper knowledge, then these discussions would of course have to be suspended until such time as the results of the important events now taking place were available.

It is, I believe, without question that every soul who is earnestly and honestly concerned with the welfare of mankind is awaiting with bated breath the outcome of the next few days. The facts will show whether certain sources from what we have called the periphery, the circumference, are capable of coming to their senses sufficiently. If they are not, then the whole of mankind—in the future, too—will be expected to believe that one fights for peace by turning down and excluding the possibility of a relatively early achievement of peace. If matters go in the direction that various voices in the press seem to assume—though no serious observer would still consider such an assumption—then no one would be obliged even to pretend any longer to believe that there is one jot of sincerity in all those declamations which proclaim peace or even the rights of nations. In the near future the world will have the opportunity to decide with full consciousness whether to see the declamations of the will to peace as wrong and untruthful and yet still continue to find them significant, or whether to turn to the truth.

We, however, do stand on the foundation of deeper knowledge, and so there is no need for us to interrupt our observations. We are seeking for the truth, and truth must be found at all costs. For the truth can never be seriously harmful or work harmfully.

Today I intend to put before your soul certain matters which give us the opportunity to make our judgement justifiable in a number of directions. In no way do I want to influence anyone's standpoint, nor their judgement; for we are concerned with looking the facts of the physical plane, as well as the facts and impulses of the spiritual world, calmly in the eye. Some time ago I said that the question of necessity in world events would have to be scrutinized, even in the face of the most painful happenings. But Anthroposophy will never make us into fatalists, in the sense that we speak of necessities as a fate to which we have to resign ourselves. It is justifiable to ask: Did these painful events have to take place? But even if we feel obliged to answer in the affirmative, there is still no question of bowing down to these necessities in a fatalistic way. I should like to start by illustrating what I mean by a comparison.

Let us suppose that two people are arguing about how good the harvest will be next year in a certain area. The one says: The harvest will depend on the constraints laid down by nature. He lists all the constraints—the weather, and all the other conditions that are more or less independent of the will of man. The other, however, might object: You are right, all that exists; but what we ought to do is look at the practical question of how much of a contribution we ourselves can make. Then it is much less a matter of the weather and other things over which I have no influence; my main concern, then, is that I want to play my part in next year's harvest, so on my section of the land I will sow the best quality seed I can find. Whatever the other factors may be, it is my duty to sow the best possible seed, and I will make every effort to do so. The first man may be a fatalist; the second may not deny the reasons for the fatalism of the first, but he will do his best to sow the best quality seed. In the same way, for every person who desires to be prudent it is a matter, above all, of finding out how he can sow the best possible seed.

Of course, for the spiritual development of mankind the expression ‘to sow the proper seed’ means something vastly more complicated than is the case in the comparison I have just cited. It does not mean the application of a few abstract principles. It means taking the demands of mankind's evolution and recognizing correctly what is needed at the present moment for this evolution of mankind. For whatever next year's weather may be like and whatever other hindrances or unfavourable circumstances may apply, if the second person does not sow good seed the harvest will certainly be bad! So it is most important to recognize that at present the salvation of mankind's development demands certain conditions which, at the moment, by far the greatest portion of mankind is resisting. These are conditions which must be incorporated in human development so that a thriving and healthy development can take place in the future. And it must also be realized that man finds himself at present in a phase of development in which, within certain limits, it is up to him to cope with his mistakes.

In earlier times this was not the case. Before the fifth post-Atlantean period, before at least a large part of earthly mankind had come to the full realization of their freedom, divine spiritual powers intervened in earthly development, and it can be clearly perceived that this intervention by divine spiritual powers was sensed by human beings. Today, what matters is to show mankind how it is possible to reach certain insights and, above all, how to form a healthy judgement which coincides with the conditions demanded for man's development. The fact that there is a resistance to this judgement is one of the deeper causes of the present painful events.

Another question we shall have to consider over the next few days is why human beings did not turn to more spiritual inclinations a century ago. For had they done so today's painful situation would surely not have arisen. Let us postpone this a little longer and come to it perhaps tomorrow or the next day. Above all, let us hold to the knowledge that the painful events have come about chiefly as a result of this rejection of man's links with the spiritual world. Present events might therefore be described as a karma of materialism. But this phrase ‘karma of materialism’ must not be taken as an empty phrase; it must be understood in the right way.

Insights that are so deeply necessary have surfaced only sporadically during the years spanned by our lives—the final decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century. Certainly some insights—and much depends on insights—have been cast amongst mankind. Moreover, the attempt was made to cast them in such a way that a considerable number of people might have been included. But, at the moment, for reasons which will be mentioned later, people are still tremendously resistant to any kind of higher, spiritually grounded insight.

I now want to mention a book which appeared years ago. You might of course say: Many books are published, so why is this one so significant? At most, a book can only give people some theoretical instruction, and the salvation of the world is certainly not going to depend on whether they read it or not. Let me tell you that more is at stake than might be expected if certain ideas and insights are disseminated. Look in your soul once more at what I have told you during the last two or three lectures and you will be able to admit that this is so.

The book I mean was published in America and the author is Brooks Adams. When it appeared all those years ago it seemed to me to be one of the most important manifestations of new human insight. Even though the way it was presented to the world was spoilt by the fact that it included a foreword by ex-President Roosevelt, one of the greatest phrasemongers of today, nevertheless the ideas in this book by Brooks Adams could have brought enlightenment in the widest sense of the word. Another factor to be considered in connection with European cultural life was that the German translation of this book was brought out by a publisher of whom it was known that he serves quite particular spiritual streams, streams which are definitely hostile and detrimental, for instance to our Anthroposophical Movement. This is not what matters, however. What always matters is to have a sense for the fact that it is significant if certain ideas are presented to the world under an appropriate flag of this kind. It is quite different if a book is published by, let us say, the Cotta'sche Verlag, a distinguished publishing house which simply publishes books or, as in the case of the book in question, by a publisher who brings out books which serve the purposes of a particular society. There is a great difference between dealing simply with literature and dealing with certain definite impulses!

What is in this book by Brooks Adams? Let me first unfold only the main ideas which are brought forward, I must say, quite generally and abstractly in the most amateurish way and only in so far as their significance could be recognized in America. Yet it is important to know that a bird such as this flies up from this particular spot. Brooks Adams says in effect: There are in the world various nations who have been developing slowly for long ages. In the development of these peoples it is possible to detect both rise and fall: they are born, they pass through infancy, youth, maturity and old age, and then they perish.

This is, to start with, no profound truth but merely a framework. However, what Brooks Adams then develops in connection with the evolution of these peoples in the way of developmental laws certainly has some significance. It can be observed, he says, that in the period of their youth these peoples necessarily develop two tendencies which belong together. To enter properly into ideas such as these of Brooks Adams we must, of course, distinguish strictly between a people as such and the individual human beings; neither must we confuse the concept of a state with the concept of a people. So, Brooks Adams ascribes certain characteristics to a particular developmental period of a people and he also considers that these characteristics belong together. According to him some peoples, in the period of their youth, have the capacity for imagination, that is the capacity to form mental images which are, in the main, drawn from within. They owe their origin to the productive imagination and not to considerations such as those of what we today call science; they are drawn from the creative inner powers of the human being. This characteristic of creative imagination is, according to Brooks Adams, necessarily connected with another: these peoples are warlike. The two characteristics of creative imagination and a warlike disposition are inseparably linked in these peoples. Brooks Adams considers this to be a natural law in the spiritual life of these peoples. Peoples who are both imaginative and warlike are, as it were, a particular type.

In contrast to those peoples who belong to the imaginative and warlike type there are, says Brooks Adams, peoples who belong to another type. Here, creative imagination is no longer predominant, for it has developed into something we can call sober scientific judgement. Peoples who possess this characteristic of sober scientific judgement are not warlike by nature; they are industrial and commercial. These two characteristics—we are speaking of peoples, not individuals—belong together: the scientific and the commercial (for industry is simply a basis for commerce). Thus, there are peoples who are scientific and commercial, and peoples who are imaginative and warlike.

For the moment I do not want to criticize these ideas but merely mention that an opinion is asserting itself, though in a rather dilettante fashion, which years ago fluttered up, as it were, from American soil: Take care not to believe that the whole of mankind can be measured by the same yardstick! Do not imagine that the same ideals can be set for every nation! Note that consideration can only be given to what is founded in evolution, which means that you cannot expect a people like the Slavs, whose character is imaginative, to be unwarlike! Those of you who read Brooks Adams' book attentively, please note this latter example particularly. Judgement must be based, not on external appearances but on inner values, inner affinities.

The book is superficial if only for the reason that such knowledge, if it is expressed at all, should be expressed on the basis of spiritual insights alone. So long as there is a lack of spiritual insights, judgements about the evolution of mankind—which is of course affected by the working of spiritual powers—cannot but be one-sided. Above all, a great truth is omitted: On the physical plane we stand within the realm of maya regarding events as well as the will of human beings. As soon as maya is treated, not as maya but as reality, we must fall into error. And as soon as we fail to pay proper attention to developments within maya and to what resembles development within maya, we are already treating maya as reality.

If it were not nonsensical it would be very nice, for instance, to live in a season of permanent springtime, to be surrounded forever by blossoming, sprouting, burgeoning life. Why did the creators of the universe not arrange things so that we have sprouting, burgeoning life forever? Why do the beautiful tulips, lilies and roses have to fade and decay? The answer is quite simple: they have to fade and decay so that they can bloom again! In so far as we stand on the physical plane it must be clear to us that the one cannot be without the other—indeed, that the one is there for the sake of the other; and there is profound truth in Goethe's saying that nature created death in order to have much life. Since the physical world is maya there is no balance so long as we are in the physical world; a balancing can only come about if we can raise ourselves from the physical to the spiritual world. However, this balance is different from the balance we would expect so long as we hold the physical world to be a reality. So it is necessary to come to know the laws of maya, and to learn that within maya a balance can never be found, either by man or by any other being, if maya is not interwoven with something which lies outside maya but inside spiritual reality.

So, above all, it is always important to come to know maya as maya, to come to understand what it means when sprouting and burgeoning have to be accompanied by decay. In the case of nature it is easy to admit, since we see before our very eyes the facts we have to recognize. It will be easy to make anyone understand that in the summer and autumn of 1917 the fruits will ripen which were sown in the previous year's sowing season. If bad seeds were sown, then of course bad fruits will be harvested. So we will tend to pay attention to the quality of the seed and not allow ourselves to be so easily deceived by maya, as we are in other areas of human life where matters are rather more obscure.

Someone who points in a similar way, in connection with the life of nations, to the effect a bad sowing has on the quality of the ripening fruit, will immediately be met with prejudices. These may, for instance, be expressed as follows: I might suggest to someone that he should not be surprised at his bad harvest since his seed was poor when it was sown; he might then retort that it was his seed and that I am hurting his feelings by saying bad things about it. But I have no intention of hurting his feelings, for the poor quality of his seed might not be his fault at all. It is not a question of hurting a person's feelings but rather of stating an objective fact. It is not for me a matter of judging the connection between him and his seed-corn; that is his affair and I leave it to him entirely. But to know the objective facts it is necessary to inspect the seed-corn very closely and face up to what is really at the bottom of events. If, in doing so, we can maintain a proper objectivity, this might even be beneficial to the sower. Indeed, the benefit to him might be considerable if we succeed in making clear to him the connection between the harvest and the sowing. What I want to make clear to you is the importance of putting forward the thoughts in the right direction, and of seeking them in the right way.

After this prelude, I now want to go back some way in history. The reasons for this will soon be clear to you. I have already drawn your attention during lectures here to a king of England who played an important part for England in the realm of maya, in relation to religious development: Henry VIII. As you know, he was rather good at getting rid of his wives, of whom he had quite a number. He also had—well—let us say, the pluck to break with the Pope who did not want to dissolve one of his marriages. This refusal by the Pope gave Henry VIII the courage to bring about a new religion for the whole of England, inasmuch as it depended on him. We have spoken about this on another occasion.

During the reign of Henry VIII lived the great and eminent Thomas More. He was a man of sublime spirituality, indeed of a spirituality equal, for instance, to that of another great man, Pico della Mirandola, as well as other eminent personalities of that era. Thomas More was an enlightened spirit, even though, despite his enlightened insight, he became Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor and did not despise Henry himself. I shall prove to you in a moment that he did not despise Henry VIII. He was a spirit whose illuminated instinct enabled him to accept maya as maya. Yet, like Pico della Mirandola, he was also a pious man. He was not pious after the manner of Henry VIII, nor after the manner of the Pope; he was a sincere, earnestly pious man and from his point of view rejected all the impulses and attempts at reformation which were already beginning to flicker during his time.

In a certain respect Thomas More was a faithful son of the Catholic church; and although Henry VIII, whose Lord Chancellor he already was, would have loaded him with every honour if he had complied with his wishes, he remained disinclined to turn to a new religion simply because Henry desired to take a new wife. For this he was not only deprived of his position, he was condemned to death, and the record of the court proceedings which culminated in his condemnation is extraordinarily interesting and very characteristic of that time. The wording of the sentence which condemned Thomas More to death is quite remarkable.

Most of you know, since it has long been published in secular books, that in Freemasonry the ascent through the various degrees is connected with certain formulations which also include the manner of death awaiting those who fail to keep the secrets of a particular degree. It is stated that under certain circumstances the candidate will have to die a terrible death; for instance, in the case of one of the degrees, his body shall be cut open and his ashes strewn to the four winds of the earth. These things, as I just said, are now the subject of numerous secular writings. Now the sentence passed on Thomas More coincides exactly with the formulation in respect of a particular degree of Freemasonry: he was to be brought from life to death by a most inhuman method. Yet this alone was not enough. His body was to be divided into as many segments as there are compass points and the pieces were to be scattered in all these directions. Part of this sentence was indeed carried out in this very manner.

Consider that this event took place at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Thomas More was born in the second half of the fifteenth century and died in the first half of the sixteenth century. We may well ask whether all he did was to refuse the king the oath of supremacy—that is, refuse to recognize that the English church was independent of the Pope and commanded instead by the King of England. Is this really all he did?

Let us now turn to the most important thing he did, namely something which, even today, can have the utmost significance for anyone who looks at it squarely. Thomas More wrote the book Utopia. On the Best Form of the State and the New Island of Utopia. The main part of this book deals with the institutions of the island of Utopia, which means ‘not place’, or ‘no place’. If we take the book in the sense intended by Thomas More, we discover that Utopia means much more to him than some imaginary land in the external physical world. We should not be so foolish, however, as to assume that More wrote the book simply as an imaginary story. Thomas More cannot be counted among the Utopians. He did not want to present people with some imaginary tale; he wanted to say far more than this, in so far as this was possible in his day.

The main part of the book deals with Utopia, but it also has a very detailed introduction. This explains to us why More wrote the book. There is an important passage I want to bring to your attention, so that you can see that he did not despise Henry VIII. It begins as follows:

‘There was recently a rather serious difference of opinion between that great expert in the art of government, His Invincible Majesty, King Henry the Eighth of England, and His Serene Highness, Prince Charles of Castile. His Majesty sent me to Flanders to discuss and settle the matter.’

While in Flanders as an ambassador for Henry VIII, whom he calls an enlightened and great king, he meets a man he regards as exceptionally intelligent—spiritually, exceptionally important. So he asks him: Since you know so much and can assess matters so correctly, why do you not place your insights at the disposal of some prince? For More considers that most people in the service of princes are not very inspired, and that much that is good and favourable could ensue for the world if such inspired people were to place themselves at the service of the princes. The other now replies: It would be to no avail, for were I to express my views within some ministry or other, I should render the others no cleverer; instead they would very soon throw me out. In order to stress that this man, with whom he himself cannot agree, did actually exist, Thomas More adds: I met this man in the most varied company and he told us how he had once attempted to put forward his views in another company.

This is not merely an introduction to Utopia; Thomas More means something further. We have the curious situation in which Thomas More wishes to express criticism of the England of that time, the England of the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century; the Lord Chancellor wants to criticize England. It goes without saying that someone who thinks as Thomas More does would not embark on a criticism of something abstract. In speaking of England he knows that the English people are not identical with what is meant by the configuration of the English state. He knows this very well and he also knows that the state is not something abstract but that it is made by individuals, and that the English people are not included in any criticism that might be expressed about the actions of these individuals on whom all the more important aspects of the English state depend. So Thomas More seizes on the best possible starting point for a concrete discussion, for it is certainly not concrete, but mere nonsense, to say: England is like this, Germany like that, Italy like the other—and so on; to say this is to say nothing at all.

Now, within the framework of a larger company, More brings this intelligent, enlightened man into contact with someone who is an excellent lawyer, someone whom the world considers to be ‘an excellent lawyer’, and so these two—the intelligent man and the excellent lawyer in the eyes of the world—enter into a discussion of English jurisprudence. English jurisprudence was then of course not as it is today, but no matter: the fifth post-Atlantean period was just beginning. The intelligent and enlightened man thought that it was extraordinarily stupid to proceed against thieves in the way considered proper in the England of that time. This man, who has seen Utopia and later describes it, thought that the whole way in which robbery and other matters were considered was not at all clever. He thought that the deeper reasons for such behaviour should be investigated. Thus he came to reject all the views of that time concerning people's attitude to thieves. The excellent lawyer, of course, could not understand him at all. Let us now occupy ourselves a little with the arguments of the intelligent man—not those of the excellent lawyer. He says:

‘I once happened to be dining with the Cardinal when a certain English lawyer was there. I forget how the subject came up, but he was speaking with great enthusiasm about the stern measures that were then being taken against thieves. “We're hanging them all over the place,” he said, “I've seen as many as twenty on a single gallows. And that's what I find so odd. Considering how few of them get away with it, why are we still plagued with so many robbers?” “What's odd about it?” I asked—for I never hesitated to speak freely in front of the Cardinal.’

Now let us hear the intelligent man speak!

‘ “This method of dealing with thieves is both unjust and socially undesirable: As a punishment it's too severe, and as a deterrent it's quite ineffective. Petty larceny isn't bad enough to deserve the death penalty, and no penalty on earth will stop people from stealing, if it's their only way of getting food. In this respect you English, like most other nations, remind me of incompetent schoolmasters, who prefer caning their pupils to teaching them. Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody's under the frightful necessity of becoming a thief and then a corpse.” “There's adequate provision for that already,” replied the lawyer. “There are plenty of trades open to them. There's always work on the land. They could easily earn an honest living if they wanted to, but they deliberately choose to be criminals.” “You can't get out of it like that”, I said.’

This is the intelligent man once again.

‘ “Let's ignore, for the sake of argument, the case of the disabled soldier, who has lost a limb in the service of King and Country, either at home or abroad—perhaps in that battle with the Cornish rebels, or perhaps during the fighting in France, not so long ago. When he comes home, he finds he's physically incapable of practising his former trade, and too old to learn a new one. But as I say, let's forget about him, since war is only an intermittent phenomenon. Let's stick to the type of thing that happens every day.

Well, first of all there are lots of noblemen who live like drones on the labour of other people, in other words, of their tenants, and keep bleeding them white by constantly raising their rents. For that's their only idea of practical economy—otherwise they'd soon be ruined by their extravagance. But not content with remaining idle themselves, they take round with them vast numbers of equally idle retainers, who have never been taught any method of earning a living.

The moment their master dies, or they themselves fall ill, they're promptly given the sack—for these noblemen are far more sympathetic towards idleness than illness, and their heirs often can't afford to keep up such large establishments.

Now a sacked retainer is apt to get violently hungry, if he doesn't resort to violence. For what's the alternative? He can, of course, wander around until his clothes and his body are both worn out, and he's nothing but a mass of rags and sores. But in that state no gentleman will condescend to employ him, and no farmer can risk doing so—for who could be less likely to serve a poor man faithfully, sweating away with mattock and hoe for a beggarly wage and barely adequate diet, than a man who has been brought up in the lap of luxury, and is used to swaggering about in military uniform, looking down his nose at everyone else in the neighbourhood?”

“But that's exactly the kind of person we need to encourage,” retorted the lawyer. “In wartime he forms the backbone of the army, simply because he has more spirit and self-respect than an ordinary tradesman or farm-hand.”

“You might as well say,” I answered,’

Now the intelligent man speaks again.

‘ “that for the purposes of war you have to encourage theft. Well, you'll certainly never run short of thieves, so long as you have people like that about. And, of course, you're perfectly right thieves do make quite efficient soldiers, and soldiers make quite enterprising thieves. The two professions have a good deal in common. However, the trouble is not confined to England, although you've got it pretty badly. It's practically a world-wide epidemic.

France, for instance, is suffering from an even more virulent form of it. There the whole country is overrun even in peacetime—if you can call it that—by mercenaries who have been brought in for much the same reasons as you gave for supporting idle retainers. You see, the experts decided, in the interests of public safety, that they must have a powerful standing army, consisting mostly of veterans—for they put so little faith in raw recruits that they deliberately start wars to give their soldiers practice, and make them cut throats just to keep their hands in, as Sallust rather nicely puts it.

So France has learnt by bitter experience how dangerous it is to keep these savage pets, but there are plenty of similar object-lessons in the history of Rome, Carthage, Syria, and many other countries. Again and again standing armies have seized some opportunity of overthrowing the government that employed them, devastating its territory, and destroying its towns. And yet it's quite unnecessary. That's obvious enough from the fact that for all their intensive military training the French can't often claim to have beaten your wartime conscripts—I won't put it more strongly than that, for fear of seeming to flatter present company.” ’

Thus says the Lord Chancellor, Thomas More. We need hardly do more than copy down what he said then about the poor people of France. You could use these words to formulate the most beautiful sentences to present to the English ministers so that they can fulminate againt ‘Prussian militarism’. But these things were said at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, and possibly the juxtaposition of today's chatter with what lay at the beginning of it all might cause hurt feelings in some quarters.

You see, Thomas More lets us listen to the words of a person who endeavours to get to the bottom of things, and, moreover, in a way which could be disagreeable to some, even if matters are only touched upon quite superficially. He continues:

‘ “In any case I don't see how it can possibly be in the public interest to prepare for a war, which you needn't have unless you want to, by maintaining innumerable disturbers of the peace—when peace is so infinitely more important.

But that's not the only thing that compels people to steal. There are other factors at work which must, I think, be peculiar to your country.” ’

Thus speaks the man who has come back from Utopia.

‘ “And what are they?” asked the Cardinal.’

A new participant in the conversation.

‘ “Sheep,” I told him. “These placid creatures, which used to require so little food, have now apparently developed a raging appetite, and turned into man-eaters. Fields, houses, towns, everything goes down their throats. To put it more plainly, in those parts of the kingdom where the finest, and so the most expensive wool is produced, the nobles and gentlemen, not to mention several saintly abbots, have grown dissatisfied with the income that their predecessors got out of their estates. They're no longer content to lead lazy, comfortable lives, which do no good to society—they must actively do it harm, by enclosing all the land they can for pasture, and leaving none for cultivation. They're even tearing down houses and demolishing whole towns—except, of course, for the churches, which they preserve for use as sheepfolds. As though they didn't waste enough of your soil already on their coverts and game-preserves, these kind souls have started destroying all traces of human habitation, and turning every scrap of farmland into a wilderness. So what happens? Each greedy individual preys on his native land like a malignant growth, absorbing field after field, and enclosing thousands of acres with a single fence. Result—hundreds of farmers are evicted. They're either cheated or bullied into giving up their property, or systematically ill-treated until they're finally forced to sell. Whichever way it's done, out the poor creatures have to go, men and women, husbands and wives, widows and orphans, mothers and tiny children, together with all their employees—whose great numbers are not a sign of wealth, but simply of the fact that you can't run a farm without plenty of manpower. Out they have to go from their homes that they know so well, and they can't find anywhere else to live. Their whole stock of furniture wouldn't fetch much of a price, even if they could afford to wait for a suitable offer. But they can't, so they get very little indeed for it. By the time they've been wandering around for a bit, this little is all used up, and then what can they do but steal—and be very properly hanged?

Of course, they can always become tramps and beggars, but even then they're liable to be arrested as vagrants, and put in prison for being idle—when nobody will give them a job, however much they want one. For farm-work is what they're used to, and where there's no arable land, there's no farm-work to be done. After all, it only takes one shepherd or cowherd to graze animals over an area that would need any amount of labour to make it fit for corn production. For the same reason, corn is much dearer in many districts.

The price of wool has also risen so steeply that your poorer weavers simply can't afford to buy it, which means a lot more people thrown out of work. This is partly due to an epidemic of the rot, which destroyed vast numbers of sheep just after the conversion of arable to pasture land began. It almost looked like a judgement on the landowners for their greed—except that they ought to have caught it instead of the sheep. Not that prices would fall, however many sheep there were, for the sheep market has become, if not strictly a monopoly—for that implies only one seller—then at least an oligopoly. I mean it's almost entirely under the control of a few rich men, who don't need to sell unless they feel like it, and never do feel like it until they can get the price they want.” ’

I need read no further, but simply point out to you that in this book Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor, a man who shares the views of Pico della Mirandola, expresses bitter criticism through the mouth of a person who may indeed be fictitious and who has been in Utopia; but the criticism is levelled at something that really happened at that time. For indeed over wide areas the people who had tilled the soil with their hands were driven from their land, which was turned into grazing ground for the sheep of the landowners who sought to make profits in this way from the sale of wool.

Thomas More found it necessary to draw attention to the fact that people exist who drive the rural population from the soil they have tilled in order to turn it over to sheep. Those who are able to link effects with causes in an objective way can pursue, on the physical plane, how the structure of the English state today is intimately bound up with what happened all that time ago and was criticized in this way by Thomas More. And if one pursues the matter with the means of the spirit, which also exist, then one discovers that the English people cannot be held responsible for a great deal for which the England of politics must be held responsible. Moreover, those who are responsible for the England of politics are the heirs—in certain cases, even the actual descendants—of those who are criticized here by Thomas More. There is an unbroken evolution which can be traced back to that point. If we take such things into account we shall discover and know that in speeches such as that of Rosebery, which I quoted to you the other day, can be heard the voices of those who long ago made profits from the sale of wool in the manner described. Everywhere the objective connections must be sought. Above all one must be entitled not to be misunderstood in every possible way.

What does it mean when one is reproached and told to be more tactful because, otherwise, the English will think this or that? This is not at all what matters. What is important is that there are certain things in our life today which can be traced back to certain origins, and these origins must be sought in the proper places. There is no cause for anyone, merely because he is English, to rush to defend the impulses of the descendants of those who long ago drove the peasants from house and home, land and soil, in order to keep flocks of sheep instead of retaining arable land. It is necessary to become familiar with the laws of cause and effect, and not babble about one nation or another being to blame for this or that.

Now that I have endeavoured to demonstrate to you a characteristic link between something in the present and something in the past, let me turn to yet another point, in order once again to make a connection. I shall present you with a number of external facts which shall serve the purpose of giving you a foundation on which to build judgements.

A survey of present-day Europe, with the exception of the eastern part which is inhabited by the Slavs, reveals that for the most part it has emerged from what was the kingdom of Charlemagne in the eighth and ninth centuries. I am not concerned at the moment with Charlemagne himself, nor with the fact that there is much argument about him today. This argument about Charlemagne really has as little point as the argument of three sons about their father. If three sons quarrel amongst each other, the reason is frequently that they are all quite right to call a certain person their father. Indeed, three people would often not quarrel amongst each other were it not for the fact that they do all share the same father; and the object of their quarrel as likely as not is their inheritance!

Out of the realm of Charlemagne have come, in the main, three component parts: a western part which, after various vicissitudes, became the France of today; an eastern part which, in the main, has become today's Germany and Austria, with the exception of the Slav and Magyar regions; and a middle part which has become essentially the Italy of today. Strictly speaking, all three are equally justified in tracing themselves back to Charlemagne. Sometimes people even have strange feelings which determine whether they want to be traced back to Charlemagne or not. For instance, when you consider how many Saxons were slaughtered by Charlemagne, it is not surprising if some people attach no particular importance to being traced back to him. So, these three regions emerged from the kingdom of Charlemagne. In order to understand much of what is going on today we need to take into account that throughout the Middle Ages there existed, between the middle and the western region, certain links which were of an ideal nature, links which today no longer exist at all in such areas, apart from some empty phrases which cannot be taken seriously. For the Holy Roman Empire was to a large extent founded on ideals. If you do not wish to believe other sources which speak of these ideals, then read Dante's De Monarchia, or investigate what else Dante thought about these things. Consider, for instance, that it was Dante who reproached Rudolf of Habsburg for taking too little care of Italy, ‘the most beautiful garden in the Empire!’ Dante was, at least during that part of his life that matters most, an ardent adherent of that ideal community which had come into being and was called Germany-Italy.

Then in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we see that the Venetian Republic began to rebel against what came down from the North. First of all Venice devoured the patriarchate of Aquileia, but the main concern of the Venetians was to gain a foothold on the Adriatic and settle along the coast there. Venice was very successful and we can see how what came from the North was indeed pushed back, particularly by the influence of the Venetian Republic. Then comes the era known as the Renaissance, which flourished in Italy and elswhere, particularly under the influence of the blossoming of the free cities. But this was followed by the Counter-Reformation and the politics emanating from the Pope and Spain, and we see that not until the eighteenth century can Italy begin to think of recovering from centuries of pain and suffering. Since you can read it up in any history book, there is no need for me to describe how the moment at last arrived when Italy found her unity, to the approval of the whole world. Those of us who are familiar with these things know that in German regions just as much enthusiasm was expressed for the unification of Italy as elsewhere.

We might ask how the modern unification of Italy came about. We should look upon the case of Italy as a particularly important example of how unified states come into being. But we must also come to understand the connections between the events in Serbia and Italy which I told you about last week. These are connections which are immensely important for an understanding of the situation today. But first one must consider for a moment how the state of Italy came into being, a state which can surely be recognized ungrudgingly.

We need go back only as far as the Battle of Solferino in which France fought alongside Italy, and where the first step was taken towards the subsequent creation of the modern state of Italy. We are in the fifties of the nineteenth century. How did it come about—for there was a great deal at stake at that time—that the first step on the path towards modern Italy could be taken at Solferino by Italy and France? Read your history books and you will find they fully bear out what I am saying: It came about solely because Prussia and Austria—Austria could only lose—could not reach any agreement!

What happened subsequently is owed to the fact that Italy had in Camillo Cavour a truly great statesman, in whose soul the idea flourished that, from this starting point, something could arise in Italy which would lead to a rebirth of the ancient Roman greatness. But matters took a different turn. Something similar, though perhaps with a very different nuance, occurred; something similar to what we saw in connection with Michael Obrenovich, Prince of Serbia, when he sacrificed his earlier idealistic views to the demands of state necessity. In a similar way the great soul of Camillo Cavour bowed before karmic necessity and made the transition from the ideal to external realism.

I can only give you an outline of these things. Italy proceeded from stage to stage. In the summer of 1871 Victor Emmanuel was able to enter Rome. How had this become possible? It was made possible by Germany's victories over France! From the statesman Francesco Crispi stem the words: Italy went to Rome thanks to the German victories, after France had taken the first initiative at Solferino. But the fact that Rome became the capital of the kingdom of Italy is due to the German victories over France.

Now a remarkable relationship develops between Italy and France. It is interesting to note how to the extent that Italy was able to consolidate her unity, she became at once an opponent and an ally of France. Another factor is that Italy's statesmen set great store by the fact that her state structure was pieced together from the outside and also that she owed to Germany the final great push towards unity. These statesmen also saw that to join forces with France in the way which would have been possible at that time could not be fruitful for her. This stream, however, was in opposition to another, which gained in force from the year 1876 onwards: that of the francophile democratic left-wing party. So now this new state vacillated between an attraction to France which was, I might say, more on the feeling level, and a more practical attraction to Central Europe. The remarkable thing was that in everything that came about at that time it always turned out that the deciding factor was the practical tendency of Central Europe.

A new turn of events came about when France took over Tunisia. It had always been taken for granted that Tunisia would fall to Italy. But now France proceeded to spread herself there. So the practical tendency in Italy began to gain the upper hand, the tendency which leaned towards Central Europe. It is interesting, for instance, that at the Berlin Congress the Italian delegate asked Bismarck, who was quite calmly suggesting that France should spread over into Africa, whether he was really intent on setting Italy and France at each other's throats. Certainly for the Italian statesmen of that time this meant that Italy must turn towards Germany. And since Bismarck had spoken the famous words: ‘The path to Germany lies via Vienna’, Italy had to turn towards Austria too. So the ancient feud, which Austria had taken on as what I would call her tragic destiny, had to be shelved. For everything the Venetian Republic had done meant, basically, that those elements which tended towards Germany had been pushed out of Italy. So Austria had to take on the role of bearing the stream which came down from the North.

As a result of France's actions in North Africa, the francophile stream in Italy had to retreat, and so the connection with Central Europe came to be taken for granted at that time. I am giving you only a sketchy outline of these things since it is, after all, not my task to teach you politics. But it is necessary to know certain things about which, unfortunately, far too little is known these days. Italy joined Central Europe in 1882 in what came to be known as the Triple Alliance. Certain people will always misjudge this Triple Alliance because they cannot accustom themselves to using the valid terms. There really are people who blame the painful events of the present war on the Triple Alliance instead of the so-called Triple Entente, which included the Entente Cordiale. You see, people do not always use the proper terms. Normally you can ask about something which is intended to lead to a particular goal whether it is really getting there and how long it remains valid. Now, it was always said by those who were a party to the Triple Alliance that its purpose was to preserve peace. And it did indeed serve this purpose for many decades; that is, for decades it served the purpose for which its participants said it was intended.

Then came the Triple Entente of which it was also said that its purpose was to preserve peace. Yet within less than a decade peace had disappeared! Anything else in the world would be judged on what it achieves. Yet precisely in this matter people do not condescend to form an objective judgement. Only five years later that secret matter was contrived which gives us the possibility of studying more closely the alchemy of those bullets which were used for the assassination at Sarajevo! The assassination of June 1914 could not possibly fail! For if those bullets had missed their target, others would have succeeded! Every precaution had been taken to ensure that if one attempt failed, the next would succeed. It was better thought out, indeed planned on a larger scale, than any other assassination in the whole of history.

In order to study what our friends have asked us to bring up here, we shall have to discover the alchemy of those bullets. I shall return to this later. For after only five years something had been mingled with the interrelationships of the Triple Entente, something which brought it about that there was a link between every event that took place in Italy and every event that took place in the Balkan countries. The aim was to let nothing happen in the Balkans without a corresponding event in Italy. The passions of the people were to be swayed in such a way that no action could be taken one-sidedly, either in the one country or the other; the people's feelings and thoughts were always to run parallel. For decades there was this intimate connection between the various impulses in the Apennine and the Balkan peninsulas. Sometimes a case of this kind stands out in an extraordinarily symbolic way. It is ‘a beauty’ in the way it conforms exactly to the theory, just as a doctor might find a serious case ‘a beauty’ if it gives him an opportunity of performing a particularly good operation—which does not mean in any way that it is something beautiful in itself.

On a visit to Italy we once called in Rome on a most charming, delightful and friendly gentleman who has since died. He conducted us into his sitting room where we found in a very prominent position the portraits, personally autographed, of Draga Masin and Alexander Obrenovich. This friendly gentleman was not only a famous professor; he was the organizer of the so-called Latin League, which was concerned with the separation of South Tyrol and Trieste from Austria in favour of Italy. Of course I do not want to draw any great conclusions from such an insignificant experience. But it is significant symbolically that somebody who organizes the Latin League—I am not judging or criticizing, merely reporting—and, in connection with this Latin League, causes the students of Innsbruck university to riot, should have in his sitting room, visible to all comers, the autographed portraits of Alexander Obrenovich and Draga Masin. Since the secret threads which link Rome and Belgrade were well known to me at the time, this experience did make an impression on me as being symptomatic in a certain way. Karma does, after all, lead us to whatever is important for us in the world, and if we are capable of seeing and understanding things in the proper way, then we realize that karma has brought us to a point where there is something to be ‘sniffed out’ in the furtherance of our knowledge.

Things now developed in such a way that in 1888, a year in which war could have broken out just as it did in 1914, the crisis was averted because Crispi remained loyal to the Triple Alliance. He remained loyal to the Triple Alliance because France was proceeding to spread herself in North Africa. France embarked at that time on a political tactic aimed at Italy, who was starting to turn away from her. The French themselves said this tactic was intended to bring about the ‘re-conquering of Italy by means of hunger’, that is, a kind of trade war was attempted against Italy, and this trade war certainly played an important role at that time. The consequence was that Italy's practical links with Central Europe were increasingly strengthened. It is perhaps just as well if I give you the opinion of a Frenchman on this, rather than that of a German. He said that modern Italy was economically a German colony.

It has often been stressed, not only by Germans but by others as well, that Italy was saved by her close economic ties with Germany from the danger of being conquered by France through hunger—not a nice prospect. All this contributed to the peaceful settlement of the crisis at the end of the eighties. It is most interesting to study this crisis in all its details. It reveals something quite special to someone who is inclined to take account of interconnections and not be deceived. I did the following: I called to mind the events of 1888 and superimposed on them the date 1914. The events are absolutely identical! Just as in 1914 the incitements in the press were started in Petersburg and then taken up in Germany, so it was in 1888. As then, so also in 1914, a conflict was to be brought about between Germany and Austria. In short, every detail is the same. It is interesting that I have read aloud to various people a speech made in 1888 in which I replaced the date 1888 by 1914. Everybody believed that the speech was made in 1914!

When such things are possible we are not inclined to speak of coincidences. We have to understand that there are driving forces and that these driving forces work in a systematic way. In 1888 the matter was averted in the manner I have described. Then the situation became more complicated. The complication arose particularly because the connection of the Apennine peninsula to Central Europe took on a most peculiar character as far as Italy was concerned. It is psychologically interesting to study these things. It really came to a point where Italy, political Italy, had to be treated like some hysterical ladies are treated. The most unbelievable things developed, particularly because the opinion grew and was propagated in Europe that Austria must break up. I am not criticizing, only reporting.

You may gain an impression of how this opinion was propagated in Europe by reading the publications of Loiseaux, Chéradame and others, all of which treat of the assumption that Austria will be divided up in the near future. Now these judgements of Loiseaux and Chéradame and the others were thrown onto what was smouldering away down in the South. Under these circumstances it was definitely not easy to carry on what is usually known as politics. For instance, Oberdank was much celebrated in Italy. He had attempted to assassinate Emperor Franz Josef. In Vienna, on the other hand, a picture in an exhibition had to be renamed for the visit of the Duke of the Abruzzi. Its title was The Naval Battle of Lissa. This battle had been won by Austria, and so as not to offend the Duke of the Abruzzi the picture had to be renamed Naval Battle. This is just one example among many. I am not criticizing, but I do wonder about the question of give and take. Would anyone in Italy have condescended to be so considerate as to omit the name of a sea battle Italy had won? In Vienna they were. Whether it is right or wrong, it does raise the question of give and take. I mention this in order to characterize the different moods somewhat. For it is these moods which matter when streams such as that of the ‘Grand Orient de France’ come into play and when occult impulses of this kind start to take a hold.

Certain things of which people have taken no note so far will have to become things of which they take a great deal of note in the future, for it is not the case that the ‘Massonieri’, as also other secret brotherhoods, do not notice what is there; rather they set themselves the task of making use of those forces which are indeed there. They know where the forces are of which they must make use. So if on the Apennine peninsula there exists a certain stream, and if on the Balkan peninsula there exists another stream, then suitable use must be made of these two streams so that, at the right moment—that is, the right moment from the point of view of these people—one thing or another can be set in motion.

Let this be a preparation for the alchemical discussion I mentioned, which will take us further along our path. Please note that, in order to meet the wishes of our friends, I cannot but mention a certain amount of what is going on at the present time. What I have to say has to be linked to certain things which do exist, even if not everybody agrees that these should be brought out into the open. I am convinced that one of the chief causes for the painful events going on in the world today is the attitude that a blind eye can be turned to certain matters while others are discussed on the basis of an entirely false premise. Even in the face of large-scale matters of this kind, each individual should start from a foundation of self-knowledge. And a portion of self-knowledge is involved if we recognize that to claim no interest in these things and to want only to hear of occult matters is, in a small way, no different from all that adds up to the events we are experiencing today. For spiritual things are not only those which have to do with higher worlds. These, to start with, are of course occult for everybody. But much of what takes place on the physical plane is also occult for many people. We can only hope that much of what is occult and hidden on this plane may be revealed! For one of the causes of today's misery is that so much remains occult for so many people, who nevertheless persist in forming judgements.

In this course of lectures we shall deal with certain questions in the realms of Spiritual Science which play a great part in life. From the different lectures which in the course of time have been given, you will have learned that Spiritual Science should not be an abstract theory, not a mere doctrine or teaching, but a source of life and aptitude for life. It only fulfils its task when by the knowledge it is able to give, it pours into our souls something which makes life richer and more comprehensible, strengthening our souls and invigorating them. When the anthroposophist sets before him the ideal we have just summed up in a few words, and then looks around him to see how far he can put it into practice, he will perhaps receive a by no means gratifying impression. For if we consider impartially what the world thinks it ‘knows’ nowadays, and what leads men to this or that feeling or action, we might say all this is so very different from Anthroposophical ideas and ideals, that the Anthroposophist is quite unable to influence life directly by what he has acquired from Spiritual Science. This would however be a very superficial view of the situation, not taking into consideration what we ourselves have gained from our world conception. If those powers which we acquire through anthroposophy really become strong enough, they will find a way to work in the world; but if nothing is ever done to make these powers increasingly stronger, then indeed will it be impossible for them to influence the world.

But there is something else which may console us, so to speak, even if after the above considerations we feel hopeless, and that is just what should come to us as the result of the observations which will be set forth in this course of lectures; studies concerning what is called human karma and karma in general. For every hour that we spend here we shall see more clearly that nothing must be spared to bring about the possibility of influencing life by means of anthroposophy; moreover, if we ourselves earnestly and steadfastly believe in karma, we must have confidence that karma itself will dictate to us what we shall each, sooner or later, have to do for our own forces. If we think we are not yet able to make use of the powers we have acquired by our conception of the world, we shall see that we have not sufficiently strengthened those powers for karma to make it possible for us to influence the world by means of them. So that in these lectures there will not only be a number of facts about karma, but with every hour our confidence in karma will be more fully awakened, and we shall have the certainty that, when the time comes, be it tomorrow, or the day after, or many years hence, our karma will bring us the tasks which we, as Anthroposophists, have to perform. Karma will reveal itself to us as a teaching which does not tell us merely what is the connection between this or that in the world, but we can, with the revelations it brings to us, make life more satisfactory, and at the same time raise it to a higher standard.

But if karma is really to do this we must go more deeply into the law referred to, and into its action in the universe. In this case, it is to a certain extent necessary that I should do something unusual for me in dealing with questions of Spiritual Science, namely, to give a definition, an explanation of a word; for usually definitions do not lead very far. In our considerations we generally begin by the presentation of facts, and if these facts are grouped and arranged in the proper way, the conceptions and ideas follow of themselves; but if we were to follow a similar course with regard to the comprehensive questions which we have to discuss during the next few lectures, we should need much more time than is at our disposal. So in this case, in order to make ourselves comprehensible, we must give, if not exactly a definition, at least some description of the conception which is to occupy us for some time. Definitions are for the purpose of making clear what is meant when one uses such and such a word. In this way, a description of the idea of ‘karma’ will be given, so that we may know what is understood when in future the word ‘karma’ is used.

From the various lectures, every one of us will have formed for himself an idea of what karma is. It is a very abstract idea of karma to call it ‘the Spiritual Law of Causes,’ the law by which certain effects follow certain causes found in spiritual life. This idea of karma is too abstract, because it is on the one hand too narrow and on the other much too comprehensive. If we wish to conceive of karma as a ‘Law of Causes,’ we must connect it with what is otherwise known in the world as the ‘Law of Causality,’ the Law of Cause and Effect. Let us be clear about what we understand to be the law of causes in the general way before we speak of spiritual facts and events.

It is very often emphasised nowadays by external science, that its own real importance lies in the fact that it is founded on the universal law of causes, and that everywhere it traces certain effects to their respective causes. But people are certainly much less clear as to how this linking of cause and effect takes place. For you will still find in books of the present day which are supposed to be clever and to explain ideas in quite a philosophical manner, such expressions as the following: ‘An effect is that which follows from a cause.’ But to say this is to lose sight entirely of the facts. In the case of a warm sunbeam falling on a metal plate and making it warmer than before, material science would speak of cause and effect in the ordinary way. But can we claim that the effect—the warming of the metal plate—follows from the cause of the warm sunbeam? If the warm sunbeam had this effect already within it why is it that it warms the metal plate only when it comes into contact with it? Hence, in the world of phenomena, in the inanimate world which is all around us, it is necessary, if an effect is to follow a cause, that something should encounter this cause. Unless this takes place one cannot speak of an effect following upon a cause. This preliminary remark, philosophical and abstract though it apparently sounds, is by no means superfluous; for if real progress is to be made in anthroposophical matters we must get into the habit of being extremely accurate in our ideas instead of being casual as people sometimes are in other branches of knowledge.

Now we must not speak of karma in a way similar to that of the sunray warming a sheet of metal. Certainly there is causality. The connection between cause and effect is there, but we should never obtain a true idea of karma if we spoke of it only in that way. Hence, we cannot use the term karma in speaking of a simple relation between effect and cause.

We may now go a little further and form for ourselves a somewhat higher idea of the connection between cause and effect. For instance if we have a bow, and we bend it and shoot off an arrow with it, there is an effect caused by the bending of the bow; but we can no more speak of the effect of the shot arrow in connection with its cause as ‘karma’ than in the foregoing case. But if we consider something else in connection with this incident, we shall, to a certain extent, get nearer to the idea of karma, even if we do not then quite grasp it. For example, we may reflect that the bow, if often bent, becomes slack in time. So, from what the bow does and from what happens to it, there will follow not only an effect which shows itself externally, but also one which will react upon the bow itself. Through the frequent bending of the bow something happens to the bow itself. Something which happens through the bending of the bow reacts, so to speak, on the bow. Thus an effect is obtained which reacts on the object by which the effect itself was caused. This comes nearer to the idea of karma. Unless a result is produced which reacts upon the being or thing producing it, unless there is this peculiar reacting effect upon the being which caused it, the idea of karma is not understood. We thus get somewhat nearer to the idea when it is clear to us that the effects caused by the thing or being must recoil upon that thing or being itself; nevertheless we must not call the slackening of the bow through frequent bending, the ‘karma’ of the bow, for the following reason. If we have had the bow for three or four weeks and have often bent it so that after this time it becomes slack, then we really have in the slack bow something quite different from the tense bow of four weeks before. Thus when the reacting effect is of such a kind that it makes the thing or the being something quite different, we cannot yet speak of ‘karma.’ We may speak of karma only when the effects which react upon a being find the same being to react upon, or at any rate that being, in a certain sense, unaltered. Thus we have again come a little nearer to the idea of karma; but if we describe it in this way we obtain only a very abstract conception of it.

If we want to grasp this idea abstractly, we cannot do better than by expressing it in the way we have just done; but one thing more must be added to this idea of karma. If the effect reacts upon the being immediately, that is, if cause and reacting effect are simultaneous, we can hardly then call that karma, for in this case the being from whom the effect proceeded would have actually intended to bring about that result directly. He would, therefore, foresee the effect and would perceive all the elements leading to it. When this is the case we cannot really call it karma. For instance, we should not call it karma in the case of a person performing an act by which he intends to bring about certain results, and who then obtains the desired result in accordance with his purpose. That is to say, between the cause and the effect there must be something hidden from the person when he sets the cause in motion; so that though this connection is really there, it was not actually designed by the person himself. If this connection has not been intended by him then the reason for a connection between cause and effect must be looked for elsewhere than in the intentions of the person in question. That is to say, this reason must be determined by a certain fixed law. Thus karma also includes the facts that the connection between cause and effect is determined by a law independent of whether or not there be direct intention on the part of the being concerned.

We have now grouped together a few principles which may elucidate for us the idea of karma, but we must include all these principles in the conception of karma, and not limit it to an abstract definition. Otherwise we shall not be able to comprehend the manifestations of karma in the different spheres of life. We must now first seek for the manifestations of karma where we first meet with them—in individual human lives.

Can we find anything of the sort in individual lives, and when can we find what we have just presented in our explanation of the idea of karma? We should find something of the sort if, for example, we experienced something in our life about which we could say. ‘This experience which has come to us stands in a certain relationship to a previous event in which we took part, and which we ourselves caused.’ Let us try in the first place, by mere observation of life, to make sure whether this relationship exists. We will take the purely external point of view. He who does not do so can never arrive at the recognition of a law of inter-dependence in life, any more than a man who has never observed the collision of two billiard balls can understand the elasticity which makes them rebound. Observation of life can lead us to the perception of a law of inter-dependence. Let us take a definite example.

Suppose that a young man in his nineteenth year, who by some accident is obliged to give up a profession which until then had seemed to be marked out for him, and who up to that time had pursued a course of study to prepare him for that profession, through some misfortune to his parents was compelled to give up this profession and, at the age of eighteen, to become a business man. An impartial observer of such an occurrence in life, like the student in physics observing the impact of the elastic balls will probably find that the business experiences into which the young man has been driven will at first have a stimulating effect upon him, so that he will carry out his duties, learn something from them, and perhaps even attain special excellence in his work. But after some time one can also observe another condition entering in, a certain boredom or discontent. This discontent will not be manifested immediately. If the change of calling took place in the youth's nineteenth year, probably the next few years would pass quietly, though about his twenty-fourth year it would become evident that something apparently inexplicable had taken root in his soul. Looking more closely into the matter we are likely to find, if the case is not complicated, that the explanation of the boredom arising five years after the change of calling must be sought for in his thirteenth or fourteenth year; for the causes of such a phenomenon are generally to be sought for at about the same period of time before the change of calling as the occurrence we have been describing took place afterwards. The man in question when he was a school-boy of thirteen, five years before the change of vocation, might have experienced something in his soul which gave him a feeling of inner happiness. Supposing that no change of profession had taken place, then that to which the youth had accustomed himself in his thirteenth year would have shown itself in later life and would have borne fruit. Then, however, came the change which at first interested the young man and so possessed his soul that he repressed, as it were, what had before occupied it; but though repressed for a certain time, it would on that account gain a peculiar strength. This may be compared with the squeezing of an india-rubber ball which we can compress to a certain point where it resists, and if it were allowed to spring back it would do so in proportion to the force with which we have compressed it. Such experiences as we have just indicated, which the young man went through in his thirteenth year, and which grew stronger until the change of profession, might also in a certain sense be driven into the background. But after a time a certain resistance arises in the soul and one can then see how this resistance becomes strong enough to produce an effect. Because the soul lacks what it would have had if the change of profession had not taken place, that which had been repressed now begins to assert itself, appearing as boredom and discontent with its surroundings.

Here then we have the case of a man who experiences something or did something in his thirteenth or fourteenth year and who later did something—changed his occupation, and we see that these causes later on in their effect react on the same person. In such a case we should have to apply the idea of karma primarily to the individual life of a man. We ought not to object to this because we have known cases in which nothing of the kind could be traced. That may be, but no student of physics examining the laws of the velocity of a falling stone would say that the law was incorrect because the stone was deflected by a blow. We must learn to observe in the right way, and to exclude those phenomena which have nothing to do with the establishment of the law. Certainly such a young man, who supposing nothing else intervenes, experiences boredom in his twenty-fourth year as the result of impressions received in his thirteenth year, would not have been thus bored if, for example, in the meantime he had married. But we are here dealing with something which has no influence on the fundamental truth of the principle. What is important is that we must find the real factors from which we can establish a law. Observation pure and simple is insufficient; only methodical observation will lead us to the recognition of the law; and therefore if we want to study the law of karma, we must make these methodical observations in the right way.

Let us start, then, with the study of the karma of one special person. Fate deals a man in his twenty-fifth year a heavy blow, which causes him pain and suffering. Now, if our observations are of such a nature that we merely say ‘This heavy blow has just broken into his life and has filled it with pain and suffering,’ we shall never arrive at an understanding of karmic connections. But if we go a little further and observe the life of this person in his fiftieth year, after he has passed through such a trouble in his twenty-fifth year, we shall perhaps come to a different conclusion which we might be able to express thus: ‘The man whom we are now observing has become industrious and active, leading an excellent life.’ Now, let us look further back into his life. When he was twenty we find that he was a good-for-nothing fellow, and thoroughly idle. At twenty-five this trouble came upon him, and had he not met with this blow we may now say that he would have remained a good-for-nothing. In this case the severe blow of fate was the cause that at the age of fifty we now find him an industrious and excellent man.

Such a fact teaches us that we should be mistaken if we considered the blow of fate at the age of twenty-five was merely an effect. We cannot just ask what caused it, and stop at that. But if we consider the blow not as an effect at the end of the phenomena which preceded it, but place it rather at the beginning of the subsequent events, and consider it as a cause, then we learn that we must entirely and essentially change the judgments we have formed by our feelings and perceptions with regard to this blow of fate. We shall very likely be grieved if we think of it only as an effect, but if we think of it as the cause of what happens later on, we shall probably be glad and feel pleasure over it. For we can say that thanks to the fateful blow the man who experienced it has become a decent fellow, and a useful member of society. So we see that our attitude is essentially different in so far as we consider an event in life as cause or as effect. Therefore it is of importance from which point of view we regard an event happening to a man—whether we consider it as a cause or as an effect. It is true that if we start our investigations at the time of the painful events, we cannot then clearly perceive the direct effect, but if we have arrived at the law of karma by the observation of similar cases, that law can itself say to us: ‘an event is painful perhaps now because it appears to us merely as the result of what has happened previously, but it can also be looked upon as the starting point of what is to follow.’ Then we can foresee the blow of fate as the starting point and the cause of the results, and this places the matter in quite a different light.

Thus the law of karma itself may be a source of consolation if we accustom ourselves to set an event not only at the end, but at the beginning of a series of events. This consolation exists only if we learn to study life methodically, and to place things in the right relationship to one another as cause and effect. If we carry out these observations thoroughly, we shall notice events in the life of a man which take place with a certain regularity; others, again, appear quite irregularly in the same life. He who observes human life carefully—not simply in a superficial way—may find remarkable connections in it. Unfortunately, the phenomena of human life are at present observed for only short periods of time, hardly even for a few years; people are not accustomed to connect what has happened after a long period of time, with what may have happened previously as the cause. There are very few at the present day who study the beginning and the end of a man's life in their relationship to each other; nevertheless this relationship is extraordinarily instructive.

Supposing we have brought up a child during the first seven years of his life without having done what generally happens, that is, without starting out in the belief that if a man is to lead a good and useful life he must unconditionally fulfil our own ideas of a good man. For in such a case we should train the child as strictly as possible in the behaviour which, according to our own ideas, is that of a good and useful man. But if at the outset we recognise that a man may be good and useful in many different ways, and that there is no necessity to determine in which of these ways the child with his individual talents is to become a good and useful man—in this case we would say: ‘Whatever may be my ideas of a good and useful man, this child is to become one through having his best talents brought out, and these I must first discover. What matter the rules by which I myself feel bound? The child himself must feel the necessity to do this or that. If I wish to develop the child according to his individual talents, I must try first to develop tendencies latent in him and draw them out, so that he may above all realise them and act in accordance with them.’

Thus we see that there are two quite different ways of influencing a child in the first seven years of its life. If we now look at the child in its later life it will be a long time before the essential effects are manifested of what we have in this way brought into the first years of its life. Observation of life reveals to us that the actual results of what was put into the child's soul in its earliest years does not manifest itself until the very evening of life. A man may possess to the very end of his life an active mind, if he has been, as a child, educated in this way; that is, if the living, inherent tendencies of his soul have been observed and naturally developed. If we have drawn out and developed his innate powers we shall see the fruits in the evening of his life displayed as a rich soul-life. On the other hand, in a starved and impoverished soul and a corresponding weakly old age (for we shall see later on how a starved soul reacts on the body), is manifested that we have done wrong in our treatment of a person is in earliest childhood. This is something in human life which in a certain way is so regular that it is applicable to everyone as a connection between cause and effect.

The same connection may also be found in the intermediate stages of life, and we will now draw attention to this. The way in which we deal with a child from his seventh to his fourteenth year produces effects in that part of his life which precedes the final stage, and thus we see cause and effect working in cycles. What existed as cause in the earliest years comes out as effect in the latest ones. But in addition to these causes and effects in individual lives which run their course in cycles, there is what may be described as a straight line law.

In our example which showed how the thirteenth year influenced the twenty-third, we see how cause and effect are so connected with human life that what a man has experienced leads to after-effects which in their turn react upon him. Thus karma is fulfilled in individual lives. But we shall not arrive at an explanation of human life if we study only the connection of cause and effect in the life of a single individual. How the idea now brought forward is to be further proved and carried out we shall show in further lectures; at present we shall only briefly touch upon what is already acknowledged, that Spiritual Science teaches how the life of a man between birth and death is the repetition of previous human existences.

If we now seek for the chief characteristic of the life between birth and death, we can describe this as being the extension of one and the same consciousness (at any rate in its essentials) throughout the whole life-time. If you call to mind the earliest parts of your life, you will say: ‘There is indeed, a point of time when my recollections of life begin, which does not coincide with my birth, but which comes somewhat later.’ Everyone who is not an initiate will allow this, and he will say, this is as far back as his consciousness extends. There is, indeed, something very remarkable in the period of time between birth and the beginning of this recollection of life, and we shall return to it again as it will throw light upon important matters. Except then for this period between birth and the beginning of memory we can say that life between birth and death is characterised by the fact of one consciousness extending throughout that period of time.

In ordinary life a person does not seek a connection between cause and effect, because he takes only short periods into consideration. So when something happens to him in later life, he does not look for the cause in his earlier life; yet he could do so if he were only observant enough and investigated everything. He could do it with the consciousness which as memory-consciousness is at his disposal, and if through recollection he strove to make the connection, in a karmic sense, between earlier and later events, he would arrive at the following conclusion: ‘I see, of course, that certain experiences that come to me would not have occurred unless this or that had happened to me in earlier life, and I must now suffer for the wrong way in which I was brought up.’ But if he also looks into the connection, not for what he has done wrong, but for the wrong done against him, that will be a help to him. He will more easily find ways and means to neutralise the harm which has been done to him. The recognition of such a connection between cause and effects in our different periods of life which we can scan with ordinary consciousness may be of the utmost use to us in life; for if we acquire this knowledge we may perhaps do something else. Without doubt if a person having arrived at the age of eighty looks back and sees that the causes of the things happening to him now are to be found in his earliest childhood it will then perhaps be very difficult for him to remedy the ill that has been done to him; and if he then begins to study the teaching it will not help him very much. But if he lets himself be taught before, and looks back in, say, his fortieth year on the wrongs that have been done to him, he might then have time to take measures against them.

Thus we see that we must be taught not entirely by our own individual life karma, but by the law of inter-dependence which karma as a whole signifies. This may be very useful in our life. What should a man do who in his fortieth year attempts to avert the effect of wrongs done to him, or wrongs which he himself did in his twelfth year? He will do everything to avert the consequences of his own misdeeds or those of others towards him. He will to a certain extent replace by another the result which would inevitably have taken place had he not intervened. The knowledge of what happened in his twelfth year will lead him to a definite action in his fortieth year, which he would not have taken unless he had known that this or that had happened in his twelfth year. What then, has the man done by looking back at his early life? He has through the knowledge thus attained, allowed a definite result to follow a cause. He has willed the cause and has brought it about. This shows now how, in the line of karmic consequences, our will can intervene and bring about something which takes the place of the karmic effects which would otherwise have followed. If we consider such a case in which a person has quite consciously brought about a connection between cause and effect in life, we could conclude that in this case karma or the laws of karma have penetrated his consciousness, and he has himself, in a certain way brought about the karmic effect. Let us now apply the same reflections to what we know about the life of man in his different reincarnations upon earth. The consciousness of which we have just spoken which extends, with the exception mentioned, throughout the period between birth and death, is due to the fact that man is able to use his brain as an instrument. When a man steps through the gate of death, a different sort of consciousness comes into play—one that is independent of the brain and works under essentially different conditions. We also know that this consciousness, which lasts until a new birth, can look back over all that has been done by the man in his life between birth and death. In this period between birth and death we must first form the intention to look back at any wrongs which have been done to us, or which we have done, if we wish to counteract these wrongs karmically. After death, in looking back over life, we see what we have done wrong or otherwise; and at the same time we see how these deeds have affected ourselves; we see how, to a certain action, our characters have been improved or debased. If we have brought suffering to anyone, we have sunk and become of less value; we are less perfect, so to speak. Now, if we look back after death we see numerous events of the sort, and we say to ourselves: ‘I have deteriorated.’ Then in the consciousness after death, the will and power arise to win back, when the opportunities occur, the value we have lost; the will, that is to say, to make compensation for every wrong committed. Thus between death and re-birth the tendency and intention is formed to make good what has been done wrong, in order to regain the standard of perfection a man should have—a standard which has been lowered by the deed referred to.

Then the man returns once more to life on earth. His consciousness is altered again. He does not recollect the time between death and rebirth, or the resolutions to make compensation. But the intention remains within him, and although he does not know that he must do such and such a thing to compensate such and such an act, yet he is impelled by the power within him to make the compensation. Now we can form an idea of what happens when a man in his twentieth year suffers bitter trial. With the consciousness he possesses between birth and death, he will be depressed by the trial; but if he could remember his resolutions made between death and rebirth, he would be able to trace the power which drove him into the position in which he suffered the trial, because he felt that only by passing through it would he win back the degree of perfection which he has lost and was now to regain. When, therefore, the ordinary consciousness says, ‘The trial is there, and you are suffering from it,’ it sees only the trouble itself, and not the effect it produces; but the other consciousness which can look back upon all the time between death and rebirth, sees the intentional seeking for the trial or other misfortune.

This, indeed, is actually shown to us when we look out over a man's life from a higher standpoint. Then we can see that fateful events occur in human life which are not the results of causes in the individual life itself, but are the effects of causes perceived in another state of consciousness, namely, the consciousness we had before re-birth. If we grasp these ideas thoroughly, we shall see that in the first place we have a consciousness which extends over the time between birth and death, which we call the consciousness of the ‘Personality.’ And then we see that there is a consciousness which works beyond birth and death of which man in his ordinary consciousness knows nothing, but which nevertheless works in the same way as the ordinary consciousness. We have, therefore, shown first of all how anyone may take over his own karma, and in his fortieth year make some compensation so that the causes of his twelfth year may not come to effect. Thus he takes karma into his personal consciousness. If, however, the man is driven somewhere where he has to suffer pain in order to compensate for something and to become a better man, this also proceeds from the man himself; not from his personal consciousness, but from a more comprehensive consciousness which operates during the period between death and rebirth. The entity included in this consciousness we will call the ‘individuality,’ and this consciousness, which is being continually interrupted by the ‘personal consciousness,’ we will call the ‘individual consciousness.’ Thus we see karma operative in relation to the individual human being.

In spite of this, we shall not understand human life if we only follow the sequence of phenomena as we have just done, if we only fix our attention on what man has within him in the way of cause and the effects which concern him. We need only bring forward a simple case to make things clearer, and we shall at once see that we cannot understand human life if we take into consideration only what has already been said. Let us take a discoverer or an inventor, for example, Columbus, or the inventor of the steam-engine, or any others: in the discovery there is a distinct action, a distinct achievement. If we examine the action and seek for the cause why the man did it, we shall always find such causes by searching along the lines just pointed out. We shall find in his individual and personal karma the reasons why Columbus sailed to America and why he determined to do so at just that particular time. But now we might ask if the cause must be sought for only in his personal and individual karma; and is the action only to be considered as an effect for the individuality working in Columbus. That Columbus discovered America had certain consequences for him. He rose by doing so, and became more perfect, and this will show itself in the development of his individuality in succeeding lives. But what effects has this achievement had on other men? Must it not also be considered as a cause which affected the lives of countless human beings?

This, again, is still rather an abstract consideration of such a question which we could study much more deeply if we could observe human life over long periods of time. Let us consider human life in the Egyptian-Chaldean age which preceded the Greco-Latin. If we examine the peculiarities of this age, especially with regard to what it has given to mankind, and what mankind then learnt in it, we shall see something curious. If we compare this epoch with our own, we shall perceive that what is happening in our own time is connected with what happened in the Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation. The Greco-Latin lies between the two. In our time certain things would not happen unless other things had happened in the Egyptian-Chaldean times. If present-day natural science has brought about certain results, it has certainly done so by means of powers which have unfolded and developed out of the souls of men. The human souls who worked in our time were also incarnated in man in the Egyptian-Chaldean age, and at that time they underwent certain experiences without which they would not be able to accomplish what they do to-day. If the pupils of the old Egyptian temple priests had not learned in Egyptian astrology about the relations existing between the heavenly bodies, they would not later on have been able to penetrate into the secrets of the world, nor would certain souls in the present age have possessed the abilities to explore the regions of the heavens. For instance, how did Kepler arrive at his discoveries? He did so because within him there was a soul who in the Egyptian-Chaldean times had acquired the forces necessary for the discoveries which he was to make in the fifth age. It fills us with inner satisfaction to see in certain souls a realisation arising out of the fact that the germs of what they are now doing were laid in the past. Kepler, one of the men who has played a most important part in the investigation of the laws of the universe says of himself, ‘Yes, it is I who have robbed the golden vessels of the Egyptians to make an offering to my God far removed from Egyptian bounds. If you will forgive me, I will rejoice, but if you blame me I must bear it; here I throw the dice and I write this book. What matter if it is read to-day or later—even if centuries must elapse before it is read! God himself had to wait six thousand years for the one who recognised his work.’

Here we have a sporadic memory rising in Kepler of what he received as a germ for the work which he, in his personal life as Kepler, accomplished. Hundreds of similar cases might be given. But we see in Kepler something more than the mere manifestation of effects which were the result of causes in a previous incarnation—we see a manifestation which has its significance for the whole of mankind—a manifestation of something which was equally important for the humanity in a previous epoch. We see how a person is placed in the special position in order to do something for the whole of mankind. We see that not only in individual lives, but in the whole of humanity, there are connections between cause and effect, which stretch over wide periods of time, and we can deduce that the karmic law of the individual will intersect the laws which we may call ‘karmic laws of humanity.’ Sometimes this intersection is only slightly perceptible. Imagine what would have happened to our astronomy if the telescope had not been discovered at that particular time. If we look back at the history of the telescope we see of what tremendous importance the discovery has been. Now it is well known that the discovery of the telescope was made in the following way: Some children were playing with lenses in an optician's workshop and by chance, as one might say, they had so placed the optical lenses that someone hit upon the idea of employing this arrangement to make something like a telescope. Think how deeply you must search in order to arrive at the individual karma of the children and the karma of humanity which led to the discovery at that particular moment. Try to think the two facts out together, and you will see in what a remarkable manner the karma of single individuals and the karma of the whole of humanity intercept and are interwoven. You must admit that the whole of the development of mankind would have been different if such and such a thing had not come to pass when it did.

To ask such a question as:—‘What would have happened to the Roman Empire if the Greeks had not beaten off the Persian attack in the Persian wars at a particular time?’—is often quite futile, but to ask: ‘How did it happen that the Persian war ended in this way?’ is by no means futile. If we follow up this question and seek an answer we shall see that in the East, definite results came about because there were despotic rulers who only wanted something for themselves, and who, to gain their ends, combined with the sacrificial priests. The whole organisation of the Eastern State was at that time necessary for any given thing to be accomplished and this arrangement brought with it all the trouble which resulted in the Greeks—a differently constituted people—defeating the Eastern attack at a critical moment. How then must we consider the karma of those who worked in Greece to resist the Persian attack? We shall find much that is personal in the karma of those in question, but we shall also find that their personal karma is linked with the karma of nations and of humanity, so that we are justified in saying that the karma of humanity placed these particular persons in that particular place at that time. We see here the karma of humanity affecting the individual karma, and we must ask how these things are interwoven. But we may go still further, and consider yet another connection by means of Spiritual Science.

We can look back to a time in the evolution of our earth when there was as yet no mineral kingdom. The evolution of the earth was preceded by the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, where as yet there was no mineral kingdom in our sense of the word. It was on this earth that our minerals first took on their present forms. But because the mineral kingdom became separated in the course of the earth's evolution, it will remain a separate kingdom to the end. Before that, men, animals, and plants had developed without the mineral kingdom. In order that later the other kingdoms might make further progress, they had to separate the mineral kingdom out of themselves, but after they had done this, they could only develop on a planet which had a firm mineral form. They could have developed in no other way than this, if we admit that the formation of a mineral kingdom took place in the way we have said. The mineral kingdom is there, and the subsequent fate of the other kingdoms depends on the existence of this mineral kingdom which was formed within our earth in remote ages of antiquity. So something happened connected with the fact of the formation of the mineral kingdom which must be taken into account in all the later evolutions of the earth. What follows as the result of the origin of the mineral kingdom finds its fulfilment in later periods of what happened in earlier ones. On the earth is fulfilled what was on the earth prepared long ago. There is a connection between what happened earlier and what came to pass later—but this is also a connection which in its effects reacts upon the being which caused it. Men, animals, and plants have separated from the mineral kingdom, and the latter reacts upon them! Thus we see that it is possible to speak of the karma of the earth.

Finally, we can bring to light something, the elements of which we can find in the general principles described in my book, Occult Science. We know that certain beings remained at the stage of the old Moon evolution and that these beings did so for the purpose of giving to human beings certain definite qualities. Not only beings, but also substances, remained from the old Moon-time of the earth. At the Moon stage there remained behind beings who influenced our earth's existence as luciferic beings. As a result of this, certain effects are manifested on our earth of which the causes are to be found in the Moon life. But from the point of being of actual substance something analogous was also brought about. As we now see our solar system, we find it composed of heavenly bodies which regularly carry out recurrent movements showing a sort of inner completeness. But we find other heavenly bodies which move, indeed, with a certain rhythm, but break through, as it were, the usual laws of the solar system. These are the comets. Now, the substance of a comet does not obey the laws which exist in our solar system, but such laws as prevailed in the old Moon-existence. Indeed, the laws of that old Moon are preserved in the life of the comet. I have already often pointed out that Spiritual Science had indicated certain laws of science before they were confirmed by Natural Science. In Paris, in 1906, I drew attention to the fact that, during the old Moon-existence, certain combinations of carbon and nitrogen played a similar part to that played at the present day on our earth by combinations of oxygen and carbon, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and so on. These latter have something deadly in them. Cyanide combinations, prussic acid combinations, played a similar part during the old Moon-existence. Attention was called to these facts by Spiritual Science in 1906, and in other lectures it was shown that comets bring the laws of the old Moon-existence into our solar system, so that not only the luciferic beings remained behind, but also the laws of the old Moon-substance, which work in our solar system in an irregular way. We have always said that a comet must contain something like cyanide combinations in its atmosphere. Only much later, namely this year, 1910, was prussic acid found by spectrum analysis in the comet, proving what had already been made known by Spiritual Science. If we are ever asked to show whether anything can be discovered by Spiritual Science we have here a proof. There are more of such proofs if only one could observe them. So there is something of the old Moon-existence working in our present earth existence. Now we come to the question: Can it be maintained that something spiritual lies behind a phenomenon observed by means of the outer senses?

To one who knows Spiritual Science it is quite clear that there is something spiritual behind all material realities. If from the point of view of substance there is an action of the old Moon-existence on our earth existence when a comet shines upon it, then also something spiritual is working behind, and we can even distinguish what spiritual force is working in the case of Halley's comet. Halley's comet is the outward expression of a new impulse of materialism every time it comes within the sphere of our earth's existence. To the world of the present day this may seem superstitious, but men must remember how they themselves bring spiritual influences from the constellations. Who would deny that an Eskimo is a different sort of human being from a Hindu, because in the polar regions the sun's rays strike the earth at a different angle! Everywhere the scientists themselves refer spiritual effects on mankind to constellations. A spiritual impulse towards materialism is coincident with the appearance of Halley's comet¹ and this impulse can make itself felt. The appearance of this comet in 1835 was followed by that materialistic culture of the second half of the nineteenth century, and its appearance before that was followed by the materialistic enlightenment of the French Encyclopaedists. That is the connection. In order that certain things may enter into the earth's existence, the causes must be laid long before outside the earth; and here we actually have to deal with the world-karma. The spiritual and the material have been driven out of the old moon in order that certain effects may be reflected back upon those entities that have driven them out. It is certain that the luciferic beings have been driven out and forced to develop in a different way so that for the beings on earth, free will and the possibilities of free will could originate. Here we have something which in its karmic effect extends beyond our earth existence; here is a glimpse of the world-karma!

So we have now been able to speak of the conception of karma, of its significance for each personality, each individuality, and for all mankind. We have described its influence within our earth and beyond it, and we have found something else which we may describe as the world-karma.

Thus we find the karmic law of connection between cause and effect which works in such a way that the effect in its turn works back upon the cause; and yet in reacting it keeps its essence and remains the same. We find this law of karma ruling everywhere in the world in so far as we recognise the world as a spiritual one. We dimly sense karma revealing itself in so many different ways, in entirely different spheres, and we feel how the different branches of karma—personal karma, the karma of humanity, earth karma, world karma, etc., will intersect each other. And thereby we shall have the explanation we need in order to understand life; for life can only be understood in its details if we can find how the various karmic influences are interwoven.

• 1. The next appearance of the comet will be [was] in 1986. Its periodic visitations occur at intervals of about 76 years, and have been recorded since 240 BC. During its last visit, it passed directly between the Earth and the Sun, the Earth actually passing through the tail of the cornet. It is interesting to note that this series of lectures were being given as the comet was at its closest to the Earth, May 1910. (Ed.)

In the course of our enquiries during the next few days I should like to draw your attention to two things which seemingly bear little relation to each other. But when we have concluded our enquiries you will realize that they are closely connected. I should like in fact to touch upon certain matters which will provide points of view, symptomatic points d'appui concerning the development of religions in the course of the present fifth post-Atlantean epoch. And on the other hand, I would also like to show you in what respect the spiritual life that we wish to cultivate may be associated with the building which bears the name ‘Goetheanum.’

It seems to me that the decisions taken in such a case have a certain importance, especially at the present time. We are now at a stage in the evolution of mankind when the future holds unknown possibilities and when it is important to face courageously an uncertain future and when it is also important, from out of the deepest impulses, to take decisions to which one attaches a certain significance. The external reason for choosing the name ‘Goetheanum’ seems to be this: I expressed the opinion a short time ago in public lectures that, for my part, I should like the centre for the cultivation of the spiritual orientation that I envisage to be called for preference the Goetheanum. The name to be decided upon had already been discussed last year; and this year a few of our members decided to support the choice of the name ‘Goetheanum.’ As I said recently there are many reasons for this choice, reasons which I find difficult to express in words. Perhaps they will become clear to you if I start today from considerations similar to those which I dealt with here last Sunday, by creating a basis for the study of the history of religions which we will undertake in these lectures.

You know of course—and I would not touch upon personal matters if they were not connected with revelant issues, and also with matters concerning the Goetheanum—you know that my first literary activity is associated with the name of Goethe and that it was developed in a domain in which today, even for those who refuse to open their eyes, who prefer to remain asleep, the powerful catastrophic happenings of our time are adumbrated. My view of Goethe from the standpoint of spiritual science, and equally what I said recently in relation to The Philosophy of Freedom, are of course a personal matter; on the other hand, however, this personal factor is intimately linked with the march of events in recent decades. The origin of my The Philosophy of Freedom and of my Goethe publications is closely connected with the fact that, up to the end of the eighties I lived in Austria and then moved to Germany, first to Weimar and then to Berlin, a connection of course that is purely external. But when we reflect upon this external connection we are gradually led, in the light of the facts, if we apprehend the symptoms aright, to an understanding of the inner significance. From the historical sketches I have outlined you will have observed that I am obliged to apply to life what I call historical symptomatology, that I must comprehend history as well as individual human lives from out of their symptoms and manifestations because they are pointers to the real inner happenings. One must really have the will to look beyond external facts in order to arrive at their inner meaning.

Many people today would like to learn to develop super-sensible vision, but clairvoyance is difficult to achieve and the majority would prefer to spare themselves the effort. That is why it is often the case today that for those naturally endowed with clairvoyance there is a dichotomy between their external life and their clairvoyant faculty. Indeed, where this dichotomy exists super-sensible vision is of little value and is seldom able to transcend personal factors. Our epoch is an age of transition. Every epoch, of course, is an age of transition. It is simply a question of realizing what is transmitted. Something of importance is transmitted, something that touches man in his inmost being and is of vital importance for his inner life. If we examine objectively what the so-called educated public has pursued the world over in recent decades, we are left with a sorry picture—the picture of a humanity that is fast asleep. This is not intended as a criticism, nor as an invitation to pessimism, but as a stimulus to awaken in man those forces which will enable him to attain, at least provisionally, his most important goal, namely, to develop insight, real insight into things. Our present age must shed certain illusions and see things as they really are.

Do not begin by asking: what must I do, what must others do? For the majority of people today such questions are inopportune. The important question is: how do I gain insight into the present situation? When one has adequate insight, one will follow the right course. That which must be developed will assuredly be developed when we have the right insight or understanding. But this entails a change of outlook. Above all men must clearly recognize that external events are in reality simply symptoms of an inner process of evolution occurring in the field of the super-sensible, a process that embraces not only historical life, but also every individual, every one of us in the fullness of our being.

Let me quote¹ by way of illustration. Today we are very proud that we can apply the law of causality in all kinds of fields; but this is a fatal illusion. Those who are familiar with Hamerling's life know how important for his whole inner development was the following circumstance. After acting for a short time as a ‘supply’ teacher in Graz (i.e. a kind of temporary post before one is appointed to a permanent position in a Gymnasium) he was transferred to Trieste. From there he was able to spend several holidays in Venice. When we recall the ten years which Hamerling spent on the Adriatic coast—he divided his time between teaching in Trieste and visiting Venice—we see how he was fired with ardent enthusiasm for all that the south could offer him, how he derived spiritual nourishment for his later poetry from his experiences there. The real Hamerling, the Hamerling we know, would have been a different person if he had not spent the ten years in question in Trieste with the opportunity for holidays in Venice!

Now supposing some thoroughly philistine professor is writing a biography of Hamerling and wanted to know how it was that Hamerling came to be transferred to Trieste precisely at this decisive moment in his life, and how a man without means, who was entirely dependent upon his salary, happened to be transferred to Trieste at this particular moment. I will give you the external explanation. Hamerling, as I have said, held at that time a temporary appointment (he was a supply teacher, as we say in Austria) at the Gymnasium² in Graz. These supply teachers are anxious to find a permanent appointment, and since this is a matter for the authorities, the applicant for such a post has to send in his various qualifications—written on one side of the application form—enclosing testimonials, etcetera. The application is then forwarded to a higher authority who in turn forwards it to still higher authorities, etcetera, etcetera. There is no need to describe the procedure further. The headmaster of the Gymnasium in Graz where Hamerling worked as a temporary assistant, was the worthy Kaltenbrunner. Hamerling heard that there was a vacancy for a master in Budapest. At that time the Dual Monarchy did not exist and teachers could be transferred from Graz to Budapest and from Budapest to Graz. Hamerling applied for the post in Budapest and handed in his application, written in copper plate, together with the necessary testimonials to the headmaster, the worthy Kaltenbrunner, who placed it in a drawer and forgot all about it. Consequently the post in Budapest was given to another candidate. Hamerling was not appointed because Kaltenbrunner had forgotten to forward the application to the higher authorities, who, if they had not forgotten to do so, would have forwarded it to their immediate superiors and these in their turn to their superiors, etcetera, until it reached the minister, when it would have been referred back to the lower echelons and have passed down the bureaucratic ladder. Thus another candidate was appointed to the post in Budapest, and Hamerling spent the ten years which were decisive for his life, not in Budapest, but in Trieste, because sometime later a post feil vacant here to which he was appointed—and because, of course, the worthy Kaltenbrunner did not forget Hamerling's application a second time!

From the external point of view therefore Kaltenbrunner's negligence was responsible for the decisive turning point in Hamerling's life; otherwise Hamerling would have stagnated in Budapest. This is not intended as a ctiticism of Budapest; but the fact remains that Budapest would have been a spiritual desert for Hamerling and he would have been unable to develop his particular talents. And our biographer would now be able to tell us how it was that Hamerling had been transferred from Graz to Trieste—because Kaltenbrunner had simply overlooked Hamerling's application.

Now this is a striking incident and one could find countless others of its kind in life. And he who seeks to measure life by the yard-stick of external events will scarcely find causes, even if he believes that he is able to establish causal relationships, that are more closely connected with their effects than the negligence of the worthy Kaltenbrunner with the spiritual development of Robert Hamerling. I make this observation simply to call your attention to the fact that it is imperative to implant in the hearts of men this principle: that external life as it unfolds must be seen simply as a symptom that reveals its inner meaning.

In my last lecture I spoke of the forties to the seventies as the critical period for the bourgeoisie. I pointed out how the bourgeoisie had been asleep during these critical years and how the end of the seventies saw the beginning of those fateful decades which led to our present situation.^T1 I spent the first years of these decades in Austria. Now as an Austrian living in the last third of the nineteenth century one was in a strange position if one wished to participate in the cultural life of the time. It is of course easy for me to throw light on this situation from the standpoint of a young man who spent his formative years in Austria and who was German by descent and racial affiliation. To be a German in Austria is totally different from being a German in the Reich^T2 or in Switzerland. One must, of course, endeavour to understand everything in life and one can understand everything; one can adapt oneself to everything. But if, for example, one were to raise the question: what does an Austro-German feel about the social structure in which he lives and is it possible for an Austro-German without first having adapted himself to it, to have any understanding of that peculiar civic consciousness one finds in Switzerland? Then the answer to this question must be an emphatic no! The Austro-German grew up in an environment that makes it totally impossible for him to understand—unless he forced himself to do so artificially—that inflexible civic consciousness peculiar to the Swiss.

But these national differentiations are seldom taken into account. We must however give heed to them if we are to understand the difficult problems in this domain which face us now and in the immediate future. It was significant that I spent my formative years in an environment where the most important things did not really concern me. I would not mention this if it were not in fact the most important experience of the true-born German-Austrian. In some it finds expression in one way, in others in another way. To some extent I lived as a typical Austrian. From the age of eleven to eighteen I had to cross twice a day the river Leitha which formed the frontier between Austria and Hungary since I lived at Neudörfl in Hungary and attended school in Wiener-Neustadt. It was an hour's journey on foot and a quarter of an hour's by slow train—there were no fast trains, nor are there any today I believe—and each time I had to cross the frontier. Thus one came to know the two faces of what is called abroad ‘Austria.’ Formerly things were not so easy in the Austrian half of the Empire. Today one cannot say things are easier (that is unlikely), but different. Up till now one had to distinguish two parts of the Austrian Empire. Officially one half was called, not Austria, but ‘the Kingdoms and “lands” represented in the Federal Council’, i.e. Cis-Leithania, which included Galicia, Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, Upper and Lower Austria, Salzburg, the Tyrol, Styria, Carniola, Carinthia, Istria and Dalmatia. The other half, Trans-Leithania,³ consisted of the ‘lands’ of the Crown of St. Stephen, i.e. what is called abroad Hungary, which included also Croatia and Slavonia. Then, after the eighties, there was the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupied up to 1909 and later annexed, which was jointly administered by the two halves of the Empire.

Now in the area where I lived, even amongst the most important centres of interest, I did not find anything which really interested me between the ages of eleven and eighteen. The first important landmark was Frohsdorf, a castle inhabited by Count de Chambord, a member of the Bourbon family, who had made an unsuccessful attempt in 1871 to ascend the throne of France under the name of Henry V. There were many other peculiarities attaching to him. He was an ardent supporter of clericalism. In him, and in everything associated with him, one could perceive a world in decline, one could catch the atmosphere of a world that was crumbling in ruins. There were many things one saw there, but they were of no interest. And one felt: here is something which was once considered to be of the greatest importance and which many today still regard as immensely important. But in reality it is a bagatelle and has no particular importance.

The second thing in the neighbourhood was a Jesuit monastery, a genuine Jesuit monastery. The monks were called Redemptorists,⁴ an offshoot of the Jesuits. This monastery was situated not far from Frohsdorf. One saw the monks perambulating, one learned of the aims and aspirations of the Jesuits, one heard various tales about them, but this too was of no interest. And again one felt: what has all this to do with the future evolution of mankind? One felt that these monks in their black cowls were totally unrelated to the real forces which are preparing man's future development.

The third thing in the locality where I lived was a masonic lodge. The local priest used to inveigh against it, but of course the lodge meant nothing to me for one was not permitted to enter. It is true the porter allowed me on one occasion to look inside, but in strict secrecy. On the following Sunday, however, I again heard the priest fulminating against the lodge. In Brief, this too was something that did not concern me.

I was therefore well prepared when I matured and became more aware to be influenced by things which formerly held no interest for me. I regard it as very significant and a fortunate dispensation of my karma that, whilst I had been deeply interested in the spiritual world in my early years, in fact I lived my early life on the spiritual plane, I had not been forced by external circumstances into the classical education of the Gymnasium. All that one acquires through a humanistic education I acquired later on my own initiative. At that time the standard of the Gymnasium education in Austria was not too bad; it has progressively deteriorated since the seventies and of recent years has come perilously close to the educational system of neighbouring states. But looking back today I am glad that I was not sent to the Gymnasium in Wiener-Neustadt. I was sent to the Realschule and thus came in touch with a teaching that prepared the ground for a modern way of thinking, a teaching that enabled me to be closely associated with a scientific outlook. I owed this association with scientific thinking to the fact that the best teachers—and they were few and far betweenin the Austrian Realschule, which was organized on the most modern lines, were those who were connected in some way with modern scientific thinking.

This was not always true of the school in Wiener-Neustadt. In the lower classes—in the Austrian Realschule religious instruction was given only in the four lower classes—we had a teacher of religion who was a very pleasant fellow, but was quite unfitted to bring us up as devout and pious Christians. He was a Catholic priest and that he was hardly fitted to inspire piety in us is shown by the fact that three young boys who used to call for him everyday after school were said to be his sons. But I still hold him in high regard for everything he taught in class apart from his religious instruction. He imparted this religious instruction in the following way: he called an a pupil to read a few pages from a devotional work; then it was set for homework. One did not understand a word, learned it by heart and received high marks, but of course one had not the slightest idea of the contents. His conversation outside the classroom was sometimes beautiful and stimulating and above all warm and friendly.

Now in such a school one passed through the hands of a succession of teachers of widely different calibre. All this is of symptomatic significance. We had two Carmelites as teachers, one was supposed to teach us French, the other English. The latter in particular scarcely knew a word of English; in fact he could not string together a complete sentence. In natural history we had a man who had not the faintest understanding of God and the world. But we had excellent teachers for mathematics, physics, chemistry and especially for projective geometry. And it was they who paved the way for this inner link with scientific thinking. It is to this scientific thinking that I owed the impulse which is fundamentally related to the future aims of mankind today.

When, after struggling through the Realschule one entered the University, one could not avoid—unless one was asleep—taking an interest in public affairs and the world around. Now the Austro-German—and this is important—arrives at a knowledge of the German make-up in a totally different way from the Reich German.⁵ One could have, for example, a superficial interest in Austrian state-affairs, but one could scarcely feel a real inner relationship to them if one were interested in the evolution of mankind. On the other hand, as in my own case, one could have recourse to the achievements of German culture at the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth century and to what I should like to call Goetheanism. As an Austro-German one responds to this differently from the Reich German. One should not forget that once one has become inured to the natural scientific outlook through a modern education one outgrows a certain artificial milieu which has spread over the whole of Western Austria in recent time. One outgrows the clerical Catholicism to which the people of Western Austria only nominally adhere, an extremely pleasant people for the most part—I exclude myself of course. This clerical Catholicism has never touched their lives deeply.

In the form it has assumed in western Austria this clerical Catholicism is a product of the Counter-Reformation, of the ‘Hausmacht’ policy of the Hapsburgs. The ideas and impulses of Protestantism were fairly widespread in Austria, but the Thirty Years' War and the events connected with it enabled the Hapsburgs to initiate a counter Reformation and to impose upon the extremely gifted and intelligent Austro-German people that terrible obscurantism, which must be imposed when one diffuses Catholicism in the form which prevailed in Austria as a consequence of the Counter Reformation. Consequently men's relationship to religion and religious issues becomes extremely superficial. And happiest are those who are still aware of this superficial relationship. The others who believe that their faith, their piety is honest and sincere are unwittingly victims of a monstrous illusion, of a terrible lie which destroys the inner life of the soul.

With a Background of natural science it is impossible of course to come to terms with this frightful psychic mishmash which invades the soul. But there are always a few isolated individuals who develop themselves and stand apart from it. They find themselves driven towards the cultural life which reached its zenith in Central Europe at the end of the eighteenth and in the early nineteenth century. They came in touch with the current of thought which began with Lessing, was carried forward by Herder, Goethe and the German Romantics and which in its wider context can be called Goetheanism.

In these decades it was of decisive importance for the Austro-German with spiritual aspirations that—living outside the folk community to which Lessing, Goethe, Herder etcetera belonged, and transplanted into a wholly alien environment over the frontier—he imbibed there the spiritual perception of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and Herder. Nothing else impressed one; one imbibed only the Weltanschauung of Weimar classicism—and in this respect one stood apart, isolated and alone. For again one was surrounded by those phenomena which did not concern one.

And so one was associated with something that one gradually felt to be second nature, something, however, that was uprooted from its native soil and which one cherished in one's inmost soul in a community which was interested only in superficialities. For it was anomalous to cherish Goethean ideas at a time when the world around was enthusiasticbut the words of enthusiasm were pompous and artificial, without any suggestion of sincere and honest endeavourabout such publications (and I could give other examples) as the book of the then Crown Prince Rudolf An illustrated history of Austria. The book in fact was the work of ghost writers. One had no affinity with this trash, though, it is true, one belonged outwardly to this world of superficiality. One treasured in one's soul that which was an expression of the Central European spirit and which in a wider context I should like to call Goetheanism.

This Goetheanism, with which I associate the names of Schiller, Lessing, Herder and also the German philosophers, occupies a singularly isolated position in the world. And this isolation is extremely significant for the whole evolution of modern mankind for it causes those who wish to embark upon a serious study of Goetheanism to become a little reflective.

Looking back over the past one asks oneself: what have Lessing, Goethe and the later German Romantics, approximately up to the middle of the nineteenth century, contributed to the world? In what respect is this contribution related to the historical evolution prior to Lessing's time? Now it is well known that the emergence of Protestantism out of Catholicism is intimately connected with the historical evolution of Central Europe. We see, an the one hand, in Central Europe, in Germany for example—I have already discussed the same phenomenon in relation to Austria—the survival of the universalist impulse of Roman Catholicism. In Austria its influence was more external, as I have described, in Germany more inward. Now there is a vast difference between the Austrian Catholic and the Bavarian Catholic, and many of these differences which have survived date back to the remote past. Then came the invasion of Catholic culture by Protestantism or Lutheranism, which in Switzerland took the form of Calvinism or Zwinglianism.⁶ Now a high proportion of the German people, especially the Reich Germans, was Lutheran. But strangely enough there is no connection whatsoever between Lutheranism and Goetheanism! It is true that Goethe had studied both Lutheranism and Catholicism, though somewhat superficially. But when one considers the ferment in Goethe's soul, one can only say that throughout his life it was a matter of indifference to him whether one professed Catholicism or Protestantism. Both confessions could be found in his entourage, but he was in no way connected with them. To this aperçu the following can be added. Herder⁷ was pastor and later General Superintendent in Weimar. As pastor, of course, he had received much from Luther externally and was familiar with his teachings; he was aware that his outlook and thinking had nothing in common with Lutheranism and that he had entirely outgrown the Lutheran faith. Thus, in everything associated with Goetheanism—and I include men such as Herder and others—we have in this respect a completely isolated phenomenon. When we enquire into the nature of this isolated phenomenon we find that Goetheanism is a crystallization of all kinds of impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Luther did not have the slightest influence on Goethe; Goethe, however, was influenced by Linnaeus,⁸ Spinoza and Shakespeare, and on his own admission these three personalities exercised the greatest influence upon his spiritual development.

Thus Goetheanism stands out as an isolated phenomenon and that is why it can never become popular. For the old entrenched positions persist; not even the slightest attempt was made to promote the ideas of Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe amongst the broad masses of the population, let alone to encourage the feelings and sentiments of these personalities. Meanwhile an outmoded Catholicism on the one hand, and an outmoded Lutheranism on the other hand, lived on as relics from the past. And it is a significant phenomenon that, within the cultural stream to which Goethe belonged and which produced a Goethe, the spiritual activities of the people are influenced by the sermons preached by the Protestant pastors. Amongst the latter are a few who are receptive to modern culture, but that is of no help to them in their sermons. The spiritual nourishment offered by the church today is antediluvian and is totally unrelated to the demands of the time; it cannot lend in any way vitality or vigour. It is associated, however, with another aspect of our culture, that aspect which is responsible for the fact that the spiritual life of the majority of mankind is divorced from reality. Perhaps the most significant symptom of modern bourgeois philistinism is that its spiritual life is remote from reality, all its talk is empty and unreal.

Such phenomena, however, are usually ignored, but as symptoms they are deeply significant. You can read the literature of the war-mongers over recent decades and you will find that Kant is quoted again and again. In recent weeks many of these war-mongers have turned pacifist, since peace is now in the offing. But that is of no consequence; philistines they still remain, that is the point. The Stresemann⁹ of today is the same Stresemann of six weeks ago. And today it is customary to quote Kant as the ideal of the pacifists. This is quite unreal. These people have no understanding of the source from which they claim to have derived their spiritual nourishment.

That is one of the most characteristic features of the present time and accounts for the strange fact that a powerful spiritual impulse, that of Goetheanism, has met with total incomprehension. In face of the present catastrophic events this thought fills us with dismay. When we ask: what will become of this wave—one of the most important in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—given the atmosphere prevailing in the world today, we are filled with sadness.

In the light of this situation the decision to call the centre which wishes to devote its activities to the most important impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the ‘Goetheanum’ irrespective of the fate which may befall it, has a certain importance. That this building shall bear the name ‘Goetheanum’ for many years to come is of no consequence; what is important is that the thought even existed, the thought of using the name ‘Goetheanum’ in these most difficult times.

Precisely through the fact I have mentioned to you, Goetheanism in its isolation could become something of unique importance when one lived at the aforesaid time in Austria where one's interests were limited. For if people had understood that Goetheanism was something which concerned them, the present catastrophe would not have arisen. This and many other factors enabled isolated individuals in the German-speaking areas of Austria—the broad masses live under the heel of the Catholicism of the CounterReformation—to develop a deep inner relationship to Goetheanism. I made the acquaintance of one of these personalities, Karl Julius Schröer¹⁰ who lived and worked in Austria. In every field in which he worked he was inspired by the Goethe impulse. History will one day record what men such as Karl Julius Schröer thought about the political needs of Austria in the second half of the nineteenth century. These people who never found a hearing were aware to some extent how the present situation could have been avoided, but that it was nevertheless inevitable because no one would listen to them.

On arriving in Imperial Germany one had above all the impression, when one had developed a close spiritual affinity with Goethe, that there was nowhere any understanding of this affinity. I came to Weimar in autumn 1889—I have already described the pleasing aspects of life in Weimar—but what I treasured in Goethe (I had already published my first important book on Goethe) met with little understanding or sympathy because it was the spiritual element in him that I valued. Outwardly and inwardly life in Weimar was wholly divorced from any connection with Goethean impulses. In fact these Goethean impulses were completely unknown in the widest circles, especially amongst professors of the history of literature who lectured on Goethe, Lessing and Herder in the universities—unknown amongst the philistines who perpetrated the most atrocious biographies of Goethe. I could only find consolation for these horrors by reading the publications of Schröer and the excellent book of Herman Grimm which I came across relatively early in my life. But Herman Grimm was never taken seriously by the universities. They regarded him as a dilettante, not as a serious scholar.

No genuine university scholar of course has ever made the effort to take K. J. Schröer seriously; he is always treated as a light-weight. I could give many examples of this. But one should not forget that the literary world with its many ramifications—including, if I may say so, journalism—has been under the influence of a bourgeoisie that has been declining in recent decades, a bourgeoisie which is fast asleep and which, when it embarks upon spiritual activities, has no understanding of their real meaning. Under these circumstances it is impossible of course to arrive at any understanding of Goetheanism. For Goethe himself is, in the best sense of the word, the most modern spirit of the fifth postAtlantean epoch.

Consider for a moment his unique characteristics. First, his whole Weltanschauung—which can be raised to a higher spiritual level than Goethe himself could achieve—rests upon a solid scientific foundation. At the present time a firmly established Weltanschauung cannot exist without a scientific basis. That is why there is a strong scientific substratum to the book with which I concluded my Goethe studies in 1897. (The book has now been republished for reasons similar to those which led to the re-issue of The Philosophy of Freedom.) The solid body of philistines said at that time (it was a time when my books were still reviewed, the title of the book is Goethe's Conception of the World:^T3 in reality he ought to call it ‘Goethe's conception of nature.’ The so-called Goethe scholars, the literary historians, philosophers and the like failed to realize that it is impossible to present Goethe's Weltanschauung unless it is firmly anchored in his conception of nature.

A second characteristic which shows Goethe to be the most modern spirit of the fifth post-Atlantean age is the way in which that peculiar spiritual path unfolds within him which leads from the intuitive perception of nature to art. In studying Goethe it is most interesting to follow this connection between perception of nature and artistic activity, between artistic creation and artistic imagination. One touches upon thousands of questions—which are not dry, theoretical questions, but questions instinct with life, when one studies this strange and peculiar process which always takes place in Goethe when he observes nature as an artist, but sees it on that account no less in its reality, and when he works as an artist in such a way that, to quote his own words, one feels art to be something akin to the continuation of divine creation in nature at a higher level.

A third characteristic typical of Goethe's Weltanschauung is bis conception of man. He sees him as an integral part of the universe, as the crowning achievement of the entire universe. Goethe always strives to see him, not as an isolatcd being, but imbued with the wisdom that informs nature. For Goethe the soul of man is the stage on which the spirit of nature contemplates itself. But these thoughts which are expressed here in abstract form have countless implications if they are pursued concretely. And all this constitutes the solid base on which we can build that which leads to the supreme heights of spiritual super-sensible perception in the present age. If one points out today that mankind as a whole has failed to give serious attention to Goethe—and it has failed in this respect—has failed to develop any relation ship to Goetheanism, then it is certainly not in order to criticize, lecture or reproach mankind as a whole, but simply to invite them to undertake a serious study of Goetheanism. For to pursue the path of Goetheanism is to open the doors to an anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. And without Anthroposophy the world will not find a way out of the present catastrophic situation. In many ways the safest approach to spiritual science is to begin with the study of Goethe.

All this is related to something else. I have already pointed out that this shallow spiritual life which is preached from the pulpit and which then becomes for many a living lie of which they are unconscious—all this is outmoded. And fundamentally the erudition in all the faculties of our universities is equally outmoded. This erudition becomes an anomaly where Goetheanism exists alongside it. For a further characteristic feature of Goethe's personality is his phenomenal universality. It is true that in various domains Goethe has sowed only the first seeds, but these seeds can be cultivated everywhere and when cultivated contain the germ of something great and grandiose, the great modern impulse which mankind prefers to ignore, and compared with which modern university education in its outlook and attitude is antediluvian. Even though it accepts new discoveries, this modern university education is out of date. But at the same time there exists a true life of the spirit, Goetheanism, which is ignored. In a certain sense Goethe is the universitas litterarum, the hidden university, and in the sphere of the spiritual life it is the university education of today that usurps the throne. Everything that takes place in the external world and which has led to the present catastophe is, in the final analysis, the result of what is taught in our universities. People talk today of this or that in politics, of certain personalities, of the rise of socialism, of the good and bad aspects of art, of Bolshevism, etcetera; they are afraid of what may happen in the future, they envisage such and such occupying a certain post, and there are those who six weeks ago said the opposite of what they say today ... such is the state of affairs. Where does all this originate? Ultimately in the educational institutions of the present day. Everything else is of secondary importance if people fail to see that the axe must be laid to the tree of modern education. What is the use of developing endless so-called clever ideas, if people do not realize where in fact the break with the past must be made.

I have already spoken of certain things which did not concern me. I can now teil you of something else which did not concern me. When I left the Realschule for the university I entered my name for different lecture courses and attended various lectures. But they held no interest for me; one felt that they were quite out of touch with the impulse of our time. Without wishing to appear conceited I must confess that I had a certain sympathy for that universitas, Goetheanism, because Goethe also found that his university education held little interest for him. And at the royal university of Leipzig in the (then) Kingdom of Saxony, and again at Strasbourg university in later years, he took virtually no interest in the lectures he attended. And yet everything, even the quintessence of the artistic in Goethe rests upon the solid foundation of a rigorous observation of nature. In spite of all university education he gradually became familiar with the most modern impulses, even in the sphere of knowledge. When we speak of Goetheanism we must not lose sight of this. And this is what I should have liked to bring to men's attention in my Goethe studies and in my book Goethe's Conception of the World. I should have liked to make them aware of the real Goethe. But the time for this was not ripe; to a large extent the response was lacking. As I mentioned recently the first indications were visible in Weimar where the soil was to some extent favourable. But nothing fruitful came of it. Those who were already in entrenched positions barred the way to those who could have brought a new creative impulse. If the modern age were imbued in some small measure with Goetheanism, it would long for spiritual science, for Goetheanism prepares the ground for the reception of spiritual science. Then Goetheanism would again become a means whereby a real regeneration of mankind today could be achieved. One cannot afford to take a superficial view of our present age.

After my lecture in Basel yesterday^T4 I felt that no honest scientist could deny what I had to say on the subject of super-sensible knowledge if he were prepared to face the facts. There are no logical grounds for rejecting spiritual knowledge; the real cause for rejection is to be found in that barbarism which in all regions of the civilized world is responsible for the present catastrophe. It is profoundly symbolic that a few years ago a Goethe society had nothing better to do than to appoint as president a former finance minister—a typical example of men's remoteness from what they profess to honour. This finance minister who, as I said recently, bears, perhaps symptomatically, the Christian name ‘Kreuzwendedich’ believes of course, in his fond delusion, that he pays homage to Goethe. With a background of modern education he has no idea and can have no idea how far, how infinitely far removed he is from the most elementary understanding of Goetheanism.

The climate of the present epoch is unsuited to a deeper understanding of Goetheanism. For Goetheanism has no national affiliation, it is not something specifically German. It draws nourishment from Spinoza, from Shakespeare, from Linnaeus—none of whom is of German origin. Goethe himself admitted that these three personalities exercised a profound influence upon him—and in this he was not mistaken. (He who knows Goethe recognizes how justified this admission is.) Goetheanism could determine men's thinking, their religious life, every branch of science, the social forms of community life, the political life ... it could reign supreme everywhere. But the world today listens to windbags such as Eucken¹¹ or Bergson and the like ... (I say nothing of the political babblers, for in this realm today adjective and substantive are almost identical).

What we have striven for here—and which will arouse such intense hatred in the future that its realization is problematical, especially at the present time—is a living protest against the alienation of spiritual life today from reality. And this protest is best expressed by saying: what we wanted to realize here is a Goetheanum. When we speak here of a Goetheanum we bear witness to the most important characteristics and also to the most important demands of our time. And amid the philistine world of today this Goetheanum at least has been willed and should tower above this present world that claims to be civilized.

Of course, if the wishes of many contemporaries had been fulfilled, one could perhaps say that it would have been more sensible to speak of a Wilsonianum,¹² for that is the flag under which the present epoch sails. And it is to Wilsonism that the world at the present time is prepared to submit and probaly will submit.

Now it may seem strange to say that the sole remedy against Wilsonism is Goetheanism. Those who claim to know better come along and say: the man who talks like this is a utopian, a visionary. But who are these people who coin this phrase: he is an innocent abroad—who are they? Why, none other than those worldly men who are responsible for the present state of affairs, who always imagined themselves to be essentially ‘practical’ men. It is they of course who refuse to listen to words of profound truth, namely, that Wilsonism will bring sickness upon the world, and in all domains of life the world will be in need of a remedy and this remedy will be Goetheanism.

Permit me to conclude with a personal observation on the interpretation of my book Goethe's Conception of the World which has now appeared in a second edition. Through a strange concatenation of circumstances the book has not yet arrived; one is always ready to make allowances, especially at the present time. It was suggested by men of ‘practical’ experience some time ago, months ago in fact, that my books The Philosophy of Freedom and Goethe's Conception of the World should be forwarded here direct from the printers and so avoid going via Berlin and arrive here more quickly. One would have thought that those who proffered this advice were knowledgeable in these matters. I was informed that The Philosophy of Freedom had been despatched, but after weeks and weeks had not arrived. For some time people had been able to purchase copies in Berlin. None was to be had here because somewhere on the way the matter had been in the hands of the ‘practical’ people and we unpractical people were not supposed to interfere. What had happened? The parcel had been handed in by the ‘practical’ people of the firm who had been told to send it to Dornach near Basel. But the gentleman responsible for the despatch said to himself: Dornach near Basel; that is in Alsace, for there is a Dornach there which is also near Basel ... there is no need to pay foreign postage, German stamps will suffice. And so, on ‘practical’ instructions the parcel went to Dornach in Alsace where, of course, they had no idea what to do with it. The matter had to be taken up by the unpractical people here. Finally, after long delays when the ‘practical’ gentleman had satisfied himself that Dornach near Basel is not Dornach in Alsace, The Philosophy of Freedom arrived. Whether the other book, Goethe's Conception of the World, instead of being sent from Stuttgart to Dornach near Basel has been sent by some ‘practical’ person via the North Pole, to arrive finally in Dornach after travelling round the globe, I cannot say. In any case, this is only one example that we have experienced personally of the ‘practical’ man's contribution to the practical affairs of daily life.

This is what I was first able to undertake personally in a realm that lay close to my heart—more through external circumstances than through my own inclination—in order to be of service to the epoch. And when I consider what was the purpose of my various books, which are born of the impulse of the time, I believe that these books answer the demands of our epoch in widely divergent fields. They have taught me how powerful have been the forces in recent decades acting against the Spirit of the age. However much in their ruthlessness people may believe that they can achieve their aims by force, the fact remains that nothing in reality can be enforced which runs counter to the impulses of the time. Many things which are in keeping with the impulses of the time can be delayed; but if they are delayed they will later find scope for expression, perhaps under another name and in a totally different context. I believe that these two books, amongst other things, can show how, by observing one's age, one can be of service to it. One can serve one's age in every way, in the simplest and most humble activities. One must simply have the courage to take up Goetheanism which exists as a Universitas liberarum scientiarum alongside the antediluvian university that everyone admires today, the socialists of the extreme left most of all.

It might easily appear as if these remarks are motivated by personal animosity and therefore I always hesitate to express them. One is of course a target for the obvious accusation—‘Aha, this fellow abuses universities because he failed to become a university professor!’ ... One must put up with this facile criticism when it is necessary to show that those who advocate this or that from a political, scientific, political-economic or confessional point of view of some kind or other fail to put their finger an the real malady of our time. Only those point to the real malady who draw attention to the pernicious dogma of infallibility which, through the fatal concurrence of mankind has led to the surrender of everything to the present domination of science, to those centres of official science where the weeds grow abundantly, alongside a few healthy plants of course. I am not referring to a particular individual or particular university professor (any more than when I speak of states or nations I am referring to a particular state or nation)—they may be excellent people, that is not the point. The really important question is the nature of the system.

And how serious this situation is, is shown by the fact that the technical colleges which have begun to lose a little of their natural character now assume university airs and so have Bone rapidly downhill and become corrupted by idleness.

I want you to consider the criticisms I have made today as a kind of interlude in our anthroposophical discussions. But I think that the present epoch offers such a powerful challenge to our thoughts and sentiments in this direction that these enquiries must be undertaken by us especially because, unfortunately, they will not be undertaken elsewhere.

Our present age is still very far removed from Goetheanism, which certainly does not imply studying the life and works of Goethe alone. Our epoch sorely needs to turn to Goetheanism in all spheres of life. This may sound utopian and impractical, but it is the most practical answer at the present time. When the different spheres of life are founded an Goetheanism we shall achieve something totally different from the single achievement of the bourgeoisie today—rationalism. He who is grounded in Goetheanism will assuredly find his way to spiritual science. This is what one would like to inscribe in letters of fire in the souls of men today.

This has been my aim for decades. But much of what I have said from the depths of my heart and which was intended to be of service to the age has been received by my contemporaries as an edifying Sunday afternoon sermonfor in reality those who are happy in their cultural sleep ask nothing more. We must seek concretely to discover what the epoch demands, what is necessary for our age—this is what mankind so urgently needs today. And above all we must endeavour to gain insight into this, for today insight is all important. Amidst the vast confusion of our time, a confusion that will soon become worse confounded, it is futile to ask: what must the individual do? What he must do first and foremost is to strive for insight and understanding so that the infallibility in the domain that I referred to today is directed into the right channel.

My book Goethe's Conception of the World was written specially in order to show that in the sphere of knowledge there are two streams today: a decadent stream which everyone admires, and another stream which contains the most fertile seeds for the future, and which everyone avoids. In recent decades men have suffered many painful experiences—and often through their own fault. But they should realize that they have suffered most—and worse is still to follow—at the hands of their schoolmasters of whom they are so proud. It appears that mankind must needs pass through the experiences which they have to undergo at the hands of the world schoolmaster, for they have contrived in the end to set up a schoolmaster as world organizer. Those windbags who have persuaded the world with their academic twaddle are now joined by another who proposes to set the world to right with empty academic rhetoric.

I have no wish to be pessimistic. These words are spoken in order to awaken those impulses which will answer Wilsonism with Goetheanism. They are not inspired by any kind of national sentiment, for Goethe himself was certainly not a nationalist; his genius was universal. The world must be preserved from the havoc that would follow if Wilsonism were to replace Goetheanism!

• 1. R. Hamerling (1830–89). Early work lyrical poems. Homunculus (1888) attacked the soullessness of the epoch. Philosophy opposed to monism and pessimism.
• 2. The Gymnasium prepared pupils for the Abitur and the University. Main subjects Greek and Latin; two foreign languages, usually French and English, included in the curriculum.
• T1. i.e. the war of 1914–18
• T2. i.e. Imperial Germany.
• 3. Realschule. Here emphasis an Mathematics and Natural Sciences. This type of school had a vocational bias.
• 4. Leitha and Leithania. The Leitha a tributory of the Danube. Up till 1918 formed the frontier between Austria and Hungary. The Austrian half of the Empire called Cis-Leithania, the Hungarian half, Trans-Leithania. See The Hapsburg Empire by C. S. Macartney, 1968.
• 5. Redemptorists. St. Alfonso de Liguori (1696–1787) founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. Members of this congregation called Redemptionists. Undertook missionary work in the dioceses around Naples, heard confession and supervised schools. St. Alfonso beatified 1816 and canonized 1839.
• 6. The ‘Reich German’ refers to the German who was born and lived in Imperial Germany pre-1918.
• 7. Gottfried Herder (1744–1807). A seminal influence in theology, history, philosophy and pedagogy. Friend of Goethe. See any history of German literature.
• 8. Karl von Linnä or Linnaeus (1707–78). Swedish naturalist. Inventor of artificial system of plant classification.
• 9. Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929). National liberal politician. Post-1918 advocated a policy of reconciliation. Chancellor 1923. Foreign Minister 1923–9. Nobel Peace Prize 1926.
• 10. K. J. Schröer (1825–1900). Literary historian. Professor of history of literature at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna. Teacher of R. Steiner. See latter's Course of my Life.
• T3. Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London and Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1928.
• T4. Rechtfertigung der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis durch die Naturwissenschaft, 31st October, 1918 (see Bibl. Nr. 72).
• 11. R. Eucken (1846–1929). Professor of Philosophy, Jena. Pioneer of idealist metaphysics.
  
  H. Bergson (1859–1941). Professor at Collge de France. Famous for his book Creative Evolution and the idea of the elan vital as the fundamental stuff of the Universe.
• 12. Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924). Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy. President U.S.A. 1912–20. Author of the ‘Fourteen Points’ as basis for peace 1918. Idea of a ‘League of Nations’ stemmed from him; also of a world government to prevent future wars.

In the last few reflections, I have tried to introduce you to the ideas and impulses that have been moving proletarian circles for a long time, that are alive in proletarian circles, and that will contribute the most essential thing to what will be world-shaking events from the present into the near future. Today, in order to bring these considerations to some kind of conclusion tomorrow, I would like to point out some of the forces that are available for the present from the past, so to speak, that can be perceived by the observer, especially the observer of spiritual science, as forces that have been preparing themselves in the past, are now are there, but which are actually not as obvious as most people today believe, but which must be taken into account by anyone who, at any point in world development, and at one point everyone is indeed, wants to participate in the shaping of events - one can already speak of such a shaping of events - that will form from the present into the future.

What happens always happens out of certain forces that have their center here or there and then radiate in different directions. We have seen how, in the last four and a half catastrophic years, long-standing forces have been unleashed in many different directions, taking on the most diverse forms, so that what has happened in the last four and a half years has taken place shows clearly distinguishable epochs, even if they are short in time, and one cannot get by with simply referring to these events of the last four and a half years as the “war” of the last years. The events came to a warlike ignition at a certain point, I would say. But then quite different forces were added to the things that first, I might say, shone more illusively into human consciousness and were also interpreted in the most illusory way by the broadest circles. In a relatively short time, people's decisions and impulses of will became quite different from what they had been before.

All this must be carefully considered. In the future, one will see that here and there these or those impulses of will will emerge. In one place, in one center, people will want one thing, in another center they will want another. These impulses of will, which will emanate from groups of people, will interpenetrate and mutually oppose each other in the most diverse ways. There is no possibility of thinking of a harmony of the effective forces, but the only thing to be considered at first is that the individual really acquires understanding for what occurs here or there. Today very few people are at all prepared to assess this or that in the right way, because people have become too accustomed to judging things according to preconceived opinions, according to catchwords. In the course of the nineteenth century and up to the present day, people have gradually been educated in such a way that they have diverted their attention from what really matters. As a result, it is hardly possible today to easily assess the weight of the volitional impulses emanating from this or that group of people in the right way. The course of recent events has provided sufficient evidence of this. This evidence will one day be recorded by history. Perhaps sooner than people think, they will be recorded by history. But for those who want to form an opinion on events in any way, it is necessary that they develop the will today to assess the free events, to assess the events.

I say: there is plenty of evidence for what I have just said. One only needs to provide a striking example, a proof whose validity unfortunately still extends far into the present, in that in this respect, in places where the judgments should not be clouded, these judgments are often clouded. In the course of the past few years we have had the distressing experience that precisely people who were in positions of responsibility here or there in the most diverse fields, that people who had to direct or manage this or that or even just had to judge this or that – because a great deal depends on judgment, on so-called true public opinion, which is sometimes actually is the unexpressed thought of men and which has nevertheless a certain deep meaning -, we have made the experience and it still works in the present, that people in decisive places or also in non-decisive places, which however are still taken into consideration, have formed illusion judgments about everything, about which they should have had a healthy judgment. I have already mentioned the fact that the German people in particular have been given a bad reputation by foreigners, which has had more influence than one might think in the course of recent events: that is the reputation of the German Kaiser. This judgment of the German Emperor is now being somewhat corrected by the very latest events, but it is only just beginning to be corrected. The worst thing about these judgments was that it had an almost devastating effect, considering this man to be an important man. If he had not been considered an important man, but a highly insignificant one, not at all relevant to the events, as he was throughout the years since he came to power, then the terrible judgment of the foreign countries would not have come about, which – as history will show – has caused greater devastation than one can even imagine today.

Not true, it will certainly help to correct the situation if we look at the terrible fear that a few people in Germany had when this man, still reluctant to resign, fled to headquarters in the last few days, in order to find some information at headquarters that might help him to hold on, to somehow hold on to the old conditions. If one could correctly assess the voices of those who always advised him to return to Berlin, where he belongs, then one must say that this shows the weight of necessary judgments. Things must not only be thought, they must be weighed, they must be weighed. It is highly reckless when, for example, an article appeared in a Basel newspaper yesterday, effectively apologizing for the German Kaiser and accusing the German people. This German people has truly suffered enough over decades from all that has been achieved through the insignificance and theatrical exaggeration of all circumstances, through the tiresome bullying. And when, as happened in yesterday's Basler Zeitung, the German people are now being accused in the most foolish way, by making the foolish claim that this man was merely an exponent of the German people – which he was absolutely not – then this is an act of profound recklessness that must be condemned unconditionally. It is important today that such reckless judgments do not gain a foothold, especially in neighboring countries. People must look at such judgments, which are likely to poison the whole atmosphere into which we must enter.

These things must really be looked at today with a more penetrating eye. One must not sleep in the face of these things, one must be awake. One must really be able to take these things in with a non-emotional, but with a truly intellectual temperament, and one must feel an indignation, feel it intellectually, when such follies are brought into the world today that are likely to completely distort a proper judgment. And an objective judgment is necessary today above all. Try to take things really as they are to be taken today, by taking them in their weight, by not spreading opinions about things that stir up sentiment, with an indifferent humor, which is no humor, and let everything slide, since it is nevertheless about events that, each in itself, can have an enormous, far-reaching, world-historical significance. These things must be observed today against a more urgent background. And I would very much like to see something enter the hearts of those who want to profess anthroposophy that I would call a world-historical sense of judgment. I would like something to enter into your hearts that constitutes the importance of the moment, that you really get beyond the mood that has never been there since I tried to bring an anthroposophically oriented worldview into the world , that the mood would change from one that takes what is presented in Anthroposophy only as a Sunday afternoon sermon, as something intended only to warm the heart and to soothe, to temper the soul. No, everything based on an anthroposophically oriented worldview was intended to guide hearts and souls into that world current that has been gathering since the end of the nineteenth century, that pointed more and more to the significant, great events that have come to shake humanity and will continue to come more and more. Everything was geared towards directing hearts to the forces at work, not just to please people's ears with something that tempers souls and warms hearts a little, so that when they have absorbed what an anthroposophically oriented worldview offers, they can sleep with a certain more peaceful soul than they would otherwise be able to sleep with. Today, the individual is no longer able to look only to themselves, to simply receive a new religion to soothe their own heart. What is demanded of humanity calls upon the individual to participate in what surges and billows through human sociality.

To do this, it is necessary to look at things in a larger context. I admit that it was necessary in the course of the last few years, under the impulses that the anthroposophically oriented worldview was to bring to people's hearts, to bring a lot in quick succession because time was pressing, to let ideas quickly replace each other. If the material that had to be presented during the course of a week had sometimes been available a month or even longer, it could have been offered in small portions, which, due to the urgency of the times, necessarily had to be brought to the hearts quickly, it might have been absorbed more deeply into the souls. But that was not possible. Time was pressing, and events have shown that time was pressing. I admit that the speed with which the teachings of the anthroposophically oriented worldview were presented to the members of the anthroposophical movement sometimes led to the fact that the later erased the earlier. But one cannot be in such a serious matter without changing one's whole mind. And in a certain sense, the word that had to be spoken again and again at the time of the founding of Christianity is being repeated in the present: Change your mind. It is not enough that we accept this or that teaching in terms of content; what matters is that we change our whole way of thinking, that we strip away everything that was decisive for the direction of our judgment from the nineteenth century, which can truly be called, as I said earlier in reference to a saying, the century of indecent psychology, of indecent soul direction, where, because of that lack of trust in the divine spiritual powers of the soul of which I spoke yesterday, one can see only arbitrariness or only powerlessness or only inaction within the human soul, where one has never grasped anything like Fichte's saying: “Man can what he should; and when he says, ‘I cannot,’ he means, ‘I will not’.” This nineteenth century was a century of great scientific achievements. But these achievements were such that they paralyzed the will of men and awakened the belief that everything that comes out of the human breast comes out of it only as something purely accidental. That the Divine Eternal radiates out of every human breast and that every human being is responsible for representing the Divine Eternal through himself, that is what the nineteenth century completely suppressed, that is what the Goethean Age into the age of philistinism; that is what makes today's intelligentsia so unprepared for all that I have indicated to you and what runs through millions and millions of proletarian souls as an impulse.

Understanding is the first thing that matters in the present. Doing will only come when people have really tried to understand. None of the things that the bourgeoisie, for example, believes today could be good in the future, none of them will somehow attack the impulses that I have given you these days as the impulses of the proletariat striving from bottom to top. Some of the quackery emanating today from those who should have learned from the events of the past decades would be tragicomic if it were not so tragic.

So today, in order to prepare for something that is of immediate relevance and that I still have to present, I would like to say that we are creating a larger basic tableau, creating a background, so to speak. You see, everything that has an effect on modern society, everything that acts as forces that will discharge in the most diverse ways towards the future, comes from certain basic forces that interact in the most diverse ways. Yesterday I pointed out in conclusion that the struggle, which is a purely material struggle, will be staged more and more from the West and will plunge humanity into materialistic struggles. From the East, the blood will counteract what comes from the West as an economic struggle. We must interpret this word in more detail, for it will be extraordinarily important in the future in social terms and is important for anyone who wants to form a clear judgment. Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to talk to a wide variety of people about the things that should be taken from the active forces in order to give the future this or that direction here or there. At every opportunity to discuss something effective, I was almost horrified, I would say, oppressed by the short-sightedness that has gradually taken over the judgment of modern humanity. Today, it is taken for granted that anyone who wants to have a say in what is developing should know the national conditions here or there. But people do not seek this knowledge in the ways in which it must necessarily be sought today, and that is why grotesque and grandiose errors arise. The one error I have mentioned is only a partial error. In order to visualize the full weight of what is involved, it must be pointed out that the time is now running out when whole masses were driven into the most nonsensical judgments.

Yesterday I showed you that the majority of people, because that is the proletariat, have a power of belief that extends only to purely material things. I had to tell you: if the power of belief, which, for example, has developed over decades in the proletariat through Marxist impulses, if this power of belief had existed to even the slightest degree in the bourgeoisie, things would be somewhat different than they unfortunately are today. But it would then have been necessary for precisely those people who, by virtue of their social position, would have had the opportunity to take advantage of this opportunity — since they did not do so, they must do so in the future — to enter the paths to judgment, on which alone real judgment can be gained; I do not mean judgment about this or that, but judgment in general. Just consider that not just one nation, but people over a wide area, were able for years to consider two generals to be important people, who were in fact highly insignificant people: Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Such a distortion of judgment for entire broad sections of the population is a characteristic of our time. This is mainly due to the fact that people do not feel the responsibility involved in forming a judgment. Of course I know that one could say: Yes, if someone had already formed a judgment, a correct judgment, for example, about Ludendorff, who must be seen as a pathological nature, who must be seen as a nature that, so to speak, since the beginning of the war can no longer be judged from any other than a psychiatric point of view. I know that one could say: What would such a judgment have helped at a time when a judgment was not allowed to be pronounced? Of course that is true, but that is not the point. The point is that people should at least form their own judgment in the first place. And now it must be said all the more, because the power of events has meant that individual judgments have to be corrected by the so-called central powers. This power of events has not yet arrived for the correction of the judgments of the Entente and the American powers. And that would bring a tremendous disaster upon humanity if the correction of the judgments were also to wait until the power of events speaks; if now, for example, there were an inclination to worship the rulers of the Entente; if the hearts did not mature the resolve to see clearly how things really are. If worship of success should arise now, if the destiny of judgments should be determined only by the outer course of events, then it would have tremendously devastating consequences for the development of humanity. That will not be a sign of how one or the other will be able to express themselves under the gagging of judgment, but at least in his or her own way, man should form an independent judgment about that which is. One forms this opinion when one feels within oneself that one is not a personality flung into the world by chance, who can think whatever he wants, but when one feels that one is a member of the divine world order and that the power which places a judgment in this heart, in this soul, is a power to which one is responsible even with one's most intimate thoughts. In the course of the events of the last four and a half years, many things have happened. This or that has happened here or there. It can be said that almost nothing has happened about which, for example, the German government or the German military leadership has formed a correct judgment in a responsible position. They have judged wrongly about everything and continued to act under false judgment. These are clear proofs of how little the present and the recent past have educated people to judge things.

I said that I have had occasion to talk to a wide variety of people. People do have the opinion, in abstract terms, that one should get to know what is going on in the various popular movements, for example. They are satisfied when one or another journalist is sent to this or that area and writes his newspaper article, and people do not know what to make of it when the same principle is applied to the field of spiritual life, as is necessary in mathematics, for example, where elementary basic maxims are taken as starting points and the furthest conclusions are reached. When bridges or railways have to be built, people admit that science is needed to build them, a science that starts from the simplest things in order to arrive at the most far-reaching conclusions. But people want to do history, to make history, without any principles, and they will not be able to do anything with it when you tell them: No one can judge European conditions without at least knowing the elementary fact that on the Italian peninsula the sentient soul is the soul of feeling, which is primarily effective in the folk, in France the soul of mind or feeling, in the British Empire the soul of consciousness, and so on, as we have come to know it. These things are the basis of what happens, just as the multiplication table is the basis of arithmetic. And unless you start from these things in relation to knowledge of the real conditions in the world, you are an incompetent person, no matter what your position in the structure of social or political life in today's world, just as you would be an incompetent person in bridge building if you did not know the simplest things in mathematics. People must come to realize this; they must learn to see through it. For the future of humanity depends on people being able to see through this. That is what matters.

Because only when you know these basic facts can you understand the various forces that radiate into what is happening. You cannot properly assess the path of a country peddler to the city if you are unable to place the peddler's journey from the countryside to the city within the fabric of social life. Humanity was allowed to live through social life in an atavistically drowsy state to a certain extent, and in the nineteenth century people preserved this state in order to sleep more deeply. In the future, humanity will not be allowed to continue living in this way. Rather, it will be obliged to think about what the hierarchies of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and so on think about the course of human evolution and what they radiate into what people do. The smallest must be linked to the greatest in everyday judgment. If today you see councils, workers' and soldiers' councils, emerging in this or that country, if you are in danger of seeing workers' and soldiers' councils emerging everywhere except in the Entente countries, then you must be able to appreciate the significance of such a fact in the right way. What is needed above all is to gain a judgment about these things. Do not ask first: What is to be done? What is to be done will come by itself, if only a real judgment is present, so that the smallest thing can be linked to the great lines of world events. The great world event, that is the peculiarity of our time, is becoming topical in these days; it will no longer be a mere theory, but will become topical.

For example, in the course of European events – American events are only a colonial appendix to European events – forces are at play that have been in preparation for a long, long time. The observer of European conditions – and we have been pointing this out from various points of view in recent days – should pay attention to the particular configuration of, say, the social conditions in the British Empire, and he should pay attention to the particular configuration of the social conditions in Eastern Europe, in Russia and in Central Europe, and he should pay attention to the forces that are at play there. For on the surface of events these events mask themselves in many ways, and he who observes only the surface of events will easily arrive at, as one says, catchwords, one can also say catch-ideas, catch-concepts, through which he wants to master events. In many cases, superficial stuff is going on in people's heads today. But in people's impulses, forces are at play that have been preparing themselves not just for centuries, but for millennia, and that are only now beginning to take on their very significant form.

You see, there is no possibility that that international entity, which I have characterized as the mood of the proletariat, which is mainly nourished by Marxist ideas, in the broadest sense, of course, Marxist ideas, really spreads across Europe. That is an illusion of the proletariat. And since the proletariat will one day wield a certain power, this is a very pernicious illusion of the proletariat. We must not overlook the fact that the worst would come to pass if this illusion of the proletariat were to gain world domination, for then one would be compelled to overcome this domination again. It would be better to see how things are preparing and how they can be counteracted. Even assuming that the impulses of the proletariat come to power in certain areas, what would happen as a result? Well, they would come to power externally; you can kill as many people here or there as Bolshevism killed in Russia. But all these ideas are only suitable for plundering, only suitable for consuming the old and not for establishing the new. When the ideas of the proletariat are realized socially, when they become established, then the existing values will be gradually consumed, consumed in rapid progression. Please take only such facts – I will show you a few, they could be greatly increased – take just one such fact: the treasury in Russia, for example, still had an income of 2,852 million rubles in the ill-fated year 1917. Bolshevism broke in. It practiced plundering. The state revenue of Russia in 1918: 539 million rubles! That is about one-fifth of the previous year's revenue. From such figures you can calculate for yourselves the progression that must occur when plundering is carried out. One must not look at these things from the point of view of the judgments that are formed from above, but one must look at them from the point of view of how the objective course of events in human history unfolds under the influence of this fact. If this social order were to spread, one would arrive at zero, at nothing. But before this nothing happens, the reactions from the subconscious of people emerge here and there, and into the spreading proletarianism, which is permeated by Marxism, everything that has been prepared over the centuries, sometimes over millennia, in the beliefs, impulses, illusions or even follies of human beings must again mix in the most diverse centers. It will not mix in the same form in which it was there, but it will mix in a transformed form. Therefore, one must know it and be able to assess it in the right way.

Now the powers that are now partly doomed but partly still rule the world have always made it their more or less conscious or unconscious task to deceive people. How much has not been deceived by means of so-called historical instruction! In all kinds of countries, history is nothing more than a legend; history is only there to train people's minds to take the direction that seems pleasant to those in power and seems like the right direction. But the time has come when people will have to form their own judgment. Over the years, much has been done in this regard, precisely in order to correct one judgment or another. But today something else must be asked. Today, among the—one does not know how many to say in terms of numbers—among the hundreds of questions that arise urgently, above all the question must be asked: How did the various power relations, the various social structures come about, for which people here or there are enthusiastic or have been enthusiastic or have quickly forgotten how to enthuse in recent weeks? For years, humanity has lived by catchwords, catchwords such as “Prussian militarism” or “German militarism,” “League of Nations,” “international law,” and so on, which were just catchwords. These have dominated and confused people's minds. As I said, a lot has been said here to correct these judgments. But the important thing is to realize that, of course, these things will not appear in the same form in the near future, but we must know them so that we will recognize them when they appear in a new form.

It is not to be assumed, for example, that the Hohenzollern dynasty will reappear as such. But the feelings of the people among whom the Hohenzollern dynasty was able to live will continue to live, masquerading in a different form. Or, it is not even very likely that, even with the will of the Entente, which to a certain extent certainly exists, the unfortunate Habsburg dynasty will somehow resurface. But that is not the point. The sentiments which were able to keep this Habsburg dynasty in the hearts of men will live on. They will not, of course, go so far as to restore the Habsburg dynasty, but they will contribute to that reaction against proletarianism of which I spoke; they will reappear in quite a different form. Therefore, it is necessary to see through what will arise from the most diverse centers with a truly healthy judgment. Then it is a matter of looking at the circumstances, but looking with a gaze that is directed by reality. The facts as such have no value. In my books—you can find this in the most diverse places—I have spoken of fact fanaticism, which has such a devastating effect. This fanaticism for facts is rooted in the belief that what is seen outside is already a fact. It becomes a fact only by being harnessed to right judgment. But right judgment must have behind it the impulse of the right directing power.

Take an example. You know that I have often said that in Central Europe all folk impulses are primarily conditioned by the fact that in this Central Europe the folk spirit works through the I, in contrast to the most diverse regions of Western Europe. But the I has the peculiarity, I might say, of circling up and down among the other regions, which are fixed. So let us assume: in the south and west, the sentient soul, mind or emotional soul, consciousness soul, but in the center the I (it is drawn). The I can be in the consciousness soul, in the mind soul, in the sentient soul. It oscillates up and down, so to speak, it finds its way into everything. Hence the peculiarity: If you look to the west of Europe, you have, I would say, sharply defined national contours. There is sharply defined nationality, nationality that you can really, I would say, define, that is within a good framework. Look to Central Europe, preferably to the German people, and you have a nature that is defined on all sides. And now follow history, judging these basic maxims in the right way. Look wherever you want, in the west as far as America, in the east as far as Russia, and see how German nationality has worked as a ferment everywhere. It penetrates into these foreign regions, is within them today, and will have an effect in the future, even if it has denationalized itself, as they say; it penetrates into these regions because the I soars and descends. It loses itself in it. You can find this out quite precisely from the fundamental nature of the people. Just look at how this whole Russian culture is permeated with the German character, how hundreds of thousands of Germans have immigrated there over a relatively short period of time, how they have given the national character its stamp to infinite depths. Look at the whole of the East and you will find this influence everywhere. Go back centuries and ask the question today. Take Hungary, for example, which is supposedly a Magyar culture. This Magyar culture is based in many ways on the fact that all kinds of Germanic elements have been introduced there as a ferment. The whole northern edge of Hungary is inhabited by the so-called Zipser Germans, who have naturally been majoritized, tyrannized, denationalized, who have suffered unspeakably, but who have provided a cultural ferment. If we go further east, to Transylvania, we find the Transylvanian Saxons, who once lived on the Rhine. If we go further to the so-called Banat, there you have the Swabians, who immigrated from Württemberg and who have left behind a cultural legacy. And if I were to show you a map of Hungary, you would see here the broad border of German people who have become Magyars, here the Zipser Germans, in the southeast the Transylvanian Saxons, here in Banat the Swabians, not counting those who have become individualized. And the peculiarity of this German nationality is that, precisely because its national spirit works through the ego, it perishes outwardly as a nation, so to speak, but forms a cultural ferment. That is what can contribute to the assessment of the effective forces. That is such an effective force.

Let Andrássy and Karolyi work away, let an old politician in the old feudal sense, as they say, work away; the only reason that what they are doing is not a slogan is that we must take into account what will be brought about in the future from the subconscious of the people through such historical events, as I have shown you one - and hundreds of others are involved -, in the future. And that radiates into the rest of what is happening in Europe, and basically one has to proceed quite thoroughly if one wants to get to know this complicated structure of Europe today. For example, one must not forget, when judging an important participant in the future shaping of Europe, namely the European East, that to a certain extent everyone who spoke the truth about Russia in a historical context was not only a heretic, but also in mortal danger. Russian history is, of course, not much more than the other histories, but it is also a historical legend. For example, those who learn Russian history in the usual sense are not even aware of what was developed here a few years ago: that at about the same time as the Normans were exerting their influence in western Europe, Norman-Germanic influence was also being exerted in the east. And today's Russian history has an interest in showing, going back further and further, how everything, absolutely everything, comes from Slavic people, from Slavic elements, and also an interest in denying that the decisive element, the one element from which what is in the East is still deeply influenced today, comes from impulses that are Norman-Germanic in origin. You don't get much further back in Russian history than telling people – well, that's the stereotypical sentence that is always said –: We have a great country, but we have no order, come and rule us. That is more or less how it begins, while in truth it should be pointed out that what had spread in Russia by the time of the Mongol invasion was of Germanic-Norman origin and had a Germanic-Norman social configuration. But that means that something spread in Russia at that time that was overgrown by later conditions, which, I might say, has been preserved and conserved in its purest form, for example, within the social fabric of the British Empire. There you have a straight line of development. If you take the social development of the British Empire, you have a current that naturally changes over the centuries, but which is the straight line continuation of the old Norman-Germanic social constitution. In the east, towards Russia, you have the same current spreading out, but under the Mongol yoke, under the Mongol influence, I would say, from a certain point onwards it breaks off. That is to say, if the same thing that was prepared under Norman-Germanic influence in the social structure of the British Empire at the time of William the Conqueror and developed until the nineteenth century to occupy its present position in the world had developed further in Russia, Russia would be similar to England.

Nowhere has anything that has worked more deeply in the hearts and souls of people than in Russia. Now, we must not forget: what is it that comes with the Norman-Germanic influence? This Norman-Germanic influence, in working itself out, has also had counter-effects in the West. I say: here it has developed in a straight line, it has developed in the straightest line, but it has also had counter-effects here. What it encountered here as a counter-effect, from which it emancipated itself to a certain extent and which modified its developmental current, is, on the one hand, the Western Roman Catholic Church and, on the other, Romanism in general, which contains an abstract legal element and an abstract political element. So that we see the national influence, from which all the stratifications of the estates, all the formation of classes and castes, as they are found within the British essence, originate, joined by what came from the church and what came from Romanism. All this is at work in it, but in such a way that, to a certain extent, the British character emancipated itself early on from the profound influence of the Church, which then continued to have an effect and flourish in Central Europe and still does so today; but that, comparatively speaking, this character emancipated itself less from the Romanesque-abstract element of legal-political thinking. The truth is that this Norman-Germanic element has also extended into the various Slavic areas, which have been present on the territory of present-day Russia since ancient times, as the dominant element, as the element that has shaped the social structure.

This Norman-Germanic nature is based on a certain view, which then finds expression in social facts. This Norman-Germanic nature is based on the view that what has blood relationship, closer blood relationship, should also have this blood relationship in an inherited or hereditary way in a social way, based on a certain social institution of the clan and the superclan, the nearest family clan and the clan standing above it, which then leads to the prince, who rules over the sub-clan, the clan that goes further. This is what a social constitution brings about according to a certain blood configuration.

This is in the sharpest possible contradiction to what, for example, the Romanesque-legal-political essence assumes. The Romanesque-legal-political essence brings abstract connections everywhere, sets up everything according to contracts and the like, not according to blood. This is something that brings the facts less to mind than to paper, something radical. Only one thing was thoroughly diverted by this Germanic-Norman nature. If it had worked alone – this is, of course, a hypothesis, it could not have worked alone – but if it had worked alone, there would never have been a monarchical state constitution in any European territory. For a monarchical state constitution does not lie in the development of those social impulses that emanate from the Norman-Germanic essence, but rather, this Norman-Germanic essence is based on the impulse of an organization according to clans, according to family configurations, which are relatively individual and independent of each other, and only from certain points of view do they unite under a prince, who then controls the overarching clan. And above all: apart from this, a monarch could never have taken hold of this Norman-Germanic essence, and pure monotheism could never have come from this essence, because it came from the south – I would actually say from the south-east – through the theocratic-Jewish element. If the Norman-Germanic element had remained purely isolated, it would be easier today to assert the rightful monotheism, which in turn does not accept the abstract single God, but rather the succession of hierarchies, angels, arch angeloi and so on, and not the nonsense that the one God, for example, protects two armies that are furiously facing each other, the Christian and the Turk at the same time, because he is the one God of the whole world. The nonsense that proliferates as abstract monotheism would never have been able to take hold, because within this element, abstract monotheism was not present. The people were pagans in the modern sense, that is, they recognized the most diverse spiritual beings that guide the forces of nature, and thus lived in a spiritual world, albeit in an atavistic way. What monotheism is, a nonsense, was only imposed from the southeast by the theocratic element. That is why it is so difficult today to get across what must necessarily be accepted: the diversity of spiritual beings that guide natural forces and natural events, the gods. But it was on Russian soil that the damping down of what came from the north took place to a certain extent. Some time ago I even talked about the name Russian here. You will remember that I pointed out that the name Russian indicated where these people came from in the north. They called themselves Vaeringjar.

But the actual idea of the state is a construct that should be carefully studied. This idea of the state comes, in a certain respect, from the same corner of the weather where many other significant things for Europe come from. Especially when discussing such things, one must remember that history can only be considered symptomatically. When we consider some phenomenon that is an external fact, we must recognize it as a symptom. In Russia, as long as this Norman-Germanic influence was present and shaping the social structure, there was no sign of any state idea. The Slavic areas were, so to speak, closed in on themselves, and what had spread was what I have called the clan idea. The clan idea has entwined this in a network-like way. The various closed Slavic areas had within them what modern man might call the democratic element, but at the same time linked to a certain longing for a lack of domination, with a certain insight that centralized ruling powers are not actually needed to bring order to the world, but only to create disorder. This lived in these closed Slavic areas. And in what extended from the Norman-Germanic element, the clan idea actually lived, the idea that was connected with blood.

Now came the Mongol invasion. These Mongols are indeed portrayed as being quite evil. But the worst thing they did was actually demanding high tributes and taxes, and they were more or less satisfied when people paid their taxes, of course in the form of natural produce. But what they brought – and please take this as symptomatic and don't think that I am saying that the idea of the state came from the Mongols – what they brought at that time, taken symptomatically, is the idea of the state. The monarchical idea of the state comes straight from this corner of the world from which the Mongols also came, only that it was brought to the further west of Europe earlier. It comes from that corner of the world that one finds when one follows the culture, or, for that matter, the barbarian wave that rolled over from Asia. What remained in Russia of the Mongols is essentially the idea that a single ruler with his paladins has to exercise a kind of state rule. This was essentially borne by the monarchical idea of the khans, and that was adopted there. In Western Europe it was only adopted earlier, but it came from the same weather angle. And essentially it was a Tartar-Mongolian idea that put together the so-called state structure in Russia. And so for a long time precisely that which characterized the culture of the West from many points of view proved to be without influence in Russia: feudalism, which was actually without influence in Russia because, by skipping monarchy spread, which was always disturbed in the West, initially by feudalism, by the feudal lords, who actually always fought the central monarchical power and who were an antithesis to the monarchical power.

The Roman Church is the second. This was ineffective in the East because the Eastern Church had already separated from the Western Church in the tenth century. The Greek-Roman, Roman-Greek education, as it has worked in the West and has contributed very much to the development of the modern bourgeoisie, has been ineffective in Russia. Therefore, the monarchical idea of the state, which has been brought in by the Mongolians, has taken its deepest roots there.

You see, you have a few of the impulses that one must know, because they will appear in the most diverse ways, masked, changed, in metamorphosis. Here or there you will see this or that flash up. You will only appreciate it correctly if you appreciate it from this point of view, which I have now stated. And above all, you will recognize the importance of the fact that within the establishment of world domination by the English-speaking population, which I have been talking about for many years now, the training of the consciousness soul is essentially effective, that this is precisely appropriate to our age, and that a healthy judgment should be applied in assessing the circumstances.

The social question will play a major role in the shaping of conditions in the future. The social thinking that already exists among the proletariat can only lead to overexploitation, to degradation, to destruction. It is a matter of really realizing that the shaping that the social question assumes, the shaping in particular that the proletarian movement will assume, makes it necessary that what today is furthest removed from spirituality as proletarian feeling must be brought closer to spirituality. What seems to be furthest apart on the outside is intimately related on the inside: proletarian will and spirituality. Of course, the proletarian today fights against spirituality with his hands and feet – one can say with his hands and feet, because he does not fight much with his head. But what he wants, without knowing it, cannot be achieved without spirituality. Spirituality must join forces with it. And it must join forces in all areas. And one must really acquire a feeling that one is at an important turning point in time. The mood that has prevailed in the most diverse areas in the nineteenth century must pass.

If you observe individual events and evaluate them correctly, you can already see, I might say, if I may express myself trivially, which way the wind is blowing. Through Mr. Englert's kindness I was recently given a letter written from Russia, which very vividly describes present-day Russian conditions. It also talks about art. The way in which people are introduced to art is very interesting; but what they paint, these people who are brought in directly from the factory, people who have lung diseases and can no longer work in the factory and are then placed in an artistic institution so that they learn to paint something there, so that they are driven from the proletariat into art, the painting – they don't paint quite like they do in our dome, but you can see it, they start painting in such a way that from this beginning, what is painted in our dome will ultimately result, even if it is still called Futurism today. That is on the march. Especially in those things where there is no programmatic approach, it becomes clear what impulses lie in the present. Those who look at programs – not to mention government programs – will always go astray. Those who look at the impulses that develop alongside and between the programs, namely from the unconscious, will see much that is radiating in the world today. You can be quite sure that the paths will be found, even if it is difficult. Once people begin to read something straight from the impulses that are emerging today in the proletariat in such a primitive, predatory way, I will not say the things themselves, which are imperfect and must be replaced by others, but things like my mysteries or the anthroposophical books, they will only be read with the right interest by the better elements that are streaming upwards from the proletariat, while what the bourgeoisie licked its fingers around in the nineteenth century: Gustav Freytag's 'Soll und Haben' or similar works, or Gottfried Keller, will interest no one. Today, for example, it is an insult to humanity to mention Gottfried Keller in the same breath as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. While Conrad Ferdinand Meyer represents an element of the future, an element that actually contains true spiritual life for the future, Gottfried Keller is the bourgeois poet of the sleeping humanity of Seldwyler Switzerland.

This must be seen everywhere and in all areas. There will be no interest in the future for this when people put models in studios and imitate what nature can do much better and then delight in it, whether it looks really natural or whether it is really like the model. After that, one will demand that something is there in the world that is not made by nature itself. Understanding for this will have to be prepared. Therefore, the model as such had to be fought against here as well. You remember how I once spoke about art from this point of view years ago. An understanding must be created that one follows the impulses that are there. For example, the stupidity that people want to learn about how the people live, say, by reading Berthold Auerbach's “Village Stories” or similar stuff, where a person who knows the people, well, as one who goes out into the countryside on Sunday afternoons and looks at the people from the outside, describes how one has so beautifully described the people, must end. That is not what matters. What matters is not observing the temporary, but the eternal that lives in man must be observed more and more. That is what matters.

We will talk more about these things tomorrow.

Our end-of-year festival will begin with Frau Dr. Steiner giving us a recitation of the beautiful Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson, of whom we are told that at the approach to Christmas he fell into a kind of sleep which lasted for thirteen days; the thirteen holy days that we have explored in various ways. In the course of this sleep he had significant experiences, that he was able to narrate when he awoke.

During these past days we have examined various things that make us aware that the spiritual-scientific outlook gives us a new approach to an understanding of gems of wisdom which, in past times, people realised belonged to spiritual worlds. Time and again we shall encounter this prehistoric knowledge of the spiritual worlds in one instance or another, and we shall continually be reminded that what was known in former ages, was due to the fact that the human being was so organised at that time that he had the kind of relationship with the whole of the cosmos and its happenings that we would now call being immersed with his human microcosm in the laws or the activities of the macrocosm, and that in this process of immersion in the macrocosm he was able to experience things that deeply concern the life of his soul, but which are hidden from him as long as he lives as microcosm on the physical plane and is equipped only with a knowledge given him by his senses and an intellect bound to the senses.

We know that only a materialistic outlook can believe that man is the only being in the world order equipped with thinking, feeling and willing, whereas a spiritual point of view must acknowledge that just as there are beings below the human level, there are also beings above the human stage of thinking, feeling and willing. The human being can live his way into these beings when, as microcosm, he immerses himself in the macrocosm. However, in this case we should have to speak of the macrocosm not only as a macrocosm of space, but as if the course of time were of significance in cosmic life. Just as in order to kindle the light of the spirit within him when he wants to descend into the depths of his own soul, man has to shut himself off from all the impressions his environment can make on his senses and has, as it were, to create darkness round him by closing off his sense perception, likewise the spirit we can call the spirit of the earth has to be shut off from the impressions of the rest of the cosmos. The outer cosmos has to have least effect on the earth spirit if the earth spirit is to be able to concentrate its forces within. For then the secrets will be discovered that man has to discover in conjunction with the earth spirit, because the earth has been separated as earth from the cosmos.

The time when the outer macrocosm exercises the greatest effect on the earth is the time of the summer solstice, midsummer. And many accounts of olden times connected with festive presentations and rituals remind us that festivals like these take place at the height of summer; that in the midst of summer, the soul, in letting go the ego and merging with the life of the macrocosm, surrenders in a state of intoxication to the impressions from the macrocosm.

On the other hand, the legendary or other kind of presentations of that which could be experienced in olden times remind us that when impressions from the macrocosm have least effect on the earth, the earth spirit, concentrated within itself, experiences within the eternal All, the secrets of the earth's life of soul, and that if man enters into this experience at the point of time when the macrocosm sends least light and warmth to the earth, he learns the most holy secrets. This is why the days around Christmas were always kept so sacred, because whilst man's organism was still capable of sharing in the experience of the earth, man could meet the spirit of the earth during the point of time when it was most concentrated.

Olaf Åsteson, Olaf the son of earth, experiences various secrets of the cosmic All whilst he is transported into the macrocosm during the thirteen shortest days. And the nordic legend which has recently been extricated from old accounts, tells of these experiences Olaf Åsteson had between Christmas and New Year up till the 6th January. We often have reason to remember this former manner in which the microcosm took part in the macrocosm, and we can then take these things further. First of all, however, let us hear the legend of Olaf Åsteson, the earth son, who during the time in which we are now, experienced the secrets of cosmic existence in his meeting with the earth spirit. Let us listen to these experiences.

The Dream Song

I

Come listen to my song!
The song of a nimble youth.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

II

He laid him down on Christmas Eve
And soon lay deeply sleeping.
Nor could he awaken
Until the people went to church
Upon the thirteenth day.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

He laid him down on Christmas Eve
And he slept long indeed!
He could not awaken
Until the bird was on the wing
Upon the thirteenth day.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

Olaf could not awaken
Until the sun shone o'er the peaks
Upon the thirteenth day.
Then saddled he his nimble horse
And rode in haste to the church.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

The priest was at the altar
Reading holy mass
When Olaf alighted at the gate
To tell the many dreams
That had passed through his soul
When he did sleep so long.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

Then old and young they all gave heed,
To Olaf's words they harkened
That told them of his dreams

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

III

‘I laid me down on Christmas Eve
And soon lay deeply sleeping.
Nor could I awaken
Before the people went to church
Upon the thirteenth day.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I was borne up into the clouds
Thrown down to the ocean's depths,
And whosoever will follow after
Good cheer he will not find.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I was borne up into the clouds
Then hurled into murky swamps,
And I saw the horrors of hell
And also heaven's light.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I had to go through deep, dark clefts
Where heaven's rivers rushed and roared.
The power to see them was not mine
Yet I could hear their roaring.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

My coal-black horse he did not neigh,
Nor did my good hounds bark,
The bird of morning did not sing
For a wonder lay on all.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I had to travel in spiritland
Through stretch on stretch of thorny heath,
My scarlet mantle was torn to shreds
The nails of my feet likewise.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

Then I came to the Gjallar Bridge
Suspended in the windblown heights,
Studded it is with rich red gold
And the nails thereon have sharp points.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

The spirit snake he struck at me
The spirit hound bit me,
And lo! the bull did bar the way.
These are the three beasts of the bridge,
Most wicked are they all.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

The hound he is a snappish beast
The serpent waits to strike,
The bull is ready to attack!
And no one may pass o'er the bridge
Who will not honour truth!

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I passed o'er the Gjallar Bridge
On dizzy heights and narrow.
I who had waded in the swamps . . . .
Behind me now they lie!

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I had waded in the swamps
There seemed no foothold I could find
As I passed o'er the Gjallar Bridge
Earth did I feel within my mouth
As the dead who lie in their graves.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

To the waters then I came,
’Twas where the icy masses gleamed
Like unto flames of blue. . . .
And God did guide me in my steps
That I did not come close.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

So I went on the wintry way
And saw on my right hand:
Like unto paradise it was,
Light shining far and wide.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

God's Holy Mother then I saw
Amidst most wondrous glory!
‘Now take thy way to Brooksvalin,
the place where souls are judged!’

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

IV

In other worlds I tarried then
Through many nights and long;
And God alone can know
The suffering I saw there—

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

I could see a young man
Who in life had killed a child.
Now he must carry him always
And stand in mud to his knee

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Also I saw an old man
Wearing a cloak of lead;
Thus was he punished,
The miser on earth,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

And men appeared before me
Wearing apparel of fire;
So does their dishonesty
Weigh on their poor souls

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Children I also saw,
Glowing coals beneath their feet,
In life they did their parents ill,
Now must their spirits feel it

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

And to a house I had to go
Where witches toiled in blood;
This was the blood of those
Who had enraged them whilst on earth,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Now there came riding from the North
Wild hordes of evil spooks,
Led by the Prince of Hell,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

This horde riding from the North
Was the wickedest ever seen;
And the Prince of Hell rode out in front,
And he rode on his coal-black steed

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Yet now came a host from the South
Bringing holy calm,
And at their head rode Saint Michael
At the side of Jesu Christ

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

The souls weighed down by sin
Had to tremble in anguish and fear!
Their tears ran down in streams
To hear of their wicked deeds

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Michael stood in majesty
And weighed the souls of men
Upon his heavenly scales,
And near him, judging, stood
The Lord of Judgment, Jesu Christ

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

V

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Gives shoes unto the poor;
He does not need, with naked feet,
To walk on the heath of thorn.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Unto the poor gave bread!
For nothing of harm can come to him
From the hounds of spiritland.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Gave corn unto the poor!
The horns of the bull are no threat to him
When he crosses the Gjallar Bridge.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Unto the poor gives clothes!
He need not fear the freezing wastes
Of ice in Brooksvalin.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

VI

And young and old they all gave heed,
To Olaf's words they harkened
That told them of his dreams.
You have slept long indeed. . . .
Awaken now, O Olaf Åsteson!

My dear friends, we have just heard how Olaf Åsteson fell into a sleep that was to reveal to him the secrets of worlds that are hidden from the world of the senses and ordinary life on the physical plane. This legend brings us tidings of ancient knowledge and insight into the spiritual worlds, which we shall regain once more through what We call the spiritual-scientific world outlook.

You have often heard the words that are included in all proclamations concerning the human soul's entry into the spiritual world, namely, that man beholds the spiritual world only when he experiences the gates of death and then enters into the elements. This means that the elements of earth existence do not surround him in the way they do in ordinary life on the physical plane, in the form of earth, water, air and fire, but that he is lifted above this sensory exterior of the elements and enters into what these elements really are when you know their true nature, where beings exist that have a relationship with man's soul experience.

We could feel that Olaf Asteson experienced something of this descent into the elements when we come to the part where Olaf reaches the Gjallar Bridge and crosses over it on to the paths of the spiritual world that all led far away. What a vivid description we are given of his experience as he descends into the element of earth. It is described in such detail that he tells us he himself feels earth in his mouth like the dead who lie in their graves. And then there is a clear indication of his going through the element of water, and of all that can be experienced in the watery element when one also experiences its moral quality. Then he also indicates how man meets with the elements of fire and of air.

All this is described in a wonderfully graphic way and centred in the experience of the human soul meeting the secrets of the spiritual world. The legend was found at a later date; it was collected at the place where it lived orally among the people. Parts of the legend in their present form are no longer the same as in the original. No doubt the graphic description of the experiences in the earth realm originally came first and then the experiences in the realm of water. And the experiences in the realms of air and of fire were no doubt far more differentiated than they are in the feeble after-echo that we have today, and which was found centuries later.

The conclusion was undoubtedly also much more impressive and less sentimental, for in its present form it does not in the least remind us of the sublime language of olden times, nor of the capacity to raise one on to a superhuman plane that used to exist in folk legends. The present conclusion merely moves on on a human level, and the reason why it is moving is purely because of its connection with such deep secrets of the macrocosm and of human experience.

If we rightly understand the season of the year in which we now are, we have a strong urge to remember the fact that humanity used to possess a knowledge—even if it was less defined and clear-cut—that has been lost and which has to be regained. And the question can arise in us, that as we surely recognise today that that particular kind of knowledge has to return if mankind is to be made whole, then should we not consider it one of our most urgent tasks to do everything we can to bring knowledge like that into the culture of the present?

Many things will have to happen in order for this change to come about in the right way, in what I would like to call the feeling content of man's world conception. One thing will be particularly necessary—I say one, for it is one among many, but you can only take one at a time—it will be essential for human souls to acquire on the basis of our spiritual-scientific world conceptual stream, reverence and devotion for what was known in ancient times in the old manner about the deep secrets of existence. People must arrive at the feeling that during the materialistic age they have neglected the development of this reverence and devotion.

We must get the feeling of how dried-out and empty this materialistic age is, and how proud of our intellectual knowledge mankind was in the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, in face of the revelations of ancient religion and knowledge handed down from former times, which, when approached with the necessary reverence, truly give us the feeling that they contain the most profound wisdom. Fundamentally speaking we have no reverence for the Bible nowadays, either! Disregarding the kind of atrocious modern research that tears the whole Bible to shreds, we have merely to look at the dry and empty way we approach the Bible today armed, as it were, only with the knowledge of the senses and ordinary intellectual powers, and at the way we can no longer muster a feeling for the tremendous greatness of human perception that comes to meet us in some of its passages. I would like to refer to a passage from the second Book of Moses, chapter 33, verse 18:

And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’

And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’

But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.’

And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’

If you gather together various things we have taken up in our hearts and souls during the years we have been working with spiritual science and then approach this passage, you can have the feeling that infinite wisdom is speaking to us there and how, in the materialistic age, human ears are so deaf that they hear nothing of the infinitely deep wisdom that comes to us from this passage. I would like to take this opportunity to refer you to a booklet that has been published under the title Worte Mosis by Bruns Publishing Co. in Minden, Westphalia, because certain things out of the five Books of Moses have been translated better in this booklet than in other editions. Dr. Hugo Bergmann, the publisher of Worte Mosis, has taken a lot of trouble over the interpretation.

The fact that man, if he wants to penetrate to the spiritual world, has to acquire a totally different relation to the world than that which he has to the sense world, has often been stressed. Man has the sense world all about him. He looks at the sense world and sees it in its colours and forms and hears its sounds. The sense world is there, and we are in the midst of it, feeling its influence, perceiving it and thinking about it. That is how we relate to the sense world. We are passive and the sense world, as it were, works its way into our souls. We think about the sense world and make mental images of it.

Our relationship is quite different when we penetrate into the spiritual world. One of the difficulties consists in getting the right idea of what a person experiences when he enters the spiritual world. I have attempted to characterise some of these difficulties in my booklet Die Schwelle der geistigen Welt (‘The Threshold of the Spiritual World’). We make mental images of the sense world and we think about it. If we go through all a person has to go through if he wants to follow the path of initiation, something occurs that can be described like this: We ourselves relate to the beings of the higher hierarchies in the same way as the things around us relate to us; they make a mental image of us, they think us. We think the objects around us, the minerals, plants and animals; they become our thoughts, whereas we are the conceptions, thoughts and perceptions of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. We become the thoughts of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and so on. They take us in, in the same way as we take in the plants, animals and human beings. And we must feel their sheltering protection when we say, ‘The beings of the higher hierarchies think us, they make mental images of us. These beings of the higher hierarchies take hold of us with their souls’. In fact we can actually picture that when Olaf Asteson fell asleep he became a mental image of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, and in the course of his sleep these beings of the higher hierarchies experienced what the beings of the earth spirit were experiencing (these are, of course, a plurality for us). And when Olaf Asteson sinks back into the physical world he remembers what the spirits of the higher hierarchies experienced in him.

Let us imagine for a moment that we are setting out on the path of initiation. How can we relate to the spiritual world, which is a host of spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, into which we wish to enter? How can we relate to them? We can appeal to them and say ‘How can we enter into you, how do you reveal yourselves to us?’ And then, when we have acquired an understanding of the different kind of relationship the human soul has to the higher worlds, there will sound forth to us, as it were from the spiritual worlds, ‘You cannot perceive the spiritual world the same way as you perceive the sense world, the way the sense world appears before you and impinges on your senses. We must think you, and you must feel yourself in us. You must feel the kind of experience in you which a thought you think in the sense world would have if it could experience itself within you. You must surrender yourself to the spiritual world, then the beings of the higher hierarchies who can reveal themselves to you will enter into you. This will stream into your soul and live within it, bringing grace, in the same way as you live in your thoughts when you think about the sense world. If the spiritual world wishes to favour you and have compassion on you, it will fill you with its love!’

But you must not imagine that you can approach spiritual beings in the same way as you approach the sense world. Just as Moses had to creep into the cave, you must go into the cave of the spiritual world. You have to put yourself there. Like a thought lives in you, you must be taken up into the life of the spiritual beings. You yourself must live as a universal thought in the macrocosm. To have experiences there of your own accord is not possible during earthly life between birth and death, but only after you have passed through death. No one can experience the spiritual world in this way before he has died, yet the spiritual world can come close to you, bless you and fill you with its love. And if after, or whilst you are within the spiritual world, you develop your earthly consciousness, the spiritual world will shine into this consciousness.

Just as when an object is outside us we confront it, and when it enters our consciousness it is inside us, the soul of man is within the cave of the spiritual world. The spiritual world passes through him. Here, man confronts things. When man enters the spiritual world the beings of the higher hierarchies are behind him. There, he cannot see their face, just as a thought cannot see our face when it is within us. Our face is in front and the thoughts are behind, so they cannot see our face. The whole secret of initiation is concealed in the words Jehovah speaks to Moses.

And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’

And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’

But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live.’—Initiation does indeed bring you to the Gate of Death.

And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a cleft of rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’

It is the opposite of the way we perceive the sense world. You must muster a lot of the spiritual-scientific effort you have developed over the years, in order to encounter a revelation like this with the right kind of reverence and devotion. Then human souls will gradually acquire more and more of this feeling of reverence towards these revelations; and this reverence, this devotion, is among the many things we need in order that the change we have been speaking of can come about in mankind's spiritual culture.

The time when the macrocosm sends down least influence to the earth, the days from Christmas over New Year until roughly the 6th of January, can be a suitable time not only for remembering the facts of spiritual knowledge, but also for remembering the feelings we have to develop as we take up spiritual science. We are really and truly taken up again into the life of the spirit of the earth, together with whom we form a whole, and in which ancient clairvoyant knowledge lived, as this legend of Olaf Åsteson shows us. Humanity in the materialistic age has in many ways lost this reverence and devotion for spiritual life. It is most essential to see to it that this reverence and devotion come back, for without them we shall not develop the mood to approach spiritual science in the right way. Unfortunately the mood with which spiritual science is spproached to start with is still the same mood we have for ordinary science. A thorough change will have to come about in this respect.

Having lost the understanding for the spiritual world, mankind has also lost the proper relation to the being of man, to humanity. The materialistic world conception produces chaotic feelings about universal existence. These chaotic feelings about the world and humanity were bound to come in the age of materialism. Think of a time—and this is our time, the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—when people no longer had any real awareness that the being of man is threefold: a bodily nature, soul and spirit. For it really is like that. The threefold nature of man, which, to us, is one of the basic elements of spiritual science, was something that people did not have the slightest notion of from the first four centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch right into our time. Man was just man, and any talk of membering his being in the way we do into body, soul and spirit was considered complete nonsense.

You might imagine that these things are valuable only in the sphere of knowledge, but that is not so. They are important not only as knowledge, but for the whole manner in which man faces life. In the fourth century of modern times, or, as we say in our language, during the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, three great words came to the fore in which people saw, or at least endeavoured to see, the essence of human striving on earth. Important though these words are, what made them significant was the fact that they appeared at a time when mankind knew nothing of the threefold nature of man. Everyone heard of liberty, equality and fraternity.

It was a profound necessity that these words were heard at a certain time in modern civilisation. People will only really understand these words when the threefold membering of the human being is understood, because until then they will not realise the significance these words can have with regard to man's real being. Whilst these words are being approached with the sort of chaotic feelings that are engendered by the thought that man is man, and the threefold membering of man is nonsense, human beings will find no guidance in these three words. For the three words, as they stand, cannot be directly applied to one and the same level of human experience. They cannot be. Simple considerations which do not perhaps occur to you because they seem too simple for such weighty matters, can go to show that if they are taken on the same level, what these three words mean can come into serious conflict.

Let us start by looking at the realm where we find fraternity in its most natural form. Take human blood relationship, the family, where there is no need to instil brotherly love because it is inborn, and just think how it warms the heart to see real genuine brotherhood among a family, to see everyone united in a brotherly way. And yet—without losing any of the wonderful feeling we can have about this brotherly love—let us have a look at what can happen to a family fraternity just because of this brotherliness. Brotherliness is justified within a family, yet a member of a family can be made unhappy by it, and can long to get away from it because he feels he cannot develop his own soul within the family fraternity and must leave it in order to develop in freedom. So we see that freedom, the unfolding in freedom of the life of the soul, can come into conflict with even the best-meant brotherliness.

Obviously a superficial person could maintain that it is not proper brotherliness if it does not agree with a person's freedom. But people can say anything they like. No doubt they can say that everything agrees with everything else. I recently saw a thesis in which one of the articles that had to be proved was that a triangle is a quadrangle. You can of course plead for a thing like that, you can even prove exactly that a triangle is a quadrangle! And you can also fully prove that fraternity and freedom are compatible. But that is not the point. The point is that for the sake of freedom many a realm of brotherliness has to be—and in fact is—forsaken. We could give further examples of this.

If we wanted to count up the discrepancies between fraternity and equality it would take us a long time. Obviously we can say in abstracto that everyone can be equal, and can show that fraternity and equality are compatible. But if we take life seriously it is not a question of abstractions but of looking at reality. The moment we realise that the human being has a bodily nature that lives on the physical plane, a soul nature that actually lives in the soul world, and a spiritual nature that lives in the spiritual world, we have the right perspective for the connection between these profound words. Brotherliness is the most important ideal for the physical world, freedom is for the soul world, and insofar as man enters into the realm of the soul we ought to speak of the freedom of the soul, that is, of the kind of social conditions that fully guarantee the soul its freedom. If we bear in mind that in order to develop the spirit and enter spirit land we, that is, each one of us, has to strive for spirit knowledge from our own point of view, we shall soon see where we would get with our spiritual conceptions if each one of us only went his own way and we all filled ourselves with a different content.

As human beings we can only find one another in life if we seek the spirit, each one for himself, yet can arrive at the same spiritual content. We can speak of the equality of spiritual life. We can speak of fraternity on the physical plane and with regard to everything that has to do with the laws of the physical plane and which affects the human soul from the physical plane; liberty with regard to all that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the soul world; equality with regard to everything that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the spirit land.

So you see, a Cosmic New Year must come about, where there will be a sun that will increase in power to give warmth and to radiate light: a sun that must bring light-filled warmth to many a thing that lived on during the age of darkness, yet was not understood. It is characteristic of our time that many a thing is striven for and expressed in words, yet is not understood.

This, too, can bring us to feel reverence and devotion for the spiritual world. For if we ponder on the fact that many people strove for fraternity, liberty and equality in the fourth century of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and uttered these words without understanding them properly, it is possible for us to see an answer to the question, ‘Where did these words come from?’ The divine-spiritual universal order implanted them into the human soul at a time when we did not understand them, in order that key words of this kind might lead us on to true universal understanding. We can notice the wise guidance in world evolution even in things like this. We can observe this guidance everywhere, whether in past ages or in more recent times, observing that often we do not notice until afterwards that something we did previously was actually wiser than the wisdom we had at our command at the time. I drew attention to this at the very beginning of my book, The Spiritual Guidance of Man.

However, if you look, for instance, at the fact that in world evolution, in the evolution of man, a part is played by directional words that can only gradually be understood, you might be reminded of an image we can use when we want to characterise this period of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch that is drawing to a close. In many respects it can really be compared with the season of Advent where the periods of daylight grow shorter and shorter. And now in our time, when we can begin to have knowledge of revelations of the spiritual worlds again, evolution is entering the phase that we can picture as the days growing longer and longer, and we can speak of this season really being comparable to the thirteen days and to the time of increasing daylight.

But it goes deeper than this. It would be absolutely wrong if we were only to find bad things to say of the materialistic age of the past four centuries. Modern times were ushered in by the great discoveries and inventions that are called ‘great’ in the materialistic age, sailing round the world, for instance, discovering lands that were not previously known and starting to colonise the earth. That was the beginning of materialistic civilisation. And then the time gradually came when people were almost stifled by materialistic civilisation. The time arrived when all our spiritual forces were applied to understanding and grasping material life. Insights, understanding and visions of the spiritual world existing in ancient knowledge were forgotten more and more, as we have seen.

Yet it is wrong to have nothing but bad things to say about this age. It would be far better to put it this way: ‘The human soul has been thinking materialistically and founding a materialistic science and culture in the part of it that is awake, but this human soul is a totality.’ If I wanted to put it schematically I could say that one part of the human soul founded materialistic civilisation. This part was inactive before that, and people knew nothing about external science and outer material life; at that time the spiritual part was more awake. (He did a drawing.) During the past four centuries the part of the soul was awake that founded materialistic civilisation, and the other part was asleep. And, in truth, during the age of materialistic culture, the seeds were being sown in the sleeping parts of the soul for the forces we can now develop in humanity to bring us to spirituality again. During these centuries mankind was really an Olaf Asteson as far as spiritual knowledge was concerned. That really was so. And humanity has not yet woken up! Spiritual science must awaken it. A time must come when both old and young must hear the words that are being spoken by the part of the human soul that was asleep in the age of darkness.

The human soul has slept long indeed, but world spirits will approach and call to it, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Asteson!’—Only we have to prepare ourselves in the right way, so that it does not happen that we are faced with the call, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Åsteson!’ and have not the ears to hear it. That is why we are engaged in spiritual science, so that we shall have the ears to hear, when the call to be spiritually awake sounds in human evolution.

It is a good thing if man remembers sometimes that he is a microcosm and that he can be receptive to certain experiences if he opens himself to the macrocosm. As we have seen, the present season is a good one. Let us try to make this New Year's Eve a symbol for the New Year's Eve that has to come to mankind in earth evolution, a New Year's Eve that will herald a new era bringing ever more light, soul light, vision, knowledge of what lives in the spirit and which can stream and flow into the human soul from out of the spirit. If we can bring the microcosm of our experience on this New Year's Eve into connection with the macrocosm of human experience over the whole earth, we shall then have the kind of feelings we ought to experience, sensing as we do the dawning of the great new Cosmic Day of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, at whose beginning we stand, and the midnight of which we want to understand worthily.

The Dream Song: Draumkvaedet, see collection Norske Folkeviser, edited by Thorwald Lammers, Kristiania 1910, by Aschehoug & Co.

Rudolf Steiner spoke about the Norwegian Dream Song of Olaf Asteson on 1st January 1912, 7th January 1913 and 31st December 1914, and his talks were always accompanied by Marie Steiner-von Sivers reciting the Dream Song. These three lectures or addresses were put together as a volume and published in 1958 as an enlarged new edition of the lecture ‘Cosmic New Year’. Ingeborg Möller-Lindholm, the Norwegian poetess (1878–1964), drew Rudolf Steiner's attention to the old legend, and it is largely due to her initiative that this extraordinary folk epic has acquired such an important place in the anthroposophical movement. Through her help we are in a position to include in this edition the notes she made of her conversation with Rudolf Steiner. We have also included in the references, several points from a lecture Ingeborg Möller-Lindholm gave on the Dream Song of Olaf Asteson, which she kindly put at our disposal in translation, and which we have attributed accordingly.

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Notes on the Dream Song by IngeborgMöller-Lindholm of Lillehammer

In June 1910 Dr Steiner held a cycle of lectures in Oslo entitled The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls in Relation to Teutonic Mythology. As I lived in Oslo and had a large room at my disposal, I invited to tea about forty anthroposophical friends who had come to Oslo for this occasion. Dr Steiner and Frau Marie Steiner had also agreed to come. I asked Dr Steiner the previous day whether he could tell us something about the unusual Norwegian folk epic, ‘The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson’. Rudolf Steiner smiled amiably and said he would first have to have read or heard it. I saw the point of this. Then he himself made the suggestion that he should arrive the next day an hour before the other guests, so that I could read the song to him and make a rough translation. And that is what happened.

While I read it to him, Dr Steiner sat with his eyes closed and listened intently. He was obviously deeply affected by the unusual content of the song. After tea the Dream Song was read out in Norwegian by a member of the Society, whereupon Dr Steiner gave a short but moving lecture on the song. In particular he dwelt on the fact that these events took place during the time of the twelve holy nights when extraterrestrial influences are at their strongest. He also gave special mention to the name of Olaf Asteson. Olaf or Olcifr means the ‘one left behind’ after his predecessors have gone. He is the one who passes on the blood of the father of the generations. Ast means love; so he is ‘the Son of Love’.

Dr Steiner asked me to translate the song into German. He himself did not know Norwegian, let alone the old dialect in which the Dream Song had been written down, and which was difficult even for modern Norwegians. To begin with I made the excuse that I did not have a sufficient command of the German language to convey the wonderful musical rhythm. Dr Steiner said that did not matter, I should just translate the song literally word for word, so that he could get an exact picture of the content. I did this in the course of the autumn and sent him the translation, which was very prosaic and in many respects extremely inadequate. Later on Rudolf Steiner put the song into its own characteristic rhythms and gave several lectures on it. It was also used for eurythmic presentation, especially at Christmas time.

Dr Steiner told me in 1913 that I should not think that Olaf the Saint was the original Olaf Åsteson. (St. Olaf, a Norwegian king, died in 1035 at the battle of Stiklestad, championing the cause of Christendom.) There had been several people with the name of ‘Olaf Åsteson’, said Dr Steiner. It was a kind of mystery title.

Dr Steiner was in Norway again after the First World War, in 1921 and 1923. On these occasions he stayed with engineer Ingero. Mrs Ragnhild Ingero, who died a few years ago, told me that Dr Steiner had talked to her about the Dream Song. He had meanwhile gone into it further and discovered new things. One of these was that the song was much older than people believed. It originated about 400 AD. At that time there was a great Christian initiate in this country. He founded a mystery school in Southern Norway; the place was not mentioned. His mystery name was Olaf Asteson, and the song describes his initiation. Originally, so Dr Steiner says, the song was much longer and had twelve sections, one for each sign of the zodiac. The song describes Olaf Asteson's journey through the whole zodiac and what he saw and experienced there. Today we only have fragments of the original song. The aforesaid mystery school continued into the early Middle Ages. The leader was always called Olaf Åsteson

Dr Steiner said that in course of time he would publish these facts and other important things connected with the song. However he did not want to do this until he had found certain external proofs of his findings. He thought he would be able to find these . But the burning of the Goetheanum, excessive work and finally illness and death prevented this intention being realised. Now these indications are all we have.

I have given much thought to these findings of Dr Steiner's and have come to the conclusion that this mystery school was possibly in Skiringssal. This place is or rather was in Vestfold, a region in south-western Norway. In old legends it has always been described as a holy place. Vikings who died on foreign soil wished to be buried in Skiringssal. There was also a kaupang there (market). Archaeologists are excavating things at present which they assume to be remains of this market. Up to now, though, nobody has been able to prove conclusively where Skiringssal is. At the time of the mystery school it lay on the coast; however loam deposits have now ‘pushed’ the place further inland. Skiringssal means ‘The Hall of Purification’. Skim means baptism or purification (old Norwegian)

Where did the first Olaf Asteson come from? It has been historically proved that Irish-Scottish monks were in this country long before Christianity was officially introduced. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea came to the British Isles as early as the first century AD, and began his missionary work there. There have been mystery centres in Ireland since very early times. The tribes on the neighbouring islands were heathen. The Irish-Scottish Church, also called the Culdee Church, arose as a result of the confluence of the work of the Christian missionaries and ancient Druid wisdom. It flourished in many places as early as 300 to 400 AD. There were churches, schools and monasteries, despite the fact that these were always under attack from powerful heathen tribes of the neighbourhood. Many priests and monks died a martyr's death. This Culdee Church was based in particular on the Gospel of St. John and the preaching of the apostle John. It was like the first communities of Christians and contrasted strongly with the Petrine or Roman Catholic Church. But the latter was victorious. The Culdee Church was destroyed and dissolved in the year 664 AD. It sent a lot of missionaries to various European countries both before and after being externally destroyed. This Church was definitely of an esoteric nature. Many things suggest that the first Olaf Asteson was a representative of this spiritual stream.

‘Among these Norwegian people, who still possess many things in their popular tongue that approach very closely the threshold of occult secrets, possibilities existed for souls to remain connected longer with everything living and working behind outer material phenomena,’ said Rudolf Steiner in his lecture on Olaf Asteson in Berlin on 7th January 1913, in Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der elementarischen Welt (Man's Connection with the Elemental World), GA 158, 1970.

In the last lecture we pointed out the significance of the fact that the Gospel of St. Mark begins by introducing the grand figure of John the Baptist, who is contrasted in a marked manner with that of Christ Jesus Himself. If we allow Mark's Gospel to influence us in all its simplicity, we receive a significant impression of John the Baptist; but only when we consider the Baptist against the background of spiritual science does he appear, so to speak, in his full greatness. I have often pointed out that we must interpret the Baptist in the light of the Gospel itself, for we know that he is clearly described in it as a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah (cf. Matt. 11:14). According to spiritual science, if we wish to investigate the deeper causes of the founding of Christianity and of the Mystery of Golgotha, we must look for the figure of the Baptist against the background of the prophet Elijah. I shall only allude briefly here to the topic of the prophet Elijah since I took advantage of the opportunity provided by the last general meeting of the German section of the Theosophical Society in Berlin to speak more fully on this subject (Turning Points in Spiritual History, London, 1934, Lecture 5). All that spiritual science and occult research have to relate concerning the prophet Elijah is fully confirmed by what is contained in the Bible itself. But many passages will undoubtedly remain inexplicable if we read the chapters relating to him in the ordinary way. I will draw your attention only to one point.

We read in the Bible that Elijah challenged all the followers and peoples of King Ahab among whom he lived, and how he pitted himself against his opponents, the priests of Baal, setting up two altars and causing them to lay their sacrifice on one of them while he laid his own sacrifice on the other. He then showed the triviality of what his opponents had said about the priests of Baal because no spiritual greatness was manifested by the god Baal, whereas the greatness and significance of Yahweh or Jehovah appears at once in the case of the sacrifice of Elijah. This was a victory won by Elijah over the followers of Ahab. Then in a remarkable way we are told that Ahab had a neighbor called Naboth who was the owner of a vineyard. Ahab coveted this vineyard, but Naboth would not sell it to him because he regarded it as sacred since it was an inheritance from his father. The Bible then tells us of two facts. On the one side Jezebel, the Queen, was an enemy of Elijah and proclaims that she will have him put to death in the same way as his opponents, the priests of Baal, were put to death because of his victory at the altar. But according to the biblical account, Elijah's death was not brought about through Jezebel. Something else took place. Naboth, the king's neighbor, was summoned to a kind of penitential feast, to which other important persons of the state were also called, and on the occasion of this feast of penitence, he was murdered at the instigation of Jezebel (I Kings 21).

Now we might say that the Bible seems to relate that Naboth was murdered at the urging of Jezebel. Yet Jezebel does not announce that she intends to murder Naboth but rather Elijah. There is an evident discrepancy in the story. Now occult research begins and shows us the real facts in the case, that Elijah was a great spirit who roamed invisibly through the land of Ahab. But at times he entered into and penetrated the soul of Naboth. So Naboth is the physical personality of Elijah; when we speak of the personage of Naboth, we are speaking of the physical personage of Elijah. In the biblical sense, Elijah is the invisible figure, and Naboth his visible image in the physical world. All this I have shown in detail in my lecture entitled, “The Prophet Elijah in the Light of Spiritual Science.”¹

But if we wish to consider the whole spirit of Elijah's work, and the whole spirit of Elijah as it is presented in the Bible, and allow it to influence our souls, we may say that in Elijah we are confronted by the spirit of the whole ancient Hebrew people. All that lives and is interwoven in this people is encompassed within the spirit of Elijah. We may refer to him as the folk spirit of the ancient Hebrew folk. Spiritual science shows him to have been too great to dwell altogether in the soul of his earthly form, in the soul of Naboth. He hovered over him like a cloud; and he not only lived in Naboth but went around the whole country like an element of nature, active in rain and sunshine. This is revealed ever more clearly the more we go into the whole narrative, which begins by saying that drought and barrenness prevailed, but that through Elijah's relationship to the divine spiritual worlds the drought was ended and the needs of the land at that time were fulfilled. He worked as an element of nature, a law of nature itself. We could say that the best way to learn to recognize what worked in the soul of Elijah is to let the 104th Psalm influence us, with its description of how Yahweh or Jehovah works in all things as a nature-divinity. Of course Elijah is not to be identified with this divinity itself; he is the earthly image of that divinity, an earthly image which is at the same time the folk soul of the Hebrew people. Elijah was a kind of differentiation of Jehovah, an earthly Jehovah, or, as he is described in the Old Testament, the “countenance” of Jehovah.

If we look at it in this way, the fact becomes especially clear that the same spirit that lived in Elijah-Naboth now reappears as John the Baptist. How does he work in John?

According to the Bible, and especially as is shown in the Gospel of St. Mark, he works through what is called baptism. What in reality is baptism? Why was it administered by John the Baptist to those who allowed themselves to be baptized? Here we must examine what was the actual effect of baptism on those who were baptized. The candidates were immersed in water. Then there always followed what has often been described as happening when a man receives the shock of being threatened by death, for example by falling into the water and nearly drowning, or by nearly falling over a precipice. A loosening of the etheric body takes place; it partly leaves the physical body. As a consequence, something happens that always happens immediately after death, i.e., a kind of retrospect of the past life. That is a well known fact and has often been described even by the materialistic thinkers of the present time. Something similar took place during the baptism by John in the Jordan. The people were plunged into the water. This baptism was not like the usual baptism of today. The baptism of John caused the etheric bodies of the candidates to be loosened and they saw more than they could comprehend with their ordinary powers of understanding. They saw their life in the spirit and the influence of the spirit on this life. They saw also what the Baptist taught, that the old age was fulfilled and that a new age must begin. In the clairvoyant observation that was possible for them for a few seconds during the baptismal immersion they saw that mankind had come to a turning point in evolution, and that what humanity had possessed in former times when it was in a group-soul condition was now in the process of completely dying out; quite new conditions had to come in, and they saw this while in their liberated etheric body. A new impulse, new capacities, must come to humanity. The baptism of John was therefore a question of knowledge. “Transform your minds, but don't merely turn your gaze backwards as would still be possible. Turn your gaze now to something else, to the God who manifests in the human `I.' The kingdoms of the divine have approached you.” The Baptist did not only preach that; he made it manifest to them by bestowing the baptism on them in the Jordan. Those who had been baptized knew then as a result of their own clairvoyant observation, even though it lasted but a short time, that the words of the Baptist expressed a world-historical fact.

Only when we consider this connection does the spirit of Elijah, which also worked in John the Baptist, appear to us in the right light. Then we see that Elijah was the spirit of the old Jewish people. What kind of spirit was this? In a certain respect it was already the spirit of the “I.” However, it does not appear as the spirit of the individual human being but as the collective folk spirit of the whole people. That which later was to live in each individual man was, so to speak, still in Elijah the group soul of the ancient Hebrew people. That which was to descend as the individual soul into every individual human breast was at the beginning of the Johannine age still in the super-sensible world. It was not yet in every human breast, and it could not yet live in this way in Elijah. So it entered into the individual personality of Naboth but only by hovering over it. Yet in Elijah-Naboth it manifested itself more distinctly than it did in the individual members of the ancient Hebrew people. This spirit, hovering, as it were, over man and man's history, was now about to enter more and more into every bosom. This was the great fact now proclaimed by Elijah-John himself when he said, as he baptized the people, something like the following, “What until now was in the super-sensible worlds and worked from these worlds you must now take into your souls as impulses that have come from the kingdom of heaven right into the hearts of men.” The spirit of Elijah itself shows how in multiplied form it must enter human hearts, so that in the further course of world history they may gradually take up ever more and more of the Christ Impulse. The meaning of the baptism by John was that Elijah was ready to prepare the way for the Christ. This was contained in the deed of the baptism by John in the Jordan, “I will make a place for Him; I will prepare the way for Him into the hearts of men. I will no longer merely hover over men, but will enter into human hearts, so that He also can enter in.”

If this is so, what may we then expect? If it is so, there is nothing more natural than to expect something to come to light in John the Baptist that we have already observed in Elijah. It becomes clear how in this grand figure of the Baptist there is not only his individual personality at work, but something more than a personality, which hovers over the individuality like an aura but has an efficacy that transcends it, something alive like an atmosphere among those within whom the Baptist is working. Just as Elijah was active like an atmosphere, so we may expect that as John the Baptist he would again be active like an atmosphere. Indeed, we may expect something further, that this spiritual being of Elijah, now united with John the Baptist, would continue to work on spiritually even if the Baptist were no longer there, if he were away. What does this spiritual being desire? It wishes to prepare the way for the Christ! We can also say that the physical personality of the Baptist may perhaps have left, but his spiritual being like a spiritual atmosphere may remain in the region where he was formerly active, and this spiritual atmosphere actually prepares the very ground on which the Christ could now perform His deed. This is what indeed we might expect. It could perhaps be best expressed if we were to say, “John the Baptist has gone away but what he is as the Elijah-spirit remains, and in this Christ can work best. Here He can best pour forth His words, and in that atmosphere that has remained behind, the Elijah-atmosphere, He can best perform His deeds.” That we can expect. And what does Mark's Gospel tell us?

It is very characteristic that twice allusion is made in the Mark Gospel to what I have just indicated. The first time it is said that “immediately after the arrest of John, Jesus came to Galilee and there proclaimed the teaching of the kingdoms of the heavens.” (Mark 1:14.) John therefore was arrested, that is to say, his physical personality was then prevented from working actively. But the figure of Christ Jesus entered into the atmosphere created by him. And it is significant that the same thing occurs a second time in the Mark Gospel, and it is a grandiose fact that it should occur a second time. We must only read the Gospel in the right way. If we pass on to the sixth chapter we hear fully described how King Herod had John the Baptist beheaded. But it is strange how many assumptions were made, not only after the physical personality of John had been arrested, but when he had been removed through death. To some it seemed that the miraculous forces through which Christ Jesus Himself worked were due to the fact that Christ Jesus Himself was Elijah, or one of the prophets. But the tortured conscience of Herod arouses a strange foreboding in him. When he hears all that has occurred through Christ Jesus he says, “John, whom I beheaded, has been restored to life!” Herod feels that, though the physical personality of John had gone away, he is now all the more present! He feels that his atmosphere, his spirituality—which was none other than the spirituality of Elijah, is still there. His tormented conscience causes him to be aware that John the Baptist, that is, Elijah, is still there.

But then something strange happens. We are shown how, after John the Baptist had met his physical death, Christ Jesus came to the very neighborhood where John had worked. I want you to take particular notice of a remarkable passage and not to skim over it lightly, for the words of the Gospels are not written for rhetorical effect, nor journalistically. Something very significant is said here. Jesus Christ appears among the throng of followers and disciples of John the Baptist, and this fact is expressed in a sentence to which we must give careful attention: “And as Jesus came out He saw a great crowd,” by which could be meant only the disciples of John, “and He had compassion on them ...” (Mark 6:34.) Why compassion? Because they had lost their master, they were there without John, whose headless corpse we are told had been carried to his grave. But even more precisely is it said, “for they were like sheep who had lost their shepherd. And He began to teach them many things.” It cannot be indicated any more clearly how He teaches John's disciples. He teaches them because the spirit of Elijah, which is at the same time the spirit of John the Baptist, is still active among them. Thus it is again indicated with dramatic power in these significant passages of the Mark Gospel how the spirit of Christ Jesus entered into what had been prepared by the spirit of Elijah-John. Even so this is only one of the main points, around which many other significant things are grouped.

I will now call your attention to one thing more. I have several times pointed out how this spirit of Elijah or John continued to act in such a way as to impress its impulses into world history. And since we are all anthroposophists assembled together here, and able to enter into occult facts, it is permissible to discuss this subject here. I have often mentioned that the soul of Elijah-John appeared again in the painter Raphael.² This is one of those facts that call attention to the metamorphoses of souls that take place under the impetus given by the Mystery of Golgotha. Because it was also necessary that in the post-Christian era such a soul should work in Raphael through the medium of a single personality; what in ancient times was so comprehensive and world encompassing now appears in such a different personality as that of Raphael. Can we not feel that the aura that hovered round Elijah-John is also present in Raphael? That in Raphael there were such similarities to these two others that we could even say that this element was too great to be able to enter into a single personality but hovered round it, so that the revelations received by this personality seemed like an illumination? Such was indeed the case with Raphael!

I could also say that there exists a proof of this fact, though it is a somewhat personal one, to which I already alluded in Munich.³ I should like to refer to it again here, not for the purpose of bringing out the personality of John the Baptist, but the full being of Elijah-John. For this purpose I will venture to speak of the further progress of the soul of Elijah-John in Raphael. Anyone who wishes honestly and sincerely to investigate what Raphael really was is likely to have his feelings aroused in a very remarkable way.

I have drawn attention to the modern art historian Hermann Grimm,⁴ and have mentioned that he was able to produce a biography of Michelangelo with comparative facility, but that on three separate occasions he tried to prepare a kind of life of Raphael. And because Hermann Grimm was not a so-called “learned man”—such a man of course can do anything he sets out to do—but a universal man who threw his whole heart sincerely into whatever he wanted to investigate and understand, he was forced to admit that when he had finished what he had intended to be a life of Raphael it did not turn out to be a life of Raphael at all. So he had to begin to do it again and again, but he was never satisfied with his work. Shortly before his death he made one more attempt, which is included in his posthumous works. In this he tried to approach Raphael and understand him in the way his heart wished to understand him, and the title his new work was to bear was indeed characteristic of him. He proposed to call the book Raphael as World-Power. For it seemed to him that if one approaches Raphael honestly, he cannot be described in any way other than as a world-power, unless one fails to see through to what is actively at work in world history. It is very natural that a modern author should experience some discomfort in choosing his words if he is to write as freely and frankly as did the evangelists. Even the best writers of modern times are embarrassed if they set to work in this way, but the figures that have to be described often force them to use the appropriate words. So it is very remarkable how Hermann Grimm wrote about Raphael shortly before his death in the first chapters of his book. It is really as if one can sense in the heart of Hermann Grimm something of the circumstances surrounding such a figure as that of Elijah-John, when he said, “If by some miracle Michelangelo were called back from the dead to live among us, and I were to meet him, I would respectfully stand aside to let him pass by. But if Raphael were to come my way I would go up behind him to see if by chance I might hear a few words from his lips. In the case of Leonardo and Michelangelo we can confine ourselves to relating what they once were in their own time; but with Raphael one must begin with what he is to us today. A slight veil has been cast over the others, but not over Raphael. He belongs among those whose growth will continue for a long time yet. We may imagine that Raphael will present ever new riddles to future generations of humanity.” (Fragments, Vol. II, page 170.)

Hermann Grimm describes Raphael as a world-power, as a spirit striding on through centuries and millennia, as a spirit who could not be encompassed within one individual man. And we may read yet other words by Hermann Grimm, wrung from the honesty and sincerity of his soul. It seems as if he wanted to express that there is something about Raphael like a great aura enveloping him, just as the spirit of Elijah enveloped Naboth. Could this be expressed in any other way than in these words of Hermann Grimm, “Raphael is a citizen of world-history; he is like one of the four rivers which, according to the belief of the ancient world, flowed out of Paradise.” (Fragments, Vol. II, page 153.)

That might also have been written by an evangelist, and it might almost have been written of Elijah! Thus even a modern historian of art, if his feelings are honest and sincere, is able to feel something of the great cosmic impulses that live through the ages. Truly nothing further is required to understand spiritual science than to come close to the soul and spiritual needs of those men who strive longingly to discover the truth about the evolution of humanity.

So does John the Baptist stand before us, and it is good if we can feel him in this way when we read the opening words of the Mark Gospel, and again later in the sixth chapter. The Bible is unlike a book of modern scholarship in which it is clearly emphasized what people ought to read. The Bible conceals beneath the grandiose artistic and occult style many of the mysterious facts it wishes to proclaim. And it is precisely in relation to the facts in the story of John the Baptist that the artistic and occult style does indeed conceal such things. Here I want to draw your attention to something that you can perhaps experience as truth only through your life of feeling. If you admit that there can be truths other than rational ones you may be able to see that the Bible tells us how the spirit or soul of Elijah is related to the spirit or soul of John the Baptist. Let us as briefly as we can see how far this is the case by allowing ourselves to be affected by the description of Elijah as it appears in the Old Testament:

So Elijah arose and went toward Zaraphta. And when he came to the gate of the city, there was a widow woman gathering wood. And he called to her and said “Bring me, I pray thee, a little water in a pitcher that I may drink.” And as she was going to fetch it, he called out to her and said “Bring me also a mouthful of bread.”

And the woman said, “As sure as the Lord your God liveth I have no bread, only a handful of flour in a bin and a little oil in a cruse. And see, I have gathered a few pieces of wood, and I am about to go inside and I want to make them ready for me and my son that we may eat and then die.”

Elijah said to her, “Fear not, go in and do as you have said. But first make a small cake and bring it out for me. Then afterwards you can make something for you and your son. For thus says the Lord, ‘The flour in the bin shall not be consumed nor the oil cruse run dry until the day when the Lord makes it rain upon the earth.’ ”

So she went in and did as Elijah had said. And he ate, and so did her household for a time. The flour in the bin was not eaten up, and the oil cruse did not run dry, according to the word he had spoken through Elijah. (I Kings 17:10-16.)

What do we read in the story of Elijah? We read of the coming of Elijah to a widow, and of a marvellous increase of bread. Because the spirit of Elijah was there it came about that there was no want in spite of the shortage of bread. The bread increased—so we read—the moment Elijah came into the presence of the widow. What is described here as an increase in bread, as the giving of bread as a gift, comes about through the spirit of Elijah. We can say therefore that the fact shines out from the Old Testament that the increase of bread is effected through the appearance of Elijah.

Now let us turn to the sixth chapter of the Mark Gospel. Here we are told how Herod caused John to be beheaded, and how Christ Jesus then came to the group of John's followers.

And when He came out He saw a great crowd, and had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things. And as it had become quite late His disciples came to Him and said, “This is a desolate place and it is already late. Let them go so that they may go to the farms and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But He answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to Him, “Should we go there and buy bread for two hundred denarii and give them something to eat?” He answered them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and look.” And after they had obtained the information they said, “Five loaves and two fishes.”

And he ordered them all to sit down on the green grass as if it had been a table. And they lay down as if for bed, by hundreds and by fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fishes, looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before them; in the same way he divided the two fishes among them. And they all ate and were satisfied. (Mark 6:34-42.)

You know the story; again there was an increase in bread brought about by the spirit of Elijah-John. The Bible does not actually speak “clearly” as we understand the word today, but it expresses what it has to say through its composition. Whoever understands how to value the truths of feeling will wish to let his feeling dwell on the passage where it is related how Elijah came to the widow and increased the bread, and where the reincarnated Elijah leaves his physical body and Christ Jesus brings about in a new form what is described as an increase of bread. Such are the inner developments, the inner correspondences in the Bible. They demonstrate how fundamentally empty the scholarship is that talks about a “compilation of biblical fragments,” but also how it is possible for us to recognize the one single spirit composing it throughout, irrespective of who this single spirit is. That is how the Baptist is presented to us.

Now it is very remarkable how the Baptist himself is again introduced into the work of Christ Jesus. On two occasions it is indicated to us that Christ Jesus really entered the aura of the Baptist just when the physical personage was withdrawing more and more into the background, finally leaving the physical plane altogether. But it is shown in very clear words precisely through the very simplicity of the Mark Gospel how through the entry of Christ Jesus into the element of Elijah-John a wholly new impulse enters the world. In order to understand this we must envisage the whole description given in the Gospel from the moment when Christ Jesus appears after the arrest of John the Baptist and speaks of the divine kingdom, to the passage where the murder of John by Herod is related, and continue on with the subsequent chapters. If we take all these stories down to the story of Herod and consider them in their true character we find that the intention of all of them is to reveal in a correct manner the qualities that are characteristic of Christ Jesus. Yesterday we spoke of His characteristic way of acting so that He is recognized also by the spirits which live in those possessed by demons. In other words, He is recognized by super-sensible beings and this is presented to us in a sharply accentuated manner. And then we are faced with the fact that that which lives in Christ Jesus is something in reality quite different from what dwelt in ElijahNaboth for the reason that the spirit of Elijah could not wholly enter into Naboth.

The purpose of the Gospel of St. Mark is to show us that the being of Christ entered fully into Jesus of Nazareth and entirely filled his earthly personality. What we recognize as the universal human ego was working in Him. What then is so terrible to the demons who were in possession of human beings when they were confronted by Christ Jesus? The devils are compelled to say to Him, “You are He who bears the God within You.” They recognize Him as a divine power in the human personality, thus compelling the demons to allow themselves to be recognized and to come forth from the human beings who were possessed through the power of what lives in the individual personality of man (Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:7). This is why in the early chapters of the Mark Gospel the figure of Christ is worked out so carefully, making Him in a certain way a contrast to ElijahNaboth, and also to Elijah-John. For whereas that which was active in them could not wholly live in them, this activating quality was wholly contained within Christ Jesus. For this reason, although a cosmic principle lives in Him, Christ Jesus as an individual personality confronts other human beings quite individually, including those whom He heals.

It is true that at the present time people generally take descriptions that come from the past in a peculiar way. In particular many of the modern learned students of nature—monists, as they also call themselves—take these descriptions in a very peculiar way when they wish to present their conceptions of the world. We could characterize this attitude by saying that these learned savants and excellent natural philosophers are secretly of the opinion, though they might be too embarrassed to say so, that it would have been better if the Lord God had left the organizing of the world to them, for they would really have established it better.

Take, for example, the case of such a learned student of natural philosophy of our time who maintains that wisdom has come to mankind only in the last twenty years, while others believe it has only been during the last five years, and regard earlier ideas as mere superstition. Such a man would profoundly regret that at the time of Christ there was no modern school of scientific medicine with its various remedies. According to their notions it would have been much more clever if all these people, for example Simon Peter's mother-in-law and others, had been cured with the aid of modern medical remedies. To their minds he would have been a really perfect God if he had created the world in accordance with the conceptions of a modern knowledge of nature. He would not have allowed humanity to have been deprived so long of the knowledge of nature possessed by modern savants. The world as established by God is indeed bungled by comparison with what a modern natural scientist would have created. They are embarrassed to say it so openly, but it is possible to read between the lines. These things that whirr around in the minds of materialistic natural scientists should be called by their right names. If we could for once talk confidentially with one of these gentlemen we might hear him voice the opinion that it is hard to avoid being an atheist when one sees how little success God had at the time of Christ in curing human beings by the methods of modern natural science.

But one thing is not considered: that the word “evolution,” about which people speak so often, ought to be taken seriously and honestly. Everything about evolution must be understood if the world is to reach its goal, and it is pointless to go looking for a plan such as modern natural scientists would produce if they were able to create a world. Because they think in this way, men do not correctly realize that the whole constitution of man, the unity of the finer bodies of man, were formerly quite different. In earlier times nothing at all could have been achieved with the human personality through the methods of natural science. For then the etheric body was much more active, much stronger than it is today; hence the physical body could be worked on indirectly through the etheric body in a very different manner. To express it quite dryly, at that time there was quite a different effect when one healed by means of “feeling” from what it would be today. At that time feeling was poured out from one person into another. When the etheric body was really much stronger and still governed the physical body, psychospiritual methods of healing acted quite differently. Human beings were constitutionally different, so there had to be a different method for healing. If a natural scientist does not know this he will say, “We no longer believe in miracles, and what is said here about healing is really a question of miracles, and these we must leave out of consideration.” And if one is a modern enlightened theologian one is faced by a very special dilemma. He would like to be able to retain these ideas, but at the same time he is filled with the modern prejudice that there is no such thing as healing of this kind, and that such cures are necessarily miracles. Which leads on to the effort to make all kinds of explanations as to the possibility or impossibility of miracles. But one thing he does not know. Nothing described up to the sixth chapter of the Mark Gospel was at that time regarded as a miracle, any more than when today some function of the human organization is affected by one medicament or another. No one at that time would have thought of it as a miracle if someone stretched out his hand and said to a leper, “I will it, become clean.” The whole natural being of Christ Jesus that was poured forth here, was in itself the cure. It would no longer work today because the union between the physical and etheric body is quite different. In those days physicians usually healed in that way, so it was not something that should be particularly emphasized that Christ Jesus cured lepers through compassion and the laying on of hands. Such a thing was then a matter of course. What is worthy of note in this chapter is something quite different, and this we must picture to ourselves correctly.

Let us then first glance at the manner in which the great physicians and even the lesser ones were trained. They were trained in schools that were part of the mystery schools, and they were able to attain to powers that worked down through them from the super-sensible world. Such physicians were thus in a sense mediums for the transmission of super-sensible powers. Through their own mediumship these men transmitted super-sensible powers, and they had been trained for this in the medical mystery schools. When in this way a physician laid his hands on a person it was not his own powers that streamed down but powers from the super-sensible world. It was through his initiation in the mystery schools that he could become a channel for the working of super-sensible powers. It would not have seemed especially remarkable to a person of that time if he heard that a leper or someone suffering from a fever had been cured through such psychical processes. The significant aspect was not that someone appeared capable of curing in this way but that someone who had not been trained in a mystery school could heal in this manner, and that in the heart and soul of this man the power which earlier flowed from the higher worlds was present, and such powers had now become personal individual powers. The truth was to be made clear that the time was fulfilled, and that from now onward men were no longer to be channels for super-sensible forces, that this had come to an end. This had also become clear to those who had been baptized by John in the Jordan, that the old time was coming to an end and everything in the future must be done through the human “I,” through that which is to enter into the divine inner center of the human being. They recognized that now among the people there stands one who does out of His own self what others before had done with the help of beings who live in the super-sensible world and whose powers worked down on them.

So we by no means grasp the meaning of the Bible if we picture to ourselves the curative process as being something special. In the fading light of the era that was passing away, when such cures were possible, it is said that Christ performed cures during this era of the fading light, but that He healed with new forces which would be present from that time onward. Thus it is very clearly shown, with a clarity that cannot be obscured, that Christ Jesus works entirely from man to man. This is everywhere emphasized. It could scarcely be more clearly expressed than when Jesus comes in contact with a woman described in the fifth chapter of the Mark Gospel. He heals her because she approaches Him and touches His garment, and He feels that a current of force has gone out from Him. The whole story is related in such a way as to show that the woman draws near to Christ Jesus and takes hold of His garment. At first He does nothing else Himself, but she does something; she takes hold of His garment, whereupon a current of force leaves Him. How? Not in this instance because He has released it, but because she draws it forth, and He notices it only later. This is very clearly shown. And when He does notice it what does He say? “Daughter, your faith has aided you. Go in peace and be healed from your plague.”

He only then became aware Himself, as He stood there, how the divine kingdom was streaming into Him, and streamed out from Him again. He does not stand there before those who are to be cured as the healers of earlier times stood before those from whom they were to drive out their demons. Whether the sick person believed or did not believe, the power that streamed from the super-sensible worlds through the medium of the healer streamed into him. But now, when it depended on the ego, this ego had to participate in the process; everything now became individualized. The main point of this description was not that one could influence the body through the soul—in that epoch that would have been a matter of course—but that insofar as the new age was just beginning, one ego must henceforth be in direct relationship with another ego. In earlier times the spiritual lived in the higher worlds, and it hovered over the human being. Now the kingdoms of heaven came near and were to enter into the hearts of men, were to live within the hearts of men as in a center. That is the point. In a world view such as this the outer physical and the inner moral flowed together in a new way, in such a way that from the time of the founding of Christianity until today there could only be faith, which from now onward can become knowledge.

Let us take the case of a sick person in ancient times as he stood facing his physician who was to heal him in the way I have just described. Magical forces were brought down from the spiritual worlds through the medium of the physician who had been prepared for this in the mystery schools, and these forces streamed through the body of the physician into that of the patient. There was at that time no link with the moral element, for the whole process did not affect the ego. Morality had nothing to do with it, for the forces flowed down magically from the higher worlds. Now a new era begins, and the moral and the physical aspects of the healing worked together in a new way. Knowledge of this fact will enable us to understand another story.

Some days had passed when He came again to Capernaum. When it was reported that He was in the house many people gathered there, so that there was no longer any room for them, even in front of the door, and He preached the word to them. Then they came to Him with a paralytic carried by four men. And when they were unable to come close to Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof of the house where He was and let down the litter on which the paralytic was lying through the gap. And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” (Mark 2:1-5.)

What would a physician have said in earlier times? What would the scribes and Pharisees have expected when a healing was to take place? They would have expected such a healer to have said, “The forces now pouring into you and into your paralyzed limbs will enable you to move.” But what did Christ say? “Your sins are forgiven you.” That is the moral element in which the ego participates. It was a language the Pharisees were incapable of understanding. They could not understand it; for someone to speak like this was a blasphemy to the Pharisees. Why? Because to their minds God could be spoken of only as living in the super-sensible worlds, and He works down from there; and sins could be forgiven only from the super-sensible worlds. They could not understand that forgiveness of sins had something to do with the person who healed. Therefore Christ went on further to say: “Which is it easier to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Stand up, take up your litter and walk?’ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth” (turning to the paralytic) “I tell you to stand up, take up your litter and go home.” And at once he stood up, took his litter and went out in full view of everyone. (Mark 2:9-12.)

Christ combines the moral and magical elements in His healing, and in this way made the transition from the ego-less to the ego-filled condition, and this can be found in every single description. This is how these matters must be understood, for this is the way they are told. Now compare what spiritual science has to say with all that biblical commentaries have to say about the “forgiveness of sins.” You will find there the strangest explanations, but nowhere anything satisfying because it was not known what the Mystery of Golgotha actually was.

I said that it had to be taken on faith. Why on faith? Because the expression of the moral in the physical element is not developed in one incarnation. When we meet someone today we must not look upon a physical defect as the bringing together of the physical and moral elements within one incarnation. Only when we go beyond one individual incarnation do we find the connection between the moral and physical elements in his karma. Because karma was very little emphasized up to the present time or not at all we can now say, “Until now the connection between the moral and physical elements could be discerned only through faith.” But now, when we are approaching the Gospels in a spiritual scientific way, faith is replaced by knowledge. Christ Jesus stands here beside us as an enlightened one, telling us about karma, when He makes known, “This person I may cure, for I perceived from his personality that his karma is such that he may stand up and walk.”

In such a passage as this you can see how the Bible is to be understood only if it is provided with the means given by modern spiritual science. It is our task to show that in this book, this cosmic book, the profoundest wisdom concerning the evolution of man is truly embodied. Once we are able to grasp what cosmic processes unfold on the earth—and this we shall emphasize increasingly in the course of these particular lectures since the Mark Gospel especially points to them—then we shall discover that what can be said in connection with this Gospel in the future can in no way be offensive to any other of the world's creeds. True knowledge of the Bible will, because of its own inner strength, stand firmly on the ground of spiritual science, attaching equal value to all the religious creeds of the world. This is because true knowledge of the Bible, for the reasons given at the end of our last lecture, cannot be truthfully confined within one denomination or another, but must be universal. In this way the religions will be reconciled. What I was able to tell you in my first lecture about the Indian who gave the lecture, “Christ and Christianity,” seems like the beginning of such a reconciliation. This Indian, no doubt subject to all the prejudices of his nation, nevertheless looked up to Christ in an interdenominational sense. It will be the task of spiritual scientific activity within the different religious confessions to try to understand this figure of Christ. For it seems to me that the task of our spiritual movement must be to deepen the religious creeds so that the inner nature of the different religions can be understood and deepened.

I should like in this connection to indicate something I have often pictured for you in the past, e.g., how a Buddhist who is an anthroposophist would conduct himself in relation to an anthroposophist who is a Christian. The Buddhist would say, “Gautama Buddha, who after first being a Boddhisattva then became a Buddha, after his death reached such a height that he no longer needs to return to earth.” The Christian who is an anthroposophist would reply, “I understand, for if I find my way into your heart and believe what you believe, I myself believe that about your Buddha.” This is what it means to understand the religion of the other person, to bring oneself to the other's religion. The Christian who has become an anthroposophist can understand everything that the other man says.

And what would the Buddhist who has become an anthroposophist say in reply? He would say, “I am trying to grasp what the innermost core of Christianity is. That with Christ we do not have to do with a founder of religion but with something different. In the case of the Mystery of Golgotha we have to do with an impersonal fact. Jesus of Nazareth did not stand there as the founder of a new religion, but the Christ entered into him, and He died on the Cross, thus accomplishing the Mystery of Golgotha. What is really the issue is that the Mystery of Golgotha is a cosmic fact.” And the Buddhist will say, “In future I shall no longer misunderstand, now that I have grasped the essence of your religion, as you have grasped mine, which was the issue between us. I will never picture the Christ as someone who will be reincarnated. For you the central question is what happened there. And I should be speaking in a very odd manner if I were to say that Christianity could be improved upon in any respect—that if Christ Jesus had been better understood He would not have been crucified after three years, that a religious founder should have been treated differently, and the like. The point is precisely that Christ was crucified, and the crucial consequences of that death on the Cross. There is no point in thinking that an injustice occurred at that time and that Christianity today could be improved upon.” No Buddhist who is an anthroposophist could say anything else than, “As you truly strive to understand the essence of my religion, so will I truly strive to understand the essence of yours.”

And what would be the result if people of different religions were to understand each other in such a way that the Christian were to say to the Buddhist, “I believe in your Buddha just as you do,” and if the Buddhist were to say to the Christian, “I understand the Mystery of Golgotha in the same way you do?” If something like this were to become general among human beings, what would be the consequence? There would be peace, and mutual acceptance of all religions among men. And this must come. The anthroposophical movement must consist of a true mutual understanding of all religions. It would be contrary to the spirit of anthroposophy if a Christian who became an anthroposophist were to say to a Buddhist, “It is untrue that Gautama after he became a Buddha will no longer reincarnate. He must appear in the twentieth century again as a physical human being.” Whereupon the Buddhist would say, “Can your anthroposophy lead you only to deride my religion?” And as a result instead of peace discord would arise among the religions. In the same way a Christian would have to tell a Buddhist who insisted on speaking about the possible improvements in Christianity, “If you can maintain that the Mystery of Golgotha was a mistake, and that Christ could return in a physical body so that He could succeed better than before, then you are making no effort to understand my religion, you are deriding it.” It is no task of anthroposophy to deride any religion, old or new, that is worthy of respect. If this were the task of anthroposophy it would be founding a society on mutual derision, not on the understanding of the equality of all religions!

In order to understand the spirit and the occult core of anthroposophy we must write this in our souls. And we can do this in no better way than by extending the strength and love that are working in the Gospels to the understanding of all religions. The later lectures in this cycle will show us how this can be achieved most particularly in connection with the Gospel of St. Mark.

• 1. Berlin, December 14th, 1911. English translation in Turning Points in Spiritual History (London: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., 1934).
• 2. Raphael. Raffaello Santi, 1483–1520, Italian painter, famous especially for his Madonnas and for his paintings in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, especially The School of Athens and the Disputä.
• 3. ... proof to which I already alluded in Munich. In a lecture of August 31, 1912, not translated, entitled, “Theosophy and the Spiritual Life of the Present.”
• 4. Hermann Grimm, 1828–1901. The books on Raphael written by him appeared under the title Das Leben Raphael (The Life of Raphael) 1872, 1885 and 1896. Raphael als Weltmacht (Raphael as World Power) appears in his posthumously published Fragments, Vol. II.

What was said yesterday about so-called poisonous substances indicated strongly how all the impulses of life are graded in relation to one another. For instance, some substance is said to be poisonous, and yet the higher nature of the human being is intimately related to this poison; indeed, the higher nature of man cannot exist without the effects of poisons. We are touching here on a most important area of knowledge, one with many ramifications and without which it is impossible to understand a good many secrets of life and existence.

Looking at the human physical body, we have to admit that if it were not filled with those higher components of existence, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego, it could not be the physical body as we know it. The moment man steps through the portal of death, leaving behind his physical body—that is, the moment the higher components withdraw from the physical body—it begins to obey laws other than those which governed it while those components were present there. The physical body disintegrates; after death it obeys the physical and chemical forces and laws of the earth.

The physical body of man as we know it cannot be constructed in accordance with earthly laws, for it is these very laws which destroy it. The body can only be what it is because there work within it those parts of man that are not of the earth: his higher components of soul and spirit. There is nothing in the whole realm of physical and chemical laws which could justify the presence of such a thing as the human physical body on the earth.

Measured by the physical laws of the earth, the human body is an impossible creation. It is prevented from disintegrating by the higher components of man's being. It follows, therefore, that the moment these higher components—the ego, the astral body and the etheric body—desert the human body, it becomes a corpse.

You know from many earlier lectures that the diagram of the human being we have often given is quite correct as such, but that in reality it is not as simple as some would like. To begin with, we divide the human being into physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. I have pointed out on other occasions that this in itself implies a further complication. The physical body, of course, is what it is—the physical body. But the etheric body, as such, is something super-sensible, invisible, something that cannot be perceived by the senses. It lives in the human being as something that cannot be perceived by the senses. But it has, in a sense, its physical counterpart because it imprints itself on the physical body. The physical body contains not only the physical body itself, but also an imprint of the etheric body. The etheric body projects itself onto the physical body; so we can speak of an etheric projection onto the physical body.

It is the same in the case of the astral body. We can speak of the astral projection onto the physical body. You know some of the details already. You know that the ego projection onto the physical body may be sought in certain features of the blood circulation, where the ego projects itself onto the blood. In a similar way the other higher components project themselves onto the physical body. So the physical body in its physical aspect is in itself a complicated system, for it is fourfold. And just as the most important aspect cannot exist in the physical body if the ego and the astral body are not in it—for it then becomes a corpse—so is it also in the case of these projections, for they are all present in the physical substance. Without the ego there can be no human blood, without the astral body there can be no human nervous system as a whole. These things exist in us as a counterpart of man's higher components.

When the ego has been, shall we say, ‘lifted out’ of the physical body, when it has passed through the portal of death, the physical body has no real life any longer, but becomes a corpse. In a similar way, under certain conditions, these projections cannot live in a proper way either.

For instance the ego projection—that is, a certain quality of the blood—cannot be present in a proper way in the human organism if the ego is not properly fostered. To turn the physical body into a corpse it is, of course, necessary for the ego to depart entirely from the physical body. But the blood can go a quarter of the way towards becoming a corpse if you prevent it from being permeated with what ought to live in the ego, so that it can work in the right manner of soul and spirit on the blood. You will gather from this that is possible to bring disorder into man's soul in such a way that the right influences cannot be brought to bear on the blood nature, the blood substance. That is then the point when the blood can change into a poisonous substance—not entirely, for in that case the person would die, but in part. The human physical body is abandoned to destruction if the ego departs from it, and in a similar way the blood is brought into a state of ill health—even if this is not necessarily noticeable—if the ego is not fostered and interwoven with the right care.

So when is the ego not fostered and interwoven with the right care? This is the case under certain quite definite circumstances. Let us look for the moment at the post-Atlantean period. We see that as human evolution proceeds, certain definite capacities, certain definite impulses are developed in each succeeding cultural epoch. It is impossible to imagine people living in the ancient Indian period having a condition of soul development similar to ours. From epoch to epoch, as human beings pass through succeeding incarnations on earth, different impulses are needed for the human soul.

Let me draw you a diagram. Imagine this to be the main, the actual physical body, the one that has to be filled with all the higher components of human nature in order to be a physical body at all.

Of all these higher components, I shall deal solely with the ego, though I could deal with all three. The shading here indicates that the physical body is permeated by the ego. So, in a certain way, the other projections also have to be permeated. Here let me indicate the projection of the etheric body, which is for the most part anchored in the human being's glandular system; for this, too, has to be permeated and interwoven. Thirdly, let me indicate what is anchored chiefly in the nervous system. This, again, in a certain way, must be interwoven with the workings of the ego. And the ego body itself—this, too, has to be interwoven in the proper way.

As I said just now, as man passes through succeeding periods of evolution he has to step into different developmental impulses with each period. He has to absorb whatever the contemporary age requires him to take in. In the first post-Atlantean period, ancient India, impulses of soul and spirit had to be absorbed which enabled the etheric body to be developed; in the next period, ancient Persia, the astral body was developed; in the period of Egypt and Chaldea it was the turn of the sentient soul; in the Greco-Latin period, the intellectual or mind soul; and today, the consciousness soul.

Whether the human being absorbs in the right way whatever is suitable for the age in which he is living will depend on whether he has properly entered into all these bodily principles—just as the physical body is permeated by the higher components of his being—so that they absorb what the age requires. Suppose an individual during the fifth post-Atlantean period were to resist absorbing anything of what ought to be absorbed during this period; suppose he were to reject everything which could cultivate his soul in the manner required by the fifth post-Atlantean period. What would be the consequence?

His bodily nature cannot revert to an earlier state if he belongs to that part of mankind which is called upon at present to absorb the impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Not everyone is called upon at the same time, but at present all the white races are called upon to absorb the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Now suppose an individual were to resist this. A certain member of his bodily nature—above all, the blood—would remain void of all that could be taken in, were he not to put up this resistance. This member of his bodily nature would then lack what ought to permeate its substance and its forces. This substance and the forces living in it—though not to a degree comparable to bodily death brought about by the departure of the ego—would then become sick in its life forces, which become degraded so that man bears them as a poison within him. Thus to remain behind in evolution means that man impregnates his being with a kind of formative phantom which is poisonous. On the other hand, if he were to absorb what his cultural impulses require him to absorb, the state of his soul would be such that he could dissolve this poisonous phantom he bears within him. By failing to do so, he allows this phantom to coagulate and become a part of his body.

This is the source of all the sicknesses of civilization, the cultural decadence, all the emptiness of soul, the states of hypochondria, the eccentricities, the dissatisfactions, the crankinesses and so on, and also of all those instincts which attack culture, which are aggressive and antagonistic towards cultural impulses. Either the individual accepts the culture of his age, and fits in with it, or he develops the corresponding poison which deposits itself within him and can only be dissolved if he does accept the culture. But if the poison is allowed to become deposited, it leads to the development of instincts which are opposed to the culture of the age. The working of a poison is also always an aggressive instinct. In the languages of Central Europe this can be felt quite clearly: many dialects do not say that a person is angry but that he is poisonous. This expresses a deep sense for something that is indeed the case. Someone who is irrascible is described in Austria, for instance, as ‘gachgiftig’ which means that he is quick to grow poisonous, quick to anger. Human beings acquire poison, sometimes in a very concentrated form, if they refuse to accept what could dissolve such poison. Nowadays, untold people refuse to accept spiritual life in the form fitting for today, which we have been endeavouring to describe for such a long time, more recently even in public.

In such people, the lotus flower here [on the forehead] reveals very clearly what occurs in these cases, for the effects reach right into the realm of warmth, and such people leap up like flames against anything in the world around them which happens to reveal something that could bring healing to our times. Certainly, Mephistopheles—that is, the devil—is abroad amongst us; but the development of even a small beginning—tiny flames stirring—starts when we refuse to accept something that is fitting for our time, so that we do not dissolve the poison but make it into a partial corpse and allow it to coagulate in our organism as a phantom of formative forces.

If you think this through properly, you will discover the cause of many dissatisfactions in life. For those who bear such a poisonous phantom within them are unhappy indeed. We would call these people nervous, or neurasthenic; but it can also make them cruel, quarrelsome, monists, materialists, for these characteristics are the result, more often than we might think, of physiological causes brought about by the poison being deposited in the human organism instead of being assimilated.

You will see from all this that there belongs to the overall balance of the world in which we are embedded a kind of unstable equilibrium between what is good and right on the one hand, and its opposite, the effects of poisons, on the other. If it is to be possible for what is good and right to come about, then it must also be possible to err from what is right, for poisons to have their effect.

If we now apply this to the wider situation, we see that it must be possible today for people to attain to some degree of spiritual life, to develop within themselves impulses for a free, inner spiritual life. To make it possible for the individual to attain to a life of the spirit, the opposite must also exist, namely a corresponding possibility to err along the path of grey or black magic. Without the one, the other is not possible. Just as you, as a human being, cannot maintain yourself without the firm foundation of the earth beneath your feet, so it is not possible for the illumination of spiritual life to be pursued without the resistance which must be permitted to exist and which is inevitable for the higher realms of life.

We have already mentioned the highly contradictory and yet no less important fact that the question: To whom do we owe the Mystery of Golgotha? could elicit the reply: To Judas. For it could be argued that if Judas had not betrayed Christ Jesus, the Mystery of Golgotha would not have taken place, so therefore we ought to be grateful to Judas, since Christianity—that is, the Mystery of Golgotha—stems from him. However, to be grateful to Judas and perhaps recognize him as the founder of Christianity is going too far! Wherever we strive to enter higher realms we have to reckon with living, not dead truth, and the living truth bears within it its own counter-image, just as in physical existence life bears death within it.

This is something I wanted to place in your soul today, for on this basis much can be understood. There has to exist the possibility for what is spiritual, but also for the deposition of the poison which is its polar opposite. And if it can be deposited then it can also be used—it can be utilized in every realm.

Many questions could be asked about this, but today we shall deal with only one: How can we find our way through the maze? Is there not a very great danger that anything we approach in the world might contain the polar opposite, namely the poison, or at least that somebody or other might seek to make something poisonous out of it? Of course there is always this possibility. Everything that is potentially very good can also be perverted and become the opposite. This must be the case in order that human evolution can take its course in freedom in accordance with the present cultural age. Indeed, the very best evolutionary impulses in our age are those most likely to be turned into their opposite.

This is valid for social life as well as for the human organism. In lectures given here last year, we saw that in the present age, to start with only germinally, the capacity is beginning to develop which will enable us to create a life of Imaginations—to develop thoughts which rise up freely—though so far this possibility is denied by materialists. However, it lies in the very nature of our present age that a life of Imagination must develop little by little. What is the counter-image of a life of Imagination? The counter-image of Imaginative life is fabrication, the creation of fabrications about reality and a corresponding thoughtlessness in alleging this or that. I have often described it in these lectures as an inattentiveness to truth, to what is actual and real. The most wonderful thing with which mankind is presented in the fifth post-Atlantean period is the gradual ascent from mere onesided intellectual life into Imaginative life, which is the first step into the spiritual world. This can err and become untruthfulness, the fabrication of untruths in relation to reality. I am not, of course, referring to poetry, which is entirely justified, but to fabrication with regard to what is real.

Another element which must come into being during the present age—we have discussed this here, too—is a form of thinking that is particularly conscientious and aware of its responsibility. When you see what anthroposophical spiritual science has to offer, you cannot but admit that, to understand what is said, sharply delineated thoughts are needed, thoughts which are imbued with the will to pursue reality in an objective way. Clear thinking is certainly necessary if our teachings—if I may call them that—are to be understood. Above all, what is needed are not fleeting thoughts, but a certain quietness of thought. We must work towards achieving this kind of thinking. We must strive unremittingly to force ourselves to think thoughts with clear contours and not wallow in sympathies and antipathies when alleging something to ourselves and others. We must seek for the foundation, the basis, of what we maintain—otherwise we shall never penetrate in the right way into the realm of spiritual science. We must demand this of ourselves. We shall fulfil our task if we demand this of ourselves. If we are asked what we can do in these difficult times, our answer must be based on what I have just said. We must be fully aware of the fact that at the present time every human being who longs for the evolution of the earth to proceed in a healthy way must seek conscientiously and honestly for objectivity of thinking, in the manner described. This is the task of the human soul today.

It is just because this is so that the corresponding poison can develop, which is a state of being utterly devoid of clarity of thought, devoid of thought that unites with reality and fabricates nothing, but seeks to depict solely what is. During the course of the nineteenth century the yearning for objectivity deserted us increasingly. And the absence of conscience in what we have been describing here as the truth has reached a certain climax in the twentieth century in comparison to all that went before. The effect is at its worst when people entirely fail to notice it; yet, in this very aspect, it is characteristic of our time.

Let me give you a few examples to show you what I mean. Let me place these examples before you sine ira—without sympathies or antipathies. Here is a man whom I know very well, someone who could be called a truly kind and nice person. He holds a position in public life and would certainly not allow himself to stray, even minutely, from the upright attitudes expected of those in public positions. Yet a short time ago this man found it possible to say something quite typical. At the end of an essay he wrote: ‘Finally we cannot avoid at least a brief discussion of ...’ [Gap in report]

It is understandable that such things should be said today, and I have quoted it precisely because the person who said it was such a serious man with truly upright attitudes. Yet when you look more closely, you discover that it is as utterly dishonest as anything can possibly be; for how can you say anything more dishonest than: ‘I shall join in singing “Now thank we all our God” and “A safe stronghold our God is still” ’ and so on, in a mood that makes these hymns into prayers, if you hold opinions such as those expressed by this man. Frankly, he is eulogizing untruthfulness. You may find such eulogies to untruthfulness wherever you look these days, yet they are given, I am bound to say, in good faith. They are the poison that corresponds to what must develop as a spiritual life of Imagination. The best among us, especially, are prone, more or less unconsciously, to harbouring the effects of this poison. Of course, once you realize that something of this kind pulsating through society is no different from a drop of poison administered to the human organism, then you are in a position to judge all these things correctly. And once you do realize it, you cannot but feel bound to strive for something in life which I have now described a number of times. You will feel bound to be alert to the facts, you will want your observation of life to be sound, for without this there is no way forward today. The karma that is being fulfilled at the moment, the karma about which I have spoken before, is not the karma of a single nation; it is the karma of the whole of European and American humanity in the nineteenth century; it is the karma of untruthfulness, the insidious poison of untruthfulness.

This untruthfulness may be experienced particularly strongly in movements of a more elevated variety. During the course of my life I have come across a great deal of untruthfulness, but I must say I have never met lies as grandiose as those promulgated among certain people who proclaim the principle: There is no religion higher than Truth. I could say that such intense mendacity is only found where there is at the same time a profound consciousness of striving for only the truth and nothing but the truth! The greatest watchfulness is needed when striving for the ultimate. For we must realize that, while in earlier cultural epochs the possibilities of erring were different, today the greatest danger is an aberration into untruthfulness brought about by a failure to take reality into account in a living way—a failure to take reality into account! The man I mentioned, who wrote such lies, would rather have his tongue cut out than consciously speak an untruth. Yet it is through such upright people that these things work, seeping into the social organism and turning into social poison. Obviously, since they must needs exist amongst us, they can also err in the opposite direction. Other human beings can take them into their awareness and use them for all kinds of mischief—to put it mildly.

Some of you might remember how strange it seemed to people when I first made some fairly radical statements about these things a few years ago, in a public lecture in Munich. I said at that time: During the course of human evolution, impulses for both good and evil develop on the physical plane. What causes these impulses to develop? They come into being when certain forces, which actually belong to the higher, spiritual world, are misused down here in the physical world. If thieves were to use their thieving instincts, and murderers their murderous instincts, and liars their lying instincts to develop higher forces, instead of enjoying them here on the physical plane, they would develop quite considerable higher forces. Their mistake is only that they develop their powers on the wrong plane. Evil, I said, is good that has been transposed down from another plane. Of course, if we know this it does not make a thief or a murderer or a liar any better. But we must understand these things, otherwise we cannot fathom what is going on, falling unconscious victim to these dangers.

It is not surprising that many people today simply do not realize that it is becoming mankind's task to be concerned with spiritual matters. Therefore they fail to take up this task, abandoning themselves instead to materialistic instincts. In doing so, they develop within themselves those poisons which ought to be dissolved by the spiritual element. What is the consequence? In those who deny the spirit, the poisons develop into forces which cause them to become veritable liars; whether conscious or unconscious is merely a question of degree. Yet these very forces could be used to achieve a reasonable comprehension of spiritual knowledge.

Consider how important it is for us to understand this and how, in understanding it, we can come to comprehend one of the central aspects of the karma of our time, if we add to it what I said yesterday: that a single instance cannot be detached from mankind as a whole, for mankind is a totality. As a counter-image of spiritual endeavour it is essential for a violent evil to exist. And one of man's tasks today is to recognize the true nature of this evil, in order to be able properly to recognize and oppose it when he comes upon it in life.

In speaking about these things we come to realize the relationship between the greater aspects of the karma of our time and something that is living in our time which is everywhere in the world bringing about very, very much that is terrible. Superficially, we see how falsehood throbs through the world in mighty waves which devour much more than one might think. For falsehood is monstrously vigorous. But as we have seen today, falsehood is nothing other than the corresponding counter-image for spiritual endeavour which ought to exist but does not. The divine, spiritual wisdom of the universe has given to the human being the possibility of spiritual endeavour. We have within us the poison which we can dissolve. Indeed, we must dissolve it, for otherwise it will become a kind of partial corpse within us.

Let me give you examples of such things from daily life. These will at the same time serve the pursuit of our aim to better understand certain things which meet us at every turn today and which are connected with life and with all the evil and suffering of the present time. For one of the things we are striving for in these talks, in so far as we have been permitted to give them, is an understanding of the painful events of today. I bring these things forward in order to show you in a structured way how these impulses work. The examples I give are intended to characterize the facts, not any particular person or persons.

Hanging around here in Switzerland is a man who many years ago was a lawyer in Berlin, a pettifogger who was forced to seek his fortune abroad because of all the mischief he had concocted. He has been hanging around abroad for years, and now that war has broken out has written a book, J'accuse, which has caused a furore throughout the countries of the periphery. This whole J'accuse affair can be said to be one of the saddest symptoms of our time, because it is so very characteristic. J'accuse is a fat book, and certain people who ought to know maintain that there is not a log cabin in distant Norway that does not house a copy. It is, in other words, one of the most widely disseminated books. In Berlin last spring I read an article about it written by quite a well-known person. He says J'accuse was recommended to him by someone whom he greatly admires. From the way he describes his friend, we gather who he must mean, namely, someone who counts for a good deal in Holland. Yet this person was quite unable to assess even the gutter-press style of the book. It is possible to be thought a great man and yet be incompetent to form a judgement in such matters.

Now quite recently the author—known, and yet unknown—of J'accuse has gone into print once more in L'Humanité with the following thoughts. As I have said, I am not concerned with the person himself, but want to characterize something that is typical of our time:

In the Reichstag in Berlin a social democrat gives a speech in which he unfolds his views about various happenings in the period leading up to the outbreak of war. It does not matter whether we agree with him or not; what I am concerned with is the form such things take. In his speech, this member of the Reichstag refers to a remark made by Sir Edward Grey on 30 July 1914 to the effect that if the Austrians would content themselves with marching as far as Belgrade, occupying the city and awaiting the outcome of a possible European congress on the relationship between Austria and Serbia, then it might still be possible to preserve peace. This remark by Sir Edward Grey is well-documented, for he made it to the German ambassador and also wrote it to the English ambassador in St Petersburg. The matter is so well-documented that there can be no doubt that Sir Edward Grey did make this remark. Nevertheless, by bringing it up again in the Reichstag, this member has aroused the anger of the author of J'accuse. So what does the author of J'accuse do? He writes an utterly slanderous article in L'Humanité in which he accuses the member of the Reichstag of mendaciousness, false citation, and so on. Yet the matter is very well-documented, and the member of the Reichstag did not say anything which is not vouched for in books, or in the letter sent by Sir Edward Grey to the English ambassador in St Petersburg. So how can the author of J'accuse make the claim of mendaciousness? He did it by saying: What the member of the Reichstag was saying cannot refer to a remark made by Sir Edward Grey on 30 July; it must refer to one made by Sasonov on 31 December. But Sasonov's remark, not Grey's, was as I shall now quote. In other words, the member of the Reichstag quoted Sasonov wrongly, for Sasonov's remark went as follows, and in addition he claims that Sasonov's remark was made by Sir Edward Grey.

The fact is that the member of the Reichstag refers to a remark by Grey. The author of J'accuse wants to counter him and says: What he is saying refers not to a remark by Grey but to one by Sasonov, which he misquotes; Sasonov said the following ...; in other words what he said in the Reichstag in Berlin is doubly false, for firstly the quotation is false, and secondly he claims that the remark was made in London, when in fact it was made in St Petersburg. Ergo, the member of the Reichstag is a liar.

The whole of J'accuse is of this calibre; all the argumentation is like this. You see how narrow, how confused and how unscrupulous must be the thinking of a person who is capable of writing such things. And what does he achieve? The countless people who read L'Humanité and what the author—known, and yet unknown—of J'accuse has to say, will, of course, not check the facts for themselves. They believe what they see before their eyes. So by this means he proves not only that the member of the Reichstag has lied, but also—and the author of J'accuse is indeed capable of allowing this to be seen as proof—that the Central Powers never replied to the proposals made by the periphery. The author of J'accuse states that the member of the Reichstag is saying that the Central Powers did react to the proposals made by the periphery. And yet, he says, look what Sasonov said, for it is Sasonov whom he is quoting! The Central Powers never replied, so you see how they managed the affair; they did not even reply to these important proposals.

Now what the member of the Reichstag said did indeed refer to a proposal made by Grey and telegraphed by him to his ambassador, who then passed it on to Sasonov. Sasonov turned Grey's whole proposal, which was not at all bad, upside down. The author of J'accuse demands that this proposal, turned into its opposite by Sasonov, should have been taken into account, even though Sasanov did not take it into account. However, it can be proved that Grey sent a telegram to his ambassador in St Petersburg and that this was presented to Sasonov, who took no account of it. At the same time Grey sent his proposal to Berlin and from Berlin it was sent on to Vienna. It can indeed be proved that negotiations were carried on between Vienna and Berlin in order to persuade Austria to make a halt in Belgrade and await European negotiations. This is documented in a letter telegraphed by the King of England to Prince Heinrich. In other words, the Central Powers did indeed consider Grey's proposals. But Sasonov did not consider them! Even so, the author of J'accuse concludes that the Central Powers did not reply and have thus made themselves guilty of these terrible events.

This whole matter is not insignificant, for in yesterday's lamentable document the same sentence may be seen. Here we have an extraordinary—let me say—kinship, family relationship, between a terrible document of world history and an individual who has been hanging around for years because his own homeland became too hot to hold him and who now writes all kinds of rubbish under the bombastic title J'accuse. By a German—rubbish that is protected by such further excesses as the latest achievement of L'Humanité.

It is not surprising if people then defend themselves in the way the German member of the Reichstag has done, having been accused by the author of J'accuse of being a slanderer, a hypocrite and a liar. He drew the following comparison: You send your maid on an errand to Mr Miller at Number 35, Long Lane. When she returns after having taken much longer than the expected two hours she says: I couldn't find Mr Miller. I went to No 85, Short Street. Mr Miller the carpenter doesn't live there, but Mrs Smith the washerwoman does. This, said the member of the Reichstag, is just about the level of connection between what the author of J'accuse says and what really happened.

The author of J'accuse is, of course, a particularly nasty example. It is this manner of treating reality which is today the obverse, the corresponding counter-image of spiritual endeavour, flowing as it does through the veins of society in place of what we should all be striving for: spiritual knowledge, spiritual knowledge with which to fill our being. We can find such things everywhere, in manifold variations. I have given you just one example—dishonesty, as it appears in an individual whom I know very well. Everywhere we shall see how such things appear as the counter-image of what is necessary in our time. Spiritual knowing is necessary for those who want to recognize anything worthwhile today; all other knowing lags behind what should be evolving. Therefore, if an attitude of mind disposed towards peace is to come about among the nations of Europe, feelings about these nations will have to develop which are imbued with the spirit, feelings which can come into being if nations are seen in the way they are shown in the lecture cycle about the folk spirits which I gave long before the war in Christiania. We must resolve to approach the spirit of a nation in this way. Only then can our human spirit become active in a manner which will enable us to form a valid judgement which encompasses a whole group, such as a nation. Just think how judgements could be formed about nations if sufficient spiritual preparation had been undertaken first of all! Yet all that we have seen going astray so drastically in one direction or another lives not only in the worst; it also lives in the best of us. In describing this it is not my intention to apportion blame. I am simply describing a lack which exists because there is no will to create the spiritual foundation on which judgements could be formed about the interrelationships of nations. Judgements are formed on the basis of sympathies and antipathies rather than true insights.

A typical example of this may be found in a famous novel written quite recently. A perfectly honest attempt is made in this context to describe a certain nation—in this case the German nation—through the various characters who represent it. Yet the way it is done is defective because a lack of spirituality prevents the author from achieving a judgement based on reality. There would be no reason for me to mention a genuine novel here, for in a true work of art such a question would not arise. But a novel that is tendentious in its descriptions can certainly be quoted in this connection. Let me clarify further what I mean: In a really good novel you will never hear the voice of the author himself, for the characters will express what is typical for their nation, their standing, their class and so on. Thus if John Smith or Adrian Swallowtail says something about the Germans, or the French, or the English, there is no cause to object. But this is not the case in the novel in question. Here, the author keeps stepping out in front of the curtain and giving his opinion, so that when he describes a person he gives his own opinion about the Germans, or whatever. You can see this straightaway in the description of a relative of the hero:

‘He was a fine talker, well, though a little heavily, built, and was of the type which passes in Germany for classic beauty; he had a large brow that expressed nothing, large regular features, and a curled beard—a Jupiter of the banks of the Rhine.’

You will agree that this is not likely to lead to an objective judgement, even if it could be true in isolated cases. A German chamber orchestra is described as follows:

‘They played neither very accurately nor in good time, but they never went off the rails, and followed faithfully the marked changes of tone. They had that musical facility which is easily satisfied, that mediocre perfection which is so plentiful in the race which is said to be the most musical in the world.’

Now the hero's uncle is described:

‘He was a partner in a great commercial house which did business in Africa and the Far East. He was the exact type of one of those Germans of the new style, whose affectation it is scoffingly to repudiate the old idealism of the race, and, intoxicated by conquest, to maintain a cult of strength and success which shows that they are not accustomed to seeing them on their side. But it is as difficult at once to change the age-old nature of a people, the despised idealism springs up again in him at every turn in language, manners, and moral habits, and the quotations from Goethe to fit the smallest incidents of domestic life, and he was a singular compound of conscience and self-interest. There was in him a curious effort to reconcile the honest principles of the old German bourgeoisie with the cynicism of these new commercial condottieri—a compound which for ever gave out a repulsive flavour of hypocrisy, for ever striving to make of German strength, avarice, and self-interest the symbols of all right, justice and truth.’

Of the hero it is said:

‘... he lacked that easy Germanic idealism, which does not wish to see, and does not see, what would be displeasing to its sight, for fear of disturbing the very proper tranquility of its judgment and the pleasantness of its existence.’

Here is another example of the author peeping out through the curtains and giving his own opinion:

‘Especially since the German victories they had been striving to make a compromise, a revolting intrigue between their new power and their old principles. The old idealism had not been renounced. There should have been a new effort of freedom of which they were incapable. They were content with a forgery, with making it subservient to German interests. Like the serene and subtle Schwabian, Hegel, who had waited until after Leipzig and Waterloo to assimilate the cause of his philosophy with the Prussian State ...’

This gentleman has a strange view of the history of philosophy. Those of us with a real understanding of what went on know that the principles of Hegel's philosophy on the phenomenology of consciousness were written down in Jena in 1806 to the thundering of canon as Napoleon approached. Yet in the novel it is said with a certain ‘sense for the truth’ that Hegel waited for the Battle of Leipzig in order to adapt to the Prussian State.

‘... their interests having changed, their principles had changed, too. When they were defeated, they said that Germany's ideal was humanity. Now that they had defeated others, they said that Germany was the ideal of humanity.’

What a fine sentence!

‘When other countries were more powerful, they said, with Lessing, that “patriotism is a heroic weakness which it is well to be without,” and they called themselves “citizens of the world”. Now that they were in the ascendant, they could not enough despise the Utopias “à la Francaise”. Universal peace, fraternity, pacific progress, the rights of man, natural equality: they said that the strongest people had absolute rights against the others, and that the others, being weaker, had no rights against themselves.’

As you can see, once the war had started, these sentences could have formed the basis for many a leading article in the countries of the periphery. Yet they were written long before the war.

‘It was the living God and the Incarnate Idea, the progress of which is accomplished by war, violence, and oppression. Force had become holy now that it was on their side. Force had become the only idealism and the only intelligence.’

Now there is a sentence missing in my notes. You know it is not easy to bring things across the border just now, and I have the book in Berlin.

Let me quote a few more passages in which the author peeps through the curtains:

‘The Germans are very mildly induigent to physical imperfections: they cannot see them; they are even able to embellish them, by virtue of an easy imagination which finds unexpected qualities in the face of their desire to make them like the most illustrious examples of human beauty. Old Euler would not have needed much urging to make him declare that his granddaughter had the nose of the Ludovisi Juno.’

It should be added that this nose and face are described as being especially ugly.

About Schumann it is said:

‘But that was just it: his example made Christopher understand that the worst falsity in German art came into it not when the artists tried to express something which they had not felt, but rather when they tried to express the feelings which they did in fact feel—feelings which were false.’

Then we are reminded with a certain amount of pleasure of something said by Madame de Staël:

‘ “They have submitted doughtily. They find philosophic reasons for explaining the least philosophic theory in the world: respect for power and the chastening emotion of fear which changes that respect into admiration.” ’

The author of the novel adds that his hero ‘found that feeling’, namely that they have submitted doughtily, that they have respect and fear:

‘... everywhere in Germany, from the highest to the lowest—from the William Tell of Schiller, that limited little bourgeois with muscles like a porter, who, as the free Jew Borne says, “to reconcile honour and fear passes before the pillar of dear Herr Gessler, with his eyes down, so as to be able to say that he did not see the hat; did not disobey”—to the aged and respectable Professor Weisse, a man of seventy, and one of the most honoured men of learning in the town, who, when he saw a Herr Lieutenant coming, would make haste to give him the path, and would step down into the road. Christopher's blood boiled whenever he saw one of these small acts of daily servility. They hurt him as much as though he had demeaned himself. The arrogant manners of the officers whom he met in the street, their haughty insolence, made him speechless with anger. He never would make way for them. Whenever he passed them he returned their arrogant stare. More than once he was very near causing a scene. He seemed to be looking for trouble. However, he was the first to understand the futility of such bravado; but he had moments of aberration; the perpetual constraint which he imposed on himself, and the accumulation of force in him that had no outlet, made him furious. Then he was ready to go any length, and he had a feeling that if he stayed a year longer in the place he would be lost. He loathed the brutal militarism which he felt weighing down upon him, the sabres clanking on the pavement, the piles of arms, the guns placed outside the barracks, their muzzles gaping down on the town, ready to fire.’

All this is interesting for a number of reasons. You know that I am not mentioning these things for personal reasons or in order to characterize somebody. Once the novel had been written and had caused a considerable sensation there were, of course, individuals who praised it as the greatest work of art of all time. This always happens. The opinion expressed by an esteemed Austrian critic is rather nice—I mean ‘esteemed’ in inverted commas: ‘This novel is the most important event since 1871, which could bring France and Germany closer together again.’

You see how much truth lies hidden in these things! Yet we are dealing here with a man who is highly praised today, and I have no intention of raising even the slightest objection to his outward activities during wartime. However, what is said in this ‘world famous’ novel provides plenty of material for slogans and leading articles in the periphery. What I have read aloud to you today may indeed be admired—with all due respect to the hacks of the periphery—at any time in those leading articles. These things were written long before the war, as that Austrian critic said ‘to bring France and Germany closer together’, and may be found in Romain Rolland's novel John Christopher.

Here you have an example of somebody who excludes the spirit, who does not want the spirit, and therefore fails to see what is essential in the events and situations of the present time. What can someone who writes such things possibly really know about the German character? We have a right to speak in this way because the subjective judgements of the author are here dressed up in the guise of an inferior novel. It is my personal opinion that this novel is one of the worst. As you have seen from the opinion of the critic from Vienna, it is held to be one of the best. Internationally, too, the critics have hailed it as one of the best. If we did not hold the opinion—which is not all that unjustified nowadays—that anything the critics praise must of necessity be rubbish, we might even have a certain respect for something they tell us is the foremost and greatest achievement of our time. From the viewpoint of cultural history, however, this is a good example for us of how impossible it is for people today to draw near to the task set for mankind by the fifth post-Atlantean period. For this reason alone, karma will have to fulfil itself. It is our task, however, to think about these things impartially. Above all we should not accept or parrot without criticism what is said out there in the materialistic world, but should strive instead to form our own judgement about these things.

What I have read aloud to you today was written many years ago, but now it provides marvellous slogans for the leading articles perpetrated by the journalists of the Entente. Its tenor is terribly anti-German, but that is not the point, for any point of view has its validity. It is, however, a strange distortion of the truth to praise a book as something new when it was in fact written years ago, even though the final volumes have only recently been published. Other strange things happen in this way, for instance in connection with quotations which keep appearing and are said to stem from Nietzsche or Treitschke and others. In the case of Treitschke you can search his works in vain for the passages, and in Nietzsche's case the passages have the opposite meaning to that claimed today by the journalists of the Entente.

I used to be acquainted with Nietzsche's publisher and discussed a number of matters with him. At that time the man who translated the whole of Nietzsche into French wrote to that publisher every few days from Paris. Nietzsche was a god to him. Today he abuses him mightily. You can have the strangest experiences in such connections. You will search the works of Treitschke and Nietzsche in vain for anything that could have been said in that book, for when they are quoted the texts are taken out of context, and furthermore they are also mutilated; the beginning of a sentence is quoted, the middle is torn out, and then the end is quoted. Only by doing this can they quote these writers.

But they can quote Romain Rolland unabridged. I have read to you only a few short passages from his novel. There is no need for you to judge it by these passages, though they could be augmented by countless others. You could, however, judge it on the basis of the ending, which shows that the whole novel is riddled with the attitudes revealed in the quoted passages. None of this is intended as a condemnation of the person himself. However, it is essential to illuminate clearly the poison seeping into our lives today.

The nature of man is complicated, and very much of what actually goes on within the human being remains more or less beneath the threshold of consciousness, merely sending its effects up into consciousness. True self-knowledge cannot be won without first obtaining insight into the working of the sub-consciousness weaving below the surface in the impulses of soul. These, it could be said, move in the depths of the ocean of consciousness and come to the surface only in the wake of the waves they create. Ordinary consciousness can perceive only the waves that rise to the surface, and on the whole one is not capable of understanding their significance, so true self-knowledge is not possible. Merely pondering on what is washed up into consciousness does not lead to self-knowledge; for things in the depths of the soul often differ greatly from what they become in ordinary, everyday consciousness. Today we shall look a little into this nature of man in order to gain, from this point of view, an idea of how the subconscious soul-impulses in the human being really work.

In this field we can, of course, to a greater or lesser extent, speak only in pictures. But if you bring together much of what we have hitherto discussed within our Anthroposophical Movement, you will be able to understand the realities that want to speak through the pictures. We can say: The invisible nature of man, his ego, his astral body, his etheric body, work through his visible nature, so what is not manifest works through what is manifest. However, the manner in which what is evident works through what is not evident is very complicated. But if we work our way bit by bit through the various parts of this complicated process, and place them all together, we shall, in the end, attain an overall view of the being of man. Even this, though, will always remain incomplete, for the being of man is infinitely complex. But at least we can gain a certain basic knowledge of human nature as a valid foundation for self-knowledge.

Today we shall examine how the separate components of man's nature express themselves in a more or less pictorial or formalized manner through physical life. Here is a human being. To illustrate what I want to tell you, I shall start with what we recognize for earthly man as the aspect of which we are conscious: the ego. I must emphasize that pictorial explanations can very easily lead to misunderstandings, because things said earlier seem to contradict other things said later. Follow carefully, and you will soon notice that such contradictions are, in fact, non-existent.

So let us start with the ego-nature of man, with that component we call our ego. This ego-nature is, of course, entirely super-sensible; it is the most super-sensible part we have as yet acquired, but it works through the physical. In the intellectualistic sense the ego works in our physical being chiefly through the nervous system which is called the system of ganglia, the nervous system radiating from the solar plexus. Diagrammatically we can indicate this nervous system, this system of ganglia, this system of the solar plexus, thus (see diagram, dark shading). It is active in a way which, at first glance, does not appear to have much to do with what, in a materialistic sense, we could call the life of the nerves. Yet it is the actual point of contact for real ego-activity. This is not a contradiction of the fact that when we begin to see ourselves spiritually, we have to seek the centre of the ego in the head. Since the ego-component of the human being is super-sensible, the point at which we experience our ego is not the same as the point at which it chiefly works in us.

We must be quite clear what we mean when we say: The ego works through the point of contact of the solar plexus. What it means is this: The ego itself is equipped with only a very dull consciousness. The ego-thought is not the same as the ego. The ego-thought is what is washed up into consciousness, but the ego-thought is not the real ego. The real ego intervenes as a formative force in the whole human organism through the solar plexus.

Certainly you can say that the ego distributes itself over the whole body. But its main point of contact, where it particularly intervenes in the formative element of the human organism, is the solar plexus. A better expression would be the system of ganglia, because all the ramifications are part of this process—the system of ganglia. It is a process that lives in the subconscious and works in this system of ganglia. Since the system of ganglia plays its part in the circulation of blood as well, this does not contradict the fact that the ego expresses itself in the blood. The exact meaning of everything that is said must be considered. It is one thing to say: The ego intervenes through the system of ganglia in the formative forces and in all the life processes of the organism. But something else is meant when we say: The blood with its circulation is an expression of the ego in the human being. The nature of the human being is, as I said, complicated.

To understand the significance of what has been said, it will be useful to answer the following question: What is the relationship of the ego with the system of ganglia and all that is connected with it? How is this ego anchored, as it were, in the abdominal organs of the human being?

When the human being is in a normal state of health, the ego is chained to the solar plexus and all that is connected with it. It is bound by the solar plexus. What does this mean? This human ego, given to man during the course of earthly evolution as a gift from the Spirits of Form, has been, as we know, subjected to the temptation of Lucifer. The ego, as it now exists in man, and because it has been infected by luciferic forces, would be a bearer of evil forces. The truth of this fact must definitely be recognized. The ego is not a bearer of evil forces because of its own nature, but because it has become infected with luciferic forces through the temptation by Lucifer; it is in fact the bearer of truly evil forces, forces which, because of the luciferic infection, tend to distort the thought life of the ego towards evil. Since the moment when the ego was given to him, man has been able to think. If there had been no luciferic temptation, man would think only good thoughts about everythiug. But as the luciferic temptation did, in fact, take place, the ego does not think good thoughts, but thoughts infected by Lucifer. This is a fact of earthly evolution: the ego is malicious and dastardly. It thinks only of showing itself in a good light and consigning everything else to the shadow. It is infected with all kinds of egoisms. This is how it is, because it is infected by Lucifer.

Now the system of ganglia, the solar plexus, is something in man that has come over from the Moon incarnation of the earth. It is a kind of house for the ego; the ego fits into it in a certain way. In fact, it can be held a prisoner there. So we have the following state of affairs: Because of its luciferic infection, the ego tends all the time to behave in a dastardly, lying manner and place itself in the light, while consigning everything else to the shade. But it is held prisoner by the nervous system of the abdomen. There it has to behave itself. By means of the nervous system of the abdomen the properly progressing forces, which have come to us from ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon, compel the ego not to be a demon in the bad sense of the word. So the manner in which we bear our ego within us is to have it bound by the organs of the abdomen.

Assume now that these abdominal organs are unhealthy in some way, or not in a normal state. Not to be in a normal state means not to want to take in fully what fits into them spiritually, what spiritually belongs to them. The ego can be somewhat freer in its activity if the abdominal organs are not quite healthy. If this freeing is brought about by some physical hyperactivity, this can express itself in the human being in that the ego is let loose on the external world, instead of remaining bound. When the ego behaves freely in this way, we have a case of psychological illness: the human being displays the characteristics of the ego infected by Lucifer. The characteristics of the ego of which I have spoken then make their appearance. There is certainly no need to be a materialist in order to understand fully the manner in which the spiritual—in this case the ego—can be bound to physical organs in life between birth and death, though in a way that differs from what is perceived by a materialist. There is no need to be a materialist to see how, in a manner of speaking, the devil can throw off his chains and break loose. This is one instance of psychological illness.

The freeing of the ego, however, is not necessarily a question of psychological illness, because another state of affairs is also possible. In such an instance it is not a question of illness in the abdomen but rather a ‘switching off’ of its normal activity. This is what happens in the great majority of cases of hypnotic consciousness. The functioning of the system of ganglia in the abdomen is put into a state—either by natural causes or by all kinds of mesmeric effects—in which it is unable properly to keep the ego under control. Thus in this way, too, the ego has an opportunity to become more involved with its environment. It is not embedded in the system of ganglia and is therefore free to make use of channels to the outside world which enable it to perceive from a distance all kinds of processes in space and time which, when it is embedded in the system of ganglia, are processes which it cannot normally perceive.

So it is important to know that a certain relationship exists between the hypnotized state, which in a mild way switches off the normal activity of the processes bound to the system of ganglia in ordinary consciousness, and certain forms of madness, where the switching-off is caused by deformation or illness in certain abdominal organs. If the ego is freed, if it feels, you might say, free of its chains and is linked, not with its body but with the spiritual forces in its environment, this is always, in a way, a pathological state, just as is also the case in madness. That is why some forms of madness are characterized by the appearance of spite, mendacity, cunning and craftiness—everything that comes from luciferic infection; the urge to place oneself in the light and consign others to the shadow, and so on.

Now you will understand why a person's constitution of soul depends on the very way the shell which binds his ego is fashioned. In order not to focus too closely on the human being and perhaps offend some human souls, let us instead look for a moment at a lion, a savage carnivore, and how it compares with a bull or an ox. You can see the difference. Even though the lion has a group ego while the human being is endowed with an individual ego, we can still use this comparison. What is the difference between the lion's nature and the ox's nature? The lion is definitely a carnivore while the ox is for the most part a vegetarian. The difference is this: What in the lion corresponds to his group ego is less bound; the forceful activity suitable for his abdominal organs makes the ego freer, lets it loose more on its environment, whereas in the vegetarian ox the group ego is more bound to the abdominal organs. The ox lives more bound up in itself.

You can see why it can be good sense for human beings to become vegetarian—of course, only if they so wish. For what does a vegetarian diet bring about? It makes the abdominal organs even more capable of binding the ego, which, if this does not sound like a paradox, leads to the human being becoming more gentle. His evil demon is more internalized and lives less in the environment. Nobody, however, should persuade himself that he does not possess this demon, for he does, but it is more imprisoned within him. It would be easy to set up an experiment to compare the behaviour of hungry carnivores and hungry vegetarians. When hungry, one is apt to be less inhibited. So it would be likely that the hungry vegetarians, who are in the habit of containing themselves as a result of their vegetarian diet, would be the more savage. For hunger brings about changes in the functions of the abdominal organs, which are then less able to fetter the ego than they are when satiated. I do not mean to be absolute in what I say, because the carnivore in any case binds the ego less strongly than the vegetarian. But I said that, in comparison, the hungry vegetarian, in contrast to his state when satiated, is likely to be far more savage than the hungry carnivore, in contrast to his state when satiated.

Human nature is indeed exceedingly complicated. One very good way of attaining some knowledge as a basis for true, genuine self-knowledge in life is to pay attention to the connection between the spiritual and bodily parts. I should add, though, that vegetarians should take care not allow themselves to become too undernourished. If they are undernourished they are in danger of damaging themselves, and then their chains—the prison for their devil, who shows himself in wiliness, lies and so on—are weakened. They then let their devil out into the environment, and the environment is troubled by their problems. Either that, or else they themselves have the trouble. They fail to cope with themselves, for they either constantly have a mania for manifesting the various bad qualities of the ego, or—if they are well brought-up—they have the urge to keep all this to themselves, in which case, too, it can happen that they fail to cope with themselves. All kinds of dissatisfactions arise in their soul. It is important to see this.

Just as the ego has its point of contact in the system of ganglia, so does the astral body have its point of contact in all those processes which are linked with the nervous system of the spinal cord. Naturally, the nerves run through the whole body; but in the nervous system of the spinal cord we have a second point of contact. Included in this, of course, are once again all the processes connected with this spinal nervous system. I am not speaking of the cerebral nervous system. I mean the nervous system of the spinal cord which has to do, for instance, with our reflex actions and is a regulator for much that goes on in the human body. In the present context we must include all the processes regulated by this nervous system. Again we have to see that the astral body is either bound to everything connected with this spinal system or that it can become free of it, through illness or through partial somnolence brought about by mesmerism or something similar. The entity which is bound here received its luciferic attributes, which are mingled a little with ahrimanic attributes, as long ago as the time of ancient Moon. Therefore these are weaker than the luciferic attributes of the ego, but they are present in the astral body, too. If you want to turn your soul to a contemplation of the process by which this luciferic infection crept into the astral body, you will have to study what I said in my book Occult Science about the separation of the moon from evolution as a whole. This infection made its appearance during the time of ancient Moon. Here you will discover another reason for certain characteristics in the human being, characteristics of a hypnotic nature—higher hypnotic characteristics which are bound, in the main, to the organs of the chest and which bring in higher experiences than do the organs of the abdomen. At the same time you will see that if something is not in order, so that the astral body cannot be bound as it should be, something can again come about which is a psychological illness, a psychological disorder. Just as the ego can be released, causing signs of madness, so also can the astral body be released, which again leads to signs of madness.

When the ego is released, this leads, as I have said, to characteristics such as spite, cunning, wiliness, fraudulence, giving prominence to oneself and putting everyone else in the shade, and so on. When the astral body is released, this leads to volatility of ideas and lack of cohesive thought, manic states on the one hand or, on the other, to withdrawal, depression, hypochondria. Again, these conditions could be brought about by hypnotic or mesmeric intervention; but in this case the organs are not ill, but have had their normal physical function suppressed by the intervention of a hypnotist or mesmerist.

There is much in our human nature which must be held in check, for in a way we do belong to the devil. We are at least partially decent human beings solely because the devils in us are held in check by the divine spiritual forces which have developed in the proper way through the periods of ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon. Because of the various temptations, we do not possess all-that-great an aptitude for decency. A good many bad dispositions and moods of soul life are the result of meeting with the demon in us. The appearance of the demonic element comes about because what is bound can become unbound.

We shall speak on another occasion about what it is in the life between death and a new birth that binds those aspects that are bound by our physical body now, during life between birth and death. You will agree that we owe a great debt of gratitude to the cosmic order that here, between birth and death, we possess our physical organism, for without it we would have no prison for our higher components. When these higher components are set free, after we have laid aside our physical body, different conditions come into operation, which we will discuss another time. Suffice it to say that the higher components still retain some fetters, even then.

Now, just as the astral body is bound in this way by the system of the spinal cord and all the processes of organic life connected with it, so is the etheric body bound by the cerebral system and everything that belongs to it. Therefore, the etheric body has its point of contact by means of the cerebral system. Similar things could be said here, too. In our head there is a prison for our etheric body. Madness or hypnotic conditions come into operation if the body is not quite well and the etheric body is let loose. Left to itself, i.e., not enclosed in the prison of the head, the etheric body has the tendency to reproduce itself, thus becoming a stranger to itself and spilling over into the world, carrying its life into other things. This is a description of the conditions that come about if the prison warder releases the etheric body.

So we have three possibilities for psychological illness, and also three possibilities of escaping from the physical body. These three possibilities must definitely be taken into consideration—but of course in quite a different way—when a person is to become free of his physical body through Initiation. What we have been speaking about is a freeing brought about by illness, when the organs of the physical body do not remain healthy and are then incapable of containing the higher components. Somnolence of the brain would result if brain activity were damped down. The etheric body would be freed and a somnolent condition would take over. But when the brain is defective, the prison can no longer hold the prisoner—that is, the etheric body—which then embarks on its own adventures, endeavouring to live and create its own disordered, muddled life by opening out into the world. So you see clearly that psychological illnesses are, in the main, caused by a kind of freeing from the physical basis to which the various higher components of man belong during life between birth and death.

The etheric body, when it is freed, has mainly ahrimanic characteristics. Envy, jealousy, avarice and similar states will be pathologically exaggerated, always in connection with a kind af spreading into the environment, a kind of letting oneself go. Try to understand it like this: The only point of attraction for the ego is, more or less, the system of ganglia and whatever is connected with it; the astral body's point of contact is with the spinal system, but together with the system of ganglia; and the etheric body is linked with the cerebral system, but jointly, with both the spinal system and the system of ganglia. So, from this point of view, the system of ganglia also has to do with the brain, for instance, in so far as it serves all subconscious organic processes. If the system of ganglia brings about a process of illness which runs its course in the brain, then it could be the etheric body which is freed, even though the root cause lies in the system of ganglia. You see how very complicated things are.

Psychiatry today has, as yet, no means of distinguishing between these three forms of soul sickness. Psychiatry will only achieve some degree of perfection when distinction is made between psychological abnormalities brought about by the freeing from bondage of the etheric body, or the astral body, or the ego. Then there will be a really significant way of distinguishing between, and assessing, the various symptoms of psychological abnormality—and it will be important to assess them in this way.

You see from all this how self-knowledge can only be built up on a penetrating view of the complicated nature of the human being. Knowledge can certainly have disagreeable sides to it. But knowledge is not supposed to be a toy, for it is the most serious matter in the whole of human life. Someone who knows everything there is to know about human nature—if he is even only somewhat inclined to understand it in a way which is not egoistic, if he is inclined to think and feel about it in an objective way—can have in this knowledge an important healing factor at his disposal. One might be too weak to use this healing factor; but this knowledge is an important healing factor. It cannot be gained by remaining in one's subjective nature; it cannot be gained by failing to extricte oneself from this.

This is a great problem for a movement such as ours. On the one hand it is necessary to strive earnestly for the highest knowledge, but on the other hand not everybody who decides to join such a movement is inclined to accept such knowledge with total objectivity and with full earnestness. Such knowledge brings health to personal life only if one is not constantly busy reflecting upon one's own personality, if one is not constantly wondering: How do I feel, what is going on in me, how am I getting on in the world, what is living in my soul, and so on. It brings healing only if we free ourselves from all that and concern ourselves instead with the affairs of mankind as a whole, matters which concern every human being. Difficulty arises only if one wants to concentrate on oneself, if one cannot get away from oneself. The more one is capable of turning away from oneself and towards all that concerns people and the world in general, the more can knowledge become a healing factor.

How glad I would be if only you would believe this! A movement like ours gives plenty of opportunity for observing the very opposite of what I have been saying. It is, of course, natural and justified that people who cannot easily get away from themselves should turn to our Movement for comfort and hope and confidence. But if they do not honestly strive to get away from themselves, if they continue to concern themselves with their own head and their own heart—not to mention whatever else very many people in our Movement are concerned with—then knowledge cannot become for them what, in truth, it is. It is possible to be interested in knowledge in such a way that it becomes not only a personal, but also a general human affair. The more personal considerations are involved, the more one is distracted from what is healing in all the knowledge about the deeper aspects of the world.

From the points of view we have now reached we must endeavour to gain clarity about how certain impulses in human nature are connected with the freeing of the soul and spiritual element, either in states brought about by hypnosis or mesmerism, or in madness. A process of freeing is always connected with a merging into the spiritual element. But this is in turn bound up with a certain feeling of voluptuousness, with real voluptuousness, both direct and indirect. For whatever has become free—be it the etheric or astral body, or the ego—in a way pours itself into the spiritual world. And this pouring forth is defnitely connected with inner feelings of bliss.

Somebody with a psychological abnormality gains a certain satisfaction from his abnormal soul activity and is therefore loath to depart from it. In every age, those who have concerned themselves with the healing of psychological abnormalities have reported the following experience: When doctors have found a way of healing their patients, it happens that as the moment of health approaches, the patient senses that he can no longer freely merge with his spiritual environment and that he has lost a certain feeling of voluptuous bliss, so he begins to hate the doctor who has taken this from him. Usually those who are not psychologically ill are grateful to their doctor when he heals them, but efforts expended on the psychologically ill are met with the opposite. You will find this documented in the appropriate literature. Doctors have frequently found that when a cure is effected, or even only an attempt is made to overcome the sickness, the patient begins to find his doctor abhorrent because he is taking away what the patient really wants, especially in his subconscious, even if he would consciously deny this.

Such things lead us deep into the mystery of the human being's soul nature. We then also understand that the ego, or the etheric or the astral body, after endeavouring to work with the help of their physical tools, if they then become free, yet are still strong and imbued with the forms they had within their physical tools, can more easily unfold certain forces than was possible for them within the diseased organs. That is why people with periodic illnesses—for there are cyclic, periodic abnormalities of the soul—when they once again leave their organism, often feel that they have capacities which they do not otherwise possess. This gives them great satisfaction, and when they then return to their physical body a certain awareness of what they have experienced remains with them; they can sometimes be very clear about themselves and what has happened.

During the first half of the nineteenth century a well-known physician, Willis, cured someone suffering from madness; that is, he brought him to a point at which he was once more capable of thinking sensibly about himself. And this person, who was intelligent, wrote a kind of review of his madness. If you take into account what I have just said, you will well understand what this intelligent individual wrote. His illness involved the freeing of all three higher components. He wrote ‘I expected my fits of insanity with impatience ... with bliss’. Remember, he awaited the moment of leaving his body with impatience because he knew he would then enjoy a kind of bliss.

‘Everything appeared easy to me. No obstacles presented themselves either in theory or practice. My memory acquired, all of a sudden, a singular degree of perfection ...’

Someone who understands these things can tell from this that the patient must otherwise have suffered from severe constipation, i.e. an abdominal condition, which led to a dulling of his memory. As soon as his ego tore itself free, his memory was again intact.

‘Long passages of Latin authors occurred to my mind. In general, I have great difficulty in finding rhythmical terminations, but then I could write verses with as great facility as prose.’

You see how exactly the patient described himself, and it is understandable that in a certain way he endeavoured to induce the abnormal state. This cannot actually be done, of course, but he was glad when it came, for it brought him voluptuous enjoyment.

This is the main difficulty in the case of psychological abnormalities for, subjectively, the patients have to be led from a happy to an unhappy state of mind, and so they are truly downcast about it. In their ordinary consciousness this is different, of course, but in their subconscious they are downcast if they are cured. Of course they go to the doctor and say they want to be cured; but subconsciously they do not, in reality, want to be cured. This is the difficulty. The freed component or components resist with all their might being torn away from the bliss they enter when they are freed. You see how, by looking at things in this way, we do justice to the material foundation of our physical existence, and yet we do not become materialists.

Take a person who is stupid to a greater degree than is apparent in external life. There are such people. Well, stupidity is only one stage on the way to a certain abnormality of soul: namely, imbecility. The cause is possibly that the otherwise bound etheric body is free because the brain is too compact and cannot achieve sufficient fluidity in the way it works. Perhaps this person shoots himself in the head without killing himself. Someone who knows what to look for might find that this is not a bad thing, as long as he had not done himself any other harm. For the resulting loosening of his compact brain might lead to his becoming clever. There are certainly known cases in which head wounds have led to people becoming more wide awake than they were before.

There is truly nothing in the physically-perceptible world as complicated as the nature of the human being. It is more complicated than anything else in the world. To understand man in his totality you have to view him in the way I have been describing. We have seen, for instance, that in the human being as he stands before us with his head, the activity of this head depends in some degree on the etheric body connecting up in the right way to it. Abnormal activity comes about if the etheric body is freed, if it is unbound. Because of the way the human being is normally organized with regard to his sense organs and the nerves of his brain, the etheric body can have a normal relationship with the ordinary environment. What man is as a result of the special connection between his etheric body and his head makes him into a human being like all others in his existence between birth and death in the physical world. If we had nothing else about us except the normal connection of our etheric body with our head, all human beings would be the same, and there would also be no way of feeling connected with that part of our being that is immortal. For our head brings to us the experiences we have in life between birth and death through our senses, through the nerves of the brain.

Consider this in connection with what I have said about the loss of the head during the course of reincarnation: What is now our head was in our previous incarnation our body, and what is now our body will become our head in our next incarnation. We know about this connection with our immortal part which runs through all births and deaths, even though without the wisdom of spiritual science this knowledge can only take the form of a belief. Through our head we can understand this connection, but we can only have this knowledge because we have the system of the spinal cord as an organ of our astral body. This is where those ideas and feelings are wrought which bring us into a mutual relationship with our immortal, our super-personal, part.

Everything we possess only for this life between birth and death is given to us through the earthly, solid element in our organism. On other occasions I have pointed out that there is indeed very little of the solid element in our make-up, of which ninety-five per cent consists, in fact, of fluid, of a pillar of fluid. The human being is a pillar of water containing only five per cent of solid ingredients. Yet only this solid element can be the bearer of our ordinary thoughts in physical life; and only in so far as we are permeated by the fluid element with its pulsation can we know about our super-personal part. And this fluid element with its pulsation is linked with the spinal system, which for the most part regulates this fluid element and its pulsation.

How all this is related to certain things I have described on other occasions, to the pulsating rise and fall of fluid between the abdomen and the brain, I shall discuss tomorrow, for at the moment it would take us too far from today's theme. Now, because the human being bears the fluid element within him he is linked with his super-personal part. But this fluid element also establishes his specific personality. If we had only heads, we would all think the same, feel the same. But because we also have hearts, the fluid element, blood and other juices in us, we are specific in some degree; for through this element the hierarchy of the angeloi can have a part in our being. The hierarchy of the angeloi can intervene in us via the fluid element.

A third possibility for intervening in our being is given because even with the normal working together of the higher components with the system of ganglia, it is possible for the airy element and everything connected with it to have an effect on us. This happens in the process of breathing. It is very complicated, and it varies depending on where we breathe, on how much oxygen, how much humidity, how much sun warmth is in the air and so on. It is the hierarchy of the archangeloi, the archangels, who work on us via the airy element. And everything that works in us from the hierarchy of the archangeloi—both those who have progressed normally and those who are retarded—works via the system of ganglia. Also this is the route by which the folk spirits work, for they belong to the hierarchy of the archangeloi. The work done by the folk spirits in the human being takes its effect through the organs which are connected with the system of ganglia. This is why nationality is something so far removed from consciousness, something that works in such a demonic way. And for the reasons I have pointed out it is linked so strongly with everything to do with locality. For the locality, the local climate, is far more closely connected with the working of the hierarchy of the archangeloi than one might imagine. Climate is nothing other than what works on the human being via the air.

So you see that by discussing the system of ganglia one is indicating how the impulses of all that belongs to the folk soul work in man's unconscious. You will now also understand why, more than one might ordinarily think, belonging to a particular nation is connected with certain characteristics which are linked to the system of ganglia. More than one might think, the problem of nationality has to be seen in relation to the problem of sexuality. Belonging to a nation has the same organic foundation—the system of ganglia—as the sexual element. Quite externally you can understand this when you remember that you belong to a nation by birth, that is, your body develops inside that of a mother who belongs to a particular nation. This of itself creates a link. So you see what subterranean soul foundations connect the problem of nationality with the problem of sexuality. That is why these two impulses in life manifest in such related ways. If your eyes are open to life you will see a tremendous amount of similarity between the way people behave in an erotic sense and the way they show their connection to their nationality. I am not speaking either for or against either of these things, but the facts are as I have described them. Arousal of a nationalistic kind, which works particularly strongly in the unconscious if it is not brought up into ego-consciousness by making it a question of karma as I described the other day, is very similar to sexual arousal. It is no good glossing over these things by making out that the emotional illusions and longings of national feeling are noble, while sexual feelings are rather less so. For the facts are as I have described them to you.

From all this you will see that a good amount of agreement can be reached amongst people in matters of the head, for in the head everyone is the same. If we consisted of heads only, we would understand one another famously. It is peculiar to say: If we consisted of heads only. But when life has brought one together with all kinds of people one grows accustomed to speaking in paradoxes such as this. In parenthesis, let me tell you that I once met quite an important Austrian poet who also entertained philosophical thoughts and was terribly worried about the way human beings were growing ever more and more intellectual. He said: People are growing more and more intellectual, so in the end the rest of their body will waste away and there will be nothing left but walking heads. He was quite serious.

If, as I said, we were heads, it would be easy for us to reach an understanding about all kinds of things. It is less easy to reach an understanding about matters which have to be comprehended via the tool of the spinal system. That is why people are embattled with regard to their view of the world, their religion and everything else they connect with what is super-personal. And there is no doubt at all that today they are embattled also with regard to everything for which the system of ganglia is the organ. By this I do not mean the external war; I mean the war that speaks in the language of hate against hate, for the external war need not necessarily have anything to do with all that is unfolding in such a terrible way in the form of hate against hate.

It is essential for people to become conscious of these things. Only if people can come to understand the nature of the human being will it be possible to find a way out of that chaos into which mankind has entered. Tomorrow we shall speak more about this chaos. But we must be clear about one thing: The knowledge and understanding we gain about the complicated nature of the human being must be filled with a mood that I described just now as an impersonal mood.

So far I have only described harmless, personal moods such as those in people who cannot cope with themselves, who go on and on about their heart, or one thing and another. But in the world at large we meet with less harmless moods, either personal or belonging to the egoism of a whole group. Occult knowledge is not always applied in a selfless manner, as you saw during our considerations over the past few weeks. We can certainly look more deeply into the impulses at work in human history if we have an understanding of the complexity of human nature. For what we can come to know with regard to the individual is connected in turn with all that happens between people, both on a one to one basis and also between the different groupings that come about during human evolution.

Now I told you that occult knowledge was used by certain secret brotherhoods in order to give a turn to events which would serve not general human aims but the egoistic aims of a particular group. I told you that certain secret brotherhoods entertained views about how Europe ought to be structured and how they could influence that structuring. Today I want to add to what has already been made plain something that has not yet been mentioned. I do this because it seems to me to be a good thing that once at least, in however small a circle, something is said which will certainly be made known in the future, just as the division of Austria has been made known in the note from the Entente to President Wilson. Those who knew about these things could have sketched the division of Austria as long ago as the nineties—I do not want to go back any further—on the basis of the maps I have already mentioned.

Whatever is made publicly known is only a fragment. It flows into external, exoteric affairs at a time when it is considered to be useful; but the rest, meanwhile, is held back. Truly, I say what I am now going to tell you not from the slightest political or inflammatory motive, but solely in order to let you have the facts. They do exist in the world. I am truly very far from wanting to worry anyone, or persuade anyone to believe anything in particular or be anxious about anything; for I am concerned only with knowledge. So let me sketch approximately part of the future map of Europe as it was worked out in those secret brotherhoods. So as not to take too long, my sketch will only be approximate. As I said, this is the form which such secret societies thought Europe should take at some point in the future. [The lecturer drew.]

First they turned their attention to the southern European Balkan confederation. This was to be a kind of bulwark against Russianism. Obviously, in the West, Russianism was considered to be the opposite pole, definitely not something with which to remain linked for ever, but something against which there would always be a need to fight. Since the intention was to weld together the present Kingdom of Italy with the Balkan Slavs and the southern Slavs at present belonging to Austria, this confederation would comprise a large part of the Apennine peninsula, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, the southern part of Austria, Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. To this the northern part of Greece would be added. The confederation would also include Hungary and the Danube estuary. This would be the Balkan confederation. Next to this, eastwards, would be everything belonging to Russia in the wider sense. In the programme shown in these maps it was always—I mention this expressly—sharply stressed that however Poland might behave, it was a necessity of world history that the whole of this country should, whatever the circumstances, be returned to the Russian Empire. From the start the programme said that Poland, including the parts now belonging to Prussia, must once again be included in the Russian Empire. So according to the programme, the Russian Empire would include today's Poland, and also Galicia reaching beyond the Slovaks. The part that I am shading here would dip in like a peninsula. This would be Bukovina. [Drawing was continued].

Then would come France which, starting at the Rhine estuary, would cover the territory over as far as the Rhine and the French-speaking part of Switzerland and would be bounded here by the Pyrenees, and here something like this. Nothing much was said about the Scandinavian peoples. No doubt they have been granted a good long respite.

The rest would be: German-speaking Switzerland with Germany and the German parts of Austria. They would cover this area. And these coloured parts would fall more or less into the sphere of influence, however that may appear, of the British Empire: Holland, Belgiurn, the coast, Portugal, Spain, the lower part of Italy—we can speak about the islands another time—and the southern part of Greece.

So here we have a map for which the one we tried to draw on the board yesterday is clearly a kind of payment on account. The Central European part looks quite similar to that implied by the note from the Entente to Wilson. This is what was seen to be an ideal structure for Europe. I repeat yet again: This is not something remotely intended to influence anybody. All I want to show is that this structure for Europe, clearly traceable by me to the nineties, or even the eighties, was taught in certain secret societies.

The reasons for wanting to shape Europe like this were also always given. The ways and means—of course the reasons were eminently sensible—for achieving this structure for Europe were more or less described. We shall talk about this tomorrow. Just let me say that I am not making this up. It is something that lived as a powerful impulse in many heads, something that had to be brought about, something that would have to be brought about by every effort.

I know very well how ill will could easily maintain that it is improper, in consideration of a particular point, to say such things precisely here, of all places. But I do not want to be inflammatory, nor do I want to set up a picture of the future, either for those nations now at war or for those who are neutral. I have nothing to do with these things. I speak about them merely to show you the impulses which existed in those circles. What we have here is a picture of the future arising from endeavours to use certain impulses in the egoistic interests of a group. Those who are shocked to see what would disappear, might remind themselves that we are concerned with the tasks of mankind in general. Things which emanate from the egoistic interests of a group are obvious, and there is no need to regard them as fateful, as pending fate. What I do regard as fatal, however, is the attitude of hiding one's head in the sand, of simpfy refusing to recognize such facts because they are uncomfortable, with the excuse that such things ought not even to be thought because they might cause disquiet. Of course I know that it could be said: We should not speak about such things because they might upset people who are honestly striving to be neutral. But the foundations on which we stand ought to have enabled us to transcend this kind of upset by now. We should be capable of looking at what is really happening in the world. And when I say these things it is on the assumption that you are sensible enough to take them in the right way.

The first part of our lecture today is devoted to insights that are connected with real experiences that our social karma has led us to in recent times. The second part is intended to cast some highlights on what may interest us particularly in current events.

In these two public lectures, I had to emphasize how it is necessary for the presentation of the spiritual worlds to gradually get used to a kind of different language than the one we use to characterize the insights of the worlds in which we find ourselves through our sensory observation and through the mind that is bound to the brain. To support our friends, I would like to refer to specific recent experiences that have taken place within our wider circle, events for which I could certainly choose others, but I choose these events because they tie in with, I would say, recent experiences and can give us ideas about the relationship between the human soul and the spiritual worlds.

I have always emphasized that when the soul on its path of knowledge crosses the threshold that leads into the spiritual world, then one of the first experiences is becoming one with what one experiences, observes. Here on the physical plane, one is, so to speak, enclosed in one's skin when facing the things one observes. As soon as one enters the spiritual world, has something to do with the spiritual world, one does not feel enclosed in the way one does in the physical body in the skin; one feels one's whole being spread out, as if identified with the beings and events one is dealing with. To explain this, I will go into positive events.

Recently, an elderly member passed through the gate of death. For years this member had lived with all his mind and soul in the ideas that one acquires when one really feels what spiritual science can give. It is of very special importance and is therefore mentioned so often that the theoretical absorption of what is given as spiritual-scientific ideas cannot be everything. It can be a starting point, but not everything. These ideas must take hold of our feelings and perceptions. In my public lecture, I was even able to explain how the sentient soul is currently much more closely related to the eternal core of the human being, while what is experienced from the consciousness soul is more relevant to what the human being experiences in connection with the physical world in the present epoch. That is why it is so important to feel what one can feel when absorbing spiritual knowledge, because this feeling has a much greater power to grasp our soul and to really bring it into contact with the supersensible world than mere thinking, intellectual reasoning. So the personality I am talking about has lived a great deal in our spiritual-scientific ideas, and now I can see, I can say, a very short time after death – before the actual occurrence of death on the physical plane has been reported to me in any way , how this personality, while still in its etheric body, processed within itself what it had absorbed in the way of feeling and intuitive powers, what it had become through living for years in the spiritual-scientific current. When its etheric body was still united with the astral body and the ego, what I have described above entered of its own accord. The personality that had passed through the gate of death came and told me that she now feels within herself what she has become through spiritual science, what she feels within herself now that she is no longer confined by the physical body. And so, as it were, sentences sounded from the individuality that had passed through the gate of death, which I will read aloud.

You will notice that in the first three lines the dead personality uses a word that cannot really be justified when used by an individuality that has already discarded the physical body; but that is not the point. The word, which refers to the physical heart, is meant in a symbolic sense. Heart here stands for the etheric organ of feeling. We have here the case of an individuality that has passed through the gate of death, which summarized its strongest experience before death as a result of life, in order to say to itself: I am now in a certain situation to experience the nature of my self, how this nature of my self arises for me by dealing with it with the understanding that I have gained in my feeling recognition through spiritual science. So it was that this individuality, who had at most passed through the gate of death two hours earlier, allowed something to resound from within that sounded in such a way that I must say that the words were put in such a way that I myself did nothing to them, I only took in the words that came from this self. These words then served as the beginning and the end when I had to give the funeral oration at the cremation. They are read:

In world-wide I will carry
My feeling heart, that it may become warm
In the fire of sacred power;

In world-thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, that it may become clear
In the light of eternal becoming-life;

I will dive into the depths of the soul
With devoted thoughts, that they may become strong
For the true goals of human endeavor.

In God's rest I strive so,
With struggles and worries,
Preparing my self for the higher self;

Longing for a peace that is joyful to work for,
Sensing the existence of the world in my own existence,
I would like to fulfill my duty as a human being;

Then I may live in anticipation
of my destiny,
which will grant me a place in the spiritual realm.

Let us hear here, as it were, from the self, what the self feels within itself, through what it has become by filling itself with spiritual-scientific feeling. It is important to bear in mind that we are dealing here with a personality who had reached a ripe old age in this physical life and that the possibility of wanting to characterize the self is connected with this attainment of a higher age, that the self only after after death expresses itself so completely in its own being that one has nothing to do but to observe it, to lose oneself completely, to surrender, to identify with the being, that one can let it express itself completely.

It was different in another case. There one had to deal with a relatively early death. To look at such a case, especially the events of the time urge us, since so many people today pass through the gate of death at a young age. In the case I am talking about, it was not the cause that is the cause in many cases today, but it was an early death. When death occurs so early that one can say: If the person had grown old, he would have lived for many decades more, then we are dealing with an etheric body that will indeed be laid aside, but it is such that it could still supply the physical body with forces for many decades. Someone who dies in such a way that he could have lived for decades hands over to the spiritual elementary world an etheric body that is still unused. Countless such unused etheric bodies are now entering the spiritual world. When we say that we have great hope for the age that is developing from the womb of our events, based on spiritual science, it should be borne in mind that those who are now passing through death will be witnesses in the spiritual world for a spiritual work and will send forces into earthly life through their individuality. But their etheric body is still there as something second, something special, it is unused. A large number of such etheric bodies will represent a force that will have an effect on people who will live when peace has been restored, and they will be helpers so that the materialistic world view can be replaced by a spiritual one.

We can become attached when we experience people dying at a young age and we can then, so to speak, perceive what is happening.

In the second case, where again the karma of our spiritual current led to me having to speak at the cremation of a personality who had passed through the gate of death, it was the case that a long time had passed between the onset of death and the cremation, from Wednesday to Monday. By then, this etheric body had already been separated, and for my occult observation, I had lost the etheric body, so to speak, on the night before I had to speak; the etheric body had been lost for the observation. The individuality had already been separated from the astral body and I. Here the observing soul was confronted with an astral body and I, and the impulse arose to introduce and conclude the eulogy with words that had something to do with individuality. Something did not arise that the individuality itself had expressed. Because it was released from the etheric body and the physical body, it was possible to put into words, which I believe were precise, the whole way this individuality had been here on earth. Again, these words are not the way I made them, but the way an inspiration impulse made them, the way they had to be, the way they characterize the individuality that had passed through death. They arose as the inspiration of the contemplating soul, yielding to the impression of the personality that had passed through the gate of death. The words arose:

You came among us.
Your gentle nature moved
Spoke from your eyes of silent strength
Calm that soulfully animated,
flowed in the waves
with which your gaze
to things and to people
carried your inner weaving; –
And this being was imbued with it
your voice, which eloquently
through the nature of the word more
than in the word itself
revealed what dwells hidden
in your beautiful soul;
But the part of devoted love of compassionate people
revealed itself wordlessly in full – –
This being, of noble, silent beauty,
told of the receptive feeling of the creation of the soul of the world.

These words were spoken at the cremation, and the peculiar thing turned out to be that the moment, which could only be called a moment of awakening, occurred when the heat of the furnace was just taking hold of the personality's physical body. And so, for this personality that had passed through the gate of death, there was a moment when it was possible to develop consciousness, and not during the funeral ceremony, but when the heat surrounded the body that had been given over to the fire. Then unconsciousness set in again. After being interrupted by unconsciousness, such moments of consciousness can occur again until full consciousness sets in some time after death. In this case it was particularly clear how consciousness works when a person has passed through the gate of death. This consciousness perceives time in a different form than a person perceives time when he lives here in the physical body. In such a case, it is particularly meaningful. The perception of time by someone who does not have a physical body can only be compared to our perception of space. Here in the physical body, we can always look back; what we have seen remains. If something has passed us by in time, we have to look back on the image in our memory, it has to rise up in our consciousness. This is not the case with someone who no longer has a physical body. The disembodied soul looks back as we do in space.

So the dead woman looked back at what had been said, as one looks back in space. What had been said now stood before her soul. It is precisely in such concrete cases that the peculiarity of the spiritual world becomes apparent. Now I just said that at the time when the words of the funeral oration were to be formed, I had, so to speak, lost the etheric body for the observation, but a second observation showed that it was precisely this etheric body that made it possible to have the inspiration that was shaped into these words. When I was able to find the ether body again - I mean for the observation - I became aware of where this ether body was when I shaped the words. It was in the night from Sunday to Monday. I said I had lost it, I only realized much later where it actually was: I was in it myself. It was a dissolving cloud. The ego and the astral body had already been separated. Because I was inside it, I did not perceive the aetheric body, like a cloud in which one is stuck; but what lived in it gave the inspiration to shape the words I read.

They provide an insight into the intimate secrets of the human soul's coexistence with the spiritual worlds. I would not dare to say so out of hand if this had only occurred in a single case, but it was confirmed to me again in the third case. There I was again in the same situation of shaping words that characterized the individuality of this third personality who had passed through the gateway of death and was part of our circle. The death of this personality had something particularly painful for our feelings on the physical plane, because it gave the best hopes with regard to the spiritual scientific work within our circle. This personality, during the time she lived here on earth, absorbed much of what can currently be called scholarship, became completely immersed in it and had the firm desire to do something that is necessary in our spiritual movement, namely to immerse oneself in what is currently called science, and to transform this science in the soul itself in such a way that it gives birth again on a higher level to spiritual-scientific insight. Not everyone can do this, but it is one of the necessities of our spiritual science. Concordance between science and spiritual science can often lead someone who is unfamiliar with spiritual science to a conviction, but it is necessary to become imbued with contemporary science, and when this is there, to ascend with it in a living way in spiritual science. One then comes to a certain point where one feels so surely, so knows so surely in one's inner experience the agreement between what present science gives and what spiritual science gives that one can no longer be misled by anything that comes from the present materialistic culture of our time.

When this personality passed through the gate of death, the necessity arose again to shape the beginning and end of the funeral oration in a certain way at the cremation, and the special impulse arose, precisely in the face of this individuality, to point out the bridge that exists for our spiritual science movement between the physical plan and the spiritual world. For our feelings on the physical plane, it is particularly painful that this personality was taken from us young. But the spiritual current in which we live would not be able to awaken as much hope as it must awaken if we were not sure that the forces flowing in spiritual science come not only from those who live on the physical plane, but that such forces also come from those who have already passed through the gate of death and are equipped with spiritual science. Thus the soul was faced with the necessity of emphasizing: At this moment you are given a great thing where you have gone through death: a call to remain a loyal co-worker even now that you have gone through the gate of death.

Especially those who take spiritual science seriously must count on those who are no longer on the physical plane as real co-workers.

Thus it became necessary to coin words, in the coining of which I am, so to speak, completely uninvolved, which resulted from a necessary impulse in the way I will read them now. You will see in a moment what the significance of such coined words is. The words are as follows:

A hope that brings us happiness:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms,
Through the power of the soul's being,
Want to show themselves to research.

Your pure love of truth was your longing was kindred;
To create from the light of the spirit
Was the earnest goal of life
You strove for tirelessly.

You cultivated your beautiful gifts
in order to walk the bright path of spiritual knowledge,
unperturbed by the contradictions of the world,
as a faithful servant of the truth,
with sure steps.

You practiced your spiritual organs
So that they bravely and persistently
On both sides of the path
You pushed error aside
And created space for truth.

To reveal your true self
To create pure light,
So that the soul's solar power
radiates powerfully within you,
was your life's concern and joy.

Other concerns, other joys
hardly touched your soul,
because knowledge appeared to you as light,
which gives meaning to existence,
as life's true value.

A hope that makes us happy:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms
Through the power of the soul's being
Would like to show themselves to research.

A loss that deeply hurts us,
So you disappear from the field,
Where the spirit's seeds of creation Matured in the womb of the soul, Your sense of the spheres.

Feel how we look lovingly Into the heights that now call you Towards other work. Give your strength from spiritual realms To your abandoned friends.

Hear our souls' request,
Sent to you in trust:
Here for our earthly work we need
Strong power from spiritual realms,
Which we thank our dead friends for.

A hope that makes us happy,
A loss that deeply pains us:
Let us hope that Thou, far-near,
Unlost, to our life dost shine
As a soul star in the realm of minds.

It was sometime during the following night when, as if it were an answer, it sounded to me from the being in question, not from its consciousness, but from its essence, so that one could immediately feel it as an answer to the words. Not as if the individuality had said it from the consciousness. The individuality resounded as if in sounds:

To shape my self to a revelation
of pure light,
That the soul's solar power
might radiate powerfully within me
Was my life's care and joy.

Other worries, other joys,
They hardly touched my soul,
Because knowledge appeared to me as light,
Which gives meaning to existence,
As the true value of life.

Only now did I realize that this was only a rearrangement of the two verses, a rearrangement of the second person into the first. From this example you can see how a correspondence takes place between the soul that dwells here in physical life and the soul that has passed through the gate of death. I would like to draw special attention to the fact that such things are given in such a way that the words cannot be changed, and you can see that I was not at all aware why the words of the two verses were so shaped. I only realized this from the answer that came the following night from the soul that had passed through the gate of death. We must get used to the fact that in this respect too, we cannot have direct feelings towards the spiritual worlds that are taken from our experiences here in the physical world. Note that much depends on this if we are to gain a true understanding of the relationship with the spiritual world. As a small example, I could also mention something that was taken from a completely different side. When these difficult days began, these formulas that we are using now were given as if from the spiritual worlds, which I also use today to guide the souls of those who are in the fields of the events or have passed through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, watchers in action,
your wings may bring
the love of my soul imploring
to the spheres (earthly people) entrusted to your care, so that, united with your power,
my plea may help to radiate to the souls that seek them lovingly.

It says: “Spirits of your souls.” I had to experience in Berlin that someone objected that this is grammatically incorrect, and now one does not know in the second line what the “your wings” refer to, because if one says, “spirits of your souls,” one turns to those who live as human beings, but one still turns to the spirits of those who live there. So the pedant might think that one should say, “Spirits of their souls.” Yes, we have to get used to the fact that in the spiritual world, the grammar that applies quite naturally to the sensual world is not always adhered to, that one must have more flexibility in the soul. One turns: “Spirits of your souls,” but in the second line it is understood that one does not turn to one or a number of people, that one turns to the protecting spirits there. Grammar is not the deciding factor. We must realize that in the higher worlds everything is much more mobile, that one does not need to divert one's conception of the human being when one turns to the protecting spirit. He is much more closely connected with the man himself than two people here. There one must apply physical grammar, because there need not be such a connection between two physical people as between the protecting spirit and the human being. So one could say: It is precisely through these given words, which are contestable before physical grammar, that something is given that is peculiar to the higher worlds. When one receives such things from the higher worlds, the words become teachings. Sometimes one only understands such things much later, and sometimes this learning is not as easy as prying into grammar, which is not a great art. We have to find our way into such an intimate relationship with the spiritual world. Even in the presentation of the higher worlds, it is important that one does not grasp them with the rough word combinations that one has acquired here in the physical world, so that it is often quite easy to find a presentation of the higher worlds, in which the realm of the spirits of form loses its special power, contestable. Crossing the threshold, we enter the realm of the spirits of movement. Even the style must become more flexible there. The spirits of form are for the world around us. Style must adapt to the realm of the spirits of movement. The time will come when we will find our way into such things, and we must not believe that we can truly depict what is mobile and fluid in the spiritual world with a style that is suitable for the physical world.

I wanted to explain a few things about the relationship between the human soul and the spiritual worlds, using specific cases that our social karma has brought us into contact with. Even more than in abstract descriptions, such concrete involvement in individual conditions of the spiritual worlds, and above all, we can develop a feeling that through our spiritual scientific movement, a living interaction between the physical world and the higher world must gradually come about. After the manifold experiences that have had to be made in recent times, it can be said that the hopes that certain things will already happen in relation to our spiritual movement can only be firmly held inwardly if one is certain that those who have already passed through the gate of death will be our helping co-workers. This does, however, require that we take the content and intention of our spiritual science with the utmost seriousness.

In summary, I would like to say something that has already been discussed in detail in the cycle in Vienna about life between death and a new birth, which is important to consider. One can say, because one must use certain words that serve the physical life: After death, the human being is in a kind of unconscious, sleeping state. Then he awakens, but “awakens” is not quite the right word. It seems as if one comes to a kind of consciousness upon awakening. This is not the case. When the human being has discarded the etheric body, he does not have too little or sleeping consciousness, he has too much consciousness. He has a kind of overflowing consciousness. Just as one cannot see when blinded by flooding light, so there is too much consciousness after death. We are completely flooded by infinitely effective consciousness, and it must first subside to the degree that we have acquired after our development in the physical world. We have to orient ourselves in the abundance of consciousness. What is called “waking up” is only an accustoming to the much higher degree of consciousness that we enter after death. It is a dimming of consciousness to the degree that we can bear.

Another thing is that, I would say, every observation shows more and more how, for certain conditions of existence, the experience in the spiritual worlds is exactly the opposite of the experience in the physical world. This is also the case with the one I am about to mention. Between birth and death, no one actually remembers their birth without higher knowledge. For no one is it a matter of their own observation. If you were to listen to those people who say they believe nothing except what their five senses give them, you might object: Then you cannot believe that you were once a small child either. You only believe that from the following two reasons: Because you see that all other people begin their lives that way, you conclude that it was the same for you. That is only an analogy, or the others have told you. - It is known through communication and not through observation that one also enters life through birth. No one realizes that this is only an analogy. One would have to say: I cannot know from my own observation about the origin of this physical body. When a person looks back in physical life, he does not see as far as his birth. It is different between death and a new birth. This is shown by the very case in which the inner impulse arose to send the one who had passed through the gate of death such words that had something to do with his self, that characterized him. This impulse comes from the urge to serve the one who has gone through the gate of death, to make it easier for him to have what he needs as soon as possible: an unobstructed view of the moment of death. For just as little as one looks back on birth in physical life, it is indispensable to look back on death between death and a new birth. Death is always there in retrospect, only from the spiritual side it looks different. From the physical point of view it may have been a terrible death, but from the other side it is the most glorious event one can look back on. It shows the glory of the spirit's victory over the physical by freeing itself from it. This is one of the most beautiful experiences one has between death and a new birth in retrospect. This is another example of how the physical world and the spiritual world are opposed to each other.

We are gradually getting to know the peculiarities of the spiritual world. These are aspects that I wanted to develop before you today in aphorisms. Another aspect is indirectly significant for things that we are experiencing now: the aspect that in the case of a person who could have lived here for a long time under normal circumstances, an unused etheric body stands as an individuality alongside the individuality. The dissolution of the etheric body only takes a short time in older people. We are always surrounded by such as yet unresolved etheric bodies. We are living towards a time when this will be particularly noticeable, because a kind of atmosphere is formed indirectly from these etheric bodies, the like of which has not yet been seen in the development of the earth. One might think that something similar has already occurred in earlier wars, but things are changing because people in the past went through death differently. There were not as many people in the past who were surrounded only by material thinking as there are now. This justifies the fact that these etheric bodies will give off spiritual impulses. Furthermore, there will be people here on earth who will feel and sense this. I have already hinted at this in the lectures I would like to call the lectures on current events. What our time wants to teach us is that, in addition to the spiritual shallowness, we also need to deepen what will later appear as the accompanying phenomena. Should we not be deeply saddened to learn that in our time, which considers itself so enlightened in terms of logic, where scientific culture has spread through all kinds of popular channels to the widest circles, that something can take hold again in the widest circles that we must regard as a judgment born of passion?

Those who follow the voices of those who consider Central Europe to be locked up in a large fortress will already have realized what this passion is doing to people's souls. One need only look to the west and northwest, where one can stand in amazement at what human passionate judgment has brought about. Better newspapers will be particularly instructive there. How is it shouted out by these or those: We did not want this war! — How is it senselessly blamed for this war by those who are hostile to the German essence, to that area that had the least reason for this war: the Central European one.

In this respect, the way in which German character has developed makes it objectively possible for the German people to achieve a kind of national self-awareness that is sorely lacking in other nations. It will certainly be a long time before most people, especially outside of Central Europe, will be able to see the situation clearly enough to get past the most foolish judgments of the present. For us, who are part of a spiritual movement that not only wants to pass on theory, it should be clear that an objective judgment can be gained in the face of such difficult events and that we can clarify many things in the present precisely because we live in these fateful days. How easily some short-sighted minds criticize what belongs to the impulses, to the core of our spiritual science. Painful things have had to be experienced in this field in recent months. There is a spiritual science movement that says it is lovingly working to want to reach people without distinction of race and so on. One can say: How does what I have put forward in this time relate to this? Before these difficult, fateful days befell us, I warned against interpreting the principle of equality in such a way that it is transformed into something completely abstract. Do you remember how I often said: When people come and say that Buddhists, Mohammedans, and Christians are only different forms of one being, that is like saying: salt, sugar, pepper are all food additives, so it doesn't matter what I take – and sprinkle sugar into soup and beer because it is a food additive. It may be convenient to apply such a principle in such an abstract way, but for the one who is seriously seeking, it cannot be the point. If we lovingly engage with the essence of the individual European nations, we come to recognize that the soul of the people speaks to the sentient soul in the Italians, to the intellectual soul in the French, to the consciousness soul in the British, and to the I in the Germans. We do not come to understand these things by pouring love over everything in the abstract. The essential thing in our movement is that the human soul, while recognizing national peculiarities, wants to rise to the general human level. Spiritual science can bring it about that someone born in Britain this time says: “I have recognized that I have the folk soul speaking particularly through the consciousness soul, through that which regulates the soul's relationship to the physical plane, which makes the human being suitable for being material. When he recognizes this, he recognizes that he must discard what stands in his way from his nationality if he wants to rise to the general humanity. This knowledge always helps, and it is important to recognize what is peculiar to the individual national entity. When the member of Russian culture will say to himself: The peculiarity of the national soul is that it hovers like a cloud over the individual, that the individual, in chaotic thinking, looks up to the national soul, and thus relies on finding his way into the productive life of other nations – then he will find his way. Those who recognize the essence of the Russian national soul through spiritual science will say: Why am I Russian? The strength that I have acquired as a result, I have to absorb the strength of other nations.

The German will recognize through spiritual science — he needs to understand this in all objectivity and humility — that he is predestined to seek the universal human through his nationality through what the national soul speaks to his ego. That he perceives what leads him beyond nationality, that is the national essence of the German. The specifically national essence of the German consists in this, that through nationality it is driven beyond the nation into the general human essence. Therefore the transition from German idealism to spiritual science is to be found in the flowing of German idealism into spiritual science. It is necessary to struggle through to a concrete grasp of spiritual realities. Spiritual science makes it possible to grasp these things concretely. When one learns that a Frenchman like Renan says that what he has received in German culture seems to him like higher mathematics compared to the lower mathematics of the experiences of other peoples, then what characterizes the German essence is being stated. It is our fate to have to recognize this. We must recognize it, we cannot help but recognize it, but with the same objectivity we must recognize that it is our destiny, if we are true Germans, to progress to spiritual life, just as it is necessary for the British to shed materialism in order to enter into the spiritual. Different tasks arise for different nations from their national character. It is particularly important for the German to immerse himself in the spiritual worlds of that which flows through German culture. For the Russian, there is no such thing as a national culture. For him, there is only the possibility of gaining the strength of blood that makes it possible for him to accept the essence of others. It turns out that the German essence underwent an important development in the evolution of the folk soul.

The folk souls, like human beings, undergo development. Between 1530 and 1550 something special happened to the Italian folk soul. Before that time this culture was not yet as separate from the rest of Europe as it was afterwards. Before that time the folk soul worked in the soul; afterwards it reached beyond the soul, shaping the physical into the national. The human being progresses to becoming independent of the physical. The folk soul does the opposite. It first affects the soul, then the body, so that the Italian folk soul before the 16th century only affected the soul, but later it reaches beyond the merely soulful into the physical, shaping the nervous system, shaping the etheric body, so that the human being is also defined and identified in terms of the physical. The human being becomes more rigid, more closed to the other cultures.

For the French national soul, such a point in time occurs in the middle of the 17th century. At that point, the national soul begins to shift from the soul to the body, making the nation rigid. For the British, this only happens from the middle of the 17th century onwards, and Shakespeare does not yet belong to an age when the national soul shifts to the body. In the period between 1750 and 1850, a kind of spillover from the German folk soul from the spiritual to the physical takes place, but it withdraws again. In Western peoples, the folk soul floats higher at first, then descends into the physical. That which previously descended into the physical then rose again into the spiritual. The descent occurred between the mid-17th and 18th centuries. As a result, the German national soul remains more flexible. It does not remain down there permanently, it goes up and down, takes hold of people and then releases them again.

These are things that will only be fully understood in the future. We must say that we cannot empathize enough with the present difficult time, with all its greatness and significance, in the depths of our soul. These present events must be infinitely significant for anyone who is interested in the spiritual essence that is weaving through the world. When people reflect on the causes that led to the present war events, one thing will become clear: the antagonism between the national souls has contributed to these present war events, but no matter how hard someone in the future will search for the causes on the physical plane, they will always find something that does not clarify the matter, because the causes do not lie on the physical plane, but because one can say about these events: spiritual individualities, spiritual impulses have an effect. Only when mankind will recognize this, will one speak reasonably about the causes that have led to these events. One will recognize that people were only the tools through which good and evil forces have worked. To come to this judgment, it is necessary to be unprejudiced, by penetrating ourselves with what spiritual science can be to the innermost part of the soul, not just to the intellect.

It may be important at some point to realize how much of what the British world has taken part in is really intimately connected with the national character. Then one will have to recognize something that has been impressed on me since July, before the war had even begun. Then one could hear different judgments. I am reporting objectively and would like you to disregard the personal aspect. It occurred to me that the world was in danger because such a terrible fool was in charge of foreign affairs in London. The world considers Grey to be a clever, perhaps shrewd man. I could never consider him to be anything other than a fool, from intuitive impressions, and today I must consider him to be an especially foolish person, chosen by Ahrimanic powers because he could cause particular harm through his ignorance of things. It is not really possible to prove that such a person is a fool on the basis of external reasons. Yesterday I bought a book and found a letter in it that a colleague of Grey's wrote. I only learned about the letter yesterday, but I have considered Grey a fool chosen by Ahriman to wreak havoc since July. It is interesting for us to see how the writer of the letter characterizes his cabinet colleague: “It is very entertaining for us, who have known Grey since the beginning of his career, to watch him impress his continental colleagues. They seem to suspect something in him that is not there at all. He is one of the Kingdom's most outstanding sports anglers and a reasonably good tennis player. He has no political or diplomatic abilities, unless one were to recognize a certain tiresome dullness of speech and a strange tenacity as such. Earl Rosebery once said of him that he makes such a concentrated impression because he never has an idea of his own that could distract him from a task that has been handed to him with precise instructions. When a somewhat temperamental foreign diplomat recently expressed admiration for Grey's quiet manner, which never revealed what was going on in his mind, a cheeky secretary said, “If a clay money box is filled to the top with gold, it certainly doesn't rattle when you shake it. But if there isn't a single penny in it, it doesn't rattle either. With Winston Churchill, a few nickels rattle so loudly that it gets on your nerves; with Grey, not a single rattle. Only the person holding the box can know whether it is completely full or completely empty!” That was impertinent, but well said. I believe that Grey has a very decent character, even if a certain stupid vanity may occasionally tempt him to get involved in matters that hands that insist on absolute cleanliness would do better to stay away from. But his excuse is always that he is incapable of overlooking and thinking through a matter on his own. He, who is in no way a schemer in his own right, can, as soon as a clever schemer uses him, appear to be the most accomplished schemer. This has always been a temptation for political schemers to choose him as their tool, and it is only thanks to this circumstance that he owes his present position."

This is an example of how one can err if one does not try to look at things objectively. In this personality, who is not distinguished by particular cleverness but by personal angling skills that have nothing to do with the skills that matter, one sees the Ahrimanic powers at work, which necessarily had to work from the inner side for the events to occur. We shall gradually realize that in the face of these events in particular, we must be clear about how the supersensible must be acknowledged in both good and evil. If we try to understand these events on the basis of what can be observed on the physical plane, we will not be able to understand them. One will realize how the various impulses have streamed across, how for a long time the East has been preparing what gave the impulse for these events, how from those things that can be observed in Eastern Europe, the factors developed which must necessarily one day ignite the torch of war, how the present moment brought the war because the western factors allowed themselves to be drawn into the arson from the east, for reasons that can only be recognized if one goes into the important causes. It will be important that precisely these historical events will force people, if they want to recognize the causes, to look to the supersensible, not to remain on the physical plane, because otherwise they will be able to argue for a long time. We shall have to recognize that it is more necessary for the man of letters than for other men to place himself on a surer horizon than that which can arise from the experience of the affairs of the physical world.

How narrow the physical horizon can become has been evident for years. For many, historical consideration only began in July. Even some in our circles made strange judgments. The elements of what I want to say have already been given in the cycle 'The Mission of Individual National Souls' in Kristiania. It also says that what wants to come forth in the sixth post-Atlantic culture is preparing itself in the East. We live here in the fifth culture. If you think abstractly, that humanity is rising higher and higher from the fifth culture to the sixth and seventh cultures, then you may get a stiff neck. But such penetration is not the progress of the cultural development of humanity. Up to the fourth culture, there was a repetition of the development of the earth. The fifth culture is the one that matters; it is something new that has been added, that must be carried over into the sixth age. The sixth culture will sink into decadence; it will be a descending culture. This must be taken into account. Connected with this is the fact that a mind like Solowjow, which in certain respects has outgrown the Russian national character with its habitual traits, has sunk into the Western world, that his philosophy is Western, although it is enclosed in the temperament of the East, but in the way the sentences flow, it reveals the Russian. It would be foolish to say that someone steeped in Western European culture could be given something that went beyond that Western European culture.

These have again been only brief sentences, but you will hear the appeal to our spiritual science to try to use this difficult time to see with concreteness and to grasp with concreteness that which can really flow into our feeling when spiritual scientific ideas flow into this our feeling. In the future, our spiritual science will have to prove itself precisely by finding its way through the raging passions of our time.

I am well aware that since the beginning of this difficult time for us, I have spoken neither here nor elsewhere about these matters in any other way than so that one can advocate these matters before an objective world view. But what all could one hear! From what has happened in the last few months, one can also learn how things stand with regard to much of what is being criticized in the outside world. One often had to hear the judgment that a large part of the members only listened to the judgment of one person, that it was all based on blind trust. — How far that blind trust went could be seen at that moment.

About what was said about me, one could hear: He uses his occult abilities to waste them on checking the Wolffian telegrams. — Strange trust for someone who is in our movement to say that I use the truth of the Wolffian telegraph office in favor of the enemies of Germany! That is only one of countless judgments. There you see how what is now flooding the world in desires and passions also plays a role in spiritual science. This must not deter us from fathoming the truth with regard to what it is our duty to emphasize now. You will be able to see that.

Basically, it has always been as it is now. What has been said now has always been said and done. I have emphasized before that this Theosophical movement, which has become the Anthroposophical movement, never wanted to develop in any other way than in the direct progression of Central European culture. It was never a matter of being taken in tow by someone. On the English side, when this was noticed, mistrust was immediately aroused against these Central Europeans, who were not the imitators of what was given by British Theosophy. The sense of truth had to reject the British view of the Christ problem, it was of such a nature that the belief could arise that Christ would re-embody himself in the physical body, because one could not understand a spiritual coming of the Christ. This showed the impossibility of the two directions going together. In English theosophical magazines you will now find letters from Mrs. Besant, who in every way calls upon the world of Theosophy to work against Germany. There you will find a subsequent explanation of why the German Theosophical movement had to break away from the English one at that time. Mrs. Besant says: ” Now, looking back, in the light of the German methods, as revealed to us by the war, I see that the long-standing efforts to capture the Theosophical Society and place a German at its head, the anger against me when I thwarted those efforts, the complaint that I had spoken about the late King Edward VII as the protector of European peace instead of giving honor to the Kaiser – that all this was part of the widespread campaign against England, and that the missionaries were tools, skillfully used by German agents here (in India) to push through their plans. If they could have turned the Theosophical Society in India, with its large number of officials, into an armed force against the British government and trained it to look to Germany as its spiritual leader, instead of standing, as it always has, for the equal alliance of two free nations, then it could gradually have become a channel for poison in India.

[Gap in the transcription] This personality has come up with what I wanted at the time. - There you can see the causes of why this war between Germany and England broke out. But you can also see that our spiritual struggle has preceded it. Many things that had to happen there will perhaps be understood differently now.

The assertion of occultism [...] is a double-edged sword. It must be said again and again that a sense of truth must intensively permeate the souls who, through occultism, want to bring salvation and not disaster into the world. How this is connected, what must penetrate our soul through the events of the time, what we, as occult students, should learn from the events of the time, can be revealed to us by the thought: When peace returns, there will be unused etheric bodies in the spiritual world that want to bring down forces. From souls that are stimulated by spiritual science, forces should also go up to connect with the forces from above. Then, for the progress and salvation of humanity, what spiritual science can be will be significant. If there are really quite a number of souls that feel this in truth and objectivity, if many souls with thoughts inspired by the spiritual world view long to reach up into the spiritual worlds, then the difficult times of our time will also have value for these souls. That is why I would like to express the connection of our spiritual striving today through the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
The fruit of the spirit will grow
Guiding souls, spirit-conscious
Their minds into the spiritual realm.