The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In this [German] Edition the verses are given as Rudolf Steiner spoke them during the Christmas Conference of 1923, as shown by the complete and reliable record in shorthand made by Helene Finckh. Previous editions [in German] contained variations in some of the verses, especially in the rendering of 25 December. This is explained as follows:

Rudolf Steiner gave the verses in two versions, both of which are recorded in his own handwriting (see Facsimiles 1 and 4 in the Supplement). The first version was used during the Conference. The second version was made for the printed record in the report ‘Die Bildung der Allgemeinen Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft durch die Weihnachts-tagung 1923’ (The Formation of the General Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Conference of 1923) in the first number of Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht. Nachrichten für deren Mitglieder (What is Happening in the Anthroposophical Society. News for Members) of 13 January 1924. In this second version there are certain divergences from the text as spoken during the Conference. The most important of these are that the hierarchies are not named but approached under a general designation, and that the Rosicrucian motto is given in German and not in Latin.

The reason which moved Rudolf Steiner to make this alteration was given on a number of occasions by Marie Steiner, and recorded by one of her colleagues, Günther Schubert, as follows: ‘She spoke repeatedly about her memory of the great difficulty Rudolf Steiner experienced in reaching the decision to publish the verses of the 1923 laying of the Foundation Stone. In the end he toned down the direct approach to the hierarchies by making the salutation more abstract. He wanted this toned-down version to be the one used exclusively within members' circles too, for he said that there was a law attached to esoteric mantrams of such a cultic nature: The force with which they return equal to that with which they are sent forth, and it is therefore necessary to ask oneself whether one will be strong enough to endure this.’

Marie Steiner originally wanted to take this into account when she published this record of the Christmas Foundation Meeting. However, it was only possible in respect of the words spoken on 25 December, for on 29 December the call to the hierarchies by name was included in Rudolf Steiner's subsequent discussion of the ‘rhythms’. The relevant lines were not spoken on the other days.

In the present [German] edition the verses, including that of 25 December, are given as they were spoken and recorded in the shorthand report.

When Rudolf Steiner, in 1909, delivered the lectures published here in book form before the General Assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society in Berlin, he intended them, as he expressed it, as a strengthening of the foundations of the European spiritual-scientific movement that he led. Such a strengthening, substantiated by cognition and minutely verified, had become indispensable in view of certain trends on the part of the Anglo-Indian theosophical movement that, fed on oriental occultism, failed to grasp the true spiritual life of the Occident in its essence and content. It saw the aberrations of materialistic civilization without understanding their deeper significance. It believed it could lead Europeans back to the sources of primeval wisdom, ignoring the historical evolution of Western peoples and their own particular tasks. It set up the ideal of an unworldly theosophy, a God-wisdom such as was sought with profound devotion and sacrificial ardor, through meditation and deeply spiritual ecstasy, by the German mystics in the Middle Ages and in the early dawn of modern times. But this goal was unattainable for the great masses of humanity; it could not be popularized without becoming shoddy.

True, the homeless souls of our day, suffocating in the close atmosphere of materialism, found hope in this oriental theosophy, but the path they discovered proved to be a blind alley. Critical European thinking with its demand for analysis and synthesis could not be satisfied with endless dogmatizing and the recounting of wonderful happenings; it wanted a consistently thought-out sequence of cause and effect, of becoming and dying within a series of ascending metamorphoses, up to the goal of higher development. The intensified Western sense of personality could not simply accept the statement of a cycle of events run off in an endless monotony of repetition, lacking all deeper significance, aiming only at the ultimate liberation from existence. As the European felt it, Creation would reveal itself by sending forth rays to a focal point, unite with it, and emerge in new raiment with added import, endlessly evolving new shapes and forms of life. This focal point of all evolution could be envisioned only in the power of the ego. Divine ego had permeated life; then came the time for the human ego—that drop from the ocean of the divine ego-being—to possess itself. Through transformation and according to laws governing earth-life, it had to be shaped and harmonized, to return eventually as an individual ego to the divine ego, retaining all it had achieved, in freedom uniting its will with the divine will, guided by knowledge and clear vision to a desire for this most exalted reunion. The human ego cannot escape from itself, cannot extinguish itself. It must seek and purify itself in eternal striving; during this process of awakening it must gradually redeem and lead back to the spirit the world of dross sloughed off during billions of years of ever new transformations. Failing this, it will fall a prey to the world of demons who will cast it back among the dross.

The task of present-day man is to seize hold consciously of this ego, which for eons has worked upon its sheaths and its essence. With the help of such remnants of the power of thought as remain after centuries of abstract thinking, and after the obscuration suffered by its living force through the shortsightedness of a mind fed on mere sense illusions, it must win back to itself; this task lends highest significance to human life that appears again and again in new incarnations. This is the path by which man, entrusted by Divinity with his freedom, gradually transcends the limits of an earth-bound mind and reaches his highest goal: to become once more the expression of the divine ego by returning to the spirit. It is the task of the Occident to lead the individual ego toward this goal by way of tireless research and free personal activity. Not flight from individualism expressed in personality, as Buddhism defines the principle of redemption, and as Neo-Buddhism tries seductively to dangle it before a weary Occident. No; it is a question of liberating the individual ego, for the time being enmeshed in personality; of the awakening of its own powers strengthened through active effort, so that it may become a fully conscious instrument of the divine will, which it recognizes—an instrument capable of collaborating with this divine will toward the divine goal. In spite of its connection with a theosophical current looking to the past and fraught with orientalism, anthroposophy has set up and clearly defined this way as indispensable. At the decisive turning point in human evolution—there where the descent of the divine ego to the human ego halted and the reascent commenced—anthroposophy points to the light streaming from the Mystery of Christ's human incarnation and His death of sacrifice.

In order that man might consciously achieve his human status, might learn to know the world and himself, might become ripe to grasp the concept of Divinity, this anthroposophical middle way from earth to the Divinity had to be cleared. The human being—of the earth, earthy, and torn two ways—can grasp this way only by the greatest effort of all the forces of his being. The attainment of communion with God by isolated, surpassing pioneers transcending their epoch—that does not suffice. If all humanity was to be led toward this goal, and thus the imminent danger of sinking into the subhuman be escaped, it was necessary for one to come who was able to point out this middle way and render it practicable for others: the way from the human to the divine Being, through the “Know thyself.”

The time has come for all humanity to become conscious of the old Mystery word. To bring this about, human personality, torn from its roots, had to undertake the long and arduous pilgrimage through the rough scrub of critical thinking by an intellect divorced from the spirit, down into the aberrations of materialistic obtuseness, and up to the portal of our mighty technical discoveries, at which the powers of the underworld are already knocking. This is the realm of the elementals opening up between spirit and nature. It is sending up forces whose incalculable, demoniacal efficacy remains un-dreamed of by the discoverers of their first manifestations; they will not be able to gauge it until they learn to penetrate the world of spirit. To do this they must first learn to know the human being—themselves. Anthroposophy can lead us to this goal by the path of serious work; without it we will know neither the abyss nor heaven, both of which are hidden in the human being. Know man; only then will you be able to travel the path that redeems hell and attains to heaven.

This road to a comprehension of the world and of man through knowledge starts in the cool region of philosophical thinking, which must confront life's enigmas with clearly defined concepts. Those whose souls are winged by the grace of direct feeling may find this road arduous and almost superfluous, yet it is a necessary one in our time. Mystical contemplation alone can no longer satisfy us in our search for life's purpose.

Rudolf Steiner smoothed this road by first creating the atmosphere that warms our heart and lifts up our spirit, thus clearing our vision for the heights of true theosophy and the wisdom of the Gospels. But he did not save us the effort, the climb up those steep steps to the peaks of knowledge. That is proved by the expositions set forth in this book. They are a vital component part of those publications of Rudolf Steiner that deal with the theory of knowledge, and they are important as well for a realistic establishment of the historic events that constitute the frame of his work.

Rudolf Steiner had already been active for seven years along the lines of the anthroposophic spiritual current that he had inaugurated. He had been called, begged for assistance, by members of the theosophical movement who felt strongly that something more was necessary to quench their thirst for knowledge—above all, an access to Christianity that could satisfy their thinking and their feeling. Rudolf Steiner was ready to give this, to illuminate the Occident's task in this spirit. It was upon these conditions—the assurance, on the part of the leading theosophists, of a totally non-dogmatic freedom of action and speech—that he consented to become the leader of the German branches. In this way seven years passed, the last two of which were darkly overcast by a suddenly arising dogmatic intolerance among the leaders of the Anglo-Indian current, who in no uncertain terms evinced their intention to render the spirit of the Occident pliant to their will. Rudolf Steiner wished to meet such difficulties solely on a basis of the forces of cognition, and in the general assemblies of the German Society he aimed to provide for his listeners ever firmer foundations for comprehending each case in point. At the same time he stressed the cyclical course of events that stems from something deeper than is apparent to superficial thinking. Probably none but a blunt-minded materialist will still refuse to see the cyclic significance of the number seven, which keeps recurring in countless images, symbolizing what is transitory, and playing so great a rôle in the evolution, not only of man but of humanity, as well as in its reflections, the historical events.

The unfolding of the consciousness soul in man commences as a rule after the completion of his twenty-eighth year, and something similar takes place in the organism of a human community. Now, as we are publishing these lectures, delivered over a period of three years before the General Assemblies of the Society, it is not without interest to continue with the indications given by Rudolf Steiner in the opening words of the first lecture. He said that the seventh anniversary of the founding of the Society furnished the right occasion for a more comprehensive presentation of anthroposophy, such as he would endeavor to give in the ensuing lectures, and he reminded his hearers that at the Foundation meeting, seven years before, he had already spoken on the subject of “Anthroposophy,” thus indicating the direction his work was to take.

The second seven-year cycle that followed witnessed the expression of the spiritual struggle arising from the refusal of the orientalizing Anglo-Indian Theosophical Society to abandon its intention of winning over the Occident to its spiritual creed. When it was no longer possible to pass up the ramparts of Christianity with a shrug, the Society created from its midst an Ersatz-savior for the souls longing for Christian truth: the Indian lad, Krishnamurti. This led to the secession of the more serious members of the theosophical movement, and to the independent Anthroposophical Society.

In 1916, at the termination of Rudolf Steiner's second cycle of activity in behalf of the spiritual rejuvenation of the Occident in a manner according with its own premises, Europe was ablaze in the abysmal flames of the world war. Upon the hills of Dornach, in Switzerland, arose the Goetheanum, center of activity for the representatives of nineteen nations who gave what they had in the name of humanity. This gave a strong impetus to the artistic element, while other departments of the work suffered through the obstacles imposed by the war. In view of her fourteen years' collaboration with Rudolf Steiner in building up the Society, the writer of these lines may be permitted to mention that this was the occasion of her resignation from the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society, and that from then on she devoted herself more intensively to the artistic tasks. Along with this step, Rudolf Steiner, as whose executive it had been the writer's privilege to serve, transferred the leadership of the Society to the Vorstand officiating in Germany. This arrangement lasted until Christmas, 1923, when he founded the Society anew under the name of the General Anthroposophical Society, with its seat at the Goetheanum in Switzerland, and he undertook the leadership himself, with a Vorstand recruited in Dornach.

By Christmas, 1930, the fourth seven-year cycle had run its course. Rudolf Steiner had departed this earth shortly after that memorable refoundation, over which he was destined to preside but one year. Then Albert Steffen, the great poet and dramatist, became the recognized Head of the Anthroposophical Society. Albert Steffen who, together with those responsible for carrying on the spirit of the movement as it had been entrusted to them by Rudolf Steiner, suffered a period of harrowing inner struggle before this apparently obvious step could be taken. Spiritual necessities, as manifested in their earthly reflection, create many trials that must be converted into forces of consciousness. It is along such paths that we can achieve an individualized community-consciousness, and the fourth seven-year cycle was characterized by a struggle for just that end.

Now we have entered the fifth epoch of our anthroposophic life. May it see the grasping of this community-consciousness by wide-awake ego forces, in order that the purpose may be fulfilled that is inseparably linked with the anthroposophical movement for the spiritualization of humanity! Anthroposophy is a way of cognition that would lead the spiritual nature of man to the spiritual nature of the universe.

This way is that of a modern science of initiation. It is not our intention to found a new religion, but rather, we aim to serve as the advance guard of a crusade to enkindle in man the rousing force of the ego. In the face of all struggles and difficulties, we as anthroposophists strive for wisdom in truth.

These lectures on Anthroposophy as here published are reproduced, more than is usually the case, in a certain abbreviated form, for no shorthand version was available—only longhand notes. In spite of this fact, no anthroposophist will fail to recognize the value of these expositions. The two cycles on Psychosophy and Pneumatosophy are here given accurately from shorthand reports. The question of omitting the poems arose. [Cf. footnote, pp. 67 and 118.] They have but a loose connection with the text and in a sense were called forth by the occasion of the General Assembly. This, however, would have necessitated an adaptation of the text, and that was above all things to be avoided. As it is, the character of the original has been retained intact. In addition to its spontaneity it thus has a certain historical value, and this will also serve as an excuse for the inevitable deficiencies in the notes.

Thus, we offer this book to the public as an expression of the living word of that leader of humanity, so little understood, so greatly feared by his adversaries, who was the embodiment of kindness, wisdom and active force in our midst, and who created the conditions for the regeneration of Europe.

This volume is part of the series of “Writings and Lectures on the History of the Anthroposophical Movement and the Anthroposophical Society,” in Rudolf Steiner's collected works (Gesamtausgabe). In it, Rudolf Steiner expresses his views on a personal attack on himself that took place in the summer of 1915. Serious accusations had been leveled against him from within the circle of members who had come together around the Goetheanum that was then being built and known as the Johannesbau. He felt that a thorough clarification was in order and spared no one in analyzing and assessing the case. To gain a clear picture of the situation, it is suggested that readers refer to Part Two for details as they read Part One.

In general, Rudolf Steiner ignored the “mystical eccentricities” of psychologically unstable personalities that are inevitably attracted to spiritual communities. He considered them harmless as long as the community saw them for what they were. However, he had already had to experience on several occasions that members with neurotic tendencies were seen as “apostles,” as “beings of a higher sort” by other members of the Society, and the 1915 case was so serious that he felt compelled to ask, “[Are we] allowed to tolerate the fact that our Society and our entire movement are constantly being endangered by all kinds of pathological cases?” (August 22, 1915, see p. 145).

The addresses and comments collected in this volume were intended to lay the groundwork for assessing the case. Rudolf Steiner felt the need to not only expose the subjective roots of the incident, but also to place it in an objective context from a spiritual scientific point of view. Therefore, these lectures have a certain fundamental significance in addition to their import for the history of the Anthroposophical Society. The crisis that came to a head in the summer of 1915 was already looming at Christmas of 1914 and lasted through the fall of 1915. Thus, many if not all of the lectures given in Dornach in 1915 relate to it in some way. In particular, see the volumes:

Wege der geistigen Erkenntnis und der Erneuerung künstlerischer Weltanschauung (“Paths to Spiritual Knowledge and Renewal of Art Philosophy”), GA 161, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1980).

Kunst- und Lebensfragen im Lichte der Geisteswissenschaft (“Questions of Art and Life in Light of Spiritual Science”), GA 162, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1985).

Chance, Providence and Necessity, GA 163, (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1988).

Der Wert des Denkens far eine den Menschen befriedigende Weltanschauung. Das Verhdltnis der Geisteswissenschaft zur Naturwissenschaft (“Thinking's Value for a Humanly Satisfying World View: The Relationship of Spiritual Science to Natural Science”), GA 164, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1984).

Die okkulte Bewegung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert und ihre Beziehung zur Weltkultur (“The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century and Its Relationship to World Culture”), GA 254 (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1986).

The contents of this book are selected from the matter of Rudolf Steiner's Esoteric School. The School remained in existence for ten years from 1904 to 1914, when the outbreak of the First World War prevented its continuance. During that period Rudolf Steiner was still within the Theosophical Society, and he used the words `theosophy' and `theosophical', though always (as he tells us in his Autobiography) in the direction in which his anthroposophical spiritual science had from the first been pointing. After the lapse of a further ten years, when he went on to found the General Anthroposophical Society and himself became its President, his esoteric guidance of those members who sought it was continued on a somewhat different footing, in closer association with the organization and direction of the Society.

The institution of the Esoteric School in 1904 had been quickly followed by publishing descriptions of the path which pupils should follow, in the book Theosophy, in the series of Essays, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved? (first published in book form in 1909), and also in Occult Science: an Outline, which appeared early in 1910. A description of the basic conditions for inner development, particularly of the `subsidiary exercises', is also to be found in these books, and after their publication Rudolf Steiner sometimes alluded to such exercises by reference to them. In Chapter V of Occult Science: an Outline (`Knowledge of Higher Worlds. Concerning Initiation') he lays down as follows the necessary precondition for all the exercises.

We can however understand from this how necessary it is that man should not demand entry into the spiritual world until he has learned and understood certain essential truths of that world by the simple exercise of his everyday intelligence, developed in the physical world. If spiritual development follows the right and normal path, then before he aspires to enter the supersensible world the pupil will already have mastered with his ordinary intelligence the whole of the earlier contents of this book.

In 1947, thirty-three years after the First World War had interrupted the Esoteric School and two years after the end of the Second, Marie Steiner, in response to requests from members of the Anthroposophical Society, set about publishing the most important of the Contents of the Esoteric School. Numerous works on oriental training methods (Yoga etc.) were making their appearance, and it was her object to set against these something from the European discipline of Rudolf Steiner. `By making available', she wrote in a letter, `examples of Rudolf Steiner's careful, personally-delivered advice, I wished to ensure that something could come forth from that Rosicrucian stream which is more in tune with the present age than decadent Indian and Tibetan methods.'

Three separate series of selections in English translation, entitled From the Contents of the Esoteric School, have previously appeared in 1948, 1949 and 1954. The following includes a revised translation of all that they contain together with some additional material not previously published in English.

O.B.

Notes from the Editor

The twelfth annual meeting of the European Section of the Theosophical Society, Adyar, took place in London from July 5 to 7, 1902. Marie von Sivers had already traveled to London in mid-June. Rudolf Steiner followed on July 1 as the designated General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society and remained there until July 11. Rudolf Steiner was invited by Bertram Keightley ¹ to join the commission, which was charged with the task of deciding the future structure of the European Section. Once the various national sections could be considered established (including the founding of the German section, which was still to come at that time), the former European section was dissolved. It was decided that an annual congress of the European Federation of National Sections would be held for future cooperation between the European national sections.

In his autobiography, Rudolf Steiner writes: “When I spoke for the first time in London at the 1902 conference of the Theosophical Society, I said: ‘The union that forms the individual sections should consist of each section bringing to the center what it holds within itself’; and I emphasized that I intended for the German Section above all. I made it clear that this Section would never act as the custodian of established dogmas, but as a place of independent spiritual research, which would seek to communicate with the Society as a whole about the cultivation of genuine spiritual life at their joint meetings.

In October 1918, Rudolf Steiner said the following about this first address at an international meeting of the Theosophical Society: “For example, I tried² when I first attended a congress of the Theosophical Society in London, to bring a certain point of view into it. I gave a very short speech. It was at a time when the Entente Cordiale had just been concluded and everything was under the impression of the recently concluded Entente Cordiale.³ I had tried to characterize that the movement which the Theosophical Society seeks to represent cannot be about spreading anything as theosophical wisdom from some center, but that it can only be about having a kind of unifying point, so to speak, in a common place for everything that the modern era is bringing forth from all corners of the world. And I concluded at the time with the words: If we build on the spirit, if we seek spiritual community in a truly concrete, positive way, so that the spirit that is generated here and there is carried to a common center (Theosophical Society), then we build a different Entente cordiale.

I spoke of this other entente cordiale in London at the time. It was the first speech I gave at the Theosophical Society, and I deliberately spoke of this other entente cordiale. [...] But the sympathies were not at all on my side.

The meeting took place in an annex of the renowned $t. James Hall. A report of the meeting, which was printed but not published, also briefly describes Steiner's lecture. Steiner spoke in German and Marie von Sivers translated into English. The report reads as follows: “He said that he had been sent over by the Berlin Lodge to learn something of the Theosophical Movement at its fountain-head. In Germany they were about to found a new Section, and he would endeavor to give an idea of the state of things there. They had but few people at present who had the least idea of theosophical teachings, but there were some diligent workers in several large cities, and there was much latent power in Germany and a strong desire to seek for further spiritual understanding, rationalistic philosophy possessed a great influence among the classes it was most desirable to reach, and this philosophy might be made the greatest enemy if not encountered properly, or, on the other hand, it could be of greatest assistance if the foundation of Theosophy in Germany were laid on the writings of the great German philosophers. Such men as Leibniz, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel were real theosophists and they should attach themselves to the teaching these men had left” (quoted from Crispian Villeneuve: Rudolf Steiner in Britain, A Documentation of his Ten Visits, Vol I, 1902-1921, Forest Row 2004, pp. 29-30. According to Crispian Villeneuve, a possibly even only “the” copy of the printed but unpublished “Report of Proceedings” is located at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in England at Gloucester Place in London).

In German translation by the editor: “He said he had been sent over from the Berlin Lodge to learn about the Theosophical movement at its source. They were to found a new section in Germany and he would endeavor to give an idea of the state of affairs there. At present they had few people who had any real knowledge of the Theosophical teachings, but there were some hard-working people in several large cities, and there was sufficient latent power and a strong desire for further spiritual understanding in Germany. Rationalistic philosophy had exercised a great influence over those classes most desirable to reach, and this philosophy might be made the greatest enemy if not properly met; or, on the other hand, it might be of the greatest help if the establishment of Theosophy in Germany were based on the writings of the great German philosophers. Such men as Leibniz,⁴ Schelling,⁵ Fichte, ⁶ and Hegel ⁷ “You are true theosophists and you should adhere to the teachings that these men have left behind.”

No further documents relating to Rudolf Steiner's presentations at this twelfth congress of the European Section of the Theosophical Society (Adyar) are available.

In addition to Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers, the following people from Germany were in attendance: Henriette von Holten,⁸ Adolf Kolbe,⁹ Ludwig Deinhard.¹⁰ It is also noteworthy that this is probably where they first met Elisabeth Vreede ¹¹ and Daniel Nicole Dunlop ¹² came.

• 1. Bertram Keightley: 1860-1944, collaborator of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and later Annie Besant , was Secretary General of the Indian Section of the Theosophical Society in Benarcs from 1891 to 1893; and Secretary General of the British Section of the Theosophical Society in Adyar from 1901 to 1905. In his biography, Rudolf Steiner writes: “I became friends with him” (GA 28, Dornach 2000, 5. 397). Rudolf Steiner stayed with Bertram Keightley in London Bayswater from July 1 to 11, 1902. In a letter dated July 1, 1902, Rudolf Steiner writes to his first wife Anna Eunike (1853-1911): “Miss von Sivers is taking me to Mr. Keightley. A pure blessing: in England you have to bathe every morning in such houses. So my first London experience is a bath. Then breakfast with Mr. Keightley. He is a very pleasant and amiable man. I didn't want to eat lunch today. It seems best to me not to get too attached to certain times. So I am sitting there at two o'clock in the afternoon – but in Berlin it is already three o'clock – and I have just eaten: Stewed kidney Lyonais. You would call this roasted kidney. Tonight at seven o'clock I have a conference with Keightley, where he should hear about the state of German Theosophy.” Quoted from: Letters, Vol. II, CW 39, Dornach 1989, 8. 412.
• 2. For example, I tried... not on my part: From the lecture of October 27, 1918, in: Historical Symptomatology, Dornach 1982, GA 185, p.145. in London on July 5, 1902, no transcript of the speech itself has been handed down.
• 3.
• NoteNum. NoteText
• 4. Leibniz: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), German philosopher, mathematician, universal scholar of the Enlightenment.
• 5. Schelling: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), German philosopher and anthropologist, successor to Hegel's chair in Berlin.
• 6. Fichte: Johann Gott lieb Fichte (1762-1814), German idealist philosopher.
• 7. Hegel: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher, representative of German idealism. - on Fichte, Schelling, Flegel: See, for example, Rudolf Steiner: The Riddles of Philosophy, GA 18. The first edition of this appeared under the title World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century, Volume 1 in 1900 and Volume II in 1902, both in Berlin. - See in particular: Pictures of Occult Seals and Pillars. The Munich Congress at Whitsun 1907 and its effects, GA 284. At the 1907 congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society in Munich, Rudolf Steiner had the busts of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel placed in front of the stage.
• 8. Henriette von Holten: 1845-2, née Borchert; no further details known .
• 9. Adolf Kolbe:? -1934, member of the Theosophical Society since 1897, founded the Hamburg Pythagorean branch with Bernhard Hubo in 1898, which was one of the branches that formed the German Section in 1902. From 1905 to 1913 on the board of the German Section, esoteric student of Rudolf Steiner.
• 10. Ludwig Deinhard: 1847-1917, engineer and industrialist, 1894-1896 head of one of the first Theosophical branches in Munich. He worked towards the formation of a German section from 1900 and was a member of its board from 1902 to 1908. His book The Mystery of Man in the Light of Psychical Research. An Introduction to Occultism, Berlin 1910, was highly esteemed by Rudolf Steiner. Cf. also the lecture of May 19, 1917 in Central Europe between East and West, GA 1744, 2nd ed. Dornach 1982, 8. 155-175 and On the History and Content of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904-1914, GA 264. - Initially belonged to the circle around Karl du Prel, later to the circle around Hübbe-Schleiden , but then joined Rudolf Steiner completely.
• 11. Elisabeth Vreede: 1879-1943, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. She worked at the Goetheanum from 1914, and from 1919 she set up the Rudolf Steiner Lecture Archive. In 1920, she was a founding member and then secretary of the branch at the Goetheanum. From 1923 to 1935, she was a member of the founding board of the General Anthroposophical Society and head of the mathematical-astronomical section of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum.
• 12. Daniel Nicole Dunlop: 1868-1935, Secretary General of the Anthroposophical Society in England from 1930 to 1935, organizer of the International Summer Schools in 1923 (in Penmaenmawr) and 1924 (in Torquay). Founder of the British Weleda Company.

Newsletter from the Youth Section of the School of Spiritual Science

This institution cannot come about from abstract considerations “from above”. It must arise from the needs of our membership “from below”. The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society has conceived the plan to form a Youth Section because it corresponds to what young people in our Society are seeking from the depths of their being. And it will shape it in such a way that these needs can be met as they arise.

The same must be true for the other sections. But for this to happen, the needs that arise within our membership must flow through the whole society and ultimately unite in what is expected of the Executive Council at the Goetheanum. We must therefore become more and more aware that the purpose of the Christmas Conference was not to form a mere “administrative board”. Of course, the “administration” must be there, and it should not be forgotten that it is necessary and that it has to develop care and accuracy. But the main thing will be that the attitude of the members of the Goetheanum Executive Council really places it at the center of the Society's spiritual interests. It should bring together all the spiritual interests that exist.

It is not the intention of this executive council to in any way restrict the initiative of the individual parts of the Society. But it should increasingly be seen as a necessity that everything that arises in the Society be brought to the attention of this executive council. It can then harmonize what is wanted in one place or by one group of people with what is intended by another. This board will not want to act in a one-sided way like an authority “from above”; it will make it its business to have an open heart and an understanding mind for everything that strives for realization from within the membership. In this regard, he would also like to be able to count on understanding in the sense that he will be met halfway, actively met halfway, when he wants to carry out something based on his initiative and the goals of the anthroposophical movement. In this sense, I said at the Christmas Conference: this board should be an initiative board.

If this board is increasingly seen in this light, then it will be able to serve as a true advisor in all matters concerning the Society. And it wants to be an “advisor”; because it knows that it would fundamentally contradict the spirit of the Anthroposophical Society if it wanted to be a “decider”. In his advice, he will appeal to nothing but the free insight of the members; but he will only be able to be a true “advisor” if the right attitude is brought to his position, which lies in the intentions and aspirations of the members.

The Executive Council at the Goetheanum would like to see as little as possible in the way of paragraphs and programs in the way of establishing a connection with the work in society; it would like to see the human element, which can also have an individual effect in every detail, come into general validity within society. And above all, it would like to achieve this in everything that is to be done for the School of Spiritual Science.

[ 1 ] A certain institution which arose within the Anthroposophical Society in such a way that there was never any thought of the public in connection with it does not really belong to the chapters of this exposition. Only it has to be described for the reason that attacks made upon me have been based upon material derived from this.

[ 2 ] Some years after the beginning of the activity in the Theosophical Society, Marie von Sievers and I were entrusted by certain persons with the leadership of a society similar to others which have been maintained in preservation of the ancient symbolism and cultural ceremonies that embody the “ancient wisdom.” I never thought in the remotest degree of working in the spirit of such a society. Everything anthroposophic should and must spring from its own sources of knowledge and truth. There should not be the slightest deviation from this standard. But I had always felt a respect for what was historically given. In this lives the spirit which evolves in the human process of becoming. And so wherever possible I also favoured the linking of the newly given to the historically existent. I therefore took the diploma of the society referred to, which belonged to the stream represented by Yarker. It had the forms of Free Masonry of the so-called high degrees; but I took nothing else – absolutely nothing – from this society except the merely formal authorization, in historic succession, to direct a symbolic-cultural activity.

[ 3 ] Everything set forth in content in the “ceremonies” which were employed in the institution were without historic dependence upon any tradition whatever. In the formal granting of the diploma only that was fostered which resulted in the symbolizing of anthroposophic knowledge. And our purpose in this matter was to meet the needs of the members. In elaborating the ideas in which the knowledge of spirit is given in a veiled form, the effort is made to arrive at something which speaks directly to perception, to the heart; and such purposes I wished to serve. If the invitation from the society in question had not come to me, I should have undertaken the direction of a symbolic-cultural activity without any historic connection.

[ 4 ] But this did not create a “secret society.” Whoever entered into this practice was told in the clearest possible manner that he was not dealing with any “order,” but that as participant in ceremonial forms he would experience a sort of visualization, demonstration of spiritual knowledge. If anything took on the forms in which the members of traditional orders had been inducted or promoted to higher degrees, this did not signify that such an order was being founded but only that the spiritual ascent in the soul's experience was rendered visible to the senses in pictures.

[ 5 ] The fact that this had nothing to do with the activity of any existing order or the mediation of things which are mediated in such orders is proved by the fact that members of the most various types of orders participated in the ceremonial exercises which I conducted and found in these something quite different from what existed in their own orders.

[ 6 ] Once a person who had participated with us for the first time in a ceremonial came to me immediately afterward. This person had reached a very high degree in an order. Under the influence of the experience now shared, the wish had arisen to hand over to me the insignia of the order. The feeling was that, after having once experienced real spiritual content, one could no longer share in that which remained fixed in mere formalism. I put the matter right; for anthroposophy dare not draw any person out of the association in which he stands. It ought to add something to that association and take away nothing from it. So this person remained in the order, yet continued to participate further with us in the symbolic exercises.

[ 7 ] It is only too easily understood that, when such an institution as the one here described becomes known, misunderstandings arise. There are, indeed, many persons to whom the externality of belonging to something seems more important than the content which is given to them. And so even many of the participants spoke of the thing as if they belonged to an “order.” They did not understand how to make the distinction that things were demonstrated among us without the environment of an order which otherwise are given only within the environment of an order.

[ 8 ] Even in this sphere we broke with the ancient traditions. Our work was carried on as work must be carried on if one investigates in spiritual-content in an original manner according to the requirements of full clarity in the mind's experience.

[ 9 ] The fact that the starting-point for all sorts of slanders was found in certain attestations which Marie von Sievers and I signed in linking up with the historic Yarker institution means that, in order to concoct such slanders, people treated the absurd with the grimace of the serious. Our signatures were given as a “form.” The customary thing was thus preserved. And while we were giving our signatures, I said as clearly as possible: “This is all a formality, and the practice which I shall institute will take over nothing from the Yarker practice.”

[ 10 ] It is obviously easy to make the observation afterwards that it would have been far more “discreet” not to link up with practices which could later be used by slanderers. But I would remark with all positiveness that, at the period of my life here under consideration, I was still one of those who assume uprightness, and not crooked ways, in the people with whom they have to do. Even spiritual perception did not alter at all this faith in men. This must not be misused for the purpose of investigating the intentions of one's fellow-men when this investigation is not desired by the man in question himself. In other cases the investigation of the inner nature of other souls remains a thing forbidden to the knower of the spirit; just as the unauthorized opening of a letter is something forbidden. And so one is related to men with whom one has to do in the same way as is any other person who has no knowledge of the spirit. But there is just this alternative – either to assume that others are straight-forward in their intentions until one has experienced the opposite, or else to be filled with sorrow as one views the entire world. A social co-operation with men is impossible for the latter mood, for such co-operation can be based only upon trust and not upon distrust.

[ 11 ] This practice which gave in a cult-symbolism a content which is spiritual was a good thing for many who participated in the Anthroposophical Society. Since in this, as in every sphere of anthroposophical work, everything was excluded which lies outside the region of clear consciousness, so there could be no thought of unconfirmed magic, or suggestive influences, and the like. But the members obtained that which, on the one hand, spoke to their ideal conceptions and yet in such a way that the heart could accompany this in direct perception. For many this was something which also guided them again into the better shaping of their ideas. With the beginning of the War it ceased to be possible to continue the carrying on of such practices. In spite of the fact that there was nothing of the nature of a secret society in this, it would have been taken for such. And so this symbolic-cultural section of the anthroposophical movement came to an end in the middle of 1914.

[ 12 ] The fact that persons who had taken part in this practice – absolutely unobjectionable to anyone who looked upon it with a good will and a sense for truth – became slanderous accusers is an instance of that abnormality in human conduct which arises when men who are not inwardly genuine share in movements whose content is genuinely spiritual. They expect things corresponding with their trivial soul life; and, since they naturally do not find such things, they turn against the very practice to which they previously turned – though with unconscious insincerity.

[ 13 ] Such a society as the Anthroposophical could not be formed otherwise than according to the soul-needs of its members. It could not lay down an abstract programme which required that in the Anthroposophical Society this and that should be done. The programme had to be elaborated out of reality. But this very reality is the soul-need of its members. Anthroposophy as a content of life was formed out of its own sources. It had appeared before the world as a spiritual creation, and many who were drawn to it by an inner attraction tried to work together with others. Thus it came about that the Society was the formation of persons of whom some sought the religious, others rather the scientific, and others the artistic. And it was necessary that what was sought should be found.

[ 14 ] Because of this working out from the reality of the needs of the members, the private printed matter must be judged differently from that given to the public from the beginning The content of this printed matter was intended as oral, not printed, information. The subjects discussed were determined by the soul-needs of the members as these needs appeared with the passage of time.

[ 15 ] What is contained in the published writings is adapted to the furtherance of anthroposophy as such; in the manner in which the private printed matter evolved, the configuration of soul of the whole Society has co-operated.

From various anthroposophical sources you know of the significance of the heavenly bodies for man's existence and I shall speak to-day of a particular aspect of this subject.

When during life on Earth we look around at our terrestrial and cosmic environment, our physical senses, even when they reach as far as the stars, perceive only what is connected with the part of our human constitution that is laid aside at death. We know from Anthroposophy that the physical body derives its forces, as well as its material composition, from what surrounds us on the Earth. In addition to the physical body we have an etheric body, and just as the physical body draws its forces and material components from the Earth, so does the etheric body draw its forces and components from the extraterrestrial Cosmos, from the etheric world. This etheric world surrounds the Earth in the expanse of space; in it the stars are embedded and from it the light streams down to the Earth from the Cosmos. Thus we owe our physical and etheric existence to what is visible in our terrestrial environment or cosmic environment. But within this etheric environment of the Earth there are two heavenly bodies which may be said to be gates or portals into the spiritual world. These are the two cosmic bodies of Sun and Moon to which everyone possessed of deeper insight into the structure of the universe has always attached the greatest possible importance for human life.

If we study man with anthroposophical insight we know that as well as the physical and etheric bodies he has within him his astral body and Ego. But if we direct our attention to the astral body and Ego of man we shall find that in the cosmic expanse perceptible to our physical senses, including even the world of stars, there is nothing in the least akin to them. We find only what is akin to our physical and etheric nature. In the whole wide universe actually or potentially visible to our senses or comprehensible to the intellect there is nothing that provides any forces or components for our astral body and Ego. The Moon and the Sun, however, are like gates into the world from which these members of our being originate.

You know that in my book Occult Science and other writings, reference is made to the time when the physical Moon separated from the Earth with which it once formed a single body in the Cosmos. But this physical and etheric separation is not the only matter with which we should be concerned in connection with the Moon existence and human life. The separation of the Moon is a very significant spiritual fact.

I have often said that in very ancient times man possessed a primordial wisdom. We are very proud nowadays of our intellectual acumen, of knowledge based upon reason and observation. This kind of knowledge was not possessed by early humanity. The Earth, and man together with the Earth, had necessarily to develop to a certain stage before such knowledge was possible. Without this development man would not have been able to use his physical body and its delicate nervous system for the acquisition of intellectual knowledge. The primordial knowledge possessed by man was an instinctive knowledge, expressed in a form altogether different from that adopted by modern scholarship. What men knew about the mysteries of the world in those ancient times was expressed in poetical language of great majesty and what tradition has preserved or can be discovered in existing records is no more than an echo of the power of that ancient wisdom. We may well be filled with wonder today when we study the Vedas or the Vedanta philosophy; we may marvel at the glorious verses of the Bhagavad Gita and recognise the sublimity of all these works, but it must be remembered that they are only the last offshoots of something infinitely greater and more powerful. Men owed this wisdom to the fact that they lived in communion with Beings whose existence was on a higher level than that of modern humanity and naturally also of the humanity of those days. These Beings had no physical body comparable with that of man to-day; they moved about the Earth in etheric bodies but nevertheless shared a life in common with humanity.

Since they had no physical body, these Beings were not able to converse with men in the way that one person converses with another to-day. But in certain states of consciousness the men of those ancient times, that is to say we ourselves in earlier incarnations, were aware of certain feelings and thoughts of which we knew that they did not spring from within our own being, as little as what we hear from someone else through oral communication springs from within ourselves. The much higher and more powerful knowledge possessed by these etheric Beings was as it were ‘inspired’ into men in a spiritual way. Thus in earlier incarnations in the primeval periods of the Earth's existence, we communed with non-physical Beings. These Beings are no longer and for long ages have not been part of earthly life. They have withdrawn from intercourse with men and only a few sparse remnants have been preserved of the world-secrets once revealed through these Beings in the remote past. Moreover it can be said with truth that even these few remnants are not really understood.

To what habitation, then, have these Beings of the ancient past withdrawn? When the physical Moon separated from the Earth, these Beings followed after it into the universe. I have already spoken about this but to-day I want to say something more, so that when we turn our gaze to the Moon we shall be aware that this cosmic body is inhabited by Beings who were once the companions of mankind on Earth. It may seem as if these Beings have no connection with the man living on Earth in his physical body: nevertheless there is a connection and it is of this that I want to speak. Simply from the fact that long ago these Beings were man's companions on Earth we may conclude that they are connected in some way with his past. And this is in fact the case.

A man's life here on Earth in his physical body is interwoven with what we call destiny. Destiny or ‘karma’—the oriental term we are accustomed to use—is a very mysterious factor in human life but its most significant connections are not always perceived.

Suppose two people who have never seen each other before, meet at a particular moment. From this moment something that is the result of joint action begins to play a part in their lives. Their recognition of each other is mutual and they know that from now on they will have a great deal to do with each other. If two people in this situation review the course of their lives since childhood, they will find, if they observe with sufficient detachment, that everything they did up to the moment of their meeting had a definite significance in that every step they took since childhood seems from the beginning to have been so cleverly directed that the path led them to the point where the meeting took place. If, starting from the time when they met and began to form a friendship, they look back over their past lives without preconceived notions it will seem that since a certain starting-point in their distant childhood, every step led them inevitably to the place where they finally met. Whatever they did so purposefully was of course done unconsciously; the conscious period began only after the meeting but the conscious and the unconscious unite in a remarkable way. In the weaving of our destiny there is a great difference between the path we have arranged unconsciously so that we may meet the other person, and what we do after the meeting has taken place. Then he is actually before us, we understand what he says and we adjust our actions to what he is doing in external life; thereafter we lead a common life of which our senses and intellect are aware. But we shall see how that common life is interwoven with what we did until the time we met. We may well ask: what is it that is taking effect in all these forces and movements which finally bring us together?

There may also be some event lying ahead of us. Every aspect of destiny comes into consideration. We shall find that there is a great difference between experiences of the two kinds of events. There are, in fact, two ways of encountering another human being in life. In the one case we immediately have a feeling, or at least we have it as soon as we have come across the man or the event in question—a feeling which we take into the sphere of our will. We get to know the person: what he is, what he now does in company with us—all this we experience in the realm of our will; we want to think as he thinks, to feel as he feels, to will as he wills. We actually feel that he is beginning to be active within our own being. He sets something astir within us, something that originates in him but nevertheless lives in our will and from our will pervades our whole soul. Indeed we learn in this way to know ourselves better, inasmuch as in our life of will and in the deeper feelings connected with our will, we become aware that the person not only makes an impression upon us from outside, but stirs something into activity within us. That is one way in which our destined encounter with another human being takes effect.

In another case we are less inwardly stirred by an acquaintanceship; we observe the person more from outside, forming an opinion of him by the impression he makes upon our intelligence, upon our aesthetic sense. There is a very great difference between these two kinds of acquaintanceship.

Suppose we get to know someone, then we go away and are tempted to talk about our new acquaintance. There will be a noticeable difference in the way we speak about the different people we know. On one occasion the way in which we speak makes it quite obvious to others that we are putting something of ourselves into our words. We may speak about the other person as though he were handsome, but in point of fact he is the very reverse and those who are listening simply cannot understand why we speak of him as we do; he appears to them to be the reverse of good-looking, hence they cannot understand how anyone can possibly rhapsodise about him. But we are not in the least concerned with what others may see in him from an aesthetic point of view; we are not talking about the impression he makes upon us from outside. We are talking about the inner effect he arouses in us and what we say about him need not tally with the impression he makes upon others.

In the case of another acquaintance it is different. We have a good eye for whether he is handsome or the reverse. From the way we speak it is clear that here the impressions made upon our intellect, our senses and our aesthetic judgement have been the criterion. We may, for instance, refer to him as a fine fellow. You know quite well that there are acquaintances of whom it would never occur to us to speak in this superficial way. The actual language we use is such that other people will immediately understand what we mean, if they know the individual or get to know him later on.

It is a simple fact that these are two ways of describing individuals we meet. The first case indicates that when we meet the individual in question the existence we share in the previous earthly life is set astir within us; something is pointing back to earlier incarnations when we lived in each other's company. In the second case we judge externally; we express our opinions in a way that others can immediately understand, because we were not together in an earlier earthly life but may perhaps have met him for the very first time in the present incarnation.

If spiritual insight enables us to penetrate to what lies at the root of the destiny which reveals itself in so definite a form in the first case, we shall find the following.—Before the human being comes down to physical existence on Earth and while, before the actual descent, he is passing through the Moon sphere, there is implanted into his astral body the karma he shares in common with other human beings. It is implanted into him for his present earthly existence by those Beings who once lived on Earth together with men and who then withdrew to the Moon sphere. These are the Beings through whose sphere we pass before we descend into earthly existence. It is they who since they left the Earth and their companionship with men, concern themselves with recording the destiny which individuals have in common. Thus it is that when we come across another person in the first of the two ways I described, what reverberates within us has been recorded in those great books of destiny kept by the Moon Beings with their knowledge of the lives of men on Earth. These are books in which spiritual ‘accounts’ are kept and they contain entries of everything we have experienced in common with other men. As we pass through the Moon sphere we read in those books what we are to bring with us to the Earth, and then, with the help of what we have thus read, we direct our path—perhaps for twenty-five to thirty years—until we finally meet in earthly existence the individual of whom we had read in these Moon-books before we descended to the Earth that we had shared certain experiences with him in a previous earthly life.

These mysterious connections are organised in a wonderful way. We must look up to the Moon existence with feelings deepened through Anthroposophy, having in mind not only the information given by physical science but also what Spiritual Science can tell us about the spiritual aspect of the Moon. There are many analogies which make this sphere of cosmic existence intelligible. The analogy drawn from earthly life is supported by knowledge to which little attention is paid.

It has often been emphasised here that in seven or eight years the physical substance of a man's body has completely changed. Physical substance is thrust out through the skin; nails and hair are cut. This indicates, and it is actually the fact, that man thrusts out physical substance from the centre of his being and produces new substance to replace it. What you cut from your nails today was within your organism seven or eight years ago; you thrust it out and have now got rid of it. Physical substance is renewed. Any of you who may have been here ten years ago must not imagine that the same muscles and the same physical components are present to-day, for that is not so. But the soul-and-spirit of each of you—that is present. The same is true of the heavenly bodies. The physicist is concerned only with the physical substance and speaks as if the Moon he now sees in the heavens were the same Moon whose physical substance once separated from the Earth. But that is just as nonsensical as to believe that the muscles and physical components which were here ten years ago are here again to-day. It takes longer for the heavenly bodies to change their substance, but they do indeed change it. The physical Moon should not really be spoken of in the way that modern science speaks. What has endured in the Moon are the spiritual Beings who were once inhabitants of the Earth together with men. The Moon that is now their habitat has changed—that is to say, its physical substance has changed. And just as it is your soul-and-spirit which forms the link between the ‘you’ who sat here ten years ago and the ‘you’ of to-day, so it is the Beings of spirit-and-soul who in reality constitute the essence of the Moon. And these are the Beings who register our past.

This whole subject can be further deepened when expounded in the light of Initiation-knowledge. So far I have explained how in the case of acquaintances of the first kind something begins to stir in us, and how this is what the Moon Beings make it possible for us to read in their records before we descended to the Earth. An Initiate has a very different experience of a meeting of this kind. He, like everyone else, meets other human beings during his life; but whereas a man with ordinary consciousness merely has the feeling that he takes the other human being into the sphere of his will and does not judge him only by the external impression he makes, the Initiate can actually see the earlier incarnations of the personalities whom he encounters. He sees not only the physical man together with his qualities of soul-and-spirit but he sees behind him a shadowy picture of the man's previous life or perhaps of several lives. Through spiritual perception we get to know a man in such a way that he seems to be a whole series of persons who are as objectively real as the one physically in front of us. In civilisations where some inkling of these things still survived, attempts were actually made to portray them. Certain old pictures portray a human figure, behind it and a little higher, a second, and behind that a third, a little higher still. In this way attempts were made to capture in painting the impression which the Initiate has of an acquaintance in whom he perceives not only the qualities of which he is the bearer in this life but what comes over with him from previous incarnations. It may be said, and it is in strict conformity with Spiritual Science, that whatever is karmically connected with a human being is clearly perceptible to an Initiate but is no more than a dim inkling to ordinary consciousness.

Whatever works and weaves from our past into our destiny may be called the Moon-element in us. The effect of this is that if we meet a human being who is karmically connected with us we are really always meeting a plurality. For the Initiate, this means acquaintance with a number of human beings in the one or at very least in several human lives; and this recognition of the earlier lives is as vivid to him as that of the present life.

Now let us consider the other kind of acquaintanceship where we judge a man more by the external, aesthetic impression he makes, by what our intellect or our senses tell us about him; the impression can be understood by everyone. In this case, if it is studied by the methods of Spiritual Science, it will be found that nothing leads back to the past; no Beings in the Moon sphere have prepared the way to this acquaintanceship in earthly life; nothing has been inscribed in the Moon sphere into the astral body of the man concerned. Other forces are working here, forces of soul-and-spirit connected with the Sun existence. In this second kind of acquaintanceship, the Sun forces, forces of soul-and-spirit, weave destiny from a different side. Again, if we are capable of spiritual insight, what leads us to human beings with whom we have jointly accomplished something in past lives, is experienced to begin with as if it were hidden in dark, mysterious night. Then, when we actually meet the person in question and allow the impression he makes to affect us, the Sun and the bright light of day seem to take the place of the mysterious night. That is indeed what happens spiritually: in the case of two people who have been karmically connected for long ages, not only the past but the present and the future as well are glimpsed and the weaving of destiny continues. The spiritual influences of the Sun make themselves felt.

But even in the case of those who have shared no experiences in earlier earthly lives, this spiritual element of the Sun weaves in their destinies both in the present and in the future. If, with the insight of Initiation, we meet someone with whom we have had no joint experiences in earlier lives but whom we are meeting now for the first time, we should see no shadowy pictures of earthly lives behind him. We should see instead, Beings of the higher Hierarchies, Beings of a rank not yet attained by man. To the insight of Initiation there is a great difference between meeting someone with whom we have already been connected in the past and someone we meet for the first time. If we had often been together with him, his earlier lives rise up in a picture behind him. If we had never met before, Beings of the next higher Hierarchy appear in his background, Beings who come down to us on Earth together with the rays of the Sun. Just as the Moon Beings weave into our astral body the karma that is past, so do these Sun Beings weave into our subconscious Ego-organisation what is to take place after our first meeting with another human being here on Earth: this is the basis of our future karma. The present is all the time changing into the future; what is now the present has for the preceding moment become the future.

The counterpart in the Cosmos of this course of man's evolution from the past to the future is to be seen in the passage of the Moon in the heavens, with the Sun either following or ahead. The relationship between past and future in the mysterious weaving of destiny in human life is the same as the relationship between Moon and Sun in their passage around the universe. If with Initiation-knowledge, when you meet someone you say to yourself with deep feeling that what the Moon Beings have inscribed in his astral body belongs to you just as it does to him and that by its means you have been led to him, when you meet someone for the very first time you will feel that Angels and Archangels stand behind him. Both experiences point to the future. There are endless ways in which destiny may be fulfilled.

If you learn how to contemplate the cosmic expanse in this way, Moon and Sun are revealed as the two gates into the spiritual world. You will realise then that what is part of the earthly, physical environment lives for the moment in your physical body; what is present in the wide etheric spheres where the stars are to be seen, lives in your etheric body. But when you look up to the Moon or the Sun, you will know that you are looking at what is present, not in your physical or your etheric body, but in your astral body, and gives power to your Ego. Through the Moon existence you are led out of the physical and etheric worlds into the spiritual world. In the same way, when you look up at the Sun, you will recognise that through its forces of spirit-and-soul you are being led through a gate to a world akin to your own Ego—not akin to your physical and etheric bodies but to your Ego. The Ego enables you to take your place in the world as a conscious being, accompanied by the destiny woven into your life as necessity and to which you conform because of your particular physical aptitudes, temperament or character, all of which are merely means of expression for your karma. In everything of which the poet says: “this you must be, you cannot escape from yourself”—in all this the past Moon existence is living on. And the Sun existence is working whenever you are conscious of freedom of choice.

Thus, spiritually considered, nature-existence and moral existence interweave. Nature does not exist in isolation with its rigid necessities on the one side and, on the other side, soul-and-spirit unable to enter into any real relationship with it and existing only as a remote moral order. There is no such contrast, for it is possible, with spiritual insight, to find in the phenomena of nature the morality that is alive within us. True, it is necessary here to pass beyond the ordinary phenomena of nature to what is revealed by the spiritual Sun-and Moon-existence.

Insight of this kind makes it possible for us to ascend from a nature-existence to existence as beings of soul-and-spirit. It is also possible—although not with ordinary consciousness—to perceive in our earthly or cosmic environment the causes of illnesses which may befall us. In itself our organism is healthy, for it is born out of its healthy Ego, its healthy astral body and also out of a healthy etheric world. If someone falls ill here on Earth it can only be because something approaches him from outside which owing to his inherent constitution he is not able completely to transform. You can see that this is so from very simple examples. Suppose you are in a warm or a cold room. You must not allow the heat or cold to pass through you as it might pass through a piece of wood or stone. You absorb and convert the external warmth which acts merely as a stimulus; you yourself generate in your own organism the warmth you have within you. If you cannot do this, if you allow the environment to treat you as it treats a stick or stone, if external warmth penetrates into you and you are unable to transform it, you will immediately catch cold. Man cannot take anything from the environment of the Earth into himself without transforming it—this also applies to the food he eats. He transforms what he eats just as he transforms everything in the environment and it is a scientific fantasy to believe otherwise. If no transformation is achieved he will fall ill. Here lies the physical cause of illness; but illness can also be connected with destiny.

If we limit our thoughts to this present earthly life, to the period, let us say, between some year in the nineteenth or twentieth century and to-day, 6th February 1924, we shall agree that if something from the environment is going to make us ill, it will have to exert a very powerful influence. If something that comes from outside—cold or heat, or perhaps noxious air—is to make us ill, it will need to be very forceful. If we merely look at a deadly nightshade it will not poison us; nor if the noxious atmosphere is sufficiently far away will it poison us. In short, if the influence from outside affects only the life of soul, it does not make us ill. To achieve that, a much more powerful influence is needed.

But now consider the following—Large numbers of people nowadays are out-and-out materialists and believe only in material influences from the environment But actually there are many ways in which they cannot be materialists, for instance, in some of their bodily needs: they cannot avoid eating what is spiritual in plants or of the nature of soul in animals. If they were honest and consistent materialists in the matter of their food they would eat nothing but stones—nothing but inorganic, lifeless matter. In their life of soul the only concepts and ideas they will accept are concerned with the lifeless and this becomes a force leading to illness in the following incarnation. The impressions make their way into the soul and are transformed into forces which can become physically active. The karmic aspect of illness is carried over from previous earthly lives into our present life, because we admitted into ourselves in earlier incarnations elements which are not fitting for human beings; we have become susceptible to illness. These ideas and impressions work in this present life as potent causes of illness. Something that may have been no more than an idea or inner experience of the soul in one earthly life is transformed in the period we live through between death and rebirth into forces that work physically. We have within us much that works physically, whereas in an earlier life it was purely of the nature of soul. Thus we have to regard illness as a matter of destiny and we must not succumb to the superstition that illnesses can be cured by spiritual means alone. Means that take effect physically are necessary. But if we fully understand the facts and realise that what is physically active in the present life is to be traced back to something that was active in the life of soul in earlier lives, we shall recognise also that by turning our thoughts away from what was imperfect towards what is perfect in man, we shall carry over in a healthy form into our next life what would otherwise be a cause of illness. For instance, if we are convinced that an illness has resulted from a materialistic life of soul in a previous incarnation, we may be sure that we can only rid ourselves of the illness by a treatment based upon spiritual views and ideas. And these are found in Anthroposophy—which is not theory but directly related to life, cultivating the insight and feeling that life requires.

If we can contemplate the Cosmos and the whole environment of the Earth in the light streaming from Anthroposophy when rightly cultivated, Moon and Sun seem intimately related to us; we see in them the cosmic pictures of our own past and our own future. We become intensely conscious of our relationship with the whole Cosmos; we see our past and future weaving in our destiny; in Sun and Moon we see world-destiny revealing itself. We shall feel in our past something that takes its place beside our present and our future as the Moon takes its place in the Cosmos beside the Sun. Our reverence and devotion, our capacity for sacrifice for the sake of the whole Cosmos will be enhanced when we learn how to expand our own existence into cosmic existence and thus experience the kinship between what lives in us and weaves in the universe.

One of the tasks Anthroposophy sets itself is to help human beings to establish union with the universe in this way. And I hope that one of the results of our meeting here in such large numbers will be that we shall identify ourselves more and more with this task of Anthroposophy which is to give added depth not only to the thoughts of men but also to their hearts and feelings. This was indeed the purpose of the Christmas Foundation Meeting. That Meeting made it clear that if the Anthroposophical Society is to develop the right kind of activity it must abandon the paths it has been taking during these last ten years; it must cease to concern itself with externalities, must penetrate to inner, spiritual realities. The School of Spiritual Science to be established in Dornach must have this esoteric character, and so must the Society as a whole in order to maintain the spiritual life it needs. It must throw off the tendency that has threatened it during the last ten years—the tendency to be absorbed in externalities.

What has actually been happening during these ten years and was happening even before then? Here is an example. A very strong opposition—it is particularly active just now—has been able to refer to lecture-courses and transcripts of lectures which are not available to the general public. As you know, people wished to possess these lecture-courses and transcripts and it was a matter of meeting these wishes, although it was obvious that this was the very way to give the opposition the ammunition it needed. We live in times when secrecy is quite out of the question. Therefore at the Christmas Meeting the Society was declared to be a public institution. But that does not in any way gainsay the fact that on the other side it becomes all the more esoteric. The leadership of the Society must be more and more consciously anthroposophical. It was for this reason that when we were framing our Statutes, our procedure differed entirely from what is customary. Statutes usually start by laying down some basic principle.—We had such Statutes in the Theosophical Society: the establishment of a universal brotherhood of mankind; the recognition of unity in religions, and so on. As I have often said, instead of all this we must emphasise the reality which the Anthroposophical Society is able to establish. This was in fact done at the Christmas Meeting. There was no mention of abstract principles but it was declared that in Dornach there is something that is living reality. Whoever sees justification in what is thus actively alive in Dornach is entitled to join the Society. The life of the Society is not conditioned by abstractions usually known as ‘Statutes;’ our so-called ‘Statutes’ are an account of what exists in Dornach and what we aim to do from there. The Society is to have an Executive which acts and which in its actions and in the initiatives it takes has a clear view of what forms and constitutes it. Thus we have tried to replace abstractions by the genuinely human element and to assert this even in the ‘Statutes.’ This is the one and only possibility of life for a Society that is to be an organ for the influx of spiritual power into the world.

Let me put it like this.—The Executive created in Dornach at Christmas is based upon a hypothetical assumption. If the Society is willing to accept what it does, it will be an Executive in the real sense; if the Society is unwilling, then the Executive will amount to nothing; it can be accepted only as the centre of living activity. I can give no more than brief indications at the moment—everything else will be clearly set forth in the News Sheet.

A real attempt was made through the Christmas Meeting to bring a new spirit into the Society, but it is essential that the nature of this new spirit shall be understood. It is not a spirit of abstractions but of living reality, a spirit which wants to speak not to the head but to the hearts of men. Thus as far as Anthroposophy is concerned, the Christmas Meeting was either everything or nothing. And it will be nothing if it has no real continuity, if it was merely a festive occasion which people found enjoyable, forgetting about it afterwards and remaining in the same old grooves. If that happens the Meeting will have no real content and nothing will stream back to it. The only content it can have is derived from the life in the various spheres, of the Society. It will become a reality only by virtue of what happens through its impulse in the life of the Anthroposophical Society. The Christmas Meeting becomes a reality only through its consequences and effects. A certain responsibility in the soul is involved merely when attention is directed to the Christmas Meeting—the responsibility to make it a reality; otherwise as a foundation it will withdraw from earthly existence and go the same way as the Moon Beings of which I have spoken to-day. In a certain sense the impulse of the Christmas Foundation Meeting was actually in the world. Whether it will become effective in life depends upon whether its impulse continues.

The spiritual Foundation Stone of the Anthroposophical Society was laid in the hearts of every participant. We brought the Meeting to a formal conclusion, but actually it should never be closed, it should continue perpetually in the life of the Anthroposophical Society. For this reason I would ask you to take very seriously what you will find in the weekly News Sheet, and to consider everything that will become known to you by its means, not only as something reported or described but as actual reality. It cannot be expected that everything will be arranged at once and to begin with people will inevitably be asking, ‘How should this or that be done?’ One of the first steps will be that in the News Sheet you will find what I may call guiding lines in the form of aphorisms giving expression to anthroposophical truths on such themes as life, religion, art, and so forth. And then people in the different groups will be able to say: Here is a thought sent to us from Dornach as a guiding line; in addition to other business let us therefore concentrate on this thought.

In this way unity will develop among the various spheres of anthroposophical life within the Society. Many things will begin to flow through the Society as its life-blood, so that instead of merely speaking about unity the Society may be permeated by a common spiritual blood. Such was the aim of the Christmas Meeting. It could be felt then and its further effects will become apparent as time goes on.

Emphasis on this is particularly necessary here in Germany where the whole position is different from anywhere else. In other countries the opposition is not nearly as strong as it is here. If it crops up elsewhere one can usually see that it is imported from here, although there is a certain kind of opposition everywhere, especially in the vicinity of Dornach itself. All the same it is a special kind of opposition that faces us in Germany, a very tough opposition which works with systematic, fully conscious methods. It was a difficult decision to put someone who was practically lowest at the head of the Society but that is what actually happened. When the Anthroposophical Society was founded in 1912-13, I held no office in it; indeed I was not even a Member. Nor was I a Member afterwards. I have often emphasised this but it has been misunderstood. I wanted the Anthroposophical Society to have me only as teacher, as one who could lead to the sources of anthroposophical life. The attempt had to be made in order to see what would come of it.

What has happened is that at the age when people usually retire, I have to make a beginning, for in fact I regard the Christmas Meeting as a beginning, a genuine beginning in life. And I would like you too to feel that we are at a beginning. If you feel like this then you may expect results from this beginning in which there are great possibilities. It is only from necessity that I have become a Member, in fact President of the Anthroposophical Society, and I sincerely hope that the significance of the Christmas Meeting will be realised. If this comes about it may perhaps be possible, as a result of this attempt, and with the cooperation of everyone with what will go out from Dornach, for genuine anthroposophical life to flow through the Society. In this spirit—and it is upon this spirit that everything in the Society will depend—I should like to respond most cordially to the welcome given me today by Dr. Kolisko, on the occasion of my first visit here since the Christmas Meeting. I should like to respond with equal warmth so that we may work together in the spirit of the Christmas Meeting in such a way that the impulse then given may never cease to be active among anthroposophists who genuinely strive to understand what anthroposophical life means. The influence of the Dornach Meeting and the spirit we tried to invoke then will always be present if there is devotion and perceptive understanding among the Members.

Let us then work together, realising the deep significance of the Dornach Meeting. Let us never treat it with indifference but regard it as an impulse that penetrates deeply into our hearts. The Dornach Meeting will then have been much more than a festival week; it will be an impulse affecting the whole world and the destiny of man. And that is the right impulse for all anthroposophical work and activity.

Translator Unknown

Today, first of all, I have the urge in my soul to say something to you with regard to what wills, out of the impulses and need of our time, to be spoken to mankind in general through my booklet about the Social Question which will be appearing in the near future. It will be called The Key Points of the Social Question in the Vital Necessities of the Present and the Future (GA 23). It will have become evident to you from the lectures which we have held here for many weeks that what I now have to say just with regard to the Social Question is, perhaps, not only a sort of secondary stream by the side of what is pulsing in our whole spiritual-scientific striving, but that, in fact, matters must be so considered that this spiritual-scientific striving develops, in a way peculiar to itself, understanding for the needs and demands of our time and of the near future. The basic character of our time can really only be radically helped as a result of spiritual impulses. Everything else could at best be a substitute. Even the external activity which has to take place will have to be of such a kind that—I will not say a particular form of Spiritual Science, but that a spiritual life, penetrating to the real Spirit, becomes possible within the Social Order.

This is necessary for the reason that, as a result of human development, the man of the present day is in a quite definite position, which I have described to you from the most diverse sides. Today I shall only refer once more to the fact that, basically speaking, all considerations have led us to realise how the man of the present day is, as a result of his organisation, in a certain state of disunion at the present point of time. You see, one can easily be inclined to look on man as a unity in his whole being. But he is not a unity. We know that he is a three-membered being. And these three members of the human entity stand in different relationships to the physical-, soul- and spiritual outer world, and to his own inner part, in the various epochs of the post-Atlantean period.

We can now consider the three-membered man in two different ways. (We will make this schematic and simply place the three members of man one above the other—see diagram). Whether we now give names to these three members according to their physical aspect and say: nerves-senses system, rhythmic or breathing-and-heart system, and metabolic system, or whether we give them names according to their spiritual aspect and say the Intuitive-spiritual, the Inspirational-psychic and the Imaginative-bodily, or whether we proceed with other words as I have represented in my book Theosophy regarding this three-membered man from the spiritual aspect, or whether we fix our attention on the physical projection of the three-membered man, to which I have drawn attention in my last book, Riddles of the Soul, from every point of view it appears to us that man is a three-membered being. But this three-membered being, man, is, if I may say so, on the other hand not at all so "simply three-membered". We can say: Man is, in a certain sense, a double being, a twofold being, and the boundary really goes midway through the rhythmic system, right through the breathing-and-heart system.

In our present phase of development, the inner part of man really only lives in the metabolic system and the lower part of the heart-lungs system, of the rhythmic system. There, man is inward in reality in today's age. On the other had, with regard to the upper part of the heart-breathing system and similarly with regard to the nerves-senses system, man is to a great extent external today. You will at once understand what I mean. Man perceives the external world through the senses: he then works it up by means of his understandings. He also breathes in the outer world by means of his lungs. From outside, man takes what comes from perceptions, from the working of his understanding, from breathing-in. But man is, as it were, a sort of dwelling-house with respect to what comes to him from outside (see diagram). The whole of external nature is really contained in this upper part of man: colours, tones, stars, clouds, the air even as far as the breathing process—and you yourselves are really only the dwelling-house for this external matter. In olden times, men have found something else which was related to this upper part: elementary spirits and also divine-spiritual beings of the higher Hierarchies. They have spoken of these nature-beings in their mythologies, which were wiser than the natural-scientific knowledge of today. Now they have fallen out of human perceptions.

Today, Man only perceives the sensible and works it up. Here, he is really carrying only the external world into himself. We are hardly sufficiently aware of how little of ourselves there really is in what we carry into ourselves as perceptions of the outer world, or even as what the memory retains of the outer world. If you go up this hill in the morning or at midday and see the Goetheanum, then go down and carry in yourself the picture of the Goetheanum and all that has happened, you apparently have something in you, but yet something which is only a mirror-image in you, for the Goetheanum is standing here on this hill. You are only its dwelling-place—with the upper part of Man which I have separated off (see diagram). And Man is so poor in spirit today because he no longer finds the Spirit in the external world.

Yes, my dear friends, there were times in the development of the Earth in which, after people had gone down again, what had been seen would have worked in those who had come up the hill here and thus had seen something such as the Goetheanum, not only as a fantasy, as an inner mystery but as a world of facts. From what they had seen people would have received—just as they carry down colours and forms now—those spiritual beings which had slipped out of every corner and which had taken part in what man did here. But this is over for men, just as though the elementary and spiritual beings had fled out of external nature. External nature is emptied of Spirit, and as a result so is this part of the human interior. And all that really is left for what is inward is the lower part of the chest, and the metabolic system with the limbs.

For the externalised man of today, this is what he calls his "inner part" if he does not really begin to interest himself in true spirituality. Man has arrived at the point where he speaks, it is true, of his "inner part", but, basically speaking, he means nothing beyond his metabolic system and, at most, the connection which the breathing and the rhythm of the heart enter into with the metabolic system. We should not be deceived about it, and should be clear with ourselves: when men declare that they are out of order in their "inner part", that they have inner difficulties, this is only a verbal expression for some lack of regularity in the metabolic system.

One man is cheerful, another ill-tempered owing to his "inner part", one is passionate, another full of humour. Basically speaking, all this is a result of the metabolic system and at most the reaction of the breathing and heart-circulation on the metabolic system. When one says that the soul is out of order in this or that person, it is, in reality, his stomach and intestines which are out of order. All that people call "soul-life" is, basically speaking, only a verbal expression for events in the metabolic system. Naturally, no one wants to confess, in accordance with reality: my stomach, my intestines, spleen or liver or such things are not in order within me, but we say: my soul has this or that difficulty. This sounds better, more elegant, to many people; they consider it to be less materialistic. To anyone who looks at things according to reality, it is merely more untruthful. For we stand today in that phase of development in which human nature already separates itself into these two members.

You may ask: by what means can this be corrected? There is only one help for the man of today, namely to get loose from himself, by means of an interest in the affairs of mankind, through real interest in what concerns all men today, and to turn the attention as little as possible to these irregularities of the metabolic system in the wider sense, which are, nevertheless, almost universally present today. If men could get loose from themselves through a far-reaching interest, which is to be reached only by taking Spiritual Science seriously—then alone can health pour itself out over the human race today.

Today, you see, one has really characteristic experiences. I was recently at the League of Nations Congress at Berne¹, where they spoke about all the things about which it is unnecessary to speak today, because they just lead to nothing, and where they did not speak about all that is most necessary today. But I do not at all wish to mention this as the main point. I should like to mention, as the main point, something about the manor of speaking which cropped up in what almost all the speakers said. In at least every third sentence uttered by these speakers is found the little word "I". "I am of the opinion", "I think", "It seems to me that this or that is necessary", "I am in favour of this or that"—you can hear this in almost every sentence. And the men were quite angry if one did not join in in the same strain! If one speaks more from an objective standpoint, if one puts one's sentences in such a way that one gives priority to the inner, objective contents of the matter, without personal opinion, they say that one is speaking authoritatively, that one is speaking arrogantly. But surely the highest arrogance is when one brings the word "I" into one's mouth every third sentence.

But people have certainly forgotten, today, to feel this arrogance. They find it more sensible if someone is always talking of himself, and they find it in the highest degree immodest and arrogant if someone tries to speak from an objective standpoint, for, you see, they have this dim feeling: he is asserting that he knows something beyond what is his personal opinion. And it is a great sin today if anyone asserts that he does know something beyond what is his personal opinion. And as to those personal opinions—!

To those who are versed in Spiritual Science I should frequently like to describe this kind of conference more accurately, just from its spiritual-scientific standpoint! One hears a speaker of the kind who utters the little word "I" with every third sentence—"I think", " I am of the opinion", "this is sympathetic to me", "I ask you to enter into this": when this speaker is speaking about the super-State, the super-parliament, the spiritual scientist says to himself: the man surely has something wrong with his liver, something is out of order in his liver and the metabolic system is speaking out of the man. A second speaker gets up and talks in a similar way. As he goes away, the spiritual scientist says to himself: probably he has a gall stone. The third is inclined to stomach trouble.

These things are important only in an age in which materialism is pulsating, where the free soul, independent of what is material, does not speak, where, in fact, it is the body which speaks. And very often indeed, today, it is the body which speaks. Really, people are only accustomed to make use of old words of their bodily indispositions. To one who looks into things in a spiritual-scientific way it would be preferable if, instead of talking about the Superman (naturally, I do not mean Nietzsche, but the others who have spoken about the "Superman" after Nietzsche's time) were to talk about the "sub-stomach". For in this way they would better catch the likeness of the reality which is, in fact, speaking out of them.

This is not pessimism, my dear friends: it is quite simply the world of present day facts. And in the present time men are impelled to become untruthful for the simple reason that they are ashamed to call the facts by the right name. There is even a longing in them to give themselves up to that "man" which is, in fact, only the physical man. In our time it is certainly the case that perhaps the only reason why we have no Molière to write a new Malade imaginaire is that we should need too many Molières, for today there is a genuine enthusiasm for being ill in people who have time to be ill. Such people as have no time for it do not, for the most part, turn their attention to those conditions which are sufficient causes for making others, who have time to be ill, feel that they are ill.

One must look for the destructive workings of materialism not only where people talk of materialism or where they talk materialistically: these working show themselves in numerous other examples as well. And sometimes even talk about the Spirit today as nothing else than the purest materialism, for this talk about the Spirit is, for very many people, nothing else than an anaesthetic for their otherwise cosy materiality. The will to activity is lacking in men today, the will to real inner activity. This is the reason why the bourgeoisie has remained in a state of ineffectiveness in face of the Social Question which has been rising up for 70 years. It is a monstrous materialism which has taken hold of men in the most diverse forms—and especially the circles on whom, in recent times, was set the task of turning to the Spiritual.

One must know this about the basic impulses of our time, about what is living in our time. Not to know it implies that one is giving oneself up to illusions. Spiritual Science is of such great importance for present day men because it takes them away from themselves, but it must be truly comprehended in this sense. An illusion can easily arise regarding Spiritual Science: a quality can assert itself, which is so thoroughly propagated at the present time just as a result of materialism—namely, superficiality. If people grasp in a superficial way what Spiritual Science wishes to arouse in the way of interests, they can be all the more hardened in themselves, can be all the more pressed into themselves. Then nothing else at all is of assistance than to return again and again to what does not in any way concern us personally, but what represents the content of our Spiritual Science and the things which are found in its content, to take them as objectively as possible and, when one speaks about the most subjective things, not to take them in a subjective way! Only think how important it is to resist, in this point, temptations which lie near.

When I recently depicted how Man is really capable of development from outside only up to the 28th year today, and how development comes to an end at that point of time when he is standing just before the mind-soul and the Ego but does not come to them, and thereby goes to meet a certain inner emptiness—this, then, is an important truth for the present time. It is important to know this: it is important to receive it into oneself as an inner experience. But it would be dangerous to think afterwards: am I, perhaps, one of those who have not developed to the mind-soul in the right way from the 28th year forward? Just the most subjective things, which refer to what is most important of all, should be taken up objectively: we should not look into whether we are among those in whom something can happen in this way: we should just be able to look away from ourselves in the most important human truths, and look at the age, at humanity, and not always think of ourselves in an egotistical way.

It is this which is characteristic of the time, which is coming forth from the deep impulses of our time and which makes it so difficult today to propagate ideas which refer to the very most important impulses of the development of the time. Man can develop no interest from this basic disposition which I have described. Their ideas remain sensations for them, do not sufficiently take hold of them, do not sufficiently spur them on to activity.

This must now be said at a time when a kind of transition has occurred for all people who are genuinely interesting themselves in our Spiritual Science. Until now you have had a spiritual-scientific literature which refers to the inner development of man and to knowledge about the Spiritual World, and which spoke to a man in such a way that he could take hold of the world, his relationship with the world, his relationship with other men, so far as it is soul-spiritual, from the most varied points of view. Now this Spiritual Science is running, with a branch—it is proceeding as the main body of Spiritual Science, for just this main body of Spiritual Science is the most necessary thing of all for really making all relationships healthy—into a stream which speaks of the Social Question, of the making healthy of the Social Organism, and which may no longer be taken inactively, no longer just passively, because otherwise it would miss its goal. And just now it will appear how many of us have made themselves ripe, during the many preceding years in which they were taking Spiritual Science into themselves, for a clear grasp of what is now to be understood as the Social Question. For what matters is a clear, unprejudiced, unsentimental grasp of what is to be uttered particularly in my forthcoming book The Basic Issues of the Social Question—it will be something on account of which we shall now have to undergo a certain trial.

Up to now, one could certainly be a good spiritual scientist if one studied Spiritual Science without troubling oneself about what was going on in life outside. And we have, you see, just two phenomena within out anthroposophical movement about which we really should reflect. We have the one phenomena that we have quite good anthroposophists who, though they know a great deal about cosmic development, the membering of Man, reincarnation, destiny and karma, nonetheless have no inkling of the reality of life, but who have sought something just in Anthroposophy, which has enabled them to hold themselves aloof from this reality of life. Those whom what I have just said specially concerns do not realise at all that it does concern them. For every one of them considers himself in naive fashion to be a practical man with regard to his life. This is the one phenomena which we have among us.

The other phenomena is sectarianism in some form or other. There is a deep inclination present, you see, to produce sectarianism just in movements which have to do with the Spiritual. It does not depend on whether this sectarianism is now developing from little cliques which appear with a sectarian character, even in very minor matters, or whether direct sectarianism is produced. For the main point is to realise that objectivity, an impersonal point of view, must permeate this anthroposophically-oriented spiritual-scientific movement which is here referred to.

This, you see, was always the difficult thing about our movement, that the personal was interchanged with what is objectively-factual, mostly without our being aware of it. When people gather into a clique which is larger of smaller, they are in full belief that they have a quite factual interest. Certainly they fully believe this, for they do not notice at all that they in reality they are generally doing what they wish for, just because this person stands near them spiritual-scientifically, because he is connected with them is such and such a way, because they wish to have just this or that relationship with him, or the like.

People are not aware of this. They live in the full belief that they are being objective. But just this sectarianism, this gathering in cliques, has brought forth the dreadful consequence that the promulgation of Spiritual Science, in whatever sphere it may be, is not judged today according to what it is but according to what a society, the Anthroposophical Society, is making and has made out of it. While I point to the most mischievous shortcomings and the most horrible "marsh-plants", of the type of an S------, it may not at all be overlooked, if one goes to the root of the matter, that this kind of "marsh-plant" has been coaxed on, raised up and cultivated by the cliquishness and sectarianism which have developed widely in the last 17 or 18 years in the anthroposophical movement. But what is going on in this anthroposophical movement very often projects itself into Anthroposophy because, you see, sins are committed by very many members against what is the most significant impulse of the time today, against individualism in the spiritual sphere. How frequently do we hear: we Anthroposophists, we Theosophists, want this or that! It is dreadful that we have as many as three basic principles!—We need no basic principles at all, for it is not these which matter: we need truths, not summarising-principles, and these truths are only for single human beings, for the individual. The Society—how often I have said it—should be something outward, but the thing itself does not concern the Society.

We must now be able to take this in a really and truly serious way. If what is now to flow into the world as a result of efforts with regard to the Social Question is to be borne along by sectarianism or clique-spirit or the various narrow-mindednesses which I have described today, quite terrible injury will be done to the matter! Here we must really develop to a more broad-minded way of thinking: we must seek for access into real, practical life. This is the main point.

Do take what I am saying about these things only in a friendly spirit. Do not take it as though I should like to say anything derogatory on the one side or the other. But now I really am compelled to utter a fundamental warning before this social side of our activities becomes the concern of all members, as it is to become—a warning not to mix into this social thinking any sectarianism, any pettiness, anything which has no wide horizon, which does not arise from clear thinking. But try, to an ever greater extent, to think from the experience and reality of life! I was, indeed, highly astonished when, a short time ago, the slogan (Devise) reached by ears, which I suppose must be uttered here from the one side or the other: one should carry practically into life the things which I am now putting forward as social ideas. What was meant was the carrying over of those practical ideas into the most unpractical measures that could be! We ought not to let that arise which has just led into the most terrible chaos and mischief in our time, the confusing of real with illusory practicality in life. What has been expressed there is so unpractical, has been thought out in so sectarian a way that I do not want to go into it further: it has to so small an extent the will really to step into practical life that I beg you before everything to look on what is going on in real life today, to know how to learn from what the various statements which I make have arisen.

For do you believe that it is a light-hearted theory when one says that labour-power has the character of a commodity? This may only be said if one has got to know it to an ever-greater extent as the most characteristic thing in life. Thus I should like, for example, to say the following—without anger, for these things are not to be taken in a personal way: I have been asked whether the three-membering—economic life, rights-life, spiritual life, could not be realised within our Society.

Certainly, one can utter something in this way with words, if one stands very well within our movement, if one feels for it quite honestly and deeply. But yet, if one say this, it is as though one had not at all grasped the basic nature of our movement. One has understood nothing at all about what I have said about the Social Question if one thinks that we can split our Society here into three, like a sect! For what are the three branches of the healthy Social Organism? First, take economic life. Do you, perhaps, wish to carry on some sort of communal economy in this Society—I do not know at all how it is to be externally realised—within the rest of the economic sphere outside? Do you wish, then, not to understand at all that one cannot cut oneself off in an egotistical way—even if it be in a group-egotistical way—and leave everything else out of consideration? You carry on economic life, in fact, together with the rest of the economy of the surrounding territory. You take, in fact, milk, cheese, vegetables, all that you need, from an economic body from which you cannot isolate yourselves. You cannot, in fact, reform the times by cutting yourselves adrift from the times. If someone wants to make a Society like this into an economic corporation, it appears to me just as though someone has a large family and says: I shall now begin threefolding in my family!

These ideas are too serious, too comprehensive. They ought not to be dragged into the petty-bourgeois field of various sectarianism which has always been there. They must be thought of in connection with the whole of mankind. They would, you see, cut themselves completely off from practical thinking about the economic circulation of the world if they wished to set up a group-economy for a sect. So much for economic life.

And rights-life! Just found the Rights-state within our Society! If you steal something, it will be entirely without importance if three people come together and pass judgement about this theft. The external court will certainly take you in charge and pass judgement. You just cannot draw yourself out of the external organisation with regard to the Rights-state.

Finally, consider spiritual life. Since there has been an Anthroposophical Society or since, with its anthroposophical content, it has belonged to the Theosophical Society, where has there been anything carried on here within this spiritual community which is dependent in even the smallest degree on any state- or political organisation? From the first day of this Society forward, our ideal has been fulfilled with regard to spiritual life, which, above all, is our task! Do you believe that it is only today that this is be achieved in this Anthroposophical Society? Is not everything fulfilled, just in this Anthroposophical Society, which is to be desired from the external spiritual organisation? Is it not the most practical ideal just with regard to this? Do you wish, now, to reform the Anthroposophical Society according to this aim? To be sure, you must have entirely failed to grasp what sort of a society you have been for so many years if it is only now that you wish to realise the Spiritual Third in this society!

Therefore, look upon just what we have been able to preserve by the skin of our teeth—freedom of spiritual investigation and teaching, at least in those people who long for no state-appointment for what they teach here—as a kind of starting-point for the rest. Just see what really is so, and do not let your thinking miss it. In my book about the Social Question it is stated again and again to be an inherited evil of the present age that the so-called practical people of today have let their thinking and speaking miss the things which matter. Is this evil also to establish itself in us, so that we no longer speak about the things which matter? It cannot be our task to carry free spiritual life into this place, but to carry out into the world what has always existed here as free spiritual life, to make it clear to men that all spiritual life must be of this kind.

What matters is, at least in the first place, to see the nearest reality. In this direction, what I have brought forward about the Social Question must, in the first place, be understood by Anthroposophists. Within the Anthroposophical Society at least, one should avoid propagating odd ideas with expressed intention of making practical what is represented here. Take seriously what has been gone through as a principal feature of the lectures of the last weeks—perhaps, indeed, of the last months: before everything, regard it quite seriously that the present time makes necessary a new adjustment of Man with regard to life, that it is not enough that we only take in now thoughts but that we should find the possibility to adjust ourselves in a new way in face of life, and that we should avoid everything which tends to isolation and to shutting ourselves off. Regard it seriously, before everything, that mankind has come to a real cul-de-sac in all three spheres with their so-called culture. How can this cul-de-sac show itself more clearly than in its chaotic, destructive effects in East- and Middle-Europe? The conditions in Russia do not arise only from the war. The war is only the culmination. What men have thought, perceived and felt for a long, long time, and what one was compelled to describe as a kind of social cancer² has brought this chaos to a head in East- and Middle-Europe.

But what is most lacking at the present time? Judgement is lacking most of all! In the present time, social enlightenment is most of all lacking! It is this which the bourgeoisie has neglected most of all—the right kind of social enlightenment. There is, you see, no social sense in men. Every man knows only himself! This is why judgement is so short-sighted. If one speaks like this today, that economic life is to be brought into the Anthroposophical Society, then this is how I should be able to represent something real to myself—if we were to buy a cow, take care of it and milk it, and thereby produce something and deal in the right way with what had been produced. Then this would not be any sectarianism within our Society, for an ordered economic life what matters before everything is to take measures to raise productivity, taking account of necessary needs.

Here a beginning was actually made, which only, in the first place, partly failed because of the personage by whom it was made. Remember, we made a beginning with our bread through Herr von R., producing bread not according to the principle of production but according to that of consumption, which can be the only really sound principle. We wished, first of all, to provide consumers, which should gave been possible through a Society. Then production would have been put in hand according to the number of these. This was a real, practical beginning. It has only failed because Herr von R. was or is a quite unpractical man. Thus this was a practical idea, but one which only had to do with the Anthroposophical Society so far as the Society represented, in the first place, a body of consumers. What matters is to turn one's glance to the thing, not to the Anthroposophical Society, certainly no to make this into an isolated sect.

With referenced to these external things which lie at the basis of production, and to many another thing, you will not come far if you do not grasp on a large scale the ideas which are in my book about the Social Question. For, in the last resort, economic practical experience is necessary for the reform of economic life; one must even know how to milk cows, and it is more important to understand the milking of cows than to put in hand some economic understanding in a little sect and then, nevertheless, to obtain milk from outside.

In our case, what matters would be to realize in just what the impulse of the present time must lie, what is the most important thing at the present time. You can engage in all the undertakings that you wish today. Go, if you can, to Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, etc. Put in hand there the best, most idealistic things; do what you wish! At the latest, all these undertakings will be bankrupt within ten years—that is how things are today. With the thoughts which men have today, you can put in hand the most idealistic undertakings; in ten years they will be bankrupt—of that you can be quite sure. It will not always be as quick as it was just now in Munich, where one workers' and soldiers' council was set aside by another, and this again by another yet more radical, and so on but everything which you put in hand today in the way of such undertakings, which appear very good and sound to you, will in their turn be overthrown so long as the same ideas remain in people's heads as have been there for centuries and are still wandering about there like ghosts.

Nothing more is to be done with these ideas! One must therefore certainly accustom oneself to think and learn the other way round, and to take in new ideas as a constituent part of the inner being of one's soul. You cannot at once, from one day to another, apply new ideas to undertakings, but you can work out in detail the ideas which are in my book, down to the most extreme specialization, because they are practical. You can try to put this or that in hand. But you will also need people, you see, for everything which you put in hand. And, so long as the old thoughts are haunting the heads of those people, your undertakings will soon become bankrupt or else will take on the earlier forms, so that everything will remain in the old manner. Therefore it is not the most important thing today to put this or that in hand. Naturally, you can put good things in hand for yourselves. I do not at all want to tempt you to put bad things in hand. But I am only drawing your attention to the fact that even if you put the best things in hand you will not change the times by doing so. In order really to work in any sphere in the new style, one can undertake something in the manner which I previously indicated to you with regard to bread, or one can do it in some such way as we are doing in the sphere of our literature.

How did we start? In the first place, I spoke to a very small circle in Berlin. Then the circles became ever larger. While they were becoming larger the need arose to have in books what was spoken. The readers were there before the books were printed. Follow up the theories about social ideas today; one of the fundamental evils of our social order consists of the continual crises and the danger of crises which arise as a result of sporadic overproduction, when people produce things without deliberation. It is worst of all in the book-trade. If you only knew what is produced in the book-trade in the way of books, editions of which are often produced of 500 copies, sometimes still more, of which not fifty copies are sold! You have employed the setter-up, you have employed the printer, you have used up paper, all for nothing! All this is thrown to the winds; a misuse of human labor-power has taken place! In the moment when you produce things without deliberation, you must be aware that you are using up human labor-power without the consumption being there to justify this using up of human labor-power, for this using-up of human labor-power is only justified by the existing need. Not the content, but the demand must be there. The spending of human labor power is only justified when one can foresee that the product of human labor is for the benefit of human beings.

Thus, in the single sphere into which we could step in a certain way as reformers, we have done so. We have even had to take refuge in under-production, not over-production. The world could by no means think otherwise than that the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis came to an end for want of readers, as other magazines have done. Just when it had to come to an end because other demands came upon me, the moment had to come when it would first have had half as many readers again as it had before, then twice as many, then three times as many. We have even had to resolve on underproduction, not overproduction. But thus crises were avoided in a sound way.

The book-trade lives in a continual crisis. If one makes statistics of books which are not bought, one sees that books are produced which are not bought today because care cannot be taken to see that they are bought. Many people have a certain insight into these things. I once spoke with Eduard von Hartmann in the eighties about the literature of the Theory of Knowledge. It was at the time when I wrote my booklet Truth and Science which is now out of print, of which no copy was printed uselessly, no copy went for waste-paper with a resulting waste of human labor-power. Eduard von Hartmann said to me: people have all their works on the Theory of Knowledge printed in editions of 500; we know that we have at the most sixty readers in Germany; in this case one should have them hectographed and send the books to the small number of readers who are really interested. It is known that works on Theory of Knowledge have had no more readers at that time.

Do not find fault with the fact that I have just spoken here about this purely economic question of anthroposophical literature. These things have nothing to do with the content of the books, you see, nothing to do with spiritual value. They can, however, illustrate what is really meant and what really matters at the present time—that first of all a sound association of consumers should be created and that production should not take place "into the blue". Not even Truth, my dear friends, should be produced from mere human predilection!

It is to this that the answer refers which I once gave to two Catholic priests in Colmar after a lecture on "The Bible and Knowledge", and which I recently touched on again. After the lecture, the two priests came to me and said: as regards to the content of the lecture they really had nothing special to object to, but they had a lot against the manner of speaking, for the way in which they spoke down from the pulpit was suitable for all men. The way in which I spoke was not suitable for all men, but only for educated people. I could only reply to them what matters in not what opinions you hold, and I hold, about the way in which one should speak to all men; no doubt we can have all sorts of interesting ideas about that, but what matters is not how one should speak but what the facts demand. And now I ask you do all the people go to you in the church? You cannot assert this. Thus I am speaking for those who remain outside and who yet also have a right to hear of Christ, and there area quite enough of them today.

These are facts which cannot be denied. But the old bourgeois education, which is wholly shut up in itself, does still deny it. It imagines something is right if done in this way: it must be so; it must be done like this. But, for life, it is not at all necessary that it be done in this way! What matters, for life, is that one observes: this is there and that is there, that one lets the facts which are there demand of one what one has to do. There are only apparently trivialities, for life today is continually sinning against these trivialities.

What is thus necessary before everything is another adjustment, and also the insight that we must see how this culture, which has been so praised, has carried death in itself, has dissolved itself. You must not believe that culture has been ruined as a result of the Radical-socialist movements of today. It has ruined itself. What the upper classes had in the way of culture has led itself into negation, is perishing by its own qualities. This upper class has simply not taken care that the lower, proletarian classes who are coming after them know anything rational about social arrangements, and thus it is astonished when they come to the fore in their social ignorance and bring really nothing about except chaos.

The position is quite serious, and it is out of this realization of the serious situation of the whole world today that the ideas flow which I have had to utter in my book about the Social Question. People will only understand this book aright if they grasp that one can put the best arrangements in hand today but that just nothing is to be done with the men who have the ideas of our time in their heads. Before everything, their heads must be filled with other ideas. What, then is the true, the real, the truly practical task? To spread enlightenment, my dear friends, before everything, to spread enlightenment and teach people to think differently! This is the task which is laid on every one of you, to bring enlightenment into people's heads, not to think of sundry reformations in details, but to give enlightenment about what is necessary in the most universal way. For, before everything, men must become different today; that is to say, the thoughts, the feelings in men's souls must become different. It is a question of carrying these ideas out there wherever one can. That is the practical thing, to put these ideas into practice. Something is achieved with every quarter of a man—pardon my speaking in such a way—when you win for these ideas. And it is achieved in the greatest degree if you win over people who have practical standing. In the matter of the signatures under the Manifesto, I recently said: it is really quite a cause for joy that there are writers' signatures under the Manifesto, but one bank director who really understands the Manifesto and works in its sense is of more value than ten writers who set their names under it.

Today, what matters is to take hold of life where it is to be taken hold of. And today this cannot be done except while one is spreading enlightenment before all else, is working in an enlightening way. For what people need as the most necessary thing of all is knowledge of the conditions for the life of the healthy Social Organism. If they do not learn to know the conditions for the life of the healthy Social Organism, they will continue to destroy the old Social Organism so long as destruction is possible. It is natural, you see, only up to a certain point. Everything which is done just now without these ideas is an exhaustion of the forces of the old order, a pulling down of the old order. This has begun in Russia and will go on further from there. What matters is to build up. But you can only build up today if people understand how the building-up must be done. For we are living in the age of the development of the consciousness-soul, that is to say in the age of conscious individualities, in the age when people must know what they are doing.

My book is written out of this spirit, and I should like it understood in this spirit. I should like you to lay it in your hearts in this spirit. It will simply serve the time; it will utter what must be uttered out of the spirit of the time. Cliques, sectarian trends within the body of our own Society, have taken care enough that, basically speaking, people presume all sorts of ghost-hunting and the like when there is talk about Anthroposophy. But one does not seek the Spirit here by always merely talking about the Spirit—one can leave that to other gentlemen—but the important thing is that the Spirit shall be in the position really to plunge down into practical life, to understand how practical life must be handled. Anyone has a poor kind of belief in the Spirit who wishes to grasp it only in a shadowy form which is floating above life. Therefore, to an ever greater extent, you must really avoid turning away from life, must to an ever greater extent seek really to understand life, to look into life; otherwise the same phenomena of which I have spoken will happen again and again. Examples can be given by hundreds and thousands. A lady came to me and said: a man has come to me to ask me to lend him money, but he is a brewer who brews beer for this money. I really cannot support this—a brewery! Now, you see, this is quite nice; in this narrow circle, the lady did not wish to support the brewery because she was an abstainer and not only wished to be an abstainer on her own account but wished also to make propaganda for temperance. I had to reply to her: "I suppose you have money in the bank, by which you live. Have you an inkling how many breweries the bank helps with your money? Have you an inkling of all that is done there? Do you believe that all this is in the sense of the idea which you have just followed with regard to the sum which you were asked to lend to the brewer? But are you not doing the same thing when your money, which you have deposited in the bank, is carried over into economic life?" For do you really believe that it means that you are turning yourself towards life if you do no more than judge this life in the narrowest circles, if you do not at all set about fixing your attention on the broad aspect of life?

But the important thing is this: our Anthroposophical Society is no field for experimenting, but it is to be the germ for everything good which is to come over mankind. With regard to the Social Question, what matters is above all that a wider stream of enlightenment about social necessities shall stream out from it. For you are certainly behaving practically, conforming with life, if you spread these things, but you must also really take trouble to spread them conformably with life, and not remain in a narrow interpretation. I hope that not one of you comes to the strange idea that we are dealing in the old national-economic ideas, by which people learn National-economy. For God's sake don't bring in anything pertaining to "export national-economics" here today, for this, you see, consists of ideas from the oldest lumber-room of all! Do not believe that you are learning to think in a national-economic way if, today, you take practicable concepts into yourselves in a scholastic way, as they are perhaps taught at universities. Do not make any programs which appear to put into practice what I have given in lectures but which, rather, mean nothing more than the terribly-grinning old bourgeois masks! Let us set ourselves on the solid ground of the great demands of our time; let us consider social life before everything in these demands of our time!

I could not but say this before you just now, when we are about to make a journey to Germany and many a task will come to meet me; and though we hope that our absence will this time be much less long than on other occasions, we are yet living in a time when one should really never make plans and projects covering a long time. One can only say people who have found one another as the members of the Anthroposophical Society have done remain together wherever they are, stand in the matter with steadfast courage and inner boldness and stick to their course, whatever the terrible billows of the present time may bring. For the most part, they will not bring anything easy. We shall most likely experience many a thing which will raise the question in us: how should things go further just among us? Stick to your course even when this happens; do what is your part in order to carry something further in the world, and you will be doing what is right.

I could only remain here at this time until this book was completed, for this book is to be of service to the time. Our friends will undertake it here, will take care of its distribution in Switzerland, and I hope for many a reason that I can be here again quite soon to take part in this work. Partly for a reason which is very much misunderstood just here in Switzerland. One can certainly hear from someone on the other side: "but what does the foreigner want just here in Switzerland? He should leave us in peace. Our democracy has lasted for 600 years; it is healthy, it is proof against what is going on outside among the crazy eastern and middle-European peoples."

I have now the conviction that the best could be done today where it could still be brought about from free-will. If such social ideas as are recorded in my book were to blossom in Russia today, this would come to pass because the most external need compelled it, and if the most external need compels it—the same in Middle-Europe, the same in Germany—then the right impulse is no longer there. The right impulse just for these ideas, which will bring social healing to mankind, would be present if they would come to pass out of freedom on a ground of which one can say the Bolshevists have not come to us, we still have something of the old conditions. Oh, if understanding for it were developed to bring forth these ideas from free-will, just on the ground here, before the water runs into the mouths of the people here as well, then Switzerland could be the blossoming land of Europe, for it is equipped for this by its geographical position! It is equipped with a gigantic mission in spite of its small size. But it will only be able to fulfill this mission if it brings to completion, from free-will, what neither the eastern nor the middle states can bring to fulfillment from free-will today—they would have had to take it in hand before now—and what the western states will not do because they have not sufficient disposition to do so. Here there are dispositions, the geographical presuppositions; everything is present here. All that is needed here is good-will towards free human resolve. To this belongs just activity of thinking. To this belongs thought-will.

Thought-will is what the mankind of today most lack. Thought-will develops very well, even geographically, among those men whom souls come because they wish to go into the mountains. (I drew your attention to this yesterday: souls no longer set very much value on race, they go to a geographical situation). Thought-will does not develop in regions such as that in which The Three Gypsies (poem by Lenau) was composed. This is a very beautiful poem, but it is composed in the plain. Man does not need a plain-disposition today; he certainly needs a mountain-disposition. Therefore, much could come out of the Swiss mountains; therefore one would like to have certain foundations here also, a point from which something could proceed. And therefore it seems important to me not to be silent just here but to speak as long as possible of the great needs of the time. And I call especially to our friends here in Switzerland to understand the demand for enlightenment, to take care that the demands of the time pass over into the consciousness just of those who live in this place. The more Swiss heads and Swiss hearts are won just for these social ideas, the better it will be for Europe and for the world. I say this quite particularly to the Swiss. You can, you see, my dear Swiss who are among us, make the foreign thing into a Swiss thing—then it is a Swiss thing! All these distinctions, really have only a passing value.

I could not but say this to you today, and I hope that you have understood me quite aright with regard to these things. I hope that the spirit which should fill and envelop this building may be further maintained as a result of the disposition of our members, and that we may at some time find ourselves together again here, held together by this spirit which, from the beginning forward, was such that it could now live itself out and which cannot be any different, for from the beginning forward it has willed to realize itself in what lies in the demands of our time.

With this I should like to take leave of you for the present. But this place here should have such a spiritual importance that if it should at any time be necessary and if the only way for me to come to work here would be to ride here on a wasted, half-dead nag, I should not shrink from even this. But tasks can come in other places which may delay my return. But in spite of everything, good-bye in our spirit, particularly in the spirit which I have slightly depicted in this last gathering and presented to your hearts.

• 1. 7-13 March 1919: see also The Real Foundation of a League of Nations. Troxler Press, Berne
• 2. see Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth, cycle 32, Lecture 6, p.12

Dear Mourners! This as a final farewell to Edith Maryon, our loyal colleague:

Those who look at your path of karma,
poor in joy,
Your noble spiritual striving,
the warmth of your soul:
The human being's sense of purpose appears to him
from your life on earth.

Whoever feels your quiet being,
loving,
sees your soul's tireless efforts
never tires:
To him appears the heart of a human being
from your daily life.

Whoever stood before your death door,
the all-too-close,
sees the hard path of suffering
the gently endured:
the meaning of human suffering

He who beholds in the spiritual spheres,
The beneficent,
Weaving your soul life in the future
The light-radiant:
A human being's spiritual power appears to him
From your eternal being.

He who beholds from the heights of the sun,
The warm and loving, Your look down to us, The helping one: The power of blessing of a human being From Your spiritual activity.

Dear mourners! I would like to turn my thoughts first to the absent relatives who were unable to attend on the day when we had to commit the earthly remains of our dear Edith Maryon to the elements. The eldest brother of the deceased, Herbert Maryon, has instructed me to convey all the love that could still be shown here on the part of the family of the deceased. The others, a sister in London, another in the north of England, and a brother in Australia, are unable to be here and can only join us in spirit. But we, my dear mourners, on this day of mourning look back at the earthly life of Edith Maryon.

She came to us in our Anthroposophical Society more than ten years ago from another esoteric community, full of a noble, sacred striving for esoteric deepening of the soul. All this was present in her, alongside what she presented in her outer life. She was an artist and, in her way, a truly accomplished artist, an artist who had full access to the means of art and was fully familiar with the workings of art. She had practised sculpture in England and Italy. She had achieved great success in this art long before she joined the Anthroposophical Society. Edith Maryon has painted a whole series of portraits of respected and well-known personalities in the world. In Italy she immersed herself in everything that is great, beautiful, sublime and haunting in art. So she came among us as an artist and esoteric. At first she sought nothing from us but to deepen her soul through esoteric development. But karma brought it about that she found herself compelled to place what was hers in art in the sacrificial service of our Goetheanum, and from the very beginning she was active at the Goetheanum with all that she, out of her art and out of her human nature, was able to contribute to the completion of this Goetheanum and to everything connected with it.

Looking back on her working life, we see that it was interrupted only once, in 1914, when she suffered a very serious illness while on a trip to England. It was an illness of which it could well be said that if it were to recur in a serious way, Edith Maryon would no longer be able to remain on earth. But at that time she recovered through the efforts of her friend Dr. Felkin, a physician, and was restored to us in 1914 for further work at the Goetheanum. From the time she was able to lay down her work on the altar of sacrifice at the Goetheanum, this was the one thing that stood at the center of all her duties and all her spiritual life. And she has just found the opportunity to do real work that truly leads to a goal within the anthroposophical movement.

It is quite natural that within the anthroposophical movement, the new impulses that I am to introduce into the most diverse fields of art, science and life come into conflict in the most diverse ways with what can be brought in, with what can be acquired with external art, with external science and so on. But there is a way of working if, above all opposition, there is a noble devotion to the work itself, if never may an obstacle be seen in a different view of how to work together. If the work is to come about, it will come about, even if one of the traditions of the older art comes from the other, and the other is obliged to bring art to a further development out of new impulses. If there is true human cooperation, then the commonality of the work can transcend all opposition.

This attitude was present in the highest degree in Edith Maryon's quiet work. That, however, many factors came into play in her working with me, may today, when we have to part with the earthly remains of Edith Maryon and look into the future, to the soul that strives upwards into the spiritual kingdom of light, there continuing to work, may well be said today to a wider circle. It was almost at the beginning of my work as a sculptor at the Goetheanum in Dornach that I had to work on the scaffolding at the top of the statue of Christ in the outer studio, the large front studio, where the model was located. At that time, I almost fell through an opening in the scaffolding and would certainly have fallen onto a pillar with a sharp point if Edith Maryon had not stopped my fall. And so I can already say, my dear mourners, that the Anthroposophical Society, in a certain way, if it believes that my work since that time has also had value within its society, has the rescue back then to be grateful for.

These things were seldom spoken of, for it was not Edith Maryon's way to talk much about her work, especially her human work. But in a very special way she displayed what may be called energy in calmness, energy in quiet work. And the two qualities which stood out as humanly beautiful and valuable were, on the one hand, Edith Maryon's reliability, whenever it was needed, and, on the other, her practical sense.

In the spiritual striving that is necessary to work out into the world, it is essential, my dear mourners, that there are also people in it who have a truly practical mind, so that what is to be realized out of the intentions of the spirit can also come before the world, can be embodied before the world. And of Edith Maryon it can be said that her reliability was something absolutely true and faithful. If she undertook something that required her practical sense, it would be there in due course, even when the work to be done was quite remote from her actual professional activity.

In addition to her collaboration on the sculptural work at the Goetheanum, which really took up even more of her time than what has since become visible, even in the Central Point Statue, in the Central Point Group, she was the most eminently suitable force for the sculptural work at the Goetheanum in the most eminent sense. She mastered the art of sculpture and was inclined to take in everything that was to permeate this art.

But something else was needed for this. A continuous interaction between the old and the new in art was necessary, and much of what has been created at the Goetheanum, without having been made by ourselves, does indeed contain the spirit that was working with Edith Maryon in the development of the plastic arts at the Goetheanum. But she went out; her energy in the quiet worked in a broader sense for the flourishing of the development of the anthroposophical cause. If it has become possible in recent years to give lectures and work for anthroposophy and eurythmy in Stratford, Oxford, London, Penmaenmawr and Ilkley, the credit is due to Edith Maryon's quiet work in mediating between the Goetheanum and the English-speaking population. It was she who first suggested the Christmas Course held years ago around Christmas time, attended by English-speaking teachers. It was she who suggested the artistic representation of the eurythmic movements and figures. And I would still have much to say if I wanted to point out everything that Edith Maryon has achieved through quiet, energetic calm. |

But that is not so important. What matters is to bring this trait of her life, which reveals itself so beautifully in her work, before our minds today.

And she was torn from this life by the fact that her old ailment was again revealed to her through the upheavals of the night of the fire in which the Goetheanum was taken from us, and that despite all careful nursing, this life could not be preserved for its earthly existence after all. Last summer, when Edith Maryon was able to make at least a few very short trips, we believed that this life could be sustained. But already in the fall it became clear how much destructive forces had intervened in this life.

It is truly out of consciousness of that karmic connection, which I expressed by pointing to that accident in the studio, when I say: Edith Maryon was predestined to enter the anthroposophical movement, and with her death much is snatched from the Anthroposophical Society, from the whole anthroposophical movement.

Much of what was her own was revealed in the most beautiful way, especially in the last few weeks, when her suffering became so extraordinarily oppressive and painful, partly through the way she bore this suffering, partly through her full attitude towards the spiritual world, which was entirely borne out of the spirit of anthroposophy, for which Edith Maryon had been preparing herself for weeks.

Due to other commitments, I was unable to be present at the hour of her death. Edith Maryon then guided her soul out of her body, with the help of her dear friend Dr. Ita Wegman, in order to lead it up into the spiritual world. She was cared for until her last hours, not only by the doctor, but also by the nurses who had become dear to her and cared for her, and it was under the care of these nurses that she often spent agonizing hours in the last days, but these could always be brightened in an extraordinarily beautiful and spiritual way. Medicines were no longer effective in the end, but what was still effective were the lectures that could be offered to her, either from what had been given as sayings at the Christmas Conference, or from the New Testament.

At that time, at the Christmas Conference, when there was still hope that we would be able to hold Edith Maryon here in the physical world, she was given the leadership of the Section for the Arts. With tremendous intensity, she endeavored, even on her deathbed, to direct her thoughts continually to the way in which this section should now come into being, and how it should work.

From this life, my dear mourners, the soul of Edith Maryon now ascends into the spiritual worlds, imbued with all that can be gained from the knowledge of anthroposophical spiritual hope and anthroposophical spiritual life. She carried, as did few, the living consciousness in her soul that she had emerged from the eternal source of the Father-Spirit of the world with her best being: Ex deo nascimur. She lived in intimate love, looking up to the Being who gave meaning to the evolution of the earth. In her last days, she had Christ's saying “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden” nailed to the side of her bed. In death she knew herself united with the spirit of Christ: In Christo morimur. And so she is certain of resurrection in the most beautiful way in the spiritual world: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus, in which we want to be united with her, to which we want to send our thoughts so that they may unite with hers. Then we can be sure, my dear 'mourners', that her thoughts, her soul's gaze, will rest. No, they will not just rest on the deeds that can still be done for the anthroposophical cause from the Goetheanum, they will work faithfully and powerfully, energetically, they will be among us when we need strength, they will be among us, and we will be able to feel their quiet comfort in our hearts when we need such comfort in the various trials to which the anthroposophical cause is exposed.

The will and testament that Edith Maryon drew up regarding her few possessions is touching. In it she remembered in an extraordinarily loving way all those who are close to her in any way.

And so we look up into those spheres where you continue to live, conquering death, wanting to be with you, united with you in that unity that never dies, that is imperishable through all the circles of the eternity that weaves and billows through the world.

He who beholds thy karmic path,
Poor in joy,
Beholds thy noble spiritual striving,
The warmth of soul:
To him appears the sense of human activity
From thy walk on earth.

He who feels thy so quiet being,
The loving one,
He beholds Thy soul's endeavor
The tireless one:
He beholds the heart of a human being
From Thy daily life.

He who stood before Thy gate of death,
The all-too-near,
He beholds the hard path of sorrow
the gently borne:
To him appears a human being's sense of endurance
from your sickbed.

Who can feel your beautiful spiritual work,
The one who is earnestly guided,
He who sees your life given up
To the spiritual goal:
He sees the strength of a human being's sacrifice
From your soul's struggle.

Whoever looks into the spiritual spheres,
The blissful,
Weave in future Your soul life
The light-radiant:
A human being's spiritual strength appears to him
From Your eternal being.

He who gazes from the heights of the sun,
The warm and loving,
Your loving gaze, the giver of help, to him appears the power to bless, from Your spiritual activity.

And so go then, You, soul so faithfully devoted to our holy cause! We want to look up to You. We know that you look down on us, we know that we remain united with you through all the circles of eternity. We live on with you, you who live the life that conquers death, as long as we are here, and when we are no longer here, we live on with you, united, united, united.