The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I would like to address some fundamental anthroposophical questions about life and then move up from these fundamental questions, from the everyday to the all-encompassing, the fundamental. The most fruitful gain of our striving should be that we learn through spiritual science to judge life more and more in its truth, in its reality, to judge it in such a way that this judgment itself can lead us most efficiently and energetically into life and how it can place us in the position that we have to fill out of our karma, that we have to fill out of our greater or lesser mission in the time in which we are embodied in the earthly body.

And so I would like to start with some of life's qualities that present themselves to us every day, either in ourselves or in our surroundings. We only begin to understand the full scope and significance of these qualities when we are able to view them in the light of spiritual science. I would like to start with two vices in life and then talk about some virtues, starting with the virtues of goodwill and contentment and the vices of lying and envy.

Let us first consider these two vices, which we often encounter in life. It cannot be denied that in the broadest circles, both among the simplest people and among those who, so to speak, already belong to the leaders of life, there is a deep, deep aversion and antipathy towards what we can call envy and mendacity. To mention right away some people who were among the leaders of life, I refer to the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini and to those passages in his autobiography where he says that on close self-examination he must accuse himself of many vices, but may still say that he was never really a liar. This artist therefore finds a certain satisfaction in the fact that, on the basis of his self-observation, he can exclude lying from his character traits. And Goethe once says, as a result of his self-observation, that he must accuse himself of many things, but that envy, this ugly vice, had not really eaten at his heart. Thus we see, as it were, at the summits of life, how one feels antipathy for mendacity and envy, how one is told everywhere, where one is accustomed to look at life a little deeper, even where great abilities are, as it were, inherent in the life of the soul: You must guard against these vices in particular. And who would deny that this fundamental antipathy to falsehood and envy runs through all, all layers of our humanity. You only need to remember how much it would eat away at your heart if, in a certain moment, you had to say to yourself during truly honest and correct self-observation: I am an envious person. If you had to admit this resolutely to yourself, you would certainly feel in this confession that you would have to take something into yourself, such as fighting against this envy, fighting against envy. It is a deeply rooted feeling that mendacity and envy are ugly human traits. Why do we feel that way, then? Yes, you see, people do not always realize why they have such a deep antipathy to this or that. They often do not realize what is slumbering in the more or less subconscious part of their soul life and is undoubtedly present. In the face of envy and mendacity, man feels that he is violating something that is connected with the very essence of humanity and the very essence of human value. We need only utter a word and we will feel this. Spiritual science should gradually make us aware that, in addition to the individual personalities incarnated in the flesh, there is something like a unified, universal humanity that dwells in all souls in the same way as the divine-human. And here it is precisely spiritual science that presents this to us as a great ideal and that gradually leads us to have an understanding of the universal human. And yet, in an emotional way, there is something in all human hearts that always says in a certain way: Seek a bond that holds all people together, that always entwines itself from soul to soul, and you will find it. — And the corresponding feeling is expressed in the word “compassion”. Compassion is such a general human quality that we have to say: In this compassion, it is darkly announced the bond that goes from every soul to every soul. And there one feels again in the subconscious how one is violating compassion, the recognition of what is common in all people in the most eminent sense, with falsehood and envy.

What do we actually do when we tell a lie? We do nothing else than erect a partition between us and the other person. What should connect us with him, the common knowledge of some truth that should live in our soul and in his, if things were right, we tear that apart by telling him a lie. We do not recognize, in the moment when we tell the untruth, that we should actually live in the other with the best part of ourselves.

And when we envy someone, be it for abilities or for something else in life, then we sin against compassion in the way that we do not recognize the person for what he or she should actually be for us, as something that actually belongs to us and whose advantages and gifts and strokes of luck we should actually rejoice in if we felt truly connected to him or her.

So we are sinning against the most beautiful thing in human life, against compassion, when we are envious and untruthful people. And why is this so vehemently expressed in the dissatisfaction with these two qualities? Why is that? Well, both qualities can show us how that which resides in our soul reproduces itself, progresses to the shells of our being and has a meaning for these shells.

Envy is something that, when observed occultly, is clearly expressed in a very specific nature of the astral body when it is present in a person. And an envious person, no matter how much he is able to hide this envy from the outside world, reveals the quality of envy in his astral body. Our astral body has very specific basic properties. Even if it is different in every person and shows the most diverse differences in different people, it still has certain basic properties. And when we look at it with clairvoyant vision as an aura, it has very specific color properties. These fade in a remarkable way in the case of envious people; they fade, they become weak and dull. And the astral body of an envious person becomes, as it were, poor in the strength that it should supply to the whole human organism.

In the case of untruthfulness, it is again the case that it, and also every single lie, expresses itself in the etheric body. The etheric body loses vitality and life energy when a person is untruthful. This can even be observed externally. However strange it may sound for our age, it is nevertheless true that wounds, for example, heal more slowly in people who lie a lot than in truthful people, under otherwise similar conditions. Of course, one should not draw absolute conclusions, there may also be other reasons. But all other things being equal, wounds are more difficult to heal in dishonest people than in truthful people. It is good to observe such things in life. And that is also easily explained. The etheric body of a person is the actual life principle, it is what must contain the life forces. But these are undermined by untruthfulness. So that the etheric body cannot give as much life force as is necessary for a healing if this etheric body has had its life force withdrawn through untruthfulness, if it has not always been permeated by those movements, by those facts that arise from truthfulness. We should pay attention to such things, for we shall understand life better in many respects if we do.

Now you know that we must see what is happening to people in the light of two powers that influence human life as it develops from incarnation to incarnation. We must look at human life under the influence of the forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. The forces of Lucifer are those that act on our astral body, that radiate their power into our astral body and tempt us in relation to it. The forces of Ahriman are those that tempt us in relation to our etheric body. Yes, it is Lucifer who, so to speak, grabs us by the scruff of the neck when we are envious people. Envy is truly a Luciferic quality, a quality that comes from Lucifer, whereas untruthfulness is a quality that comes from Ahriman. For Ahriman sends out the forces and powers that radiate into our etheric body.

Now we can say: It was absolutely necessary that Lucifer and Ahriman were delegated by the wise powers of the world so that they could influence us to become independent. In that they cause us to abuse our independence, they are in a sense enemies of the higher development of mankind. But even if they are in a sense enemies of man in his higher development, they are very friendly and make very peculiar compromises among themselves. We can speak of these compromises when we consider human qualities such as envy and lying.

Envy! The moment a person who is not completely corrupt says to himself, 'I am an envious person', he will do anything to fight that envy. You don't have to be particularly high to do anything. But sometimes things are much deeper than our power, which comes from consciousness. And sometimes people imagine that it is too easy to fight such things. So it happens that they fight such things because they perceive them as ugly, but they do not go away, they actually only change their form, they reappear in a different area. They then appear in masks, in disguises. And because one hates envy so much, one fights against it, but if the soul is not yet strong enough to fight it thoroughly, it disappears as envy but reappears in another form.

You all know that human trait that is so common and that you could call: criticism and faultfinding, paying attention to the faults of our fellow human beings. When someone has to say to themselves, “I am an envious person, I don't want my fellow human beings to have advantages,” they feel bad. They feel that they have to fight it. But when they can say, He feels that the fault-finding is justified to a certain extent, and he feels right in his element. Just imagine, if that were not the case, how many coffee parties and beer societies would have to be abandoned, where basically nothing else is done so often but to give rein to this carping and fault-finding. And then man finds himself justified before himself. He says to himself: Yes, one sees the faults, one must see them, one cannot close one's eyes. — It is only a matter of why we see the faults of our fellow human beings, whether we see the intention to improve life, or whether we follow a tendency of our soul, which is often nothing more than a masked envy. People fight envy because they hate it, but they are too weak to uproot it. So it takes on the guise of a critical nature and continues to roam the soul in this way. Then you have not fought envy, you have only forced it into a different metamorphosis. In reality, what has happened is that man has fought Lucifer, because he is above the envy of the Regent, as he is above much. But Lucifer then says to Ahriman, if I may express it thus: 'See, dear Ahriman, man hates my mode of ruling envy; he does not want to be envious. Now you take him in relation to this quality! Then Ahriman says: Yes, I will press that into the etheric body. — And it is pressed into the etheric body as a critical mind, as a critical spirit, as a misguided judgment about the world. For the ability to judge always has something to do with the movements and forces of the etheric body. Here the command of our soul passes from Lucifer to Ahriman. And so many qualities, which if they presented themselves in their original form we would hate and fight against, appear in disguise. Sometimes they present themselves in such a way that we actually find them very justified and even take some pride in being able to see what is right in life. Then we are truly caught in the tentacles of the other power, the Ahrimanic power. We must not forget that a quality is much more dangerous when it appears in disguise than when it appears in its original form. Therefore, when we see this or that in life, it is always good to ask: Is it not perhaps only a transformed other vice? — This is extremely necessary so that we learn to look at life in its truth. We can only do this if we use the guidelines that anthroposophical wisdom gives us to properly observe life.

Now we must say: What appears in life as this or that vice, whether in its true form or in disguise, we often see as a karmic effect in a single incarnation. We do not even have to wait for the transition from one incarnation to another. We see the karmic effect of a quality that occurs in any period of life in one incarnation. And those who really want to observe life and pay a little attention, will not get to know life if they always forget tomorrow what happened today, but if they consider longer periods of human life, they will find karma at work even in one embodiment, in one life. It is really necessary to pay very, very careful attention to how the sins of life basically only show up after decades. But people are a forgetful generation. Of all the races, beginning with the human race and extending to all higher worlds, people are truly the most forgetful generation. Even if we have known someone for decades, we forget what came to light ten years ago; we are very happy to let it fade from our memory. I may have already mentioned a small example here, but it can show us how we have to look at life in larger periods of time if we want to recognize it in its true form – something external that I just want to insert. It concerns the time in which I had the opportunity to observe many children in different families. When you educate children, you not only have to observe the children you are educating yourself, but also the more or less young offspring of uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews, and so on. And you can take note of many things for life. Well, it was a long time ago, fashions change. When I had children of my own, it was fashionable for their teachers to give them quite a few tins of red wine with their meals during the day as a form of sustenance. It was done, and it was thought to be a good thing. If you made a note of it at the time: this child and that child were given red wine and the other was not, you can now, if you have the opportunity again, as I always try to observe what has become of these children, gather strange insights. I can say that the two- to three- to four-year-old children of yesteryear – now people of twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine years – who were given red wine as children, are fidgety, nervous people who sometimes find it extremely difficult to find their way in life. Of course, one should not just make one's observations over a period of five years. Today it is so common to try this or that, and if it shows some success in the next few months, it is quickly a widespread remedy. People are forgetful in this area too. How many remedies have gone out of fashion after five years, people have forgotten again. But, as I said, if you extend your observation over decades, then you can really feel how life works. There really is a big difference between children who were given red wine in those days and those who were not given any. But you would have to make your observations over three decades, so to speak, to see that. And that is how it is. I have included this to show that if you want to see karma at work, it is necessary not to be forgetful, but to extend your observations over longer periods of time. The same applies to what comes to light in a more psychological way.

If you look at the second half of a person's life in context with the first, you can see how a person who was untruthful or envious, or who expressed envy under the mask of criticism, will experience the karmic effect of this in the second half of their life. Dishonest people always show a certain karmic effect of dishonesty in one incarnation: a certain shyness, an impossibility, one might say, to look people straight in the eye. That will certainly come true. Just try to observe the matter. You will find it confirmed. Folk proverbs sometimes have a deep, wise core. It is not without reason that in many regions people say that one should beware of a person who cannot look another in the eye. This is because of the karmic effect of untruthfulness.

Envy, on the other hand, or envy masked as criticism, manifests itself in a later life epoch of the same incarnation in such a way that the person in question has the characteristic of not being able to stand on his or her own two feet, so that he or she has the longing to lean on others, to need advice on all sorts of things, and always wants to run to someone else for advice. Independence in life is lost through envy, criticism, and a tendency to find fault. Such a person becomes weak in spirit.

Now these qualities, with their karmic effects, confront us spiritually when we consider one incarnation. We will take a moment to consider how the karmic effects play out as we move from one incarnation to another.

But now, so as not to be one-sided, we also want to consider good qualities: goodwill and contentment. Everyone knows what a benevolent person is. A benevolent person is someone who feels satisfied when someone else succeeds or achieves something, when they notice good qualities in someone. Goodwill is present when, in a sense, one experiences what the other person experiences as one's own. This goodwill, in turn, has a very specific effect on our astral body, which is almost the opposite of the effect of envy. We see how the lights of the astral body shine when a person expresses goodwill. The astral body becomes brighter and more radiant when there are feelings of goodwill in the soul of the person. The aura becomes more luminous, more radiant and thus richer; it becomes more saturated, and it is then able to infuse into the person first something like warmth of soul and then even a sense of well-being.

And when we see a contented person before us, a person who is not inclined to be grumpy about everything from the outset, to be dissatisfied about everything, then the etheric body shows us very definite qualities. It is important that we take note of this in a certain way. For we should actually realize how much of our dissatisfaction basically really depends on ourselves. There are those who cannot do enough to ferret out everything that can make them dissatisfied. And we feel that not only happier natures, but also better natures, are capable of paying a great deal of attention to the fact that, however bad things may be, we still have reasons to be happy about this or that. There are such reasons. And if someone does not want to admit that these exist, it is their own fault. Satisfaction, especially when it is brought about by a better quality of our soul, strengthens the etheric body in terms of its life force. And again it is the case – all other conditions being equal – that wounds or other things heal more easily in a contented person who has good reason to be contented, and does not get worked up about what happens to him, than in a grumpy and discontented person who gets worked up about everything and, as I said, leaves unsatisfied, under otherwise similar circumstances. Now we can also see quite clearly in a lifetime – and this is important for us to bear in mind when educating others – that someone who is truly imbued with contentment during a certain period of their life and who strives to seek out things that can satisfy them, perhaps despite pain and suffering, that a karmic effect will occur in the same life, even if it takes decades. This is expressed in particular by the fact that such a person, who has endeavored to acquire contentment in a certain period of his life, radiates a certain beneficial balance of life to his environment. You know that this exists. There are people around whom others have to fidget, and there are those who simply by being there calm others. People who have endeavored to be content in one epoch of their lives gain, as a karmic effect for the next epoch of the same life, the possibility of having a harmonizing effect on their environment, so to speak, purely by their existence, being benefactors to their environment.

We can always observe that benevolent people who have endeavored to be benevolent reap the karmic effect of all things that depend on them and are intended by them succeeding in a later epoch of life. Sometimes it seems inexplicable to us that some people succeed in everything, that they feel up to whatever they undertake, while others do not succeed and everything they touch fails. This leads back to the karmic cause of goodwill or ill will. You can observe these things, which I am presenting to you as guidelines, in life. If you exclude the sources of error that exist, you will see that life confirms what I have said.

When we now pass from one incarnation to another, we have to say: in one incarnation, the karmic effects can actually only show themselves in the soul. The effects of envy show themselves in certain weaknesses and in a lack of independence, the effects of untruthfulness in shyness, the effects of goodwill and contentment as I have described them to you. In this incarnation we do not have the same thorough and profound influences on our bodily organization that would enable us to make more progress with the karmic effects than a psychic basis. These things only take effect in the body, in the structure and organization of the body, in the next incarnation. And while we make ourselves spiritually dependent on others in one incarnation through envy and a tendency to find fault, these have the effect of constituting the body weakly and building it up weakly into the next incarnation. A weak body is built up by someone who was formerly plagued by envy or by masked envy, by a tendency to find fault, to be critical.

But now, if we have studied spiritual science a little, we must also say that it is truly not by chance that we are brought together with this or that person in a new incarnation. We are led into the family and environment with which we have something to do. And so you will not find it very strange if I say: If someone in an incarnation was an envious person, he will be reborn with the people – be they his parents or others – whom he envied, judged or gossiped about, or blamed. He will be reunited with them. And we may be reunited with them because we are led into this environment with weak organization. This makes the matter very practical, bringing the teaching of karma close to our practical life. We can say that when a human child is born with weak organization, This is the consequence of the envious disposition of the previous incarnation, and we are the ones who were envied, and this human child has been brought together with us karmically because we are the ones who were the target of their envy and gossip. It is fruitful when we say to ourselves: If karma has any meaning at all, it is justified to look at it this way. So let's look at it that way.

Of course, the only way to make it fruitful is to ask ourselves: What should we do in the face of such a weak human being? We only need to ask ourselves: What seems morally best in ordinary life when someone persecutes us with their envy and criticism? Perhaps it is not always possible to do the best in our ordinary, everyday lives. But what seems best to us? - Now, most certainly, forgiveness seems to us to be the very best. We may say that our lives are perhaps not such that we can always forgive, but the best is undoubtedly the forgiveness, and the most effective and also the most fruitful in life is the forgiveness. We cannot always practise it in our ordinary lives, but if we can say that the best thing in life is to forgive, it turns out that the real application of the principle of forgiveness is in the right place in all circumstances. This is when we have to acknowledge what I have said as a karmic effect from past incarnations. If a weak human child is born into our environment or brought together with us, we must then say to ourselves: Since karma should not remain merely a theoretical idea, we must think that we were the envied ones, the gossiped about. Now, under all circumstances, we can practice in our deepest hearts the feeling of forgiveness and of forgiveness. We can, so to speak, envelop such a human child in an atmosphere of repeatedly stirred feelings of forgiveness. If we did that in life, if we felt united with people who are weak, and did not just grasp the idea of forgiveness in theory, but always renewed the feelings in our souls, I have something to forgive you for, I want to forgive you, and always renew this feeling, then that would be a practical introduction of the anthroposophical attitude into life. You would certainly see the effect. Just try to put it into practice and you will see that people who are born into our environment in a weak state will flourish when you forgive them in this way and renew the feeling of forgiveness, that our feeling has a healing and invigorating effect on them. And we can become healers, healers of the people with whom we have been brought together by karma. In this way, anthroposophy becomes fruitful if we do not merely regard it as a collection of ideas that interest us. It is basically quite selfish when we begin to get enthusiastic about anthroposophy because the thoughts of anthroposophy inspire us and seem true to us. For what are we satisfying then? We are satisfying our longing for a harmonious worldview. That is very beautiful. But the greater thing is when we permeate our whole life with what results from these ideas; when the ideas go into our hands, into every step and into everything we experience and do. Only then does anthroposophy become a principle of life, and until it does, it has no value.

We can also speak in a similar way with regard to the other qualities. If, for example, we have been liars in a previous incarnation and are born again, we will be brought together with those to whom we may have lied to their faces. It is not uncommon, if one is a true student of the occult, to find that a human being is born into an environment to which he cannot find the right relationship, is not understood by it and does not understand it. Sometimes we have a peculiar effect on our environment. I don't know if you have already observed that this has a much wider impact than just on people. There are certain people: if they want to raise flowers, these flowers thrive, they have a lucky hand for it. The fact that it is they who raise the flowers makes them thrive. Other people can do whatever they want: the flowers wither. That happens. There are simply much more mysterious relationships between the individual beings of existence than one usually thinks. These mysterious relationships are, of course, mainly from person to person. And if we are brought together through karma with a human child who brazenly lied to us in a previous incarnation, it is so that we, so to speak, find it difficult to relate to this child. We should pay attention to this. We should not judge this merely according to our temperament, but karmically. We should say: “This comes from the fact that we were perhaps often lied to by this human child.” Now we can in turn help this human child, strengthen and empower him.

What is the best way to forgive something that can be expressed something like this, another person tells you a lie. The best way to forgive that is to teach him a truth. With the other, by rectifying the lie, you are already doing some good, but you have not helped the person any further. You can help him further by trying to teach him a useful truth. You have to follow a kind of policy in your dealings with people, and that helps people to progress. If we are obliged to look at the matter karmically, it is particularly advantageous that we endeavor to be truthful to people with whom we are karmically brought together and who we know do not find a relationship with us because they are shy around us. Then we will see how these people in turn flourish under our openness and how this openness is of great advantage to them. Thus we see how we can gain life principles by looking at the workings of karma in a practical way.

What we have just characterized as the effect of goodwill in a single life, we can see as having the effect of harmonizing life, but initially in the soul. People in whom this has an effect from one incarnation to the next, we find that they are actually born with a happier organization, which we can call 'skillful'. Good will, contentment in one incarnation, brings about skillfulness in another incarnation. It is true that this is the case, because it can always be proven in the field of occult research. And one can very well observe oneself and experience some of the ways in which the previous incarnation works its way into the present one. We can be quite sure that it is so in the case of people whose fingers are quite unsuitable for sewing on a button that might tear, or in the case of people who, when asked to carry a glass into the cupboard, happily throw it to the floor – I am exaggerating a little now. But in more subtle nuances, there are very many people who are so organized that they cannot help but move their fingers in the wrong way, that they always make awkward mistakes. Whether one can use the instrument of one's body well or whether it presents treacherous obstacles at every turn has a profound significance for one's life. This is extraordinarily important. And when we see a clumsy child growing up, we must assume in most cases that in the previous incarnation he lacked contentment and goodwill. When we see skill emerging, so that the person, when he touches something, already literally knows how to do it, then that is most certainly the karmic effect of goodwill and contentment. |

If we look at it this way, we can say that we can actually have a wonderful effect from one incarnation to the next. It is possible for us to really work on our next incarnation. And we will change a lot for our next incarnation if we seriously resolve to observe whether we have a little bit of faultfinding and criticizing in us after all. If we try to examine ourselves to see if we have even a little of this, we find that we have it to a considerable extent. It is good to try to examine ourselves to see if we have even a little of it. Then the process of working on ourselves begins. And we may be able to avoid being born weak and pale in the next incarnation, avoid in this life becoming, so to speak, dependent human beings.

When we consider these things, we will say to ourselves: It is no longer a fantasy to combine the individual incarnations like links in a human chain and to really regard the earth as a kind of training through which we learn to use what is offered to us in the individual incarnations so that we come higher and higher, go further and further. After all, why are we incarnated, in principle? We can best understand this by asking ourselves what the two great differences are between our incarnations in the old, pre-Christian times and our present incarnations, which are taking place after the Christ Impulse has been present. There is a very, very significant difference.

This difference between our incarnations in ancient pre-Christian times and our present incarnations could best be described by saying: When you look back at the incarnations of people in the pre-Christian era, to a certain extent the souls in that pre-Christian era had all retained something of what all souls had at the beginning of their earthly incarnations. All souls had natural clairvoyance, an insight into the spiritual world. And the progress of incarnations consists precisely in the fact that this inheritance from the spiritual world, from the spiritual origin, has gradually been lost, that people have increasingly emerged onto the physical plane, and the spiritual world has increasingly faded from them. The Christ impulse means that when we find the possibility to receive the Christ in us, to connect him with our ego, we in turn begin to ascend more and more to what we were at the beginning, only richer. That we are again at the end of the incarnations in the spiritual as we were at the beginning of our incarnations, is effected by the reception of the Christ power, when we apply our next incarnations so that we absorb more and more of the Christ. These are the great differences between pre-Christian and post-Christian incarnations. We are actually still in a transitional period in this regard. We have been pushed far out of the reach of normal human perception onto the physical plane, onto mere physical perception, and today is actually a high point in terms of physical perception. For the Christ impulse is only just beginning, and in subsequent incarnations people will truly take up the Christ, will only come to love these incarnations because they give them the opportunity to experience what can only be experienced through earthly existence: the acceptance of the Christ impulse into the soul. We can observe this even in great personalities, how there is, so to speak, a tremendous difference between the incarnations before the Christ impulse on Earth and after. I would like to tell you a detail.

Some time ago I was called upon to spend a few days lecturing in our southernmost European branch – I mean in so far as we speak of Rosicrucian Theosophy – in Palermo. And when I entered Sicily from Naples by ship, I already had the very definite feeling that there was something to be learned there about occult facts that are difficult to study in the north alone. For there is a personality, an individuality that emerged, which I cannot name now, that played a certain role at the turn of the Middle Ages and the modern era, which made a lot of noise in our and neighboring areas and which makes the occultist wonder: What was the previous incarnation of this personality? That was an important research question for me, and strangely enough, I hoped to find out something about this question through the occult research that was possible there, especially at this entrance to Sicily. And that was indeed the case very soon. Of course, what is being told is something intimate, but within our branches, there is no longer any need to hold back on these intimate things. Something very, very remarkable has been poured out into the whole spiritual atmosphere of Sicily – I do not say the outer, but the spiritual atmosphere. And the pursuit of this remarkable thing really led at last to its origin, to a great sage who worked in Sicily and who is also dismissed with a few words in the history of philosophy, but whom we really know very little about in an outwardly exoteric way. His name is Empedocles.

If one wants to characterize Empedocles as an occultist – and I would like to do this for you – then one must say: in some respects, Empedocles was very much ahead of his time, he was overripe for his time. In other respects, however, he could not go beyond his time. There was a deep conflict in his soul. Empedocles is truly a great, all-embracing personality. He was active in Sicily not only as a philosopher, not only as a mystery teacher, but also as a statesman, as an architect, as all kinds of things – he was a kind of organizer, this wonderful Empedocles. Empedocles lived in Sicily about four or five centuries before the Christ Impulse, and he was ahead of his time in that he had the urge to delve into the material world. In the past, people had never delved into matter as superficially as they do today. When someone spoke of water, like T'hales, for example, they meant something spiritual. Empedocles was the one who, in a certain respect, nevertheless anticipated a materialistic principle by composing all being out of the four elements, which he, however, conceived materially. And by mixing and unmixing this matter, he conceived the constitution of the world. He lost the spiritual because he — precisely as an occult personality, looking back on his incarnations — should have found the Christ impulse; he would have been called to do so. When we look back in the Akasha Chronicle today, we find the Christ impulse at a very specific point; but the one who lived before the Christ impulse could not do so. He could not absorb it as an earthly impulse, because it had not yet existed physically. Empedocles lacked that, it could not pour into his soul. He did not have the counterweight against the materialism that flared up in him. But because he was a personality with strong impulses, albeit with the impulses of an occultist, this led him to live out this disharmony. That is what turned out to be the truth. This led him to want to be one with the material of the four elements, just as one would otherwise, when seeking the truth, want to unite with this spiritual in spirit. And he plunged into the Atna. He really did throw himself into it to be one with the elements. He sought the divine in the material, identifying with the divine that appeared to him in the material image. And I would like to say: this product of Empedocles' combustion in the fiery floods of Etna is still present today in the atmosphere of Sicily as a fertilizing force, like the effect of a sacrifice. Something great and mighty is present, but it is emanating from this, one might say, false, blasé, wrongly placed in time – do not misunderstand the term 'false' – materialism. Empedocles, who, looking back, could not find the Christ, although he should have found him, throws his life away. Thus it happened that he came to life again in such a remarkable way at the beginning of the newer time and lived quite differently. It is not yet time to speak of the personality in which he was reborn. A wonderful view of what the Christ Impulse actually is in the course of evolution arises. Between the previous and the later incarnation of Empedocles stands the Christ event in the midst. And by comparing the two incarnations of Empedocles, one can see, by observing his individuality, what effect it has, whether one, as a spirit belonging to the newer observation, can look back and find the Christ impulse or not. This makes an enormous difference. Just as souls in ancient times had to go back from incarnation to incarnation to see how they had allied themselves with the divine spiritual being in earlier incarnations, so we must have the opportunity, when we go back from our own incarnation and trace the time from our birth to our previous death and again from that to our previous birth and so on, to find the Christ impulse in this way. The spiritual researcher in particular must find it. This Christ impulse lights a light for him, whereas otherwise he would be plunged into darkness at this moment and everything that existed would lie in darkness. We need the Christ impulse like a torch in the field of spiritual research, otherwise darkness comes, otherwise we cannot see clearly into the true reasons of the Akasha Chronicle of ancient times. This can be observed in a wonderful way in examples such as that of Empedocles. Then one gets a feeling for how these incarnations follow one another in our earthly existence; how, so to speak, man has moved in a descending direction up to the Christ Impulse, how he has emerged further and further onto the physical plane, and how we are in the process of gradually ascending into the spiritual realm again. The last great spirit of descent is the great Buddha, the first great impulse for ascent is that of Christ Jesus, and perhaps there is no better way to feel the tremendous difference between the Buddha principle and the principle of Christ Jesus than by contemplating something that the great Buddha once said to his most intimate disciples, looking back at his enlightenment, which is symbolically called the enlightenment under the bodhi tree. There Buddha says: When I look back on earlier incarnations, I see how I proceeded from the divine-spiritual source of the world, how I went from incarnation to incarnation, always dwelling with the spiritual essence in the outer body temple, descending into the physical world. But now, in this incarnation, I have found the possibility of no longer having to return to an incarnation. From body temple to body temple I have gone, in every incarnation the Godhead has erected the temple of my body for me. But now, as I am embodied in it for the last time, I feel how the beams of this body temple are cracking and that I no longer need to return to such a temple. For that is what he proclaimed: that the true striving must be to escape from this earthly activity, to no longer have any connection with this temple of the body, but to strive out of it to the last incarnation, in order to live on only in the spiritual. That was the last reference to man's descent, to the memory that men can have of primeval wisdom, of what stands at the beginning of the human race.

Oh, it must move us when we see the Buddha standing, saying: From temple to temple of the body I have passed; now I feel that it is for the last time. If we compare this – and disregard all metaphysical backgrounds – with an intimate saying of Christ to his intimate disciples, with the words: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again”, we see that in the Buddha was a great longing for the beams of the temple of the body to collapse, so that there would be no need to return to it; but that in Christ there was the promise: “Tear it down, and I will rebuild it in three days.” The love for the earthly world expresses itself in the fact that for the following incarnations of human beings, in which they find the possibility to build their body temple again and again, so that they can learn again and again and ascend higher; so that then, when the earth has reached its goal, the earth itself will become a corpse, so to speak, fall away from the soul of all humanity, just as our body falls away from the soul when we pass through the gate of death. But then people will have come higher and higher. By becoming Christianized, people will be able to live on to new levels of existence as humanity. What is meant by Christ's saying that he himself wants to return to the physical body, but that he will return to the principle of building the body, that he will remain in the earthly existence until the end of the earth.

That is what I tried to express in what I say through Theodora, the seer in the Mystery Drama, where you can see how the Christ will become more and more familiar to human life, although he does not return to a physical body. But he is experienced in the physical body temples of human beings. And in this saying of his, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” lies the promise: Yes, I will make it true that I can enter into the souls of men, so that more and more people can come who, in the sense of Paul, can say, “Not I, but the Christ in me!”

Thus we see how we can contemplate in a small way spiritual science as a principle of life, by gaining the possibility of seeing certain qualities of our character and soul taking effect karmically between birth and death, and of seeing them working their way into the bodily organization of the next incarnation. And so we see how spiritual science presents the loftiest ideals to us and tells us what we will become — Christ-like human beings — when the Earth will become a corpse and fall away from the soul-like in man, when man will be called upon to progress to other planetary conditions. Spiritual science can thus give us the greatest ideals and can flow into the smallest circumstances of life. In this way it becomes practical for everyday life, and it can and should become more and more so. When we become anthroposophists in the sense that all our actions, no matter how remote from what might be considered anthroposophical activity, are imbued with anthroposophical thinking and feeling, only then can we say that our beings have been imbued with anthroposophy. Anthroposophy must be regarded not as a theory but as a way of life, but as a way of life that needs to be learned. And basically we must realize that we have to encourage ourselves through the true, concrete content of anthroposophy if it is to be a way of life for us, not wanting to say: I understand this from anthroposophy and that is the right thing to do, but rather that we first have to familiarize ourselves deeply with what spiritual science has to say to us. Then it must become the strength of our lives. And it can only do so when we permeate ourselves with it. But then it will do so in the smallest and in the greatest, then the perspective for the connections of human progress and for the smallest facts of everyday life will open up for us.

One particular fact, a fact we have been discussing here a number of times, is causing concern to anyone wishing to work along the lines of a spiritual science in the spirit of anthroposophy. I am referring to the fact that modern humankind is basically failing to pay attention to the powers of decline that are clearly in evidence, to powers that must inevitably take our present civilization to the edge of the abyss if they are allowed to come into effect.

Surely we have to admit to ourselves that many things are coming up from the profound depths of human nature and coming to realization; or in other words that there is a great deal going on at present. On the other hand many of our fellow citizens simply cannot make up their minds to pay proper attention to what is really going on.

It is reasonable to say that at the present time little effort is made in cultural life to take a wider point of view and pay genuine attention to the forces that shape our world. There is one school—I have characterized it a number of times over the years—that has its roots mainly among the English-speaking peoples and is rather secretive about its work. It is however extraordinarily effective. A second school is the movement that has come together because people want to take account of the instincts of the masses, instincts that are understandable and indeed also justifiable. In its extremes this movement is represented by people who have no idea of human evolution, who know nothing of the principles that mean progress for the world. Certain conditions, however,—I shall refer to these later—enable them to hold a position of authority in spite of their narrow-minded views and in spite of a natural inclination for criminal activities that is in fact quite considerable. They are of course clever people and able to be to the fore in public life nowadays because they impress people.

The third movement that has an effect in cultural life is based on particularly energetic representatives of the different confessions—confessions of all kinds—who also know very well what they want. They are the fountainhead of everything that usually comes under the heading of Jesuitism. Many people talk about Jesuitism and the like, but still large numbers of our fellow citizens are little inclined to pay proper attention to what is really going on.

To get a proper idea of current events one would have to take account of a number of things. One thing to be particularly taken into account however is connected with a fact I also mentioned in my first public lecture here.²⁰ It is the fact that when it comes to their frame of mind, particularly as regards the way they form ideas, present-day people are in many, many instances continuing in a way that was only suitable for the forming of ideas during the Middle Ages. That was a great and significant way of thinking, but it is now out of date. Some people have gone very intensely into the medieval way of developing sensibilities and forming ideas. These are the people who hold more or less socialist views, and there are many of them all over the globe. The ideas current among them come to expression above all in a belief in authority that is almost limitless. They cringe before anything that assumes authority by simply taking a strong line among them. This has made it possible for people like Lenin and Trotsky²¹ to impose their tyranny on millions of people with the help of just a few thousand. That particular movement is spreading from Eastern Europe into Asia at an incredible pace. It imposes a tyranny worse than anything seen during the worst periods of oriental tyranny.

All these things need to be considered in forming an opinion on current events. It has only been possible to give a rough outline. Basically the only opposition to these trends—and we are still thinking in terms of major forces in world history, forces shaping the world—comes from what should ideally be a truly honest, sincere and genuine spiritual-scientific movement. If we compare the interest brought to this spiritual-scientific movement with the interest those other movements have aroused within a relatively short time, and with the influence these movements have gained, we have to say that interest in this spiritual-scientific movement is as good as nil at the present time.

We do not fail to recognise of course that there are many people who go along with this spiritual-scientific movement, or at least tell themselves that they go along with it. There would be an enormous difference, however, if people really took note of the intensity with which those other three movements work for the things they want to bring to the fore, and then compared this with the intensity of Interest that there is for spiritual science. The spiritual-scientific movement is really approached in a very superficial way, superficial in the way people feel about it. The other movements on the other hand are arousing a limitless intensity of feeling.

Does anyone clearly understand—making it the centre of both heart and mind—that if spiritual science is to intervene to any serious extent in the forces that shape the world, people must first of all give recognition and proper value to initiation knowledge, or initiation science as we call it? Initiation science today also needs humanity's firm and decided interest. Many people believe they are sincerely devoted to it, yet the interest they muster is still rather superficial, subject to all kinds of unimportant considerations.

The people I have often called the real big shots in the Anglo-American movement have initiation knowledge, but certainly not for the benefit of humankind. Everything based on Jesuitism has initiation knowledge and in its own peculiar way Leninism also has initiation knowledge. Leninism knows how to put things cleverly, using rational ideas produced in the head, and there is a definite reason for this The cleverness of the human animal, the cleverness of human animal nature, is coming to the fore in human evolution through Leninism. Everything arising from human instincts, human selfishness, comes to interpretation in Leninism and Trotskyism in a form that on the surface seems very intelligent. The animal wants to work its way to the fore, to be the most intelligent of animals. All the ahrimanic powers that aim to exclude the human element, to exclude everything that is specifically human, and all the aptitudes that exist within the animal kingdom—I have often stressed this—are to become the forces that determine humanity.

Consider—and this is something else I have often stressed—the conceit shown by humans when they invented things such as linen paper, paper made from wood or the like; in short, paper of any kind. Well, wasps and similar creatures made this invention very much earlier, building their nests from the same materials as those from which we make paper. There you have human cleverness within animal nature. If you now take all the cleverness of this kind that exists within the whole animal kingdom, and imagine ahrimanic powers taking this up and making it come to life in human heads, in the heads of people who follow only their egotistical instincts, you can see that it may be true to say that Lenin, Trotsky and others are the tools of those ahrimanic powers. That is an ahrimanic initiation. It belongs to a different cosmic sphere than our own world does. It is however an initiation that also holds the potential for getting rid of human civilization on earth, getting rid of everything that has evolved by way of human civilization.

We are therefore dealing with three schools of initiation. Two are on the plane of human evolution and one is below that plane, though it is an initiation of tremendous will power, almost unlimited will power. The only thing that can bring order into all these developments, setting a goal that is worthy to be called human, is contained within genuine spiritual knowledge. A true goal and genuine sincerity will however only come from this spiritual science if it is made into something that involves the whole of our life, taking note how much empty chatter, how much conceit and inner egotism comes to expression in so much of what is usually said in its name. These things cannot be left unsaid. On the contrary, we need to discuss them over and over again. How else can we hope to give souls the power today that is needed to prevent civilization going into total decline.

Let me take a few minutes to give you a very concrete picture. Just a short time ago I read the following in a newspaper:

Religion is a fantasy that arises in human heads as a reflexive response to the way they relate to each other and to nature. It is doomed to die a natural death in the triumphant progress of a clear, scientific and naturalistic interpretation of the truth that is evolving hand in hand with the planned evolution of a new society.²²

Considering what one comes up against nowadays with regard to souls fast asleep in the present age, we may well ask ourselves how many people reading this kind of thing in a newspaper article pull up short as though stung by a viper, because a truly dreadful symptom comes to expression in those lines. People do not reflect on what would happen on this earth if these words came to realization:

Religion is a fantasy that arises in human heads as a reflexive response to the way they relate to each other and to nature. It is doomed to die a natural death in the triumphant progress of a clear, scientific and naturalistic interpretation of the truth that is evolving hand in hand with the planned evolution of a new society.

‘Religion’ does not refer here to some confession on other, nor to some religious movement that one may quite rightly consider to be wrong, nor merely to religion in the narrower sense, but to all that is moral. If the thoughts expressed in those lines were to come true the result would be that human society in every part of the globe would very rapidly become a herd of animals, animals capable of very sophisticated thought, however. If a way cannot be found now for opposition to arise against the principle that is growing in the East of Europe and spreading across into Asia at an incredible pace, civilization will be doomed. The ideals expressed in those lines would then become reality.

In the light of such impulses in world history I do not think it is Justifiable for people in some places to wish to continue with the mystical small talk within closed circles, small talk that against my Wishes has in the long run also come up in spiritual science working towards anthroposophy. Some people even consider it the ideal! I do not think it is right to continue with this in any form, totally disregarding what is demanded of us in the wider interest of humanity on this earth. It must be our will to consider those wider interests of humankind without bias. We must make an effort and become truly serious about certain basic principles—not merely in theory, using our intellect, but instinctively. Those principles have been obscured by all the confessions in Europe and America and the intention is to obscure them yet further.

We know about the virulent propaganda campaign being launched against spiritual science working towards anthroposophy, we hear the bullets whistling all around. If therefore opposition arises in some corner or another it would be a pity to give oneself up to the harmful illusion—an illusion indeed that today merits punishment—that we may ever hope to achieve anything by converting people who after all are the authorized agents of something or other that belongs to the past. We cannot and must not be opportunists or go for compromise. That should be our special meditation every morning, as it were. There have been well-meaning people who have said we should simply try and explain to people in one direction or another how we are endeavouring to bring the Christ Mystery to the world. The more we do this, the more bullets whistle around our ears from certain quarters. Nothing goes more against the grain for instance with certain Catholic or Protestant groups today than that humankind should today gain true understanding of the Christ Mystery. It is not in their interest that the true Mystery of Christ comes to be known; all they want is to hold on to the old ideas. If we had some kind of strange and peculiar creed concerning Christ they would treat us as a harmless sect, as odd characters, and not fight us with the intensity we have come to experience. Within the two schools, quite apart from the third, there are however quite a number of people who know that our aim is to speak of the Christ Mystery out of the truth, and of social order out of the triune principle. This makes them sit up and listen; it makes them say: ‘It would take the ground away from under our feet if we were to go for the truth; let us therefore vow to destroy it.’ People do not fight us because we are in error, they fight us because it is realized in certain quarters that we want the truth. There is no point is saying anything else about some of the things that go on today. The cultural movement I am speaking of has a profound interest in absolute clarity, particularly also clarity of thought.

Remember some of the things I have told you. What is the essential point when we come to see what humankind needs above all else today? The essential point is that our powers of thought—everything we have by way of ability to form ideas, except for sensory powers—have come down to us from our life before birth or life before conception. Everything we human beings are able to think we have brought into the physical world when we were born; we have brought it with us from the life we had before we were born. All the thoughts we evolve whilst we are in our physical bodies are faculties that govern the whole of our essential human nature between our last death and the birth process that brought us into our present life on earth. When we are thinking here and now, the powers of thought we use, not the thoughts, are a shadow image of something that was at work before we were born or conceived.

Try and think of what we call the forces of nature today, of what goes on in lightning and thunder, in the movement of waves, in the way clouds are formed, in the rising and setting of the sun, in wind and rain in the way the plants rise from the ground, in the way animals are conceived and born and grow. Think of all the natural processes You see all around; then think of them merely as a picture, not the reality. So, please, think of everything you have around you by way of natural forces casting its shadow somewhere or other, and of these shadows being taken up into a container and presenting themselves to us as pictures. The relationship that exists between nature as she actually is now and the reality that lies behind is similar to the relationship between life before birth and our faculties of thought in the present earth life. Just think that there you have everything that happens to your soul between death and rebirth—I am showing it in diagrammatic form—and then its shadow arises; a shadow arises of everything you have there and this shadow becomes the content of Your head, the content of your thoughts; it is your faculty of thought. What you are thinking now, those are the forces active before you were born. That is ‘nature’ in the spiritual world, if I may put it in such a paradoxical way. The evolution of humankind cannot progress unless we become aware that when we are thinking, the existence we had before birth influences our faculties of thought. Having entered into my present earth life, I am continuing the life I had before birth when I am thinking.

Who puts up the greatest opposition to this idea? The greatest opposition is put up by religious confessions that maintain more or less the following: ‘A human child is born. It pleases two people, a male and a female individual on this earth, to come together and God creates a soul in the spiritual world, a soul that then connects with what is created between two people in the act of begetting. That is how the human individual comes into being.’ This is of course very different from what I have just been saying. It is what confessions live on in our modern civilized worlds. They all teach that when two People copulate the spirit very kindly creates a soul up above, a fresh new soul; it is then sent down to unite with the physical body which has been created, and something new has come into existence. To whom do these confessions address themselves? They address themselves to terribly egotistical individuals who simply cannot bear the thought of being extinguished when they die. Yet they are able to bear the thought—for they have got used to it over the centuries, indeed soon it will be millenia—that it pleases God to create souls for human beings procreated here on earth. What their egotism does i not allow them to accept is the thought that death puts an end to it all.

Of course you all know what life after death is like. I do not need to go into it here. But let us turn our attention to something quite different. Preachers in their pulpits always need to assume that they are speaking to people who cannot bear the thought of death being the end of it all. The water they have to pour down from their pulpits—irrespective of the particular creed followed by the people who sit there below them—must make it clear to them—I mean unclear, of course—what happens after death. They have to choose words most liable to excite the egotism of people; they have to utter phrases that are fully in accord with the egotism in the souls of people.

Let us think what would happen for instance—to give a particular example—if someone were freely and in all seriousness to make certain aspects of the Roman Catholic confession his target, say the dogma that when two people copulate it must please God to send a freshly made soul down to them. What would happen if criticism were to be aimed at this? Someone going into the whole issue without prejudice would find that it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything to be found in the true Christian faith. They would find that during the Middle Ages the teachings of Aristotle infiltrated theology and that Aristotle represented these ideas on the basis of misunderstood Platonic ideas, saying that a fresh soul is created for every newly generated human body and unites with it. Something taken for granted as a fundamental tenet in Christian beliefs in fact has nothing to do with Christianity but is an Aristotelian principle.²³

Let us move on to something else. One element in religious beliefs is the dogma of eternal punishment in hell. Again, entirely an Aristotelian thought. Aristotle assumed that once a soul had been created, lived on earth and then come into the spiritual world, there was nothing it could do in the spiritual world, as he saw it, but look back for all eternity on what it had done during its one and only life on earth. Aristotle imagined that a fresh soul was created for every child, that this soul lived on earth until the individual died and then for all eternity occupied itself with the contemplation of what had happened during one life on earth. If someone had committed murder, they would have to look back on this for ever. That is where the dogma of eternal punishment in hell originated. It is a purely Aristotelian concept.

Just think, if the truth were to become known, instead of Aristotelian thoughts presented as Christian dogma, the people wishing to represent such Aristotelian ideas masquerading as Christian dogma would be scared out of their wits that people might find out about this, that People might find out that their priests were not teaching Christian Ideas from their pulpits, but Aristotelian ideas that had crept into Christian teachings.

Christian beliefs also contain an infinite number of ideas deriving from gnostic teachings. The Roman Catholic sacrifice of the Mass has infinitely much in it that derives from the Egyptian Mysteries. Many of the rites of the Catholic Church—and the Protestant, too, in many respects—contain things the origin of which must be sought in all kinds of oriental religions. All they are after is that people do not find out where these things come from. What do they feel compelled to do? They have to resort to slander! They have to say that the people who are presenting the truth today are plagiarists borrowing from oriental and gnostic teachings and so on. ‘Traubism’ is the order of the day. They come up with learned calumnies like those presented by the clergyman Professor Traub ²⁴ and all the people who parrot him. Why do people do such things? Because the truth is coming to light and they all have an interest in not letting it come to light. People will go on saying that what we are doing is taken from some source or other. They will provoke something that makes people go against gnosis and things that are part of the very fibre of their souls because they do not want it to come to light in its true form. Gnosis—one is supposed to say—is something terrible, something dreadful. Then people will ignore it, being afraid of it, and the preachers can talk about things that in fact have their origin in gnosis. It is the preachers who talk about things that originally came from gnosis, not the people who speak about what has grown in the soil of spiritual science working towards anthroposophy. What they are most afraid of is that there is such a thing as pre-existence of the soul, a life of the soul before birth and also conception, that the soul has its roots in the spiritual world through all the ages that any kind of knowledge and creed among humankind might cover. For if the truth were to become known there would be no room any more for such blasphemy as that the gods are obliged to send a newly made soul from the spiritual world for every single human body, so that they might unite. All these things have their origin of course in a desire for power that is getting very strong. Behind it all are thoughts of power. It is possible to put tremendous energies into such thoughts of power simply by following certain precepts.

What is going on in Dornach at the moment, for instance? All around, almost everywhere in Switzerland, articles on anthroposophy are being published not one sentence of which is true.²⁵ The whole campaign started when an article appeared that contained twenty-three lies. For weeks now, article on article has picked up on those twenty-three lies; they have appeared almost everywhere in the Catholic press in Switzerland and not a single sentence is true. Why is this happening? It happens because the many followers of these people are brought to a certain state of mind by being told untruths, a state of mind where it is no longer possible to tell the difference between truth and falsehood.

Think of all the efforts we go to in spiritual science working towards anthroposophy to form sufficiently clear ideas; for instance, as to how far the things we become aware of in human minds, in the form of dreams, may or may not be reflecting the truth. As human beings we cannot immediately distinguish truth from falsehood when something appears in the course of a dream. The same state of mind arises for a congregation when they are told lies by people who know that those lies will be believed. The soul is brought to a state, a mood. by those lies where it becomes the willing tool of those desiring power. It is easiest to get people into your power by planting illusions in their unsuspecting minds. Articles full of lies are systematically put out with the intention of creating the kind of mood that can be created with lies. That will be the inevitable consequence of the probabilism which the Jesuits have been teaching for a long time. It is merely a final consequence.

It is of course difficult to rouse modern souls from their general torpor to stand up against such people. The day before I left we were forced to arrange for a lecture—for we must fight, of course, even if we do not want to, against the lies that come up in Dornach. Dr BooS, one of the most courageous of our young protagonists, called on everyone who had anything to say on the subject of the lecture to join in the in the discussion—it was a public lecture, of course. When no one came forward he said openly and publicly that he publicly declared the cleric who had first written those twenty-three lies, a priest called Arnet in Reinach, to be unworthy of his priestly calling, for disseminating scurrilous lies.

One cannot help oneself. And then, even when this had been said, only one individual stood up among those present, a teacher, shaking in his boots if I may put it like that, and said: ‘Just wait. There are more articles to come, and in the end you will see!’ Well, all I could say was that there had been twenty-three lies to begin with, and the truth about those twenty-three lies will without doubt never emerge, however long it takes until there is an end to the matter even if the end does not come until the end of the world. Not the least attempt has been made in everything published so far—and a respectable number of articles have already appeared—to go into those twenty-three lies.

Other things have been tried, using a strange logic. The pamphlet by the Tübingen speaker was brought into play—it actually played a large role—but the people who bring professor Traub's pamphlet into play in their articles have not properly understood what he said. They will write that this man Steiner is borrowing from all kinds of ancient writings, from the Upanishads, the Egyptian Isis Mysteries and the ‘Akashic Records’—well, I suppose the typesetter may have put that in, but on the other hand the clerical gentleman may have done so. I therefore said that it was not really my concern to correct printers' errors, but that it surely is a strange way of reading Traub's Pamphlet if immediately afterwards the reader has forgotten that not even Traub says anything so stupid as that the Akashic Records are to be found on library shelves; I said that one cannot really accuse people of borrowing from that old tome, the Akashic records, for spiritual science based in anthroposophy.

Our attackers have also gained support among liberal thinkers. Dr Boos was going great guns in a liberal paper, saying that this was a deliberate untruth, since the writer must have known that there were no Akashic Records in his library. He could not possibly have them in his library and so he ought to have known; he must have written a deliberate untruth. What did the person concerned do? He wrote that Dr Boos was evading the issue, as it was self-evident that the typesetter must have been responsible for the ‘Akashic Records’ error and not he himself. In his view the kind of sophistry that made authors responsible for that kind of printing error merely showed what kind of stable people came from.

Well, you see the kind of mentality one is dealing with. But do not underestimate it! You have to realize that it is going to be a hard fight, particularly in this direction. The aim is to prevent people from finding out about what I have been saying. What I said, first of all in the medical course, is the following: It is particularly when one is making serious efforts to determine the spiritual laws of this world, doing so on the basis of present-day life, when one tries to reach the deeper secrets of human nature by making these things one's own on the basis of present-day life, and then also finds them written in ancient works—albeit arising from an intellectual life that was more instinctive and atavistic—that one feels very humble in perceiving the greatness of the instinctive, atavistic intellect that human beings once possessed; that has been lost and must now be found again. These words were spoken in awareness of the fact that knowledge which today has to be sought within life was once instinctive wisdom given to humankind. Much of that ancient wisdom has of course survived in the religious beliefs, though it has become corrupted. Yet the people professing those beliefs want to make humankind fear that original wisdom, and when they talk about it say more or less the following: `Those dreadful people who pursue anthroposophy today are borrowing everything from that ancient wisdom'. If they went into the matter they would find that the spiritual science offered to humankind in anthroposophy is very different from anything ever borrowed from anywhere, from the Upanishads or whatever. So we had to borrow indeed from that ancient tome called the Akashic Records! To prevent people getting sight of something that belongs to the present age our enemies are letting their bullets come whistling from all around.

Let us be clear about one thing. You may feel tempted now and then to stress the good points of one thing or another. The alliance between Jesuitism and the Social Democrats which is getting closer and closer by the day is something entirely natural. There is nothing unnatural about it. The Social Democrats are equipped with the same kind of ideas as the Jesuits, only they take them the other way round. One thing, however, that differs from all else that is felt is the 'eternal nature of the human being'. This has become the teaching of egotism. It is restored to its true form when the pre-existence concept, of a human soul having a life before birth, or before conception, once again becomes the effective moral principle. The knives will come out to fight this idea. We shall only be able to progress in the world if in the first place truth has inner power. This inner power can only be effective, however, if in the second place people have the courage, however few they may be in number, to carry this truth in their souls, carry it in their souls in all seriousness, uprightness and honesty and without compromise. It is useless for us to play down the tremendous difference which exists between true Christianity and the Catholic and Protestant Aristotelianism which holds the idea that souls are created for bodies as they arise through procreation. We must not play down this difference. If we do play it down we will not even notice where the idea of power, the desire for power, has its real origins.

I find myself referring again and again to the pastoral issued by a Roman Catholic bishop. This document really exists. According to it the faithful must regard their priest as ranking higher than God and Christ, for each time the priest performs the consecration at the altar Christ is forced to be present by that altar, to be present in the bread and the wine which is His body and His blood. The priest therefore has greater power in the universe than a god. That is what it says in a pastoral that really exists and has also been quoted in many other pastorals. Now you may ask me if that is consistent with the abolition of the spirit by the Council of Constantinople ²⁶ in 869. The answer is yes. A Roman Catholic saying that God is more powerful than a priest would say so because people will not accept any other view nowadays. People are so much asleep in their souls that they never ask themselves: ‘What was the person ²⁷ writing to Moleschott really saying who had the nerve to say that a criminal, a liar, a murderer is a moral person only if he can be fully himself and is an immoral person if he does not bring to expression what he has in him. for this would impose restraints on his individuality, and that an inclination to murder is just as valid as other inclinations are’? Modern souls do not have the courage to say to themselves: ‘If scientists continue to teach the kind of basic philosophy that they have been teaching, the inevitable conclusion simply has to be that criminals, murderers, are just as good as someone trying to act morally, as it were. People merely lack the courage to admit this.’ When materialism had its flowering, at the time when people like Vogt, Moleschott and Büchner,²⁸ all of them courageous men, were publishing their writings, such things were admitted. The present age is too cowardly, however, to make such admissions. Nor is there sufficient courage in the sleeping souls of the present to admit to oneself: 'If you go by the spirit of those creeds and statements a priest is indeed more powerful than a god.'

The school of thought represented by spiritual science working in the spirit of anthroposophy must above all work towards clear thinking in every respect. Its message cannot be grasped if thoughts are unclear, it cannot be grasped in a vague and vaporous mysticism but only with crystal clear thoughts, thoughts which in my Philosophy of Freedom ²⁹ I have tried to show are the starting point for genuine human freedom.

We may continue our discussion of the subject when I am able to speak to you again. I hope this will be soon.

• 20. ‘Der Weg zum gesunden Denken und die Lebenslage des Gegenwartsmenschen’ (A way to develop sound thinking and people's life situation in the present day), Stuttgart 8 June 1920. Published in Geisteswissenschaft und die Lebensfordeningen der Gegenwart No. 6, Dornach 1950. To be published in Germany in GA 355. No record of translation into English.
• 21. Lenin (formerly Ulyanov), Vladimir Ilyich, Russian revolutionary.
  Trotsky. Leon (Lev Davidovich Bronstein), Russian revolutionary leader in 1917.
• 22. Basler Vonvärts of 2 June 1920. X.N. , ‘Die Politik der Sowjetregierung auf dem Gebiete der Religion’ (Soviet government policies concerning religion).
• 23. See Franz Brentano. Die Psychology des Aristoteles (The psychology of Aristotle), Mainz 1867. S. 199 ff.
• 24. Traub, Friedrich, professor at Tuebingen University, author of Rudolf Steiner als Philosoph und Theosoph (Rudolf Steiner as a philosopher and theosophist), Tuebingen 1919.
• 25. For details relating to this see Boos, Roman, ‘Aktenmäßige Darstellung der Hetze gegen das Goetheanum’ (The virulent campaign against the Goetheanum presented in documents), in Rudolf Steiner/Roman Boos: Die Hetze gegen das Goetheanum (The virulent campaign against the Goetheanum), Arlesheim 1920.
• 26. Refers to the Council's rejection of ‘trichotomy’. Rudolf Steiner referred to this on a number of occasions, e.g. in Bausteine zu einer Erkenntnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha GA 175, 1st and 2nd lectures. English translation in Cosmic and Human Metamporphoses. H. Collison ed. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1926.
• 27. Mathilde Reichardt, a lady who published a book on science and moral philosophy in the form of letters to Moleschott in 1856, is able to lay undoubted and unenviable claim to rank first among those who turn moral concepts upside down. It is the opinion of this lady that moral philosophy merely has to ask whether a human individual develops his or her inherent traits in a balanced way. Yet nature—so she says—expresses a different intent in every human individual. She therefore does not hesitate to state ‘that when someone has an inherent tendency to cheat and to steal, such a person can only be an entirely moral person if he or she is a cheat or a thief.’ ‘Someone born to be a thief has also been born with the right to live out those inherent tendencies, developing them to the full, for that is the only way in which he or she can be a strong and moral individual. And what applies to thieves also applies to all other vices, including those born to be murderers.’
  (Quoted from Jurgen Bona Meyer, Philosophische Zeitfragen, Bonn 1874, S. 323 f.)
• 28. Vogt, Carl, champion of Darwinism.
  Moleschott, Jakob, physiologist.
  Büchner, Ludwig, German physician and materialist philosopher.
• 29. Die Philosophie der Freiheit (1894), GA. 4. English: The Philosophy of Freedom. M. Wilson tr. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1970.

Quite a number of lectures have now been given by me on the changes that must necessarily take place in our whole civilization. First and foremost, what was said in this connection was expressed in such a way as to appeal to the will of men. We now live in a cycle of humanity's evolution in which people have to discover inner activity in order to contribute their share towards the necessary change. For human soul substance will have to stream into external life, into the objectivity of external life, and human beings themselves will have to bring about what should appear. In the present cycle of human development it is no longer possible to wait passively for divine powers, far removed from man, to step in and to do something for human evolution, without the participation of man himself.

The essential thing is to be in a position to understand such things by observing the individual phenomena of social life and the life of nature, but today, certain phenomena of social life shall be our topic. I would like to start with a quite definite fact. Let us suppose that someone announces himself; he may, for example, send his business card with the name “Edmund Miller” printed on it. Yet, on seeing this card with the name “Edmund Miller,” it would be foolish to assume that a miller was coming, a man who grinds corn. For the person announcing himself by this name may be a contractor, or a professor, or a court advisor, and so on. It would not be justified in such a case to deduce anything from the name “Miller.” Initially, it would perhaps be better to form no thoughts whatever, but just to wait and see what kind of a person conceals himself behind the name. Or, through certain other circumstances, we may already know something about the actual person, the real living entity concealed behind this name, “Miller.”

It is clear to us in this case that it would be quite wrong to infer from his name anything about the character of the approaching individual. If a person named “Smith” announces himself we would not think that he is a smith. This shows that in regard to those words we consider proper names, we feel the need to discover, by means of something that is not inferred from the name, what or whom we are dealing with.

Well, in this respect, even proper names have undergone a certain history. A person bearing the name Smith today no longer has anything to do with a real smith; a person called Miller has nothing to do with a miller. Yet these names originally arose at a time when name-giving such as is customary today did not exist, when people in a village would remark, “The smith said,—the miller said this or did that,”—or, “I saw the miller,”—and referred to the actual smith or miller. One who has lived in villages knows that people frequently do not refer to each other by proper names but say instead that they saw the smith, or the mason, or somebody else. Therefore, the name itself originally caused people to infer from the words what lay behind them.

All words, the whole language, will undergo the same development in the-course of evolution from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean epoch that proper names have undergone, a development which in their case we can clearly survey. Nevertheless, human beings today are still almost completely caught up in the whole of language; we basically acquire all our knowledge out of language. In actual fact, the general attitude towards nearly the whole compass of language is to infer the things from their words. Now, it is convenient to do so, but human evolution follows a different course, and in regard to such things we must have the same attitude that we adopt in regard to natural phenomena. They contain objective necessity. Objective necessity also exists where the causality of nature holds sway in the sphere of life, something that is experienced by many people with abstract superficiality. It happens frequently—I have often pointed this out—that people will say, “I never intended to do or say this; I meant it quite differently; I had this or that intention with regard to this matter.” But regardless of how pronounced the child's intention is not to get burned, when it reaches into fire, it will burn itself. Concerning the things of life, intentions that do not delve into life are not decisive; at most, only those intentions that do delve into life, or, certainly, facts, and the relationships of these facts that follow natural laws, are decisive.

People must become used to this way of thinking; based on spiritual science, this is, above all, necessary in the most eminent sense. And one must also get used to the thought: “As pleasant as it might be if one could just take words as they are, it is nevertheless a fact that the objective course and laws of human evolution point in a different direction.” They indicate that man's whole conception, his whole soul life, is becoming emancipated from words. Words are gradually becoming mere gestures that simply indicate the being or thing in question, no longer designating and explaining anything fully. If spiritual-scientific descriptions are to be taken seriously, for example, then something must come about for which people are often annoyed with me, namely, that one can no longer use words in the manner that words and sentences are customarily used at present. For if one sets forth spiritual-scientific facts, one is above all presenting facts of the future; something is represented that in future time will have to become the possession of mankind. In a certain sense, one has to anticipate something that is supposed to occur in the future. What is to happen in the future must be received into one's will. Therefore, one is obliged to give spiritual-scientific descriptions in such a way that even the words point like gestures to the essential reality lying behind them. Since our ideal today concerning the reconstruction of the social order will have to be born out of spiritual science, as I explained yesterday, it is necessary that, particularly in matters of social reconstruction, we speak from the above-mentioned viewpoint. This is precisely what people did not at all wish to comprehend, for instance, in my book, Towards Social Renewal. They absolutely wanted matters presented to them in the old style, matters that cannot be described in the old style since they are part of the future. And basically, what one is being faced with here can best be made evident by the fact that almost all the questions that, up to now, have been connected by one side or another to the expositions in Towards Social Renewal always proceed totally out of the old manner of thinking. No attempt is made to find one's way into the transformed new way of thinking.

Thus we may say that, particularly in the descriptions of social relationships of the future, it must become evident that we have to develop an emancipated soul life that no longer clings merely to words. One who follows my descriptions in the various fields of spiritual science, including the recent ones into the field of social life, will find that I am always at pains to describe a matter from many different sides. As a rule, I use two sentences instead of one, because the first sentence indicates the matter from one side, the other one from the other side. This is then supposed to call forth a desire in the listener or reader to approach the matter by transcending the words and sentences, as it were. This is what must be mentioned in reference to human soul life as far as the transformation of the meaning of human language is concerned. This is an important matter. It is important for the reason that the greatest part of what occurs today in regard to confusion of one's manner of thinking and conceptions comes about for no other reason than the fact that the objective laws and impulses of human evolution already demand that we free ourselves from language. Because of their easy-going habits of thinking, however, human beings do not wish to give up clinging to language. When such a phenomenon is clearly understood, it leads to a deeper insight into the whole course of human development. Indeed, from this transformation of our language or languages, we can actually build a bridge to profound spiritual facts. Naturally, this is more the case in one language than in another. But this is then a matter of the specific treatment of a language, of the meaning of words in a language in the individualized differentiated regions of human civilization, as I have pointed out.

We now live in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of human civilization and are approaching the sixth condition of development. These evolutionary conditions are not of such a nature that a clear line could be drawn between one and the other epochs; instead, one epoch, bearing its own peculiarities, passes over into the next; and long before it arises, the future one casts its shadows—one could also say its lights—into the present. One must take hold of these lights if one wishes to participate in the evolution of humanity with one's soul.

Let us try and connect what might be termed the “suprahistorical” fact, namely, that we are supposed to work our way towards the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, with another fact known to all of us. It is this: With his spirit-soul entity, the human being descends out of a spiritual world to earthly incarnation through birth or conception. On earth, he then experiences the life between birth and death; then, he passes through the gate of death, and in so doing bears his soul-spiritual being once again into that environment of life which is definitely of a spiritual and soul nature.

Now we must clearly understand—and the significance of this for the art of education, for example, has also been outlined here recently—that we bring down from the spiritual world, at least in the form of effects, what we have experienced in this spiritual world. When we move in ordinary life from one locality to another, we take with us not only our clothes but also our soul-spiritual belongings. In like manner, one brings along into this world through conception and birth the consequences and effects of what has been undergone in the spiritual world. In the period that mankind has presently lived through, concerning which we know that it began around the middle of the fifteenth century A.D., man, through his spirit-soul entity, brought along forces of the soul life devoid of images, forces containing no pictures. It is for this reason that, above all, the intellectual life has arisen and has flourished. During this period, prior to descending through conception and birth into physical existence, the human being was endowed in a sense with something lacking in capacities, lacking in images. This explains the slight inclination mankind had for developing original creations of fantasy since the middle of the fifteenth century. Human fantasy is, in truth, only a terrestrial reflection of super-earthly imagination. The Renaissance does not contradict this, for just the fact that one had to resort to a “renaissance,” not a “naissance,” clearly shows that original forces of imagination were not present, only a fantasy that required fructification from earlier periods. In short, the fact is that the human soul was permeated in a certain sense with forces that are devoid of images.

Now begins the age—and in many respects, this is the real reason for the stormy character of our times—in which the souls who descend through conception and birth into earthly life bring along for themselves images from the spiritual world. When pictures are brought along out of spiritual existence into physical life, and if salvation is to arise for the human being and his social life, they must under all circumstances be united with the astral body, whereas the element lacking images only unites with the ego. It is predominantly the unfolding of the ego which has blossomed in humanity since the fifteenth century.

Now, however, the time is beginning when man has to feel: Within me there live pictures from my prenatal existence; during my earthly life, I have to make them come alive. I cannot accomplish this merely with my ego; I must work deeper into myself, and this must reach as far as my astral body.

Now, it is generally true that humanity resists the images indwelling in the astral body, images experienced prior to conception. In a way, human beings repel what is supposed to find its way out of the depths of their being into the astral body. The dry, prosaic attitude of the present time is one of its fundamental characteristics, and there are many broadly based movements that oppose an education whose concern it would be that the forces arising from the soul and trying to make themselves felt in the astral body will actually assert themselves. There are insipid, dry people who would really like to exclude any education by means of fairy tales, legends and anything illuminated by imagination. In our Waldorf School system, we have made it our priority that the lessons and instruction of the children entering primary education will proceed from pictorial descriptions, from the life-filled presentation of images, from elements taken from legends and fairy tales. Even what the children are initially supposed to learn about the nature and processes of the animal kingdom, the plant and the mineral kingdoms, is not supposed to be expressed in a dry, matter-of-fact manner; it is supposed to be clothed in imaginative, legendary, fairy tale-like elements. For what is seated deep within the child's soul are the imaginations that have been received in the spiritual world. They seek to come to the surface. The teacher or the educator adopts the right attitude towards the child if he confronts the child with pictures. By placing images before the child's soul, there flash up from its soul those images, or, strictly speaking, those forces of pictorialized representation which have been received before birth or, let us say, prior to conception.

If these forces are suppressed, if the dry, prosaic person guides the education of the child today, he confronts the child from earliest childhood with something that is actually not at all related to the child, namely, the letters of the alphabet. For our present letters have nothing to do anymore with the letters of earlier pictorial scripts. They are really something that is alien to the child; a letter should first be drawn out of a picture, as we try to do it in the Waldorf School. The child is confronted today with something devoid of a pictorial element; the young person, on the other hand, possesses forces in his body—naturally, I am referring to the soul when I am now speaking of “body,” for after all, we also speak of the “astral body”—forces seated in his body that will burst out elsewhere if they are not brought to the surface in pictorial representation. What will be the result of modern mistaken education? These forces do not become lost; they spread out, gain existential ground, and invade the thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will after all. And what kind of people will come into being from that? They will be rebels, revolutionaries, dissatisfied people; people who do not know what they want, because they want something that one cannot know. This is because they want something that is incompatible with any possible social order; something that they only picture to themselves, that should have entered their fantasy but did not; instead, it entered into their agitated social activities.

Therefore, we can say that people who, in an occult sense, do not have honest intentions in regard to their fellowmen, do not have the courage to admit to themselves: “If the world is in a state of revolt today, it is really heaven that is revolting.” It means the heaven that is held back in the souls of men, which then comes to the fore, not in its own form, but in its opposite—in strife and bloodshed instead of imaginations. No wonder that the individuals who destroy the social fabric actually have the feeling that they are doing good. For what do they sense in themselves? They feel heaven within themselves; only it assumes the form of a caricature in their soul.

This is how serious the truths are that we must comprehend today! To acknowledge the truths that matter today should be no child's play; such acknowledgment should be pervaded by the greatest earnestness. In general, it is no light task today to describe such things, for, in the first place, people do not care for them; secondly, they cling to words. Indeed, one who states that heaven is revolting in human souls is naturally taken literally by his words; people do not notice how he is trying to show that additional facts must be known, whereby the word “heaven” is related to something more than they are in the habit of connecting with the term. This is the same as not thinking of a miller who grinds corn when a “Mr. Miller” announces himself. The emancipation from language is definitely required in individual concrete cases if, in the sense that the laws of human evolution demand it, we wish truly to make progress.

Here, we see how something that comes from the life before birth pushes into the social life. One who is familiar with these relationships knows that he has to recognize something that is actually heavenly in what appears on earth in a caricature. This is in regard to the social questions, but there is something else in addition.

During the age of intellectualism, which has developed predominantly since the middle of the fifteenth century, human beings have obtained very little from their life of sleep in the form of imaginations for their waking life. Even those who have somewhat more lively dreams tend to interpret them quite rationally and intellectually. In this direction, theosophists, for example, are rational and intellectual. I could not begin to describe in a small volume, only in a big one, how many people have come to me in the course of time and wished to have rational explanations for their dreams! What is important here is that even those imaginations that express themselves in dreams point to a deeper spiritual life. I have often said that the outward appearance of the dream does not matter at all; that has already emancipated itself from the actual content. The content which we receive and then interpret in words of a language, from which, in turn, we actually have to emancipate ourselves as well, is not the true course of the dream; it really has very little to do with the true course of the dream. The dream's content is represented in its dramatic sequence, in the way one image follows another, the way complications arise and are resolved; one can experience the same spiritual content in a number of different ways as a dream. One person comes and describes how he climbed a mountain; he ascended quite easily up to a certain point, then, he suddenly stood before an abyss and could not proceed. Another person relates that he was walking along a path; everything around him filled him with joy. Suddenly, when he reached a certain point in the road, a man with a #8224 came up 'to him and killed him. Here we have two completely different dream images. Yet the process concealed behind them may be exactly the same. It can express itself in one instance in the climb up the mountain and the feeling of confronting an abyss; in another instance, it can be expressed in a cheerful walk down a path until one confronts a person who intends to kill one. The content of the images is not important; it is the dramatic sequence of experiencing something that offers resistance. It is the dynamics behind the images that matters. The course taken by the forces can envelop itself in any number of images, indeed in hundreds of pictures!

We can only understand the spiritual world when we know that what appears in the physical world in the form of dreams, or what clothes itself in images from the spiritual world in such a manner that it resembles the physical world, is only an image. As long as one has the inclination, however, to interpret the images in a rationalistic, purely intellectual way, so long does one also occupy an intellectual standpoint in regard to the dream life of sleep. What matters here is that we understand this dream life of sleep as the expression of a deeper spiritual life. Then only do we comprehend it imaginatively; then we grasp the pictures as something that stands in place of the content.

Then we shall not turn against something that is beginning for the human being today, namely, making inner soul demands out of sleep in a manner similar to the demands made by the imaginations prior to birth or conception. For today we are beginning to sleep differently from the way sleep was experienced in the regular life of the intellectual age since the middle of the fifteenth century. Man brought along into the waking state little inclination for faculties that wish to experience, rather than interpret, the images.

We have now reached the point in human evolution where, out of sleep as well, we draw imaginations that seek to indwell not only our ego, where rationality reigns supreme, but also our astral body. If we work against this, we once more reject something that is trying to rise into consciousness out of the depths of the human soul; we also work against the whole course of mankind's evolution, and what matters here is that we do not oppose humanity's development but work in harmony with it. We do this in the first place by permeating our culture once again with as many elements as possible connected in some way with the spiritual world. Naturally, in regard to external life, it is important for us to imbue ourselves with what is grasped from the spiritual world; hence, that we also imbue ourselves with a true spiritual insight, to fill ourselves with something that in this physical world cannot be comprehended in terms of the physical world. The whole past epoch of human life was actually opposed to this. Consider a case that I have already mentioned a number of times.

It is true that Christianity confronts human beings in such a way that they can only grasp its essence, especially the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha, if they come round to a comprehension of something super-sensible. For one must envisage that Christ, a being Who formerly had not been connected with earth evolution, united with the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, and that super-sensible events took place. One must conceive of the fact that in regard to the event of Golgotha, even birth and conception differed from the way they take place in ordinary human circumstances. In short, the demand is made by Christology to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in a super-sensible sense.

There is an interesting passage in a book written by a modern naturalist⁹⁴ where fulminations are uttered against the Immaculate Conception, where it is said that it is an impertinent insult to human reason to claim that an immaculate conception can occur.

Well, a modern rationalist, a purely intellectual person, can't help feeling this way. In a certain sense, what is intended out of the spiritual life is indeed an impertinent mockery of human reason. But the point is that we now live in an age where we must gradually begin to bring into waking life what has been spiritually experienced between falling asleep and waking in such a manner that our astral body can be impregnated and permeated with a pictorial element—not merely our ego, which is the seat of rationality, of intellectualism.

It is interesting that even the theology of the nineteenth century developed in such a way that it opposed Christology with rationalism, with pure intellectualism. Increasingly, modern theology felt called upon altogether to deny Christ as such, and to describe the humble man from Nazareth, the mere Jesus, as a human personality somewhat more outstanding than other human beings. One did not wish to make the effort to comprehend something super-sensible. What is to confront the human being supersensibly, what is to awaken him to the super-sensible realm, this one tried to grasp with concepts gained here in the sensory world.

A Protestant theologian,⁹⁵ with whom I once discussed this matter, told me after we had talked about it for some time, “Yes, we modern theologians should really not call ourselves Christians any longer, for we no longer have Christ. If the name ‘Jesuit’ had not been appropriated already, we should really claim it for ourselves.” This is not something that I am saying; it is something that a Protestant theologian of the modern school said to me as a confession of his own soul.

One who has insight into the whole character of our time, however, will understand that we must advance to a comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha. Just because it is the central manifestation of our human evolution, it will tear us away from the earthly manner of thinking, and will draw us with might and main to understand something that is incomprehensible based an the earthly sense domain. Whoever wishes in everything to remain caught in the earthly sensory sphere would say, “The Immaculate Conception is an impertinent insult against human reason.”

One who understands the task of present-day man will say: I must accustom myself to such ideas. In that case, I must emancipate myself from the customary use of words today. When somebody by the name of Smith or Miller announces himself, I must not assume that he is coming with a hammer in hand or overalls powdered with flour. I must expect something quite different from what I might deduce from the words. Thus, I have to become used to emancipating myself from what was ingrained into the words by the merely physical life of the senses.

Today, the Mystery of Golgotha is in fact the first test for us to see whether we are willing to go along with the comprehension of something that extends beyond the physical-sensory sphere. We, therefore, can no longer content ourselves with a merely traditional, historical description of Christianity, we need instead a creative understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Out of spiritual science, we need inner strength of soul which, in a new way, approaches the Mystery of Golgotha and is in a position to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha as a supersensory fact. Then, having positioned the Mystery of Golgotha into the central point of human thinking and feeling, we must make a new beginning especially in regard to education, and prepare the child in such a way that it does not suppress, does not have to suppress, the imaginations that seek to arise from the depths of the soul. We must meet the imaginations halfway by making pictures of our conceptions.

This is the deeper reason why, in the last issue of Soziale Zukunft (Social Future),⁹⁶ which is a magazine dealing with education, I described education and instruction as an art in the most eminent sense. In the field of pedagogy, teachers and educators must actually proceed in the way an artist does—indeed, they must proceed in a style surpassing that of an artist. It does not do to impose abstract principles in an abstract pedagogical sense. What matters is that one penetrates the being of man, and, through this comprehension of man's nature, arrives at the point of reading from the inner human being what one has to do in each case. An artist who is creating something cannot go by abstract rules. The purpose of aesthetics is not that of establishing rules for the artists. An artist cannot even go by what he has created yesterday when he creates something today. At every moment he must endeavor to be creative and original. This is how the teacher must be, in a still higher sense. One must not say based on a certain attitude of mind: "Well, if we are looking for teachers like that, we have to wait another three to four hundred years." The only reason that we do not have such teachers as yet is because we say things like this. We can have them the very moment that we have the strong power of faith in it; but it is the strong, not the passive, power of faith that is needed here. Therefore, what is important here is that when we return from sleep, upon awakening, we truly experience in the astral body and imprint into the etheric body what the astral body experiences from the moment of falling asleep until waking up. It can only take place through pictorializing the whole cultural life.

This pictorialization of the whole life of culture, this pictorialization that is demanded by the laws of humanity's evolution, will come into being when the whole spiritual life is left to the decision of those who participate in the spiritual life; when no instructions, no school regulations are laid down by a government which by its very nature stands outside the spiritual life. It is important here that the state does not hand down pedagogical regulations, school curriculums, and such like in an abstract manner. What matters is that one has human beings in an emancipated spiritual life who act out of their own free personality, and that one accomplishes with them what one can or wishes to accomplish with them.

The fact that the human being is presently beginning to bring along through conception and birth something that differs from what he brought with him since the middle of the fifteenth century, and the fact that he also brings something different with him out of sleep, both these facts demand that careful attention be given such matters, and that one really permeates oneself with the knowledge of such decisive facts. But from where can this knowledge be gained, if not from spiritual science? The external culture, today's science, certainly does not deal in any way with these matters. It ignores them; indeed, its present methods compel it to do so. I feel obliged to say that the present situation becomes most poignant when one observes the frequent and strange discrepancy between the inner requirements of humanity's evolution and the way in which people meet them. In recent times, the need has arisen to reckon with what flows into the human being from the spiritual world. Those who were intellectual, who did not reckon with what flows out of the spiritual world, made hypotheses about atoms, molecules, and the like. It was thought that bodies possessing volume point back to an atomistic formation, and so on. Out of the root causes of mankind's evolution, the need arose to grasp spiritual facts. And this instinct to grasp the spiritual expressed itself also in something, for example, like the Theosophical Society. One of its heroes is a certain Mr. Leadbeater who wrote an occult chemistry. What did he do in this book? He did something quite horrible, for he pictures the spiritual world in an atomistic sense; meaning, the materialistic manner of thinking is carried into the spiritual world.

I have recently mentioned this whole grotesque thing. Something very clever came about in the Theosophical Society. Someone wished to prove that here is one life; there is the next one (see drawing below). Now, it is so, isn't it, that something has to pass from the preceding life to the later one. One sees the body fall into decay. A proper materialist says that the body disintegrates and it is all over with man. A theosophist, however, wants another earth life to come; so, something must pass from one life to the other! The proper materialist says that all atoms unite with the earth. The theosophist also does not think in any other way than materialistically, but at the same time he tries to think “theosophically.” He wants something to pass from the first to the next life. So he says: “Of course, the atoms become one with the earth; one atom, however, remains and it passes through the whole period of existence between death and a new birth. There it appears again. This is the permanent atom.” One atom! Oh, the theosophists were especially proud then, when they discovered this “permanent” atom! They had no inkling that in this way they were carrying materialism into the spiritual world conception! Materialism induced them to believe that something—they never said what it was—of the many atoms that sink down into the ground is saved; and this fortunate, saved, permanent atom then reappears in the next incarnation. Much has been written about this permanent atom. It is nothing more than an example of the fact that something was borne into spiritual science that people could not rise above, namely, materialism. It permeates, by the way, the whole description of man, in the way it is frequently presented in the literature of the Theosophical Society. As I have often pointed out, they present the physical body as dense, the etheric body as thinner, the astral body as still thinner. Then come degrees of thinness, where even thinking and conceptions become quite thin. Yet, one is still dealing with something substantial, like mist; hence, although Buddhi and Atma are mists, they are still tangible as mists. One does not have the will power truly to discard materialism even in one's conceptual life; to pass from concepts of matter to concepts of the spirit.

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All these things prove how closely human beings are tied to the old ways of thinking. Out of such considerations, anybody who honestly wishes to acknowledge spiritual science should take up the inner challenge to test himself as to how far he has freed himself from the old materialistic concepts; or, when he turns to something spiritual, to what extent he imagines this spiritual manner in materialistic pictures, not being aware of the fact that they are just pictures.

It is always a matter of being conscious of this. For if, say, I were to draw a picture of one of you on the blackboard, the picture could mean a lot to me, if the person in question were no longer present. But if I were then to imagine that the person in the picture would shake my hand, or would speak to me, in other words, that he would be the actual person, then I would be suffering from illusions! Therefore, one may naturally sensualize the spiritual in pictures, but one must always be aware of the fact that they are nothing but pictures.

In the case of words, too, people must realize more and more clearly that language is on the way to turning the word into a gesture, and that we should go no further than to allow the word to indicate something to us that no longer is contained in the word. All words will have to take the same direction that proper names have taken.

For philosophers, I have something even better to say. Philosophers of recent times have set up any number of theories. When I say, “The child is small,” they have a concept of “small;” they have a concept of “child.” The “is,” however, the copula of the two—what does it mean? Oh, much has been written about this copula even in the philosophical sense, not just from the grammatical or philological standpoint. Everything that has been written about it suffers from the fact that this verb, “is,” no longer has the meaning of which people speak. It has already emancipated itself from its meaning and the soul content has become a different one. Thus, people in fact philosophize about something that no longer lives in the soul in an alive sense.

This is just an incidental philosophical remark which perhaps doesn't have much significance, but it is supposed to draw your attention to the fact that something that is not noticed by the outer world is by no means noticed immediately by the philosophers. Nevertheless, it is often true that the philosophers are the last to notice the things that really occur in the world, and many of our philosophical systems lag considerably behind what exists outside of themselves!

By proceeding principally from the example of language, however, I have tried to show you quite concretely how present-day human development presents itself. What actually takes place in regard to human development can really only be seen by looking at super-sensible facts. Anthropology can no longer discover what actually takes place, only anthroposophy. This is the reason why anthroposophical cultural thinking must lie at the foundation of everything that constitutes work for the progress of mankind.

• 94 . Ernest Haeckel: Anthropogenie oder Entwicklungsgeschichte des Menschen, Leipzig, 1891, p. 871.
• 95 . Max Christlieb: 1862–1916.
• 96 . In “Soziale Zukunft,” #5–7, Dornach, 1920.

Today's lecture will be historical in character, and the day after tomorrow I shall speak of matters which will give us deeper insight into the impulses contained in the thinking,—willing and actions of rosicrucianism. We can only understand the work of rosicrucianism as it is today when we realise that it was never a model laid down once and for all but assumes a different form in every century. This is because rosicrucianism must always adapt itself to the conditions of the times. It is quite obvious to us that the fundamental impulses of Spiritual Science must increasingly find their way into the culture of the present age; but we know, too, that Western culture presents difficulties. Spiritual Science cannot make different human beings of us from one day to the next, because through our karma we have been born into Western culture. Our task is not as simple as that of the representatives of communities based upon race or the tenets of a particular religion. For our fundamental principle must be that we are not rooted in the soil of a specific creed but regard the different systems of religion as forms and variations of the one, universal life. It is the seed of spiritual truth in all religions for which Spiritual Science must seek. As a Westerner, the Anthroposophist may very easily be misunderstood, above all by the different religious confessions and schools of thought in the world.

If we rightly understand our task as Spiritual Scientists we must hold fast to the principle of historical development, realising that Spiritual Science is an integral part of this development. Each one of you here has been incarnated in every epoch of culture—indeed more than once. What is the purpose of these reincarnations? Why must the human being pass through all these different schoolings in the periods of culture and civilisation? It was this question which brought Lessing⁴⁵ to avow his belief in the idea of reincarnation. Lessing thought to himself: Human beings have lived through all the earlier periods of culture and they must return again and again in order to learn new things and to be able to connect the old with the new. There must be a purpose in the fact that we pass through different incarnations, and the purpose is that in each of them the human being shall add new experiences to the old.

As you have often heard, there are great differences between the successive epochs of culture. Today we shall speak in greater detail of an extremely important period: the thirteenth century. Human beings in incarnation at that time lived through an experience which had not fallen to the lot of others. What I am now about to say is known to all who have reached a certain high level of spiritual life and who are now again in incarnation.

In the thirteenth century spiritual darkness fell for a time upon all human beings, even the most enlightened, and also upon the initiates. Whatever knowledge of the spiritual worlds existed in the thirteenth century came from tradition or from men who in still earlier times had been initiates and were able to call up memories of what they had then experienced. But for a brief space of time it was impossible even for these men to have direct vision of the spiritual world. Darkness had to fall for this short period to prepare for the intellectual culture which was to be characteristic of our modern age. The important point is that we have this kind of culture today in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Culture in the Greek epoch was quite different. Instead of the modern, intellectual kind of thinking, direct perception was then the dominant faculty; the human being was one, as it were, with what he saw and heard, even with what he thought. He did not cogitate and reason as he does today, and needs must do, for this is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

In the thirteenth century it was necessary for especially suitable personalities to be singled out for initiation, and the initiation itself could only take place after that brief period of darkness had come to an end. The name of the place in Europe where these events that I shall now describe took place cannot yet be communicated, but before very long this too will be possible.

We shall speak today of the dawn of occultism in the modern age. Twelve men were living at the time of the darkness, twelve men of deep spirituality, who came together in order to further the progress of humanity. None of them possessed the power of direct vision of the spiritual world, but they were able to bring to life within them memories of what they had experienced through earlier initiation. And by the dispensation of the karma of mankind, the heritage left by the ancient culture of Atlantis was embodied in seven of these twelve men. In my book Occult Science it is stated that the seven wise teachers of the ancient, holy Indian civilisation bore within them the surviving wisdom of Atlantis. These seven men were incarnated again in the thirteenth century and formed part of the twelve; it was they who were able to look back to the seven streams of the ancient Atlantean wisdom and to their further course. The task assigned to each of the seven was to make one of the seven streams of wisdom fruitful both for the culture of the thirteenth century and for that of our modern age. These seven individualities were joined by four others; unlike the first seven, these other four were not able to look back to times of the primeval past; they looked back to what mankind had acquired from occult truths during the four epochs of post-Atlantean culture. The first of the four looked back to the period of ancient India, the second to that of ancient Persia, the third to that of Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian culture, and the fourth to that of the Greco-Roman age. These four joined the seven in the council of the wise men in the thirteenth century; the twelfth had fewer memories; he was the most intellectual of the twelve and it was his task to cultivate and foster the external sciences. These twelve individualities did not live on only in the sphere of occultism as cultivated in the West, but could also be ‘incorporated’ as it were in men who possessed some genuine knowledge of occultism. Goethe's poem The Mysteries⁴⁶ gives a certain indication of this.

Thus there were twelve outstanding individualities, joined by a thirteenth who, after the period of darkness had come to an end, was to be chosen for the kind of initiation demanded by the culture of the West. The circumstances are very mysterious, and I can only give you the following information in the form of a narrative. To me it is objective truth, but you yourselves can put it to the test by gathering together what has been said by Anthroposophical Spiritual Science during the last few years, in addition to what you know of history since the thirteenth century.

It was known to the council of twelve wise men that a child was to be born who had lived in Palestine at the time of Christ and had been present when the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place. This individuality had strong heart forces and a power of deep, inward love which circumstances had since helped him to unfold. An individuality of extraordinary spirituality was incarnated in this child. It was necessary in this case for a process to be enacted which will never be repeated in the same form. What I shall tell you does not describe a typical initiation but an altogether exceptional happening. It was necessary for this child to be removed from the environment into which he was born and to be placed in the care of the twelve at a certain place in Europe. But it was not the external measures adopted by the twelve wise men that are of essential importance; what is important is the fact that the child grew up with the twelve around him, and because of this, their wisdom was able to stream into him. One of the twelve, for example, possessed the Mars wisdom and therewith a definite quality of soul—a mood of soul tempered by the form of culture influenced by Mars. The forces of the Mars culture endowed his soul with the faculty, among others, of presenting occult sciences with a fiery enthusiasm and ardour. Similar planetary influences were also at work in other faculties distributed among the twelve. The influences pouring from the twelve wise men worked in such mutual accord that the soul of the child was brought into harmony. And so the child grew up under the unceasing care of the twelve. Then, at a certain time, when the child had grown into a young man of about twenty, he was able to give expression to something that was a kind of reflection of the twelve streams of wisdom—but in a form altogether new, new even to the twelve wise men. The metamorphosis was accompanied by violent organic changes. Even physically the child had been quite unlike other human beings; he was often very ill and his body became transparent, as though filled with light. Then there came a time when for some days the soul departed altogether from the body. The young man lay as if dead ... And when the soul returned it was as though the twelve streams of wisdom were born anew, so that the twelve wise men, also, could learn something quite new from the youth. He was now able to speak of quite new experiences. There had come to him, through the Mystery of Golgotha, an experience similar to that of Paul before Damascus. Thereby it was possible for all the twelve world conceptions, religious and scientific—and fundamentally there are only twelve—to be amalgamated into one comprehensive whole, which could do justice to them all. Of what was taught we shall speak the day after tomorrow. It remains now to be said that the young man died very soon afterwards. His life on earth had been brief. His mission has been to create this synthesis of the twelve streams of wisdom in the sphere of thought and to bring forth the new impulse which he could then bequeath to the twelve men who were to carry it further. A great and significant impetus was thus given. The name of this individuality from whom this impulse originated was Christian Rosenkreutz.⁴⁷ He was born again in the fourteenth century and this earthly life lasted for more than a hundred years. In the new earthly life he brought to fruitfulness, in the outer world too, all that he had lived through in that brief space of time. He traveled all over the West and over practically the whole of the then known world in order to receive anew the wisdom which in the previous life had quickened in him the new impulse—the impulse which, as a kind of essence, was to filter into the culture of the times.

This new impulse also came to expression in the exoteric world. The inspiration of the being of whom we have spoken, worked, for example, in Lessing. It is not, of course, possible to give external proof of this, but Lessing's whole mode and manner of thinking is such that the rosicrucian impulse is perceptible to one who is versed in these matters. Again in the nineteenth century—an age so ill adapted for the ideas of karma, reincarnation and the like—this impulse worked exoterically. It is an interesting fact that towards the end of the forties of the nineteenth century a certain scientific body offered a reward for the best philosophical treatise on the subject of the immortality of the soul: Among the treatises submitted, the one that was awarded the prize was by Widenmann⁴⁸ who accepted the principle that the soul has many earthly lives. Naturally this essay does not speak of reincarnation in the way as Spiritual Science now does; but it is interesting that such a writing should have appeared at that time and have been awarded the prize. And other contemporary psychologists also acknowledged their belief in repeated earth lives. The thread of belief in reincarnation and karma was never entirely broken. Moreover the early writings of the founder of the Theosophical Society, the great H.P. Blavatsky,⁴⁹ are explicable only when we recognise the rosicrucian inspiration underlying them.

Now it is of the greatest importance for us to know that whenever the rosicrucian inspiration is given, in each century, the bearer of the inspiration is never outwardly named. His identity has been known only to the very highest initiates. Today, for example, it is only permissible to speak of happenings of a hundred years ago; for this is the period of time which must elapse before they may be spoken of openly. The temptation to pay fanatical veneration to authority vested in some personality—than which there is no greater evil—would be too great. This danger is too near at hand. Silence is a necessary precaution not only against the wiles of ambition and pride—which it might be possible to resist—but paramountly because of the occult, astral attacks which would be directed all the time against such an individual. Hence the rule that these things may not be spoken of until a hundred years have elapsed. Such studies must help us to realise that the fulcrum of historical development is contained in rosicrucianism.

By a simple comparison let me explain to you what is meant by this. Think of a pair of scales. There must be only one fulcrum, for if there were two, no weighing would be possible. One such fulcrum is also necessary in the process of historical development. Eastern world conceptions do not admit this, nor do they recognise historical evolution in this sense; and the same applies to Schopenhauer.⁵⁰ But it is the task of Western humanity to acknowledge the course of history—and it is the mission of rosicrucianism to promote a kind of thinking which admits the reality of a fulcrum or pivotal point in history. In regard to what will now be said, the religious confession to which a man may belong is of no consequence. For it can be substantiated from the Akashic Record that the day which represents the pivotal point in the evolution of mankind is the 3rd April in the year 33 AD. Knowledge of the fact that the pivot of evolution lies at this point is an essential part of rosicrucianism.

What was it that really happened then? What happened was what can be called the crisis in the world of the demons. And what does this mean? We know that in earlier times human beings possessed the faculty of primitive clairvoyance. This clairvoyance became progressively feebler, almost to the point of extinction. The fact is that hitherto the human being had been conscious mainly in the astral body and less in the ego. The crisis came about because of the darkening of the ancient clairvoyance. Man's vision extended only into the lowest regions of the spiritual world. The ego still lived in the astral world; but the beings and powers which the ego was able to behold deteriorated into greater and greater impurity. Man no longer had any vision of the good powers, but as he looked into the astral world he saw only these evil beings. The only means of salvation was the cultivation and development of the ego. The starting point for this was what took place in the baptism by John in the Jordan. What was the experience of one thus baptised? He experienced in the first place the physical process of immersion in the water, which caused the separation of the astral and etheric bodies from the physical body. This enabled him to perceive that a crisis was at hand in the world of the demons. And those who had been baptised knew: We must change our hearts! The time is at hand when the spirit is to stream directly into the ego. Such a man felt that these terrible astral beings were within him, always penetrating into him.

Something had to come that transcends the astral, and this is the ego. Through the ego it will be possible for communities of human beings to gather together in freedom of soul, communities no longer determined by ties of blood. And now picture to yourselves a man possessed by demons of the most evil kind who know that they are facing a crisis. Picture to yourselves again that to such a man there comes One Whose mission it is to oppose the demons. What must the demons feel? They must feel ill at ease to the highest degree! And so indeed it was: in the presence of Christ Jesus the demons were ill at ease.

Rosicrucianism has within it the impulse by which the demons may and must be countered. Through this impulse the ego is to become supreme—but in this respect little progress has yet been made.

Returning to the point at which the lecture began, it is not difficult to realise that it will be harder for us as Anthroposophists to make our voice heard in the world than it will be for any others. The adherents of other views of the world will have less persecution to suffer than Anthroposophists. For nothing makes men more uneasy than to describe to them the true nature of the Christ. But our conviction is based upon the results of genuine occult science, and this conviction must be sustained with all the strength of which we are capable.

• 45. See note 32.
• 46. See note 29.
• 47. See note 23.
• 48. See note 33.
• 49. See note 1.
• 50. Arthur Schopenhauer: 1788 – 1860. See ‘Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung’ (The World as Will and Idea in the ‘Supplements to the second volume’, chapter 38 ‘Uber Geschichte’ (On History).

[ 1 ] At this time there was established in Germany a branch of the Ethical Culture Society which had originated in America. It seems obvious that in a materialistic age one ought only to approve an effort in the direction of a deepening of ethical life. But this effort arose from a fundamental conception that aroused in me the profoundest objections.

[ 2 ] The leader of this movement said to himself: “One stands to-day in the midst of the many opposing conceptions of the world and of life as regards the life of thought and the religious and social feelings. In the realm of these conceptions men cannot be brought to understand one another. It is a bad thing when the moral feelings which men ought to have for one another are drawn into the sphere of these opposing opinions. Where will it lead if those who feel differently in matters religious and social, or who differ from one another in the life of thought, shall also express their diversity in such a way as thus to determine also their moral relationships with respect to those who think and feel differently. Therefore one must seek for a foundation for purely human ethics which shall be independent of every world-concept, which each one can recognize no matter how he may think in reference to the various spheres of existence.”

[ 3 ] This ethical movement made upon me a profound impression. It had to do with views of mine which I held to be most important. For I saw before me the deep abyss which the way of thinking characteristic of the most recent times had created between that which occurs in nature and the content of the moral and spiritual world.

[ 4 ] Men have come to a conception of nature which would represent the evolution of the world as being without moral or spiritual content. They think hypothetically of a purely material primal state of the world. They seek for the laws according to which from this primal state there could gradually have been formed the living, that which is endued with soul, that which is permeated with spirit in the form characteristic of this present age. If one is logical in such a way of thinking – so I then said to myself – then the spiritual and moral cannot be conceived as anything other than a result of the work of nature. Then one faces facts of nature which are from the spiritual and moral point of view quite indifferent, which in their own process of evolution have brought forth the moral as a by-product, and which finally with moral indifference likewise bury it.

[ 5 ] I could, of course, perceive clearly that the sagacious thinkers did not draw these conclusions; that they simply accepted what the facts of nature seemed to say to them, and thought in regard to these matters that one ought simply to allow the world-significance of the spiritual and moral to rest upon its own foundation. But this view seemed to me of little force. It made no difference to me that people said: “In the field of natural occurrences one must think in a way that has no relation to morality, and what one thus thinks constitutes hypotheses; but in regard to the moral each man may form his own ideas.” I said to myself that whoever thinks in regard to nature even in the least detail in the manner then customary, such a person cannot ascribe to the spiritual-moral any self existent, self-supporting reality. If physics, chemistry, biology remain as they are – and to all they seem to be unassailable – then the entities which men in these spheres consider to be reality will absorb all reality; and the spiritual-moral could be nothing more than the foam arising from this reality.

[ 6 ] I looked into another reality – a reality which is spiritual and moral as well as natural. It seemed to me a weakness in the effort to attain knowledge not to be willing to press through to that reality. I was forced to say to myself according to my spiritual perception: “Above the natural occurrences, and also the spiritual-moral, there is a veritable reality, which reveals itself morally but which in moral activity has at the same time the power to embody itself as an occurrence which attains to equal validity with an occurrence in nature.” I thought that this seemed indifferent to the spiritual-moral only because the latter had lost its original unity of being with this reality, as the corpse of a man has lost its unity of being with that in man which is endued with soul and with life.

[ 7 ] To me this was certain; for I did not merely think it: I perceived it as truth in the spiritual facts and beings of the world. In the so-called “ethicists” there seemed to me to have been born men to whom such an insight appeared to be a matter of indifference; they revealed more or less unconsciously the opinion that one can do nothing with conflicting philosophies; let us save the principles of ethics, in regard to which there is no need to inquire how they are rooted in the world-reality. Undisguised scepticism as to all endeavour after a world-concept seemed to me to manifest itself in this phenomenon of the times. Unconsciously frivolous did any one seem to me who maintained that, if we let world-concepts rest on their own foundations, we shall thus be able to spread morality again among men. I took many a walk with Hans and Grete Olden through the Weimar parks, during which I expressed myself in radical fashion on the theme of this frivolity. “Whoever presses forward with his perception as far as is possible for man,” I said, “will find a world-event out of which there appears before him the reality of the moral just as of the natural.” In the recently founded Zukunft I wrote a trenchant article against what I called ethics uprooted from all world-reality, which could not possess any force. The article met with a distinctly unfriendly reception. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, when these “ethicists” themselves had been obliged to come forward as the saviours of civilization?

[ 8] To me this matter was of immeasurable importance. I wished to do battle at a critical point for the confirmation of a world-concept which revealed ethics as firmly rooted along with all other reality. Therefore, I was forced to battle against this ethics which had no philosophical basis.

[ 9 ] I went from Weimar to Berlin in order to seek for opportunities to present my view through the press.

[ 10 ] I called on Herman Grimm, whom I held in high honour. I was received with the greatest possible friendliness. But it seemed to Herman Grimm very strange that I, who was full of zeal for my cause, should bring this zeal into his house. He listened to me rather unresponsively, as I talked to him of my view regarding the ethicists. I thought I could interest him in this matter which to me seemed so vital. But I did not in the least succeed. When, however, he heard me say “I wish to do something,” he replied, “Well, go to these people; I am more or less acquainted with the majority of them; they are all quite amiable men.” I felt as if cold water had been thrown over me. The man whom I so highly honoured felt nothing of what I desired; he thought I would “think quite sensibly” when I had convinced myself by a call on the “ethicists” that they were all quite congenial persons.

[ 11 ] I found in others no greater interest than in Herman Grimm. So it was at that time for me. In all that pertained to my perceptions of the spiritual I had to work entirely alone. I lived in the spiritual world; no one in my circle of acquaintances followed me there. My intercourse consisted in excursions into the worlds of others. I loved these excursions. Moreover, my reverence for Herman Grimm was not in the least diminished. But I had a good schooling in the art of understanding in love that which made no move toward understanding what I carried in my own soul.

[ 12 ] This was then the nature of my loneliness in Weimar, where I had such an extensive social relationship. But I did not ascribe to these persons the fact that they condemned me to such loneliness. Indeed, I perceived that unconsciously striving in many people was the impulse toward a world-concept which would penetrate to the very roots of existence. I perceived how a manner of thinking which could move securely while it had to do only with that which lies immediately at hand yet weighed heavily upon their souls. “Nature is the whole world” – such was that manner of thinking. In regard to this way of thinking men believed that they must find it to be correct, and they suppressed in their souls everything which seemed to say one could not find this to be correct. It was in this light that much revealed itself to me in my spiritual surroundings at that time. It was the time in which my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, whose essential content I had long borne within me, was receiving its final form.

[ 13 ] As soon as it was off the press, I sent a copy to Eduard von Hartmann. He read it with close attention, for I soon received back his copy of the book with his detailed marginal comments from beginning to end. Besides, he wrote me, among other things, that the book ought to bear the title: Erkenntnistheoretischer Phänomenalismus und ethischer Individualismus.¹ I He had utterly misunderstood the sources of the ideas and my objective. He thought of the sense-world after the Kantian fashion even though he modified this. He considered this world to be the effect produced by reality upon the soul through the senses. This reality, according to his view, can never enter into the field of perception which the soul embraces through consciousness. It must remain beyond consciousness. Only by means of logical inferences can man form hypothetical conceptions regarding it. The sense-world, therefore, does not constitute in itself an objective existence, but is merely a subjective phenomenon existing in the soul only so long as this embraces the phenomenon within consciousness.

[ 14 ] I had sought to prove in my book that no unknown lies behind the sense-world, but that within it lies the spiritual. And concerning the world of human ideas, I sought to show that these have their existence in that spiritual world. Therefore the reality of the sense-world is hidden from human consciousness only so long as the soul perceives by means of the senses alone. When, in addition to the sense-perceptions, the ideas are also experienced, then the sense-world in its objective reality is embraced within consciousness. Knowing does not consist in a copying of a real but the soul's living entrance into that real. Within the consciousness occurs that advance from the still unreal sense-world to the reality of this world.

[ 15 ] In truth is the sense-world also a spiritual world; and the soul lives together with this known spiritual world while it extends its consciousness over it. The goal of the process of consciousness is the conscious experience of the spiritual world, in the visible presence of which everything is resolved into spirit.

[ 16 ] I placed the world of spiritual reality over against phenomenalism. Eduard von Hartmann thought that I intended to remain within the phenomena and abandon the thought of arriving from these at any sort of objective reality. He conceived the thing as if by my way of thinking I were condemning the human mind to permanent incapacity to reach any sort of reality, to the necessity of moving always within a world of appearances having existence only in the conception of the mind (as a phenomenon).

Thus my endeavour to reach the spirit through the expansion of consciousness was set over against the view that “spirit” exists solely in the human conception and apart from this can only be “thought.” This was fundamentally the view of the age to which I had to introduce my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The experience of the spiritual had in this view of the matter shriveled up to a mere experience of human conceptions, and from these no way could be discovered to a real (objective) spiritual world.

[ 17 ] I desired to show how in that which is subjectively experienced the objective spiritual shines and becomes the true content of consciousness; Eduard von Hartmann opposed me with the opinion that whoever maintains this view remains fixed in the sensibly apparent and is not dealing at all with an objective reality.

[ 18 ] It was inevitable, therefore, that Eduard von Hartmann must consider my “ethical individualism” dubious.

[ 19 ] For what was this based upon in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity? I saw at the centre of the soul's life its complete union with the spiritual world. I sought so to express this fact that an imaginary difficulty which disturbed many persons might resolve itself into nothing. That is, it is supposed that, in order to know, the soul – or the ego – must differentiate itself from that which is known, and therefore must not merge itself with this. But this differentiation is also possible when the soul swings, like a pendulum, as it were, between the union of itself with the spiritual real on the one hand and the sense of itself on the other. The soul becomes “unconscious” in sinking down into the objective spirit, but with the sense of itself it brings the completely spiritual into consciousness.

[ 20 ] If, now, it is possible that the personal individuality of men can sink down into the spiritual reality of the world, then in this reality it is possible to experience also the world of moral impulses. Morality becomes a content which reveals itself out of the spiritual world within the human individuality; and the consciousness expanded into the spiritual presses forward to the perception of this revelation. What impels man to moral behaviour is a revelation of the spiritual world in the experiencing of the spiritual world through the soul. And this experience takes place within the individuality of man. If man perceives himself in moral behaviour as acting in reciprocal relation with the spiritual world, he is then experiencing his freedom. For the spiritual world works within the soul, not by way of compulsion, but in such a way that man must develop freely the activity which enables him to receive the spiritual.

[ 21 ] In pointing out that the sense-world is in reality a world of spiritual being and that man, as a soul, by means of a true knowledge of the sense-world is weaving and living in a world of spirit – herein lies the first objective of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. In characterizing the moral world as one whose being shines into the world of spirit experienced by the soul and thereby enables man to arrive at this moral world freely – herein lies the second objective. The moral being of man is thus sought in its completely individual unity with the ethical impulses of the spiritual world. I had the feeling that the first part of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and the second part form a spiritual organism, a genuine unity. Eduard von Hartmann was forced, however, to feel that they were coupled together quite arbitrarily as phenomenalism in the theory of knowledge and individualism in ethics.

[ 22 ] The form taken by the ideas of the book was determined by my own state of soul at that time. Through my experience of the spiritual world in direct perception, nature revealed itself to me as spirit; I desired to create a spiritual natural science. In the self-knowledge of the human soul through direct perception, the moral world entered into the soul as its entirely individual experience.

[ 23 ] In the experience of spirit lay the source of the form which I gave to my book. It is, first of all, the presentation of an anthroposophy which receives its direction from nature and from the place of man in nature with his own individual moral being.

[ 24 ] In a certain sense The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity released from me and introduced into the external world that which the first period of my life had brought before me in the form of ideas through the destiny which led me to experience the natural-scientific riddles of existence. The further way could now consist in nothing else than a struggle to arrive at ideal forms for the spiritual world itself.

[ 25 ] The forms of knowledge which man receives through sense-perception I represented as inner anthroposophical experience of the spirit on the part of the human soul. The fact that I had not yet used the term anthroposophic was done to the circumstance that my mind was always striving first to attain perception and scarcely at all after a terminology. My task was to form ideas which could express the human soul's experience of the spiritual world.

[ 26 ] An inner wrestling after the formation of such ideas comprises the content of that episode of my life which I passed through between my thirtieth and fortieth years of age. At that time fate placed me usually in an outer life-activity which did not so correspond with my inner life that it could have served to bring this to expression.

• 1. Phenomenalism in the Theory of Knowledge and Individualism in Ethics.

Let us resume our observations of yesterday. I showed how, in the main, through factors I have mentioned, the People of the Christ was diverted eastwards and how, as a consequence of other factors, the Peoples of the Church developed in the centre of Europe and spread from there in a westward direction. I then pointed out how the various conflicts which arose at the turning-point which marked the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch were connected with this basic fact. I also showed how, within that territory where the true People of the Church developed, through the fact that the Christ impulse to some extent no longer exercised a lasting influence, but was associated with a definite moment in time and had to be transmitted through tradition and written records, there arose the troubled relationship between Christianity and the politically organized church, subject to the Roman pontiff; and how then other individual churches submitted to Rome. These other churches, though manifesting considerable differences from the papal church have, however, many features in common with it—in any case certain things which are of interest to us in this context and which seem to indicate that the state church of the Protestants is closer to the Roman Catholic Church than to the Russian Orthodox Church, in which however the dependence of the church upon the state was never the essential factor. What was of paramount importance in the Russian church was the way in which the Christ impulse, in unbroken activity, expressed itself through the Russian people. I then showed how the radical consequence of this dragging down of the Christ impulse into purely worldly affairs was the establishment of Jesuitism, and how Goetheanism^T1 appeared as the antithesis of Jesuitism.

This Goetheanism endeavours to promote a countermovement, somewhat akin to Russian Christianity. It seeks to spiritualize that which exists here on the physical plane, so that, despite the circumstances on the physical plane, the soul unites with the impulses which sustain the spiritual world itself, impulses which are not brought down directly to the plane of sensible reality, as in Jesuitism, but are mediated by the soul. As was his custom, Goethe seldom expressed his most intimate thoughts on this subject. But if we wish to know them we must again refer to that passage in Wilhelm Meister to which I have already drawn attention in another context. It is the passage where Wilhelm Meister enters Jarno's castle and is shown a picture gallery depicting world history, and in the framework of this world history the religious evolution of mankind. Wilhelm Meister is led by the guide to a picture where history is portrayed as ending with the destruction of Jerusalem. He drew the attention of the guide to the absence of any representation of the Divine Being who had been active in Palestine immediately before the destruction of Jerusalem. Wilhelm was then led into a second gallery where he was shown what was missing in the first gallery—the life of Christ up to the Last Supper. And it was explained to him that all the different religions represented in the first gallery up to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem were related to the human being in so far as he was a member of an ethnic group. All these scenes represented an ethnic or folk religion. What he had seen in the second gallery, however, was related to the individual, was addressed to the individual; it was a personal and private matter. It could only be revealed to the individual, it could not be an ethnic religion for it was addressed to the human being, to the individual as such.

Wilhelm Meister then remarked that he still missed here, i.e. in the second gallery, the story of Christ Jesus from the time of the Last Supper until His Death and Ascension. He was then led to a third and highly secret gallery where these scenes were represented. But at the same time the guide pointed out to him that these representations were a matter of such intimacy that one had no right to portray them in the profane fashion in which they were usually presented to the public. They must appeal to the innermost being of man.

Now one can claim with good reason that what was still valid in Goethe's day, namely, that the representation of the Passion of Christ Jesus should be withheld from the public, no longer applies today. Since that time we have passed through many stages of development. But I should like to point out that Goethe's whole attitude to this question is revealed in this passage from Wilhelm Meister. Goethe shows quite clearly that he wishes the Christ impulse to penetrate into the inmost recesses of the soul; he wishes to dissociate it from the national impulse, from the national state. He wishes to establish a direct relationship between the individual soul and the Christ impulse. This is extremely important for an understanding not only of Goethe, but of Goetheanism. For, as I said recently, in relation to external culture, Goethe and the whole of Goetheanism are in reality isolated, but when one bears in mind the more inward religious development of civilized mankind one cannot say the same of the progress of evolution. Goethe, for his part, represents in a certain respect the continuation of something else. But in order to understand how Goethe is to some extent opposed to everything that is usually manifested in the Church of Central Europe, we must now consider a third impulse.

This third impulse is localized more to the West, and to a certain extent is the driving force behind the nations—one cannot say that it inspires them. That which emerged in its extreme form as Jesuitism, as the militia of the generalissimo Jesus Christ, is deeply rooted in the very nature of the civilized world. In order to understand this we must turn our attention to the controversy dating back to the fourth century which was felt long afterwards. From your knowledge of the history of religions you will recall that, in its triumphal march from East to West, Christianity assumed diverse forms and amongst them those of Arianism and Athanasianism. The peoples—Goths, Langobards and Franks—who took part in what is mistakenly called the migration of nations were originally Arians.

Now the doctrinal conflict between the Arians and Athanasians¹ is probably of little interest to you today, but it played a certain part and we must return to it. It arose from a conflict between Arius and Athanasius which began at Alexandria and was given new impetus in Antioch. Athanasius maintained that Christ is a God, like God the Father, that a Father-God therefore exists and that Christ is of the same nature and substance as the Father from all eternity. This doctrine passed over into Roman Catholicism which still professes today the faith of Athanasius. Thus at the root of Roman Catholicism is the belief that the Son is eternal and of the same nature and substance as the Father.

Arius opposed this view. He held that there was a supreme God, the Father, and that the Divine Son, i.e. Christ, was begotten of the Father before all ages. He was a separate being from the Father, different in substance and nature, the perfect creature who is nearer to man than the Father, the mediator between the Creator, who is beyond the reach of human understanding, and the creature.

Strange as it may seem this appears at first sight to be a doctrinal dispute. But it is a doctrinal dispute only in the eyes of modern man. In the first centuries of Christianity it had deeper implications, for Arian Christianity, based on the relationship between the Son and the Father, as I have just indicated, was something natural and self-evident to the Goths and Langobards—all those peoples who first took over from Rome after the fall of the empire. Instinctively they were Arians. Ulfilas's translation of the Bible shows quite clearly that he was an adherent of Arius. The Goths and Langobards who invaded Italy were also Arians, and only when Clovis was converted to Christianity did the Franks accept Christianity. They adopted somewhat superficially the doctrine of Athanasius which was foreign to their nature, for they had formerly been Arians at heart. And when Christianity hoisted its Banner under the leadership of Charles the Great² everyone was instructed in the creed of Athanasius. Thus the ground was prepared for the transition to the Church of Rome. A large part of the barbarian peoples, Goths, Langobards, etcetera, perished; the ethnic remnants who survived were driven out or annihilated by the Athanasians. Arianism lived on in the form of sects; but as a tribal religion it ceased to be an active force.

Two questions now arise: first, what distinguishes Arianism from Athanasianism? Secondly, why did Arianism disappear from the stage of European history, at least as far as any visible symptoms are concerned? Arianism is the last offshoot of those conceptions of the world which, when they aspired to the divine, still sought to find a relation between the sensible world and the divine-spiritual, and which still felt the need to unite the sense-perceptible with the divinespiritual. In Arianism we find in a somewhat more abstract form the same impulse that we find in the Christ impulse of Russia—but only as impulse, not in the form of sacramentalism and cultus. This form of the Christ impulse had to be abandoned because it was unsuited to the peoples of Europe. And it was also extirpated by the Athanasians for the same reason.

In order to have a clearer understanding of these questions we must consider what was the original constitution of soul of the different peoples of Europe. The original psychic make-up of the peoples who took over from the Roman Empire, who, it is said, invaded and settled in its territory (which is not strictly true, but I have not the time at present to rectify this misconception), the psychic disposition of the so-called Teutonic peoples was originally of a different nature. These peoples came from widely different directions and mingled with an autochthonous population of Europe which is rightly called the Celtic population. Vestiges of this Celtic population can still be found here and there amongst certain ethnic groups. Today when there is a wish to preserve national identity, people are intent upon preserving at all costs the Celtic element wherever they find it, or imagine they have found it. In order to form a true picture of the national or folk element in Europe we must imagine a proto-European culture, a Celtic culture, within which the other cultures developed—the Teutonic, the Romanic (i.e. of the Romance peoples), the Anglo-Saxons, etcetera.

The Celtic element has survived longest in its original form in the British Isles, especially in Wales. It is there that it has retained longest its original character. And just as a certain kind of religious sentiment had been diverted towards the East, with the result that the Russian people became the People of the Christ, so too, by virtue of certain facts which you can verify in any text-book of history a certain impulse emanated in the West from the British Isles. It is this impulse, an echo of the original Celtism, which ultimately determined the form of the religious life in the West, just as other influences determined that of the East and Central Europe.

Now in order to understand these events we must consider the question: what kind of people were the Celts? Though widely differentiated in many respects, they had one feature in common—they showed little interest in the relationship between nature and mankind. They imagined man as insulated from nature. They were interested in everything pertaining to man, but they had no interest in the way in which man is related to nature, how man is an integral part of nature. Whilst in the East, for example, in direct contrast to Celtism, one always feels profoundly the relation between man and nature, that man is to some extent a product of nature, as I showed in the case of Goethe, the Celt, on the other hand, had little understanding for the relationship between human nature and cosmic nature. He had a strong sense for a common way of life, for community life. But amongst the ancient Celts this corporate life was organized on the authoritarian principle of leaders and subordinates, those who commanded and those who obeyed. Essentially its structure was aristrocratic, anti-democratic, and in Europe this can be traced to Celtic antiquity. It was an organization based on aristocracy and this was its fundamental character.

Now there was a time when this aristocratic, Celtic, monarchical element flourished. The king as leader surrounded by his vassals, etcetera, this is a product of Celtism. And the last of such leaders who, in his own interests, still relied upon the original Celtic impulses was King Arthur with his Round Table in Wales. Arthur with his twelve Knights whose duty, so it is recorded—though this should not be taken literally—was to slay monsters and overcome demons. All this bears witness to the time of man's union with the spiritual world. The manner in which the Arthurian legend sprang up, the many legends associated with King Arthur, all this shows that the Celtic element lived on in the monarchical principle. Hence the readiness to accept commands, injunctions and direction from the King.

Now the Christ of Ulfilas, the Christ of the Goths was strongly impregnated with Arianism. He was a Christ for all men, for those who, in a certain sense, felt themselves as equals, who accepted no class differences, no claims to aristocracy. At the same time he was a last echo of that instinctive feeling in the East for the communion between man and the cosmos, between man and nature. Nature was to some extent excluded from the social structure of the Celtic monarchical system.

These two streams converged first of all in Europe (I cannot now enter into details, I can only discuss the main features). Then they were joined to a third stream. As a result of this confluence Arianism at first gained ground; but since it was a survival of a conception that linked nature and man, it was not understood by those who, as heirs of the Teutonic and Frankish peoples, were still influenced by purely Celtic impulses. They understood only a monarchical system such as their own. And therefore the need arose, still perceptible in the Old Saxon religious epic Heliand, to portray the Christ as a royal commander, a sovereign chief, as a feudal lord with his liege men. This reinterpretation of the Christ as a royal commander stemmed from the inability to understand what came over from the East and from the need to venerate Christ as both a spiritual and temporal King.

The third stream came from the South, from the Roman Empire. It had already been infected earlier with what one might perhaps call today the bureaucratic mentality. The Roman Empire—(it was not a state; it could best be described as a structure akin to a state) is very like—but different, in that the different territories are geographically remote from each other and different conditions determine the social structure—this Roman Empire is very like what emerged from the monarchical system though starting from different principles. Formerly a republic, it developed into an imperial organization, into an empire akin to what developed out of the various kingdoms of the Celtic civilization, but with a Teutonic flavouring.

Now the intellectual and emotional attitude towards social life which originated in the South, in the Roman Empire—because it envisaged an external structure on the physical plane—could never really find any common ground with Arianism which still survived as an old instinctive impulse from the East. This Roman impulse needed, paradoxically, something that was incomprehensible, something that had to be decreed. And as kings and emperors governed by decree, so too the Papacy. The doctrine of Athanasius could be brought home to mankind by appealing to certain feelings which were especially developed in the peoples I have mentioned; after all, these sentiments exist in everyone to some extent. The faith professed by Athanasius contains little that appeals to human feeling or understanding; if it is to be incorporated in the community it must be imposed by decree, it must have the sanction of law after the fashion of secular laws. And so it came to pass: the strange incomprehensible doctrine of the identity of the Father and the Son, who are co-equal and co-eternal, was later understood to imply that this doctrine transcended human logic; it must become an article of faith. It is something that can be decreed. The Athanasian faith can be imposed by decree. And since it was directly dependent upon authoritarian directives it could be introduced into an ecclesiastical organization with political leanings. Arianism, on the other hand, appealed to the individual; it could not be incorporated in an ecclesiastical organization, nor be imposed by decree. But authoritarian directives were important for the reasons I have mentioned.

Thus that which came from the south, from Athanasianism with its authoritarian tendency, merged with an instinctive need for an organization directed by a leader with twelve subordinates. In Central Europe these elements are interwoven. In Western Europe, in the British Isles and later also in America, there survived however a certain remnant of the old aristocratic outlook such as existed in the feudal nobility, in the old aristocracy, in that element which is responsible for the social structure and introduces the spiritual into the social life. That the spiritual element was regarded as an integral part of the social life is evident from the Arthurian legend which relates that it was the duty of the Knights of the Round Table to slay monsters and to wage war on demons. The spiritual therefore is operative here; it can only be cultivated if it is not imposed by decree, but is a spontaneous expression and is consciously directed. Thus, whilst the People of the Church developed in Central Europe there arose in the West, especially amongst the English-speaking peoples, what may be called the ‘People of the Lodges,’ to give a name to this third stream. In the West there had existed originally a tendency to form societies, to promote in these societies a spirit of organization. But in the final analysis an organization is only of value if it is created imperceptibly by spiritual means, otherwise it must be imposed by decree. And this is what happened in Central Europe; it was more in the society which later developed as a continuation of Celtism, in the English-speaking peoples, that attempts were made to rule in conformity with the lodges. Thus arose the ‘People or Peoples of the Lodges’ whose conspicuous feature is not the organization of mankind as a whole, but rather the division of mankind into separate groups and orders.

The division into orders stems from this continuation of the feudal element which is associated with the legend of King Arthur. In history things are interwoven. One can never understand a new development if one imagines that the effect follows directly from the cause. In the course of development things interpenetrate. And it is a strange fact that, in relation to its mode of representation and to everything that is active in the human soul, the principle of the lodges (of which freemasonry is a grotesque caricature) is inwardly related to Jesuitism. Though Jesuitism is bitterly hostile to the lodges, there is nevertheless great similarity in their mode of representation. And a Celtic streak in Ignatius Loyola certainly contributed to his consummate achievement.

In the East therefore the People of the Christ arose; they were the bearer of the continuous Christ impulse. For the man of the East accepts as a matter of course that throughout his life he receives the continuous influx of the Christ impulse. For the People of the Christ in Central Europe this impulse has become blunted or emasculated because it has been associated with a unique event at the beginning of our era and was later supplemented by the promulgation of decrees, state decrees, and by traditional transmission in conformity with Catholic doctrine. In the West, in the system of the Lodges, the Christ impulse was at first very much in question and so became still further emasculated. Thus the modes of thinking which really originate in this lodge impulse, which stems from Celtism and is a last echo of Celtism, gave birth to deism and what is called modern Aufklärung.³ It is extremely interesting to see the vast difference between the attitude of a member of the People of the Church in Central Europe to the Christ impulse and that of a citizen of the British Empire. But I must ask you not to judge this difference of attitude by the isolated individual, for obviously the impulse of the Church has spread also to England and one must accept things as they are in reality; one must take into account those people who are associated with what I have described as the lodge impulse which has invaded the state administration especially in the whole of the West.

The question is: What then is the relationship of the member of the People of the Christ to Christ? He knows that when he is really at one with himself he finds the Christ impulse—for this impulse is present in his soul and is continuously active in his soul. The member of the People of the Church speaks, perhaps, like Augustine who, at the age of maturity, in answer to the question, how do I find the Christ? replied: ‘The Church tells me who is the Christ. I can learn it from the Church, for the Church has preserved in its tradition the original teaching about the Christ.’—He who belongs to the People of the Lodges—I mean the true member of the Lodges—has a different approach to the Christ from the People of the Church and the People of the Christ. He says to himself: history speaks of a Christ who once existed. Is it reasonable to believe in such a Christ? How can the influence of Christ be justified historically before the bar of reason? This, fundamentally, is the Christology of the Aufklärung which demands that the Christ be vindicated by reason.

Now in order to understand what is involved here we must be quite clear that it is possible to know God without the inspiration of the Christ impulse. One need only be slightly mentally abnormal—just as the atheist is a person who is physically ill in some respect—to arrive at the idea of God or admit the existence of God by way of speculation or of mysticism. For deism is the fundamental belief of Aufklärung. One arrives directly at the belief of the Aufklärung that a God exists.

Now for those who are heirs of the People of the Lodges it is a question of finding a rational justification for the existence of Christ alongside the universal God. Amongst the various personalities characteristic of this rational approach I have selected Herbert of Cherbury⁴ who died in 1648, the year of the peace of Westphalia. He attempted to find a rational justification for the Christ impulse. A true member of the Russian people, for example, i.e. of the People of the Christ, would find a rational approach to the Christ impulse unthinkable. That would be tantamount to demanding of him to justify the presence of his head upon his shoulders. One possesses a head—and equally surely one possesses the Christ impulse. What people such as Cherbury want to know is something different: is it reasonable to accept alongside the God, to the idea of whom enlightened thinking leads, the existence of a Christ? One must first study man from a rational point of view in order to find a justification for this approach.

Not every member of the People of the Lodges of course responds in this way! The philosophers express their views in definite, clear-cut concepts; but others are not given to reflection; but all those who are in any way connected with the impulse of the Peoples of the Lodges, instinctively, emotionally and in the conclusions they unconsciously draw, adopt this rational approach. Cherbury started from an examination of the common factor in the different religions. Now this is a typical trick of the Aufklärung. Since they themselves cannot arrive at the spirit, at least as far as the Christ impulse is concerned, but only at the abstract notion of the god of deism, they ask: is it natural for man to discover this or that? Cherbury, who had travelled widely, endeavoured first of all to discover the common factor in the different religions. He found that they had a great deal in common and he tried to summarize these common factors in five propositions. These five propositions are most important and we must examine them closely.

The first proposition states: A God exists. Since the various peoples belonging to widely differing religions instinctively admit the existence of a God, he finds it natural therefore to admit that a God exists.

Secondly: The God demands veneration. Again a common feature of all religions.

Thirdly: This veneration must consist in virtue and piety.

Fourthly: There must be repentence and expiation of sins.

Fifthly: In the hereafter there is a justice that rewards and punishes.

As you see, there is no mention of the Christ impulse. But in these five propositions one finds the most one can know when one relies only upon the religious impulse emanating from the Lodges. Aufklärung is a further development of this way of looking at things. Hobbes, Locke⁵ and others constantly raised the question: since there is a tradition which speaks of Jesus Christ, is it reasonable to believe in His existence? And finally they are prepared to say: what is written in the Gospels, what is handed down by tradition on the subject of Christ Jesus agrees with the fundamental tenets common to all religions. It seems that the Christ wished to collate the common factors in all religions, that a divinely inspired personality (this can be envisaged more or less) had once existed who taught what is best in all religions. The Aufklärer found this to be reasonable. And Tindal who lived from 1647–1733 wrote a book entitled Christianity as Old as Creation. This book is very important for it gives us an insight into the nature of Aufklärung which was subsequently diluted by Voltaireism etcetera. Tindal wanted to show that in reality all men, the more enlightened men, have always been Christians, and that Christ simply embodied the best in all religions.

Thus the Christ is reduced to the status of a teacher: whether we call Him Messiah or Master, or what you will, He is nothing more than a teacher. It is not so much the fact of the Christ that is important, but that He exists and dwells amongst us, that He offers a religious teaching embodying the most precious element, the element which is common to the religions of the rest of mankind.

The idea I have just expressed may of course assume widely different forms, but the basic form persists—the Christ is teacher. When we consider the typical representatives of the People of the Christ, the People of the Church and the People of the Lodges, representatives who show wide variations, when we seek the reality behind the appearance, then we can say that for the People of the Christ: Christ is Spirit and therefore He is in no way concerned with any institutions on the physical plane. But the mystery of His incarnation remains. For the People of the Church: Christ is King, a conception which may assume various nuances. And this conception lives on also in the People of the Lodges, but in its further development it is modified and becomes: Christ is the Teacher.

We must bear in mind these different aspects of the European consciousness for they are deeply rooted not only in the individual, but also in what has developed spiritually in Europe in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and also in many of the social forms. They are the principal nuances assumed by the Christ impulse. Much more could be said on this subject; I can only give a brief outline today since my time is short.

Let us now return to the three forms of evolution of which I spoke yesterday. In its present stage of development the whole of mankind is now living in the Sentient Soul, corresponding to the age of twenty-eight to twenty-one in man. Every single man, qua individual, develops the Consciousness Soul today in the course of the post-Atlantean epoch. Finally a third evolution unfolds within the folk-souls of which I spoke yesterday. We have, on the one hand, the historical facts and the influence they exert, and on the other hand the folk-souls with their different religious nuances. As a result of this interaction, for the People of the Christ: Christ is the Spirit; for the People of the Church: Christ is the King; for the People of the Lodges: Christ is the Teacher. These different responses are determined by the different folk characteristics. That is the third evolution.

In external reality things always interpenetrate—they work upon each other and through each other. If you ask who is representative of the People of the Lodges, of the deism of the Aufklärung then, strangely enough, a perfect example is Harnack⁶ in Berlin! He is a much more representative example than anyone on the other side of the Channel. In modern life things are much confused. If we wish to understand events and trace them back to their origin we must look beyond externalities. We must be quite clear that the third stream of evolution which is linked to the national element is connected with what I have described here. But because of the presence of the other evolutionary currents a reaction always follows, the assault of the Consciousness Soul upon this national element, and this assault manifests itself at diverse points. It starts from different centres. And one of these waves of assault is Goetheanism which, in reality, has nothing to do with what I have just described, and yet, when considered from a particular angle, is closely related to it. Parallel with the Arthurian current there developed early on the Grail current which is the antithesis of the Arthurian current. He who wishes to visit the Temple of the Grail must follow dangerous and almost inaccessible paths for sixty miles. The Temple lies remote and well concealed; one learns nothing there unless one asks. In brief, the purpose of this whole Grail impulse is to restore the link between the inmost core of the human soul (where the Consciousness Soul awakens) and the spiritual world. It is (if I may say so) an attempt artificially to lift up the sensible world to the spiritual world which is instinctive in the People of the Christ. The following diagram shows this strange interpenetration of the religious impulses of Europe. We have here an impulse which still exists today instinctively, in embryo and undeveloped, in the People of the Christ (red); philosophic spirits such as Solovieff come to accept this Christ impulse as something self-evident.

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On account of its ethnographical and ethnic situation, Central Europe is not disposed to accept the Christ impulse as something self-evident; it had to be imposed artificially. And so we have an intervention of the current of the Grail radiating in the direction of Europe—a Grail current that is not limited therefore to the folk element. This Grail atmosphere was active in Goethe, in the depths of his subconscious. If you look for this Grail atmosphere you will find it everywhere. Goethe is not an isolated phenomenon in this respect and therefore he is linked with what preceded him in the West. He has nothing in common with Luther, German mysticism and its forerunners; this was in part a formative influence and helped to shape him as a man of culture. It is the Grail atmosphere which leads him to distinguish three stages in man's relation to religion: first the religion of the people; secondly, the religion of the philosophers portrayed in the second gallery, and finally the most intimate religion in the third gallery, the religion which touches the inmost depths of the soul and embraces the mysteries of death and resurrection. It is the Grail atmosphere which inspires him to exalt the religious impulse active in the sensible world and not to drag it down after the fashion of the Jesuits. And paradoxical as it may seem today the Grail atmosphere is found today in Russia. And the future role that the Russian soul will play in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch depends upon this unconquerable spirit of the Grail in the Russian people.

So much for the one side. Let us now consider the other side. Here we have those who regard the Christ impulse neither as an inspiration, as in the East, nor as a living force transmitted by tradition and the Scriptures, but as something rational. It is in this form that it spread within the Lodges and their ramifications. (In the diagram I indicate this by the colour green.) Later it became politicized in the West and is the last offshoot of the Arthurian current. And just as the Christ impulse in the Russian people is continued in the Grail quest and irradiates all men of good will in the West, so the other current penetrates into all members of the People of the Church and takes on the particular colouring of Jesuitism. That the Jesuits are the sworn enemy of that which emanates from the Lodges is not important: anyone and anything can be the declared enemy of the outlook of the Lodges. It is a historical fact that the Jesuits have not only infiltrated the Lodges, that high-ranking Jesuits are in contact with the high dignitaries of the Lodges, but that both, though active in different peoples, have a common root, though the one gave birth to the Papacy, the other to freedom, rationalism, to the Aufklärung. I have now given you a kind of picture of what may be called the working of the evolution of the Consciousness Soul. I described to you earlier the three stages of evolution proceeding from the East to the West which are based on the ethnic element. That they assumed the form of Aufklärung in the West, as a consequence of interaction, is due to the fact that every individual is involved in the evolution of the Consciousness Soul.

Then we have a third current of evolution in which the whole of mankind is involved and by virtue of which mankind ceases to develop physically at an ever earlier age. Today mankind as a whole is at the ‘age’ of the Sentient Soul, i.e. between the ages of twenty-eight and twenty-one. This applies to the whole of mankind.

In describing the first current, the ethnic current when folk or tribal religions arise within Christianity such as the religion of the Christ, the religion of the Church and the religion of the Lodges, we are speaking from the standpoint of the evolution of peoples (or nations) which I usually characterize as follows: the Italian peoples = the Sentient Soul; the French peoples = the Intellectual or Mind Soul, etcetera. We have described how the Consciousness Soul develops in every individual in the course of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In this consciousness we have the element that streams into religion. But from that moment begins the interaction with the other current, with the evolution of the Sentient Soul (common to all men) which follows a parallel course and is a far more unconscious process than that of the evolution of the Consciousness Soul.

If you study how a man like Goethe—though the impulses are often subconscious—nevertheless determines consciously his religious orientation, you see the working of the Consciousness Soul. But at the same time another element is at work in modern mankind, an element which finds powerful expression in the instinctive life, in unconscious impulses, and is intimately associated with the evolution of the Sentient Soul. And this is the trend towards socialism which is now in its early stages and will end in the way I have described. The initial impetus, it is true, is always given by the Consciousness Soul (as I have already indicated); but the development of socialism is the mission of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and will end in the fourth millennium when it will have fulfilled its purpose. This is owing to the fact that mankind collectively is at the age of the Sentient Soul, corresponding to the age of twenty-eight to twenty-one in man. Socialism is not a matter of party politics, although there are many parties within the community, within the body social. Socialism is not a party political question as such, but a movement which of necessity will gradually develop in the course of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. And when this epoch has run its course an instinctive feeling for socialism will be found in all men in the civilized world.

In addition to the interaction of these currents in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch there is also at work that which lies in the depths of the subconscious, the desire to find the right social structure for all mankind from now until the fourth millennium. From a deeper point of view it is not in the least surprising that socialism stirs up all sorts of ideas which could be highly dangerous when one recalls that they derive their impulses from the depths of the subconscious, that everything is in a state of ferment and that the time is still far distant before it will come into its own. But there are rumblings beneath the surface—not, it is true, in the souls of men at present, i.e. in the astral body—but in the etheric body, in the temperaments of men. And people invent theories to explain these stirrings in the temperaments of men particularly. If these theories do not explain, as does spiritual science, what lies behind maya, then these theories, whether they are the theories of Bakunin,⁷ Marx, Lassalle and the like, are simply masks, disguises, veils that conceal reality. One only becomes aware of the realities when one probes deeply into human evolution as we have attempted to do in this survey. All that is now taking place (i.e. in 1918) in the external world are simply tempestuous preparations for what after all is now smouldering, one may say, not in the souls of men, but in their temperaments. You are all socialists and you are often unaware how deeply impregnated you are with socialism because it is latent in your temperament, in the subconscious. But it is only when we are aware of this fact that we overcome that nebulous and ridiculous search for self-knowledge which looks inward and finds only a caput mortuum, a spiritual void, an abstraction. Man is a complex being and in order to understand him we must understand the whole world. It is important to bear this in mind.

Consider from this point of view the evolution of mankind in the course of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. First, the People of the Christ in the East with its fundamental impulse: Christ is Spirit. It is in the nature of this people to give to the world through Russianism, as if with elemental force and from historical necessity, that for which the West of Europe could only have prepared the ground. To the Russian people as such has been assigned the mission to develop the essential reality of the Grail as a religious system up to the time of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, so that it may then become a cultural ferment for the whole world. Small wonder then that when this impulse encounters the other impulses the latter assume strange forms.

What are these other impulses? Christ is King and Christ is Teacher. One can scarcely call ‘Christ is Teacher’ an impulse, for, as I have already said, the Russian soul does not really understand what it means, does not understand that one can teach Christianity and not experience it in one's soul. But as for the conception ‘Christ is King’—it is inseparable from the Russian people. And we now see the clash between two things which never had the slightest affinity, the clash between the impulse ‘Christ is Spirit’ and Czarism, an oriental caricature of the principle which seeks to establish temporal sovereignty in the domain of religion. ‘Christ is King and the Czar is his representative’—here we have the association of the Western element manifested in Czarism with something that is completely alien to Czarism, something that, through the agency of the Russian folk soul, permeates the sentient life of the Russian people.

A characteristic feature of external physical reality is that those things which inwardly are often least related to each other must rub off on each other externally. Czarism and Russianism have always been strangers to each other, they never had anything in common. Those who understand the Russian nature, especially its piety, must have found the attitude to the elimination of Czarism as something self-evident when the time was ripe. But remember that this conception ‘Christ is Spirit’ touches the deepest springs of our being, that it is related to the highest expression of the Consciousness Soul and that, whilst socialism is smouldering beneath the surface, it collides with that which dwells in the Sentient Soul. Small wonder then that the expansion of socialism in Eastern Europe assumes forms that are totally incomprehensible: a chaotic interplay of the culture of the Consciousness Soul and the culture of the Sentient Soul.

Much that occurs in the external world becomes clear and comprehensible if we bear in mind these inner relationships. And it is vital for mankind today and for its future evolution that it does not neglect, out of complacency or indolence, its essential task, namely, to comprehend the situation in which we now find ourselves. People have not understood this situation, nor have they attempted to understand it. Hence the chaos, the terrible catastrophe which has overtaken Europe and America. We shall not find a way out of the present catastrophic situation until men begin to see themselves as they are and to see themselves objectively in the context of present evolution and the present epoch. We cannot afford to ignore this.

That is why it is so important to me that people should realize that the Anthroposophical Movement, as I envisage it, must be associated with an awareness of the great evolutionary impulses of mankind, with the immediate demands of our time. It is tragic that the present age shows little inclination to understand and to consider the Anthroposophical Weltanschauung precisely from this point of view.

I should now like to round off what I said last week in connection with The Philosophy of Freedom by a consideration of more general points of view. From what I have said you will realize that the rise of socialism^T2 at the present time is a movement deeply rooted in human nature, a movement that is steadily gaining ground. For those endowed with insight the present negative reactions to the advance of socialism are simply appalling. Despite its ominous rumblings, despite its noisy claims to recognition, it is evident that socialism, this international movement which is spreading throughout the world, prefigures the future and that what we are now seeing, the creation of all kinds of national states and petty national states at the present time, is a retrograde step that inhibits the evolution of mankind. The dictum ‘to every nation its national state’ is a terrible obstacle to an understanding of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Where this will end nobody knows; but this is what people are saying! At the same time this outlook is entirely permeated with the backward forces of the Arthurian impulse, with the desire for external organization. The antithesis to this is the Grail quest which is intimately related to Goethean principles and aims at individualism, at autonomy in the domain of ethics and science; it concerns itself especially with the individual and his development and not with groups which have lost their significance today and which must be eliminated by means of international socialism because that is the trend of evolution.

And for this reason one must also say: in Goetheanism with its individualism—you will recall that I emphasized the individualism in Goethe's Weltanschauung in my early Goethe publications and also in my book Goethe's Weltanschauung when I showed that this individualism is a natural consequence of Goetheanism—in this individualism, which can only culminate in a philosophy of feedom, there lies that which of necessity must lead to the development of socialism. And so we can recognize the existence of two poles—individualism and socialism—towards which mankind tends in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In order to develop a right understanding of these things we must ascertain what principle must be added to socialism if socialism is to follow the true course of human evolution. The socialists of today have no idea what, of necessity, socialism entails and must entail—the true socialism that will be achieved to some extent only in the fourth millennium if it develops in the right way. It is especially important that this socialism be developed in conjunction with a true feeling for the being of the whole man, for man as a tripartite being of body, soul and spirit. The religious impulses of the particular ethnic groups will contribute in their different ways to an understanding of this tripartite division of man. The East and the Russian people to the understanding of the spirit; the West to an understanding of the body; Central Europe to an understanding of the soul. But all these impulses are interwoven of course. They must not be systematized or classified, but within this tripartite division the real principle, the true impulse of socialism must first be developed.

The real impulse of socialism consists in the realization of fraternity in the widest sense of the term in the external structure of society. True fraternity of course has nothing to do with equality. Take the case of fraternity within the same family: where one child is seven years old and his brother is newly born there can be no question of equality. One must first understand what is meant by fraternity. On the physical plane the present state-systems must be replaced throughout the whole world by institutions or organizations which are imbued with fraternity. On the other hand, everything that is connected with the Church and religion must be independent of external organization, state organization and organizations akin to the state; it must become the province of the soul and be developed in a completely free community. The evolution of socialism must be accompanied by complete freedom of thought in matters of religion.

Present-day socialism in the form of social democracy has declared that ‘religion is a private matter’. But it observes this dictum about as much as a mad bull observes fraternity when it attacks someone. Socialism has not the slightest understanding of religious tolerance, for in its present form socialism itself is a religion; it is pursued in a sectarian spirit and displays extreme intolerance. Socialism therefore must be accompanied by a real flowering of the religious life which is founded upon the free communion of souls on earth.

Just think for a moment how radically the course of evolution has thereby been impeded. There must be opposition to evolution at first, so that one can then work for a period of time towards the furtherance of evolution; this, in its turn, will be followed by a reaction and so on. I spoke of this in discussing the general principles of history. I pointed out that nothing is permanent, everything that exists is doomed to perish. Think of the opposition to this parallel development of freedom of thought in the sphere of religion and in the sphere of external social life, a development that can only be realized within the state community! If socialism is to prevail the religious life must be completely independent of the state organization; it must inspire the hearts and souls of men who are living together in a community, completely independent of any kind of organization. What mistakes have been made in this domain! ‘Christ is the Spirit’—and alongside this, the terrible ecclesiastical organization of Czarism! ‘Christ is the King’—complete identification of Czarism and religious convictions!^T3 And not only has the Roman Catholic Church established itself as a political power, it has also managed, especially in the course of recent centuries, indirectly through Jesuitism, to infiltrate the other domains, to participate in their organization and to imbue them with the spirit of Catholicism. Or take the case of Lutheranism. How has it developed? It is true that Luther was the product of that impulse^T4 of which I have already spoken here on another occasion—he is a typical Janus who turns one face to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch and the other to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and in this respect he is animated by an impulse in conformity with our time. Luther appears on the stage of history—but what happens then? What Luther wanted to realize in the religious sphere is associated with the interests of the petty German princes and their Courts. A prince is appointed bishop, head of synod, etcetera. Thus we see harnessed together two realms which should be completely independent of each other. Or to take another example—the stateprinciple which permeates the external organization of the state is impregnated with the Catholic religious principle, as was the case in Austria, the Austria which is now disintegrating; and to this, fundamentally, Austria's downfall must be attributed. Under other leadership, especially that of Goetheanism, it would have been possible to restore order in Austria.

On the other hand, amongst the English-speaking population in the West the princes and the aristocracy have everywhere infiltrated the Lodges. It is a characteristic feature of the West that one cannot understand the state organization unless we bear in mind that it is permeated with the spirit of the Lodges—and France and Italy are thoroughly infected by it—any more than one can understand Central Europe unless one realizes that it is impregnated with Jesuitism. We must bear in mind therefore that grievous mistakes have been made in respect of freedom of thought and social equality that must necessarily accompany socialism.

The development of socialism must be accompanied by another element in the sphere of the spiritual life—the emancipation of all aspiration towards the spirit, which must be independent of the state organization, and the removal of all fetters from knowledge and everything connected with knowledge. Those ‘barracks’ of learning called universities, which are scattered throughout the world are the greatest impediment to the evolution of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Just as there must be freedom in the sphere of religion, so, too, in the sphere of knowledge all must be free and equal, everyone must be able to play his part in the further development of mankind. If the socialist movement is to develop along healthy lines, privileges, patents and monopolies must be abolished in every branch of knowledge. Since, at the present time, we are still very far from understanding what I really mean, there is no need for me to show you in any way how knowledge could be freed from its fetters, and how every man could thus be induced to participate in evolution. For that will depend upon the development of far reaching impulses in the sphere of education, and in the whole relationship between man and man. Ultimately all monopolies, privileges and patents which are related to the possession of intellectual knowledge will disappear; man will have no other choice but to affirm in every way and in all domains the spiritual life that dwells in him and to express it with all the vigour at his command. At a time when there is a growing tendency for the universities, for example, to claim exclusive rights in medicine, when in widely different spheres people wish to organize everything with maximum efficiency, at such a time there is no need to discuss spiritual equality in detail, for at present this is far beyond our reach and most people can safely wait until their next incarnation before they arrive at a complete understanding of what is to be said on the subject of this third point. But the first steps of course can be undertaken at all times.

Since we are involved in the modern world and the modern epoch, all we can do is to be aware of the impulses at work, especially socialism and what must accompany it—freedom of religious thought, equality in the sphere of knowledge. Knowledge must become equal for all, in the sense of the proverb which says that in death all men are equal, death is the great leveller; for knowledge, even as death, opens the door to the super-sensible world. One can no more acquire exclusive rights for death than one can acquire exclusive rights for knowledge. To do so nevertheless is to produce not men who are vehicles of knowledge, but those who have become the so-called vehicles of knowledge at the present time. These words in no way refer to the individual; they refer to what is important for our time, namely, the social configuration of our time. Our epoch especially which saw the gradual decline of the bourgeoisie has shown how all rebellion against that which runs counter to evolution is increasingly ineffective today. The Papacy firmly sets its face against evolution. When, in the seventies, the ‘Old Catholics’⁸ rejected the dogma of papal infallibility, this consummation of papal absolutism, life was made difficult for them (and is still made difficult for them today); meanwhile they could render valuable service by their resistance to papal absolutism.

If you recall what I have said you will find that, at the present time, there exists on the physical plane something which in reality belongs to the soul life and to the spiritual life of men whilst on the external physical plane fraternity seeks to manifest itself. That which does belong directly to the physical plane, i.e. freedom, has manifested itself on the physical plane and has organized it. Of course in so far as men live on the physical plane and freedom dwells in the souls of men, it belongs to the physical plane; but where people are subject to organizations on this plane there is no place for freedom. On the physical plane, for example, religions must be able to be exclusively communities of souls and must be free from external organization. Schools must be organized on a different basis, and above all, they must not become state-controlled schools. Everything must be determined by freedom of thought, by individual needs. Because in the world of reality things interpenetrate it may happen that today socialism, for example, often denies its fundamental principle. It shows itself to be tyrannical, avid for power and would dearly like to take everything into its own hands. Inwardly, it is, in reality, the adversary of the unlawful prince of this world who appears when one organizes externally the Christ impulse or the spiritual in accordance with state principles, when, in the external organization, fraternity alone does not suffice.

When we discuss vital and essential questions of the contemporary world we touch upon matters which mankind finds unpalatable today. But it is important that these problems should be thoroughly understood. It is only by gaining a clear understanding of these problems that we can hope to escape from the present calamitous situation. I must repeat again and again that we shall only be able to contribute to the true evolution of mankind by acquiring knowledge of the impulses which can be found in the way I have described.

When I discussed here a week ago my book The Philosophy of Freedom I tried to show how, as a result of my literary activities, I was rejected everywhere. You will recall no doubt that in many fields my work met with opposition. Even when I attempted in the recent fateful years to draw attention to Goetheanism I was ignored on all sides. Goetheanism does not mean that one writes or says something on the subject of Goethe, but it is also Goetheanism to search for an answer to the question: What is the best solution, anywhere in the world at the present time, when all nations are at each others throats? But here too I felt myself ignored on all sides. I do not say this out of pessimism, for I know the workings of Karma much too well for that. Nor do I say it because I would not do the same again tomorrow if the opportunity presented itself. I must say it because it is necessary to apprise mankind of many things, because only by insight into reality can mankind, for its part, find the impulses appropriate to the present age.

Must it then be that men will never succeed in finding the path to the ‘light’ by awakening that which dwells in their hearts and their inmost souls? Must they then come to the ‘light’ through external constraint? Must everything collapse about their ears before they begin to think? Should not this question be raised afresh every day? I do not ask that the individual shall do this or that—for I know only too well that little can be done at the present moment. But what is necessary is to have insight and understanding, to avoid false judgement and the passive attitude which refuses to see things as they really are.

A remark which I read in the Frankfurter zeitung this morning made a strange impression upon me. It was an observation of a man whom I knew intimately some eighteen or twenty years ago and with whom I have discussed many different questions. I read in the Frankfurter zeitung an article by this man; it was from the pen of Paul Ernst,⁹ poet and dramatist, whose plays have been performed on the public stage. I knew him intimately at that time. It was a short article on moral courage and in it I read a sentence—it is indeed very encouraging to find such a sentence today, but one must constantly raise the question: must we suffer the present catastrophe for such a sentence to be possible? A cultured German, a man who is German to the core writes: in Germany people have always maintained that we are universally hated. I should like to know (he writes) who on earth really hated the creative genius of Germany? And then he recalls that in recent years it is the Germans themselves who have shown the greatest antipathy to the creative genius of Germany.

And in particular they harbour a real inner antipathy to Goetheanism. I do not say this in order to criticize in any way, and certainly not—you would hardly expect this of me—to say something that would in any way imply making concessions to Wilsonism. It is tragic when things happen only under constraint, whereas they could be truly beneficial if they were the fruit of freedom. For today that which must be the object of freedom must stem from free thoughts. I must constantly reiterate that I say these things not in order to evoke pessimism, but in order to appeal to your hearts and souls so that you, in your turn, may appeal to the hearts and souls of others and so awaken insight—and therefore understanding! What has suffered most in recent years is judgement that has allowed itself to be clouded by submission to authority. How happy people are, the world over, that they have a schoolmaster for their idol (i.e. Wilson), that they no longer need to think for themselves! This must not be accounted a virtue or defect of any particular nation. It is something that is now widespread and must be resisted: we must endeavour to support our judgements with sound reasoning. One does not form judgements by getting up an one's hind legs and pronouncing judgements indiscriminately. Those who are often the leading personalities today—and I have already spoken of this in a different context—are the worst possible choice, the products of the particular circumstances of our time. We must be aware of this. It is not a question of clinging to slogans such as democracy, socialism etcetera; what is important is to perceive the realities behind the words.

That is what one feels, what comes to mind at the present time when one sees so clearly that the few who are shaken out of their complacency awaken only under constraint, when compelled to do so by constraint. That is why one says to oneself: what matters is judgement, insight and understanding. In order to gain insight into the evolution of nations we must bear in mind these deeper relationships. We must have the courage to say to ourselves: all our knowledge of ethnology and everything that is concerned with the social organization is valueless unless one is aware of these things. We must summon up the courage to say this and it is of this courage that I wanted to speak. I have spoken long enough, but I felt that it was important to show the direct connection between the deeper European impulses and those of the present time.

As you are aware one can never know from one day to the next how long one is permitted to remain in a particular place—one may be compulsorily directed at the behest of the authorities. Whatever happens—one never knows how long we may be together—in any case, though I may have to leave very soon, the present lecture will not be the last. I will see to it that I can speak to you again here in Dornach.

• T1. Goethestudien und Goetheanische Denkmethoden (in Bibl. Nr. 36).
• 1. Arianism and Athanasianism. The doctrinal conflict between Arius (250–336) and Athanasius (d. 373) arose over the question of the divine Sonship of Christ. Arius maintained the Son was not God, that He was not of divine substance and not eternal, but a creation ‘begotten of God’. Athanasius defended the Godhead of the Son. Christ was truly the Son and truly God. Arianism remained the official religion of the eastern halfof the Roman Empire down to 378. The Athanasian doctrine, accepted by the Western Church at first, rejected by the Council of Antioch 341, but later supported by emporers Constantine II and Constans. The victory of the Nicene doctrine assured by the support of the Church Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa. The second Council of Constantinople 381 confirmed the Nicene faith and in 383 Arianism was proscribed. See Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion.
• 2. Ulfilas, the Teutons and the Heliand. The migrations of the early Christian era led to tribal groupings. The Teutonic tribes (Germanic peoples or Germans) were composed of N. Teutons, E. Teutons (Goths, Vandals and Burgundians) and W. Teutons (Franks, Saxons, Langobards).
  
  The ‘Migration of the Peoples’ (375–568) led to attacks upon the frontiers of the Roman Empire.
  
  Ulfilas or Wulfila (310–383). A Visigothic bishop; translated part of the Bible into Gothic. (Codex Argenteus at Uppsala.) Major influence in conversion of Visigoths to Arian christianity.
  
  The Langobard Kingdom in Italy lasted from 568–772.
  
  Clovis d. 511 captured Gaul for the Arian Visigoths. Was baptized 496, established a Frankish national church and so won support for Roman Catholicism.
  
  Charles the Great overthrew the Langobards, Frisians and Saxons and united Germany under a single ruler. He was crowned in St. Peters 800 by Pope Leo III. The alliance of the Papacy and the Carolingians ensured the victory of Catholic Christianity.
  
  Other influences in the diffusion of Christianity were the monasteries, poetic works such as the Muspilli (830), the Heliand (circa 830) in which Christ is portrayed as King and warrior, his disciples as vassals. The purpose of the poem was frankly didactic. (This complicated period of history should be studied in some standard work.)
• 3. Aufklärung or Enlightenment. A rationalist movement originating in England and associated with the names of Locke, Hobbes, Hume and Newton; in France with Voltaire and the Encyclopedists; in Germany with Lessing, Wolff, Nicolai and Kant. ‘Sapere aude’ said Kant—dare to be wise, have the courage to use your reason. See Kant, Was ist Aufklärung?
• 4. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648) was called the ‘father of deism’. The five propositions in De Veritate 1624 were tenets of ‘natural religion’. He wished to show that Christianity and its doctrines were reasonable.
• 5. John Locke (1632–1704). In philosophy an empiricist; forerunner of the Enlightenment. See An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690.
  
  Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Philosopher: mathematicalmechanical conception of nature. Universe and man envisaged as complex machines. Politically, he looked to enlightened despotism; cf. Leviathan, 1651.
• 6. A. van Harnack (1851–1930). Protestant theologian and exegete; leading patristic scholar of the nineteenth century. Chief of the liberal Ritschl school of theology. Followed scientific-historical method, emphasis on ‘source study’. History of Dogma, 7 vols.; What is Christianity?
• 7. M. A. Bakunin (1814–76). Russian revolutionary and anarchist. Co-founder of the first International.
• T2. See Soziale und antisoziale Triebe im Menschen, [Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being] Bern, 12th December, 1918 (in Bibl. Nr. 186).
• T3. Note—the stenogram is unclear.
• T4. See 17th and 18th September, 1917, Das Karma des Materialismus (in Bibl. Nr. 176).
• 8. The Old Catholics. Party of reform in the R. C. Church who rejected the doctrine of papal infallibility and of Immaculate Conception. Movement founded by Döllinger in Munich 1871.
• 9. Paul Ernst (1866–1933). Neo-classic poet, novelist and dramatist. Strove to unite classical form and modern thought; cf. Der Weg zur Form, 1906. Wrote books connected with the war and its aftermath, Der Zusammenbruch des deutschen Idealismus, 1920.

Last night dear Frau Dr. Leyh died. I believe from the very fact of her expending so much energy in playing her part in this organisation during the last weeks of her life on earth, in spite of severe illness that made it hard for her to come up and down here—I believe that from the keenness with which she shared in our work you will have been able simply through these facts, particularly when you have so constantly seen her here, to feel what a delightful and precious personality has left us if one is to speak in the terms of outer space.

Those of our friends who tended her devotedly during the last days of her earthly life, who stood by her in friendship and devotion, have shown in every case of this standing-by, in all the help given her, how fond they had become of this personality. I need not dwell at length on what we all feel in our hearts. Those who have now had the opportunity of knowing this personality so well in her intimate circle, not only during her suffering of the last weeks but all through her spiritual striving, her wonderful spiritual struggles, which came to such a grand conclusion that even on her last day she was deep in many great ideas about our world-outlook—those with her in her intimate circle, and also those less intimately connected with her (as I said, I need not labour this) will send their thoughts towards the spiritual region
where henceforth our good friend will be. They will be following her and will use every moment possible to be together in spirit with one whom physically they have been permitted to be so closely connected with in the spirit of our world conception, in times when the friend who has gone could joyfully follow but also in times when she had to follow only with sorrow, what our Anthroposophical development wills.

In token of this, my dear friends, we will rise from our seats.

Yesterday I wanted to make it clear that, looked at from one side, the actual content, the deeper content, of the Christ impulse that has come into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha, has not been entirely imparted to mankind either all at once nor during the relatively long time that there has been a Christianity up to now. During the whole of the future, ever more and more of the content of the Christ impulse will be imparted to mankind; in fact there is deep truth in the saying of Christ Jesus; “For, lo, I am with you away even unto the end of the world.” And Christ did not mean that He would be inactive among men but that He would be revealing Himself actively, entering into their souls, giving souls encouragement, giving them strength; so that when these souls know what is happening within them they find the way, they are able to find the connection with the Christ and feel themselves strong for their earthly striving.

But just in this age of ours, this age of consciousness, it is necessary for all this to be clear, as far as may be today, and as I have said the content will flow forth in an ever clearer and richer stream for men. For this very reason it is already necessary today to make clear to ourselves what actually belongs to the revelation of the Christ impulse. To come to a right understanding on this point we must first be permeated by the knowledge that the human race has really developed, really changed, in the course of the earth period. One can best describe the change by saying that when we look back into very ancient times on earth, times long before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find on close scrutiny that the bodily nature of man was more spiritual than it is today. And it was this bodily nature of man that allowed the visions to arise which in a certain way revealed to atavistic clairvoyance the supersensible world. But this faculty, this force, for making oneself acquainted with the spiritual world by atavistic clairvoyance, became gradually lost to mankind. And just at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching there was indeed a crisis. This crisis showed that the force in connection with the revelation of the spiritual had sunk to its lowest degree in man's bodily nature.

Now from that point of time, from that critical point, there had to arise a strengthening of the soul and spirit, a strengthening of the power of soul and spirit, corresponding to the weakening of bodily power. Here in the earthly body we have to count on our body as an instrument. Man would simply not have been capable of acquiring in his soul and spirit the new strength necessary to meet the lowering of his bodily forces, had he net received help from a region that was not of the earth, a region outside the earth, had not something entered the earth from outside—namely, the Christ impulse. Man would have been too weak to make any progress by himself.

And this can be seen particularly clearly if we look at the nature of the old Mysteries. What purpose did these old Mysteries serve? On the whole it may be said: the great masses of our forefathers (which means of ourselves, for in our former life we were indeed the very men we now call forefathers) these men in very ancient days were furnished with a much duller consciousness than that of today. They were more instinctive beings. And the men of this instinctive nature would never have been able to find their way into a knowledge that is nevertheless necessary for man's good, for his support, for his growing powers of consciousness. And certain personalities initiated into the Mysteries, whose Karma called them to do so could then proclaim to the others who led a more instinctive life the truths that may be called the truths of salvation. This instruction, however, could only be given in those olden days out of a certain constitution of the human organism, the human being, a constitution no longer existing. The Mystery Ceremonies, the organisation of the Mysteries in their various stages, depended upon a man becoming a different person through the Mysteries. Today, this can no longer really be pictured because through external arrangements (recently I have given an account of these in the Egyptian Mysteries) (cf. R LII.) it is not possible at the stage we are in today. By bringing about certain functions, certain inner experiences of soul, the man's nature really became so transformed that the spiritual was liberated in full consciousness. But the pupil in the Mysteries was prepared to begin with in such a way that this spiritual did not become free in the chaotic condition that it does today in sleep; a man could really perceive in the spiritual. The great experience undergone by Mystery pupils was that after initiation they knew about the spiritual world as a man through his eyes and ears knows about the physical world of the senses. After that they were able to proclaim what they knew of the spiritual world.

But the time came when a man's nature could no longer be straightway transformed in this manner by such doings as those in the ancient Mysteries. Man did indeed change in the course of history. Something different had to come and the different thing that came was actually what at a certain stage man had experienced in the Mysteries, the inner resurrection, enacted as historical fact on Golgotha. Now this had happened historically. A man, Jesus—for outwardly as a man going about He was the man Jesus—had gone through the Mystery of Golgotha. Those who were His intimates knew, however, that after a certain time He appeared among them as a living being (how this was we will not go into today) and that therefore the resurrection is a truth.

Thus we may say: In the course of human evolution the fact once came about that at a certain place on earth the news was proclaimed that through a force coming from beyond the the earth, the Christ impulse, a man had triumphed over death: and thus the overcoming of death could actually be one of the experiences, one of the practical experiences, of earthly existence. And what was the consequence? The consequence was that in the historical evolution of man there had taken place something intellectually incomprehensible, something which should now develop in a special way, something belonging to the progress of man. For it is incomprehensible to the human intellect that a man should die, be buried and rise again. To save the evolution of the earth something therefore was necessary, something had to happen, in the physical course of earthly evolution that is incomprehensible to the understanding which can be employed quite well where nature is in question, but incomprehensible to the intellect that is applied to nature. And it is only honourable to admit that the farther men progress in the development of this intellect—and development in the consciousness age is pre-eminently development of the intellect—the more incomprehensible must the event of Golgotha become for this intellect that is above all directed to external nature. We can put it like this—anyone only conscious of the way the ordinary intellect is applied when directed to Nature, must in honesty gradually come to own that he does not understand the Mystery of Golgotha. But he must give himself a shake for nevertheless he must understand. This is what is essential—to give oneself a shake, and simply think oneself out above the sound human understanding. This is essential, it is something that necessarily must happen—to give oneself this shake so as in spite of all to learn to understand something apparently incomprehensible precisely for the highest human force.

There must be ever more and more a going back—the greater the development of the intellect upon which the flourishing of science depends, the more the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha will have to retreat before the intellectual development. It was for this reason also that in a certain sense historically chosen for understanding the Mystery of Golgotha—in the way I have explained the Mystery of Golgotha to you—it was not the cultured Hebrews, nor the cultured Greeks, nor the cultured Romans, who as I said yesterday converted it into different conceptions, but above all it was the northern barbarians, with their primitive culture, who in their primitive souls received the Christ Who came to them just as He came to Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed in the sense of what I was discussing with you yesterday it may be said: The Christ came first to the man Jesus of Nazareth in the event of Golgotha. There mankind was shown—the mankind of the Hebrews, the mankind of the Greeks, mankind of the Romans—the most important of all happenings in earthly existence. But after that Christ came once again, united Himself with the men who peopled the East and the North of Europe, who by no manner of means possessed the culture of the Hebrews nor of the Greeks, nor of the Romans. There He did not unite Himself with individual man, there He united Himself with the folk souls of these tribes. Yesterday, however, we had to emphasise that these tribes gradually evolved. They had to a certain degree to overtake at a fifth stage what at a fourth stage had been accomplished by the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin peoples. And yesterday we dwelt on the fact that it was only at Goethe's epoch that the epoch of Plato was reached for this later time. In Goethe himself, for the fifth post-Atlantean period, the Platonism of the Greeks of the fourth post-Atlantean period was repeated. Yet in Goetheanism man still had not come to the point at which he already faced the entirely new form of grasping the Mystery of Golgotha, but, as I said yesterday, he was in a state of expectation.

This attitude towards the Mystery of Golgotha on the part of more recent mankind can be particularly well studied if one comes to a real understanding of the personality, but for the moment the personality of soul and spirit of Goethe. It is absolutely in accordance with Spiritual Science for us to ask the following question: Where do Goethe and those who belong to him, the various minds who were in connection with him, stand as the eighteenth century passed into the nineteenth; where does Goetheanism stand with regard to mankind's evolution, with regard to understanding the Christ impulse? We might first consider how Goethe actually stood within European evolution.

Now it will be well here to recall something I have often said to you during these years of catastrophe, it will be just as well to go back to the answer to the question—where are the European periphery tending with their American off shoots? We should not forget that whoever turns his gaze without prejudice to these civilisations on the periphery of Europe, knows that in what English culture consists, in the cultures too of France, Italy, the Balkans, as as there has been progression here, but even behind the culture of Eastern Europe, all this has been rayed out from the centre of Europe; all these cultures have been radiated out. Naturally it would be dreadfully prejudiced to believe that what today is Italian culture, Italian civilisation, is anything but what has been radiated throughout Italy from mid-Europe, but absorbed into the Latin nature, still there in the language and outer form. It would be shocking prejudice to think that English civilisation is intrinsically different from what has streamed out from mid-Europe, and actually merely appropriated again in its language and so on in another way, in reality far less than the Italian or French way. But all that France, England, Italy and, even in mare respects, what Eastern Europe is, has been rayed out from central Europe. And in this centre there has now remained what indeed we have just found left after the streaming out of these cultures, what has remained as the womb out of which Goetheanism has evolved. We are faced today by this fact, a fact to be calmly accepted, that what has rayed forth into the periphery is working with all its power to bring to naught, to
nullify, even where soul and spirit are in question, everything existing in mid-Europe from which it has streamed. There will come a time when the world will look in a quite different way from how it does today upon this monstrous phenomenon in human events, where the world is reedy to set up as idols fourteen corpses of western thought. At some future date mankind will realise that there came about what may be called the absolute desire to exterminate what thus radiated out in all directions. It goes without saying that the tragedy of this fact will bear its fruit.

For connected with this fact, we see appearing in a further step forward of Europe's evolution, with the exception of the period during recent decades when other forces may be said to have held sway, all that prepared a way for itself and developed throughout the centuries by reason of the personal characteristics of those who in the most various directions developed these civilisations—we see all this streaming forth from the whole of Central Europe. How little inclination mankind has today for forming unprejudiced judgment on this point: I think I may say that, at the time the last traces were to be found of what assured the matter a fully scientific basis, I myself actually stood in intimate connection with it; my old friend, Karl Julius Schröer, was studying the various dialects, the various languages and the various natures of those sections of the people looked upon as German nationals of North Hungary, of Siebenburg and formerly of the various districts in Austria. Whoever observes here all that refers to the unpretentious dictionary and grammar of the Zips-German of Siebenburg Saxony in Schröer's studies which, in personal collaboration with him in the studies he was then making concerning the spread of mid-European culture, I was permitted to comment upon, whoever does this may say that he was still connected with a knowledge unhappily no longer even noticed today amid the confusion and turmoil of events. But let us look at this Hungary where, you must know, purely Magyar culture has been-supposedly established in the course of recent decades, since the year 1867; let us look there, not with political unreality, political delusion, political hatred, let us look in conformity with the truth. It will then be discovered that in the regions that afterwards, later, were supposed to be magyarised as countries of the Magyars, men from the Rhine were moved in—like the Siebenburg Saxons, men from further west, like the Germans of Zips, men out of modern Swabia, like the Germans of Bana. All this is the leaven forming the basis of the Magyar culture over which is now simply poured what then in reality was only developed very late as Magyar culture. At the basis of this Magyar culture, however, though perhaps not in anything expressible in language, but rather in the feelings, in the experiences, in the whole national character, there has always flowed in what has for centuries come from Central Europe.

Astonishing as it is, were you just to take the whole of European history, you could make a study of this in all the periphery regions of Europe. In the east the Slav wave came up against what radiated from the centre, and what radiated from the centre was pushed aside by the Slav wave—in the west by the Latin wave. And through a tragic chain of events, having, however, an inner historical necessity, the periphery then turned against what still remained in the womb of the centre, turned in such a way that from this turning a fact becomes clear—it may be believed or not, it may easily be mocked or scoffed at or not—what remained in mid-Europe grew out of Goetheanism, grasped by soul ant spirit in its reality and its truth, all this no longer meets with any understanding in the best intelligence of the periphery. Of this it might be said: The actual substance of what is the essence of mid-Europe is spoken of everywhere, even in the American countries, as though people had no notion of it. People may have no notion of it, but world history will bring it to the surface. This is what can give one strength in a certain sense to be able to hold fast to it.

It is true, my dear friends, on Silvester eve I gave you here a picture worked out by a man who is well able to make a calculation about the future relations of central Europe. (see Z 269.) If everything is fulfilled, even if only part is fulfilled, of what the periphery countries are wanting, these relations cannot be otherwise. But out of all this, the extermination of which for external existence has been decided upon, indeed the extermination of which will be fulfilled above everything else during the next years, the next decades—for so it has been determined in the councils of the periphery powers—within all this there has been the last shaping of what we described yesterday; there was within it the last shaping of what is nevertheless important as a leaven for the evolution of men. It must flow in, this evolution simply must go on of which I gave you a picture in what has to do with the Magyars. This radiating will indeed continue.

But particularly in central Europe all that during the last decades has certainly been very little understood there, will have to be grasped. Something of the nature of what lies in the aims of the threefold ordering of social existence, as I have presented it, will have to be understood. It will be central Europe itself that will be called upon to understand this threefold ordering. And perhaps if this centre of Europe has no external state, if this centre of Europe is obliged to live tragically in chaos, there will then be the first beginnings of understanding that we have to overcome those old outlooks for which the periphery of Europe is at present struggling, for these old outlooks will be unable to be maintained even by the European periphery. The old concept of the state will vanish, it will give place to the separation into three parts. And what constitutes Goetheanism will indeed have to enter this external life. Whether or not it is given this name is immaterial. The essential thing is that Goethe's world-outlook foresees what simply must be made clear also where the forming of human society is concerned. But all this can be discovered only if we take the trouble to understand this representative, this most representative being of all Germans—Goethe. For he is such a perfect representative of the German nature just because he is so entirely without national Chauvinism or anything at all reminiscent of Chauvinism or nationalism, as understood today. There must be an attempt to understand this man who represents all that is new, this most modern man, at the same time this most fruitful of men in his being for all that is spiritual culture. It cannot be said that mankind have yet reached a high point in their comprehension of Goethe. In his environment Goethe felt very mush alone. And even were Goethe one of those personalities who accustom themselves to social intercourse, who even develop a certain adroitness and grace in society so that a possible relation is set up to their environment, even were this so, the real Goethe living in the inner circle of Weimar and later in outward appearance the stout Privy Councillor with the double chin—the man who inwardly lived in this stout Privy Councillor felt lonely. And in a certain way he may be said still to be alone today. He is alone for a quite definite reason and must feel himself alone. This feeling of cultural isolation, this feeling of his that he was not understood, perhaps underlay his remarkable saying of later years: “Perhaps a hundred years hence Germans will be different from what they are now, perhaps from scholars they will have grown into human beings.”

My dear friends, this saying must touch us in the very depths of our soul. For, you see, we may look at the last years of the eighties, for example. When after the death of the last of Goethe's grandchildren in Weimar the Archives of Goethe and Schiller and the Goethe Society were founded, these were founded by a gathering of men—truly I want to say it in the best sense of the word—by a gathering of scholars. In fact the Goethe cult was organised by men, by personalities, who really had not grown out of scholars into men. One may even go farther. You know how much I revere Herman Grimm, the art historian, the subtle essayist (cf. The Story of My Life, also E.N.43.) and I have never made any secret of my admiration nor spoken to you in any different way about my admiration for Herman Grimm. I have also unconditionally admitted to you that I consider what has come from Herman Grimm's pen about Goethe as the best book as biography, as monography, that has been written about him. But now take this book of Herman Grimm's; it is written out of a certain human affection and width of outlook, but take it as giving a picture of Goethe himself which arises when you have let the book have its affect upon you. What is this figure Goethe? It is just a ghost, a ghost rather than the living Goethe. If these things are taken earnestly and in a spirit worthy of them one cannot help feeling that should Herman Grimm meet Goethe today, or had he met Goethe during his life time, because he harboured fervent admiration for him in the tradition built up about Goethe, he would have been ready at any moment to say: Goethe is predestined to be the spiritual king not only of mid-Europe but of all mankind. Indeed Herman Grimm, had it come his way, would have even gone to great lengths to serve as herald, had it been a question of making Goethe king of all earthly culture. But neither can one get free of the other feelings Had Herman Grimm got into conversation with Goethe, or Goethe with Herman Grimm, Herman Grimm would hardly have found it possible to understand what was in the depths of Goethe's being. For what he portrays in his book, although undoubtedly the best he knew of Goethe, is nothing but the shadow thrown by Goethe on his surroundings, the impression he made upon his age. There is nothing here, not even the slightest suggestion, of what lived in Goethe's soul—but merely a ghost out of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and not what was living deep down in Goethe.

This is a remarkable phenomenon which must be pondered in the soul in all seriousness and with due consideration. And if we look away from all this well, not Goetheanism but Goethe-worship that even a hundred years after Goethe is in reality far more scholarly than human, if we look back at Goethe himself, beneath much of what is great, much of what is grandiose confronting us in Goethe, we see one thing above all. Much, curiously much in Goethe—just take The Mysteries Frau Dr. Steiner recited here a short time ago, take the Pandora, take the Prometheus Fragment, (cf. E.N. 36) or some other work, take the fact that The Natural Daughter is only the first part of an incomplete trilogy, or the fact that in this fragment there was expressed something of the very greatest that lived in Goethe, and you have the strange, the quite strange, fact that when Goethe set himself to express what was greatest he never brought it to a conclusion. This was because he was sufficiently honest, not outwardly to round off the matter, to bring it to perfection, as a poet, an artist, will even do, but simply to leave off when the inner source of strength became dry. This is the reason wily so much remained unfinished: But the matter goes further, my dear friends. The matter goes far enough for us to be able to say: In an external way Faust is certainly brought to a conclusion, but how much in Faust is inwardly unsound, how much in it is like the figure of Mephistopheles itself. Read what I have said about Faust and about the figure of Mephistopheles in the recently published booklet on Goethe, where I spoke of how Goethe in his Mephistopheles set up a figure that in reality does not exist, for In this figure the two figures of Lucifer and Ahriman merge into one another and interweave in a chaotic way. And in the course of the week you will see presented here the last scenes before the appearance of Helen, before the third Act of the second part of Faust, something completed in Goethe's advanced age, something, however, on the one hand impressive, deep, powerful, on the other hand though finished to outward appearance, inwardly quite unfinished. It contains everywhere hints of what Goethe was hankering after, which however would not come into his soul. If we regard Faust from the point of view of its human greatness we have before us a work of gigantic proportions; if we look from the point of view of the greatness that would have lived in it had Goethe in his time been able to bring forth all that lay in his soul, then we have a frail, brittle work everywhere incomplete in itself. (see R LV.)

What Goethe left to those coming after him is perhaps the most powerful testament. That they should not only acknowledge him, that they do not acknowledge him today as a great scholar, or even as a man of certain culture, is easy to understand but Goethe did not make our attitude to him as easy as that. Goethe has to live among us as if he were still alive; he must be further felt, further thought. What is most significant in Goetheanism does not remain where Goethe was, for in his time he was not able to bring it into his soul out of the spiritual, and only the tendency is everywhere present. Goethe demands of us that we should work with him, think with him, feel with him, that we should carry on his task just as though he were standing behind each one of us, tapping us on the shoulder, giving us advice. In this sense it may be said that the whole of the nineteenth century and up to our own time, Goethe has been given the cold shoulder. And the task of our time is to find the way back to Goethe. Strictly speaking nothing is more foreign to real Goetheanism than the whole earthly culture, external earthly culture, with the exception of the modicum of spiritual culture that we have—nothing is more foreign than the earthly culture of the end of the nineteenth century or even of the twentieth century. The way back to Goethe must be found through the Spiritual Science of Anthroposophy.

This can be understood only by one who can go straight for the question: where did Goethe stand actually and in reality? You have from Goethe the most honest human avowal (I spoke of this yesterday) that he started out from paganism as it also corresponded to Platonism. The boy erected for himself a pagan altar to Nature, then the man Goethe was most strongly influenced not by all that was derived from the traditional Christianity of the Church, this fundamentally always remained foreign to him because his world-outlook is a world-outlook of expectancy, of awaiting the new understanding of the mystery of Golgotha. Those who in the old, traditional sense embraced the faith of the Christian Church in comfort, or even wished within this Christian Church to carry through all manner of purely outward reforms, were not in reality, closely related to him inwardly, where soul and spirit are concerned. Actually he always felt as he did when, travelling with the two apparently good Christians Lavater and Baswdow; two men who represented a progressive but at the same time old ecclesiastical Christianity, he said: “Prophets to right, prophets to left and the worldling in the middle.” It was his actual feeling between two of his contemporaries that he thus gave voice to; as opposed to the Christians around him he was always the definite non-Christian for the very reason that he was to prepare mankind for the Christ mood of waiting.

And so we see three men in a remarkable war having the very greatest influence upon his spiritual culture. These three men are actually thorough worldlings in a certain sense; ordinary Christian ministers were not popular with Goethe. The three personalities having such a great influence upon him are, first Shakespeare. Why had Shakespeare such a decisive influence upon Goethe? This was simply because Goethe aimed at building a bridge from the human to the superhuman, not in accordance with any abstract rule, not out of an intellectuality open to influence, but out of what is human itself. Goethe needed to hold fast to the human so that within it he might find the passage over from the human to the superhuman. Thus we see Goethe making every effort to model, to form the human, to work out of the human as Shakespeare did to a certain degree. Look how Goethe took hold of The History of Godfried Von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, Berlichingen's autobiography; how altering it as little as possible he dramatised this history and moulded the first figure of his Götz von Berlichingen; how then he formed a second figure out of him, this time more transformed, having more shape—then a third. In a way Goethe seeks his own straight forward path which holding to Shakespeare's humanity, but out of the human he is wanting to form the superhuman.

This he first succeeded in doing when, on his Italian travels (read his letters), he believes he can recognise from what is near to him, from the Greek works of art, how the Greeks pursued the same intentions, the divine intentions, according to which nature herself proceeds. He goes on his own path, his own individual, personal,true, path of experience. He could not accept what those around him said—he had to find his own way.

The second mind that had an enormous influence upon him, was that of a decided non-Christian, namely, Spinoza. In Spinoza he had the possibility of finding the divine in the way this divine is found a man wishing to make a road for himself leading from the human to the superhuman. Fundamentally Spinoza's thoughts bear the last impression of the intellectual age of the old Hebrew approach to God. As such, Spinoza's thoughts are very far from the Christ-impulse. Spinoza's thoughts, however, are such that the human soul as it were finds in them the thread to which to hold when seeking that way. There within men is my being, from this human being I seek to press on to what is superhuman. This way that he could follow, that he did not have to have dictated to him, that be could fellow while following Spinoza, this path Goethe in a certain sense, at a certain stage in his life, looked upon as his.

And the third of the spirits having the greatest influence upon him was the botanist Linnaeus. Why Linnaeus? Linnaeus for the reason that Goethe would have no other kind botanical science, no other science of the living being, but one which simply placed the living beings in juxtaposition, in a row as Linnaeus has done. Goethe would have nothing to do with the abstract thinking that thinks out all kinds of thoughts about plant classes, species and so on. What he considered important was to let Linnaeus work upon him as a man who placed things beside one another. For from a higher standpoint than that of the people who follow up the plants in an abstract way, what Linnaeus conscientiously placed next to each other as plant forms Goethe wanted to pursue after his own fashion, just as the spirit makes itself felt in this side by side arrangement.

It is just these three spirits who really could give Goethe what was lacking in the intimate circle of his life at the time, but was something he had to find outside; it is just these spirits who had the strongest influence upon him. Goethe himself had nothing of Shakespeare in him, for when he came to the climax of his art he created his Natural Daughter, which certainly contained nothing of Shakespeare's art but strove after something entirely different. He could, however, develop his inmost being only by educating himself in Shakespeare. Goethe's world-outlook had nothing in it of the abstract Spinoza; what was deep within Goethe, however, as his way to God could only be reached through Spinoza. Goethe's morphology had nothing of the placing side by side of the organic being, as in the case of Linnaeus, but, Goethe needed the possibility of taking from Linnaeus what he himself did not have. And what he had to give was something new.

Thus then did Goethe develop and came to his fortieth year, brought up on Shakespeare, Linnaeus and Spinoza; and having gone through what in the way of art Italy could show him he said when there about these works of art: “Here is necessity, here is God”. And as he lived in the spirit of his epoch there took place in him in a strong but unconscious way, also, however, to a certain extent consciously, what may be called his meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold.

And now, bearing in mind his passing the Guardian of the Threshold in the early nineties of the eighteenth century, compare words sounding like prayers to Isis in ancient Egypt, reminiscent of the old Egyptian Isis, such as those in the Prose-Hymn to Nature just recited to you by Frau Dr. Steiner—compare these words in which Goethe had still a quite pagan feeling, with those that as powerful imagination meet you in The Fairy tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, there you have Goethe's path from paganism to Christianity. But there in pictures stands what Goethe became after going through the region of the Threshold, after he passed the Guardian of the Threshold. It stands there in pictures which he himself was unable to analyse for people in intellectual thoughts, which all the same are mighty pictures. Whither are we obliged to go if we wish to understand the Goethe who wrote the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily? Consider what is written about the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily in the little book on Goethe already mentioned. (see Goethe's Standard of the Soul) When we really look at this we are confronted by the fact that Goethe created this fairy story of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily as a mighty Imagination, after passing the Guardian of the Threshold.

This fairy tale of The Green snake and the Beautiful Lily that has sprung from a soul transformed, sprang forth after the soul found the bridge from pagan experience as it still finds utterance in the Hymn in Prose. “Nature! we are surrounded and enveloped by her, unable to step out of her, unable to get into her more deeply. She takes us up unasked and unwarned into the circle of her dance, and carries us along till we are wearied and fall from her arms” . . . “Even the unnatural is Nature . . . Everything is her life; and death is merely her ingenious way of having more life . . .” and so on and so forth.

This pagan Isis mood is changed into the deep truths, not to be grasped at once by the intellect, lying in the mighty Imaginations of The Green Snake end the Beautiful Lily where Goethe set down uncompromisingly how all that man is able to find through the external science of Europe can only lead to the fantastic capers of a will-of-the wisp. He shows also, however, that what man develops within must lead him to develop the powers of his soul in such a way that the self-sacrificing serpent who sacrifices his own being to the progress of human evolution can became the model which enables the bridge to be built from the kingdom of the physical world of the senses to the kingdom of the superphysical; and between these there rises the Temple, the new temple, by means of which the supersensible kingdom may be experienced.

Certainly, in this fairy story of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily there is no talk of Christ. But just as little as Christ asked of a good follower that he should always just be saying Lord, Lord! is he a good Christian who always says Christ, Christ! The manner in which the pictures are conceived, the way the human soul is thought out in its metamorphosis in this fairy story of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, the sequence of the thoughts, the force of the thoughts—this is Christian, this is the new path to Christ. For, why is this? In Goethe's day there were a number of interpretations of this fairy tale and since then in addition to those there have been many more. We have thought to throw light on to the fairy tale from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. My dear friends, I may, (here in this circle I may venture to speak out about this) I have the right to speak about this fairy tale. It was at the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century when the knot of this fairy tale untied itself for me. And I have never since forsaken the path that should lead farther and farther into the understanding of Goethe, with the help of the mighty Imaginations embodied In the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. It may be said that the intellect that leads us quite well in our search for scientific truths, this intellect that can quite well guide us in acquiring an external outlook on nature and its conditions, at this precise moment so favourable to such an outlook, when anyone wishes to understand the fairy tale, this intellect is found absolutely wanting. It is necessary here to let the intellect be fructified by the conceptions of Spiritual Science. Here you have, transformed for our age and its conditions, what is necessary to all mankind for understanding the Mystery of Golgotha.

For understanding the Mystery of Golgotha the intellect must first be re-forced; it must move itself, jerk itself. No jerk is needed for understanding external nature. It has become ever more impossible for Latin culture as well as for the German—for the Latin because it is too greatly decedent, for the German culture because up to now it has not sufficiently evolved—it has become ever more impossible out of mere intellectuality to school the soul so far that it can find the new way to the Mystery of Golgotha. When, however, you develop the possibility in you, can you re-shape the forces of the soul so that they begin in a natural inner speech to find the passage over to the pictorial for which Goethe strove, then you school the forces of your soul so that they find the way to the new comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha. This is what is important.

Goethe's significance does not lie only in that he accomplished; it lies above all In what he does to our soul when we fully surrender ourselves to the profoundest depths of his being. Then gradually mankind will be able even consciously to find the path an which to pass the Guardian of the Threshold, the path Goethe fortunately, took while still, unconscious, and on that account was unable to finish just those works in which he wished to express all that was deepest in him. In this soul of Goethe's there lived a shimmering and glimmering of what was conscious and what was unconscious, what was attainable and what was out of reach. When we let such a poem as The Mysteries work upon us, or when we let Pandora work upon us, or any of the things Goethe left unfinished, we have the feeling that in this very incompletion there lies something that must free itself in the souls of those following after Goethe, something that will have to be completed as a great spiritual picture.

Goethe was lonely. Where it was a question of Goethe's real being he was lonely, lonely in his evolution. Goetheanism contains much that is hidden. But, my dear friends, even though the nineteenth century has not yet produced human beings out of scholars, whereas Goethe struggled through out of a scholarly to a human world-outlook, evolution must indeed go forward with the help of Goethe's impulse. I said yesterday and repeat today that the force bound up with the Mystery of Golgotha once united itself in a little known province of the Roman Empire with the man Jesus of Nazareth, and then with the Folk souls at central Europe after that, however, this force became inward. And out of what was weaving there inwardly in central Europe came such results as we find in Goethe and the whole of Goetheanism. But it is just the nineteenth century that has had a great share in letting Goetheanism lie in its grave. In every sphere the nineteenth Century has done everything possible to leave Goetheanism in its grave.

The scholars Who in Weimar founded the Goethe Society at the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century would much rather have belonged to those who buried Goetheanism than to those who could raise any thing of this Goetheanism from the deed. Quite certainly the time has not come for Goetheanism to be able to live yet for the external life. The time depends on what we have often spoken of, namely, on the renewal of the human soul through Spiritual Science. Whatever may come to this Europe that now in a certain sense would bring about its own death, the grave which above all, first of all, the lack of thought in modern culture is digging, this grave will nevertheless also be a grave from which something will rise again. I have already pointed to the fact that the Christ spirit united itself with the folk souls of middle Europe; Goetheanism arose in the bosom of these folk souls. A resurrection will come, a resurrection not to be conceived as political, a resurrection that will have a very different appearance—but resurrection it will be. Goetheanism, my dear friends is not alive, Goetheanism for outer culture is still resting in the move: Goetheanism must however rise again from the dead.

Let the building that we have sought to set up on this hill bear testimony to the sincerity of our purpose, with the necessary courage for the present time to undertake the bringing to life of G0etheanism. For this, it is true we should need the courage to understand and penetrate in its ungoethean way what has up till now called itself Goetheanism. We should have to learn to acclaim Goethe's spirit to the same degree as the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth have disowned it, denied it in every possible sphere. Then the path of knowledge acquired through Spiritual Science, a path that is to be found unconditionally, will be connected with the historical path of the resurrection of Goetheanism. But it will also be connected with what can come from this resurrection of Goetheanism, that is, the impulse towards a new understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, that right understanding of the Christ which is necessary for our particular age. Perhaps the pathfinder of the Christianity necessary for mankind in the future will be recognised as the decidedly non-Christian Goethe who, like Christ Himself, did not ask for the constant repetition of “Lord, Lord . . .” but that man should carry his spirit in his heart, in his mind; and that in Goetheanism it should not always be a matter of “Christ, Christ . . .” but all the more that what has flowed into men as reality from the Mystery of Golgotha should be preserved in the heart, so that this heart should gradually change abstract and intellectual knowledge, the present knowledge about nature, into something by means of which the supersensible world is seen, so that men may be given the force for a deeper knowledge of the world and for a shaping of the social structure that is worthy of the human being.

It is certainly understandable that in the soul of the present man, more than is perhaps otherwise the case, the need arises to understand time in its peculiarity. We are living in a time when events are taking place that not only demand the most tremendous sacrifices from many people, but which truly present human thought with difficult riddles, riddles of the most diverse kinds. Why did these things have to reveal themselves in our age in such a terrible catastrophe as it is now going through the development of mankind? This is certainly a question that touches the souls of today. We see the outer events well; we must only try to prepare ourselves more and more, not only to seek the proximate causes for such momentous events, but to turn our eyes to the deeper forces of the time, and to how these deeper forces are grounded in the overall development of humanity. Then we may perhaps also understand much that otherwise remains incomprehensible to us, that we can only stare at, so to speak.

Let us ask ourselves: What is a serious characteristic of our time in the deepest sense? — Well, we certainly cannot deny from discussions that have often been held here that in recent times, in all fields, what we call materialism, materialism in the broadest sense of the word, has emerged. Materialism! — today, let us not understand it in the sense of only directing our feelings, our sympathy and our antipathy to that which we label with the term materialism; rather, let us try to sense that an age had to come when materialism, so to speak, set the tone in the development of humanity. Humanity needed materialism, the passage through materialism. It must not lose itself within materialism; it must not, as it were, surrender to this materialism to such an extent that it loses the connection with the spiritual world not only out of sight but also out of mind. To ensure that this does not happen, to ensure that the connection with the spiritual world is maintained, is precisely the task of spiritual science. Today I would like to try to bring before you some of the developmental laws of the human race, which, if we understand them in the right way, can help us to understand what is happening around us.

That we live in the age of materialism is by no means due merely to the wickedness and depravity of the human soul at large, but to certain laws of development. Admittedly, the face of materialism in our age is not a beautiful one, especially when we can compare this materialistic face with the cultural face of older periods. Nevertheless, no one should fall back into reactionary thinking and believe that the old cultural developments should be brought back. What is quite significant for us about the nature of materialism in our time is that even outstanding, spiritually significant personalities cannot bring their soul impulses to an understanding of the spiritual world. They simply cannot. We must admit this to ourselves without prejudice. Let us take a typical example from the 19th century, a man who was much talked about in the second half of the 19th century in the international intellectual life of Europe: Ernest Renan, who endeavored to understand the Christ Impulse in a way that was possible for his time. Ernest Renan's 'Life of Jesus' caused a great sensation in the widest circles and had a great influence. But Ernest Renan is, on the one hand, a spirit who was serious about spiritual matters, but on the other hand, he could not form any ideas about the fact that man can find a way to an understanding of spiritual worlds. Let us take a saying that Ernest Renan made at a fairly young age; he said: “The man of the present is aware that he will never know anything about the highest causes of the universe and about his own destiny.” This is a leading spirit of the present day who speaks in this way, who actually presents it as an important insight when man becomes aware that he can never know anything about the causes of the universe and about his destiny. And he was not a superficial man, this Ernest Renan. He lived a life of insight. And it is characteristic that the old Renan, the Renan who had become an old man, made another characteristic statement. This man, who throughout his life immersed himself in the belief that man cannot find his way into the spiritual world, indeed, he had to impress this on himself as a higher realization, said at the end of his life: I wish I knew for sure that there was a hell, because better the hypothesis of hell than that of nothingness. There you see something spoken from the compressed heart of the present. Nothingness stares at man when he has the yearning, the desire to gain a spiritual world, a spiritual world into which man could enter when he passes through the gate of death. And a person who believes that he has achieved the state of being above such things, that he can do without such knowledge, who at the end of his life says: It would be better to know that there is a hell than to look at nothingness. — One must empathize with such things if one wants to feel characteristic of our time.

But we must be clear about one thing: humanity needs leading minds in every age. In ancient times it was the mystery priests, and in our age it is certain philosophers who are increasingly taking on a scientific character. A philosopher whom I knew very well said the following in his last work, “The Tragicomedy of Wisdom”: He says: We have no more philosophy than an animal and differ from the animal only in the frantic attempts to want to come to a knowledge, and by the final surrender to the non-knowledge. — The person concerned, who has thus come to the conclusion from his digging in the spiritual life that man cannot have more philosophy than an animal, has become a professor of philosophy and a university professor. Therefore, it is not surprising that, on the other hand, natures of a more profound bent want to seek some way into the spiritual world, and that, because they cannot bring themselves to do so, they throw themselves into the arms of the nearest thing, so to speak, that is offered to them by the impulses of the age, arising out of materialism. We see this from numerous such examples in our own time, such as Maurice Barrès, the Frenchman who has now also attained a certain fame among the crazed haters of the Germans during the war. Before the war, he was the typical leader of those young Frenchmen who, as far as possible, sought a path to spirituality. Maurice Barrès searched for a long time, and after a long search, he threw himself into the arms of popular Catholicism, the Catholic Church, as many young Frenchmen have done. In the end, it is only one particular example of a widespread trend, as it lives in our time and has come to expression in his becoming Catholic. But let us now try to look into the soul of a man like Maurice Barrès and see how he approaches the search for the spiritual life. I must say that the following is a characteristic saying of this Maurice Barrès. So a modern seeker of the spirit let the following words slip: “It is a futile effort to seek the beyond. It may not even exist!” And then he continues: “And however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers. Whatever form mysticism takes, it contradicts reason. But we still give ourselves to the Church, firstly because it is inextricably linked with the tradition of France, and secondly because, with the authority of centuries and great practical experience, it formulates the will of that ethic that must be taught to the people and the Church, and finally because, far from delivering us to mysticism, , it directly defends us against it, silencing the voice of the mysterious groves” - by mysterious groves he means everything that has come out of the mysteries - ‘and interpreting the Gospels, sacrificing the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society.’

Why should we surrender to the Catholic Church? Because it has understood, he says, to sacrifice the generous worldview of the Savior to the lukewarm needs of modern humanity, that is, to adapt Christianity quite well to those who want the same thing from Christianity that an average Christian experiences with his or her Christianity today. If one did not understand that there is a certain necessity for arriving at such a view, then one would have to call such a view, in the extreme, frivolous, cynical and frivolous. But that deeper minds in particular arrive at such a view, one should feel, and that is necessary to feel. We can only ask ourselves one question: What is the deeper cause? What is the deeper cause that it is so difficult for people today to find their way into the spiritual world? — Here we must once again turn our soul's gaze to the development of humanity, at least in the time that has elapsed since the great Atlantean catastrophe and in the fifth period of which we are living.

We have so far divided this development of humanity into the first period, which we have called the ancient Indian, the second, which we have called the pre-Persian, the third, which we have called the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian, the fourth, which we have called the Greek-Latin, and finally we have our fifth period; we live in it. In this fifth period, the very things have come about that we have hinted at from a certain point of view. I have tried at various times to characterize the development of humanity in order to place the present in this development of humanity. Today I will do so from a different point of view. This other point of view may again seem quite paradoxical when first considered, but let us at least take it up without prejudice for the time being. Let us try to equip ourselves with the way of looking at things that we can already have after having developed so many years of anthroposophy.

From what we have already absorbed into our souls, we can know that not only does the individual human being undergo a development in the physical world between birth and death, but that humanity itself also undergoes a development. Today, we are considering the fifth period of that development that follows the Atlantic catastrophe, in the manner just characterized. The paradox will arise when we ask ourselves: Can we speak of an evolution in time in a more precise way for humanity, for a part of human development, just as we speak of such a development in time for the individual human being? — We say: A person will first develop in such a way that he lives through the first seven years from the first to the seventh year. Then he lives through the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year – taken approximately, you know what is meant by that – then from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and so on. In a sense, the human being develops in stages, adding one year from birth to death each time a year has passed.

How can we think now, if we want to reflect on the indicated piece of human development? It will be useful if we also ask ourselves: How old is humanity if we want to compare its age with our own individual human age? At what age is today's humanity? It will not be uninteresting to consider this from a spiritual scientific point of view. And it is precisely this spiritual-scientific consideration that will bring us to many things. -— Years ago I have already characterized the same thing. It is the case in spiritual science that one can know many things and only after years can one formulate them properly or can reformulate them. I would like to give you a new formulation of the enigma hinted at today.

Let us first consider schematically how the development was:

First period, the primeval Indian development;
second period, the primeval Persian development;
third period, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian development;
fourth period, the Greek-Latin development;
the fifth period is ours; then comes the sixth.

If we now compare the age of humanity with the individual ages of man, how old was humanity in the first period after the Atlantic catastrophe? How old was it then? You see, if we knew how old all of humanity was, then we could compare how we have to see ourselves, how we place ourselves in the development of humanity with our life ages. It was not at all easy to investigate this question from a spiritual scientific point of view. One had to look first at the purely spiritual scientific fact, had to connect a meaning with this purely spiritual scientific fact of the first period. And when one had gained an insight into the particular spiritual configuration of humanity as it was at that time, then one had to ask: to which individual, personal age would this configuration of that time be comparable? And there you find out that humanity as humanity – not the individual human being, we will talk about that later – that humanity in this first post-Atlantean period has an age that can be compared to today's human age between the forty-eighth and fifty-sixth year. So you see, if you take the spiritual configuration of what was cultural life at that time, you come to the conclusion that humanity back then had an age that can be compared to today's age of man, and of course woman, from the forty-eighth to the fifty-sixth year. It was not very easy to get this information, but once it was available, it is an actual result of spiritual science.

Now the question is: What about the second, the original Persian period? The same observation had to be made again. It turns out that if you consider the nature of what was culture back then, it can only be compared to the age between forty-two and forty-eight years of age today. And if we now move on to the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian era, which ends around 747 BC, this corresponds to the human age from thirty-five to forty-two years. When we come to the Greco-Latin period, this corresponds to the human age from twenty-eight to thirty-five years. And when we come to our fifth, post-Atlantic age, this corresponds to the individual human age between twenty-one and twenty-eight years. And in the sixth period, we can predict that the sixth age will correspond to the age between the fourteenth and twenty-first year; and in the last period, before a new great catastrophe, the age from the seventh to the fourteenth year.

I may well confess to you, my dear friends, that the result that emerged when it was formulated was truly one of the most surprising things I actually came up with, one of the most surprising things. Because, isn't it true, it is based on a strange fact: while man is ascending in numbers, the development of mankind is descending. Strangely enough, humanity is getting younger and younger! That's right: humanity is getting younger and younger.

Now, of course, one has to ask oneself: what does all this mean on a broader scale? There are many developmental puzzles associated with this matter. I asked myself first: What does it mean for the first cultural period that humanity was between the ages of forty-eight and fifty-six? The following emerges: Of course, the people who were born and lived at that time first became one, two, three years old. That is clear. But then they also reached the age of forty-eight. For each person there came a time when they lived between the forty-eighth and fifty-sixth year of the individual development. And then these people could say to themselves: Now we are personally entering an age where we have the personal characteristics of old age that are contained all around us in the group spirit of all humanity. We grow into what is in our environment. Earlier, before the age of forty-eight, we had, so to speak, completed a development that belonged to us, that was for us; but at the age of forty-eight we grow into what is in our environment. If you then became older than fifty-six, you continued to develop, you just lived on and, in a sense, grew back into what was there before the Atlantic catastrophe. You then went through something that went beyond what was revealed in the group soul of humanity around you. So at the age of forty you found the connection to the group soul of humanity.

In the next, in the second cultural period, this connection was found earlier. Then one became forty-two years old and grew into what was in the environment, grew into what was aurically in all of humanity.

And then, at the age of thirty-five, you grew into it, so that between the ages of thirty-five and forty-two you could say to yourself: Now what is in me is in harmony with what is around me. After the age of forty-two, what was around you could no longer give you anything, so you had to live on out of yourself, so to speak, because the age of humanity had become so much younger. In the period from the age of forty-two onwards, you were no longer in the environment; you grew beyond it, you had to rely on yourself.

Thus the ancient Greeks and Romans were dependent on themselves when they reached the age of thirty-five. Between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five, he lived with his environment, and then humanity had nothing more to add to its age, because that was lived out; humanity could no longer become forty-eight years old if it had reached the age of thirty-five and was going backwards.

And we in the fifth period: just think, we live ourselves into the group spirit of humanity, into what our environment is, between the twenty-first and twenty-eighth year. From then on, our environment no longer provides anything. What comes after that, we have to attain through our own development, we have to draw from our inner selves, because nothing more flows to us from the outside. Mankind has covered the years up to the twenty-eighth year, and when we have reached the age of twenty-eight, then, yes, then we must have a fund, then we must have something within us that we can carry forward; otherwise we will never be older than twenty-eight. And now so much of the fifth period has already passed that mankind has just returned to the twenty-seventh year. So that if nothing is done to develop their inner selves energetically and to advance through themselves, people will only live to be twenty-seven years old. That's a lot, my dear friends! That means that if everything is left as it is, today's humanity will not achieve any intellectual or other soul development than that up to the age of twenty-seven. And if something is not poured into their souls to develop them further, then they remain twenty-seven years old for the rest of their lives.

They remain twenty-seven years old for the rest of their lives: that is a great secret of the present development of humanity. In the sixth post-Atlantic period, people do not get older than twenty-one years at all. If nothing is done to expand their inner life, to strengthen their intellect, initiative and will, then a general outbreak of early dementia would result. People would have to remain within a life development that ends at twenty-one years of age: anything later would be merely an insubstantial addition.

Let us consider this in connection with the individuality of the human being. Just think, we all become more and more mature in accordance with our individual, personal inclinations. A child is essentially always a materialist; a young person then becomes an idealist, but their ideals are abstract, they lack substance. Only in later years does one adapt to making such ideals that are immersed in reality, live with reality, that are truly realistic. Suppose a person today is completely a child of his time. What kind of qualities will he be able to show if he was not offered the opportunity in his youth to absorb something spiritual? That alone advances the soul. If he remains subject to the spirit of the age, then such a person's destiny is to make no progress beyond twenty-eight years of development. Whatever comes later stops at twenty-eight. Of course, if one is stimulated, one can progress beyond the twenty-eighth year, but the other is the rule; what I have described is what follows from the law of development. A person who does not advance beyond the age of twenty-eight, who remains twenty-eight years old even though he reaches fifty, fifty-six, or sixty, may under certain circumstances develop great abstract ideals, but he will have gone through only the years of life with their abstract ideals, but not the years of trial, which, in the spiritual sense, turn those who harbor such ideas into practical people, into people who realize how they can be realized, who not only dazzle people with the power of youth but who can realize themselves.

This naturally raises the question: could an example be given of a true child of our time who has grown old but is not beyond the age of twenty-eight? Of course, if one were to give such an example today in the world, which wants nothing to do with spiritual laws that also work in the development of humanity, one would be laughed at as a fool. But here among us, where we have developed so much spiritually, it may perhaps be helpful to speak quite specifically in order to better understand our time. Why should not the spiritual scientist be allowed to speak specifically to those who are his friends and who would like to hear something about the secrets of the time?

After really careful research into our time, I noticed a very characteristic example of a person who, no matter how old they get, is condemned to be no older than twenty-eight years old, and that is the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. Yes, you laugh, my dear friends, but for me this was a very significant realization that solves an enormous number of puzzles of our time. I always had to ask myself: Why do the ideals of this man, which he has expressed in various notes to humanity, blind so much, and why do they turn into the opposite of what is written in them? Because they are the ideals of youth, and remain as such, although the man who expresses them grows older. Because they are abstract ideals of youth, which do not want to be related to reality, which do not want to be saturated by reality, and which therefore cannot be applied to real practical life, in which not only the external material, but also the spiritual is at work, especially when it comes to the order of the social structure of humanity. As much as one can think today without what can only be established internally, so much can he think, Woodrow Wilson, no more!

A Wilson of the sixth period would only be able to live to the age of twenty-one, even if he lived to be a hundred years old. But you see, after all, the fact of the matter is this: when we consider the fourth period, the individual, personal age of man, so to speak, meets the descending age of humanity up to the thirty-fifth year at the center of this thirty-fifth year. There it coincides in the middle. Hence the peculiarly harmonious life of the Greeks, and the harmony between the individual life of the Greek and the life of Greek humanity. But now humanity has regressed and no longer passes through the years from the age of twenty-eight onwards. And the human being must go through them individually, really individually.

You see, this is connected with things that lie beyond the physical, sensual world. You can find out more about some of these things in my book 'The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and Humanity'. Today I want to present this from a different point of view.

In the first post-Atlantean period, through his individual development, when a person reached the age of forty-eight, he was able to connect with the age of humanity. However, this was connected with the fact that in those days, in this first period, there was still a close contact between certain entities of the higher hierarchies and between humanity here on earth. The entities of the higher hierarchies, which we think of as belonging to the hierarchy of the archai or spirits of personality, still descended to earth at that time, as it were, and united with human development; they inspired, actually intuitized humanity. The fact that humanity was able to develop to the point of only growing into the age of humanity at such a late individual age has resulted in humanity having a special connection with the archai here on earth. In the second post-Atlantic period, there was the same connection with the archangeloi, and in the third with the angeloi. But in the fourth post-Atlantic period, in the Greco-Latin period, people had to rely on themselves. In the third period, it was still the case that the angels, the archangels, descended and inspired people, intuiting them and giving them imaginations. Then came the Greco-Latin period: the spirits of the higher hierarchies no longer descended in the same easy way, so to speak, and people had to start commuting up and down, into the spiritual realm and then back down into the earthly realm. In other words, man had to find himself. But now, in the fifth period, we have entered an epoch in which the opposite must take place. Now we have to strengthen our inner being to such an extent that, during this fifth period, we gradually come close to the angeloi through our own strength, that we encounter them again, but through our own strength, and that the angelos in us sets the impulse for development; that we can find through ourselves what humanity can no longer give us through the higher hierarchies.

There you see why we have materialism in our time. There you see that there have been times when humanity, by being older, by not yet being as young as it is now, reached further up into the spiritual worlds, where it was, so to speak, from the very beginning closer to the spiritual worlds than man is now, when he approaches death, is close to the spiritual worlds. There you see the deeper reason for materialism, but also the necessary impulse to really seek something that can spiritually, individually, stimulate the human being inwardly, that can lead him beyond what he can absorb from his environment.

Even the education that, so to speak, only flows to man by itself cannot possibly give what brings more to man today than a lifespan of twenty-eight years. Therefore, the spiritual conditions must be spiritualized. If things were to continue as they are, if spiritual science were to be thoroughly drilled, if things were to continue as they do naturally, then a general standstill would take hold at the age of twenty-eight. If research were only carried out in natural science laboratories and clinics and only what can be given from the outside were found, if nothing were stimulated in the souls from within, if no science of the spiritual were sunk into the souls, but only what the greatness of modern times, the greatness of materialism, has brought were continued, then progress would finally be such that people would always remain young. But that would only be something if they remained young not only in their inner being but also with their bodies. But with the body they are already growing old. As a result, what lives in them no longer corresponds to the outward physicality.

Today it is still the case that in many respects it is precisely the inadequacy of what we experience with humanity that stimulates certain forces within us. We can only become twenty-eight years old through humanity, but we must live longer in the world in the various incarnations. It is the case that for the time being, when humanity is only twenty-seven years old, there are still forces that are further developed in the time between death and a new birth towards the Angelos. Today it is still like that. But when the sixth period begins, then man on earth will only be able to reach the age of twenty-one through what is around him. What has been developed by the twenty-first year? The physical body by the seventh year, the body of formative forces by the fourteenth year, the sentient body by the twenty-first year: only the bodily nature is developed. The soul, if the person does not develop it from within, the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, the consciousness soul: they are then not developed at all. The physical is developed up to the age of twenty-one. Then the human being would lose too much from his own powers to be able to catch up on what he has missed here, if he has not received any spiritual stimulation, even after death, between death and a new birth.

You can see from this that the point of view that humanity attains does not correspond to chance, but that it is a deep necessity, that it corresponds to a surprising law of human development. We can see this in many individual cases today. Indeed, there has never been a time in the development of humanity when people were so reluctant to recognize experience as something that life gives. Everyone today wants to be clever as early as possible. Why? Because deep down he senses that at twenty-eight he must be a finished product. For many people today, absorbing anything after twenty-eight years is an absurd idea, an absurd fact altogether. Then one lives one's life, but one wants to absorb only up to the twenty-eighth year, or even more precisely — and this is true of the facts — up to the twenty-seventh year.

But when we consider such a secret of human development, we also understand that when we speak of the necessity of spiritual development, it is not seen as an arbitrariness, but it is understood in such a way that this necessity really exists, that, so to speak, a person remains imperfect in our time if he does not take up a spiritual impulse. This is felt everywhere, and wherever life is not viewed in its reality. The strange fact that many people are so incapable of even entering into certain lines of thought is based on the fact that people do not even reach the age of thirty-five, that there are so few who can say something that is connected with the more mature experience of later life.

These things must be faced quite impartially and without prejudice, and from them we must draw the impulse to take in spiritual things. If we do not do this, we join those who actually want to condemn humanity to immature youthfulness.

Yes, certain thoughts and insights that come to us from spiritual science are indeed so profound that they seem deeply, deeply incisive to us when we are fully human, but we really only have to be inclined to feel the incisive at every moment. Because it grows out of the incisive, spiritual science, we need not be surprised if this spiritual science meets with resistance. It meets with resistance not only from the stubbornness of people, but from the nature of human development.

I may have told you a few paradoxes. In any case, it is already paradoxical for today's people that if you go back to the second, third, fourth cultural period, it is as if, in those days, people who had really found their way to humanity were, to put it trivially, on familiar terms with the angels, archangels and archai, had dealings with them. Yes, for someone who does not live to be older than twenty-eight years today, it is of course a crazy thought to claim that people once not only made agreements among themselves, but they communicated with angels, with archangels and with archai, as we communicate with each other today on the physical plane. That this view prevails and the other view seems a madness is only because people have forgotten old knowledge. In Plato you find a remarkable and very important passage, that is, during the period in which humanity offered man twenty-eight to thirty-five years. Plato said: Before the spiritual man sank into sensuality and lost his wings, he lived among the gods in the rational spiritual world, where everything is true and pure. And by this Plato means not only the life before birth, but the life in ancient times, when people still gained their knowledge from their dealings with the gods themselves. — I also hinted at this in the mystery play where an old initiate speaks of the old teachers who draw their knowledge from their dealings with the gods, that is, with the spirits of the higher hierarchies.

But certain things are connected with the development of humanity which, precisely because that is the case, are no longer understood at all. One has strange experiences.

Allow me to cite an experience that is both gratifying and disappointing. A strange word, isn't it, but it is true. It is gratifying because I have to mention the name of a man who was very kind to my writing 'Thoughts During the Time of War', from the northern countries, a person who likes to find his way into the world as far as he can, Kjellén, the state researcher, who is now in Uppsala. I do not want to attack or criticize the man, on the contrary, I have chosen this example because Kjellén is one of our friends. He has recently written an interesting book, 'The State as a Form of Life', in which he attempts to present a deeper understanding of the state. Yes, Kjellén is trying to gain a view of how the state should be an organism. For those who now see through these things and who, from the study of spiritual science, know how political science, if it existed today, should be structured in order to be fruitful in practical state life, reading Kjellén's book, even though one likes the author very much, is almost torture, a real torture. Why? Well, you see, Kjellén does not go any further than to ask: If one now regards the state as a whole organism, then man lives within the state. What then is the human being? It suggests itself: a cell! Thus, for Kjellén, the human being is a cell of the state organism. Kjellén builds much of his book “The State as a Form of Life” on this idea. The human being is a cell, as we have cells within us, and the state is the whole organism, which organizes itself through its various cells.

You see, if you just go out on comparisons – and that's all it is – then you can actually compare everything with everything. You can actually logically support any thought, because if you don't draw any consequences, you can compare an organism with a pocket knife. But it all depends on having a sense of penetrating reality. But if you look at Kjellen's book in particular, you immediately come across some very strange dead ends. In an organism, the cells are next to each other, one adjoins the other, and the fact that they adjoin each other and have the effect that comes from it makes the organism an organism. This can no longer be applied to the interaction of people in the so-called state organism. In short, if you want to remain abstractly logical, you can come up with any number of clever thoughts about it, write a rather thick book about it, and then indulge in the idea that it is also practical. But if you have a sense of reality, then the thought must be developed further. It must really be sunk into reality; that is the first step to understanding. I recommend that you read the book; it is a representative book of the present time. Buy it and read it and feel that agony of which I have spoken. It comes with the fact that the thought pops out: What can be compared to the organism if one wants to apply the thought of the organism to the social life of humanity? - Only the life of humanity on the whole earth. And the individual states can only be compared to cells.

The life of humanity on the whole earth may be called an organism, and the individual states may be called cells, but not a state as an organism and the individual human being as a cell. But in this way the whole thing is only compared to a plant, to the life of the state. Never with anything other than a plant organism. And if one wants to retain the concept of an organism, then one would have to take the organism and the human being would have to stand out. For the human being develops beyond all state life. He cannot be absorbed, like the cell in the individual organism, into this state life, but must stand out. That is to say, there must be spheres in the evolution of mankind that cannot be included in the state. It will be seen that man must reach out into a spiritual realm, that man can only reach into the state life through his lower anchorage, but upwards into the spiritual world. And here it is interesting how some researchers are suddenly confronted with the fact that people in ancient times, when the mysteries still existed, knew something about them. And Kjellen himself points to an interesting book, a book written fifty years ago by Fustel de Coulanges: 'La Cit& antique'. And he comes to the strange, incomprehensible to both the author Fustel de Coulanges and Kjellén: What was the old state? What was that? — Coulanges comes to say to himself: Yes, the old states were all based on worship. Why? The state was a form of worship because it was still felt that man had to reach up into the spiritual world. Someone could only set the tone in the state if he was initiated into the mysteries and received instructions about the social structure from the mysteries. It was still like that in the third and fourth periods. People come to it through external research, but they cannot do anything with it, even though they can even read about it in history.

It is tremendously tragic to read the last page of Kjellén's book “The State as a Form of Life” and see that he now wants to construct something that is political science, but is completely, completely discouraged by the fact that What are we to do with the cell? If one wanted to realize Kjellen's idea, one could actually only decapitate people, because they cannot, with their heads, belong to such a state, which would be constructed as Kjellen's science constructs it, since they must extend beyond the state with their spirituality.

You see, when you look more deeply at life, you come to very strange things. And that is why all that is still called political science today does not yet know what it wants at all. Nowhere is there a real political science by today's standards. All we have is mere talk. For a real political science will only be possible when we are once more oriented towards the way in which man is connected with the spiritual world, when we once more know how much we can organize in our earthly life together and how much must freely transcend the organization. These things must be brought up from certain depths. Here you feel, my dear friends, how things become tragic. Humanity must bear within itself the laws of its development, must have some sense of these laws of development.

In particular – please forgive me for mentioning particulars at the end – one comes up against terrible obstacles when one feels it as a necessity of life to think in a real way. To think in a real way also means to think spiritually, because if one does not think spiritually, one does not think in a real way, but rather one thinks an essence-less abstraction. If you have developed the habit of thinking in real terms, you will often come up against obstacles today. Please forgive me for choosing an obvious example that seems trivial.

For example, I can say that nothing impresses me less than someone coming today within the German-speaking world and writing so-called beautiful verses, perfectly beautiful verses, as most people still like them. Something that has undergone such a development as the German language, and has such developmental possibilities ahead of it as the German language, is where so-called beautiful verses today practically write themselves, especially in the immature youth up to the age of twenty-eight. If one solves artistic verse problems, then one does not arrive at what people today often consider beautiful verses, because these actually belong to what one enjoys when one transports oneself into earlier times. Therefore, many people today are quite successful at making beautiful verses, but the point is to advance in development. It may often happen that someone writes less beautiful verses but tries to create a new art form from an elementary point of view. Naturally many people will think it dreadful when someone attempts to create a new art form that is perhaps still very imperfect in relation to what it should become. You see, I would now like to say something personal. I will not speak of my opinion of the verses in which Mr. von Bernus expounded anthroposophical thoughts in Das Reich. But you can all be quite certain that, however little any one of you may have liked the verses, Mr. von Bernus could have produced verses like them off his cuff if he had wanted to write them. Things are not so simple after all. And today, when there is so much malicious disparaging and defaming of what we want, this magazine, 'Das Reich', emerged with the best of intentions, and it should have been supported precisely because of this very best intention, regardless of one's attitude towards the individual issue. Therefore it was hard for me to hear that Mr. von Bernus Schocke had received letters from our circle of members which slandered what was written in the journal. One would have had much more opportunity to look at what was directly aimed at destroying our movement. And so it happens that someone who has set out to tell untruths about everything in our movement can claim: “The Reich”, which is under the sign of Steiner.” Now, I have no more connection with this journal than I could possibly have with any other; I did not found it, it is the work of Mr. von Bernus, it is not connected with my personality. I write articles for this journal and am not responsible for anything. But anyone who uses the defamatory expression in a hurtful manner in one direction or the other can also know that - in such a case it is a defamatory expression - “this magazine serves Steiner's purposes”. On the contrary, one should be able to be pleased when something comes from a completely outside source. But so far we have often experienced that precisely those who wanted to support our cause were thrown stones in the way by our members, but that it was advised against to support our cause in good will and in a bold way, while one did not care about all the defamation that has happened on the whole.

There would be much more to say. I wanted to mention this because I really want to emphasize that it never occurred to me to talk about this or that in the “Reich” in any other way than to discuss it, that is, to see if perhaps behind the seemingly imperfect there is a striving for development , and I really had no desire to look at what many have looked at, those who have felt called to do so, which would be nonsense anyway, even if it were not distasteful to send their judgment in letters to the poet. That is the most distasteful and harmful way. For one need not approach personally with a defamatory letter the one who has endeavored to write about the matter. Even if the letter were justified, he could not understand it, he lives inside the matter. One may say one's opinion to all the others, only do not send it to the poet's house.

Now, my dear friends, all these things that are said only ever hit one side, the side of a few. But it is the case that, in society, the innocent are imprisoned with the guilty and now have to atone for them. That is what is more painful to me than to those who suffer from today's measures.

But there is one more thing I would like to add: anyone in society who merely communicates the one measure, that I will no longer discuss personal matters in private conversations in the future, would only say one-sided things. The whole thing is part of it: I expressly release everyone from the promise, insofar as they themselves want it, to keep secret something that has been said in private conversations. That is part of it, and that is the important thing. During the defamation campaign, believe it or not, these measures are so necessary that no exceptions can be made. But no one should lose anything. What can be done esoterically will also be possible when it has to be done in full public view. And I shall find ways and means, although I cannot and must not make exceptions in private conversations, so that everyone will be able to satisfy their esoteric needs in the future as well. Please be patient for a short time. Even without private conversations, there will be ways and means to ensure that everything that can legitimately be demanded for esoteric life is satisfied, without the damage that has been caused to our society by the defamation of private conversations.

And now I would like to say that I would like to bring up something that is deeply connected to what can lead us to an understanding of our difficult present, but that I am truly not finished with what I wanted to say to you during this stay. Therefore, for those who want to come, I will speak here again on Tuesday evening.

The day before yesterday we considered one the most important occult themes namely getting a glimpse into the Higher Worlds. Yesterday we had an open lecture in which we occupied ourselves with which method and tasks are needed to reach the stage when the slumbering soul's capabilities and powers can be awakened in order to make knowledge of the Higher Worlds possible. The theme to which we will apply ourselves today relates in a particular way to both of these, and stand in a certain relationship to all anthroposophical striving. What is so often expressed theoretically is that anthroposophic occult science can be nothing other than an all-encompassing, universal self-knowledge of mankind, a self-knowledge which leads to the deepest origins, the deepest existence of the individual “I” and how it is enclosed in World Knowledge. Not only, I can say, do you find this expressed often in theosophical literature and elsewhere, but is adhered to; genuine self-knowledge is an accompanying phenomenon which needs to run parallel with all real research into the areas of the Higher Worlds, running parallel with development of all our inner soul forces. The “Know Thyself” ancient human expression means a great deal, even much more so for the Anthroposophist. Today we want to explore that which we call in the occult scientific sense self-knowledge in relation to the most varied stages of human development. We will commence with the most ordinary, everyday self-knowledge and rise up to this self-knowledge which can be called World Knowledge in the anthroposophic sense; and to above all, relate each single element we discuss to what could be called “occult scientific” with constant consideration to the occult side.

Self-knowledge is considered so much more important within the anthroposophic world view because it, when understood correctly, can include the most High within anthroposophic striving, but falsely understood, can become extremely dangerous. Incorrectly understood self-knowledge tends to appear particularly at the beginning of the path of spiritual scientific striving which is pointed out in Anthroposophy, earlier rather than leading towards it. Goethe, with many references to this familiar field, once said that he has a particular distrust in the expression “self-knowledge,” as it means something which the human being represents basically as some kind of false melancholy, self-anaesthesia, caught up in an incorrect channel. This is correct throughout. We always have an opportunity in the occult scientific field to gaze at the complexity of human nature when we remember what we all know: with anthroposophic insight we have human members in the physical body, which comprises the ether and astral body, and what we call the actual Ego- or “I”-carrier (Ich-Träger). When we look at that which we basically call the Self, with all these members linked to human nature, we easily come to the conclusion that self-knowledge is something extraordinarily complex.

To anticipate the simplest, humblest type of self-knowledge, we must remember to differentiate between these four members of human nature—according to the present relationships between these members—the wakeful and dreamless sleeping human being of which we can now say: the sleeping human being's physical and ether bodies are loosened from the astral and I-bearer and the latter two are outside the body. We know at the same time that it is normal in the present human cycle, that the human “I” can only become self aware when using physical organs, and make observations on the physical plane. Thus we speak as it were in a spiritual scientific sense if an I-bearer existing through those conditions called unconscious sleep. We have to say that this I-bearer only develops consciousness and self-consciousness while entering directly into the field of observation and use physical organs, thus taken up into the physical and ether bodies. There we have today's normal human self consciousness before us and need ask: what is the being of this self-consciousness at the lowest level? Better even is to describe the question thus: How does the human being, how do we, come to understand that which lives in the physical body from morning to night, using physical organs—how do we arrive at knowledge of this being, or even of the self? We can easily believe that we need to look within and thus investigate ourselves. Here we discover all possible kinds of self-knowledge which could be cultivated and recommended. For example a person is advised to observe what he or she does, what their characteristics and faults are, they should brood within and search for their worth, how efficient they appear in one or the other activity—that kind of thing. Here already dangers arise in false understanding of self-knowledge and for this reason we must speak about these dangers. We always have it in mind that we should strive to rise towards the Higher Worlds. We also know that this rising up is something which makes a person quite different from what he or she was before, and therefore it is natural that various hindrances are encountered on the way. Through false self-knowledge the ascent becomes just as dangerous as it becomes firstly possible through genuine self-knowledge. This kind of self-knowledge which could rather be called the brooding of the everyday “I,” an awareness of faults, is false and a danger which works backward in fact, because a comprehensive measure for judgement is missing.

When a person, through ordinary consideration of his merits and faults says: “This you have done well, that you have not done well, you must improve,” it appears that he has developed a measure with which to orientate himself. This measure becomes so to speak the yard stick for all which the person will portray in future. In this way a person will never rise above himself and this is exactly what the Anthroposophist always recites to himself: “Don't remain stuck, on the contrary, again and again, step by step, move out of this fixed point”—a saying which should be taken to heart: Everything undertaken with reference to soul development as an advancement on your life path, is good; everything which holds you back at this point is basically a loss for the soul.—No self-knowledge which draws you into being overcome with remorse or drives one to self satisfaction, brings you forward. Only if we want to reach the possibility to have insight into what really matters, must we ask the following question: On what does the human being usually depend?—You can easily consider the following: How would it have been in my imagination, my experiences and feelings if this individuality which has gone from one incarnation to the next and which will repeat future incarnations, how would it have been if this individuality had not, for instance, been born at such and such a date in Vienna, but rather about fifty years earlier in Moscow? What kind of experiences, feelings, imaginations, thoughts and ideas would this individuality develop to create the characteristic keynote of his life? Something quite different! You easily realise with precise imagination when you reflect about it, how you, from morning to evening, going through your ideas and experiences, how much of this depends upon when and where you are situated in the world. Make an attempt to formulate a precise reckoning, drawing from your inner soul everything which is caused from the when-and-where of your birth.

Now throw out all these images from your soul life. Try to ponder what is left over and try to meditate primarily on how many of these images, which from morning to night permeate the soul, have validity and value other than being linked to the place and time in your life between birth and death. As a result you will see how important it is for the “I” to carefully consider the extent of the influences of the where-and-when. This is not realised in what broods within, but realised through proper consideration of the poetic saying: If you want to examine yourself, learn to know about yourself through others—through your surroundings. Thus we are oddly enough directed away from the brooding soul to say: we should, in order to get to know our “I,” encourage a watchful eye, an open sense for the unusual in the world content of the when-and-where into which we were born. The more we endeavour to develop this open perceptive sense towards the outer world surrounding us, so much more closely do we approach, in the spiritually scientific sense, that which at this basic level could be called self-knowledge.

Through taking a clear view and getting to know the entire tenor of our own time, let's try to clarify what, in the most manifold ways at our disposal, is the most unusual in our epoch and in the location in which we live. Highly individualistic is this self-knowledge, which directs us from ourselves towards our surroundings. Learning to know this outer world, we try to enter into the spirit of it and researching what has crystallized in ourselves as a result, we will recognise a mirror image of our Ego or “I.” This is an objective way. Looking into oneself is a danger. The causes why one is like this, or like that, need to be recognised. This can be found in the surroundings, through this we are deflected from ourselves. As a result we acquire the capability to recognise ourselves, as far as we are an “I,” through use of the physical organs and living amongst contemporaries.

The “I” is served by the organs of the ether-body, the life-body—the composition of this fine organism with which the anthroposophic occult scientist is familiar—penetrate the physical body and continuously fight against the physical body's disintegration. Similarly, when it dives down into the physical and etheric bodies in the morning, it works in the present human cycle in both bodies, including the etheric body. Nothing is added into our examination according to place and time, to when-and-where, but something else is added to the consideration. The ether body links to something quite different, which in a certain sense is tied even deeper to our self, something which surpasses birth and death. Here we discover a certain relationship the self brings along, something which had originated earlier and reaches into the future, something it already had, before it had been incorporated into a physical body. Seen from outside in a superficial manner, the ether body presents something extraordinary which we call talents, aptitudes, particular abilities and here we come to a certain connection which is an even more difficult area of self-knowledge. Although this which on a elevated level of higher development is called self-knowledge, even though still at a relatively low level, the human being here also doesn't come far when he or she broods in order to reach clarity: which are my talents and abilities?

Today it would go too far, to take as a basis the being of the human, regarding what I would like to say now. In self-knowledge lurk the worst enemies when we begin to search for clarity regarding talents and abilities through self-centred brooding. Right here we must shift our examination of the environment from the personal to the impersonal. Next we need to link the examination, with reference to the area of the ether body, to our common bond with this or that race. We need ask ourselves to which member of mankind we actually belong. We will occupy ourselves with researching particularities of this group to which we belong through family, race and folk, in comparison with the universal qualities of the whole human race. We get to know what continues through the hereditary stream, what develops from great-grandfather to grandfather and so on, and even what the self has as colouring in this hereditary line, which does not link directly with the when-and-where, but links to deeper basic laws of human existence. We learn to recognise these particularities within the laws and through this we find the right basis to which we can see how we rose from this background. However, everything brooded upon in examining this background is bad (Ubel). Anthroposophy demands an uncomfortable kind of self-knowledge from us compared with cliché filled alternatives, but in any other way we don't reach genuine self-knowledge, because a comparative measure is missing, because brooding on a single aspect fails to provide a measure with which to make a comparison.

Now I want to immediately link up to occult facts. We all know that our human body is surrounded by an aura, embedded in this astral aura, which is visible to the clairvoyant like an oval cloud. As a result of being born at a certain time and a particular place, makes the mass of our aura distinctly particular. Should we have a very limited outlook and actually only experience and will only judge and be led by our own will impulses not visible from our surroundings, being a product of where-and-when, then the clairvoyant will see our aura appearing as if squeezed, pressed together. The aura in this case is not large and not wide around the physical body. The moment we widen our outlook, the very moment we develop our receptive sense, an “open eye” for the observation of our environment, others can actually see how our aura enlarges all around us, how it becomes inclusive in relation to the physical body. We become spiritually larger within, through spreading our horizons in relation to our world of understanding and feelings. For the clairvoyant awareness it becomes gradually more obvious how people, as an echo of their environment, have a small aura. When we start to refine our judgement, making it independent, in order to reach that which distinguishes us from the mere common, then clairvoyant consciousness is able to see the aura spreading, enlarging, as we become refined and more extensive.

Grotesque as it may sound—knowledge of the environment is the first step towards self-knowledge. Knowledge of the family and race is the second step. With someone who tries to become liberated in their feeling and will impulses from aspects instilled by folk, race, family and so on, the clairvoyant will see not only an expanding aura but the aura becoming mobile, displaying vibration in contrast to its earlier immobility. It was mentioned already—not directly but in a certain sense—that what we call these particular colourings and talents inter-relate with the hereditary line.

How can we lift ourselves beyond all that which stems from the defining base, the causes of inner structures of the self? Mankind has not accomplished much by getting to know itself this way. With reference to our talents and abilities as a rule, not much can be done when we build an imagination upon descent and inheritance, we will not get any further. Here only spiritual scientific experience is valid. It involves the following: out of spiritual scientific experience mankind can become independent from his talents and abilities. This healing remedy hardly seems applicable, not at all similar, yet still it is a healing remedy: when we try to develop a warm, heartfelt feeling for something which hardly interests us, for something too bothersome to attempt involving our interested and especially if we make this interest many-sided, then we will lift our individuality out of our inherited abilities.

The first step, knowledge of the environment, will relatively soon be accomplished; the second—this self-education—only slowly transforms talents. Yes, attention must be drawn to the fact that now and then this incarnation must be renounced in order for the transformation of talents to be carried out, yet the way is introduced and it is extraordinarily important that we really try to do this. Clairvoyant vision will soon perceive how the aura becomes agile and vibrates. We will at least see the beginnings of transformation in our own nature. In this gradual resulting self-education there arises quite by itself what can be called impersonal self-knowledge.

Now we come to the third important area. We reach, through self-contemplation, what we express in our astral body—the bearer of desire and pain, of suffering and so on. The astral body is lifted during dreamless sleep out of the physical and etheric bodies. Ordinarily we are not aware of the astral body being separated from the physical and ether bodies. Clairvoyant consciousness can, but not common consciousness. What kind of rule in human nature will now express its characteristics in the astral body? Something is expressed from the self which we call karma, that which is particular to the self or the individuality, not only developed out of the hereditary stream but which continues from one incarnation to another, connected to individual deeds, with personal experiences of the soul, through incarnations. Our experiences through our bodies, and thus results from the law of cause and effect experienced in a purely spiritual way, bring us to the third step in examining self-knowledge.

We can ask: can a person do something in order to attain self-knowledge in this sphere? I could respond by explaining how difficult it is in the present human cycle to actually understand the working of karma. Take an example of how karma pre-determined an individual to undertake a journey, say in 14 days” time. He may take a decision that he has to do something three weeks later, ignoring karma because he knows nothing about his karma. Planning for the three weeks ahead, he organises everything, until he gets news that he needs to take the journey. Now the two directional lines collide. His planning comes in direct opposition with the direction of his karma. We see through this, how karma always attaches something new. This way karma's aim is strengthened and interlinked. It has to be added that a person in his normal development can only with difficulty measure the way to his Self, his “I,” while taking into consideration the karmic links; because he lacks clairvoyant consciousness through higher development and is unable to know what lies within his karma.

Now the question arises: can we reach this point of self-knowledge in a normal life? I must straight away indicate the means which spiritual scientific experience gives us, which makes it possible for us not to overlook what is karmically correct and at a precise moment perform the right thing. It is a totally false conception which one meets from time to time, namely that we are un-free due to karma. Karma does not make us un-free. Exactly by dint of our freedom can we do what karma gives rise to within us, at any given moment. Karma excludes nothing which allows the karmic line to weave and form links this way and that. Can we do something in order to orientate ourselves towards our karma in such a way that our karma isn't counter-acted and as a result create more karmic causes, thus instead of bringing us forwards, only pushes us backwards? There is one thing which helps us align ourselves ever more in the direction of our karmic stream, and this is something we nurture through our world view within anthroposophical circles, something often practiced and discussed. It is actually a mood of soul under the influence of the anthroposophic world view. It is that which we bring ever more into our karma. We must really orientate ourselves within the anthroposophic way: compliant individuals who only talk about it, that a person should become more profound, seek God within, will hardly direct a person any further on his or her path, rather it could bring them further by directing them away from themselves and offering a world view which makes the super-sensible world view possible. Everything that is offered in anthroposophy allows us to see into supersensible events. First of all if we aren't clairvoyant we need to absorb what is presented by clairvoyant research. It is frankly not necessary to be a clairvoyant just as little as if one takes a telescope or microscope in hand. That which the researcher shares in these fields is always understood through unquestionable logic. The human being, we, must so to say make an instrument of ourselves, if we want to research the supersensible regions ourselves; however, insight can become everything without having to make ourselves into an instrument.

When an anthroposophist builds an image for himself of what the Higher Worlds look like, how it approaches behind the sense perceptible realities, it influences his or her entire mood and life of feeling. Once and for all we must speak right into the soul and not allow a comfortable reasoning: it doesn't depend on learning a great deal but rather that one has this or that moral principal. It is actually like this, with anthroposophic spiritual science learning can't be spared and whoever is on the wrong track, say: why bother with theory of Higher Worlds and so on? Decidedly it depends on the anthroposophic way of thinking, a self-evident requirement: just like an oven warms a room when tinder is lit—so it is with people. If you stand and preach to the stove and say: “Lovely stove, your duty is to warm the room”—the room won't become warm. Merely preaching to people regarding their duty to love one another and so on, will come to nothing much. Setting ourselves up as moral preachers has little worth because moral preaching leaves human beings just as they are. When you heat the oven, the room warms up. Giving it heating offers the chance to heat the room. Giving the human being a world view which offers him or her Anthroposophy regarding supersensible facts, what follows is the first ground rule of the Theosophical Society—a general avowal of friendship and brotherhood—which is utterly necessary. The fundamental anthroposophic attitude must be there, but to merely repeat it doesn't help. Your step is sure when you enter into that expression which works for you in the world by including knowledge of the higher worlds and supersensible-world knowledge. Like plants tap into the sun, just so everyone strives for world knowledge, towards a central sun, and all other consequences capitulate by themselves. Thus it is with the anthroposophic way of thinking, revealed out of the spiritual scientific knowledge.

This is what makes it possible for us, in relation to our karma, to live out of ourselves. It deals more with the fact that we arrive at a moment when anthroposophic teaching can transform facts. It is necessary, that if karma is not to remain an abstract concept, that we attempt to bring in these karmic ideas on a trial basis at least, because we can't remain continuously in a state of self-contemplation in our everyday life of complexity and restlessness. It is necessary to consider the question: what is karmic thinking?

Take a radical example: someone has given another—me for instance—a slap in the face. What can be called in this case, “karmic thinking?” I was here in a previous life, and so was he. I had, perhaps in that previous life, given him a reason to justify his present actions; forced him to do it, simultaneously directed him towards it. I don't wish to theorize, I wish to make a hypothesis which should become a life-hypothesis. Will he give me a slap if I think about it? No, he will not do it. I, myself, delivered this slap because I have put him in this place, I have lifted the very hand myself which was raised against me.

Further to this experience the following can be added: when you earnestly focus on examining this karmic idea, pose such a question now and then, in full earnestness and full honesty and you will really see the results. This no other person can prove for you. You must prove it for yourself by doing it. As a result you will notice your inner-life becoming quite different. You experience quite different feelings, will-impulses regarding life and a totally different life shows its consequences: life will reveal itself in quite a transformed way. Whereas you had experienced great pain and disappointment before, now you accept this calmly, having been equilibrated as a result of how you acted and thought about it. Now the following happens, your soul life is flooded by a remarkable peace, a kind of legitimate comprehension of events which is in no way fatalistic.

This is also the direction in which to focus, by gradually exploring the karma-idea and its inherent truth, if you want to bring it to a certain stage of development. The Karma-idea is open to argument. Whoever wants to present reasons may do so. Theoretically nothing can be proven except through a test and here experience needs to be added. Experience provides, when applied intensively, the tool with which to understand karma. As a result you notice a grouping of things—that indeed it is inherent in things—just like you notice, when you have a fantasy image, whether it actually has the reality of a steel bow when grasped. Experience itself must create each combination of life's facts, through which we gradually, according to our own will forces, include these inner will-impulses into our lives. This complex work of our lives is one of the best remedies to achieve the third step which belongs to genuine self-knowledge. Through this you gradually learn to feel how present setbacks originate from an earlier life.

This experience is not as easy as brooding within, because it has to originate and approach from the surroundings. Most importantly we need to move beyond ourselves, even in the highest self-knowledge, which is world-knowledge. Fichte said: “Most people will rather be a piece of lava in the moon than be their ‘I.’”—Thus we learn to know the “I,” in its selective existence, as more than just a point. This “I” we recognise as a selective copy of the whole world. In this sense self-knowledge is, if you will, God-knowledge, not in the pantheistic sense but like a drop of similar substance and wisdom is to an entire sea. How you as a result search for knowledge regarding the essential similarity between the Being and the nature of the entire sea, you are equal in being to the Godhead, who is recognised; yet it will not occur to anyone to explain the drop as the sea. We could recognise substance and the ocean's godly Being from the drop, but no one will be presumptuous and say knowledge of the drop is sufficient; surely everyone will say, for me relevance is in knowledge of the sea and what happens if I sail on it. You particularly learn to recognise the godly when you allow the drop of godliness to enter within, understand it within, but you comprehend that within you is only a drop or spark, nothing more, then you deepen yourself selflessly in the greater supersensible worlds in the highest way possible. Should we want to learn to know ourselves we must totally go out of ourselves and need to research the supersensible worlds in the most profound way.

For the third step, what's been said suffices, regarding reincarnation and karma. For the highest self-knowledge we must reach knowledge of the great cosmic relationships of our earth; because we are part of our earth like a finger is part of the whole organism. The finger doesn't create the illusion that it has an independent existence; cut it off and it is no longer a finger. If it could walk around our organism then it could give, like us, the illusion that it is an independent organism. The human being doesn't think that when he lifts himself for a couple of kilometres above the earth, he is no longer a human being. The human being is a member of the earth organism, the earth is again a member of the cosmos. This we can only see when we understand the basis of cosmic relationships. All thinking about the self without all-embracing world-knowledge, without grasping how the “I” need all aforementioned events, is in vain, without glancing over it we can't reach knowledge, also none of the “I”-Self. We reach knowledge about the daily-“I,” when we search in the area of the when-and-where.

Knowledge, as expressed in the ether body, we find when we consider the inheritance line. Knowledge of the “I” living through the astral body, we find when we experience karma, and the last kind of knowledge, when we acquire world-knowledge; because there it is spread out but is condensed in a few points of the human “I.” World-knowledge is self-knowledge.

When you present to your soul exactly what is described in the essays “out of the Akashic Records,” how the development of the earth is described, which can appear quite strange to the soul, how it finally leads to the present configuration out of necessity, then you have self-knowledge through world-knowledge! Thus self-knowledge goes ever further and further out of us, always towards the impersonal. As with the application of karma in life resulting in the aura turning ever lighter, so through actual knowledge of cosmic relationships the aura becomes stronger and capable of shaping itself out of the original free impulses. Here you discover the answer to the question about freedom and bondage. Because freedom is the product of development, people are able to obtain this increasingly, the more they attain self-knowledge. Then you arrive, through such a practice of self-knowledge as described, at various things in the spiritual scientific fields and through genuine understanding, you can feel yourself enter the anthroposophic spiritual stream. Various things haunt like children's disease in the anthroposophic movement, which needs to fall away once such things are grasped, as they were given as directions to self-knowledge. The impersonal kind of anthroposophic knowledge will become ever more known. It is indeed achieved through that which has been gained from those researchers who not only transformed their souls into instruments of self-knowledge, but have also developed themselves—as had been related even today—and have come to impersonally reveal what the Higher Worlds offer. One of the first basic sayings which has to be conquered is the old, beautiful saying of the wise Greeks: “Whoever wants to attain wisdom dare not take notice of his own opinion.” You will find that whoever has really experienced the spiritual scientific route, will say: Yes, my opinion doesn't provide much; I can give descriptions of experiences, but not regularization principles, not claims of action, and these descriptions should be taken as instructions flowing into the theory of occult science. Opinions and points of view need be given up by the spiritual researcher. He has no point of view because all observations are like images originating from different points of view, which are as varied as people looking at the world from the most diverse angles. On the one side is the image of the materialistic standpoint, then from the other side that of a spiritual or a mechanistic or the easy-life observation. These are all observation angles. To not only recognise them theoretically but to live with every world view in order to create images as to how each observation creates a different side, that is the inner tolerance which is important here. One opinion shouldn't fight another. As a result an inner and from this an outer tolerance develops which we need if we, mankind, want to meet our healing in future.

Particular value must be awarded to insight, that resulting ideas flowing through the anthroposophic world stream come as products of the impersonal. As a result we will arrive at eliminating from the anthroposophic movement that which was there in earlier times and is still there today: authority in the worst sense. Do we call the microscope an authority? It is a necessity, a gateway. So we too, should become gateways, but we must lift ourselves to the impersonal, because only through people can there come into the world, what must come. Belief in authority must be struck from the anthroposophic dictionary and for this very reason mankind attain, while living into this knowledge, an attitude of impartiality, so that they, through the personal can enter into the impersonal way of the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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