The Rudolf Steiner Archive

THE STUDY of Spiritual Science should always go hand in hand with practical experience of how the mind works. It is impossible to get entirely clear about many things that we discussed in the last lecture unless one tries to get a kind of living grasp of what thinking involves in terms of actualities. For why is it that among the very persons whose profession it is to think about such questions, confusion reigns, for example, as to the relation between the general concept of the “triangle-in-general” and specific concepts of individual triangles? How is it that people puzzle for centuries over questions such as that of the hundred possible and the hundred real thalers cited by Kant? Why is it that people fail to pursue the very simple reflections that are necessary to see that there cannot really be any such thing as a “pragmatic” account of history, according to which the course of events always follows directly from preceding events? Why do people not reflect in such a way that they would be repelled by this impossible mode of regarding the history of man, so widely current nowadays? What is the cause of all these things?

The reason is that far too little trouble is taken over learning to handle with precision the activities of thinking, even by people whose business this should be. Nowadays everyone wants to feel that he has a perfect claim to say: “Think? Well, one can obviously do that.” So they begin to think. Thus we have various conceptions of the world; there have been many philosophers—a great many. We find that one philosopher is after this and another is after that, and that many fairly clever people have drawn attention to many things. If someone comes upon contradictions in these findings, he does not ponder over them, but he is quite pleased with himself, fancying that now he can “think” indeed. He can think again what those other fellows have thought out, and feels quite sure that he will find the right answer himself. For no one nowadays must make any concession to authority! That would deny the dignity of human nature! Everyone must think for himself. That is the prevailing notion in the realm of thought.

I do not know if people have reflected that this is not their attitude in other realms of life. No one feels committed to belief in authority or to a craving for authority when he has his coat made at the tailor's or his shoes at the shoemaker's. He does not say: “It would be beneath the dignity of man to let one's things be made by persons who are known to be thoroughly acquainted with their business.” He may perhaps even allow that it is necessary to learn these skills. But in practical life, with regard to thinking, it is not agreed that one must get one's conceptions of the world from quarters where thinking and much else has been learnt. Only rarely would this be conceded to-day.

This is one tendency that dominates our life in the widest circles, and is the immediate reason why human thinking is not a very widespread product nowadays. I believe this can be quite easily grasped. For let us suppose that one day everybody were to say: “What!—learn to make boots? For a long time that has been unworthy of man; we can all make boots.” I don't know if only good boots would come from it. At all events, with regard to the coining of correct thoughts in their conception of the world, it is from this sort of reasoning that men mostly take their start at the present day. This is what gives its deeper meaning to my remark of yesterday—that although thought is something a man is completely within, so that he can contemplate it in its inner being, actual thinking is not as common as one might suppose. Besides this, there is to-day a quite special pretension which could gradually go so far as to throw a veil over all clear thinking. We must pay attention to this also; at least we must glance at it.

Let us suppose the following. There was once in Görlitz a shoemaker named Jacob Boehme. He had learnt his craft well—how soles are cut, how the shoe is formed over the last, and how the nails are driven into the soles and leather. He knew all this down to the ground. Now supposing that this shoemaker, by name Jacob Boehme, had gone around and said: “I will now see how the world is constructed. I will suppose that there is a great last at the foundation of the world. Over this last the world-leather was once stretched; then the world-nails were added, and by means of them the world-sole was fastened to the world-upper. Then boot-blacking was brought into play, and the whole world-shoe was polished. In this way I can quite clearly explain to myself how in the morning it is bright, for then the shoe-polish of the world is shining, but in the evening it is soiled with all sorts of things; it shines no longer. Hence I imagine that every night someone has the duty of repolishing the world-boot. And thus arises the difference between day and night.” Let us suppose that Jacob Boehme had said this.

Yes, you laugh, for of course Jacob Boehme did not say this; but still he made good shoes for the people of Görlitz, and for that he employed his knowledge of shoe-making. But he also developed his grand thoughts, through which he wanted to build up a conception of the world; and for that he resorted to something else. He said to himself: My shoe-making is not enough for that; I dare not apply to the structure of the world the thoughts I put into making shoes. And in due course he arrived at his sublime thoughts about the world. Thus there was no such Jacob Boehme as the hypothetical figure I first sketched, but there was another one who knew how to set about things. But the hypothetical “Jacob Boehmes”, like the one you laughed over—they exist everywhere to-day.

For example, we find among them physicists and chemists who have learnt the laws governing the combination and separation of substances; there are zoologists who have learnt how one examines and describes animals; there are doctors who have learnt how to treat the physical human body, and what they themselves call the soul. What do they all do? They say: When a person wants to work out for himself a conception of the world, then he takes the laws that are learnt in chemistry, in physics, or in physiology—no others are admissible—and out of these he builds a conception of the world for himself. These people proceed exactly as the hypothetical shoemaker would have done if he had constructed the world-boot, only they do not notice that their world-conceptions come into existence by the very same method that produced the hypothetical world-boot. It does certainly seem rather grotesque if one imagines that the difference between day and night comes about through the soiling of shoe-leather and the repolishing of it in the night. But in terms of true logic it is in principle just the same if an attempt is made to build a world out of the laws of chemistry, physics, biology and physiology. Exactly the same principle! It is an immense presumption on the part of the physicist, the chemist, the physiologist, or the biologist, who do not wish to be anything else than physicist, chemist, physiologist, biologist, and yet want to have an opinion about the whole world. The point is that one should go to the root of things and not shirk the task of illuminating anything that is not so clear by tracing it back to its true place in the scheme of things. If you look at all this with method and logic, you will not need to be astonished that so many present-day conceptions of the world yield nothing but the “world-boot”. And this is something that can point us to the study of Spiritual Science and to the pursuit of practical trains of thought; something that can urge us to examine the question of how we must think in order to see where shortcomings exist in the world.

There is something else I should like to mention in order to show where lies the root of countless misunderstandings with regard to the ideas people have about the world. When one concerns oneself with world-conceptions, does one not have over and over again the experience that someone thinks this and someone else that; one man upholds a certain view with many good reasons (one can find good reasons for everything), while another has equally good reasons for his view; the first man contradicts his opponent with just as good reasons as those with which the opponent contradicts him. Sects arise in the world not, in the first place, because one person or another is convinced about the right path by what is taught here or there. Only look at the paths which the disciples of great men have had to follow in order to come to this or that great man, and then you will see that herein lies something important for us with regard to karma. But if we examine the outlooks that exist in the world to-day, we must say that whether someone is a follower of Bergson, or of Haeckel, or of this or that (karma, as I have already said, does not recognise the current world-conception) depends on other things than on deep conviction. There is contention on all sides!

Yesterday I said that once there were Nominalists, persons who maintained that general concepts had no reality, but were merely names. These Nominalists had opponents who were called Realists (the word had a different meaning then). The Realists maintained that general concepts are not mere words, but refer to quite definite realities. In the Middle Ages the question of Realism versus Nominalism was always a burning one, especially for theology, a sphere of thought with which present-day thinkers trouble themselves very little. For in the time when the question of Nominalism versus Realism arose (from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries) there was something that belonged to the most important confessions of faith, the question about the three “Divine Persons”—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—who form One Divine Being, but are still Three real Persons. The Nominalists maintained that these three Divine Persons existed only individually, the “Father” for Himself, the “Son” for Himself, and the “Holy Ghost” for Himself; and if one spoke of a “Collective God” Who comprised these Three, that was only a name for the Three. Thus Nominalism did away with the unity of the Trinity. In opposition to the Realists, the Nominalists not only explained away the unity, but even regarded it as heretical to declare, as the Realists did, that the Three Persons formed not merely an imaginary unity, but an actual one.

Thus Nominalism and Realism were opposites. And anyone who goes deeply into the literature of Realism and Nominalism during these centuries gets a deep insight into what human acumen can produce. For the most ingenious grounds were brought forward for Nominalism, just as much as for Realism. In those days it was more difficult to be reckoned as a thinker because there was no printing press, and it was not an easy thing to take part in such controversies as that between Nominalism and Realism. Anyone who ventured into this field had to be better prepared, according to the ideas of those times, than is required of people who engage in controversies nowadays. An immense amount of penetration was necessary in order to plead the cause of Realism, and it was equally so with Nominalism. How does this come about? It is grievous that things are so, and if one reflects more deeply on it, one is led to say: What use is it that you are so clever? You can be clever and plead the cause of Nominalism, and you can be just as clever and contradict Nominalism. One can get quite confused about the whole question of intelligence! It is distressing even to listen to what such characterisations are supposed to mean.

Now, as a contrast to what we have been saying, we will bring forward something that is perhaps not nearly so discerning as much that has been advanced with regard to Nominalism or to Realism, but it has perhaps one merit—it goes straight to the point and indicates the direction in which one needs to think.

Let us imagine the way in which one forms general concepts; the way in which one synthesizes a mass of details. We can do this in two ways: first as a man does in the course of his life through the world. He sees numerous examples of a certain kind of animal: they are silky or woolly, are of various colours, have whiskers, at certain times they go through movements that recall human “washing”, they eat mice, etc. One can call such creatures “cats”. Then one has formed a general concept. All these creatures have something to do with what we call “cats”. But now let us suppose that someone has had a long life, in the course of which he has encountered many cat-owners, men and women, and he has noticed that a great many of these people call their pets “Pussy”. Hence he classes all these creatures under the name of “Pussy”. Hence we now have the general concept “Cats” and the general concept “Pussy”, and a large number of individual creatures belonging in both cases to the general concept. And yet no one will maintain that the general concept “Pussy” has the same significance as the general concept “Cats”. Here the real difference comes out. In forming the general concept “Pussy” which is only a summary of names that must rank as individual names, we have taken the line, and rightly so, of Nominalism; and in forming the general concept “Cats” we have taken the line of Realism, and rightly so. In one case Nominalism is correct; in the other. Realism. Both are right. One must only apply these methods within their proper limits. And when both are right, it is not surprising that good reasons for both can be adduced. In taking the name “Pussy”, I have employed a somewhat grotesque example. But I can show you a much more significant example and I will do so at once.

Within the scope of our objective experience there is a whole realm where Nominalism—the idea that the collective term is only a name—is fully justified. We have “one”, “two”, “three”, “four”, “five”, and so on, but it is impossible to find in the expression “number” anything that has a real existence. “Number” has no existence. “One”, “two”, “three”, “five”, “six”,—they exist. But what I said in the last lecture, that in order to find the general concept one must let that which corresponds to it pass over into movement—this cannot be done with the concept “Number”. One “one” does not pass over into “two”. It must always be taken as “one”. Not even in thought can we pass over into two, or from two into three. Only the individual numbers exist, not “number” in general. As applied to the nature of numbers, Nominalism is entirely correct; but when we come to the single animal in relation to its genus, Realism is entirely correct. For it is impossible for a deer to exist, and another deer, and yet another, without there being the genus “deer”. The figure “two” can exist for itself, “one”, “seven”, etc., can exist for themselves. But in so far as anything real appears in number, the number is a quality, and the concept “number” has no specific existence. External things are related to general concepts in two different ways: Nominalism is appropriate in one case, and Realism in the other.

On these lines, if we simply give our thoughts the right direction, we begin to understand why there are so many disputes about conceptions of the world. People generally are not inclined, when they have grasped one standpoint, to grasp another as well. When in some realm of thought somebody has got hold of the idea “general concepts have no existence”, he proceeds to extend to it the whole make-up of the world. This sentence, “general concepts have no existence” is not false, for when applied to the particular realm which the person in question has considered, it is correct. It is only the universalising of it that is wrong. Thus it is essential, if one wants to form a correct idea of what thinking is, to understand clearly that the truth of a thought in the realm to which it belongs is no evidence for its general validity. Someone can offer me a perfectly correct proof of this or that and yet it will not hold good in a sphere to which it does not belong. Anyone, therefore, who intends to occupy himself seriously with the paths that lead to a conception of the world must recognise that the first essential is to avoid one-sidedness. That is what I specially want to bring out to-day. Now let us take a general look at some matters which will be explained in detail later on.

There are people so constituted that it is not possible for them to find the way to the Sprit, and to give them any proof of the Spirit will always be hard. They stick to something they know about, in accordance with their nature. Let us say they stick at something that makes the crudest kind of impression on them—Materialism. We need not regard as foolish the arguments they advance as a defence or proof of Materialism, for an immense amount of ingenious writing has been devoted to the subject, and it holds good in the first place for material life, for the material world and its laws.

Again, there are people who, owing to a certain inwardness, are naturally predisposed to see in all that is material only the revelation of the spiritual. Naturally, they know as well as the materialists do that, externally, the material world exists; but matter, they say, is only the revelation, the manifestation, of the underlying spiritual. Such persons may take no particular interest in the material world and its laws. As all their ideas of the spiritual come to them through their own inner activity, they may go through the world with the consciousness that the true, the lofty, in which one ought to interest oneself—all genuine reality—is found only in the Spirit; that matter is only illusion, only external phantasmagoria. This would be an extreme standpoint, but it can occur, and can lead to a complete denial of material life. We should have to say of such persons that they certainly do recognize what is most real, the Spirit, but they are one-sided; they deny the significance of the material world and its laws. Much acute thinking can be enlisted in support of the conception of the universe held by these persons. Let us call their conception of the universe: Spiritism. Can we say that the Spiritists are right? As regards the Spirit, their contentions could bring to light some exceptionally correct ideas, but concerning matter and its laws they might reveal very little of any significance. Can one say the Materialists are correct in what they maintain? Yes, concerning matter and its laws they may be able to discover some exceptionally useful and valuable facts; but in speaking of the Spirit they may utter nothing but foolishness. Hence we must say that both parties are correct in their respective spheres.

There can also be persons who say: “Yes, but as to whether in truth the world contains only matter, or only spirit, I have no special knowledge; the powers of human cognition cannot cope with that. One thing is clear—there is a world spread out around us. Whether it is based upon what chemists and physicists, if they are materialists, call atoms, I know not. But I recognize the external world; that is something I see and can think about. I have no particular reason for supposing that it is or is not spiritual at root. I restrict myself to what I see around me.” From the explanations already given we can call such Realists, and their concept of the universe: Realism. Just as one can enlist endless ingenuity on behalf of Materialism or of Spiritism, and just as one can be clever about Spiritism and yet say the most foolish things on material matters, and vice versa, so one can advance the most ingenious reasons for Realism, which differs from both Spiritism and Materialism in the way I have just described.

Again, there may be other persons who speak as follows. Around us are matter and the world of material phenomena. But this world of material phenomena is in itself devoid of meaning. It has no real meaning unless there is within it a progressive tendency; unless from this external world something can emerge towards which the human soul can direct itself, independently of the world. According to this outlook, there must be a realm of ideas and ideals within the world-process. Such people are not Realists, although they pay external life its due; their view is that life has meaning only if ideas work through it and give it purpose. It was under the influence of such a mood as this that Fichte once said: Our world is the sensualised material of our duty. [Note 2] The adherents of such a world-outlook as this, which takes everything as a vehicle for the ideas that permeate the world-process, may be called Idealists and their outlook: Idealism. Beautiful and grand and glorious things have been brought forward on behalf of this Idealism. And in this realm that I have just described—where the point is to show that the world would be purposeless and meaningless if ideas were only human inventions and were not rooted in the world-process—in this realm Idealism is fully justified. But by means of it one cannot, for example, explain external reality. Hence one can distinguish this Idealism from other world-outlooks:

We now have side by side four justifiable world-outlooks, each with significance for its particular domain. Between Materialism and Idealism there is a certain transition. The crudest kind of materialism—one can observe it specially well in our day, although it is already on the wane—will consist in this, that people carry to an extreme the saying of Kant—Kant did not do this himself!—that in the individual sciences there is only so much real science as there is mathematics. This means that from being a materialist one can become a ready-reckoner of the universe, taking nothing as valid except a world composed of material atoms. They collide and gyrate, and then one calculates how they inter-gyrate. By this means one obtains very fine results, which show that this way of looking at things is fully justified. Thus you can get the vibration-rates for blue, red, etc.; you take the whole world as a kind of mechanical apparatus, and can reckon it up accurately. But one can become rather confused in this field. One can say to oneself: “Yes, but however complicated the machine may be, one can never get out of it anything like the perception of blue, red, etc. Thus if the brain is only a complicated machine, it can never give rise to what we know as soul-experiences.” But then one can say, as du Bois-Reymond once said: If we want to explain the world in strictly mathematical terms, we shall not be able to explain the simplest perception, but if we go outside a mathematical explanation, we shall be unscientific. The most uncompromising materialist would say, “No, I do not even calculate, for that would presuppose a superstition—it would imply that I assume that things are ordered by measure and number.” And anyone who raises himself above this crude materialism will become a mathematical thinker, and will recognize as valid only whatever can be treated mathematically. From this results a conception of the universe that really admits nothing beyond mathematical formulae. This may be called Mathematism.

Someone, however, might think this over, and after becoming a Mathematist he might say to himself: “It cannot be a superstition that the colour blue has so and so many vibrations. The world is ordered mathematically. If mathematical ideas are found to be real in the world, why should not other ideas have equal reality?” Such a person accepts this—that ideas are active in the world. But he grants validity only to those ideas that he discovers outside himself—not to any ideas that he might grasp from his inner self by some sort of intuition or inspiration, but only to those he reads from external things that are real to the senses. Such a person becomes a Rationalist, and his outlook on the world is that of Rationalism. If, in addition to the ideas that are found in this way, someone grants validity also to those gained from the moral and the intellectual realms, then he is already an Idealist. Thus a path leads from crude Materialism, by way of Mathematism and Rationalism, to Idealism.

But now Idealism can be enhanced. In our age there are some men who are trying to do this. They find ideas at work in the world, and this implies that there must also be in the world some sort of beings in whom the ideas can live. Ideas cannot live just as they are in any external object, nor can they hang as it were in the air. In the nineteenth century the belief existed that ideas rule history. But this was a confusion, for ideas as such have no power to work. Hence one cannot speak of ideas in history. Anyone who understands that ideas, if they are there are all, are bound up with some being capable of having ideas, will no longer be a mere Idealist; he will move on to the supposition that ideas are connected with beings. He becomes a Psychist and his world-outlook is that Psychism. The Psychist, who in his turn can uphold his outlook with an immense amount of ingenuity, reaches it only through a kind of one-sidedness, of which he can eventually become aware.

Here I must add that there are adherents of all the world-outlooks above the horizontal stroke; for the most part they are stubborn fold who, owing to some fundamental element in themselves, take this or that world-outlook and abide by it, going no further. All the beliefs listed below the line have adherents who are more easily accessible to the knowledge that individual world-outlooks each have one special standpoint only, and they more easily reach the point where they pass from one world-outlook to another.

When someone is a Psychist, and able as a thinking person to contemplate the world clearly, then he comes to the point of saying to himself that he must presuppose something actively psychic in the outside world. But directly he not only thinks, but feels sympathy for what is active and willing in man, then he says to himself: “It is not enough that there are beings who have ideas; these beings must also be active, they must be able also to do things.” But this is inconceivable unless these beings are individual beings. That is, a person of this type rises from accepting the ensoulment of the world to accepting the Spirit or the Spirits of the world. He is not yet clear whether he should accept one or a number of Spirits, but he advances from Psychism to Pneumatism to a doctrine of the Spirit.

If he has become in truth a Pneumatist, then he may well grasp what I have said in this lecture about number—that with regard to figures it is somewhat doubtful to speak of a “unity”. Then he comes to the point of saying to himself: It must therefore be a confusion to talk of one undivided Spirit, of one undivided Pneuma. And he gradually becomes able to form for himself an idea of the Spirits of the different Hierarchies. Then he becomes in the true sense a Spiritist, so that on this side there is a direct transition from Pneumatism to Spiritism.

These world-outlooks are all justified in their own field. For there are fields where Psychism acts illuminatingly, and others where Pneumatism does the same. Certainly, anyone who wishes to deliberate about an explanation of the universe as thoroughly as we have tried to do must come to Spiritism, to the acceptance of the Spirits of the Hierarchies. For to stop short at Pneumatism would in this case mean the following. If we are Spiritists, then it may happen that people will say to us: “Why so many spirits? Why bring numbers into it? Let there be One Undivided Spirit!” Anyone who goes more deeply into the matter knows that this objection is like saying: “You tell me there are two hundred midges over there. I don't see two hundred; I see only a single swarm.” Exactly so would an adherent of Pneumatism stand with regard to a Spiritist. The Spiritist sees the universe filled with the Spirits of the Hierarchies; the Pneumatist sees only the one “swarm”—only the Universal Spirit. But that comes from an inexact view.

Now there is still another possibility: someone may not take the path we have tried to follow to the activities of the spiritual Hierarchies, but may still come to an acceptance of certain spiritual beings. The celebrated German philosopher, Leibnitz, was a man of this kind. Leibnitz had got beyond the prejudice that anything merely material can exist in the world. He found the actual, he sought the actual. (I have treated this more precisely in my book, Riddles of Philosophy.) His view was that a being—as, for example, the human soul—can build up existence in itself. But he formed no further ideas on the subject. He only said to himself that there is such a being that can build up existence in itself, and force concepts outwards from within itself. For Leibnitz, this being is a “Monad”. And he said to himself: “There must be many Monads, and Monads of the most varied capabilities. If I had here a bell, there would be many monads in it—as in a swarm of midges—but they would be monads that had never come even so far as to have sleep-consciousness, monads that are almost unconscious, but which nevertheless develop the dimmest of concepts within themselves. There are monads that dream; there are monads that develop waking ideas within themselves; in short, there are monads of the most varied grades.”

A person with this outlook does not come so far as to picture to himself the individual spiritual beings in concrete terms, as the Spiritist does, but he reflects in the world upon the spiritual element in the world, allowing it to remain indefinite. He calls it “Monad”—that is, he conceives of it only as though one were to say: “Yes, there is spirit in the world and there are spirits, but I describe them only by saying, ‘They are entities having varying powers of perception.’ I pick out from them an abstract characteristic. So I form for myself this one-sided world-outlook, on behalf of which as much as can be said has been said by the highly intelligent Leibnitz. In this way I develop Monadism.” Monadism is an abstract Spiritism.

But there can be persons who do not rise to the level of the Monads; they cannot concede that existence is made up of being with the most varied conceptual powers, but at the same time they are not content to allow reality only to external phenomena; they hold that “forces” are dominant everywhere. If, for example, a stone falls to the ground, they say, “That is gravitation!” When a magnet attracts bits of iron, they say: “That is magnetic force!” They are not content with saying simply, “There is the magnet,” but they say, “The magnet presupposes that supersensibly, invisibly, a magnetic force is present, extending in all directions.” A world-outlook of this kind—which looks everywhere for forces behind phenomena—can be called Dynamism.

Then one may say: “No, to believe in ‘forces’ is superstition”—an example of this is Fritz Mauthner's Critique of Language, where you find a detailed argument to this effect. It amounts to taking your stand on the reality of the things around us. Thus by the path of Spiritism we come through Monadism and Dynamism to Realism again.

But now one can do something else still. One can say: “Certainly I believe in the world that is spread out around me, but I do not maintain any right to claim that this world is the real one. I can say of it only that it ‘appears’ to me. I have no right to say more about it.” There you have again a difference. One can say of the world that is spread out around us. “This is the real world,” but one can also say, “I am clear that there is a world which appears to me; I cannot speak of anything more. I am not saying that this world of colours and sounds, which arises only because certain processes in my eyes present themselves to me as colours, while processes in my ears present themselves to me as sounds—I am not saying that this world is the true world. It is a world of phenomena.” This is the outlook called Phenomenalism.

We can go further, and can say: “The world of phenomena we certainly have around us, but all that we believe we have in these phenomena is what we have ourselves added to them, what we have thought into them. Our own sense-impressions are all we can rightly accept. Anyone who says this—mark it well!—is not an adherent of Phenomenalism. He peels off from the phenomena everything which he thinks comes only from the understanding and the reason, and he allows validity only to sense-impressions, regarding them as some kind of message from reality.” This outlook may be called Sensationalism.

A critic of this outlook can then say: “You may reflect as much as you like on what the senses tell us and bring forward ever so ingenious reasons for your view—and ingenious reasons can be given—I take my stand on the point that nothing real exists except that which manifests itself through sense-impressions; this I accept as something material.”

This is rather like an atomist saying: “I hold that only atoms exist, and that however small they are, they have the attributes which we recognize in the physical world”—anyone who says this is a materialist. Thus, by another path, we arrive back at Materialism.

All these conceptions of the world that I have described and written down for you really exist, and they can be maintained. And it is possible to bring forward the most ingenious reasons for each of them; it is possible to adopt any one of them and with ingenious reasons to refute the others. In between these conceptions of the world one can think out yet others, but they differ only in degree from the leading types I have described, and can be traced back to them. If one wishes to learn about the web and woof of the world, then one must know that the way to it is through these twelve points of entry. There is not merely one conception of the world that can be defended, or justified, but there are twelve. And one must admit that just as many good reasons can be adduced for each and all of them as for any particular one. The world cannot be rightly considered from the one-sided standpoint of one single conception, one single mode of thought; the world discloses itself only to someone who knows that one must look at it from all sides. Just as the sun—if we go by the Copernican conception of the universe—passes through the signs of the Zodiac in order to illuminate the earth from twelve different points, so we must not adopt one standpoint, the standpoint of Idealism, or Sensationalism, or Phenomenalism, or any other conception of the world with a name of this kind; we must be in a position to go all round the world and accustom ourselves to the twelve different standpoints from which it can be contemplated. In terms of thought, all twelve standpoints are fully justifiable. For a thinker who can penetrate into the nature of thought, there is not one single conception of the world, but twelve that can be equally justified—so far justified as to permit of equally good reasons being thought out for each of them. There are twelve such justified conceptions of the world.

Tomorrow we will start from the points of view we have gained in this way, so that from the consideration of man in terms of thought we may rise to a consideration of the cosmic.

When you remember a dream, it will probably be quite obvious to you that during the dream you merely observed the images weaving before your soul without having a clear awareness of yourself. Self-awareness, then, is not as clear in dreaming as it is in waking consciousness. The images weaving before the soul present two types of scenes. There are either series of images familiar to the dreamer because they relate to recent or not-so-recent events, or scenes where such events are changed in all sorts of ways, their form altered to such an extent that specific occurrences are unrecognizable, and we think we are dreaming of something completely new. We can indeed have dreams that are not connected with any experiences we have had and are therefore completely new. But in each case, we will have had a feeling that a type of living, weaving image has been revealed to the soul. This is what we remember after waking up. Some dreams remain in our memory longer and others seem to vanish as soon as we have to deal with the events of the day.

So today let us examine what we perceive in such weaving dreams. We know what we perceive when we are awake in this world, which we call the physical. But what fills our perception when we dream, as events and material things fill our daytime experience? It is what we call the etheric world, the etheric substance permeating the world with its inner processes and with all that lives in it. That is the essence, as it were, of our perceptions when we dream. But we usually perceive only a very small part of the etheric world when dreaming. The etheric world is inaccessible to us when we are awake and perceive the physical realm; we cannot perceive the etheric substance around us with our physical senses. Likewise we cannot perceive all of it in our ordinary dreams, but only a part of it, namely, our own etheric body.

As you know, we leave our physical and our etheric bodies behind in sleep. In our usual dreams we look back, as it were, from within our astral body and I to what we have left behind in sleep. However, we are then not aware of our physical body and do not use our physical senses. Rather, we look back only at our etheric body. Fundamentally, therefore, processes in our etheric body reveal themselves in certain places, and we perceive them as dreams. In fact, most dreams are nothing else but looking at our etheric body in sleep and becoming aware of some of its exceedingly complex processes.

Our etheric body is very complex and contains all our memories, ready to present them to us when we recall them. Even those things that have sunk down into the depths of the soul, things we are not aware of in waking consciousness, are contained in the etheric body in some way. Our whole life in this incarnation is retained in the etheric body, is really present in it. Of course, this is very difficult to imagine, but it is true nevertheless. Imagine you were to talk all day long, as some people do, and everything you said was recorded on records. When the first record is full, you take a second one, then a third, and so on. The number of records would depend on how much you spoke. Now if someone collected all the records, everything you had said would be nicely preserved on records at the end of the day. Then, if someone played them, everything you said during the day would be heard again. In a similar way, all our memories are retained in the etheric body. Under the special conditions of sleep one part of the etheric body appears before us, as though—to stay with this metaphor—we took one record from the collection and played it; this is the most common kind of dream. Thus our consciousness weaves in our own etheric body.

The same applies to hallucinations affecting our soul. As a rule, such hallucinations arise because the person can see with the ego and the astral body, which are still in the physical body, a section of the etheric body that has become detached. This can happen when a part of your physical body is ill, the nervous system, for example. Your etheric body is then unable to penetrate the physical at the point where the nervous system is diseased; it is cast out there, so to speak. The etheric body itself is not sick, but it has been separated from the physical body in a specific place. If it could remain in the physical body, our normal state of consciousness would prevail, and we would be unaware that our physical body is sick. When the part our etheric body cannot penetrate shines out toward it, we experience this in our consciousness as a hallucination.

This etheric substance, from which dreams or hallucinations develop, surrounds us everywhere in the world. And our own etheric body is like a section that has been cut out of this etheric substance. After passing through the gate of death and discarding our physical body, we pass through this etheric substance and never really leave it on our path between death and a new birth. It is everywhere and we have to pass through it; we are in it. Sometime after death, we discard our etheric body, which dissolves into this surrounding etheric substance. Usually, we cannot perceive this outer etheric substance. That is why we have nothing in the etheric world that could be called perception, parallel to perception in the physical world. Our perceptions of the etheric in our dreams depend completely on us.

True perception of the etheric world after death or here on earth in clairvoyant Imaginations requires greater strength than we usually have between birth and death. We need greater inner strength of soul. We do not perceive the etheric world around us during earthly life because we lack sufficient strength of soul. To perceive the etheric world we must become much more active, work much harder than we do in ordinary life. After death, too, the soul must be filled with much more active strength than in ordinary life to relate to its environment. Otherwise we do not perceive the etheric world, just as we wouldn't perceive anything if we lacked all senses in the physical world. Thus, we need a more active strength of soul to find our way after death and not to be deaf and blind, figuratively speaking, to the world we enter then.

To get a clearer idea of how the soul perceives after death, or after it has developed the faculties to unfold its imagination, let us compare this soul faculty to writing. What you write down expresses something that stands behind your words; still, it is you who put down the letters. You have the power to make what you write true, to make it correspond to an objective state of affairs. If you want to inform a faraway friend about something and write it down for him, it is you who form the words that will tell the friend about the fact when he reads them. Someone may object that this fact does not exist in the world as an objective fact, but is only what someone has written down. This is nonsense, of course. It is possible to describe an objective fact with the letters you wrote. The same applies to imaginative perception in the super-sensible world. You have to be active. You have to set down the signs, the letters that express the objective processes in the spiritual world, and you must be aware that this is what you are doing. Whether you can do that or not depends on whether you have the strength necessary for a living relationship with spiritual reality, whether it inspires you to set down the truth and not falsehoods. But the fact remains: You have to know you are setting it down.

Now, let us return to dreams. When we dream, we usually feel the dream images “weave” and simply unravel on their own. We should think of these dreams as images that float past the soul. Now suppose you were thinking that you yourself place the dream images in space and time just as you set down letters on paper. This is not what we normally associate with dreams or hallucinations, but it is the type of consciousness required for imaginative thinking. You must be aware that you are the determining power in your dreams. You put down one thing after another just as you do when writing something on paper. You yourself are in control. The same power is behind you that makes what you write true. The great difference between dreams or hallucinations and true clairvoyance is that in the latter we are aware that we are the esoteric scribes, as it were. The things we see are noted down as an esoteric script. We inscribe onto the world what we perceive as expression, as revelation, of the world.

Here, people could object that we do not need to write these things down because they are known beforehand. But that is not valid, for in this case it is not we who do the writing but the being of the next higher hierarchy. We give ourselves up to that being, and it becomes the force ruling us. In an inner soul process, we record what holds sway through us. When you look at this esoteric script, you will read what is to be revealed.

That is why I have said so often in public lectures that the development of clairvoyance requires that all perception becomes active and does not remain the passive openness to the world that is appropriate for understanding our physical environment. Gradually, then, we comprehend what we have called “learning the esoteric script,” since the beginning of our anthroposophic work. I have described it in more detail in The Threshold of the Spiritual World.¹ To write the esoteric script into spiritual space and spiritual time our soul must be more active and powerful than it needs to be in everyday life. We need this greater strength when we have passed through the gate of death. If you seek imaginative clairvoyance, you will achieve it gradually through meditation. You will experience and perceive, knowing all the while you are in a world of which our dreams are but a weak reflection. You can live in that world in such a way that you can control your dreams, just as you are in control when you assemble a table or a shoe.

Many people object they have tried to meditate in all kinds of ways but are still not becoming clairvoyant. This lack of clairvoyance simply shows they do not really want the activity and strength I have just described. They consider themselves fortunate because they do not need them. They do not want to develop any active strength of soul, but want to become clairvoyant without having to acquire this strength first. They want the tableau that arises before them through clairvoyance to appear by itself. But that would be nothing but hallucinating or dreaming. To put it bluntly, a dream is a piece of the etheric world that we can take with our etheric feelers and move from one place to another. This has nothing to do with true clairvoyance. In experiencing true second sight we are as active as we are in the physical world in writing on paper. The only difference is that when we want to write in the physical world, we need first to know what it is we want to write down—at least it usually helps if we do. By contrast, in spiritual perception we allow the beings of the spiritual hierarchies to write, and only then, while we are writing, do the things appear that we are to perceive. Real clairvoyance cannot come about without our active involvement in every single aspect of our perception.

We also need the strength that enables us to write in the etheric world when we have passed through the gate of death. The kind of thinking that serves us well in the physical world is of no use for perception after death. A person may be exceedingly clever and smart about things of the physical world, but after death these capacities will be of no help. This kind of thinking is much too weak for writing anything into the etheric world. All ideas we have developed relating to physical things have their origin in this weak thinking, which is useless after death. We need a stronger kind of thinking, one that is inwardly active of its own accord. We need thinking that forms thoughts which do not merely mirror the outer sense world. We must develop this inner capacity to form thoughts independent of anything external that arise, as it were, from the depths of the soul, or we cannot have a corresponding capacity after death.

Now you might object that we could just think up all kinds of things, or create a lot of fantasies that do not reflect anything external, and then we would be well prepared for developing the strength of thinking necessary after death. It could be that someone wants to have a great deal of thinking ability after death and therefore imagines winged dragons, which do not exist, terrifying beasts, and so on. The person imagines all these things so as not to be tied to the apron strings of outer images, and to be able to develop inner strength of thinking in preparation for life after death.

It cannot be denied—people who do this will have greater faculties in the world after death than those who do not. However, they would perceive only false images, distortions, just as people with impaired vision see a distorted image of the physical world and those with damaged hearing have a false impression of its sounds. People who follow this course of action sentence themselves to perceiving nothing but grotesque things in the etheric world, instead of what is truly rooted there.

In past periods of human development, care was always taken to ensure that human beings were given mental images neither borrowed from the physical world nor created in the arbitrary and fantastical manner I have just described. According to the methods available to them, the great founders of our religions handed down images not based on the physical, but on the spiritual world. Thus, by following their religious teachers, people were able to develop mental images that were not tied to the sensory world but were true all the same because they originated in the spiritual world. This is the immensely great education of the human race undertaken by the founders of our religions. They had set themselves the task of giving human beings images that would help them to develop a kind of thinking that would keep them from arriving spiritually deaf and blind in the spiritual world after death. The founders of our religions wanted to be certain that human beings were fully alive, fully conscious, and that their consciousness would not vanish or fade in their hour of death or become a false consciousness then.

As I have often said, we are currently living at a stage of evolution when human beings are meant to come of age, as it were. Religious founders will no longer appear as they formerly did and appeal to our faith. Those times are past, although, of course, they still reach into our time. At present, only a few people are beginning to experience this new existence, so to speak. Most still yearn to cling to the traditional ideas of the ancient founders of religions. But humanity must come of age and what the founders of religions provided for our faith must be replaced by the contribution of modern spiritual science. For this science of the spirit is by nature completely different from those ancient teachings. In order to avoid misunderstandings, we must emphasize that when we speak of the old religious founders we are not including Christ among them. I have often said that Christ's significance does not lie in his teachings, but in what took place through him. The ancient religious founders were in a sense teachers, but Christ's main deed was to imbue humanity with His own power through the Mystery of Golgotha. To this day, this has been extremely difficult for many people to understand. That is why they speak of Christ as only a great cosmic teacher. For those who really understand the full significance of Christ, this is simply nonsense.

Humankind is coming of age through our modern spiritual science, through the concepts, ideas, and images that are linked with our life after death and thus with our entire soul life. For spiritual science can be understood by every person who wants to understand its findings. It strives to give people what each individual soul can truly achieve on its own, not by following the religious founders, as in earlier times. And although it must be individual researchers who make the results of this science of the spirit available today, they do so in a form that can be understood by everyone who wants to. I have often emphasized that it is a complete misunderstanding to say spiritual science must also be believed. When people say this, it is because they are so crammed full with materialistic prejudices that they do not look at what spiritual science really has to offer. As soon as it is examined, everything becomes understandable. One does not need clairvoyance for this; our ordinary understanding is enough to really grasp and comprehend all this gradually—of course, “gradually” will be inconvenient for some people.

In other words, spiritual science appeals to our understanding, making use of the opposite principle to the one used by the ancient religious founders. Their ideas gave something to human souls that awakened them spiritually and gave them strength to perceive in the etheric world, and that also means to lead a conscious life after death. Assimilating modern spiritual science will in turn give our soul the strength to develop the necessary power of thinking after death to consciously perceive its etheric environment. Both people of ancient times who followed their religious founders and modern people who are willing to understand spiritual science will be able to find their way after death.

Only one type of person will have difficulty in finding his or her way after death. In fact, this type will frequently not even experience a life after death, because it will have become so dulled and obscured. This sort of person is the dyed-in-the-wool materialist who clings to images of the physical world and does not want to develop any strength to perceive the world we enter after death. In terms of the soul-spiritual, to be a materialist really means the same as wanting to destroy one's eyes and ears in the physical world, gradually deadening one's senses. It is no different from someone saying, “These eyes—they can't be trusted, they provide only impressions of light. Away with them! These ears—they perceive only vibrations, not the one single truth. Get rid of them! Get rid of the senses, one by one!” To be a materialist in regard to the spiritual world makes as much sense as this attitude in regard to the sensory world. It is basically the same, as will be quite easy to see when we consider the reasoning presented by spiritual science.

Today I have attempted to explain from this perspective what it means to be in the spiritual world. I want to go on to explain a type of dream we will all recognize, because everyone has probably experienced a dream of this kind. I am speaking about dreams where we stand face to face with ourselves, so to speak. As I described earlier, usually the dream fabric unrolls itself before us, so to speak, and we have no clear awareness of ourselves at the time. It is only afterward that we reflect on the dream with self-consciousness.

There are also other dreams where we face ourselves objectively. And beyond simply seeing ourselves, as sometimes happens, we can also have the dream students often have, of sitting in school, trying to work out an arithmetic problem, but unable to solve the equation. Another person comes and easily finds the solution. The student really dreams that this happens. Well, you will understand that it was he himself who came and solved the problem. Thus, it is also possible that we face ourselves in this way without, however, recognizing ourselves. But that is not the important thing. In such a situation the I divides in two, as it were. It would be nice, wouldn't it, if in the physical world as well, the other ego appeared and immediately produced the right answer when we do not know something. Well, it does happen in dreams.

When we are dreaming, we are actually outside our physical and etheric bodies and only in the astral body and ego. While the type of dream described earlier gives us a glimpse of the etheric body, the ones where we face ourselves result from the astral body we took along revealing a part of itself to us and facing us with it. We perceive a portion of ourselves outside the physical body.

We do not perceive the astral body in ordinary life, but we can quite easily see part of it in sleep. It contains things we are not at all aware of when we are awake. I spoke earlier about the nature of the etheric body; it contains everything we have experienced. But now I have to tell you something quite strange—the astral body contains even those things we have not experienced. You see, our astral body is a rather complicated structure. It is in a certain sense built into us out of the spiritual world, and it contains not merely those things we already have in us now but also those we will learn in the future! They are already present there as a disposition. This astral body is much cleverer than we are. Therefore, when it reveals something of itself in our dreams, it can confront us with our self in a form that is much cleverer than we have become through physical life. If you bear this in mind—I say this now only as an aside and not as part of the lecture—it will throw some light on the “cleverness” of animals. They also have an astral body. It can bring out things that do not emerge in the ordinary lives of the animals. Many surprising things can reveal themselves there. For example, the astral body contains, believe it or not, all of mathematics, not only as far as we know it today, but also everything that still remains to be discovered. Nevertheless, if we wanted to read the mathematics contained there and read it consciously, we would have to do so actively by acquiring the necessary faculties.

Thus, it is a revelation of part of our astral body when we come face to face with ourselves in a dream. And many of the things that come to us as inner inspiration spring from these revelations of the astral body. In the same way hallucinations can occur under the circumstances I described earlier. The part of us that is cleverer than we usually are can, through a special disposition in our constitution, take on a voice of its own. Then we can be inspired, which would not happen if we used only our ordinary judgment in our physical body. But it is dangerous to give ourselves over to such things, because we cannot control them until we are able to penetrate them with our judgment. And since we cannot control them, Lucifer has easy access to all these developments, and we cannot keep him from directing them according to his intentions, rather than in accordance with the aims of the proper world order.

When we develop our inner forces, we learn to lead an inner life that makes us clairvoyant in the astral body. But you will see from what I have said that becoming clairvoyant in the astral body requires that we are always aware of facing ourselves, our own being. Just as we do not lead a healthy physical life if we are not fully conscious, so we do not lead a healthy soul life in the super-sensible world if we do not see ourselves at all times. In the physical world we are ourselves; in the higher, spiritual world we have the same relationship to ourselves as we have here to a thought representing a past event. We inwardly look at such a thought and treat it as a memory. As we deal with a thought in this world, so we know in the spirit realm that we are looking at and observing ourselves. Our self must always be present when we experience things in the spiritual world. Basically, this is the only principle applying also to those things over which we have no control. In fact, in the realm of the spirit this principle allows us to master things, to become the controlling power. Our own being is the center of everything. Our own being shows us how we act in the spiritual world, revealing to us who we really are in the spiritual world.

If we are in the spiritual world and perceive something is incorrect, that means we are using the esoteric script incorrectly. Well, if we use the esoteric script incorrectly but perceive ourselves as the center of everything going on, we experience in our own being: You look like this because you did something wrong; now you have to put it right! We can see how we have acted by what we have become. We can compare this to how you would feel here in the physical world if you were not inside but outside yourself. For example, if you said to someone, “It is now half past eleven”—something that is not true—and look at yourself, you see how you stick your tongue out at yourself. You say, “This isn't you!” And then you start to correct yourself and say what is true, “It is now twenty past nine.” At that moment your tongue goes back in. Similarly, you can tell whether you are acting correctly in the spiritual world by looking at yourself.

Such grotesque images may serve to characterize these things, which should be taken much more seriously than everything said about the physical world. The point is to gain an understanding of the super-sensible realm through the power of thinking we already possess in the physical world. That way we free our thinking, which otherwise remains bound to our physical environment.

In earlier times people had a basic, atavistic clairvoyance. It was possible for them to have Imaginations, even Inspirations. But in contrast to this earlier stage, we have now reached an advanced stage and can form ideas about the physical world. When people still possessed an atavistic clairvoyance, they could not think properly. For proper thinking to develop, the strength used earlier in clairvoyance had to be applied to thinking. Some people nowadays develop clairvoyant faculties at certain times in their life by methods other than those described by spiritual science. This is because they have inherited these faculties from earlier times and they have not yet achieved sound judgment in those areas of life where they are clairvoyant. But we are approaching the time when sound judgment must be present before clairvoyance can be developed on the basis of such mature and balanced judgment.

In other words, when people these days show certain psychic abilities, a certain clairvoyance, without having done serious exercises, without having studied spiritual science—which, if applied in the right way, can be the best exercise to bring out the old clairvoyance—this does not mean that they are more advanced than everyone else, but rather that they are lagging behind. Having atavistic abilities today does not mean one has reached the stage of clear thinking. The more advanced soul is clearly the one that comes to sound judgments out of its ordinary understanding—and this ordinary understanding is completely sufficient to grasp spiritual science if one is free of preconceived notions.

We are making a great mistake if we allow atavistic clairvoyant abilities to impress us. We are on the wrong track if we believe such a person's soul is particularly advanced. That this soul shows such abilities means that it has failed to go through certain things that had to be experienced in the age of clairvoyance. Therefore, that soul is now catching up on what was missed earlier. It is quite grotesque when people involved in spiritual science believe that someone who displays a certain clairvoyance without having studied spiritual science must have been someone important in a previous life. Such a person was quite certainly less important than someone displaying sound judgment about things.

Now it is very important that our movement should try to build a certain circle of people who see through these things, who truly and thoroughly understand them and can reach the following insight: We need spiritual science in our time because only by understanding it can we progress.

This is very important. There are, of course, childhood illnesses in all areas of life, and naturally also in spiritual streams entering the world. And one can understand easily enough why spiritual science has childhood illnesses because it tries to give human beings the results that were achieved by clairvoyant consciousness. But you can see how we have to describe this. We have to say that becoming clairvoyant in the way humanity needs it now and in the future does not appeal to people's love of comfort and convenience. It requires a great deal more than just waiting for things to happen. Participation at every moment, self-control and the capacity for self-observation are required to reach the spiritual world. This must be widely understood. It is much easier to wait for clairvoyance to approach us like a dream, streaming to and fro. People want to experience the spirit realm in the same way they experience the world of the senses. This is a remnant from past periods of our history. In ancient clairvoyance, things were experienced in such a way that people did not really “know” them. This is probably why even today people want to experience the spirit realm in such a way that they do not actually “know” it. We do not properly appreciate what we know for sure. When we do arithmetic, for example, we follow certain set methods, without being much involved in what we are doing. When we add up five and seven, we are not really participating in the sense referred to here; we are not fully present in what we do. That is why people do not like it if others have developed their own view of the world. As soon as you can show people something you have come to know without this inner participation, they are happy, exceedingly happy! But when someone demonstrates knowledge of the spiritual world and knows of it in such a way that he is involved, then people say, “Oh, he knows it! That is a completely conscious process and not objective.” But if someone comes along and has had a vision whose origin he cannot explain, people say, “That is objective, completely objective! We can believe this person.”

The most important aspect of our spiritual science is to develop clear ideas. Spiritual science is still relatively new; therefore, now that people's longing for the spiritual world and knowledge of it has awakened, they want to connect with everything still coming up from the old world of clairvoyance. They gather all these old things and believe they are doing something quite special in preserving them.

However, our task is to see clearly in this field! It must be clear to us that there is nothing inferior about giving advice in full consciousness on a matter of spiritual healing. But most people will appreciate indications given by someone “above” the situation, who yields himself to quite obscure feelings and does not “know” things, much more because his statements result in the dark, blissful feeling: This is the result of something unknown! Everywhere we hear people saying that things they can grasp are of no interest to them. They have come for the inexplicable—that is supreme, divine!

Believe me, the individual truths of spiritual science must gradually enter our souls, and at the same time we must have a clear and sure sense for the conditions I have just touched upon. I have spoken about these conditions to show, beginning with the nature of dreams, that true clairvoyance requires the kind of active work by the soul we can compare with writing. I wrote The Threshold of the Spiritual World with the aim of clarifying these matters more and more. Those who understand my book will grasp the vital nerve, the keynote of our movement. I have to emphasize again and again—in spite of having said it frequently over the years—because so much depends on this: Those who really want to gain access to spiritual science have to acquire a healthy sense for the things that truly belong to it. Then we will gradually develop into a Society that can set itself the task of having a genuinely healing effect on everything belonging to cultural life.

Next time, we will continue to talk about what we began today as a description of the world of dreams based on the spiritual world.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, A Road to Self-Knowledge & The Threshold of the Spiritual World, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1975).

On July 15, 1889, I was standing in the St. Leonhard cemetery near Graz with the writer Rosegger and the sculptor Hans Brandstetter as the body of the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling was lowered into the grave.¹ Robert Hamerling had been called from the physical plane a few days earlier. He died after decades of unutterable suffering that grew to an unbearable level at the end of his life. Prior to the burial, the body had been laid out in the beautiful Stifting House on the outskirts of the Austro-Styrian town of Graz. The physical form left behind by his great soul lay there, a wonderful reflection of a life of striving to reach the highest levels of the spirit: so expressive, so eloquent was this physical form. It also bore the imprint of the unspeakable suffering this poet had had to endure in his life!

On that occasion a little girl of ten could be seen among the closest mourners. She was Robert Hamerling's ward and had brightened and cheered the poet's last years with the promise of her character. She was the girl to whom Robert Hamerling had dedicated the lines that fundamentally reveal his mood in the last years of his life.² And because they let us see so deeply into Hamerling's soul, please permit me to read you these lines:

To B.(ertha)

Child, like a butterfly harmlessly
Fluttering past the pain-racked invalid,
When having seen me begin the homeward journey,
In the wake of suffering
Do not think of me in your flush of youth:
A fleeting thought is all that you would give;
Nor when happily in love, in marriage or in motherhood:
Your memory would be only a pale reflection in the bustle of your life.
Only at sixty years of age, please think of me:
The poor sick man you saw
Year after year stretched on a bed of suffering,
Who, tortured by unceasing pain,
Spoke little, save laborious groans;
Nothing was he to you and nothing could he be.
At sixty years of age, child, think of him:
Then you will muse on him, muse long,
And late, deep compassion will rise in you
For him then long at rest from suffering.
A teardrop fills your eye as offering
For him long paled in death,
Who nothing was to you, and nothing could be.

It is not necessary to describe the situation of a poet who could write lines that speak so powerfully of his suffering in virtually the entire second half of his life. There was much gossip, even after Hamerling had already been confined to his bed for a large part of his life, and allegations about the sybaritic life the author of “Ahasver” supposedly led. It was even rumored that he lived in a sumptuous house in Graz, and that he had a large number of girls for his pleasure, who had to perform Greek dances day after day and other such things. All these stories were told at a time when illness kept him laid up while the sun was shining outside. He was forced to stay in bed in his small room, knowing that outside the sun was shining on the meadows, on the glorious nature he had enjoyed so much in the brief periods he was able to leave his sickbed.

And this same bright sun was shining gloriously when we accompanied the deceased to his last resting place on July 15, 1889. There are few indeed who lived under such outward constraints and yet were devoted with every fiber of their soul to what is great, beautiful, monumental, magnificent, and joyous in the world.

I remember one time sitting with a young musician in Vienna who was a great friend of Hamerling's. This young man was essentially a poor fellow who soon succumbed to a mental illness. He was deeply pessimistic and never tired of complaining about life. And since he loved Hamerling a great deal, he loved to cite the poet in his complaints about life. On this occasion, the young musician once again wanted to quote Hamerling as a pessimist. As we were sitting together in a cafe, I was able to call for a newspaper that contained a small occasional poem by Hamerling entitled “Personal Request.” I showed it to the young musician.

Personal Request

Say that I write bad verses,
Say that I steal the silverware,
Say I'm a rotten German
Because my diet says I can't eat Jews
And Slavs for breakfast;
Or that I betray our Austria
Because I sing the praise of Bismarck.
Say that I'm stricken with grief because
Praise for me is sadly lacking,
Slandered I am basely on occasion—
But I ask one thing only:
Do not say that I'm a pessimist,
That the last word in my singing
Belongs to blasé-modern
Stupid, dull unhappiness with living!
What? The poet is a pessimist
Because he makes complaining noises?
Just because the world is lovely
And life seems so charming to him
He would painfully regret it
If his part he were to forfeit.
If you call pessimists all persons
Who complain, then pessimistic
Is the man from whom a cry
Escapes while he is at the dentist!
Everything the critics say, believe them,
Except that I'm a pessimist!
I hate this word. To me it smells
Rather like its final syllable.³

These words characterize Hamerling's attitude and show that he lived in greatest pain (he wrote as much to Rosegger) at the time of writing this poem “Personal Request.” He wrote to Rosegger: “I am not worried about becoming a pessimist, but I do fear going mad or becoming an imbecile, as sometimes I can manage only a few minutes respite from the never-ending pain!”⁴ The man who began his poetic career with words truly sounding like a lifetime's program was worried about going mad or becoming an imbecile, but not about becoming a pessimist. For when Robert Hamerling sent his first major poem, “Venus in Exile,” out into the world, he gave it the motto:

Go on your way, a holy messenger,
And sing in joyful tones
Of the dawning day,
Of the realm of beauty to come.

That was his attitude throughout his life. We must recall one very memorable scene if we want to fully understand Hamerling's unique nature. A few months or weeks before his death, he moved from his flat in Graz—where he lived on the street then called Realschulstrasse; now it is Hamerlingstrasse—to a small summer house, called Stifting House, situated in a secluded area on the outskirts of the town. Two servants had to carry the invalid down; his flat was three floors up. Several times he almost fainted. But on either side of him he had a parcel tied up with a broad ribbon, which went round his neck like a stole; they contained the wrapped manuscript of his last work, The Atomistic Will.⁵ This was characteristic of the way this poet lived and of what he loved. He did not want the manuscript of this philosophical work to leave his hands for even a minute! He was so ill that two servants had to carry him down; yet he had to hold on to the thing that filled his life. So he was carried down and taken out to Stifting House in the most beautiful sunshine, sighing, “Oh, what pleasure to ride like this; if only I were less ill, less ill!”

The soul and spirit at work under these physical conditions remained open to all that is great and beautiful, all that is filled with spirit in the world. It worked out of the wellsprings of greatness, beauty, and spirituality in such a way that we cannot really be surprised by his attitude to pessimism. We cannot be surprised to see in Hamerling's spirit living cosmic evidence that the spiritual forces in us can triumph over material and natural forces, however obstructive they may be, in every situation.

Fifty-nine years earlier, that is in 1830, Robert Hamerling was born in Austria in an area called Waldviertel.⁶ Because of its special natural configuration that region is eminently suited—and was probably more so then than now when it is crisscrossed by railroad lines—to concentrate the soul inwardly if it is awake and to deepen the soul. The Waldviertel region is basically a backwater of civilization, although someone was born and lived there in the first half of the nineteenth century who was also widely known in Austria this side of the river Leitha. He has probably been forgotten by now, and at most continues to live in the memory of the people in the Waldviertel, in numerous folk legends. I have to add that I often heard tell of this person's fame because my parents came from the Waldviertel area. Thus, I could at least hear about the remnants of his peculiar fame, which is characteristic of the atmosphere of cultural isolation in that region. This famous person was none other than one of the “most famous” robbers and murderers of the time, namely, Grasel. This Grasel was certainly more famous than anyone else who came from the Waldviertel region.

In his later years, Hamerling wrote about the Waldviertel area, and I want to read you just a few lines from what he said about his native region where he lived for the first ten or fifteen years of his life, because I believe these words can throw much greater light on Hamerling's nature than any academic characterization. He writes:

I do not know how much the construction of a railroad skirting the Waldviertel area has affected the latter's isolation from the world. In 1867, the appearance of a stranger still created quite a stir there. If such a person came along on foot or by coach, the oxen plowing the fields came to a halt and turned their heads to gawk at the new apparition. The farmer made one or two feeble attempts to drive them on with his whip—but in vain, and finally, he did likewise, and the plow rested until the stranger had disappeared behind the next hill or forest. That, too, is the image of an idyllic atmosphere!⁷

Hamerling's life and personality are an example of a soul growing out of and beyond its environment, and of an individuality's development. He was the son of a poor weaver. Since they were completely impoverished, his parents were evicted from their home at a time when Hamerling was not yet capable of even saying “I.” His father was forced to go abroad while his mother remained in the Waldviertel area, in Schonau, with the young boy. There the child experienced the beauties of the Waldviertel region. A scene from that time remained always in his memory of an experience he believed actually gave him his own being. The seven-year-old boy was going down a hill. It was evening, and the sun was setting in the west. Something came toward him, golden, out of the golden sunshine, and Hamerling describes what was shining forth in the golden light as follows:

Among the most significant memories of my boyhood, but also most difficult to convey, are the often strange moods that passed through my soul when I was a roaming boy. In part they came from the moment's lively impressions and stimulation, usually from nature around me, in part they were waking dreams and premonitions. Speaking about himself, the mystic Jakob Böhme used to say that the higher meaning, the mystical life of the spirit was awakened in him miraculously at the moment when he was dreamily absorbed in gazing at a pewter bowl sparkling in the sunlight. ^{8Jakob Böhme, 1575–1624. German mystic. He was first a shoemaker, then had a mystical experience in 1600.} Perhaps every spiritual person has a pewter bowl like Böhme's as the origin of his real inner awakening. I vividly recall a certain evening when I was about seven years old. I was going down a hill, and the sunset shone toward me like a miracle, a spiritual vision. It filled my heart with an unforgettably strange mood, with a presentiment that today seems to me like a calling, reflecting my future destiny. In high spirits, I hurried toward an unknown destination; yet, at the same time my soul was filled with a melancholy that made me want to cry. If that moment could have been explained out of the surrounding circumstances, if it had not been so completely unique, it would surely not have remained so indelibly in my memory.⁹

Thus, in the poet's seventh year the poetic and spiritual muse drew near. At that time, the seed for everything that was later to become of this soul was laid into it from out of the cosmos, so to speak. The nice thing is that Hamerling ascribes his poetic calling to such an event, as if it were a miracle the cosmos itself performed on him.

Because of his parents' poverty, the boy had to be educated at the Cistercian monastery of Zwettl.¹⁰ In return for his school lessons, he had to sing in the monastery choir. At that time, Hamerling was between ten and fourteen years old. He formed a close relationship to a strange personality at the monastery, namely, Father Hugo Traumihler, a person completely given over to mystical contemplation and a strict ascetic life. At that time the boy already possessed a thirst for the beauty of the cosmos and an urge to deepen his soul. You can imagine that he was inspired by the inner experiences Father Traumihler described from his inner contemplation of the secrets of the heart and soul. He was a mystic of a very elementary, primitive kind who nevertheless made a deep impression on Hamerling's soul.

But it is impossible to talk about the poet Hamerling without mentioning what was such a great part of his longing: the longing to be a great human being. When he returned on a trip to the Waldviertel long after he had left the area, people who knew that he came from there asked him what he wanted to be.¹¹ But although he was already well past twenty, Hamerling had not thought about what he wanted to be. This realization brought it home to him that at that age you cannot avoid the question “What do you want to do?” The only thing he could tell himself was: “Well, I cannot really tell them what I want to be, because they would not understand. For when I am asked what I want to be, I want to answer: I want to become a human being!” So sometimes he said he wanted to be a philologist or an astronomer or something like that. People could understand that. But they would not have understood that someone who had finished his studies might intend to become a human being.

Well, much could be said about the development of Hamerling as a poet and, above all, about the unfolding of three things in his soul. The first he later described in The Atomistic Will by saying that the Greeks called the universe “cosmos,” a word connected with beauty.¹² That, to him, was characteristic of the Greek spirit, for his soul was filled with the beauty that resonates throughout the universe. And his heart's desire was to see humankind in turn permeated by that beauty; that was what he wanted to express in poetic form. So everything in him strove toward beauty, toward the beauty-filled world of the Greeks. Yet he saw so many aspects of life that cast a pall over the beauty intended by nature. For him beauty was identical with spirituality. He would often survey everything he knew about Hellenism and then look with sadness at modern culture, the readers of his poetry. He wanted to write poetry for this modern culture in order to fill it with sounds that would encourage people to bring beauty and spirituality back into life, and thus return happiness to life on earth. Hamerling found it impossible to speak of a discrepancy between the world and beauty in human life. He was inspired by the belief that life should be infused with beauty, that beauty should be alive in the world, and from his youth on he would have preferred to live for that alone. It was like an instinct in his soul. But he had met with much that showed him the modern age must struggle through many things that frustrate our ideals in life.

Hamerling was a student in 1848. He was a member of the liberation movement and was arrested by the police for this “great crime” and given a special punishment, as happened to many who had been part of the liberation movement in Vienna at that time. If they went beyond what the police thought permissible, they were taken to the barber where their hair was cut as a sign that they were “democrats.” These days you no longer risk having your hair cut just because you hold liberal views—progress indeed! The other thing not allowed at that time was the wearing of a broad-brimmed hat. This again was taken as a sign of liberal views. One had to wear a so-called “topper,” a top hat, which had full police approval.

Hamerling had to put up with this and much else. Let me just mention one more event as a small indication of how the world treated the great poet; I believe it leads to a much better characterization than an abstract description. The event I am referring to happened when Hamerling had concluded his years at university and was about to take his teaching examination. He had good grades in Greek, Latin, and mathematics. Indeed, he received excellent grades on his Greek and Latin. But if we read further in his report card, we find that although Hamerling claimed to have read some grammar books, his performance in the examination did not indicate a thorough study of the German language. This was said of the man who has enriched the German language so immeasurably through his unique style!

I would like to draw your attention to another experience Hamerling had. In 1851, he became acquainted with a family and one evening was invited to stay for a party. He would have gladly joined them, but he could not stay. Then the daughter of the family had a glass of punch sent over to his student quarters. What were his feelings then? He suddenly had the urge to take pencil and paper, and he felt himself transported into another world. At first he saw images of world history, presented as if in a large tableau. Then these images were transformed into a chaos of blossoms, rot, blood, newts, golden fruits, blue eyes, harp music, destruction of life, the thunder of cannons, and quarreling people. Historical scenes alternated with blossoms and salamanders. Then, as if crystallizing from out of the whole, a pale, serious figure with penetrating eyes appeared. At the sight of this figure, Hamerling came to. He looked at the piece of paper. The paper, blank before the vision, had written on it the name Ahasver and below, the outline for the poem “Ahasver.”

Hamerling's interest in everything that moves the human soul to its heights and depths was of rare profundity, and combined with a drunkenness with beauty, so to speak. That is why the ten years he spent teaching high school in Trieste on the glorious Adriatic and taking his vacations in neighboring Venice may be described as a happy time for him. He got to know Venice so well that years later he still knew all the nooks and crannies and little alleys where he had walked many times on beautiful evenings. There he saw radiant nature and southern beauty, for which his soul had such a yearning. This southern beauty blossomed in “Greeting in Song from the Adriatic.” Like his early works, this poem shows Hamerling's extraordinary talent. It was followed by “Venus in Exile.” Hamerling conceived of Venus not only as the embodiment of earthly love, but as the bearer of the beauty that rules and holds sway in the cosmos, a beauty that is in exile as far as modern humanity is concerned. Robert Hamerling's longing as a poet was to liberate beauty and love from their exile. Hence the motto I read to you:

Go on your way, a holy messenger,
And sing in joyful tones
Of the dawning day,
Of the realm of beauty to come.

But Hamerling's soul could not sing of the “dawning day, / Of the realm of beauty to come” without looking into all the dark recesses of the human soul. The vision of Ahasver shows what Robert Hamerling saw in those recesses. It continued to stand before his soul until he found the poetic form for the personality of Ahasver. Ahasver became the thread running through human life as the personification of an individuality who wants to escape life but cannot. This individuality is then contrasted with that of Nero in Rome, a man always seeking life but unable to find it in sensual saturation and therefore eternally searching.

We can see how life's contradictions confronted Hamerling. This becomes even clearer in his poem “The King of Sion” where he describes a person who wants to bring spiritual salvation from lofty heights to his fellow human beings but falls prey to human weaknesses in the process, to sensuality and so on. Hamerling was always reflecting on the proximity of opposites in life, and he wanted to give this poetic form. Greece arose before his soul in the form to which he wanted to restore it. In Aspasia, he described the Greece of his imagination, the country of his yearning, the world of beauty, including the negative aspects such a world of beauty may also bear. In the form of a three-part novel, Aspasia became a wonderful poem about cultural history.

Robert Hamerling was not understood, as I learned when I met a man in a godforsaken place whose eyes burned with resentment and whose mouth had an ugly expression. I do not mean physical ugliness, of course; physical ugliness can actually radiate beauty of the highest degree. This man was one of the most vicious critics of Aspasia. In comparison with the beauty-filled poet, that man appeared to be one of the ugliest men, and it was clear why his bitter soul could not understand Hamerling.

All of Robert Hamerling's endeavors were of this order. There would be much to tell if I were to recount the whole of his progress through history. He sought to deal with Dante and Robespierre, ending with Homunculus, in whom he wished to embody all of the grotesqueness of modern culture. There would also be much to tell if I were to describe how Hamerling's lyrical muse sought to find the reflective sounds permeating his works in the beauty and colors of nature and in the spirit of nature. Again, there would be much to say if I wanted to give you even just an idea of how Hamerling's lyrical poetry is alive with everything that can comfort our souls regarding the small things in the great ones, or how his poems can give us the invincible faith that the kingdom of beauty will triumph in the human soul however much the demons of discord and ugliness might try to establish their rule. Hamerling's soul suffered in life; yet in the midst of the deepest, most painful suffering, his soul could find joy in the beauty of spiritual activity. His soul could see the discords of the day all around, and yet could immerse itself deeply in the beauty of the night when the starry heavens rose above the waters. Hamerling was able to give meaningful expression to this mood.

I wanted to describe briefly, by means of a few episodes out of Hamerling's life, an image of Robert Hamerling as a poet of the late nineteenth century who was filled with an invincible awareness of the better future of humanity because he was steeped completely in the truth of the beauty of the universe. At the same time, he was a poet who could describe how the spirit can be victorious in us over all the material obstacles and hindrances to our spiritual nature.

It is impossible to understand the poet Hamerling without reference to his lifelong effort to answer the question: How do I become a human being? Everything he created has human greatness, though not always poetic excellence, for Hamerling's stature as a poet is a consequence of his human greatness. When he saw disharmony in life, Hamerling always felt an invincible urge in his soul to find the corresponding harmony, to find the way in which all things ugly must dissolve into beauty when we look at them rightly.

In conclusion, I want to read you a small, insignificant poem typical of Hamerling. In conception and thought it belongs to his early years, but it does characterize the mood, albeit in primitive poetic simplicity, that accompanied him throughout his life:

The Lion and the Rose

On a deep red rose
The angry lion trod
His paw caught fast the thorn
Of this delicate bud.

His paw swelled large;
In angry pain he died.
Refreshed, the red rose drank
The early morning dew.

Be the delicate ever so delicate,
The rough ever so rough,
That which is fragile, gentle, pure—
Beauty, triumphs over all.¹³

This mood—we can see it in everything he wrote—accompanied Hamerling through his life:

Be the delicate ever so delicate,
The rough ever so rough,
That which is fragile, gentle, pure—
Beauty, triumphs over all.

• 1. PeterRosegger, 1843–1918, Austrian poet and novelist. Hans Brandstetter, 1854–1925, Austrian sculptor. Robert Hamerling, pseudonym of Rupert Hammerling 1830–1889, Austrian poet. Best known for his epics Ahasverus in Rom 1865 and Homunculus (1888).
• 2. “An B(ertha),” Hamerling's last poem; written in the Stiftin House on June 18, 1889, three weeks before his death. In Letzte Grüsse aus Stiftinghaus, in Hamerlings Sämtliche Werke (Hamerling's Collected Works), Leipzig 1893, 16 volumes, edited by Michael Rabenlechner, vol. 15, p. 90.
• 3“The Pessimist” in Letzte Grüsse aus Stiftinghaus, p. 91. Translator's note. The final syllable of the German word “Pessimist” (mist) means “dung” in English.
• 4. Letter of June 11, 1888, in Peter Rosegger, Persönliche Erinnerungen an Robert Hamerling, Vienna 1891, p. 177.
• 5. Hamerling's philosophical work, published in 1891.
• 6. The Waldviertel is a region in northwestern Lower Austria.
• 7Robert Hamerling, “Die schönste Gegend der Erde,” vol. 16 in his Collected Works, p. 134, and “Stationen meiner Lebenspilgerschaft,” same volume, p. 17.
• 9. Hamerling, “Stationen meiner Lebenspilgerschaft,” p. 17.
• 10. “Stationen meiner Lebenspilgerschaft”, p. 45.
• 11. “People still have the bad habit of asking me what I want to become—well, a human being!” from “Lehrjahre der Liebe,” in Tagebuchblätter und Briefe (Diaries and Letters), entry of April 13, 1851. Volume 14 in Hamerling's Collected Works.
• 12. Literally: “The Greeks called the universe ‘beauty’ (cosmos).” In Atomtstik des Willens, Hamburg 1891, vol. 11, p. 226.
• 13. In Letzte Grüsse aus Stiftinghaus, vol. 15 in Hamerling's Collected Works, pp. 34–35.

In the last lecture we found that moral impulses are fundamental in human nature. From the facts adduced, we tried to prove that a foundation of morality and goodness lies at the bottom of the human soul, and that really it has only been in the course of evolution, in man's passage from incarnation to incarnation, that he has diverged from the original instinctive good foundation and that thereby what is evil, wrong and immoral has come into humanity. But if this is so, we must really wonder that evil is possible, or that it ever originated, and the question as to how evil became possible in the course of evolution requires an answer. We can only obtain a satisfactory reply by examining the elementary moral instruction given to man in ancient times.

The pupils of the Mysteries whose highest ideal was gradually to penetrate to full spiritual knowledge and truths were always obliged to work from a moral foundation. In those places where they worked in the right way according to the Mysteries, the peculiarity of man's moral-nature was shown in a special way to the pupils. Briefly, we may say: The pupils of the Mysteries were shown that freewill can only be developed if a person is in a position to go wrong in one of two directions; further, that life can only run its course truly and favourably when these two lines of opposition are considered as being like the two sides of a balance, of which first one side and then the other goes up and down. True balance only exists when the crossbeam is horizontal. They were shown that it is impossible to express man's right procedure by saying: this is right and that is wrong. It is only possible to gain the true idea when the human being, standing in the centre of the balance, can be swayed each moment of his life, now to one side, now to the other, but he himself holds the correct mean between the two.

Let us take the virtues of which we have spoken: first—valour, bravery. In this respect human nature may diverge on one side to foolhardiness—that is, unbridled activity in the world and the straining of the forces at one's disposal to the utmost limit. Foolhardiness is one side; the opposite is cowardice. A person may tip the scale in either of these directions. In the Mysteries the pupils were shown that when a man degenerates into foolhardiness he loses himself and lays aside his own individuality and is crushed by the wheels of life. Life tears him in pieces if he errs in this direction, but if, on the other hand, he errs on the side of cowardice, he hardens himself and tears himself away from his connection with beings and objects. He then becomes a being shut up within himself, who, as he cannot bring his deeds into harmony with the whole, loses his connection with things. This was shown to the pupils in respect to all that a man may do. He may degenerate in such a way that he is torn in pieces, and losing his own individuality is crushed by the objective world; on the other hand, he may degenerate not merely in courage, but also in every other respect in such a way that he hardens within himself. Thus at the head of the moral code in all the Mysteries there were written the significant words: “Thou must find the mean,” so that through thy deeds thou must not lose thyself in the world, and that the world also does not lose thee.

Those are the two possible extremes into which man may fall. Either he may be lost to the world, the world lays hold on him, and crushes him, as is the case in foolhardiness; or the world may be lost to him, because he hardens himself in his egoism, as is the case in cowardice. In the Mysteries, the pupils were told that goodness cannot merely be striven for as goodness obtained once for all; rather does goodness come only through man being continually able to strike out in two directions like a pendulum and by his own inner power able to find the balance, the mean between the two.

You have in this all that will enable you to understand the freedom of the will and the significance of reason and wisdom in human action. If it were fitting for man always to observe the eternal moral principles he need only acquire these moral principles and then he could go through life on a definite line of march, as it were, but life is never like this. Freedom in life consists rather in man's being always able to err in one direction or another. But in this way the possibility of evil arises. For what is evil? It is that which originates when the human being is either lost to the world, or the world is lost to him. Goodness consists in avoiding both these extremes. In the course of evolution evil became not only a possibility but an actuality; for as man journeyed from incarnation to incarnation, by his turning now to one side and now to the other, he could not always find the balance at once, and it was necessary for the compensation to be karmically made at a future time. What man cannot attain in one life, because he does not always find the mean at once, he will attain gradually in the course of evolution in as much as man diverts his course to one side, and is then obliged, perhaps in the next life, to strike out again in the opposite direction, and thus bring about the balance. What I have just told you was a golden rule in the ancient Mysteries. We often find among the ancient philosophers echoes of the principles taught in these Mysteries. Aristotle makes a statement, when, speaking of virtue, which we cannot understand unless we know that what has just been said was an old principle in the Mysteries which had been received by Aristotle as tradition and embodied in his philosophy. He says: Virtue is a human capacity or skill guided by reason and insight, which, as regards man, holds the balance between the too-much and the too-little. Aristotle here gives a definition of virtue, the like of which no subsequent philosophy has attained. But as Aristotle had the tradition from the Mysteries, it was possible for him to give the precise truth.

That is, then, the mean, which must be found and followed if a man is really to be virtuous, if moral power is to pulsate through the world. We can now answer the question as to why morals should exist at all. For what happens when there is no morality, when evil is done, and when the too-much or the too-little takes place, when man is lost to the world by being crushed, or when the world loses him? In each of these cases something is always destroyed. Every evil or immoral act is a process of destruction, and the moment man sees that when he has done wrong he cannot do otherwise than destroy something, take something from the world, in that moment a mighty influence for good has awakened within him. It is especially the task of Spiritual Science—which is really only just beginning its work in the world—to show that all evil brings about a destructive process, that it takes away from the world something which is necessary. When in accordance with our anthroposophical standpoint, we hold this principle, then what we know about the nature of man leads us to a particular interpretation of good and evil.

We know that the sentient-soul was chiefly developed in the old Chaldean or Egyptian epoch the third post-Atlantean age. The people of the present day have but little notion what this epoch of development was like prior to that time, for in external history one can reach little further back than to the Egyptian age. We know that the intellectual, or mind-soul, developed in the fourth or Graeco-Latin age, and that now in our age we are developing the consciousness-or spiritual-soul. The spirit-self will only come into prominence in the sixth age of post-Atlantean development.

Let us now ask: How can the sentient-soul turn to one side or the other, away from what is right? The sentient-soul is that quality in man which enables him to perceive the objective world, to take it into himself, to take part in it, not to pass through the world ignorant of all the diversified objects it contains, but to go through the world in such a way that he forms a relationship with them. All this is brought about by the sentient-soul. We find one side to which man can deviate with the sentient-soul when we enquire: What makes it possible for man to enter into relationship with the objective world? It is what may be called interest in the different things, and by this word “interest” something is expressed which in a moral sense is extremely important. It is much more important that one should bear in mind the moral significance of interest, than that one should devote oneself to thousands of beautiful moral axioms which may be only paltry and hypocritical. Let it be clearly understood, that our moral impulses are in fact never better guided than when we take a proper interest in objects and beings. In our last lecture we spoke in a deeper sense of love as an impulse and in such a way that we cannot now be misunderstood if we say that the usual, oft-repeated declamation, “love, love, and again love” cannot replace the moral impulse contained in what may be described by the word ‘interest.’

Let us suppose that we have a child before us. What is the condition primary to our devotion to this child? What is the first condition to our educating the child? It is that we take an interest in it. There is something unhealthy or abnormal in the human soul if a person withdraws himself from something in which he takes an interest. It will more and more be recognised that the impulse of interest is a quite specially golden impulse in the moral sense the further we advance to the actual foundations of morality and do not stop at the mere preaching of morals. Our inner powers are also called forth as regards mankind when we extend our interests, when we are able to transpose ourselves with understanding into beings and objects.

Even sympathy is awakened in the right manner if we take an interest in a being; and if, as anthroposophists, we set ourselves the task of extending our interests more and more and of widening our mental horizon, this will promote the universal brotherhood of mankind. Progress is not gained by the mere preaching of universal love, but by the extension of our interests further and further, so that we come to interest ourselves increasingly in souls with widely different characters, racial and national peculiarities, with widely different temperaments, and holding widely differing religious and philosophical views, and approach them with understanding. Right interest, right understanding, calls forth from the soul the right moral action.

Here also we must hold the balance between two extremes. One extreme is apathy which passes everything by and occasions immense moral mischief in the world. An apathetic person only lives in himself; obstinately, insisting on his own principles, and saying: This is my standpoint. In a moral sense this insistence upon a standpoint is always bad. The essential thing is for us to have an open mind and be alive to all that surrounds us. Apathy separates us from the world, while interest unites us with it. The world loses us through our apathy: in this direction we become immoral. Thus we see that apathy and lack of interest in the world are morally evil in the highest degree.

Anthroposophy is something which makes the mind ever more active, helps us to think with greater readiness of what is spiritual and to take it into ourselves. Just as it is true that warmth comes from the fire when we light a stove so it is true that interest in humanity and the world comes when we study spiritual science. Wisdom is the fuel for interest and we may say, although this may perhaps not be evident without further explanation, that Anthroposophy arouses this interest in us when we study those more remote subjects, the teachings concerning the evolutionary stages through Saturn, Sun and Moon, and the meaning of Karma and so on. It really comes about that interest is produced as the result of anthroposophical knowledge while from materialistic knowledge comes something which in a radical manner must be described as apathy and which, if it alone were to hold sway in the world, would, of necessity, do untold harm.

See how many people go through the world and meet this or that person, but really do not get to know him, for they are quite shut up in themselves. How often do we find that two people have been friends for a long time and then suddenly there comes a rupture. This is because the friendship had a materialistic foundation and only after the lapse of time did they discover that they were mutually unsympathetic. At the present time very few people have the “hearing” ear for that which speaks from man to man; but Anthroposophy should bring about an expansion of our perceptions, so that we shall gain a “seeing” eye and an open mind for all that is human around us and so we shall not go through the world. apathetically, but with true interest.

We also avoid the other extreme by distinguishing between true and false interests, and thus observe the happy mean. Immediately to throw oneself, as it were, into the arms of each person we meet is to lose oneself passionately in the person; that is not true interest. If we do this, we lose ourselves to the world. Through apathy the world loses us; through uncontrolled passion we lose ourselves to the world. But through healthy, devoted interest we stand morally firm in the centre, in the state of balance.

In the third post-Atlantean age of civilisation, that is, in the Chaldaic-Egyptian age, there still existed in a large part of humanity on earth a certain power to hold the balance between apathy and the passionate intoxicating devotion to the world; and it is this, which in ancient times, and also by Plato and Aristotle, was called wisdom. But people looked upon this wisdom as the gift of superhuman beings, for up to that time the ancient impulses of wisdom were active. Therefore, from this point of view, especially relating to moral impulses, we may call the third post-Atlantean age, the age of instinctive wisdom. You will perceive the truth of what was said last year, though with a different intention, in the Copenhagen lectures on The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind. In those lectures we showed how, in the third post-Atlantean age, mankind still stood nearer to the divine spiritual powers. And that which drew mankind closer to the divine spiritual powers, was instinctive wisdom.

Thus, it was a gift of the gods to find at that time the happy mean in action, between apathy and sensuous passionate devotion. This balance, this equilibrium was at that time still maintained through external institutions. The complete intermingling of humanity which came about in the fourth age of post-Atlantean development through the migrations of various peoples, did not yet exist. Mankind was still divided into smaller peoples and tribes. Their interests were wisely regulated by nature, and were so far active that the right moral impulses could penetrate; and on the other hand, through the existence of blood kinsmanship in the tribe, an obstacle was placed in the way of sensual passion. Even to-day one cannot fail to observe that it is easiest to show interest within blood-relationship and common descent, but in this there is not what is called sensuous passion. As people were gathered together in relatively small tracts of country in the Egypto-Chaldaic age, the wise and happy mean was easily found.

But the idea of the progressive development of humanity is that, which originally was instinctive, which was only spiritual, shall gradually disappear and that man shall become independent of the divine spiritual powers. Hence we see that even in the fourth post-Atlantean age, the Graeco-Latin age, not only the philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, but also public opinion in Greece, considered wisdom as something which must be gained as something which is no longer the gift of the gods, but after which man must strive. According to Plato, the first virtue is wisdom, and according to him, he who does not strive after wisdom is immoral.

We are now in the fifth post-Atlantean age. We are still far from the time when the wisdom instinctively implanted in humanity as a divine impulse, will be raised into consciousness. Hence in our age people are specially liable to err in both the directions we have mentioned, and it is therefore particularly necessary that the great dangers to be found at this point should be counteracted by a spiritual conception of the World, so that what man once possessed as instinctive wisdom may now become conscious wisdom. The Anthroposophical Movement is to contribute to this end.

The gods once gave wisdom to the unconscious human soul, so that it possessed this wisdom instinctively, whereas now we have first to learn the truths about the cosmos and about human evolution. The ancient customs were also fashioned after the thoughts of the gods.

We have the right view of Anthroposophy when we look upon it as the investigations of the thoughts of the gods. In former times these flowed instinctively into man, but now we have to investigate them, to make the knowledge of them our own. In this sense Anthroposophy must be sacred to us; we must be able to consider reverently that the ideas imparted to us are really something divine, and something which we human beings are allowed to think and reflect upon as the divine thoughts according to which the world has been ordered. When Anthroposophy stands in this aspect to us, we can then consider the knowledge it imparts in such a way that we understand that it has been given us so as to enable us to fulfil our mission. Mighty truths are made known to us, when we study what has been imparted concerning the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, concerning reincarnation, and the development of the various races, etc. But we only assume the right attitude towards it when we say: The thoughts we seek are the thoughts wherewith the gods have guided evolution. We think the evolution of the gods. If we understand this correctly we are overwhelmed by something that is deeply moral. This is inevitable. Then we say: In ancient times man had instinctive wisdom from the gods, who gave him the wisdom according to which they fashioned the world, and morality thus became possible. But through Anthroposophy we now acquire this wisdom consciously. Therefore we may also trust that in us it shall be transformed into moral impulses, so that we do not merely receive anthroposophical wisdom, but a moral stimulus as well.

Now into what sort of moral impulses will the wisdom acquired through Anthroposophy be transformed? We must here touch upon a point whose development the anthroposophist can foresee, the profound moral significance and moral weight of which he even ought to foresee, a point of development which is far removed from what is customary at the present time, which is what Plato called the “ideal of wisdom.” He named it with a word which was in common use when man still possessed the ancient wisdom, and it would be well to replace this by the word truth, for as we have now become more individual, we have withdrawn ourselves from the divine, and must therefore strive back to it. We must learn to feel the full weight and meaning of the word ‘truth,’ and this in a moral sense will be a result of an anthroposophical world conception and conviction. Anthroposophists must understand how important it is to be filled with the moral element of truth in an age when materialism has advanced so far that one may indeed still speak of truth, but when the general life and understanding is far removed from perceiving what is right in this direction. Nor can this be otherwise at the present time; as owing to a certain quality acquired by modern life, truth is something which must, to a great extent, be lacking in the understanding of the day, I ask what does a man feel to-day when in the newspapers or some other printed matter he finds

certain information, and afterwards it transpires that it is simply untrue? I seriously ask you to ponder over this. One cannot say that it happens in every case, but one must assert that it probably happens in every fourth case. Untruthfulness has everywhere become a quality of the age; it is impossible to describe truth as a characteristic of our times.

For instance, take a man whom you know to have written or said something false, and place the facts before him. As a rule, you will find that he does not fear such a thing to be wrong. He will immediately make the excuse: “But I said it in good faith.” Anthroposophists must not consider it moral when a person says it is merely incorrect what he has said in good faith. People will learn to understand more and more, that they must first ascertain that what they assert really happened. No man should make a statement, or impart anything to another until he has exhausted every means to ascertain the truth of his assertions; and it is only when he recognises this obligation that he can perceive truth as moral impulse. And then when someone has either written or said something that is incorrect, he will no longer say: “I thought it was so, said it in good faith,” for he will learn that it is his duty to express not merely what he thinks is right, but it is also his duty to say only what is true, and correct. To this end, a radical change must gradually come about in our cultural life. The speed of travel, the lust of sensation on the part of man, everything that comes with a materialistic age, is opposed to truth. In the sphere of morality, Anthroposophy will be an educator of humanity to the duty of truth.

My business today is not to say how far truth has been already realised in the Anthroposophical Society, but to show that what I have said must be a principle, a lofty anthroposophical ideal. The moral evolution within the movement will have enough to do if the moral ideal of truth is thought, felt and perceived in all directions, for this ideal must be what produces the virtue of the sentient-soul of man in the right way.

The second part of the soul of which we have to speak in Anthroposophy is what we usually call the mind-soul, or intellectual-soul Gemütsseele. You know that it developed especially in the fourth post-Atlantean, or Graeco-Latin age. The virtue which is the particular emblem for this part of the soul is bravery, valour and courage; we have already dwelt on this many times, and also on the fact that foolhardiness and cowardice are its extremes. Courage, bravery, valour is the mean between foolhardiness and cowardice. The German word gemüt expresses in the sound of the word that it is related to this. The word gemüt indicates the mid-part of the human soul, the part that is mutvoll, full of mut, courage, strength and force.

This was the second, the middle virtue of Plato and Aristotle. It is that virtue which in the fourth post-Atlantean age still existed in man as a divine gift, while wisdom was really only instinctive in the third. Instinctive valour and bravery existed as a gift of the gods (you may gather this from the first lecture) among the people who, in the fourth age, met the expansion of Christianity to the north. They showed that among them valour was still a gift of the gods. Among the Chaldeans wisdom, the wise penetration into the secrets of the starry world, existed as a divine gift, as something inspired. Among the people of the fourth post-Atlantean age, there existed valour and bravery, especially among the Greeks and Romans, but it existed also among the peoples whose work it became to spread Christianity. This instinctive valour was lost later than instinctive wisdom.

If we look round us now in the fifth post-Atlantean age, we see that, as regards valour and bravery, we are in the same position in respect of the Greeks as the Greeks were to the Chaldeans and Egyptians in regard to wisdom. We look back to what was a divine gift in the age immediately preceding ours, and in a certain way we can strive for it again. However, the two previous lectures have shown us, that in connection with this effort a certain transformation must take place. We have seen the transformation in Francis of Assisi of that divine gift which manifested itself as bravery and valour. We saw that the transformation came about as the result of an inner moral force which in our last lecture we found to be the force of the Christ-impulse; the transformation of valour and bravery into true love. But this true love must be guided by another virtue, by the interest in the being to whom we turn our love. In his Timon of Athens Shakespeare shows how love, or warmth of heart, causes harm, when it is passionately manifested; when it appears merely as a quality of human nature without being guided by wisdom and truth. A man is described who gave freely of his possessions, who squandered his living in all directions. Liberality is a virtue, but Shakespeare also shows us that nothing but parasites are produced by what is squandered.

Just as ancient valour and bravery were guided from the Mysteries by the European Brahmins—those wise leaders who kept themselves hidden in the background—so also in human nature this virtue must accord with and be guided by interest. Interest, which connects us with the external world in the right way, must lead and guide us when, with our love, we turn to the world. Fundamentally this may be seen from the characteristic and striking example of Francis of Assisi. The sympathy he expressed was not obtrusive or offensive. Those who overwhelm others with their sympathy are by no means always actuated by the right moral impulses. And how many there are who will not receive anything that is given out of pity. But to approach another with, understanding is not offensive. Under some circumstances a person must needs refuse to be sympathised with; but the attempt to understand his nature is something to which no reasonable person can object. Hence also the attitude of another person cannot be blamed or condemned if his actions are determined by this principle.

It is understanding which can guide us with respect to this second virtue: Love. It is that which, through the Christ-impulse, has become the special virtue of the mind-soul or intellectual-soul; it is the virtue which may be described as human love accompanied by human understanding. Sympathy in grief and joy is the virtue which in the future must produce the most beautiful and glorious fruits in human social life, and, in one who rightly understands the Christ-impulse, this sympathy and this love will originate quite naturally, it will develop into feeling. It is precisely through the anthroposophical understanding of the Christ-impulse that it will become feeling.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha Christ descended into earthly evolution; His impulses, His activities are here now, they are everywhere. Why did He descend to this earth? In order that through what He has to give to the world, evolution may go forward in the right way. Now that the Christ-impulse is in the world, if through what is immoral, if through lack of interest in our fellow-men, we destroy something, then we take away a portion of the world into which the Christ-impulse has flowed. Thus because the Christ-impulse is now here, we directly destroy something of it. But if we give to the world what can be given to it through virtue, which is creative, we build. We build through self-surrender. It is not without reason that it has often been said, that Christ was first crucified on Golgotha, but that He is crucified again and again through the deeds, of man. Since Christ has entered into the Earth development through the deed upon Golgotha, we, by our immoral deeds, by our unkindness and lack of interest, add to the sorrow and pain inflicted upon Him. Therefore it has been said, again and again: Christ is crucified anew as long as immorality, unkindness and lack of interest exist. Since the Christ-impulse has permeated the world, it is this which is made to suffer.

Just as it is true that through evil, which is destructive, we withdraw something from the Christ-impulse and continue the crucifixion upon Golgotha, it is also true that when we act out of love, in all cases where we use love, we add to the Christ-impulse, we help to bring it to life. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me” (Matthew 25, 40), this is the most significant statement of love and this statement must become the most profound moral impulse if it is once anthroposophically understood. We do this when with understanding we confront our fellow-men and offer them something in our actions, our virtue, our conduct towards them which is conditioned by our understanding of their nature. Our attitude towards our fellow-men is our attitude towards the Christ-impulse itself.

It is a powerful moral impulse, something which is a real foundation for morals, when we feel: ‘The Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished for all men, and an impulse has thence spread abroad throughout the whole world. When you are dealing with your fellow-men, try to understand them in their special, characteristics of race, colour, nationality, religious faith, philosophy, etc. If you meet them and do this or that to them, you do it to Christ. Whatever you do to men, in the present condition of the earth's evolution, you do to Christ.’ This statement: “What ye have done to one of My brothers, ye have done unto Me,” will at the same time become a mighty moral impulse to the man who understands the fundamental significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. So that we may say: Whereas the gods of pre-Christian times gave instinctive wisdom to man, instinctive valour and bravery, so now love streams down from the symbol of the cross, the love which is based upon the mutual interest of man in man.

Thereby the Christ-impulse will work powerfully in the world. On the day when it comes about that the Brahmin not only loves and understands the Brahmin, the Pariah the Pariah, the Jew the Jew, and the Christian the Christian; but when the Jew is able to understand the Christian, the Pariah the Brahmin, the American the Asiatic, as man, and put himself in his place, then one will know how deeply it is felt in a Christian way when we say: “All men must feel themselves to be brothers, no matter what their religious creed may be.” We ought to consider what otherwise binds us as being of little value. Father, mother, brother, sister, even one's own life one ought to value less than that which speaks from one human soul to the other. He who, in this sense does not regard as base all that impairs the connection with the Christ-impulse cannot be Christ's disciple. The Christ-impulse balances and compensates human differences. Christ's disciple is one who regards mere human distinctions as being of little account, and clings to the impulse of love streaming forth from the Mystery of Golgotha, which in this respect we perceive as a renewal of what was given to mankind as original virtue.

We have now but to consider what may be spoken of as the virtue of the Consciousness- or Spiritual- Soul. When we consider the fourth post-Atlantean age, we find that Temperance or Moderation was still instinctive. Plato and Aristotle called it the chief virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Again they comprehended it as a state of balance, as the mean of what exists in the Spiritual-soul. The Spiritual-Soul consists in man's becoming conscious of the external world through his bodily nature. The sense body is primarily the instrument of the Spiritual-Soul, and it is also the sense body through which man arrives at self-consciousness.

Therefore the sense-body of man must be preserved. If it were not preserved for the mission of the earth, then that mission could not be fulfilled. But here also there is a limit. If a man only used all the forces he possessed in order to enjoy himself, he would shut himself up in himself, and the world would lose him. The man who merely enjoys himself, who uses all his forces merely to give himself pleasure, cuts himself off from the world—so thought Plato and Aristotle—the world loses him. And he, who denies himself everything renders himself weaker and weaker, and is finally laid hold of by the external world-process, and is crushed by the outer world. For he who goes beyond the forces appropriate to him as man, he who goes to excess is laid hold of by the world-process and is lost in it.

Thus what man has developed, for the building up of the Spiritual-soul can be dissolved, so that he comes into the position of losing the world. Temperance, or Moderation, is the virtue which enables man to avoid these extremes. Temperance implies neither asceticism nor gluttony, but the happy mean between these two; and this is the virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Regarding this virtue we have not yet progressed beyond the instinctive standpoint. A little reflection will teach you that, on the whole, people are very much given to sampling the two extremes. They swing to and fro between them. Leaving out of account the few who at the present day endeavour to gain clear views on this subject, you will find that the majority of people live very much after a particular pattern. In Central Europe this is often described by saying: There are people in Berlin who eat and drink to excess the entire winter, and then in summer they go to Carlsbad in order to remove the ill-effects produced by months of intemperance, thus going from one extreme to the other. Here you have the tipping of the scale, first to one side and then to the other. This is only a radical case. It is very evident that though the foregoing is extreme, and not universal to any great extent, still the oscillation between enjoyment and deprivation exists everywhere. People themselves ensure that there is excess on one side, and then they get the physicians to prescribe a so-called lowering system of cure, that is, the other extreme, in order that the ill effects may be repaired.

From this, it will be seen that in this respect people are still in an instinctive condition, that there is still an instinctive feeling, which is a kind of divine gift, not to go too far in one direction or another. But just as the other instinctive qualities of man were lost, these, too, will be lost with the transition from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean age. This quality which is still possessed as a natural tendency will be lost; and now you will be able to judge how much the anthroposophical world conception and conviction will have to contribute in order gradually to develop consciousness in this field.

At the present time there are very few, even developed anthroposophists, who see clearly that Anthroposophy provides the means to gain the right consciousness in this field also. When Anthroposophy is able to bring more weight to bear in this direction, then will appear what I can only describe in the following way: people will gradually long more and more for great spiritual truths. Although Anthroposophy is still scorned to-day, it will not always be so. It will spread, and overcome all its external opponents, and everything else still opposing it, and anthroposophists will not be satisfied by merely preaching universal love. It will be understood that one cannot acquire Anthroposophy in one day, any more than a person can take sufficient nourishment in one day to last the whole of his life. Anthroposophy has to be acquired to an ever increasing extent. It will come to pass that in the Anthroposophical Movement it will not be so often stated that these are our principles, and if we have these principles then we are anthroposophists; for the feeling and experience of standing in a community of the living element in anthroposophy will extend more and more.

Moreover, let us consider what happens by people mentally working upon the particular thoughts, the particular feelings and impulses which come from anthroposophical wisdom. We all know that anthroposophists can never have a materialistic view of the world, they have exactly the opposite, But he who says the following is a materialistic thinker: “When one thinks, a movement of the molecules or atoms of the brain takes place, and it is because of this movement that one has thought. Thought proceeds from the brain somewhat like a thin smoke, or it is something like the flame from a candle.” Such, is the materialistic view. The anthroposophical view is the opposite. In the latter it is the thought, the experience in the soul which sets the brain and nervous system in motion. The way in which our brain moves depends upon what thoughts we think. This is exactly the opposite of what is said by the materialist. If you wish to know how the brain of a person is constituted, you must inquire into what thoughts he has, for just as the printed characters of a book are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts, so the movements of the brain are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts.

Must we not then say that the brain will be differently affected when it is filled with anthroposophical thoughts than it will be in a society which plays cards? Different processes are at work in your minds when you follow anthroposophical thoughts from when you are in a company of card players, or see the pictures in a movie theatre. In the human organism nothing is isolated or stands alone. Everything is connected; one part acts and reacts on another. Thoughts act upon the brain and nervous system, and the latter is connected with the whole organism, and although many people may not yet be aware of it, when the hereditary characteristics still hidden in the body are conquered, the following will come about. The thoughts will be communicated from the brain to the stomach, and the result will be that things that are pleasant to people's taste to-day will no longer taste good to those who have received anthroposophica1 thoughts. The thoughts which anthroposophists have received are divine thoughts. They act upon the whole organism in such a manner that it will prefer to taste what is good for it. Man will smell and perceive as unsympathetic what does not suit him—a pecu1iar perspective, one which may perhaps be called materialistic, but is exactly the reverse.

This kind of appetite will come as a consequence of anthroposophical work; you will like one thing and prefer it at meals, dislike another and not wish to eat it. You may judge for yourselves when you notice that perhaps you now have an aversion to things, which before your anthroposophical days you did not possess. This will become more and more general when man works selflessly at his higher development, so that the world may receive what is right from him. One must not, however, play fast-and-lose with the words “selflessness” and “egoism.” These words may very easily be misused. It is not altogether selfless when someone says: “I shall only be active in the world and for the world; what does it matter about my own spiritual development? I shall only work, not strive egoistically!” It is not egoism when a person undergoes a higher development, because he thus fits himself more fully to bear an active part in the furtherance of the world development. If a person neglects his own further deve1opment, he renders himself useless to the world, he withdraws his force from it. We must do the right thing in this respect as well, in order to develop in ourselves what the Deity had in view for us.

Thus, through Anthroposophy a human race, or rather, a nucleus of humanity will be developed, which perceives temperance as a guiding ideal not merely instinctively, but which has a conscious sympathy for what makes man in_a worthy way into a useful part of the divine world-order, and a conscious disinclination for all that mars man as a part in the universal order.

Thus we see that also in that which is produced in man himself, there are moral impulses, and we find what we may call life-wisdom or practica1 wisdom as transformed temperance. The ideal of practical wisdom which is to be taken into consideration for the next, the sixth post-Atlantean age, will be the ideal virtue which Plato calls “justice.” That is: the harmonious accord of these virtues. As in humanity the virtues have altered to some extent, so what was looked upon as justice in pre-Christian times has also changed. A single virtue such as this, which harmonises the others did not exist at that time. The harmony of the virtues stood before the mental vision of humanity as an ideal of the most distant future. We have seen that the moral impulse of bravery has been changed to love. We have also seen that wisdom has become truth. To begin with, truth is a virtue which places man in a just and worthy manner in external life. But if we wish to arrive at truthfulness regarding spiritual things, how then can we arrange it in relation to those things? We acquire truthfulness, we gain the virtue of the Sentient-Soul through a right and appropriate interest, through right understanding. Now what is this interest with regard to the spiritual world? If we wish to bring the physical world and especially man before us, we must open ourselves towards him, we must have a seeing eye for his nature. How do we obtain this seeing-eye with reference to the spiritual world? We gain it by developing a particular kind of feeling, that which appeared at a time when the old instinctive wisdom had sunk into the depths of the soul's life. This type of feeling was often described by the Greeks in the words: “All philosophical thought begins with wonder.” Something essentially moral is said when we say that our relationship to the supersensible world begins with wonder. The savage, uncultivated human being, is but little affected by the great phenomena of the world. It is through mental development that man comes to find riddles in the phenomena of everyday life, and to perceive that there is something spiritual at the back of them. It is wonder that directs our souls up to the spiritual sphere in order that we may penetrate to the knowledge of that world; and we can only arrive at this knowledge when our soul is attracted by the phenomena which it is possible to investigate. It is this attraction which give rise to wonder, astonishment and faith. It is always wonder and amazement which direct us to what is supersensible, and at the same time, it is what one usually describes as faith. Faith, wonder and amazement are the three forces of the soul which lead us beyond the ordinary world.

When we contemplate man with wonder and amazement, we try to understand him; by understanding his nature we attain to the virtue of brotherhood, and we shall best realise this by approaching the human being with reverence. We shall then see that reverence is something with which we must approach every human being and if we have this attitude, we shall become more and more truthful. Truth will become something by which we shall be bound by duty. Once we have an inkling of it, the supersensible world becomes something towards which we incline, and through knowledge we shall attain to the supersensible wisdom which has already sunk into the subconscious depths of the soul. Only after supersensible wisdom had disappeared do we find the statement that “philosophy begins with wonder and amazement.” This statement will make it clear that wonder only appeared in evolution in the age when the Christ-impulse had come into the world.

It has already been stated that the second virtue is love. Let us now consider what we have described as instinctive temperance for the present time, and as practical wisdom of life for the future. Man confronts himself in these virtues. Through the deeds he performs in the world, he acts in such a way that he guards himself, as it were; it is therefore necessary for him to gain an objective standard of value.

We now see something appear which develops more and more, and which I have often spoken of in other connections, something which first appeared in the fourth post-Atlantean age, namely the Greek. It can be shown that in the old Greek dramas, for instance in Aeschylus, the Furies play a role which in Euripides is transformed into conscience. From this we see that in ancient times what we call conscience did not exist at all. Conscience is something that exists as a standard for our own actions when we go too far in our demands, when we seek our own advantage too much. It acts as a standard placed between our sympathies and antipathies.

With this we attain to something which is more objective, which, compared with the virtues of truth, love and practical wisdom, acts in a much more objective, or outward manner. Love here stands in the middle, and acts as something which has to fill and regulate all life, also all social life. In the same way it acts as the regulator of all that man has developed as inner impulse. But that which he has developed as truth will manifest itself as the belief in supersensible knowledge. Life-wisdom, that which originates in ourselves, we must feel as a divine spiritual regulator which, like conscience, leads securely along the true middle course. If we had time it would be very easy to answer the various objections which might be raised at this point. But we shall only consider one, for example, the objection to the assertion that conscience and wonder are qualities which have only gradually developed in humanity, whereas they are really eternal. But this they are not. He who says that they are eternal qualities in human nature only shows that he does not know the conditions attached to them.

As time goes on it will be found more and more that in ancient times man had not as yet descended so far to the physical plane, but was still more closely connected with divine impulses, and that he was in a condition which he will again consciously strive to reach when
he is ruled more by truth, love and the art of life in regard to the physical plane, and when in regard to spiritual knowledge he is actuated by faith in the supersensible world. It is not necessarily the case that faith will directly lead into that world, but it will at length be transformed into supersensible knowledge. Conscience is that which will enter as a regulator in the Consciousness- or Spiritual-Soul. Faith, love, conscience; these three forces will become the three stars of the moral forces which shall enter into human souls particularly through Anthroposophy. The moral perspective of the future can only be disclosed to those who think of these three virtues being ever more increased Anthroposophy will place moral life in the light of these virtues, and they will be the constructive forces of the future.

Before closing our observations, there is one point which must be considered. I shall only touch upon the subject, for it would be impossible to analyse without giving many lectures. The Christ-impulse entered human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. We know that at that time a human organism consisting of physical, etheric, and astral bodies received the Ego-impulse or “I” from above, as the Christ-impulse. It was this Christ-impulse which was received by the earth and which flowed into earthly evolution. It was now in it as the ego of Christ. We know further that the physical body, etheric body and astral body remained with Jesus of Nazareth; the Christ-impulse was within as the ego. At Golgotha, Jesus of Nazareth separated from the Christ-impulse, which then flowed into the earth development. The evolution of this impulse signifies the evolution of the earth itself.

Earnestly consider certain things which are very often repeated in order that they may be more easily understood. As we have often heard, the world is maya or illusion, but man must gradually penetrate to the truth, the reality of this external world. The earth evolution fundamentally consists in the fact that all the external things which have been formed in the first half of the earth's development are dissolved in the second half, in which we now are, so that all that we see externally, physically, shall separate from human development just as the physical body of a human being falls away. One might ask: What will then be left? And the answer is: The forces which are embodied in man as real forces through the process of the development of humanity on the earth. And the most real impulse in this development is that which has come into earth evolution through the Christ-impulse. But this Christ-impulse at first finds nothing with which it can clothe itself. Therefore it has to obtain a covering through the further development of the earth; and when this is concluded, the fully developed Christ shall be the final man—as Adam was the first—around whom humanity in its multiplicity has grouped itself.

In the words: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me,” is contained a significant hint for us. What has been done for Christ? The actions performed in accordance with the Christ-impulse under the influence of conscience, under the influence of faith and according to knowledge, are developed out on the earth-life up to the present time, and as, through his actions and his moral attitude a person gives something to his brethren, he gives at the same time to Christ. This should be taken as a precept: All the forces we develop, all acts of faith and trust, all acts performed as the result of wonder, are—because we give it at the same time to the Christ-Ego—something which closes like a covering round the Christ and may be compared with the astral body of man.

We form the astral body for the Christ-Ego-impulse by all the moral activities of wonder, trust, reverence and faith, in short, all that paves the way to supersensible knowledge. Through all these activities we foster love. This is quite in accordance with the statement we quoted: “What ye have done to one, of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

We form the etheric body for Christ through our deeds of love, and through our actions in the world which we do through the impulses of conscience we form for the Christ-impulse that which corresponds to the physical body of man. When the earth has one day reached its goal, when man understands the right moral impulses through which all that is good is done, then shall be perfected that which came as an Ego or “I” into human development through the Mystery of Golgotha as the Christ-impulse. It shall then be enveloped by an astral body which is formed through faith, through all the deeds of wonder and amazement on the part of man. It shall be enveloped by something which is like an etheric body which is formed through deeds of love; and by something which envelops it like a physical body, formed through the deeds of conscience.

Thus the future evolution of humanity shall be accomplished through the co-operation of the moral impulses of man with the Christ-impulse. We see humanity in perspective before us, like a great organic structure. When people understand how to member their actions into this great organism, and through their own deeds form their impulses around it like a covering, they shall then lay the foundations, in the course of earthly evolution, for a great community, which can be permeated and pervaded through and through by the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see that morals need not be preached, but they can indeed be founded by showing facts that have really happened and do still happen, confirming what is felt by persons with special mental endowments. It should make a noteworthy impression upon us if we bear in mind how, at the time when Goethe lost his friend, Duke Charles Augustus, he wrote many things in a long letter at Weimar, and then on the same day—it was in the year 1828, just three-and-a-half years before his own death, and almost at the end of his life—he wrote a very remarkable sentence in his diary: “The whole reasonable world may be considered as a great immortal individual which uninterruptedly brings about what is necessary and thereby makes itself master even over chance.” How could such a thought become more concrete than by our imagining this individual active among us, and by thinking of ourselves as, being united with him in his work? Through the Mystery of Golgotha the greatest Individual entered into human development, and, when people intentionally direct their lives in the way we have just described, they shall build up a covering round the Christ-impulse, so that around this Being there shall be formed something which is like a covering around a kernel.

Much more could be said about virtue from the standpoint of Anthroposophy. In particular long and important considerations could be entered into concerning truth and its connection with karma, for through Anthroposophy the idea of karma will have to enter into human evolution more and more. Man will also have to learn gradually so to consider and order his life that his virtues correspond with karma. Through the idea of karma man must also learn to recognise that he may not disown his former deeds by his later ones. A certain feeling of responsibility in life, a readiness to take upon ourselves the results of what we have done, has yet to show itself as a result of human evolution. How far removed man still is from this ideal we see when we consider him more c1osely. That man develops by the acts he has committed is a well-known fact. When the consequences of an action seem to have come to an end, then what could only be done if the first act had not taken place, can still be done. The fact that a person feels responsible for what he has done, the fact that he consciously accepts the idea of karma, is something which might also be a subject for study. But you will still find much for yourselves by following the lines suggested in these three lectures; you will find how fruitful these ideas can be if you work them out further. As man will live for the remainder of the earth development in repeated incarnations, it is his task to rectify all the mistakes made respecting the virtues described, by inclining to one side or the other, to change them by shaping them of his own free will, so that the balance, the mean, may come and thus the goal be gradually attained which has been described as the formation of the coverings for the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see before us not merely an abstract ideal of universal brotherhood, which indeed may also receive a strong impulse if we lay Anthroposophy at the foundation, but we see that there is something real in our earthly evolution, we see that there is in it an Impulse which came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha. And we also feel ourselves under the necessity so to work upon the Sentient-Soul, the Intellectual-Soul and the Spiritual-Soul, that this ideal Being shall be actualised, and that we shall be united with Him as with a great immortal Individual. The thought that the only possibility of further evolution, the power to fulfil the earth mission, lies in man's forming one whole with this great Individual, is realised in the second moral principle: What you do as if it were born from you alone, pushes you away and separates you from the great Individual, you thereby destroy something; but what you do to build up this great immortal Individual in the way above described, that you do towards the further development, the progressive life of the whole organism of the world.

We only require to place these two thoughts before us in order to see that their effect is not only to preach morals, but to give them a basis. For the thought: “Through your actions you are destroying what you ought to build up,” is terrible and fearful, keeping down all opposing desires. But the thought: “You are building up this immortal Individual; you are making yourself into a member of this immortal Individual,” fires one to good deeds, to strong moral impulses. In this way morals are not only preached, but we are led to thoughts which themselves may be moral impulses, to thoughts which are able to found morals.

The more the truth is cultivated, the more rapidly will the anthroposophical world conception and feeling develop ethics such as these. And it has been my task to express this in these lectures. Naturally, many things have only been lightly touched upon, but you will develop further in your own minds many ideas which have been broached. In this way we shall be drawn more closely together all over the earth. When we meet together—as we have done on this occasion as anthroposophists of Northern and Central Europe—to consider these subjects, and when we allow the thoughts roused in us at gatherings such as this to echo and re-echo through us, we shall in this way best make it true that Anthroposophy is to provide the foundation—even at the present time—for real spiritual life. And when we have to part again we know that it is in our anthroposophical thoughts that we are most at one, and this knowledge is at the same time a moral stimulus. To know that we are united by the same ideals with people who, as a rule, are widely separated from one another in space, but with whom we may meet on special occasions, is a stronger moral stimulus than being always together.

That we should think in this way of our gathering, that we should thus understand our studies together, fills my soul, especially at the close of these lectures, as something by which I should like to express my farewell greeting to you, and concerning which I am convinced that, when it is understood in the true light, the anthroposophical life which is developing will also be spiritually well founded. With this thought and these feelings let us close our studies today.

It is natural, though it is usually ignored by science, that man as he is simply cannot know one part of his being. As he looks out upon the world it shows itself, roughly expressed, as an ascending scale from the mineral kingdom through the plant and animal kingdoms up to man. It goes without saying that man must assume some creative force behind all the forms he perceives around him in the kingdoms of nature. The point is, however, that man gains knowledge of the world he lives in just because the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are outside him and he can observe them. As to all man has within himself, however, he can only gain knowledge of that insofar as the same forces are at work in him as are active in the three kingdoms of nature outside him. The forces active within him which transcend those three kingdoms he cannot know by the usual methods of knowing nature—not in the least. It is just what man has within himself over and above the kingdoms of nature that enables him to build up systematically a knowledge of those kingdoms outside him. Just as little as the eye, whose purpose it is to see outwardly, can see itself, just so little can man gain knowledge of what in himself is there in order that he may acquire knowledge. This is a very simple idea, but sound.

It is impossible for the eye to see itself because it is there to see out, and it is impossible for those forces in man that are there to acquire outer knowledge, to acquire knowledge of themselves. Further, it is these very forces that represent what it is in man that makes him something more than an animal. Materialistic Darwinism disposes of this fact easily by simply leaving out of account the fact that this special human power of acquiring knowledge itself cannot be known by man's usual instrument for knowledge. Recognizing that this power is unknowable, science denies its existence and accordingly considers man only insofar as he is still animal. You see on what the peculiar fallacy, the illusion of materialistic Darwinism rests. Man cannot know in himself those forces that are the actual means of knowledge. But the eye can see another eye, and for this reason, other things being equal, it can believe in itself. With the faculty of knowledge this is not the case. It would be logically possible for a man to confront another man and perceive in him the knowing faculty that raises him above animals. Logically, that is. But even that is actually impossible, for the very reasons implied in what we have described previously about the effects of thinking.

What does ordinary knowledge involve in the external world? We saw that it involves a perpetual destruction of the nerve structures in the brain. This is an actual external process. The creative forces on the other hand—those that really distinguish man from the animal—cannot develop at all in our waking life when we normally acquire knowledge. In this life they must behave so as not to interfere with the wearing away of the nerve structures. Therefore in waking life these forces are at rest. They sleep.

We have recognized a great truth if we can thoroughly enter into the thought that all that would have to be known to realize the full fallacy of materialistic Darwinism, even on the physical plane, is actually asleep in our waking life; that what raises man above the animal is at rest and a destructive process is taking place. The creative forces that bring forth the animal organism are not so far perfected as those at work in the organism of man. In our waking life the latter are inactive, and the process that takes their place is perpetually destroying just what in man transcends the animal. These very creative forces are destroyed during waking life. They are not present at all, but during sleep they appear and begin building up again what has been destroyed. These creative forces that raise man above the animal can really be perceived in a sleeping man. So we should have to say that whatever it is that repairs in sleeping man the forces he spends in his waking life, must be the forces that raise him above the animals.

These forces are still unknown to external natural science, which is only beginning to surmise them. Science, however, is on the way and one day will reveal these forces by purely external methods. Indeed, there are already exceptions to the statement that the forces leading man out beyond the animal nature are ordinarily unobservable in him. When science once learns to distinguish these forces in man it will discover in the sleeping human body the physical evidence of man's transcending the animal kingdom. When it distinguishes the regenerative forces in man from what is present in the animal kingdom also, it will recognize how the creative forces active in the earth's life to raise man beyond the animal are awake only when man sleeps. From all this we can gather that in self-knowledge man's creative forces, the real human forces, can only be perceived by man when he becomes clairvoyant during sleep; that is, when in a condition otherwise like sleep he awakes clairvoyantly. In the fifth lecture we already indicated this fact.

Today I have said that to some extent, from the processes observable in sleeping man, science will after a time find indications of the forces whereby man transcends the animal, but they will only be indications. These forces, when they appear to clairvoyant consciousness today, are seen to be of such a nature that they cannot be revealed externally to the senses in their true form. It will be possible to indicate their existence by deductions from scientific facts. Apart from their not being perceptible in their essence there is quite another reason why it will become possible to discover them if not to perceive them. These human creative forces have a very special relation to all the other forces of nature. We are here approaching a difficult subject, but it may be possible to make it clear in the following way.

Let us imagine we have here the receiver of an air-pump, say a glass bell-jar, and suppose we succeed in making a really perfect vacuum inside it. That is very nearly possible ordinarily. Everyone whose intellect is bound to the world of sense will now say, “Inside there is no air, only an empty space; we cannot go any farther, there cannot be less than no air inside.” Actually that is not true. We can pump until no air at all is left, then go on pumping until we get a space still more empty of air than a vacuum. People dependent on the material will find it difficult to imagine this “less than nothing.” Or, suppose you have ten shillings in your pocket. You can gradually spend them until you have nothing left. In this domain of life there is a real “less than nothing.” It is often one of the strongest realities—you can go into debt for a few shillings. In practical life less-than-nothing is often more intensely real than the reality of possession.

It is remarkable what things are sometimes accepted as axioms, as obvious truths. Thus, you can read in many Western philosophic books that there can nowhere be less than nothing, that there is no such thing. Even more, it is sometimes said that nothing itself cannot exist. Yet, what exists in our illustration about debt exists also in the universe. All philosophic dicta about “nothing,” however pretentious the form they take, are really rubbish. They are themselves a kind of ill-defined nothingness. It is true that the physical something that surrounds us can be reduced to nothing, and then still further to less than nothing. This “nothing” actually is a real factor on all sides. We must imagine the world that surrounds us, which we know in the forces of nature throughout the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, reduced down to nothing, then down to below nothing. Then it is that those forces arise that are creatively active in man when he sleeps. Natural science knows only the external side of these forces. In fact, it holds fast to a mere abstraction about them and therefore cannot enter into or appreciate them because ordinary science is to the reality in the forces of nature as the abstract number ten, for example, is to ten beans or ten apples. If we eliminate quality and say that all these are “ten” and nothing else, we are doing what natural science does, making no distinctions, touching only the surface of things. Suppose it gains the idea that regenerative forces must be present building up the organism again in sleep, then it will treat these forces as does a man who, when someone meets him saying, “I have fifteen shillings in my pocket,” replies, “Not so, you have fifteen.” The man leaves out of account the very thing that matters. Consequently science will confuse these forces with the ordinary natural laws, and will fail to recognize that higher laws are at work in them.

I mention all this to show what difficulties external science has and must have in getting to know the truth. It will draw certain conclusions and thus come near the truth. For some persons this will not be necessary, because science will gradually be supplemented by clairvoyant perception that does experience the difference between these forces and those active out in the three kingdoms of nature. At present I cannot deal fully with the superficial objection that animals also sleep. Such objections have little logical value but people do not notice it, nor their superficiality, for they judge according to concepts instead of the real nature of things. By introducing animal sleep into the argument one would speak the same fallacy as if someone were to say, “I sharpen my pencil with a knife and I also shave with a knife,” and another person replied, “That is impossible, knives are there to cut meat.” People are always making that kind of judgment. They think that a given thing must have the same function in different realms of nature. Sleep is an altogether different function in man from what it is in the animals.

I wanted to call your attention to forces at work in man's nature that we find at first in the regeneration of his organism as he sleeps. Now these forces are closely related to other forces, those that also develop in man with a certain unconsciousness. I mean the forces having to do with the propagation of the race. We know that up to a certain age man's consciousness is filled with a pure and straightforward unconsciousness of these forces; the innocence of childhood. Then at a certain age this consciousness awakens. From that time onward the human organism is permeated by an awareness of the forces afterward known as sensual sex-love.

What in earlier life lives as a sleeping force and only wakens with puberty, seen in its original and essential form is the very same as those forces that in sleep regenerate the outworn forces in man. Only they are hidden by the other parts of human nature in which they are mingled. Invisibly in man there are at work forces that can become capable of either good or evil only when they awaken, but that sleep, or at most dream, until the time of puberty. Since the forces that manifest themselves afterward must first be prepared, they are intermingled, though not yet awake, with the remaining forces in man even from birth onward. All this time his nature is permeated by these sleeping forces. This is what meets us in the child as such a wonderful mystery. It is the sleeping generative forces that only waken later on. One who is sensitive to these things feels something like a gentle breath of God in the activity of these forces withdrawn into reticence in childhood, whatever the naughtiness, obstinacy and other more or less unpleasant characteristics a child may have. These innocent qualities of the child are those of the grown-up person, but in childlike form. One who recognizes them as among the generative forces feels the breath of divine powers. While in later life they appear in man's lower nature, they are so wonderful because they really breathe the pure breath of God so long as they work in unconscious innocence. We must feel these things and be sensitive to them, then we shall perceive how wonderfully human nature is composed. The generative forces, sleeping during the most tender age of childhood, waken around the time of puberty, and from then on are still active in innocence when at night man sinks back into sleep.

Thus man's nature falls into two parts. In every human being two persons confront us—the one that we are from the time we waken until we go to sleep, the other, from going to sleep to waking again. In our waking state we are continually at pains to wear and worry our nature down to the animal level with all that is not pure knowledge, pure spiritual activity. What raises us above humanity holds sway like a pure, sublime force within the generative powers as they were during innocent childhood, and then in sleep it is awakened in the regeneration of what is worn away in waking life. So we have in ourselves one person who is related to the creative forces in man, and another who destroys them.

The deeply significant thing in the double nature of man is, that behind all that the senses perceive we have to surmise another man, one in whom the creative forces dwell. This second man is really never there in a pure, unmixed form; not during waking life nor even in sleep because in sleep the physical and etheric bodies still remain permeated by the after-effects of waking life, by the disturbing and destructive forces. When at last the latter have been removed altogether, we wake up again.

So it has been since what we call the Lemurian Age, the beginning, strictly speaking, of present-day mankind's evolution. At that time, as is described in greater detail in my Occult Science the Luciferic influence on man set in; and from this influence there came, among other things, what today compels man continually to wear and tear himself down to the animal nature. The other element that exists in human nature, which man as he is now does not yet know—the creative forces in him—all this came into play in the early Lemurian time before the Luciferic impulses entered. Thus we rise in thought from man ‘become’ to man ‘becoming;’ from man created to man being re-created. In so doing we have to look out into that distant Lemurian time when man was as yet wholly permeated by the creating forces. At that time man came into being as he is today. If we follow the human race from that epoch onward, we have this double nature of man continually before us in all that has happened since. Man then entered a kind of lower nature.

At the same time, as we can see clairvoyantly by looking back into the Akashic record, there appeared beside ordinary people, who themselves were permeated by the human creative forces, something like a brother- or sister-soul; a definite soul. It was as though this sister-soul was held back, not thrown into the current of human evolution. It remained permeated through and through by human creative forces only, and by nothing else. Thus, a brother- or sister-soul (in that ancient time there was no difference)—Adam's brother-soul—remained behind. It could not enter the physical process of mankind's development. It lived on, invisible to the physical world of man. It was not born as men are born, in the flowing stream of this life, because if it had entered into birth and death it would have been in the processes of physical human life. It could only be perceived by those who rose to the heights of clairvoyance, who developed those forces that awaken in the state we otherwise know as sleep. In that state man is near to the forces that live and work in purity in the sister-soul.

Man entered his evolution, but holding sway above this life there lived, in sacrifice, a soul that throughout all the processes of human life never came down in bodily form. It did not strive like ordinary human souls for birth and death in successive incarnations, and it could only show itself to them when in their sleep they attained clairvoyant vision. Yet it worked on mankind wherever they could meet it with special clairvoyant gifts. There were men who either by nature or special training in schools of initiation had this power and were able to recognize the creative forces. Wherever such schools are mentioned in history we can always find evidence that they were aware of a soul accompanying mankind. In most instances it was only recognizable in those special conditions of clairvoyance that expand man's spiritual vision into sleep consciousness.

When Arjuna stood on the battle-field with the Kurus and Pandus arrayed against each other, when he felt all that was going on around him and deeply realized the unique situation in which he was placed, it came about that this soul we have mentioned spoke to him through the soul of his charioteer. The manifestation of this special soul, speaking through a human soul, is none other than Krishna. For what soul was it that could instill into man the impulse to consciousness of self? It was the soul that had remained behind in the old Lemurian age when men entered his actual earthly evolution.

This soul had often been visible in manifestations before, but in a far more spiritual form. At the moment, however, of which the Bhagavad Gita tells us, we have to imagine a kind of embodiment, though much concealed in Maya of this soul of Krishna. Later on in history a definite incarnation takes place. This soul actually incarnated in the body of a child. Those of our friends to whom I have spoken of this before know that at the time when Christianity was founded two children were born in different families, both from the house of David. The one child is mentioned in St. Matthew's Gospel, the other in St. Luke's. This is the true reason for the external discrepancies between the two Gospels. Now this very Jesus Child of St. Luke's Gospel is an incarnation of that same soul that had never before lived in a human body but is nevertheless a human soul, having been one in the ancient Lemurian age. This is the same that revealed itself as Krishna.

Thus we have all that the Krishna impulse signifies incarnated in the body of the Luke Jesus child. What was there embodied is related to the forces that are asleep in every child in their sublime purity and innocence, until they awaken as the sex-forces. In this child they can manifest themselves and be active until the age of puberty when man ordinarily becomes sexually mature. But the body of this child that had been taken from common humanity would no longer have been adapted to the forces related to the innocent sex-forces in the child. Thus the soul in the other Jesus child, which was the soul of Zarathustra, that had passed through many incarnations and reached its eminence by hard work and special striving, passed over into the body of the Luke Jesus child, and from then on dwelt in that body.

We touch here upon a wonderful mystery. We see how into the body of the Luke Jesus child there enters the soul of man as he was before he descended into the course of earthly incarnations. We understand that this soul could hold sway in the human body only until the twelfth year of its life. After that another soul must take possession, the Zarathustra soul that had gone through all the transformations of mankind. This wonderful mystery is enacted, that the innermost essence and self of man, which we have seen hailed as Krishna, permeates the Jesus child of the Luke Gospel. In this child are the innermost forces of humanity, the Krishna forces, for indeed we know their origin. This Krishna root takes us back into the Lemurian time, the very primeval age of man. At that time it was one with humanity, before ever the physical evolution of mankind began. In later time this root, these Krishna forces, flowing together and uniting in the unknown and unseen, worked to bring about the unfolding of man's inner being from within. Concretely embodied, this root is present within a single being, the Luke Jesus child, and as the child grows up it remains active beneath the surface of life in this special body after the Zarathustra soul has entered it.

In the thirtieth year, in the moment the Bible describes as the Baptism in Jordan, there comes toward this special human body what now belongs to all mankind. This is the moment indicated in the words, “This is my well-beloved Son, this day have I begotten Him.” Christ now comes toward the physical body from the other side. In the body that stands before us there, we have in concrete form what yesterday we thought of abstractly. What belongs to all mankind comes to the body that contains what, through another impulse, has brought the inner being of man to the highest ideal of individual strength, and will carry it to yet greater heights.

I think when you consider all that has been said today, leading up as it does to a certain understanding of that great moment pictorially represented as the baptism by St. John, you will have to admit that our anthroposophical outlook takes nothing away from the sublime majesty of the Christ-Idea. On the contrary, by shedding the light of understanding upon it much is added to all that can be given -to mankind exoterically. Today I have endeavored to present the matter in such a way as to give it sense and meaning for those who can consider it with an open mind, in the light of external human history. That is not the way, however, by which this secret was found. Someone might ask, in view of the lectures about St. Luke's Gospel I delivered years ago in Basel, when for the first time I drew attention to the different genealogies of the two Jesus children, “Why did you not explain then all you have added to it now?” That depends on the whole way these things were discovered. Actually, this truth has never yet been found in one single and complete whole by the human understanding. It was not discovered in the form I have tried to convey it today. The truth itself was there first, as I indicated in a lecture a few days ago, and the rest followed of its own accord, adding itself to the main body of this piece of knowledge about the two Jesus-children. From this you may gather that in the Anthroposophical Movement for which I am permitted to stand before you, there is nothing of the nature of intellectual or logical construction. I do not mean to lay this down as a general rule for everybody, but I do regard it as my own personal task to say nothing that is given by the intellect as such but to take things in the way they are directly and immediately given to occult vision. Only afterward are they permeated with the power of understanding, The truth about the two Jesus-children was not discovered by external historical research, but from the beginning it was an occult fact. Afterward the connection with the Krishna mystery was revealed.

You see in this how the science of man will have to work into the occult realm in the age we are entering; how the fundamental impulses of earthly evolution will gradually be understood and realized by individual persons, and how this will throw more and more light on all that has happened in the past. True science will not only speak to the intellect, but will fill the whole soul of man. It is just when we make ourselves acquainted with occult facts that we have a feeling for the real majesty, the greatness and wonder of these facts. Truly, the more deeply we penetrate the world of reality the more we have this feeling of wonder. Not only our intellect and reason but our whole soul is illumined when we let the truth come to us in this way. Especially at such a point as this, that wondrous event when the whole inwardness of humanity lived in a human body; when a soul that had developed upward to this point through the whole course of earthly life took possession of this body; then from outside there came into this body during three years of its life something that was vouchsafed to all mankind from the great universe beyond. Truly this can stir our souls to their depths. The spiritual age that is dawning will in time make it possible to deepen points like this still more.

One thing is essential to the coming spiritual age. We must learn to take a different attitude toward the great riddles and secrets of the cosmos, to approach them not as in the past with reason and intellect alone, but with all the faculties of our soul. Then we shall ourselves become partakers in the whole of human evolution. It will be for us like a fountain of sublime, all-human consciousness. We shall have fullness of soul. We shall feel that we may belong to that humanity that over all the earth is to develop such impulses as have been the subject of our thoughts today.

In these two lectures I should like to speak to you from the point of view of Spiritual Research, on the question so frequently and urgently put: “What is the meaning of life?” If in these two evenings we are to get anywhere near this subject we shall have to create first of all a kind of foundation or basis, on which to construct the edifice of knowledge, and from this deduce the answer in outline.

When we contemplate the things around us, those which exist for our ordinary sense-perception and our ordinary experience, and then turn to our own life, the result is at best the formulation of a question—the presentation of an oppressive, a painful problem. We see how the beings of external nature arise and decay. We can observe every year in spring how the earth, stimulated by the forces of the sun and the universe, bestows on us the plants which sprout and bud and bear fruit through the summer. Towards autumn, we see how they decay and pass away. Some remain indeed throughout the year, some for very many years, for instance, our long-lived trees. But of these also we know that even though in many cases they may outlive us, they also pass away at last, disappear and sink down into that which, in the great world of nature, is the realm of the lifeless. Especially do we know that even in the greatest phenomena of nature there rules this growth and decay: even the continents on which our civilisations develop did not exist in times past, for they have only risen in the course of time, and we know for certain that they will one day pass away.

Thus we see around us growth and decay; we can trace it in the plant kingdom and in the mineral kingdom as well as in the animal kingdom. What is the meaning of it all? Ever an arising, ever a passing away all around us! What is the meaning of this arising and this passing away? When we consider our own life, and see how we have lived through years and decades, we can recognise there also this coming into being and decay. When we call to mind the days of our childhood: they are vanished and only the memory of them remains. This stirs within us anxious questionings about life. The most important thing is that we ourselves have progressed a little through it, that we have become wiser. Usually, however, it is only when we have accomplished something, that we know how it ought to have been done. If we are no longer in a position to do a thing better, we still know how much better it might have been done, so that actually our mistakes become a part of our life; but it is just through our mistakes and errors that we gain our widest experiences.

A question is put to us, and it seems as if that which we can grasp with our senses and our intellect is unable to answer it. That is the position of man to-day; all that surrounds him confronts him with the problem, with the question: “What is the meaning of existence as a whole?” and particularly “Why has man his peculiar position within this existence?”

An extremely interesting legend of Hebrew antiquity tells us that in those old Hebrew times there was a consciousness that this anxious question which we formulated as to the meaning of life, and especially as to the meaning of man, occurs not only to man, but to beings quite other than man. This legend is extremely instructive and runs as follows:—When the Elohim were about to create man after their own image and likeness, the so-called ministering angels, certain spiritual beings of a lower grade than the Elohim themselves, asked Jahve or Jehovah: “Why is man to be made in the image and likeness of God!” Then Jehovah collected—so continues the legend—the animals and the plants which could already spring forth on earth before man was there in his earthly form, and He gathered together the angels also, the so-called ministering angels—those who immediately served Him. To those He showed the animals and plants and asked them what they were called, what were their names? But the Angels did not know the names of the animals and plants. Then man was created, as he was before the Fall. And again Jehovah gathered around him Angels, animals and plants, and in the presence of the Angels he asked man what the animals whom He made to pass by in succession before man’s eyes, were called, what their names were. And behold! Man was able to answer: “This animal has this name, that animal has that, this plant has this name, that plant has that,” Then Jehovah asked man: “And what is thine own name?” And man said: “I must be called Adam.” (Adam is related to Adama, and means: “Out of the earth: earth-being”). Jehovah then asked man: “And what am I myself to be called?” “Thou shalt be called Adonai,” man replied, “Thou art the Lord of all created beings of the earth.” The Angels now began to have an idea of the meaning of man’s existence on the earth. Though religious tradition and religious writings often express the most important riddle of life in the simplest way, there are many difficulties in understanding them, because we have to get behind their simplicity. We must first penetrate into the meaning behind them. If we succeed in this, great wisdom and deep knowledge are revealed. It may well be so with this legend, which we shall just keep in mind for a moment, for these two lectures will give us, in some sort, an answer to the question which it contains.

Now you know that there is a religion which has put the question as to the meaning and value of life by placing it in a wonderful form into the mouth of its own founder. You all know the story of the Buddha, how it tells us that when he left the palace in which he was born, and came face to face with the real facts of life, of which in that incarnation he had as yet learned nothing, he was most profoundly dismayed, and pronounced the judgment: “Life is suffering,” which as we know comprises the four statements: “Birth is suffering—disease is suffering—old age is suffering—death is suffering,” and to which is added “to be united with those we do not love is suffering, to be separated from those we love is suffering, not to be able to attain that to which we aspire is suffering.” We know then that to the adherents of this religion the meaning of life can be summed up by saying: “Life, which is suffering, only acquires a meaning when it is conquered, when it transcends itself.” All the various religions, all philosophies and views of life, are, after all, attempts to answer the question as to the meaning of life. Now, we are not going to approach the question in an abstract, philosophical way. Rather we shall review some of the phenomena of life, some of the facts of life, from the point of view of Spiritual Science, in order to see if a deeper occult view of life furnishes us with something wherewith to approach this question as to the meaning of life. Let us take the matter up again at the point we have already touched—the annual growth and decay in physical nature, the life, growth and decay in the plant world. In Spring we see the plants spring up out of the earth, and that which we see there as germinating, budding life, calls forth our joy and delight. We become aware that the whole of our existence is bound up with the plant world, for without it we could not exist. We feel how that which springs up out of the earth at the approach of Summer is related to our own life. We feel in the Autumn how that which in a certain sense belongs to us, again decays.

It is natural for us to compare with our own life that which we see germinating and decaying. For an external observation based only on what can be perceived by the senses and judged by the intellect, it is very natural to compare the vernal springing up of the plants with, let us say, man’s awakening in the morning; and the withering and decaying of the plant world in Autumn with man’s falling asleep at night. But such a comparison is quite superficial. It would leave out of account the real events with which we can already become acquainted through the elementary truths of occultism. What happens when we fall asleep at night? We have learned that we leave our physical and etheric bodies behind in bed. With our astral body and our ego we withdraw from our physical body and etheric body. During the night, from the moment of our falling asleep to the moment of our waking, we are with our astral body and our ego in a spiritual world. From this spiritual world we draw the forces which we require. Not only our astral body and our ego, but our physical and etheric bodies go through a kind of restorative process during our sleep at night, when the latter lie in bed, separated from the astral body and ego.

When one looks clairvoyantly down from the ego upon the astral, the etheric and physical bodies, one sees what has been destroyed by waking life; one sees that that which finds its expression in fatigue, is present as a destructive process and is made good during the night. The whole conscious life of the daytime is in fact, if we look at it in its connection with human consciousness and in its relation to the physical and etheric bodies, a kind of destructive process as regards the physical and etheric bodies. We always destroy something by it, and the fact that we destroy expresses itself in our fatigue. That which is destroyed is made good again at night.

Now if we look at what happens when we have withdrawn our astral body and our ego out of the etheric and physical bodies, it is as if we had left behind us a devastated field. But in the moment we are out of them, out of the physical and etheric bodies, they begin gradually to restore themselves. It is as if the forces belonging to the physical and etheric bodies begin to bud and blossom, and as if an entire vegetation should arise on the scene of destruction. The further night advances and the longer sleep lasts, the more do the forces in the etheric body bud and blossom. The nearer morning approaches and the more we re-enter our physical and etheric bodies with our astral body, the more a kind of withering or drying up sets in as regards the physical and etheric bodies.

In short, when the ego and the astral body look down from the spiritual world on the physical and etheric bodies, they see at night, at the moment of falling asleep, the same phenomenon which we see in the great world outside, when the plants bud and germinate in Spring. Therefore, to make a real comparison, we must compare our falling asleep and the earlier part of the sleep condition at night with Spring in nature; and the time of our awakening, the time in which the ego and the astral body begin to re-enter the physical and etheric bodies, with Autumn, in external nature. Spring corresponds to our falling asleep and Autumn to our awakening.

But how does the matter stand, when the occult observer, he who really can look into the spiritual world, directs his gaze to external nature and watches what takes place there in the course of the year? That which then presents itself to the occult vision teaches us that we must not compare things in an outward, but in an inward way. Occult observation shows that just as the physical and etheric bodies of man are connected with his astral body and his ego, so is there connected with our earth what we call the spiritual part of the earth. The earth also must be compared with a body, a widespread body. If we consider it only as far as its physical part is concerned, it is just as if we were to consider man with regard to his physical body only. We consider the earth completely when we consider it as the body of spiritual beings, in the same way in which, in the case of man, we consider the spirit as being connected with the body, yet there is a distinction. Man has a single nature controlling his physical and etheric bodies; a single psycho-spiritual nature belongs to that which is his physical human body and etheric human body. But there are a great many spirits belonging to the Earth-body. What in man’s psycho-spiritual nature is a unity, is, as regards that of the earth, a multiplicity. This is the chief distinction. With the exception of this difference everything else is in a certain way analogous. To occult vision is revealed how in the same measure as green plants come forth from the earth in Spring, those spirits whom we call the earth-spirits, withdraw from the earth. Only here again they do not, as is the case with man, absolutely leave the earth; they move round it, they pass in a certain way to the other side of the earth. When it is Summer in one hemisphere it is Winter in the other. In the case of the earth, the spiritual part moves from the northern to the southern hemisphere when Summer is approaching in the north. But that does not alter the fact that to the occult vision of a man who experiences the Spring on any given part of the globe, the spirits leave the earth; he sees how they rise and pass out into the cosmos. He does not see them move to the other side, but he sees them go away, in the same way as he sees the ego and the astral body leave man at the moment of his falling asleep. In the Autumn the earth-spirits approach and re-unite themselves with the earth. During the Winter, when the earth is covered with snow, the earth-spirits are directly united with the earth. In fact something similar then begins for the earth to what is found in man: a kind of self-consciousness. During the Summer the spiritual part of the earth knows nothing of what goes on around it in the universe. But in Winter the spirit of the earth knows what is happening in the universe around, just as man, on waking, knows and beholds what is taking place around him.

The analogy is thus complete, only it is the reverse of that which the outer consciousness draws. It is true that if we wish to go into the question fully, we cannot simply say: “When, in Spring, plants bud and spring from the earth, the earth spirits go away,” for with the budding and sprouting of plants there arise, as if out of the depths, out of the interior of the earth, other and mightier spirits. Therefore the mythologies were right when they distinguished between the higher and the nether gods. When man spoke of the gods who left the earth in Spring and returned in Autumn, he spoke of the higher gods. But there were mightier, older, gods, called by the Greeks the Chthonic gods. These arise in Summer when everything is budding and flourishing, and they descend again when in Winter the real earth spirits unite with the body of the earth.

Now, I should here like to mention that a certain idea, taken from scientific and occult research, is of immense importance for human life. For this shows us that when we consider the individual human being, we have really before us something like an image of the great Earth-being itself. What do we see when we turn towards plants which are beginning to sprout and bud? We see exactly the same as takes place in man when his inner life is active, we see how the one exactly corresponds to the other. How single plants are related to the human body, what their significance is for the human body, can only be recognised when such connections are understood. For it is in fact true that, on close examination, one sees how, when man falls asleep, everything begins to sprout and bud in his physical and etheric bodies: how a whole vegetation springs up in him: how man is in reality a tree or a garden in which plants are growing.

Whoever follows this with occult vision sees that the sprouting and germinating within man corresponds to what is germinating and budding in nature without. Thus you can form an idea of what will be possible when, in the future, Anthroposophy—often considered as foolishness to-day—is applied to life and made fruitful. We have for example, a man who has something wrong in his bodily life-activities. Let us now observe, when he falls asleep, what kind of plants are wanting when his physical and etheric bodies begin to develop their vegetation. When we see that on earth whole species of plants are missing, we know that something must be wrong with the life of the earth. And it is the same with the deficiency of certain plants in the physical and etheric bodies of man. In order to make good the defect we have only to seek on the earth for the plants which are missing in the man in question, and introduce their juices either in the form of diet or medicine and then we shall find the relation between medicine and disease. From this example, we see how Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science will intervene directly in life, but we are only at the beginning of these things.

In what I have just said I have given you, in a comparison drawn from nature, some idea of the composition of man and the connection of his whole being with the environment in which he is placed. We shall now look at the matter from a spiritual point of view. Here I would like to call attention to a matter that is of great importance, namely, that our anthroposophical outlook on life, while letting its gaze range over the evolution of mankind from the point of view of occultism, in order to decipher the meaning of existence, gives no preference to any one special creed, or any one view of life over any other. How often has it been emphasised in our occult movement that we can point to that which our earthly humanity experienced and developed immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe—the Flood. We passed through, as the first great post-Atlantean civilisation, the sacred civilisation of Ancient India. Here, at Copenhagen, we have already spoken of this old sacred Indian civilisation, and we laid stress upon the fact that it was so lofty, that that which has survived in the Vedas or in written tradition is only an echo of it. It is only in the Akashic Records that we can catch glimpses of the primeval teachings that issued from that time. There we gaze on heights which have not been re-attained.

The later epochs had quite a different mission. We know that a descent has taken place since then, but we know also that there will be again an ascent and that, as already mentioned, Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science has to prepare this ascent. We know that in the seventh post-Atlantean age of civilisation, there will be a kind of renewal of the ancient, holy Indian civilisation. We do not give preference to any religious view or creed, for all are measured with the same measure, in every particular they are described: in each the kernel of truth is sought.

The important thing is that essentials be kept in view. We must not allow ourselves to stray in the consideration of the nature of each separate creed, and if we keep this in mind, in approaching the various points of view, we find one fundamental difference. We find views on life which are of a more oriental nature, and others which have permeated our Western civilisation. Once we make this clear to ourselves, we have something which throws light on the meaning of existence. We then find that the ancients were already in possession of something which we have to regain with difficulty, viz., the doctrine of reincarnation. The oriental stream possessed this as something springing from the profoundest depths of existence. You can still realise how the oriental mind shapes the whole of life from this doctrine, when you look at the relation of the oriental to his Bodhisattvas and his Buddhas. If you keep in view how little it concerns the oriental to select a single figure with this or that definite name, as the ruling power in human evolution, you see at once how he attaches much more importance to tracing the individuality which goes on from life to life. Orientals say that there are such and such a number of Bodhisattvas, high beings who have sprung from men, but who have gradually evolved to a height which we can describe by saying: A Being has passed through many incarnations, and then has become a Bodhisattva, as did Gautama, the son of King Sudhodana. He was Bodhisattva and became Buddha. The name Buddha, however, is given to many, because they passed through many incarnations, became Bodhisattva, and then ascended to the next higher stage, that of Buddhahood. The name Buddha is a generic name. It denotes a degree of human attainment, and has no sense apart from the spiritual being who goes through many incarnations. Brahmanism fully agrees with Buddhism in regarding the individual who goes through the different personalities, rather than the single person. It comes to the same whether the Buddhist says:—“A Bodhisattva is destined to ascend to the highest degree of human attainment, and for this he has to go through many incarnations; but for me the highest is the Buddha.” Or whether the adherent of Brahmanism says: “The Bodhisattvas are indeed highly developed beings, who ascend to Buddhahood, but they are inferior to the Avatars, who are higher spiritual individualities.” You see, consideration of the persisting spiritual entity is what characterises both these oriental points of view.

But now let us turn to the West, and see what is the thing of greatest importance there. In order to enter a little more deeply into this connection, we must consider the ancient Hebrew point of view, where the personal element enters. When we speak of Plato, of Socrates, of Michelangelo, of Charlemagne, or of others, we are always speaking of a person: we place before men the separate life of the personality with all that this personality has done for mankind. In our Western life we do not direct our attention to the life which has gone from personality to personality, for it has been the mission of Western civilisation to direct attention for a time to the single life. When in the East the Buddha is spoken of, it is understood that the designation “Buddha” is an honourable title which may be applied to many personalities. When, on the contrary, the name “Plato” is uttered, we know that this refers only to a single personality. This has been the education of the West.

Let us now turn to our own day. In Western civilisation, mankind has been trained for a time to direct his attention to the personality, but the individual element, the “individuality” has now to be added to the personal element. We stand now at the point where we must reconquer the individual element, but strengthened, vivified, by the contemplation of the personal.

Let us take a definite case. In this connection we look back to the old Hebrew civilisation, which preceded that of the West. Let us turn our attention to the mighty personality of the prophet Elijah. To begin with, we may describe him as a personality. In the West he is seldom regarded in any other way. If we leave aside details and look at the personality from a wider point of view, we see that Elijah was something very important for our evolution. He gives the impression of a forerunner of the Christ-Impulse.

On looking back to the time of Moses, we see how something had been proclaimed to the people; we see that the God in man was proclaimed. “I AM the God Who was, Who is, Who is to come.” He has to be comprehended as in the ego, but among the ancient Hebrews He was comprehended as the Folk-soul of the race. Elijah went beyond Moses, though he did not make clear that the ego dwells in the single human individual as Divinity, for he could not make clear to the people of his time more than the world was then able to receive. While even the Mosaic Culture of the old Hebrews was conscious of the fact that “the Highest lies in the Ego,” and that this Ego found expression in the time of Moses in the Group-Soul of the people, we find Elijah already pointing to the individual human soul. We see a forward leap in evolution. But a further impulse was needed, and again a forerunner appeared, whom we know as the personality of John the Baptist. Once more it was in a significant expression that the quality of John the Baptist as a “Forerunner” found expression. A great occult fact is here indicated that man, as primeval man, once possessed ancient clairvoyance, so that he could look into the spiritual world—into Divine activity—but he gradually approached towards materialism; the vision of the spiritual world was cut off. To this fact John the Baptist alludes when he says: “Change the attitude of your soul; look no longer at what you can gain in the physical world: be watchful, a new impulse is at hand (he means the Christ-Impulse). Therefore I say unto you, seek the spiritual world that is in your midst; there the spiritual element appears with the Christ-Impulse.” Through this saying John the Baptist became a forerunner of the Christ-Impulse.

Now we can direct our gaze to another personality, to the remarkable personality of the painter Raphael. This remarkable personality presents itself to us in an unusual way. In the first place, we need only compare Raphael to—let us say—Titian, a painter of a later period. Whoever has an eye for such things, even if he look at the reproductions, will find the distinction. Look at the pictures of Raphael and at those of Titian! Raphael painted in such a way that he put Christian ideas into his pictures. He painted for the people of Europe as Christians of the West. His pictures are comprehensible to all Christians of the West, and will become so more and more. Take, on the other hand, the later painters. They painted almost exclusively for the Latin race, so that even the schisms of the Church found expression in their pictures.

With which pictures was Raphael most successful? With those in which he was able to demonstrate the impulses that lie in Christianity. He is at his best where he could represent some relationship of the Jesus-Child to the Madonna, where this Christ-relation appears as something that is an impulse to feeling. These are the things which he really painted best. We have for instance, no Crucifixion of his, but we have a Transfiguration. Wherever he can paint the budding and germinating aspect, that which is self-revealing, he paints with joy and there he paints his greatest and best pictures.

It is the same with the impression which his pictures produce. If some day you come to Germany and see the Sistine Madonna in Dresden, you will realise that that work of art—of which it is said that the Germans may rejoice to have such a celebrated picture among them, Yes! that they may even regard it as the flower of the painters’ art—you will realise that this work discloses a mystery of existence.

When Goethe in his time traveled from Leipsic to Dresden, he heard something quite different about the picture of the Madonna. The officials of the Dresden Gallery said something like this to him: “We have also a picture of Raphael’s, but it is nothing particular. It is badly painted. The look of the Child, the whole Child itself, everything to do with the Child, is common. The same with the Madonna. One can only think that she is painted by a dauber. And then these figures down below of which one does not know whether they are meant for children’s heads or angels!” Goethe heard this coarse opinion, so that at first he had no right appreciation of the picture. Everything which we hear about the picture at the present time only came to be understood later on, and the fact that Raphael’s pictures made their triumphal march through the world in reproductions, is a result of this better appreciation. We have only to call to mind what England has done for the reproduction and circulation of these pictures. But what was effected in England by the trouble which has been taken for the reproduction and circulation of Raphael’s pictures, will only be recognised when people have learned to look at the matter from the point of view of spiritual science.

Thus through his pictures, Raphael becomes for us the forerunner of a Christianity which will be cosmopolitan. Protestantism has long regarded the Madonna as specially Catholic; but to-day the Madonna has penetrated everywhere into Protestant countries and we are rising more to the occult interpretation, to a higher inter-denominational Christianity. So it will be more and more. If we may hope for such results as regards interdenominational Christianity, what Raphael has done will also help us in Anthroposophy.

It is remarkable that the above three personalities confront us in this manner: all three have the quality of being forerunners of Christianity. Now let us direct occult observation to these three persons. What does it teach us? It teaches us that the same individuality lived in Elijah, in John the Baptist and in Raphael. However impossible it may seem, it is the same soul which lived in Elijah and in Raphael.

When it is revealed to occult vision—which searches and investigates and does not merely compare in a superficial way—that it is the same soul that is present in Elijah, in John the Baptist and in Raphael, we may ask how it is possible that Raphael the painter becomes the vehicle for the individuality which lived in John the Baptist? One can conceive that this remarkable soul of John the Baptist lived in the forces which were present in Raphael.

Occult research comes in here again, not merely to put forth theories, but to tell us how things actually are in life. How do people write biographies of Raphael to-day? Even the best are so written that they simply state that Raphael was born on Good Friday of the year 1483. It is not for nothing that Raphael was born on a Good Friday. This birth already proclaimed his exceptional position in Christianity and shows that in the deepest and most significant way he was connected with the Christian Mysteries. It was on a Good Friday that Raphael was born. His father was Giovanni Santi. He died when Raphael was eleven years old. At the age of eight years his father sent him as a pupil to a painter, who was, however, not of any special eminence. But if one realises what was in Giovanni Santi, Raphael’s father, one gets a peculiar impression which is further strengthened when the matter is investigated in the Akashic Records. There it appears that there lived in the soul of Giovanni Santi much more than could be expressed in his personality and then we can agree with the duchess, who at his death said: “A man full of light and truth and fervent faith has died.” As occultist, one can say that in him there lived a much greater painter than appeared outwardly. The outer faculties, which depend on the physical and etheric organs, were not developed in Giovanni Santi. That was the original cause why he could not bring the capacities of his soul to full expression; but really a great painter lived in him.

Giovanni Santi died when Raphael was eleven years old. If we now follow what takes place, we see that man certainly loses his body, but that the longings, the aspirations, the impulses of his soul continue to exist, and continue to be active where they are most closely connected.

There will come a time when Anthroposophy will be made fruitful for life, as it can already be made fruitful by those who have grasped it vitally and not merely theoretically. Permit me here to interpolate something before going on with Raphael. What I tell you in the examples I give is not mere speculation; on the contrary, it is always taken from real life. Let us suppose that I had children to educate. Whoever pays attention to the capabilities of children can notice the individual element in every child, but such experiences can only be made by those who educate children. Now if one of the parents of a child dies while the child is still young and the other parent is still living, the following may be noticed: Certain inclinations will show themselves in the child which were not there before and which consequently cannot be explained. But one who has charge of children has to occupy himself with these things. Such a one would do well if he said: “People generally look upon what is in Anthroposophical books as mere folly: I will not take this for granted, but will try whether it is right or not.” Then he will soon be able to say “I find forces at work which were already there and again there are other forces playing into those which were already there.” Let us suppose that the father has passed through the gates of death and there now appears in the child, with some strength, certain qualities which had belonged to the father. If this assumption is made and if the matter is looked upon in this way, the knowledge which comes to us through Anthroposophy is applied to life in a sensible way, and then, as is soon discovered, we find our way in life, whereas before we did not. Thus the person who has gone through the gateway of death, remains united, through his forces, with those with whom he was connected in life. People do not observe things closely enough, otherwise they would see more often that children are quite different before the death of their parents from what they are afterwards. At present there is not enough regard for these things, but the time is coming when they will receive attention.

Giovanni Santi, the father, died when Raphael was eleven years old; he had not been able to attain great perfection as a painter, but powerful imagination was left to him and this was then developed in the soul of Raphael. We do not depreciate Raphael, if, while observing his soul, we say: Giovanni Santi lives on in Raphael, who appears to us as a completed personality, as one incapable of higher attainment because a dead man gives life to his work.

We now realise that in the soul of Raphael are reborn the vigorous forces of John the Baptist and in addition, there live in his soul the forces of Giovanni Santi; that together these two were able to bring to fruition the result which confronts us as Raphael. It is true that to-day we cannot yet speak publicly of such extraordinary things, but in fifty years’ time this may be possible, because evolution is progressing quickly, and the opinions held to-day are rapidly approaching their decline. Whoever accepts such things, sees that in Anthroposophy our task is to regard life everywhere from a new point of view. Just as in the future people will heal in the way to which I have referred, so they will reflect on the strange miracle of life wherein men attract to their assistance, from the spiritual world, the achievements of those who have passed through the gates of death.

I should like to draw your attention to two things, when speaking on the riddles of life; things which so truly can illuminate the meaning of life. One is the fate that has befallen the works of Raphael. Whoever looks to-day at the reproductions of his pictures, does not see what Raphael painted. And if he travels to Dresden or to Rome, he finds them so much spoiled that he can hardly be said to see the pictures of Raphael. It is easy to see what will become of them when we consider the fate of Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper,” which is falling more and more into decay. These pictures, in times to come, will fall into dust, and everything which great men have created will disappear. When these things have vanished, we may well ask: “What is the meaning of this creation and decay!” We shall see that really nothing remains of what the single personality has created.

Still another fact I should like to put before you, and that is the following: If when to-day, with Anthroposophy as an instrument, we desire to understand, and must understand, Christianity as an Impulse that works for the future, we have need of certain fundamental ideas through which we know how the Christ-Impulse will continue to work. This we require. And we can point to a development of Christianity for which Anthroposophy is necessary. We can point to a person who presents Anthroposophical truth in special form—namely, that of aphorisms. When we approach him we find much that is significant for Anthroposophy. This person is the German poet Novalis. When we study his writings, we find that he describes the future of Christianity from out of the occult truths it contains. Anthroposophy teaches us that we have here to do with the same individuality as is in Raphael, John the Baptist and Elijah.

We have here again to glance into the further development of Christianity. That is a fact of an occult nature, for no one reaches this result by reasoning. Let us once more put the different pictures together. We have the tragic fact of the destruction of the creations and works of single personalities. Raphael appears and allows his interdenominational Christianity to flow into the souls of men. But we have a foreboding that some day his creations will be destroyed, that his works will fall to dust. Then Novalis appears to take in hand the fulfilment of the task and continue the work he had begun. The idea is no longer now so tragic. We see that just as the personality dissolves in its sheaths, so the work dissolves, but the essential kernel lives on and continues the work it had begun. Here once again it is the individual to which our attention is directed. But because we have kept firmly in mind the Western view of life and therewith the personality, we are able to grasp the full significance of the individuality. Thus we see how important it is that the East directed its attention to the individuality, to the Bodhisattvas, who go through many incarnations; and how important it is that the West first directed its attention to the contemplation of the single personality, in order, later on, to grasp what the individuality is.

Now I think there are many Anthroposophists who will say: “Well, this is something we have just to believe, when Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis are mentioned.” For many the main thing is that they must just believe. It is essentially the same as when from the scientific side some fact is asserted that many people have to believe, such as that this or that spectrum appears when certain metals are examined by spectrum analysis, or when for instance, the nebula in Orion is so examined. Some people have certainly investigated it, but the others, the majority, have to believe. But that is after all not the essential point. The essential point is that Anthroposophy is at the beginning of its development, and will bring souls to the point of examining for themselves such matters as we have discussed to-day. In this respect, Anthroposophy will help forward human evolution very rapidly.

I have put before you a few instances, which I submit as resulting from the occult point of view regarding life. Take only the three points which we have considered and you will see that by knowing in what way life is related to the Spirit of the Earth, the art of healing can be given a new direction and supplied with new impulses; how Raphael can only be understood when not only his personal forces are taken into account, but also those forces which came from his father. The third point is that we can educate children when we know the interplay of forces acting on them. Outwardly people admit that they are surrounded by numberless forces which incessantly influence them, that man is continually influenced by air, the temperature, his surroundings and the other Karmic conditions under which he lives. That these things do not interfere with his freedom everyone knows. They are the factors with which we have to reckon to-day. But that man is continually surrounded by spiritual forces and that these spiritual forces must be investigated is what Anthroposophy has to teach men: they will have to learn to take these forces into account and will have to reckon with them in important cases of health and disease, of education and life. They will have to be mindful of such influences as come from without, from the super-sensible world, when, for instance, some one’s friend dies and he then shares those sympathies and ideas that belonged to him. What has been said does not hold good for children only, but for all ages. It is not at all necessary that people should know with their ordinary consciousness in what way the forces of the super-sensible world are active. Their general frame of mind may show it, even their state of health or illness may show it. And those things which signify the connection of man’s life on the physical plane with the facts of the super-sensible worlds have a still wider bearing.

I should like to put before you a simple fact which will show you the nature of this connection, a fact which is not invented, but has been observed in many cases. A man notices at a certain time that he has feelings which formerly he did not know; that he has sympathies and antipathies which formerly he did not know; that he succeeds easily where before he found difficulties. He cannot explain it. His surroundings cannot explain it to him, nor do the facts of life itself give him any clue. In such a case it can be found, when we observe accurately (it is true that one must have an eye for such things), that now he knows things which he did not know before and does things which he could not do before. If we examine matters further and have had experience of the teachings of Anthroposophy, it may be that we shall hear something like the following from him: “I do not know what to think of myself. I dream of a person whom I have never seen in my life. He comes into my dreams, though I never had anything to do with him.” If we follow the matter up it will be found that till now he had no occasion to occupy himself with this person. But this person had died and now first approaches him in the spiritual world. When he had come near enough to him he appeared to him in a dream which was yet more than a dream. From this person, whom he had not known in life, who, however, after death, gained influence on his life, came the impulses which he had not known before. It is not a question of saying: “It is only a dream.” It is far more a question of what the dream contained. It may be something which, although in the form of a dream, is nearer to reality than the outer consciousness. Does it matter at all whether Edison invents something in a dream or in clear waking consciousness? What matters is whether the invention is true, is useful. So also it does not matter whether an experience takes place in dream-consciousness or in physical consciousness; what is of importance is whether the experience is true or false.

If we now summarise what we are able to understand from what has just been said, we may say “It is clear to us when we learn to apply Anthroposophy, that life appears to us in quite a different light from before.” In this respect people who are very learned in materialistic ways of thought are but children. We can convince ourselves of this at any time. When to-day I came here by train I took up the pamphlet of a German physiologist in its second edition. In it the writer says that we cannot speak of “active attention” in the soul, of directing the attention of the soul to anything, but that everything depends on the functioning of the various ganglia of the brain; and because the tracks have to be made by thoughts, everything depends on how the separate brain cells function. No intensity of the soul intervenes, it depends entirely upon whether this or that connecting thread in our brain has been pulled or not. These learned materialists are really children. When we lay our hands on anything of this kind one cannot help thinking how guileless these people are! In the same pamphlet one finds the statement that lately the centenary of Darwin was celebrated, and that on that occasion, both qualified and unqualified people spoke. The author of the pamphlet thought himself of course quite specially qualified. And then follows the whole brain-cell theory and its application. But how is it with the logic of the matter? When one is used to considering things in accordance with truth and then sees what these great children offer people concerning the meaning of life, the thought occurs to one that after all it comes to the same as if someone should say that it was simply nonsense that a human will had any part in the way the railways intersect the face of Europe! For it is just the same as if at a given time one considered all the engines in their varied parts and functions, and said that these are organised in such and such a way and run in so many directions. But the different roads meet at certain junctions and through them the engines can be turned in any direction. What would occur if this were done would be a great disarrangement of trains on the European railways. Just as little, however, can it be asserted that what takes place in the human brain cells as the life of human thought depends only on the condition of the cells. If such learned people then happen, without previous knowledge, to hear a lecture on Anthroposophy, they look upon that which is said as the most utter nonsense. They are firmly convinced that a human will can never have anything to do with the mode and manner in which the European engines run, but that it depends on how they are heated and driven.

So we see how at the present day we stand confronted by questions regarding the meaning of life. On the one side there is darkness, on the other the spiritual facts press in upon us. If we grasp what has been said to-day we can, with this as a basis, put the question before our soul in the way in which it has to be put in Anthroposophy, namely: What is the meaning of life and existence, and especially of human life and human existence?

In the last lecture we found that moral impulses are fundamental in human nature. From the facts adduced, we tried to prove that a foundation of morality and goodness lies at the bottom of the human soul, and that really it has only been in the course of evolution, in man's passage from incarnation to incarnation, that he has diverged from the original instinctive good foundation and that thereby what is evil, wrong and unmoral has come into humanity. But if this is so, we must really wonder that evil is possible, or that it ever originated, and the question as to how evil became possible in the course of evolution requires an answer. We can only obtain a satisfactory reply by examining the elementary moral instruction given to man in ancient times.

The pupils of the Mysteries whose highest ideal was gradually to penetrate to full spiritual knowledge and truths were always obliged to work from a moral foundation. In those places where they worked in the right way according to the Mysteries, the peculiarity of man's moral-nature was shown in a special way to the pupils. Briefly, we may say: The pupils of the Mysteries were shown that freewill can only be developed if a person is in a position to go wrong in one of two directions; further, that life can only run its course truly and favourably when these two lines of opposition are considered as being like the two sides of a balance, of which first one side and then the other goes up and down. True balance only exists when the crossbeam is horizontal. They were shown that it is impossible to express man's right procedure by saying: this is right and that is wrong. It is only possible to gain the true idea when the human being, standing in the centre of the balance, can be swayed each moment of his life, now to one side, now to the other, but he himself holds the correct mean between the two.

Let us take the virtues of which we have spoken: first—valour, bravery. In this respect human nature may diverge on one side to foolhardiness—that is, unbridled activity in the world and the straining of the forces at one's disposal to the utmost limit. Foolhardiness is one side; the opposite is cowardice. A person may turn the scale in either of these directions. In the Mysteries the pupils were shown that when a man degenerates into foolhardiness he loses himself and lays aside his own individuality and is crushed by the wheels of life. Life tears him in pieces if he errs in this direction, but if, on the other hand, he errs on the side of cowardice, he hardens himself and tears himself away from his connection with beings and objects. He then becomes a being shut up within himself, who, as he cannot bring his deeds into harmony with the whole, loses his connection with things. This was shown to the pupils in respect to all that a man may do. He may degenerate in such a way that he is torn in pieces, and losing his own individuality is crushed by the objective world; on the other hand, he may degenerate not merely in courage, but also in every other respect in such a way that he hardens within himself. Thus at the head of the moral code in all the Mysteries there were written the significant words: “Thou must find the mean,” so that through thy deeds thou must not lose thyself in the world, and that the world also does not lose thee.

Those are the two possible extremes into which man may fall. Either he may be lost to the world, the world lays hold on him, and crushes him, as is the case in foolhardiness; or the world may be lost to him, because he hardens himself in his egoism, as is the case in cowardice. In the Mysteries, the pupils were told that goodness cannot merely be striven for as goodness obtained once for all; rather does goodness come only through man being continually able to strike out in two directions like a pendulum and by his own inner power able to find the balance, the mean between the two.

You have in this all that will enable you to understand the freedom of the will and the significance of reason and wisdom in human action. If it were fitting for man to observe eternal moral principles he need only acquire these moral principles and then he could go through life on a definite line of march, as it were, but life is never like this. Freedom in life consists rather in man's being always able to err in one direction or another. But in this way the possibility of evil arises. For what is evil? It is that which originates when the human being is either lost to the world, or the world is lost to him. Goodness consists in avoiding both these extremes.. In the course of evolution evil became not only a possibility but an actuality; for as man journeyed from incarnation to incarnation, by his turning now to one side and now to the other, he could not always find the balance at once, and it was necessary for the compensation to be karmically made at a future time. What man cannot attain in one life, because he does not always find the mean at once, he will attain gradually in the course of evolution in as much as man diverts his course to one side, and is then obliged, perhaps in the next life, to strike out again in the opposite direction, and thus bring about the balance.

What I have just told you was a golden rule in the ancient Mysteries. We often find among the ancient philosophers echoes of the principles taught in these Mysteries. Aristotle makes a statement, when, speaking of virtue, which we cannot understand unless we know that what has just been said was an old principle in the Mysteries which had been received by Aristotle as tradition and embodied in his philosophy. He says: Virtue is a human capacity or skill guided by reason and insight, which, as regards man, holds the balance between the too much and the too-little. Aristotle here gives a definition of virtue, such as no subsequent philosophy has attained. But as Aristotle had little tradition from the Mysteries, it was possible for him to give the precise truth.

That is, then, the mean, which must be found and followed if a man is really to be virtuous, if moral power is to pulsate through the world. We can now answer the question as to why morals should exist at all. For what happens when there is no morality, when evil is done, and when the too-much or the too-little takes place, when man is lost to the world by being crushed, or when the world loses him? In each of these cases something is always destroyed. Every evil or unmoral act is a process of destruction, and the moment man sees that when he has done wrong he cannot do otherwise than destroy something, take something from the world, in that moment a mighty influence for good has awakened within him. It is especially the task of Spiritual Science—which is really only just beginning its work in the world—to show that all evil brings about a destructive process, that it takes away from the world something which is necessary. When in accordance with our anthroposophical standpoint, we hold this principle, then what we know about the nature of man leads us to a particular interpretation of good and evil.

We know that the sentient-soul was chiefly developed in the old Chaldean or Egyptian epoch the third post-Atlantean age. The people of the present day have but little notion what this epoch of development was like at that time, for in external history one can reach little further back than to the Egyptian age. We know that the intellectual, or mind-soul, developed in the fourth or Graeco-Latin age, and that now in our age we are developing the consciousness-or spiritual-soul. The spirit-self will only come into prominence in the sixth age of post-Atlantean development.

Let us now ask: How can the sentient-soul turn to one side or the other, away from what is right? The sentient-soul is that quality in man which enables him to perceive the objective world, to take it into himself, to take part in it, not to pass through the world ignorant of all the diversified objects it contains, but to go through the world in such a way that he forms a relationship with them. All this is brought about by the sentient-soul. We find one side to which man can deviate with the sentient-soul when we enquire: What makes it possible for man to enter into relationship with the objective world? It is what may be called interest in the different things, and by this word “interest” something is expressed which in a moral sense is extremely important. It is much more important that one should bear in mind the moral significance of interest, than that one should devote oneself to thousands of beautiful moral axioms which may be only paltry and hypocritical. Let it be clearly understood, that our moral impulses are in fact never better guided than when we take a proper interest in objects and beings. In our last lecture we spoke in a deeper sense of love as an impulse and in such a way that we cannot now be misunderstood if we say that the usual, oft-repeated declamation, “love, love, and again love” cannot replace the moral impulse contained in what may be described by the word interest.

Let us suppose that we have a child before us. What is the condition primary to our devotion to this child? What is the first condition to our educating the child? It is that we take an interest in it. There is something unhealthy or abnormal in the human soul if a person withdraws himself from something in which he takes an interest. It will more and more be recognised that the impulse of interest is a quite specially golden impulse in the moral sense the further we advance to the actual foundations of morality and do not stop at the mere preaching of morals. Our inner powers are also called forth as regards mankind when we extend our interests, when we are able to transpose ourselves with understanding into beings and objects.

Even sympathy is awakened in the right manner if we take an interest in a being; and if, as anthroposophists, we set ourselves the task of extending our interests more and more and of widening our mental horizon, this will promote the universal brotherhood of mankind. Progress is not gained by the mere preaching of universal love, but by the extension of our interests further and further, so that we come to interest ourselves increasingly in souls with widely different characters, racial and national peculiarities, with widely different temperaments, and holding widely differing religious and philosophical views, and approach them with understanding. Right interest, right understanding, calls forth from the soul the right moral action.

Here also we must hold the balance between two extremes. One extreme is apathy which passes everything by and occasions immense moral mischief in the world. An apathetic person only lives in himself; obstinately, insisting on his own principles, and saying: This is my standpoint. In a moral sense this insistence upon a standpoint is always bad. The essential thing is for us to have an open mind for all that surrounds us. Apathy separates us from the world, while interest unites us with it. The world loses us through our apathy: in this direction we become unmoral. Thus we see that apathy and lack of interest in the world are morally evil in the highest degree.

Anthroposophy is something which makes the mind ever more active, helps us to think with greater readiness of what is spiritual and to take it into ourselves. Just as it is true that warmth comes from the fire when we light a stove so it is true that interest in humanity and the world comes when we study spiritual science. Wisdom is the fuel for interest and we may say, although this may perhaps not be evident without further explanation, that Anthroposophy arouses this interest in us when we study those more remote subjects, the teachings concerning the evolutionary stages through Saturn, Sun and Moon, and the meaning of Karma and so on. It really comes about that interest is produced as the result of anthroposophical knowledge while from materialistic knowledge comes something which in a radical manner must be described as apathy and which, if it alone were to hold sway in the world, would, of necessity, do untold harm.

See how many people go through the world and meet this or that person, but really do not get to know him, for they are quite shut up in themselves. How often do we find that two people have been friends for a long time and then suddenly there comes a rupture. This is because the friendship had a materialistic foundation and only after the lapse of time did they discover that they were mutually unsympathetic. At the present time very few people have the “hearing” ear for that which speaks from man to man; but Anthroposophy should bring about an expansion of our perceptions, so that we shall gain a “seeing” eye and an open mind for all that is human around us and so we shall not go through the world. apathetically, but with true interest.

We also avoid the other extreme by distinguishing between true and false interests, and thus observe the happy mean. Immediately to throw oneself, as it were, into the arms of each person we meet is to lose oneself passionately in the person; that is not true interest. If we do this, we lose ourselves to the world. Through apathy the world loses us; through uncontrolled passion we lose ourselves to the world. But through healthy, devoted interest we stand morally firm in the centre, in the state of balance.

In the third post-Atlantean age of civilisation, that is, in the Chaldaic-Egyptian age, there still existed in a large part of humanity on earth a certain power to hold the balance between apathy and the passionate intoxicating devotion to the world; and it is this, which in ancient times, and also by Plato and Aristotle, was called wisdom. But people looked upon this wisdom as the gift of superhuman beings, for up to that time the ancient impulses of wisdom were active. Therefore, from this point of view, especially relating to moral impulses, we may call the third post-Atlantean age, the age of instinctive wisdom. You will perceive the truth of what was said last year, though with a different intention, in the Copenhagen lectures on The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind. In those lectures we showed how, in the third post-Atlantean age, mankind still stood nearer to the divine spiritual powers. And that which drew mankind closer to the divine spiritual powers, was instinctive wisdom.

Thus, it was a gift of the gods to find at that time the happy mean in action, between apathy and sensuous passionate devotion. This balance, this equilibrium was at that time still maintained through external institutions. The complete intermingling of humanity which came about in the fourth age of post-Atlantean development through the migrations of various peoples, did not yet exist. Mankind was still divided into smaller peoples and tribes. Their interests were wisely regulated by nature, and were so far active that the right moral impulses could penetrate; and on the other hand, through the existence of blood kinsmanship in the tribe, an obstacle was placed in the way of passion. Even to-day one cannot fail to observe that it is easiest to show interest within blood-relationship and common descent, but in this there is not what is called sensuous passion. As people were gathered together in relatively small tracts of country in the Egypto-Chaldaic age, the wise and happy mean was easily found.

But the idea of the progressive development of humanity is that that, which originally was instinctive, which was only spiritual, shall gradually disappear and that man shall become independent of the divine spiritual powers. Hence we see that even in the fourth post-Atlantean age, the Graeco-Latin age, not only the philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, but also public opinion in Greece, considered wisdom as something which must be gained as something which is no longer the gift of the gods, but after which man must strive. According to Plato, the first virtue is wisdom, and according to him, he who does not strive after wisdom is unmoral.

We are now in the fifth post-Atlantean age. We are still far from the time when the wisdom instinctively implanted in humanity as a divine impulse, will be raised into consciousness. Hence in our age people are specially liable to err in both the directions we have mentioned, and it is therefore particularly necessary that the great dangers to be found at this point should be counteracted by a spiritual conception of the World, so that what man once possessed as instinctive wisdom may now become conscious wisdom. The Anthroposophical Movement is to contribute to this end.

The gods once gave wisdom to the unconscious human soul, so that it possessed this wisdom instinctively, whereas now we have first to learn the truths about the cosmos and about human evolution. The ancient customs were also fashioned after the thoughts of the gods.

We have the right view of Anthroposophy when we look upon it as the investigations of the thoughts of the gods. In former times these flowed instinctively into man, but now we have to investigate them, to make the knowledge of them our own. In this sense Anthroposophy must be sacred to us; we must be able to consider reverently that the ideas imparted to us are really something divine, and something which we human beings are allowed to think and reflect upon as the divine thoughts according to which the world has been ordered. When Anthroposophy stands in this aspect to us, we can then consider the knowledge it imparts in such a way that we understand that it has been given us so as to enable us to fulfil our mission. Mighty truths are made known to us, when we study what has been imparted concerning the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, concerning reincarnation, and the development of the various races, etc. But we only assume the right attitude towards it when we say: The thoughts we seek are the thoughts wherewith the gods have guided evolution. We think the evolution of the gods. If we understand this correctly we are overwhelmed by something that is deeply moral. This is inevitable. Then we say: In ancient times man had instinctive wisdom from the gods, who gave him the wisdom according to which they fashioned the world, and morality thus became possible. But through Anthroposophy we now acquire this wisdom consciously. Therefore we may also trust that in us it shall be transformed into moral impulses, so that we do not merely receive anthroposophical wisdom, but a moral stimulus as well.

Now into what sort of moral impulses will the wisdom acquired through Anthroposophy be transformed? We must here touch upon a point whose development the anthroposophist can foresee, the profound moral significance and moral weight of which he even ought to foresee, a point of development which is far removed from what is customary at the present time, which is what Plato called the “ideal of wisdom.” He named it with a word which was in common use when man still possessed the ancient wisdom, and it would be well to replace this by the word veracity, for as we have now become more individual, we have withdrawn ourselves from the divine, and must therefore strive back to it. We must learn to feel the full weight and meaning of the word ‘veracity’, and this in a moral sense will be a result of an anthroposophical world conception and conviction. Anthroposophists must understand how important it is to be filled with the moral element of truth in an age when materialism has advanced so far that one may indeed still speak of truth, but when the general life and understanding is far removed from perceiving what is right in this direction. Nor can this be otherwise at the present time; as owing to a certain quality acquired by modern life, truth is something which must, to a great extent, be lacking in the understanding of the day, I ask what does a man feel to-day when in the newspapers or some other printed matter he finds certain information, and afterwards it transpires that it is simply untrue? I seriously ask you to ponder over this. One cannot say that it happens in every case, but one must assert that it probably happens in every fourth case. Untruthfulness has everywhere become a quality of the age; it is impossible to describe truth as a characteristic of our times.

For instance, take a man whom you know to have written or said something false, and place the facts before him. As a rule, you will find that he does not fear such a thing to be wrong. He will immediately make the excuse: “But I said it in good faith.” Anthroposophists must not consider it moral when a person says it is merely incorrect what he has said in good faith. People will learn to understand more and more, that they must first ascertain that what they assert really happened. No man should make a statement, or impart anything to another until he has exhausted every means to ascertain the truth of his assertions; and it is only when he recognises this obligation that he can perceive veracity as moral impulse. And then when someone has either written or said something that is incorrect, he will no longer say: “I thought it was so, said it in good faith,” for he will learn that it is his duty to express not merely what he thinks is right, but it is also his duty to say only what is true, and correct. To this end, a radical change must gradually come about in our cultural life. The speed of travel, the lust of sensation on the part of man, everything that comes with a materialistic age, is opposed to truth. In the sphere of morality, Anthroposophy will be an educator of humanity to the duty of truth.

My business today is not to say how far truth has been already realised in the Anthroposophical Society, but to show that what I have said must be a principle, a lofty anthroposophical ideal. The moral evolution within the movement will have enough to do if the moral ideal of truth is thought, felt and perceived in all directions, for this ideal must be what produces the virtue of the sentient-soul of man in the right way.

The second part of the soul of which we have to speak in Anthroposophy is what we usually call the mind-soul, or intellectual-soul (German—Gemütsseele). You know that it developed especially in the fourth post-Atlantean, or Graeco-Latin age. The virtue which is the particular emblem for this part of the soul is bravery, valour and courage; we have already dwelt on this many times, and also on the fact that foolhardiness and cowardice are its extremes. Courage, bravery, valour is the mean between foolhardiness and cowardice. The German word “gemüt” expresses in the sound of the word that it is related to this. The word “gemüt” indicates the mid-part of the human soul, the part that is “mutvoll,” full of “mut,” courage, strength and force.

This was the second, the middle virtue of Plato and Aristotle. It is that virtue which in the fourth post-Atlantean age still existed in man as a divine gift, while wisdom was really only instinctive in the third. Instinctive valour and bravery existed as a gift of the gods (you may gather this from the first lecture) among the people who, in the fourth age, met the expansion of Christianity to the north. They showed that among them valour was still a gift of the gods. Among the Chaldeans wisdom, the wise penetration into the secrets of the starry world, existed as a divine gift, as something inspired. Among the people of the fourth post-Atlantean age, there existed valour and bravery, especially among the Greeks and Romans, but it existed also among the peoples whose work it became to spread Christianity. This instinctive valour was lost later than instinctive wisdom.

If we look round us now in the fifth post-Atlantean age, we see that, as regards valour and bravery, we are in the same position in respect of the Greeks as the Greeks were to the Chaldeans and Egyptians in regard to wisdom. We look back to what was a divine gift in the age immediately preceding ours, and in a certain way we can strive for it again. However, the two previous lectures have shown us, that in connection with this effort a certain transformation must take place. We have seen the transformation in Francis of Assisi of that divine gift which manifested itself as bravery and valour. We saw that the transformation came about as the result of an inner moral force which in our last lecture we found to be the force of the Christ-impulse; the transformation of valour and bravery into true love. But this true love must be guided by another virtue, by the interest in the being to whom we turn our love. In his Timon of Athens Shakespeare shows how love, or warmth of heart, causes harm, when it is passionately manifested; when it appears merely as a quality of human nature without being guided by wisdom and truth. A man is described who gave freely of his possessions, who squandered his living in all directions. Liberality is a virtue, but Shakespeare also shows us that nothing but parasites are produced by what is squandered.

Just as ancient valour and bravery were guided from the Mysteries by the European Brahmins—those wise leaders who kept themselves hidden in the background—so also in human nature this virtue must accord with and be guided by interest. Interest, which connects us with the external world in the right way, must lead and guide us when, with our love, we turn to the world. Fundamentally this may be seen from the characteristic and striking example of Francis of Assisi. The sympathy he expressed was not obtrusive or offensive. Those who overwhelm others with their sympathy are by no means always actuated by the right moral impulses. And how many there are who will not receive anything that is given out of pity. But to approach another with, understanding is not offensive. Under some circumstances a person must needs refuse to be sympathised with; but the attempt to understand his nature is something to which no reasonable person can object. Hence also the attitude of another person cannot be blamed or condemned if his actions are determined by this principle.

It is understanding which can guide us with respect to this second virtue: Love. It is that which, through the Christ-impulse, has become the special virtue of the mind-soul or intellectual-soul; it is the virtue which may be described as human love accompanied by human understanding. Sympathy in grief and joy is the virtue which in the future must produce the most beautiful and glorious fruits in human social life, and, in one who rightly understands the Christ-impulse, this sympathy and this love will originate quite naturally, it will develop into feeling. It is precisely through the anthroposophical understanding of the Christ-impulse that it will become feeling.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha Christ descended into earthly evolution; His impulses, His activities are here now, they are everywhere. Why did He descend to this earth? In order that through what He has to give to the world, evolution may go forward in the right way. Now that the Christ-impulse is in the world, if through what is unmoral, if through lack of interest in our fellow-men, we destroy something, then we take away a portion of the world into which the Christ-impulse has flowed. Thus because the Christ-impulse is now here, we directly destroy something of it. But if we give to the world what can be given to it through virtue, which is creative, we build. We build through self-surrender. It is not without reason that it has often been said, that Christ was first crucified on Golgotha, but that He is crucified again and again through the deeds, of man. Since Christ has entered into the Earth development through the deed upon Golgotha, we, by our unmoral deeds, by our unkindness and lack of interest, add to the sorrow and pain inflicted upon Him. Therefore it has been said, again and again: Christ is crucified anew as long as unmorality, unkindness and lack of interest exist. Since the Christ-impulse has permeated the world, it is this which is made to suffer.

Just as it is true that through evil, which is destructive, we withdraw something from the Christ-impulse and continue the crucifixion upon Golgotha, it is also true that when we act out of love, in all cases where we use love, we add to the Christ-impulse, we help to bring it to life. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me” (Matthew 25, 40), this is the most significant statement of love and this statement must become the most profound moral impulse if it is once anthroposophically understood. We do this when with understanding we confront our fellow-men and offer them something in our actions, our virtue, our conduct towards them which is conditioned by our understanding of their nature. Our attitude towards our fellow-men is our attitude towards the Christ-impulse itself.

It is a powerful moral impulse, something which is a real foundation for morals, when we feel: “The Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished for all men, and an impulse has thence spread abroad throughout the whole world. When you are dealing with your fellow-men, try to understand them in their special, characteristics of race, colour, nationality, religious faith, philosophy, etc. If you meet them and do this or that to them, you do it to Christ. Whatever you do to men, in the present condition of the earth's evolution, you do to Christ.” This statement: “What ye have done to one of My brothers, ye have done unto Me,” will at the same time become a mighty moral impulse to the man who understands the fundamental significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. So that we may say: Whereas the gods of pre-Christian times gave instinctive wisdom to man, instinctive valour and bravery, so love streams down from the symbol of the cross, the love which is based upon the mutual interest of man in man.

Thereby the Christ-impulse will work powerfully in the world. On the day when it comes about that the Brahmin not only loves and understands the Brahmin, the Pariah the Pariah, the Jew the Jew, and the Christian the Christian; but when the Jew is able to understand the Christian, the Pariah the Brahmin, the American the Asiatic, as man, and put himself in his place, then one will know how deeply it is felt in a Christian way when we say: “All men must feel themselves to be brothers, no matter what their religious creed may be.” We ought to consider what otherwise binds us as being of little value. Father, mother, brother, sister, even one's own life one ought to esteem less than that which speaks from one human soul to the other. He who, in this sense does not regard as base all that impairs the connection with the Christ-impulse cannot be Christ's disciple. The Christ-impulse balances and compensates human differences. Christ's disciple is one who regards mere human distinctions as being of little account, and clings to the impulse of love streaming forth from the Mystery of Golgotha, which in this respect we perceive as a renewal of what was given to mankind as original virtue.

We have now but to consider what may be spoken of as the virtue of the Consciousness- or Spiritual- Soul. When we consider the fourth post-Atlantean age, we find that Temperance or Moderation was still instinctive. Plato and Aristotle called it the chief virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Again they comprehended it as a state of balance, as the mean of what exists in the Spiritual-soul. The Spiritual-Soul consists in man's becoming conscious of the external world through his bodily nature. The sense body is primarily the instrument of the Spiritual-Soul, and it is also the sense body through which man arrives at self-consciousness.

Therefore the sense-body of man must be preserved. If it were not preserved for the mission of the earth, then that mission could not be fulfilled. But here also there is a limit. If a man only used all the forces he possessed in order to enjoy himself, he would shut himself up in himself, and the world would lose him. The man who merely enjoys himself, who uses all his forces merely to give himself pleasure, cuts himself off from the world—so thought Plato and Aristotle—the world loses him. And he, who denies himself everything renders himself weaker and weaker, and is finally laid hold of by the external world-process, and is crushed by the outer world. For he who goes beyond the forces appropriate to him as man, he who goes to excess is laid hold of by the world-process and is lost in it.

Thus what man has developed for the building up of the Spiritual-soul can be dissolved, so that he comes into the position of losing the world. Temperance or Moderation is the virtue which enables man to avoid these extremes. Temperance implies neither asceticism nor gluttony, but the happy mean between these two; and this is the virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Regarding this virtue we have not yet progressed beyond the instinctive standpoint. A little reflection will teach you that, on the whole, people are very much given to sampling the two extremes. They swing to and fro between them. Leaving out of account the few who at the present day endeavour to gain clear views on this subject, you will find that the majority of people live very much after a particular pattern. In Central Europe this is often described by saying: There are people in Berlin who eat and drink to excess the entire winter, and then in summer they go to Carlsbad in order to remove the ill-effects produced by months of intemperance, thus going from one extreme to the other. Here you have the weighing of the scale, first to one side and then to the other. This is only a radical case. It is very evident that though the foregoing is extreme, and not universal to any great extent, still the oscillation between enjoyment and deprivation exists everywhere. People themselves ensure that there is excess on one side, and then they get the physicians to prescribe a so-called lowering system of cure, that is, the other extreme, in order that the ill effects may be repaired.

From this, it will be seen that in this respect people are still in an instinctive condition, that there is still an instinctive feeling, which is a kind of divine gift, not to go too far in one direction or another. But just as the other instinctive qualities of man were lost, these, too, will be lost with the transition from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean age. This quality which is still possessed as a natural tendency will be lost; and now you will be able to judge how much the anthroposophical world conception and conviction will have to contribute in order gradually to develop consciousness in this field.

At the present time there are very few, even developed anthroposophists, who see clearly that Anthroposophy provides the means to gain the right consciousness in this field also. When Anthroposophy is able to bring more weight to bear in this direction, then will appear what I can only describe in the following way; people will gradually long more and more for great spiritual truths. Although Anthroposophy is still scorned to-day, it will not always be so. It will spread, and overcome all its external opponents, and everything else still opposing it, and anthroposophists will not be satisfied by merely preaching universal love. It will be understood that one cannot acquire Anthroposophy in one day, any more than a person can take sufficient nourishment in one day to last the whole of his life. Anthroposophy has to be acquired to an ever increasing extent. It will come to pass that in the Anthroposophical Movement it will not be so often stated that these are our principles, and if we have these principles then we are anthroposophists; for the feeling and experience of standing in a community of the living element in anthroposophy will extend more and more.

Moreover, let us consider what happens by people mentally working upon the particular thoughts, the particular feelings and impulses which come from anthroposophical wisdom. We all know that anthroposophists can never have a materialistic view of the world, they have exactly the opposite, But he who says the following is a materialistic thinker: “When one thinks, a movement of the molecules or atoms of the brain takes place, and it is because of this movement that one has thought. Thought proceeds from the brain somewhat like a thin smoke, or it is something like the flame from a candle.” Such, is the materialistic view. The anthroposophical view is the opposite. In the latter it is the thought, the experience in the soul which sets the brain and nervous system in motion. The way in which our brain moves depends upon what thoughts we think. This is exactly the opposite of what is said by the materialist. If you wish to know how the brain of a person is constituted, you must inquire into what thoughts he has, for just as the printed characters of a book are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts, so the movements of the brain are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts.

Must we not then say that the brain will be differently affected when it is filled with anthroposophical thoughts than it will be in a society which plays cards? Different processes are at work in your minds when you follow anthroposophical thoughts from when you are in a company of card players, or see the pictures in a movie theatre. In the human organism nothing is isolated or stands alone. Everything is connected; one part acts and reacts on another. Thoughts act upon the brain and nervous system, and the latter is connected with the whole organism, and although many people may not yet be aware of it, when the hereditary characteristics still hidden in the body are conquered, the following will come about. The thoughts will be communicated from the brain to the stomach, and the result will be that things that are pleasant to people's taste to-day will no longer taste good to those who have received anthroposophical thoughts. The thoughts which anthroposophists have received are divine thoughts. They act upon the whole organism in such a manner that it will prefer to taste what is good for it. Man will smell and perceive as unsympathetic what does not suit him—a peculiar perspective, one which may perhaps be called materialistic, but is exactly the reverse.

This kind of appetite will come as a consequence of anthroposophical work; you will like one thing and prefer it at meals, dislike another and not wish to eat it. You may judge for yourselves when you notice that perhaps you now have an aversion to things, which before your anthroposophical days you did not possess. This will become more and more general when man works selflessly at his higher development, so that the world may receive what is right from him. One must not, however, play fast-and-lose with the words “selflessness” and “egoism.” These words may very easily be misused. It is not altogether selfless when someone says: “I shall only be active in the world and for the world; what does it matter about my own spiritual development? I shall only work, not strive egoistically!” It is not egoism when a person undergoes a higher development, because he thus fits himself more fully to bear an active part in the furtherance of the world development. If a person neglects his own further development, he renders himself useless to the world, he withdraws his force from it. We must do the right thing in this respect as well, in order to develop in ourselves what the Deity had in view for us.

Thus, through Anthroposophy a human race, or rather, a nucleus of humanity will be developed, which perceives temperance as a guiding ideal not merely instinctively, but which has a conscious sympathy for what makes man in a worthy way into a useful part of the divine world-order, and a conscious disinclination for all that mars man as a part in the universal order.

Thus we see that also in that which is produced in man himself, there are moral impulses, and we find what we may call life-wisdom or practical wisdom as transformed temperance. The ideal of practical wisdom which is to be taken into consideration for the next, the sixth post-Atlantean age, will be the ideal virtue which Plato calls “justice.” That is: the harmonious accord of these virtues. As in humanity the virtues have altered to some extent, so what was looked upon as justice in pre-Christian times has also changed. A single virtue such as this, which harmonises the others did not exist at that time. The harmony of the virtues stood before the mental vision of humanity as an ideal of the most distant future. We have seen that the moral impulse of bravery has been changed to love. We have also seen that wisdom has become truth. To begin with, truth is a virtue which places man in a just and worthy manner in external life. But if we wish to arrive at truthfulness regarding spiritual things, how then can we arrange it in relation to those things? We acquire truthfulness, we gain the virtue of the Sentient-Soul through a right and appropriate interest, through right understanding. Now what is this interest with regard to the spiritual world? If we wish to bring the physical world and especially man before us, we must open ourselves towards him, we must have a seeing eye for his nature. How do we obtain this seeing-eye with reference to the spiritual world? We gain it by developing a particular kind of feeling, that which appeared at a time when the old instinctive wisdom had sunk into the depths of the soul's life. This type of feeling was often described by the Greeks in the words: “All philosophical thought begins with wonder.” Something essentially moral is said when we say that our relationship to the super-sensible world begins with wonder. The savage, uncultivated human being, is but little affected by the great phenomena of the world. It is through mental development that man comes to find riddles in the phenomena of everyday life, and to perceive that there is something spiritual at the back of them. It is wonder that directs our souls up to the spiritual sphere in order that we may penetrate to the knowledge of that world; and we can only arrive at this knowledge when our soul is attracted by the phenomena which it is possible to investigate. It is this attraction which give rise to wonder, astonishment and faith. It is always wonder and amazement which direct us to what is super-sensible, and at the same time, it is what one usually describes as faith. Faith, wonder and amazement are the three forces of the soul which lead us beyond the ordinary world.

When we contemplate man with wonder and amazement, we try to understand him; by understanding his nature we attain to the virtue of brotherhood, and we shall best realise this by approaching the human being with reverence. We shall then see that reverence becomes something with which we must approach every human being and if we have this attitude, we shall become more and more truthful. Truth will become something by which we shall be bound by duty. Once we have an inkling of it, the super-sensible world becomes something towards which we incline, and through knowledge we shall attain to the super-sensible wisdom which has already sunk into the subconscious depths of the soul. Only after super-sensible wisdom had disappeared do we find the statement that “philosophy begins with wonder and amazement.” This statement will make it clear that wonder only appeared in evolution in the age when the Christ-impulse had come into the world.

It has already been stated that the second virtue is love. Let us now consider what we have described as instinctive temperance for the present time, and as practical wisdom of life for the future. Man confronts himself in these virtues. Through the deeds he performs in the world, he acts in such a way that he guards himself, as it were; it is therefore necessary for him to gain an objective standard of value.

We now see something appear which develops more and more, and which I have often spoken of in other connections, something which first appeared in the fourth post-Atlantean age, namely the Greek. It can be shown that in the old Greek dramas, for instance in Aeschylus, the Furies play a role which in Euripides is transformed into conscience. From this we see that in earlier times what we call conscience did not exist at all. Conscience is something that exists as a standard for our own actions when we go too far in our demands, when we seek our own advantage too-much. It acts as a standard placed between our sympathies and antipathies.

With this we attain to something which is more objective, which, compared with the virtues of truth, love and practical wisdom, acts in a much more objective, or outward manner. Love here stands in the middle, and acts as something which has to fill and regulate all life, also all social life. In the same way it acts as the regulator of all that man has developed as inner impulse. But that which he has developed as truth will manifest itself as the belief in super-sensible knowledge. Life-wisdom, that which originates in ourselves, we must feel as a divine spiritual regulator which, like conscience, leads securely along the true middle course. If we had time it would be very easy to answer the various objections which might be raised at this point. But we shall only consider one, for example, the objection to the assertion that conscience and wonder are qualities which have only gradually developed in humanity, whereas they are really eternal. But this they are not. He who says that they are eternal qualities in human nature only shows that he does not know the conditions attached to them.

As time goes on it will be found more and more that in ancient times man had not as yet descended so far to the physical plane, but was still more closely connected with divine impulses, and that he was in a condition which he will again consciously strive to reach when he is ruled more by truth, love and the art of life in regard to the physical plane, and when in regard to spiritual knowledge he is actuated by faith in the super-sensible world. It is not necessarily the case that faith will directly lead into that world, but it will at length be transformed into super-sensible knowledge. Conscience is that which will enter as a regulator in the Consciousness- or Spiritual-Soul. Faith, love, conscience; these three forces will become the three stars of the moral forces which shall enter into human souls particularly through Anthroposophy. The moral perspective of the future can only be disclosed to those who think of these three virtues being ever more increased Anthroposophy will place moral life in the light of these virtues, and they will be the constructive forces of the future.

Before closing our observations, there is one point which must be considered. I shall only touch upon the subject, for it would be impossible to analyse without giving many lectures. The Christ-impulse entered human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. We know that at that time a human organism consisting of physical, etheric, and astral bodies received the Ego-impulse or “I” from above, as the Christ-impulse. It was this Christ-impulse which was received by the earth and which flowed into earthly evolution. It was now in it as the ego of Christ. We know further that the physical body, etheric body and astral body remained with Jesus of Nazareth; the Christ-impulse was within as the ego. At Golgotha, Jesus of Nazareth separated from the Christ-impulse, which then flowed into the earth development. The evolution of this impulse signifies the evolution of the earth itself.

Earnestly consider certain things which are very often repeated in order that they may be more easily understood. As we have often heard, the world is maya or illusion, but man must gradually penetrate to the truth, the reality of this external world. The earth evolution fundamentally consists in the fact that all the external things which have been formed in the first half of the earth's development are dissolved in the second half, in which we now are, so that all that we see externally, physically, shall separate from human development just as the physical body of a human being falls away. One might ask: What will then be left? And the answer is: The forces which are embodied in man as real forces through the process of the development of humanity on the earth. And the most real impulse in this development is that which has come into earth evolution through the Christ-impulse. But this Christ-impulse at first finds nothing with which it can clothe itself. Therefore it has to obtain a covering through the further development of the earth; and when this is concluded, the fully developed Christ shall be the final man—as Adam was the first—around whom humanity in its multiplicity has grouped itself.

In the words: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me,” is contained a significant hint for us. What has been done for Christ? The actions performed in accordance with the Christ-impulse under the influence of conscience, under the influence of faith and according to knowledge, are developed out on the earth-life up to the present time, and as, through his actions and his moral attitude a person gives something to his brethren, he gives at the same time to Christ. This should be taken as a precept: All the forces we develop, all acts of faith and trust, all acts performed as the result of wonder, are—because we give it at the same time to the Christ-Ego—something which closes like a covering round the Christ and may be compared with the astral body of man.

We form the astral body for the Christ-Ego-impulse by all the moral activities of wonder, trust, reverence and faith, in short, all that paves the way to super-sensible knowledge. Through all these activities we foster love. This is quite in accordance with the statement we quoted: “What ye have done to one, of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

We form the etheric body for Christ through our deeds of love, and through our actions in the world which we do through the impulses of conscience we form for the Christ-impulse that which corresponds to the physical body of man. When the earth has one day reached its goal, when man understands the right moral impulses through which all that is good is done, then shall be present that which came as an Ego or “I” into human development through the Mystery of Golgotha as the Christ-impulse shall then be enveloped by an astral body which is formed through faith, through all the deeds of wonder and amazement on the part of man. It shall be enveloped by something which is like an etheric body which is formed through deeds of love; and by something which envelops it like a physical body, formed through the deeds of conscience.

Thus the future evolution of humanity shall be accomplished through the co-operation of the moral impulses of man with the Christ-impulse. We see humanity in perspective before us, like a great organic structure. When people understand how to member their actions into this great organism, and through their own deeds form their impulses around it like a covering, they shall then lay the foundations, in the course of earthly evolution, for a great community, which can be permeated and made Christian through and through by the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see that morals need not be preached, but they can indeed be founded by showing facts that have really happened and do still happen, confirming what is felt by persons with special mental endowments. It should make a noteworthy impression upon us if we bear in mind how, at the time when he lost his friend, Duke Charles Augustus, Goethe wrote many things in a long letter at Weimar, and then on the same day—it was in the year 1828, three-and-a-half years before his own death, and almost at the end of his life—he wrote a very remarkable sentence in his diary: “The whole reasonable world may be considered as a great immortal individual which uninterruptedly brings about what is necessary and thereby makes itself master even over chance.” How could such a thought become more concrete than by our imagining this Individual active among us, and by thinking of ourselves as, being united with him in his work? Through the Mystery of Golgotha the greatest Individual entered into human development, and, when people intentionally direct their lives in the way we have just described, they will range themselves round the Christ-impulse, so that around this Being there shall be formed something which is like a covering around a kernel.

Much more could be said about virtue from the standpoint of Anthroposophy. In particular long and important considerations could be entered into concerning truth and its connection with karma, for through Anthroposophy the idea of karma will have to enter into human evolution more and more. Man will also have to learn gradually so to consider and order his life that his virtues correspond with karma. Through the idea of karma man must also learn to recognise that he may not disown his former deeds by his later ones. A certain feeling of responsibility in life, a readiness to take upon ourselves the results of what we have done, has yet to show itself as a result of human evolution. How far removed man still is from this ideal we see when we consider him more closely. That man develops by the acts he has committed is a well-known fact. When the consequences of an action seem to have come to an end, then what could only be done if the first act had not taken place, can still be done. The fact that a person feels responsible for what he has done, the fact that he consciously accepts the idea of karma, is something which might also be a subject for study. But you will still find much for yourselves by following the lines suggested in these three lectures; you will find how fruitful these ideas can be if you work them out further. As man will live for the remainder of the earth development in repeated incarnations, it is his task to rectify all the mistakes made respecting the virtues described, by inclining to one side or the other, to change them by shaping them of his own free will, so that the balance, the mean, may come and thus the goal be gradually attained which has been described as the formation of the coverings for the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see before us not merely an abstract ideal of universal brotherhood, which indeed may also receive a strong impulse if we lay Anthroposophy at the foundation, but we see that there is something real in our earthly evolution, we see that there is in it an Impulse which came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha. And we also feel ourselves under the necessity so to work upon the Sentient-Soul, the Intellectual-Soul and the Spiritual-Soul, that this ideal Being shall be actualised, and that we shall be united with Him as with a great immortal Individual. The thought that the only possibility of further evolution, the power to fulfil the earth mission, lies in man's forming one whole with this great Individual, is realised in the second moral principle: What you do as if it were born from you alone, pushes you away and separates you from the great Individual, you thereby destroy something; but what you do to build up this great immortal Individual in the way above described, that you do towards the further development, the progressive life of the whole organism of the world.

We only require to place these two thoughts before us in order to see that their effect is not only to preach morals, but to give them a basis. For the thought: “Through your actions you are destroying what you ought to build up,” is terrible and fearful, keeping down all opposing desires. But the thought: “You are building up this immortal Individual; you are making yourself into a member of this immortal Individual,” fires one to good deeds, to strong moral impulses. In this way morals are not only preached, but we are led to thoughts which themselves may be moral impulses, to thoughts which are able to found morals.

The more the truth is cultivated, the more rapidly will the anthroposophical world conception and feeling develop ethics such as these. And it has been my task to express this in these lectures. Naturally, many things have only been lightly touched upon, but you will develop further in your own minds many ideas which have been broached. In this way we shall be drawn more closely together all over the earth. When we meet together—as we have done on this occasion as anthroposophists of Northern and Central Europe—to consider these subjects, and when we allow the thoughts roused in us at gatherings such as this to echo and re-echo through us, we shall in this way best make it true that Anthroposophy is to provide the foundation—even at the present time—for real spiritual life. And when we have to part again we know that it is in our anthroposophical thoughts that we are most at one, and this knowledge is at the same time a moral stimulus. To know that we are united by the same ideals with people who, as a rule, are widely separated from one another in space, but with whom we may meet on special occasions, is a stronger moral stimulus than being always together.

That we should think in this way of our gathering, that we should thus understand our studies together, fills my soul, especially at the close of these lectures, as something by which I should like to express my farewell greeting to you, and concerning which I am convinced that, when it is understood in the true light, the anthroposophical life which is developing will also be spiritually well founded. With this thought and these feelings let us close our studies today.

I'd like to ask your forgiveness, first of all, for being unable to speak to you tonight in your native language. But friends who have been attending my lectures to members of the Anthroposophical Society this week have assured me that it would be all right to speak to you on a spiritual scientific subject in German.

The local members have also suggested the underlying theme of this evening's talk; I am to speak on the relationship of spiritual science—or anthroposophy, as it may also be called—to Christianity. In order to do so, I must first say something about the nature and significance of what is meant by spiritual science, about the point of view from which I shall be speaking.

This spiritual science is not trying to found either a new religion or a new religious sect of any kind. It hopes to be able to fulfill the tasks required spiritually of our contemporary culture.

Several hundred years ago, the dawning of the modern scientific age signified an advance in human cultural life which can be compared to the steps we must now take in mankind's development if further progress is to be made. Natural science opened the modern age for mankind through the knowledge of external physical laws. Spiritual science should play a similar role in the present and near future in recognizing the laws of the realms of soul and spirit and applying them to ethical, social, and all other aspects of cultural life.

Although it is still misunderstood and misrepresented—and understandably so—it can trust the power and effectiveness of its truth when it considers the course of natural science at the beginning of the modern age. Natural scientists, too, had to face prejudices hundreds and even thousands of years old. But truth possesses powers which always help it to victory against any hostile forces.

Now that we have mentioned the trust the spiritual scientist has in the truth and effectiveness of his work, let us turn to the nature of that research which is the basis for this spiritual science.

The spiritual scientist's way of looking at things is wholly in keeping with the methods of natural science. However, it must certainly be clear that since spiritual science covers an entirely different field from the external sense-perceptible field covered by natural science, researching the spiritual realm requires a fundamental modification of the natural scientific approach. The methods of spiritual science are in keeping with those of natural science in the sense that any unprejudiced person trained in natural science can accept the premises of spiritual science. However, as long as the natural scientific method is conceived one-sidedly, as all too often happens today, then prejudice will be heaped upon prejudice when it comes to applying the natural scientific approach to spiritual life. Granted, natural scientific logic must be applied to what most concerns man but which is most difficult to investigate for that very reason. Granted, this way of thinking must be applied to the very being of man himself. Granted, in spiritual science man must examine his own nature, making use of the only tool that he has at his disposal—himself. The premise of spiritual science is that in becoming an instrument of investigation into the spiritual world, man has to undergo a transformation that enables him to look into the spiritual world, something he cannot do in ordinary life.

I'd like to start with a comparison from natural science, not to prove anything but just to make it clear how the spiritual scientific way of looking at things rests entirely on the premises of natural scientific thinking. Let us take water as an example drawn from nature. Suppose we are looking at the qualities of water as we find it around us. Then along comes the chemist and applies his methods to the water, breaking it down into hydrogen and oxygen. Well, what is he doing to the water? As you all know, water doesn't burn. The chemist takes hydrogen out of the water, and hydrogen is a gas that burns. No one just looking at water can tell that it contains hydrogen and oxygen, which have totally different properties from water.

As spiritual science shows, it is equally impossible for us to see the inner qualities of another person. Just as the chemist can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, the spiritual scientist, by means of an inner process which must be prepared in the soul's very depths, is able to distinguish between the external physical and soul-spiritual aspects of what confronts him outwardly as a human being. He is interested initially in examining, from the spiritual scientific viewpoint, the soul-spiritual aspect as something separate from the bodily nature. No one can discern the real facts of the soul-spiritual from looking at the merely external bodily nature, any more than the nature of hydrogen can be discerned without first extracting it from water.

Nowadays it very often happens that as soon as one begins to say this sort of thing one hears: “This conflicts with monism, which must be adhered to at all costs.” Well, monism can't keep even chemists from splitting water into two parts. It's no argument against monism when something that can actually happen does happen—for instance, when the soul-spiritual is recognized as distinct from the bodily nature by applying the methods of spiritual research.

These methods, however, cannot be applied in laboratories or hospitals, but are processes that have to take place in the soul itself. They are not miraculous qualities; they are faculties which we possess to a certain degree in daily life. But they have to be infinitely heightened if we are to become spiritual researchers.

I don't want to beat around the bush with all kinds of general statements, so I'll come right to the point. We are all familiar with the soul capacity known as memory, and are aware of how much depends on it. Imagine waking up some morning with no idea of where we've been and who we are. We would lose everything that makes us human. Our memory, which has possessed inner coherence ever since early childhood, is essential to our life as human beings. The study of memory leaves contemporary philosophers perplexed. There are already some among them who go so far as to turn away from the monistic-materialistic view when it comes to looking at memory. In precise research they find that, although sensory perception (if one may refer to an activity of soul in this way) is superficially bound to the body, it will never be possible to say that memory is bound to the body at all. I am just calling this to your attention. Even the French philosopher Bergson, a man who certainly shows no tendency to delve into anthroposophy, has pointed to the spiritual nature of memory.

How do memory and the power of recall actually confront us? Events long past enter our soul as images. Although the events themselves may lie far in the past, our soul is actively involved in conjuring them up from the depths of our inner life. And what emerges from these depths can be compared with the original experience, though in contrast to the images provided by our sensory perceptions memories are pale. However, they are closely connected with the integrity of our soul life. And without memory, we would not find our way in the world. But memory is built upon the power to recall, through which the soul can conjure up what is hidden in its memories.

This is where spiritual science comes in. Please note that it is not memory as such, but the power of summoning up a mental content from the soul's depths, which can be infinitely strengthened. Then this power can be used not only for conjuring up past experiences but for quite other purposes as well. Methods of spiritual research are not founded upon any external procedures applicable in laboratories or upon anything perceptible to external senses, but rather upon intensive soul processes which anyone can undergo. What makes these processes valuable is the boundless heightening of our attentiveness or, in other words, the concentration of our thought life.

What is this concentration of thought life?

This evening I have only a short hour to speak, so I'll just be able to touch on the principles of the topic under discussion. You can find the details in my books, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, Occult Science—an Outline, and The Threshold of the Spiritual World. Let me outline the basic soul activities which represent a boundless heightening of the attentiveness necessary for human life. Only this heightening makes spiritual research possible.

What activity does a person usually engage in when he confronts his surroundings? He perceives things; he applies his brain-bound thinking to them and forms mental images about them. As a rule he does nothing further with these images. But methods of spiritual science, based upon the concentration of thinking, begin just where our everyday mental activity leaves off. Anyone wanting to become a spiritual researcher must carry on from this point.

We must choose mental images which we ourselves can form for ourselves in detail and bring them into our field of consciousness. These should preferably be symbolic images that do not need to correspond with the external world. We must place these images, taken from the practice of spiritual science or suggested to us by the spiritual researcher, at the center of our full consciousness, so that for a longer period we turn our attention away from everything external, concentrating on a single image. Whereas we usually move on from one mental image to another, in this case we marshal all our soul forces, concentrate them on one chosen image, and devote ourselves totally to this image. A person observed in this activity seems to be engaged in something resembling sleep (although it is in fact radically different). For if such concentration is to be fruitful, that person must indeed become in some respects like a sleeper.

Just before we fall asleep, we feel how the will forces in our limbs quiet down, how a kind of twilight settles around us, how the activity of the senses ebbs away. Then we lose consciousness. In concentration, as in sleep, our senses must be wholly shut off from all impressions of the outer world; the eye should see as little, the ear hear as little as in sleep, and so on. Then the whole soul life is focused on a single mental image. This is what makes concentration radically different from sleep. In fact, it could be called fully conscious sleeping. Whereas in sleep the darkness of unconsciousness floods the soul, the aspiring spiritual researcher lives in a heightened state of soul activity. He mobilizes all the strengths of his soul and focuses them on the chosen image. The point here is not that we observe the mental image; it rather gives us the opportunity to pull our soul forces together and channel them. That's the important thing, because in this way we gradually succeed in wresting our soul-spiritual being free from our bodily nature. Again I refer you to my books for the details.

What I've just explained cannot be achieved all at once. Most people, even those who are not distracted by the demands of daily life, have to work for years on such concentration exercises; it is impossible to keep at them for more than a few minutes at a time, or for more than a fraction of an hour at most. We must repeat them again and again until we really succeed in strengthening the powers that otherwise slumber in everyday life (but are nevertheless there) so that they become effective in us to the point of freeing our soul-spiritual being from our bodily nature.

Let me share facts with you rather than talk abstractions, and say at once that if the spiritual researcher succeeds, by persevering energetically and devotedly in his exercises, in reaping the fruits of his efforts, then he arrives at an experience of what could be called purely inner consciousness. From then on, he can make sense of a statement that previously meant nothing to him: “I know that I am outside my body; in grasping and experiencing my inner being, I am outside my body.”

I'd like to describe this experience to you in detail. We notice first of all that the power of thinking, which is usually active only in the affairs of daily life, frees itself from the body. To begin with, this experience is faint, but it makes its appearance in such a way that, having had it, we know it for what it is. Only when we return to our body and have submerged ourselves in the life of the brain, manifested in physical substance, do we realize what resistance the brain offers. We are aware that we use the brain as an instrument for ordinary thinking; but now we know that we have been outside it. We gradually learn to make sense of the statement, “You are experiencing yourself in the soul-spiritual element.” We experience our head as though clothed in its thoughts. We know what it means to have separated our soul-spiritual element from our external bodily nature. First we get to know the resistance that bodily life puts up, and then to know life independent of the body. It is just as if hydrogen were to become aware of itself outside of the watery element. That is the case with a person who does exercises of this kind. And if he continues to do them faithfully, the great and significant moment comes when real spiritual research begins—a profoundly shattering moment that has far-reaching consequences for our entire existence. This moment can occur in thousands of different ways, but I will characterize it in the way it most typically comes about.

If we have carried on these exercises for a certain period of time, training our souls in conformity with the natural scientific approach, then that moment finally comes, either during waking life or in a sleep from which we awaken to realize that we are not dreaming but experiencing a brand new reality. The experience can be such, for example, that we say, “What is going on around me? It is as though my surroundings were receding from me, as though the natural elements were striking like lightning and destroying my body, and I nevertheless maintained myself, unlike this body.” We come to know what seers throughout the ages have always pictured as “reaching the gates of death.” This image brings home to us the true soul-spiritual state of man when he is living purely in the soul-spiritual element, instead of perceiving himself and the world through the instrument of his body (and this we experience only through the image; the reality is met only in death).

The shattering thing is to know that we have released ourselves from our body with our thinking capacity. And other forces can be similarly released so that we become ever richer and more inward as regards our soul life.

But the one exercise that I have characterized as concentration or as an unbounded heightening of attentiveness is not enough. We achieve the following result with this exercise: When we have arrived at the point where the soul experiences itself, images that we can call real imaginations make their appearance. Images rise up, but they are vastly different from those of our ordinary memory. Whereas ordinary memory contains only images of external experiences, these images arising now from the grey depths of our soul have nothing in common with anything that can be experienced in the outer world of the senses. Objections that we might easily be deceiving ourselves, that what thus arises from these grey depths of soul may merely be reminiscences produced by memory, don't hold up. For the spiritual researcher learns to distinguish exactly between what memory can summon up and something radically different from the content of memory.

We must keep one thing in mind, however, when talking about this moment of entering the spiritual world: namely, that people who suffer from visions, hallucinations, or other such pathological conditions are not well suited to spiritual research. The less a person tends in that direction, which is a mere reflection of ordinary experience, the more safely and certainly he advances in the field of spiritual research. A large part of the preparation for spiritual research consists in learning to distinguish exactly between something that arises in an unconscious and pathological manner from within, and the new element which can make its appearance as spiritual reality following a spiritual scientific schooling of our soul.

I'd like to mention a radical difference between visionary or hallucinatory experiences and what the spiritual researcher perceives. Why is it that so many people believe themselves to be already in the spiritual world, when they are only having hallucinations and visions? How unwilling people are to learn anything really new! They cling to the old and familiar. These sick soul-figments appear to us in hallucinations and visions in basically the same way as external sensory reality. They are simply there, confronting us; we do nothing to make them appear. The spiritual researcher is not in the same situation with regard to his new spiritual surroundings. I've told you how he has to concentrate and refine all the forces of his soul that are usually asleep. This requires him to exert a strength and energy of soul not present in external life. He must constantly hold on to this strength when he enters the spiritual world. It is characteristic of hallucinations and visions that a person remains passive; he doesn't need to exert himself. However, as soon as we become passive toward the spiritual world for even a moment, everything disappears. We have to stay with it and to be continuously active. That is why we cannot be mistaken, since nothing of the spiritual world can appear to us in the way a vision or hallucination does. We must be fully active in confronting every least detail of what appears to us out of the spiritual world, so that we grasp what we are facing. This uninterrupted activity is vital for true spiritual research. But only then do we enter a world radically different from the world of the senses, a world where spiritual actualities and beings surround us.

But another thing is still needed: Wresting the soul free of the body happens as described. This further need, however, can again be explained with a scientific comparison. When we extract hydrogen, it remains separate at first, but then it combines with other substances, becoming something quite different. The same thing must happen to our soul-spiritual being after its separation from the body. This being must link itself up with beings not of the sensory world. It must unite with them and thus perceive them.

The first stage of spiritual research is separation of the soul-spiritual from the bodily nature. The second is entering into relationship with beings that work behind the scenes of the sensory world. To say this is held against one nowadays, even more so than any vague talk of “spirit” in general. Many people today feel the urge to acknowledge the existence of something spiritual; they speak of a spirit behind the world order and are perfectly satisfied to be pantheists. But as the spiritual researcher sees it, pantheism is just like taking someone out into nature and remarking, “Look, all this around you is nature,” instead of saying, “Those are trees, clouds; that's a lily, that's a rose.” Leading a person from one experience of nature to another, from one being to the next, and saying, “All this is nature,” is to tell him nothing. The facts must be presented concretely and in detail. It is acceptable today to speak of an all-pervading spirit, but the spiritual researcher cannot rest content with that. After all, he is entering a realm of spirit beings and spiritual realities which are differentiated, just as the external world is concretely differentiated into clouds, mountains, valleys, trees, flowers, and so on. But although we differentiate natural phenomena into plant, animal and human kingdoms, it is not acceptable today to speak of concrete details and facts encountered upon entering the spiritual world. The spiritual researcher cannot help but point out that entering the spiritual world means entering a world of real, concrete spiritual beings and events.

Another exercise we need to do is to intensify our feeling of devotion—devotion felt in everyday life and in life's special moments as religious reverence. This devotion must be boundlessly heightened and developed, so that a person can reach the stage of giving himself devoutly over to the stream of cosmic events, as he does in sleep. In contemplation or meditation, he must forget about any bodily movement, again as he does in sleep.

This is the second exercise, and it must alternate with the first. The person doing the exercise forgets his body so completely that he not only stops thinking about it but can even shut out all stirrings of feeling and will, just as in sleep he shuts out all awareness of bodily stirrings. But this condition must be brought about consciously. Adding this exercise in devotion to the first, he will succeed in making himself at home in the spiritual world with the help of his awakening spiritual senses, just as he finds his way into his physical surroundings with the help of his external senses.

A new world now dawns before him, a world that is always inhabited by his soul-spiritual being. A reality becomes apparent to his inner observation—a reality still rejected by current prejudices, although it is just as much a fact of strictly scientific research as our modern evolutionary theory. I am referring to the fact that he comes to know the soul-spiritual core of his being in such a way the he realizes: “Before I was conceived and born into this life which clothed me in a body, I existed as a soul-spiritual being in a spiritual realm. When I pass through the gates of death, my body will fall away. But what I have come to know as the soul-spiritual core of my being, which can live outside my body, will pass through the gates of death. From then on, it lives in a spiritual world.”

In other words, we come to recognize the immortality of the soul already in this life between birth and death. We become familiar with something we know to be independent of the body and with the world that the human soul enters after death. We come to know this soul-spiritual core in such a way that we can describe it with scientific clarity.

Observing a plant, we see how the seed germinates, how leaves and blossoms develop, and how the fruit forms, producing new seed. We realize how its life culminates in this seed. Leaves and blossoms drop off, but the seed remains, bearing the promise of a new plant. We become aware that the seed, the essential part of a new plant, is already living in the plant we are observing. As we look at life between birth and death, we thus come to recognize that something develops in the soul-spiritual element that passes through the gates of death and is, moreover, the germ and essential core of a new life. The soul-spiritual core of our being, which is hidden in everyday life but reveals itself to spiritual science, carries the potential for a new human life just as certainly as a plant seed has the potential to become a new plant. Looking at things in this way, we arrive at the realization of repeated earth-lives in full harmony with the natural scientific approach. We know that the sum total of man's life consists not only of the life between birth and death but also of the life running its course between death and rebirth, from which man then embarks upon a new incarnation.

The only possible objection to what I've just said is that the germinating seed could perish if conditions didn't foster the development of a new plant. Spiritual science meets this objection by pointing out that, though the plant seed in its dependence on outer conditions may perish, there is nothing in the spiritual world to hinder the gradual ripening of the core of the human soul as it prepares for a new life on earth. In other words, the core of the human soul which matures during one earth-life will appear again in a further life on earth. I can only indicate briefly how the spiritual researcher, faithful to natural scientific methods of investigation, comes to this view of repeated earth-lives.

People have accused spiritual science of being Buddhistic because it speaks of reincarnation. Spiritual science certainly does not draw what it has to say from Buddhism; it is firmly founded on the premises and principles of modern natural science. But spiritual science widens modern natural science to cover the life of the spirit without even taking Buddhism into account. Spiritual science can't help acknowledging the truth of reincarnation. It can't change the fact that in ancient times Buddhism spoke out of old traditions about repeated earth-lives.

I'd like to mention in this connection that Lessing's mature thinking, deepened by experience, led him to speak about reincarnation. At the end of a long working life, Lessing wrote his treatise on the education of the human race, in which he advanced the idea of repeated earth-lives. He said somewhat as follows: “Is this teaching to be rejected just because it appears at the dawn of human culture, before any scholarly prejudice could cloud it?” Lessing refused to be swayed by the fact that this teaching was a product of ancient times, a teaching that was later pushed into the background by scholarly prejudice. Spiritual science also doesn't need to shy away from it simply because it appears in Buddhistic doctrine. That is certainly no reason to accuse spiritual science of Buddhistic leanings.

Spiritual science recognizes the truth of repeated earth-lives out of its own sources, and it points us to our connection with the totality of human life through the ages. For the souls living in us have been here many times before, and will return again and again. Let us look back on early cultural epochs—for instance, to the time when people lifted their eyes to the pyramids. We know that our souls were already living at that time and that they will appear again in the future; they take part in every epoch.

It is still perfectly understandable today that people have a bias against such teachings. There are also people who take everything the way they want to see it. They know that Lessing was a great man, but it makes them uncomfortable to know that he acknowledged the truth of reincarnation at the height of his career. So they say, “Oh, well, Lessing was getting senile in his old age.” That makes people more comfortable than to think that we have each been part of every civilization that ever existed on the earth.

Now, how does spiritual science want to introduce the facts I've just explained into contemporary culture? Why, no differently than natural science presents its findings, although this means that spiritual science is subject to the same prejudices as the initial findings based on the modern natural scientific approach. Just think of Copernicus, Galileo, or Giordano Bruno. What happened when Copernicus claimed that the earth didn't stand still, but revolved around the sun, and that the sun actually stood still in relation to the earth? How did people react? They thought that religion was at stake, that people's religious piety was jeopardized by this advance in knowledge.

It took the Church until the nineteenth century to remove the teachings of Copernicus from the Index and to integrate them into its doctrine. In every age advances in thought have had to fight against old prejudices. This young spiritual knowledge wants to make itself felt in human culture today in the same way as the new natural scientific knowledge did in its day. Spiritual science wants to emphasize the fact that mankind is ready to acquire knowledge of the spirit, just as in the achievements of Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno the need for a new science of nature was made evident at a time when mankind was ready for it.

In his day, even Nicholas Copernicus, a canon of the Church, was accused of not being a Christian. And now it is easy in certain respects to accuse spiritual science of being unchristian. When this happens, I always think of a priest who, on becoming rector of his university, delivered a lecture about Galileo. He spoke somewhat as follows: “In those days people had religious prejudices against Copernicus. But a truly religious person knows that God's glory and light are not dimmed when we consciously penetrate the secrets of the universe. He knows that the grandeur of our view of God has in fact only increased as a result of extending our knowledge beyond the realm of the senses to calculate the course of the stars and the particular characteristics of the heavenly bodies.”

A truly religious person can grasp that religion is only enriched and deepened by scientific knowledge. Spiritual science doesn't want to have anything to do with founding a new religion or to give rise to prophets or founders of sects. Mankind has matured; the time for prophets and founding religions is over. And in future people who feel the urge to be prophets will suffer a different fate from the prophets of old, who, in accordance with the ways of their times, were rightly revered as outstanding individuals. People of today who try to be prophets in the old sense will simply be laughed at. Spiritual science doesn't need any prophets because by its very nature it bases what it has to say upon the depths of the human soul, depths which our souls cannot always illuminate. And the spiritual scientist simply wants to investigate his subject as an unassuming researcher, drawing attention to vital matters. He says, “I've discovered it; you can discover it for yourself, too, if you try.” It won't take long until the spiritual investigator is recognized as a researcher just like any chemist or biologist. The difference is that the spiritual researcher does his research in a field of concern to every human soul.

Tonight I could only sketch the activity of the research done in this field. But if you study the matter in more detail, you will find that it addresses the most vital questions of the human soul, questions concerning the nature of man and his destiny. Both are questions which can stir human beings to their depths every hour of every day; they give us strength for our work. And because the concerns of spiritual science deal with the depths of the human soul, it is only natural that it should grip us and unite with our inmost self, thereby deepening and enhancing our religious feeling to an unusual degree.

Spiritual science does not want to usurp the place of Christianity; on the contrary it would like to be instrumental in making Christianity understood. Thus it becomes clear to us through spiritual science that the being whom we call Christ is to be recognized as the center of life on earth, that the Christian religion is the ultimate religion for the earth's whole future. Spiritual science shows us particularly that the pre-Christian religions outgrow their one-sidedness and come together in the Christian faith. It is not the desire of spiritual science to set something else in the place of Christianity; rather it wants to contribute to a deeper, more heartfelt understanding of Christianity.

Can it be said that when Copernicus was arriving at his concept of the solar system in the peace and quiet of his study, he wanted to reshape the order of nature? It would be mad to say anything of the sort. Nature stayed as it was, but people learned to think about nature in a way that accorded with the new view of the world. I've taken the liberty of calling a book on Christianity that I wrote many years ago Christianity as Mystical Fact. No one used to mulling over what he presents to the world would choose such a title without weighing it carefully. Why, then, did I choose it? Only in order to show that Christianity is not a mere doctrine to be interpreted this way or that; it has entered the world as a fact that can only be understood spiritually. Nature didn't change because of Copernicus, nor does the truth of Christianity change when spiritual science is used as a tool for understanding it more completely than was possible in times gone by.

I've taken more time than was intended, but perhaps you will let me draw your attention to one concrete aspect of Christian spiritual research. Studying ancient pre-Christian cultures from the viewpoint of the spiritual researcher, we find that they all had mystery places which were simultaneously centers of religion, art, and science. Although the exoteric cultures of earlier times did not allow people to delve into the spiritual world by means of the spiritual scientific methods I have described, it was possible for certain individuals to be admitted into the mysteries as pupils or candidates for initiation. The art of the mysteries helped them to achieve what I have just been describing—namely, withdrawing from the physical body and developing a body-free soul life. And what came of it? The achieving of this body-free soul life enabled them to experience the spiritual world and the pivotal event in man's evolutionary history, the Christ Event.

Exoteric scholarship pays far too little attention to the role played by these pupils of the mysteries, although this is not for lack of available material on the subject.

Let me mention a symptomatic instance. St. Augustine said that there have been Christians not only since Christ's appearance on earth, but even before His coming. Anyone saying that today would be accused of heresy. A Church Father could say it, however, and that was indeed St. Augustine's opinion. Why did this Christian teacher state such a thing? We get a sense of why he said it when we see in reading Plato, for instance, how he prized the mysteries and how he speaks of their significance for the whole life and being of mankind. Some words of Plato that seem harsh have come down to us. He said that human souls live in muddy swamps after death if they have not been initiated into the holy mysteries. Plato spoke out of his conviction that the human soul is essentially of a spiritual nature, and that he who withdraws his soul from the physical body as a result of initiation can behold the spiritual world. A person who has not worked his way into the mysteries seems to Plato to be cut off from his true being. The crucial point is that in ancient times the mysteries were the only way to leave the world of the senses and gain entry into the world of the spirit. So it was that those who were recognized as schooled in the mysteries, men like Heraclitus and Plato, were called “Christians” by the Church Fathers because the mysteries had taught them to see the spiritual world.

That, however, is no longer the case. The relationship of the human soul to the spiritual world is tremendously different today than it was in pre-Christian times. What I have been describing tonight about what every soul can undertake for itself to succeed in entering the spiritual world has been possible only since the founding of Christianity. Since then, every soul who applies the methods set forth in the books mentioned above can ascend to the spiritual world through a process of self-education. In pre-Christian times the mysteries and the authoritative guidance of teachers were essential; there was no such thing as self-initiation then. And when spiritual science is asked what brought about this change, the reply based on its research must be that it was brought about by the Mystery of Golgotha. The founding of Christianity has introduced to mankind a reality that can only be researched spiritually. Christ Himself could be found previously in the realm of the spirit only by a person who had learned in the mysteries to withdraw from his body. He can be found since the Christ Event by every human soul willing to make the effort. What the mysteries once introduced to human souls dwells since the Mystery of Golgotha in every human soul, shared by all alike.

How is this to be understood?

Those who were recognized as schooled in the mysteries, men like Heraclitus and Plato, were called “Christians” by the Church Fathers because the mysteries had taught them to see into the spiritual world. Spiritual science shows that while Jesus was living in the way the Gospels tell of it, there came a moment in His life—the baptism in the Jordan—when Jesus was transformed. A Being not there before entered into Him and lived within Him for the next three years. The Being that thus entered Him went through the Mystery of Golgotha. This is not the time to go into detail concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, but spiritual science, from its fully scientific point of view, confirms what the Gospels relate. Through the Event on Golgotha the Being Who could previously be experienced only in spiritual heights united with earthly humanity. Since the time He passed through death on Golgotha, Christ lives in all human souls alike. He is the source of strength whereby every soul can find its way into the spiritual world. Human souls on earth have been transformed by the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ came, as He said, “from above,” but He has taken up His earthly abode in our human world.

Spiritual science is reproached for saying that Jesus was not always the Christ, but that Christ's life on earth began only when Jesus was thirty years old. Prejudiced humanity confronts spiritual science with one superficiality after another. The mere stating of the fact instantly invites prejudice. And the same holds true of almost everything that our opponents say regarding the position spiritual science takes on Christianity.

Don't we all agree that a child only begins to remember around his third year? Does this mean that what lives in him now was not already present before then? When we speak of Christ's entering into Jesus, are we thereby denying that Christ had been related to Jesus from birth on? We would not deny this any more than we would deny that the child has a soul before the soul becomes aware of itself during the third year of life. If we understood rightly what spiritual science had to say, we would not oppose it.

Anthroposophy is further reproached for making Christ a cosmic being; however, it only widens our earthly way of looking at things beyond merely terrestrial concerns into the far reaches of the universe. Thus our knowledge can embrace the universe spiritually, just as Copernicus, with his knowledge, embraced the external world. The need spiritual science feels to encompass what is most holy to it is simply due to a feeling that is religious and deeply scientific at the same time. Before Copernicus, people determined the movements of the stars on the basis of what they saw. Since Copernicus, they have learned to draw conclusions independent of their sensory perception. Is spiritual science to be blamed for doing the same with respect to the spiritual concerns of mankind? Up until now, people regarded Christianity and the life of Christ Jesus in the only way open to them. Spiritual science would like to widen their view to include cosmic spiritual reality as well. It adds what it has researched to what was known before about the Christ. It recognizes in Christ an eternal Being Who, unlike other human beings, entered once only into a physical body and is henceforth united with all human souls.

Those persons who make Christianity the basis for battling against spiritual science commit a peculiar error. Just inquire of spiritual science whether it opposes what it finds in Christianity! It affirms everything Christianity stands for and then adds something more to it. But to suppress what spiritual science has to add is not to insist on Christianity but rather to insist on a narrow view of it. In other words, it means to behave just like those who condemned Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno. It is easy to see the logical error at the root of this argument. People come along and say, “You talk of a cosmic Christ living in the far reaches of the universe; this makes you a Gnostic.” This is the same kind of error that we fall into if a person says to us, “I've just been given money by someone who owed me thirty crowns. But he gave me forty, because he was lending me ten in addition.” If we now insist that the man hasn't paid his debt because he returned forty crowns instead of thirty, we're talking nonsense, aren't we? If people reproach the spokesmen of spiritual science with the remark, “You are not only saying what we say about the Christ, but you add to it,” they don't notice what a monstrous mistake they've made; they are not speaking truly objectively, but out of strong emotion. Let people argue whether or not the findings of spiritual science about Christianity mean anything to them. That depends on what people think they need. Of course it would be possible for us to reject Copernicus, Galileo, or Giordano Bruno. But we cannot claim that spiritual science has less to offer on the subject of Christianity or that it is hostile to it.

And there's something else that must be added here when the relationship of spiritual science to Christianity is discussed. Mankind changes as each individual goes from life to life in succeeding epochs. Our souls incarnated in times before Christ united with the earth, and they will continue to be reborn into further earth-lives in which the Christ is joined with the earth. From now on, Christ lives in each human soul. If our souls acquire ever greater depth as they live through successive earth-lives, they become increasingly independent and inwardly ever more free. Therefore they need fresh means of understanding ancient wisdom and need to continue making progress out of this inner freedom. It must be stated that spiritual science confidently proclaims these ancient Christian truths in a new form because it has understood the depth, truth and significance of Christianity. Let those who insist on clinging to their prejudices believe that spiritual science undermines Christianity. Anyone familiar with modern culture will find that it is precisely those people who cannot be old-fashioned Christians who have been convinced of the truth of Christianity by spiritual science. For what it has to say about Christianity can be said by spiritual science to every human soul, since the Christ of Whom it speaks can be found by every human soul within itself. But spiritual science can also say that it sees Christ as the Being that once really entered into human souls and into the earth-world through the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. Faith has nothing to fear from knowledge, for the elements of faith, raised to the level of the spirit, need not shun the light of knowledge. Thus spiritual science will win those souls for Christianity who could not be won by speaking to them like a prophet or as a founder of a sect, but instead they need to be addressed by an unassuming scientist who draws their attention to what can be found in the field of spiritual science and who sets the strings in every human soul vibrating in harmony.

Anyone can become a researcher in the field of the spirit; you can find the ways described in the books mentioned earlier. But it is also true that a person who is not a researcher in this field can be permeated by the truth if he lets it work upon him without bias. Otherwise, he won't be able to free himself from prejudices. All truth resides in the human soul. Not everybody may be able to achieve the seer's view of spiritual truth, but the more our thinking is freed from sensory realms, the more fully it can follow the spiritual scientist as he draws our attention to his findings along spiritual paths. He only wants to make us aware that there are truths that can spring to life in every soul because they are already dormant in it.

Before closing I'd like to point out how spiritual science fits into our cultural life today. Spiritual science is in full agreement with the natural scientific way of seeing and thinking about things. It wants to present itself to culture in the same way that the loyal canon Copernicus and Galileo and Giordano Bruno presented themselves in their times.

Let's think for a moment of Giordano Bruno—what did he really do? Before he appeared on the scene and spoke words so significant for human evolution, people gazed into the skies and talked of the heavenly spheres in the way they thought they saw them. They spoke of the blue vault of the heavens as the boundary of the universe. Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno had the courage to break through sensory appearances and to establish a new way of thinking. What was Giordano Bruno actually saying to his listeners? He said, “Look at the firmament, the blue vault of the heavens. The limitations of your knowledge have created it. That is as far as your eyes see; it is your eyes that create this boundary.” Giordano Bruno extended their view beyond these limits. He felt it permissible to point out that everlasting starry worlds were embedded in the vastnesses of space.

What is the task of the spiritual researcher? Let me try to express it in terms of recent spiritual evolution. The researcher must point to a sort of “firmament of time,” to birth and death as the boundaries of human life. He maintains that the exoteric viewpoint sees birth and death as a “firmament of time” because of the limitations of human understanding and perceptive capacity. Like Giordano Bruno, the spiritual researcher must point out that this “time firmament” doesn't really exist, but that people think it does simply because of their limited way of seeing. Giordano Bruno pointed beyond the supposed limits of space to endless worlds embedded in its vast expanses. The spiritual scientist must similarly explain that behind the supposed boundaries of birth and death there stretches never-ending time, in which the eternity of the human soul, the eternal being of man as it passes from life to life, is embedded. Spiritual science is in complete harmony with the impulses that brought about these changes in natural science.

May I be allowed to draw attention once again to the fact that spiritual science has no desire to found a religion of any kind; rather does it want to set a more religious mood of soul-life and to lead us to the Christ as the Being at the center of religious life. It brings about a deepened religious awareness. Anyone who fears that spiritual science could destroy his religious awareness resembles a person—if I may use this analogy—who might have approached Columbus before he set sail for America and asked, “What do you want to discover America for? The sun comes up so beautifully here in our good old Europe. How do we know if the sun also rises in America, warming people and shining on the earth?” Anyone familiar with the laws of physical reality would have known that the sun shines on all continents. But anyone fearing for Christianity is like the person described as fearing the discovery of a new continent because he thinks the sun might not shine there. He who truly bears the Christ-Sun in his soul knows that the Christ-Sun shines on every continent. And regardless of what may still be discovered, either in realms of nature or in realms of spirit, the “America of the spirit” will never be discovered unless truly religious life turns with a sense of belonging toward the Christ-Sun as the center of our existence on the earth, unless that Sun shines—warming, illumining, and enkindling our human souls. Only a person whose religious feeling is weak would fear that it could die or waste away because of some new discovery. But a person strong in his genuine feeling for the Christ will not be afraid that knowledge might undermine his faith.

Spiritual science lives in this conviction. It speaks out of this conviction to contemporary culture. It knows that truly religious thinking and feeling cannot be endangered by research of any kind, but that only weak religious sentiment has anything to fear. Spiritual science knows that we can trust our sense for truth. Through the shattering events in his soul life which he has experienced objectively, the spiritual researcher knows what lives in the depths of the human soul. Through his investigations he has come to have confidence in the human soul and has seen that it is most intimately related to the truth. As a result, he believes—signs of the times to the contrary—in the ultimate victory of spiritual science. And he counts on the truth-loving and genuinely religious life of the human soul to bring about this victory.

You must not expect that these four lectures can be a substitute for those which were planned for Munich. [It had been Dr. Steiner's intention to give a course of lectures on the theme ‘Occult Reading and Occult Hearing’ in August 1914, after the production of a new Mystery Play, but this was prevented by the outbreak of the War.] I will try to give a brief outline of what was to have been the content of the Munich lectures but the most important and essential information that was to have been given there must be reserved for less turbulent times. I am astonished to find certain people thinking that the strenuous efforts required for giving very important teachings of Spiritual Science—as was intended in Munich—can be applied in times such as those in which we are now living. But it will be realised one day that this simply is not possible, that the highest truths cannot be communicated when storms are raging. As far as my theme is concerned, I will give a course of lectures on it later on, when karma permits, in substitution for what was to have been given in Munich. But in view of the desire to hear something about this subject, I will try to meet this wish as far as is possible at the present time.

The essential findings of Spiritual Science are acquired through occult reading and occult hearing. We hear something about the methods by which the spiritual investigator reaches his experiences, when he speaks of the actual processes of occult reading and occult hearing. Absurd theories still prevail at the present time about the way in which results are obtained in Spiritual Science. Before I pass on to the central theme I will speak of a trivial matter—trivial, that is to say, in comparison with what our stream of spiritual life would like to attain. A certain modern Professor wrote a review of my book Theosophy. This review was published a few years ago, and the author was obviously irritated most of all by what is said in the book about the human aura, about thought-forms and so forth. Among many things that I will not mention here, this review also contains something that is absolutely comprehensible from the point of view of a typical thinker of the present day. It is said that if there is anything in these statements about the aura and thought-forms, some of those who can see thought-forms should subject themselves to an experiment. There would have to be an experiment where a number of those who claim to be able to see such things stand in front of others who have certain thoughts and feelings, and then the former should be asked: ‘What do you see in these people standing or sitting in front of you?’ Then—according to the reviewer—these so-called occultists should state what they have observed, and the others should confirm that they had actually had these thoughts and feelings. If the seers' statements all tallied with each other, then they could be believed.

Let me say here that there is nothing more natural than this argument. Any thinker schooled in modern natural, science must use it because it inevitably appears to be completely reasonable. Nevertheless, one thing holds good. The Professor who said this had certainly read the book before writing his review. We must assume this at any rate. As the review gives the impression of honesty, we can certainly assume it. But he could not read it in the real sense because, comprehensible as it is that the objections should be made as long as there is no knowledge of the truths contained in the book, it ought also to be comprehensible that such objections would not be brought forward if the book had been read with understanding. With these words I am saying something that will be considered outrageous by every normal scientific thinker of to-day—he will think it outrageous because it must inevitably be incomprehensible to him; he simply cannot understand it. Among the things to be found in that book, there is also the following.—It is said that if the seer really desires to look into the spiritual world and see the truth, he must, above all, practise a self-education which enables him to penetrate into things with absolute selflessness, to silence his own wishes and desires in face of the spiritual world. Yes, but if five or six people are brought together in order to make an experiment according to the methods of natural science, as is demanded, those four or five people start off with the wish to reach a certain result—as a matter of fact a result that is demanded by science itself. The whole thing is arranged as happens when there are desires and wishes in ordinary life—which is just what should be avoided. It is obvious that every true impression of the spiritual world will be eliminated by such an experiment. For this experiment is arranged entirely according to the thinking of the physical plane and it is just these thoughts of the physical plane that must be overcome, together with all the desires and wishes connected with them. It may be said that it is a question of being passive. Certainly—but such conditions cannot be arranged from the standpoint of the physical plane and with the methods of the physical plane. They must be arranged only from the standpoint of the spiritual world and with the methods of the spiritual world.

First of all, the matter in question would have to lie in the spiritual world itself, not in the brain of a curious professor. The intention would have to emanate from the spiritual world that human beings who are seers here on the physical plane should experience something of the thoughts and feelings of other human beings; through the karma of the spiritual world a handful of people would have to be brought together—brought together, not by a professor but as if through a nexus of destiny. Then, from the other side, the seers too would themselves have to be brought together by karma. Again, from out of the spiritual world the feelings and so forth within the individuals would have to be revealed to the various seers. If the experiment could be arranged in this way it would undoubtedly succeed.

If anyone reads my book Theosophy with real understanding, he will know that what I have just said is a self-evident truth of the spiritual world but that such procedures are not possible in our age. And one has, after all, to reckon with this fact.

Because the review in question showed me that people are not able to read the book with sufficient understanding to discover such a thought by themselves, in the sixth edition—the proofs of which I am now correcting—I have added what I have just told you. One of the essentials in a book that has grown out of Spiritual Science is that one not only assimilate its actual contents—that is of minimal importance—but that having read it a change shall have taken place in thinking and feeling; standards and judgments otherwise applied in the everyday world should have progressed. The difficulty still standing in the way of understanding books on Spiritual Science is that people read them just as they read other writings and imagine that their contents can be absorbed in the same way, whereas the truth is that something will be changed within us when we have understood a genuinely occult book. It is therefore quite understandable that genuine occult books are rejected by most human beings to-day. For what ought to take place in someone who reads such a book at the present time? He takes the book ... and he is clever ... as everyone is clever to-day. He considers that he is capable of judging the contents of the book, and he is convinced at the outset that there can be no better judge of that book than himself. And now, after having read it, is he supposed to learn to judge differently? Of course, he cannot do so; he is clever already and has impeccable judgment! He does not admit that there is anything to change in his power of judgment. Needless to say he will realise nothing of the basic trend and intention of the book. At most he comes to the conclusion that he has learnt nothing from its contents and that it is all so much juggling with words and concepts. It must necessarily be so if he does not constantly have in mind the basic principle of Spiritual Science which is that in any circumstance, no matter how trivial, after reading a genuine book on Spiritual Science, a different kind of perception and judgment of the world must arise.

There is one essential to be remembered if the words ‘Occult Reading and Occult Hearing’ are to mean anything to us. We must, as it were, say farewell to the ordinary kind of thinking, the ordinary judgments applied to the physical world. I have often emphasised that one must, of course, remain a reasonable human being. Although a new kind of judgment, of thinking and of feeling must be acquired for the spiritual world, healthy judgment as regards the events and beings of the physical plane must be maintained. That goes without saying. But there is something that is necessary for the higher worlds and does not hold good for the physical plane. I will start from an experience that is certainly familiar

On the physical plane we are accustomed through our thinking, feeling and willing to relate ourselves to that plane. When we think, we create for ourselves mental pictures of the things and beings of the physical plane and the processes connected with then. Anything of which we opine that it is present in space or takes place in time, we thereby make into our own spiritual property. We learn, through our mental pictures, to know something. It is the same with feeling. We confront some object—for instance, we delight in a rose; we take the rose into our world, into our feeling, into our own soul. We make something that goes out as an impression from the rose and works upon our soul, into our own inner possession. In willing, we incorporate into the external world something that is contained in our intention. Relationships between ourselves and the external world are clearly evident when we observe our behaviour and conduct on the physical plane. Nothing we thus apply in acts of thinking, feeling and willing, nothing we do when we enter into relation with the outer world through the physical body, serves us in the remotest degree—in the form in which it is practised on the physical plane—for getting to know anything of the higher world. Whatever helps us for example, to know something about the physical world, whatever we apply in the form of feeling or thinking in order to know about the things of the physical world—this can serve only as preparation for spiritual-scientific investigation.

Let it be remembered, therefore, that in the physical world whatever we do in thinking, feeling and willing in order to have some knowledge of that world or to do something for it—all this serves only as preparation for knowledge of the higher worlds. Whatever we may think about something belonging to the physical world, no matter how astutely, gives us no knowledge of the higher worlds. Through thinking our soul is merely prepared, merely trained in such a way that it gradually becomes capable of penetrating into the spiritual worlds. And the same applies to willing and feeling in connection with things of the physical world. In order to be doubly clear, let me say this. A learned researcher, through his scientific methods, gets to know something belonging to the external world. When he has investigated it he is wont to say: I know this and that belonging to the external world. This kind of investigation, this kind of thinking, does not help him in the very least to penetrate into the spiritual world. His thinking and investigation are of significance only because they exercise the powers of his soul. The effect, as far as penetration into the spiritual worlds is concerned, is that through this thinking and investigation the soul becomes more capable of living its own life, of activating its own forces. The activities that are normally carried out in the physical world are of use for spiritual-scientific investigation only as an education of a man's own soul.

I will choose still one more comparison to make the matter clearer. Suppose someone is a carpenter; he has learnt carpentry and intends to make furniture. In his work as a carpenter he makes certain pieces of furniture and continues to do so for many years. This is his job. But something else happens as well; he becomes more skilful, his manipulations more effective; he acquires something else, inasmuch as his own organism becomes more skilful. This is a kind of supplementary achievement. It is the same with spiritual activities. If, as a botanist, I think and make great efforts for years in the sphere of botany, that is all to the good, but as well as this my mind becomes more flexible. That is also of help. I am better ‘drilled’ than I was some decades ago. Please do not take the expression in its ordinary trivial sense, if I say that the spiritual scientist must have been previously ‘drilled.’ He must use his drilling to make his spiritual powers more mobile, more flexible. Then, when everything that is otherwise practised in the world is placed directly in the service of self-education as happens in meditation and concentration, in the exercises that are given for the purpose of penetrating into the spiritual world—we duly prepare ourselves for this. Please take the words, ‘we prepare ourselves,’ as something infinitely important, for in reality we can never do anything more than prepare ourselves to enter the spiritual world; the rest is an affair of that world itself; the spiritual world must then come to us. It will not do so if we remain in the usual state of human beings on the physical plane. Only when we have transformed our soul-forces in the way indicated can we hope that the spiritual world will come to us. It cannot be anything like investigation in the physical world, for then we go towards the things we are investigating. We can only prepare so that when the spiritual world comes towards us, it will not escape us, but make a real impression upon us.

It must therefore be said: All that we can do to develop the capacity for spiritual investigation is to prepare ourselves worthily, in order that when karma wills that the spiritual world shall confront us, we shall not be blind and deaf to it. We can so prepare ourselves, but the manifestation of the spiritual world is an act of grace by that world and must be thought of as such.

And so to the question: How can one succeed in penetrating into the spiritual world?—the answer must be: We must prepare ourselves by adopting every measure that makes our actions more skilful, more mobile, that trains our thinking, makes our feeling and perception more delicate, more full of devotion. And then: Wait, Wait, Wait! That is the golden rule—to be able to wait in restfulness of soul. The spiritual world does not allow itself to become accessible in any other way than this: individuals must make themselves worthy of it and then develop a mood of expectation in restfulness of soul. That is the essential. We acquire it in the way I have described in detail in my books, by making ourselves ready to receive the spiritual world. But we must also acquire that absolute restfulness of soul which alone makes it possible for the spiritual world to approach us.

In lectures I have used the following example. In the physical world, if we want to see something we must go to it. Those who want to see Rome must go to Rome. That is quite natural in the physical world, for Rome will not come to them. In the spiritual world it is just the reverse. We can do nothing except prepare ourselves through the methods described, in order to be worthy to receive the spiritual world: we must acquire restfulness of soul, poise where we stand ... then the spiritual world comes to us. We must wait for it in restfulness of soul—that is the essential. And this that comes to us, where is it? Of this too I have often spoken and will speak of it merely by way of introduction so that we may have a good foundation upon which to proceed.

You are all familiar with our anthroposophical literature. Where are the Elemental Beings, where are the Beings of the higher Hierarchies? They are here, everywhere—just where the table is, where the chairs are, where you yourselves are—they are around us everywhere. But in comparison with the things and processes of the external world they are so ethereal, so fleeting, that they escape the attention of men. Men pass unceasingly through the whole spiritual world and do not see it because through their constitution they are still unprepared for it. If you were able to enter the spiritual world, as is the case at night when you are asleep, you would realise that consciousness is so weak that in spite of the fact that man is in the spiritual world from the time he goes to sleep until he wakes, his consciousness is too dull to perceive the spiritual Beings who are around him. He is in the spiritual world the whole night long, he is within this delicate, fluctuating world, but he is not aware of it because his consciousness is too dull.

What must happen in order that man can learn to be aware of this world in which he is really living all the time? Here we have to consider something very important. Above all, we must keep the following in mind. I have tried to describe it more precisely, for the public as well, in the last chapter of the book Riddles of Philosophy. I want to see whether a few individuals who are not in the Anthroposophical Movement are capable of understanding it.

How does external perception come about? As you know, people generally think—especially those who imagine themselves to be very clever—that external perception arises because the objects are there and then man, inside his skin, receives impressions from the objects; they suppose that his brain (if they think materialistically) produces inner pictures of the external objects and forms. Now that is simply not the case; the facts are quite different. The truth is that the human being is not by any means confined within his skin. If someone is looking at a bunch of flowers, then with his Ego and astral body he is actually within it, and his organism is a reflecting apparatus which reflects it back to him. In reality you extend over the horizon which you survey. In waking consciousness, you are also rooted, with an essential part of your Ego and astral body, in your physical and etheric bodies. The process is as I have often described in lectures. Let us assume that here are a number of mirrors. As long as you walk through space and have no mirror, you do not see yourself, but as soon as you come to a mirror you do. The human organism is not the producer of what you experience in your soul, it is only the reflecting apparatus. The soul is united with the bunch of flowers outside. That the soul may be able to see the flowers consciously depends upon the eye, in unison with the brain-apparatus, reflecting back to the soul that with which the soul is living. Man does not perceive in the night, because when he sleeps he draws out what is within him all day—his Ego and astral body. Therefore, the eyes and brain cease to reflect. Going to sleep is just as though you had a mirror in front of you—you look into the mirror and see your own face; take the mirror away, and all at once your face is no longer there!

And so man, with his being of soul-and-spirit, is actually within that part of the world which he surveys; and he sees it consciously, because his own organism mirrors it back to him. In the night this reflecting apparatus is not there, and he sees nothing. We ourselves are the part of the world which we see; during the night that part of the world is withdrawn.

One of the worst forms of Maya is the belief that man remains firmly within his skin. He does not; in reality he is within the things he sees. When I am confronting a human being, I am within him with my astral body and Ego. If I were not to confront him with my organism I should not see him. The fact that I can see him is due to my organism; but with my astral body and Ego I am within him. The failure to realise this is one of the most dangerous results of Maya.

In this way we can form an idea of the nature of perception and experience on the physical plane.

And what about the spiritual world? If we want to experience that of which I have said that it is so fleeting, so mobile compared with the processes and things of the physical world that although we live within it as within the coarse objects of the physical world, we do not experience it because it is too tenuous—if we want to experience this fluctuating, ethereal reality, then our ordinary Ego, the bearer of our individuality, our egoity, must be damped down, must be suppressed. In true meditation this is what we do. What is meditation? We take some content, or mental picture, and give ourselves over entirely to it. We forget ourselves and suppress the egoity of ordinary waking consciousness. We exclude everything that is connected with the egoity of waking consciousness. Whereas we are accustomed to apply egoity on the physical plane, we now suppress it. Instead of living in the physical and etheric bodies, we gradually succeed, by suppressing egoity, in living in the astral body only.

Please note the essential point here. When we meditate or concentrate, our primary goal always is to suppress our egoity. This egoity must not transmit physical experiences; we try to suppress it, to press it into the astral body. When it is in the astral body it is not, to begin with, reflected in the physical body.

When you look at this bunch of flowers, you are, in reality, within it. The physical body is a reflecting apparatus and you see the bunch of flowers because the physical body mirrors it to you. If you suppress the Ego with its egoity, then you will be living within the astral body. And the astral body is so delicate that you can perceive the fleeting things of the external world consciously; but they too must first be reflected if you are to see them in reality.

There are many among you who faithfully and sincerely devote yourselves to meditation. Thereby you succeed in suppressing the everyday egoity, and experience in the astral body begins. But reflection must first take place if you are to have conscious experience in the astral body. There are numbers among you who through meditation have already reached the stage of living in the astral body. But now it is a matter of reflection, of mirroring. And just as in ordinary life the physical body must reflect what we experience, so, if we want to perceive consciously in the spiritual world, the experiences of the astral body must be reflected by the etheric body.

But what happens when a man's experiences in the astral body are actually reflected by the etheric body? Something happens of which we must realise, above all, that it is absolutely different from sight in the physical world. Things in the spiritual world are not as convenient as they are in the physical world. Even a bunch of cut flowers is a self-contained object; it remains as it is. We can take a bunch of flowers home and have pleasure in it, put it in a vase and so on. We expect nothing else when the bunch of flowers is there in front of us. But this is not by any means the case with the astral experiences that are reflected to us by the etheric body. Everything there lives and weaves; nothing is still for a single moment. But the essential thing is not how it appears in the reflection. The essential thing about the bunch of flowers is what it actually is, at the time. I take the flowers and I have them. When something is reflected to me by the etheric body, I cannot take it as it is and be satisfied with it. For it simply is not what it appears to be.

Understand me well, my dear friends. For this too I have often used the following analogy. Suppose there are a few strokes here (on the blackboard) let us say B ... A ... U. Now if I could not read when these signs are in front of me I should simply say: ‘I see a few strokes like this which, when joined, form a peculiar pattern.’ I cannot take this home like the bunch of flowers and put it in a vase! If I were to take what stands there, the word BAU (building) and put it in a frame, then I have not got what is essential. What is essential is the actual building outside somewhere. I express the building through these signs, and I merely read the essential thing, in the signs.

On the physical plate the essential things are actually there, in front of me. In ordinary reading I have not the essentials; I have signs for them. So, it is with what I experience in the astral body which is then reflected in the etheric body. It is correct only if I take it as so many signs, realise that these signs mean something else and that it is not sufficient simply to look at what is reflected and assume that it is the essential thing. It is not the essential, any more than the word BAU is the actual building. The essential thing is what these signs mean. First of all, I must learn to read them. In the same way I must learn to read what, to begin with, I perceive in the spiritual world—simply a number of signs which express the truth. We can acquire knowledge of the spiritual world only by taking what it presents to us as letters and words which we learn to read. If we do not learn this, if we think we can spare ourselves the trouble of this occult learning to read, it would be just as clever as a person taking a book and saying: There are fools who say that something is expressed in this book, but that is no concern of mine. I can just turn over the pages and see fascinating letters on them. Such a person simply takes what is presented to him and does not trouble about what is there expressed.

If what I have just said is ignored, one comes into an entirely false relationship to the spiritual world. The essential point is to learn to read and interpret what is perceived. We shall see in the next lectures what is meant by this reading and interpreting.

Thus, we have indications at any rate, which help us to understand the question: What is occult reading? Occult reading begins when man experiences himself in the astral body—just as in the physical world he experiences himself in the Ego—and when the experiences of the astral body are reflected in the etheric body, not as is the case in the physical world, when the experiences of the Ego are reflected in the physical body.

Something else must be remembered here. We are not, as I have also told you to-day, wholly within the objects outside us; we are not only in them with our Ego and astral body; but in waking consciousness the Ego also sends part of itself into the physical body. It is only during sleep that the Ego withdraws from the physical body. This means that in order to live in the physical world we must be able to dive down into our physical body. As regards perception and reading in the spiritual world, we realise, in the first place, that we can live in our astral body, and that things are reflected to us by the etheric body. But we must advance to the further stage of being able to live in the etheric body itself, to come down into the etheric body just as on waking from sleep we come down into the physical body. Please take note too that it is necessary to come down with the astral body into the etheric body.

When we learn to read, we learn to live outside the physical body. Just as on waking we come down into the physical body, so must the occultist, without sinking into the physical body, come down into the etheric body. Occultists call this, with reason, ‘being thrust into the abyss.’ What is necessary is that we should not be stupefied when this happens, that we should go down with consciousness and maintain our own bearings, for this descent into the etheric body is not as easy as the descent into the physical body. In very truth it is like being thrust into the abyss. Man's being is split into three. I have spoken of this in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Man becomes a threefold being. He cannot consciously descend into his etheric body without being multiplied in the way indicated.

When the human being lives in the physical world alone, and goes to sleep, his Ego and astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies; his consciousness then is too dull to enable him to see the spiritual world. When he comes down into the physical body which reflects the physical world to him so that he perceives it, this too is a kind of thrust into the abyss; only it is made so easy for us that we do not experience it as a shock. But every morning, if through our exercises we progress to that stage where we can experience something in the spiritual world, if we learn to read in this condition which is like sleep that has become conscious, we also experience what it means to be thrust down, to be divided into three. If we retain our consciousness now, we are also able consciously to penetrate into the things and happenings of the spiritual world that are outside us.

Thus, we learn to live in the astral body and have our experiences reflected by the etheric body. We read as when we are reading a book. As soon as we have come down into the etheric body we become threefold. We can send out these three parts of our being—and they then move about consciously in the spiritual world. In their wanderings they then experience what we call ‘occult hearing.’ As soon as we have been consciously thrust down into our own etheric body, occult hearing begins. Now we penetrate into things in the real sense. Now we notice that what we have previously learnt to read we can actually experience.

Let us therefore repeat what has been said. Through his occult exercises man is enabled to suppress his egoity to such an extent that he learns to live consciously in his astral body. Then, gradually, the beings and happenings of the spiritual world are reflected by his etheric body. When he is able rightly to interpret this reflected world, he has learnt the art of occult reading. At a further stage, when he is able not only to read while outside his etheric body, but to awaken in the real sense in the etheric body, then he sends out the three parts of his being into the world and hears what is going on, hears its inner weaving and activity. At this stage he hears it.

Gradually he develops the faculty of occult reading and occult hearing in such a way that something quite definite is associated with the experience. He succeeds in actually penetrating to the reality of things. For what transpires on the physical plane is not the reality, indeed it is not! Simple contemplation shows us in every region and corner of the world that what we experience in our environment is not the reality, that we attach a false meaning to everything. Someone once said to me on the banks of the Rhine: ‘There is the ancient Rhine.’ It was a beautiful, deeply felt saying. But what, in reality, is ancient in the Rhine? Certainly not the water that one sees flowing by, for the next moment it is no longer there. It shows clearly enough that it is not what is ancient. Ancient, at most, is the hollow that has been burrowed out in the soil, but that is not what is meant when someone speaks of ‘the ancient Rhine.’ What is it, in reality, that is designated by the phrase, ‘the ancient Rhine?’ If one says ‘the hollow’ ... well, there are hollows in the sea-floor too, and also streams. When the Gulf Stream flows through the ocean, not only is the water different at every moment but the hollow too is different. Nothing is permanent in the Physical, nothing whatever. It is the same with the whole physical world. Your own organism is only a stream: the flesh and blood you have to-day was not yours eight years ago. Nothing is real in the Physical, everything is in flow.

To speak of ‘the ancient Rhine’ has meaning only when we are thinking of those elemental Beings who actually have their life in the Rhine, when we are thinking of the elemental River God Rhine—a spiritual Being who is truly ancient. Only then have we said something that has meaning. We must mean the words ‘ancient Rhine’ in a spiritual sense, or we are talking thoughtlessly. It is profoundly true that we penetrate to spiritual realities only when we are guided by the spiritual world. It is then that we penetrate into the true realities. That we do indeed penetrate into these realities will be clear when we describe the details of occult reading and hearing—as far as is possible—in the lecture tomorrow.

Dear friends, as on other occasions when I have been able to speak to you since the serious events of the present time took their beginning, let our thoughts go out at this moment to those who are at the front offering their souls and their bodies in sacrifice for the tremendous demands made in our time and having to take up, with the whole of their physical existence, the challenge of the time:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, the spirit we have long been seeking in our movement, may he be with You and guide you to the goals that you have to seek.

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

My particular intention with the words I spoke here on the last occasion was to let a truth flow into your minds, a truth to be found through spiritual science, that the great and serious events in life really enable us to see how outward appearances have to be regarded in the light that comes to us from spiritual science. It is only then that they will no longer appear to us as Maya, the great illusion, but in their profound truth. This is not to say that these outward appearances in themselves are Maya or illusion—that is an erroneous view people often pick up from a philosophy with a more oriental orientation—but that our senses and our intellect err in the interpretation, in their comprehension, of outer events unless we illumine those external events with the light that comes to us from an understanding of the spiritual world.

Today I want to take certain individual facts that have already been touched on during the years of our anthroposophical work and present them in a perspective that is somehow in accord with our time.

We are fully conversant with the thought that since the Mystery of Golgotha intervened in events on earth, the impulses, the forces and entities that have gone through this Mystery of Golgotha have played an active role, as living forces, in all that happened in human evolution on earth. In other words, and to put it more concretely, I want to say: In all major events, in all the important and essential things that have happened, the Christ impulse has been active through those who are his servants, his spiritual helpers. At the present time the term Christianity is generally understood to cover only what men have been able to comprehend. But, as I stressed on many occasions, what has come into the world through Christianity is so great, so tremendous, that human reason, the human intellect, is in no position, or has not been in a position to the present moment, really to grasp even the most elementary aspects of the powers of the Christ impulse. If Christ had worked only on the basis of what men have been able to grasp of him, he would have been able to achieve little. But what matters is not what has entered into mankind through human reason and understanding, what concept men have been able to form of the Christ, but rather the fact that he has been present since the Mystery of Golgotha, active right among men and in their ways of doing things. It is not a question of how far men have understood him but that he has been present as a living entity and has entered wholly into all significant events in evolution.

Of course, our spiritual science enables us to grasp only a little of the profundity of the Christ impulse even today. Future times will come to understand and see more and more. There is no reason to feel pride in such understanding of the Christ impulse as we have so far achieved. Spiritual science will grasp a little more today than it has been possible to grasp of the Christ in the past. In past times people were able only to reflect on the Christ by using the means available through external intellect, external reason, external research. Now we have spiritual science as well, and with this we see into the supersensible worlds, and out of the supersensible worlds we are able to provide many answers concerning the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. Immediate comprehension of what the Christ is, and what the spiritual powers are that serve him as folk souls and the like, has been least possible for the peoples living in regions where the Christ still had to enter, as it were. Yet the Christ impulse had to come in, for instance in the Roman world. And there is one particular example which we have already considered in another context that will be the best way of demonstrating how the Christ is at work as a living power, directing his spiritual servants when events have to be brought about that are essential in evolution, to bring real progress for mankind.

The event I mean is one I should like to mention again. It happened in AD 312 that the man through whom Christianity became the official state religion, Constantine,¹⁶ son of Constantinus Chlorus, entered the field with his army against Maxentius, then the ruler of Rome. Of course, if one considers those two armies facing each other one would have to say that the situation was the worst possible for Constantine, his army being five times smaller than that of Maxentius. It is possible to imagine, however, that considering the state of the art of war at the time, both armies had a number of outstanding generals. Yet what mattered particularly at that time was not the the skill of men but that opportunity was given for the ongoing Christ impulse to influence mankind in a way commensurate with the needs of the time.

It is possible to see how much of the Christ impulse could be understood at the time, how much of that Christ impulse human hearts had been able to absorb in the state of consciousness then prevailing if we consider what happened a few decades later around Rome and out of Rome. Julian the Apostate¹⁷ fought Christianity out of honest conviction, on the basis of what could be gleaned from human knowledge in those times. Anyone considering the way Julian and his followers fought Christianity can say to himself: ‘There is no doubt that as far as human knowledge was concerned, Julian and his followers were very advanced for their time; they were much more enlightened in this respect than the Christians of their day, although they had reverted to worship of the old gods.’ They stood for what might be considered to represent human knowledge at that time. Yet in AD 312 it was not the stand of human knowledge that determined the issue; it was rather that the potential had to be there for the Christ and his servants to intervene in the historical evolution of mankind. However much Maxentius and his army were able to rely on the skills of their generals and on anything else human knowledge and human wisdom may have achieved at that time, if nothing else had happened, then, undoubtedly, something destined to emerge at that time would not have emerged. And what did happen?

What happened was the following. The continuing Christ impulse flowed into soul activities that were not within men's consciousness, into activities men were not aware of. And it did indeed guide men in such a way that what had to come about did come about. The battle between Constantine and Maxentius was fought by the Red Rock, the Saxa Rubra, on 28 October 312. It was decided not by human skill, but—and enlightened minds may refuse to accept this as much as they like—by dreams; that is by what is generally called ‘dreams’, though they are not just dreams to us. For through their dreams there entered into the souls of the two army leaders what could not enter into them out of human reason. Maxentius had a dream before the battle that he would have to leave his city. He consulted the Sibylline Oracle and was told that he would achieve what was to happen if he dared to join battle outside the city and not within it. It was the most unwise thing he could have done, particularly as his army was so much more powerful than Constantine's. He should have known that anything received from the higher worlds first had to be interpreted and that the oracle would mislead him. Constantine in his turn was told in a dream that he would win if he led his troops into battle under the sign of Christ. He acted accordingly. What had entered into the souls of these men by the roundabout route of a dream became deed, and as a result the world was greatly changed at that time. We need only reflect a little to be able to say: What would have become of the Western world if supersensible powers had not taken a hand in events in a way that is indeed perfectly apparent.

Let us now look at those events in more details. At the time souls had incarnated in the West and South of Europe who were destined to be bearers of Christianity. Even the most enlightened souls were unable to become bearers of the Christ impulse at the time by using their minds, their intellect, because the time for this had not come. They had to find the way to Christianity through what had been created around them, externally. We may say they assumed Christianity like a garment. Their deeper nature was not greatly affected by it. They became serving members rather than receiving the Christ impulse into their innermost being. Fundamentally speaking, that was to hold true for the best souls in the western parts of Europe for a long time to come, into the 8th and 9th centuries and beyond. They needed to assume Christianity as a garment, to wear this garment of Christianity in such a way that they wore it in their ether bodies and not in their astral bodies. You can judge what it means when I say they bore Christianity in the ether body. It means they assumed it in such a way that they were Christians when awake but were unable to take their Christianity with them when outside their physical and ether bodies. The way they went through the gate of death also was such that we can say: they were able to look down from the realm through which man has to pass between death and rebirth, look down at what they had been in their last earth life. But one thing that was not immediately possible for them at the time was to take the Christian impulses arising from their former life into their future life. They wore Christianity more as a garment.

Because of something I will come to shortly, let us hold on to this way in which the souls accepted Christianity in their outward lives and the way Christianity was not part of what souls were able to take with them through the spiritual world, when passing through the gate of death, to prepare for a new life on earth. Let us remember that these souls were only able to enter into a new earth life having forgotten Christianity. For we do not in a later earth life remember what we merely wore as a garment in our former life. If it were otherwise our children would not have to learn Greek again at grammar school, for many of them did once incarnate in Greece. They have no memory of their Greek incarnation, however, and therefore have to learn Greek again. Those souls who had incarnated in the West of Europe were unable to carry their Christianity through the life they had to go through between death and rebirth because they had not integrated these impulses inwardly with their ego and astral body. That was the particular way in which those souls lived on into later incarnations. Let us remember this and now move on to another fact, one I have also mentioned before.

We know that the time we live in now, the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, began mainly around the 15th-16th centuries. That was the time when preparation was to be made for the European world for elements that were predominantly to lead to the development of the spiritual soul. That is really what our fifth epoch of civilization is about. Whatever had to be achieved there had to be achieved with regard to the fact that in the external aspect of earth life, too, conditions were arising on earth that were particularly favourable for the evolution of the spiritual soul—the soul able to develop by directing itself towards material earth life, the external facts of physical existence. That had to take its beginning and it did take its beginning. We merely need to recall how horizons expanded in Europe as the great discoveries were made and with everything they brought with them. The spiritual soul, therefore, had to develop primarily under the influence of the material world. We merely need to think of one thing, and again reference has already been made to this: the evolution and development of the spiritual soul is the special mission, the one-sided mission, of that which belongs to the sphere Of the British folk soul. Considering all the details, one could hardly imagine anything proceeding more according to plan than the way the British folk soul was directed towards these material roles in life. This was definitely predestined in the evolution of mankind.

Let us imagine, for instance, that during the 15th century England had been deflected from its propensity for those regions of the earth towards which it had been directed as the vast lands outside Europe were discovered, and that the British folk soul had instead experienced large territorial gains on the Continent of Europe. Let us imagine that the map of Europe had been changed to this effect. Then it would have been impossible in the first place to achieve what had to be achieved in the sphere of material civilization and, secondly, to achieve what had to be achieved in Europe by developing the inner life. This inner development proceeded specifically from that point onwards, overcoming all kinds of obstacles, with a role played also by Protestantism which in turn was influenced in many ways by German mysticism. Intervening in the process of evolution the Christ impulse had to ensure that the British Isles were kept away from the region where souls still had to be prepared to become outward, external bearers of the Christ impulse.

The Christ impulse had to flow into the deeds done on the Continent of Europe. It had to act in such a way that it achieved a great deal more than could come about through mankind, through the arts and skills of man. And what happened?

The marvellous thing happened that a poor shepherd girl from Orleans, Joan of Arc, [16 January 1412–30 May 1431] did everything those who were very advanced for their time had not been able to do. At that time it was indeed the Christ impulse acting in Joan of Arc, through its Michaelic servants, that prevented a possible merging of France and England, causing England to be forced back onto its island. And this achieved two things: first, France continued to have a free hand in Europe. This can be seen if we study the history of France over the following centuries—the essential element of the French spirit was able to influence European culture entirely without hindrance. The second thing which was achieved was that England was given its domain outside the continent of Europe. This deed, brought in through Joan of Arc, was a blessing not only for the French but also for the English, compelling them to take up their domain.

If we consider this in connection with what is implied by the advance of the Christ impulse on earth, the deed of Joan of Arc achieved something about which the following may be said: The degree to which she understood those things in a genuine human intellectual way was as good as zero compared to the deed which has given the map of Europe its present form. Events had to take that course so that the Christ impulse could spread in the right way. There we see the living Christ erupting into historical events out of the subterranean depths of human nature. That is not the Christ men think they know, for the Christ impulse may be seen in two ways. On the one hand we may ask ourselves: What did the people of that time understand of the Christ impulse? If we open our history books and study the history of mankind we find that over the centuries theologians were in dispute, defending or contending all kinds of theories, attempting to show how human freedom, the Holy Trinity and other things should be understood. So we see countless theologians fighting each other, acknowledging each other as orthodox theologians or else accusing each other of heresy. We observe how Christian doctrine spread entirely in accord with the situation as it was at the time. That is one side of it. But it is not the thing that matters, just as now it does not matter what people are able to do with their ordinary intellect. What matters is that the Christ lives among men, unseen but a living entity, and is able to stream up from depths beyond our perception and enter into the deeds of men. And he has done so at a point where there was indeed simply no need for him to come in through the human intellect, through a reasoning mind, but where he was able to come in through the soul of a girl of simple mind, through the soul of the Maid of Orleans. And when he came in like this, what was the attitude of those who were able to grasp Christianity in form of the orthodox doctrine? Well, they found they had to burn the girl who bore the Christ impulse at the stake. It has taken some time for official doctrine to take a different view. There may have been a point to it where official doctrine is concerned, but canonizing Joan of Arc is not exactly the right response to the events of that time.

This is a real example of how the Christ intervened in human evolution through his servants. As I said, he acted through his Michaelic spirit in the case of the Maid of Orleans. He intervened as a living entity, not merely through whatever men were able to understand of him. This particular example also shows something else, however. Christianity did exist. The people who were there around the Maid of Orleans, as it were, did call themselves Christians. Their Christianity did mean something to them. But all we can say about their understanding is: He whom you seek is not here,¹⁹ and the one who is here is not the one you seek, for you do not know him.

It must be clearly understood, however, that it was essential for Christ evolution to proceed within the evolution of Europe also in the form of an external garment. Souls were part of this development that were able to assume Christianity exactly as such an outer garment, who were able to wear it on the outside as it were. They were souls trailing behind, souls that had been incarnated there earlier and still did not take the Christ into their ego, merely into the ether body. The great difference between Joan of Arc and the others was that she had taken the Christ impulse into the very depths of her astral body and was acting for the Christ impulse out of the deepest forces of her astral body. This is one of the points where we can gain a clear understanding of something that really must become clear to us: the difference between the progressive evolution of nations and the progressive evolution of individual human personalities.

If we consider the French as they are today, for example, it is of course true that a number of individual human personalities exist within the French nation. These individual personalities were not, of course, part of the nation in their previous incarnation, part of a nation that had assumed the outer garment of Christianity there in the West of Europe. It was because a number of people had to assume Christianity as an outer garment in the West of Europe that they were in a condition on passing through the gate of death that necessitated their being united with Christianity in their astral body and ego in their next life, under different conditions. It was because they had been incarnated in the West of Europe that the necessity arose for them to have their next incarnation somewhere else. It is indeed very uncommon—note that I am saying uncommon, though it does not always have to be so—that a soul belongs to the same community on earth through a number of consecutive incarnations. Souls pass from one earthly community to another.

We have one example, however—and I am saying this without wishing to rouse sympathies or antipathies, and with no intention of flattering anyone—we have one example of souls actually assuming the same nationality a number of times. That is the case with the people of Central Europe. These Central European people include many souls that are incarnated among them today and have also been incarnated in the Germanic tribes in the past. This is a fact we are able to trace. It cannot always be fully explained with the means now available in occult science, but it exists nevertheless. A fact like that presented in last Thursday's public lecture on The Ancient Germanic Soul and the German Spirit,²⁰ for example, is illumined when we know that souls make repeated appearances within the Central European community. The fact is that cultural epochs were cut short within this particular community.

We only have to realize what it means that there was an epoch at the dawn of Germanic culture when the writers of the German poem the Nibelungenlied lived, or Walther von der Vogelweide (German lyric poet, minnesinger, c. 1170–12301 and others. And we need to realize that later there was a' time when a new flowering of German culture began and the first had been completely forgotten. For when Goethe was young nothing was known, as it were, of the first flowering of Germanic culture. It is because the souls return to the same community that it was necessary to forget what had gone before, so that the souls would find something new on their return and could not pick up the threads of what remained from earlier times. It has not happened with any other people that a metamorphosis was gone through, as it were, the way it happened in the case of the Central European people: from the height that had been reached in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries to that later height that came about the time between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries and which we may hope will continue. There is no continuous line from the first to the second of these periods, and this can only be explained once we know that souls do return particularly in this culture. It is possible that another deeply moving fact I have already mentioned to you is also connected with this, the fact that it was noted how the Central European fighters of the present continue the struggle once they have gone through the gate of death, that soon after they have passed through the gate of death it is possible to see how they continue to join the struggle. This fact can raise wonderful hopes for the future, because one can see how not only the living, in the physical sense living, but also the dead, those who have died, are making their contribution to events.

Let us now pose the question: What is the situation with souls that were incarnated in Western Europe at the time when Christianity was assumed like an outer garment, that is in the 6th, 7th 8th and 9th centuries, and accepted Christianity there, or also under the Romans, though they were not yet able to unite it with their astral body and their ego? What is the situation with those souls?

Grotesque as it may seem to modern man with his materialistic thinking, the things spiritual science can teach achieve real meaning for life if the concrete facts are considered. People still think reference to repeated earth lives is a matter of mere fantasies produced by a handful of foolish dreamers. The idea is one that is not accepted, though it is once again considered excusable to make reference to it in view of the fact that in an hour of weakness even the great Lessing accepted the idea of repeated earth lives.²¹ Yet if we take the findings made in occult research seriously we cease to be fools begging the forgiveness of greatly enlightened folk. It will be necessary for us to consider some of the things arising from occult research in detail, for that will be the only way of throwing light on something which otherwise has to remain a great illusion.

It is a strange thing that a great many souls that lived to the west of us towards the end of the Roman epoch, when Christianity was slowly gaining influence, finally becoming the established church, now come from the East, as souls growing up in the East, souls now among Russia's fighters. I said we must remember the fact I referred to earlier. For among the people killed in the East, those who are fighting there and being taken prisoners, are souls who towards the end of the Roman epoch lived in the western part of Europe. They now come towards us from the East, people who in those past times allowed the Christian faith to flow into their ether bodies and now, in a civilization that is relatively speaking at a lower level, take Christianity into their souls in a waking state and do so in such a way, due to the peculiarities of life in the East, that they have an emotional, instinctive bond with it. They are thus linking themselves to the Christ impulse in their astral bodies, doing now what they had been unable to achieve in their previous incarnations. This is a very strange fact brought to light by occult research in the present day. Many facts that deeply move the soul may come within the occult horizon triggered by the events of our time and this is one among them. What, then, can we learn from these facts?

We have to be clear about the following. We have to remember that is it part of the direct progress of the life of the spirit in Central Europe that the soul life of the German peoples is very consciously linked with the Christian faith, that it is taken upwards to the heights of a straight Christian culture. The streams, the paths, leading to this have been most marvelously laid out in advance over centuries. We see it all taking shape. It is specifically when we look at our own age with all its errors and mistakes that we see how the seed is there in Central European culture, how preparations have been made and no effort spared in the German folk spirit, the folk soul of the German-speaking peoples, so that now the Christ impulse may be taken hold of in conscious awareness.

That is a fact of infinitely greater importance than the 15th century event when Joan of Arc had to save France because that country had an important mission at that time. We therefore have before us the significant fact that the German spirit is called upon to take in the Christ impulse more and more consciously in future, take it in with the elements that have come into the life of the spirit in German countries and do so in a state of full waking consciousness. This Christ impulse had to announce itself in what went on at subconscious level over the centuries, as we have consistently shown. In the future it will have to unite with souls in such a way that there will be people—and in Central Europe there will have to be such souls—who in full awareness unite also their ego and astral body with the Christ impulse, exerting the powers of their conscious mind and not only the powers inherent in their physical and ether bodies. We can see efforts being made among the best. Let us take the best of them all: Goethe. We may quote Goethe as an outstanding example, but all souls have the potential within them, so long as they strive for it, however darkly.

Goethe showed Faust, the representative of mankind, to be striving for the highest.²² In Part 2 of the play he transports him to Greek civilization to share the experience of nations, guiding him into this in such a way that Faust has a significant experience of the future when he desires to wrest land from the sea and establish something that to him lies in the far distant future. And where does Goethe take Faust in the end? Goethe himself once expressed it like this in conversation with Eckermann: he had to make use of the vivid images of Christianity²³ to show Faust ascending into the spiritual world. And if you consider the profoundly beautiful picture of Faust's soul being received by the Mater gloriosa. you see it as the opposite image to that which led Raphael [1483–1520] to paint his famous Sistine Madonna, where the virgin mother is bringing the soul down. In the last scene of Faust we see the virgin mother upwards. That is the birth of the soul in death. And so we see a deeply inward striving arising from the human spirit in full conscious awareness. It is striving always to gain all that can be gained from Christianity in such a way that it may be borne through the gate of death and into the life man is going to live through in the new earth life that will follow preparation between death and rebirth. What we see there in Goethe himself is a character trait of the German people. It can give an indication as to the mission given to human beings. The mission is, and we can present this very clearly to our souls, that true benefit for the progress of mankind will arise only if within a certain group of people a harmonious relationship is established between Central Europe and Eastern Europe.

It is possible to visualize Eastern Europe expanding westwards, across Central Europe, by brute force. It is possible to visualize this happening. That, however, would be equivalent to a situation where Joan of Arc had not done her deed in the 15th century and England had annexed France in those days. If it had come to that, and I state this emphatically, something would have come about that would not only have brought calamity to France but would have meant calamity also for England. And if German culture were now to suffer through what may come from the East, this would be to the detriment not only of German culture but also of the East. The worst that can happen to the East is that it might expand for a time and have an adverse effect on German culture. For as I said, the souls formerly incarnated in Western Europe or on the Italian peninsula and now growing up in the East unite with the Christ impulse as though instinctively, in the unconscious depths of the astral body. Yet the Christ impulse that is to grow within them can never arise through linear progression of the instinctive element that lives in their souls under the name of orthodox catholicism which, on the whole, is Byzantine of course, for this is a name not an impulse. It is just as impossible for this to evolve into what it is predestined to become as it is impossible for a woman without a man to have a child. What is preparing in the East can only come to something if Central Europe strongly and consciously—that is in a state of full awareness—unites the force of the human ego and human powers of insight with the Christ impulse' out of what souls are striving for out of egoic nature.

What has to come about for the civilization and culture of the future will only come about if the German folk spirit finds souls that transplant the Christ impulse into their astral body and ego the way it can indeed be implanted there in a state of full conscious awareness' It has to come about through harmony being established, by uniting with that which is consciously achieved in Central Europe—more and more consciously.

This will need not just one or two centuries, but a very long time. The time needed will be so long that we may reckon on about two thousand years, I would say, counting from the year 1400. Adding two thousand years to 1400 we get the approximate time when something will emerge in the evolution of the earth that has had its seeds in the German life of the spirit, ever since there has been such a life of the spirit. We therefore realize that we have to consider a future lying not just centuries ahead but more than a thousand years. And the mission of the Central European, the German folk spirit, a mission already before us, is that there will have to be more and more of that nurturing of the life in the spirit through which men take op in conscious awareness—right into the astral body and ego—a comprehension of the Christ impulse that in earlier times moved through the peoples of Europe as a living but unconscious impulse. Once evolution takes this course then the East, too, will gradually, by twining upwards, reach the level reached in Central Europe because of what is already inherent there. That is the intention of the cosmic intelligence. We only interpret the intention of the cosmic intelligence rightly when we say to ourselves: It would be the greatest misfortune also for the East of Europe to harm the very spiritual power it needs to use as a support in twining upwards, a power the East should indeed revere, revere in friendship, foster and cherish. It will have to come to this. For the moment the East is very far indeed from achieving this. The very best of them still fall far short. Short-sightedly. they still refuse to accept what Central European culture in particular is able to give.

I went into this already in my first public lecture here in Berlin.⁵ Tonight you can see the deeper occult reasons behind what in the public lecture I was able only to put exoterically. in an extraneous way. This is of course something one always has to be careful about, to speak in terms close to the understanding of one's listeners in public lectures. The real impulses to say one thing and omit another, looking for the one context or the other, always have their occult reasons. At all events it is possible to see from what has been discussed today that when we look at things in an external way they present to us the great illusion, Maya. It is not that the outside world in itself is Maya. It is not. But we only gain understanding for it if we illumine it with the truths derived from the spiritual world. In the present case, the truths streaming from the spiritual world show that it is essential for Central Europe not to be overcome by Eastern Europe today, just as in 1429–1430 it was essential for France not to be overcome by England. It will of course be obvious, from what has been said, that for those in the East of Europe it is quite impossible to understand the crux of the matter and that, fundamentally speaking, this can be understood only in Central Europe. Surely this is understandable. In all humility, therefore, without any feeling of superiority, we must take on this mission, and we shall have to accept that it will be possible to misunderstand us. We must find that perfectly understandable. For what is preparing in the East will only be rightly understood in the East itself in time to come.

That is the one thing arising from what I have to say. The other is that we consider the great transition occurring in human evolution in our time exactly on a basis such as this. On previous occasions we have considered it from many different aspects. Now we consider it in such a way that we are able to see how the element which entered into man's evolution on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha needs to be understood in increasingly greater conscious awareness in our day, by those who are able to do so after this incarnation. In the days of Constantine or of Joan of Arc, for instance, it would have been impossible for the Christ impulse to bring about at a conscious level what it had to bring about at an unconscious level. But the time will have to come when it will be able to act at a fully conscious level. That is why we receive out of spiritual science what we are able to take into our soul in increasingly greater conscious awareness. Again it is possible to point to a particular fact—honestly, without getting worried about any sympathies or antipathies that may arise and with no intention of flattering anyone. After all, it is always better to base one's views on facts rather than on what they are so often based on today. For if we look out into the world a little bit we shall see that opinions really and truly are not always based on facts but on passion, on strong national feelings. Yet it is also possible to base the views that determine the attitude of the human mind on facts.

Anatole France²⁴ was a man who considered Joan of Arc from the rationalistic and materialistic point of view now current. In the cultural sphere of Germany it has been quite natural to understand Joan of Arc out of a supernatural context since Schiller's great deed.²⁵ There are people even in Germany today who think Schiller made a big mistake; but those are the literary historians and in their case that is understandable. After all, it is their function to 'understand' art and literature—which is why they are unable to understand it. No, the essential thing is for us to let arise before our eyes, from the depths of spiritual life as though glorified, the figure of which Schiller said: ‘The world indeed loves to blacken all that is radiant and drag down into the dust all that is sublime.’

And so it is indeed that acknowledgement of the fact that the Christ impulse intervened in a human individual in a situation not affecting our own nation can bring us the confidence to accept what I have put forward in my public lecture: that it is possible to perceive in the life of the spirit in Germany how it tends towards spirituality the way it has evolved, tends towards spiritual science. We can see that it is its special—though not exclusive—mission to take all that has been achieved and aimed for the life of the spirit in Germany and carry it upwards to perception and understanding of the spirit in the spirit. That is the mission of the German people. The other missions, being the same soul mission expressed in bodily form, as it were, have to serve it. What has to come to pass, out of cosmic wisdom, will come to pass. But, as I have said before, it will be necessary for the twilight we live in today to evolve into a true Sun-age for the future. To make this possible, there will have to be people in the future who have a connection with the spiritual worlds in order that the soil now being prepared with the blood and suffering of so many will not have been prepared in vain. The existence of souls capable of bearing within them their connection with the spiritual worlds justifies everything that happens, even the most horrific, terrible and fearsome, events, so that the Central European mission in spiritual life may be achieved. This, however, will depend on individual souls being able to get in touch with this spiritual life through their karma, and taking it wholly into themselves. Then, when the sun of peace is once again shining over the fields of Central Europe, they shall bear perception of things spiritual, a feeling for things spiritual, within them. Then the inclination developed in a few souls that are capable of this in their present incarnation will make it possible for that to happen which I want to condense in the following words. These words sum up all I wanted to put to you, so that we write the device into our souls under which souls will be able to grow in the right way towards the potential for the future that may arise out of these difficult times:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 16. Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BC), Greek philosopher of Ephesus: Fragment B53 in H. Diels Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Vol. I.
• 17. Constantine I (the Great) (274 –337), Roman emperor 306-337 (sole ruler from 323). Victory over Maxentius at Pons Milvius, a bridge crossing the Tiber to the north of Rome, in 312. See also the lecture given by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach on 30 January 1915 in Wege der geistigen Erkenntnis und der Erneuerung künstlerischer Weltanschauung (GA 161).
• 19. See Matthew 28:6; Mark 16:6; Luke 24:5,6.
• 20. Lecture given on 14 January 1915 ‘Die germanische Seele und der deutsche Geist vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswissenschaft’ (GA 64).
• 21. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlecthtes (1780) paragraph 98:
  
  ‘Why should I not return as often as I am sent to gain new knowledge, new skills? Do I carry off so much at one go that it is not worth the effort to return?’
• 22. See Rudolf Steiner, Geisteswissenschafiliche Erläuterringen zu Goethes ‘Faust’ (Vol. I ‘Faust, der strebende Mensch’; Vol. 2 ‘Das Faust-Problem’ (GA 272 and 273). Engl. GA 272 in part translated and published in different books and journals: GA 273. The Problem of Faust in R Series of typescript lecture courses at Rudolf Steiner Library, London.
• 23. See J. P. Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, 6 June 1831:
  
  ‘And of course you'll admit that the conclusion, where the soul which has been saved is taken upwards, was very difficult to do. With something so noumenal, scarely to be intuited, I could so easily have ended up in vagueness, but I used the sharply defined figures and concepts of the Christian church to give my poetic intentions the much needed form and consistency.’
• 5. Lecture given on 29 October 1914 entitled ‘Goethes Geistesart in unsern schicksalsschweren Tagen und die deutsche Kultur’ in Aus schicksaltragender Zeit (GA 64). In The Dramatic Art of the Goethenaum I (tr. L. Dreher) London: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1936.
• 24. Anatole France, Vie de la Jeanne d 'Arc (49th edn, 2 Vols.) Paris 1927.
• 25. Friedrich Schiller, 3rd verse of the poem Das Mädchen von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans).