The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Everyone involved to any degree at all in social life will certainly feel that the moral aspect is one of the most important aspects in the entire field of education. At the same time, one realizes that it is precisely this aspect that is the most subtle and difficult one to handle, for it relates to the most intimate area of education.

I have already emphasized that educational practice needs to be built on real knowledge of, and insight into, the human being. The comprehension, perception and observation that I tried to characterize last night will give the knowledge necessary to train the child’s cognitional capacities. Practically speaking, knowledge of the human being, supported by the science of the spirit, will enable one to reach, more or less easily, the child’s powers of cognition. One will be able to find one’s way to the child. If, on the other hand, one wishes to appeal to a child’s artistic receptivity as described yesterday, which is equally important, it is necessary to find a way to each child individually, to have a sense for the way various children express themselves from an artistic comprehension of the world. When it comes to moral education, all of one’s skill for sensitive observation and all of one’s intimate psychological interest must be kept in mind, so that all the teacher’s knowledge of the human being and of nature can be put at the service of what each child brings forth individually. To reach children in a moral way, the only choice is to approach each child on an individual basis. However, with regard to moral education, yet another difficulty has to be overcome—that is, an individual’s sense of morality can only be appealed to through full inner freedom and with full inner cooperation.

This requires that educators approach moral teaching so that, when later in life the students have passed the age of formal education, they can feel free as individuals in every respect. What teachers must never do is to pass on to developing students the relics of their own brand of morality or anything derived from personal sympathies or antipathies in the moral realm. We must not be tempted to give our own ethical codes to young people as they make their way into life, since these will leave them unfree when it becomes necessary that they find their own moral impulses. We must respect and acknowledge the young person’s complete inner freedom, particularly in the realm of moral education. Such respect and tolerance truly demand a great deal of selflessness from educators, and a renunciation of any self-interest. Nor is there, as is the case in all other subject matters, the opportunity of treating morality as a subject in its own right; as such, it would be very unfruitful. The moral element must be allowed to pervade all of one’s teaching.

These difficulties can be overcome if we have truly made our own and imbued with spiritual science the knowledge that we bring to the pupils. Such knowledge, by opening one’s eyes to each individual child, is all-important, particularly in this moral sphere. Ideally speaking, moral education would have to begin with the first breath taken in by the newborn, and in a certain sense, this really is what must be done. The great pedagogue Jean Paul (who is far too little recognized, unfortunately) said that a child learns more of value during the first three years of life than during the three years spent at university. If these words were to be applied more to the moral aspect of education than to the cognitive and esthetic realms, they could be rephrased as follows: How an adult educator acts around the child is particularly important during the child’s first years, until approximately the change of teeth—that is, until we receive the child into our schools.

The first life period really needs to be examined closely. Those who have embarked on the path to a true knowledge of the human being will need to consider three main stages during this first life period. At first sight, they do not seem directly connected with the moral aspect, but they nevertheless shed light on the child’s entire moral life to come, right up to the point of death. In the first developmental phase of the child, the moral is tightly linked with the natural. In fact a crude psychology makes it difficult to notice the connection between later moral development and the child’s natural development during these first years. The three stages in the child’s development are usually not granted enough importance, yet they more or less determine the whole manner in which the child can become a human being inhabiting the Earth. The first one, when the child arises from what could be termed an animal-like existence yet in the human realm, is generally called “learning to walk.” In learning to walk, the child has the possibility of placing into the world the entire system of movements—that is, the sum of all potential movements that human beings can perform with their limbs, so that a certain equilibrium is achieved. The second stage, when the child gains something for the entire course of life, is “learning to speak.” It is the force through which children integrate themselves into the human environment, whereas by learning to walk, children learned to integrate themselves into the whole world through a whole system of movements. All of this happens in the unconscious depths of the human soul. And the third element the child appropriates is “learning to think.” However indistinct and childlike thinking may appear during the first life period, it is through learning to speak that the child gradually develops the capacity to make mental images, although in a primitive way at first.

We may ask: How does the child’s acquisition of the three capacities of walking, speaking, and thinking lead to further development, until the conclusion of the first life period when the permanent teeth appear? The answer seems simple enough at first, but when comprehended with some depth, it sheds tremendous light on all of human nature. We find that during this first life period, ending with the change of teeth, the child is essentially a being who imitates in a state of complete unconsciousness, finds a relationship to the world through imitation and through trial and error. Until age seven, children are entirely given over to the influences coming from their environment. The following comparison can be made: I breathe in the oxygen of the air, which is part of my surroundings, to unite, at the next moment, my bodily nature with it, thus changing some part of the external world into my own inner world, where it works, lives, and weaves within me. Likewise, with each indrawn breath, children up to the age of seven bring outer influences into their “inner soul breath,” by incorporating every gesture, facial expression, act, word, and even each thought coming from their surroundings. Just as the oxygen in my surroundings pulsates in my lungs, the instruments of my breathing, and blood circulation, so everything that is part of the surroundings pulsates through the young child.

This truth needs to stand before the soul’s eye, not just superficially, but with real psychological impact. For remarkable consequences follow when one is sufficiently aware of the child’s adaptation to its surroundings. I will discover how surprisingly the little child’s soul reverberates with even an unspoken thought, which may have affected my facial expression only fleetingly and ever so slightly, and under whose influence I may have slowed or speeded up my movements, no matter how minutely. It is astonishing how the small details that remain hidden within the adult’s soul are prolonged into the child’s soul; how the child’s life is drawn into the physical happenings of the surroundings, but also into the soul and spiritual environment. If we become sensitive to this fact of life, we will not permit ourselves even one impure, unchaste, or immoral thought near young children, because we know how imponderable influences work on children through their natural ability to imitate everything in their surroundings. A feeling for this fact and the attitude it creates are what make a person into a real educator.

Impressions that come from the company of adults around the child make a deep, though unconscious, imprint in the child’s soul, like a seal in soft wax; most important among them are those images of a moral character. What is expressed as energy and courage for life in the child’s father, how the father behaves in a variety of life situations, these things will always stamp themselves deeply into the child’s soul, and will continue their existence there in an extraordinarily characteristic, though subtle and intimate, way. A father’s energy will energize the entire organization of the child. A mother’s benevolence, kindness, and love, surrounding the child like an invisible cocoon, will unconsciously permeate the child’s inner being with a moral receptivity, with an openness and interest for ethical and moral matters.

It is very important to identify the origin of the forces in the child’s organization. As unlikely and paradoxical as this may sound to modern ears, in the young child these forces derive predominately from the nerve-and-sense system. Because the child’s ability to observe and perceive is unconscious, one does not notice how intensely and deeply the impressions coming from the surroundings enter its organization, not so much by way of various specific senses, as through the general “sensory being” of the child. It is generally known that the formation of the brain and of the nerves is completed by the change of teeth. During the first seven years the nerve-and-sense organization of the child could be compared with soft wax, in its plasticity. During this time, not only does the child receive the finest and most intimate impressions from the surroundings, but also, through the workings of energy in the nerve-and-sense system, everything received unconsciously radiates and flows into the blood circulation, into the firmness and reliability of the breathing process, into the growth of the tissues, into the formation of the muscles and skeleton. By means of the nerve-and-sense system, the child’s body becomes like an imprint of the surroundings and, particularly, of the morality inherent in them. When we receive children into school at the time of the change of teeth, it is as if we received the imprint of a seal in the way the muscles and tissues are formed, even in the rhythm of breathing and blood circulation, in the rhythm of the digestive system with its reliability or its tendency toward sluggishness; in short, in the children’s physical makeup we find the effects of the moral impressions received during the first seven years.

Today we have anthropology and we have psychology. Anthropology’s main concern is the abstract observation of the physical aspect of the human being, while that of psychology is the abstract observation of the human soul and spirit as entities separate from the physical body. What is missing is the anthroposophical perspective, which observes the human being—body, soul, and spirit—as a unity; a point of view that shows everywhere how and where spirit is flowing into matter, sending its forces into material counterparts. The strange feature of our materialistic age is that materialism cannot recognize matter for what it is. Materialism believes it can observe matter wholly externally. But only if one can see how soul and spiritual processes are everywhere streaming and radiating their forces into material processes, does one really know what matter is. Through spiritual knowledge, one learns to know how matter works and what its real nature is. One could answer the question, “What is materialism?” by saying, “Materialism is the one worldview that does not understand matter.”

This can be followed up even in details. If one has learned how to see the nature of the human being by viewing body, soul, and spirit as a unity, one will also recognize, in the formation of the muscles and tissues and in the breathing process, the ethical courage inherent in surroundings to which children have adapted during the first seven years. One sees, not only the moral love that warmed them, in the form of harmonious ethical attitudes in their environment, but also the consequences of disharmonious ethical attitudes and lack of love in the surroundings. Here a perceptive educator cannot help feeling that, by the time children are received by the school, they are already formed from the moral viewpoint—an insight that, taken seriously, could in itself engender a mood of tragedy. Given the difficult, disorderly, and chaotic social conditions of our time, it might almost seem preferable from a moral viewpoint if children could be taken into one’s care soon after birth. For if one knows the human being out of a sensitive and refined psychology, one realizes how serious it is that by the time the child loses the first teeth, moral predispositions are fixed. On the other hand, this very same psychological insight offers the possibility of identifying the child’s specific moral disposition and needs.

Children absorb environmental impressions, especially those of an ethical nature, as if in a dream. These dreams go on to affect the inmost physical organization of children. If children have unconsciously experienced and perceived courage, moral goodness, chastity, and a sense of truth, these qualities will live on in them. The presence of these qualities will be such that during the second life period, by the time children are in school, these qualities can still be mobilized.

I would like to illustrate this with an example: Let’s assume that a child has spent the earliest years under the influence of an environment conducive to introversion. This could easily happen if a child witnesses lack of courage and even downright cowardice in the surroundings. If a child has seen in the environment a tendency to opt out of life, witnessed dissatisfaction with life or despondency, something in the child’s inner being, so to speak, will evoke the impression of a continuously suppressed pallor. The educator who is not perceptive enough to observe such symptoms will find that the child takes in more and more intensely the effects of the lack of energy, the cowardice and doubt that has been witnessed in the surroundings. In some ways, even the child will exhibit such characteristics. But if one can view these things with greater depth, one will find that, what thus began as a distinct characterological disposition during the first seven years, can now be seized educationally and directed in a more positive way. It is possible to guide a child’s innate timidity, lack of courage, shyness or faintheartedness so that these same inherent forces become transmuted into prudence and the ability to judge a situation properly; this presumes that the teacher uses classroom opportunities to introduce examples of prudence and right judgment appropriate to the child’s age and understanding.

Now let’s assume that a child has witnessed in the surroundings repugnant scenes from which the child had inwardly recoiled in terror. The child will carry such experiences into school life in the form of a characterological disposition, affecting even the bodily organization. If such a trait is left unnoticed, it will continue to develop according to what the child had previously absorbed from the environment. On the other hand, if true insight into human nature shows how to reorient such negative characteristics, the latter can be transformed into a quality of purity and a noble feeling of modesty.

These specific examples illustrate that, although the child brings into school an imprint—even in the physical organization—of the moral attitudes witnessed in the earlier environment, the forces that the child has thus absorbed can be redirected in the most diverse ways.

In school we have an immensely important opportunity to correct an unbalanced disposition through a genuine, intimate, and practical sense of psychology, which can be developed by the educator who notices the various tendencies of character, will, and psyche in the students. By loving attentiveness to what the child’s nature is revealing, the teacher is in a position to divert into positive channels what may have developed as an unhealthy or harmful influence from the early environment. For one can state explicitly that, in the majority of cases, nothing is ever so negative or evil in an ethical predisposition that the child cannot be changed for the better, given a teacher’s insight and willing energy.

Contemporary society places far too little trust in the working of ethical and moral forces. People simply do not know how intensely moral forces affect the child’s physical health, or that physical debilitation can be improved and corrected through proper and wholesome educational practice. But assuming we know, for example, that if left uncorrected a characteristic trait in a child could turn into violence later on, and that it can be changed so that the same child will grow into a courageous adult, quick and ready to respond to life’s tasks—assuming that an intimate yet practical psychology has taught us these things, the following question will arise: How can we guide the moral education of the child, especially during the age of primary education? What means do we have at our disposal? To understand the answer, we will again have to look back at the three most significant stages in the development of the very young child.

The power of mental imagery and thinking that a child has developed until this point will continue to develop. One does not notice an abrupt change—perhaps at most, with the change of teeth, that the kind of mental imagery connected with memory takes on a different form. But one will notice that the soul and physical forces revealed in speech, which are closely linked to breathing and to the rhythmic system, will reappear, metamorphosed, during the years between the change of teeth and puberty. The first relationship to the realm of language is founded through the child’s learning to speak during the first years of life. Language here includes not just language itself in the restricted meaning of the word, for the entire human being, body, soul, and spirit, lives in language. Language is a symptom of the entire threefold human being.

Approximately between the ages of seven and fourteen years, however, this relationship to language becomes prominent in the child in an entirely different—even reversed—way. At that point, everything related to the soul, outwardly expressed through the medium of language, will reach a different phase of development and take on a different character. It is true that these things happen mostly in the unconscious, but they are nevertheless instrumental for the child’s entire development. Between the ages of seven and fourteen, the child wrestles with what lives in the language, and if he or she should speak more than one language, in all the languages spoken. The child knows little of this struggle because it remains unconscious. The nature of this wrestling is due to increasingly intense merging of the sounds issuing from the rhythmic system with the pupil’s thoughts, feelings, and will impulses. What is trying to evolve during this life period is the young adolescent’s hold on the self by means of language.

It is extremely important, therefore, that we understand the fine nuances of character expressed in the ways students bring their speech and language into the classroom. The general directions I have already presented regarding the observation of the pupils’ moral environment now sound back to us out of the tone of their voices, out of the very sound of their speech, if we are sensitive enough to perceive it. Through the way children use language, they present us with what I would call their basic moral character. Through the way we treat language and through the way students speak during lessons, every hour, even every minute, we are presented with the opportunity as teachers to guide what is thus revealed through speech, into the channels we consider appropriate and right. Very much can be done there, if one knows how to train during the age of primary education what, until the change of teeth, was struggling to become speech.

This is where we meet the actual principle of the growth and development that occurs during the elementary school age. During the first years up to the change of teeth, everything falls under the principle of imitation. At this stage the human being is an imitator. During the second life period, from the second dentition until puberty, the child is destined to surrender to what I would call the authority of the teacher. You will hardly expect me, the author of Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, to plead for the principle of authority per se. But for the time between the child’s change of teeth and puberty, one has to plead for the principle of self-evident authority, simply because during these years the child’s very nature needs to be able to look up to what comes from the authority of the adult.

The very young child observes the surroundings unconsciously. One could almost say that a child breathes in the whole character of the environment during the first seven years. The next seven years are spent not so much breathing in the environment, but listening to what it has to say. The word and its meaning now become the leading motive. The word becomes the guiding principle as a simple matter of human nature. During this stage the child learns to know about the world and the cosmos through the mediation of the educator. Whatever reaches the pupils through the mouth of the teacher as authority represents the truth to them. They observe beauty in gestures, in general conduct and again in the words spoken around them. Goodness is experienced through the sympathies and antipathies engendered by those in authority.

These few words give the main direction for moral education during the age between the second dentition and puberty. If we attempt to give the child abstract moral values upon its way, we will encounter inner resentment, not because of any inherent shortcomings in the child, but because of a natural response. On the other hand, if we can create moral pictures for the child, perhaps taken from the animal kingdom, letting animals appear symbolically in a moral light, and possibly extending this approach to include all of nature, then we can work for the good of the child, particularly during the seventh, eighth, and ninth years of life. If we create vivid, colorful human characters out of our own imagination and allow our own approval or disapproval of their deeds to shine through our descriptions, and if we allow our sympathies and antipathies to grow into definite feelings in the children that will lead them over into a more general moral judgment of good and evil, then our picture of the world cultivates ageappropriate moral judgements based in perceptions and feelings. But this particular way of presenting the world is of the essence. During the first years, the child has learned from direct perception. As we reach the primary school age, whatever comes toward the child, to strengthen a moral feeling leading to moral judgment, must have passed through the medium of those in authority. Now the teacher and educator must stand before the child as representatives of the order of the world. The child meets the teachers in order to receive the teachers’ picture of the world, colored by their sympathies and antipathies. Through the feelings with which children meet the teachers, and through instinctual life, children themselves must find what is good and what is evil. The students have to receive the world through the mediation of the educator. The children are happy who, thanks to a teacher’s interpretation of the world can form their own relationship to the world.

Those who have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed such a relationship with their teachers in childhood have gained something of value for the rest of their lives. People who say that children should learn intellectually and through their own observations, free from the influence of authority, speak like flagrant amateurs; for we do not teach children merely for the years during which they are under our care, but to benefit their whole lives. And the various life periods, right up to the point of death, are mutually interrelated in very interesting ways.

If, because of their teachers’ natural authority, pupils have once accepted subject matter they could not yet fully comprehend with their powers of reasoning—for the intellectual grasp belongs to a later stage of development and works destructively if enforced too early—if they have accepted something purely out of love for their teachers, such content remains deeply preserved in their souls. At the age of thirty-five or forty perhaps, or possibly even later in life, it may happen that they speak of the following strange experience: Only now, after having lived through so many joys, pains, and disappointments, only now do I see the light of what I accepted at the age of eight out of my respect for my teacher’s authority. This meaning now resurfaces, mingling with the many life experiences and the widening of horizons that have occurred meanwhile. What does such an experience mean for later life? A sensitive and empathetic psychology tells us that such events give off life-invigorating forces even into old age. Education gains new meaning from knowing that such an expansion of childhood experiences into older ages brings with it a new stimulus for life: we educate not only to satisfy the short-term needs of the child while at school, but also to satisfy the needs of life as a whole. The seeds laid into the child’s soul must be allowed to grow with the child. Hence we must be aware that whatever we teach must be capable of further growth. Nothing is worse than our pedantic insistence that the child learn rigid, sharply outlined concepts. One could compare this approach with that of forcing the child’s delicate hands into an iron glove to stop them from growing. We must not give the child fixed or finished definitions, but concepts capable of expansion and growth. The child’s soul needs to be equipped with the kind of seeds that can continue to grow during the whole of the life to come. For this growth to take place, it is not enough just to apply certain principles in one’s teaching; one has to know how to live with the child.

It is especially important for the moral and ethical aspect of education that we remember, for the ages between seven and fourteen, that the child’s moral judgment should be approached only through an appeal to feelings called forth by verbal pictures illustrating the essentials of an inherent morality. What matters at this age is that the child should develop sympathy for the moral and antipathy for the immoral. To give children moral admonitions would be going against their nature, for they do not penetrate the souls of children. The entire future moral development is determined by those things that, through forming sympathies, become transformed into moral judgments. One single fact will show the importance of the teacher’s right relationship to the child with regard to moral development. If one can educate with a discriminating, yet practical, sense of psychology, one will notice that, at a certain time around the ninth or tenth year (the exact age may vary in individual cases), the children’s relationship to the world—an outcome of sympathies and antipathies that can be cultivated—will be such that they forget themselves. Despite a certain “physical egotism” (to give it a name), the child will still be fully open to environmental influences. Just as teachers need clear insight into the child’s developmental stages when they use observational methods in object lessons with children of nine or ten, such insight is particularly important when it comes to moral education. If one pays sufficient attention to the more individual traits emerging in pupils, an interesting phenomenon can be observed at that age: the awareness that the child has a special need for help from the teacher. Sometimes a few words spoken by the child can be like a call for help. They can be the appropriate signal for a perceptive teacher, who now must find the right words to help the child over the hump. For the child is passing through a critical stage, when everything may depend on a few words spoken by the teacher to reestablish the right relationship between pupil and teacher.

What is happening at this time? By wrestling with language, the young person becomes aware, very consciously, for the first time that “There is a difference between myself and the world.” (This is unlike the time during the first seven-year period when, unconsciously, the child first learned to refer to the self as “I.”) The child now strongly demands a new orientation for body, soul, and spirit vis-à-vis the world. This awareness happens between the ninth and the tenth year. Again, unconsciously, the child has a remarkable experience in the form of all kinds of seemingly unrelated sentiments, feelings, and will impulses, which have no outward relationship with the behavior. The experience is: “Here before me stands my teacher who, as authority, opens the world for me. I look into the world through the medium of this authority. But is this authority the right one for me? Am I receiving the right picture of the world?” Please note that I am not saying this thought is a conscious one. All this happens subtly in the realm of the child’s feelings. Yet this time is decisive for determining whether or not the child can feel the continued trust in the teacher’s authority necessary for a healthy development until the onset of puberty. And this experience causes a certain inner unrest and nervousness in the child. The teacher has to find the right words to safeguard the child’s continued confidence and trust. For together with this consolidation of trust, the moral character of the child also becomes consolidated. At first it was only latent in the child; now it becomes inwardly more anchored and the child attains inner firmness. Children grasp, right into the physical organism, something that they had perceived thus far as a self-evident part of their own individual self, as I described earlier.

Contemporary physiology, consisting on the one side of anthropology and on the other of an abstract psychology, is ignorant of the most fundamental facts. One can say that, until the second dentition, all organic formations and functions proceed from the nerve-and-sense system. Between the change of teeth and puberty, the child’s physical fitness or weakness depends on the good functioning of the rhythmic system, on the breathing and blood circulation. Between the ninth and the tenth birthdays, what previously was still anchored primarily in the breathing, in the upper part of the organism, basically shifts over to the blood circulation; this is the time when the wonderful number relationship of one to four is being developed, in the approximately eighteen breaths and the seventy-two pulse beats per minute. This relationship between breathing and blood circulation becomes established at this time of life. However, it is only the outer expression of deep processes going on in the child’s soul, and the reinforcement of the trust between teacher and child must become part of these processes, for through this trust the consolidation of the child’s inner being also occurs.

These interactions between physiological and moral development must be described in detail if one wishes to speak of moral education and of the relationship between pedagogy and morality. As an educator, whether or not I am aware of this particular point in a child’s life will determine whether or not I exercise a beneficial or a harmful influence for the rest of a person’s life.

I should like to show, as a comparison, how things done at this stage continue to affect all of the rest of life. You may have noticed that there are people who, when they grow old, exert an unusual influence on those around them. That there are such people is generally known. Such people don’t even need to say much when they are with others. Their mere presence is enough to bring what one may call an “air of blessing” to those around them. A grace emanates from them that brings about a relaxed and balanced atmosphere. If one has the patience and energy to trace the origin of this gift, one will find that it has developed out of a seed that came into being during childhood through a deeply felt respect for the authority of someone in charge. One could also describe it by saying that, in such a case, the child’s moral judgment had been enhanced by a feeling of veneration that gradually reached the level of religious experience. If a child, between the change of teeth and puberty, experiences the feeling of reverence for certain people, reverence tinged even with a genuine religious feeling that lifts moral feelings into the light of piety, expressed in sincere prayer, then out of this childlike prayer grows the gift of blessing in old age, the gift of radiating grace to one’s fellow human beings. Using pictorial language, one could say: Hands that have learned to pray in childhood have the gift of bestowing blessing in old age. These words, though symbolic and pictorial, nevertheless correspond to the fact that seeds planted in childhood can have an effect right to the end of life.

Now, for an example how the stages of human life are interrelated; one example in the moral realm is, as I said earlier, that the child’s ability to form mental images in the thinking process develops along a continuous line. Only memory will take on a different character after the change of teeth. Language, on the other hand, becomes somehow inverted. Between the second dentition and puberty, the young person develops an entirely different relationship to language. This new relationship can be properly served by bringing to the child at this time the grammar and logic inherent in language. One can tackle practically every aspect of language if, instead of rashly bringing to consciousness the unconscious element of language from early childhood, one makes this translation in a way that considers the child.

But what about the third relationship: the young child’s creation of an individual equilibrium with the external world after having learned to walk? Most people interpret the child’s attempt to use the legs for the first time in a purely external and mechanistic way. It is not generally known, for example, that our ability for spatial imagination and our capacity for mathematical imagery is an upward projection of our limbs’ potential movements into the intellectual sphere; in this projection, the head experiences, as mental activity, what is experienced in our limbs as movement. A deeply hidden soul element of the human being lives especially in this system of movement, a deep soul element linked to outer material forces.

After crawling on hands and knees, the child assumes the vertical position, lifting vertically the bodily axis, which in the case of the animals remains parallel to the Earth’s surface. This upright achievement of the child is the physical expression of the moral potential for human will forces, which lift the human being above the level of the animals.

One day a comprehensive physiology, which is at the same time anthroposophy, will learn to understand that moral forces express themselves in the way a child performs physical movements in space. What the child achieves by assuming the upright posture and thus becoming free of the forces that keep the animal’s spine parallel to the Earth’s surface, what the child achieves by rising into a state of equilibrium in space, is the physical expression of the moral nature of its will energy. It is this achievement that makes the human individual into a moral being.

The objection may be raised that during sleep the position of the human spine is also parallel to the Earth’s surface. However I am speaking here about the general human organization, and about the way spatial dimensions are organized into the human being. Through an accurate assessment of these matters, within this upright position the physical expression of human morality can be seen, which allows the human countenance to gaze freely into the world.

Let me compare what actually happens in the child with a certain phenomenon in nature. In the southern region of old Austria, (now part of Italy) there is a river named the Poik, whose source is in the mountains. Suddenly this river disappears, completely vanishes from sight, and surfaces again later. What appears as the second river does not have its own source, but after its reemergence, people call it the Unz. The Unz disappears again, and resurfaces as a river called The Laibach. In other words, this river flows, unseen, in the depths of the Earth for part of its journey. Similarly, what the child has absorbed from its surroundings in its early years rests unperceived during childhood sleep. During the first years of life, when the child is unconsciously given over to moral forces inherent in the environment, the child acquires the ability to use the limbs in an upright position, thus becoming free of animality. What the child puts into this newly won skill is not noticeable between the change of teeth and puberty, but reappears as freedom in the making of moral judgements, as the freedom of human morality in the will sphere. If the teacher has cultivated the right moral sympathies and antipathies in the child at primary school age—without, however, being too heavy-handed—then, during the time before puberty, the most important aspects of the will can continue their “underground existence.” The child’s individual will, built on inner freedom, will eventually become completely a part of a human sense of responsibility, and will reappear after puberty so that the young person can be received as a free fellow human being. If the educator has refrained from handing down interdicts, and has instead planted sympathies and antipathies in the pupils’ emotional baggage, but without infringing upon the moral will now appearing, the young person can transform the gifts of sympathies and antipathies according to individual needs. After puberty, the young person can transform what was given by others into moral impulses, which now come freely from individuality.

This is how to develop, out of real empathy with the human being, what needs to be done at each age and stage. If one does so properly between the seventh and fourteenth years by allowing moral judgements to mature in the pupil’s life of feeling, what was given to the child properly with the support of authority will be submerged into the human sphere of free will. The human being can become free only after having been properly guided in the cultivation of moral sympathies and antipathies. If one proceeds in this manner regarding moral education, one stands beside the pupils so that one is only the motivator for their own self-education. One gives them what they are unconsciously asking for, and then only enough for them to become responsible for their own selves at the appropriate age, without any risk or danger to themselves.

The difficulty regarding moral education to which I drew your attention at the beginning of today’s meeting, is solved in this way. One must work side by side with one’s pupils, unselfishly and objectively. In other words, the aim should be never to leave behind a relic of one’s own brand of morality in the psychological makeup of the pupils; one should try instead to allow them to develop their own sympathies and antipathies for what they consider morally right or wrong. This approach will enable them to grow rightly into moral impulses and will give them a sense of freedom at the appropriate age.

The point is to stand beside the child on the basis of an intimate knowledge and art of psychology, which is both an art of life and an art of spiritual endeavor. This will do justice not only to artistic, but also to moral education. But one should have due respect for the human being and be able to rightly evaluate a child’s human potential. Then one’s education will become a moral education, which means that the highest claim, the highest demand, for the question of morality and education is contained in the following answer: The right relationship between education and morality is found in a moral pedagogy whereby the entire art of education is itself a moral deed. The morality inherent in an art of education is the basis for a moral pedagogy.

What I have said so far applies to education in general, but it is nearest to our heart at the present time, when an understandable and justified youth movement has been growing apace. I will not attempt to characterize this youth movement properly in just a few words. For many of you here, I have done so already in various other places. But I wish to express my conviction that, if the older generation of teachers and educators knows how to meet the moral impulses of the younger generation on the basis of an art of education as outlined here, this problem of modern youth will find its proper solution. For in the final resort, the young do not wish to stand alone; they really want to cooperate with the older generation. But this cooperation needs to happen so that what they receive from their elders is different, something other, from what they can themselves bring; they need to be able to perceive it as the thing which their soul needs and which the older people can give.

Contemporary social life has created conditions regarding this question of the younger generation that I would characterize in this way: It is often said that the old should retain their previous youthful forces in order to get on better with the young. Today (present company, as always, excluded) the older generation appears excessively youthful, because its members have forgotten how to grow old properly. Their souls and spirits no longer know how to grow into their changed bodies. They carry into their aging bodies what they used to do in their young days, but the human garment of life no longer fits. If now the old and the young meet, the ensuing lack of understanding is not caused by old age as such, but, on the contrary, because the old have not grown old properly and, consequently, cannot be of much help to the young. The young expect that the old should have grown old properly, without appearing childish. When today’s young meet their elders, they find them not very different from themselves. They are left with the impression that, although the old people have learned more in life, they do not seem to understand life more deeply, to be wiser. The young feel that the old have not used their age to become mature, that they have remained at the same human level as the young themselves. Youth expects that the old should have grown old in the right way.

For this concept to enter social life properly, a practical art of education is needed, which ensures that the seeds planted in education bear fruit right into ripe old age, as I have described it in various examples. One has to be able to unfold the appropriate life forces for each stage of life. One must know how to grow old. When the old understand how to grow old properly, they are full of inner freshness, whereas if they have become gray and wrinkled while remaining childishly immature, they cannot give anything to the young that the latter don’t have already. This sheds some light on the present situation. One must only look at these things objectively. Basically, those who find themselves in this situation are quite innocent of the problems involved. What matters is that we tackle this most important and topical human problem by looking closely at our contemporary education, and in particular at the moral factor in education. Coming to terms with it is of great import, not only from the educational point of view, but for the entire social life.

When all is said and done, the moral education of the human being is the crown of all education and teaching. In Faust, Goethe puts the following strange words into the mouth of the Creator-God:

The good person, in darkest aberration,
is of the right path conscious still.

It is worth noting that although Goethe let these words be spoken by the Lord God Himself, pedantic minds could not resist nitpicking over them. They said, “‘The good person, in darkest aberration ... is conscious...’ ”; this is a contradiction in terms, for the darkest aberration is purely instinctive and certainly not conscious. How could Goethe write such words in his Faust?” So much for erudite barbarians. Well, I believe that Goethe knew very well what he had written in this sentence. He wanted to express the idea that, for those who look at the moral life without prejudice, morality is connected with the darkest depths of the human being, and that in this realm one approaches the most difficult area of the human being. In today’s meeting, we saw for ourselves the difficulty of approaching moral issues in practical education. In these areas the darkest realms of the human being are encountered. Goethe clearly recognized this, but he also recognized that what the moral person can achieve only through the brightest rays of the spirit light, has to be attained in the darkest depths of the soul. I would like to think that Goethe’s words consecrate the moral aspect of education, for what do they really say? They express a deep truth of life, into which I wish to condense all that has been said about the meaning of moral education.

I therefore will sum up in the sense of Goethe’s words what I outlined for you today by concluding as follows: If you wish to enter the land of knowledge, you must follow the Spirit-light of day. You must work your way out of the darkness into the light. If you wish to find your way to the land of art, you must work your way, if not to the dazzling light of the Sun itself, at least into the colored brightness that Spirit-light radiates into the world. For in this light and in this light alone is everything turned into art.

However, it would be sad if, before becoming a morally good person, I first had to work my way toward these two goals. To become a morally good person, the innermost kernel of the human being has to be taken hold of down to its deepest recesses, for that is where the right orientation is needed. And the following must be said too: True, in our search for knowledge, we must work our way toward the light, and the pursuit of art means striving toward the colorful light of day; but it is equally true that, in the moral life, the human being who has found the right orientation can be a good person without light, and also without brightness; it is possible to be a good person through all the darkness and obscurity of life. If, as “the good person,” one is “conscious of the right path still,” one will be able to find the right way through all existing darkness, into the light and into all the colorful brightness of the world.

You will recall the studies in which we have tried to establish a relationship to the different premises and assertions of modern psychoanalysis. What mattered to me in those studies was to bring clarity into the concept of the “unconscious,” to show that the way in which the concept of the “unconscious” is commonly used in psychoanalysis is essentially unfounded. As long as one is unable to go beyond this concept, a purely negative concept, one cannot say more than that psychoanalysis works with insufficient methods of cognition on an especially challenging phenomenon today. Because the psychoanalysts strive to explore the soul and spirit and, as we have observed, even pursue this soul and spirit into a social life, one must admit that we have here a point of departure that is much more significant than what official academic science is able to offer in this realm. Because analytical psychology tries to intervene in life, however, through pedagogy, therapy, and soon, most likely, social and political means, the dangers related to this matter must be regarded with great concern. The question thus arises what it is essentially that the researchers of today cannot and do not wish to reach. They recognize that there exists a soul nature beyond consciousness; they search for a soul beyond consciousness, but they cannot raise themselves to cognition of the spirit itself. Spirit can in no way be grasped through a concept of the unconscious, because an unconscious spirit is like a human being without a head. I have brought to your attention that there are people who under certain hysterical conditions walk about the streets and see in other human beings only their bodies, not their heads. It is a definite form of illness if one is unable to see a person's head. Among contemporary researchers, there are some who believe they are seeing the whole spirit. Since they represent the spirit as unconscious, however, they show immediately that they themselves have fallen prey to illusion, the illusion that there is an unconscious spirit, a spirit without consciousness, if we were to cross the threshold of consciousness, whether in the right way, as we have always described it in our spiritual scientific research, or in an ill, abnormal way, as in the cases that are usually submitted to psychoanalysts.

When one crosses the threshold of consciousness, one always enters a spiritual realm; regardless of whether one enters the subconscious or the super-conscious, one always enters a spiritual realm. This is a realm, however, in which the spirit is conscious in a certain way, is developing some form of consciousness. Where there is spirit there is also consciousness. One must only seek the conditions under which the consciousness in question exists. Through spiritual science it is possible to recognize what type of consciousness a particular spiritual being has.

A week ago the case was presented here of the lady who left a social gathering and ran in front of some horses but then was prevented from jumping into a river and was carried back to the house from which she had fled. There she was brought together with the master of the house, because in some unclear, subconscious way she was in love with this man. In this case it may not be said that the spirit, which did not belong to this lady's consciousness, this spirit that pushed and led her, is an unconscious spirit or that it is an unconscious soul quality. Indeed, it is something extremely conscious. The consciousness of this demonic spirit that led the lady back to her unlawful lover, this demon is indeed much shrewder in its consciousness than the lady is in her muddle-headedness, that is to say her consciousness. When the human being in any way crosses the threshold of his consciousness, these spirits that become active and powerful are not unconscious spirits. Such spirits become consciously active and powerful in their own right. The expression, “unconscious spirit,” as the psychoanalysts use it, has no sense whatsoever. If I were to speak merely from my own viewpoint, I could just as well say that the whole illustrious company sitting here is my unconscious if I were unfamiliar with it. Just as little may we describe as unconscious the spiritual beings that surround us and that take hold of the personality under particular conditions, as was the situation in this case that I related a week ago. They are subconscious; they are not actually grasped by the consciousness that lives directly within us, but in themselves they are fully conscious.

It is exceptionally important to know this—particularly for the task of spiritual science in our time—basically because the knowledge of a spiritual world that lies on the other side of the threshold and the knowledge of truly self-conscious individualities is not merely an achievement of today's spiritual science but is actually an ancient knowledge. In earlier times it was only known through an ancient, atavistic clairvoyance. Today one knows it through other methods; one learns to know it gradually. The knowledge of actual spirits to be found outside of human consciousness—spirits living under different conditions from human beings but standing in continuous relationship to human beings, spirits that can take hold of the human being in his thinking, feeling, and willing—this knowledge was always there. This knowledge was always considered the secret treasure of particular brotherhoods, who treated this knowledge within their circles as strictly esoteric. Why did they treat it in this way? To enlarge on this question would lead at this moment too far afield. It should be said, however, that individual brotherhoods were permeated with the earnest conviction that the majority of humanity was not sufficiently mature for this knowledge. Indeed, this was the case to a large extent. Many other brotherhoods, however, which are called brotherhoods of the left, were striving to retain this knowledge, because such knowledge, when taken possession of by a small group, would give this group power over others who did not possess such knowledge. There have always been endeavors whose aim was to secure power for certain groups over others. This could be achieved by considering a particular kind of knowledge as an esoteric possession but using it in such a way that the power over something quite different was expanded.

In our day it is particularly necessary to have real clarity in these matters. As you know—I have enlarged on this in the last lectures—since 1879 humanity has been living in a very special spiritual situation. Since 1879, extraordinarily powerful spirits of darkness have been shifted from the spiritual world into the human realm, and those people who cling to the mysteries connected with this fact and retain them wrongfully within small groups could cause everything imaginable with these secrets. Today I shall show you exactly how certain mysteries that relate to present-day development can be used in a wrongful way. You must be careful, however, to consider coherently all that I say today, which will be of a more historic nature, with what I will add tomorrow.

You all know that for a long time attention has been drawn within our anthroposophical stream to the fact that this twentieth century is one that should bring about in the evolution of humanity a special relationship to the Christ. This relationship to Christ will come about in the course of the twentieth century, and already in the first half, as you know, will begin the phenomenon that has been suggested in my first Mystery Drama, in which for a large number of people Christ in the etheric will be an actual, existing being.

We know that we actually live in the age of materialism. We know that since the middle of the nineteenth century this materialism has reached its climax. In reality, however, polarities must converge. It is exactly this climax of materialism within the evolution of humanity that must converge with the intensification in human evolution that leads to truly beholding Christ in the etheric. One can grasp that just the announcement of the mystery of beholding Christ, of this new relationship with humanity into which Christ will enter, would arouse ill-will and resistance from some human beings. These would be members of certain brotherhoods who wished to exploit the event of the twentieth century, this event of the appearance of the etheric Christ, who wished to use it for their own purposes and not allow it to become general human knowledge. There are brotherhoods, and brotherhoods always influence public opinion by allowing this or that to be publicized by such means as would be least noticed by people. There are certain occult brotherhoods who spread the message that the age of materialism has almost run its course, that in a certain way it is already past. These poor, pitiable, “clever people”—in quotation marks, of course—spread the doctrine in numerous assemblies, books, and societies that materialism has exhausted itself, that one can already grasp again something of spirit, but they can offer people nothing more than the word spirit and single phrases. These people are more or less in the service of those who have an interest in saying what is not true, that materialism has been “ruined by bad management,” as it were. This is not true; on the contrary, materialistic thinking is in the process of growing. It will thrive most when people deceive themselves by believing that they are no longer materialists. The materialistic way of thinking is in the process of increasing and will continue to increase for about four or five centuries.

It is necessary, as has been frequently emphasized here, to grasp this fact in clear consciousness, to know that it is so. Humanity will come to a true healing when one works so thoroughly in the life of spirit that one knows absolutely that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is there for the purpose of extirpating materialism from the general evolution of humanity. A more spiritual being, however, must counteract materialism. I have spoken in previous lectures about what people of the fifth post-Atlantean period must learn to meet, that is, the fully conscious struggle against evil rising up in the evolution of humanity. Just as in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch the task lay in the struggle with birth and death, so we are now facing a struggle with evil. What matters now, therefore, is to grasp spiritual teaching in full consciousness, not to cast sand into the eyes of contemporaries as if the devil of materialism did not exist. He will thrive increasingly. Those who deal with these matters in a wrongful way know about the event of the appearance of Christ as well as I do, but they deal with this event in a different way.

In order to understand this one must keep one's eyes on the following. Now that humanity has become what it has in the post-Atlantean time, the phrase that many people expound in their comfortable smugness is completely incorrect: “While we live here between birth and death, it is a matter of surrendering ourselves to life. If later, when we have passed through death, we then enter a spiritual world, that will reveal itself in good time and for that we can wait. Here we will enjoy life as if there were only a material world; if one enters a spiritual world through death, such a world will then reveal itself, if it really exists.” This attitude is about as clever as the pledge that someone makes, saying, “As truly as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist!” It is just about that intelligent, but it is the attitude of many who say, “It will be revealed after death how things are; meanwhile it is not at all necessary to occupy ourselves with spiritual science.”

This attitude has always been contestable, but in the post-Atlantean period in which we live it becomes especially ominous, because it has been particularly urged upon human beings by the powers of evil. When man under the present conditions of evolution passes through the portal of death, he takes with him the conditions of consciousness that he has created for himself between birth and death. The person who has occupied himself under present circumstances exclusively with materialistic ideas, concepts, and sense impressions of the material, of the sense world, condemns himself after death to live in an environment in which only concepts defined during bodily life have bearing. The human being who has absorbed spiritual ideas enters the spiritual world legitimately, but one who has rejected spiritual ideas is forced to remain in a certain sense within earthly conditions until he—and this may endure for a long time—has learned there to absorb enough spiritual concepts that he can be carried by them into the spiritual world. Whether we absorb spiritual concepts or reject them therefore determines our environment on the other side of the threshold. Many of those souls—and this must be said with compassion—who have rejected or were hindered from absorbing spiritual concepts here in life are still wandering about on earth and, though dead, remain bound to the earthly sphere. The soul of the human being, however, when no longer separated from its environment by the physical body—which can then no longer prevent the human soul from acting destructively—becomes a source of disturbance within the earthly sphere.

Let us study what I would like to characterize as the more normal situation, in which souls under present circumstances pass over into the spiritual world after death, souls who wished to know nothing at all about spiritual concepts and experiences. They become sources of disturbance, because they are retained within the earthly sphere. Only souls who here on earth have already been completely permeated by a certain relationship to the spiritual world pass through the portal of death in such a way that they can be received in the right way in the spiritual world. They will be carried away from the earthly sphere in such a way that they can spin threads to those remaining behind, threads that are continually being spun. We must be clear about this: the spiritual threads between the souls of the dead and those of us who are bound to them are not ruptured by death; they remain, are even closer, after death than they were here on earth. What I have said must be accepted as a serious, significant truth.

I am not the only one who has this knowledge; others are also aware that this is so at present. There are many, however, who exploit this truth in a terrible way. There are misguided materialists today who believe that material life is the only one, but there are also initiates who are materialists and who spread materialistic teaching through brotherhoods. You must not be misled into believing that these initiates are of the foolish opinion that there is no spirit or that the human being does not have a soul that can live independently of the body. You can be confident that one who has been truly initiated in the spiritual world would never surrender himself to the foolishness of believing in mere matter. There are many, however, who have a certain interest in encouraging the dissemination of materialism and who make all sorts of arrangements so that a large proportion of human beings believe only in materialism and are totally under its influence. There are brotherhoods that have at their head initiates who have exactly this interest in cultivating materialism and disseminating it. These materialists are well served when there is constant talk that materialism has already been overcome, for it is possible to further some causes by using words with antithetical meaning. How this is handled is often most complicated.

What is it that such initiates desire, these initiates who know quite well that the human soul is a purely spiritual being, a spiritual being fully independent of corporeality? What do these initiates desire who, in spite of knowing this, shelter and cultivate the materialistic thinking of human beings? These initiates desire that there should be as many souls as possible who here between birth and death absorb only materialistic concepts. Through this, these souls are prepared to remain in the earthly sphere. They become to a certain extent fastened to the earthly sphere. Picture to yourself that brotherhoods are established that clearly know this, that are thoroughly familiar with these circumstances. These brotherhoods prepare certain human souls so that they remain in the realm of the material. If these brotherhoods then arrange—which is quite possible through their infamous power—that these souls come after death into the region of the power-sphere of their brotherhood, then this brotherhood grows to tremendous strength. These materialists, therefore, are not materialists because they do not believe in the spirit—these initiate materialists are not so silly; they know full well the spirit's position. They induce souls to remain with matter even after death, however, in order to make use of such souls for their own purposes. From these brotherhoods, a clientele of souls is thus produced who remain within the realm of the earth. These souls of the dead have within them forces that can be guided in the most diverse ways, with which one can bring about a variety of things and by means of which one can come to special manipulations of power in relation to those who have not been initiated in these things.

This is simply an arrangement of certain brotherhoods. In this matter, one can see clearly only if one does not allow oneself to be deceived by darkness and fog, does not permit oneself to be deceived by the belief that such brotherhoods either do not exist or that their activities are harmless. They are by no means harmless; they are, in fact, extremely harmful. They say that human beings should enter more and more deeply into materialism, that they should believe, according to the thinking of such initiates, that spiritual forces exist, to be sure, but that these spiritual forces are nothing other than certain forces of nature.

Diagram 5 Click image for large view

I would like to characterize for you the ideal that such brotherhoods hold. One must exert a little effort to understand the situation. Picture for yourself, therefore, a harmless world of people who are somewhat led astray by today's prevailing materialistic concepts, who have strayed away a little from the old, established religious ideas. Picture for yourself such a harmless humanity. Perhaps we can picture it for ourselves graphically.

We imagine here the realm of such a harmless humanity (larger circle). As I said, this humanity is not completely clear about the spiritual world; led astray by materialism, they are unsure how they should conduct themselves toward the spiritual world. They are especially unclear how they should act in relation to those who have passed through the portal of death. Let us assume that the realm of such a brotherhood is here (small circle, green). This brotherhood spreads the teachings of materialism; it is concerned that people think purely materialistic thoughts. In this way the brotherhood brings about the procreation of souls who remain in the earthly sphere after death. These would become a spiritual clientele for the lodge (see drawing, orange). This means that dead people have been created who would not leave the earthly sphere but would remain on earth. If the right preparations have been made, they can be retained in the lodges. In this way, therefore, lodges have been created that contain the living as well as the dead, but dead who are related to earthly forces.

The matter is directed so that these people hold sessions in the same way as was the case with the seances held during the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, about which I have often spoken. It may then happen—and I beg you to bear this in mind—that what occurs in these seances is directed by the lodge with the help of the dead. The true intention of the masters of those lodges, however, is that the human beings should not know that they are dealing with the dead but rather should believe that they are dealing with higher forces of nature. People are made to believe that these are higher forces of nature, that psychism and the like are only higher forces of nature. The true concept of soul will be taken from them, and it will be said that, just as there is electricity, just as there is magnetism, so there are also such higher forces. The fact that these forces are derived from souls is concealed by those who are leaders in the lodge. Through this, however, these others, these harmless souls, gradually become completely dependent, dependent in their souls, upon the lodge, without realizing what is subjugating them, without realizing the source of what is actually directing them.

There is no remedy against this situation other than knowledge of it. When one knows about it, one is already protected. When one knows it to the extent that the knowledge has become an inner certainty, a real conviction, then one is protected. One must not, however, be too lazy in striving to gain knowledge of these things. It must be said, though, that it is never entirely too late. I have often brought the following to your attention: these things can become clear only gradually, and I can pull together only gradually the elements to bring you complete clarity. I have often made you aware that, in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, many brotherhoods of the West introduced spiritism experimentally to convince themselves through this test that they had gone as far with humanity as they had intended. It was a testing to see how far they were with humanity. In these seances they expected that people would say that there are higher forces of nature. Then they were disappointed, these brothers of the left, that people did not say this but rather said that in the seances spirits of the dead appear. That was a bitter disappointment for the initiates; that was exactly what they did not want, because it was just this belief in the dead that these initiates wished to take from man. Not the activity of the dead, not the activity of the forces of the dead, but this thought that the forces derive from the dead, this correct, significant thought, this was to be taken from man. The brothers see that this is a higher materialism; it is a materialism that not only denies the spirit but wishes to force the spirit into matter. They see that materialism has forms in which it can already be denied. One can say that materialism has disappeared—we are speaking already about spirit, but all of them speak about spirit in a vague way. It is very easy to be a materialist when all nature has been made into spirit in such a way that psychism emerges. What is important is that one is able to cast one's glance into the concrete spiritual world, into concrete spirituality.

Here you have the beginning of what will become more and more intense in the next five centuries. These evil brotherhoods now are limiting themselves, but they are bound to continue their activity if they are not prevented, and they can only be prevented if one overcomes laziness toward the spiritual scientific world conception.

Through these seances, therefore, these brotherhoods betray themselves, so to speak. Instead of covering themselves, they have unveiled themselves through these seances. This showed that their scheme was not really quite successful. For this reason, the impulse sprang up within these same brotherhoods to strive to discredit spiritism for a time during the 1890s. In short, you can see how deeply incisive effects can be achieved in this way with the methods of the spiritual world. What we are dealing with here is the enhancement of power, exploiting certain evolutionary conditions that must emerge in the course of humanity's evolution.

This growing materialization of human souls, this imprisonment of human souls within the earthly sphere—lodges are also in the earthly sphere—will be counteracted. If the souls therefore haunt the lodges and are to be effective there, they must be confined to the earthly. This striving, this impulse to work in the earthly sphere through the souls, is counteracted by the significant impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. This impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha is also the healing of the world against the materialization of the soul. The way taken by Christ Himself is completely outside the will and intentions of human beings. No human being, therefore, no matter how knowledgeable—also no initiate—has influence over what Christ does, which will lead, in the course of the twentieth century, to the appearance about which I have spoken and of which you will find indications in the Mystery Dramas. This depends completely upon Christ Himself. Christ will exist in the earthly sphere as an etheric being. It depends upon the human being how he establishes a relationship to Him. On the appearance of Christ Himself, therefore, no one, no initiate however mighty, has any influence. It will come. I beg that you hold firmly to this. Arrangements can be made, however, for receiving this Christ event in this way or that, for making it effective.

These brotherhoods about which I have just spoken, which wish to confine the souls of human beings to the materialistic sphere, strive for the Christ to pass unnoticed through the twentieth century, for His coming as etheric individuality to be unobserved by human beings. This striving evolves under the influence of a quite definite idea, under a definite impulse of will. These brotherhoods have the urge to conquer the sphere of influence that is to come through Christ in the twentieth century and to continue further, to conquer it for another being, about which we shall speak later in more detail. There are brotherhoods of the West who strive to battle the Christ impulse. They wish to place another individuality who has never yet appeared in the flesh but only as an etheric individuality, who is of a strong Ahrimanic nature, in place of Christ.

All these measures about which I have just spoken regarding the dead and so forth serve in the end the aim of leading human beings away from Christ, Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, and of securing the rulership of the earth for another individuality. It is a real struggle, not just something that I know of as abstract concepts or whatever but a real struggle. It is a real struggle that concerns itself with placing another being in place of the Christ being in the course of human evolution for the rest of the fifth post-Atlantean period and for the sixth and seventh. It will be the task of a healthy, honest spiritual development to eradicate such strivings, which are in the true sense of the word anti-Christian, to remove them, to annihilate them. This can be achieved, however, only through clear insight. This other being whom the brotherhood wishes to substitute as ruler they will call “Christ”; they will actually designate him as the “Christ.” What will be important will be to distinguish between the true Christ, Who, when He appears, will not be an individuality incarnated in the flesh, and the being that is distinguished from the true Christ by having never yet incarnated during earthly evolution. This other being is one who has only reached etheric embodiment, and he will be put by the brotherhoods in the place of Christ, Who is to pass by unobserved.

There we have the part of the battle concerned with counterfeiting the appearance of Christ in the twentieth century. He who observes life only on the surface, above all in outer discussions about Christ and the question of Jesus and so forth, does not look into the depths. This is the fog, the fumes with which people are deceived, diverting them from the deeper things, from what is the essential issue. When theologians debate about Christ, there is always in such discussions a spiritual influence from somewhere. These people then encourage quite different aims and purposes from those in which they actually believe consciously.

This is just the danger of the concept of the unconscious, that people are driven into confusion even concerning such circumstances. These evil brotherhoods pursue their aims very consciously, but what the brotherhoods pursue consciously naturally becomes unconscious for those who have all kinds of superficial discussions and plans. One does not reach the heart of the matter, however, when one speaks about the unconscious, for this so-called unconscious is simply on the other side of the threshold of everyday consciousness. It is in that sphere in which the knowing one can unfold his plans. You see that this is essentially one side of the situation, that it is really so that a number of brotherhoods take an opposing stand, brotherhoods who wish to replace the activity of the Christ with the activity of another individuality. These brotherhoods arrange everything so that they can achieve their purpose.

Countering this are brotherhoods of the East, especially Indian brotherhoods, who wish no less significantly to interfere in the evolution of humanity. These Indian brotherhoods pursue yet another goal. They have never developed the type of esotericism through which they could ensnare the dead into their realm, into the realm of the lodges. That is far removed from their purposes; they have no interest in such things. On the other hand, they also do not wish the Mystery of the Golgotha with its impulse to take hold of the evolution of humanity. They also do not wish this. It is not, however, that they do not wish it because the dead are at their disposal, as I indicated is the case with the brotherhoods of the West. They wish to fight against the Christ, Who will enter human evolution as an etheric individuality in the course of the twentieth century, not by substituting another individuality; for that purpose they would need the dead and these they do not have. Instead they wish to divert the interest away from this Christ. They do not wish to allow Christianity to become strong, these brotherhoods of the East, especially the Indian brotherhoods. They do not wish the interest in the true Christ, Who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, to flourish, the interest in the Christ Who had only a single incarnation for three years here on earth and Who cannot appear again on earth in a physical incarnation. They do not wish to make use of the dead in their lodges but something other than what were once simply living human beings. In these Indian, Eastern lodges, a different type of being is made use of in place of the dead used by the Western lodges.

When a human being dies, he leaves behind his etheric body; it separates from him soon after death, as you know. Under normal conditions this etheric body is assimilated by the cosmos. This absorption is somewhat complicated, as I have shown you in many different ways. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, however, and even after Golgotha, particularly in the Eastern regions, something quite distinctive was possible. When the human being after death surrenders such an etheric body, certain beings are able to inhabit this etheric body; they then become etheric beings with these etheric bodies that have been laid aside by human beings. In Eastern regions, therefore, it now happens that not dead people but all kinds of demonic spirits are induced to inhabit etheric bodies laid aside by human beings. Such demonic spirits that inhabit the etheric bodies laid aside by human beings are taken into the Eastern lodges. The Western lodges thus have the dead who have been directly confined within matter; the Eastern lodges of the left have demonic spirits, spirits that do not belong to earthly evolution but who creep into earthly evolution by occupying the etheric bodies vacated by human beings.

Exoterically this phenomenon is transformed through veneration. You know that certain brotherhoods possess the art of calling forth illusions. Because people do not know how widespread illusion already is in reality, they can easily be deceived by artificially called forth illusions. It is done in this way: what one wishes to achieve is clothed in the form of veneration. Imagine that I have a tribe of people, a related clan; I have arranged ahead of time as an “evil” brother the possibility that the etheric body of an ancestor is occupied by a demonic being. I say to them that they must venerate this ancestor. The ancestor is simply the one who had laid aside his etheric body, which was then occupied by demons through the machinations of the lodge. The veneration of ancestors is thereby brought about. These ancestors who are being worshipped, however, are simply demonic beings within the etheric body of the respective ancestor.

One can divert the world conception of Eastern people from the Mystery of Golgotha by working in these ways, as they do in the Eastern lodges. Through this their purpose will be achieved, that Christ as individuality, as He is intended to pass over the earth, remains unnoticed by Eastern people and perhaps by people everywhere. They therefore do not wish to substitute a false Christ but to cause the appearance of Christ Jesus to remain unnoticed.

To a certain extent a twofold struggle is thus waged today against the Christ impulse appearing in the etheric in the course of the twentieth century. Humanity is actually inserted within this evolution. What we see happening in individual cases is essentially only a consequence of what is transpiring in the great impulses of humanity's evolution. For that reason it is sad that people will be deceived constantly when the unconscious, the so-called unconscious, is working within them—be it some receding love affair or something similar—when, in fact, impulses of extremely conscious spirituality are passing from all sides through humanity but remaining relatively unconscious if one does not trouble oneself about them in one's consciousness.

To these things you must add much more. Human beings who have been honestly concerned with the evolution of humanity have always taken into consideration such things as we have characterized, and they have undertaken what was right from their point of view. Much more than this the human being cannot or is not permitted to do.

A good sheltered place for spiritual life, an exceptionally good sheltered spot, protected against all possible illusions, was Ireland, the Irish Island during the first Christian centuries. It was truly protected from all possible illusions, more than any other region on earth. This is also the reason that so many disseminators of Christianity in the early Christian centuries originated in Ireland. These disseminators of Christianity, however, had to work with a naive humanity, because European humanity, among whom they were active, was in those days naive. They had to take this humanity in its naiveté into consideration, but as far as they themselves were concerned, they had to know and understand the great impulses of humanity. In the fourth and fifth centuries particularly, Irish initiates were active in Central Europe. They began there, and their activity consisted in preparing what was to take place in the future. To a certain extent they were under the influence of the initiate-knowledge that revealed that in the fifteenth century (1413, as you know) the fifth post-Atlantean era was to begin. They were under this influence. They also knew that they had to prepare for a completely new age, that a naive humanity must be protected for this new period. What was it that was done at that time to protect this naive humanity, to build a fence around it, as it were, to keep certain harmful influences from entering? What was done?

Evolution was guided first by well-instructed and then by honest groups in such a way that gradually all ocean journeys were suppressed, journeys that in past times had been made from Northern lands to America. It was thus arranged that whereas in past times boats would cross from Norway to America for certain purposes (I shall say more about this another time), this knowledge of America would be completely forgotten by the European population, so that the connection with America was gradually obliterated. In the fifteenth century nothing was known of America by European humanity. The development was directed particularly from Rome so that for definite reasons the connection with America was gradually lost, because European humanity had to be sheltered from American influences. Especially involved in this process of protecting European humanity from American influences were just these monks from Ireland who as Irish initiates had spread Christianity over the European continent.

In ancient times quite definite influences were brought from America; in the age when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began, however, matters were arranged so that European humanity was uninfluenced by America, knew absolutely nothing about it, lived in the belief that America did not exist. Only after the fifth post-Atlantean period had begun was America again discovered, as is familiar history. One of the truths with which you are most likely familiar is that what is learned in schools as history is many times a “fable convenue.” That America was discovered for the first time in 1492 is such a convenient fable. It was only rediscovered. It was merely that for a period the connections were cleverly concealed, as had to occur. It is again important, however, to know what the situation was, to know the true history. True history is that Europe was fenced in for a time and was carefully protected against certain influences that were not to come to Europe.

Such things show you how significant it is not to accept the so-called unconscious as an unconscious but rather as something that is extremely conscious and takes place beyond the threshold of everyday human consciousness. It is indeed important for a larger portion of humanity to learn about certain mysteries. I have therefore done as much as it is possible to do now in public lectures in Zurich. In Zurich, as you may know, I have gone at times as far as to explain to people the extent to which historical life is not grasped by human beings with the ordinary consciousness but is in reality dreamt, how the content of history is in reality dreamt by human beings. Only when people become conscious of this will health come to these concepts.

These are things through which one gradually awakens consciousness. The phenomena, the facts that will come about, will show us the truth of these things. One must only be sure not to overlook them. Human beings go blindly and slumbering through the facts; they also go blindly and slumbering through such tragic catastrophes as the present one. These are things that I would like to impress upon your hearts, today more historically. Tomorrow I shall speak about these things more explicitly.

I would like to add one more picture to these things. First, you have seen from the discussion what a tremendous distinction there is between East and West in the evolution of humanity. Second, I ask you to consider the following. You see, the psychoanalyst speaks about the subconscious, about the subconscious life of the soul, and so on. It is not so important to speak about such an indefinite concept of these things, but it is necessary to grasp what is truly beyond the threshold of consciousness. What is there? Much is certainly to be found down there under the threshold of consciousness. For itself, however, what lies down there is extremely conscious. One must come to understand what kind of conscious spirituality exists beyond the threshold of consciousness. One must speak of conscious spirituality beyond the threshold of consciousness, not unconscious spirituality. We must become clear that man has much about which he knows nothing in his ordinary consciousness. It would put the human being in a terrible position if he had to know in his ordinary consciousness all that goes on within him. Just consider how he would be able to go about eating and drinking if he were to acquaint himself exactly with all the physiological and biological processes that take place from the ingesting of food onward, and so on. All this takes place in the unconscious. There are spiritual forces at work everywhere, even in the purely physiological. Man cannot wait with eating and drinking, however, until he has learned what is really going on within him. So much goes on within man! For man, a large portion, by far the largest portion, of his being is unconscious, or to say it better, subconscious.

The strange thing is that this subconscious that we carry within us is taken hold of by another being under all circumstances. This means that we are not only a fusion of body, soul, and spirit, carrying within us through the world our soul, which is independent of our body; shortly before birth another being takes possession of the subconscious portions of the human being. This being is there, this subconscious being that accompanies man the entire way between birth and death. Somewhat before birth it enters man and accompanies him. One can also characterize this being as one that permeates man in those parts that do not come into his ordinary consciousness: it is a very intelligent being and possessed of a will that is akin to the forces of nature; in its will it is much more closely related to the forces of nature than is man. I must emphasize the peculiarity, however, that this being would suffer extraordinarily if under present conditions it were to experience death with man. Under present conditions this being cannot experience death with man. It thus disappears shortly before death; it must always save itself. It always has the urge, however, to arrange the life of the human being in such a way that it can overcome death. It would be dreadful for the evolution of the human being, however, if this being that has taken such possession of man should also be able to conquer death, if it could die with man and in this way enter the spiritual worlds that man enters after death. It must always take its leave of man before he enters the spiritual world after death. In some cases this is very difficult for this being, and all sorts of complications arise.

This is the situation: this being that holds sway completely in the subconscious is extremely dependent upon the earth as a whole organism. The earth is not at all the being described by geologists, mineralogists, and paleontologists; this earth is a fully living being. Man sees only its skeleton, because the geologist, mineralogist, and paleontologist describe only its mineral nature that is the earth's skeleton. If you knew only this much, you would know about as much as if you were to enter this room and, through some special arrangement of your capacities for sight, could see nothing of this honored company but the bones, the skeletal system. Imagine if one entered through the door and on these chairs sat nothing but skeletons (not that you necessarily would have nothing but bones—that I do not expect of you—but we will assume that man has the capacity to see only bones; he would be fitted out with some kind of X-ray machine). This is just what geology sees of the earth; it sees only the skeleton. This earth, however, not only consists of skeleton but is a living organism, and this earth sends from its center to every point on the surface, to every territory, special forces. Picture for yourself the surface of the earth (see drawing):

Diagram 6 Click image for large view

Here is the Eastern region, there the Western region, to take it only on a large scale. The forces that are transmitted from the earth are something that belong to the life organism of the earth. Depending on whether a human being lives on this or that spot on earth, his soul, this immortal soul, does not come directly in contact with these forces but only indirectly—the immortal soul of man is relatively independent of earthly conditions. The soul is only artificially dependent upon earthly conditions, as was shown today. By the circuitous path through this other being, however, this being that takes possession of man before birth and must leave him again before death, these various forces work particularly strongly. These forces are active in racial types and geographic differentiations in human beings. It is thus this “double,” which man bears within him, upon whom the geographic and other differentiations particularly exert their influences.

This is extremely significant, and we will see tomorrow in which way this double is influenced from various points of the earth and what the resulting consequences are. I have already mentioned that it is necessary for you to consider what I have said today with what will come tomorrow, because the one can hardly be understood without the other. We must now try to absorb into ourselves such concepts as become even more serious when related to the total reality, to that reality in which the human soul lives with its entire being. This reality metamorphoses itself in various ways, but how it is metamorphosed depends greatly upon man. Two significant metamorphoses that are possible become clear when one is aware of how human souls, depending upon whether they absorb materialistic or spiritual concepts between birth and death, imprison themselves on earth or come into the right spheres. In these matters increasing clarity must prevail in our concepts. We will then find increasingly the right relationship to the entire world. This will not occur in an abstract spiritual movement, but rather it must lie within us, in a concretely comprehended spiritual movement that reckons with the spiritual life of a number of individualities.

It is truly satisfying for me that such discussions—discussions that are also particularly significant for those among us who no longer belong to the physical plane but have passed through the portal of death, remaining our faithful members—that such discussions as these are fostered here as a reality, that they bring us ever closer to our departed friends.

We have been asked to say something about Freemasonry. This cannot be understood, however, until we have examined the original spiritual currents related to Freemasonry, which can be seen as its sources. An even more important spiritual current than Rosicrucianism was Manicheism. So first we need to speak about this much more important movement and then, at a later time, we can shed a light on Freemasonry.

What I have to say on this subject is connected with various things which influence the spiritual life of today and will influence it in time to come. And to illustrate how one who is actively engaged in this field constantly comes across something—if only obliquely—I would point out, by way of introduction, that on many occasions I have described the problem of Faust¹ as of particular importance for modern spiritual life. And that is why the modern spiritual movement is brought into connection with the problem of Faust in the first number of Luzifer.² The allusion I made to the problem of Faust in my essay in Luzifer is not without a certain reason.

In order to bring the things with which we are concerned into connection with one another, we must start from a spiritual tendency which first manifested in about the third century A.D. It is that spiritual movement whose great opponent was St. Augustine,³ although before he went over to the side of the Catholic Church he was himself an adherent of this faith. We have to speak about Manicheism, which was founded by a person who called himself Mani⁴ and lived about the time of the third century A.D. This movement spread from a part of the world which was then ruled by the kings of the Near East; that is to say, from a region of Western Asia Minor. This Mani was the founder of a spiritual movement which although at first only a small sect, became a mighty spiritual current. The Albigenses, Waldenses and Cathars⁵ of the Middle Ages are the continuation of this current, to which also belong the Knights Templar, of whom we shall speak separately,⁶ and also—by a remarkable chain of circumstances—the Freemasons. Freemasonry really belongs to this stream, though it is connected with others, for instance with Rosicrucianism.⁷

What outer history has to say about Mani is very simple.⁸

It is said that there once lived a merchant in the Near East who was very learned. He compiled four important works: first, Mysteria, secondly, Capitola, thirdly, Evangelium, and lastly Thesaurus. It is further related that at his death he left these writings to his widow who was a Persian. This widow, on her part, left them to a slave whose freedom she had bought and whom she had liberated. That was the said Mani, who then drew his wisdom out of these writings, though he was also initiated into the Mithraic mysteries.⁹ Mani is called the ‘Son of the Widow’, and his followers are called the ‘Sons of the Widow.’ However, Mani described himself as the ‘Paraclete’.¹⁰ the Holy Spirit promised to mankind by Christ. We should understand by this that he saw himself as one incarnation of the Holy Spirit; he did not mean that he was the only one. He explained that the Holy Spirit reincarnated, and that he was one such reincarnation.

The teaching which he proclaimed was opposed in the most vigorous fashion by Augustine after he had gone over to the Catholic Church. Augustine opposed his Catholic views to the Manichean teaching which he saw represented in a personality whom he called Faustus.¹¹ Faustus is, in Augustine's conception, the opponent of Christianity. Here lies the origin of Goethe's Faust, and of his conception of evil. The name ‘Faust’ goes back to this old Augustinian teaching.

One usually hears it said about Manichean teaching that it is distinguished from western Christianity by its different interpretation of evil. Whereas Catholic Christianity regards evil as an aberration from its divine origin, the defection of originally good spirits from God, Manicheism teaches that evil is just as eternal as good; that there is no resurrection of the body, and that evil, as such, will continue for ever. Evil, therefore, has no beginning, but springs from the same source as good and has no end.

If you come to know Manicheism in this form it will seem radically unchristian and quite incomprehensible.

Now we should like to study the matter thoroughly according to the traditions which are supposed to have originated from Mani himself, and so see what it is all about. An external clue is given us in the Manichean legend; just such a legend as the Temple Legend, which I recounted to you recently. All such spiritual currents connected with initiation are expressed exoterically in legends, but the legend of Manicheism is a great cosmic legend,¹² a super-sensible legend.

It tells us that at one time the spirits of darkness wanted to take the kingdom of light by storm. They actually reached the borders of the kingdom of light and hoped to conquer it. But they failed to achieve anything. Now they were to be punished—and that is a very significant feature which I beg you to take account of—they were to be punished by the kingdom of light. But in this realm there was nothing which was in any way evil, there was only good. Thus the demons of darkness could only have been punished with something good. So what happened? The following: The spirits of light took a part of their own kingdom and mixed it with the materialised kingdom of darkness. Because there was now a part of the kingdom of light mingled with the kingdom of darkness, a leaven had been introduced into the kingdom of darkness, a ferment which produced a chaotic whirling dance, whereby it received a new element into itself; i.e. death. Therefore, it continually consumes itself and thus carries within itself the germ of its own destruction. It is further related that just because of this, the race of mankind was brought into existence. Primeval man represents just what was sent down from the kingdom of light to mix with the kingdom of darkness and to conquer, through death, what should not have been there; to conquer it within his own being.

The profound thought which lies in this is that the kingdom of darkness has to be overcome by the kingdom of light, not by means of punishment, but through mildness; not by resisting evil, but by uniting with it in order to redeem evil as such. Because a part of the light enters into evil, the evil itself is overcome.

Underlying that is the interpretation of evil which I have often explained as that of theosophy. What is evil? Nothing but an ill-timed good. To cite an example which has often been quoted by me, let us assume that we have to do with a virtuoso pianist and an excellent piano technician, both perfect in their sphere. First of all the technician has to build the piano and then hand it over to the pianist. If the latter is a good player he will use it appropriately and both are equally good. But should the technician go into the concert hall instead of the pianist and start hammering away he would then be in the wrong place. Something good would have become something bad. So we see that evil is nothing else than a misplaced good.

When what is especially good at one time or another strives to be preserved, to become rigid and thus curb the progress of further development, then, without doubt, it becomes evil, because it opposes the good. Let us suppose that the leading powers of the lunar epoch, though perfect in their way and in their activity, were to continue to intermingle with evolution though they ought to have ceased their activity, then they would represent something evil in earth evolution. Thus evil is nothing else than the divine, for, at that other time, what is evil when it comes at the wrong season, was then an expression of what is perfect, what is divine.

We must interpret the Manichean views in this profound sense, that good and evil are fundamentally the same in their origin and in their ending. If you interpret it in this way you will understand what Mani really intended to bring about. But, on the other hand, we still have to explain why it was that Mani called himself the ‘Son of the Widow’¹³ and why his followers were called the ‘Sons of the Widow’.

When we turn back to the most ancient times, before our present Root Race, the mode in which mankind acquired knowledge was different. You will perceive from my description of Atlantis—and also, when the next issue of Luzifer appears, you will see from my description of Lemuria¹⁴—that at that time, and to a certain extent up to the present day, all knowledge was influenced by what is above mankind. I have often mentioned that that Manu¹⁵ who will appear during the next Root Race will for the first time be a real brother to his fellow men, whereas all earlier Manus were superhuman, divine beings of a kind. Only now is man becoming ripe enough to have one of his brother men as his Manu, who has passed through all stages with him since the middle of Lemuria. What is really taking place then, during the evolution of the fifth Root Race? This, that the revelation from above, the guidance of the soul from above, is gradually being withdrawn, so that man is left to go his own way and become his own leader.

The soul was always known as the ‘mother’ in all esoteric (mystical) teachings; the instructor was the ‘father’. Father and mother, Osiris and Isis, those are the two forces present in the soul: the instructor, representing the divine which flows directly into man, Osiris, he that is the father; the soul itself, Isis, the one who conceives, receives the divine, the spiritual into itself, she is the mother. During the fifth Root Race, the father withdraws. The soul is widowed. Humanity is thrown back onto itself. It must find the light of truth within its own soul in order to act as its own guide. Everything of a soul nature has always been expressed in terms of the feminine. Therefore the feminine element—which exists only in a germinal state today and will later be fully developed—this self-directing feminine principle which is no longer confronted by the divine fructifier, is called by Mani the ‘Widow’. And therefore he calls himself ‘Son of the Widow’.

Mani is the one who prepares that stage in man's soul development when he will seek for his own soul-spirit light. Everything which comes from Mani is an appeal to man's own spirit light of soul, and at the same time is a definite rebellion against anything which does not come out of man's own soul,out of man's own observation of his soul. Beautiful words have been handed down from Mani¹⁶ and have been the leading theme of his followers at all later times. We hear the words: You must lay aside everything which you have acquired as outer revelation by means of the senses. You must lay aside all things which come to you via outer authority; then you must become ripe to gaze into your own soul.

St. Augustine, on the other hand—in a conversation which made him into an opponent of the Manichean Faust—voiced the opinion: ‘I would not accept the teachings of Christ if they were not founded on the authority of the Church’.¹⁷ The Manichean Faust said,¹⁸ however: ‘You should not accept any teaching on authority; we only wish to accept a doctrine in freedom.’ That illustrates the rebellious self-sufficiency of the spirit light which comes to expression so beautifully in the Faust saga.¹⁹

We meet this confrontation also in later sagas in the Middle Ages: on the one hand the Faust saga, on the other, the Luther saga.²⁰ Luther carries on the principle of authority.²¹ Faust, on the other hand, rebels, he puts his faith in the inner spirit light. We have the saga of Luther; he throws the inkwell at the devil's head. What appears to him to be evil he thrusts aside. And on the other hand we have Faust's pact with the devil. A spark from the kingdom of light is sent into the kingdom of darkness, so that when the darkness is penetrated, it redeems itself, evil is overcome by gentleness. If you think of it in this fashion you will see that this Manicheism fits in very well with the interpretation which we have given of evil.

How do we imagine the interworking of good and evil? We have to explain it as the harmonisation of life with form.²² How does life change over into form? Through coming up against resistance, through not manifesting all at once in one particular shape. Take note, for instance, how life in a plant—let us say a lily—speeds on from form to form. The life in the lily has fashioned, has elaborated, the form of the lily.

When this form has been created, life overcomes it and passes over into the seed to be reborn as the same life in a fresh form. And so life strides onward from form to form. Life itself is formless and could never perceptibly manifest its vital forces. The life of the lily, for instance, exists in the first lily and progresses to the second, third, fourth and so on. Everywhere there is the same life which appears in a limited form, spreading and interweaving. The fact that it appears in a limited form is a restriction imposed upon this universal flowing life. There would be no form if life were not restricted, if it were not arrested in its flowing force which radiates in all directions. It is just what remains behind, which, from a higher stage, appears like a fetter; it is just out of this that form evolves in the great cosmos.

What comprises life is always set in the framework of a form which was life in an earlier time. Example: the Catholic Church. The life which existed in the Catholic Church from St. Augustine until the fifteenth century was the Christian life. The life therein is Christianity. Ever and again this pulsating life emerges anew (the mystics). Where does the form come from? It is no less than the life of the old Roman Empire. What was still alive in the old Roman Empire has frozen into form. What was at first a Republic, then an Empire, what lived in outward appearance as the Roman State, surrendered its life, frozen into form, to the later Christianity; even its capital city, Rome, was previously the capital city of the Roman Empire, and the Roman provincial officers have their continuation in the presbyters and bishops. What was previously life later becomes form for a higher stage of life.

Is it not the same with human beings? What is human life? The fructification from above (Manas fructification), implanted into man in mid-Lemurian times, has today become his inner life. The form is what is carried over, as seed, from the lunar epoch. At that time, in the lunar period, the life of man consisted of the development of the astral body; now this has become the sheath, the form. Always the life of a former epoch becomes the form of a later epoch. In the harmonisation of form and life that other problem is expressed too: the problem of good and evil, through the fact that the good of a former epoch is joined to the good of a later epoch, which is fundamentally nothing but a harmonisation of progress with the things which hinder progress. That is what, at the same time, makes material existence possible, makes it possible for things to appear in outward form. It is our human existence on the solid mineral plane: soul life and what remains of the life of an earlier epoch hardened into a restrictive form. That, too, is the teaching of Manicheism regarding evil.

If we now pose the question from this point of view: What are Mani's intentions, what is the meaning of his statement that he is the Paraclete, the Spirit, the Son of the Widow? It means no less than that he intends to prepare for the time in which the men of the sixth Root Race will be guided out of their own being, by their own soul's light, to overcome outward forms and convert them to spirit.

Mani's intention is to create a spiritual current which goes beyond the Rosicrucian current,²³ which leads further than Rosicrucianism. This current of Mani's will flow over to the sixth Root Race and has been in preparation since the founding of Christianity. It is just at the time of the sixth Root Race that Christianity will be expressed in its most complete form. Its time will truly have come. The inner Christian life, as such, overcomes every form, it is propagated by external Christianity and lives in all forms of the various confessions. Whoever seeks Christian life will always find it. It creates forms and destroys forms in various religious systems. It does not depend upon a search for conformity in the outward forms in which it is expressed, but it depends upon experiencing the inner life stream which is always current under the surface. What is still waiting to be made is a form for the life of the sixth Root Race. That must be created beforehand, it has to be there so that Christian life can be poured into it. This form has to be prepared by human beings who create an Organisation, a form, so that the true Christian life of the sixth Root Race can find its place therein. And this external form of society must derive from the intention which Mani has fostered, from the small group whom Mani has prepared. That must be the outer form of Organisation, the congregation in which the spark of Christianity will first be truly kindled.

From this you will be able to conclude that Manicheism will endeavour, first and foremost, to preserve purity in outer life; for its aim is to produce human beings who will provide an adequate vessel in the future. That is why such great stress was laid on absolute purity of mind and of life. The Cathars were a sect which rose like a meteor in the twelfth century. They called themselves Cathars because ‘cathar’ means ‘pure one’. They strove for purity in their way of life and in their moral attitude. They had to seek catharsis (purification) both inwardly and outwardly in order to form a community which would provide a pure vessel. That is what Manicheism was striving for. It was less a question in Manicheism of the cultivation of the inner life—for life will flow onwards through other channels—but rather the cultivation of the external form of life.

Now let us look at what is to come about during the sixth Root Race. Good and evil will then contrast very differently from the way that they do today. What will be evident to all mankind in the fifth Round²⁴—that the outer physiognomy which each one acquires will directly mirror what Karma has made out of him—that will express itself spiritually in the sixth Root Race like a prelude to this event. Among those on whom Karma has bestowed an excess of evil, it will become particularly evident on a spiritual level. On the one hand there will be human beings possessing mighty inner forces of good, who will be gifted with great love and goodness; but, on the other hand, the opposite will also be seen. Evil will be present as a disposition without any disguise in a great many people, no longer cloaked or hidden from view. The evil ones will extol evil as something of particular worth. A glimmering of this delight in evil and the demonic pertaining to the sixth Root Race is already in evidence in certain men of genius. Nietzsche's ‘blonde beast’,²⁵ for example, is a portent of this.

The unalloyed evil must be cast out of the stream of world evolution like dross. It will be relegated to the eighth sphere.²⁶ Today we stand immediately at the threshold of a time when good must consciously come to terms with evil.

The sixth Root Race will have the task of drawing evil back into the continuing stream of evolution through kindness. Then a spiritual current will have been born which does not oppose evil, even though it manifests in the world in its demonic form. The consciousness will have been established in the successors to the ‘Sons of the Widow’ that evil must be included again in evolution and be overcome, not by strife, but only through charitableness. It is the task of the Manichean spiritual stream forcefully to prepare for this. This spiritual stream will not die out, it will make its appearance in many forms. It appears in forms which many can call to mind but which need not be mentioned today. If it were to function merely in the cultivation of an inner mood of soul, this current would not achieve what it should do. It must express itself in the founding of communities which, above all, will look upon peace, love and passive resistance to evil as their standard of behaviour and will seek to spread this view. For they must create a receptacle, a form, for the life which will continue to exist even without their presence.

Now you can understand how it is that Augustine, the leading spirit of the Catholic Church, who developed the form of the Church very precisely in his City of God, who worked out the form for contemporary life, was of necessity the most violent opponent of that kind of form which is preparing for the future. Two polar opposites confront one another, Faust and Augustine: Augustine, who based his work on the Church, on the form belonging to his day, and Faust, who strives to prepare in man a sense for the form of the future.

That is the contrast which developed in the third and fourth centuries A.D. It is still present and finds expression in the struggle of the Catholic Church against the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucians, Albigenses, Cathars and so on. All of them are eliminated from the physical plane, but their inner spirit continues to be active. This contrast manifests again later in modified but still violent form in two currents born out of Western culture, that of Jesuitism (pertaining to Augustine) and that of Freemasonry²⁷ (Manicheism). Those who lead the battle on the one side are all conscious of what they are doing—they are the Catholics and Jesuits of the higher degrees. Of those, however, who are on the other side, who lead the battle in the spirit of Mani, only very few are conscious; only those at the head of the movement are conscious of it.

Thus Jesuitism (belonging to Augustine) and Freemasonry (Manicheism) confront one another in later centuries. They are the offspring of ancient spiritual currents. That is why you have in both these currents a continuation of the same ceremonies connected with initiation that you find in the old currents. The initiation into Jesuitism has the four degrees: Coadjutores temporales, Scholares, Coadjutores spirituales, Professi. The degrees of initiation in the true occult Freemasonry are similar. The two run parallel to one another but they point in quite different directions.²⁸

• 1 . See: Goethe's Standard of the Soul, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1925; Goethe's Secret Revelation and the Riddle of Faust, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., 1933; The Problem of Faust, (R. 55)—especially lecture of 3rd November 1917.
• 2 . The first number of Rudolf Steiner's Luzifer, a periodical concerned with soul life, spiritual development and theosophy, with its opening article on Luzifer, appeared in June 1903.
• 3 . The famous Church Father (354–430 A.D.) was, according to his own confession, a disciple of Manicheism for nearly nine years until his ‘conversion.’ See lecture of 26.12.1914, in Festivals of the Seasons.
• 4 . Originally Mani is said to have been called ‘Corbicius.’ ‘Mani’ was the name which he gave himself and, according to Schmitt (see note concerning the text), this has the significance: ‘an Aeon of the Mandeans: Mana raba, which is as much as to say: the promised Comforter, the Paraclete.’ The date of Mani's life is usually considered to be 215/16–276/7 A.D.
• 5 . According to Charles William Heckethorn (see note to lecture 3 of 30th September 1904): ‘The sect of the Albigenses, the offspring of Manicheism, fructified in its turn the germs of the Templars and Rosicrucians, and of all those associations that continued the struggle and fought against ecclesiastical and civil oppression.’ The relationship between Manicheism and Freemasonry is expressed thus by Heckethorn: ‘Masons in this degree call themselves the “children of the widow”, the sun on descending into his tomb leaving nature—of which Masons consider themselves the pupils—a widow; but the appellation may also have its origin in the Manichean sect, whose followers were known as the “sons of the widow”.’
  
  According to Joseph Schauberg in his book (Vergleichendes Handbuch der Symbolik der Freimaurerei mit besonderer Rucksicht auf die Mythologien und Mysterien des Altertums) on the symbolism of Freemasonry, a copy of which was in Rudolf Steiner's library: ‘... nearly all Freemasonry symbols show that the Masons of old believed in and dedicated their service to a worship of the light after the manner of the Oriental sects of the Parsecs, Sabaeans, perhaps also of the Manicheans.’
• 6 . There is no evidence to show when this could have taken place in this context. See also sixth lecture (25th September 1916) in Inner Impulses working in the Evolution of Mankind, (R. 45), and lecture of 2nd October 1916 (Z 425).
• 7 . The origin of Freemasonry and its connection with Rosicrucianism is a much debated and unsolved theme, even in the literature of Freemasonry itself, whereas it has hardly even been touched on in serious historical studies. A first attempt in this direction, if exclusively from a rational and a spiritual point of view, is the work of Frances A. Yates: The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.
• 8 . At this point the contents of Rudolf Steiner's lecture seem to have been very inadequately reported. He based what he had to say on a legend which he later repeated in a lecture for members (according to notes lacking date or indication of locality). In the aforementioned notes the literal transcript is as follows: ‘Mani, or Manes, the founder of Manicheism appeared in the third century A.D. in Babylon. An unusual legend has the following to say about him: Skythianos and Terebinthus, or Buddha, were his predecessors. The latter was the pupil of the former. After the violent death of Skythianos, Terebinthus fled with the books to Babylon. He also suffered misfortune; the only one to accept his teachings was an elderly widow. She inherited his books and left them, at her death, to her foster child, a twelve year old boy whom she had adopted out of slavery when he was seven years old. The latter, who might also be called a “Son of the Widow”, came to public notice at the age of 24 as Manes, the founder of Manicheism.’
  
  This legend is dealt with at length and with full references as to source in the work of D. Schwolsohn: Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, Petersburg and Leipzig, 1856. (The detailed source references are not quoted in what follows):
  
  ‘Now that it has been established that Manicheism has been derived from Mandaism, we shall attempt to throw light on the account given of Mani by another of the Church Fathers. According to Epiphanius, Cyrillus Hierosolymitanus, Socrates and the author of the Acta Disputationis S. Archelai (Acta Archelai) with whom Theodoretus Suidas and Cedrenus in part agree, Mani was not the real founder of Manicheism but had as his predecessor a certain Scythianus and the latter's pupil, Terebinthus, who afterwards called himself Buddha. It goes on to say that anyone who wished to make a denial of the heresy of Manicheism, must at the same time abjure Zarades (Zoroaster), Buddha and Scythianus. According to the Acta Archelai, the last-named was a Scyth from Scythia—which accounts for his name, which was not really Scythianus—and he appeared at the time of the Apostles, when he started to spread his doctrine of the two principles. He is said to have been a Saracen by birth and married a woman from upper Thebes, for whose sake he settled in Egypt, where he became acquainted with the wisdom of the Egyptians. Epiphanius, Socrates and Cyrillus, Hierosolymitanus give similar accounts, only the first of these says that he was a Saracen by birth, was educated in Arabia and journeyed to India and Egypt, and the last mentioned says emphatically that his teachings had nothing in common with either Judaism or Christianity. He, or his pupil Terebinthus, was the author of four books, which the latter, after his emigration to Babylon, left to a widow when he died. Mani, the slave of this widow, inherited these writings from her and proclaimed their doctrines as his own. Theodoretus, Suidas and Cedrenus have the same to say of Terebinthus and Mani, only they identify the latter with Scythianus; Theodoritus even goes so far as to say that the reason why Mani was called Scythianus was that he was a slave, and Suidas and Cedrenus say that by birth he was a Brahmin. Bauer maintains that these two predecessors of Mani, Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha could not possibly be held to be historical personages: “Alone the obvious anachronism that Scythianus is reckoned as belonging to the time of the Apostles, and then to make his successor, Mani, appear soon after, is enough to make us suspicious of the historical truth of the whole story”. This, however, is quite a wrong supposition. The time of the Apostles lasted until Trajan, who died in 117, for, according to Eusebius, John the Evangelist only died during Trajan's reign. When it is said that Scythianus appeared during the time of the Apostles, it is only the last years of the said Apostle which are meant. As proof of this a point made by Suidas will serve, to the effect that the Emperor Nerva (who reigned from 97 A.D. for 1 year and 4 months) recalled the Evangelist, John, from Patmos, where he had been in exile, to Ephesus; at that time, adds Suidas, the dogma of the Manicheans became known through the public proclamation of Mani's heresy. The latter statement, however, is almost certainly founded on mistaken identity: for, in another place, Suidas himself says that Manes lived at the time of the Emperor Aurelian (reigned from 271–275). Without doubt, Suidas gleaned from his source that Scythianus proclaimed his dualistic doctrine at the time of Nerva and as he, as mentioned above, confused Manes with Scythianus, he substituted the former for the latter. According to that Scythianus started proclaiming his doctrine at the time of Nerva, that is to say, in 97 A.D. His pupil, Terebinthus-Buddha, may therefore have lived until 170 or 180 A.D., or even longer. Mani appears to have been born about 190 A.D. En-Nadim informs us (on the authority of Mohammed ben Is'haq Sahrmani, who is otherwise unknown) that Mani came before Schabur Ardsir (Sapores I) in the second year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Gallus (Trebonianus), who commenced his rulership November 251 A.D. As en-Nadim further adds, this took place on April lst, according to the Manicheans; that is to say, on April lst 253 A.D. But as Mani, according to en-Nadim, had been wandering the land and gathering pupil@ for forty years before he came before Schabur and was already twenty-four years old before he started to preach his doctrines, it follows from this that he must have been born around the year 190 A.D. According to the reports of the above mentioned Church Fathers, Mani did not come into direct personal contact with Terebinthus, but arrived as a seven year old boy at the house of the widow, in whose possession were the writings of the already deceased Terebinthus. The chronology therefore fits in very well and Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha can very well both be historical personages; only Bauer makes the conjecture, for reasons which have much in their favour, that Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha are identical, which could be so, as Mani, as stated above, never came into personal contact with either of them. But the questions remain: who was Scythianus and whence did he obtain his dualistic teaching? The Acta Archelai states specifically that he was a Scyth from Scythia and yet he is generally called a Saracen. We explain this contradiction in the following way: he was born in a northeastern province of Parthia, which in later times went under the general name of Scythia. Afterwards he wandered to the Near East, namely southern Mesopotamia and north-eastern Arabia (whence the name “Saracen”) and, at the time of Nerva, he was proclaiming his dualistic teaching and became the precursor of Mani. Bauer expressed himself likewise. El'hasai'h, or Elchasai', or Elkasai' (founder of the sect of the Ssabiers or Sabians, mentioned in the Koran—otherwise Mandaeans) also came from northeastern Parthia and proclaimed his dualistic doctrine in the same region and at the same time as Scythianus and was also, in certain respects, a precursor of Mani, as has been shown above. Does it not appear to be a reasonable conjecture to suppose that Scythianus, who was named after his birth place, is identical to the El'hasai'h of en-Nadim, the Elchasai' of the Pseudo-Origines and the Elkasai' of Epiphanius and Theodoretus?
  
  After what has been said there can be no further doubt about the influence of Parsism on Mendaeism, a fact which was already suspected by Lorsbach. Bauer would see indications of the spread of Buddhism—with its consequent influence on Manicheism—in the accounts of Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha, whom he identifies, but to whom he attaches no historical reality. This he would see substantiated in many ways, one of which is the abjuration formula of the Manicheans who, on conversion to the Church, were required to denounce Buddha among others. An influence of Buddhism in the Near East at such an early date is certainly a possibility; for enNedim states specifically that Buddhism had penetrated into Transoxiana even before Mani's time. Weber also finds it “highly probable that Buddhist missionaries, urged on by their fresh religious zeal, had spread over the further parts of western Iran” at the time of which he was speaking (the time of the Greek rulership of India). Weber adds, however, that data on the subject are wanting. In another place he remarks: “the important influence which Buddhism had on the teaching of Mani is easily explained by the flowering of the same under the Yueitchi-Princes of Indo-Scythia, whose rulership spread temporarily over a large part of the eastern provinces of Iran”. We are also of the opinion that the account which Mas'udi gives of the journeys of Budasp (Buddha) to Seg'estan, Zabulistan and Kerman point to an early spread of Buddhism in Persia. If, then, according to this, Scythianus, who in our opinion is a well-authenticated historical personality, was the disseminator of Buddhist doctrines, so, according to the above arguments, we would have to look for Buddhist elements and Buddhist influences among the Mendaeans. Perhaps the many assertions of Mohammedan writers to the effect that Budasp (Buddha) was the founder of the cult of the Ssabiers arose out of an actual historical influence of Buddhism on the Mendaeans, who were originally called Ssabiers by the Mohammedans. The genetic origin of both Buddhism and Mendaeism is still insufficiently known for us to be able to form conclusive views about the influence of the former on the latter. We will therefore content ourselves with gentle hints and indications to future investigators, which may perhaps help towards clearing up the problem.’
  
  Even though the latest research no longer pays heed to this legend, because it ascribes a different origin to Mani, it is not thereby invalidated as a description of Mani's ‘spiritual’ origin. Compare note 13: ‘why it was that Mani called himself the “Son of the Widow”’—and Rudolf Steiner's ninth lecture of the cycle given in Munich in 1909: The East in the Light of the West, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., and Anthroposophic Press
• 9 . According to Franz Cument: The Mithras Mysteries, Manicheism was the inheritor of the Mithras Mysteries and the continuator of their mission.
• 10. Compare once more with lecture 9 of The East in the Light of the West, quoted above.
• 11. In his writing: Contra Faustum. Regarding Faustus, compare Bruckner: Faustus von Mileve, Basle, 1901, where Faustus is described as an important representative of Manicheism in Roman cultural circles.
• 12. The legend is given as follows by Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (see notes referring to text above referring to Schmitt).
  
  ‘“While the Powers of Darkness were chasing and devouring one another in a wild rage they arrived one day at the borders of their territory. Here they glimpsed a few beams of the Kingdom of Light and were so struck by the 'splendid sight that they decided to relinquish their quarrels among themselves and took counsel together as to how they could gain mastery over the Good which they had just seen for the first time and of which they formerly had no notion. Their desire thereafter was so great that all of them, as many as there were, armed themselves for battle.” This is the description of events given by Titus of Bostra. In a similar way Alexander of Lycopolis presents it to us: “In the Hyle (Matter) desire arose to climb to the upper regions; there was espied the Divine Ray of Light which engendered so much amazement that a decision was immediately formed to get the same into its power.” Of the measures taken by the threatened Kingdom of Light we are informed by the Acts of Archelaus (Acta disputationis cum Maneta, Chap. 7): “As the Father of Light became aware that the Darkness was about to attack his holy Domain, he allowed a force to emanate from him which is called the Mother of Life, this, in its turn, produced from itself Archetypal Man who, arrayed with the five pure Elements; Light, Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, descended to the earth like an armed warrior to do battle against Darkness.” Manes himself gives the name of the Universal or World-Soul to this force which emanates from God. We can recognise here the same force which is called the Heavenly Mother or Holy Spirit by Bardesanes and other Gnostics (According to Titus of Bostra 1. 29. Compare Bauer: Manicheism).
  
  ‘When Hyle made its attack, God held counsel to decide on a punishment, says Alexander of Lycopolis. But, as he had no means of punishment—there being no Evil in the House of God—he sent forth a force, a Soul-Force, against Matter, so that Matter was penetrated through and through and death consumed it with the force of this separation, with the force of this inner division and confusion which resulted from being mixed together in this way. It reminds us of the saying of Christ: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.” (Luke 11. 17). The latter interpretation contains the deeper esoteric meaning of the above battle. Not force against force, not evil against evil can be the recompense of the gentle light of heaven of which the moral was proclaimed by Christ. His victory must be achieved in quite a different way: in the form of a quiet disintegration in which the Forces of Light act as a kind of ferment to leaven the dough of matter; thus the Gospel describes the battle of the Light in such a wonderfully meaningful fashion. The pictures which Mani gives describe exactly the same event as the Gospel, but in more detail and with a depth which corresponds to the more mature historical setting.
  
  ‘Therefore it is exactly the same thought which is expressed in the further unfolding of this Manichean hero-tale. In the struggle against the opposing forces of Hyle the heavenly hero is not able to prevail, although, like Proteus of the Greek saga, he constantly disguises himself and takes on the shape of the various elements. The Demons overcome him and gain possession of his armour; yes, they appropriate many pieces of his radiant, sun-like nature to themselves and he would have been entirely at their mercy had he not called out to the Father, the Primeval Source of Light! The latter sent him the help of the Spirit of Life (pneuma zoon), who stretched forth the succour of his right hand and drew him up again out of darkness into the Heights of Light. “That is why”, adds the Acta Archelaus Chapter 7, “when Manicheans meet one another they give each other the right hand, as a token that they have been rescued out of darkness; for, in darkness, says Mani, live all heresies.” This point is of particular interest, because it quite openly states the object of this allusion, “heresy”, which in this case refers to the Ecclesiastical, Satanic doctrine, which has known how to appropriate the Garment of Light, the outward form of Christianity, to itself to deceive and captivate the nobler souls. These are the plundered sun-like parts of Archetypal Man, which have come under the dominion of depravity-seeking mankind; a depravity which took on the appearance of sanctity through this act of plunder. It is, however, only one aspect of the meaning of this myth, which embraces both evolution and history. The noblest parts of Archetypal Man, his Sons, as it were, were fixed in the heavens as Sun and Moon by the Spirit of Life. These are the symbols of the all-illuminating Light and Life of Christ and the Paraclete, whereas the other stars, as scattered, expired light, are fixed in the heavens as the Demons of the Night. This Spirit of Life makes his appearance as the tamer of material existence, as the Spirit who brings measure and sets a limit to matter. He was therefore given the name “Architect of the Universe” by the Manicheans and essentially he plays the part of Horos, or Horothathos, the boundary-marker of Valentius. That part of divine Life and Light, however, which is held captive in the nature forms of the plants, animals and Man, is given the name: suffering Jesus: the Man of Sorrows: Jesus Patibilis. In the sense of Manicheism, however, Jesus only represents this divine figure when he surmounts the restricted sufferings within the narrow limits of the body, when it was nailed to the Cross on the hill near Jerusalem. He becomes the Saviour of the World only when he identifies his Divine Life with that of all the suffering beings of a world yearning for his redeeming, light-shedding thoughts. And nothing is more characteristic of the crudity of the basic views of the Constantinian Church than that its chief exponent, the great Augustine, was morally unable to find anything in these thoughts but a calumny and defilement and humiliation which would have been sufficient to make the Manicheans blush. On the other hand, we have seen with what delicacy Mani discharged himself of his task of rendering tangible a struggle between the forces of the Divine and the forces of Matter, of Evil, of Violence and the Demonic, and how beautifully he is able to honour the holy majesty of powerless mildness and to bring forth the dawning of a more noble culture of which the rough Roman mind of an Augustine had no inkling.’
• 13. The Manicheist scholar, Hans Heinrich Schaeder, writes in his study of Origin and Development of the Manichean System, from his collection of lectures, 1924–1925, from the Warburg Library: ‘We do not know what “Son of the Widow” means.’ Rudolf Steiner, by contrast, explains the meaning still more profoundly than in the lecture under consideration as being a ‘Mystery’ title. (The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972).
• 14. His description in the periodical Luzifer. Contained in: Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1971.
• 15. See note 2 to lecture 4 of 7th October 1904.
• 16. Rudolf Steiner here gives a free rendering of a quotation from Eugen Heinrich Schmitt: Die Gnosis, already mentioned at the beginning of these notes. Schmitt's text is as follows: ‘It would therefore be a notable test of the fact that Manicheism, as understood by initiates and as inner secret doctrine, is not just a re-telling of Persian fables, but a genuine Gnostic teaching based on spirit-vision, if we could only prove in a single case that the Manicheans sought the source of their knowledge and warranty for their truth, not in outward belief in authority (Mani said this or that), but directly through inner soul-vision. And this evidence is actually forthcoming. Mani himself introduces his foundation letter (epistola fundamenti) with the following words:
  
  ‘“These are the words of healing and the eternal fountain of life. He who hears them and believes in them first of all and keeps their message will nevermore be prey to death but will enjoy a truly immortal and splendid life. For truly he is blessed who, through this divine doctrine, partakes of the knowledge (Gnosis) which sets him free to pass over into eternal life. The peace of the Invisible God and a knowledge of Truth will be with their brothers and loved ones who believe in the laws of heaven even as they put them into practice in their daily lives. And they will behold you sitting on the right hand of the Light and will take away from you all malevolent attacks and all snares of this world; the gentleness of the Holy Spirit will in truth open your inner sense, so that you shall behold your own soul with your very eyes”. The last words of this sentence, “Pietas vero Spiritus Sancti intima vestri pectoris adaperiat, ut ipsis oculis videatis vestras animas”, appear in the Latin of Augustine (De actis cum Felixe L. 1 C. 14 Migne Aug. Opp. omnia Tomas V-III).’
• 17. (Contra epist. Manich 5).
• 18. (In Augustine's work: Contra Faustum, VI, 8). After Augustine (basing his statement on John XX, 29) calls those blessed who have not seen and yet have believed, Faustus makes the reply: ‘If you imagine that we are called upon to believe without reason or reckoning, then you may well be happier without reasoning, but I prefer to get my blessedness through insight.’ Quoted from Eugen Heinrich Schmitt: Die Gnosis—Grundlagen der Weltanschauung einer edleren Kultur, and marked in Rudolf Steiner's copy.
• 19. Compare Herman Grimm: ‘Die Entstchung des Volksbuches von Dr. Faustus,’ in Fifteen Essays, third edition, Berlin, 1882.
• 20. It is a well-known legend that Luther, while staying in hiding at the Wartburg in Thuringia under the protection of Frederick the Wise (1521–22), threw an ink-bottle at the Devil.
• 21. Martin Luther, 1483–1546. The great inaugurator of the German Reformation was an Augustinian monk prior to leaving the monastic life. See Rudolf Steiner's two lectures: ‘Luther’ and ‘Luther the Janus-head,’ in The Karma of Materialism, C 47.
• 22. Rudolf Steiner had spoken on several occasions about the concepts, life and form, at the time he gave this lecture. See lecture of 3rd November 1904: ‘Theosophy and Tolstoy’ copy Z 332. Also twenty-seventh lecture in Foundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1983.
• 23. In a note of 1907 Rudolf Steiner writes that, within the Rosicrucian current, the initiation of Manes was looked upon as one of the Higher Degrees which consisted of understanding the true function of Evil.
• 24. See diagram in connection with lecture 10 of 23rd December 1904. Compare also: The Apocalypse of St. John, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1977.
• 25. ‘blonde beast’ in his Zur Genealogie der Moral, which was widely praised. However, Rudolf Steiner said in his lecture of 6th October 1917, Elemental Spirits of Birth and Death,’ copy Z 400: ‘people understood very little about it ... It was the Devil himself who inspired people with the wish, as Nietzsche devotees, to become “blonde beasts” themselves ... but even though people never became “blonde beasts” in Nietzsche's sense—something took place in this century as a result of this socially disturbing impulse of the nineteenth century.’
• 26. This difficult occult concept had already been explained by Rudolf Steiner, shortly before this time, as for instance on 31st October 1904, in the following way: ‘In the first half of the fourth Round mankind developed the capacity for adapting his senses to the mineral kingdom for the first time. In the second half of the fourth Round he redeemed the mineral kingdom. But a part of this remained behind and was excluded, because it was no longer of any use to mankind. That constitutes the eighth sphere, which is no longer of use to the development of man, but can be used by higher beings.’ (From previously unpublished notes). In the year 1915, Rudolf Steiner again went very thoroughly into the concept of the eighth sphere. See: The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, especially fourth and fifth lectures, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973.
• 27. Rudolf Steiner spoke in much more detail on this subject, which is here only briefly mentioned, in his lecture given in Dornach on 3rd July 1920 (as yet untranslated); but he also spoke about Jesuitism on 20th May, 3rd and 6th June: ‘Roman Catholicism.’ Copy Z 65.
• 28. In the shorthand version of Franz Seiler a few sentences occur at the end. It is not quite clear if this is the answer to a question: ‘Christ appears in person during the sixth Root Race (Great Epoch)—the Thousand-Years Reign, originally it was Aeon, in Latin saeculum saeculorum. In the sixth Root Race, therefore, both the Bad and the Good will have evolved ... [Gap] ... The Keely Motor came too early, no doubt. An individual will possess so much power during the seventh Root Race, that he will be able to kill thousands and thousands at a stroke.’ Compare this with note 29 to lecture 20, the last lecture in this volume.

In the course of these lectures I propose to make some important additions to the enquiry which I undertook here last week.^T1 Our earlier investigation gave us a certain insight into the impulses which determine the recent evolution of mankind. What I now propose to add will emerge from a study of the various turning points in modern history. We will endeavour to study this recent history up to the moment when we shall see how the human soul at the present day is related to the universe, in respect of its evolution within the cosmos and of its inner development in relation to the divine and its ego development in relation to the Spirit. I should like to show the connection between these things and the more or less everyday occurrences which are familiar to you. Therefore I will first take as my point of departure today—and the reasons for this will be apparent tomorrow and the day after tomorrow—the historical survey of the recent evolution of mankind which was to some extent the background to the observations on modern history, observations which I suggested in my public lecture in Zürich yesterday.^T2

From my earlier lectures in which I discussed analogous themes you already know that from the standpoint of spiritual science what is usually called history must be seen as a complex of symptoms. From this point of view what is usually taught as history, the substance of what is called history in the scholastic world, does not touch upon the really vital questions in the evolutionary history of mankind; it deals only with superficial symptoms. We must penetrate beneath the surface phenomena and uncover the deeper layer of meaning in events and then the true reality behind the evolution of mankind will be revealed. Whilst history usually studies historical events in isolation, we shall here consider them as concealing a deeper underlying reality which is revealed when they are studied in their true light.

A little reflection will show how absurd, for example, is the oft repeated assertion that modern man is the product of the past, and this remark invites us to study the history of this past. Recall for a moment the events of history as presented to you at school and ask yourself what influence they may have had, as history claims to show, upon your own sentient life, upon the constitution of your soul! But the study of the constitution of the soul in its present state of development is essential to the knowledge of man, to the knowledge of oneself. But history as usually presented does not favour this self knowledge. A limited self knowledge however is sometimes brought about indirectly. Yesterday, for example, a gentleman told me that he had been given three hours detention because in class one day he had forgotten the date of the battle of Marathon. Clearly such an experience works upon the soul and so might contribute indirectly to a better understanding of the impulses which lead to self knowledge! But the way in which history treats of the battle of Marathon adds little to man's real understanding of himself. None the less, a symptomatology of history must take into account external facts, for the simple reason that by the study and evaluation of these external facts we can gain insight into what really takes place.

I will begin by tracing the main features of contemporary history. The history which we study at school usually begins with the discovery of America and the invention of gunpowder and opens, as you know, with the statement that the Middle Ages have drawn to a close and that we now stand on the threshold of the modern era. Now if such a study is to be fruitful, it is important to turn our attention especially to the real and fundamental changes in human evolution, to those decisive turning-points in history when the life of the soul passes from one stage of development to another stage. These moments of transition usually pass unnoticed because they are overlooked amid the tangled skein of events. Now we know from the purely anthroposophical point of view that the last great turning point in the history of civilization occurred in the early years of the fifteenth century, when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began. The Greco-Latin epoch opened in 747 B.C. and lasted until the beginning of the fifteenth century which ushered in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Because people only take a superficial view of things they usually fail to recognize that, during this period, the whole of man's soul-life underwent modification. It is manifestly absurd to regard the sixteenth century simply as a continuation of the eleventh or twelfth centuries. People overlook the radical change that occurred towards the beginning of the fifteenth century and persisted in the subsequent years. This point in time is of course only approximate; but what is not approximate in life? Whenever one stage of evolution which is to some extent complete in itself passes over into another stage we must always speak of approximation. It is impossible to determine the precise moment when an individual arrives at puberty; the onset is gradual and then runs its course to full physical maturity. And the same applies, of course, to the year 1413 which marks the birth of the Consciousness Soul. The new consciousness develops gradually and does not immediately manifest itself everywhere in full maturity and with maximum vigour. We completely fail to understand historical change unless we give due consideration to the moment when events take on a new orientation.

When, looking back to the period before the fifteenth century, we wish to enquire into and compare the predominant condition of the human soul at that time with the progressive transformation of this psychic condition after the beginning of the fifteenth century, we cannot help turning our attention to the real situation which existed in civilised Europe throughout the whole of the Middle Ages and which was still intimately related to the whole psychic condition of the Greco-Latin epoch. I am referring to the form which Catholicism that was subject to the Papacy had gradually developed over the centuries out of the Roman Empire. We cannot understand Catholicism before the great turning point which marks the birth of modern times unless we bear in mind that it was a universalist impulse and that, as such, it spread far and wide. Now mediaeval society was hierarchically ordered; men were grouped according to social status, family connections; they were organized in craft and merchant guilds, etcetera. But all these social stratifications were indoctrinated with Catholicism, and in the form that Christianity had assumed under the impact of various impulses of which we shall learn more in the following lectures (and under the impact of those impulses which I mentioned in earlier lectures). The expansion of Catholicism was characterized by the form of Christianity which was decisively influenced by Rome in the way I have indicated.

The Catholicism which emanated from Rome and developed after its own fashion through the centuries was a universalist impulse, the most powerful force animating European civilization. But it counted upon a certain unconsciousness of the human soul, a susceptibility of the human soul to suggestionism. It counted upon those forces with which the human soul had been endowed for centuries when it was not yet fully conscious—(it has only become fully conscious in our present epoch). It counted upon those who were only at the stage of the Rational or Intellectual Soul and calculated that by its power of suggestion it could slowly implant into their affective life what it deemed to be useful. And amongst the educated classes—which consisted of the clergy for the most part—it counted upon a keen and critical intelligence which had not yet arrived at the stage of the Consciousness Soul. The development of theology as late as the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries showed that it relied upon a razor-sharp intelligence. But if you take the intelligence of today as the measure of man's intelligence you will never really understand what was meant by intelligence up to the fifteenth century. Up to that time intelligence was to some extent instinctive, it had not yet been impregnated with the Consciousness Soul. Mankind did not yet possess the capacity for independent reflection which came only with the development of the Consciousness Soul. None the less men displayed on occasions astonishing acumen to which many of the mediaeval disputations bear witness, for many of these disputations were debated with greater intelligence than the doctrinal disputes of later theology. But this was not the intelligence that was an expression of the Consciousness Soul, it was the intelligence which, in popular parlance, came from ‘on high’; esoterically speaking it was a manifestation of the Angelos, a faculty not yet under man's control. Independent thinking became possible only when he achieved self dependence through the Consciousness Soul. When a universalist impulse is diffused in this way through the power of suggestion, as was the case with the Roman Papacy and everything associated with it in the structure of the Church, then it is much more the community, the Group Soul element, everything that is related to the Group Soul that is affected. And this spirit of self-dependence also affected Catholicism, with the result that under the influence of certain impulses of contemporary history this universalist impulse of expanding Catholicism found in the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation its battering ram. We will discuss these matters from another standpoint later on. We see how the expansion of universal Roman Catholicism was prosecuted amid continuous conflict and contention with the Roman Empire. One need only refer to the period of the Carolingians and the Hohenstaufens¹ in the standard history books to find that the fundamental issue was the incorporation of Europe into a universal Christian church of Roman Catholic persuasion.

If we wish to have a clear understanding of these matters from the point of view of the dawning Consciousness Soul we must consider an important turning point which, symptomatically, reveals the waning of Catholic power which had dominated the Middle Ages. And this turning point in modern history is the transference of the Pope to Avignon in 1309.² Such a challenge to the papacy would formerly have been impossible and shows that mankind which formerly had been dominated by a universalist impulse now begins to undergo a transformation. That a king or an emperor could have entertained the idea of transferring the residence of the Pope from Rome to some other city would have been inconceivable in earlier times. In 1309 the matter was quickly dealt with—the Pope was transferred to Avignon and the next decades witnessed the endless quarrels between popes and anti-popes associated with this transference of the papal court. And a victim of this conflict within the Church was the Order of the Templars,³ which had been loosely associated with the Papacy, though of course its relationship to Christianity was totally different. The Order was suppressed in 1312 shortly after the removal of the Pope to Avignon. This is a turning point in modern history and we must consider this turning point not only in respect of its factual content, but as a symptom, if we wish gradually to discover the reality concealed behind it.

Let us now turn our attention to other symptoms of a similar kind at the time of this turning point in history. As we survey the continent of Europe we are struck by the fact that its life, largely in the Eastern areas, is profoundly influenced by those events which operate in the course of history after the fashion of natural phenomena. I am referring to the continuous migrations, beginning with the Mongol invasions⁴ in the not far distant past, which poured in from Asia and introduced an Asiatic element into Europe. When we link an event such as the transference of the Papacy to Avignon with these invasions from the East we establish important criteria for a symptomatology of history. Consider the following: in order to understand not the inward and spiritual, but the external and human tendencies and influences which were connected with the event of Avignon and prepare the ground for it, you need not look beyond a coherent complex of human acts and decisions. But you will find no such coherent pattern of events when you consider the time between the Mongol invasions and the later penetration of the Turks into Europe. But when studying any historical event, a complex of facts of this kind, you must consider the following if you really wish to arrive at a symptomatology of history.

Let us assume for the moment that here is Europe and here is Asia. The columns of the invading armies are advancing towards Europe. One of these columns, let us assume, has penetrated as far as this frontier. On the one side are the Mongols and later the Turks; on the other side the Europeans. When considering the event of Avignon you find a complex of acts and decisions taken by men. There is no such complex across the frontier. You have to consider two aspects, the one on this side of the frontier, the other on the other side. For the Europeans the Mongolian wave that sweeps across the frontier resembles a natural phenomenon of which one sees only the external effects. The invaders pour across the frontier, invade the neighbouring territory and harass the inhabitants; behind them lies a whole culture of the soul of which they are the vehicle. Their own inner life lies behind the frontier. But this psychic life does not reach beyond the frontier which acts as a kind of sieve through which passes only energies akin to the elemental forces of nature. These two aspects—the inner aspect which is found amongst those who live behind this frontier and the aspect which shows only its external face to the Europeans—these are not to be found, of course, in the episode of Avignon, where everything forms a single complex, a composite whole. Now an occurrence such as these Asiatic invasions closely resembles what one sees in nature. Imagine you are looking at the world of nature ... You see the colours, you hear the sounds—but these are external trappings. Behind lies the spirit, behind are the elemental beings which are active up to the point where the frontier begins. (See diagram.) You see with your eyes, hear with your ears, you experience by touch—and behind lies the spirit which does not cross the frontier, does not manifest itself. Such is the situation in nature, but in history it is not quite the same, though somewhat similar. The psychic element behind history does not manifest itself, we see only its external appearance.

It is most important to bear in mind this strange intermediate zone, this no man's land, where peoples or races clash, revealing to each other only their external aspects—this strange intermediate zone (which must also be reckoned among the symptoms) between actual universal experience of the human soul such as we see in the event of Avignon and the genuine impressions of nature. All the historical twaddle which has come to the fore recently, and which has no idea of the operation of this intermediate zone, cannot arrive at a true history of civilization. For this reason, neither Buckle nor Ratzel⁵ (I mention two historians of widely divergent outlook), could arrive at a true history of civilization because they started from the preconceived idea: of two events, if one follows from the other, then the later event must be considered as the effect and the earlier event the cause—the common sense view that is generally accepted.

When we consider this event as a symptomatic event in the recent evolution of mankind, then, as we shall see in later lectures, it will provide a bridge from the symptoms to reality.

Now from the complex of facts we see emerging in the West of Europe a more or less homogeneous configuration at first, which later gives birth to France and England. Leaving aside for the moment the external elements such as the channel, which is simply a geographical factor separating the two countries, it is difficult at first to distinguish between them. In the period when modern history begins French culture was widespread in England. English kings extended their dominion to French territory, and members of the respective dynasties each laid claim to the throne of the other country. But at the same time we see emerging one thing, which throughout the Middle Ages was also associated with what the universalist impulse of Catholicism had to some extent relegated to the background. I mentioned a moment ago that at this time communities were already in existence; families were cemented by the blood-tie to which they clung tenaciously; men were organized in craft guilds or corporations, etcetera. All these organizations were permeated by the powerful and authoritative universalist Catholic impulse moulded by Rome which dominated them and set its seal upon them. And just as this Roman Catholic impulse had relegated the guilds and other corporate bodies to a subordinate role, so too national identity suffered the same fate. At the time when Roman Catholicism exercised its greatest dynamic power national identity was not regarded as the most important factor in the structure of the human soul. Consciousness of nationality now began to be looked upon as something vastly more important than it had been when Catholicism was all powerful. And significantly it manifested itself in those countries I have just mentioned. But whilst the general idea of nationhood was emerging in France and England an extremely significant differentiation was taking place at the same time. Whilst for centuries these countries had shared a common purpose, differences began to emerge in the fifteenth century. The first indications are seen in the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429, a most important turning point in modern history. It was this appearance of Joan of Arc which gave the impetus and if you consult the manuals of history you will see how important, powerful and continuous this impetus was—which led to the differentiation between the French and the English character.

Thus we see the emergence of nationalism as the architect of the community and at the same time this differentiation which is so significant for the evolution of modern mankind. This turning point is marked by the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429. At the moment when the impulse of the Papacy is compelled to release from its clutches the population of Western Europe, at that moment the consciousness of nationality gathers momentum in the West and shapes its future. Do not allow yourselves to be misled in this matter. As history is presented today you can, of course, find in the past of every people or nation a consciousness of nationality. But you do not attach any importance to the potent influence of this force. Take, for example, the Slav peoples: under the influence of modern ideas and currents of thought they will of course trace back as far as possible the origin of their national sentiments and forces. But in the period of which we are speaking the national impulses were particularly active so that, in the territories I have just mentioned, there was an epoch when these impulses underwent a profound modification. And this is what matters. If we wish to apprehend reality we must make strenuous efforts to achieve objectivity. Another symptomatic fact which also reveals the emergence of the Consciousness Soul—like the one I have just mentioned—is the strange fashion in which the Italian national consciousness developed out of the levelling influence of the Papacy which, as we have seen, relegated the national impulse to a subordinate role, an influence which had hitherto pervaded the whole of Italy. Fundamentally it was the national impulse which emancipated the people of Italy from papal sovereignty at this time. All these facts are symptoms which are inherent in the epoch when, in Europe, the civilization of the Consciousness Soul seeks to emerge from the civilization of the Rational and Intellectual Soul.

At the same time—we are anticipating of course—we see the beginning of the conflict between Central and Eastern Europe. What emerged from what I described as the ‘battering ram’ of the Papacy, from the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, came into conflict with Slav expansionism.

The most diverse historical symptoms bear witness to this interaction between Central and Eastern Europe. In history one must not attach so much importance to princely families or personages as modern historians are wont to do. After all only a Wildenbruch⁶ could throw dust in people's eyes by pretending that the farce played out between Louis the Pious and his sons had historical significance. Only a Wildenbruch could present these family feuds in his dramas as historically important. They have no more significance than any other domestic gossip; they have nothing to do with the evolution of mankind. It is only when we study the symptomatology of history that we develop a feeling for what is really important and what is relatively unimportant in the evolution of mankind. In modern times the conflict between Central and Eastern Europe has important implications. But in reality Ottokar's conflict with Rudolf⁷ is only an indication; it is a pointer to what actually happened. On the other hand it is most important not to take a narrow view of this conflict. We must realize that, during this continuous confrontation, a colonizing activity began which carried the peasants from Central to Eastern Europe and in later years from the Rhine to Siebenbürgen. These peasant migrations, through the mingling of Central and Eastern European elements, had a profound influence upon the later development of life in these areas. Thus the Slavs whose expansionist policy came into conflict with what had developed in Central Europe out of the Holy Roman Empire were continuously infiltrated by Central European colonists moving eastwards. And from this strange process emerged that which later became the Hapsburg power. But another consequence of this ferment in Europe was the formation of certain centres which developed a particular cast of mind within the urban communities. The main period when the towns throughout Europe developed their specifically urban outlook lies between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries. What I have described in a previous lecture^T3 penetrated into these towns; in these towns men were able to develop their individual characteristics.

Now it is a remarkable and significant phenomenon that after the separate development of France and England, there emerged in England at this time, after slow and careful preparation, that which later became the system of parliamentary government in Europe. As a result of the long civil wars which lasted from 1452–1480, we see developing, amongst manifold external symptoms, the historical symptom of embryonic parliamentary government. When the era of the Consciousness Soul opened in the early fifteenth century people wanted to take their affairs into their own hands. They wanted to debate, to discuss, to have a say in future policies and to shape external events accordingly—or at least liked to imagine that they shaped events. This spirit of independence—as a result of the disastrous civil wars in the fifteenth century—developed in England out of that configuration which was markedly different from what had also arisen in France under the influence of the national impulse. Parliamentary Government in England developed out of the national impulse. We must clearly recognize that, through the birth of parliamentary government as a consequence of the English civil wars in the fifteenth century, we see the interplay, or, if you like, the interpenetration, the interfusion of the emergent national idea on the one hand, and on the other hand an impulse clearly orientated towards that which the Consciousness Soul seeks to realize. And for reasons that we shall see later, it is precisely because of these events that the impulse of the Consciousness Soul breaks through in England and assumes the character of that national impulse; hence its peculiarly English flavour or nuance. We have now considered many of the factors which shaped Europe at the beginning of the age of the Consciousness Soul.

Behind all this, concealed as it were in the background, a virtual enigma to Europe, we see developing the later configuration of Russia, rightly regarded as an unknown quantity because it bears within it the seeds of the future. But first of all it is born of tradition, or, at least, of that which does not come from the Consciousness Soul and certainly not from the human soul. ... None of the three elements which helped to fashion the configuration of Russia originated in the Russian soul. The first was the heritage of Byzantium, of Byzantine Catholicism; the second was that which had streamed in through the mingling of Nordic and Slav blood; the third was that which was transmitted by Asia. None of these three elements was the creation of the Russian soul; but it was these elements which moulded that strange, enigmatic structure which developed in the East and was concealed from the happenings in Europe.

Let us now try to find the common characteristic of all these things, of all these symptoms. They have one common characteristic which is very striking. We need only compare the real driving forces in human evolution today with those of former times and we perceive a significant difference which will indicate to us the quintessential character of the culture of the Consciousness Soul and that of the Rational and Intellectual Soul.

In order to see this situation in clearer perspective we can compare it with the impulse of Christianity which in every man must spring from the inmost depths of his being, an impulse which passes over into the events of history, but which springs from man's inner life. In the evolution of the earth Christianity is the most powerful impulse of this nature. We can, of course, consider impulses of lesser import, for example, those which influenced Roman civilization throughout the Augustan age, or we need only glance at the rich efflorescence of the Greek soul. We see everywhere new creative impulses entering into the evolution of mankind. In this respect, however, our present epoch brings to birth nothing new; at best we can speak of a rebirth, a revival of the past, for all the impulses which are operative here no longer spring from the human soul. The first thing that strikes us is the national idea, as it is often called—more correctly one should speak of the national impulse. It is not a creation of the individual soul, but is rooted in what we have received from inheritance, in what is already established. What emerges from the manifold spiritual impulses of Hellenism is something totally different. This national impulse is a rightful claim to something which is already present like a product of nature. As member of a national group man creates nothing of himself; he merely underlines the fact that, in a certain sense, he has developed naturally like a plant, like a member of the natural order. I intentionally called your attention earlier on to the fact that Asia's contribution to Europe (and only its external aspect was perceptible to European culture) was something natural and spontaneous. The irruption of the Mongols, and later of the Osmanlis⁸ into Europe, though their influence was considerable, did not lead to any creative impulse in Europe. Russia too produced no creative impulse, nothing that was particularly characteristic of the Russian soul. This was the work solely of the Byzantine and Asiatic element, this mixture of Nordic and Slav blood. In these peoples it is given facts, facts of nature which determine the lives of men—nothing in reality is created by the human soul. Let us bear this in mind, for it will serve as a point of departure for what is to follow. From the fifteenth century on the demands of mankind are of a totally different character.

Hitherto we have considered the external facts of history; let us now turn to the more inward happenings which are related more to the impulse of the Consciousness Soul which is breaking through the shell of the human soul. Let us consider, for example, the Council of Constance⁹ and the burning of Hus. In Hus we see a personality who stands out, so to speak, like a human volcano. The Council of Constance which passed sentence on him opened in 1414, in the early years of the fifteenth century which marked the birth of the Consciousness Soul. Now in the annals of modern history Hus stands out as a symbol of protest against the suggestionism of the universalist impulse of Catholicism. In Jan Hus the Consciousness Soul itself rebels against all that the Rational or Intellectual soul had received from this universalist Catholic impulse. And this was not an isolated phenomenon—we could show how this ground had already been prepared by the struggle of the Albigenses against Catholic domination. In Savanarola in Italy and in others we see the revolt of the autonomous personality who wishes to arrive at his religious faith by relying upon his own judgement and rejects the suggestionism of papal Catholicism. And this same spirit of independence persists in Luther, in the emancipation of the Anglican Church from Rome (an extremely interesting and significant phenomenon), and in the Calvinist influence in certain regions of Europe. It is like a wave that sweeps over the whole of civilized Europe; it is an expression of the inner life, something more inward than the other influences, something which is already more closely linked with the soul of man, but in a different way from before.

After all, what do we admire in Calvin, in Luther when we consider them as historical figures? What do we admire in those who liberated the Anglican Church from Roman Catholic tutelage?—Not new creative ideas, not fresh spiritual insights, but the energy with which they endeavoured to pour traditional ideas into a new mould. Whereas these traditional ideas had formerly been accepted by the Rational or Intellectual Soul which was more instinctive or less conscious, they had now to be accepted by the Consciousness Soul which is autonomous. But this did not lead to the birth of new ideas, a new confession of faith. Time-honoured ideas are called in question, but no new symbol is found to replace them. The further we look back into the past—just think of the wealth of symbols created by man! Truly, a symbol such as the symbol of the Eucharist had to be created one day by the soul of man. In the age of Luther and Calvin there were endless disputes over the Eucharist as to whether it should be administered in both kinds or in one kind! But an autonomous impulse, an individual creation of the human soul was nowhere to be found. The dawning of the Consciousness Soul signifies a new relationship to these problems but does not herald the birth of new impulses.

When this new epoch dawns the budding Consciousness Soul is operative in it and manifests itself in historical symptoms. On the one hand we see the national impulses at work, on the other hand we see, striking at the very roots of religious faith, the revolt of the personality that strives for autonomy because the Consciousness Soul seeks to burst its bonds. And we must study the effects of these two forces when we consider the further development of the two representative national states, France and England. These forces gather strength, but are clearly differentiated and show how the two impulses, that of nationalism and that of personality, react upon each other differently in France and England. They create nothing new, but show the traditional past under new forms as the basis for the historical structure of Europe. This reinforcement of the national impulse is particularly evident in England where the personal element that in Hus, for example, assumed the form of religious pathos, unites with the national element, and the impulse of personality, of the Consciousness Soul, increasingly paves the way for parliamentary government, so that in England everything takes on a political aspect. In France—by contrast—despite the national element that exercises a powerful influence by reason of the native temperament and other things—the independence, the autonomy of the personality predominates and gives another nuance. Whilst England lays greater emphasis upon the national element, in France the active tendency is visibly more towards the element of personality. One must make a close study of these things.

That these forces act objectively—they are in no way connected with the arbitrary actions of man—can be seen in the case where the one impulse is operative, but bears no fruit; it remains sterile because it finds no external support and because the counter-impulse is still sufficiently powerful to neutralize it. In France the national impulse had such a powerful impact that it was able to liberate the French people from the authority of the Pope and this explains why it was France that compelled the Pope to reside at Avignon and why in France the ground was prepared for the emancipation of the personality. In England too the national impulse exercised a powerful influence, but at the same time, as a natural inheritance, the impulse of personality was equally strong. In the field of culture the whole nation was to a large extent free from Roman influence and developed its own doctrinal structure. In Spain the same impulse was at work but could neither penetrate the existing national element, nor, like the personality, overcome the power of suggestionism. Here everything remained in an embryonic state and became decadent before it had time to develop.

External events, what are usually called historical facts, are in reality only symptoms. This is obvious after a moment's reflection. In 1476 an important battle was fought on Swiss soil. The defeat of Charles the Bold in the battle of Murten was an extremely significant symptom, for it gave the death blow to chivalry that was closely associated with the Papacy. In the battle of Murten we see a trend that was already spreading through the whole of civilized Europe at that time, a trend that to some extent only came to light in a typically representative phenomenon (i.e. the battle of Murten).

When a phenomenon of this nature emerges on the surface it meets with counter-pressure from the past. The normal course of evolution, as you know, is always accompanied by Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces which derive from backward impulses and seek to assert themselves. Every normal impulse entering into mankind must fight against the subtle invasion of Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces. Thus the impulse that was clearly manifest in Hus, Luther, Calvin and Wyclif had to battle with these forces. A symptom of this struggle is seen in the revolt of the United Netherlands and in the Luciferic-Ahrimanic personality of Philip of Spain. And one of the most significant turning points of modern times was the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. With this defeat those forces which, emanating from Spain, had offered the strongest resistance to the emancipation of the personality were finally eliminated. The Dutch wars of independence and the defeat of the Armada are external symptoms and nothing more. In order to arrive at the underlying reality we must be prepared to probe beneath the surface, for when these ‘waves’ are thrown up we are the better able to see the inner reality of events. The wave of 1588, when the Armada was defeated, illustrates how the personality which, in the process of emancipation, seeks to develop within itself the Consciousness Soul, rose in revolt against the petrified forms inherited from the Rational or Intellectual soul.

It is absurd to regard historical evolution as a temporal series of causes and effects, the present as the consequence of the past, cause—effect, cause—effect, etcetera. That is extremely convenient, especially when one takes the academic approach to historical research. It is so very convenient—simply to stagger along step by step from one historical fact to the next. But if one is not blind or asleep, if one looks at things with an open mind, the historical symptoms themselves show how absurd such an approach is.

Let us take an historical symptom which is most illuminating from a certain point of view. All the new developments from the fifteenth century onwards which are characterized by the impulses I have already indicated—the rise of nationalism, the awakening of personality—all this evoked conflicts and antagonisms which led to the Thirty Years' War. The account of this war as presented by history is seldom dealt with from the standpoint of symptomatology. It can hardly be treated after the fashion of café chatter. After all it was of little importance for the destiny of Europe that Martinitz, Slavata and Fabricius¹⁰ were thrown out of the window of the royal palace in Prague and would have been killed had there not been a dungheap beneath the window which saved the lives of the emperor's emissaries. In reality the dungheap is supposed to have consisted of scraps of paper that the servants of the Hradschin had thrown out of the window and had left lying there until they finally formed a pile of rubbish. This anecdote provides a pleasant topic for cafe chatter, but one cannot pretend that it has any bearing on the evolution of mankind!

When we begin to study the Thirty Years' War—I need hardly remind you that it began in 1618—it is important to bear in mind that the cause of the war lies solely in confessional differences, in what had developed in opposition to the old Catholicism, to the old Catholic impulses. Everywhere serious conflicts had arisen through this antagonism between the recent development of personality and the suggestionism of the old Catholicism. When the conflict was brought to an end by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648¹¹ we ask ourselves the question: how did matters stand in 1648 in respect of this conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism? What had come of it? What changes had taken place in the course of thirty years? Nothing strikes us more forcibly than the fact that in this conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism and in everything connected with it the situation in 1648 was exactly the same as it had been in 1618. Though, meanwhile, certain issues which had been the source of discord had been modified somewhat, the situation in Central Europe had remained unchanged since the outbreak of hostilities. But the intervention of foreign powers which was in no way connected with the causes of the conflict of 1618, this intervention, after the powers had found scope for their activity, gave a totally different complexion to the political forces in Europe. The political horizon of those who had been involved in the war was completely transformed. But the results of the peace of Westphalia, the changed situation in relation to the past, this had nothing whatsoever to do with the causes of the conflict in 1618.

This fact is extremely important, especially in the case of the Thirty Years' War, and illustrates how absurd it is to consider history, as is the usual practice, in terms of cause and effect. However, the consequence of these developments was that England and France owed their leading position in Europe to the outcome of this war. But their supremacy was in no way connected with the causes which provoked the war. And a most important factor in the march of modern history is this: following upon the Thirty Years' War the national impulses, in conjunction with the other impulses which I have described elsewhere, develop in such a way that France and England become the representative national states. There is much talk at the present time of the national principle in the East; but we must not forget that this principle passed from the West to the East. Like the trade winds, the national impulse flowed from West to East and we must bear this clearly in mind.

Now it is interesting to see how the same impulse—the national impulse in conjunction with the emancipation of the personality—assumes a totally different form in the two countries, where, as we saw, they began to be clearly differentiated in 1429. In France the emancipation of the personality within the national group develops in such a way that it turns inward. That is to say, if the national element is represented by the red line in the diagram below and on the one side of the line is the individual human being, and on the other side mankind, then in France the development of the national impulse is orientated towards man, towards the individual, in England towards mankind. France modifies the national element within the nation state in such a way that the national element tends to transform the inner being of man, to make him other than he is. In England the personal element transcends nationalism and seeks to embrace the whole world and to promote everywhere the development of the personality. The Frenchman wishes rather to develop the personal element in the soul, the Englishman to extend the principle of personality to the whole of mankind. Here we see two entirely different trends—in both cases the basis is the national element. In the one case the national impulse turns inwards, towards the individual soul; in the other it is directed outwards, towards the soul of mankind. In England and France therefore we have two parallel streams with two sharply contrasting tendencies. Only in France therefore, where the inner life of the personality was deeply influenced, could the political and social configuration which developed as I have described lead to the Revolution—via Louis XIV, etcetera. In England the national impulse led to a sober liberalism, because here it expressed itself externally, whilst in France it expressed itself inwardly, in the inner life of man.

This phenomenon, strangely enough, manifests itself also geographically, especially when we consider another turning point in modern history as symptom—the defeat of Napoleon, who was a product of the French Revolution, by the English at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. What is revealed to us here? Napoleon, a strange representative it is true, but nonetheless a representative of the French makeup, signifies the withdrawal inwards—and geographically too, the withdrawal to the continent of Europe. If the following diagram represents Europe—Napoleon, precisely as a consequence of the battle of Trafalgar, is thrust back towards Europe (see arrow) and England is thrust outwards towards the whole world in the opposite direction. At the same time let us not forget that these two tendencies have need of conflict, they must try conclusions with each other. And this is what happened in the struggle for supremacy in North America, which in some respects is a consequence of this turning point in 1805. Looking back a few decades before this date we see how the specifically French nuance, Romanism, is ousted in the interests of the world by the Anglo-Saxon element in North America.

Thus you can sense, if you really wish to, the forces which are at work here; like the magician's apprentice the impulse of the Consciousness Soul conjures up national impulses which implant themselves in mankind in divers forms and with different nuances. We can only understand these things if we study the impulse of the Consciousness Soul in all its aspects, avoiding all prejudice and keeping our eyes open for what is important and what is unimportant and also for what is more or less characteristic so that from our observation of external symptoms we can then penetrate to the inner pattern of reality. For external appearances often belie the inner impulse of the personality, especially in an epoch when the personality is self-dependent. And this, too, becomes apparent when we study symptomatically the development of modern history. What is taught as history in our schools is quite unreal. The real facts are as follows: here is the surface movement of the water, here is the current (shaded red in the diagram.)

Now there are times when there breaks through into historical events—like the waves thrown up here, sometimes with the violence of a volcanic eruption—what lies beneath the surface. At other times, events emerge on the surface, and isolated historical events betray what lies beneath the surface. As symptoms they are especially characteristic. But sometimes there are symptoms where one must totally ignore external appearances when looking at the symptomatic fact.

Now there is a personality who is especially characteristic of the emergence of the impulse of the Consciousness Soul in Western Europe, both on account of his personal development and on account of the place he occupies in contemporary history. At the beginning of the seventeenth century he was involved in this differentiation between the French impulse and the English impulse, a differentiation that had exercised a widespread influence upon the rest of Europe. In the seventeenth century this differentiation had been effective for some time and had become more pronounced. The personality who appeared on the stage of history at this time was a strange individual, whom we can depict in the following way: one could say that he was extremely generous, filled with deep and genuine gratitude for the knowledge imparted to him, infinitely grateful, in fact a model of gratitude for the kindness men showed towards him. He was a scholar who combined in his person almost the entire erudition of his day, a personality who was extremely peace-loving, a sovereign indifferent to the intrigues of the world, wholly devoted to the ideal of universal peace, extremely prudent in decisions and resolutions, and most kindly disposed towards his fellow men. Such is the portrait that one could sketch of this personality. If one takes a partial view, it is possible to portray him in this way and this is the external view that history presents.

It is also possible to portray him from another angle which is equally partial. One could say that he was an outrageous spendthrift without the slightest notion of his financial resources, a pedant, a typical professor whose erudition was shot through with abstractions and pedantry. Or one could say that he was timid and irresolute, and whenever called upon to defend some principle he would evade the issue out of pusillanimity, preferring peace at any price. It could also be said of him that he was shrewd or crafty and wormed his way through life by artfully choosing the path that always guaranteed success. Or that he endeavoured to establish relationships with others as children are wont to do. His friendships betrayed a frankly childish element which, in his veneration for others and in the adulation others accorded him, was transformed into romantic infatuation. One can adopt either of these points of view. And in fact there were some who described him from the one angle, others from the other angle, and many from both angles. Such was the historical personality of James I¹² who reigned from 1603 to 1625. Whichever point of view we take, in both cases the cap fits perfectly. In neither case do we know what he really felt or thought as a typical representative of contemporary evolution. And yet, precisely in the epoch when James I was King of England a hidden current rises to the surface and the symptoms manifested at that time are characteristic of the underlying reality. We will speak more of this tomorrow.

• T1. Das Geschichtsleben der Menschheit, Dornach, October, 1918. Lectures included in Die Polarität von Dauer und Entwickelung im Menschenleben (Bibl. Nr. 184).
• T2. Die Geschichte der Neuzeit im Lichte der Geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung 17th October, 1918 (included in Bibl. Nr. 73).
• 1 . Carolingian and Hohenstaufen dynasties marked by the struggle between Empire and Papacy.
• 2 . A French bishop, Clement V, is elected to the papal throne. The papal court transferred to Avignon 1309. Beginning of the ‘Babylonian Captivity’.
• 3 . Knights Templar. Founded 1118 by Hugues de Payen to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Sepulchre. After their defeat at Acre 1291 they took refuge in Cyprus. The order was denounced 1307 by the Inquisition; their property was sequestrated. The Templars were arrested and most, including the leader, Jacques Molay, tortured and burnt. Papal Bull 1312 suppressed the Order.
• 4 . Mongol invasions. After destroying the power of China and Islam in Central Asia, the armies of Chingis Khan (1167–1227) advanced through Georgia, overran the Ukraine and the Crimea and destroyed three Russian armies (1222–3). A renewed invasion of Russia began in 1237 under Ögödei. The Mongols captured Moscow, Rostov, Yaroslavl and destroyed the army of the Grand Duke. In 1240 they advanced towards Poland and Hungary and reached Pesth. Another army overran Lithuania and East Prussia. Archduke Henry of Silesia was defeated at Liegnitz by a force under Kaidu and in 1241 all Hungary fell to the Mongols. The death of Ögödei in 1241 saved Western Europe from further invasion. A full account will be found in The Mongols by E. D. Phillips, Thames & Hudson, 1969. Also, The Mongols and Russia by G. Vernadsky, Yale, 1959.
• 5 . H. T. Buckle (1822–62) English historian. His chief work was the History of Civilisation in England (1857–61). He saw in the law of causality the determining factor in history. Freidrich Ratzel (1844–1904). Geographer and professor in Munich and Leipzig.
• 6 . Ernst von Wildenbruch (1845–1909). Author of historical dramas Die Karolinger 1881, Die Quitzows 1888, etcetera. Filled with a sense of priestly mission. His plays are patriotic, rhetorical and rely upon stage effects. ‘He was capable of raising a storm to put out a night light!’
• 7 . Ottokar II (1253–78), King of Bohemia, was compelled to surrender Austria, Styria and Carinthia to Rudolf of Hapsburg. He refused to recognize the validity of Rudolf's election as emperor and was defeated and mortally wounded at the battle of Marchfeld 1278.
• T3. Die Geschichte des Mittelalters bis zu den grossen Erfindungen und Entdeckungen, Berlin, October—December, 1904.
• 8 . Osmanlis or Ottomans, a western Turkish race named after their leader Osman I or Ottoman (d. 1326) who founded the Turkish empire by conquering western Asia Minor. A nomadic people.
• 9 . Council of Constance (1414–18). John Hus was summoned to defend himself before the Church authorities against the charge of heresy. Refused to recant and was convicted and burnt.
• 10. Defenestration of Prague 1618. Protestant meetings prohibited by Imperial decree. Calvinists invaded the Hradschin Palace in Prague and threw the Imperial regents, Martinitz and Slavata, together with their secretary, Fabricius, out of the window on to the courtyard fifty feet below. A Bohemian rebellion now became inevitable.
• 11. Peace of Westphalia 1648. Religious clauses a return to the Peace of Augsburg 1565—‘cujus regio, ejus religio’. Territorial and political implications of the treaty of great significance in European history.
• 12. James I of England or James VI of Scotland aptly described by Henry IV of Navarre and Sully as the ‘wisest fool in Christendom.’

It may seem at first and it seems so to many people, as if that what one calls clairvoyant forces in the true sense of the word through which the beings and processes of the spiritual worlds can be recognised, as if the human being does not have these clairvoyant forces in the everyday life at all, or as if he develops nothing at all of these forces in his soul in the everyday life. However, it is not that way. The clairvoyant forces are not such forces which are quite strange to the human being living in the everyday life. This is not the case, but that we have to develop so that we can behold in the spiritual worlds what we must bring out of the deep subsoil of the soul in order to find the path into the spiritual worlds, this already exists in a certain soul activity also for the everyday life of the human being.

These are the moral impulses of the human being. A really moral action, a really moral impulse arises from the same abilities of the soul which lead to clairvoyant abilities by means of a corresponding development. Indeed, for the everyday life the matter is different because everything that the human being is doing comes from his physical nature or from that which he has acquired for and by means of his physical nature in the course of life. If the human being develops desires if the human being does this or that what he is determined by his education or his other conditions of life, then it is the body from which the impulse comes. But there are real impulses in the human life which do not come from the body with which only the soul deals if the human being grasps these impulses: these are the moral impulses. A really moral action is that to which the body is called for help, indeed, so that one gets a mental picture of the moral action, but the impulse of the moral action is in the psycho-spiritual which is really independent of the bodily. One will never be able to define moral with the help of mere philosophy, and it is just the typical of philosophy, provided that it wants to be moral philosophy, that it does not come to a correct, satisfying definition of moral if it does not position itself on the ground that the human being is able to experience his psycho-spiritual in himself independently of his body.

We know that human life is composed of moral, less moral and immoral actions and impulses. The difference which exists between moral and immoral actions appears only to the esoteric consideration in the true light. The human being goes in his smallest life cycle, in that time of twenty-four hours, into the sleeping state. This sleeping state means that the ego and the astral body go out basically from the physical and etheric bodies and live then beyond this physical and etheric bodies. Not yet everything is said with it if I say that the ego and the astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies. But you have also to realise that the ego and the astral body, while they leave the etheric and the physical bodies, are taken up in the spiritual worlds which prevail in the supersensible around us. We go into the supersensible worlds with our ego and astral body. If we have had a moral impulse during the day, during our waking state and have accomplished a moral action, then the following is true: we must be taken up with our ego and astral body by the spirits of the next higher hierarchies, by the spirits, which we count to the hierarchy of the angels, of the archangels et cetera. These take us up; we go into them as it were in the sleeping state.

As well as we live in the body during the day, we live inside the beings of the higher hierarchies during sleep. That has to be clear to us. If we have accomplished a moral action, if we have had a moral impulse, then it is possible for the beings of the next higher hierarchies—according to the spiritual cosmic laws—to take up our ego and our astral body with our moral impulses or that which of our moral impulses has remained in our soul. If we have committed an immoral action or have had an immoral impulse, we cannot come with this rest, with that which was formed by the immoral impulse in us into the beings of the higher hierarchies during sleep. That really remains behind, is pushed back which is immoral in us, it is pushed down again into the physical nature. The result of the fact is that everything that we bring as an after-effect of morality into the spiritual worlds during sleep does not have an effect on our physical and etheric bodies, because it is taken away from them.

An immoral idea, an immoral impulse, an immoral action, however, becomes something that is pushed back into the etheric and physical bodies and this has an effect on them. That is why the results of immoral actions can work in the physical and etheric bodies during sleep, from falling asleep up to waking. In this regard, it is really easy to recognise what I have often emphasised in my talks that language has a miraculous genius that it works ingeniously. If we speak of guilt, there just this German word “Schuld” (also meaning debts) signifies infinitely exactly this what it concerns. We pay what we owe to the spiritual world with our moral actions, but we remain guilty to the spiritual world of that which we must leave behind in our bodies, our immoral thoughts, our immoral impulses, our immoral actions.

Take now the following into account: if we spent our life in such a way that we would only perceive the things of the outside world and think about them, the processes even in our physical body would be quite different than they are. Because we not only think and perceive, but we also remember the thoughts, perceptions and experiences. What we think, imagine, feel goes down into our etheric body, but the etheric body imprints it again into the physical body. And that what the etheric body creates like impressions in the physical body this is memory. If we remember something of former experiences in the later life, this means: we bump our astral body, which is connected then with the etheric body, on that what like an impression, as a seal impression has remained in our physical body. The materialistic idea is childish: as if a recollection sits in the brain here, another there, as if it is tinned thus. This is not true, but any recollection has an impression which corresponds basically to the whole head and still some other parts of the human figure, and the recollections are in each other, not side by side as a childish materialistic idea supposes it.

This activity of remembering is based on the fact that our astral and etheric bodies can cause impressions in our physical bodies. It is really the same activity which takes place externally when we write down something. If we look at the notes, then that what we have in our soul, of course, does not have the slightest resemblance to the signs we have on the paper. On the paper are signs of any form, but by that what we do then from it, while we are induced to bring back to life again that in the soul which we have written down, a spiritual process takes place. It is the same also with memory. What remains in us does not have more resemblance in principle with that which appears in the soul while remembering, than that which stands on the paper, with that what appears in the soul if we read it again.

Clairvoyantly beheld, the matter is like that: let us suppose that somebody remembers something that he has gone through once. What lights up then in his physical body, is a mark which is a copy of the human figure from the head and a piece below in any way. These are marks. Every mark is different which appears in the memory, but these are marks. The soul only makes with the help of the marks what we experience, while we remember. This is really a subconscious reading what appears as memory. If natural sciences progress a little further and investigate the physical processes, they will be a help to spiritual science, while they will show that that what remains in the body must really be submitted by the soul to a process which is similar to the reading in the soul in principle. Memory is a real subconscious reading. This is a regular activity of the human soul, this remembering.

However, if we send down results of immoral impulses, thoughts or actions into our body while falling asleep, we do not remove immoral impulses from our physical body. Something similar thereby happens as it happens usually regularly in memory. The work on the physical body imprints itself there. If now the human being wants to fall asleep and his ego and astral body want to go out from his physical and etheric bodies, this process begins. What he must leave behind there imprints itself like memories imprint themselves, and then there come the pangs of conscience which appear there. This is the real process of the pangs of conscience. Thus they are reflected from that what the matters cause as impressions in our physical body and also in the etheric body. This remains then.

Because these pangs of conscience remain as the regular memories do and attain strength, they appear then as self reproaches in the further life. This is the important matter that we really succeed in seeing that the moral action is a real process that it is not only something abstract, but that this moral action is handing up that into the spiritual worlds what we here act on earth. Because we hand over the results of our moral behaviour to the higher hierarchies, they also remain in certain respect in these higher hierarchies. What we cannot take with us what works then in the physical and etheric bodies remains here on earth; this is in the earth process. If the human being has gone through the gate of death, he must always look back at it, and while he always looks back at it, the impulse must originate in him to put it away from the earth process. The working out of karma between death and a new birth is based on that.

We take the results of our moral impulses in our karma with us, but while we bring them into spiritual worlds during sleep, they also make impressions there. We can say that the angels, the archangels, also the spirits of personality then have the moral impulses. What do they do with them? These moral impulses, which are now in the spiritual world, are the real fertilising germs for the later earth periods. Not only that we keep these results in our karma, but we bring the impressions up, and in the coming earth epochs the spirits of higher hierarchies bring them down again. These results of the moral impulses are the fertilising germs for the human inventive thinking, for the human thinking generally in later earth epochs. Imagine that an epoch of the earth evolution is quite immoral, so that no impressions of moral impulses are brought to the spiritual worlds. Then an epoch would follow in the earth evolution when the human beings would think of little for the life on earth when the human beings would have few ideas and concepts when they have no means to imprint and stimulate their soul-lives.

So we stand with our moral impulses in a real process of the universe. Hence, spiritual science which shows us such a matter is suitable to increase our responsibility, to make our responsibility more vigorous, because we thereby notice only what it means to be moral or immoral in human life. Being immoral means to take its life germs away from the earth, to incorporate them into the physical earth process in which they become then germs of destruction for the next earth epochs, because they are also preserved there, of course, because nothing gets lost. Then they extinguish that what should live vividly as a soul element. Suppose that a bigger crowd of people would decide that they would live immorally in a certain epoch. Then a later epoch poor in thoughts would be thereby caused, and the souls would come down to the earth and find no ideas there, they would have a desolate life.

It is now possible that we take up not only the contents of moral in our knowledge. If we do not take up that in our effective knowledge, we obliterate the earth. But we need and we have the possibility to take up something different in our soul development, and this is the knowledge of the supersensible. Basically, the earth never was completely without supersensible knowledge. We know that humankind received a certain inheritance of clairvoyant capacities, also of clairvoyant knowledge in olden times. It is not long ago that the aftermath of this clairvoyant knowledge was there on earth. We also know that we live in the time when this clairvoyant knowledge is drawing to an end since centuries, but must be replaced by the clairvoyant knowledge gained consciously. We live in this important time. We have yesterday made ourselves aware that the fifth culture-epoch and those who are its bearers have a vocation to gain clairvoyant knowledge consciously for the souls. The fifth culture-epoch will not come to an end, before a certain sum of clairvoyant knowledge has grasped a relatively big part of humankind. Herder's saying is true that enlightenment will spread over the earth.

Any knowledge we acquire from the only sensory outside world, all the thoughts we have only as after-images of the sensory outside world cannot be brought directly by us into the spiritual world, while we sleep. It is true, the thoughts, the ideas which we have reach to the beings of the higher hierarchies up to a certain degree—just with the exception of the immoral impulses. However, that rises up which we acquire as pictures of the outside world up to a certain degree into the spiritual world. But it does not rise up very far, not at all to the sphere of the archangels. So that the human being—if he fills himself with ideas only which come from the sensory world—can bring that which he gains as ideas of the sensory world not very far into the spiritual worlds. The supersensible ideas we experience in ourselves are brought far into the spiritual worlds. Just those beings who belong to the hierarchy of the archangels get, as it were, the impressions of them and carry them over into later times. That of supersensible knowledge which the human egos and astral bodies carry up into the spiritual worlds is used later for the earth evolution.

It does not form, like the moral impulses, the fertilising germs, the stimulating element, but the germs for that which we call the earth progress. Refusing supersensible ideas by an age means the condemnation of a coming age to make no progress in the earth evolution. He who refuses the supersensible ideas restrains the progress of coming epochs as far as he is concerned. If any nation became quite materialistic, this materialism of a whole nation would condemn the earth to a standstill in its development—of course up to a certain degree because the other peoples would not have to reject the supersensible ideas. We see again how the acquisition of supersensible ideas is significant in the earth process itself. Causes and effects are connected in the whole earth process that way. Those human beings who are, as it were, consciously materialists in our present are ahrimanically enticed beings, enticed by the ahrimanic spirits, because Ahriman is very interested in restraining the regular progress.

We see again how spiritual science is able to increase the feeling of responsibility of the individual human soul to the world as a whole. We see spiritual science snatching us from our selves and making us members of the whole human process, that spiritual science is basically an unselfish activity of the human soul.

In a certain respect, any living in supersensible ideas is a reproduction of the moral life. Hence, there is nothing more disturbing for the knowledge of the supersensible worlds than filling the human soul with immoral impulses. That is why it is deeply founded to demand a kind of moral thinking in the most eminent sense as a preparation of the esoteric development. The fifth epoch has the task to make consciously sure that spiritual knowledge fills the human beings, so that during the rest of the post-Atlantean age the progress of humanity is not restrained, so that really a progress can take place in humanity. If we have to ascribe the natural ability of spiritual knowledge in the most eminent sense just to the Central European peoples after all our discussions during the last days, it must be clear to us which significance the further existence, the undisturbed development of the Central European culture has.

If we now are able to see the horizon of the European life only a little bit by means of that which we have mentioned, what does it present to us? The life of the higher hierarchies is connected with the life of peoples. You need only to study the series of talks about the development of the folk-souls which was held once in Kristiania (Oslo), which is especially important to study in our present time. You need only to call it in your mind and you will see how the archangels intervene in the national life; how generally this national life unfolds in the cooperation of the higher hierarchies with that what happens here on earth. If we look at an individual human being, we know that his ego-development takes place only slowly and gradually. Indeed, in the tender childhood, from the time up to which one remembers, the ego-consciousness begins. But this ego becomes increasingly mature, advances in his development. In our time big mistakes are there concerning this ego-development. There is too little a consciousness of the fact that such an ego-development takes place in life. Thus one can experience that today greenhorns regard themselves to be mature to judge everything because they do not know that one has to attain a certain age to judge certain matters, because the ego thereby reaches a certain maturity only.

As it is in the individual life of the human being, it is also in the life of peoples. We must only take the following into consideration if we want to understand the life of peoples in relation to the individual human life on the physical plane. The individual human being matures concerning to his ego-development. Because he grows increasingly mature, he also learns to take a better overview of the outside world. What we know about the outside world if we have attained twenty, twenty-five years, and what we can know if we spend life substantially if we have worked through ten years more. For such matters just the spiritual scientist has to get a feeling. There is the ego in its relation to the external world, to its surroundings.

The beings of the higher hierarchies behave differently. These beings of the higher hierarchies have the same relationship to our egos as we have to the matters of the outside world. The matters and beings of the mineral, plant and animal realms are objects for us. For the beings of the higher hierarchies, for example, our egos are objects. The relationship of the beings of the higher hierarchies to our egos is not that of perception as we have it to the outside world. Their volition rather penetrates our egos, their volition works on our egos.

Those archangels who have to lead the peoples have the same relationship to the egos, to the individual human beings of the people as we have concerning the perception of matters of the outside world. We are the objects for these archangels. What is an outside world for us, we are as human beings for the archangels, only that it is more a process of perception with us and more a process of will with the archangels. But concerning this process of will the archangel also experiences a development. This archangel goes through a maturation of his soul exactly the same way, now not concerning his ego, but concerning deeper forces of his soul. He experiences a development through which he attains another relation to the individual human beings of his nation; as well as we attain another relation to our environment with a more mature ego.

Let us take, for example, the archangel to whom the guidance of the Italian people has been transferred in the course of history. This archangel has had such a relation to the Italian people for a long time that he has, actually, worked with his will basically on the higher parts of the soul. In the further course this archangel had an effect not only on the higher parts of the soul, but also on the lower ones, on the passions, on the impulses of the soul which are still connected with the body. Thus the development of the archangel goes on: at first, he has more an effect on the soul as such, in the later course he becomes more and more powerful and works on those parts of the soul which are more connected with the body.

We can give for the Italian people that the archangel experienced a condition of his development in 1530 which can be characterised in such a way that one can say: he has worked more on the real soul, now he starts impregnating the soul more with his will, in so far as it penetrates the body. The Italian people, really, starts now to let itself go concerning its appearance, to develop its national character so surely. Study the history of the Italian people before the mentioned time—about the middle of the 16th century,—then you see that there the archangel still worked on the internal soul qualities of the Italian people; that then the external national character formed in the most remarkable sense, as we know it today. Before this point in time—and such a point in time exists for any people—the whole soul-life of a people is still alive. It is still possible then that the soul-life of the people can take on this or that quality. The qualities are not yet coined so strongly. After this point in time, when the archangel has developed his will relations to the deeper qualities of the soul, the people's character becomes rigid; it penetrates the bodily qualities. The time begins when one can hardly approach the people with anything that does not correspond to the national character. It becomes nervous at once if anybody comes with anything that does not lie completely in the national line or current.

One can really give this point in time in the historical development of the French people correctly. All these statements are approximate, of course, but this time is for the French people about 1600, in the beginning of the 17th century, and for the English people in the middle of the 17th century, in 1650.

If you go back before this time, to the Middle Ages, you see how much the peoples of Europe still have in common, and how with the single peoples the development of the national character begins at the points in time which I have given. The archangel experiences a development so that one can say: his forces were even weaker before that, so that he was only able to work on the soul, on the inside. The forces grow stronger after that, he can stretch his forces up to the physical. He thereby causes the sharply distinctive national character. Single phenomena appear quite comprehensible to you if you have such matters for the historical consideration. Imagine that in the time in which the English people had their Shakespeare the national character had not yet been enclosed in this way, so that just the English people are no longer able to understand Shakespeare. This comes from the fact that the archangel enclosed it with a distinctive national character. This will give a real historical consideration of the future when one does no longer start, as it was the case so often in the 19th century, from the assumption that ideas have an effect in history. A human being can have ideas, but ideas cannot work as forces in history. The angels, archangels and archai can have ideas, but ideas must always come from beings. The whole historical consideration of the 19th century, in so far as it speaks of ideas in history, is a spook, because it is based on the faith that ideas develop, can freely move in the continuous current of time.

We can now put the question: what about the German people? Was there a point in time at which the archangel attained a certain level?—Yes, such a point in time happened. But the German people differ from the other peoples to a certain degree. We know that the soul of the human being consists of sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, and consciousness-soul. You can gather this from the talks on the folk-souls that the archangel of the Italian people preferably wants to gain power in the sentient soul, that of the French people in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, that of the British people in the consciousness-soul, and that of the German people in the ego which extends its power to the three soul members. Hence, the relation of the archangel to the individual egos of the German people is also another than with the western peoples.

There was already a point in time when the archangel of the German people intervened in the physical life or in the lower soul-life, in so far as it seizes the physical. This is the time approximately between 1750 and 1830. If one studies the matters once quite rationally, one will get wonderful explanations about the course of the national development. If anybody got involved only to look at the really great, magnificent difference which is there in the German life in the human beings of the 19th and 20th centuries and the human beings living two hundred years ago, then he would see how immense this difference is. In those days, the archangel intervened in the national character of the German people, as well as the archangels intervened in the other peoples at the points in time which I have given. But, one would like to say, he stopped again, he did not transform the physical constitution so vigorously, as thoroughly as it happened with the other peoples. Hence, it has even happened that the second half of the 19th century took such a course that this German people have really taken up everything imaginable from the other peoples unconsciously.

This has led to tragic conflicts in our days. Think only once that Ernst Haeckel is an Englishman in his whole world view, in so far as he has based his world view on science. He is completely an Englishman, because he has taken up English thought-forms. Everything that he thinks is influenced by the English being. He starts from Darwin, from Huxley. He regards Spencer as his philosophical God. While one cannot really translate a book of Hegel or a book of spiritual science into English, one can translate Haeckel very easily into English, of course. You may be surprised about me saying this, because you know that spiritual-scientific books are translated into English. But what you read in the books, you read this only approximately in the English translations. One can never really translate, for example, the sentence which is essentially¹ and with everything that developed in the German being following Master Eckhart. You cannot translate this sentence correctly into English: “In dem Gemüte lebt das Fünklein, in dem sich in der Menschenseele die Weltseele offenbart.” “The little spark lives in man's feeling nature in which the world-soul reveals itself to the human soul.” It is impossible to translate it really into English, because for that what is experienced in the word “Gemüt” does no translation exist. Also the original dictum by Hegel cannot be translated into English which is almost the foundation stone of German idealistic philosophy: “Sein und Nicht-Sein vereinigen sich zur höheren Einheit im Werden.” “Being and Not-Being coalesce to Becoming as the higher unity.” Of course, one can translate everything, but the translation cannot report what is experienced in such a sentence.

The German language has the special peculiarity that it still allows certain liquidness. Imagine how infinitely easy it is to say if anything is translated into English or French: this is wrong; one does not say this that way!—We Germans must not develop the bad habit to say that something is wrong, but we must keep our language liquid—this is spoken radically, of course. Study our cycles, there you will see how I always struggled to form new words, also forms which formulate the words from within. This comes, for example, from the fact that the archangel of the German people stopped the sharp stamping again. He has only made an attempt, as it were, to sharply coin the national character during almost one century, and has then released the people again.

That means a lot. But this must be that way, because the German people have a vocation to transform their idealism to lively spiritual knowledge. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, who are attacked today, created a thinking which is indeed not already spiritualism, nor spiritual science which is, however, the seed of spiritual science which guides you really to spiritual science, so to speak, if you meditate it thoroughly. However, the German national character must still remain liquid, must make really possible that one says: somebody is an Italian, somebody is a Frenchman, and somebody is an Englishman. However, somebody becomes a German! The archangel has only made an attempt with the German people to form the national character. In the same way to be national or chauvinistic as the West-European peoples are, this would be an untruth with the German; he is not able to do this at all—one is able to do everything, of course, but then it is not commensurate with the real being of the German.

The relations of the Russian people are quite different. Its archangel is connected with the individual egos of the people in a different way than with the West-European and Central European peoples. The archangels of the West-European peoples work with their rays of will, with the Italian people on the sentient soul, with the French people on the intellectual soul or mind-soul, with the British people on the consciousness-soul, with the German people on the ego. However, the folk-soul of the Russian people does not work on the souls at all. It hovers as it were over the people like a cloud, and the soul can only have a premonition of it and long for it. It has still remained a group soul as it were. There is no intimate interaction of the folk-soul with the individual human egos. You can get no more tragic, more serious impression than when you are present at a Russian-orthodox service, in which the human egos of those, who take part in it as believers, are almost completely eliminated.

There is something impersonally universal that does not seize the individual personality. There is nothing in this service that appeals to the human nature. This is an immediate expression of the fact that the Russian soul has not awoken at all to that stimulation which is due to the interchange of the individual ego with the folk-soul. Everything is a little bit rigid and stereotyped, as if spirituality comes from unknown worlds and turns to something rigid and stereotyped, in the performances just as in the icon painting. There we stand before something quite different as it is the case in Western Europe. There we stand before the fact that the archangel has not got ready at all to intervene in the national element. Hence, the national element is for the Russian more a soul dream. The Russian always talks of the “really Russian human being,” and the Russian writers talk of it. But it is a soul dream which is emphasised in particular, because the folk-soul is not incorporated into the human beings, because the Russian has a longing for a super-personal folk-soul.

You have to look into these deep secrets, and then you understand how the European cultural regions stand facing each other. I never think, of course, to see the cause of the present events directly in this facing each other of the cultural regions. Nevertheless, you must do that indirectly. In particular, you must be aware of the fact that the torch of the current war is a powerful mark to familiarise ourselves with that which weaves and reigns within the spiritual life of Europe.

We look up to beings of the higher hierarchies; we see these beings of the higher hierarchies also developing. Whereas we develop our egos as individual human beings, we see these developing in such a way that they get more and more power to penetrate the ego with their will. First they still keep far away from this ego, overshadow it from above like in the case of the Russian people. Then there is a more intimate overshadowing and living together at the same time as it is with the German people. Then they add the intransigent national character to the individual human beings like it is the case of the three characterised West-European peoples. You can derive from that in which condition this modern life of the human development is. Have a look only once at the Central European history and you will find—if you refrain from Russia where the relations are quite different,—you will find that the life of the West-European peoples and in certain way also of the Central European peoples is similar, that a European internationalism is there. Then we see a new time dawning in the individual peoples from the 14th century on. With this dawning we see the peoples being seized by distinctive national characters. At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, we see the German people getting just as much of national character that the German feels as it were what a national character is, but not so much that he is taken up in the solidified national character. One will find that that lies in the disposition of the German nature that the German does not need to be taken up in the national character; that it really has a deep sense when Fichte² says: everything that wants freedom of the human soul-being, everything that strives for the universally human, that belongs to us.

There is a possibility of free development of the Central European or German character. However, something is contained in that which leads immediately to the insight that the West-European peoples have to take this national character—or fluid national character—of the German people into account. I say, something like the fluid national character of the German can lead to the tragic just in our time. Think of Ernst Haeckel once again. We have seen that he was influenced by the English so deeply in the second half of the 19th century—because the development of the national character was released again. And today? The man who bears, actually, the whole English nature in himself has thrown words of the strongest hatred against the English people. He stood at the head of those who sent back their English certificates, medals and honourings. It would be so much more important that they would send back the materialistic Darwinism, the materialistic Newtonism, everything that came from them. In this regard, we have to learn to really understand us, to see the matters objectively and without national hatred.

It was a kind of a spiritual prelude when some years ago the splitting had to take place between our anthroposophical movement and the Anglo-Indian coloured theosophical movement. It had to take place. Those who have a vocation to develop the spiritual element cannot go along with the materialistic view of a Christ re-embodied in the flesh. It had to come out among us that the return of Christ will really be the return of the etheric Christ. It has often been said that and could also be heard out of Theodora's mouth in my first mystery drama.³ Indeed, now we read in an English-theosophical magazine—I tell no fairy tales to you, the president of the society herself expressed it—that the warfare of the Germans shows now what was, actually, behind the theosophical German undertaking at that time, because it appears now that we would have taken amiss, actually, on theosophical field that the president Annie Besant has always stood up for the peace prince, who did his best for Europe, Eduard VII. We would have looked at this already with immense aversion, and, therefore, we would have sent our agents to England who should there talk about theosophy in our sense to get the theosophists in our hands. If we had succeeded, the president tells in the English theosophical magazine, to penetrate at that time so far that we would have got the complete, as she says, “rich administrative machinery” of the Anglo-Indian theosophy—never have we wanted this, of course,—our intention would have been carried out to bring the poison of our views to India and to gain influence on the British government from there. Then our intention would have been executed to induce the British people to acknowledge the German supremacy over England on this way!—This is the representation which is given now in English-theosophical magazines to the theosophists there.

Now look at the truth. We have to realise it, because we cannot think about these matters in a dreaming way. The truth is, for example, that that which I wrote in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Life is written out of the kind as spiritualism lives in the Central European cultural current. The book was translated into English straight away, and at that time one said to us there—to me at least—that the whole theosophy is contained in this book. Now we could say: well, if people think in London that the whole theosophy is contained in this book, they can go along with us.—But each step we undertook was nothing but an expression of the Central European developing spiritualism.

Some months before the outbreak of this war, it touched me still peculiarly—today I am allowed to mention this—that some of our ladies who do eurythmy drove to London to give there a course. The eurythmy has pleased. This is all right, it shall please human beings. But one does not notice that this eurythmy is the spiritual counter pole of the materialistic sport; the fact that on one side Europe is flooded completely by materialism and sport brings materialism into the movement of human beings, which serves the amusement of the people, the addiction to make oneself healthy which is quite materialistic, whereas with us each movement is the expression of the spiritual, corresponds exactly to that which is Central European spirituality. We work on this ground and let grow up the fruits of the spiritual development from this ground. How did just the sport intervene in the second half of the 19th century in Germany! How finer sport activities have then also—I believe, a method was especially that of Dalcroze supersensible human being.

This eurythmy is based on the following principles: we have an organ through which the etheric body acts immediately, so that the physical becomes an image of the etheric. This is the case when we are speaking. Not the whole physical, but the air becomes an image of the etheric. The sounding word in the air, the kind how the air swings, is a direct expression of the etheric. If one seizes that what lives in the sound, in the word and spreads it over the whole etheric body and lets the hands and feet and everything of the human being be moved, like in speaking and singing the air is moved in the etheric body, then one has eurythmy. Since eurythmy is a speaking of the whole human being, so that one makes use not only of the moving air but of the human organs.

Such a matter shows you that the intervention of spiritual science in the modern civilisation is intended as something universal and extensive. To understand the nerve of the thing we have just heard something of which one does not think today. I have given these both talks within this small circle by means of which I wanted to stimulate the sensation in you to look at that what spiritual science intends for the whole human life universally. If I succeeded in doing so, it would be already enough. Since the task of spiritual science is not really fulfilled if we learn single theoretical concepts. The task of spiritual science is fulfilled if it intervenes in everything, in every life, and spiritualises this life. It is inevitable in our fifth culture-epoch within that nation to which this task is assigned to cause spiritualisation, to understand these matters, to cause a sense of responsibility concerning development. It is easy to criticise the human development, rather easy. However, this does not concern, because the matters which happen happen with necessity, even if they counter that which as it were the good progress intends with the human beings. In a certain respect, we must have and let have something in our culture that counters this good progress, actually.

Among these various matters which belong to it, for example, this is that we start to maltreat our children from tender age on because of our present cultural point of view, as one says, for the sake of progress. One does not know it, but one maltreats them. Since there is basically nothing more countering the human nature than to let start the children from the seventh year already learning the school objects and to teach them as pupils as one does it presently. One would really experience something especially advantageous if one grew up quite differently and such matters that are taught already in the seventh year would be taught only in the ninth or tenth years. Mind you, that I do not say this intending that it should not happen, because the general cultural progress demands it, it must be like that. But the counter pole must be created. And particularly while we maltreat the etheric bodies of the children terribly on one side because we have certain types of school lessons because we stamp something into them for which they are good in no way during these years, we must create eurythmy as a counter pole and supply just that what is eurythmy for the children, so that their etheric bodies have the balance in these movements indigenous to them.

Eurythmy will become something that is quite general, since the development does not arrive at its destination advancing unilaterally, but advancing in contrasts. One must always create the counter pole, assert the counter pole. Development moves in contrasts. And against the maltreating of the etheric body as a result of the present-day school lessons a counter pole must be created, in making the etheric body malleable, causing natural movements of it in the sense, as it is attempted in the first rudiments of our eurythmy. Thus something is connected that many call even today “our eurythmy” with that which I have to call the universal character of our spiritual movement.

If we see, on one side, how that intervenes in the ramifications of the external life how deeply it can penetrate us, on the other side, that the depths of the Christ Impulse combine with that which we gather in spiritual science, then we have the universal character of spiritual science from the highest knowledge down to the lowest. And even more than on some other things it depends on the fact that we get a sensation of this universal character of spiritual science. I must say, it belongs to the provisionally most serious sensations and feelings that the present destiny-burdened events are not felt as something more significant that they do not make stronger impressions on our contemporaries. Since apart from all that which one can notice externally these destiny-burdened events is a warning sign, a warning sign not to keep to that which the last centuries have brought up as materialism in humankind, a warning sign to turn on the developmental way of humankind. What is experienced in blood and death should be felt, as if it was sent from the gods to earth, so that it teaches us how necessary spirituality is for the further development of humankind.

It is really a pity, for example, when we experience in these times that people hold talks, also write articles in which they say: may it come soon again, the time when again the free interchange of the peoples takes place, as it has taken place before. Otherwise, the Germans could labour under the delusion to come back again to the metaphysics of Fichte and Hegel, to develop metaphysical impulses again.—Even in these destiny-burdened days one fears that in the longings of the human beings something of metaphysical impulses could come in again. The metaphysical impulses shall be aroused in these months again. Since in how many cases we see—to the grievous experience of the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and other human connections -an unaware confidence in the significance of the supersensible going like a magic breath through our world. Shall thousands and thousands go through death willing to make sacrifices, and the human beings will then keep on preaching that the human life is enclosed between birth and death when peace is on our earth again? Then the sacrificial deaths would be offered for nothing, because these sacrificial deaths arise—even if for many not clearly—from the steady confidence that these deaths is the aurora of a new time. He who goes into death on the battlefield wants to confirm something different by his death than this: my body ends here.—Which futility would it be to fill the European earth with corpses in our time if the materialistic world view even had a grain of justification? We have to write this into our souls above all. Those, who survive this time who live in the time when peace is there again, betray the dead if they do not work on the spiritualisation of the human development. Not to work on the spiritualisation of humankind signifies nothing but to say to those who have gone through blood and death: you died for nothing.—If materialism is right, they all died for nothing.

The spiritual scientist has to penetrate himself completely with this sensation. I read just during these days again that there are people today—and in the 19th century these people became more and more numerous—who state: it was a prejudice of St Paul that he said, if Christ did not rise, then our words and our faith would be “null and void.” But this saying by Paul⁵ is true. Since through that what happened as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha, the human soul was appointed again to have forces, which lead it to the spiritual world. We have spoken of these forces. But our time calls to us clearly: the deaths of so many people would be null and void if materialism were right. If materialism were right, they all would have died in vain.

If we penetrate ourselves with such thoughts, those who offered to give up their forces to the big human progress in a death which occurred at the blossoming human age will receive their forces increasingly from the thoughts which go up from our souls. If human souls turn that what they can have of spiritual thoughts and sensations, the collected forces from above, the unused etheric forces will meet, as I also said yesterday at the end, the human spiritual thoughts and cause a new age. That is why I close with the words today which gave us the feeling sense of standing in our time as spiritual scientists:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Master Eckhart: ~1260–1327, mystic
• 2. seventh address in Addresses to the German Nation
• 3. The Portal of Initiation
• 5. St. Paul: 1 Corinthians 15:14

It must be my intention during these days to bring something home to our souls that is able to throw some light from the spiritual-scientific point of view on our big events. Therefore, it is also my task next Sunday to turn our sensations to certain points of view which can bring some light just in that which must now move our hearts and souls in the deepest sense. I would like to prepare the basis of that, directing your souls to certain powers and forces which have an effect in the historical existence of human beings which can be only recognised by those insights spiritual science can give and are not immediately discernible for the everyday consciousness. I want to point to developmental facts of human life, to more or less subconscious facts today which express themselves in the historical course of human life.

We go out from the fact- you know it from the representation in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?—that what takes place in secrecy with every human being is recognised on successive levels of supersensible knowledge, of the so-called Imaginative knowledge, of the Inspirative knowledge and of the Intuitive knowledge. In the public lecture yesterday, I have already emphasised that one has always to keep in mind that the spiritual scientist who states something of the spiritual worlds on the basis of his knowledge of Imaginative, Inspirative and Intuitive perceptions, does not add anything that does not exist in the spiritual realms in which every human soul lives without being aware of them. The spiritual scientist only draws attention to that which always weaves and lives in the world and in which way the individual human soul is put in it. So that not only for somebody who has the intention to make his way into the current of esoteric experiences, but for every human soul the knowledge of them is important what is internal reality for it at any rate, only a reality which cannot be recognised by means of the everyday awareness of life.

Thus I would like to go out from some facts of the Imaginative perception of the human nature generally. We observe daily that an event full of riddle, at least an event full of riddle for the external science intervenes rhythmically in our life by turns: the waking and sleeping states. We know for a long time that we belong with our four human members, the physical body, the etheric body, astral body and ego, in the waking state to the physical earth. We know that we are during sleep, from falling asleep up to waking, in the physical world only with our physical and etheric bodies that we withdraw as it were into the purely spiritual world with our astral bodies and egos. We can characterise that which presents itself now to the view of the spiritual researcher and say: the spiritual researcher looks at that which takes place, for example, constantly with the human being when he leaves his physical and etheric bodies while falling asleep and advances to the region of the higher world with his astral body and ego. The spiritual researcher simply watches what happens there with the human being—with every human being falling asleep. So that we can say: the spiritual researcher only observes what would show itself to every human soul if it could look down not in the dream state, but in the complete sleeping state at the world, so that it would find its physical and etheric bodies as something among the things of the world that is outside of it, of the sleeping soul.

We must not imagine that we see that which we have left there, in which we have left behind our physical and etheric bodies, from the point of view of sleep as we see our physical surroundings with our physical eyes. We have to use our physical senses, our physical eyes to see our surroundings from waking up to falling asleep. We do not use them when we are beyond our physical and etheric bodies. If we became suddenly clairvoyant in the sleeping state, we would perceive nothing of that what surrounds us in the waking state, as it is in the waking state. We also do not perceive our physical and etheric bodies as we perceive the physical body looking into a mirror. It is quite wrong to believe that one looks at the physical and the etheric bodies as if one bends with his astral body and ego over the physical and etheric bodies. This is not the case.

That what the Imaginative knowledge—we keep that in mind now: Imaginative knowledge—shows us that everything disappears to us, really disappears for the time being that we are used to see in the waking state. Also while we see our physical and etheric bodies, these are not like they are in the waking state, but our physical and etheric bodies appear to be enlarged to a world; they appear to us as connected with the whole earth. We are looking; we are aware that we are looking at the physical and etheric bodies. But we behold them, so that they are the only world for us at first. As well as we have mountains, rivers and clouds, the sun and stars et cetera round ourselves and look at them as our surroundings in the waking state, we look, while we look at our surroundings, when we are beyond our physical and etheric bodies, at our physical and etheric bodies as something that is extended to a world. We look at nothing else at all. We look at this as we look, otherwise, at the different things of our earth. We look there at our own physical nature like at a whole world.

It is strange that we feel this world at which we look there falling asleep that we feel it as we feel the earth in spring when it produces the single green rungs, after it has been freed from the snowy cover of the winter, when it makes the vegetation grow on it again, when everything begins shooting and sprouting. Falling asleep we look at the physical and etheric bodies enlarged to a world, we look at them, so that we can feel them like a planet waking in spring. And this goes on through the whole sleeping state that way. What we see there in mighty pictures which really appear to us in the expansion of a planet, begins going to its summer like the earth is about to go towards its summer when the spring comes to an end. We experience the sleeping state that way if we experience it properly.

We go in the sleeping state up to that point where we feel: our physical and etheric bodies bear something sprouting and shooting up to bloom, up to fruit; everywhere everything grows and blossoms. If I may express myself in detail, I have to say—for the Imaginative view that is paradoxical which shows itself that way, indeed: while looking physically we feel our earth's surface and experience its sprouting upwards, its growing and blooming in our consciousness. It is different when we now observe that from outside which takes action with our body and compare it with the plant world, as if its roots penetrate from above and grows with its flowers into our body. Thus we feel a completely reverse world, and the fruits are immersed. We learn then that with this immersion of the fruits is really expressed what becomes clear to us as the refreshment of sleep.

We know thereby that our physical and etheric bodies receive the forces from the whole universe—because everything is forces at what we look Imaginatively,—while we go on sleeping. We watch forces coming from the universe which are active in the creation of plants. We see the universe driving a vegetation into our physical nature. We get the sure knowledge of the fact that we leave our body while falling asleep, because we take away our physical and etheric bodies from the effects of the cosmic forces with our egos and astral bodies from waking up to falling asleep. Because we ourselves go out, the whole universe is able to have an effect on our physical and etheric bodies. It sends elemental, not physical forces into us which express themselves in the described Imaginations. Thus a relation is produced between physical body and etheric body with the whole universe every time when we fall asleep. While we live in the waking state in the physical world, our physical and etheric bodies really live during sleep in that what we call the elemental world, the world of the bare forces which show themselves just in the described Imaginations.

Where are we with our egos and astral bodies? We have often described, and it is also shown in different writings: we are with our egos and astral bodies in the world that has been described as the world of the higher hierarchies among the beings we call angeloi, archangeloi, archai et cetera. The egos and the astral bodies dive into these beings and their world. As well as we know about the beings of the animal, the plant, the mineral realms, when we are waking, and stand as human beings as it were above this world while we take up them in our thoughts, we are taken up like thoughts by the beings of the higher hierarchies. This is the significant matter that we can say: while here below our physical and etheric bodies are connected with the forces of the whole universe, we are thought from falling asleep up to waking, as if we were real beings, woven of thoughts and the will being; we are thought by the beings of the higher hierarchies.—As we think nature, the beings of the higher hierarchies think us. Hence, it is not right at all, exactly speaking, to say if one comes out of the physical body, he thinks the world. It is correct to say that one experiences to be thought by the world of the higher hierarchies. As the thought would have to feel itself during the waking life if it had consciousness, we would have to experience ourselves as the thoughts of the higher beings when we are outside our physical bodies.

How do we experience the reawakening Imaginatively? While we prepare to wake up gradually, we experience that really as we experience—we can compare the Imagination again to the external nature—the winter coming with its forces destroying and paralysing the sprouting summer life. As well as the winter above the earth brings frost and cold and the destruction of the summer splendour, we ourselves dive into the physical body and etheric body. Waking up we prepare the decline of the forces which entered our physical body and etheric body really like a vegetation, even like an animal realm from the elemental world of the universe as the winter prepares the decline of the summer splendour. While we are awake, we really transport our physical and etheric bodies as a result of our presence into such a condition as the cosmic relations transport the earth when it is winter. We spread out the winter over our own physical and etheric bodies, entering them. You see at the same time that what one uses from physical points of view often as a comparison is not right for the spiritual view. Indeed, the human being already has the consciousness instinctively that he is connected with the whole universe and that his experience is a microcosmic image of the macrocosm. But the human being prefers to say when he really wants to compare something in his microcosmic life to the macrocosmic life: waking is like the spring coming in our life and the waking life is like the summer. The autumn is like becoming tired in the evening and sleeping is like the winter.—Just the reverse is reality. The summer life is the sleeping life and the winter life is the waking life. This is the truth of the matter.

If the spiritual researcher investigates these relations, he finds that, while his ego and astral body rise to the realms of the higher hierarchies and are thought by the higher beings, not only the elemental world but also certain beings of the higher hierarchies work on his physical and etheric bodies. It is not only the elemental world which consists of forces, but real beings of the higher hierarchies, which work on our physical and etheric body. Something strange comes to light then that we can notice that we get to quite different conditions at the moment when we fall asleep as those in which we are while we are awake. As I have said, everything that can be expressed that way is based on the fact that the spiritual research permits us to watch the conditions of falling asleep and waking. Then it appears that also that being of the higher hierarchies has an effect on our physical and etheric bodies from waking up to falling asleep whom we must feel as the folk-soul to whom we belong. When the human being wakes up, he does not only dive into his physical and etheric bodies, but also into the processes which are carried out in his physical and etheric bodies by that which his folk-soul accomplishes. Something strange becomes apparent that the human being dives with falling asleep not only into those beings of the higher hierarchies who correspond to his individual development, but also into such spiritual beings we must regard as folk-souls. I ask to notice that, because it behoves us, who want to penetrate into spiritual science, to look deeper at the world interrelation than external perception can do it. Namely, the human being dives into the relationship to all folk-souls except his own folk-soul from falling asleep up to waking.

Let us remember: during the waking state we live immersed in the spiritual facts which our own folk-soul carries out in our physical and etheric bodies. We live together with our own folk-soul from waking up to falling asleep. Beside our folk-soul all the folk-souls of the other peoples are existent in the world. With falling asleep we dive into the relations of the other folk-souls, not in a single other folk-soul—make a note of that,—but in what they accomplish together, what they accomplish as it were in association, as a society. Only the own folk-soul is taken away from this relationship during night. We cannot escape to have also a relationship with all those folk-souls which belong to the other peoples in whom we are not incarnated in a certain incarnation. Since, while we belong to our folk-soul in our waking state, we belong to the other folk-souls in the sleeping state, indeed, only to their sounding-together; while we belong in the waking state to the intentions of the individual folk-soul in whose area we are born in a certain incarnation.

But there is a means to dive sleeping also into an other folk-soul. While we live in the normal awake state in our own folk-soul or its activity and in sleep in the harmony of the other folk-souls, we can dive sleeping in an individual folk-soul if we acquire a rather burning hatred of that which this other folk-soul accomplishes. So absurd it may sound, it is true—and we must be able in our movement to endure such a truth quietly: if the human being really feels burning hatred of a nation's area from his inner being, he condemns himself to sleep with the folk-soul of this nation's area at night, to be together with it.

We just touch a truth where we can see that life begins to have a deep seriousness behind that veil which covers the spiritual worlds for the everyday view, and that it is quite uncomfortable in a certain respect to be a supporter of spiritual science. Since spiritual science begins to be most serious about circumstances which one thinks uncomfortable in life and over which we are generously helped to get because life does not reveal the truth in the everyday sense. Although we must stand, of course, in the external life on the ground which this external life requires from us, we have to be serious about such a principle if we rise in spiritual science to those realms where other characteristics of life begin.

In my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? I spoke of the fact that at the moment when one rises in the spiritual world—and every human being is in the spiritual world, it concerns here only to a knowledge of that which is there always,—then that comfortable unity of the human being stops in which we live in the physical world. The human being experiences some splits; apart from those splits which are mentioned there, and which one can observe after the meeting with the guardian of the threshold, some other splits happen, for example, that is of deep importance for the soul-life. We have to accept while we live in a certain incarnation in a certain nation that it is involved in the whole process of the earth's evolution. We have to do our duty for the nation in which we stand and we have to offer our love to it. It must be clear to us that we really belong, because we are also spiritual beings in our ego and astral body, to the whole humankind and feel with our impulses with the whole humankind. Spiritual science does not allow that we live in it in one-sidedness, but we must be able to harmonise these both sides completely.

We have to realise that we harmonise—although we can love as a person of the present incarnation, even if we are spiritual scientists, our nation as intensely as somebody else is able to love his nation—this feeling with that which combines us with the whole humankind. And just spiritual science raises us to be brought together with the whole humankind because it shows us that we are connected with the whole humankind in our egos and astral bodies. Spiritual science demands more and more to harmonise contrasts from those who devote themselves to it with seriousness and dignity. It is bad if true spiritual science is confused with that unclear mystic activity which wants to combine the needs of the external, physical life with that for which we must rise diving into the spiritual world. Because unclear mysticism wants to bring in that everywhere in the everyday life what spiritual science only shows in the right light. That unclear mysticism will never be able to harmonise, for example, the love of the own nation with the love of the whole humankind, it leads to a hazy mystic cosmopolitism.

One can compare it, as I have already done, to that which hazy theosophists say all the time about equality and about the equal validity of any religion. Indeed, you can say in the abstract: all religions contain the truth. But this is exactly the same, as if one says: pepper, salt and paprika and everything possible are on the table, and all are food ingredients. Sugar, pepper, salt, and paprika—everything is the same. So I give paprika once into the coffee and sugar into the soup, because they are all food ingredients. Exactly on the same point of logic are those who drivel in an unclear mysticism only about the uniform core of all religions instead of getting involved in the real being of any detail that appears in our earth development. It does not depend on emphasising always: all peoples are only expressions of the generally human, but that we recognise the specific tasks which are given to the individual peoples by their folk-souls. A key is given for that in the series of talks which was printed long ago, which was held several years before the outbreak of the war, which did not come into being under the influence of the war, which one cannot reproach that it originated under the impressions of the war: The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology.

Just in our time it is important to call to mind such serious matters, so that the human being can find the harmony between general charity and patriotism. One does not need to shy away from characterising of any individual people, in so far as it is a people—the individual human being always rises up above his people. However, you can derive from my remarks that that has to take place without hatred, of course. Anybody does not recognise the real being of the individual plant if he hates the plant and describes what he feels as hatred. And also anybody cannot recognise the characteristics of a people if he describes what he hates of the people, or if he takes up that in the portrayal which comes from the emotions of hatred.

Thus somebody who is able to rise up to the points of view of spiritual science has to be eager all the time to see the being of the world not in a uniform unity, but just in the harmony of a variety. The human being has to find the possibility to feel all possible warmth for his people, concerning which he needs not show less commitment than anybody who does not strive for spiritual science, and to combine, on the other side, what brings us together with the whole humankind as a big complete being.

I said that we resume such matters the day after tomorrow. Now, however, I want to note that we take off that which brings us together with the single incarnation by our physical and etheric bodies at the same time, while we pass from our waking state into sleep and are thereby taken up in the beings of the higher hierarchies. So we take off our national being in sleep, too. We become only human beings, human beings with all the characteristics which we must have by that which we have acquired as human beings. If we look as spiritual scientist at that which happens to the human being, waking and sleeping, we perceive at the same time that in sleep the human being lives in the spiritual world with his ego and astral body, just as now also his physical and etheric bodies belong to the big world. The independent existence stops, which passes as it were in our skin, and we extend our selves to the big self.

Take into account that we go through a summer state and a winter state always in the course of twenty-four hours. The earth goes also through this summer and winter states, but the earth goes through them in the cycle of the year. Why does the earth go through these states in the cycle of the year? Because the earth is a being as we are, only on another level of the hierarchies. The whole earth, if we look at it physically, as it is around us, is only the body of the earth; and as well as we carry our soul and spirit in ourselves, the earth also has its soul and spirit. Only that is the difference that we are awake and sleep in the course of twenty-four hours, and the earth is awake and sleeps in the cycle of the year. It is awake from the autumn up to the spring and sleeps during the summer. So that we can always say, actually when we live in the summertime: we live embedded in the sleeping earth.—When we live in the wintertime: we live embedded in the waking earth.—It does not hold true that the earth is awake in summer and sleeps in winter as we can say in the trivial comparison taken from everyday life. But it is correct that when autumn comes the earth wakes up as a psycho-spiritual being and is most awake in the midwinter. The earth spirit thinks in the midwinter the most and starts stopping its thinking bit by bit while spring is approaching; and it sleeps when the external life sprouts; in the summertime the earth spirit is sleeping.

We as human beings are not only in connection with the body of the earth by our physical body, but also with the spirit of the earth. We know from various talks that the spirit we call the Spirit of Christ was united with the spirit of the earth by the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ Spirit lives in the spirit of the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha. If the human beings want to commit a festival which should express that the Christ Spirit is in the earth spirit—in which time they have to set this festival? They must not set it in the summer, but in the winter, in the midwinter. This is Christmas. For this reason one sets Christmas and that which develops from it in the wintertime. This arose from a right knowledge of those who once arranged the Christian year. Out of esoteric truth Christmas was determined, not account of historical facts. For the human being, while he is embedded with his soul and spirit in the soul and spirit of the earth, is together with that most awake condition of the earth in the wintertime. There he lives in the waking earth.

And what did the ancient peoples do about whom we know that they worked and got knowledge with the help of a kind of dreamlike clairvoyance? They must refer preferably to that which lives in the sleeping earth spirit when the earth spirit sleeps mostly, has withdrawn mostly to its sleeping state. There they have risen to that—in contrast to the modern humankind—which gave them the truth unconsciously, as it had to be for them. Hence, in the midsummer we find the St John's-tide festival with the peoples who belonged to the cult which scooped its knowledge from the more sleeping, dreamlike state. It is the summer festival in contrast to Christmas which is fitting for the modern humankind.

What is determined so externally, and what our materialistic time does not understand at all, this actually has its deep bases in the spiritual reality. We live now in a time in which the human beings must start again thinking and feeling quite differently as it was the case in the past time. The past time had the task to bring the realm of materialistic thinking and feeling home to the human beings. And just the last centuries which the human souls lived through should bring them home to the materialistic thinking and feeling. The earth development had to go through the materialistic time. We do not do well to harshly criticise materialism. It had to come once in the earth development. But now we live in a time when materialism must be overcome again when spiritual beholding has to enter human souls again. This is the more or less bright or dark sensation of those who are attracted in their own souls to our spiritual-scientific attempts, to our spiritual-scientific world view. They just feel that now the time is there when one has consciously to take up this spiritual world, while the spiritual world was once seen in a dreamlike condition. Spiritual science is there for that.

The past time was that of materialism. Because humankind had to dive into materialism, the strong impulse which takes up humankind again had to work just through the time of materialism. This is the Christ Impulse. When the Christ Impulse came into the earth evolution, the preparation already began. It came in the 14th, 15th centuries all the more. But when it approached, humankind already prepared itself to dive into materialism. The Christ Impulse was there as an objective fact in the world evolution, but the human beings of that time were not able to understand it least of all. Now we live in the time when one has to start to really understand it.

What do we see, hence? We see a strange course of the Christ Impulse in the previous development. We see that this Christ Impulse when it has entered in the human development as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha is not understood at all by the human beings. Let us try once to form an idea about that which people did in their cleverness. Just in the first and the following centuries, after the Christ Impulse had entered, we find that any possible theological system forms, that the people argue about how they have to imagine the Trinity et cetera. We see an infinite theological squabbling through centuries, and it would probably be the worst way to want to understand the Christ Impulse today from this theological squabbling how the Christ Impulse has worked during these centuries. The people who quarrelled there about its understanding have also understood nothing of the way the Christ Impulse stands in the evolution.

Let us try to realise how this impulse really worked once. I may give you single facts. I take the event that happened in the fourth century A.D., in 312, on the 28th October, which determined the later map of Europe completely: this was that Constantine, who was called “the Great,” the son of Constantius Chlorus, moved against Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, and triumphed over him. That is why Christianity also was victorious in the western world in an external way. Constantine declared Christianity the state religion et cetera. However, did he act out of his cleverness? Did that happen, which happened in those days, out of cleverness? We cannot say this. What happened then, actually? When Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, got to know that Constantine was approaching, he asked the Sibylline Books at first. That means that he set about understanding the world phenomena in a dreamlike way. He got the statement out of these books that somebody would accomplish the right action if he left the city as a ruler of Rome and went into battle outside Rome. This was something most unusual that one could think. Because Constantine had a much smaller army than Maxentius and could have achieved nothing without doubt if Maxentius had remained in Rome. But Maxentius moved out of Rome on the advice of the Sibylline Books. However, also in the army of Constantine the generals were not victorious. Rather Constantine had a dream showing him the symbol of Christ. On account of this dream he made his armies carry the cross as the symbol of Christ. He made his behaviour dependent on that which the dream had revealed to him. This battle by which the map of Europe was determined at that time was not decided by means of human cleverness, nor did the generals triumph, but dreams and prophecies. Everything in Europe would have changed if in those days the matters had taken place according to the consciousness of the human beings and not according to that what worked out of the subconsciousness what the human beings just did not know.

The theologians have argued about the question who is Christ, whether He is born with the Father in eternity, whether He is born in time whether He had the same validity as the Father et cetera. In their thoughts nothing of the Christ Impulse was included. But it worked within the human beings in the subconscious regions. It worked not by the egos, but by the astral bodies. The Christ Impulse was reality and worked without human beings understanding it. This is the important, essential part. The working of Christ is so independent of that what human beings understood of it like the course of a thunderstorm is independent of that what human beings have learnt about electricity or in the physical laboratory. Now it is the time to immerse oneself consciously in the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse. But Christ was always working as a force in the historical events.

We go over from this to another, later example. However, there we have to remember of what I explained to you. For the time when materialism approached it is important to know that the human being, while he wants to immerse himself in the spiritual world, must do that best of all in the wintertime. Hence, the view arises everywhere for this time that at the mentioned nights of midwinter especially talented people are endowed with inspirations from the spiritual world. There are legends everywhere with the peoples that tell us how the especially talented human beings who experience no initiation but are endowed by their nature, by elemental forces working in them to be inspired, how these are inspired during the nights from Christmas Eve up to the Epiphany day, in thirteen winter nights.

There is a very nice legend which was found in Norway not long ago, the legend of Olaf Åsteson who approaches the church at Christmas Eve and falls asleep. He sleeps up to the sixth January; and when he wakes up, he knows how to tell in imaginations about that which has taken place in the soul land, in the realm of spirits, as we call it. He expresses it in pictures, but he has experienced it through these thirteen nights. Such legends are found everywhere. They are just not that which one calls legends today. Indeed, there have always been endowed human beings who have gone through a physical initiation by elemental forces working in them which the human being can go through if he carefully follows the instructions of the initiatory path by his will.

So that we can say: in the time of materialism there could always be human beings who could unite with the earth spirit and receive inspirations when the earth spirit is most awake, in the midwinter. This was also the time when the Christ Impulse was able to work which united with the earth. Imagine especially endowed souls who are receptive for the spiritual world. It became apparent to them that they just got the impulses to that what they had to accomplish from the spiritual world in these thirteen nights up to the sixth January. This had to appear and appeared always again in little and big examples that there were human beings in the historical course who were inclined spiritually so that if the right point in time entered when they lived through those thirteen nights in winter the spiritual impulse—and in this time the Christ Impulse in particular—came into them. Initiations by nature, initiations which did not take place by means of conscious work have been carried out in the time of materialism always the easiest in these thirteen nights. We can find out that where such initiations appeared they took place in these thirteen nights.

And now we have a fact that even those will accept, who have only a little good will to recognise the spiritual world—the fewest people have this today,—that spiritual forces entered the historical course in the 15th century in the form of a virgin, the Maid of Orleans, as can be proved. You can verify this also historically that again the whole map of Europe was arranged differently, because the Maid of Orleans helped the French against the English at that time. Who thinks about it can find out that everything would have formed differently after that what human beings are able to do unless the shepherd girl had intervened—and in this shepherd girl just the forces of the spiritual world. The Maid of Orleans was only the instrument for that which was caused in those days. The Christ Impulse worked in her.

However, she had to have a physical initiation for that—and this physical initiation had to be carried out the best in the thirteen nights up to the sixth January. The Maid of Orleans had to get a sleeping state in the time from the 24th December to the sixth January when she would have been especially receptive for the spiritual influence which can be there just in this time. So that one had to demand that the Maid of Orleans would have experienced the time in a not quite conscious state from the 24th December to the sixth January and would have got the Christ Impulse.—Yes, the Maid of Orleans went through this state in a quite striking way. One cannot go through it more strikingly, than when one is still in that sleeping state in which somebody is before his birth, in the last times which he/she spends as a child before the birth in the body of the mother. The external consciousness is not able, of course, to take up anything. There is a sleeping state, and if it is the end of the time in the womb, it is the ripest condition of the internal-motherly sleep.

Indeed, the Maid of Orleans is born on the sixth January. This is the great secret of the Maid of Orleans that it went through an initiation by nature during thirteen days, which preceded her birth. That was why especially sensitive people gathered on that sixth January, when the Maid of Orleans was born in the village, and said that something quite particular must have happened. They sensed that something particular had come to the village. The Maid of Orleans was born. She worked through an initiation by nature in that sleeping state which she experienced in the body of the mother in the last time before her birth. There we see the spiritual beings working behind the threshold of that which takes place for the human consciousness, which are under this threshold of consciousness.

We see what history can mean if it counts only on that which is given in documents and external communications. The gods go differently through the course of history. The gods work by other means and in other ways. They put a Maid of Orleans into life who is able because of her special karma of this incarnation to take up the Christ Impulse and to work with it. They allow the Christ Impulse to flow in at the right moment. Of course, both were right for that: the special individual karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be added. Not any child that is born on the sixth January could accomplish the same.

Thus we can really say: the Christ Impulse worked in the human being using those forces which did not become clear to these human beings. Only today do we live in the time in which we must consciously take up that which used another way for centuries than the conscious way to be effective in history.

I wanted to arouse a feeling in your souls how the subconscious powers work definitely, what external history is which can be studied according to the external documents, that it is trivialities. It is good if one does such a study in particular in our time. We see, nevertheless, just in our time something great, something immense, something valiant, combined with sacrificial actions, occurring. But we see this great that takes place in our time, being really accompanied from the consequence of the extreme materialism, from that consequence which tries to explain everything that takes place in our time by means of bare external circumstances. This finds expression in the fact that one nation puts the blame on the other nation for the present events and wants to judge everything externally, so that one finds the guilt with the other for that which takes place. Also for our time the causes and reasons of the events are right down at the bottom in the subconscious processes. We will speak about that the day after tomorrow.

Our time will be suitable—also because of the bloody events—to remind the human beings of spiritual impulses of cognition. If once again peace is in the countries waging war today, one will realise that one cannot explain such immense wars of world history out of external causes. One will find out that one cannot explain them. Today people still say, especially the clever ones: nobody is allowed to speak about everything that has caused this war, history will speak about that.—They regard themselves as especially prudent who say there: only in fifty, in hundred years history will speak the right thing about that.

What one calls history today will never explain the causes of these events; however, one will see that from the historical consideration the causes cannot be fathomed. But other support will be there. An esoteric observation of our present just shows this.

What is one of the most remarkable facts in this destiny-burdened time? Oh, one of the most remarkable facts is without doubt this that so countless human beings go through the gate of death in their youth. We know what happens with the human being when he goes through the gate of death. We know that he comes out of the physical body with his etheric body, astral body and ego and that he takes off his etheric body after relatively short time and makes his journey with the essence of the etheric body. However, you can imagine that a difference must be between an etheric body, which is taken off between the twentieth and thirtieth years which could still have supplied the functions of human life for decades, and an etheric body, which is taken off at the later age. Yes, there is a big difference. If a human being dies because of age or illness, the etheric body has fulfilled its task. But countless young human beings go now through the gate of death, and their etheric bodies could not yet fulfil everything that they could fulfil.

I would like to show you at a concrete example how it is in a certain way with such etheric bodies that are torn away by force from the physical bodies. One could give many examples, of course. But today I want to give you an example which we ourselves experienced in Dornach in autumn. We experienced it at the site of our construction. A family which lives near the construction had a little son of seven years—a family which belongs to our anthroposophical circle. It was a dear boy of seven years, really a boon boy. He was so well-behaved that when his father had gone to war the seven-year-old Theo said to his mother: now I must be especially diligent, because I must help you where the father has helped you.

One evening after a lecture, a person belonging to our circle came and reported that this little Theo has disappeared since the evening. One could imagine nothing but that he has had an accident. A removal van had driven in that evening by what one calls in the external life chance at a place where for years indeed no van has gone, and since that time also not. Here the carriage had tipped over. The little Theo had been in that small house which one calls the canteen because there our friends who work on the construction are supplied with food. Strangely enough—he would have left sooner—he was detained by somebody, and while he wanted to go out through a door through which he would have gone on a certain way, this time he had to go through another door, and he thereby passed the removal van, just when the removal van toppled over. The van fell on him. This is one of those examples where we see clearly karma working.

I often used the simple comparison to show how often cause and effect are totally confused: we see a person going along a river. Suddenly we see the person falling into the river. We go and find a stone lying where the person has fallen. The person is drawn out of the water. He is already dead. If one does not go on examining the matter, one tells the matter with the best external conscience in the following way: the man fell over the stone and then into the river, and drowned.—One would have only needed to examine, and one would have thought that death did not happen because the person fell into the water, but the person fell into the water because he was dead; he had got a heart attack. Just the opposite happened as one imagines. You see how easy it is to confuse cause and effect everywhere in life. However, in the usual science this happens everywhere that causes and effects are confused.

Of course, here is the case that this Theo just caused it. He was the cause that the van passed at this time, he steered it to himself. You have to imagine this as the real secret of the matter. But now I will go on: a human child is killed in an accident in the very first blossom of life. If anybody is combined wholeheartedly with the construction work in Dornach and has the possibility at the same time to observe what is working on this construction, then one can say: this etheric body which was separated by force from the little Theo is in the atmosphere of the construction. Thus one gains the best Inspirative forces for the construction combining his own soul with that what lives, expanded to a little world, in the atmosphere of the construction. Never will I hesitate before confessing unreservedly that I have to thank for much that I could find for our construction in that time that I directed my soul to the etheric body of the little Theo working in the atmosphere of the construction. Thus just the connections are in the world. The real individuality of this human being goes on, but the etheric body remains which could have still supplied a human life for many decades.

Imagine the number of the unused etheric bodies which are floating there in the spiritual atmosphere over us and over those who will also live after us. Those etheric bodies which are left behind by those who went in young age through the gate of death in our destiny-burdened time. We do not speak of the way the individualities go through, but we speak of the fact that an own spiritual atmosphere is created by these etheric bodies. The human beings, who will live there, will live in this atmosphere. They will be submerged into a spiritual atmosphere which is filled with these etheric bodies which sacrificed their lives, because just in our time humankind can advance by these events. But it will be necessary that one feels what these etheric bodies intend which are the best inspirators of the future humankind. A good time of spiritualism comes if human beings show understanding, internal heart understanding for that what these etheric bodies want to say to them. All these etheric bodies are assistants of the spiritual impetus of the future. That is why it is so important that there are souls who are able to feel that what comes into the atmosphere of the future by these etheric bodies.

You do not learn anything about the nature of the etheric bodies that you can tell: the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, but that you also know such a secret of the effective spirituality of the etheric bodies as it is there in future.

Those have to prepare themselves who already tend to stand up for spiritual science, to receive that which these etheric bodies want to say. If we turn our souls to the spiritual world, we prepare ourselves and those who come after us to feel that which the legacy, the etheric legacy of the dead wants from the future humankind. If human souls are stimulated by spiritual science, so that they are able to direct their spiritual senses to the spiritual worlds, then something great and immense will certainly sprout up as an effect of the blood, of the courage, of the sufferings, and of the sacrifices. Hence, I would like to summarise at the end of this consideration in some words that what may now inspire, invigorate us if we as spiritual-scientific supporters direct our senses to the big, destiny-burdened events of our time.

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

From our considerations of yesterday and the day before, we have been able to see how Goethe's creative work is steeped through by a certain outlook suggestive of that of spiritual science—although this outlook may be but dimly foreshadowed. And it is indeed very important that we should make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with the character of Goethe's spiritual life. It is only by shedding before the soul the light of a deepened observation upon all that such a life of spirit contains that this life appears in the right connection with the whole evolution of mankind. But I wish to add something here to all that has been said. I should like, that is, to point out how really it is only possible rightly to comprehend the whole structure, the whole manner, of Goethe's spiritual life if this is done from the standpoint of spiritual science. It is not merely that from an unspiritual standpoint we can naturally never find in Goethe's work all that yesterday and the previous day we were able to discover by considering it anthroposiphically, but also it only becomes clear how such a life of soul is possible within the course of human development, when we look at it from the point of view of spiritual Science.

In various connections I have called your attention to other manifestations of Goethe's soul-life, manifestations that, for ordinary human life, may perhaps seem—but only seem—to be more remote than what is represented in the all-embracing Faust poem,that should indeed be of the greatest interest to every man. I have spoken to you of the special mind of natural science which Goethe cultivated. And it is particularly important and significant that he should have done so. It may be said that Goethe's individual way of thinking where natural science is concerned is precisely what in most spheres at present still meets with complete lack of understanding. Nevertheless, it appears to me of quite special importance for the various branches of present day spiritual life—and not least for the religious life—that an insight should be gained into this particular form, this individual way, in which Goethe looked upon nature. You know how he sought to establish for the inanimate world a natural science founded on his own interpretation of the primal phenomena, and how he built up a botany on the basis of metamorphoses.

So far as all this is a matter of general knowledge I should like today to give you a brief description of the primal phenomena and metamorphoses.

What was Goethe's intention when he turned not to hypotheses and theories but to the so-called primal phenomena for his explanation of nature? Since the eighties of the last century I have been doing my best to give mankind, from various aspects, an idea of the true basic character of the primal phenomenon. But it cannot be claimed that so far there has really been a very wide understanding of the matter. Perhaps we can get the best view of what Goethe understood by the primal phenomenon in inanimate nature when we consider how he came to build up his special Theory of Colors. He tells of this himself. I know that what I now have to say is an abomination and a heresy for the present day scientific conception of physics. That, however, is of no consequence. What physics does not recognize today, my dear firends, the physics of tomorrow will find itself obliged to accept. In reality, present day physics is not yet ripe for Goethe's theory of colors.

As I said, Goethe himself tells us that up to the beginning of the nineties of the eighteenth century he believed, as did other men, in the so-called Newtonian theory of colors—in that theory built up by Newton on a certain hypothesis. This theory declared that something imperceptible lay at the basis of light—we need not go into that now. In essentials it is immaterial whether it is represented, as it was by Newton himself; as currents of matter, or as oscillations, or as some kind of electrical impulse. The arising of colors was conceived as follows—that the light in some way contains the various colors unseparated as if naturalized in a kind of supersensible entity, and that by means of the prism or other devices, the colors were made to issue forth from the unified white light.

One day Goethe found himself obliged to abandon this conception that he shared with others, and he did so in a way that, naturally, must appear to modern physics both primitive and foolish. He studied this Newtonian physics, this Newtonian optics, and accepted it as one does as a matter of course when knowing of nothing better. But he found that when wishing to apply this optics, this theory of colors, in order to think out anything that had to do with art, with painting, he could do nothing with it. This Newtonian physics serves for a materialistic physical representation, but is useless when it comes to art. This increasingly disturbed Goethe and incited him at least to look into what happens in the appearance of colors from the point of view of physics. So, from Councillor Buttner who was a professor at Jena, he managed to procure the apparatus to see, through his own investigations and experiements, what views he could form concerning the appearance of colors. It goes without saying that Professer Buttner promptly placed all the apparatus at the disposal of His Excellency von Goethe. But, once in his house, it served, to begin with, only to collect the dust. It was long before he made his investigations—not indeed until Councillor Buttner expressed his need of the apparatus, and the desire for its return. Goethe put the things together for dispatch. However, he thought he would first have a quick glance through a prism, believing that if he looked through it at the white of the wall, so this white would then be broken up into seven colors, he would assuredly see them. (This would, as has been said, appear to the modern physicist both foolish and primitive). But—nothing! The wall remained white! This puzzled him. According to customary notions this was foolish but, my dear firends, it was sound thinking. He took a peep through the prism; the wall was still white. That made him appeal to Councillor Buttner to let him keep the instruments, the apparatus, and he then set up his further investigations. And from these investigations there now grew first his science of colors, and, secondly, his whole outlook on physics, that is to say, on inanimate, natural phenomena. It was an outlook that rejected all hypotheses and theories, that never thought out anything about natural phenomena, but traced back one set of natural phenomena to another, traced them merely to primal appearances, primal phenomena.¹

Thus he became clear that, when color is perceived, at the basis of this lies some kind of working together of super imposed lightness and darkness. If darkness laps over lightness, the bright colors appear; if lightness laps over darkenss, then there appear the deep colors, blue, violet and so forth. If over brightness, lightness any form of darkness is projeatd, such as dark material and so forth,or the actual prism, the bright colors appear, red, yellow and so on. Here it is not a matter of any theory. Darkness and lightness are working through immediate perception. It is simply perceived that if darkness and lightness work together, colors arise. No hypothesis is expressed here nor any theory—merely something that is simple fact, something that can be perceived.

Now it did not concern him merely to invent hypotheses like the wave theory perhaps, or the Emission theory, and so on, hypotheses that would say that colors arise in such and such a way; it was simply a putting together, as lightness and darkness had to be put together for yellow or red, blue or violet, to appear. Goethe's way was not to add to phenomena hypotheses and theories in thought, but to keep strictly to letting the phenomena speak for themselves. In this way Goethe brought a theory of colors into existence that led in a wonderfully beautiful way to the grasping of what has to do with color in the realm of art. For the chapter on the effect of color with reference to moral associations, in which are found so many significant indications for the artist, belongs to the most beautiful part of Goethe's theory of colors.

This then was the basis of Goethe's whole understanding of inanimate nature—never to seek for theories or hypotheses. According to him these can be set up as scaffolding. But, as when the building is finished, the scaffolding is not left but removed, so one uses hypotheses merely to show the way in which things may be put together. They are discarded as soon as the primal phenomenon, the simplest phenomenon, is reached.

It was this that Goethe also tried at any rate to outline for the whole of physics. And in the large Weimar edition, in the volume where I have published Goethe's general scientific essays, you will find a chart in which Goethe has detched out a complete scheme for physics from this point of view. In this chart the acoustics of particular interest, that, like his theory of colors, is indeed merely given in outline. Some day it would be interesting, however, to set up an acoustics that would fit in with music in the same way as Goethe's theory of colors does with painting. Naturally this could not be done yet, for modern natural science has taken a different path from that founded on Goethe's world conception and on his conception of nature.

It was this that he was trying to do where inanimate nature is concerned. And he was looking for something of the same kind in the life of the living plant in the theory of metamorphoses, where, without setting up any hypotheses, he followed up how the stem leaf was transformed, metamorphosed, and took on various forms, growing afterwards into the petal, so that the blossom is simply transformed stem leaf. Again this is an outlook that will have nothing to do with hypotheses but keeps to what is offered to the perception. What we need here is not fixed concepts but concepts that are as much on the move as is nature herself while creating; that is, she does not hold fast to forms but in ever transforming them. We must have such concepts, therefore, that the majority of mankind is too lazy to develop, concepts in a state of inward transformation, so that we are able livingly to follow them in their forms that change as they do in nature. But then, free from hypotheses and theories, one confines oneself to pure percept.

This is what is characteristic of Goethe, my dear friends, that he rejects all theory where natural phenomena are concerned, and really is willing to apply thinking only for assembling phenomena in the right way, so that they express themselves according to their essential nature. One can indeed put this in a paradox. I beg you to keep this well in mind. It was precisely through this that, as we have seen in the last two days, Goethe was driven along the right path into the sphere of the spiritual, that, for the phenomena of external nature, he did not destroy their integrity by all kinds of theories and hypotheses but grasped them just as they were offered to the life of the senses.

This, my dear friends, has a further consequence. If we form theories, such as those of Newton or spencer, that is to say, if we cloud by theories and hypotheses what nature herself offers, we may think about nature in the way that is possible during human physical life, but the matter is not then taken up into the etheric body. And they become overdone, all these theories that do not arise from pure nature and from the simple observation of nature; all these theories and hypotheses make indeed a caricature of the human etheric body and also of the astral body, thereby having a disturbing effect on man's life in spiritual worlds.

Goethe's sound nature turned against the destruction of the forms demanded for itself by the etheric body. This is exactly what is so significant about Goethe, and why I tell you he can only be understood anthroposophically—that he had an instinct for what did not originate in immediate reality, and perceived that, when he formed concepts like those of Newton, the etheric body was nipped and tweaked. This did not happen to others because they were less finely organized. Goethe's organization was such that while looking into things thus his etheric body was nipped and tweaked. And neither theory nor the most beautiful hypothesis prevented this, when only the white appears and he has to realize: The wall is still white in spite of the fact that all the seven graded colors are supposed to appear. This has not happened. And Goethe's way of experiencing this is indeed a proof of his thoroughly sound nature and of how he, as microcosm, was in harmony with the macrocosm.

Yet another side of the matter may be brought to your notice. We know, my dear friends, that man is not only the being who lives between birth and death; he is also the being who lives between death and a new birth. Into this life between death and a new birth he takes the sun of inner forces developed by him when in his physical body. Now when, after a few days, he is parted from his etheric body, he looks back upon it; and it is important that this etheric body should have been so used by him that in looking at it thus he is not deluded by a caricature. Now this is what we have particularly to note. If we look at nature in its purely natural aspect, as did Goethe, rejecting theories and hypotheses, and allowing only primal phenomena to have weight, then this understanding and regarding the primal phenomena thus, is of such a nature that it sets free within us sound, healthy experiencec and feelings of the kind that Goethe described in his chapter on the effect of color with reference to moral associations. It goes without saying that the perception of sense phenomena ceases with life. And what remains in our soul and spirit from pure perception, the only thing Goethe allowed to hold good as natural science is thoroughly sound and in harmony to do with the world of soul and spirit. Thus, we may say that Goethe's natural science is in accordance with the spiritual, in spite of his keeping to the phenomenal and physically perceptible. This is because it does not sully through theories the purity of its outlook on nature by influencing the spirit either ahrimanically or luciferically. Theories of this kind darken for the soul and spirit the purity of outlook upon what is earthly.

Now I told you yesterday that man has not lived only on the earth, but before he trod the earth he went through successive developments on Saturn, Sun and Moon. After he will have left the earth, or rather when the earth has left him, he will continue his development on Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. But I told you that scientific concepts are possible only in relation to the earth evolution. In actual fact, if we cultivate a sound natural science, we then have the impulse not to represent the earth evolution so that everything is mixed up in it that is in keeping with Saturn, Sun and Moon—though naturally this is in reality connected with the earth evolution—but a sound natural science will take the earth as earth and represent it in its conformity with law. This is what Goethe did. And, why man is so little able to rise to a sound understanding of the Moon, Sun and Saturn evolution, is because his earth evolution is not sound. Even though Goethe himself never arrived at this conception of the evolutions on Moon, Sun and Saturn, anyone going deeply into his natural science—a science free from anything else and concerned merely with the earth—just through this prepares his spirit to separate what is earthly by means of a sound knowledge of the earth, and prepares himself as well to form a sound conception of what can be seen only in the supersensible, that is to say, the evolution of Saturn, Sun and moon, and all that is spiritual. It is possible, therefore, to say that it was just by his outlook being directed so exclusively towards the supersensible, that Goethe had the necessary qualifications to work in his Faust upon all we have been witnessing these last two days. Goethe lived thus in the spirit where spiritual comprehension is concerned, because he did not apply to natural phenomena any confused theories or hypotheses out of the spirit. The one thing determines the other.

What finally I called your attention to yesterday is that Goethe was not idealist on the one side, realist on the other but took the outer phenomena realistically, and in an idealistic way what was to be understood idealistically. He did not, however believe it possible to found a world-conception either through the one or the other, but allowed both to be mirrored in his soul as they are reflected also in external reality. Though Goethe himself did not entirely follow this out, yet it led in a wholesome way—if his ideas are really absorbed—to the possibility of a right representation of the two kinds of life that man has to experience. And it may be asked why then is it that mankind's usual outlook today is so little inclined towards the spiritual, and, although concepts of the spiritual world are formed, they are so abstract that with them external nature cannot be understood? How is it that for present day man idealism and realism so fall apart that, either they found a half-hearted monism of little significance, or they do not arrive at any world outlook at all—how is this? This comes about because man wishes today to found his world outlook in a quite definite way. He either becomes a scientist, learning to know nature and trying to instill into her all manner of theories and hpotheses—for in the realm of thinking today the heritage of the natural scientist is not primal phenomena but theories and hypotheses—and seeking to permeate natural phenomena with these; or, he becomes a theologian or philosopher, trying to acquire from tradition certain concepts, ideas, about the spiritual. These are so thin, so shadowy, that with their inadequate power it is impossible to comprehend nature.

Just look around at what is given out by the theologians and phiolsophers today; where do you find any firm ground from which rightly to throw light on nature? And among the real adherents of modern natural science, when they are not monistic garbage, where do you find any serious possibility of rising from natural science to the reality of divine spiritual forms and realms of existence? Even if sound thinking is developed, it is not possible today to unite the two spheres in their present guise. The two spheres are only united when we have the faculty of devoting ourselves in Goethe's way to science and the observation of nature. That means directing the gaze to the phenomenon to what appears, without intermixing useless theories unless these build up the phenomena; it means making merely a useful servant of thinking, but not letting it interfere in results. Where nature is concerned we have to allow her the power of interpreting herself. Not to weave fantastic ideas about nature, but to be completely materialistic, letting the material phenomena speak for themselves—that is our task when it comes to sound natural science. Should we really come to a natural science of this kind, we shall then understand human life between birth—or shall we say conception—and death. And by looking on one side into nature thus, we must also be able to look into the spirit without the light of impossible theories and hypotheses. We shall not then be confined to abstract theologies or philophies but give ourselves up to spiritual perceptions. And it is precisely through the power that sets free in us a direct observation of nature—Goethe's observation—that spiritual perception, perception of the pure spirit, can be induced. Upon the man who confusedly mixes his concepts and ideas about natural phenomena, these concepts take their revenge, preventing his perceiving the spirit. He who looks simply at nature sees her in his own soul in such a way that he can look upon the spirit too with reality. In this respect, Goethe's world outlook can be a good educator for modern humanity.

But in this case, outlook on nature and outlook on spirit must be independent of one another. We must, however, be conscious that we can do nothing with either by itself. If you wish to remain pure theologian or pure phiksopher, my dear friends, then it is exactly as if you had something with two different sides and chose to photograph the one side only; and it is the same if you want to be purely a scientist. You should be able to make the two into one whole, letting the one be reflected in the other; that is to say, instead of seeking to unite them through abstract concepts, having first developed pure perception in each separate sphere, you let the things unite themselves. They are then mirrored in one another. And then too, my dear friends, by means of what this reflection is able to do, you get a sound outlook upon human life as a whole. Then you see natural phenomena external to man according to the way of Goethe's natural science. But when you observe man you see that what exists for external nature does not go far enough to explain him. For that way you only come to a ‘Homunculus’ not to a ‘Homo’.

You see how, for the understanding of man, it is necessary to approach him from two opposite directions; with natural science and with spiritual science, letting the two reflect one another. Thus, they may be suitably applied to man. Then in the human being the life between birth, or conception, and death, is reflected in what appears to one as life between death and a new birth; and vice versa, the life between death and a new birth is reflected in the life between birth and death. We are not here inventing any theory supposed to explain the one or the other, but we let not theories but two perceptions, two things perceived and not united by concepts be mutually reflected in the perception.

It proves that Goethe was definitely on the way to the new spiritual science that, through the sound development of his soul, he should have come to such perception of the mutual reflection of what was essential in external reality. And if Goethe was still to some extent uncertain, even for his own time, because, as I am always having to emphasize, his knowledge of Spiritual Science was but a premonition, nevertheless his judgment was sound in much concerning the spiritual life—and this can be followed in our time up to the regions where Goethe never actually arrived but for which he had prepared.

It is regrettable that everything in connection with Goethe is so little understood. I am not finding fault, my dear friends, for everyone able to look right into things neither blames nor criticises, realizing he must speak only positiviely; I do not find fault with what has happened, I only set forth what is demanded for the future. And the demand for the future is that mankind should go more deeply into the ideas that were already being prepared in Goethe's way of thinking—whatever name you give all this. And Goethe's way of thinking works with tremendous reality and in accordance with reality. It is of great importance to take heed of this.

I have to draw your attention to this so as to point you to a right understanding of man's usual procedure when he wants to explain some phenomena of nature or of life. Let us look at a perfectly average man who is clever—nowadays the clever man is average—thus, we are going to observe an average man. The average man lives, does he not, from birth to death.

BIRTH--------------------- DEATH
EARTH LIFE

In his 35th year, let us say, or 45th or 42nd—in some year of his life perhaps even earlier—he wants to discover something, possibly to form a world-outlook, enlighten himself about some matter; what does he do? He ferrets among the stock of ideas that we may take it he has when 42 years old. Let us assume he wishes to be really clear about, let us say, the Copernican world-outlook; he gathers together, then, all the concepts and ideas he can find. If he looks about in his soul life and can find something that suits him, when he has assembled a whole series of the kind of concepts in which he finds nothing contradictory, then he has finished, and understands the whole matter. This is the way with the average man. Not so with Goethe, my dear friends. Goethe's soul worked in a completely different fashion. Those who are ready to write his biography never take this into consideration, and some kind of person makes his appearance who was born in Frankfurt in 1749 and died in 1832 in Weimar—but it is not Goethe. For his soul worked differently. If in his 42nd year any phenomenon confronted him, there did not work in him merely the abstract image arising from the gathering up of all kinds of concepts into a suitable outlook. When Goethe in his 42nd year contemplated a plant, or anything else about which he sought enlightenment, there worked in him with reality the whole of his soul-life, not merely abstract concepts but all his real life of soul. Thus, at the age of 42, when Goethe wished to reflect upon the life of a plant, there worked in him in part unconsciously those impulses that he had not merely gathered together but which had been working in him since his childhood. It was always his entire life of soul that was active. That is what never happens in modern man; he wants to arrive at an unprejudcied conception, but this does not go tyond snatching up a few concepts that can be perceived easily and with little effort. This is exactly the reason why we can make such great discoveries about Goethe when we reconsider the various phases of his life all together.

For example, I have tried to understand what comes latest in Goethe's point of view by always returning to Nature, the hymn in prose that he wrote during the eighties of the 18th century, in which is contained in embryo what belongs to a later period. What at that time existed in an unripe state was nevertheless active. And I have often referred before to how Goethe as a seven year old, collected minerals, piled them up on a reading desk he took of his father's, placed a candle on top, and then went through a kind of divine service in which, however, he sought to make a sacrifice to the ‘Great God’ who worked through natural phenomena. In the morning—fancy! a lad of seven he caught a ray of the sun with a burning glass, making it light his candle. He kindled nature's fire above his minerals. Here in childish fashion is already pictured forth all that afterwards worked in his most mature conceptions. We understand Goethe only when we are in a position to grasp him rightly in this way, out of his being as a whole. Also, when he is thus understood, we first arrive at a notion of the spiritual world that we are able to discover in the light of Goethe's world outlook, which then, however, with the ideas of his time he himself could but slightly develop. For consider, if we think, really think, about nature in Goethe's way, in the sense of the theory of phenomena, primal phenomena, and in the sense of the theory of metamorphoses through thinking of this kind we cannot help releasing in our souls forces that lead to perception of the spiritual world. And at length they lead us also to the perception of man's life after he has passed the gate of death. It is just with such a concentrated perception of nature, of pure nature, as Goethe's that a true and comprehensible idea of immortality is established.

It is precisely through this that power is gathered for these opposite representations needed for perceiving the supersensible that man experiences between death and a new birth. Man gains the power for this perception by first developing a keener insight into pure nature, nature unspoilt by theories and hypotheses. Where the external world is concerned man makes the greatest mistake in believing that everything must go in one line, in one stream. If any man speaks thus of Monism to one who sees right into the matter—as, having founded an abstract Monism, many speak today—when an abstract Monism of this kind is put before one who can see into things, it seems just as though a man were standing there with left and right side properly developed and another were to tell him that it was an illusion, a false dualism, and that man has to be built monistically. It is not the proper thing he would say, to have a right and a left side, something here is wrong.

Our world outlook must be just like that. And as there is nothing wrong about our having two hands, and the right one be aided by the left, there is nothing wrong either in having two world outlooks that reciprocally reflect and enlighten each other. And those who declare it a mistake when two world outlooks are demanded, should also declare that some sort of artificial arrangement ought to be devised so that the right and left hands and the right and left legs would not move and be active in the world in such a shockingly separate fashion and that right and left should be forcibly dovetailed into one another and man should be a monism and, thus handicapped, continue his way through life.

For those who have penetration and see the reality instead of distorted abstract theories, the striving for an abstract idealism on the one side and a material realism on the other, as Monism, is as onesided as the grotesque comparison I have just made. And it is really in the spirit of Goethe's world outlook that I have pointed again and again, in a way that today arouses much antagonism, on the one hand to a pure and direct perception of nature, free from hypotheses, a perception that is alive and not thought out, thinking being applied simply to introduce the perception; and on the other hand to a phenomenon of the spirit where again thinking is applied merely as introduction to the perception, the spiritual perception, that leads us into the realm where we have to seek man on the other side of his life, that is between death and a new birth.

Now, if among people today you put forward the outlook of Spiritual Science, you are met with theories to refute it that sound really logical, clever theories. I have often said that it is very easy to think out arguments against Spiritual Science. In two successive public lectures in Prague² made the attempt to oppose Spiritual Science in one, in the other to show its foundations—lectures not too well received in some quarters. But at least I made the attempt to hold them. It goes without saying that one can quite easily find counter arguments to Spiritual Science; this is possible. How should it be otherwise? Whoever believes that it is not possible takes approximately the same view as anyone who says he cannot prick his left hand with the needle he holds in his right. Of course it is possible, but it does not get us anywhere. It may be said that at the basis of this opposition, that works with such apparently perfectly logical theories, right within it, there lies something entirely different. One speaks indeed, my dear friends, of the unconscious and the sub-conscious. What really is significant for man in the sub-conscious soul life, the sub-conscious spiritual life, is misunderstood, particularly by the psycho-analysts, but also in other quarters. I have often spoken of this here. In reality the analytical psychologist of today speaks of the unconscious life of the spirit in the same way as the blind speak of color. They are forced to do so by the requirements of modern science, but their science has not sufficient to go upon—it works with inadequate means. (I referred to this last year in Zurich and also here).³ For the capacity must really be there always to discover rightly what is in the subconscious beneath what is going on in the conscious.

You see, we may say the matter stands thus. The conscious is here, the subconscious lies beneath it (see diagram). Now how stands the matter today? since about the 16th century very strong ahrimanic influences have made themselves felt in man and in man's whole thinking. This has its good and bad sides. Above all it has the effect that natural science has developed in a particularly ahrimanic way. To this ahrimanic science Goethe opposed his science that I have described to you. And from the lectures I gave you a week ago you can gather that nothing takes place in the human soul nor in be human spirit without something happening in the subconscious also. By evolving the present form of thinking about nature, two quite distinct feelings have been developed in the subconscious—fear of and lack of interest in the spiritual. If Goethe's natural science is not developed, natural science cannot be cultivated at all in the sense of modern thinking without there developing at the same time subconscious fear and indifference towards the spiritual world. People are afraid of the spiritual; that is the necessary consequence of the impression made by modern natural science. But it is a subconscious fear of which men know nothing and this subconscious fear dresses itself up, and in all kinds of bespangled theatrical garments appears in man's consciousness. It clothes itself, for instance, in logical reasons. Fear transforms itself into logical reasons, with which logical reasons men are now going around.

Those with penetration note what clever logical reasons man brings forward; however, they know also how beneath, in the subconscious, there sits fear of the spiritual—as the unknown always brings fear in its train, the hydrophobia of dogs can be traced to it. And lack of interest in the spiritual is also there, and this is particularly evident, because when man develops a right knowledge to nature, the spiritual can be quite palpable to him. For I should like to challenge any man wanting exhaustive knowledge to say out of what earthly natural phenomena, without recourse to the spiritual, he can explain the shape of the human head. The obvious correct scientific explanation of the human head leads back to what is known only scientifically as I have made clear. If we take interest in what is actually there in the nature of man, this leads naturally and of necessity to the spirit. It is mere lack of interest that induces us to say: nothing here points to the spirit! This is only when it has been excluded. We pay no attention to it but begin by building for ourselves empty theories, well prepared hypotheses and theories which soon fail us when put to the test, however carefully they have been prepared. In the main, the modern natural scientist behaves like someone who carefully cleans the scales from a fish, afterwards declaring it has none. So the modern scientist cleans phenomena of all that points to the spirit, because it does not interest him. But he is as ignorant of his lack of interest as he is of his fear. Therefore the lack of interest, too, dons disguising garments, and these are beliefs in limits to knowledge, quite consciously these limits are spoken of—ignorabimus. But what is referred to here is really immaterial; we could at will invent a quite different collection of words for what du Bois-Reymond, for instance, spoke of in his lecture about the limits to knowledge of nature, and they would be worth just as much. For what we wish is completely immaterial. It would be caused by our lack of interest, like the fish bereftaf its scales with which we have just compared it.

In an article called “Der Internationale Kitt” (International Cement) are found the-following: “It is one of the greatest disillusionments of world history that even this spiritual power—the spiritual power of Christianity—has failed where war is concerned, and has set up no dam against the onsweeping tide of hatred and destruction. Indeed, during this division between the peoples, in Christianity itself particularly ugly phenomena have come to light as, for example, the way theology with its attempt to drag down the highest absolute values into the relativity of world events. By trying to rationalize this and bring it into some kind of formula man has even gone so far as to try to justify through the ethical God of Love, what is dreadful and profoundly evil. This is instead of humbly remaining, in face of the frightful submergence of love and life, by Luther's ‘Deus absconditus’, the hidden God, that also comes to appearance in the world dynamics that is indifferent to ethics. Through this ethical and religious glorification of war, political aims were thrust upon the God of Love—aims that appear depressingly like those of rulers and cabinet ministers.”

Those who follow contemporary literature will know that this is perfectly correct—that on all sides the intentions of those in power are foisted as divine intentions upon God. So that this man is justified in thus describing many of the regrettable things happening today.

He goes on to say: “This is not all. Even the mutual tension among the Christian Churches has become accentuated. The historical opposition has been re-revived between the followers of Luther and those of Calvin. The extreme Anglicans have become alienated from continental Protestantism to such a degree that they will hardly allow it the name of Christianity; not to mention the breach among the international Christians in the mission field. Thus, a popular ideal limited by national feeling again to have gained the day over the international, communal ideal of Christianity.

“But where that has happened Christianity has shown itself a traitor to the Gospels—a Judas who betrayed Christ. For the true being of Christianity points to an all-embracing human society, and only in this form can it develop.”

And so on.

My dear friends, this man says a great deal that is clever, but he does not go so far as to ask: If Christianity has been followed for nearly two thousand years, how is it that although by its nature it should make the conditions we have at present an impossibility, it has not done so? It means nothing, my dear friends, just to say that men are bad Christians and should be better ones, if what is meant by this is that they should live up to the Christian example. I could give you hundreds of quotations from what has been said recently by seriously minded men, from which you could see that already in various places there is arising a definite but subconscious impulse that something like a new world outlook is needed. But the moment men should really come to what is necessary, that is, to a world outlook that is anthroposophical, they obscure their own concepts and these concepts immediately degenerate into fear and lack of interest. Men are afraid of Spiritual Science. This may be seen very clearly in individual personalities and in what they say and how they live. Or they show indifference to Spiritual Science; they are not capable of it in any way; it does not appeal to them. One then comes to astonishing contradictions, naturally not seen by the modern reader, for modern reading is done in the way I pictured yesterday and on other occasions. This writer of the article, a man who as we said is to be taken seriously, is justified in writing as he did. But, listen to this; he says something else must happen for Christianity to be able to develop its international significance and activity. He then makes all kinds of suggestions, for instance: Why should it not be possible for Christianity to encourage the international impulse to prevent hate and destruction? And he then goes on: in August, 1914, the Free Chuches in Britain could still write to Professor Harnack—“With the exception of the English—speaking peoples, no people stand so high in our affections and esteem as the Germans. We are all immeasurably indebted to German theology, philosophy and literature.”

There we have something—he continues—that is quite delightful. We have British theologians paying compliments to German theologians in the most wonderful way; could it not be like this in future?—

That is all very well, my dear friends, but when your thinking accords with reality you notice that this is written in August 1914, at the very moment of the outbreak of hostilities. In the light of facts the conclusion would be that inspite of British theologians writing this, it could do nothing to prevent the holocaust. You see, therefore, instead of from left to right man thinks from right to left, or the other way round, according to how the matter stands. Whereas the result of thinking according to reality is that we must investigate what, in spite of people making each other polite speeches, is really wrong and what is lacking. The writer says that if we but do what was done in August, 1914, we shall go forward. But we can begin all over again for, as the reality proved, that did nothing to help. Correct thinking would run like this—something is not right, Christianity must have been out of its calculations. What it failed to take into consideration was that Christianity has no part in what the times of necessity demand. It is this that such men lack - willingness to enter into what is demanded by the impulse of the age. Thus,it can be seen that people are recognizing that the old way of looking at the world has come to grief. But they do not want anything new, they want the old again, once more to be able to suffer disaster. That however, naturally remains in their subconscious. They wish for the best as a matter of course, but they are too fond of comfort seriously to look for what is necessary.

This, my dear friends, is what is ever and again in the background when we have to speak of the significance for the present time of all that is connected with the name of Goethe, or also of what is naturally greater than this, of the whole spiritual world and the knowledge of it. There too one need not be critical. We do not need to say how thoroughly bad those men are who neglect to do what should now be done, but confine ourselves to finding out what ought to happen. We should look to what is positive. Perhaps then we may say: “If only there were not so dreadfully little that I can do—I can do so terribly little, what indeed can be done by one person alone.” my dear friends, such questions are often asked under the impression that it would be possible in my lectures to give a definite concrete programme for individual people; but by being given in a general way this would naturally become abstract and empty. Today it is our common concern that many people should realize how, among those to whom control is given in some particular sphere, there will be many failures. This is because the leaders of our time are striving against something they ought not to resist. And it is important that we should not be eaten up by a false feeling towards authority, nor stand in great awe of anything because we have no real knowledge of it. For as today it is not a matter of accepting historical authority without question. But there is need for observation and attention, and the ability to form a judgment concerning how, in the various spheres of life today, this life is often given a wrong lead by those in authority. This is done with insufficient insight, above all, often with insufficient thought. For it should be the result of reflection, not of the lack of reflection. It is tremendously important to examine in our subconscious how much perverted belief in authority we still carry in us—to realize also that it is Spiritual Science itself that actually leads us away from belief in authority, and if its judgments are allowed livingly to permeate us has the power to make us free men with independent judgment. It is always thought that the world must run its course as if it had but one meaning and ran on one track. Then we accustom ourselves to look upon nature in the way of science, then we shall look upon everything in the same manner; when we accustom ourselves to look upon the world in accordance with abstract theories—or, as we often say, idealistically—we shall see everything in that light. But life does not take its course with only one meaning and on only one track; it demands of us in our thinking flexibility, change of form, multiplicity. This is something that fundamentally we can make our own only by cultivating Spiritual Science aright, something that is at present of great importance for finding our right path. For that reason I should like in this lecture to enlarge upon something in connection with Goethe. It is nothing very special I want to say about him—that as you have seen has appeared as though of itself—but I just want to touch on important truths of Spiritual Science that may fitly be connected with what we find treated artistically by Goethe in the actual scene to be represented. Many turn away from Goethe in scorn because they find him unscientific, just as they find Spiritual Science. But many would profit if only they would go deeply into such a spirit, such a soul, as Goethe's. For it frees us from the false belief—really a superstition—that we can make progress with concepts having only one meaning, with life that has only one meaning. There is no development, my dear friends, without its reverse, an opposite development and where there is reversed development there will also be development. When you direct your mind whole heartedly to the primal phenomena and metamorphoses in nature, without obscuring your vision by theories, this leads not to a mere onesided conception of nature, but to a development in the soul of that other conception which turns towards the spirit. And when you develop this conception correctly, you can no longer approach nature with false theories but are induced to let nature, through her material phenomena, be her own and only interpreter.

Thus it is, too, when in the sphere of Spiritual Science, one has to express in words anything as serious as what was put before you yesterday concerning the evil connected with the appearance of the Phorkyades; or what it was necessary to say about man having in his subsconscious much that does not enter his consciousness. Through misunderstanding such things are often taken ill. Just think! when with real knowledge it is said that certain things are in the subconscious how the hearer jumps to the conclusion: this man is no friend of mine, even though he allows that these things are unconscious; he imagines that in my subconscious I am doing all kinds of things sub rosa. So also may our contemporaries think: This anthroposophist insults us by saying we have subconscious fear and apathy—he is running us down. But, my dear friends, the world has not only one meaning. I do not confine myself to saying people have fear and apathy in their subconscious. I say also that in your subconsicies you have the whole spiritual world—but you have to realize it. That, too, is in the subconscious; it is the reverse side. In Spiritual Science one does not make any assertion that does not involve a second. And those to who I say: You have subconscious fear, subconscious lack of interest, should remember that I also say: It is true that you are not conscious of your fear and apathy; you disguise them by all kinds of untruth and by your belief in limits to knowledge. You have, however, the whole world of your subconscious about which to make discoveries if you will only take the plunge. I am not only accusing these people as they think, but telling them besides something good about their subconscious. This is what can make you see that life is not one-sided, nor can it be so represented in Spiritual Science.

Thus indeed, on the one side, we speak in the way we often have to speak. When we have to show aversion, fear and apathy as having been instilled into man, we have also to warn him of the dangers he has to overcome if he wants to make his way to the spiritual world—how he must overcome certain disagreeable things—that is certainly one side we have to make clear. But, my dear friends, just consider what a fund of experiences that give happiness to the soul lie in the conceptions of Spiritual Science being able to open our eyes to the life among our fellows which we lead here between birth and death; what experiences that bring joy to the world are opened out to,us when we know we can live more intimately ith those who have passed through the gate of death. And imagine, when once this idea of two-sidedness is really grasped, when once the world is looked upon rightly in the sense of Spiritual Science, what Spiritual Science has to say will not demand of us only a hard struggle to enter the worlds of the spirit, but over the hearts of men it will be able to pour a whole host of experiences that give comfort. It will have a whole host of other experiences that bring joy to the soul of man so that it grasps that it will become increasingly capable of living not only with those who surround man in the perceptible world, but also to lie with all those with whom he has entered into some kind of connection in this life, after they have passed through the gate of death. My dear friends, could we with reason even desire that the knowledge carrying our souls in full consciousness beyond the gate of death should be easily acquired? No, indeed; if we are intelligent and reasonable, that is something for which we could not even ask. men of the future will be obliged to undergo hardship to find their world happiness. To this end they will have to make up their minds to seek knowledge of the spiritual worlds.

This is what I wished to say to you today.

• 1. In Man or Matter by Dr. Ernst Lehrs the words “light” and “dark” have been reserved for referring to the primary polarity, “lightness” and “darkness” being used to express their visible effects. The same principle has been followed here.
• 2. Given 19.3.11 and 25.3.11
• 3. Given 5.11.17

Arising out of yesterday's lecture a further question has been put to me in connection with our subject and I should like to deal with it here. The question is this: “With reference to the law of imitation in a child's movements I regard as important an explanation of the following fact. My grandfather died when my father was between eighteen months and two years old. When he was about forty-five my father visited one of my grandfather's friends who was astonished at the similarity of all my father's movements and gestures with those of my grandfather. What was the cause of this, seeing that owing to my grandfather's early death there could hardly be any question of imitation!”

So a man died when his son was between eighteen months and two years old and long afterwards, when the latter was in his 45th year, he heard from this friend, who was in a position to know, that as late as his 45th year he still imitated, or rather had the same gestures as his father.

Of course we are dealing here with matters of such a nature that it is scarcely possible to do more than give certain guiding lines, omitting detailed explanations. Unfortunately our courses of lectures are short, and the theme, if it were to be gone into fully, would need many lectures and ample time, six months for instance, or even a whole year. Very many questions are therefore likely to arise, and it may well be possible to answer these if they are brought forward. I must however point out that owing to the limited time at our disposal a certain lack of clarity will inevitably arise and this could only be cleared up if it were possible to enter fully into every detail. With reference to the question which has been put I should like to interpolate the following remarks.

If we take the first epoch of a child's life, that is, the time between birth and the change of teeth, the organisation of the child is working and developing in such a way that those predispositions are incorporated into the organism which I described yesterday as consisting of walking, which includes the general orientation of the human being, of speaking and thirdly of thinking.

Now this is how things follow one another. Between the first and seventh year of life the child is so organised that he is mainly concerned with gesture; between approximately the seventh and fourteenth year he is concerned with speech, as I explained yesterday; and, again speaking approximately, between his fourteenth and twenty-first year he is so organised that he is mainly concerned with thinking. What thus makes its appearance in the course of twenty-one years is however already taking shape as predisposition in the first period of life, between birth and the change of teeth. In so far as the assimilation of gesture is concerned, and this includes walking freely in space without need of support, so that the arms and also the muscles of the face can move in an expressive way—in other words a general orientation, finding a living relationship with gesture and movement—all this is developed mainly in the first third of these years, that is to say in the first 2⅓ years. The main development of the child during this time lies in the unfolding and building up of gesture. The gestures then continue to develop, but in addition something more intimate and inward is now impressed into the speech organism. Although the child has already uttered a few words nevertheless the experience of speech as predisposition takes place after 2⅓ years. The actual experience and feeling for speech is fully developed between the seventh and fourteenth year, but as predisposition it is there between 2⅓ and 4⅔ years old. Naturally all this must be taken as an average. From then on the child develops the faculty of experiencing inwardly the first beginnings of thought. What unfolds and blossoms later, between the 14th and 21st year is already developing germinally between 4⅔ and 7 years old. The forming of gestures continues of course throughout these years, but other faculties enter in. We see therefore that in the main we have to place the time for the unfolding and forming of gestures right back to the first 2½ years. What is gained during this time lies deepest. This is only natural, for we can well imagine how fundamentally the principle of imitation works in the very first years of life.

If you take all this together you will no longer find anything astonishing in what gave rise to the question that has been put here. The grandfather died when the father was between 1½ and 2 years old. Now this is precisely the time in which the forming of gesture is working most deeply. If the grandfather died then, the gestures the child imitated from him made by far the deepest impression. That is in no way altered by what may have been imitated later from other people. So just this particular case is extraordinarily significant when we consider it in detail.

We tried yesterday to explain how in the second period of life, between the change of teeth and puberty, the child in the course of his development experiences everything that finds its expression through speech, in which the self-understood authority of the teacher and educator must play its part. The intercourse between teacher and child must be of such a kind that it works in a pictorial, imaginative way. And I pointed out how at this age one cannot approach the child with moral precepts but can only work effectively on his moral nature by awakening in him such feelings as can be awakened by pictures: so that the child receives pictures described by his teacher and educator, who is also his model. These work in such a way that what is good pleases him and what is bad gives him a feeling of distaste. Therefore at this preparatory or elementary school age morality must be instilled in pictorial form by way of the feelings.

I explained further how writing must be brought to the child in a pictorial way and I showed how the forms of the letters must be developed out of the drawing-painting and the painting-drawing. Of all the arts this must be cultivated first, for it leads the child into civilisation. Everything which introduces the child at the very outset into the forms of the letters, which are completely strange to him, is quite wrong from an educational point of view; for the finished forms of the letters used in our present day civilisation work on the child like little demons.

Now in an education built up on a knowledge of man, learning to write must precede learning to read. If you want to come near to a child of this age, immediately after the change of teeth, you must as far as possible approach the whole being of the child. The child when occupied in writing does at least bring the whole of the upper part of the body into activity; there is an inner mobility which is quite different from when only the head is kept busy learning the forms of the letters. The emancipated, independent faculties of the head can only be made use of at a later age. For this reason we can make a transition by allowing the child also to read what he has written. In this way an impression is made on him.

By carrying out our teaching in this way at the Waldorf School it transpired that our children learn to read somewhat later than others; they even learn to write the letters a little later than children in other schools. It is necessary however, before forming a judgment in regard to this to be able really to enter into the nature of man with understanding. With the limited perception and feeling for a knowledge of man usual at the present day, people do not notice at all how detrimental it is for the general development of the human being if, as a child, he learns too early things so remote from him as reading and writing. Certainly nobody will experience any deficiency in his capacity to read and write, whose proficiency in these arts is attained somewhat later than others; on the other hand everyone who learns to read and write too early will suffer in this very respect. An education based on a knowledge of man must from the very beginning, proceed out of this ability to read human evolution and by understanding the conditions of life help the child in furthering the development of his own nature. This is the one and only way to a really health-giving education.

To gain deeper insight we must enter somewhat into the being of man. In man we have in the first place his physical body which is most intensively developed in the first epoch of life. In the second epoch the higher, finer body, the etheric body, develops predominantly. Now it is a matter of great importance that in this study of man we should proceed in a truly scientific way, and we must conjure up the same courage as is shown today in other branches of science. A substance showing a definite degree of warmth, can be brought into a condition in which that warmth, hitherto bound up with substance, becomes freed. It is liberated and then becomes “free” warmth. In the case of mineral substances we have the courage to speak scientifically when we say that there is “bound” warmth and “free” warmth. We must acquire the same courage when we study the world as a whole. If we have this courage then the following reveals itself to us in regard to man.

We can ask: Where are the forces of the etheric body in the first epoch of life? During this time they are bound up with the physical body and are active in its nourishment and growth. In this first epoch the child is different from what he becomes later. The entire forces of the etheric body are at first bound up with the physical body. At the end of the first epoch they are freed to some extent, just as warmth becomes free from the substances with which it was formerly bound up. What takes place now? Only a part of the etheric body is working after the change of teeth in the forces of growth and nourishment; the freed part becomes the bearer of the more intensive development of the memory, of qualities of soul. We must learn to speak of a soul that is “bound” during the first seven years of life and of a soul that has become free after the 7th year. For it is so. What we use as forces of the soul in the second seven years of life is imperceptibly bound up with the physical body during the first seven years; this is why nothing of a psychic nature becomes body free. A knowledge of how the soul works in the first seven years of life must be gained from observation of the body. And only after the change of teeth can any direct approach be made to what is purely of a soul nature.

This is a way of looking at things which leads directly from the physical to the psychological. Just think of the many different approaches to psychology today. They are based on speculation pure and simple. People think things over and discover that on the one hand we have the soul and on the other hand the body. Now the following question arises: Does the body work on the soul as its original cause, or is it the other way round? If they get no further either way, they discover something so extraordinarily grotesque as psychophysical parallelism, the idea of which is that both manifestations run parallel, side by side. In this way no explanation is given for the interaction of one with the other, but one speaks only of parallelism. This is a sign that nothing is known about these things out of experience. Out of experience one would have to say: In the first seven years of a child's life one perceives the soul working in the body. How it works must be learned through observation, not through mere speculation. Anthroposophy as a means of knowledge rejects all speculation and proceeds everywhere from experience, but of course from physical and spiritual experience.

So in the second period of life, in the time between the change of teeth and puberty the etheric body of man is our chief concern in education. Both teacher and child need above all those forces which are working in the etheric body, for these release the feeling life of the child, not yet judgment and thought. Deeply embedded in the nature of the child between the change of teeth and puberty is the third member of the human being, the astral body, which is the bearer of all feeling life and sensation. During this second period of life the astral body is still deeply embedded in the etheric body. Therefore, because the etheric body is now relatively free, we have the task to develop it in such a way that it can follow its own tendencies, helped and not hindered by education. When can it be so helped? This can happen when in the widest possible sense we teach and educate the child by means of pictures, when we build up imaginatively and pictorially everything that we wish him to absorb. For the etheric body is the body of formative forces; it models the wonderful forms of the organs, heart, lungs, liver and so on. The physical body which we inherit acts only as a model; after the first seven years, after the change of teeth, it is laid aside, and the second physical body is fashioned by the etheric body. This is why at this age we must educate in a way that is adapted to the plastic formative forces of the etheric body.

Now, just as we teach the child by means of pictures, just as, among other things, he learns to write by a kind of painting-drawing—and we cannot introduce the child too early to what is artistic, for our entire teaching must be permeated with artistic feeling—so must we also bear the following in mind. Just as the etheric body is inseparably associated with what is formative and pictorial, so the astral body, which underlies the life of feeling and sensation, tends in its organisation towards the musical nature of man. To what then must we look when we observe the child? Because the astral body between the change of teeth and puberty is still embedded in the physical and etheric bodies every child whose soul life is healthy is inwardly deeply musical. Every healthy child is inwardly deeply musical. We have only to call up this musicality by making use of the child's natural liveliness and sense of movement. Artistic teaching therefore must, from the very beginning of school life, make use both of the plastic and pictorial arts and also of the art of music. Nothing abstract must be allowed to dominate; it is the artistic approach which is all-important, and out of what is artistic the child must be led to a comprehension of the world.

But now we must proceed in such a way that the child learns gradually to find his own orientation in the world. I have already said that it is most repugnant to me if I see scientific text books brought into school and the teaching carried out along those lines. For today in our scientific work, which I fully recognise, we have deviated in many respects from a conception of the world which is in accordance with nature. We will now ask ourselves the following question, bearing in mind that in the course of discussion other things may have to be added. At about what age can one begin to teach children about the plant world?

This must be done neither too late nor too early. We must be aware that a very important stage in a child's development is reached between the 9th and 10th year. Those who see with the eye of a teacher observe this in every child. There comes a time in which the child, although he does not usually express it in words, nevertheless shows in his whole behaviour that he has a question, or a number of questions, which betray an inner crisis in his life. This is an exceptionally delicate experience in the child and an exceptionally delicate sense for these things is necessary if one is to perceive it. But it is there and it must be observed. At this age the child learns quite instinctively to differentiate himself from the outer world. Up to this time the “I” and the outer world interpenetrate each other, and it is therefore possible to tell the child stories about animals, plants and stones in which they all behave as though they were human beings. Indeed this is the best approach, for we should appeal to the child's pictorial, imaginative sense, and this we do if we speak about the kingdoms of nature in this way. Between the 9th and 10th year however the child learns to say “I” in full consciousness. He learns this earlier of course, but now he does so consciously. These years, therefore, when the consciousness of the child is no longer merged with the outer world, but when he learns to differentiate himself from it, are the time when we can begin, without immediately renouncing the pictorial element, to lead the child to an understanding of the plant world, but to an understanding imbued with feeling.

Today we are accustomed to look at one plant alongside of another, we know their names and so on; we do this as though the single plant was there for itself. But when we study the plant in this way, it is just as if you were to pull out a hair, and forgetting that it was on your head examine it for itself, in the belief that you can know something about its nature and life-conditions without considering it as growing out of your head. The hair only has meaning when it is growing on the head; it cannot be studied for itself. It is the same with the plant. One cannot pull it up and study it separately, but one must consider the whole earth as an organism to which the plants belong. This is actually what it is. The plants belong to the entire growth of the earth, in the same way as the hairs belong to our head. Plants can never be studied in an isolated way, but only in connection with the whole nature of the earth. The earth and the world of plants belong together.

Let us suppose that you have a herbaceous plant, an annual, which is growing out of the root, shooting up into stalk, leaves and flowers, and developing the fruit which is sown again in the following year. Then you have the earth underneath, in which the plant is growing. But now, think of a tree. The tree lives longer, it is not an annual. It develops around itself the mineralised bark which is of such a nature that pieces of it can be broken off. What is this in reality? The process is as follows: If you were to pile up around a plant the surrounding earth with its inherent forces, if you were more or less to cover it with earth, then you would bring this about in an external, mechanical way, through human activity. Nature however does the same thing by wrapping the tree round with the bark; only in this case it is not completely earth. In the bark there is a kind of hill of earth, the earth heaps itself up. We can see the earth flourishing and growing when we see the growing tree. This is why what surrounds the root of the plant must most certainly be reckoned as belonging to it. We must regard the soil as belonging to the plant.

Anyone who has trained himself to observe such things and happens to travel in a district where he notices many plants with yellow flowers will at once look to see what kind of soil it is. In such a case, where specifically many yellow flowers are to be seen, one is likely to find, for instance, a soil which is somewhat red in colour. You will never be able to think about the plant without taking into consideration the earth in which it grows. Both belong together. And one should lose no time in accustoming oneself to this; as otherwise one destroys in oneself a sense for realities.

A deep impression was made on me recently, when at the request of certain farmers, I gave an agricultural course, at the end of which a farmer said: Today everybody knows that our vegetables are dying out, are becoming decadent and this with alarming rapidity. Why is this? It is because people no longer understand, as they understood in bygone days, as the peasants understood, that earth and plants are bound together and must be so considered. If we want to foster the well-being of our vegetables so that they flourish again we must understand how to treat them in the right way, in other words, we must give them the right kind of manure. We must give the earth the possibility of living rightly in the environment of the plant roots. Today, after the failure of agricultural methods of development, we need a new impulse in agriculture based on Spiritual Science. This will enable us to make use of manure in such a way that the growth of plants does not degenerate. Anyone as old as I am can say: I know how potatoes looked 50 years ago in Europe—and how they look today! Today we have not only the decline of the West in regard to its cultural life, but this decline penetrates deeply also into the kingdoms of nature, for example, in regard to agriculture.

It really amounts to this, that the sense for the connection between the plant and its environment should not be destroyed, that on school outings and similar occasions die plants should not be uprooted and put into specimen containers and then brought into the classroom in the belief that thereby something has been achieved. For the uprooted plant can never exist just for itself. Today people indulge in totally unreal ideas. For instance they look upon a piece of chalk and a flower as having reality in the same sense. But what nonsense this is! The mineral can exist for itself, it can really do this. So the plant also (they say) should have an independent existence;

but it cannot, it ceases to be when it is uprooted from the ground. It only has earthly existence when it is attached to something other than itself, and that other only has existence in so far as it is part of the whole earth. We must study things as they are in their totality, not tear them out of it.

Almost all our knowledge based on observation teems with unrealities of this kind. This is why Nature Study has become completely abstract, although this is partly justified, as with the theory of relativity. Anyone, however, who can think in a realistic way cannot allow abstract concepts to run on and on, but notices when they cease to have any relationship with what is real. This is something he finds painful. Naturally you can follow the laws of acoustics and say: When I make a sound, the transmission of this sound has a definite speed. When I hear a sound anywhere, at any particular place, I can calculate the exact time its transmission will take. If now I move, no matter at what speed, in the direction the sound is travelling, I shall hear it later. Should my speed exceed the speed of the sound I shall not hear it at all; but if I move towards the sound I shall hear it earlier. The theory of relativity has its definite justification. According to this, however, we can also come to the following conclusion: If I now move towards the sound more quickly than the sound travels, I shall finally go beyond it, so that I shall hear the sound before it is made! This is obvious to anyone able to think realistically. Such a person also knows that logically it is absolutely correct, wonderfully thought out, to say that a clock (to take the famous comparison of Einstein) thrown with the speed of light into universal space and returning from thence, will not have changed in any respect. This can be wonderfully thought out. But for a realistic thinker the question must necessarily arise: What will the clock look like on its return? for he does not separate his thinking from reality, he remains always in the sphere of reality.

This is the essential characteristic of Spiritual Science. It never demands a merely logical approach, but one in accordance with reality. That is why people today, who carry abstractions even to the splitting of hairs, reproach us anthroposophists with being abstract, just because our way of thinking seeks everywhere the absolute reality, never losing the connection with reality, although here certainly the spiritual reality has to be included and understood. This is why it is possible to perceive so clearly how unnatural it is to connect plant study with specimens in a container.

It is therefore important when introducing the child to plant study that we consider the actual face of the earth and deal with the soil and plant growth as a whole, so that the child will never think of the plant as something detached and separate. This can be unpleasant for the teacher, for now he cannot take the usual botany books into class with him, have a quick glance at them during the lesson and behave as though he knew it all perfectly. I have already said that today there are no suitable botany text-books. But this sort of teaching takes on another aspect when one knows the effect of the imponderable and when one considers that in the child the subconscious works still more strongly than in older people. This subconscious is terribly clever and anyone able to perceive the spiritual life of the child knows that when a class is seated facing the teacher and he walks up and down with his notes and wants to impart the content of these notes to the children, they always form a judgment and think; Well, why should I know that? He doesn't even know it himself! This disturbs the lesson tremendously, for these feelings rise up out of the subconscious and nothing can be expected of a class which is taught by someone with notes in his hand.

We must always look into the spiritual side of things. This is particularly necessary when developing the art of education, for by doing so we can create in the child a feeling of standing firmly and safely in the world. For (in lessons on the plant) he gradually grasps the idea that the earth is an organism. And this it actually is and when it begins to become lifeless we must help it by making the right use of manure. For instance, it is not true that the water contained in the air is the same as that in the earth below. The water below has a certain vitality; the water above loses this vitality and only regains it when it descends. All these things are real, absolutely real. If we do not grasp them we do not unite ourselves with the world in a real way. This then is what I wished to say in regard to the teaching about the world of plants.

Now we come to the animal world and we cannot consider the animals as belonging to the earth in the same way. This is apparent from the mere fact that the animals can move about; in this respect they are independent. But when we compare the animals with man we find something very characteristic in their formation. This has always been indicated in an older, instinctive science, the after-effects of which still remained in the first third of the 19th century. When however a modern man with his way of looking at things reads the opinions expressed by those philosophers of nature who, following old traditions, still regarded the animal world in its relation to the human world, these strike him as being utterly foolish. I know that people have hardly been able to contain their laughter when in a study circle, during the reading from the nature philosopher, Oken, the following sentence occurred: “The human tongue is a cuttlefish.” Whatever could he have meant? Of course in actual fact this statement of Oken's can no longer be regarded as correct, but it contains an underlying principle which must be taken into account. When we observe the different animal forms, from the smallest protozoa up to the fully developed apes, we find that every animal form represents some part of the human being, a human organ, or an organic system, which is developed in a one-sided way. You need only look at these things quite crudely. Imagine that the human forehead were to recede enormously that the jaw were to jut right out, that the eyes were to look upwards instead of forwards, that the teeth and their whole nexus were also to be formed in a completely one-sided way. By imagining such an exaggerated, one-sided development you could get a picture of a great variety of mammals. By leaving out this or that in the human form you can change it into the form of an ox, a sheep and so on. And when you take the inner organs, for instance those which are connected with reproduction, you come into the region of the lower animals. The human being is a synthesis, a putting together of the single animal forms, which becomes softer, gentler, when they are united. The human being is made up of all the animal forms moulded into one harmonious structure. Thus when I trace back to their original forms all that in man is merged together I find the whole animal world. Man is a contraction of the whole animal world.

This way of looking at things places us with our soul life once more in a right relationship to the animal world. This has been forgotten, but it is nevertheless true; and as it belongs fundamentally to the principles of evolution it must again be brought to life. And, after having shown the child how the plant belongs to the earth, we must, in so far as it is possible today, proceed at about the nth year to a consideration of the animal world; and we must do this in such a way that we realise that in its various forms the animal world belongs, strictly speaking, to man himself. Think how the young human being will then stand in his relation to animal and plant. The plants go to the earth, become one with the earth; the animals become one with him! This gives the basis for a true relationship to the world; it places man in a real relationship to the world. This can always be brought to the child in connection with the teaching matter. And if this is done artistically, if we approach the subject in a living way, so that it corresponds with what the child in his inner being is able to grasp, then we give him living forces with which to establish a relationship to life. Otherwise we may easily destroy this relationship. But we must look deeply into the whole human being.

What really is the etheric body? Well, if it were possible to lift it out of the physical body and so impregnate it that its form were to become visible—then there would be no greater work of art than this. For the human etheric body through its own nature and through what man creates within it, is at one and the same time both work of art and artist. And when we introduce the formative element into the child's artistic work, when we let him model in the free way I described yesterday, we bring to him something that is deeply related to the etheric body. This enables the child to take hold of his own inner being and thereby place himself as man in a right relationship to the world.

By introducing the child to music we form the astral body. But when we put two things together, when we lead what is plastic over into movement, and when we form movements that are plastic, then we have eurythmy, which follows exactly the relationship of the child's etheric body to his astral body. And so now the child learns eurythmy, speech revealing itself in articulated gestures, just as he learned to speak quite naturally in his earlier years. A healthy child will find no difficulty in learning eurythmy, for in eurythmy he simply expresses his own being, he has the impulses to make his own being a reality. This is why, in addition to gymnastics, eurythmy is incorporated into the curriculum as an obligatory subject from the first school years right up into the highest classes.

So you see, eurythmy has arisen out of the whole human being, physical body, etheric body and astral body; it can only be studied by means of an anthroposophical knowledge of man. Gymnastics today are directed physiologically in a one-sided way towards the physical body; and because physiology cannot do otherwise, certain principles based on life-giving processes are introduced. By means of gymnastics, however, we do not educate the complete human being, but only part of him. By saying this nothing is implied against gymnastics, only in these days their importance is over-estimated. Therefore in education today eurythmy should stand side by side with gymnastics. I would not go as far as a famous physiologist did, who once happened to be in the audience when I was speaking about eurythmy. On that occasion I said that as a means of education gymnastics are over-rated at the present time, and that a form of gymnastics calling on the forces of soul and spirit, such as is practised in eurythmy side by side with the study of eurythmy as an art, must be introduced in addition to gymnastics as usually understood. At the end of my lecture the famous physiologist came up to me and said: Do you say that gymnastics may have their justification as a means of education because physiologists say so? I, as a physiologist, must say that gymnastics as a means of education are nothing less than barbarism! You would certainly be very astonished if I were to tell you the name of this physiologist. At the present time such things are already apparent to people who have some right to speak; and we must be careful not to advocate certain things in a fanatical way without a full knowledge of what is involved. To stand up fanatically for certain things is utterly out of place in connection with the art of education, because here we are dealing with the manifold aspects of life.

When we approach the other subjects which children have to be taught and do so from the various points of view which have here been considered, we come first to the years during which the child can only take in the pictorial through his life of feeling. History and geography, for instance, must be taught in this way. History must be described pictorially; we must paint and model with our words. This develops the child's mind. For during the first two stages of the second main epoch of life there is one thing above all to which the child has no relationship and this is what may be termed the concept of causation. Before the 7th year the child should most certainly not go to school. [i.e. to school as distinguished from a kindergarten.] If we take the time from 7 to 9⅓ years old we have the first subdivision of the second main epoch; from 9⅓ to 11⅔ years old we have the second stage and from 11⅔ until approximately the age of 14 we have the third stage. During the first stage of this second main epoch the child is so organised that he responds immediately to what is pictorial. At this age therefore we must speak as one does in fairy-tales, for everything must still be undifferentiated from the child's own nature. The plants must speak with one another, the minerals must speak with one another; the plants must kiss one another, they must have father and mother, and so on. At about 9⅓ years old the time has come which I have already characterised, when the ego begins to differentiate itself from the outer world. Then we can make a more realistic approach in our teaching about plants and animals. Always, however, in the first years of life history must be treated in fairy-tale, mythical mood. In the second subdivision of this longer epoch, that is to say, from 9⅓ until 11⅔ years old, we must speak pictorially. And only when the child approaches the age of 12 can one introduce him to the concept of causation, only then can one lead over to abstract concepts, whereby cause and effect can be allowed to enter in. Before this time the child is as inaccessible to cause and effect as anyone colour blind is to colours; and as an educator one often has absolutely no idea how unnecessary it is to speak to the child about cause and effect. It is only after the age of 12 that we can speak to him about things which today are taken for granted when looked at from a scientific point of view.

This makes it essential to wait until about the 12th year before dealing with anything that has to do with the lifeless, for this involves entering into the concept of causation. And in the teaching of history we must also wait until about this age before passing over from a pictorial presentation to one which deals with cause and effect, where the causes underlying historical events have to be sought. Before this we should only concern ourselves with what can be brought to the child as having life, soul-imbued life.

People are really very strange. For instance, in the course of cultural development a concept has arisen which goes by the name of animism. It is maintained that when a child knocks himself against a table he imagines the table to be alive and hits it. He dreams a soul into the table, and it is thought that primitive people did the same. The idea is prevalent that something very complicated takes place in the soul of the child. He is supposed to think that the table is alive, ensouled, and this is why he hits it when he bumps up against it. This is a fantastic notion. On the contrary those who study the history of culture are the ones who do actually “ensoul” something, for they “ensoul” this imaginative capacity into the child. But the soul qualities of the child are far more deeply embedded in the physical body than they are later, when they are emancipated and can work freely. When the child bumps against a table a reflex action is set up without his imagining that the table is alive. It is purely a reflex movement of will, for the child does not yet differentiate himself from the outer world. This differentiation first makes its appearance at about the 12th year when a healthy child can grasp the concept of causation. But when this concept is brought to the child too early, especially if it is done by means of crude external methods, really terrible conditions are set up in the child's development. It is all very well to say that one should take pains to make everything perfectly clear to a child. Calculating machines already exist in which little balls are pushed here and there in order to make the operations of arithmetic externally obvious. The next thing we may expect is that those of the same frame of mind will make moral concepts externally visible by means of some kind of machine in which by pushing something about one will be able to see good and evil in the same way as with the calculating machines one can see that 5 plus 7 equals 12. There are, however, undoubtedly spheres of life in which things cannot be made externally apparent and which are taken up and absorbed by the child in ways that are not at all obvious; and we greatly err if we try to make them so. Hence it is quite wrong to do as is often attempted in educational books and make externally apparent what by its very nature cannot be so treated. In this respect people often fall into really frightful trivialities.

In the years between the change of teeth and puberty we are not only concerned with the demonstrably obvious, for when we take the whole of human life into consideration the following becomes clear. At the age of 8 I take in some concept, I do not yet understand it fully; indeed I do not understand it at all as far as its abstract content is concerned. I am not yet so constituted as to make this possible. Why then do I take in the concept at all? I do so because it is my teacher who is speaking, because the authority of my teacher is self-understood and this works upon me. But today we are not supposed to do this; the child is to be shown what is visual and obvious. Now let us take a child who is taught everything in this way. In such a case what a child experiences does not grow with his growth, for by these methods he is treated as a being who does not grow. But we should not awaken in the child ideas which cannot grow with him, for then we should be doing the same thing as if we were to have a pair of shoes made for a three-year-old child and expect him to wear them when he is 12. Everything in the human being grows, including his power of comprehension; and so the concepts must grow with him. We must therefore see to it that we bring living concepts to the child, but this we can only do if there is a living relationship to the authority of the teacher. It is not achieved if the teacher is an abstract pedant who stands in front of the child and presents him with concepts which are as yet totally foreign to him. Picture two children. One has been taught in such a way that he takes in concepts and at the age of 45 he still gives things the same explanation that he learned when he was 8 years old. The concept has not grown with the child; he paid careful attention to it all, and at 45 can still explain it in the same way. Now let us take a second child who has been educated in a living way. Here we shall find that just as he no longer wears the same size shoes as he did when he was 8 years old, so at a later age he no longer carries around with him the same concepts that he learned when he was 8. On the contrary; these concepts have expanded and have become something quite different. All this reacts on the physical body. And if we look at these two people in regard to their physical fitness we find that the first man has sclerosis at the age of 45, while the second has remained mobile and is not sclerotic. How great do you think the differences are which come to light between human beings? In a certain place in Europe there were once two professors of philosophy. One was famous for his Greek philosophy; the other was an old Hegelian, an adherent of the school of Hegel, where people were still accustomed to take in living concepts, even after the age of 20. Both were lecturers at the same university. At the age of 70 the first decided to exercise his right to retire on a pension, he felt unable to continue. The second, the Hegelian professor, was 91 and said: “I cannot understand why that young fellow is settling down to retirement already.” But the conceptual life of this second professor had retained its mobility. People criticised him for this very reason and accused him of being inconsistent. The other man was consistent, but he suffered from sclerosis!

There exists a complete unity in the child between the spiritual and the bodily, and we can only deal rightly with him when we take this into consideration. Today people who do not share the views of materialists say that materialism is a bad thing. Why? Many will say that it is bad because it understands nothing of the spiritual. This, however, is not the worst, for little by little people will become aware of this lack, and as a result of the urge to get the better of it they will come to the spiritual. The worst thing about materialism is that it understands nothing of matter! Look into it yourselves and see what has become of the knowledge of the living forces of man in lung, liver and so on under the influences of materialism. Nothing is known about how these things work. A portion is removed from the lung, the liver and so forth and this is prepared and examined, but by means of present-day scientific methods nothing is learned of the spirit working actively in the human organs. Such knowledge can only be gained through spiritual science. The material reveals its nature only when studied from the aspect of spiritual science. Materialism has fallen sick, and the cause of this sickness is above all because the materialist understands nothing of matter. He wants to limit himself to what is material but he cannot penetrate to any knowledge of what is material in a real sense. In saying this I do not mean the “thought-out” material, where so and so many atoms are supposed to dance around a central nucleus: for things of this kind are not difficult to construct. In the earlier days of the Theosophical Society there were theosophists who constructed a whole system based on atoms and molecules; but it was all just thought out. What we have to do now is to approach reality once again. And if one actually does this one has a feeling of discomfort when one is supposed to grasp some concept which is entirely devoid of reality. One experiences pain when, for instance, someone propounds a theory such as this: Fundamentally it is one and the same thing whether I drive my car to a town, or whether the car stands still and the town comes to me. Certainly things of this kind are justified when looked at from a certain point of view. But drawn out to the extent that occurs today among those who hold completely abstract opinions, they impoverish the entire life of the human soul. And anyone who has a sense for such things experiences great pain in regard to much of what people think today, which works so destructively on teaching methods. For instance, I see the tendencies of certain methods applied already to little children in the kindergarten, who are given ordinary cut-out letters and then learn to pick them out of a heap and put them together to form words. By occupying the child in this way at such an early age we are bringing him something to which as yet he has absolutely no relationship. When this happens to him the effect is the same as if in real thinking one were to say: I was once a man who still had muscles, skin and so on; now I am merely a skeleton. So it is today under the influence of this propensity for abstractions in the spiritual life of mankind: one sees oneself suddenly as a skeleton. With such an outlook, however, which is the bare skeleton of reality, we cannot approach the child in education.

Because of this I wanted to show today how everything depends on the teacher approaching life in a true and living way.

Translated by Alice Wulsin

Anyone who follows the evolution of the human spirit over the course of centuries, or perhaps millennia, will come to feel that this human spirit moves on to ever new achievements in the realm of knowing and in the realm of doing. There is no need to place too much emphasis on the word progress, for in the dismal time that has now befallen humanity this might call forth bitter doubt in many. If we observe this evolution of the human spirit, however, something else makes a clear impression on us, namely, that the forms and configurations taken by man's striving spirit vary essentially from century to century. And since today in our studies we are chiefly concerned with a striving for knowledge that wishes to penetrate humanity's evolution in a new way, we need only bear in mind, by way of example, how such conceptions, which are to some extent in conflict with the old ones, have difficulty gaining access to evolving humanity.

We should continually recall, for example, how difficult it was to bring the Copernican world view into people's habits of thought, habits of feeling—indeed, in certain realms this took centuries. This Copernican world view had broken with what people for a long time believed necessary to maintain as the truth about the structure of the universe on the basis of their sense perception. Then came the time when a person could no longer rely on what the eye saw as the rising and setting of the sun, as the sun's movement. He had to accept that, contrary to the visual appearance, the sun in a certain way, at least in its relation to the earth, stands still. Human habits of thought and feeling did not easily accommodate themselves to such sudden reversals of knowledge.

In the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to which our considerations this evening are devoted, we have to do with an even greater reversal of this kind. Those who believe themselves convinced on firm scientific grounds of the content of this spiritual science also believe it necessary for it to have a decisive influence now and in the further evolution of human thinking, sensing, and feeling. It could also be said, if you will allow me these few introductory words, that the introduction of something like the Copernican world view was a matter of dealing with countless prejudices, with traditional opinions. People believed that if anything else were to supersede these it would upset all kinds of religious conceptions and things of that kind.

Many other objections concerning what we are to discuss this evening get in the way. Here the problem is not simply the prejudices such as those that confronted the Copernican theory, for example. In this case there is also the problem that in our time many people, indeed the majority of those considering themselves enlightened and cultured, not only bring with them their prejudices and preconceptions; they are actually ashamed of having to take seriously the realm about which anthroposophy has to speak. Such an individual feels he has to apologize not only to the world in general but to himself if he admits that it is possible to know about the things that are to be spoken of today in as thoroughly scientific a way as about the outer structure of nature. He believes that he has to regard himself as foolish or childish.

These things must be considered if we are to speak today about an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Anyone speaking out of knowledge of this science knows the objections that must arise today by the hundreds and thousands. He already knows these objections, because doubt is felt today not only concerning the specific truths and results of this spiritual science; there is also doubt that knowledge of any kind can be acquired concerning the realm with which anthroposophy occupies itself. The possibility of developing conceptual beliefs in the soul, general conceptual beliefs about the realm of the eternal, is certainly still acknowledged as justified by many today; but it is generally considered something dreamy or sentimental to believe that a really factual knowledge can be developed about the facts that can be drawn from the sense world concerning the immortal and eternal in the nature of the human being. This is particularly the case among those who believe themselves to be forming their judgments out of the presently recognized mode of scientific conception.

This evening we will have nothing to do with the dreamy and sentimental. We will rather be dealing with a realm in which you could say that the student, particularly the scientific student, shrinks from its first conditions. I would like to touch very briefly on the fact that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has no wish to be sectarian. It is completely misunderstood by anyone who believes that it wishes to arise in the way some new kind of religious faith is founded. It has no such wish. It wishes to arise today as a necessary result of the world view brought by natural scientific development, a general, publicly accepted conception among the widest circles of humanity. This natural scientific development today supplies so many concepts, which are in their turn the source of feelings and sensations. It provides the concepts for the most widely held world view. This natural scientific mode of observation sets itself the task of examining and explaining what is yielded to the outer senses, of examining what is accessible to human understanding by way of the natural laws about facts given to the outer senses.

If only one takes a quick look at what is living, it is possible to see how everywhere today natural science must consider origins, going back to what the construction of the seed reveals concerning growing, becoming, flourishing. (Though this is more prevalent in other realms, it is most clearly apparent in the realm of the living.) If the natural scientist wishes to explain animal life or human life in this sense, he goes back to birth, he studies embryology, he studies that from which growing and becoming evolve. The natural scientist returns to birth, to the beginning of what unfolds before the senses. And when natural science seeks an explanation for the world, it goes back with various hypotheses—with the foundations laid by geology, paleontology, with what the individual branches of natural science can reveal—forming conceptions out of this about the birth of the universe's structure, you could say. Even if one or another may have doubts about the justification for such a way of thinking, it is always being striven for.

The thoughts are well known that people have presented in order to fathom, if not the beginning of earthly evolution, at least far distant epochs (those epochs, for example, before the human being walked the earth) in order to explain in some way out of what went before, out of what lay in a germinal state, what follows, the consequences that the human being takes in of his surroundings through his senses. The whole Darwinian theory, or, if one wishes to leave that aside, the theory of evolution, is based on the search for origins, looking for the emergence of something out of something else, I would say that everywhere we find this thought of going back to youth and birth for explanations.

Spiritual science in the anthroposophical sense finds itself in another position. And by its point of departure it calls forth a vague opposition. Opposition without people being conscious of it; one could say that it calls forth an unconscious opposition, an instinctive opposition. Such opposition is often much more effective than the opposition that is clearly recognized, clearly thought through. In order to arrive at conceptions at all, an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must not begin now with general, hazy concepts of spirit; to arrive at spiritual facts, it must make death its starting point. It thereby stands from the outset, you could say, in fundamental opposition to what is preferred today, namely to proceeding from birth, youth, growth, and the progress of development. Death encroaches upon life. And if you keep in touch with contemporary scientific literature, you can find everywhere that the conscientious scientist holds the view that death as such cannot be inserted in the series of natural scientific concepts in the same sense as other concepts.

The spiritual scientist must make death his actual starting point, death, the cessation, actually the opposite of birth. How death and all that is related to it encroaches upon life in the widest sense is the basic question. Death terminates what is perceptible to the senses; death dissolves what is becoming, what is developing before the senses. By the way that death encroaches on life, it can be conceived of as having no part in what is working and flourishing here in the sense world, springing forth and producing life. This is what yields the opinion that nothing can be known about what is concealed by death, as it were, cloaked by death. (Within certain limits this opinion is perfectly comprehensible, though totally unjustifiable.) And it is actually from this corner of human feeling that the objections rear up their heads, objections that obviously can be brought up against things that are the results of a science still in its youth today. For spiritual science is young, and for precisely these reasons just referred to, the spiritual scientist is in quite a different position from that of the natural scientist, even when speaking about things in the sphere of his own research. The spiritual scientist cannot proceed in exactly the same way as the natural scientist, who poses some fact and then proves it on grounds by which everyone is convinced: that it can be seen. The spiritual scientist, however, speaks about what cannot be perceived by the senses. Hence, in speaking about the results of his research, he is always obliged to indicate how such results can be reached.

There is a rich literature concerning the realm about which I will be speaking with you this evening. Believing themselves called upon to do so, critics constantly raise the objection when reading my writings, for example, that the spiritual scientist maintains such and such a thing but gives no proof, although this actually shows only how superficially things are read! He does offer proof, but in a different way. To begin with, he tells how he arrived at his results; he must first indicate the path into the realm of facts. This path is generally unknown, because it is not the customary one for today's habits of thinking and feeling. It must first be said that the spiritual investigator is forced by his investigation to conclude that with the methods and procedures by which the ordinary scientist comes to his brilliant results (not rejected by the spiritual scientist but admired) we do not arrive at the super-sensible. It is precisely this experience, namely, the very limitations of the methods of natural scientific thinking, from which the spiritual scientist makes his start. This is not done, however, in the way so prevalent today, which is to declare that certain things, beyond which the ordinary scientist does not go, are the limits of human cognition. No, it is done in such a way that an attempt is made to come to definite experiences that can be attained only at these limits. I have spoken about these boundaries to human cognition particularly in my most recent written work, Riddles of the Soul.

Those people who have not taken knowledge as something that falls into their laps from outside, those who have wrestled with knowledge, wrestled with truth, have always at least certain experiences at these limits of human cognition. Here it must be noted that times change, that the evolution of humanity undergoes changes. Not so very long ago, the most outstanding thinkers and those struggling for knowledge, when they stood before boundaries of this kind, thought that one cannot go beyond these boundaries, that one must remain there. Those of you in the audience who have often heard me speak here know how little it is my habit to touch on personal matters. When the personal has a connection in any way with the question under consideration, however, one may venture to refer to it briefly. I may say that what I have to say about experiences of this sort at the boundaries of cognition is the result of more than thirty years of spiritual research. And it was more than thirty years ago that these very problems, these tasks, these riddles that arise at the boundaries of cognition, made a significant impression on me.

From the many examples that can be cited about such boundaries, I would like to take one that has been referred to by a real wrestler with knowledge, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the famous aesthetician who was also a philosopher of distinction, though perhaps little known during his lifetime and soon forgotten. A decade or so ago Friedrich Theodor Vischer wrote a very interesting treatise about a book, also very interesting, written by Volkelt concerning dream fantasies. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, in the course of this treatise, touched on a variety of subjects of no further interest to us here. But I would like to quote one sentence, a sentence that may perhaps be passed over in reading but a sentence that can pierce like lightning into the human heart and soul when these are permeated by a striving for knowledge, a true inner striving for knowledge. It is the sentence that burst upon Vischer when he was reflecting, meditating upon the nature of the human soul. Out of what he had gleaned about the human being from contemporary natural science, he deduced that the human soul cannot be merely in the body; this much is clear; but it is just as clear that it cannot be outside the body.

Here we have a complete contradiction, a contradiction that cannot easily be resolved. It is a contradiction that poses itself with immutable necessity if an individual is wrestling for knowledge in all earnest. Vischer was not yet able for the time was not sufficiently ripe—to press on from what we might call his position in knowledge, at these boundaries of knowledge, to press on from cognition in the ordinary sense of the word to inward experience of a contradiction of this kind. Yet from all directions today, from the most knowledgeable people, we hear a particular conclusion when they come up against such a contradiction. (There are indeed hundreds and hundreds of such contradictions du Bois-Reymond a physiologist of great intelligence, has spoken about only seven world riddles, but these seven can be multiplied by hundreds.) Our contemporary man of knowledge says that from this point on human cognition is able to go no further. He says this for the simple reason that at the boundaries of human cognition he cannot determine to go on from mere thinking, from mere mental activity, to experience.

It is necessary to begin at a place where such a contradiction obstructs the way, a contradiction not ingeniously thought out but one that is revealed by the riddle of the world; we must seek to live with such a contradiction again and again, to wrestle with it in everyday life, to immerse the soul in it entirely. We must have no fear while immersing ourselves in this contradiction (and a certain inner courage of thought is part of this), we must have no fear that this contradiction will be able to split asunder the conceptual powers of the soul, or that the soul will not be able to penetrate through it, and so on. I have described this very struggle at such boundaries in detail in my book, Riddles of the Soul.

When an individual comes to such a boundary with his whole soul, instead of with mere mental images, with mere clever thinking and mental strategies, he progresses further. He does not go further on a purely logical path, however, but on the path of living knowledge. I would like to describe what he experiences by means of a comparison, for the paths of the spiritual investigator are really experiences of knowledge, facts of knowledge. Language today has not yet acquired many words for these things, because words have been coined for what is acquired by outer sense perception. Hence what stands clearly before the eye of the spirit can often be expressed only by means of comparison. When we live into such contradictions, we feel as if we were at the border where the spiritual world breaks in; this is not to be found in sense-perceptible reality, where indeed it breaks in but does so from outside, as it were.

Now, whether or not this image is well-founded from a natural scientific point of view is not important here, for it can still be used by way of comparison. It is as if one of the lower forms of life had not yet developed the sense of touch but experienced only inwardly, experienced itself inwardly in constant stirrings of movement, in this way experiencing the borders of the physical world, the surfaces of single objects. A being that has not yet developed the sense of touch and experiences only the surfaces of sense-perceptible objects remains entirely shut within itself, unable as yet to feel, to touch, what is there outside it by way of sense impressions.

In the same way, a person struggling with knowledge feels himself purely soul-spiritually (we should not think here of anything material) when he comes to the kind of place I have just described. In the case of our rudimentary animal, the organism breaks through to the outer, sense-perceptible world by its impact with it, differentiating itself through the sense of touch, by which surfaces are touched and knowledge gained as to their roughness or smoothness, their warmth or cold. In the same way, when what has lived only inwardly opens itself to what is outside, the possibility is acquired to break through, as it were, just at the places we have described and to acquire a spiritual sense of touch. Only when a person has wrestled perhaps for years at these boundaries of cognition, struggling to break through into the spiritual world, can he first acquire real spiritual organs. I am speaking only in an elementary way of how this sense of touch is developed. To use these terms in a more definite way, however, we can say that by ever greater application of inner work, working away from being enclosed within oneself, spiritual eyes, spiritual ears develop. To many people today it still seems absurd to say that at first the soul is just as undifferentiated an organ as the organism of a lower animal, forming its senses out of its own substance and out of this substance developing soul concepts, spiritual organs differentiated as to their soul qualities, which then bring an individual face to face with the spiritual world.

It may be said that a systematically presented spiritual science, which is fully entitled to be called scientific, is something new in the progress of knowledge in human evolution. It is not new, however, in every respect. The struggle for it, the striving after it, is to be seen in the outstanding individuals of knowledge from the past. I have referred to one of these when I mentioned Friedrich Theodor Vischer. I would like to show from his own comments how he stood at such a border of knowledge, how he remained there, never making the transition from being inwardly stirred to actually breaking through the boundary to the spiritual sense of touch. Here I would simply like to read you a passage from Friedrich Theodor Vischer's works, in which he describes how he came to such a boundary where the spirit breaks through into the human soul in the course of his wrestling with natural scientific knowledge. This was at the time in which materialistically directed natural science posed many riddles for those struggling for knowledge in real earnest. Countless people claimed that the soul cannot be said to be anything but a product of material activity.

Here are his words: “No spirit where there is no nerve center, where there is no brain—so say our opponents. We reply: There would be no nerve center, no brain had they not been prepared for by countless stages from below upward; it is easy to speak mockingly of those who say that there is an echo of the spirit in granite and limestone. This is no harder than it would be for us to ask sarcastically how the protein in the brain rises to the level of ideas. Human knowledge cannot discriminate between stages. It will remain a mystery how it comes about that nature, beneath which the spirit must be slumbering, stands there as such a perfect counter-blow of the spirit that we bruise ourselves against it.”

Please take note of how this wrestler for knowledge describes how we bruise ourselves! Here you have the inner experience of bumping against something by one who wrestles for knowledge: “It is a forcible separation with the appearance of such absoluteness that with Hegel's ‘differentiation’ and ‘non-differentiation’ (ingenious as this formula is, though it says as good as nothing) the steepness of the apparent dividing wall is concealed. One finds the right appreciation of the cutting edge and the impact of this counter-blow in Fichte, but no explanation for it,”

Here we have a man's description of his struggle for knowledge in the time before there could be a decision, a spiritual scientific decision, not merely to come to this blow and counter-blow but to break through the dividing wall into the spiritual world. I can speak about these things only in principle here; you will find them described in detail in my books. Particularly in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and in the second part of my Occult Science, you will find all the details concerning what the soul must take upon itself in the way of inner activity and inner exercise (if I may use the expression) in order really to transform what is undifferentiated in the soul into spiritual organs able to behold the spiritual world.

A great deal is necessary, however, if an individual really wishes to make investigations on this path. So much is necessary just because in our age, due to the habits cultivated in the natural scientific sphere, in the sphere of the natural scientific world view, habits that are perfectly justified in their own field, a particular way of thinking has taken root in human life, a way that is opposed to the one leading to the spiritual world. Thus it goes without saying that from the side of natural science things are heard that demonstrate an utter lack of desire to know the actual facts about the spiritual world.

I will give just one example (as I have said, you can find more exact information in the books I have mentioned) of how the human being has to make every effort to acquire a totally different way of conceiving things. In ordinary life people are satisfied with concepts, with mental images of which it may be said that these concepts, these mental images are such that they offer a likeness to some external fact or object. This cannot satisfy the spiritual investigator. Even mental images, concepts, become something totally different in his soul from what they are due to modern habits of thinking. If I may use another comparison, I would like to show how the spiritual investigator stands today in relation to the world. Those who are materialists, spiritualists, pantheists, individualists, or monadists, and so on, all believe that in some way they can penetrate the world riddle. They try with definite mental images, concepts, to reach a picture of world processes. The spiritual investigator is totally unable to look on concepts in this way; his attitude toward them must be such that he is always clearly conscious of how, in a concept, in a mental image, he has nothing beyond what can be had in the outer sense world when, for example, one particular side of a tree or some other object is photographed and then another picture is taken from another side, from a third side, a fourth side, and so on. The pictures are different from one another. If combined mentally, they together present the tree as a formed mental image. But it can easily be said that one picture contradicts another.

Just consider how completely different an object looks when photographed from one side or another. The spiritual I investigator looks at the conceptions of pantheism, monadism, and so on as if they were simply different ways of looking at reality. Spiritual reality does not actually reveal itself at all to the life of mental images, the life of concepts, in such a way that it is possible to say that any one concept is a faithful image. We must always go all around the matter, forming manifold concepts from various sides. By this means we become capable of developing a much more flexible inner soul life than we are accustomed to when regarding the outer sense world. By doing this it becomes necessary to make our concepts far more alive. They are no longer simply images, but by being experienced they become much more alive than they are in ordinary life and for the things of ordinary life.

Perhaps you will understand me better if I describe it in the following way. Suppose you have a rose cut from the rose bush; you form your mental image of it. You are able to form this mental image yourself. You will often have the feeling about this mental image that it expresses something real for you, that the rose is something real. The spiritual investigator can never make any progress if he is satisfied with the mental image that the rose is something real. Pictured as a blossom on a short stalk, the rose is not real in itself. It can be real only when on the rose bush. The rose bush is something real. And the spiritual investigator must accustom himself to regarding every individual thing, to remaining conscious in what limited sense an issue is something real. People form mental images of these things, believing them to be something real. When the rose is in front of him on its stalk, the spiritual investigator must feel that it is not real; he must have a feeling for, an experience of, the degree of unreality contained in this rose as mere blossom.

By extending this to our observation of the whole world, however, the conceptual life itself is renewed, and we do not thereby get the crippled, dead mental images with which the modern natural scientific world view is satisfied; we get mental images that are living with the objects. It is true that in proceeding from the present habits of thinking, we at first experience a great deal of disappointment, disappointment that arises because what is experienced in this way differs a great deal from present habits of thinking. When speaking out of knowledge acquired in the spiritual world, much has to be said that seems paradoxical when compared with what is generally said and believed today.

A person today may be very learned in the sphere of physics, let us say; he may be an exceptionally learned person who quite rightly excites admiration by his erudition; but such an individual may work with clear concepts that have not been produced nor worked upon in accordance with what I have described, that is, without endowing the conceptual world with life. I have said something quite elementary, but this elementary statement must in the case of the spiritual investigator be extended over the whole observation of the world. I will offer an example. At the beginning of the century, Professor Dewar delivered a very important lecture in London. This lecture could be said to show in every sentence the great modern scholar who was as well acquainted with the conceptions of physics as a modern physicist can be. From his modern conceptions of physics, this scholar seeks to speak about the final condition of the Earth and about some future condition in which much of what is present with us today will have died away. He describes this correctly, because he bases his lecture on really well-founded hypotheses: he describes how one day after millions of years a condition of the earth will have to arise in which a great drop in temperature will occur; this can be well calculated, and this drop in temperature will bring about changes in certain substances. This can be calculated, and he describes how milk, for example, will not be able to maintain its fluid condition but will become solid; how the white of an egg smeared on a wall will become so luminous that people will be able to read a newspaper by its light alone, since so much light will come from the white of an egg; and many other such details are described. The consistency of things that can sustain hardly any weight today will be materially strengthened so that hundreds of pounds will be able to be supported by them. In short, Professor Dewar gives an imposing picture of the future condition of the earth. From the standpoint of physics there is nothing at all to be said against it, but for anyone who has taken living thinking into his soul, the matter has another aspect. When he turns to the conceptual forms of the kind given by the Professor, an example enters his mind that in its methods and manner of approach is very similar to the Professor's deductions and way of thinking.

Suppose, for example, we were to take a man of twenty-five and observe exactly how certain organs, the stomach for example, change from year to year in the course of two, three, four, five years (today such an observation can be managed; I need only remind you of X-rays). They take on different configurations. We can describe this in the same way that the physicist does when he compares successive conditions of the earth and then calculates what the earth will look like after millions of years. This can also be done in the case of the human being. The changes in the stomach or heart, for example, are observed, and a calculation then made of how this man will look after perhaps 200 years according to these alterations. We get just as well-founded a result if it is calculated what this man will look like after 200 years by taking into account all the individual perceptions. The only thing is that the man will have died long before this! He will no longer be there.

You see what I mean. What is important here is that in a particular case we know from direct experience that calculations of this kind do not correspond with reality, because, when 200 years have passed, the human body with its transformations will no longer be there; yet this same kind of calculation is made in connection with the earth. No heed is paid to the fact that after two million years the earth as a physical being will have been dead for a long time, will no longer be there. Thus the whole learned calculation about this condition has no value at all as a reality, because the reality it is applied to will no longer be there.

These matters are very far-reaching. In the case of the human being you can just as well calculate backward as forward; you might, in accordance with the small changes taking place in two years, calculate how a man looked 200 years ago, but he was not there then either! With this same method, however, the Kant-LaPlace theory was formulated. This theory assumes that there was once a condition of fog, a calculation that was based on our present condition. The calculation is entirely correct, the perceptions are good enough; it is just that the spiritual investigator becomes aware that at the time this primeval fog was supposed to be there, the earth was not yet born. The entire solar system did not yet exist.

I wanted to bring these calculations to your notice to show you how the entire inner life of soul must be raised out of abstractions, how it must immerse itself in a living reality, how mental images themselves must be living. In my book, The Riddle of Human Being, I have made a distinction between conceptions corresponding to reality and those corresponding to unreality. To put the matter briefly, the spiritual investigator must point out that his path is such that the means of knowledge that he uses must first be awakened, that he must transform his soul before being able to look into the spiritual world. Then the results take on a form enabling one to see that the spiritual investigator is not speculating as to the immortality of the soul or whether the soul goes through birth and death. His path of investigation leads him to the eternal in the human soul, to what goes through birth and death; the path shows him what lives as the eternal in the human being. He therefore seeks out the object, the thing, the being itself. If we reach the being, we can recognize its characteristics just as we recognize the color of a rose.

Hence it often appears as if the spiritual investigator were asserting that such-and-such is so. For when he presents evidence he must always indicate by what path he arrived at these things. He has to begin where the other science ends. Then, however, a real penetration is possible into spheres that may be said to take death as their starting point, just as natural scientific spheres take their start from birth and youth. We must simply be clear that this death is in no way merely the final event, as it is ordinarily regarded from the viewpoint of outer sense perception. It is rather something that has its part in existence in the same way that the forces called into life with birth have their part in existence. We do not meet death only through its taking hold of us as a one-time event; we carry the forces of death in us—destructive forces, forces that are continually destroying—just as we carry in us the forces of birth, the constructive forces that are given to us at birth.

To have real insight into this we have to be able to pursue research at a boundary between natural science and spiritual science. Today I am only able to cite the results of such research, of course; I only wish to arouse your interest. Were I to go into all the details of what I am suggesting, I would have to offer many lectures. If an individual is to pursue what has been suggested here, he must approach a boundary between natural science and spiritual science. It is widely believed today, and has been believed for some time, that the human nervous system, the human nerve apparatus, is simply an instrument of thinking, feeling, and willing, in short, an instrument for soul experiences, (Science today has for the most part gone beyond this belief, but the world view of the general public usually remains at the standpoint abandoned by science some decades before.) An individual who develops the soul organs—the eyes of the spirit, the ears of the spirit—as I have described at least in principle, comes to recognize the life of the soul.

Whoever really discovers this soul life knows that to call the brain an instrument of our thinking is much the same as to maintain the following. Let us say that I am walking over ground that has become sodden, and in it I leave my footprints. These footprints are found by someone else, who then wishes to explain them. How does he do this? He assumes that underneath in the earth all kinds of forces are surging up and down, and because they surge in this way they produce these footprints. Of course the forces in the earth have nothing to do with the fact that these footprints have been produced, for I myself left them there, but the traces I left can now be reflected upon. This is the way that physiologists today explain what goes on in the brain, what originates in the brain, because all thinking, all mental activity and feeling correspond to something in the nervous system. Just as my tracks correspond with my footsteps, so something actually in the brain corresponds with the impressions of the soul; but the soul has first to leave its imprint there. The earth is just as little an organ for my walking or footprints as the brain is the organ for processes of thinking or mental activity. And just as I cannot walk around without firm ground (I cannot walk on air, I need ground if I want to walk) so the brain is necessary; this is not, however, because it calls forth the soul element but because the soul element needs ground and footing upon which it expresses itself during the time that the human being is living in the body between birth and death. It therefore has nothing to do with all that.

The brilliantly intellectual natural science of today will come to full clarity when this revolution in thinking comes about to which I have referred here. This revolution is more radical than the transition to the Copernican world view from the world view held previously. In face of the real world view, however, it is as justifiable as the Copernican world view was in relation to what preceded it. When we have pressed forward on the path of investigation of the soul, we will find that the processes in the brain, in the nervous system, that correspond to the soul life are not constructive. They are not there so that the productive, growing, flourishing activity is present in the nervous system as it is in the rest of the organism. No! What the soul brings about in the nervous system is a destructive activity. During our waking consciousness outside sleep it is a destructive activity.

Only by virtue of the fact that our nervous system is inserted within us in such a way that it receives constant refreshment from the rest of the organism can there be constant compensation for the destructive, dissolving, disintegrating activity introduced into our nervous system by thinking. Destructive activity is there, activity qualitatively of the same nature as what the human being goes through when he dies, when the organism is completely dissolved. In our mental activity death is living in us continually. You might say that death lives in us continually, distributed atomistically, and that the one-time death that lays hold of us at the end of life is only the summation of what is continually working in us destructively. It is true that this is compensated for, but the compensation is such that in the end spontaneous death is evoked.

We must understand death as a force working in the organism, just as we understand the life forces. Look today at natural science, so thoroughly justified in its own sphere, and you will find that it looks only for the constructive forces; what is destructive eludes it. Hence external natural science is unable to observe what arises anew out of the destruction, not in this case of the body, for the bodily nature is destroyed, but of a soul and spiritual nature, now constructive. This aspect is always lost to observation, being accessible only to the kind of observation I have previously described. Then it becomes evident that, having meanwhile brought our life to this point, the whole activity of our soul does not work only in conjunction with the ground on which it has to develop and which, indeed, it acts upon destructively (in so far as the soul forms mental images, in so far as it is active); instead, the whole of our soul activity is attuned to a spiritual world always around us, in which we stand with our soul-spiritual element just as we stand in the physical, sense-perceptible world with our physical body. Spiritual science is thus striving for a real connection of the human being to the spiritual world that permeates everything physical to the actual, concrete, real spiritual world.

Then the possibility truly arises for a more far-reaching observation of how what is working and weaving within us as soul, working destructively within the limits I described, is a homogeneous whole. What I have called the development of the soul presses on from ordinary consciousness to clairvoyant consciousness. I have spoken about this in my book, The Riddle of Human Being. This clairvoyant consciousness creates the possibility of possessing Imaginative knowledge. This Imaginative knowledge does not yield what belongs to the outwardly perceptible; it yields to the human being himself (I would like to look away from the other world for the moment) what is not perceptible to his senses. To avoid misunderstanding I recently called what can be perceived at first by an awakened knowledge of this kind the body of formative forces. This is the super-sensible body of the human being, which is active throughout the whole course of our life, from birth, or let us say, conception, until our physical death. It also bears our memories, yet it stands in connection with a super-sensible entity, with a super-sensible outer world.

Thus, our sense life with the rest of its consciousness is there as a mere island, but around this island and even permeating it we have the relationship of the human body of formative forces to the super-sensible outer world. Here, it is true, we reach the point of bringing the whole conceptual world (not any different now from the way I have described it) into connection with the physical brain that provides the ground for all this; but we arrive at the insight that the body of formative forces is the carrier of human thoughts, that thoughts develop in this body of formative forces and that in thinking the human being lives in this body of formative forces.

It is different if we go on to another experience of the soul, namely to feeling. Our feeling, our emotions, our passions, stand in a different relationship to our life of soul from that of our thinking. The spiritual investigator finds that the thoughts we usually have are bound up with the body of formative forces. This does not apply, however, to our feelings, our emotions. Feelings and emotions live in us in a much more subconscious way. Thus they are connected with something far more all-encompassing than our life between birth and death. It is not as though the human being is without thoughts in the part of his life about which I am now speaking; all feelings are permeated by thoughts. But the thoughts by which feelings are permeated do not, as a rule, enter man's ordinary consciousness. They remain beneath the threshold of this consciousness. What surges up as feeling is penetrated by thoughts, but these thoughts are more far-reaching, for they are found only when an individual progresses in clairvoyant cognition, when he progresses to what I call the Inspired consciousness (I am not thinking of superstitious conceptions here). You may study the particulars of this in my books.

If we go deeply into what is actually sleeping in regard to ordinary Consciousness (in the same way that from going to sleep to awaking a person sleeps in regard to the ordinary images of the senses) we see that it surges up just as dreams surge up into our sleep. Feelings actually surge up from the innermost depths of the soul; it sounds strange, but it is so. But this deeper region of the soul that is accessible to Inspired knowledge is what lives between death and a new birth. It is what enters into connection with the physical through our being conceived or born, what goes through the portal of death and has a spiritual existence among other conditions until the human being is reborn. Whoever really looks into what is living in the world of feeling with Inspired knowledge sees the human being not only between birth and death but also during the time the soul undergoes between death and a new birth.

The matter is not quite so simple as this, however; it is indeed like this, but it is also shown how forces arise in the soul that make it possible to look upon the feelings, emotions, passions, that make it possible to live in them. Just as in the plant we see what has arisen through the forces of the seed, so we see something that has not arisen with our birth or conception but that has emerged from a spiritual world.

I know very well how many objections can be made to a conception of this kind by those who accept the natural scientific world view. Those who are familiar with this world view will find it easy to say, “Here he comes and like a dilettante describes how the aspects of the soul he wishes to encompass come from a spiritual world; he even describes their special configurations, the colors of the feelings and so on, as if, on the one hand, there were hints in these feelings concerning our life before birth and, on the other hand, something in these feelings that is like the seed of the plant, which will become the plant of the next year. Doesn't this man know,” people will say, “about the wonderful laws of heredity presented by natural science? Is he ignorant of everything that those who created the science of hereditary characteristics have brought about?”

Even if the facts indicated by natural science are entirely correct, it is nevertheless the case that concealed in the emergence of heredity are the forces through which we have been preparing ourselves for centuries and which we ourselves send down. From grandparents and parents, constellations are built up that finally lead to the material result with which we then sheathe ourselves when we leave the spiritual world to descend into the physical. Whoever really keeps in mind the wonderful results of modern research into heredity will find that what spiritual science finds out about the soul (yet in a quite different way, it might be said, in the entirely opposite way) will be fully confirmed by natural science, whereas what natural science itself says is definitely not confirmed in the least by natural science. I can only suggest this here. When we then enter the sphere referred to as that of the will, this totally eludes the contents of man's ordinary consciousness. What does a person know about the processes going on in him when the thought, I want something, shapes itself into a movement of the hand? The actual process of willing is asleep in the human being. Regarding the feelings and emotions it could at least be said that the human being dreams within the human being. This is the reason that the question of freedom is so difficult, because the will is sleeping in relation to the higher consciousness. We come to knowledge about what is going on in the will in clairvoyant consciousness only by reaching the stage of actual Intuitive consciousness. By this I do not mean the vague, everyday consciousness called intuitive, but rather what I refer to in my writings as one of the three stages: Imaginative, Inspired, and Intuitive cognition.

Here we come into the sphere of the will, into the realm that is supposed to live and work within us. This must first be drawn out of the deep regions of the soul. Then we find, however, that this element of the will is also permeated by thoughts, by the spiritual (in addition, the ordinary thought stands by itself). But in bearing the will within us, there works into this will something in addition to what we have experienced in the spiritual world in our feelings, working between death and a new birth. Something is active there that we have experienced in the preceding life on earth. The impulses of earlier earthly lives work into the will nature of the human being. In what we develop or what we cultivate in our present willing live the impulses for our lives on earth to come. For real spiritual science, then, the whole of human life separates into the lives lying between birth and death and those which, because all physical existence has to be built up out of the world, are experienced in far longer periods in the spiritual world. Out of such lives, out of repeated earthly lives, repeated spiritual lives, the complete human life is composed. This is not some fantasy, it is not a capricious thought, but rather something we find when we learn to turn the eye of the spirit to the eternal, the imperishable, in the human soul.

These things do not preclude human freedom. If I build a house this year in which I will live for the next two years, I will be a free man in this house despite having built it for myself. Human freedom is not precluded by this. One earthly life determines the other that follows. Only through a lack of understanding could this be represented as an infringement on the idea of human freedom.

Thus, in spiritual investigation by making death our point of departure, we gradually arrive at the spiritual facts. If in spiritual investigation one makes death the foundation, just as physical investigation is based on birth and embryonic life, this observation reveals the most varied things in individual detail. I will point to something specific here, because I would not like to remain with the indefinite but rather to quote concrete results of anthroposophical research. In the ordinary life of the spirit we are able to differentiate between the forcible entry of death due to an external cause and death that comes from within through illness or by reason of old age. We are therefore able to distinguish two different kinds of death.

Spiritual investigation that goes concretely into the nature of death discovers the following. Let us take as an example the entrance into life of violent death, be it through accident or some other cause. The entrance of such an event brings about an end to life in this earthly existence. The development of spirit consciousness for the spiritual world after death depends on this one-time entrance of death, just as the consciousness we are able to develop in life depends on the forces given us at birth (in the way that I have described). The Consciousness we develop after death is of a different kind. The consciousness developed here on earth stands on the ground of the nervous system, just as when I walk around on the ground my foundation is the ground. In the spiritual world the consciousness after death has different foundations, but it is definitely a consciousness. If a man dies a violent death this is not something that merely lays hold of his mental images. The mental activity of ordinary consciousness ceases with death, and another Consciousness begins, but this lays hold of his will which, as we have seen, passes over into the next earthly life. The spiritual investigator possesses the means to investigate what can arise in an earthly life if, in a previous earthly life, there has been a violent death.

Now when we speak of such things today, people will obviously condemn this way of speaking as foolish, childish, fantastic. Yet the results are attained just as scientifically (and it is only such results that I present) as the results of natural science. If a violent death intervenes in a life, it shows itself in the following life on earth, where its effect produces some kind of change of direction at a definite period in that life. Research is now being done concerning the soul life, but as a rule only the most external things are taken into consideration. In many human lives, at a particular moment, something enters that changes a person's whole destiny, bringing him into a different path in life in response to inner demands. In America they call these things “conversions,” wanting to have a name for such events, but we do not always need to think in terms of religion. A person on another path of life may be forced into a permanent change of the direction of his will. Such a radical change of the direction of his will has its origin in the violent death of his previous life. Concrete investigation reveals the tremendous importance of what happens at death for the middle of the next life. If death comes spontaneously from within through illness or old age, then it has more significance for the life between death and a new birth than for the next earthly life.

I would like to offer the following example so that you may see that I am not speaking about anything vague here. In fact, I am speaking about details arising in life's conditions that can be gained by definite perceptions. Spiritual investigation, which is something new even for those convinced of the immortality of the human soul, makes us aware that we must not speak in merely a general way about immortality. Instead, by grasping the eternal in the human soul, human life as such becomes comprehensible. All the strange processes that are observable if we have a sense for the course taken by the soul life, for the course of the soul life in the human being, all the wonderful events find their place if we know we are dealing with repeated earthly lives and repeated spiritual lives. In the spiritual world (I say this merely parenthetically) the human being lives with spiritual beings—not only other human beings who are closely connected with him by destiny and have also passed through the portal of death, but with other spiritual beings to whom he is related in the same way that on earth the human being is related to three kingdoms: the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. The spiritual investigator speaks of particular individual spirits, particular individual spiritual beings, belonging to a concrete, individualized spiritual world, just as here we speak of individualized plant beings, animal beings, and human beings, in so far as they are physical beings between birth and death. It can be shattering to people when knowledge itself approaches the human soul in a totally different way. It is difficult to speak about these things so that they arise out of the dim depths of the spirit in a new way.

From what I have said you will have seen that knowledge about the spiritual world can be acquired. This knowledge has profound significance for the human soul; it makes the soul something different, as it were. It lays hold of the life of the soul, regardless of whether one is a spiritual investigator or has merely heard and understood the results of spiritual investigation and has absorbed them. It is of no importance whether or not one does the research oneself; the result can be comprehensible just the same. Everything can be understood if we penetrate it with sufficient depth. We only need to have absorbed it. Then, however, when we have grasped it in its full essence, it enters the human soul life in such a way that one day it becomes more significant than all the other events of life.

A person may have difficulties, sorrows, that have shattered him, or joy that has elevated him, or some truly sublime experience. It is not necessary to be indifferent to such experiences to be a spiritual investigator, someone who knows the spirit; one can participate as fully with the feelings as other people do who are not investigators of the spirit. But when someone penetrates with his essential being into what is given the soul by spirit knowledge, and when he becomes capable of answering the question, “What are the effects upon the soul of these spiritual results?”—when a full answer is given to the question of what the soul has become through this spiritual knowledge, then this event becomes more important than anything else in destiny, more important than any of the other experiences of destiny that approach the human being. Not that the others become less significant, but this one becomes greater than the others. Knowledge itself then enters through the human soul life in accordance with destiny. If knowledge thus enters through the human soul life, he begins to understand human destiny as such. From this knowledge comes the light that illumines human destiny.

From this moment on, an individual can say this: that if one has this experience of destiny so purely in the spiritual in this way, it becomes clear how one is placed into life in accordance with destiny, how our destiny hangs on threads spun out of previous lives, previous earthly lives and lives between death and a new birth, which again spin themselves out of this life and into a following life. Such an individual goes on to say that ordinary consciousness only dreams through its destiny; ordinary consciousness endures its destiny without understanding it, just as one endures a dream. Clairvoyant consciousness to which one awakes, just as we awake from a dream to ordinary consciousness, acquires a new relationship to destiny. Destiny is recognized as taking part in all that our life embraces, in the life that goes through all our births and deaths.

This matter should not be grasped in a trivial way, as if the spiritual investigator were to say, “You yourself are the cause of your own misfortune.” That would simply betray a misunderstanding and would even be a slander of spiritual investigation. A misfortune may not have its source at all in the previous life. It may arise spontaneously and have its consequences only in the life to follow and also in the life between earthly lives. We can see again and again that out of misfortune, out of pain and suffering, emerges a consciousness of a very different form in the spiritual world, Meaning enters the whole of our life, however, when we learn to understand our destiny, which otherwise we only dream our way through.

One thing particularly stands out when we bear in mind this knowledge of the spirit. We can no longer say, “If, after death, the soul enters another life, we can wait until this happens. Here we take life as it is offered us in the physical body; we can wait for what comes after death.” The matter is a question of consciousness. We may be sure that what happens after death is connected with the life we undergo in the body. Just as in a certain sense we have the Consciousness of our ordinary waking condition by means of our body, so after death we have a Consciousness that is no longer spatial, no longer built up out of the nervous system, but built up out of what has to do with time, built up out of looking backward.

Just as our nervous system in a way is the buttress and counterpart to our ordinary consciousness between birth and death, so our consciousness in the spiritual world between death and a new birth is founded on what takes place here in our consciousness. Just as here we have the world around us, so when we are dead we have before us our life as the significant organ. Hence, a great deal depends upon our consciousness in the physical body, which is able to extend into the consciousness we have after death. An individual may be occupied exclusively with physical conceptions grasped by the senses, as often happens in the habitual thinking of the present time; he may take into his consciousness and also in his capacity of memory, in everything playing itself out in his soul, concerns exclusively having to do with ordinary life. Such an individual, however, is also building up a world for himself after death! The environment there is built out of what a person is inwardly. A person born physically in Europe cannot see America around him, and just as he receives what he is born into physically as his environment, so to a certain extent he determines the environment, the place of his existence, through what he has built up in his body.

Let us take an extreme case, though one unlikely to happen. Let us take the case of someone who fights against all super-sensible conceptions, who has become an atheist, someone who doesn't even have any inclination to occupy himself with religion. Now I know that I am saying something paradoxical here, but it is based on good foundations anthroposophically: such an individual condemns himself to remaining in the earthly sphere with his consciousness, whereas another individual who has absorbed spiritual conceptions is transposed to a spiritual environment. The one who has absorbed only sense-perceptible conceptions condemns himself to remaining in the sense-perceptible environment.

Now we can work properly in the physical body because our physical body is, as it were, a sheath protecting us against the environment. And though we can thus work properly in the physical body when we are present in the physical world, we cannot do so if we hold to the physical world after death. We become destructive if we have physical conceptions in our consciousness after death. In speaking of the problem of heredity, I intimated how, when the human being is in the spiritual world, his forces lay hold of the physical world. Whoever condemns himself, by reason of his merely physical consciousness, to hold to the physical world becomes the center of destructive forces that lay hold of what is happening in human life and in the rest of universal life. As long as we are in the body, we are only able to have thoughts based on the sense-perceptible, we are able to have only materialistic thoughts: the body is a defense.

But how much greater a defense than we imagine! It seems strange, but to anyone who perceives the spiritual world in all its connections, one thing is clear: if an individual were not shut off from the surrounding world by his senses, if the senses were not curbed so that in ordinary consciousness he is incapable of taking up living concepts but takes up only those that are lifeless and designed to prevent him from penetrating into the spiritual environment, if an individual were able to make his conceptions active directly and did not have them merely within him after things have already passed through the senses, then even here in the physical world, if he were to develop his conceptual life, his conceptions would have crippling, deadening effects. For these conceptions are in a certain way destructive of everything they lay hold of. Only because they are held back in us are those conceptions kept from being destructive. They destroy only when they come to expression in machines, in tools, which are also something dead taken from living nature. This indeed is only a picture, but one corresponding with a reality. If an individual enters the spiritual world with merely physical conceptions, he becomes a center of destruction.

Thus I have to bring a conception to your attention as an example of many others: we should not say that we can wait until after death, because it depends on a person's nature whether he develops conceptions of the sense world or of the super-sensible world, whether he prepares for his next life in this way or that. The next life is indeed a very different one, but it is evolved from our life here. This is the essential thing that has to be comprehended. In spiritual science, we encounter something different from what is surmised. For this reason I must still make a few remarks in closing.

The belief might easily arise that anyone now entering the spiritual world must unconditionally become a spiritual investigator himself. This is not necessarily so, although in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, I have described much of how the soul must transform itself in order really to be able to enter. And to a certain degree, everyone is able to do this today, but it need not be everyone. What a person develops regarding the soul element is a purely intimate concern; what arises from it, however, is the formation of concepts of the investigated truths. What the spiritual investigator can give is clothed in conceptions such as I have developed today. Then it can be shared. For what a person needs, it is quite immaterial whether things are investigated by himself or whether he accepts them from some other credible source. I am speaking here from a law of spiritual investigation. It is not important to investigate the things oneself. What is important is for us to have them within us, for us to have developed them within. Hence, we are in error if we believe that everyone has to become a spiritual investigator.

Today, however, the spiritual investigator has the obligation (as I myself have had the obligation) to render an account, as it were, of his path of research. This is due not only to the fact that everyone today can, to a certain extent, follow the path I have described without harm, but it is also because everyone is justified in asking, “How have you arrived at these results?” This is why I have described these things. I believe that even those who have no wish to become spiritual investigators will at least want to be convinced of how spiritual investigators arrive at the results that everyone needs today, the results of those who wish to lay the foundation for the life which must develop in human souls for human evolution today.

The time is now over during which, in ancient times, so much was held back regarding spiritual research that brought about the evolution of the soul. In those ancient times, to impart what was hidden was strictly forbidden. Even today, those who know of these mysteries of life (of which there are not just a few) still hold these things back. Whoever has learned about these things merely as a student from another teacher does not under any circumstances do well to pass them on. Today it is advisable to pass on only what an individual himself has discovered, the results only of his own investigations. These, however, can and must be put at the service of the rest of humanity.

Already from the few brief indications I was able to give today it can become evident what spiritual investigation can mean for the individual human being, but it is not only significant for the individual. And in order to address this other aspect in closing with at least a few words I would like to point to something that is taken into consideration only a little today. There is a curious phenomenon to which I would like to direct your attention in the following way. In the second half of the nineteenth century we have seen the rise of a certain natural scientific orientation: the explanation of living beings connected with the name Darwin. Enthusiastic scholarly investigators, enthusiastic students have carried these things through the second half of the nineteenth century. Maybe I have already remarked upon the occurrence of a curious fact. Already in the 1860's, under the guidance of Haeckel, there developed a powerful movement based on a world view. This movement wanted to overthrow everything old and to restructure the entire world view in accordance with Darwinistic concepts. Today there are still numerous people who emphasize how great and significant it would be if there were no longer a wisdom-filled world-guidance but instead if the evolution of everything could be explained out of mechanical forces in the sense of Darwinism.

In 1867 Eduard von Hartmann published his Philosophy of the Unconscious (Philosophie des Unbewussten) and turned against the purely external view of the world represented by Darwinism. He pointed to the necessity of inner forces, although he did so in an inadequate way, in a philosophical way (he did not yet have spiritual science). Naturally those who were enthusiastic about the rise of Darwinism were ready to say, “That philosopher is simply a dilettante; we don't need to pay any attention to him.” Counterattacks appeared in which the “dilettante” Eduard von Hartmann was ridiculed and which asserted that the true, educated natural scientist need not pay any attention to such things.

Then there appeared a publication by Anonymous, which brilliantly argued against the publication of Eduard von Hartmann. The natural scientists who all thought as they did were in full agreement with this publication because Eduard von Hartmann was completely contradicted in it. Everything that could possibly be gathered from the basis of natural science was there used by the anonymous author against Eduard von Hartmann just as today so much is brought up against spiritual science. This publication was received very favorably. Haeckel said, “For once a real natural scientist has written against this dilettante, Eduard von Hartmann; here one can see what a natural scientist is able to do. I myself could write no better. Let him identify himself and we will consider him as one of us.” To state it briefly, the natural scientists spread a lot of propaganda in relation to this publication, which they welcomed highly because it solidified their position. The publication was very soon sold out, and a second edition became necessary. There the author revealed himself: it was Eduard von Hartmann!

In that instance someone taught the world a necessary lesson. Whoever writes about spiritual science today and reads what is written against it could without much effort invent everything that is brought against spiritual science. Eduard von Hartmann was able himself to make all the objections that the natural scientists made against him—and he did so.

But I mention this only in introduction to my main point. Oskar Hertwig is one of the most important students of Haeckel who entered upon the industrious, reliable, and great path of natural scientific investigation. Last year Hertwig published a very beautiful book, The Evolution of the Organism. A Rebuttal to Darwin's Theory of Chance (Das Werden der Organismen. Eine Widerlegung von Darwins Zufallstheorie). In this book he points to issues that were already raised by Eduard von Hartmann. Such a matter is pretty much without precedent: already the generation immediately following, which still grew up under the master, had to get away from something that had been believed could build a whole world view; it had even been believed that it could provide elucidation of the spiritual world. A good Darwinist contradicts Darwinism! But he does still more, and that is what is actually important to me.

Oskar Hertwig writes at the conclusion of his superb and beautiful book that the kind of world view that Darwinism represented does not stand there merely as a theoretical edifice; rather it intervenes in the totality of life, encompassing also what people do, will, feel, and think. He says, “The interpretation of Darwin's teaching, which because of its vagueness can have such varied meanings, permitted also a very varied application to other realms of economic, social, and political life. It was possible, just as it was from the Delphic Oracles, to use what was said as desired for specific applications to social, political, health-related, medical, and other questions and to support one's own assertions by basing them on the Darwinistically restructured biology with its immutable natural laws. If these supposed laws are not actually laws, however, could there not exist social dangers—because of their many-sided application in other realms? We had better not believe that human society can for centuries use expressions like, ‘a struggle for existence,’ ‘survival of the fittest,’ ‘the most suitable,’ ‘the most useful,’ ‘perfection by selection,’ etc., applying them to the most varied realms of life, using these expressions like daily bread, without influencing in a deep and lasting way the entire direction of idea formation! The proof for this assertion could easily be demonstrated in many contemporary phenomena. For this very reason the decision concerning the truth or error of Darwinism reaches far beyond the confines of the biological sciences.”

What arises in such a theory shows itself everywhere in life. Then a question arises from the realm of spiritual science that also intervenes in life. We live today in a sad time, in a tragic time for humanity. It is a time that has developed out of human conceptions, out of human ideas. Whoever studies interrelationships with the help of spiritual science knows about the connection of what we encounter externally today with what humanity is now tragically experiencing. A great deal is being experienced; people believe that they can encompass reality with their concepts, but they do not encompass it. And because they do not encompass it, because with natural scientific concepts reality can never be encompassed, reality grows over their head and shows them that human beings can take part in such events but that the result is the chaos by which we are surrounded today.

Spiritual science does not arise only through an inner necessity, though this is also true. It would have arisen through this inner necessity even if the outer events did not stand there as a mighty, powerful sign. Such signs are there, however, from the other side: that the old world views are great in the natural sciences but can never intervene formatively in the social, legislative, political spheres in the world, that reality grows beyond human beings, if that is what they want. These mighty signs point to the need for spiritual science, which seeks concepts that correspond with reality, concepts derived from reality and that are therefore also capable of carrying the world in the social and political realms. No matter how much one believes that the concepts customary outside spiritual science today will enable us to emerge out of the chaos, it will not happen; for within the reality the spirit prevails. And because the human being himself intervenes with his actions in this reality, in the social, in the political life, he requires the conceptions, the feelings, the will impulses that are drawn from the spirit in order to come to fruitful concepts in these realms. In the future politics and social science will need something for which only spiritual science can provide the foundation. This is what is particularly important for contemporary history.

In this lecture, which has already been long enough, I can only hope to offer a few impulses. I only wish to point out that what appears today as spiritual science in a systematic order is wanted by the best. If it were only up to me, I would not give a special name to this spiritual science. For more than thirty years I have been working on the greater and greater elaboration of the conceptions regarding reality that Goethe acquired in his magnificent theory of metamorphosis, in which he had already attempted to make the concept living as opposed to dead. At that time this was only possible in an elementary way. If one does not consider Goethe simply as a historical figure, however, if one considers him still as a contemporary, then today the Goethean teaching of metamorphosis transforms itself into what I call living concepts, which then find their way into spiritual science. Goetheanism is the term I would most like to use for what I mean by spiritual scientific investigation, because it is based on sound foundations of a grasp of reality as Goethe wanted it.

And the building in Dornach that is to be dedicated to this spiritual investigation, and through which this spiritual investigation has become more well known than it would have without the building, I would like most to call the Goetheanum, so that one would see that what arises as spiritual investigation today stands fully in the midst of the healthy process of the evolution of humanity. Certainly many today who wish to acknowledge the Goethean way of looking at the world will still say that Goethe was one who recognized nature as the highest above all and who also permitted the spirit to emerge out of nature. Already as a very young man, Goethe said, “Gedacht hat sie und sinnt beständig” (“She did think and ponders incessantly”), ponders incessantly although not as man but as nature. Even if one is a spiritual investigator one can agree with the kind of naturalism that, like Goethe, thinks of nature as permeated by spirit. And those who always believe that one must stop at the boundaries of knowledge, that one can't get any further there, can be repudiated with Goethe's words. Permit me, therefore, as I conclude here, to add the words that Goethe used concerning another accomplished investigator who represented the later Kantian view:

Into the inner being of nature—
No created spirit penetrates.
Blissful those to whom she only
Reveals the outer shell!

Ins Innere der Natur—
Dringt kein erschaffner Geist
Glueckselig, wem sie nur
Die aeussere Schale weist!

Next to these words Goethe placed others that show how well Goethe knew that when the human being awakes the spirit within himself, he also finds the spirit in the world and himself as spirit:

Into the inner being of nature—
No created spirit penetrates.
Blissful those to whom she only
Reveals the outer shell!
This I hear repeated for sixty years
And damn it but secretly—
Nature has neither core nor shell,
She is everything at once.
Above all simply examine yourself
To see whether you yourself are core or shell!

Ins Innere der Natur—
Dringt kein erschaffner Geist.
Glueckselig, wem sie nur
Die aeussere Schale weist!—
So hoer ich schon an die sechzig Jahre wiederholen
Und fluche darauf—aber verstojileri,—
Natur hat weder Kern noch Schale,
A lies ist sie mit einemmale,
Dich pruefe du nur zu allermeist,
Ob du selbst Kern oder Schale seist!

Spiritual science wishes to work toward the human being learning to examine himself as to whether he is core or shell. And he is core if he grasps himself in his full reality. If he grasps himself as core, then he also penetrates to the spirit of nature. Then in the evolution of humanity in relation to spiritual science something occurs that is similar to when Copernicus pointed from the visible to the invisible, even of this visible itself.

For the super-sensible, however, humanity will have to stir itself to grasp this super-sensible within itself. To do this one does not need to become a spiritual investigator. One needs, however, to remove all prejudices that place themselves before the soul if one wishes to understand what spiritual science intends to say out of such a Goethean attitude.

I wished to offer today only a few impulses to stimulate you further. From this point of view it is always possible at least to stimulate something, but if one wanted to go into all the details, many lectures would be needed. But I believe these few comments will have sufficed to show that something needs to be drawn out of the evolutionary process of humanity, something that will first awaken the soul to full life. No one needs to believe that this will shrivel the soul, that it will kill off anything, not even the religious life. As Goethe said:

Whoever possesses Science and Art,
Has also Religion,
Whoever possesses neither of the two,
Had better have Religion!

Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt
Hat auch Religion,
Werjene beiden nicht besitzt,
Der habe Religion!

So one can say, as the modern way of thinking is evolving, whoever finds spiritual scientific paths will also find the way to true religious life; whoever does not find the spiritual scientific path will be in danger of losing also the religious path so necessary for the future of humanity!

The first two lectures on spiritual science that I was able to give here this winter were more about the way in which spiritual knowledge is acquired. They were about those forces in the human soul that generally still oppose this spiritual knowledge in our present time, are hostile to it, and the like.

This evening, I would like to take the liberty of saying a few words, even if they are naturally limited in a short lecture, about the relationship between spiritual science and various religious and social currents in our present-day culture. I may remark that, as is natural, I can only advocate spiritual scientific research, which was the subject of the first two lectures here, and that we should carefully avoid confusing this spiritual scientific research with all kinds of other currents that call themselves theosophical or similar and are active in the present day. Generally speaking, it is not pleasant to talk about such currents, but perhaps it is not necessary after these lectures. We live in a time in which the human soul, which is only a little aware of what is going on around it, must undoubtedly feel how it is increasingly being forced to step out of the instinctive life of the soul and to live more and more consciously and recognizably in that which one can call the demands of the world, namely the cultural world, on man and his soul development. We need not look back to the very early days of human cultural development to be convinced, very soon indeed, if we are unprejudiced, that in those earlier times man was able to live much more instinctively, much more, one might say, naturally, than in our own time. This is the basis for what we experience as the progressive aspect of our time. The human soul is increasingly compelled to think and imagine about what, if the expression may be used, was instilled into it by inner, soul-spiritual forces that remain more indeterminate, so that they could express themselves more instinctively.

In a genuine and true sense, spiritual science seeks to serve this human soul, which is striving for maturity and full consciousness. But since it must do so from a point of view that, at least initially, is seemingly in stark contrast to the traditional habits of thought and ways of thinking for many souls, it is, on the other hand, quite natural, as has already been emphasized, that the general consciousness revolts against what spiritual science wants to bring into the present, so that it really corresponds not only to what is present, so to speak, on the surface of the soul, but to what, in the deep longings of the soul, weaves and strives towards the human future.

For some, what spiritual science has to say must seem radically different in a much more profound sense than, for example, what was radically different in the dawn of the new spiritual life that the scientific way of thinking brought. To a much greater extent, man of today must feel that spiritual science has apparently — and this must always be emphasized — pulled the ground from under his feet, in contrast to the time when Copernicus, with his new physical worldview, shook what people had previously believed, namely that the earth, along with man, was stationary in space. That people had to accept the new truth, which was new for that time, they felt it somewhat as if the ground on which they stood quietly had been pulled out from under their feet. If one felt something physically at that time, one can certainly feel it today to an increased extent, if one wants to hold on to old habits of thinking, when spiritual research speaks of repeated earthly lives and says that the spiritual spheres can only be explored if one frees the soul from the experiences in the body. Spiritual science requires a soul observation that is free from all sense perception and free from the brain-bound thinking.

It is natural that in contrast to this, many a person feels insecure who has always sought the safe ground of human perception and observation, human philosophizing, in that the soul makes use of the senses and the intellect that is bound to the brain. For the latter, a feeling of insecurity arises, as if the ground were being pulled from under his feet, only to a much greater extent than was the case at that time in the dawn of the new spiritual life.

Anyone who is even slightly familiar with the meaning and spirit of spiritual science cannot but be repeatedly amazed at certain objections and attacks that come particularly from one side, namely from the religious denominations of the most diverse orientations. One must be all the more amazed at this, although it is understandable, since attacks also come from materialistic and other scientific sides. One must be all the more surprised by the attacks that come from religious denominations. In the face of these attacks, it must first be emphasized, albeit this has already been done, in a few words, what the actual stumbling block is for many souls when they encounter spiritual science.

Spiritual science wants to be a continuation of the scientific way of thinking in the most eminent sense, but since it deals with the spiritual realm, it must overcome this scientific way of thinking. It must, so to speak, develop in a different way what the scientific way of thinking has achieved in its field, because spiritual research deals with the realm of the spirit. Recent spiritual science shows that with the means available to man when he wants to explore the natural world and fathom the great truths of nature, he cannot enter the spiritual world with these powers and soul abilities. It is evident that no insight into the spiritual world is possible if man wishes to make use only of those soul faculties that can be developed when man, from waking to sleeping, is in the resulting state of consciousness, that man makes use of the senses of his body, of thinking, feeling and willing, for which he needs his nervous system and his brain.

That, in addition to the soul faculties that man must apply precisely in the realm of external sensual life and also in the realm of scientific research, that in addition to these faculties, other faculties slumber in the soul that can be developed if man does something to further them – this is what is objectionable for many minds of the present day. Many minds of the present time do not even consider the fact that in a certain respect a similar change takes place in miniature, in the primitive, in man in the course of his entirely natural life, as is required by spiritual research if it is to develop in accordance with it.

Every human being develops soul powers in the first years of their childhood that they could not get through life with if they remained throughout their whole life as they were in their first childhood years. The fact that we, as adults, find our way in life, that we can position ourselves in life in such a way that we develop an appropriate relationship with other people and with the world as a whole, depends on the abilities we have in early childhood being developed further, and on the abilities of childhood being raised to a higher level. Just as the forces slumbering in the human being in the first years of life are developed in such a way that the human being can orient themselves in their sensory world, so too, if the human being really wants to recognize, look at and perceive the spiritual world, a change must take place in them in later life. And through exercises, the principle of which has been explained in the last lectures and in my books Occult Science and The Threshold of the Spiritual World, and so on, through such exercises the human being is able to transform the abilities of the soul, which he naturally has without doing anything, into abilities through which he can see into the spiritual world. And this transformation is connected with the fact that man learns to really draw his soul out of the body.

In this way the human being comes to the clear concept of consciously distinguishing between two different states of life. The one state is that of ordinary waking. There one knows that one must make use of one's senses. And anyone who has even slightly penetrated the way of thinking in modern times knows that he must make use of his brain and nervous system-bound thought life in order to orient himself in the outside world. Consciousness is such that everything of the soul is directly connected with the body, that the body is contained within the soul and spirit. Through the effort of the powers of thinking, feeling and will, which the human being must develop in certain spiritual exercises, he is able to concentrate and strengthen his soul forces in such a way that the soul detaches itself from the body. He is able to truly experience that moment which is otherwise also experienced, but unconsciously: the moment of leaving the physical body. This moment is otherwise experienced - but unconsciously - when falling asleep. The person still perceives how the impressions and inner activity fade away. Slowly he then passes into unconsciousness. In a similar way, someone who has strengthened their thinking, feeling and willing by doing certain spiritual and soul exercises feels how they can make their soul so strong that it feels: I am still something even when I no longer move my hands, no longer use my eyes and ears, I am still something within myself.

These soul-spiritual exercises are based on the fact that the deeper forces are brought out, through which the soul is also something when it renounces the bodily impressions and the feeling of itself, by exerting the will in the limbs of the body. Through these exercises, the soul is able to leave the body. The body is then an external thing for the soul, like the other things outside our body. In the last lectures, I used the comparison of a spiritual chemistry: just as hydrogen is extracted chemically as water, so the soul experiences itself as a spiritual-soul being, and so it will withdraw from the body. Then it knows itself in a world of spiritual processes and entities, just as it knows itself in a world of sensory processes and entities as long as it uses the senses and the intellect, which is bound to the brain.

I have already pointed out that in the presence of some people it is still forgiven to refer to the spirit in a general way; but it is no longer forgiven when the spiritual world, in which the soul lives, is referred to in such a way that this world, like the sensory world, consists of individual, very concrete processes and entities. It is difficult to forgive when one does not dream oneself into a general, hazy, pantheistic spiritual world, but enters into a world of spiritual diversity. And yet this inner strengthening of the soul leads to it becoming free of the body, to the human being really entering into concrete spiritual worlds.

I do not wish to speak in abstractions, but rather to draw attention to what the spiritual researcher experiences in concrete terms. Through devotion to very specific thoughts that he thinks, he experiences the feelings and will impulses crowding together, and in so doing, he causes the soul to become free from the body. He experiences this, as it were, while awake, which is otherwise only experienced in a dormant and unconscious state. At first he feels how the outer sensory world, the world of colors, light and sounds, fades away as he falls asleep. Then he feels that his thoughts, of which he has rightly said, “I grasp these sensory impressions with them,” become as it were detached from him. And a new world opens up before him.

Man pours out his thoughts about the new world. And when the impressions of the sensory world disappear, then man knows: Yes, so far, where I have seen the carpet of the sensory world around me in my state of consciousness, as it were, something like a veil was woven for me. Now that this veil is gone, a new world is opening up for me. When you live consciously in the body-free soul, you not only experience the disappearance of the sensory world, but something like a veil also disappears, which is felt as if it has covered a world of the spiritual. You then experience a world of spiritual beings that emerge when the veil of the sensual tears.

When the veil disappears, one experiences beings that are one degree higher than the human soul in the order of the world. One then becomes familiar with a feeling that enriches the soul infinitely. One then feels: When you look around here in the world of the senses, you have the beings of the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms beneath you. The highest realm, which you have around you, is on the same level as you. You immerse yourself in a world that comes to you, and as a soul you know: what lies in your depths, what you are not aware of in your ordinary existence, what does not enter into your self-awareness, that is something through which you will be enriched. It is a world of spiritual beings that stand above you in the order of the world, that are not embodied in the body, but that are “ensouled” and within which you yourself are when you have become a body-free soul.

That is one thing. A second thing that comes to you when the veil of the sensual world is blown away is that you perceive what you otherwise call natural laws in a completely different way. The laws of nature, which one comprehends in the sense of being through thoughts, are no longer laws of nature when one perceives outside of the body; the thoughts are gone, they have united with spiritual beings that stand above man. What we experience in the laws of nature, which we previously perceived through thoughts, is now life itself. These are spiritual beings, which, when one has attained the relevant level of knowledge, stand before the soul of man as real as animals, plants and minerals otherwise stand before the senses of man. One familiarizes oneself with these entities, in relation to which one says to oneself: the laws of nature show us something like silhouettes, like abstractions of them. But what is present in the laws of nature when the veil is lifted are high spiritual entities. In spiritual science, these entities, which constitute the form of the laws of nature, are called the spirits of form because they instruct everything in the world to take on form through their spiritual power, out of the life of the world. Everything that exists in minerals, in animals and plants as form is the result of the activity of these entities.

When the physical body of a person is at rest, but in such a way that consciousness is maintained, when every will that only acts through limbs, that only acts through the body, when every such will is paralyzed, when it rests as it then does in sleep, when the person his physical body lies motionless in bed, when the will has been weakened by the application of soul power, but the person does not sink into unconsciousness but remains conscious, then he realizes: there is something within you that is the giver of your will, that radiates into your will. Your will is permeated and permeated by exalted spirits that permeate and interweave the world. One is tempted to call them spirits of the will. By paralyzing the will within himself, man discovers the spirits of the will.

In this way he lives into the spiritual world in the same way as when he opens his eyes at birth and becomes familiar with a world that he perceives through his senses. In this way he lives, when the ordinary conscious powers of the soul are rejected, into a spiritual world. This living into comes about through man's submerging with his own soul into the spirit, as modern natural science submerges into nature in its experiments. What has led to the great triumphs in natural science? It has separated observation from experiment. In the experiment, the natural event is detached from the immediate impression it makes on the senses. It is true that one must observe, but in the experiment one tries to penetrate into what lies behind the sense impressions in the physical. We dive down into nature, and every natural science experiment demands that what is to be seen be made independent of the subjective impressions of the senses.

Spiritual science goes to the other side. It makes the human being himself the subject of experimentation. It does not do it, as it is done in some spiritualistic circles, where experiments are done on people in the manner of observation. Spiritual science knows that man can only make himself a tool to find his way into the spiritual world. And so it shows how the physical and perceptible detaches itself from the soul-spiritual in man, and how he comes to be among spirits and souls under spirits and souls.

All this, which has now been discussed, is offensive to many minds of the present time. It is understandable that it must have this effect. Why is it so offensive? I cannot now go into what I have already mentioned in the last lectures. Only those who train themselves spiritually can perceive in the spiritual world, but in order to take in and understand what the spiritual researcher writes in books after he has researched it, one does not need to be a spiritual researcher. You have to be a painter to paint a picture, but not to understand it. It would be sad if only painters could understand paintings. In the same way, you don't have to be a spiritual researcher to understand what spiritual research has to say.

More and more, the world will realize that even if only a few people can be spiritual researchers – after all, my books explain how everyone can become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent – the world will be directly and convincingly affected by what these few have to say and by the way they express it. And the time will come when even non-spiritual researchers will crave descriptions of the spiritual world. Human souls are designed for truth, not error. To see in the spiritual world, one must consciously look into it, one must be a spiritual researcher. To comprehend, one need not look into it, one need only accept fully and without prejudice what the spiritual researcher has to say.

In this way, the human soul will be directly grasped by what the spiritual researcher has to say. In the depths of the human soul lies a hidden language. This language only needs to be developed. It slumbers in every human soul. It approaches the human soul directly and is awakened by the spiritual truths that the spiritual researcher brings from the spiritual world. The spiritual researcher is understood more and more through the intimate, profound language that the human soul has for the spirit.

Above all, in this way, the human being gets to know his own soul. He comes to know that it is possible to speak about immortality, about that which goes beyond the world of the senses, in a truly scientific way, when, through the development of his spiritual powers, he comes to find the soul core, which can detach itself from the physical and then lives on as a living being when the human being passes through the gate of death and hands over the physical to the elements.

To get to know the immortality of the soul consciously, one must follow the paths that lead to this human soul. In the ordinary person, the properties are as hidden as the properties of hydrogen in water. Therefore, he cannot approach the soul with any philosophy, not with mere concepts. He can certainly determine all kinds of things theoretically about what is called immortality, but it is only possible to speak knowledgeably about immortality when one really understands the nature of the soul. Then it will be shown that our whole life on earth between birth and death presents itself in such a way that we really develop something with what we carry in our soul, which the spiritual researcher only extracts from the body, but which always remains independent of the physical. as the natural scientist discovers the living germ in the plant as it grows from the root to the leaves and blossoms and fruits, which gradually develops and which, when the plant fades, offers the prospect of a new plant life.

In this way, the spiritual researcher senses the soul, and discovers in the human being that which grows inwardly, spiritually and soulfully in the whole of life between birth and death, and which then, as a living soul, passes through the portal of death and enters a spiritual world, undergoing the events that are spiritual and that in turn lead to repeated earthly lives. What passes through the human being in the form of a disembodied soul must go through repeated earthly lives. And what passes through death in this way is truly discovered by the spiritual researcher. But it is discovered by the fact that the ground is actually pulled from the knowledge on which one initially wants to rely. Just as Copernicus undermined the basis of the sensory evidence on which people believed they saw everything correctly, so spiritual science undermines the belief that the soul, if it only detaches itself, if it itself becomes a spiritual-soul being, can really see into the spiritual world.

This is the offensive thing about spiritual science, that it likewise repudiates all knowledge of which man is so proud and which has led to such great triumphs in external science, just as Copernicus repudiated the evidence of the senses. And this is why man recoils from this spiritual science, because it says: Not one power of knowledge, which is already there, but one that must be carefully prepared and acquired, is alone capable of looking into the spiritual world. Man recoils from this. For everything that demands of man to go further than he already is contradicts the view, often unconsciously slumbering deep in the soul, that man, as he is, is already very perfect, that he has no need at all to go beyond himself.

Spiritual science knows that it is necessary to go beyond the ordinary powers of perception, just as a child must go beyond its powers of perception if it is to orient itself in the world. Basically, we know that some children are uncomfortable when we want to lift them beyond their innate powers of perception. Children just don't have the stubbornness and resistance that people have at a later age. If you say to a person, “If you want to get close to the spirit, you have to believe in other forces than your ordinary power of perception,” then it contradicts human vanity, the belief in the perfection of the human being. But no matter how much one resists recognizing the truth of what has just been said, it is the vanity and discomfort of a new, unfamiliar way of thinking that prevents people from approaching spiritual-scientific interests.

And basically, this is what has always held back or tried to hold back all real progress in human cultural life; it is only more so in the case of spiritual science. Those who oppose spiritual research today, whether from a liberal or orthodox point of view, are truly the successors of the opponents of Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno. Just as the opponents at that time believed that everything that had previously been recognized as true by people was now being called into question and was in danger, so it is also believed today to an increased extent of spiritual science. And this, and nothing else, is actually the basis of the attacks that are made on spiritual science, particularly by religious communities. Here one must address the question: Why is it that religious communities stubbornly resist the progressive development of humanity? How could it be that in the time of Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno, certain people believed that religion was endangered by the advent of these scientific discoveries? How can it be that the successors of these people today believe that religion is endangered by spiritual science?

When one hears how the confessor of this or that religious community rebels, one might say with all the weapons at his disposal, against something like spiritual science, I am repeatedly reminded of a priest who was elected rector of a large university not so long ago. He gave his inaugural address about Galileo Galilei. He was a priest and at the same time a great scholar, an amiable scholar. He, the priest, said at the time, contrary to the views of his church community, with regard to new cultural achievements in the field of the mind: At the time when Copernicus and Galileo appeared, people who judged the matter from the perspective of their religious community in a shortsighted way believed that such discoveries would endanger the worship of God and religious sentiment. Today, we should have outgrown such beliefs. Today, it should be clear that every new insight into the great truths of existence can only serve to reveal the holiness and glory of the divine order of the world. These are the words of a man who, as a Catholic priest, understood the core of his religious community better than those who today want to be the successors of those who fought Galilei and Copernicus. That he said it in the spirit of his religious community was clear to anyone who sensed in him something that was not entirely genuine, as he held on to it throughout his life. And even in his dying hour, he held fast to what he had said. He spoke in his hour of death, saying that he wanted to die as a faithful son of his church. One must sympathize, without perhaps standing on the ground of this priest, with what true, inner connection with the core and soul of a religious community means, if one at the same time finds the possibility and ability to speak, as he does, about the progress of humanity.

Every religious community, more or less in the course of its existence, allies itself with certain views, with the insights of its time, because it has to work. Thus, as is quite natural, the Christian religion has associated itself with the ideas of the pre-Copernican world view. But the fact that it associated itself with them was an expression of its time. Those who said that religion would be endangered if something different were now known about the world view were short-sighted. Those who said: The God we carry in our hearts, the Christ with whom we feel, the religious feeling that runs through us, that will be effective, however the rest of the world view may be shaped. And it is still somewhat understandable when today's religious communities behave antagonistically towards materialistic world views that believe they are building on the basis of science, but which are usually far removed from true knowledge of nature.

But one cannot understand at all why individual representatives of these religious denominations are so terribly opposed to spiritual research, although deeply-disposed natural scientists – one need only think of Galilei, or, if one does not want to mention him, Copernicus, one could also mention a whole series of profound naturalists and scholars of the nineteenth century who really carried the call of natural science throughout the world - although more deeply inclined naturalists were basically always pious. It was said of Newton that he did not pronounce the name of God without baring his head. Those who today behave as materialists and say that the observation of nature forbids them to believe in the idea of God rely on him. Newton was so attached to it that he never bared his head wherever he was when he uttered the name of God, he, the alleged founder of the movement that today wants to be monists in the materialistic sense.

Nevertheless, one can understand how opponents can arise. From a superficial observation of nature, some may believe that science demands to deny immortality, to deny God - superficially considered, in that one has detached from sense perception that which is hidden in external nature. By refraining from this hidden knowledge and arming the senses to observe external nature, science has grown. It will always come from superficial observation of nature, from dilettantish knowledge of nature, if one believes oneself forced into atheism, into a lack of religion. This can only come from a misunderstanding of things. This can lead to those who feel religiously inclined rebelling against what arises from a non-religious observation of nature. However, spiritual science affects the mind differently than a worldview that claims to be based on pure natural science. People very quickly understand how this spiritual science works if they just open themselves up to it a little. Anyone who engages with spiritual science is presented with a set of concepts and ideas about the world and its processes to which the soul truly belongs. If you absorb these concepts and ideas, they are of a completely different strength than the ideas of external natural science. These ideas can, so to speak, solve many external puzzles, but they will no longer reach what sits in the depths of the soul. They will no longer stir the inner being into activity, they leave the depths of the soul barren. But spiritual science, with its concepts, reaches into the soul, into the mind, into the will and feeling of the soul, permeates and spiritualizes all impulses, even all affects and passions of the soul. It interweaves and lives through the whole soul. And the consequence of this living and interweaving of the soul through spiritual science is that the soul of the human being is given a religious bent. Spiritual science wants to be a real, genuine science, and has no desire to found a new religion or to compete with an old religion. It wants to be anything but a new religious sect. It wants to be a science for the soul, just as natural science was a science for the external world of nature from the moment its time had come. It wants to be scientific, but the way it approaches the soul means that the soul is tuned to religion from the outset. You can be a great natural scientist, you can get to know the full extent of natural laws, and you can be irreligious, an irreligious person. One does not become a spiritual researcher by having already prepared this or that religious sentiment, but by carrying the scientific mind and spirit upwards. But if one is attracted by spiritual science, one becomes interested in spiritual science, then one necessarily becomes a religiously minded person, a religiously minded soul.

If the religious communities of the present day were to sense correctly what is happening through spiritual science, they would not fight it so much. They would say: Thank God that a world view is emerging that gives souls a sense of religion. It will bring the soul what so many are being deprived of through misunderstood natural science. One can misunderstand natural science, but no-one will misunderstand spiritual science in an anti-religious sense. The souls of the various communities should rejoice that a spiritual power is emerging that will once again give a religious outlook to souls that have become irreligious as a result of so many things in the present day. And it is strange that this trend, which occurs in spiritual science and gives religious spirit to souls, is not felt. It is not felt because people are not at all inclined to learn from history. They have been able to fight and even burn the representatives of the scientific world view; it has prevailed. You may fight the proponents of the spiritual-scientific worldview; it will prevail. It is only surprising that the members of religious societies do not ask themselves: Must we go through the same thing with the spiritual-scientific achievements as our ancestors did with the natural-scientific ones? Could we not learn something from history after all? The fact that humanity has still not progressed far enough to learn from history, in turn, gives rise to the question: Why, for example, is there opposition to spiritual science?

It must be said that many people certainly have their conception of God, their religious feelings, but they have forgotten how to rejoice, to feel joy when a time shines forth anew that deepens these religious feelings. They are too lazy to go along with this new time because of it. Let us look at individual aspects. Spiritual science fully recognizes the Christ whom the true Christian worships. Spiritual science even deepens it, going along with the course of development of humanity, saying that all human development before the Mystery of Golgotha pointed to the event of Golgotha, that through this event a spirit that was previously extraterrestrial entered the earth to live and remain on earth with people, albeit invisibly.

Spiritual science shows that something tremendous happened at that event, to which the Bible so alludes, namely at the event at Golgotha. At that time, a spirit that had previously only worked into humanity from outside the earth entered into earthly activity through the human being as if through a gate. Spiritual science says: What was not previously in the spiritual atmosphere of the earth has been in the earthly atmosphere since that time. Christ has entered the earthly atmosphere. Spiritual science says: A cosmic being has become an earthly being. And in the man Jesus of Nazareth it lived in order to become a companion of men. Spiritual science says: The Christ, who from the birth of Jesus of Nazareth hovered around this Jesus from the outside, so to speak, entered into the depths of his soul at his baptism in the Jordan.

Now the opponents come and say: You teach a Christ idea that we cannot recognize when you claim that until the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, Jesus was merely preparing to receive the Christ, while the Bible prescribes that the Christ being was connected with the Jesus of Nazareth from the beginning. The Bible will also teach something different in this regard. It will prove the spiritual scientific interpretation right, because it can no longer do otherwise. Today, insightful translators translate a passage from the [Gospel of] Luke:

This is my beloved son, today I have begotten him.

that is, immersed in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. In the face of the all-encompassing grandeur of this Christ-idea, which can truly grasp the soul in its very depths, opponents may say that it is not Christian, that one should not present the Christ in this way, because you do not seek the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth before his baptism in the Jordan.

When you look at a child and say: From the moment the child learns to say “I”, that is, from the point in time up to which you remember later in life, from that moment on, something new has entered the child has entered into the child – will it be possible to come and say: You must not call the child, who is called Paul, Paul before the moment when the child learns to say 'I', because something significant happened at that moment? Does the fact that the significance of the baptism in the Jordan has been recognized in spiritual scientific terms, that something that previously surrounded Jesus of Nazareth has entered into his inner being and become one with this inner being, change anything about what is now Christian? No, that is the right thing, that all the conceptions of the soul, all the deep feelings, all the union with Christ Jesus, that only some Christian soul can feel, are preserved, and that something is added which, because times progress, makes the idea of Christ appear even greater, even more glorious. So when spiritual science has to say to those who approach it from a Christian point of view: what you demand to believe, spiritual science does not deny it, spiritual science admits that what you believe can be believed. Only something is added, which we believe must be added because the Christ has said:

I am with you until the end of the world.

He is alive among us, and He reveals Himself continually in the souls of people today. It is He who introduces us to spiritual science, and through Him we feel connected to spiritual science. The adherents of this spiritual teaching do not want to say: You should believe everything we ask you to believe; that is not the case. Spiritual science does not deny anything, it adds something. It does not demand that something be believed that it believes, but it does demand that what it does not believe but knows be not believed but known. It conveys that the idea of Christ grows and advances in the world. How does it do that?

Let us assume that it could have happened that, before Columbus discovered America, people would have come to him and said: There are supposed to be other areas of the earth? That cannot be possible, because the sun shines so warmly on our areas of the earth. If it had to shine on other areas, it would not have enough warmth left for our areas. But others would have said to Columbus: Of course, the sun shines on other parts of the earth as well as on ours. Those who are so weak in their conception of God that they believe this conception to be endangered when people discover a new area, a new physical fact, are the same as those who do not believe the sun is strong enough to shine on a newly discovered land. But anyone who wants to live with his Christ, who is sufficiently imbued with his religious feeling, knows that this concept of divinity, this connection with the Christ, this religious feeling will shine over all areas, physical and spiritual, that man will ever discover. Must we not conclude how weak-minded people's concept of God is, who believe that this concept of Christ is endangered because they cannot accept that in this newly discovered spiritual realm the sun of the spirit will shine as it shines in the old realm?

So it will be more and more recognized that opposition arises from religiosity that has become weak, from religiosity that has become fearful, as in the various religious denominations towards the discoveries in the field of spiritual life. We should recognize much more where we actually stand with our religious life. Do we not see that it is becoming more and more fragmented? Do we not see how all possible shades, all possible religious denominations, are spreading from the most orthodox right to the most radical left? Do we not see these representatives fighting each other more and more? If you look at these beliefs from a spiritual scientific point of view, you can ask: where do these antagonisms come from?

If you go into this hatred, many things turn out to be so weak. To mention just one example, which I have already pointed out, a few months ago a Free-Religious preacher said that children should not be taught religion because it is against nature. You just have to let children grow up on their own, so they do not come by themselves to religious ideas. It is therefore not natural for them to develop out of themselves. Therefore, they should not be taught artificially. This saying seems convincing to a great many souls through logic. But if one asks what this logic is based on, one must say that it is a weak, one-sided logic. Man is not so constituted that he can do everything new out of himself. The same logic also speaks quite precisely against a child learning to speak. Logic only needs to be sharpened a little, then we can see so clearly what is actually taking place at a deeper level. For it is not logic that is fighting against logic. What is fighting from the far right to the far left are passions, human temperaments - that is what human souls carry within them in the way of affects and passions before they are illuminated and fully enkindled by Christ. When the various groups in our present time confront each other in this way in the field of religious world view, they reveal how our fragmented time must long for what spiritual science can give it.

Spiritual science does not found a new religion. It says what it has to say about the world of the spirit, in the same way that natural science speaks about external nature. Spiritual science speaks about Christ in the way one must speak about him when one teaches the soul, which has become free, to look into spiritual realms and there find the effective Christ. Spiritual science will increasingly provide the disputing parties with the basis for their mutual understanding.

The disputing parties in religious communities today are like people who, at the time of Copernicus, argued about what he had to say about the solar system. The dispute will end as soon as there is a positive basis. The task and mission of spiritual science will be to create a positive foundation, to really say how things are in the spiritual world, about which one could only form a basis from the groping feeling of the soul's indeterminacy. And anyone who looks into the souls of human beings knows that it is a task longed for by them.

Thus spiritual science will not throw a new bone of contention into the souls of the present, but will bring about the peace that can truly live in souls by balancing them. In this way it will give shape to the striving of the human soul. These souls will thereby have a basis for combating, out of their own intuitive perception, that which, through the character of the individual, tends too much towards liberalism or orthodoxy, so that people would have to fight out of this temperament. Spiritual science will bring the positive, the truly spiritual, in contrast to what is only sensed.

And when we consider this, we will recognize how spiritual science truly relates to the various religious denominations. We might say that the individual religious parties are separated from one another by a stream that they cannot yet cross. Spiritual science is the bridge that leads across this stream. It has something to say to everyone, just as it has something to say to anyone who has looked beyond a certain radius. On the one hand, it speaks to those who have retained their faith, and on the other hand, it speaks to those whose religious feeling is seeking a new form. It shows that in the end it can unite everyone. This is how it will be with spiritual science: it has to find the positive.

And this positive aspect it has to contribute not only from the religious point of view, but also to the social currents. Oh, these social currents! When we look through these social currents with understanding, we see that people are basically quite helpless when we try to think more deeply, when we try to form ideas about a possible future for humanity in the social sphere and about the effect of these social currents.

One example among many can be cited in our present time, and in this way we can fathom from the most diverse intellectual and physical causes what the social organization has actually brought about. Sombart wrote a book some time ago to make it clear how this capitalist spirit that dominates the present has emerged. He is not a fanatical representative of the capitalist spirit. Sombart spent his whole life trying to understand what has brought man, as he now stands in economic life, into this economic life. He actually found, to a certain extent, beautiful explanations about capitalism, which has taken hold of the human soul. After the author has endeavored to gather together everything that can provide insight into what our organization has created, he concludes his book – tellingly, it is a thick book – as follows:

What will happen when the capitalist spirit has ceased to have its present resilience is not our concern here. Perhaps the giant

– by which he means the present economic order

– will then, when it has gone blind, be trained to pull a democratic cultural cart. Or perhaps it will be the twilight of the gods. [...]

Who knows?

This is how the attempt presents itself in today's current, the attempt to know how people could rise from the present economic order to a fully human existence. So strong is this “who knows” that it calls the spirit of this economic order a “blind giant”. And when we survey the various attempts to understand intellectually what is to become of our present economic system, which is not national in any way, which is taking hold of the whole earth beyond all countries, we see how, again from left and right, from radicalism and conservatism, the most diverse attempts are being made to move the whole.

Sombart's book contains certain references to what I have dared to say for many years in terms of spiritual science. He describes what has happened since ancient times to bring about the present order, how present-day humanity is determined in the field of economic life as by the command of its soul: “This you shall do, that you shall leave.” He describes how man is seized by an impersonal organism, how he is driven into the wheelwork. This observer of contemporary social life describes it vividly and with expertise. And if you look at this social life in detail, then we already have knowledge of this being seized by people who are right in the middle of this life.

Just read the autobiography of a great railroad king. You will always find the same tone, the same type of man who, for example, says:

My [...] intention was limited to acquiring enough through the construction of railways to buy a larger estate, then to retire from business and, when the opportunity arose, to accept a mandate for the House of Representatives and devote myself entirely to parliamentary work. That is what he wanted.

That's what his soul told him. He threw himself into this life. He realized: if I throw myself into this one endeavor, I'm bound to lose. Only by using these funds for a next venture, only by letting myself be dragged from one into the other, only in this way can it be done. - By plunging into a second, a third, a fourth venture and being driven from one into the other, he is driven ever more sharply into it.

Man cannot follow his own path. Anyone who looks at economic life knows that it always depends on how the affairs of the present are integrated into the objective order. Man is plunged into this objective order, seized by it, and his personal life is completely eliminated, so that Sombart can say: People have lost various things over time. If you look at today's entrepreneur, you have to say that he has given up the last thing that could still separate him from this objective economic machine. He has lost all subjective feeling and all his love for the work in the company itself. What used to be directed at completely different things has been poured into the company. Man no longer knows anything about himself, but has become homeless in his work. That is not a word of mine, but of Sombart.

This is the social current of the present: the soul is homeless in modern life, and is it only the case for those who work in leading entrepreneurial positions? No! This social spirit of the present has taken hold of everyone, so that not only the entrepreneur, but also those who work as simple laborers in the economic life do not feel connected to what they work. If, in the course of work, the question of wages or something else is a cause of disagreement, then it is not work that is at the center of interest, but the question that has been raised by our economic system. This interest is intertwined with work. This plays a role in contemporary social life. In this area, the present is certainly moving forward.

All that I have just said has not been said in order to criticize. The way things have become, they had to become – they have become necessary. But what is characteristic is what man has to say about this order. The individual human being cannot really live in a way that befits human dignity, but rather says: Today I will have to do this or that, tomorrow is none of my business; let the “blind giant” do later what cannot be known, that is none of our business. Sombart says even more. I mention him not precisely because he wrote this book, but because what he says is typical. Sombart says: This social order, this economic order has come to the point where we see it taking hold of people, making them spiritually homeless, throwing them into the wheels of industry, mercilessly throwing them in. And now a very characteristic word! He says: And what means do we actually have to counter this? Labor protection laws, homeland protection laws and the like. Means that make one shudder when they are set up. But – as he puts it – no Weimar-Königsberg doctrine of wisdom will ever change this course of the economic order. – Weimar-Königsberg [means]: a wisdom that could emanate from Goethe's or Kant's world view.

What is expressed in such knowledge? Something that should actually only surprise us when so few people today are moved by it, are disturbed by it. How do such people relate to the current social trends? It can be said that at this stage of development, individuality has become detached from people. Today, we can no longer say: the human being calculates in his business; he plunges in, it calculates, it counts, the capital flows from one place to another.

What does man say when he does not want to behave prudishly in the face of the 'fact' that it must go on and on like this? What does man say when he examines the efforts made so far to gain scientific insight into human life, to gain a worldview? Man says: No Weimar wisdom, no Königsberg wisdom will change anything. Why not? Because man shuts himself off from that wisdom that comes from spiritual science and which has quite different powers to gain access to human souls. For what is meant in Sombart's sense as Weimar, as Goethean wisdom, as Kantian wisdom, is void. But spiritual science has not only concepts, not only ideas; it is something that takes hold of the whole person and brings him back to himself.

Spiritual science alone will have the strength and power to strengthen human souls within themselves, to take hold of them in such a way that these human souls can find themselves again, after they had to lose themselves in the spirit of the economic order of the new age. This spirit of the economic order was so strong that it could make man a stranger to himself. The spirit of spiritual science will be so strong that it will take hold of the soul, that it will offer the soul its spiritual and soul home in the hustle and bustle of the modern economic order. Man has been numbed by the economic order, so that he must speak of it as of the “blind giant” of which he does not know what it will bring. Spiritual science will open the power of the soul to see, which will grip people so that it becomes their home, so that they can become glowing and spiritualized through what they do on this earth.

Such a thing can still be little understood by people of the present time. And what is not understood is most often met with hostility. If you do not understand something, you are its opponent. That is the easiest thing. Learning to understand is more difficult. Laughing and not understanding is easier. And it is precisely in the realm of antagonism that some people have gathered in relation to the building we are trying to establish as a place for the humanities. This place is already proving to be something special in what is new in our spiritual life, in that people are trying to find names for it from all possible angles of the old. Maps have already been shown on which the building is called “Anthroposophical Temple under Construction”. It will not be a temple, but a name is needed. It will be no more a temple than anthroposophy wants to be a new religion or the founding of a sect. If one wants a name, one can say: it will be a “Free University for Spiritual Science”. But for the reasons that have been given, it will have nothing anti-religious about it; it will not be an opponent of religion, but this college will have religiously minded souls within its walls. For through what has been explained, souls are so attracted by spiritual science that they are religiously minded.

But without striving for religion, religion is particularly protected by spiritual science, and souls are again led to understand and recognize the greatness of their religion. And many a soul that may have been alienated from the religious mood by education, that is, by that which lives outside of religion, will be won again for a sure conception of God and Christ through what is taught in this religious college, is shown. We do not undertake to build a church or a temple; but what we build, what we want: just as there are laboratories and cabinets for the physical, so we will build a laboratory, a cabinet for research into spiritual life. What we want will be an image of this spiritual endeavor in its entire configuration and in its entire design. Those who have envisaged what has just been said about the relationship between spiritual science and the social currents of the present will understand that something like this must come into being.

When buildings are erected on a large scale in which such a spiritual foundation extends to the last detail, to the last edge, and when the souls, strengthened by spiritual science, do not face it as something they do not understand, then the human souls who have not found their heaven on the socially configured earth will combine love with their work. Then we will not ask: What will become of the “blind giant?” but rather: What will become of this human soul, attuned to religious spiritual science? And we know: Our conception of God, our religious feeling is so strong that this soul will carry it over into the future. We do not ask: Who knows what will happen then? We see the well-founded knowledge that our soul passes through death, that this soul founds a new life for itself on earth, that it will carry what it acquires through death into the spiritual world, so that it will work from the spiritual world again before the soul reappears on earth. We do not say: Who knows what the future will bring? We seek to acquire in the present that which offers a guarantee that the future of the human soul will be such that one cannot say, through the stupefaction of social life, that man has lost his home. Rather, one will then be able to say: No matter how much the capitalist system spreads, no matter how much it numbs people, the human soul will find itself and will know how firmly it is rooted in the soil of its original spiritual life. It will not live in a world led by a “blind giant”, but in a world in which it can see and in which its economic system can also see. This will give it well-founded hope for the future, because the soul itself provides the building blocks for the construction of this hope. This may be said to the social movement.

This spiritual science will show anyone who takes even a little time to familiarize themselves with it that it is in search of the path that the human soul traverses from the beginning to the end of life. Spiritual science speaks of the path along which man walks towards his future. Spiritual science speaks of truth, not only of a truth of external impressions that arise through sensory perception, but of that truth that is experienced inwardly by the soul in such a way that it feels itself to be a spiritual citizen of the soul in that world. In that world, Christ can be found directly. Many a spirit in the present seeks the present Christ, but it only comes to yearning, it only speaks of it.

It is Christ who harmonizes. He will find the new harmony with the religion of old Europe, he will give the souls to themselves. Anyone who reflects must find that there is a spiritual connection between all things. And that which is subject to an external power today must long for the direct living presence of Christ. Spiritual science points out that the living Christ will maintain the order of the world as long as earthly time lasts. Spiritual science points to the Christ that the soul needs if it wants to feel truly strengthened, and to whom it turns in times of need and danger. Spiritual science imparts this Christ. It grasps the world in truth by allowing the soul to experience the truth. In this way, truth itself comes to life, so that the dead abstract truth is so enlivened that the whole human being is grasped by it.

While today's economic system has killed the human being and thrown him out of his homeland, spiritual science returns him to his living homeland. It has the way, the way that the soul had previously lost and had to take a different one instead. The soul seeks truth and will grasp it directly, so that it does not feel separate from life but connected to it. The path, the truth and the life shine forth for spiritual research. And just as it earnestly seeks these three, so it is also aware that it will find them. And it also finds the one who said that he is what it seeks. No matter how the opponents of this spiritual research fight it, whatever arguments they put forward, spiritual research points to the truth and the life through what lives in its adherents, who can only come to this adherence through their own power of judgment, through what lives in them and what they strive for. And so, no matter what the opponents of religious denominations may say, those who honestly and sincerely seek the path to the spiritual realm, and who strive for it in the same way as the adherents of spiritual research, need have no fear. They will find, in the right sense, in the sense in which souls must reveal it today, the one who said:

I am the way, the truth and the life.

And no matter how powerful the voices may become that rise up against spiritual research, In the knowledge that it is always seeking the Way, the Truth and the Life and is thus directly aware of the connection with the One who was the Way, the Truth and the Life, in this knowledge it becomes bold and free, but also aware of its glory, in modesty and humility it can always answer anyone – even those who say that spiritual science is looking for a false Christ – We seek the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Whatever He says, we know that we may express ourselves freely and honestly to everyone: We follow Him in our own way, which we believe gives souls their new home on earth. We follow Him, He calls us, He will lead us.