The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Hotel “Preussischer Hof”, February 8, 1913

Dear Dr. Steiner.

You have called upon us to “watch over” the newborn Anthroposophical Society, which is beset by enemies, and ensure that no harm befalls it. I believe I am acting in accordance with this instruction when I take the liberty of drawing your attention to a danger that threatens it from within. I will illustrate this danger with an example.

A Mr. Daeglau gave a lecture at the architects' house in which he provided evidence that “science” had misunderstood the nature of gravity. He claimed that there was hardly any attraction of bodies through the earth, but that the fall was caused by repulsion through the zodiac. In his explanations, he said some outrageous things as if they were well-known facts, such as that the direction of gravity is the same everywhere, that according to the laws of mechanics g = # would have to be if the mass of the earth were to be assumed to be infinitely large in relation to the mass of the falling body, and so on.

For anyone familiar with the fundamentals of physics, it was clear that one had before them a half-educated fantasist, but the majority of the ladies present and some of the gentlemen did not even have this modest knowledge. Since no objections were raised against the lecturer's assertions, such listeners could have been left with the impression that new proof had been provided of how foolish “science” is how far-sighted secret research is; and if they then carry this wisdom home in black and white (as some do) and occasionally share it with an outsider, the Anthroposophical Society, or more correctly Dr. Rudolf Steiner, can suffer as a result of such a fact, which is immediately generalized.

For one must always bear in mind that the Anthroposophical Society is not a society of equal members who have elected Dr. Rudolf Steiner as their chairman, but are actually and unequivocally the disciples of a man around whom they gather to learn facts from his mouth, the correctness of which they cannot verify because they lack the necessary sense for doing so. They can check the conclusions themselves, but they have to accept the facts on trust. This is the fundamental difference between secret research and science, which is based on the empirical facts of the five normal senses. In science, every normal person is able to check the premises on which a scientific proposition is based; in secret research, they are not. In science, to believe authorities is a sin against the fundamental principle of the same; in secret research, on the other hand, belief in the truthfulness and flawless observation of the only qualified secret researcher is a basic condition.

If, in the presence of the teacher, one of the students makes false assertions without being refuted, serious damage can result.

I understand very well the motives for which you, with regard to the lectures of your students (and these are all members of the Anthroposophical Society), pay homage to the principle “the more, the better”; but as a seminar leader who is concerned about the development of his students, seeks to involve all of them in the preparation of presentations, but only with the proviso that the mistakes made are corrected in the presence of those present, for their benefit and edification.

Now, even with your universal knowledge and inexhaustible capacity, it is not possible for you to go to all that trouble, but then it would have to be ensured that when a “weak student” wishes to speak, a fellow student well versed in the subject in question should be instructed to correct any, even very serious, lapses, such as those made by Mr. Daeglau.

Please excuse the length of these explanations, but I felt I had to draw attention to the danger that threatens your and consequently our cause if the attempts of your students to apply the facts communicated to us from the spiritual world to events in the physical plane are not controlled by the teacher himself but on his behalf by a competent party.

With sincere reverence,

Your humble servant,

Friedrich von Wrangel

It is a little difficult to continue what has been given in the last lectures, because so many friends who have not taken part in these studies are here to-day. On the other hand it is hardly possible to make a new beginning, for many things contained in the previous lectures have still to be completed. Friends who have just arrived will have to realise that if some of our thoughts to-day prove somewhat difficult to understand, it is because they are connected—inwardly, though not outwardly—with preceding lectures. At Easter we shall have a self-contained course, but to-day I must continue what has gone before. We did not expect so many friends at this date, although needless to say we are extremely glad that they have come.

In recent lectures we have been speaking of definite karmic relationships—not with the object of finding anything sensational in the successive earthly lives we have studied, but in order to arrive step by step at a really concrete understanding of the connections of destiny in human life.

I have described successive earthly lives of certain historic figures, in order to call forth an idea of how one earthly life works on into the next—and that is not an easy matter.

Again and again it must be emphasised that a new trend has come into the Anthroposophical Movement since the Christmas Foundation Meeting at Dornach. Of this I should now like to say a few introductory words.—You know, my dear friends, that since the year 1918 there have been all manner of undertakings within the Anthroposophical Society. Their origin is clear. When the Anthroposophical Society was founded, this question was really being asked, out of a deep occult impulse: Would the Anthroposophical Society continue to evolve by virtue of the inner strength which (in its members) it had acquired until then? There was only one way to make the test. Until then, I, as General Secretary, had had the leadership of the German Section, which was the form in which the Anthroposophical Movement had existed within the Theosophical Society. The only way now was for me no longer to take in hand the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society but to watch and see how this Society would evolve through its own inherent strength.

You see, my dear friends, that is something quite different from what the position would have been if already at that time (as at our Christmas Foundation Meeting) I had said that I would undertake the leadership of the Society. For the Anthroposophical Society, if led by me, must naturally be an altogether different thing than if led by someone else. Moreover, for certain deep reasons, the Society might have been led all the better if I myself had not had the administrative leadership. Many things might have been done if human hearts had spoken—things which in fact remained undone, or which were even done from outside, often enough under resistance from the anthroposophists.

During the War, of course, we had little opportunity to unfold our forces in all directions. So it came about that after the year 1918, the prevailing state of affairs was taken advantage of by those from many quarters who wanted to do this or that. If I had said at the time, “No, these things shall not be done”, then of course we should hear it said to-day: “If this or that had only been allowed, we should now have numbers of flourishing undertakings.”

For this very reason it was the custom at all times for the leaders of occult movements to let those who wanted to do something try it out and see what became of it, so that convictions might be called forth by the facts themselves. For that is the only way to call forth conviction. And so it had to be in our case too.

The upshot of it all has been that since the year 1918, opposition to our Movement has grown rife, and has brought about the present state of affairs, when it is impossible for me, for instance, to give public lectures in Germany.

At the present moment these facts must in no way be concealed from the Anthroposophical Movement. We must face them with all clarity. As long as we work with unclear situations we shall make no progress.

As you know, all manner of experiments were made in the hope of being ‘truly scientific’—shall we say? Quite naturally so, in view of the characters of those concerned! Scientists who also partake in our Society naturally like to be scientific. But that is the very thing that annoys our opponents. When we say to them, “As scientists we can prove this or that truth”, they come forward with all their so-called scientific claims, and then of course they become furious. We should be under no illusions on this point. Nothing has annoyed our opponents more than the fact that our members have tried to speak on the same subjects as they themselves do, and in the same manner, only—as these our members often used to say—“letting a little Anthroposophy flow into it.” It was precisely this which called forth our opponents in such overwhelming numbers.

Again, we offend most strongly against the life-conditions of Anthroposophy if we give ourselves up to the illusion that we can win over the adherents of various religious communities by saying the same or similar things as they, only once more “letting Anthroposophy flow into it.”

But now, since the Christmas Foundation Meeting, an entirely new element must come into all that is being done in the field of Anthroposophy. Those of you who have observed the way Anthroposophy is now being presented here, or the way it was presented at Prague and again at Stuttgart, will have observed that impulses are now at work which call forth something altogether new, even where our opponents are concerned. If we try to be ‘scientific’ in the ordinary sense of the word—as, unfortunately, many of our members have tried to be—then we are presuming, so to speak, that it is possible to enter into discussion with them. But now take the lectures that have been given here, or the lectures at Prague, or the single lectures at Stuttgart—can you believe for a single moment that there can be any question of entering into discussion with our opponents on these matters? It goes without saying: we can enter into no discussion with our opponents when we speak of these things. How, for example, should we discuss with any representative of the civilisation of to-day the statement, for example, that the soul of Muavija appeared again in the soul of Woodrow Wilson?¹

Thus in the whole Anthroposophical Movement there is now a prevailing quality which can tend to nothing else than this.—We must take it at last in real earnest that there can be no question of entering into discussion or argument with our opponents. For if we do so, it will in any case lead nowhere. Thus we must realise that, with regard to our opponents, it can only be a question of refuting calumnies, untruths and lies. We must not give up ourselves to the illusion that these things can be discussed. They must expand by their own inherent power; they cannot be decided by any dialectic.

Through the whole tenor of the Anthroposophical Movement as it has been since Christmas last, this will perhaps be realised increasingly, even by our members. Henceforth the Anthroposophical Movement will take this attitude: It will no longer pay heed to anything other than what the spiritual world itself requires of it.

It is from this standpoint that I have placed before you various thoughts on karma. Those of you who were here, or who heard my last lecture at Stuttgart, will remember that I tried to show how the individualities who lived in the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. at the Court of Haroun al Raschid in Asia, having continued to evolve after death in different directions, played certain definite parts in their new incarnations. At the time of the Thirty Years' War (and a short time before) we have on the one hand the individuality of Haroun al Raschid, reincarnated in the Englishman, Bacon of Verulam. And a great organiser at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, who had lived at the Court—not indeed as an Initiate, but as the reincarnation of an Initiate—this individuality we found again as Amos Comenius, whose field of action was rather in Middle Europe. From these two streams, much in the spiritual part of modern civilisation flowed together. In the spiritual and intellectual aspect of modern civilisation, the Near East—as it was in the time immediately after Mohammed—lived again, on the one hand through the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, Bacon of Verulam; and on the other hand through Amos Comenius, who had been his counsellor.

In the present lecture I wish to emphasise the following fact:—The evolution of man does not merely take place when he is here on earth, but also when he is between death and a new birth. Bacon as well as Amos Comenius, having fastened Arabism—so to speak from two different sides—on to the civilisation of Europe, died again and passed into the life between death and a new birth. And there they were together with many souls who came down to earth after their time. Bacon and Amos Comenius, having died in the 17th century, lived on in the spiritual world. Other souls, who came down to earth in the 19th century, were in the spiritual world together with the souls of Bacon and Amos Comenius from the 17th to the 19th. On the one hand there were souls who gathered mainly around the soul of Bacon—Bacon whose work became so dominant. Then there were the souls who gathered around Amos Comenius. And though this is rather a pictorial way of speaking, we must not forget that there are ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’—albeit under quite different conditions—even in the spiritual world which men pass through between death and a new birth. Such individualities as Bacon or Amos Comenius worked not only through what they brought about on earth—through their writings, for example, or through the traditions of them which lived on on earth. No, these leading spirits were also working through the souls whom they sent down, or the souls with whom they were together and who were then sent down; they worked by causing certain tendencies to germinate in these souls in the spiritual world. Thus among the men of the 19th century we find souls who had become dependent already in their evolution in the pre-earthly life on one or other of these two spirits—the discarnate Amos Comenius, and the discarnate Bacon.

As I said, I want to lead you more and more into the concrete way in which karma works. Therefore I will now draw your attention to two personalities of the 19th century whose names will be known to most of you. One of them was especially influenced in his pre-earthly life by Bacon, and the other by Amos Comenius.

If we observe Bacon as he stood in earthly civilisation—in his earthly life as Lord Chancellor in England—if we observe him there, we find that his working was such that an Initiate stood behind him. The whole Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, as it is outwardly pursued by the historians of literature, is appallingly barren. All manner of arguments are brought forward which are supposed to show that Shakespeare the actor did not really write his dramas, but that they were written by Bacon the philosopher and Lord Chancellor, and so on ...

All these things—working with external methods, seeking out similarities in the way of thought in Shakespeare's dramas and Bacon's philosophic works—all these are barren superficialities. They do not get at the real truth. For the truth is that at the time when Bacon, Shakespeare, Jacob Boehme, and a fourth were working on the earth, there was one Initiate who really spoke through all four. Hence their kinship, for in reality it all goes back to one and the same source. Of course, these people who dispute and argue do not argue about the Initiate who stood behind, especially as this Initiate—like many a modern Initiate—is described to us in history as a rather intolerable fellow. But he was not merely so. No doubt he was so sometimes in his external actions, but he was not merely so. He was an individuality from whom immense forces proceeded, and to whom were really due Bacon's philosophic works as well as Shakespeare's dramas and the works of Jacob Boehme, and also the works of the Jesuit, Jacob Balde.

If we bear this in mind, then we must see in Bacon, in the philosophic realm, the instigator of an immense and far-reaching stream of the time.

It is most interesting to observe what could become of a soul who lived throughout the two centuries, in the life beyond the earth, under the influence of the dead Bacon. We must turn our attention to the way in which Bacon himself lived after his death. For our studies of human history it will in fact be more and more important to observe the human beings who have lived on earth not only until the moment of their death but in their working beyond death, where they work on and on upon those souls who are afterwards to descend to earth. This applies especially to those who have themselves been responsible for great spiritual achievements.

No doubt these things may be somewhat shocking for men of the present time. So for instance I remember—if I may make this digression—I remember on one occasion I was standing at the entrance to the railway station in a small German University town with a well-known doctor who went in a great deal for occultism. Around us stood many other people. Presently he warmed up to his subject and out of his enthusiasm said to me in a loud voice, so that many of those who were around could hear him: “I will make you a present of the biography of Robert Blum; but that is a biography which begins only after his death.” Spoken loudly as it was, one could well observe the shock it gave to those who were standing around us! One cannot say without more ado to the people of to-day, “I will make you a present of the biography of a man, but it begins only after his death.”

For the rest—apart from this two-volumed biography of Robert Blum, which begins not with his birth but with his death—little has yet been done in the way of relating the biographies of men after their death. Biographies generally begin at birth and end at death; there are not yet many works that begin with a man's death.

Yet, for the real happenings of the world, what a man does after his death is immensely important, notably when he passes on the results of what he did on earth—translated into the spiritual—to the souls who come down after him. We cannot understand the age which succeeds a given age if we do not observe this side of life.

Now I was specially interested in observing those individualities who surrounded Bacon after his death. Among them were individualities who were subsequently born as natural scientists. But there were also others who were born as historians; and if we observe the influence of the dead Lord Bacon on these souls, we see how the materialism which he founded upon earth—the mere researching into the world of sense (for, as you know, everything else was for him an ‘idol’)—translated into the spiritual, reverts into a kind of radicalism. And so indeed, in the very midst of the spiritual world, these souls received impulses which worked on in such a way that after their birth, having descended to the earth, they would attach no value to anything that was not a concrete fact visible to the senses.

I will now speak in a somewhat popular form, but I beg you not to take my words too literally, for if you do so it will of course be only too easy to say: ‘How grotesque!’ Among these souls there were also some who, by their former tendencies—derived from former earthly lives—were destined to become historians. And among them was one who was the greatest. (I am still speaking of the pre-earthly lives of all these souls). One among them was the greatest. Under the influence of Lord Bacon's impulses, all these souls said to themselves, in effect: It is no longer permissible to write history as it was written in former times, to write it with Ideas, investigating the inner connections. Only the actual facts must now be the object of our research.

Now I ask you, what does this mean? Are not the intentions of men the most important thing in history?—and they are not outwardly real! These souls, however, no longer permitted themselves to think in this way; and least of all did the soul who afterwards appeared again as one of the greatest historians of the 19th century—Leopold von Ranke. Leopold von Ranke was a pre-earthly disciple of Lord Bacon.

Study the earthly career of Leopold von Ranke as a historian. What is his principle? Ranke's principle as a historian is this: nothing must be written in history save what is to be read of in the archives. We must compile all history from the archives—from the actual transactions of the diplomats.

If you read Ranke you will find it so. He is a German and a Protestant, but with his sense of reality this has no effect on him. He works objectively—that is to say, with the objectivity of the archives. So he writes his History of the Popes—the best that has ever been written from the pure standpoint of archives. When we read Ranke we are irritated, nay dreadfully so. It is a barren prospect to imagine the old gentleman—quick and alert as he was until a ripe old age—sitting forever in the archives and merely piecing together the diplomatic transactions. That is no real history. It is history which reckons only with the facts of the sense-world—that is to say, for the historian, with the archives.

And so indeed, precisely by taking into account the life beyond the earth we have the possibility to understand why Ranke became what he was.

But now we can also look across to Amos Comenius, and observe how he worked on the pre-earthly willing of souls who afterwards descended to the earth. For just as Leopold von Ranke became the greatest disciple of Bacon—of Bacon after his death—so did Schlosser become the greatest disciple of Comenius after his death.

Read Schlosser's History; observe the prevailing tone, the fundamental note he strikes. On every page there speaks the moralist—the moralist who would fain seize the human heart and soul—whose object is to speak right into the heart. Often he scarcely succeeds, for he is still rather a pedant. He speaks, in effect, like a pedant speaking to the heart. Nevertheless, being a pre-earthly disciple of Amos Comenius, he has absorbed something of the quality that was in Comenius himself, who was so characteristic by virtue of the peculiar quality of his spirit. For after all, Comenius too came over from Mohammedanism. Though he was very different from the spirits who gathered around Lord Bacon, nevertheless Comenius too, in his incarnation as Comenius, concentrated on the real, outer world. Everywhere he demanded visibility, objectivity, in education. There must always be an underlying picture. He demands vision—object lessons, as it were; he too lays stress on the sense-perceptible, though in quite another way. For Amos Comenius was also one of those who at the time of the Thirty Years' War believed most enthusiastically in the coming of the so-called Millennium. In his Pansophia he wrote down great and world-embracing ideas. He wanted to work for human education by a great impulsive power. This too worked on Schlosser. It is there in Schlosser.

I mention these two figures—Ranke and Schlosser—in order to show you how we can understand what appears as the spiritually productive power in man only if we also take into account his life beyond the earth. Only then do we understand it—just as we have also learnt to understand many things by taking into account repeated lives on earth. For in the thoughts which I have recently placed before you, we have observed this marvellous working across from one incarnation to another. As I said, I give these examples in order that we may then consider how a man can think about his own karma. Before we can dwell on the way in which good and evil—or illnesses or the like—work over from one incarnation to another, we must first learn to perceive how that which afterwards emerges in the spiritual and intellectual life of civilisation also works across from one incarnation to another.

Now my dear friends, I must admit that for me one of the most interesting personalities in modern spiritual life, with regard to his karma, was Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Anyone who observes him closely will see that his most beautiful works depend on a peculiar fact, namely this: Again and again, in his whole human constitution, there was a kind of tendency for the Ego and astral body to flee from the physical and the etheric bodies.

Morbid conditions appear in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, bordering very nearly on dementia. But these morbid conditions only express in a rather more extreme form what was always present in him in a nascent state. His soul-and-spirit tends to go out—holds to the physical and etheric only by a very loose thread. And in this condition—the soul-and-spirit holding to the physical and etheric by a very loose thread only—the most beautiful of his works originate; I mean the most beautiful of his longer works and of his shorter poems too. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's most beautiful poems may even be said to have originated half out of the body. There was a peculiar relationship between the four members of his nature. Truly there is a great difference between such a personality and an average man of the present time. With an average man of this materialistic age we generally find a very firm and robust connection of the soul-and-spirit with the physical and etheric. The soul-and-spirit is deeply immersed in the physical and etheric—‘sits tight’, as it were. But in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer it was not so. He had a very tender relation of the soul-and-spirit to the physical and etheric. To describe his psyche is really one of the most interesting tasks one can undertake when studying the developments of modern spiritual life. Many things that emerge in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer appear almost like a dim, cloudy recollection—a recollection which has however grown beautiful in growing dim. When Conrad Ferdinand Meyer writes we always have the feeling: He is remembering something, though not quite exactly. He changes it—but changes it into something beautiful and form-perfected. We can observe this wonderfully, piece by piece, in certain of his works.

Now it is characteristic of the inner karma of a human being when there is such a definite relationship of the four members of his nature—physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. And in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's case, when we trace back this peculiarly intimate connection, we are led, first of all, to the time of the Thirty Years' War. This was the first thing clear to me in his case: there is something of a former earthly life at the time of the Thirty Years' War. And then there is a still earlier life on earth going back into the pre-Carlovingian age, going back quite evidently into the early history of Italy.

When we endeavour to trace Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's karma, the peculiar, intangible fluidity of his being (which none the less expresses itself in such perfection of form)—the peculiar, intangible fluidity of his life somehow communicates itself to our investigation, until at length we feel: We are getting into confusion. I have no other alternative but to describe these things just as they happened in the investigation.

We go back into the time of the 6th century in Italy. There we have the feeling: We are getting into an extraordinarily insecure element. We are driven back again and again, and only gradually we observe that this is not due to ourselves but to the object of our research. There is really in the soul—in the individuality—of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer something that brings us into confusion as we try to investigate him. We are driven to return again and again into his present incarnation or into the one immediately before it. Again and again we must ‘pull ourselves up’ and go back again.

The following was the result.—You must remember, all that has lived in a human soul in former incarnations becomes manifest in the most varied forms—in likenesses which are often quite imperceptible to outer observation. This you will have seen from other instances of reincarnation given here.

So at length we come to an incarnation in Italy in the early Christian centuries—at the end of the first half of the first millennium A.D. Here we come to a halt. We find a soul living in Italy, to a large extent at Ravenna, at the Roman Court. But now we come into confusion. For we must ask ourselves: What was living in that soul? The moment we ask ourselves this question (in order to call forth the further occult investigation), the whole thing is extinguished once again.

We become aware of the experiences which this soul underwent while living at the Court at Ravenna—at the Roman Court. We enter into these experiences and we think we have them, and then again they are extinguished—blotted out from us; and we are driven back again to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer as he lived on earth in the immediate past. At length we perceive that in this later life he obliterates from our vision the content of his soul in the former life. Only after long trouble do we perceive at length how the matter really stands. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer—or rather the individuality who lived in him—was living at that time in a certain relationship to one of the Popes who sent him, among others, to England on a Roman Catholic, Christian Mission.

The individuality who afterwards became Conrad Ferdinand Meyer had first absorbed all that wonderful sense of form which it was possible to absorb in Italy at that time. The Mosaic art of Italy bears witness to it; also the old Italian painting, the greater part, nay practically the whole of which has been destroyed. This art did not continue.

And then he went on a Roman Catholic Christian Mission to the Anglo-Saxons. One of his companions founded the Bishopric of Canterbury. What afterwards took place at Canterbury began essentially with this foundation. The individuality, however, who after-wards appeared as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, was only there as a witness, so to speak. Nevertheless, he was a very active person, and he called forth the ill-will of an Anglo-Saxon chieftain, at whose investigation he was eventually murdered. That is what we find to begin with.

But while he lived in England there was something in the soul of this Conrad Ferdinand Meyer which robbed him of real joy in life. His soul was deeply rooted in the Italian art of his time—or, if we will call it so, in the Italian spiritual life. He gained no happiness in the execution of his missionary work in England. Yet he devoted himself to it with great intensity—so much so that his assassination was a reaction to it.

This constant unhappiness—being repelled from something which he was none the less doing with all force and devotion out of another impulse in his heart—worked on in such a way that when he passed through his next earthly life there ensued a cosmic clouding-over of his memory. The inner impulse was there but it no longer coincided with any clear concept.

And so it came about that in his subsequent incarnation as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, an undefined impulse was at work in him, to this effect: ‘I was once working in England. It is connected somehow with Canterbury. I was murdered owing to my connection with Canterbury.’

So indeed the outer life of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in this incarnation takes its course. He studies outer history, he studies Canterbury, studies what happened in Canterbury, in connection with the history of England. He comes across Thomas à Becket, Chancellor of King Henry II in the 12th century. He learns of the strange destiny of Thomas à Becket, who from being the all-powerful Chancellor of Henry II, was murdered virtually at his instigation. And so in this present incarnation as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, his own half-forgotten destiny appears to him in Thomas à Becket. It comes before him, half-forgotten in his subconsciousness, for I am speaking of course, of the subconscious life which comes to the surface in this way. So he describes his own fate in a far distant time. But he describes it in the story of what actually happened in the 12th century between King Henry II and Thomas à Becket of Canterbury, whose fate he recounts in his poetic work Der Heilige (The Saint). So indeed it is—only all this takes place in the subconscious life which embraces successive incarnations. It is as though within a single earthly life a man had experienced something in his early youth in connection with a certain place. He has forgotten it. He experienced it maybe in the second or third year of his life. It does not emerge, but some other similar destiny emerges. The very same place is named, and as a result he has a peculiar sympathy for this other person's destiny. He feels it differently from one who has no ‘association of ideas’ with the same place.

Just as this may happen within one earthly life, so it took place in the concrete instance I am now giving you. There was the work in Canterbury, the murder of a person connected with Canterbury (for Thomas à Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury), the murder of Thomas à Becket at the instigation of the King of England. All of these schemes work in together. In the descriptions in his poem he is describing his own destiny.

But now the thing goes on—and this is most interesting in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's case. He was born as a woman about the time of the Thirty Years' War—a lively woman, full of spiritual interest in life, a woman who witnessed many an adventure. She married a man who first took part in all the confused events of the Thirty Years' War, but then grew weary of them and emigrated to Switzerland, to Graubünden (Canton Grisons), where he lived a somewhat philistine existence. But his wife was deeply affected and impressed by all that took place in the Graubünden country under the prevailing conditions of the Thirty Years' War.

This too is eclipsed, as though with another layer. For it is so with this individuality: That which is living in him is easily forgotten in the cosmic sense, and yet he calls it forth again in a transmuted form, where it becomes more glorious and more intense. For out of what this woman observed and experienced in that incarnation there arises the wonderful characterisation of Jürg Jenatsch, the man of Graubünden, in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's historic novel. Observing Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in this incarnation, we have indeed no explanation of his peculiarity if we cannot enter into his karma. I must say—speaking with a grain of salt—that I envy the people who ‘understand’ him so light-heartedly. Before I knew his reincarnations, all that I understood was that I did not understand him. This wonderful inner perfection of form, this inner joy in form, this purity of form, all the strength and power that lives in Jürg Jenatsch, and the wonderful personal and living quality in The Saint,—a good deal of superficiality is needed to imagine that one understands all this. Observe his beautiful forms—there is something of clear line in them, almost severe; they are painted and yet not painted. Here live the mosaics of Ravenna. And in The Saint there lives a history which was undergone once upon a time by this individuality himself; but a mist of the soul has spread over it, and out of the mist it emerges in another form.

And again one needs to know: All that is living in his romance of Graubünden, Jürg Jenatsch, was absorbed by the heart and mind of a woman; while in the momentum, the driving power that lives in this romance there lives again the swashbuckler of the Thirty Years' War. The man was pretty much of a philistine, as I said, but he was a swashbuckler. And so, all that comes over from former experiences on earth comes to life again in a peculiar form in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Only now do we begin to understand him. Now we say to ourselves: In olden times of human evolution, men were not ashamed to speak of Spirits from beyond descending to the earth, or of earthly human beings finding their way upward and working on from spiritual worlds. All this must come again, otherwise man will not get beyond his present outlook of the earthworm. For all that the natural-scientific conception of the world contains, it is the world-outlook of the earth-worm. Men live on earth as though only the earth concerned them, as though it were not true that the whole Cosmos works upon all earthly things and lives again in man. As though it were not true that earlier epochs of history live on, inasmuch as we ourselves carry into later times what we absorbed in former times.

We do not understand karma by talking theoretic concepts about successive earthly incarnations. To understand karma is to feel in our hearts all that we can feel when we see what existed ages ago flowing into the later epochs in the souls of men themselves. When we begin to see how karma works, human life gains quite a new content. We feel ourselves quite differently in human life.

Such a spirit as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer feels his former earthly lives like an undertone—an undertone that sounds from far away. We understand what appears in him only when we develop an understanding for this undertone. The progress of mankind in spiritual life will depend on its ability to regard life in this way, to observe in all detail what flows across from former epochs of the world's evolution into later epochs through the human beings themselves. Then we shall cease, in the childish way of psycho-analysts, to explain the peculiarities of souls by speaking of ‘hidden underlying regions’ and the like. After all, one can ascribe anything one likes to what is ‘hidden’. We shall look for the real causes. In some respects, no doubt, the psycho-analysts do quite good work. But these pursuits remind us of the story of how someone heard that in the year 1749 a son was born to a certain patrician. Afterwards this son emerged as a very gifted man. To this day we can point to the actual birth-place in Frankfurt of the man who afterwards came forth as Wolfgang Goethe. ‘Let us make excavations in the earth and see by dint of what strange emanations his talents came about’. Sometimes the psycho-analysts seem to me just like that. They dig into the earth-realm of the soul, into the hidden regions which they themselves first invent by their hypotheses, whereas in reality one ought to look into the preceding lives on earth and lives between death and a new birth. Then if we do so, a true understanding of human souls is opened out to us. Truly the souls of men are far too rich in content to enable us to understand their content out of a single life alone.

• 1. See Vol. I, lecture X.

A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to begin the meeting with a short speech.

Dr. Steiner asks about gymnastics class.

A gymnastics teacher: We tried teaching at the same time in the same room. We could just do it with the third grade, but it was completely impossible with the sixth grade. Because of the size of the gymnasium, we were unable to keep the two classes under control. We do not think there is any advantage in continuing in this way. In addition, we also need the gymnasium for teaching eurythmy some of the time.

A teacher: We do not yet have an instrument for the new small eurythmy room.

Dr. Steiner: That is only temporary.

A eurythmy teacher: The new eurythmy room is too small for some of the classes, which is why we have to use the gymnasium.

Dr. Steiner: The so-called “little eurythmy room” is large enough. It is not a little room, it is a large hall. Anything larger would be too large for eurythmy. It is not very fruitful to teach eurythmy in an enormous room. That would certainly not be fruitful.

The fact is that you need the gymnasium so much that eurythmy cannot be taught there. It was conceived as a gymnasium and thus should be used to hold gymnastics class. Where else could you teach it?

Concerning the first two grades, there is not much we can do for now. In the future, though, gymnastics is actually too much for the first two grades. Instead, they should have some supervised play. We should begin with such supervised games as soon as we have a little breathing room, so that in the third grade a transition can be made from games to actual gymnastics. The children need real movement.

The gymnastics teacher: Without increasing the number of hours, we could include the first and second grades by giving them only one hour of instruction.

Dr. Steiner: The third grade has two hours.

How are things with eurythmy in the various grades?

A eurythmy teacher: The first through fifth grades have one hour each; the sixth through eleventh grades, two.

The gymnastics teacher: Due to the large number of classes in the tenth and eleventh grades, we had to move one of the gymnastics classes into the time allocated for shop.

Dr. Steiner: Gymnastics loses less than shop if one hour is dropped. We could talk about it if the question was how to give a complete education without any manual training. That seems preferable to me since the children have a quiet form of gymnastics in their shop class. We have arranged the schedule so that the gymnastics does not adversely affect the periods following, haven’t we?

A teacher: We could arrange to have a games period.

Dr. Steiner: We have no one to teach it, so we can hardly consider that now. It will not be possible to decrease the teaching load until the end of this school year.

The gymnastics teacher: We are certainly not concerned with an overburdening.

Dr. Steiner: Fifteen hours are enough. If you teach fifteen hours, then you need to give two or three hours per day, and that is a lot for gymnastics.

The gymnastics teacher: We want to find a way.

Dr. Steiner: That is true. Nevertheless, you must take the following into consideration. In a school such as ours, we need to develop gymnastics class in a certain way, but that can happen only over time. Next year we may well be able to focus on developing gymnastics for the twelfth grade. At present, we treat it as only a stepchild. We will need to work together on that.

I think teaching gymnastics will present a number of difficulties for you as our Waldorf School develops. The main thing is that, beginning with a particular grade, the purpose of gymnastics will be conscious exercise for strengthening the human organism, a kind of hygienic whole-body massage of the human organism. I think you need to orient yourself more toward the upper grades.

In the lower grades, I am considering having the women work on the games. The authority of the gymnastics teachers should not suffer by first having them play with the children. They should represent what actually occurs in gymnastics. The children should not feel that their games teacher is now teaching gymnastics to them. I am, of course, not belittling games. A female games teacher in the first and second grades would not go on to gymnastics. The children would get a distorted feeling if we don’t make such a change. What I mean with games is movement.

What is important now is to find a replacement for Mrs. Baumann during her illness. Mrs. Fels should take over half the eurythmy classes and Mrs. Husemann, the other half. Mrs. X. would have the more mature students because she is older and more mature herself.

Marie Steiner: Mrs. X. first had quite a shock.

Dr. Steiner: I do not want Mrs. Y. to give the entire instruction, because I want the older children to have a more mature person.

A teacher: Tittmann will be free only after the first of April.

Dr. Steiner: Then there is nothing we can do other than wait. I am really sorry that this situation must continue. I thought it was very difficult that you had to do the French class immediately after art.

A teacher: There is nothing we can do about that.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult, but there is nothing we can do. Twentyfive hours is too much, but we have to wait.

A teacher: We will lose eight teaching days due to the earlier close of school.

Dr. Steiner: We don’t need to cling to our schedule as though it were a great treasure. The exact amount of material per week is not so important.

A teacher: Should we do a longer book in tenth-grade French?

Dr. Steiner: You could use a different book. They should complete at least one book, even if they do not read a lot. Have you thought of something? I think you could choose something shorter that could be completed in the remaining two and a half months. In a class like that, it might be best to read a biography. There is a nice little book called La Vie de Molière.

Marie Steiner: Enfant célèbre.

Dr. Steiner: I would particularly recommend a biography.

A teacher: We read Livius in Latin. Next we will do Somnium Scipionis. I also included Horace, and we will read two or three odes and learn them from memory.

Dr. Steiner: You will certainly take up Cicero?

A teacher: In tenth-grade English, we completed The Tempest, and now we are doing excerpts from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Dr. Steiner: I would prefer that, instead of excerpts, you read the whole book. Making a selection for English is not easy. As soon as you move past Shakespeare, things become difficult.

It may be good to read Macaulay in the tenth grade, but that depends upon how you treat it. This is the age of life where children should learn to characterize in a broad and comfortable way. Biographies, for example Luther’s, are very useful for children at the age of fifteen. They are not very appropriate later, as the children will find them boring. In contrast, I think it would be good to read Carlyle and Emerson in the eleventh and twelfth grades. You might recommend Walter Scott for reading by themselves, but Emerson and Carlyle would be books for the class. Emerson has such short sentences.

A teacher asks about a newly enrolled child.

Dr. Steiner: She could go into the ninth grade. In foreign languages, she would be at the very bottom, but that is not so bad. You should, however, make her acceptance dependent upon her having some place to live, but you will need to do that with some tact. You might even consider trying to find good living quarters for her yourself.

We now have two children of workers at Dornach in the eighth grade, and the tuition has to be paid out of the funds for the building. They will have to find their own living quarters, but they will have to be places where we know that the adults pay some attention to such children. The workers at the building are quite connected to these things.

A teacher: If I were a man and had an apartment I would take some children myself.

Dr. Steiner: Now you tell me you are almost a man.

A class teacher: T.M. and O.Nr. need to be separated in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: With such children, much depends upon what they are accustomed to. It will not make much difference in the first half-year, but afterward for sure. They should be separated. (Speaking to the teacher of the parallel class) T.M. would go to you. He is easier to handle. I think it would be best if you took him.

A religion teacher asks if it would be all right if he were to go on a lecture tour.

Dr. Steiner: If you arrange it with the others, there should be no difficulty.

A teacher: We are striving to awaken a religious mood, but there are some problems with many of the children. X. often ruins the class. He does not like such moods.

Dr. Steiner: He certainly does not like moods, but there is nothing to be done. Even worse could occur. You could use his lack of participation to highlight the seriousness of the material.

A teacher asks about a service for the older children.

Dr. Steiner: I will soon arrange for an offering at the Sunday service.

A religion teacher asks another question.

Dr. Steiner: In connection with this question, we need to return to something we have already discussed. It is important that the youth of our Waldorf School talk less about questions of world perspective. The situation is that we need to create a mood, namely, that the teacher has something to say that the children should neither judge nor discuss. That is necessary, otherwise it will become trivial. An actual discussion lowers the content. Things should remain with simply asking questions. The children even in the tenth and eleventh grades should know that they can ask everything and receive an answer. For questions of religion and worldview, we need to maintain that longer. The religion teacher needs to retain a position of authority even after puberty. That is something I mentioned before in connection with the “discussion meetings.” They need to be avoided. If the children put forth questions of conscience, and you answer them, then there is nothing to say against that.

We also need a second thing. The older students often mentioned that we emphasize that the Waldorf School is not to be an anthroposophical school. That is one of the questions we need to handle very seriously. You need to make the children aware that they are receiving the objective truth, and if this occasionally appears anthroposophical, it is not anthroposophy that is at fault. Things are that way because anthroposophy has something to say about objective truth. It is the material that causes what is said to be anthroposophical. We certainly may not go to the other extreme, where people would say that anthroposophy may not be brought into the school. Anthroposophy will be in the school when it is objectively justified, that is, when it is called for by the material itself.

In things such as Parzival, it is already there, so that you will need to direct attention away from symbols rather than toward them. Wagner’s followers in Bayreuth have gone into much more nonsense about symbols than occurs here. We do not do that here. Parzival has to be taught as a man of the world, not a monk. I think this is something I needed to say today. For the children, of course, much is quite difficult.

It would be best if you discussed symbolism as little as possible. Stay with the facts, the historical background, without becoming trivial. Remain with the facts, not symbols.

A teacher asks about the English teachers who had visited the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: Only women came, and they were quite satisfied. I certainly thought we would have to deal with much harsher judgments.

Discipline is much easier in England. When you go into a boys’ school there, you find only well-behaved boys. You might not find that so nice, but if you love discipline, you will find it wonderful. Modern Englishmen, at least in regard to their external behavior, are close to being insolent. Everybody assures you that they get better by the age of fourteen. That is certainly true in Gladstone’s school. I have observed how they go into the dining hall. It’s something that lies in the temperament of the people. The children are quieter there than here.

A teacher: N.G. is here.

Dr. Steiner: I do not want to have anything to do with that family, even indirectly. Besides N.G., I feel sorry for the children.

I am very sorry to have disturbed the harmonious mood. So much occurred that I referred to as the “Stuttgart attitude” following that terrible misfortune. I could not let things pass by without naming names, because things were really catastrophic. I have to say that was the way things had to be. Due to the nature of the problem, I repeatedly needed to put these things in the proper light. I also would have thought, considering the situation, that no one would have thought of doing something like this. It is quite strange how things that outside, in normal life, would not occur at all, blossom so well in this anthroposophical foundation, the foundation of the Waldorf School that should be kept pure. It would be hard to imagine a normal faculty meeting where someone asks the school principal to say something nice. If we have no self-discipline, we cannot move forward. It is very painful for me that things are as they are. Aside from the fact that I have been unable to determine the actual content of the problem, everything is simply swimming around. If only something would move in a particular direction, but everything is simply floating about. I do not know what people are thinking. The mood here is so tense. We need to give some thought to all this. Certainly one task of the Waldorf School faculty is to cease all of this inner comfort. The fact that things are done in the way they are is a part of these nonmethods. It is really too bad for today’s meeting, since a disharmony has now come into it.

In the interest of the Anthroposophical Society, I had to see that the methods that have arisen here since 1919 do not go any further. Something must happen in the near future in the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society. This is an important question, but people will have to think about it. It would be best not to do things in that way, and better if you helped to improve the situation. You can certainly not say that working together does not make sense, and that everyone should work individually. If that principle had been in effect in 1901, there would be no room for us. People worked together until the end of the war. This kind of separation from one another arose only since 1919 when individuals went off to the great tasks that were begun then. That is the reason for what has unfortunately occurred in the Anthroposophical Society, namely, that the Society has divided into a number of cliques. Before, there was some balance that inhibited the formation of such cliques. Now, there are big and little cliques everywhere, and everything is falling apart.

We cannot say everyone should live like a hermit. A harmonious cooperation should arise from the admonitions of our opponents that became so clear through the catastrophe at Dornach. Learn from our opponents! Our opponents know things very exactly, and they know, at least from their perspective, how to take them seriously, more seriously than is done by the Anthroposophical Society. There is a continual demand for something new, as has happened in Dornach. The Society as such needs to become a genuine reality, not simply a bureaucratic list of so-and-so-manythousand people who barely want to know anything about one another. The Society must become a reality, and there is much we can achieve through the Waldorf School if the faculty would stand as an example of harmonious cooperation. Everyone needs to really give something of themselves, and that is where individual activity comes in, namely, that everyone takes interest in each other’s work. It is simply narrow-minded to always seek the error in someone else. If we fall prey to that error, we will cease to be an anthroposophical society. There is certainly no other real example of anthroposophical activity if it is not here in the faculty. If you do not want to become enthusiastic about anthroposophy, then I do not know how it will be possible to save anthroposophy itself. That is really necessary. The catastrophe in Dornach is the culmination of our opponents’ activity. The Waldorf School faculty needs to take on the leadership of anthroposophical behavior. That is what is necessary.

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy to give you information. What I said recently about the incorrect methods relates to how anthroposophical matters are treated, not to the teaching methods here. What I have to say about that, I have already said. As of this morning, I cannot say that anything special has resulted. I was satisfied with the little I saw this morning. I thought things would come to a good conclusion. It was clearly noticeable, for example, that there is a greater level of seriousness in the higher grades. There is a much better tone in the higher grades. I see nothing to talk about there. I spoke about incorrect methods in connection with the extent of faculty participation in the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society.

(Speaking to a teacher) It would be good if you were careful to leave out the inner school methodology in your considerations until tomorrow.

We will overcome the problems in the school methodology. The Waldorf School has proven what lies in its basic impulse. Individual problems have arisen, but as a whole, the Waldorf School has proven what lies at its basis. We will overcome the problems. Most certainly, we will move forward with the inner methodology. There is something else that comes into question aside from the general anthroposophical aspect. In connection with methodology, we could try to lift everything from the Earth and move it to the moon where we could perfect it. But, that is something we cannot do with anthroposophical activity. We will overcome the problems at the school because that is an isolated area and can remain so.

Everything was present in the discussions with the leaders of the Movement for Religious Renewal. In the lecture I had to give in Dornach on December 30, I directed everything toward anthroposophists, not toward those working for a renewal of religion. 4 That was clear from ten paces away, but it lead to an argument between the anthroposophists and those of the Religious Renewal. There is now a tense mood and a heavy atmosphere. If we leave these things the way they are, the Anthroposophical Society will be destroyed, and other institutions along with it. It is sad that this all occurred directly following the events in Dornach. We should have guarded against that. We need to do something to relieve it. Those anthroposophists who are not involved with the renewal of religion said nothing, but the anthroposophical perspective should have been maintained, but without rancor. You cannot expect the Movement for Religious Renewal to make things easy for anthroposophists. They are taking the cream and leaving the rest, but the Anthroposophical Society needs to stand firm. That is something of concern to everyone. The school should not shine because the faculty has no concern about the Anthroposophical Society. You need to have a strong interest in it.

approved at the third general assembly of the Johannesbau-Verein

Corrections by Rudolf Steiner are in italics in brackets and, where applicable, marked with strikethroughs.

Articles of association of the association
“Anthroposophical Colony Dornach“
(”Johannesbau-Colonie Dornach")

§1. Under the name “Anthroposophen-(J. B.-)Kolonie-Dornach” there exists in Dornach (Canton Solothurn, Switzerland) an association in the sense of Art. 60ff. of the Swiss Civil Code. It is to be entered in the commercial register of the Canton Solothurn.

§2. The purpose of the association is to establish and develop an anthroposophical colony in Dornach, as well as to protect and promote the ideal interests of the colonists. In doing so, it sets itself the further task of ensuring that the buildings constructed within the colony are related in their external architectural design to the Johannesbau as their center.

(It is formed from members of the Anthroposophical Society and aims to establish a colony with the Johannesban as its spatial center and to contribute to the realization of the intentions of the Anthroposophical Movement through its design.)

§3. The association seeks to achieve this purpose by the following means in particular:

a) by procuring suitable building land, whether by acquiring ownership or by acquiring building rights. (Art. 675 & 779 Z.G.B.),

b) by constructing road, sewerage and lighting systems,

c) by acquiring sources, supplying water, gas and electricity,

d) by constructing residential buildings, other buildings and facilities that can serve to achieve the purpose of the association (in particular by adhering as closely as possible to the architectural style of the Johannesbau),

e) by acquiring existing buildings, demolishing or converting them, in order to significantly improve the overall facilities of the Anthroposophical (Johannesbau) Colony in Dornach.

f) by giving developed or undeveloped parcels of land to its members for limited use,

8) by renting buildings for uses that do not disturb life in the colony.

§4 The land and buildings of the Anthroposophical (J. B.) Colony Dornach are to be permanently preserved for the purposes of the Anthroposophical Movement and therefore, if possible, remain the property of the colony itself or its members (or the Johannesbau Association). To achieve this, the following standards must be adhered to when land or buildings are sold:

a) When the land and buildings are handed over, an easement is to be imposed in favor of the Anthroposophical Colony (land parcel no.) to the effect that no business or trade may ever be carried on on or in the same that causes a nuisance to the neighborhood through noise (exceptions may ), dust, smoke, soot, odour, or which is associated with a risk of fire or explosion, and that no animals may be kept on or in the same which may cause a nuisance to the neighbourhood through noise or unpleasant odours. (With regard to noise, exceptions may be granted by the board.)

b) The purchasers of land or buildings shall grant the Anthroposophical Colony of Dornach a right of purchase to the effect that, after the purchaser has left the association, the Anthroposophical Colony is entitled at any time to purchase the land and buildings at a value determined by a joint expert opinion on terms agreed in advance with a one-year notice period. This right of purchase shall be entered in the land registry and renewed one year before its expiry in each tenth year (otherwise membership will be lost).

The Anthroposophical Colony will only make use of this right if the former member's continued ownership of the relevant parcel of land causes significant inconvenience to the colony or the anthroposophical movement , which shall be decided by a general meeting of the association by secret ballot with an absolute majority of all members of the association; the person concerned has the right to appeal to the arbitral tribunal provided for in $ 19 within one month of notification of this decision of the association.

In the event of the member's death, however, the right of preemption can only be exercised vis-à-vis the first generation of descendants when these descendants have reached the age of thirty.

c) Similarly, the purchasers of land or buildings of the Anthroposophical Colony of Dornach shall grant a (real) right of first refusal, which, in the event of a sale to a buyer outside the Anthroposophical Colony of Dornach, entitles the Anthroposophical Colony of Dornach to enter into the relevant purchase agreement. This right of first refusal should also be recorded in the land registry and renewed (one year) before its expiry in the tenth year (otherwise membership will be lost).

d) Finally, the buyers of land or buildings from the Anthroposophical Colony of Dornach must undertake to rent buildings only to members of the association, subject to a conventional penalty of 10,000 francs. (ten thousand francs), for which a land charge is to be registered on the property in question, which in its rank immediately follows the liens existing at the time of the purchase settlement, with the right of succession in the event of partial payments to the previously pledged'promotional funds. However, the board of directors may, in individual cases, freely grant permission to rent to non-members on a provisional basis and with the right of revocation at any time. (The paragraph with the comment is in italics: changed)

§5. To be admitted to the association, the person to be admitted must be a member of the Anthroposophical Society. However, associations of members of the Anthroposophical Society (associations, societies, local groups, country groups, etc.) can also be admitted to the association; they must designate a first and second representative, of whom the first, or the second if the first is prevented, exercises the membership rights for the association.

Admission is based on a written application for admission addressed to the board (after a debate) in a secret ballot by a resolution of the association with an absolute majority of all members of the association.

About the association the reasons for the admission or rejection of the persons involved in the association's decision (are put forward), as well as the names of the candidates for or against, the participants (in the votes) have to and to break this only if a legitimate claim to do so is asserted in the opinion of the colony's board of directors. Anyone who is granted a right of use to a property or a building or both by the Johannesbau-Verein enjoys the full rights, including all the voting rights of a member, and must fulfill the member's obligations.

Inserted list of members as of December 1, 1915 [abbreviated, here without first and last names]:

(Frau Dr. Grossheintz), Levy, Ehmck, Ostermayer & Lutz, Greber, Rebstein, Liedvogel, Peelen, Meebold, Peet, Muntz, Grossheim, Hilverkus, Gatey, Hagemann-Maquet, Ruffner, Collison, Smit, Herwarth, Freund, Strakosch, Richmond, Eiffe, Johannesbau-Verein, Gruppe Holland, Laute. Added by hand: Wilson, de Jaager, Mutach, Weigele theos. Art funds: Mackenzie (4 Building committee: de Jaager, Peelen, Mistach, Eiffe, Mrs. Grossheintz, v. Herwarth)

The admitted party is obliged to have a building plot or a house within the colony or to acquire one within a year. (!) This obligation does not apply to admitted associations; it is sufficient for them that one of their members has or acquires a building plot or house within the colony or rents it on a permanent basis. Failure to comply with this obligation will result in exclusion or suspension.

Upon admission, the admitted person submits to all provisions of these statutes and all amendments to them that will come about in a lawful manner.

§6. The ordinary annual contribution for all members of the association is Fr. 30 (thirty francs).

The extraordinary annual contributions are decided annually by the ordinary association meeting. For their collection, the members are divided into three classes according to the surface area of their property (the land tax assessment of their property) (I. Class up to 1500 m² (15,000 francs), II. Class from 1500 to 3000 m² (15,000 to 50,000 francs), II. Class over 3000 m² 50,000 francs), of which members of I. Class pay the simple, those of II. Class pay double, those of III. Class pay triple. (A special regulation will be established for the distribution of costs for road, sewer, water, gas and electricity installations.) The general assembly of the association shall determine the respective unit rate, while the board of directors shall assign members to the respective classes. Members who have not yet purchased property or who only hold property on a rental basis shall pay the simple rate. Beneficiaries within the meaning of §5 shall be treated the same as owners with regard to all rights and obligations under §6.

§7. Membership can be terminated by resignation, which is possible at any time, by loss of membership of the Anthroposophical Society (by death), and by expulsion.

A member may also be suspended for a specified period of time in the exercise of membership rights, namely in participation in association meetings, votes and elections; however, this does not affect their rights to property within the colony.

§8. Expulsion or suspension shall be effected by a resolution of the Association; there must be important reasons for this, which must be communicated to the person concerned in writing. The excluded or suspended person may appeal to the decision of the court of arbitration (§19) within one month by submitting a written reasoned appeal.

§9. Only the Association's assets shall be liable for the Association's obligations; personal liability of the members is excluded.

§10. The assets are formed in particular by:

a) the ordinary and extraordinary membership fees,
b) voluntary contributions, donations and bequests,
c) through land and buildings that the association acquires and their yields,
d) through the proceeds from the sale of land and buildings and their interest,
e) through provisions (§17).

§11. The organs of the association are:

1. The General Assembly,
2. the Board,
3. the Building Committee,
4. the Auditors.

§12. The (ordinary) General Assembly shall meet as scheduled once a year usually in August.

An extraordinary general meeting may be convened by the board at any time; it must be convened as soon as one fifth of all members of the association request it in writing, stating the subject of the meeting.

The board of directors shall convene the association's meetings by sending a registered letter to the members, stating the place, time and agenda; these invitations must be issued no later than 30 days before the ordinary (association) meetings and no later than 3 days before the extraordinary meetings.

The General Assembly is opened and chaired by the Chairman of the Board or the deputy appointed by the Board; he appoints the secretary and the tellers.

At the General Assembly, a member can be represented by another. The representative must hand in the written power of attorney at the beginning of the meeting.

Resolutions are passed by an absolute majority of the members present, subject to the provisions for admission (§5), dissolution (§20), amendment of the statutes (§21), exercise of the purchase right (§4b).

Each member has one vote. In the event of a tie, the chair of the meeting has the casting vote.

Voting is open unless a majority of the assembly decides on a secret ballot or such a ballot is provided for by the statutes. (§4b, §5).

The minutes of the association meetings are signed by the chair of the meeting and the secretary.

The written consent of all members to a proposal is deemed equivalent to the resolutions of a general meeting (Art. 66 2.6.8.).

§13. The following matters are reserved for the general meeting:

a) Election of the board and its chairperson, as well as dismissal of the same,
b) Election of the building committee,
c) Election of the auditors,
d) Determination of the extraordinary membership fee,
e) Approval of the annual financial statements,
f) Admission, exclusion and suspension of members,
g) Decision on the exercise of the right of purchase (§4b),
h) Approval of general construction plans,
i) Revision of statutes,
k) dissolution of the association.

In addition, the board of directors must submit important business to it for discussion and decision-making, which in individual cases results in an obligation or expenditure of more than CHF 10,000 (ten thousand francs).

§14. The committee consists of (at least) 5 - 7 members and is elected each year at the ordinary association meeting. If a committee member leaves during the year of office, the committee has the right to make an additional election for the remainder of the term of office.

The committee constitutes itself by electing the deputy chairperson, the secretary and the treasurer.

The participation of an absolute majority of the board members is required for a valid resolution of the board; the resolutions are passed with the absolute majority of those present.

Resolutions can also be passed by circular letter; for their adoption, the written consent of the absolute majority of the board members is required, but the circular letter must have been sent to all board members.

The board is the governing body for the management of the association; its responsibilities include all business related to the achievement of the association's purpose that is not reserved by law or the statutes (§13) for the association's meeting, or by the statutes for the building committee (§15), the auditors (§16) or the arbitral tribunal (§19). It prepares the business of the association's meeting and executes its resolutions.

It designates those members of the board who are to hold the legally binding signature for the association (§18).

The Executive Council is authorized to transfer certain responsibilities to individual members and to call in experts, who do not have to be members of the association, to examine and assess important business (however, experts who are not members of the Anthroposophical Society should only be appointed if no experts can be found within the Anthroposophical Society for the cases in question).

If the executive council concludes a business transaction involving an obligation or expenditure of more than 10,000 francs (ten thousand francs) without obtaining the approval of the general meeting in accordance with §12, last paragraph, those of its members who have not demonstrably voted against such a conclusion, are liable to the association for all damages arising therefrom and may themselves be required to personally take over the business in question; the ordinary courts shall decide on this, excluding the arbitral tribunal provided for in §19.

§15. The building committee consists of five people (members), of whom four belong to the association and one is taken from the “Johannesbau-Verein Dornach”.

The building committee decides on the external architectural design of the buildings that the association members wish to construct within the colony. It has to make its (motivated) decision within three (six) weeks of submission of the relevant building plans and notify the applicant. In the event of non-approval, the building committee has to provide the applicant with the plan amendments in the form of detailed projects within three months at the latest..

The building committee is only to assess the external architectural design of the buildings; the floor plan is to be determined by the builder.

The building committee is to consult with members of the Anthroposophical Society who are professionally or artistically trained for the assessment of the construction plans and consultations.

§16. Each year at the regular meeting of the Society, two members of the Society shall be elected as auditors. They shall audit the annual accounts and submit a report on them to the Society's meeting. The Society's meeting may not approve the annual accounts without this report.

§17. At the end of each calendar year, the board of directors shall prepare the annual financial statements in accordance with commercial principles. Appropriate provisions shall be made in the financial statements for securing the proper operation of a business and for extraordinary events.

§18. The legally binding signature for the association is held jointly by two members designated by the board from among its members.

§19. All disputes between the association on the one hand and its organs and members on the other, as well as all disputes between organs on the one hand and other organs or association members on the other, and finally disputes between association members among themselves regarding association matters, shall be finally settled, to the exclusion of the ordinary courts, by a court of arbitration consisting of three arbitrators, who shall be chosen for each individual case by the Centralvorstand of the Anthroposophical Society (the board of the Johannesbau-Verein designated). (Members of the board of the “Johannesbau-Verein” can also be designated as arbitrators.)

Should the Central Board refuse to establish the court of arbitration in an individual case, the ordinary courts shall decide on the merits of the dispute in question.

The court of arbitration also retains jurisdiction for disputes between the association and a former member or their legal successors until such time as a final settlement has been reached regarding the relationship between the former member and the association, including, in particular, the exercise of the right of purchase (Section 4b).

The court of arbitration is not authorized to decide on the liability of association bodies and their members in accordance with § 14, last paragraph.

§20. A resolution passed by a three-quarters majority at a general meeting at which three-quarters of all members are present or represented is required to dissolve the association. Any assets remaining after the liquidation shall go to the Johannesbau-Verein in Dornach.

§21. These statutes may be amended by a resolution adopted at an ordinary or extraordinary meeting of the Association at which at least three quarters of all members are present or represented, with a three-quarters majority vote.

[ 1 ] In the present stage of its evolution the human consciousness unfolds three forms, the waking, the dreaming, and the dreamless sleeping consciousness.

[ 2 ] The waking consciousness experiences the outer world through the senses, forms ideas about it, and out of those ideas can create such as portray a purely spiritual world. The dreaming consciousness develops pictures in which the outer world is transformed, as, for instance, when the sun shining on the bed is experienced in dream as a conflagration in all its details. Or a man's own inner world may appear before him in symbolic pictures, as, for instance, the throbbing heart in the picture of an over-heated oven. Memories also re-appear transformed in the dream consciousness. What these memory pictures contain is not borrowed from the world of the senses, but from the spiritual world. However, it is not possible through the memory pictures to penetrate with understanding into the spiritual world, because they are just too dim to rise into the waking consciousness, and because what little may be perceived cannot be really understood.

[ 3 ] But it is possible in the moment of waking to grasp so much of the dream world as to become aware that it is the imperfect copy of a spiritual experience which has happened in sleep, but which for the most part evades the waking consciousness. In order to comprehend this, it is only necessary to shape the moment of waking in such a way that the outer world is not conjured all at once before the soul, but that the soul, without as yet regarding the outer world, feels itself surrendered to what has been experienced within.

[ 4 ] In the dreamless sleep consciousness the soul passes through experiences which mean nothing more for the memory than an indifferent period of time between falling asleep and waking.

These experiences may be spoken of as non-existent, until the way into them has been opened up through spiritual scientific investigation. But if this takes place, if the Imaginative and Inspired consciousness described in anthroposophical literature be developed, then out of the darkness of sleep the pictures and inspirations belonging to the experience of previous lives on Earth make their appearance. It then becomes possible to survey also the content of the dream consciousness. This cannot be grasped by the waking consciousness; it has to do with the world in which man dwells as a disembodied soul between two earthly lives.

[ 5 ] If one learns to know what is hidden behind the dream- and sleep-consciousness in the present age, then the way is clear to the understanding of the forms of human consciousness in past ages. One cannot, however, arrive at this by means of outer investigation; for evidence received from the outer world shows only the after-effects of the experiences of human consciousness in prehistoric times. Anthroposophical literature gives information as to how, by means of spiritual investigation, one may attain to the vision of such experiences.

[ 6 ] It is found by means of spiritual research that in ancient Egyptian times man possessed a dream-consciousness which was much more like the waking consciousness than it is at the present day. The memory of the dream experiences passed into the waking consciousness, and the latter provided not only the sense impressions that can be grasped in clearly outlined thoughts, but in addition to these the Spiritual that is at work in the world of the senses. Man's consciousness thereby lived instinctively in the world he had left when he incarnated on the Earth—the world he will re-enter when he passes through the gate of death.

[ 7 ] Inscribed monuments and other records preserved from ancient times give to those who penetrate them with an impartial mind, clear evidence of a consciousness of this kind, belonging to an age of which no outer relics exist.

[ 8 ] In ancient Egyptian times the sleep-consciousness contained dreams of the spiritual world, just as the sleep consciousness of the present day contains dreams originating from the physical world. [ 9 ] But among other peoples we find in addition another kind of consciousness. The experiences undergone during sleep passed over into the waking consciousness in such a way that there was an instinctive vision of repeated earthly lives. The traditions regarding the knowledge of repeated earthly lives possessed by ancient humanity originate from these forms of consciousness.

[ 10 ] In the developed Imaginative consciousness we find again the dream-consciousness which in ancient times was dim and instinctive, only in the Imaginative consciousness it is fully conscious, like our waking life. [ 11 ] And through the Inspired knowledge we become aware of the pre-historic instinctive insight which still saw something of the repeated earthly lives.

Modern writers of works on the history of humanity make no note of this transformation in the forms of human consciousness. They would like to believe that on the whole the present forms of consciousness have existed as long as humanity has been on the Earth. [ 12 ] And what, in spite of this, does point to other forms of consciousness, viz., the myths and fairy-tales, they would prefer to look upon as the result of the poetic fantasy of primitive man.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 13 ] 88. In the waking day-consciousness man experiences himself, during the present cosmic age, standing in the midst of the physical world. This experience conceals from him the presence, within his being, of the effects of a life between death and birth.

[ 14 ] 89. In dream-consciousness man experiences, in a chaotic way, his own being unharmoniously united with the spiritual being of the world. The waking consciousness cannot seize the real content of the dream-consciousness. To the Imaginative and Inspired Consciousness it is revealed how the Spirit-world through which man lives between death and birth is helping to build up his inner being.

[ 15 ] 90. In dreamless sleep-consciousness man experiences, all unconsciously, his own being permeated with the results of past earthly lives. The Inspired and Intuitive Consciousness penetrates to a clear vision of these results, and sees the working of former earthly lives in the destined course—the Karma—of the present.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 16 ] 91. The Will enters the ordinary consciousness, in the present cosmic age, only through Thought. Now in this consciousness we always have to take our start from something sense-perceptible. Thus, even of our own Will, we apprehend only what passes from it into the world of sense-perceptions. In the ordinary consciousness it is only by observation of himself in thought that man is aware of his Will-impulses, just as it is only by observation that he is aware of the outer world.

[ 17 ] 92. The Karma that works in the Will is a property belonging to it from former lives on Earth. This constituent of the Will cannot therefore be apprehended with the ideas of our ordinary sense-existence, which are directed only to the present earthly life.

[ 18 ] 93. Because they are unable to take hold of Karma, these ideas refer what is unintelligible to them in man's impulses of Will to the mystic darkness of the bodily constitution, whereas in reality it is the working of past earthly lives.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 19 ] 94. With the ordinary life in ideas transmitted through the senses, man is in the physical world. For this world to enter his consciousness, Karma must be silent in his thinking life. In his life of ideation, man as it were forgets his Karma.

[ 20 ] 95. In the manifestations of the Will, Karma works itself out. But its working remains in the unconscious. By lifting to conscious Imagination what works unconsciously in the Will, Karma is apprehended. Man feels his destiny within him.

[ 21 ] 96. When Inspiration and Intuition enter the Imagination, then, beside the impulses of the present, the outcome of former earthly lives becomes perceptible in the working of the Will. The past life is revealed, working itself out in the present.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 22 ] 97. For a cruder description it is permissible to say: Thinking, Feeling and Willing live in the soul of man. For greater refinement we must add: Thinking always contains a substratum of Feeling and Willing; Feeling a substratum of Thinking and Willing; Willing a substratum of Thinking and Feeling. In the life of thought, however, Thinking predominates; in the life of feeling, Feeling predominates; and in the life of will, Willing predominates over the other contents of the soul.

[ 23 ] 98. The Feeling and Willing of the life of Thought contain the karmic outcome of past lives on Earth. The Thinking and Willing of the life of Feeling karmically determine the man's character. The Thinking and Feeling of the life of Will tear the present earthly life away from Karmic connections.

[ 24 ] 99. In the Feeling and Willing of Thinking man lives out his Karma of the past; in the Thinking and Feeling of Willing he prepares his Karma of the future.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 25 ] 100. The thoughts of man have their true seat in the etheric body. There, however, they are forces of real life and being. They imprint themselves upon the physical body, and as such ‘imprinted thoughts’ they have the shadowy character in which the everyday consciousness knows them.

[ 26 ] 101. The Feeling that lives in the Thoughts comes from the astral body, and the Willing from the Ego. In sleep the human etheric body is certainly irradiated with the world of his Thoughts, but man himself does not partake in it. For he has withdrawn, with the astral body the Feeling of the Thoughts, and with the Ego their Willing, out of the etheric and the physical.

[ 27 ] 102. The moment the astral body and Ego loose their connection during sleep with the Thoughts of the etheric body, they enter into connection with ‘Karma’—with the beholding of the events through repeated lives on Earth. To the everyday consciousness this vision is denied, but a supersensible consciousness can enter into it.

The present lectures for members given in Dornach in June 1923 are based on the attempt by Rudolf Steiner to encourage the Anthroposophical Society to reconsider the real foundations of anthroposophy and the inner requirements for tackling the tasks of the age. After the First World War, the Society had increasingly splintered into a variety of external initiatives and practical projects. Although Rudolf Steiner had spoken warning words from 1921 onwards, and at the end of 1922 had called on leading members to make proposals for its reconsolidation, a real rethink did not take place until New Year's Eve 1922, when the destruction by fire of the first Goetheanum provided the catalyst. As a consequence, regional societies were founded in a number of countries in 1923. On 10 June, immediately preceding the first lecture in this volume, the General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland decided, on the basis of a motion from the Society in Great Britain, to call a meeting of delegates from all countries for the end of July to decide the measures for the reconstruction of the Goetheanum. This international delegate meeting further decided to combine the individual regional societies into an International Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum at Christmas 1923. Its leadership was to be assumed by a General Secretary to be elected at that time, but shortly before Christmas Rudolf Steiner decided to take over the chairmanship himself.

Textual basis: These lectures were taken down in shorthand by Helene Finckh. Her own transcription of these notes forms the basis for this volume.

The first edition was published by Marie Steiner in 1931 with a Foreword by her. The second edition was undertaken by H.W. Zbinden. The third edition in 1981 included an expanded Contents and additional Notes.

Works by Rudolf Steiner which have not been translated and which have appeared as part of the Complete Edition (Gesamtausgabe = GA) are referred to in the Notes by their bibliographical number.

Speeches by Rudolf Steiner at the preliminary meeting of the fourth ordinary general assembly of “Futurum A.G.”

Emil Leinhas greets the members of the Anthroposophical Society who are present and who represent about 80% of the share capital of “The Coming Day”, and asks Dr. Steiner to take the chair.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! Today we will probably have to hold the most sober and uninspiring meeting possible within the Anthroposophical Society, and therefore we may well ask that pure reason alone prevail in today's meeting, otherwise we will hardly be able to cope.

The point is that today we have to talk to each other in a certain way about the fate of the “Coming Day”, which is connected with many ideals that members of the Anthroposophical Society have embraced in recent years. We have in the “Coming Day” an institution that emerged, so to speak, as the last major institution from the once emerging threefold social order movement, and it is only with a certain pain that we can turn our attention to the fact that this “Coming Day” is now in a truly serious crisis that absolutely must be resolved. Above all, it is important to see things as soberly as possible.

The hopes have not been fulfilled that the things connected with the “Coming Day” could proceed as one had wanted, that the Central European economic crisis, so to speak, would pass by the “Coming Day”, but the “Coming Day” is now just as any other business, fully participating in what the declining economic life offers. The “Coming Day” is not doing better today, but also not worse than any other Central European business.

The crisis has come about in the following way: if, [after the currency was converted to gold marks], the “Coming Day” had cash today, the possibility of continuing its economic and intellectual operations with cash, if it could count on being able to take out loans, then it would be able to continue working, just as other businesses are truly not working under better conditions today. However, the “Coming Day” does not have any cash, and so it cannot continue its economic and spiritual activities as they have existed up to now. The material value of the “Coming Day” is - and this must be emphasized again and again - such that if cash were available or could be raised, there would be no objection to simply letting the leadership go. Of course, there may be other reasons why “The Coming Day” is unable to find cash at the moment, but the main reason is that German economic life has taken on forms that make it impossible for the “Coming Day” to continue as other commercial enterprises do, because to do so it would have been necessary for the “Coming Day” to be treated with the same goodwill from outside as other commercial enterprises have been. That did not happen. A large part of the reasons why the “Coming Day” is in this crisis due to the lack of any cash funds - soberly this cannot be put differently than this: a large part of the blame lies in the way the “Coming Day” was vilified in the world. A project that is presented to the world in this way could only continue to function if it had a core of people who would take financial responsibility for it. But if only what has happened so far within the Anthroposophical Society is continued, the only thing that can be counted on, this is not the case either, and so today we can do no other than objectively present the situation of the “Coming Day” as it is. Therefore, I will take the liberty of organizing today's agenda in such a way that I will first ask Mr. Leinhas to present the situation of the “Coming Day” objectively to you, and as the second point on the agenda, I will make the proposals that need to be made in view of the serious situation. So I ask Mr. Leinhas to give an objective presentation of the situation of the “Coming Day” as a prerequisite for our further negotiations.

[Emil Leinhas describes the situation on the basis of the balance sheet. The situation is such that the economic enterprises can no longer support the spiritual ones.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! You have listened to the description of the situation of the “Coming Day”, and I will now take the liberty, with a heavy heart but purely rationally, as I ask you to take it, of discussing the only way we can get over this crisis of the “Coming Day” in my opinion.

The essential thing here is that, in view of the description of the situation that has just been given to us, we now have to divide the “Coming Day” into two parts: one comprising purely economic enterprises and the other comprising spiritual enterprises. If we draw the conclusion from what has just been said, it is actually the case that we, who, as anthroposophists, have to reflect on the situation, have to say that The “Coming Day” is no longer able to provide any cash for the spiritual activities, which essentially include the Waldorf School, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute, the Research Institute and the publishing house. Therefore, the question is – since the prerequisite that I believed I had to make, that the purely economic operations had to be organized first, has failed due to the impossibility of somehow managing today with the sale of these operations or the like – how we manage to separate the spiritual operations of “Coming Day” in a certain way. But this can only be done through extremely difficult measures that require heavy sacrifices on the part of our anthroposophical friends. It is not possible in any other way. You must bear in mind that these spiritual enterprises are now in a situation in which they have no possibility of being continued in any way out of the situation of the “Coming Day”. They have, so to speak, been abandoned, not by any decision, but by the facts.

The question arises: how do we get out of this situation? We have to consider the following: the “Coming Day” has issued 109,000 shares. Let us do the math based on the number of shares. If we make an estimate, but probably a fairly accurate one, of the share capital underlying these 109,000 shares, and divide it between the purely economic and the spiritual enterprises, then 74,000 shares are accounted for by the economic and agricultural enterprises and 35,000 by the spiritual enterprises. So, we have possessions for the spiritual enterprises, which correspond to 35,000 shares of “Tomorrow”.

Now, my dear friends, how can these enterprises, these spiritual enterprises, be continued? That is the fundamental question. And however you may look at it, these spiritual enterprises cannot remain as they are in the face of the situation of the “Coming Day”. For what would then have to happen? Then the “Coming Day” would have to proceed in the same way as other enterprises have to proceed today. The holdings would have to be consolidated, and the total mass of shareholders of the “Coming Day” would be faced with exactly the same situation, only with a significantly reduced number of shares. Perhaps this would somewhat increase their creditworthiness, but it is something that cannot be done, given all the prospects that have to be considered.

But if this cannot be done, what can be done? There is nothing else to be done – and I am now saying what I have to say with the greatest reluctance, but it must be said because of the situation, and if I were to present the matter to you in a long-winded way, it would not be any better: the only thing that can be done is to get rid of the 35,000 shares that correspond to the ownership of the spiritual enterprises. But this is only possible if enough people of influence can be found within the Anthroposophical Society who are willing to simply renounce their shareholdings in favor of the most important spiritual enterprises, so that the spiritual enterprises receive the 35,000 shares as a gift. It is just as if spiritual enterprises were to be founded and if a number of self-sacrificing personalities could be found who would contribute the sum corresponding to these 35,000 shares.

So, my dear friends, is it possible that the owners of 35,000 “Kommenden-Tag” shares renounce ownership of their shares? Then the 35,000 shares of Coming Day stock that are being given away could be left to the German Goetheanum fund, which would then have to be at my free disposal. This would give me free rein to run the spiritual enterprises. I see no other possibility for any other solution to the problem we are facing now than for this measure to be taken. You will understand that it is extremely difficult for me, one year after I myself resigned from the supervisory board of “Kommender Tag”, to have to make this enormous demand on the shareholders of “Kommender Tag” today: Give me 35,000 shares so that the spiritual activities can be continued in the way I will explain in a moment.

So if today there are shareholders willing to make this donation, then the matter is such that the “Coming Day” as such will continue to exist as an association of purely economic enterprises. How this continuation is envisaged will be discussed later. This continuation would correspond to a shareholding of 74,000 shares. We can discuss the matter in this area later. At this moment, I consider it my task to explain what can happen to the spiritual enterprises if the 35,000 shares are donated to the German Goetheanum Fund. It would then be clear that this willingness to make a sacrifice would at least express an anthroposophical attitude. The donors would say to themselves: Of course we are making a sacrifice, but we are doing so out of the anthroposophical spirit. There are shareholders in the “Coming Day” who will be able to make such a donation. Since they can, of course, only be placed in a position to make such a gift voluntarily, one can only say: Those who will give will also be able to give. It will be a group of shareholders who can give. On the other hand, there are shareholders of the “Coming Day” who cannot renounce their shareholdings; they are referred to purely economic enterprises. They would be in no different a position than other shareholders. And in order to preserve the full ownership of the 74,000 shares, it would be necessary for the spiritual enterprises to have no influence whatsoever on the economic administration of the “Coming Day”. If this condition were to be fulfilled today, that 35,000 shares of stock be made available to the German Goetheanum fund, and the economic enterprises were to be thought of separately, then the following would emerge:

First of all, the Waldorf School has 300,000 German Marks booked in the “Coming Day”. What the Waldorf School needs cannot really be covered by any kind of equivalent value. As you all know, the Waldorf School is entirely dependent on school fees and voluntary donations for its cash resources. Therefore, if the situation is to be rectified, the Waldorf School cannot be provided with the equipment it needs unless it receives a gift of the full amount. What corresponds to the Waldorf School [in terms of land, buildings and facilities], which is therefore listed in the “Coming Day” with 300,000 marks, must be donated outright.

The following then remains: the Clinical Therapeutic Institute, which is currently linked to the sale of remedies, that is, to the pharmaceutical laboratory. I will discuss the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute later. Regarding the sale of remedies, the balance sheet shows that it can be said that there is every prospect of it no longer requiring any significant sacrifices from today onwards. It is self-financing. However, cash will still be needed in the near future. And because it is a solid economic asset, it will be taken into account as such, and it must also be possible to buy it. Now it occurs to me that the Internationale Laboratorien A.G. in Arlesheim also handles the sale of remedies for all those countries in the world that have not even been ceded to the Stuttgart laboratory in a treaty, that this Internationale Laboratorien A.G. Arlesheim handles the sale of these remedies for the world. It is a joint-stock company. And in view of the balance of the local sales of remedies and in view of the general circumstances relating to our sales of remedies, which are extremely favorable in ideal terms, the International Laboratories A.G. Arlesheim will be persuaded to take over the sale of remedies and carry out the purchase of the laboratory. But again, given the circumstances there in Arlesheim, I cannot imagine that the purchase price could exceed 50,000 francs. These 50,000 francs will of course have to be added to the Goetheanum fund, since if the spiritual enterprises are now independent, if they are given as a gift, but the donation does not receive any cash, so that there could actually be no question of this purchase having the consequence that compensation - which would in any case be quite minimal - could be paid to the donating shareholders.

Regarding the publishing house, I would like to say the following: I can only feel an obligation to the publishing house to save from it the anthroposophical books that I have written myself, the books that are the result of the extraordinary and meritorious research of Dr. and Mrs. Kolisko, the two brochures and another book by Dr. Wachsmuth, a member of the Executive Council at the Goetheanum, which is currently being published. That would make a total of books that could be worth between 25,000 and 30,000 francs. This is something that should be acquired and the income from it should go to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press. The other mass of books is such that, speaking purely financially and from the point of view of the Coming Day, I not only cannot feel any obligation towards it, but must not feel any obligation towards it. In the case of this mass of books in particular, it occurs to me that despite all the objections I raised at the time when this book publishing house was founded, this publishing house has only behaved over time in such a way that it has essentially counted on the consumers of the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House within the Anthroposophical Society; that basically those who at the time created a competing company for the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag with the “Coming Day” publishing house with an alleged enthusiasm that was actually foolishness, could easily be taken to task for this. Therefore, I do not feel morally obliged in any way to take care of the remaining book stock of the “Coming Day” publishing house.

This remaining book stock brings me to another thought. In the future, I will have to work hard to ensure that no anthroposophical funds flow into economic enterprises that have nothing to do with the Anthroposophical Society as such. In this regard, there was a time when we gave in, but today it is imperative that no economic enterprises be fed anthroposophical funds in the future. Therefore, it was also necessary for me to ensure that in the future, the entire sale of remedies worldwide would not be based on capital that comes from anthroposophical pockets, but on capital from people who want to manage their own assets with these things, in other words, only by people who do not give the money for anthroposophical reasons, but only out of consideration for those who consider the sale of remedies profitable, without taking into account that this has anything to do with anthroposophy. In the future, these matters can only be dealt with from this point of view. The sale of remedies can be organized in such a way that, if it is also managed commercially in the future, it can become a profitable business in a purely commercial sense, given the great recognition that even those remedies find in the world that I myself have only, I would say, half-hoped for. But it can only be managed with funds that are given for the risk involved in selling the remedies. So I can also recommend to the Internationale Laboratorien A.G. Arlesheim, which will be based on the above principles in the future, the purchase of the sale of remedies here.

That leaves the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart, my dear friends. Although its finances are quite healthy at present, it cannot be thought of as needing any other kind of leadership than that provided by cash. In accordance with the intentions that emerged from the Christmas Conference in Dornach, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim can no longer be a member of the International Laboratories A.G. in Arlesheim, but only the local laboratory and the sale of remedies. In the future, a spiritual institute cannot be associated with purely economic enterprises. For this reason, the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim has also been separated from the International Laboratories A.G. in Arlesheim and has become an integral part of the Goetheanum. The same cannot be said for the ClinicalTherapeutic Institute in Stuttgart, because the Goetheanum could not guarantee or take on the risk of a penny subsidy. So the situation of the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart is such that it cannot be connected to the International Laboratories A.G. in Arlesheim, nor can it be connected to the Goetheanum for the simple reason that the Goetheanum cannot take on any risk. The only way to set up the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart is to make it a financially independent enterprise that can be taken over by a doctor or non-doctor who, if subsidies are needed, will take them on at their own risk. On the other hand, if subsidies are not needed, anyone with a little business sense can take them on at their own risk. But if subsidies are necessary, then the Goetheanum certainly cannot take them on. So there is no other option for the clinic than to make it an independent enterprise. As for Gmünd, I do not count it among the enterprises for which I am responsible; the “Coming Day” will have to continue to take care of it and find a way to make it profitable.

What remains, my dear friends, is the scientific research institute, which is almost heartbreaking when you have to talk about it in this situation. But as things stand, the fact is, on the one hand, that the “Coming Day” has no cash for this institute, that the Goetheanum in Dornach is in no position to take on any obligation for this scientific research institute, not even a single penny , so that there is no other possibility — not out of any wish or anything like that, but purely out of the economic situation — than, if no enthusiast can be found to take over and finance the scientific research institute, to dissolve it, to dissolve it completely. We may be burying the idea that we had in mind as one of the most sacred, I would say, to establish economic enterprises to serve the spiritual life. But the possibility of continuing this does not exist.

So the following situation would arise for the spiritual enterprises: the Waldorf School will be supported by donations. The Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart will become independent and will be made into a separate enterprise; Gmünd will remain in the care of the “Coming Day”. The scientific research institute will have to be dissolved if no individual or consortium can be found to maintain it. My books and the others mentioned will be removed from the publishing house and it will be ensured that these books fall to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House for further distribution. The rest of the book inventory must be sold on the open market to outside publishers. I would consider it inadmissible if any steps were taken within the Anthroposophical Society itself to sell the rest of this book stock and to found anything further on what lies within the Anthroposophical Society, because that would create competition for the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, and no one can demand that what the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag is doing should also be undermined by further competition.

That, my dear friends, is the stark and sober truth, which is the only thing that is necessary in the current situation. If we succeed in appealing to the willingness to make sacrifices of so many shareholders in the “Coming Day” today, so that 35,000 shares of stock for the spiritual enterprises are freely available and allocated to the Goetheanum fund, then we can undertake the reorganization of these spiritual enterprises in the way I have described. I would advocate for the order itself and then the remaining 74,000 shares would have to be dealt with for the further operation of the purely economic enterprises that are part of the “coming day”.

Do you believe, my dear friends, that what I have just presented to you briefly, soberly and dryly has really caused me the most serious concerns for weeks, has led to the most difficult struggles. But when Mr. Leinhas came to me at the Goetheanum in Dornach a few weeks ago and told me that the last of the economic enterprises with which the “Coming Day” still had to reckon, which, in a spirit of complete sacrifice, had actually raised the lion's share of the subsidies up to that point, it was clear that this enterprise would no longer be able to raise these subsidies either. Then it was clear: this would mean the end of the possibility of continuing the “Coming Day” in its old form. Then, despite its material assets, the “Coming Day” would be without the possibility of creating cash; then a reorganization would have to take place at all costs. Since that time, the whole matter has been a great concern to me. As long as there was hope that the economic enterprises could be sold first, and the spiritual enterprises would remain as a kind of rump of the “Coming Day”, one could think that what remains could be organized in some way. But now that things have progressed so far that we are standing before the General Assembly and have asked you to come together beforehand in confidence, it is not possible for me to put anything other than what I have just said before you as a proposal.

That is the point at which I would like to open the discussion. I therefore ask friends who want to participate to speak up. We can then, after the things that have been presented have been discussed, move on to discussing what possibilities can be considered for the continuation of the purely economic enterprises. I should also mention that one shareholder, who owns the corresponding number of shares, has made available to me the amount that the Waldorf School in “Kommender Tag” is currently worth. It can also be assumed that a number of others will definitely give it. So it will be possible for the shareholders who are willing to transfer their shares in the way described to add their number of shares to a list that is being passed around.

During the discussion, Emil Kühn asks whether it would not be possible for the shareholders who are donating today to participate in some way in the real values of the spiritual institutions.

Rudolf Steiner: As far as the economic enterprises are concerned, I myself would certainly be open to discussing the question that Dr. Kühn has just touched on. But as far as the spiritual enterprises are concerned, I would like to say the following: If the experiences that have been made in the economic management within the Anthroposophical Society in recent years are taken as a basis, then I can only say that I myself would not participate in the reorganization of the spiritual enterprises differently than if, in every respect, such conditions were created that would only make possible an administration in the spiritual sense for these enterprises.

As far as the Waldorf School is concerned, I would not be able to participate in a reorganization if, in any way, an economic administration were to be associated with this reorganization; and that would be the case if, in some way, the current shareholders of the Waldorf School were to participate. The Waldorf School can only obtain its operating funds from school fees and voluntary contributions, as I said before. And even if the property were there to begin with, it would always have to mean something quite imaginary for those who participate in it. The only healthy relationship is when the Waldorf School itself has this property, when it is given to it. On this condition alone, the spiritual enterprises of “Coming Day” can be detached from my proposal. I can say that I would only participate if a sufficient number of people were to give up their shares as a free gift - and this can only be done of their own free will - in order to find a solution. I myself would not participate in this solution if it were tied to the condition that gifts be made on condition that there should still be a participation. For that, financial administration would be necessary again, and I do not want to be associated with that. So I ask only those friends to sign up who are able to make their donations unconditionally, who want to place these spiritual enterprises on purely spiritual ground.

As you have seen, I have only made the proposals with a heavy heart. The proposal that has now been made is the most obvious one and has also been well considered. Otherwise it would be a matter of issuing bonds that would only represent an imaginary ownership. I want to keep away from anything imaginary. If the Waldorf School is not detached from an economic connection with the “Coming Day”, then I also don't know how the question can be solved, that I could remain the spiritual director of the Waldorf School. So I can't say what influence it would have on my own decisions if such a reorganization, as it has been suggested, were to take place. I have not appealed to a decision by you, but to the willingness of individual anthroposophical friends to make sacrifices. We do not have to bring about a decision if 35,000 shares are donated to the German Goetheanum fund as a gift – if Gmünd is dropped, it is only 29,000 shares – if 29,000 shares are donated to the German Goetheanum fund as a gift. I am not appealing to a decision, but only to the willingness to sacrifice in order to finance the spiritual enterprises in a certain way à fond perdu.

[Further discussion of the donation of shares to save the spiritual enterprises, which would also relieve the economic enterprises. These should become independent and, if possible, be taken over again by their former owners.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! The words contained in my proposal have, I am deeply moved to say, fallen on extraordinarily fertile ground. I do not wish to miss this opportunity to emphasize what seems to me to be important and significant, namely that despite the unfortunate circumstances that have arisen within the Anthroposophical Society as a result of various foundations - I have often spoken about this over the past few years - it has become apparent that the trust in the general anthroposophical movement is so great that we can only look on with the deepest satisfaction that this trust is so great that it has hardly been weakened at all in recent years, despite all the unfortunate measures that have been taken and that were intended to accommodate those who had the faith that such measures could do anything for the anthroposophical cause. I have already emphasized in various places how the reliance on purely anthroposophical ground since the Christmas Conference has been shown everywhere in the most energetic way, that trust in the actual anthroposophical cause has not diminished in recent months, but has become much greater. So that within Anthroposophy we can look with the deepest satisfaction at what is alive among us in this direction.

I must say that today, with an extraordinarily sad and worried heart, I set about making the proposal that I once had to make to you, my dear friends, after becoming aware of the situation of “Kommendes Tag”. And I could have well understood if this proposal had been rejected in the broadest sense. I must say that it is deeply touching and heart-warming that this did not happen, but that we can see that right from the outset, in the first hour, friends have agreed to donate 20,700 shares to the Goetheanum Fund. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this very beautiful result, that we can look at this result, that the indicated number of 20,700 shares has been made available, so that in the very near future we will be able to achieve full financial recovery of the spiritual enterprises in this direction, as far as possible, and thus also be able to contribute indirectly to the recovery of the “Coming Day”.

This is an extraordinarily distressing result, and we can only look back on the proceedings of this meeting with the deepest emotion. I thank all those who were able to donate and did so, truly from the bottom of my heart for what you have done, which means an extraordinarily significant deed not only for the “Coming Day”, but especially for our anthroposophical movement. For if this willingness to make sacrifices is now being shown in spite of the failures of recent years within anthroposophical circles in such a way, we will nevertheless be able to achieve what needs to be achieved on our main path in the near future. And what needs to be achieved is what can be done through anthroposophy in spiritual terms for humanity and for modern civilization. Even if our material undertakings have not had the desired success, even if everything that has emerged from the threefold social order movement has basically fallen through today, we still have the opportunity – and this is solely due to the unlimited trust that our anthroposophists have in anthroposophy – to make further progress in the spiritual realm.

This, however, also imposes an obligation on me to continue in the way I have tried to make the Christmas Conference fruitful so far, by making the Anthroposophical Society ever more esoteric and esoteric, in an active way. It is precisely from what our friends have done today that I feel how strong the obligation is to continue in this direction in the most energetic way. If we stick together in this way, each doing what he can do, we will make progress on the appropriate path.

You see, my dear friends, there is still work to be done: the threefolding movement was founded here years ago. Individual enterprises have emerged from it. The part of the threefolding movement that should have been carried out in a purely practical way, for which practical collaboration would have been necessary, did not initially prove itself. On the other hand, far beyond the borders of Europe, especially in America, there is a great deal of interest in these impulses. Let me use this word, which has been so much maligned: These are realities of the threefold social order. It is becoming apparent that these impulses are nevertheless being taken up with a certain understanding more and more. And perhaps it will be good for these impulses in particular if we do not try to translate them into unsuitable practice in a hasty manner, but instead follow what I have often said at the beginning of our explanations of our magazine Anthroposophie: Threefolding can only take effect when it has entered as many minds as possible. We have seen the failure of applying threefolding to the outer practice of people's lives, but it will make its way into the world as something that is, after all, on anthroposophical ground. All indications show that our strength must be applied in the anthroposophical-spiritual field. And in this sense, I would like to tell you that I feel it is my duty and my gratitude to do everything in my power to further and advance the esoteric-spiritual character of our anthroposophical movement. If we succeed, and we must succeed, because the spiritual does not encounter obstacles in the same way as external material things, then the friends who have shown this willingness to make sacrifices will feel even more closely connected to our life in the Anthroposophical Movement in a renewed way.

Since it is already late, we may perhaps close today's meeting with this.

The background mood out of which I shall be addressing you today is not the same as that that prevailed on earlier occasions when I was privileged to speak here. Since New Year's Eve 1922, that mood is conditioned by the dreadful picture of the burning Goetheanum. The pain and suffering that picture inevitably causes anyone who loved the Goetheanum because of its connection with anthroposophy are such that no words can possibly describe them.

There might seem to be some justification for feeling that a movement as intent on spiritual things as ours is has no real reason to grieve over the loss of a material expression of its being. But that does not apply in the case of the Goetheanum we have lost. It was not an arbitrary building for our work. During its erection, a process that went on for almost ten years, I often had occasion to explain that a structure that might suitably have housed some other spiritual or similar movement would not have been appropriate for our Anthroposophical Movement. For, as I have often said, we are not just a spiritual movement, which, as its membership increased, found itself with a number of people in its ranks who wanted to build it a home in some conventional style or other. The point here was that anthroposophy is built on a spiritual foundation that is not one-sidedly religious or scientific or artistic. It is an all-embracing movement, intent on demonstrating every aspect of mankind's great ideals: the moral-religious, the artistic, and the scientific ideals. There could, therefore, be no question of erecting any arbitrary type of building for the Anthroposophical Movement. Its design had to come from the same source from which anthroposophical ideas receive their shaping as an expression of the spiritual perspective gained on the anthroposophical path of knowledge, and it had to be carried out in artistic harmony with that outlook. For almost ten years many friends worked side by side with me trying to incorporate and demonstrate in every single line, in every architectural and sculptural form, every choice of color, what was flowing from the wellsprings of anthroposophical investigation, anthroposophical life, anthroposophical intention. That was all incorporated there, and the building was intimately associated with the artistic and scientific striving in the Movement. Friends who attended eurythmy performances in the Goetheanum will surely have felt how, for example, the architectural forms and decoration of the auditorium harmonized with and responded to eurythmic movement. It was even possible to have the feeling that the movements of the performers on the stage there were born of those architectural and plastic forms. If one stood on the podium speaking from the heart in a truly anthroposophical spirit, every line and form responded and chimed in with what one was saying. That was our goal there. It was, of course, a first attempt, but such was our goal, and it could be sensed. That is why those who worked on the Goetheanum at Dornach have the sensation that the very feelings they put into their efforts went up in the flames of New Year's Eve. It was just this intimate connection of anthroposophical feeling and will with the Goetheanum forms—forms that were artistically shaped by and for spiritual contemplation and that can never find a substitute in any thought forms or words—that makes our grief at the loss we have suffered so immeasurably deep.

All this ought to become part of the memories of those who grew to love the Goetheanum and to feel the intimate connection with it just described. We must, in a sense, build a monument to it in our hearts in memory form. Even though the very intimacy of our connection with it is the reason why we are now shelterless, we must seek the more intensively for a shelter in our hearts that will replace the one we have lost, We must try with every means at our disposal to rebuild in our hearts, for all eternity, this building that has been lost as an external source of artistic stimulation. But the terrible flame into which all the lesser flames of New Year's Eve were drawn is there in the background of every effort yet to be made in the field of anthroposophy. Though living, spiritual anthroposophy came to no harm in the fire, a great deal of work that we had been trying to accomplish for anthroposophy in the present day world was brought to naught.

I do believe, though, that if what we experienced on that occasion becomes properly rooted in our members' hearts, the grief and pain we suffered can be turned into strength to support us in everything we are called upon to accomplish for anthroposophy in the near future. It is often the case in life that when a group of people find themselves faced by a common disaster, they are united by it in a way that gives them strength and energy to go on together in effective common action. Experience, not grey theories or abstract thoughts, should be the source on which we draw for the strength needed for our anthroposophical work.

My dear friends, I want to add these comments to those I will be making in connection with the theme I have had to choose for this conference, to a description of the conditions that must prevail in anthroposophical community building. I would like to include them not only because they are graven on my heart, but because they point to a fact on which we would do well to focus our attention in these coming days. A great deal of sacrifice and devotion went into the work on the Goetheanum. The impulses from which that sacrifice and devotion sprang have always been there to count on in the two decades of our work, wherever anthroposophy really lived. They were born of hearts filled with enthusiasm for anthroposophy, and the Goetheanum was the product of deeds done by anthroposophically-minded individuals. Though, for a variety of reasons, we are thinking—are having to think—today about how to regenerate the Society, we should not forget on the other hand that the Society has been in existence for two decades; that a considerable number of people have undergone experiences of destiny in their common work and effort; that the Society is not something that can be founded all over again. For history, real history, history that has been lived and experienced, cannot be erased. We cannot begin something now that began twenty years ago. We must guard against any such misconceptions as these as we proceed with our current deliberations. Anyone who has found his way into the Society over the years certainly sees plenty to find fault with in it, and is justified in doing so. Many a true and weighty word has already been uttered here on that score. But we must still take into account the fact that the Society has been effective and done things. There are certainly people enough in the Society who can express the weight of their grief and sorrow in the words, “We have suffered a common loss in our beloved Goetheanum.”

It makes a difference whether a person joined the Society in 1917 or later, and whether one's relation to it is such that these grief-stricken words issue from long and deep experience in it. That should influence our deliberations. It will do much to tone down the feelings that some of our friends had good reason to express here. I heard someone say (and I certainly felt the justice of the remark), “After what I have listened to here I will go home unable to continue speaking of anthroposophy as I used to when I was still full of illusions.” Part of what that sentence conveys will disappear if one considers how much those individuals who have been anthroposophists for two decades have gone through together, and how much they have had to suffer with each other recently, because that suffering is the product of a long life in the Anthroposophical Society. The load of worry we are presently carrying cannot wipe out all that human experience; it remains with us. It would still be there even if events here were to take a much worse turn than they have taken thus far. Are we to forget the depths for the surface? That must not be allowed to happen in a spiritual movement born of the depths of human hearts and souls. What has come into being as the Anthroposophical Movement cannot rightly be called sunless. Even the sun sometimes suffers eclipse.

Of course, this should not prevent our dealing with the situation confronting this assemblage in a way that enables us to provide anthroposophy once again with a proper vehicle in the form of a real Anthroposophical Society. But our success in that depends entirely on creating the right atmosphere.

It will, of course, be impossible for me to cover the whole situation today. But in the two lectures I am to give I shall try to touch on as much of what needs to be said as I possibly can. Some things will have to be left out. But I do want to stress two matters in particular. Those are the pressing need for community building in the Society and the symptomatic event of the entrance into the Anthroposophical Movement of the exceedingly gratifying youth movement. But in anthroposophical matters we have to develop a rather different outlook than prevails elsewhere. We would not have taken our stand on ground that means so much to many people if we could not see things in a different light than that in which the modern world habitually views them.

Community building! It is particularly noteworthy that the community building ideal should be making its appearance in our day. It is the product of a deep, elemental feeling found in many human souls today, the product of a sense of definite relationship between person and person that includes an impulse to joint activity.

A while ago, a number of young theologians came to me. They were preparing to enter the ministry. They were intent above all else on a renewing of religion, on a renewal permeated through and through by the true Christ force, such as to be able to take hold of many people of the period in the way they long to be taken hold of but cannot be by the traditional confessions as they are today. I had to bring up something that seemed to me to have vital import for the development of such a movement. I said that a suitable method of community building must be found. What I had in mind was to develop a religious and pastoral element capable of really uniting people. I told these friends who had come to me that religious community could not be effectively built with abstract words, the usual kind of sermon, and the meagre remnants of a divine service, which are all that most contemporary churches have to offer. The prevailing intellectualistic trend that is increasingly taking over the religious field has had the effect of saturating a great many present day sermons with a rationalistic, intellectualistic element. This does not give people anything that could unite them. On the contrary, it divides and isolates them, and the social community is reduced to atoms. This must be easy to see for anyone who realizes that the single individual can develop rationalistic and intellectualistic values all by himself. Simply attaining a certain cultural level enables an individual to acquire increasingly perfect intellectual equipment without depending on anyone else. One can think alone and develop logic alone; in fact, one can do it all the better for being by oneself. When one engages in purely logical thinking, one feels a need to withdraw from the world to the greatest possible extent, to withdraw from people. But the tendency to want to get off by oneself is not the only one man has. My effort today to throw light on what it is in the heart's depths that searches for community is called for by the fact that we are living in a time when human nature must go on to develop the consciousness soul, must become ever more conscious.

Becoming more conscious is not the same thing as becoming more intellectualistic. It means outgrowing a merely instinctual way of experiencing. But it is just in presenting anthroposophy that every attempt should be made to portray what has thus been raised to a clear, conscious level in all its elemental aliveness, to offer it in so living a form that it seems like people's own naive experiencing and feeling. We must make sure that we do this.

Now there is one kind of community in human life that everyone over the entire globe is aware of, and it shows that community is something built into humankind. It is a type of community to which a lot of attention is being given in modern cultural and even political and economic life, and this in an often harmful way. But there is a lesson of sorts to be learned from it, though a primitive one.

In a child's early years it is introduced into a human community that is absolutely real, concrete and human, a community without which one could not exist. I am referring to the community of human speech. Speech is the form of community that we might say nature presents to our contemplation. Speech—and especially our mother tongue—is built into our whole being at a time when the child's etheric body is not yet born, and it is our first experience of the community building element. We can lay it to the rationalism of our age that though people nowadays have some feeling for languages and nationality and conceive folk groups in relation to the language they speak, they do so from the political-agitational standpoint, without paying any heed to deep and intimate underlying soul configurations, to the tremendous aspects of destiny and karma attached to a language and to the spirit behind it, all of which are the real and intrinsic reason why human beings cry out for community. What would become of us if we passed one another by without hearing resounding in the other's words the same life of soul that we ourselves put into those same words when we use them? If everybody were to practice just a little bit of self-knowledge, we would be able to form an adequate picture, which I cannot take the time to develop now, of all we owe to language as the foundation of a first, primitive building of community.

But there is a community building element still deeper than language, though we encounter it more rarely. On a certain level, human language is indeed something that unites people in community life, but it does not penetrate to the deepest levels of soul life. At certain moments of our life on earth we can become aware of another community building element that transcends that of language. A person feels it when his destiny brings him together again with others whom he knew as children. Let us take an ideal example. Someone finds himself in later life—in his forties or fifties, say—in the company of several companions of his youth or childhood whom he has not seen for decades but with whom he spent the period between his tenth and twentieth years. Let us assume that good relationships prevailed among them, fruitful, loving relationships. Now imagine what it means for these individuals to share the experience of having their souls stirred by common memories of their youthful life together. Memories lie deeper than experiences on the language level. Souls sound more intimately in unison when they are linked by the pure soul language of memories, even though the community experience they thus share may be quite brief. As everyone knows from such experiences, it is certainly not just the single memories that are summoned up to reverberate in the souls of those present that stir such intimate soul-depths in them; it is something quite else. It is not the concrete content of the particular memories recalled. An absolutely indefinite yet at the same time very definite communal experiencing is going on in these human souls. A resurrection is taking place, with the countless details of what these companions experienced together now melting into a single totality, and what each contributes as he enters into the others' recollections with them is the element that awakens the capacity to experience that totality.

That is how it is in life on earth. As a result of pursuing this fact of soul life into the spiritual realm, I had to tell the theological friends who had come to me for the purpose described that if true community were to come of the work of religious renewal, there would have to be a new form of worship, a new cultus, suited to the age we live in. Shared experience of the cultus is something that quite of its own nature calls forth the community building element in human souls. The Movement for Religious Renewal understood this and accepted the cultus. I believe that Dr. Rittelmeyer spoke weighty words when he said from this platform that such a development of community could conceivably become one of the greatest threats to the Anthroposophical Society that the Movement for Religious Renewal could present. For the cultus contains a tremendously significant community building element. It unites human beings with one another. What is it in this cultus that unites them, that can make a commonality out of separate individuals atomized by intellectuality and logic, and that most certainly will create commonality? For that is surely what Dr. Rittelmeyer had in mind, that this is the means of building community. Since community, however, is also a goal of the Anthroposophical Society, the Society will have to find its own way of building it if the Movement for Religious Renewal is not to pose a threat to it from that angle.

Now what is the secret of the community building element in the cultus developed for the Movement for Religious Renewal with that specific end in view?

Everything that comes to expression in the various forms of worship, either as ceremonial acts or words, is a reflection, a picturing of real experiences, not earth experiences, of course, but real experiences in the world through which man makes his way before he is born; in other words, experiences of the second half of his path between death and rebirth. That is the part of the cosmos he passes through from the midnight hour of life after death to the moment when he descends again into life on earth. In the realm thus traversed are found the beings, the scenes, the events faithfully reflected in all true forms of worship. What is it, then, that a person is experiencing in the cultus in common with others whom some karma or other has brought together with him? For karma is so intricately woven that we may ascribe all encounters with our fellow men to its agency. He is experiencing cosmic memories of pre-earthly existence with them. They come to the surface in the soul's subconscious depths. Before we descended to earth, we and these others lived through a cosmic lifetime in a world that reappears before us in the cultus. That is a tremendous tie. It does more than just convey pictures; it carries super-sensible forces into the sense world. But the forces it conveys are forces that concern man intimately; they are bound up with the most intimate background experiences of the human soul. The cultus derives its binding power from the fact that it conveys spiritual forces from the spiritual world to earth and presents supernatural realities to the contemplation of human beings living on the earth. There is no such reality for man to contemplate in rationalistic talks that have the effect of making him forget the spiritual world, forget it even in subconscious soul depths. In the cultus he has it right there before him in a living, power-pervaded picture that is more than a mere symbol. Nor is this picture a dead image; it carries real power, because it places before man scenes that were part of his spiritual environment before he was incarnated in an earthly body. The community creating power of the cultus derives from the fact that it is a shared, comprehensive memory of spiritual experiences.

The Anthroposophical Society also needs just such a force to foster community within it. But the ground this springs from need not be the same for the Anthroposophical Movement as for the Movement for Religious Renewal. The one by no means excludes the other, however; the two can co-exist in fullest harmony provided the relationship between them is rightly felt.

But that can be the case only if we acquire some understanding for a further community building element that can be introduced into human life. Memory, transposed into the spiritual realm, rays out to us from the form the cultus takes. The cultus speaks to greater depths than those of intellect: it speaks to man's inwardness. For at bottom the soul really does understand the speech of the spirit, even though that speech may not be fully consciously perceived in present day earth life.

Now, in order to grasp the further element that must come to play a corresponding role in the Anthroposophical Society, you will not only have to contemplate the secrets of language and memory in their relationship to community building; you will also have to consider another aspect of human life. Let us study the condition in which we find a dreaming person and compare it with that of someone going about his daytime activities wide awake.

The dream world may indeed be beautiful, sublime, rich in pictures and in significance. Nevertheless, it isolates people here on earth. A dreaming person is alone with his dreams. He lies there asleep and dreaming, perhaps in the midst of others awake or asleep, the content of whose inner worlds remains completely unrelated to what is going on in his dream consciousness. A person is isolated in his dream world, and even more so in the world of sleep. But the moment we awake we begin to take some part in communal life. The space we and those around us occupy is the same space; the feeling and impressions they have of it are the same we have. We wake at hand of our immediate surroundings to the same inner life another wakes to. In waking out of the isolation of our dreams we awaken, up to a certain point at least, into the community of our fellowmen, simply as a result of the way we are related to the world around us. We cease being completely to ourselves, shut in and encapsulated, as we were when absorbed in our dream world, though our dreams may have been beautiful, sublime, significant. But how do we awaken? We awaken through the impact of the outer world, through its light and tones and warmth. We awaken in response to all the various impressions that the sense world makes on us. But we also wake up in ordinary everyday life in the encounter with the external aspects of other human beings, with their natural aspects. We wake up to everyday life in the encounter with the natural world. It wakes us out of our isolation and introduces us into a community of sorts. We have not yet wakened up as human beings by meeting our fellow men and by what goes on in their innermost beings. That is the secret of everyday life. We wake up in response to light and tone and perhaps also to the words someone speaks in the exercise of his natural endowment, words spoken from within outward. In ordinary everyday life we do not wake up in the encounter with what is going on in the depths of his soul or spirit, we wake up in the encounter with his natural aspects.

The latter constitutes the third awakening, or at least a third condition of soul life. We awaken from the first into the second through nature's impact. We awaken from the second into the third at the call of the soul-spiritual element in our fellowmen. But we must first learn to hear that call. Just as a person wakes up through the natural world surrounding him in the right way in everyday life, so do we wake up rightly at a higher level in the encounter with the soul-spirit of our fellowmen as we sensed light and tone on awakening to everyday life. We can see the most beautiful pictures and have the most sublime experiences in our isolated dream consciousness, but we will scarcely be able to read, for example, unless highly abnormal conditions prevail. We are not in a relationship to the outer world that would make such things possible. We are also unable to understand the spiritual world, no matter how many beautiful ideas we may have garnered from anthroposophy or how much we may have grasped theoretically about such matters as etheric and astral bodies. We begin to develop an understanding for the spiritual world only when we wake up in the encounter with the soul-spiritual element in our fellowmen. That is where the first true understanding of anthroposophy sets in. Yes, it is indeed necessary to base our understanding of anthroposophy on what can be called a waking up in the encounter with the soul and spirit of another person.

The strength needed to achieve this awakening can be created by implanting spiritual idealism in human communities. We talk a lot about idealism these days, but it has become a threadbare thing in the culture and civilization of the present. For true idealism exists only where man reverses the direction he takes when, in presenting the cultus, he brings the spiritual world down to earth; when, in other words, he consciously makes himself capable of lifting to the super-sensible-spiritual, the ideal level, what he has seen and learned and understood on the earthly level. We bring the supernatural down into a power-permeated picture when we celebrate the ritual of the cultus. We lift ourselves and our soul life to the super-sensible level when our experiences in the physical world are experienced so spiritually and idealistically that we come to feel we have experienced them in the super-sensible world itself and that what we perceive here in the sense world suddenly comes all alive on being lifted to the ideal level. It comes alive when properly permeated with our wills and feeling. When we ray will through our inner being and infuse it with enthusiasm, we carry our idealized sense experience in a direction exactly opposite to that taken when we embody the super-sensible in the ritual of the cultus. Whether the anthroposophical community be large or small, we can achieve what I am characterizing when, infusing living power into the spiritual ideas we form, we put ourselves in a position actually to experience something of that awakening element, something that doesn't stop at idealizing our sense experience and leaving it at the stage of an abstract thought, but that endows the ideal with a higher life as we live into it and make it the counterpart of the cultus by raising it from the physical to the super-sensible level. We can achieve it in our life of feeling by taking care to imbue everything we do for anthroposophy with thoroughly spiritualized feeling. We do this when, for instance, we feel that the very doorway we reverently enter on our way to an anthroposophical assemblage is consecrated by the common anthroposophical purpose being served in the room it leads to, no matter how mundane the setting. We must be able to feel that everybody joining with us in a communal reception of anthroposophy has the same attitude. It is not enough to have a deep abstract conviction of this; it must be inwardly experienced, so that we do not just sit in a room where anthroposophy is being pursued, a group of so and so many individuals taking in what is being read or spoken and having our own thoughts about it. A real spiritual being must be present in a room where anthroposophy is being carried on, and this as a direct result of the way anthroposophical ideas are being absorbed. Divine powers are present in sense perceptible form in the cultus celebrated on the physical plane. Our hearts and souls and attitudes must learn similarly to invoke the presence of a real spiritual being in a room where anthroposophy is being talked of. We must so attune our speaking, our feeling, our thinking, our impulses of will to a spiritual purpose, avoiding the pitfall of the abstract, that we can feel a real spiritual being hovering there above us, looking on and listening. We should divine a super-sensible presence, invoked by our pursuit of anthroposophy. Then each single anthroposophical activity can begin to be a realizing of the super-sensible.

If you study primitive communities, you will find another communal element in addition to language. Language has its seat in the upper part of man. But taking the whole man into consideration, you will find that common blood is what links members of primitive communities. Blood ties make for community. But what lives there in the blood is the folk soul or folk spirit, and this is not present in the same way among people who have developed freedom. A common spiritual element once entered groups with common blood ties, working from below upward. Wherever common blood flows in the veins of a number of people, there we can discern the presence of a group soul.

A real community spirit is similarly attracted by our common experiencing when we study anthroposophy together, though it is obviously not a group soul active in the bloodstream. If we are able to sense this, we can form true communities.

We must make anthroposophy real by learning to be aware in anthroposophical community life that where people join in anthroposophical tasks together, there they experience their first awakening in the encounter with the soul-spiritual element in their fellows. Human beings wake up in the mutual encounter with other human beings. As each one has new experiences between his encounters with these others, and has grown a little, these awakenings take place in an ever new way as people go on meeting. The awakenings undergo a burgeoning development.

When you have discovered the possibility that human souls wake up in the encounter with human souls, and human spirits wake up in the encounter with human spirits, and go to anthroposophical groups with a living awareness that only now have you come awake and only now begin to grow together into an understanding of anthroposophy, and on the basis of that understanding take anthroposophical ideas into an awakened soul rather than into an everyday soul asleep to higher things, then the true spirit of community descends upon the place where you are working. Is truth involved when we talk of the super-sensible world, yet are unable to rise to awareness of a spiritual presence and of this reversed cultus? We are firmly grounded in our understanding of things of the spirit only when we do not rest content with abstract spiritual concepts and a capacity to express them theoretically, but instead grow into a sure belief that higher beings are present with us in a community of spirit when we engage in spiritual study. No external measures can bring about anthroposophical community building. You have to call it forth from the profoundest depths of human consciousness.

I have described part of the path that leads to that goal, and tomorrow we will follow it further. Descriptions of this kind are intended to show that the most important thing for any further development of the Anthroposophical Society is that it become absorbed in a true grasp of anthroposophy. If we have that grasp, it leads not only to spiritual ideas but to community with the spirit, and an awareness of community with the spiritual world is itself a community building force. Karmically preordained communities will then spring up as an outcome of true anthroposophical awareness. No external measures for achieving that can be indicated, and a person who offers any such is a charlatan.

Now these matters have been understood to some degree during the two decades of anthroposophy's development, and quite a good many members have also understood them in a spiritual sense. I will perhaps return to this subject and discuss it more fully tomorrow when I continue with these reflections and go on to point out a further goal. For now, I would like to add just a few words on matters that may have been occupying you after hearing my description of the spiritual bases of anthroposophical community life. On the one hand, things in the Anthroposophical Movement are really such as to necessitate my describing them as I have done. The Anthroposophical Society may present this or that appearance in a given phase. But anthroposophy is independent of anthroposophical societies and can be found independently of them. It can be found in a special way when one human being learns to wake up in the encounter with another and out of such awakening the forming of communities occurs. For one undergoes ever fresh awakenings through those with whom one finds oneself foregathered, and that is what holds such groups together. Inner, spiritual realities are at work here.

These matters must be increasingly understood in the Anthroposophical Society. Every consideration brought up in connection with the Society's welfare ought really to be pervaded with forces intimately related to anthroposophy itself.

It was deeply satisfying to me, after spending weeks attending larger and smaller conclaves where preparations were being made for these delegates' meetings, and listening there to debates reminiscent of the ordinary, everyday kind of rationalistic considerations in which parliaments and clubs engage, to go to an assemblage of young people, a meeting of young academicians. They, too, were pondering what ought to be done. For a while the talk was about external matters. But as time passed, it changed, all unaware, into a truly anthroposophical discussion. Matters that first appeared in an everyday light took on aspects that made anything but an anthroposophical treatment impossible.

It would be ideal if, instead of dragging in anthroposophical theories in an artificial, sentimental, nebulous way, as has so often happened, a down-to-earth course were to be pursued. Taking life's ordinary concerns as a starting point, the discussion should lead to the conclusion that unless anthroposophy were called upon, no one would know any longer how to go about studying such subjects as physics and chemistry. This spirit could serve to guide us.

But no solution will be found by tomorrow evening if things go on as they have up to this point; they can only lead to a state of tremendous, tragic chaos. The most important thing is to avoid any sentimental dragging in of all sorts of matters, and instead fill our hearts with anthroposophical impulses, conceived in full clarity.

As things are now, I see two parties, two separate groups of human beings sitting in this room, neither of which in the least understands the other, neither of which is able to take the first small step toward mutual understanding. Why is this the case? It is because what one side is saying issues inevitably from the experience of two whole decades, as I explained briefly earlier today, and the other side takes no interest whatsoever in that experience. I say this not in criticism, but in a spirit of concerned pleading. There have been occasions in the past when well-meaning people, in their own way genuinely enthusiastic about anthroposophy, have simply cut across our deliberations with such comments as, “What possible interest can these reports have for us when they keep on being served up at a moment when the important thing is that people unacquainted with the great dangers the Society faces want to learn about them?” Here, on the one side, we see an elemental, natural interest in the life of the Anthroposophical Society, a life that may have certain familial characteristics, but that has the good aspects of the familial as well. On the other side we find no interest in that life, and instead just a general conception of an Anthroposophical Society.

As things stand today, both points of view are justified, so justified that unless we can quickly develop a wholly different form of discussion, the best thing we could do (I am just expressing my opinion, for the decision will have to be made by the Society) would be to leave the old Society as it is and found a union of free anthroposophical communities for those who want something entirely different. Then each party could carry on in the way that suits it. We would have the old Society on the one side, and on the other a loose but closely related confederation of free communities. The two societies could work out ways of living together. It would be better to solve the problem this way than to continue on in the hopeless situation that would present itself tomorrow evening if the discussion were to go on as it has thus far. So I ask you to put on the agenda the further question whether you would not prefer to avoid the false situation that would develop from keeping the two groups welded together, regardless of whether things stay as they have been or undergo some modification. If the situation remains as it is, with each side failing to understand the other, let us go ahead and set up the two suggested groups within the one movement. I say this with an anxious, a very anxious heart; for surely no one will deny that I understand what it is to feel concern for our anthroposophical undertaking and know what it means to love it. But it is better to have two devoted sisters, each going her own way and united only by a common ideal, than to settle for something that would again lead in short order to a state of chaos.

My dear friends, you simply must not let yourselves overlook the fact that it is the various single enterprises that are causing our troubles. That should have been worked out in clearest detail. I am certainly not stating that the last Central Executive Committee accomplished a great deal more, materially, than the one before it, not any more, that is, than I accomplished when I was similarly active at the center in my role as General Secretary. But that is not the question. The real question is: What should have happened, anthroposophically speaking, after all the various enterprises were started here in Stuttgart? This will have to be answered. We cannot at this point dissolve what has been brought into being. Once these enterprises exist, we must find out how to keep them flourishing. But if we fail, as we have in the past four years, to learn how to go about this in an anthroposophical spirit, if we introduce enterprises as foreign bodies into the Anthroposophical Movement, as we have done, these institutions that have been in existence since 1919 will ruin the whole Anthroposophical Movement. They will ruin any Central Executive Committee, no matter what name it is given.

We should therefore keep our discussions objective and impersonal, and try to reach some clarity on what form the Society ought to take, now that it embraces all these institutions, and among them one as wonderful as the Waldorf School. Not a single word has yet been spoken on this subject, for those who are most familiar with what is going on in Stuttgart have thus far kept fairly silent. I would particularly like to hear what the two members of the Central Executive Committee would say to this. [The members of the Central Executive Committee were Ernst Uehli, Emil Leinhas, Dr. Carl Unger.] (I am not including Herr Leinhas, the third member, as he was the only one who helped me in a problematical situation and who continues to help. Indeed, for his sake I hardly like to see him go on devoting himself to the Central Executive Committee, ideally fitted for it though he is.) It is not a question of these two gentlemen defending themselves, but simply of saying what they think about the future shaping of the Anthroposophical Society, which is capable of amalgamating the enterprises that have been in existence since 1919; otherwise, it would have been an irresponsible deed to launch them. We cannot leave it at that, now that they exist.

These are very, very serious questions. We have to deal with them and discuss them objectively and impersonally. I meant what I said objectively, not as an attack on any member or members of the Central Executive Committee. Nobody is being disparaged, but in my opinion these problems, thus again sharply enunciated by me, had to be brought up. If the two proposed societies are to be established, the group that would be a continuation of the old Anthroposophical Society could make itself responsible for the projects the Society has undertaken, and the other group, that feels no interest in them, could pursue a more narrowly anthroposophical path.

This is what I wanted to put before you in a brief sketch. Tomorrow at twelve I shall speak in detail about matters of business.

Lecturing is an art that requires command of many technical aspects. The novice tells all he knows, or worse—what he has read about a subject. He either bores or overwhelms the listeners with his flow of information. The master knows his audience and calls forth wonder and insight. How is it done?

In 1921, to provide prospective lecturers with some guidance, Rudolf Steiner gave two courses on the art of lecturing: one in Stuttgart and the one published here, in Dornach. The illustrative material—needed in all lecturing—was taken from the theme and purpose of these lectures: speaking on the need for a threefold social organism. The Swiss political and social situation at that time was relevant to the audience of about fifty Swiss members of the Anthroposophical Society.

These lectures were not intended for publication and were printed only fifty years later, in 1971. They were translated into English for the Newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society and serialized in nine issues, Autumn 1976 to Winter 1978.

To make this valuable text available at an affordable price, Mercury Press has printed 1,000 copies, using mostly the original pages of the Newsletter. The illustrative material of the Swiss scene of 1921 (in lectures three and four) omitted earlier, ahs been added for the sake of completion, thanks to Maria St. Goar who also translated most of the other text. A new paste-up, combining old and newly typeset material, resulted in some type variation, which the grateful reader—aware of the devotion that has gone into making this translation available—will surely forgive.

Summer 1983
Gisela O'Neil, editor of the Newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society in America

Now just a few remarks following on from what I said the other day, because I am almost afraid that some things could be misunderstood again. From a variety of symptoms, it is clear that some things could be misunderstood. Just remember that it must not be believed that I disapprove of or somehow complain about or even find it incomprehensible when articles appear that are opposed to spiritual science and take a factual point of view. Such articles cannot, of course, do any harm to the cause. Even what the privy councillor Max Seiling wrote about the alleged contradictions cannot harm the cause of spiritual science; for everyone can see from the literature what it is about. Therefore, when I speak of the damage to society, it cannot be the case that society could now have the task of dealing with what is factual from a social point of view; that is the concern of the individual. The individual who stands up for spiritual science – whether positively or polemically – will be able to do a great service to spiritual science as such. But spiritual science is most certainly not a matter for the Society as such in this context. I have to say this, otherwise it will seem ridiculous to say that meetings or discussions are being held on how to deal with the attacks on Dr. Steiner.

Of course anyone who wants to can write about the matter; that is their business. But it cannot be a matter for the Society. It can be a matter for individuals, but not for the Anthroposophical Society. So, for example, if special meetings have been held in one place and one of the main topics there was what should be done about such attacks, then that is of course completely off the mark. Such attacks, which are factual – even if they are not factual – want to be factual, must also be countered in writing, in the usual way that it generally happens. What is at issue now is that this method of trying to kill spiritual science by drawing people into a web of lies, slander and defamation is not used, but that spiritual science is made impossible because people find it too uncomfortable, or for other reasons, to engage with spiritual science themselves. They have to deal with it themselves. But someone who tells you the most stupid, fantastic orgies - you don't need to get involved in spiritual science for that. But with today's human disposition, it is something through which you can achieve a lot. But this is something that is quite connected - I say this fully consciously - with what has often been played out in the Anthroposophical Society, and also earlier in the Theosophical Society.

You see, after printing an article that is a pack of lies from beginning to end, an editor finds it appropriate to talk about how, I don't know, admirers or female disciples of Dr. Steiner everywhere emphasize that they consider him to be the Christ returned. This is not something that occurs in one place only, it occurs everywhere. Just yesterday it occurred to us again, in the following form: someone claimed that they could find witnesses that I had given a public lecture in a city from which it could be inferred that I had spoken of repeated embodiments of the Christ and pointed out that I myself was claiming such an embodiment.

But, my dear friends, do not believe that this does not already relate to certain murky things in the development of our society. Those friends who observe things with understanding will have found that from a certain point in time, which was very early on, I had begun to assert with complete determination, to emphasize again and again, that the Christ event is a unique one, and I emphasized it because, as I well knew, coteries had formed among us very early on that spread this, well, you can't even call it a fairy tale, but this nonsense, that it has penetrated everywhere, now it is appearing. Do you think I don't know those who in 1905, 1906, 1907 were already toying with all kinds of ideas of incarnation, who were spouting nonsense back then, and had connected with that what - I can't even repeat it because it's such trite stuff. Not only when the Alcyone swindle first appeared did I speak of the impossibility of repeated Christ incarnations, in order to counter what was going on here in this society. It became apparent very early on that a small group, small coteries, were forming, each of which wants to have been this or that, and of course, if one wants to be a Baptist, they need the other complementary piece, because they have to appear together again. Such John the Baptists, Apostles John - they just walked around like that, didn't they.

A lot of it also has to do with the fact that one has a selfish joy, a typically selfish joy, when one can say to someone: This is a secret! I am not allowed to tell you! This is only for the inner circle! - A lot of it has to do with all these things. These things have now been pushed far enough; these things have led to the gossip and scandal that has proliferated. I recently spoke not to counter this, which apparently or really deals with the facts, but about what threatens to let society sink into gossip and rumor, into slander and defamation, because spiritual science can be drawn into gossip and rumor as a result.

And what is a social matter is what has led to the fact that measures had to be taken. Do you think that articles that challenge one or the other sentence have led to such measures having to be taken now? No, they have not! But if you have powers of observation, you can see the intertwined paths everywhere, especially in what has been appearing for some time. As some of you may still remember, it all began with a mean article that appeared in the “Deutsche Tageszeitung” [German Daily Newspaper], which actually contained gossip that had been exaggerated in a very specific way. Since that time, no protest has ever been raised in the Anthroposophical Society against gossip and idle chatter, but it has been thought — as I generally emphasize, that as a rule the opposite of what I mean happens; I have always been misunderstood. As if I believed that this or that, which is apparently or really factually objected to spiritual science, should be dealt with by society. That can certainly be asserted by members, but that is a matter in itself. But we cannot continue the society if such swamp flowers arise as they are now; we cannot possibly do so. All kinds of things are sought after in one direction or another that have nothing to do with spiritual science, that depend on whether one has a society, so it happens that everyone in the society, no matter whether they represent the greatest nonsense, belongs to the society. So people say: This is the society that Dr. Steiner represents! He is responsible for all the nonsense that is carried out. And what a lot of cabbage it is! People go to the doctor and explain to him without any coercion: Yes, Dr. Steiner knows all this better than you do; he knows how to find the illnesses through the spirit.

It is obvious that these things, which accumulate and are always there in one form or another, make it impossible for society to continue in its present form. Apart from many other things that make it impossible, which in particular mean that there is hardly any kind of impudence to which we have not been exposed over time. Above all, everyone understands their membership in such a way that they can scold us according to their needs, preferably in writing or in some other way. We have not been spared any kind of unjustified impudence over time.

Now, these are not really impertinences, there is no need to get annoyed about them, you can accept them objectively, they do not harm you; but the things that then happen are factual. The person who writes an impertinence represents it in every respect; the impertinence becomes a lie, becomes a lie, and then it leads to gossip and slander. That is why it is so important to keep pointing out the factual judgment.

Do we have to overheat everything? Do we always have to put everything in a false light? Things on the physical plane are not so that they can be deified in every single link, in every single small phase. And can we not, when it comes to emphasizing as a social issue what has been said often and for the purpose of being said, so that what our society should be can really learn to distinguish itself from all the ghastly sectarian societies with which it is repeatedly and repeatedly confused. But what is happening?

Please take the whole stack of the Zyklen (a series of lectures) – I don't even want to mention the books – take the Zyklen, the lectures that were given, and please look up how much is in them about the purely physical question of nutrition: what one should eat or drink, what one should not eat or drink; please look up what is in them! Then ask how many members of the Anthroposophical Society are going around saying: Dr. Steiner said you shouldn't eat that, I know what, you shouldn't eat roots, that and that. - All sorts of things that make the Society look ridiculous! But it is arranged so that not only the Society is ridiculed, but I am always ridiculed with it; that is the technique that is followed.

It depends on the spirit in which things are done, because that is the spirit in which they are then driven. And I can observe this spirit from other symptoms. It is almost unbelievable when I see the kind of rubbish that is sent to me from members. If someone comes up with nonsense like cutting potatoes and placing them on warts to heal them, a member will ask whether this is right or not, or what should be done in such a case. This spirit also leads to telling members whether they should drink coffee, eat cheese, or consume mustard and paprika, and the like. I beg of you, take a look at the whole bunch of cycles and see if you can find any of these things there! So anyone who, even with the best of intentions, advocates these things as they are advocated and makes stories out of them that appear to be made in the name of the Society is falsifying what this is all about in the worst possible way.

Of course, I know that many, many, hopefully the majority of the members, feel the same way, but it is important to judge the things. If you have a society, you have to consider: everyone is a member of this society; but does that blind you to the qualities of the society? Is it necessary that it blinds you to the qualities of the society? Isn't it true that sometimes one has to deal with a person, one should also deal with him, one can perhaps do him some good by dealing with him. But does one then have to be blind to the person? Can't one walk alongside a person with seeing eyes? Does one have to justify oneself to oneself when one is friends with a person, that he is a high I or even a terribly great incarnation or the like?

I am talking about very specific things that have happened. Really, a lot would be kept back if one were to make the effort to judge. So it can happen, of course, as attitudes develop in our society, that I can't save myself whenever a certain personality, when I went on a trip, also bought a ticket and of course sat down in the compartment where I sat. That is something I can't prevent. I can't forbid any passenger to sit with me in the compartment, otherwise I would have to buy up all the tickets. — That is harmless; but if people from the Anthroposophical Society then come and, because the person in question always sits in my compartment and travels with me, they consider this person to be a highly initiated one, that is, an especially highly developed personality, then the damage of considering someone to be something begins. It is precisely this that matters, that one has first formed one's opinion.

I really don't always want to be 'betrayed' about these things, but the way these things are coming out of all 'clusters' now, how we really can't go on a journey and see in all places how far people go with the most sacred things. Of course, I never spoke in that place in the most distant of successive incarnations of Christ, but I least noticed that I myself was that incarnation, as in 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907 it was constantly whispered to the world, but not trumpeted, that is precisely the worst thing, that bears its fruits today.

But here we have a person who claims to have heard it, because he claims that he was sitting at the lecture and can also point to others who heard it too. So things go so far that you hear things that could never possibly have been said. But do you think, my dear friends, after the experiences I have had, that I would dare to be completely sure if someone were to say: Yes, there was someone there who took notes, who gave me the transcript, I can prove it! – Do you think I would claim that there can be no such transcript? I am even willing to believe, after all the nonsense that has been spread in the postscripts, that this too can be found in the postscripts.

Just as my dear friends, such nonsense, such ridiculous nonsense in such a hateful way has not really been written at all yet, as is now being written against us, so one must also say: the Anthroposophical Society had to be founded to bring such things to light, which would not actually be possible on any other ground. Nevertheless, many of those who engage in such things are, according to the state of their consciousness, fully convinced that it never occurred to them to ever participate in such things. They may not even know, those who do it.

It is only under such conditions that we are able to see the result that arises, among other things, from this. I will mention only the mildest: Dr. Steiner spoke about the Lazarus miracle, how the human being can be transformed. And then it is shown that he also wanted to perform the Lazarus miracle in a special case with a member. The member felt that the miracle should be performed on her. The way was that Dr. Steiner, when the person concerned was in a sanatorium, sent chocolate biscuits “to thicken the blood”. So, because chocolate biscuits were sent to the sanatorium, as the person concerned herself says, “to thicken the blood”.

Of course, Dr. Steiner only sent them to eat. If she had not walked past a pastry shop, but an orange and apple shop, she might have sent oranges or apples, but she sent chocolate biscuits.

But once the aspiration has arisen, my dear friends, to seriously tie in with the cultural movement of humanity in general, the society was generally not the right instrument for doing so. I once talked about the first attempts of this or that painter or sculptor and tried to show them. One would like it if one were interested in something that, even if it is only at the beginning, is hung in lecture halls for the sake of shame, and people walk past it; but all such endeavors were ignored. A boycott of everything that is not dilettantism is also an ingredient of the Anthroposophical Society, which weighs heavily on the soul.

On the other hand, if you came into the individual branches, the seven red “patches” over the black cross were everywhere, of course! Whether or not it was a work of art was not the point! Rather, the ugliest and most inartistic was that which was the deepest. And once when I was speaking in Dornach about how the big problem, if one can call it that, with Dürer's 'St. Jerome', but especially with 'Melancholy', lies in the use of chiaroscuro, in the entire spatial arrangement, and how I was trying to place that in the development, since we were able to show the picture as a slide at the time, and one could discuss this particular aspect of the Dürer picture, a voice suddenly arose that found this quite Botokudisch, of course, that I saw the important thing in the actually artistic problem: Can't you see anything deeper in it? He meant that one had to start explaining according to the pattern of how it had happened once – well, we had presented something and someone came and asked: Which person is Atma, which one is Buddhi, which one is spirit self? Everything should be an abstract symbol.

This, of course, leads to the factual, but I also had to mention it for the reason that these aberrations in the factual form the centerpiece; for on the other hand they lead into the abyss of that which presents itself as a love of the nebulous, which is then no longer far removed from all possible subjective deception and which is no longer far removed from objective untruth.

But today it is important not to confuse social issues – and these are very much social issues – with issues of spiritual science, which are something completely different. Otherwise, one could come up with the absurd idea, which someone has already come up with, of setting up a press committee to which anyone who wants to write something, in particular wants to write counterattacks or wants to make attacks, would have to submit. My dear friends, firstly, I believe that if such a committee had existed, Seiling would hardly have bothered to go and ask whether he could write his articles. And neither would the others. If they were forbidden to do so, they would at most resign. That is the second point. The third is that the whole thing would be nonsense.