The Rudolf Steiner Archive

For years now, I have been privileged to speak here in this place about questions of spiritual science. It seems right to me to continue the lectures, which have always begun at this time, this winter as well. For how could there not be a need, especially in our fateful times, to delve into matters of spiritual life! Above all, however, it seemed necessary to me to take the immediate starting point of what is now so close to all our hearts in the two introductory lectures, which are to be held today and over eight days. For it seems impossible to me to speak about anything in our time without bearing in mind that the words we speak today must be able to stand up to those who, in the West and the East, are giving their all for what the times demand. Who could say otherwise than that words that are to be worthy of speaking today may be addressed in spirit to those who bleed to death for our cause? And how could we not start from the immediate impressions of the time, since we have experienced something great and powerful, that in a few days the world of souls, the world of hearts, can show a new face! An infinite amount of selflessness, of devotion, of willingness to sacrifice – we saw it flourish in the first days of August, and we are all under the impression of the greatness of the time.

But if I want to start with the genius who is so intimately connected with all that he has given to his people and to humanity, who is so intimately connected with the whole development of Central Europe; if I want to start with Goethe, it is mainly because because, however strange it may sound, I believe that in all the years I have not spoken a word from this place that could not stand up to Goethe's judgment – even if what spiritual science has to say cannot always be literally substantiated with what we know from Goethe. His spirit reigns over us. And what can be justified before the spirit of Goethe is what I mean as spiritual science in our present time.

It is not only what comes out of our lungs, what comes out of our hearts, that speaks to us today; it is also close to our hearts to hear how the facts speak a powerful language. Many today have to sacrifice their lives. Those we hold dear are returning wounded from the West and the East. In these days, the facts speak of the spiritual world. And I know that they speak in the hearts of those who have to leave their physical lives behind on the battlefields. There, what connects us to the lasting, to the eternal, here on this earth, becomes an immediate spiritual reality, with which, above all, those who must physically leave this reality know they are connected. Folklore, the national soul, these become very real concepts; today you can hear it from those who come back or who send reports home from the battlefields. Those of the honored audience who have heard the lectures of recent years here will know that I rarely touch on personal matters. But today the starting point of the personal will be allowed, since basically we are all personally connected in our innermost soul and heart with what is happening and with what shines forth as fruits in our hopes from what is taking place.

In a sense, I experienced what has become an event today in Austria years ago. And when today's events are discussed – after all, all eyes are turning to Austria, from which, as it were, what appears to us to be great and painful in these fateful days has emerged – I may, since personal matters are connected with the general human aspect of these days, start from this – I would say – Austrian experience.

In the 1970s and 1980s of the last century, I was part of a group of people in Austria who saw an ideal shining before them, which, to a certain extent, has been fulfilled in Central Europe in recent days. Even though all those to whom I belonged in Austria at that time may have had a very different idea of the connection between the Austrian and German peoples, the union of the Austrian peoples with the German peoples still lived in numerous hearts at that time as an ideal. And when I, who as a child had absorbed with the sounds of the German language everything that was present in the Austrian Germans in the 1860s in the way of ill will towards Prussia, especially after 1866, and everything connected with it – when I, in the 1870s and I attended the University of Vienna in the 1870s and 1880s, the words of an Austrian German professor first reached my ears. At that time, I was at the center of Austria's intellectual endeavors, and these words gave me and others, as it were, the slogan for the unity of Central Europe's intellectual life. And I may read to you the words that were spoken at the time by a German in Austria to his students:

"The year 1870 brought the development of the German people to a close.

The hope that the remaining thirty years of our century will drive the seeds of intellectual life in Germany to rapid development, even if poetry will initially have to take a back seat, must prompt us to come to terms with the recent past in order to face the immediate present without a backlog of files, so to speak.

We in Austria find ourselves in a peculiar position at this significant turning point.

The free movement of our national life has removed the barrier that separated us from Germany until recently; the elementary school law and the new educational institutions have given us the means to work our way up to a common cultural life with the other Germans. Now, just now, the case has arisen,» – please note: this was written in the immediate aftermath of 1870!

"that we should not participate in a great action of our people. The North has taken the lead in Germany and formed a state from which we are excluded. This could not create a dividing wall in German intellectual life. The roots of this are not political, but cultural and historical. We want to keep an eye on this unbreakable unity of German intellectual life, in which not only western Austria, but even the Germans of Hungary and Transylvania play a decisive role. May mutual love prevail in this intellectual realm on both sides. We in Austria want to go hand in hand with intellectual life in the German Reich and acknowledge and strive to follow where we are ahead; in the German Reich, however, we want our difficult cultural task to be appreciated and honored, and not to be held accountable for the past, which is our destiny, not our fault."

The man who spoke these words, Karl Julius Schröer – no longer among the living – often spoke them to his Austrian students. What inspired him in his innermost being? He himself was a German born in Hungary. What connected him to the entire German intellectual life? It is expressed in one word, which held it together - in the word: Goethe. For this man was completely filled with Goethe's spirit. And Goethe's spirit, it worked like the living bond, but also like the fire that went over from the Germans of Germany to the Germans of Austria, the Germans of Hungary, to all the Germans of Europe.

Now, when speaking of Goethe, one can easily object: To how many souls, to how many hearts within the German people does Goethe speak a living language today? Will there not be many who bleed to death outside for German nature and who do not know much about Goethe?

That is not the point when one speaks of the guiding geniuses of a nation and of humanity. For more than in any other area, the saying “You shall know them by their fruits!” seems true to me here. Central European cultural life, German culture, must be recognized by its fruits – and by its ripest fruit, by Goethe. And Goethe has had such an influence that many Austrians feel German character as their own. The most German of Austrian poets, Robert Hamerling, spoke a word that can be used, so to speak, as a kind of motto for those I have just spoken of, as a meaningful motto; because it was spoken from the soul of many, many during the time of which I have spoken. “Austria is my fatherland,” says Robert Hamerling, ‘but Germany is my motherland!’ And all such words, but above all such sentiments, were spoken under the influence of Goethe, who was active in the German national substance. So here too I may take the personal as a starting point for the universal human.

Goethe became a kind of guiding genius for me. More and more he appeared to me as the genius of Central Europe, who represents not only what one can get to know in Goethe's works, what one can get to know in the abundant messages that we have precisely from Goethe's life; indeed, Goethe did not even appear to me exhaustively in what he himself has presented to us as a living entity, like that of his “Faust”. Rather, Goethe always seemed to me as if, in everything we can know of him from his communications, from his works, from what is already living and working in the culture of Central Europe, indeed in the whole culture of humanity, as if all of this, there is something more comprehensive, something more universal, something that emerges from a magic mountain in the intimate moments of life when we truly engage with Goethe. Like the old Barbarossa himself in a renewed form with the genius of Central Europe – so in Goethe we encounter a being intimately connected with what is to be taken from the German spirit and incorporated into human culture. And the words at the end of Faust seem to go deeper than we can understand today:

All that is transitory
Is but a parable;
The inadequate,
Here it becomes reality;
The indescribable,
Here it is done.

Faust, after a life in which the perpetual striving of Central Europe is so well expressed, ends with his soul merging into the spiritual world. Goethe's way of thinking seemed to me to be a reference to the fact that from Faustian striving, with which man connects, the connection of man with the spiritual world must emerge. And it can appear to one in the following way. One can devote oneself to Goethe, to all the magnificent and great things he has said; one can absorb the tremendous world wisdom of Faust with a devoted heart. But one can also delve more intimately into the way Goethe strove, into the way the secrets of humanity and the world worked, lived and stirred in his soul. One can resolve to strive with him. Then, I believe, the soul will be transported, pointed to the worlds that the spiritual science I am referring to here represents. In my last book, “The Riddles of Philosophy”, the second edition of my “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century”, I tried to show how the crowning of Western philosophy can be won from Goethe's spirit. Today I can only briefly touch upon the subject, which I have so often discussed here from this same platform. Let us delve into Goethe's spirit. We find him — and if we delve deeply enough into his way of thinking, it is not one-sided — we find him above all striving to descend deeply into those spheres of nature where the sources flow, where nature and human nature are one. Goethe's mind is such that natural science becomes directly religious life, religious being. Goethe did not delve into nature with understanding and reason alone; rather, his whole heart, his whole soul plunged deeply into the secrets of nature, so that what was a natural secret to him was at the same time an earthly friendship. What the West has always striven for – to rediscover the connection between the human soul and nature, as it existed in Greece and as modern humanity has lost – can be gained through Goethe's way of thinking. All of Goethe's powers strive towards this one goal. His comprehensive imagination guides understanding and reason along the paths by which the human soul penetrates to the sources of existence, where not only external, mechanical knowledge of nature can be found, but also such universal laws as we encounter as the thoughts of the Godhead itself. With his whole soul, Goethe plunges into the depths of being, where science simultaneously becomes religion, into those depths of which Schiller says:

Take the Godhead in your will,
And she descends from her throne in the world.

Thus it is that Goethe was not only a poet, not only an artist, that he became a researcher, a scientist, because he wanted to strive for what the human soul strives for as a whole. And so the most comprehensive and mature nature ever portrayed by a human being appears to us: the Faustian nature, to arise from Goethe's soul, that Faustian nature that stands before external reality with words that have almost become trivial today, but in the face of which one must take the standpoint from which Goethe experienced them. Thus Goethe was able to create the figure in Faust who stands before external reality with the words:

Alas, now have I,
Law and Medicine,
And, alas! also Theology,
Studied thoroughly, with ardent endeavor.
There stand I now, poor fool that I,
And all my wisdom is as before!

But what do we experience in this Faust? — We experience that the soul, which has fallen into doubt about the external world, builds up from its inner being the elements that lead it into universal existence — scientifically, artistically, universally. And then we recognize that it is in this Faustian nature that the spirit of Central Europe lives, above all the spirit of the German people, and we recognize this spirit of the German people particularly when we hear Faust speak the words:

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything
Why I asked. You did not turn your face to me in vain
in the fire.
You gave me the glorious nature of the kingdom,
the strength to feel and enjoy it. Not
only allowing cold, astonished visitors,

and then the powerful words that penetrate deep into the soul:

Allow me to look into her deep chest
As if into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches And crushing neighboring trunks, And the hill muffled hollow thunders, Then you lead me to the safe cave, show Then myself, and my own chest, Secret deep wonders open up.

One cannot feel these words, cannot penetrate them, without – I would like to say – becoming one with what the German folk soul is, this folk soul that wants to sacrifice itself with its thoughts and feelings, with its fantasy and imagination, on the altar of spiritual life, in order to see the fire rise on this altar, leading up to the spiritual worlds. And when we follow the conclusion of Faust, we cannot but remember that Goethe wanted to tell us through him: Only the path for those who have rejuvenated themselves leads to this ascent into the spiritual worlds, where it can truly become clear to him: “All that is transient is only a parable.” For Faust is presented to us with a double life. We first see him as he is old, and then as he has enjoyed the rejuvenating potion and ascends into the spiritual worlds. In times such as these, one is tempted to see the words as having a very special depth. The German people have often been compared to Hamlet. The words of Hamlet, “To be or not to be,” have often been used to characterize the nature of the German people. Oh, one hears it in the words and in the great confidence that we hear today in everything, this “To be or not to be.” But how? Not in the sense of Hamlet, but in the sense of Faust! In the sense of the certainty that what is as firmly established as the national soul, out of which Faust grew, belongs to that for which “all that is transitory is but a parable”, that is preserved for eternity. And so Faust truly appears to us not as a skeptic, but as a symbol. We follow the German people from the earliest times, of which Tacitus tells us in such a grandiose way, and find it in a Faustian way always rejuvenating – but always knowing the one thing: can we already be “German” now? We cannot be that yet; we will become that in eternal striving! And again we hear the words of Faust:

Who always strives and strives,
We can redeem him;

as well as the others:

Only he deserves freedom and life
who must conquer them daily.

And the German cannot say of himself, “I am a German,” as the Englishman says of himself, “I am an Englishman,” as the Frenchman says, “I am a Frenchman,” as the Italian says, “I am an Italian.” For the members of these nations know what they are when they say that. The German knows that what he has in mind as a “German” is an ideal that is connected to the deepest sources of the spiritual, that one becomes and always will be a German - and never zst. And so the German striving itself always goes up into spiritual worlds - like Faust's striving ultimately rises in his soul from step to step into worlds that Goethe so wonderfully portrayed. Even if in many German hearts little is consciously left of Goethe's portrayal, the power that lived in Goethe lives today in Central Europe. And it is certainly no exaggeration to say that Goethe's genius is fighting in the souls, in the hearts, in the veins of those who stand in the West and in the East. For the humanities scholar, the old Greek myth that the most valuable geniuses of a nation are among the spiritual comrades-in-arms when the fate of that nation is decided becomes reality. For anyone who truly knows Goethe, it is clear that everything that Western culture has produced, everything we can call Western culture, has become a person in Goethe, has become a universal personality, has been reborn in Goethe, so that from now on, anyone who embraces culture must be touched by Goethe's genius. This gives us faith that Goethe's genius reigns over us, especially in our time.

That is how it was for Austrian Germans who heard the word “Goethe” in the midst of the period of those struggles, when the Austrian peoples were not yet allowed to fight alongside their German brothers. That was what also contained the pull that I myself felt towards Germany. And just as a personal note, I would like to mention the deepest satisfaction I was able to feel when I was able to work for six and a half years on the great Weimar Edition, which was to bring Goethe's entire spiritual heritage to mankind. And since that time, it has been my unalterable urge to make progress in grasping Goethe's genius. And here I may refer to a personality whom I have already mentioned from this place, a personality who, in the last third or in the second half of the nineteenth century, fully represented Goethe's spirit in German intellectual life: Herman Grimm. Herman Grimm's lectures on Goethe, which he gave at the University of Berlin in the 1870s, were an event in German intellectual life. I do not want to say that I can support every word in these lectures by Herman Grimm; but more significant than his words was the consciousness that lived in Herman Grimm.

In his very first lecture, he spoke about Goethe's relationship to the intellectual life of Germany in the following way: |

"Goethe has influenced the intellectual life of Germany as a mighty natural phenomenon would have influenced the physical. Our coal seams tell of times of tropical warmth when palm trees grew here. Our caves, which are opening up, tell of ice ages when reindeer were native to our country. In enormous periods of time, major upheavals took place on German soil, which in its present state gives the appearance of being eternally unchanging. It is therefore fair to say that Goethe's influence on the intellectual atmosphere of Germany was comparable to the effect of a telluric event that increased our average climatic warmth by so and so many degrees. If something like that happened, a different vegetation, a different way of farming and thus a new basis for our entire existence would occur.

Thus it was natural for Herman Grimm to think in Goethe's spirit. One might say that every word of Herman Grimm can show us how, in Herman Grimm, we can see, as it were, the spiritual representative of Goethe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Goethe's genius itself worked through Herman Grimm. And Herman Grimm was convinced – and this is where Goethe's spirit was truly reflected in him – that hundreds of years would be needed to fully understand and appreciate Goethe's spirit. Therefore, Herman Grimm himself knew that what he had to say about Goethe would have to be revised once this spirit of Goethe's was properly understood. Thus Herman Grimm's description of Goethe also appears to us as an external description. It is a peculiar experience to delve into Herman Grimm's descriptions of Goethe's mind and of Goethe's creations. Germany's social, political and intellectual life is spread out before Herman Grimm, and within it he sees Goethe, how mightily he strides and how, through his genius, he intervenes deeply in Germany's circumstances in the scientific, political and artistic realms. But we see him only from the outside. Herman Grimm was aware of this himself, and he has the feeling that times must come when one must first connect inwardly with Goethe's way, and that there is still an infinity to come from Goethe.

In these fateful days, we may recall Herman Grimm's thoughts when speaking of Goethe's mind. In the introduction to my lecture, I referred to Karl Julius Schröer. One of the words this man spoke will remain unforgettable to me, for when Schröer spoke about Goethe in Vienna, it fell like a spark into my soul. He began a lecture in which he explored what the peculiarity of the German mind is, how German art, German imagination – Goethean art, Goethean imagination – is founded on the deepest truth of being; and one might say: illuminating a wide field in a flash, the Goetheanist Karl Julius Schröer said: the German has an aesthetic conscience! Many questions become matters of conscience for the German out of his Faustian nature. And so even the greatest events he faces – those events of which Goethe says that they are connected with the “great gigantic fate that lifts man up when it crushes man” – become, above all, questions before his conscience. Herman Grimm strove to take this conscience into his soul. That is why he said many things that one would like to repeat in these days, when, in the face of voices from all over the world, in the face of all that is being called to us from everywhere, we want to ask nothing more than conscience: whether we can stand up to it?

What does Goethe's German conscience say to Herman Grimm?

I believe that the words he speaks are significant, words that could become particularly significant in our time:

“The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people is today the church that unites us all. We are seeking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious aspirations of the masses have only this one goal. The division of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national distinction applies to the ethical worldview.”

This could be said in 1895, out of Goethe's spirit, which, like no other, had the quality of lovingly immersing itself in all things human, including all things national.

“We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland,” and here are significant words:

"But we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war. It is no lie to say that keeping the peace is our most sacred wish. ‘Peace on earth and goodwill towards men’ permeates us.

Anyone who is familiar with the essence of Central Europe knows that these are true words, words that can stand up to what has just been called the “German conscience”! And as a lead-in to what Goethe, the living Goethe, can still become for us, here are the following words of Herman Grimm:

“... As a totality, human beings recognize themselves as subject to an invisible court enthroned in the clouds, before which they consider it a misfortune not to be allowed to exist and whose judicial proceedings they seek to adapt to their inner disputes. It is here that they anxiously seek their right.”

How universally, how lovingly, and with what attention to the universally human does Herman Grimm, speaking from the spirit of Goethe, say in 1895:

“How hard the present-day French are trying to make out that the war they have in mind against Germany is a moral imperative, demanding recognition from other nations, yes, even from the Germans themselves.”

Do we not hear in these words the assurance that lived in Central Europe that it could never have brought about the war for its own sake? But do we not also hear the awareness of facing an ironclad necessity? “We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war.” We know that this is true! And that is why we know that the cause and the ‘fault’ for today's events cannot be found in the people in whom these attitudes lived. But the Goetheans were not blind. They knew that war would come after all. “How today's French are trying to present the war against Germany, which they are planning, as a moral demand, the recognition of which they demand from other nations, even from the Germans themselves!”

Even in Goethe's time, people spoke of Goethe's objective sense, of his loving way of immersing himself in people, but also in things, of connecting with everything with his own soul. An important psychologist of his time, Heinroth, used the word of Goethe's objective way of thinking and looking at things. This concreteness leads precisely to the world view that can be called the “Goethean world view” and which no one can ignore if they want to absorb the culture of modern times. Basically, we have not been far removed from recognizing such things. Has Goethe's way of thinking remained so unknown? I would like to point to words that have been spoken and that can show us how Goethe's way of thinking has not actually remained so unknown – words such as the following:

There are also some remarkable words with regard to the French and English:

“The highly favored selection among Descartes' and Newton's compatriots knew the spirit of science unquestioningly; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, primarily by thousands of German researchers...”

”... Imagination, feeling, will, made their claim to be heard beside or above reason, and under their transforming pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful. The irrational was recognized as a source of illumination; wisdom was drawn from the child and the flower; science, philosophy, and poetry drew near each other. In England, this revival of the imagination gave birth to noble poetry, but left science and philosophy almost untouched.

One of the keys to understanding the period is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical, and scientific movements flowed mostly in separate channels, in Germany they touched and merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius of poetry in the net of his logic; and the thought that discovers and explains, and the imagination that produces the new, they worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

“In Faust at the end of his eventful life, we see the present-day Germany foreshadowed, the Germany of restless, bold volition and action, and we can all the better understand why the great cosmopolitan, in whose eyes state and nationality were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals, nevertheless claims his unassailable position as the highest poet of the German Empire alongside Bismarck, his creator.”

These are words that show you have some sense of Goethe's way of thinking. These words were spoken in 1912, and where? Are they being spoken somewhere in Germany for the sake of prestige? No! They were spoken in Manchester, by Herford, the Englishman, who is referring to German intellectual life. And they were spoken, as we are told in the preface to the book in which they appeared – a book well worth reading in these fateful days for us! – in order to teach the newspaper people something that might lead to a better understanding of what German genius is. I leave it to everyone to judge, in the light of recent events, how much these newspaper people have learned from it. But there is something else in these lectures. There is a meaningful sentence where Goethe was discussed and the lecture continues immediately:

“No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, faithful.”

So spoken in Manchester in 1912. We may claim to understand something of what it means to be “true and loyal”; and we may say—especially in view of the place where these words appear—that we have learned something from Goethe! A preface has been printed at the beginning of the book, from which I would also like to share a few words with you. Lord Haldane—you may know the name from the discussions of the last few days—says:

"The source of the stream of (Germany's) intellectual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a high degree practical and materialistic.

Why does Lord Haldane write these words? He also expresses his opinion on this, for he says:

"Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the burden of arming ourselves against attacks that in reality none of us has in mind.

Well then! I need add nothing to the light that is thrown on our fateful days from this side. But they give us, so to speak, from the internationality of the German essence, the right to hold to Goethe, to find consolation and hope in Goethe, and also support in Goethe in these fateful days. Above all, and I could refer to many, many things today, we find a saying of Goethe's. Oh, I have often thought of this saying of Goethe's in the last few days and weeks! That shots were fired at the cathedral of Reims – so it was spread throughout the world. I do not believe that I am second to anyone in my admiration for the unique and wonderful cathedral of Reims. I saw it in 1906; I admired it. But I have also seen how this cathedral has become fragile, and it cut me to the heart when I had to say to myself: Not thirty years from now, and it will no longer be able to stand as it does now. But we heard that this cathedral was said to have been shot at – I do not want to investigate the fact – and there was much talk about it. Then I had to remember a Goethean idea, a Goethean feeling. It was from Goethe's spirit that the word was spoken, which can make such a deep impression: What would the countless stars be, what would all heavens be, if they did not ultimately shine into a human eye, if they were not reflected in a human soul and grasped by a human heart? Anyone who understands Goethe's way of thinking knows that there is a higher work of art than all cathedrals, that there is a higher work of art than all the works of art created by human beings, however much he admires them; he knows that there is the divine work of art created by man! And then, however paradoxical it may sound, the following may be said to a people who have been educated in error: if war is a necessity and must be, and shots are fired at the greatest work of art, which is greater than all cathedrals, then one feels — in the Goethean sense — that it is hypocrisy to lament the fact that bullets can also fall on cathedrals!

Once again, because it is connected with current events, let me turn my attention to the country that is being talked about so much today: Austria. But first, I would like to raise a question, because in many respects it depends on the right questions being asked whether the right answers are obtained.

Much is said about the “guilt” for the present war; much is said about the fact that the present war was ignited here or there. But I think one question can be decisive, and it must be important – the question: Who could have prevented this war? That it was bound to happen one day is another question. I am now speaking only of its immediate beginning in our time, and there is no other answer to this question than that: the Russian government alone could have prevented it! That is certain. From everything that is very easy to know, people today can give themselves this answer.

But now back to the “local” starting point. That group of people, of whom I said earlier that the idea of the Germans of Austria joining those of the German Reich shone before them, repeatedly heard a word from Bismarck during the years when what has now become an event was being prepared. It was a word spoken with superior humor, but – I would like to say – one that includes fate. “Autumn crocus” was the term Bismarck used to describe a number of people who did not want to go along with the mission that the Berlin Congress in 1878 had given to the Austrian state in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Why the name Herbstzeitlose? At that time in Austria we had a parliament whose leader was a great and important man. His name was Herbst. Like many others, he saw the English parliamentary system as the highest ideal of political effectiveness. From this parliamentary system, one could derive a great deal. Among other things, the Herbstians derived something that they represented with great virtuosity: that one should not claim Bosnia and Herzegovina for oneself. Bismarck called these people “Herbstzeitlose” (autumn crocus) in reference to their leader, because he saw the task of the time connected with what Austria had to carry out in Bosnia and Herzegovina at that time.

How did that come about?

Russia had at that time continued its efforts to expand its sphere of influence over the Balkan countries. France and England were the main opponents of this endeavor. Today, we must remember who it was that had instructed Austria in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Congress of Berlin, because only the context of the facts can instill a proper feeling in our hearts. England and its representative at the Congress of Berlin, Lord Salisbury! At that time, England regarded it as a necessity of modern times for Austria to extend its sphere of influence over Bosnia and Herzegovina. And those who were not autumn crocuses, but who at that time claimed to speak the language of modern times – the language of the people of the times, not of autumn crocuses – could not go along with the autumn people in Austria, but had to submit to the modern demand: to extend Austria's sphere of influence to Bosnia and Herzegovina. What happened later is a consequence of what happened then, and it has settled into those people who, one might say, wanted to combine the Austrian spirit with the modern spirit at that time.

Now, there is also a beautiful saying of Goethe's that he spoke when he once commented on one of the oldest rocks on earth, granite. He said that nature, with all its consistency, attracted him again and again because it led him away from the inconsistency of people and their actions. — This dominates Goethe's entire way of thinking: inner consistency. And when this inner consistency in Goethe's style is observed, it gives the soul security and true, genuine goals. One must gradually work one's way up to this consistency if it is to become the consistency in people's actions.

If we now apply Goethe's way of thinking to those who formed their German ideal in Austria, what should they think of the consistency or inconsistency of people when they have to learn that Austria, in its vital question – continuation of what was intended by English policy at the Berlin Congress of 1878 – encounters resistance from the southern Slav elements, thereby provoking Russia – and finds England on Russia's side? What should have happened to please English policy? What it wanted in 1878 – or something else? In history, facts are intimately connected; they continue consistently. And right must be, who is able to base his actions on this consistency! Might the Austrian German now turn to the authors of his mission regarding the southern Slavs, and, taking up Bismarck's word, expand the term “Herbstzeitlose” somewhat? This, too, seems to be Goethe's spirit in our days: the consistency of the events to which we are bound in our own days.

When we turn again to Goethe and to what he was in the depths of his soul, we find that he sought this inner connection between the human soul and the sources of all being relentlessly and portrayed it so vividly and so captivatingly in his “Faust” » so vividly and so thrillingly because he knew that a heavenly, a spiritual and divine element shines in the human soul, and that this heavenly, this spiritual and divine element is greater than what human beings can grasp with their intellect, with their weak reason. That is precisely the Faust problem: to sense God in the soul, the creating, the working, the speaking God in history. — What characterizes Goethe's spirit does not always have to be associated with Goethe's name; but “by their fruits ye shall know them”. I said that it can be applied to the culture of the German people, and the most mature, the most glorious, the most enduring fruit of this culture is Goethe's spirit. But what we see at the root of this culture, what we feel at the root of this culture, we see everywhere that we encounter Germanness, Germanity in its immediacy.

Again, we ask this Germanness, which is also Goethean, in the face of something else that comes up again and again: “Belgium's neutrality was violated by Germany,” we hear over and over again. It is not my job here to discuss military necessities; because anyone who knows the circumstances knows what military necessities are at this moment. But there is another aspect to be considered. Across the Channel we hear: Yes, because you violated Belgium's neutrality, we were morally obliged to start the war with you!

Firstly, I do not want to be one of those people who, when certain facts occur, are often said to have been wise after the event and say that they had known this for a long time. But one may say that those who were concerned with public affairs in this case well knew that this war would come one day, and that England would then be found among Germany's enemies. However things might have come about, they were such that they had to come about. For this reason, one cannot give much credit to England's current moral indignation – although I do not want to talk about the violation of Belgium's neutrality. But I will speak about the moral outrage from Goethe's way of thinking.

Goethe pointed out that when the human soul finds itself at the sources of the eternal, it then also sees the eternal necessities shining within itself. And Schiller, as so often, coined a phrase from Goethe's mindset: “World history is the world court.” Let us assume that an injustice has been done in violating Belgium's neutrality. Who would be the judge? The one who thinks in Goethe's, in Schiller's way of thinking answers: “Now world history!” German history will have to submit to its judgment. But Schiller, in the spirit of Goethe, would never have said: “English politics is the world court!” – Herman Grimm spoke of how close Bismarck was to Goethe. Therefore, in connection with the above, a word of Bismarck may be recalled; for it may be said to be related to what has been said about “world history” and “world judgment”.

It was in 1866 when Bismarck was advised from a high position to punish Austria because it was the only guilty party in the rivalry with Germany. And Bismarck is said to have spoken the words: “We do not have a judicial office to rule, but to pursue German politics; Austria's rivalry against us is no more punishable than ours against Austria.”

I wanted to say this in advance because I believe that it can serve as a basis when the call for England's moral outrage over Germany's violation of Belgium's neutrality is heard. In the spirit of Goethe, we would say to such voices: You do not have a judicial office to rule, but you pursue your policy! And whatever the case may be, it was out of politics and political necessities that what had to be done was done by Germany in Belgium. But if you want to defend Belgium's neutrality, you do it not out of morality but for political reasons. And just as Germany had to deal with Belgium's neutrality at its discretion for political reasons, so you had to deal with that neutrality in your own way for political reasons!

When one hears such talk, one is reminded of the English judgment I have already quoted: “No words in the German language are more saturated with the juice of national ethics than those which denote these things: true, thorough, faithful.” It is true that in war it is states that pursue their policies, not morals. It is only right that in 1914 we should face the consequences of what was undertaken in 1878. Whether it is right to take action against someone for continuing in 1914 what was committed to him in 1878 is a matter for those who speak of the “morality” of their policy.

I did not want to go into what touches on current politics, because, especially in our fateful days, we must remain true to what Bismarck said: that those who have to stay at home should, in a way, remain silent when events speak for themselves out in the field. I also did not want to talk about this or that about Goethe. But I did want to say that, starting from Goethe, something can sound in our hearts and souls when, in the face of such fateful events in the physical world as today's, we feel the necessity to hold as true: that all that is transitory is only a parable, that the inadequate can only be achieved in the spiritual, that the indescribable is done there alone. I know that, especially in these days, for those who are out there in the field, the prospect of the spiritual world was what they needed, what they longed for. And I have heard the assurances that came from those on whom it depends today – the assurances that war speaks a clear language, but a language about the spiritual life, about the reality of the spiritual life. These days one can study the feelings, those feelings: “Wherever I may let my blood flow, wherever I may draw my last breath, I know: my soul is safe in the spiritual life, and reality is what remains behind!” And not only for those who are outside in the East and in the West, but also for those whose fate has determined otherwise, “spiritual grasp of the world” is a great word. Should one not be ashamed, not to be out there in the field, when one feels the difference within oneself: “You are certain that your blood will not flow; only the others are exposed to a difficult and harsh fate?” Should one not be ashamed to belong to the former, when one should not know that the spirit and spiritual bonds are common to all, that those who bleed to death are with us? Even if it cannot be explicitly expressed by everyone who is out in the field, how it lives in him, which has borne its most mature fruits in Germanness — it lives in him at least in his subconscious. And it is true — let it be said again: fellow fighters are not only those who are out on the battlefields, but also the geniuses who have emerged from the people as ripe fruits. And Goethe is one such ripe fruit that the culture of modern times cannot ignore; but certain people still find it difficult not to ignore this culture. And finally, allow me to point out these difficulties that exist and also what is connected with these difficulties in our fateful days.

We turn our gaze to the East, and there too we may say: By their fruits ye shall know them. Let us single out one of the most important Russian intellectuals, who grappled particularly with the intellectual life of the nineteenth century: Alexander Herzen. How is he connected with the intellectual struggle of the time? Let us consider the soul of Herzen, the Russian intellectual. We raise a question: Was he touched by Goethe's spirit? He who is touched by it believes in eternal things, in the future of humanity and human value, in the groundedness of the human in the divine; and when he is victorious, he still believes, with Goethe's Faust, in the rejuvenation of the human being – and from all doubt and from all distress about the misery of existence, hope still flows to him, Faustian hope. Herzen familiarized himself with the intellectual life of Western Europe. John Stuart Mill seemed to him to be one of the most enlightened minds of Western culture. Let us hear what he says about Mill:

"He was not exaggerating when he spoke of the narrowing of the mind, of the energy, of the polished nature, of the constant flattening of life, of the constant exclusion of general human interests from life, of the reduction of the same to the interests of the commercial office and of bourgeois prosperity. Mill speaks openly about the fact that in this way England will become China – and we add: and not only England.

And further, Herzen says:

“Perhaps a crisis will save us from this Chinese wasting away. But where it will come from and how — I don't know, and Mill doesn't know either.”

And now Herzen exclaims:

“Where is that mighty thought, that passionate faith, that ardent hope, which makes the body stronger and the soul more and more ecstatic, which feels neither pain nor privation and walks firmly to the stake?” Look around you! What can uplift the people?"

The Russian intellectual addresses such questions to European culture. What conclusion can be drawn? Well, the answer that the present time gives is the one that those who believed in Goethe have given themselves in their souls. That is why they are so connected with the great events of the time with this soul, with the soul of the heart. And even if those who are Goetheans could never have raised the question, “Where is that mighty thought, that passionate faith, that ardent hope that hardens the body and drives the soul into that ‘convulsive rapture’ that feels neither pain nor privation and walks firmly to the stake?” Even if they could not have asked in this way, they felt that what comes from the sources from which Goethe drew, in a certain sense goes to its death for the culture of modern times! And the answer resounds to us from our fateful events: “Look around you! What can uplift the nations?”

Mereschkowski, another contemporary Russian intellectual, says the following in the book in which he also speaks about Herzen:

"Herzen's last vision of death is Russia as the ‘land of free life’ and the Russian peasant community as the savior of the world. He took his old love for a new faith, but realized, it seems, in the last hour, that this last faith was also an illusion. However, even if faith deceived him, love did not deceive him; there was a certain correct outlook in his love for Russia: not the peasant community, but the Christian community will perhaps become the faith that the young barbarians are to bring to ancient Rome.

Meanwhile, however, he dies – without any faith at all!"

Thus he says from the heart:

“Farewell, corrupt Rome! Farewell, my homeland.” Why this homelessness, when we look eastward, among the best intellectuals? One might say: one can recognize what is still missing in the East from a nakedness that Mereschkowski displays in his last book, “The Advance of the Mob.” On page 25 of this book, he says:

"When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed and shriveled to a dwarf by an evil spell; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German citizen and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, “Herr von Goethe, Geheimer Rat des Herzogs von Weimar und anständiger Sohn des anständigen Frankfurter Krämers.”

We see the nakedness; we see the intellectual who could not get close to Goethe, who wonders: “How did Goethe speak about the French Revolution?” and gives himself the answer: “From a Hellenic demigod He becomes a German citizen and – the shadow of the Olympian be gracious to me – a German philistine, “Herr von Goethe, Privy Councillor to the Duke of Weimar and decent son of the decent Frankfurt shopkeeper.” But this Goethe became the one who conjured up in his “Faust” the greatest revolution that humanity has experienced, the revolution of the human soul on its way to the divine. And the right appreciation of this magical creation is what modern culture must understand if it wants to ignite not unbelief, the “Farewell, my homeland”, but confidence and faith in the divine life in people. What do the intellectuals of the East see in Western culture? Well, in the way described, they bypass the thing by which the West has reached its prime! But just as ancient Greek and ancient Roman culture live in our veins, just as the Christianity of the early centuries has penetrated into our veins, so too will the people of the East one day carry in their veins the cultural heritage that has reached the sun through Goethe's spirit. Man resists most what he must ultimately succumb to, for he hates what must of necessity come upon him. The future of humanity is not determined by what the Russian soul has attained from Byzantinism or what it has received of external culture from the West, but by what of Greek and Roman culture and early Christianity has become the lifeblood of the highest nations of Central Europe. But nothing can be skipped! In Goethe, what is alive in the culture of Central Europe in the way of Greek, Roman and early Christian elements has been resurrected. And in what comes from the East, we still see the childlike resistance, the lack of understanding of what must be taken up by the soul. And we begin to understand – and this is also Goethe's way of thinking – and then to look to the future with knowing confidence and knowing trust when we are asked: Why are we at war with the East? – Mereschkowski also gives us an answer to this when he talks about Chekhov:

But what a source of rejuvenation, what a source of hope even in difficult times Goethe is, that becomes very clear when one knows: the West necessarily had to go through an epoch of materialism. Those who are only able to see materialism can despair; but in the midst of materialism, such spirituality arises that can be summarized in Goethe's spirit! Truly, the German has proved it: he takes in with love, with devotion, the Russian spirit. But he must also show understanding for what the Russian spirit is not yet. Strange words—which Gorky says are cruel but true—are those spoken by a Russian intellectual who is not touched by Goethe's spirit. Gorky says:

"Yes, what is he to you, this man? Do you understand? He takes you by the scruff of the neck, crushes you under his nail like a flea! Then you may feel sorry for him! Yes! Then you may reveal all your foolishness to him. He will stretch you on seven racks for your pity, he will wrap your guts around his hand and tear all your veins out of your body, one inch per hour. Oh you... Pity! Pray to God that you may be beaten without any pity, and that's it! ... Pity! Ugh!

Cruel, but true, says Gorky. So speaks he who has yet to wait for what Goethe's spirit has to say.

This spirit of Goethe contains something that is eternal in the face of the ephemeral, the parable of life, something indescribable in every age because it is ever-growing, ever-generating new hopes. And if one speaks in these days of that which reigns as a good genius over Central Europe, which justifies the trust that is so firmly rooted in the souls of Central European humanity, then one may speak of it in Central Europe in such a way that it has become part of the universal blood of humanity in Goethe. And when we look at what lives in the struggling Central Europeans, what lives with them in soul and spirit, what also lives there in their blood, then we may say: it is the spirit of Goethe's spirit, and it will endure as long as Goethe's spirit endures! In these fateful days, we can also find hope and consolation in the words coined by Schlesermacher, which are also rooted in Goethe's spirit. For it is a truth: Schleiermacher coined it out of a Goethean spirit because he knew that Goethe's way of thinking is connected with knowledge and contemplation of the spiritual world, and that what lives in the German people is itself an eternal spiritual reality. Thus one can say, full of consolation and hope in the spirit of Schleiermacher: “There blows like a breath of the Central European spirit, of the Goethe spirit, upon the ranks of those upon whom the spirits look today, because the destiny of mankind is grounded in them.” Thus it whispers in our fateful days, that we may speak it with increased strength and with increased confidence, because we know: the fateful words of Schleiermacher, which are also Goethe's words, live in the hearts of many who are suffering outside, because they are shaped in his spirit:

“Germany still exists, and its invisible strength is undiminished” – and we add: resilient!

In this winter series of lectures, I have taken the liberty of alternating purely spiritual lectures with those inspired by the great and significant events of the present. Today's reflections on the nature of the German national soul and its relationship to other national souls in Europe are also intended to be inspired by the feelings evoked by our time. Tomorrow, another reflection will follow, which is purely spiritual scientific. In the introduction to today's reflection, I will take the liberty of pointing out some things that have already been discussed from a different point of view in one of the previous lectures, which also dealt with the nature of the folk soul.

If one speaks of folk souls today, one encounters many misunderstandings if one takes the point of view that is to be adopted here. One is often reproached for thinking something purely fantastic. And that is basically quite in order; because our present-day world view cannot help but see a fantasy in what must be addressed as the folk soul, in addition to other real, concrete spiritual beings. It is therefore only natural that, when the folk soul, among other spiritual beings, was spoken of as a real being in my book 'Theosophy', this chapter in particular was found to be particularly strange. That is precisely what a purely externalistic world view will never admit: that alongside those entities that can be perceived by the senses, that can be grasped by the intellect and are connected with the brain, there are also other supersensible, invisible entities beings that can only be seen with what Goethe called the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. These beings have a reality, however, just as the beings of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms around us have reality. And so spiritual science also speaks of the German national soul as a real, actual entity. It speaks of this entity as conducting the dialogue — subconscious, unconscious dialogues with the individual human soul — already mentioned in the previous lecture on the supporting forces of the German spirit. It is impossible to give an indication of the nature of the real, true national soul without saying at least a few words about what spiritual research will eventually have to say to mankind about the nature of the individual human soul. The present official science of the soul, or psychology, approaches the human soul in such a way that it sees in it, I might say, a more or less chaotic but ordering unity, in which will, feeling and thinking act in confusion.

But now spiritual science must speak of this human soul in a sense that physics speaks of color and color nuances that arise from light. Physics is aware that it can only study the essence of light if it seeks out this light in its effects, which appear as the different color nuances of the rainbow, the spectrum. On the one hand, we have the reddish-yellow color nuances, in the middle the greenish ones, and on the other hand the violet-bluish color nuances. Just as physics now already admits that the nature of light can be fathomed by studying the effect of light through matter in the various color nuances, so the spiritual science of the future will most certainly have to distinguish in the human soul as a whole that which one could call the revelation of the human soul light, that this is lived in the human soul in three parts, as it were in the three distinct nuances, one of which must be called the nuance of the sentient soul, corresponding to the reddish-yellowish band of colors of the rainbow or the color spectrum; thus, one must speak of the soul of understanding or feeling, corresponding to the middle green color nuances of the rainbow; and thus one must speak of the soul of consciousness, corresponding to the bluish-violet color nuances of the rainbow. And it is not a matter of an arbitrary classification of the soul activities, but rather of something that has to do with the reality of the human soul, just as the colors have to do with the reality of light. For spiritual science shows that what on the one side of the spectrum of the soul must be recognized as the sentient soul reveals primarily those powers of the soul that stream out of the impulses of will and feeling and express themselves in a certain instinctive way in man ; but at the same time it shows, and this is the remarkable thing, that precisely in this instinctive nature of the soul, in this nuance of feeling of the human soul, is contained that which we shall show tomorrow to pass through births and deaths as the eternal of the human soul. It is mainly in this part of the human soul that the eternal essence of the soul is contained.

Then we have, as it were, the middle color nuance of the human soul, the intellectual soul. In this, soul expressions directed equally to the eternal and to the sensual-real, the transitory, can be found; instinctive tendencies and those which rise above them and look at the senses in order to spiritually comprehend the world of the senses.

Thirdly, we have the consciousness soul, which, in the present stage of human development, elevates man to his self-awareness, which makes it possible for man to stand in his soul in such a way that he can say: “Within me, even within my physicality, between birth and death, there dwells an I.” But at the same time, it is that which is in these powers, that which, for the present development of humanity, contains the feelings of the human soul life that are turned towards the transitory, the external, obvious reality. Just as light reveals itself in the different color nuances, so what is the unity of the human soul reveals itself in these different members of the human soul. And one can say: just as light lives in red, green and blue, so the human ego lives in all three aspects of the life of the human soul.

Now, for spiritual science, what is to be regarded as the folk soul is a real supersensible entity, not merely what a more materialistic world view sees, a totality of characteristics that climate, education or otherwise are peculiar to a nation, but for spiritual science the folk soul is a spiritual entity that works from the supersensible worlds into what are the functions of the human soul.

And now, according to the way in which the folk soul works in what is the work of the human soul, the basic character of the folk soul life can be seen through different European peoples. These are things that spiritual science has to say, so that one day it will form a science, just as the physics of color within natural science forms a real scientific discipline.

I would also like to make it clear this time that what I am going to say about the interaction of the national soul with the individual soul elements in the various European nations has not been caused or provoked by the current war events and the existing conditions of the European nations. Rather, many of the listeners here can confirm that I have been saying for years, based on spiritual science, that We are dealing, for example, when we consider the more southern peoples, when we consider the soul of the Italian people, with an interaction of this national soul with the individual human being in such a way that what the national soul does, what it has to accomplish in a dialogue with the individual soul, flows directly into the sentient soul. So that one can say: insofar as a member of the Italian nation is Italian, he expresses himself from the character of his nation in such a way that the forces of his national spirit tremble and have an effect in his sentient soul. It is with this sentient soul that the national spirit, the national soul, holds its dialogue. Of course, it must always be emphasized that the individual soul can rise and take on the general human character in every nation. What has been said here about the relationship between the national soul and nationality applies to the extent that the individual is connected to the national soul through the expressions of his life. And everything that the Italian national soul arouses in the individual sentient soul of the Italian is, in essence, Italian culture. Hence the Italian culture, which emerges directly from the passions, can be traced from the individual impulses of the people to the mighty painting that Dante created of the world. That is why what is called humanism was also imprinted on European culture from Italy. The connection of the whole human being with the sentient soul through what one feels, what one has in one's emotional impulses, insofar as that comes into its own, flows through the whole of Italian culture. Spanish culture is similar and related to this.

When we consider French popular culture, we have to say that it is the result of the direct interaction of the folk soul with what is called the rational soul. Hence the peculiarity of the French national character, which seeks to bring everything into a certain system, even if it is the system of feeling and art. A certain mathematical character is inherent in everything that belongs to this culture. You only have to surrender to the flow of a French poem or the course of a French drama to feel this result of the relationship between the soul of the people and the soul of the mind everywhere. If you look at it from a spiritual scientific point of view, this mathematical disposition of the French character becomes highly understandable.

And again, when we look at the English national character, we must bear in mind those relationships that develop between the national soul and the consciousness soul. That is to say, the English national character is primarily shaped as follows: through the consciousness soul, the English national character is directed outwards to the struggles and congruities of physical reality, to that which is transitory in life. Hence the empirical character, the outward-looking character of English culture, which can be traced right back to Shakespeare, despite the greatness of Shakespeare.

And if we then go to the center of Europe, preferably to German culture, we must point to a relationship to the folk soul, a relationship of the individual to the folk soul that can be expressed directly as a connection of the folk soul not with a single soul element, but directly with the self, with the I. Therefore, the impulses that the national soul has to stimulate flow directly into the individual Germans. And it can then express itself as the ego struggles to reveal itself not only in one direction, but through the various members of the soul life, alternately or cohesively. Hence what I had to say eight days ago about the supporting forces of the German spirit, the direct influence of the spiritual world on the individual human personality. Therefore, it is not the human passions, the human passions wrestling with something transcendental, nor the ratio, the intellect wrestling with the transcendental, nor the consciousness soul being active, but always the direct confrontation of the individual human being with his divinity, of the individual human being with the spirits of the transcendental world. But this brings about the peculiar thing in the whole German development, that the individual German must always take up the highest impulses of spiritual life. We have a German development in which we see individual great characters appear. Again and again, the individual great character has to start anew, so to speak, without being able to tie in with what is historically given, because he has to let what the soul of the people has to give him shine in his deepest inner being.

But there is another aspect to this: since the German is always compelled to establish a direct, elementary relationship with the folk soul, this folk soul must also have an ever-present effect on him with its elemental power, and he always again impelled to go back to the purest sources of popular life; and he feels strengthened and refreshed when he can sense his connection with this popular life.

That is what the German feels impelled to express when he wants to consider his relationship to the supersensible world. This is also what gives the German world poem, Faust, its special magic. We see Faust living in the midst of a culture that has grown old, as it were; we see how he has allowed the individual expressions of this culture to take effect in him, and how he now strives to go directly to the sources of all knowledge, to enter into a relationship with individual spirits, with the spirit of the earth, the world spirit. We see how he strives to achieve what could be called a rejuvenation of the whole human soul. There has even been mockery, at least contemptuous talk about what stands as a kind of rejuvenation scene at the beginning of the second part of “Faust”, where Faust is in a kind of sleep state and the spirits of the cosmos permeate him, in epochs, as the night passes, with what they have to give him. But anyone who knows that such things can only be depicted in images will not be able to succumb to such a misunderstanding. After Faust has first tried to rejuvenate what has grown old in him through sensory life and the world of external science, a relationship is established in him between the elemental forces of his soul life and the supersensible world, and through this he is rejuvenated so that he can then accomplish all that is presented to us in the second part of Faust: that he can enter the great world in order to work there as an active force; that he can take the path to the mothers, where he has to discover the primal forces of being in that sphere, of which the materialist will always say it is a nothing, of which the one who knows something about the spirit must always use Faust's words: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.”

But we also see in Faust how the rejuvenating powers of spiritual life work in him through the fact that he is portrayed as a German spirit. These rejuvenating powers work in him in such a way that in the end, when he goes blind, everything that could be called his connection to the physical-sensual world dies. And while it grows dark around him, a bright light shines within him. That is to say, he has come to the forces that Goethe really drew from the essence of the German national soul and that are awakened in him in such a way that he has sensed the rejuvenating power of true German life in the external culture that has grown old. These rejuvenating forces work in the soul in such a way that what his soul thinks and feels and does is seen directly in his inner being as the thoughts, feelings and will of the divine-spiritual beings themselves. spiritual beings themselves and feels connected to the spiritual world itself, which works in him as a rejuvenating force that does not allow his culture to grow old; which always gives him hope that, if any branch of culture has become spiritually dry, so to speak, the rejuvenating forces can bring about a new germ. This direct proximity of the national spirit to the individual soul of the human being, in turn, distinguishes the soul of the Central European from that of the Eastern European.

In a remarkable way, Russian Slavdom presents itself to spiritual science. The Russian has his national spirit as a ruling power, so that this national spirit does not, as with the Italian, for example, directly into the sentient soul or as with the Frenchman into the intellectual soul or as with the British into the consciousness soul nor does it dips into the ego; but that the folk soul, as a spiritual, hovers over the individual, to which it is looked up like to a cloud, while below, with their soul forces, the individual works, into whose soul forces the folk soul does not reach. Hence we see among these Eastern peoples that the individual soul powers, which have not yet been grasped in the stage of development, work together in an anarchic way. Because the national soul-life does not bring about their inner harmony, these three soul-forces work as if in anarchic confusion; they cannot find the possibility of being in harmony with each other. This is the peculiarity that seems strange to the Western European when he turns to the spiritual culture of the East. This lack of togetherness of the national soul in relation to the togetherness of the national soul with the individual human soul is what distinguishes the German from the Russian. And this distinction becomes particularly apparent when we turn our spiritual attention to the actual forces of the German national soul.

How does the development of German culture enter into the whole evolution of the world? After the Germans had had their encounters with the Romans and the southern peoples, German culture presents people who are directly seized by the power of the human in their being here in the world. To mention just one figure, we see Siegfried before us; we see the other figures of the Nibelungen before us. They carry the forces through which they are called to work in the world directly in their souls, and they feel that which they have there in their soul as that which guides, rules and sustains the world in general. What has been preserved in the popular mind, in the spiritual life, of this relationship between the soul of the people and the individual soul, as it already appears at the beginning of Central European culture, what has been preserved there, we can find it characteristically in a similar way to how the relationship to the spiritual world appears to us in mysticism. The mystic feels that which courses through him as the same that courses through the entire cosmos. He feels himself to be part of what he calls the Divine, the spiritual. One need only compare what pulses through Siegfried or the other figures, which are echoes of the oldest coexistence of the German folk soul with the individual soul, with the figure that has maintained great popularity within Russian folk life, the figure of Ilya Muromets. There we see how he, as a human being, feels the divine-spiritual in the distance, how he looks up to it, how it is something for him that is not directly in his soul, for which he can at most sacrifice himself and give as a champion. The courage, the strength in the Siegfried nature, the humility, the direct sacrifice in the Muromez nature.

And we can say: That which we see in the early days of the German flowering is like something that then disappears in the turmoil of the later times, succumbing to foreign influences. And then, in a wonderful way, from the twelfth, especially the thirteenth century onwards, we see a renewed effort of the German spirit shining through the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul.

Take figures such as Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. We see how figures and poetic subjects are indeed taken from the West, but how what is taken from the West is only the scaffolding and how an immediate connection with the most elementary forces of the supersensible world, for example, inspires Wolfram von Eschenbach to to make out of his Parzifal one who undergoes his journey to the Grail through the powers of his own soul; in that he seeks in the outer world, he wants to expand his soul powers with every step and to the same extent bring about a spiritualization in his soul. In this period, to which Wolfram von Eschenbach belongs, we see a deepening and at the same time a rejuvenation of the German character.

And then we see again how foreign influences gradually assert themselves; how, as it were, the German character ages. But we see the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul at work throughout all this aging. And we see these rejuvenating forces of the German national soul emerge in a remarkable way after Germany was made like a cultural desert by the enemies all around it in the Thirty Years' War; we see these forces glowing, we see a working out of the national forces, which in turn undergo a complete rejuvenation. Where do these rejuvenating forces come from? Here we must refer to Lessing, who in his works, in what is his spiritual testament, points to the immortal, the eternal in human nature – in that testament, however, in which the very clever do not want to believe. But at the end of his testament, he also pointed out how he sought knowledge, not the knowledge of the learned, who think they are at the pinnacle of education, but the knowledge of the simplest, most elementary forces of the people in primeval times. A rejuvenation, a refreshment of knowledge is what Lessing means when he says: Must every single person have traveled the path by which the human race achieves perfection in the same lifetime? Why could not every individual have existed more than once in this world? Is this hypothesis ridiculous because it is the oldest? Because the human mind, before it was dispersed and weakened by the sophistry of the school, immediately fell into it?

And so we have this deliberate immersion in the popular in order to arrive at the highest wisdom. Anyone who considers his connection with the development of the German people can only say: in Lessing we see an influx of the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul.

And again, in Herder and in Goethe, we see how they, the one supported by the other, delve into the German folk song, into German antiquity, and how they, stimulated by the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul, achieve an elevation of the poetic and cognitive potential within them. And we see how Goethe created his Faust out of what had arisen in the midst of the people – the Faust figure, which he first knew only through the puppet theater, that is, through what lived within the people. Goethe and Herder experienced a rejuvenation of their lives through their penetration into the impulses of the folk soul. It was Lessing who also placed the Faust problem in its time, who pointed out that what was fundamentally present in drama in his time – figures such as those that lived in the people in old plays – should be brought to the stage again. And he gave a scene that draws on an old folk tradition, that draws on the connection with the spiritual world.

And if we visualize the trend of the Romantics, who sought a connection with the spirit through immersion in German folklore and mysticism, we see, for example, in Novalis, a deep immersion into the spiritual world.

When we consider all these circumstances, many things can be explained that have certainly already been emphasized, that have been accepted as something that has been recognized through observation, but that have not been understood in their context. The extraordinarily brilliant Karl Hillebrand has beautifully juxtaposed the characteristics of Western and Central European peoples. What he has to say in his very beautiful treatise on the Western world view finds complete confirmation, but also a thorough illumination, through what spiritual science has to say. Hillebrand emphasizes that the Italians brought European culture, the Spaniards mathematism, the English empiricism. And now he ponders: What is it, then, that the German spirit has to contribute to the general spiritual process of humanity? And in his answer he really does come up with an excellent, precise characterization of what the German spirit has to bring to humanity: “The German spirit is the first to have found the idea of the organism.” For those who think only in a British way, the organism does not exist. The essential is viewed from the outside, but the direct organic life and weaving does not appear to the eye. The rationalist of the West seeks to understand reality through historical ideas; but to immerse oneself in the real so that life is grasped in the real — Hillebrand also knows that this is the peculiarity of the German mind. And so it is precisely through spiritual science that the misunderstandings prevailing among European nations with regard to Germanness will come to light more and more.

It must truly be said: It is understandable how the German spirit, in its struggle for an inner, elementary, direct connection with the soul of the people, can be so difficult to understand. That which characterizes him, that which is in his own nature, and that which exists within his nature, is something that is organically connected with the spirit, that he must experience directly in the objective connection with his soul, and that is so difficult for the spirit, for example, which in his soul life grasps the folk soul only with the consciousness soul. Herman Grimm, who had such a thorough and beautiful understanding of the workings of the German national soul, says a beautiful word about the Englishman Lewes' biography of Goethe, which is indeed outstanding in certain respects: “When one reads the biography, then, if one, as a German, experiences Goethe's nature directly, one must say: Yes, this Mr. Lewes, he writes about a person who was born in August born in Frankfurt in August 1749, who experienced a youth so similar to Goethe's, a person to whom Goethe's life events are attributed, to whom Goethe's works are ascribed, who dies in March 1832, but from whom nothing is noticeable that the German observer feels and strives to prove in his Goethe.

And it is, after all, very understandable that the most intimate German conception of the world, the comprehension of the organic-living, seems improbable to the Western people. And so it could come about that, in a grotesque misunderstanding, the French philosopher Bergson was able to give a lecture around Christmas time in which he said that the German essence lacked a living grasp of the organic-living in the present, that the whole German essence had become a mechanism.

One has the feeling that this French philosopher, Bergson, who certainly has many depths in his nature, which he owes precisely to German idealism – Schelling – and which he then expresses in his own way, is lacking in depth when it comes to the German nature.

One may find it strange that this philosopher views the German nature as mechanistic because he believes that the old idealistic life has vanished. He judges the German people by the fact that German cannons are now facing his people. It is just as if Bergson had expected the French to be met, not by rifles and cannons, but by Germans reciting Goethe or Schiller poems to them. Since they do not do this, people, including philosophers, notice nothing of the German spirit, but only see the German mechanism, which confronts them in rifles and cannons.

But in many other respects, too, what is most intimate in the German spirit is difficult for those to understand who do not want to get involved in the most intimate peculiarity of German intellectual life, in which the soul of the people and the soul of the individual interact. Because this seems to me to be quite characteristic, I would like to share three sentences that were born, so to speak, out of the deepest, most intimate peculiarities of German development; these sentences are formulated as if the German wanted to express the essence of his soul in them, as he has overheard it in his national spirit.

The first sentence: “In the mind lives the spark in which the world soul reveals itself in the human soul.” This sentence was spoken by Eckhart, the German mystic. It may well be said that it is truly spoken from the essence of the interaction of the folk soul with the individual soul. Now try to translate this sentence into any Western European language in such a way that it is really translated. You will not be able to do so because the folk spirit of another language does not produce what the translation of this sentence would be, which so correctly expresses the content of the sentence in the sense of German mysticism.

The second sentence: “The German does not want to remain in a closed state of being, he always wants to become.” The German thus regards his nationality as something that he sees as an ideal to strive for. Fichte says: One is Italian, one is French, but one becomes German by feeling one's Germanness intensively and effectively within oneself; just as Faust feels that which he “always strives for”. “The German becomes, he does not want to remain in a closed state of being.” Try to translate that again so that it conveys this intimate sense. You will see that you cannot.

The third sentence is one in which Hegel expresses what appears to him to be the connection between the supersensible and the individual human soul. Hegel says that in the transition from being to non-being, from non-being to being, lies the living becoming, in which Fichte also grasped the essence of man in the ego. Not in the rigid state of being, but in that which is always creating, which always has within it the potential for transition from non-being to being, from being to non-being. This third sentence is eminently German: “Being and non-being unite in becoming to form a higher unity.” Try to translate this sentence into a Western European language, and you will not be able to.

What is German in the sense indicated will be particularly difficult for Eastern Europeans and Russians to understand. And it must be right to focus on the nature of the Russian people in our present day. For it is precisely the infinite vilifications that come to us from all sides, including from the east, that show the greatest lack of understanding of the German character. For decades, the eastern European character has been preparing to erect a barrier, a chasm, to the central European character.

Of course, in Western Europe, people are trying to capture in strict logic what the German seeks in a variety of ways, including in a variety of back and forth ways, because he must always remain in living unity with the supersensible if he is a German in the truest sense of the word. But this logic is, after all, a strange logic. And it is especially apparent to us now, when, out of such strange logic, it is still being said, despite everything that has happened: Who wanted the war? and then the strange implication is made that the people of Central Europe wanted this war. These logical arguments are on the same logical level as the sentence: “It is your fault, Germans, that the present wars can be waged at all, because you invented gunpowder.” The reasons that sound out to us from the immediate events of the present are more or less the same. We can even be blamed for the fact that the war in the newspapers is being waged against us, because the Germans also invented the art of printing. If this had not happened in Central Europe, the invective and abuse of the West could not now befalling us.

Many currents must be emphasized, which, when viewed in their entirety, compose everything that comes to us like a spiritual atmosphere from the East. There we see how, after the first half of the last century, something arose in Russia that was called Slavophilism. If we consider Slavophilism as it has now developed, we can discern three aspects in present-day Pan-Slavism. The first aspect, which arose radically, is that Slavophilism believes that Western culture is corrupt, that it is ripe for decline, and that Russian culture must save European culture. That is the first aspect. The second is: in the West, individualism reigns. This is not entirely incorrect if one understands it correctly, because one can call that coexistence of the individual soul with the folk soul an individualism; the individual wants to experience his divine-spiritual directly with his own soul powers. But Slavophilism considers this individualism to be something harmful.

And as a third reason is given: that the Western European and the Central European live out their religious feelings out of the enthusiasm of their soul, not out of mere humble devotion to a spiritual element that hovers like a cloud above the people and above the individual. This is why Dostoyevsky, for example, said: “We Russians must form the synthesis; that is, we must synthesize, we must form the confluence of all European cultures. For just as we speak all languages and understand all civilizations, so we also understand everything that has influenced all cultures and can express it in all freedom. We also understand human life in such a way that man stands by his God as the one who humbly bows before what he recognizes as the God hovering above the individual. Therefore we do not let ourselves be bound by a legal system; that contradicts what the individual directly experiences in his childlike humility. Thirdly, Dostoyevsky cites the Orthodox religion, of which he says that it never appeared as a militant church like the Western European one.

What these three statements of Slavophilism express is basically what has inspired many, at least the important minds of the East, what has filled their souls and then also become popular, what has been passed down from leading personalities to the people, and what has an enormous effect. We can distinguish different phases in this Slavophilism. Take, for example, Khomyakov. He still approaches the matter from the standpoint of spiritual knowledge. Orest Miller, a thoroughly noble man who was deeply immersed in Russian folklore, turns away from the dark side of Slavophilism and takes up what Khomyakov also emphasized: that the Russian ideal is not yet alive in every individual Russian. Thus we read in this Slavophile: “Our fatherland condemns the yoke of bondage, godless flattery and servility, nauseating falsehood, soulless and disgraceful apathy, black lawlessness in the courts and all manner of shameful deeds.” Or: “We will be the democrats among the other nations of Europe and the heralds of humanitarian principles that promote the free and independent development of each tribe.”

Orest Miller, who is well known in Russian folklore, was also enthusiastic about such a national ideal. However, when Khomyakov increasingly began to deify the Russian people instead of seeking the divine in the heavens, Orest Miller dared to voice a few objections. The result was that he was dismissed. But we see how what has been smouldering in the East for a long time is now haunting the West and is taking shape entirely out of the Russian character.

Thus we see how perhaps the most outstanding Russian, Soloviev, takes it up in his own way, but idealizes it, one might say spiritualizes it, elevating it to the spiritual, how he ties in with Slavophilism. But not in the way that a German would say: If the power that lives in the folk soul is to take effect, it must take hold of the individual human being, it must work through the soul forces of the ego; the individual human being must be the channel of what the folk soul has to say to the world. Thus Solowjew does not stand by the forces of the national soul, but he stands so that he also points upwards to that cloud-like spiritual image which stands above the individual in a spiritual height, in a spiritual distance. And then he says to himself: This Divine-Spiritual will work on the national soul. This Divine-Spiritual has set itself the task of carrying out a certain mission through the Russian people. And it does not matter what the Russian people are like. Whatever the case may be, what has to happen will happen by a miracle. Sinful or not sinful, vicious or not vicious, foolish or wise – that can do nothing to help it; but that which is at work there, it works through a cosmic miracle, simply through people, however they are. These are Solovyev's own words:

“That power which will give a new and complete content to the history of mankind can only be a revelation of that higher, divine world; but the people in whom that power will reveal itself must become the mediator between the human race and the superhuman reality, the free, self-conscious instrument of the latter.”

The human race, by which he means his people, is to become the instrument for the divine miracle that will take place, without the national soul allowing the individual souls to receive the powers for what the Russian people will accomplish in the development of humanity.

When we see that one of the most significant and best seers is far removed from what constitutes the character of the German being, we understand that a man like Boris Chicherin, who died in 1904, was unable to penetrate very far when he wanted to place himself on the peculiar basis of German thinking, when he wanted to tie in with Hegel. In his great work 'Science and Religion', Boris Chicherin attempts above all to develop the idea of how the human soul, through the ideas and thoughts it can develop within itself, gradually finds its way up to a point where it can mystically grasp the great divine rule. He tried to carry out this idea in jurisprudence and political science. But he fell from favor and was dismissed as Mayor of Moscow after Alexander III came to power, when he gave a speech that was completely imbued with the idea that what man can grasp in his soul can truly merge with the Russian essence.

More and more, we see how Slavophilism takes hold of that which those who could see through it a little had to say: it is no longer about some ideal, about something conceptual, but about something quite different. It is about asserting not some supernatural, not some conceptual, but simply the immediate physical powers of a race. And I believe it is good if a Western European does not choose a star witness who is a Western European, but someone who could have known. And someone who could know, as we shall see in a moment, says of Slavophilism, after it had passed through the minds of Katkov and Aksakov and others: “Slavophilism had become a fairground commodity, filling with wild, animalistic shouting all the dirty streets, squares and back alleys of Russian life.”

But the man who said this, and who also said another telling word about what Slavophilism had gradually become, he knew! The other word he said, directing it against Danilevsky, was: “The Russian writer lacks the strength to rise above the gloomy present; he content himself with the task of summarizing the contradictions prevailing among humanity into a well-rounded system and to draw from this system some practical postulates for his own fraction of humanity to which he himself belongs.”

All this can be seen as a consequence of what has been said: that the individual soul forces work chaotically, inharmoniously, at the moment when the divine life hovering over the individual is not grasped, not grasped in the soul of the individual himself. And this is particularly emphasized by this knowledgeable spirit in these words. And who is the knowledgeable spirit? It is the same one about whom a well-known Russian speaks the following words:

The man of whom the Russian prince Trzbeizkos says these words spoke, as I have quoted it, in turn of Slavophilism, from which he himself also started, even if he idealized it; for it is Solowjew himself who speaks about Slavophilism in this way. What is important is that we hear from an informed source what has been brewing in the East and is now coming towards us.

But, you see, even at the highest level of Soloviev's thinking, there is still something anarchic in the soul of the Eastern man. For whereas Solowjew, as early as 1880, in his “Criticism of Abstract Principles,” expressed himself as I have quoted, he comes, at the end of the eighties, to realize how far what is reality, what surrounds him as reality, is removed from what he has dreamed. Then the demand arises in him that politics should become moral. In “Morality and Politics,” Solowjew says the following: “We must not delude ourselves: the politics of selfish interest, which in international and social relations has hatred in its train, is transformed into the politics of anthropophagy (he means man-eating), which in the end destroys all morality, even in private and family life. For man is a logical being and cannot long remain in the monstrous discord between the principles of private and political activity. We are preached about our special sublimity and mission, but let us remember that the resulting and mutually exclusive claims must ultimately, in the name of cultural sublimity, lead to a fight to the death and the right of violence."

Thus Solowjew himself, who must gradually look away from reality in order to live in peace, one might say in peace of mind, with what he has dreamed up as an ideal, a spiritual Slavophilism: “The Russian people are not only an ethnographic unit with its innate characteristics and material interests, but a people that feels that above these characteristics and interests the cause of God hovers; a people ready to sacrifice itself for this cause; a theocratic people by vocation and duty.

But Solowjew also sees that what he dreams of and sees has not yet become a duty, not even an awareness, in his people. And one may use his words when answering the question he raises: why Europe cannot love what is really going on in the East. Solowjew himself raises the question: Why does Europe not love us? And he gives the answer. It is at the same time the answer for much that comes to us from the East like a spiritual aura in our immediate present. He asks this question: Why does Europe not love us? And he answers it in 1888: “Europe looks at us with disgust, because it sees the decisive thing not in the power and mission of Russia, but in its sin.” So Solowjew. But there were also very hard realities that had to be faced by this soul in order for it to arrive at such a conviction. It was especially hard for him when he had to see what Slavophilism had gradually become, which he himself had to say had become a fairground commodity. And finally, he finds it only logical that this Slavophilism should have come about in the end, because the Russian people, without looking at what they themselves first wanted to make of themselves, were to give Europe directly what they are. Solowjew finds it consistent that the Moscow University professor Yarosh should have praised Ivan the Terrible as “the perfect model of the qualities of a Russian in general and of an Orthodox and a tsar in particular”. This was said not in jest but in complete earnest, and Solowjew finds it consistent. For, he argues, if you look at what the Slavophiles actually have in mind when they speak of the Russian people, then it basically comes out typically in Ivan the Terrible. Nothing else could have come out as the ultimate consequence, Solowjew argues. But now he asks himself the question: how does Slavophilism come to such strange forms? Solowjew saw before him how the Slavophiles gradually said: the West is rotten, we can't use anything from it; new, young life must flow from the West to the East, and this new, young life is to be found with us. Solowjew saw all this. But in a certain respect he is thoroughly a genuinely Russian man, such a Russian man that he had something left over, one would like to say, for those who at least had the courage to carry this last consequence through. Of Katkov he said: “He had the courage to strip rational religion of all ideal embellishment and to present the Russian people themselves as the object of religious worship, not in the framework of the supposed virtues of the people, but in the name of factual power, of which the state is the living word or the embodiment of the deified people.”

That is what Solowjew says. But he asks himself: Yes, but where does the Russian, who is full of humility, get it all from? That was a question for Solowjew. He wanted to examine where it actually is in the Russian that is shown by those who threw the provocative Slavophilism into the people as a firebrand. And lo and behold, he found a strange answer. He examined the works of Danilevsky, the successor of Katkov and Aksakov. And he found that the people who hurl and have hurled fiery torches against the West had initially borrowed them in the thought-forms, in the whole logic, from the French Jesuit pupil Joseph de Ma istre, Solowjew could prove that the whole stamp of thought of the Slavophiles is borrowed from the one who is a Western European spirit; that Western European spirit who at the beginning of the 19th century established the doctrine: People cannot come into the spiritual through what is within themselves, but only and alone through authority, and he means the papal authority. That which she decrees can lead people to the spiritual world. If you want to read about de Maistre, you need only read the beautifully written article that Georg Brandes, the all-rounder, wrote in his “Geistesströmungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts” (Spiritual Currents of the Nineteenth Century) – the same Brandes who who is, of course, less a gardener of intellectual culture, who does not like to plant, but who knows how to cut the flowers everywhere and put together fantasy bouquets that may seem very ingenious to people. But if you want to get an idea from these bouquets, you can easily get everything from Brandes.

Thus Solowjew had made a strange discovery, which was illuminating for him, though. That with which Europe is to be invaded and overcome from the east comes from the— as Solowjew says—Jesuit pupil, that is, from his thoughts into the thoughts of the Slavophiles. And so Soloviev has no choice but to say the characteristic words at the end: “A tiny morsel from the intellectual banquet of the West proved sufficient to nourish our national and political consciousness for half a century, and a single one of the countless twigs from the Western European tree of knowledge of good and evil were not only proudly contrasted with the whole tree from which they had been plucked, but even contrasted with it as the Russian tree of life, which should grow and embrace the whole world.

That was indeed a remarkable discovery. But Solowjew pursued the matter further. And finally he discovered a remarkable book by Bergeret: 'Principes de politique.' And he found that this reactionary spirit Bergeret also reappears with his thought forms in the Russian Slavophiles. And finally he discovered a German book written in 1857 by a 'strange fellow', Heinrich Rückert. I do not believe that there is a person here in this hall who knows anything about this book. I also do not believe that there is anyone in Berlin who knows anything about it, except perhaps scholars in this specialized field. The book is entitled: 'Textbook of World History in Organic Development'. But Solowjew says: Russian patriots have also copied from this book. Now he had it together. Now he knew the forces that had come together to be effective, to be led into the field against the West. Now he knew what had seduced even such fine minds as Orest Miller and others. And Solowjew spoke the words:

“Our patriots condemn various views because they are Masonic. In this case, their own view of Russia and patriotism is doubly condemnable, from our point of view and from theirs, because it is alien, un-Russian, slavishly transplanted from foreign soil.”

That was certainly an important revelation. And after this revelation, Solowjew did not find many friends among those who had been his friends before. But this Solowjew was really a strange person. After his first Slavophile period, after Alexander II had been murdered, he gave a fiery speech in which he advised the successor to prove himself to be truly Russian. Solowjew saw this “genuinely Russian” in the fact that Alexander II naturally had to pardon the murderers of his predecessor; the idea of the sublime must first be expressed in this. And they “behaved Russian” in response to this speech. Solowjew was chased away, he was chased out of his position. He had already had the fate of seeing that some of the things he had seen in his idealism were different in reality than he had dreamed them up.

Now, when you bring in such an impeccable star witness as this great philosopher is, you can see how, little by little over decades, a current bordering on megalomania has arisen in the East that must necessarily lead to arson in the end.

I have chosen to invoke Soloviev as a characterizer of the Russian character and the Russian national soul in contrast to the German national soul because we are particularly accused by Russia of not being able to understand the Russian character. Well, I think we can help ourselves by not characterizing it ourselves, but by having it characterized by someone who lived in such a way that he was interwoven with Slavophilism, albeit an ideal Slavophilism; that we call upon such a one, upon whom we may indeed call.

And if we now add this to what has been said about the relationship of Germans and Central Europeans to the outside world, then much of what has happened becomes understandable from its intellectual underpinnings. What is said about Germany in our times often coincides with nonsense and futility.

What the German feels to be his essential nature must be particularly offensive to him in this time; offensive for the very reason that from such a consideration what has been said from other points of view can also be derived: the great hope for the future of German activity and of the German spirit. This German spirit, when we consider its relation to the soul of the German people, appears as a spirit that tends to deepen the spiritual life of the whole cultural development of mankind.

If only those who so glibly speak of the German character from abroad would observe in detail the struggles of those souls who are truly gripped by the German national spirit. Then they would not, as I stated last time, depict something like Romain Rolland's “Schultze”, but they would see something different; because in many places something different can be seen, as I have only given a few examples of.

In this lecture, I wanted to point out how German idealism itself is still a germ, how it must develop into a flower, into fruit, into a complete grasp of the spiritual world, which is grasped in its true, concrete vitality, precisely because the German national soul is connected with the individual souls.

A personality comes to mind, a man who died as a grammar school headmaster in Bromberg in 1867. He is a very different kind of spirit in German intellectual life from this 'Schultze' of Romain Rolland. He is Johann Heinrich Deinhardt. His treatises are written from a thoroughly German way of thinking. They contain a remarkable passage. His treatises were published by his friend Schmidt, including a treatise on the immortality of the soul, which was written in a simple style to his friend, who was then his editor. In it, he wants to show how it occurred to him that man, even while he is here in life, is working on an immortal body; that everything he accomplishes serves to organize an immortal body that passes through the gate of death. — Thus we see this simple school teacher on the path of spiritual science.

And so much more might be cited. In such instances the co-working of the German national soul is fulfilled through what the individual strives for. In such matters it is revealed how this German national soul provides the individual soul with the impulses to work towards the very first sources of knowledge and to link the individual soul life of the human being to the eternal in the soul life. But we will continue this discussion tomorrow.

Today, however, I would like to summarize what I had to say about the supporting forces that are contained in Germanness and that are shown precisely in this ever-renewed connection to the very first sources of human knowledge and human experience; I would like to conclude the consideration that I have given to the German national soul in relation to other national souls, with the words of a little-known Austrian poet, who, from a truly German soul, one might say, from a dialogue with the German national soul, published his “German Sounds from Austria” in 1881. In these “German Sounds from Austria” by Fercher von Steinwand, we find a poem that shows so well how vividly the individual German can feel in it, in what lives and moves, always rejuvenating the German essence, as the German folk soul. It presents itself to us as in a vision. As if all those who are interested in it come to the Kyffhäuser mountain to see as guests the mystery of the Kyffhäuser, the mystery of Emperor Barbarossa resting within, who keeps the power of the German essence hidden like a mystery. And for Fercher von Steinwand, one of the guests who come here represents the German spirit: the spirit, as already mentioned, that Fercher von Steinwand, the poet of “Deutsche Klänge aus Österreich” (German Sounds from Austria), also feels as the spirit that constantly rejuvenates the soul of each individual because it always allows that which speaks from the world of the stars, from suns and moons, to shine within; the spirit that speaks to the heart in the most intimate sense, because it speaks of the vastness of the universe; this German spirit, this rejuvenating German spirit, is what the German poet from Austria, Fercher von Steinwand, lets speak with words, in which I would like to summarize what I have tried to hint at today in terms of my feelings about the German spirit, especially in comparison with other European national spirits:

What springs from the riddles of this earth,
What finds hearts, what masters minds,
What flows eternally speaking from the stars
And reveals an inimitable God,
What seemingly gets lost in time and the world
And yet shoots around us in a thousand streams:
That is the primal power of the German spirit,
And to speak it clearly is the oath it has sworn!

then the wonderful words in it:

“She has thought and continues to think; but not as a
human being, but as nature.”

That is to say, Goethe is clear about one thing: spinning a mechanical web of concepts about nature does not provide an understanding of nature. Only such a deeper search in the existence of nature creates knowledge of nature, through which the human soul finds in the depths of this natural existence that which is related to what it can seek out in the depths of its own being when it penetrates into them.

We may now ask: Is such striving, as it can be characterized by Kant, can be characterized by the ideal figure of Goethe's Faust, - is this striving a solitary, a merely individual one, or does it have anything to do with the overall striving of the German national spirit, the German national soul? Even if we consider Kant, the abstract philosopher, who hardly ventured a few miles beyond Königsberg and spent his whole life in abstract thought, we clearly see, especially in the way he worked his way from his earlier world view to his later one, how he, despite his reclusiveness, developed out of everything all that in the German national spirit aspired after certainty, and how, owing to this national spirit, he did not come to a narrowing of the human soul to the sphere of mere human thinking, but was led up to the horizon on which the whole range of ideas and ideals appeared to him, which give man impulses in the course of his human development.

One might say that what was later expressed by the most German of German philosophers, Fichte, already lives in Kant; what has become so dear to the German worldview, especially from the eighteenth century onward, already lives in Kant. This German world view came to value having a view of the world that does not need to be disconcerted by what presents itself to the senses, for the absolute validity of that which is man's duty, love, divine devotion, moral world. overlooks the world and looks at the way in which he is placed in the world, he sees himself surrounded by the field of vision of sensual impressions and what he can divine behind them; but he also sees himself placed in such a way that he world without this second aspect of the world; he sees himself so placed that behind him, in his soul, the divine ideals are at work, which become his duty and deed, and these ideals do not bear the coarse sensual character that the world of external movement and external revelation has. One might say that when the German mind looks at the stiffness and smoothness of natural existence, to speak symbolically, at the mechanical movement in the unfolding of natural processes, it feels the need to recognize: How can we become immersed in that which is so indifferent in nature, that which appears in ideals as a demand, as a duty, as a moral life? How can we become immersed in that which appears as the highest value of life, as a moral ideal? How does the reality of moral ideals relate to the reality of external nature? This is a question that cannot be answered lightly, but which can also be found in tremendous depth, heart-wrenching. And so it was felt in the best German minds at the time when Kant's world view was forming. Sensuality had to be presented in such a way that it was no obstacle to the moral world flowing into the world through human beings. Morality could not be a reality that presents itself indifferently, and against which moral ideas must rebound. When moral ideas from the spiritual world are put into action through human beings, they must not be repelled by the rigid materialistic barrier of the sensory world. This must be taken as a profound insight, then one understands why Kant wants to dethrone ordinary knowledge so that a real source can be thought for the moral idea. Then one understands Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who coined the paradoxical , but which arose from deep German striving: “All sensuality, everything we can see and feel outside and think about the external world, is only the sensualized material of our duty.” The true world is the world of the ruling spirit, which lives itself out as man perceives it in ideas and ideals, and these are the true reality, they are what pulses through the world as a current, what only needs something to which it can apply itself, to illustrate it. Sensuality has no independent existence for Fichte, but is the sensitized material for human fulfillment of duty.

From a philosophy that seeks to validate everything spiritual, that must be sought from a natural disposition towards idealism, such words emerged; and one may find such words one-sided, but that does not matter when such words are made into dogma. But to take them as symptoms of a striving that lives in a people, that is the significant thing; and to recognize that such minds, which create in the sense of such a word, precisely because of the idealistic character of the German national soul, elevate Germanness to the arena of thought. In order to give thought its vitality, human knowledge and striving must go beyond what Cartesius could merely find. And Goethe's Faust, this image of the highest human endeavor, this image that one must first struggle to understand by allowing many German cultural elements to take effect, from what did it emerge? — It is truly not invented, did not come about in such a way that a single person created it out of themselves; rather, it emerged from the legends, from the poetry of the people themselves. Faust lived in the people, and Goethe was still familiar with the “puppet show of Dr. Faust”; and in the simple folk character, he already saw the traits that he only elevated to the arena of thoughts. Nothing is more vivid than Goethe's “Faust” to show how something supreme can emerge from what lives most deeply, most elementarily, most intimately in the simple folk being. One would like to say: not Goethe and Goethe's nature alone created Faust, but that Goethe brought Faust forth like a germ that lay within the German national organism, and gave it its essence, embodied it in such a way that this embodiment corresponds at the same time to the highest striving of the German spirit for the arena of thought. Not the striving of isolated personalities out of their own nature, but precisely when it confronts us in its greatness from the whole nation, it is the result of German idealism.

And how does thought work within this German idealism? One comes to an understanding of how it works precisely by comparing this German idealistic striving of thought with what is also a striving of thought, let us say, for example, in Descartes. In Descartes, thought confines man within the narrowest limits; it works as a mere thought and remains as such confined to the world in which man lives directly with his senses and his mind. Within German idealism, the personality does not merely encounter the thought as it enters the soul, but the thought becomes a mirror image of that which is alive outside the soul, that which vibrates and permeates the universe, that which is spiritual outside of man, that which is above and below the spirit of man, of which nature is the outer revelation and the life of the soul is the inner revelation. Thus, thought becomes an image of the spirit itself; and by rising to the level of thought, the German wants to rise through thought to the living spirit, wants to penetrate into that world that lives behind the veil of nature in such a way that by penetrating this veil, man not only visualizes something, but penetrates with his own life into a life that is related to him. And again, since man is not satisfied with what he can experience in his soul, he seeks to penetrate into what lies behind thinking, feeling and willing, for which these three are outer shells, for which even the thought is only an inner revelation, in which man lives and works, in which he knows himself as in a living being that creates the scene of thoughts within him. And so we can see how, especially in those times when the German mind, seemingly so detached from external reality, from external experience, strove for a world view, this German mind felt itself entirely dominant and weaving within the arena of thought. And there is first of all Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who regards external nature only as an external stimulus to that which he actually wants to seek, to whom, as already mentioned, the whole of the external sense world has become only the sensitized material of our duty; who wants to live only in that which can penetrate from the depths of the world in a mental way and can be directly realized before the human soul. That is the essence of his world view, that only what emerges in a contemplative way from the deepest depths of the soul and announces itself as emerging from the deepest depths of the world is valid for him.

For his successor Schelling, the urge for nature, the Faustian urge, becomes so vivid within him that he considers the knowledge of nature, which only wants to express itself in concepts about nature, as nothing. Only when the human soul comes to regard all of nature as the physiognomy of man, only when nature is regarded in such a way that nature is the physiognomy of the spirit that rules it, only then does one live in true knowledge of nature; but then, by penetrating through the bark, one feels creative in nature. And again, a paradoxical but appropriate word for the essence of Germanness comes from Schelling: To recognize nature is actually to create nature! Admittedly, this is at first a one-sided saying; but a saying that represents a one-sidedness need not remain so; rather, if it is rightly recognized, this creative knowledge of nature will lead the spirit to reflect inwardly, to awaken slumbering powers within itself, which penetrate to the spiritual sources of nature. The source, the germ of that which can be true spiritual science, we can find it precisely within this world picture of German idealism!

In the third of the German idealistic philosophers, in Hegel, who is difficult to understand and who is so far removed from many, this lively character of the scene of the thoughts within German idealism appears in the same way. In our own time, when the abstract is so much decried and mere thought is so little loved, this world-view strikes us as strange. And yet Hegel feels himself closely connected with the Goethean direction of nature towards the spirit. The content of his world-view – what is it if not mere thinking, a progression from one thought to another? With his world-view we are presented with a thought organism; necessity is created for us, so that we stand face to face with a mere thought organism, which we can only create by thinking it, as we would with any other organism through our senses. But behind this presentation of a thought organism there is a consciousness, a certain attitude. This attitude consists in stripping away all sense perceptions, all perceptions of the senses, for a few moments of world-gazing, stripping away everything that one wants and feels as an individual, and surrendering to what as if the thought itself were taking one step after another, — that man then immerses himself in a world that is a thinking world, but no longer his thinking world, so that he no longer says to this world: I think, therefore I am! but: “The spirit of the world thinks in me, and I give myself to the spirit of the world as a theater, so that in what I offer as soul to the all-encompassing spirit of the world, this spirit can develop its thoughts from stage to stage and show me how it bases its thoughts on world-becoming. And the deepest religious impulse is connected with the striving to experience in the soul only what that soul can experience when it surrenders all its own being to the thinking that thinks itself within it. One must also see this Hegelian philosophy, this so idealistic excerpt from the German essence, in such a way that one does not take it as a dogmatics, on which one can swear or not, but as something that, like a symptom of German striving in a certain time, can stand before us. In Hegel's philosophy, the world spirit appears as a mere thinker; but while it is true that much more than mere thinking was needed to shape the world, it is nevertheless true that the path that once led to it, to seek logic, is one which produces in man the attitude towards the living that reigns behind existence and which leads man to the scene not of abstract, intellectual thought, but of living thought, which in the experience of thought has experience of the world.

The three idealists, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, sought to elevate the human spirit to the realm of thought in three different directions: Fichte tried to shine a light into the depths of the human ego and did not say, like Descartes, “I think, therefore I am!” For Fichte, if he had only been able to arrive at Descartes' thought, would have said: “There I find within me a rigid existence, an existence to which I must look. But that is not an ego. I am only an ego if I can secure my own existence myself at any time. Not through the act of thought, not through mere thinking can I arrive at my ego, but through an act of action. That is a continuous creative process. It does not depend on looking at its being; it leaves its previous being; but by having the power to create itself again in the next moment, out of the act of doing, it is constantly being reborn. Fichte does not grasp the thought in its abstract form, but in its immediate life on the scene of the thought itself, where he creates vividly and lives creatively. And Schelling, he tries to recognize nature, and with genuinely German feeling he lives into the secrets of nature, even if, of course, his statements, if you want to take them as dogma, can be presented as fantastic. But he immerses himself in natural processes with his deepest emotions, so that he does not feel merely as a passive observer of nature, as a being that merely looks at nature, but as a being that submerges itself in the plant and creates with the plant in order to understand plant creation. He seeks to rise from created nature to creative nature. He seeks to become as intimate with creative nature as with a human being with whom he is friends. This is an archetypally German trait in the Schellingian nature. Goethe sought to approach nature in a similar way from his point of view, as his Faust expresses it, as to the “bosom of a friend”. There Goethe, to describe how far removed every abstract observer is from a contemplation of nature, there he calls what he, as an external naturalist, is to the earth, his friendship with the earth. So human, so directly alive does the German spirit feel itself in Goethe to the spirit that reigns in nature in the striving to be scientific, in that he wants to raise science itself to the arena of thoughts. And Hegelian logic – abstract, cold, sober thought in Hegel – what becomes of it? When one considers how mere logic often appears to man, and compares this with what prevails in Hegel's idealistic world-view, then one gets the right impression of the world-importance of this Hegelian idealism. In Hegel's work, what appears to be the furthest thing from mysticism, the clear, crystal-clear, one might say, crystal-cold thought itself, is felt and experienced in such a way that although the thought , but that what the soul experiences in terms of thought is direct mystical experience; for what Hegel experiences in terms of thought is a becoming one with the divine world spirit, which itself permeates and lives through the world. Thus, in Hegel, the greatest clarity and conceptual sobriety become the warmest and most vibrant mysticism. This magic is brought about by the way in which the German mind rises from its direct and living idealism to the realm of thought. In doing so, it proves that what matters is not the individual expressions that are arrived at, but the soul foundations from which the human soul seeks a worldview. Hegel is said to be a dry logician. In answer to this it may be said: He who calls Hegel's logic by that name is himself dry and cold. He who is able to approach this logic in the right way can feel how it pulsates out of German idealism; he can feel in the apparently abstract thoughts, which in Hegel's system are so spun out of one another, the most living warmth of soul that is necessary to strip away all individuality and to connect with the divine, so that in Hegel logic and mysticism can no longer be distinguished; that although nothing is nebulous in it, a mystical trait prevails in all its details.

Even in our time, the German mind, even the opponents of German idealism, has endeavored time and again to fathom the fundamental idealism of this German nature in its significance as a riddle. And the best German minds, even those who are opponents of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, if we turn our gaze to them, we still find that the development of Germany consists in absorbing more and more of the basic impulses of this idealism.

How these fundamental impulses can lead to a living experience of the spiritual worlds has often been discussed and will be discussed more often. Attention should only be drawn to how – one might say – German idealism, after it had reached one of its high points in the German world view, then continued to have an effect on German intellectual life as a different impulse. There was a period in this German intellectual life, and it was lived out in minds of the very, very first order until the middle of the 19th century, until the last third of the 19th century, when the view was that such creative work as is expressed, for example, in Goethe's Faust, where thought really takes hold of the imagination directly and can unfold dramatic creativity, was only possible within poetry; but the development of humanity shows that, for example, in the sphere of natural science, the same process of thinking can be observed that is expressed in Goethe's Faust. example, in Goethe's Faust, where thought takes hold of the imagination directly and can unfold dramatic creation, is only possible within poetry; but the development of humanity shows that, for example, music has a different area; that music is, as it were, the field that does not seek to grasp the highest in man by the detour of a work of fiction such as Faust, but that music is the field in which sensuality must be grasped directly. For example, the contrast between the legend of Don Juan and that of Faust has been cited, with a certain amount of justification after the experiences that could be had within the development of humanity, how mistaken it is to legend on the same level as the Faust legend; it has been asserted that what this other legend, which shows man completely absorbed in sensual experience, can be correspondingly portrayed only within music that directly evokes and seizes sensuality. — The way in which the German does not rise to the scene of thought in the abstract, but in a lively way, has also brought the refutation of this view. In Richard Wagner, we have in modern times the spirit that has triumphed over the merely external, emotional element in music, that has sought to deepen the setting of the thoughts so that the thought itself could take hold of the element that was thought to live only in music. To spiritualize music from the standpoint of the spirit, to show that, was also only possible for German idealism. One can say: Richard Wagner showed that in the most demure element for thought there is nothing that could resist or be opposed to the strength of life that dominates the German spirit. If, through his philosophy and his contemplation of nature, the German has tried to present nature to his soul in such a way that the seemingly mechanical, the seemingly external and rigid loses its mechanical aspect and what would otherwise appear in a formal way comes to life and moves as soulfully and vividly as the human soul itself , on the other hand, the element that flows in the immediate sensual sequence of tones has been allowed to seek its connection, its marriage, with that which leads the human soul to the highest heights and depths in the realm of thoughts, in Wagner's music, which has thus effected an elevation of an artistic-sensual element into a directly spiritual atmosphere.

This aspect of German idealism, which leads to a result that can be characterized as the soul standing on the scene of thought – I wanted to characterize this aspect today with a few strokes. This trait of German idealism, this living comprehension of the otherwise dead thought, is one side, but a remarkable side, of the nature of the German people, and will appear as a remarkable phenomenon to anyone who, I might say, is able to place themselves within the German people in a way that revitalizes thought within themselves. Indeed, the German cannot arrive at the fundamental trait of his people's character other than by penetrating ever deeper into the self-knowledge of the human being. And this the German may, as it seems to me, feel so rightly in our immediate present, where this German essence really has to defend itself in a fight imposed on it, where this German essence must become aware of itself by having to wage a fight, which it feels is due to it from the task that appears to it as a sacred one, entrusted to it by the world forces and world powers themselves. And although today, in a different way than in the times of which we have mainly spoken, the German must fight for his world standing, his world importance, it must still come to life before our soul, for which the German today enters into a world-historical struggle. A future history will have to establish more and more the deeper connection between the German soul, struggling through the course of the world, and the bloody events of the times, which, however, bring us bliss out of pain and suffering. I wanted nothing with today's reflection but to show that the German has no need to speak out of hatred or outrage when he wants to compare his nature with that of other nations. We do not need to point out the nature of the German soul in order to exalt ourselves, but in order to recognize our duties as they have been handed down to us by world history, we may point this out. And we do not need, as unfortunately happens today in the camp of our enemies, to invent all sorts of things that can serve to belittle the opponent, but we can point out the positive that works in the German national substance. We can let the facts speak, and they can tell us that the German does not want to, but must, according to his abilities, which are inspired by the world spirit, his nature, his abilities – without any arrogance – in comparison to the nature of other peoples.

From this point of view, we do not need to fall into what so unfortunately many of our opponents fall into. We look over to the West. We certainly do not need to do as the French do, who, in wanting to characterize German nature in its barbarism, as they think, in its baseness, want to exalt themselves; truly, the French needed, as they believe, a new sophistry to do so. And minds that spoke highly of the German character just before the war, even at famous teaching institutions, can now, as we can see, find the opportunity to advocate the view that, given the nature of his world view, the German cannot help but conquer and , as Boutroux says, to assimilate what is around him; for the German does not want to ascend to the sources of existence in a modest way, as Boutroux thinks, but claims that he is connected to these sources, that he carries the deity within himself and must therefore also carry all other nations within himself. This German world view is certainly profound; but it is not conceived immodestly.

Nor perhaps does the German need what is sought today from the British side when German character is to be characterized. The British, in emphasizing the peculiarities of their own national character, have never taken much interest in penetrating the German national character. When the forties in Germany were passing through a period of development, it seemed to me that the German mind was so fully occupied with the sphere of ideas that the way Hegel's disciples thought was felt by Schelling , who was still alive, and by his students, was felt to be too abstract, too logical, and that on Schelling's side, efforts were made to gain a greater liveliness for the thoughts themselves on the stage of thoughts. Whereas in Hegel one sensed that he allowed one thought to emerge from another through logical rigor, Schelling wanted people to sense the thoughts as active, living things that do not need to be proven in logic, just as what happens from person to person in living interaction cannot be encompassed in logic. He wanted to grasp it in something that is more than logic, wanted to grasp it in a living way, and that is how a great dispute arose on the scene, which the German tries to illuminate with the light he wants to ignite from his living knowledge. The English observed this dispute that arose. A London newspaper wrote what seemed to them a clever article about this dispute, in which it was said: These Germans are actually abstruse visionaries. Many are concerned with the question of who is right: Schelling or Hegel. The truth is only that Hegel is obscure and Schelling even more obscure; and the one who finds this is the one who will most easily come to terms with things—a piece of wisdom that roughly corresponds to the point of view of studying the world not when it is illuminated by the sun but at night, when all cats are black or gray. But anyone who today surveys the British judgment on the necessity of what is happening within the German character will perhaps be reminded of such “deeply understanding” words, especially when these words are used primarily to conceal what is actually taking effect and what one does not want to admit even to oneself. The present-day British really need a new mask to characterize their relationship to the Germans, and the foreign philosophers need a new sophistry to disparage Germany – a new sophistry that they have found since the outbreak of the war.

And the Italians? They also need something to reassure them about their own actions at the present time. Without arrogance, the German may say: it will uplift him within the difficult world situation when he thinks of the duty the world spirit has assigned to him, as he gains self-knowledge and this becomes knowledge of the German essence. What he should do will flow to him as realization from the realization of the German essence. When D'Annunzio spoke his resounding words before the Italian war broke out, he truly did not delve as deeply into Italian national character as he could have. But it is not for us Germans, who have gladly immersed ourselves in what the Roman spirit has created, to believe that d'Annunzio's hollow words really come from the deepest essence of Italian culture; but that they come from the motives that d'Annunzio needs to justify himself. The others needed sophistry, masks, to remove the causes of the war from their own soil, so to speak. The Italian needed something else, a justification that we have already seen emerging in recent years, a strange justification: he needed a new saint, a saint appointed from within the ranks of the profane, “holy egoism”. We see it recurring again and again, and it is to this that we see the representatives of Italian character repeatedly appeal. A new saint was needed to justify what had been done.

Perhaps it will lead the objective, unbiased observer of the German character to a position within today's historical events; because German character does not arise from such sophistry, such masks, nor from the “appointment of a new saint”, but from human nature, from what this human nature allows to be expressed, from what the national spirit of the German people has revealed to the best minds of this people have revealed to this people, but also what these spirits hoped for the people, because that is also a peculiarity of this German nature, which can be described by saying that the German always sought to direct his soul's gaze to what was aroused in him from the scene of thoughts, and from this he also wanted to recognize what hope he could harbor for what his people could achieve.

And today, when we need to develop love, a great deal of love, for what the ancestors of the German character have established within the German national soul and national strength, in order to place ourselves in today's historical events through this love, today, when we need faith in the strength of the present, today when we need confident hope for the success of that which the German character must achieve in the future. Today, we can look at what Germans have always loved, believed, and hoped for in the context of their past, present, and future. And so let us end with the words of a man who is indeed unknown today in the widest circles, but who in lonely thought wanted to fathom the popular and the intellectual of Goethe's Faust in those years of German life in which Germany had not yet produced the German state in its modern form. In those years, which preceded the deeds of the German power, in the sixties, a lonely thinker was concerned with the idea: in imagination, in the life of the soul, in idealism, the German wanted to rise to the highest that can only somehow be sensed by him. He had to develop a strength that must lie in his nature and that gives us hope that this strength will be fruitful, victorious in action. A simple German Faust observer, an observer of poetry that truly shows that German nature holds future forces, is quoted with his words. By pointing to words that Goethe himself, intuitively placing himself in the German future, spoke as a 65-year-old old man, he ties his own words to them and says:

"The earnest style, the high art of the ancients,
the primeval secret of eternal forms,
It is familiar with men and with gods,
It will leaf through rocks as through books.
For what Homer created and the Scipios
will never live in the scholarly hothouse!
They wanted to transplant us into the hothouse;
But the German oak grew to the whole!
A storm of growth has overtaken her,
She has taken the glass from the hothouse with her.
Now grow, O oak, grow to the delight of the world.
I can already see new solar auras flying.
And when my gray eyelashes close,
A mild light will still pour forth,
From whose reflection of those stars
The late grandchildren will learn to see,
To report in prophetically higher visions
Of God and humanity higher things.»

And the Faust viewer from the sixties continues:

"Let us add the wish that the Master's word, which looks down on us from better stars with a mild light, may come true in its people, who are seeking their way to clarity in darkness, confusion and urge, but with God's will, with indestructible strength, and that in those higher accounts of God and humanity, which the poet of Faust expects of the coming centuries, German deed too may no longer be a symbolic shadow, but in beautiful, life-affirming reality, may one day find its place and its glorification alongside German thought and German feeling!

We believe that such hopes, expressed by the best of Germans from the deepest German national sentiment, may be fulfilled in our own day, out of the blood and the creative energy of our courageous and active people. We believe that in these difficult days the German can develop to his strength, over which the atmosphere of hatred spreads, still another: that he can vividly grasp to strengthen his strength the love for what has been handed down in spirit and strength, in the life and work of his fathers as a sacred legacy, because he can be convinced that he, by permeating himself with this love for the past, he will find the strength to believe; because in this faith and this love he may find the hope for those fruits that must blossom for the German people out of blood and suffering, but also out of the blessed deed of the present, which the German performs not out of bellicosity but out of devotion to a necessity imposed on him by history. Thus, in the present difficult times, what may support, uplift and guide the German through the difficult struggle in which he finds himself is integrated into German life, German work, German feeling and sentiment: love for the German past, faith in the German present, confident hope for the German future.

I would like to take the liberty of outlining tomorrow a world view from the perspective of spiritual science. Today, as an introduction, so to speak, I would like to precede it with a description of the world view of German idealism.

It is possible to speak of such a world view of German idealism if one attempts to extract from the innermost being of the German national soul, so to speak, what has been attempted by this national soul in the greatest period — in terms of intellectual life — to get closer to the riddles and secrets of the world. If we consider the impulses and forces assimilated by the national soul in those days as still active in the second half of the nineteenth century and continuing into our own time, when the world picture of German idealism has receded in the face of other endeavors, where it has lived hidden, as it were, as an urging force in the development of the national spirit, then one can also speak of such an effective world view in the present. However, we must bear in mind that, due to many things that have arisen in our intellectual life and have become dominant for the generality of this intellectual life, this – I would say – most “original German” intellectual construct of German idealism has receded. But especially in these days we may express our hopes that this world picture of German idealism will again come to the surface and incorporate its strength into the general process of human development.

In my lectures this winter, but also earlier, I have often mentioned a name that was borne by one of the most German minds of the second half of the nineteenth century; I have mentioned the name Herman Grimm, the great art historian. And it may be said that what I have ventured to suggest here about Herman Grimm can, especially when one considers what Herman Grimm achieved as an art historian, as an art observer and in other ways through his entire literary work, be proof that it is born directly out of German feeling, out of German thinking, in short, out of the innermost impulses of the German national soul. When Herman Grimm tried to lift up his soul to that which presented itself to him—more from his feelings than from philosophical reflection—as the world view of the Goethean worldview, he had to place this world view alongside the other which in modern times has found the widest dissemination and the widest interest; that world view, of which its adherents, its believers, repeatedly claim that it is based on the genuine and correct assumptions of science. This world-picture, which in a certain sense now holds sway in the minds of many, Herman Grimm, moved by his intuitive perceptions, desired to set beside the other, which presented itself to his imaginative fancy as the world-picture on which all Goethe's work and activity was based. I have already mentioned the conclusion which Herman Grimm arrived at when he made this attempt. He said:

“Long ago, in his” — Goethe's — “youth, the great Laplace-Kantian fantasy of the origin and the former destruction of the globe had taken hold.” Herman Grimm wanted to suggest the idea that if Goethe had wanted to profess this Laplace-Kantian world view, he would have had plenty of opportunities to do so because it had already taken hold in his youth. And now Herman Grimm continues:

"From the rotating nebula – which children already learn about at school – the central drop of gas forms, which later becomes the Earth, and, as a solidifying sphere, goes through all phases, including the episode of habitation by the human race, over inconceivable periods of time , and finally to plunge back into the sun as burnt-out slag: a long process, but one that is completely comprehensible to today's audience, and one that no longer requires any external intervention to come about, except for the effort of some external force to keep the sun at the same temperature."

Herman Grimm alludes to the world view that is so widespread today: that once upon a time there was nothing but extraordinarily thin matter, that this thin matter clumped together, began to rotate, to move in circles, that from this the world building gradually formed, the planets split, that then on the earth – the one of the planets split off from the central gas drop – in the course of time the mineral, the vegetable and the animal kingdom developed from the gas, and that then the whole course of evolution took on that form which presents itself to us as human 'history'. But then, later on, there would come a time when all living things would have to wither and dry up, when everything would fall back into the sun, and with it all life would sink back into inanimate matter. Many people believe that this world view is the only one that can be achieved on the solid ground of natural science. And, as I have already indicated, it is easy to make this world view comprehensible. Herman Grimm says of it: children already learn it at school. You just have to carefully slide a cut-out card through a drop of oil floating in a liquid, stick a needle through it from above and turn the needle to set the whole thing in motion; then smaller drops separate from the larger oil ball and move around the larger one. And so, there you have, quite “evidently,” the origin of a small world system, and from that you draw the conclusion that the origin of the great world system must have occurred in just the same way. However, I have always pointed out how obvious it is, even to a child, that the world could not have come into being any other way; but in this experiment, people usually forget one thing – and one should maintain perfection when demonstrating something. For it is usually not taken into account that the “Mr. Teacher” or the “Mr. Professor” is standing there, turning the needle and setting the whole thing in rotation, and one must not forget oneself in an experiment that one does. Therefore, if one wanted to accept the experiment cited as proof, one would have to place a giant Mr. Teacher or Mr. Professor into outer space.

Herman Grimm continues:

So said Herman Grimm. In contrast to this, it may be pointed out that the entire period of German Weltanschauungsidealismus in its striving for a Weltanschauungsbilde was basically a protest against the fact that the culture of the time incorporated precisely this world view with the most fruitless perspective; and it may be further pointed out how it actually came about that such a world view could take hold. But to do this, it is necessary to point out a little of the way in which, so to speak, popular thinking, the world-view thinking of the present day, has come about. And since it can be noted again and again how little account is taken of all the circumstances that are drawn upon in these arguments, I would like to point out that what I have to say in this regard is really not only of this war and is not said merely because we are living in these fateful times; rather, as many of the listeners here present know, it has been said and advocated again and again, not only in Germany but also outside of Germany. I would like to emphasize this in particular because it could very easily be thought that these discussions lack objectivity precisely because, in our fateful times, they draw attention to what can help to guide the German soul to what is rooted in the deepest depths of the German national spirit.

If we want to grasp the development of our newer world view, we have to go back – to not go further back – at least to the point in time when, under the impression of powerful external discoveries about the world building of space and also about the world building of time, humanity began to work on the renewal of the world view as well, as it must present itself to the human mind. In this context, it must be pointed out time and again how the work of Copernicus and what was achieved by minds such as Kepler, Giordano Bruno and Galileo in the wake of this work, basically provided the first impetus for the world view under the influence of which present-day education still stands. Today, I would like to focus on the extent to which Europe's individual nations and peoples have worked towards this world view, which now surrounds us in the consciousness of most thinking people; and how, on the other hand, the world view of German idealism has been incorporated into what Europe's peoples have contributed to the common world view.

The spirit that can appear to us as particularly characteristic in the — I would like to say — reshaping of the world view of modern times is that of Giordano Bruno, who was burned in 1600. By pointing to Giordano Bruno, we must point out the contribution that Italian culture, Italian thinking, and Italian striving for a world view has made to general world culture. In earlier lectures I pointed out that the life and striving of the human soul can be seen in three forms of expression by a true spiritual science: as sentient soul, as mind or emotional soul, and as consciousness soul. and that in this surge of inner experience, which comes about under the influence of the forces of the sentient soul, the forces of the mind or emotional soul and the forces of the consciousness soul, the actual self of the human being acts as the all-uniting element. I have also said that today one can certainly scoff at this classification as an arbitrary one, but that in the future spiritual science will make it clear that the division of the human soul into a part of feeling, a part of understanding and a part of consciousness is just as 'scientific' as the division undertaken by physics in order to divide light into seven colors or — we could also say — into three color groups: into the yellowish-reddish part, into the greenish part and into the blue-violet part. Just as one will study the colors of light in this threefold division, not out of arbitrariness but out of an inner nature of the thing, if one wants to come to a result at all, so the human soul in its wholeness must be studied in the three “color nuances” . The reason why the same mental operation that is accepted in physics is regarded as mere speculation in spiritual science is that today we are not accustomed to approaching the soul in the same way that we approach the nature of light in physics. I have also pointed out that the essential thing about the national impulses, in so far as they take hold of the human soul, consists, for example, in the case of the Italian people, in the fact that the impulses which play from the Italian folk soul into the soul of the individual Italian ripen the soul of feeling in the latter , but not in the sense that he is considered as an individual, but as a member of his people; so that a person who strives for a world view within Italian culture will do so as a person pulsating with the power that works through his sentient soul. And if we look at Campanella, at Vanini, and at other spirits in the newer age of Italian culture, we see that it was Giordano Bruno who most vividly expressed this aspect. Bruno, in the dawn of modern times, seizes with the powers, which we say are the powers of the sentient soul, that which Copernicus has brought up as a spatial world view?

Let us take the medieval world view. Man could see no further than the sky, which was bounded by the vault of heaven, in which the stars were set. Then there were the spheres of the individual planets, with the spheres of the sun and moon. Such a world view corresponded to the senses. But it was only compatible with the view of the world of space that preceded Copernicanism. As Copernicanism — I might say — descended into the infinite capacity for enthusiasm of the soul of Giordano Bruno, who with all the depths of his sensibility recognized the world, this view arose in him: What was called the vault of heaven up there is not up there at all; it is not a real boundary, but only a boundary up to which the human view of space comes. The world extends into infinity! And embedded in infinity are innumerable worlds, and dominating these innumerable worlds is the world soul, which, for Giordano Bruno, permeates this perceived universe in the same way that the individual human soul permeates the individual human elements that make up our organism. One needs only to read a page of any of Giordano Bruno's writings to realize that the enthusiasm kindled in his soul by Copernicanism led him to direct his hymns – for that is what his writings on revelation are – to the infinite world building permeated by the soul of the world. And so will others who, like him, have been inspired in their quest by his folk culture. Thus we see how in Giordano Bruno we are confronted with a world picture which everywhere sees not only the material and spatial in the world, but sees everything material and spatial at the same time spiritualized, ensouled; how the individual human soul is for him only an image of the entire world organism, which is permeated by the world soul just as our individual organism is permeated by our soul.

This world view of Giordano Bruno stands before us — I would like to say — formed from the same basis of feeling as the older world view of Dante; only that Dante's world view took up in its poetic creation what had also been handed down from earlier times and led into the infinite, but into the infinite supersensible. I have already pointed out how Giordano Bruno can teach us lessons that are so necessary to learn in the face of the newer spiritual science. For, in the first place, this newer spiritual science is always objected to on the ground that it asserts something that contradicts the “five senses” of man. Now, nothing contradicted the five senses of man more than the world-picture of Copernicus, which made on Giordano Bruno the impression just characterized; nevertheless, the world-picture of Copernicus has entered, if gradually, into the thought-habits of mankind. But other things have also become part of people's thinking. Just as Giordano Bruno called out to his contemporaries: “You imagine space as being limited by the blue vault of heaven; but this blue vault of heaven does not exist, because it is only the limit of your perception,” so the newer spiritual science must speak in the face of what the older world view sees in birth and death as the limitation of the world view. For what appears in birth and death as the limits of the temporal is just as little really there outside of human perception as the blue vault of heaven is really there for the spatial perception outside of human perception. It is only assumed as the boundary of the spatial because the human spatial view only extends as far as the blue vault of heaven. And because in relation to the temporal, human perception only extends to birth and death, birth and death are assumed to be the limits of the temporal; and today, with spiritual science, we stand at the same point in relation to birth and death as Giordano Bruno did in his time.

I would like to say: in order to effectively impress what emerged as his world view on the culture of the time, the stirrings arising from the sentient soul that Giordano Bruno gave to this world view were needed. It is as if what he has to say about the world does not in the least engage his intellect, does not in any way trouble his reason – one has only to read a page of his work to find confirmation of this – but as if everything emerges for him from the most direct intuition, that is how Giordano Bruno speaks. Thus, at the end of the Middle Ages, the Copernican world picture was accepted, which was bound to be accepted because it was so deeply significant for human progress. And so we can say: the “nuance of feeling” of the soul's life is clearly pronounced in the world picture of Giordano Bruno and also in that of those who, with him, received their most significant impulses from the Italian soul. For that is the significant thing that has come from this side to the present day: that all philosophizing, all the gathering of thoughts into a world-view, has flowed out of this most direct life of feeling. What warms the worldview with inner strength comes from this source. Therefore, we may say: insofar as the individual Italian places himself in his nationality, the enthusiastic soul speaks out of him when he wants to work out a worldview.

If we now turn to another current – one of those currents that then led to the modern world view: to the French current, we also find an excellent spirit at the starting point of the newer world view current; but if we look closely, we see him facing the origin of the world view under completely different conditions than Giordano Bruno: Descartes (Cartesius). He is also a spirit who, like Giordano Bruno, belongs to the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but he starts from completely different premises. Let us take a look at these premises as they present themselves in this outstanding mind. What is it that he starts from, in contrast to Giordano Bruno? In Giordano Bruno, we see how he is seized by an ever-increasing enthusiasm for what gives him the foundations of the modern world view. With Descartes, we see the opposite: we see how he starts from doubt, how he realizes that everything that arises from the external world or from within the soul as knowledge, as insight, as experience, can be doubted as to whether it is a reality, whether it is justified, whether it has more justification than a passing dream image. Descartes comes to doubt everything; but he seeks knowledge, to know with inner powers. First of all, he looks for the characteristics that knowledge must have in order for the soul to accept it; and for him, clarity and distinctness are these characteristics. What can present itself most clearly and distinctly to the soul bears the mark of certainty. I would like to say: in the sea of doubt in which he initially finds himself, he realizes that he must seek something that presents itself to him with clarity and distinctness, with transparency; for only that can count as a certainty for him. So it is not the original enthusiasm that drives him, but the striving for clarity, for distinctness and transparency. From this it then follows that he says to himself: And even if I doubt everything, even if everything I could perceive in the external and internal world were only a dream image: I cannot doubt that – whether it be a dream or not, I am thinking this; and if everything that takes place in the sea of experiences and that I can doubt is not, and this is established with clarity above everything: I think – then I am too! And from this clarity and distinctness, the thought arises in him: everything that presents itself to the soul as clearly and distinctly as this model of clarity and distinctness has legitimacy; one may think about the world as one must survey it: I think, therefore I am. And now let us see from this starting-point with Descartes and his followers how a world-picture comes into being that thirsts for clarity and distinctness. This clarity and distinctness was prefigured in Descartes' soul in that he was a great mathematician, and above all a special thinker on the basis of geometry. He demands mathematical clarity for everything that should belong to this world-picture. He and his successors then went on to say: About the world of space and about everything that moves in space, one can gain clarity and distinctness, one can form an image that is inwardly as clear and distinct as only mathematics itself is clear and distinct. But I would like to say that the soul-life actually escaped this world-picture. Not that Descartes denied the soul, but by taking certainty: I think, therefore I am —, he did not take it in such a way that one would get the impression that he delved into the soul as he delved into the external world of space, into what happens externally. What happens externally in space gives him the opportunity to survey the details, and also to survey the context of the details; but the interior remains more or less obscure. He said to himself: “Certain ideas that arise in the soul are clear and distinct; these are ‘innate’ ideas; by arising clearly and distinctly, they structure and organize the soul internally. But a connection between the inner-spiritual and the outer-spatial did not arise for him; they stood side by side like two worlds. Therefore, he could not — like Giordano Bruno, who thought of everything as inspired by the world soul and of this world soul pouring its spiritual impulses into everything — come to think of the soul in everything spatial as well. He said to himself: When I look at an animal, a spatial structure presents itself to me; I can look at it like another spatial structure; but it does not show anything other than spatial structures; therefore it appears like a moving automaton. He did not find in animals that which moves the animal. He found it only in himself. Therefore, he ascribed a soul only to human beings, not to animals. He called animals “living machines” — and with that we have the beginning of a mechanical world view. They were not so bold – neither Descartes nor his disciples – to deny what was present from the old religious tradition, this inner soul, but they sought to consider it as belonging only to humans; and in animals, they considered it as presenting its creations to the soul in the way that mathematical creations present themselves to the soul.

Do we not see clearly and distinctly the working of the intellectual or mind soul, the middle soul, in the striving for clarity and distinctness, which has increasingly become the characteristic of all work on a worldview in France? Until recently, this remained the basic feature of the current that worked from this perspective on the construction of a general world view. One might say that everything in a worldview that is mathematically transparent, that can be expressed in mathematically clear thoughts, that can be presented in such a way that one thing mathematically follows from another, came from this worldview – up to the world view created by Auguste Comte, where everything – from the simplest phenomena of nature to human social coexistence – is to be presented as in a large, powerful painting, with one sentence always following another in mathematics. It would be interesting to show how this nuance of the mind or soul, this systematizing soul, permeates this entire culture, how it forms the innermost nerve of this culture.

And if we now turn to a third current that also had an enormous influence on our intellectual culture, on our intellectual world view of the second half of the last century, if we turn to British culture, we find Bacon, Baco von Verulam, as the dominant spirit, in whose footsteps all of England's other leading spirits still follow. And how does he assert what he has to say? He said to himself: Mankind has lived for too long on mere ideals, has busied itself for too long with mere ideals and mere words, and it should now turn its attention to external things, to the things themselves, that is, to those things that present themselves to external observation ; one could only arrive at a true picture of the world by directing one's eyes and other senses to what is taking place in the external world, and only allowing “thoughts” to be valid insofar as they bring what is happening outside into a context. Bacon became the philosopher of experience, of the world view of experience, the world view that serves to summarize what is happening externally. Hence we see how, in the course of this school of thought, an outstanding mind such as Locke denies the possibility that the soul can gain any knowledge from itself; all it can do is to stand and observe the course of the world; then what it can observe will be written on the soul's blank slate. In this sense, the soul itself is a blank slate, a tabula rasa; not as with Descartes, innate ideas arise that are connected with the essence of the soul. Locke crosses out all innate ideas. For him, the world view arises only from the fact that the human soul focuses on its surroundings, that it analyzes, synthesizes and reflects on what is going on outside. This current extends right up to more recent times. People like John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and others are influenced by an impulse such as that just mentioned. One would like to say: with such a world view, everything that the soul could achieve by developing inwardly and bringing up what it does not yet have when it is placed in the world in a natural way, is rejected, so that it must stop at everything that presents itself externally and apply all the soul's strength to summarizing what presents itself from the outside.

When I first tried to find a concept, an idea for this kind of English philosophy, especially for John Stuart Mill, about fifteen years ago – this is presented in my “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century” – I struggled to find a suitable expression to characterize John Stuart Mill's world struggled to find a fitting expression to characterize John Stuart Mill's world view; and even then I had to characterize this world view in such a way that I said: This point of view is that of the 'spectator of the world', it is not the point of view of a soul that works inwardly on itself with the belief that it can advance in the knowledge of the inner connections of things through this inner work. John Stuart Mill also takes this standpoint as a spectator, for Mill was also one of the followers of Locke and Bacon, and he faces the world in such a way that he stands before what is presented to the senses externally and what can be joined together in thoughts, just as thoughts are joined and dissolved in everyday life.

Now we see how, in yet another way, Giordano Bruno, Descartes and Bacon in the way they are characterized work on the creation of a world view, in German, Central European intellectual culture on the emergence of a world view; we see how, in solitude, a profound German mind seeks to gain a world view from the depths of the national soul. It is easy to misunderstand this thinker, who strives for the highest possible insights for a human being, and to ridicule him; but when we speak of German intellectual life, we must draw attention to this one man: Jakob Böhme, who lived at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is certainly easy to misjudge this simple shoemaker from Görlitz, for he did not speak as did Copernicus or Giordano Bruno, who drafted a world picture out of his elementary intuitive perception; nor did he speak out of a striving for clarity and distinctness, as we find in Descartes, and he spoke even less like Bacon, who wanted to summarize what presents itself outwardly to the senses. Rather, he spoke in such a way that when he delved into his soul or was with nature, something was there that had not been there before; he spoke of how an inward path is traversed that leads to the innermost secrets of existence. He spoke of what ignited within him when, as a shepherd boy, he once looked into a hole in the ground at the top of a mountain and saw a metal vessel full of gold in the recess. He said that this experience ignited something within him, and he wanted to say: A spark has been kindled in my soul, which has been ignited by the spirit that is weaving in the world; I felt connected to the spirit living in the world. And he goes on to tell us how he pursued this experience in his soul and also lived in a state of soul alienated from everyday life for seven days, how he had gone through a “paradise and realm of joy,” how he did not feel connected to reality through his senses, nor to what the senses presented through his mind, but how he felt connected through his soul to what invisibly and supersensibly reigns in things. But when he told this to his master, with whom he was then apprenticed, the latter told him to get out of there, because he could not use any young house prophets! And many still speak like this master today; in this respect, people have not become more understanding.

But if we delve into Jakob Böhme, we see how he wants to tie his soul to what pulses through the soul spiritually and emotionally. While Giordano Bruno directed his soul outwards, in order to see the 'soul of the world' everywhere, which he assumed, it is the case with Jakob Böhme that he only wants to form and shape his soul inwardly, that he does not want to look at the soul of the world outwardly, but rather immerses himself in it, so that he participates in the life of this soul of the world. Participates, I said. This is the starting point for world views that arise from a dark urge, for Jakob Böhme works without external scholarship, only from his soul. It is the beginning of the striving of a soul that draws its impulses from the impulses of the German national soul: this immersion in what is otherwise only observed or what is presented in clarity and distinctness. Jakob Böhme would not have understood what Cartesius strove for; for him it was not a matter of clarity and distinctness, but of allowing the soul to live the life of the great world soul. And if he could do that, then it did not matter to him whether it was clear and distinct, because “it is simply experienced!” And this “it is experienced” has remained like an impact, like a ferment within the striving of the German national spirit. Those spirits whom I mentioned in my lecture of eight days ago are the continuers of that first germ which was in Jakob Böhme; one can still see in them how they only want to strive clearly for what was already in Jakob Böhme's striving, which can be expressed by saying that he wanted to experience the secrets of the world — not just look at them!

Now, however, we must look at a second starting point for the more recent striving for a worldview if we want to recognize all the forces that are inherent in this newer striving for a worldview. This other starting point is often more admired today by people who are striving for a worldview than the starting point of Jacob Boehme; it is the one that is also found in a German mind, and again in an eminently cosmopolitan mind, namely in Leibniz. His world view is similar to that of Giordano Bruno, but expressed in a German world view nuance. If we want to characterize the Italian world view, we have to say: it is born out of the sentient soul. In the same sense, the French world view is born out of the mind or mind soul; especially when studying Cartesius, one notices this to a very special degree. The British world view is born entirely out of the consciousness soul, out of that consciousness soul which, especially in the stage of observation, is able to focus on what is external and what the mind can bring to consciousness from it. The German view of the world emerges from the I itself, from the most intimate inner workings of the soul. And just as light is present in both the red-yellow and the green-blue-violet, so the I is present in the sentient soul, in the mind or emotional soul and also in the consciousness soul, , but is therefore also a continuous back-and-forth striving, sometimes striving for the sentient soul, as with Jakob Böhme, sometimes more inclined towards the intellectual soul, as with Leibniz. What Jakob Böhme strives for inwardly as a way of living in the soul of the world, Leibniz strives for through the intellect, but not, as is the case with Descartes, not as a mathematical mind, but as a soul that has a clear awareness that man in his essence is a part of the whole world. And so Leibniz said to himself: What I am as a soul, a conceiving being, is basically everywhere, underlying the whole world. What we see in space is not a mere spatial construction, but the reality is that everything that is reality outside is of the same kind as that which is within me; only my soul comes to an alert consciousness, as it were. In the beings outside, which are not human, there are also such basic components as are present in humans. Leibniz calls them “monads.” What is “really” in them is consciousness. Only the monads of the mineral and plant kingdoms have something like a sleeping consciousness; then they become more and more aware and aware, to finally come to self-awareness in the human kingdom.

For Leibniz, the world is composed entirely of monads, and if you do not see the world as monads, it is because you see it indistinctly – as it is with a swarm of mosquitoes, which, seen from a distance, appears indistinct and looks like a cloud, but as soon as you get closer, it dissolves into the individual mosquitoes. So, for example, the table in front of me consists of monads, but these monads are seen pushed together like the individual midges in a swarm. Thus, for Leibniz, the entire world consists of individual monads, and just as the individual monads are mirrored in the whole world, so they are a microcosm in the macrocosm. One must imagine that the entire world is mirrored in every single monad, and a harmony implanted by the original monad spreads throughout the whole.

If one wants to characterize the salient feature of this Leibnizian world view, one must say: the salient feature is its abstractness, its thoughtfulness; and this abstract-thoughtfulness is indeed immediately apparent when one looks at it more closely. For what would be the use of it if, as Leibniz does with regard to the individual monads, one were to dwell only on a clock and say: the individual link, the individual cogwheel would be effective with the whole clock, would thus be a “little clock,” and all the effects of the clock would find expression in it? Certainly, anyone who has knowledge of the composition of the clock can say how its individual parts are connected. But what would it matter if one were to say that the real characteristic of the clock is its harmony? One encompasses it with an abstract concept. Today, however, people are usually glad when they can put an abstract concept for something; but one cannot grasp a clock through the mere concept of harmony. In this we can feel the contrast between a rational, abstract world view, as offered to us by Leibniz, and an ever-increasing immersion in the workings and weaving of the world spirit, as first presented to us by Jakob Böhme, albeit more in the form of a hunch.

In a similar way to Descartes, who sought the possibility of mathematically subordinating thoughts to the world view, Spinoza also strove for a world view that is comprehensible like a mathematical system; but at the same time, he wanted to shape it in such a way that, as one ascends from concept to concept, an ever higher and higher experience of the human soul results. He characteristically calls his mathematical world picture 'ethics' because, as he strings concept to concept, each successive one leads the soul ever deeper into the secrets of existence, until the soul, by becoming ever more absorbed in the concepts that lead from mathematics to mathematics, can feel at one with the unified substance of the world, with the unified spirit of the universe. It is an inward progression, a self-development in Spinoza. Therefore Spinoza stands alone in his striving for a world view. He has the impact that he was able to get from Descartes; but he has brought it into his world view in a deeper way through what he himself was able to get.

All the elements that have now been mentioned have influenced, in a certain way, what the world view of the nineteenth century has now become. But one can say: the blossoming and development of what was called “German Idealism” here eight days ago was a protest — which only never came to full effectiveness — against the fact that the world view developed into what Herman Grimm said: “A carrion bone that a hungry dog would avoid would be a refreshing, appetizing piece compared to this excrement of creation.” And it was always the case with the most outstanding minds, who stood with their natures within the development of the German people, that they endeavored to take up all the impulses that necessarily entered into the spiritual development of humanity in the construction of their world view, but to shape this world view in such a way that the striving for a worldview is not merely looking, not merely “watching”, but inner experience. Thus we see that in the characteristic spirit of German striving — in Goethe — the individual members, the various parts of the currents of world-view, are absorbed. In Goethe's 'Faust', which in this respect is a reflection of his own striving, we can see how his Faust develops out of the details of external observation, how he wants to arrive at an overall feeling for what permeates and animates the world. This is truly the spirit of Giordano Bruno. In this, and in the other, how later Goethe did not rest until he could fully immerse himself in Italian art, we see everywhere something of that nuance of feeling of the soul that seeks to expand one's own self into the world's self. And this already flows through the first parts that Goethe wrote down of his Faust.

On the other hand, we can see how the second world-view current, which in Descartes took the form of the pursuit of clarity and distinctness, has taken on a characteristically materialistic expression in Europe. Goethe was already aware of this as a young man when he was in Strasbourg, in Holbach's “Systeme de la nature”. I have already indicated how Descartes, in his world view, presents animals as animated automatons that are not ensouled. From what this Cartesian world view and, later, the British world view, which spread to the continent through Voltaire and fully embraced the aforementioned rejection of what the soul can inwardly achieve in inward striving, in order to accept only that which can be space can be systematized: from this arose the world view that Goethe opposed in Holbach's “Systeme de la nature,” which knows only the moving atoms that group themselves into molecules, and through whose agglomerations everything that can be seen in the world is said to arise. That world picture, which seeks to resolve everything into the effect of moving atoms and molecules, has clarity, the greatest clarity, and distinctness, a clarity, a distinctness that cannot be increased in such a world picture. But everything of a spiritual-soul nature must fall away from such a world picture. There is no room in it for anything of a spiritual-soul nature.

Goethe was already confronted with such a world view in his youth. He rejected it by saying:

Goethe finds this world view “cold and barren”.

And now we see how Goethe, summarizing everything that is in his soul, wants to combine clarity and distinctness with direct experience, in a way that was not present in Descartes. This is the characteristic that enters into the German world view during Goethe's time. How do we see the striving for clarity and distinctness in Descartes? In such a way that what one looks at, what one thinks about, must show itself clearly and distinctly. It must show itself clearly and distinctly to the observer. Goethe is clear about the fact that one does not gain any knowledge at all by merely seeing things clearly and distinctly placed before one; but he is clear about it, even if he does not want to stop at the mere inkling of Jakob Böhme: If one wants to gain a real world view that corresponds to reality, one must immerse oneself in things, to witness the forming of the crystal by placing oneself in the position of the forces that form the crystal; and in the same way, one must enter into the plant, witness the forces that make the plant a plant, and immerse oneself in all beings. Goethe does not want an abstract world view, cobbled together out of monads and harmonies, but a world view that is experienced. But not, as with Jakob Böhme, only intuitively, but by immersing oneself in all the things of the world, and through this immersion, the human being undergoes the path by which he or she approaches more and more the innermost sources of existence. That is why the world view that presented itself to him in Spinoza's work was able to have such an effect on Goethe. Spinoza never had the impulse to immerse his soul in the real external world. He sought to string together the impressions of the world in front of him, one after the other, but in such a way that the soul would undergo something in the process. Not that Goethe was ever a devout follower of Spinoza's world view; only those who know nothing about Goethe can say that. Rather, it is the case that Goethe felt the way he wanted to find his way into a world view with Spinoza, found it with him. The only difference is that what Spinoza strove for in an abstract way, Goethe wanted to seek in a concrete way. Just as Spinoza moves from concept to concept, Goethe wanted to move from plant to plant in order to experience what the plant experiences. Goethe called the soul's attainment by immersing itself in the plant world the “Utrpflanze”; and what the soul experienced by immersing itself in the animal world in the same way, he called the “Urtier”. Thus for Goethe the striving for a world-picture became a participation, but not a dark one as in Jakob Böhme; but the experience itself was to proceed in clarity and distinctness. This is witnessed to by Goethe's little essay on the “Metamorphosis of Plants”, in which he describes how the plant develops from root to leaf and to flower, with constant transformations taking place. But we must always bear in mind that Goethe sought to achieve his goal by immersing himself in the essence of things. While Cartesius, in his world view, threw everything of a spiritual nature out of the essence, for example out of animals, and turned them into living automatons, Goethe allowed his own soul to flow into plants, into animals, into the whole world, in order to connect with it in his soul and to recognize it clearly. Clarity and distinctness of experience is what entered the world-view striving of German idealism in Goethe's time. What Cartesius makes an external characteristic of knowledge, which he presents and behaves as a spectator, Goethe connects with the inner experience. And what is wrested with dark, elemental power from the soul of Jakob Böhme and expressed in his words, is also present in Goethe; but in that it shows itself in him, we find it in clarity and distinctness.

Now, however, we see in Goethe what the three great minds also strove for, which were cited as characteristic of German idealism.

Let us look at Fichte. Eight days ago, we characterized how he strives to gain a world view by seeking certainty entirely from the impulses of the innermost part of man, the I. And if we want to see through Fichte completely, what then dominates in his world view? We might put it this way: what dominates in his world view is everything that a person can develop within themselves, without directing any kind of gaze to the outside world, by gaining self-awareness. This is a welling up and flowing up from the innermost depths of the soul. I have often characterized it here: every external thing can be named by everyone in the same way as the name expresses it; but we can only name the I in such a way, if it is to express our being, by letting it resound within ourselves. Fichte did not express this; but it underlies his entire world view as an impulse, and he starts from the assumption that the I is only there when it places itself in the world. A volitional decision, then, is what Fichte seeks as the center of the development of his worldview. And he asserts of the ego — and this already characterizes Fichte's worldview — that it can find out of itself what the mission of itself is. For Fichte, this is the moral worldview. And the national world exists only to engage in moral activity. Thus, for Fichte, everything is permeated by the divine within man. Everything else is only appearance, is only created so that the moral world order can be active. The will, which is grasped in the consciousness of self, in the point of self-awareness, and radiates from the consciousness of self, is grasped as part of the soul of the world.

The way in which Fichte presents this shows us that, in a sense, he starts from full self-consciousness. Just as the light appears in every single color nuance – to return to this comparison – he starts from the self that appears in all three soul members; but he lets it prevail in such a way that it works through the consciousness soul. And in this respect, I would say that in Fichte we have the thinker who is the antipode, the opposite pole, of the British spirit. While the British spirit essentially brings to bear that which can prevail in the soul impulses in the consciousness soul, Fichte radiates everything that lives in the I into the consciousness soul. Hence the British spirit in Spencer's more recent work has come to expect the blessing of the world above all from the establishment of such an outer order, whereby the whole outer world is so arranged that the greatest possible benefit for outer human needs arises. What industrialization can offer humanity stands as an ideal in Spencer's world view; and to him, every link in a social order that is incompatible with the industrialization of society appears to be a curse, because the industrialization of society, of the state, brings eternal peace, according to Spencer, and works to eradicate everything that endangers peace. Thus the ultimate principle of utility has been incorporated into the world view.

With Fichte, we see that he is no less a practical mind. We have been able to emphasize how he directly influenced the development of his time, for example through his “Speeches to the German Nation,” how he stirred hearts, how he awakened enthusiasm, how his entire work is aimed at , but to take hold of what is not from the point of view of the external world of the highest benefit to mankind, but what is to be placed as the deepest ideals of the soul in the moral world order. So we see how Fichte works out of the nuance of the consciousness soul and, as it were, brings about the counter-image of the British spirit.

A spirit that places at the center of his world view what the soul can experience within itself, but which, through the way in which he processes this, is infinitely close to the French spirit, is Flegel. Hegel is one of the most German thinkers because he accomplishes from the opposite side what is peculiar to the French mind. Clarity and distinctness, systematic order in the spectator's point of view, in the point of view that is gained when one only confronts the world: that is what has emerged from Cartesius to Bergson as the characteristic of the French world view. Hegel wants to have the world picture as an experience; but he can only absorb from this world picture that which is as clear and distinct as a mathematical concept. That is why Hegel's world picture seems as clear as a mathematical concept. That is why one has the “cold feeling” towards it, as I have explained. But it is not a system of mathematical concepts that has been picked up, but it is conceived in such a way that it touches the soul in its deepest innermost being. And by touching the soul in its deepest innermost being, it finds itself elevated above all that is unclear and indistinct in the external view. But what remains for it, after all that is vague and indistinct has fallen away from it, is the clarity of the full being — to the point of the Gnostic and philosophical concept. What characterizes Hegel's world picture is this: even if it contains only external abstractions, these abstractions are experienced, directly experienced. That makes a great deal, to be sure. First of all, it makes it unthinkable for someone to become a “true Hegelian.” Basically, one cannot become a true Hegelian; it is an impossibility. Because thinking, continuing these external abstractions, really has no appeal for anyone else, and one always has the feeling that once someone has done this, that is enough in the world. What matters is the endeavor to see how the human soul can be experienced if one only experiences concepts, if one only feels as inner direct experience that which is a clear but also completely abstract concept. The pursuit of such a world view is what is admirable about Hegel; looking at him as he pursues it is what matters. Particularly when one is absorbed in a work such as his Phenomenology of Spirit (though admittedly very few people will be able to immerse themselves in it), one has a web of nothing but abstractions, of the most terrible abstractions; but it has life, it has soul. It is a characteristic sign that the German mind has once gone so far in its experience of a world picture that it said to itself: I find no clarity and distinctness anywhere; I will see what happens when I let one concept arise from the other. While Fichte allows the divine essence of the world to merge into “God as moral world order,” for Hegel God is the “world thinker”; and the individual soul can immerse itself through the most abstract logic by reflecting on the divine thoughts. That is certainly the tremendously sobering and cold thing about Hegel's philosophy, that if you get involved with it, you must get the thought: the divine order of the world was only concerned with “thinking,” and in order to represent thinking, everything else was represented. A moral worldview warms us; a moral worldview also, so to speak, places us in everyday life. Thinking only allows us to “behold” the world, and in this respect, beholding is also an experience with Hegel. And because it is the experience that is important in forming the world view of German idealism, we see how it is made fruitful by Hegel in such a way that he does not lose himself in the most external abstractions, but adheres to the thoughts that the divine order of the world allows the human race to experience by letting it go through history. The human soul is, as it were, directed to go through history in order thereby to take part in the course of the divine world-order. This “taking part” in the world, which I indicated in a much more universal sense in Goethe, is what we encounter in Hegel in relation to history. The way in which the thoughts run in relation to history, so they contribute to a world-picture of history. But in this experience of the logic of the world, history becomes for him what it must become: a twofold one. The whole ancient history up to the appearance of Christ on earth is the one part; and the appearance of Christ is a mighty impact, is the most powerful impact on earth-history, in order to bring something completely new into human evolution, which was not previously connected with the earth, and which now guides earthly evolution. The Christ-idea connects in the characterized way with the historical world picture, which the German evolution has brought forth. For Hegel, the whole of history is a progression conceived by the divine world government, so that it presents itself as an education of humanity to freedom. And the greatest educator, but one who divides the entire progress of earthly evolution into two parts, is the Christ-Being, which has come into earthly evolution from without — also in Hegel's sense. And the characteristic feature is this: with the clarity and distinctness that Cartesius demands, but with which all experience is also connected in Hegel, the soul can live itself into the whole course of history; there it immerses itself in the stage in which in which the event of Golgotha took place, and experiences in microcosm what the whole development of the earth has gone through, in that the Christ has incorporated Himself into the development of the earth.

Thus Hegel anchors his world picture in the soul of the intellect, and thereby becomes the opposite pole to Descartes' world view, just as Fichte is the opposite pole to the British world view.

The case is different when we come to the third of the thinkers mentioned, Schelling. One could say of him that his outer thinking already expresses how he can be brought into a relationship with the southern world view, the Italian one. I have already mentioned how he seeks to shape what underlies all natural and historical becoming out of a heightened imagination. In this regard, Schelling's outward appearance is physiognomically significant: his eyes, which sparkled throughout his life, bore witness to inner fire; the powerful forehead, his sardonic laughter and the inner fire made him a spirit similar to Giordano Bruno. Whereas in Fichte we have the point where the German mind tends towards the same nuance of soul as the British mind, but in complete contrast to it, and wants to grasp world events from within—whereas the German mind produces in Hegel something that is still opposed to the French mind , but which is more similar to it, the German spirit produces something in Schelling that is completely similar to Giordano Bruno, because Schelling works in just the same way as Giordano Bruno according to the nuances of the soul. It is only that Schelling builds his world view in a slightly different way than Giordano Bruno in all of nature and history. And while in Fichte the world-spirit pervading the world is the moral order of the world, while in Hegel we see this world-spirit as the clear and distinct logical thinker of the world, in Schelling — similarly to Giordano Bruno — we have before us the highest artist, art itself, the artist who creates everything in the world according to artistic principles. But if we compare Schelling's unique quest with Giordano Bruno's, we see again the difference between the work of the Italian national soul, which comes from the soul of feeling, and the work of the German national soul, which comes from the ego. In Giordano Bruno, everything is, as it were, of a piece, everything bears a common character. I would like to say: Giordano's world view is as clear as a shot. In Schelling, we see how he starts from the world view of his youth, how he laboriously searches to feel some of it, how one can experience a spark of world life in nature. And he arrives at the view that whatever lives in my spirit as feeling also lives in matter; matter is enchanted feeling, I must release it from the enchantment, must disenchant it; the experiencing of everything that is in nature is an experiencing of feeling. While Giordano Bruno attempts to gain his world-picture as if in a single bound, Schelling sets out on a journey. And I might say that from year to year we can follow how he seeks to penetrate deeper and deeper into the secrets of the existence of the world. He is passing through the path of evolution. He had to go through it in such a way that in his youth he was still understood in the way the inwardness of the I had opened up to him; later, when he still wanted to show the I in the moral world, he was no longer understood, and in the end he was laughed at and ridiculed.

The world view of German idealism is above all a path into the deeper foundations of world existence. If I may use an image, I would say: the British world view is like a person who is in a house and looks out of a window. What he sees there, he takes as the description of the world; and so he takes what he sees through the tools of the house as the world itself. German idealism is pointed in the direction of seeking to experience the world-spirit together with it. If we follow the path, however, we see how he, also living in a house, grasps himself inwardly. In Schelling, Hegel, Fichte, we see that German idealism seeks to make itself at home in the house; it sees meaningful images everywhere in the house, and the “images” already express the external entities; and because it wants to decipher the images, it seeks a world picture. Fichte seeks it in the moral soul: a world picture, sketched in the house, not created through the windows. Hegel explains the pictures in the house that represent nature and humanity. Schelling, in turn, deciphers another part, or rather, Schelling makes “house music,” and in it he sees an imprint of what is going on outside. Hegel sees what has been painted about what is outside. All these minds have a world picture ; but they have created a home in order to decipher what is in the house. What they have not come to, however, is, I might say, the door of the house – that they might go out, so that when they had come through the gate they might fuse the image with reality, might experience it directly.

It is true that Goethe took this path – through the gate. But he also went through all the difficulties of this path. He showed us how we must struggle endlessly to find an expression for what we experience when we really set out on the path of experience. Thus he went through the experience with its struggles and difficulties, which such an experience must go through, just as one who seeks development must go through life. We see how Goethe defined a certain stage of his life in Faust of 1797, which he characteristically calls a “barbaric composition” and of which he is convinced that something completely new must come in at a new stage of his life. That is one of the characteristics of the German view of the world: it can never be “finished”. That superficial judgment, which finds the great only “great” when it is “flawless,” is not a judgment suited to the hero of human endeavor. Anyone who might entertain the opinion that we can have a work of art in the Faust that is just as perfect as that given us by Dante in his Divine Comedy would be mistaken. In Dante's work, everything is magnificently complete, as if cast from a single mold; in Goethe's, the individual parts are written piece by piece, one after the other, with each one left lying around for years, then taken up again, and so on. It really is, as he himself says, a “barbaric composition.” Goethe's Faust is certainly incomplete as a work of art, for the reason that it could not become a unified composition from a single mold, because it always went along with life. But the point is not that we say: Faust of 1797 is a barbaric composition, a “Tragelaph”, as Goethe put it, but that we take Goethe's point of view and try to understand how it can be a barbaric composition; only in this way do we escape blindness, while one can only speak of recognition with the abstract word.

Thus Goethe goes the way through the gate, knowing that one can go out through the gate, and differs from the philosophers in that he tries to get ahead. But at the same time he knows: whatever man can imagine of himself, whatever picture he can make of himself, it cannot be what Fichte presents in his philosophy, nor what Schelling or Hegel present; otherwise one arrives at nothing but abstractions, at an abstract moral world order and the like.

What then is it in the Goethean sense that man can only gain as an idea of himself? It is Homunculus, as he presents him in the second part of Faust, the little man Homunculus, an artificial product of what man can know of himself. This must now first be submerged into living nature. And how that which man bears of himself must merge with living nature, that Goethe presents in turn. In the lowest becoming you must begin, Homunculus is told.

Thus Goethe presents the process of development in its entire becoming. For example, when he speaks of the passage through the plant stage, where he uses the words: “It grunet so.” He admonishes the homunculus to immerse himself in the entire process of development; he even admonishes him: “Do not strive for higher places” - it must be “places”, not “orders”, as it because Goethe spoke in an unclear Frankfurt dialect, the transcriber wrote a “d” instead of a “t”; and the Goethe commentators have thought a lot about how the homunculus should come to all kinds of medals. And then it is further explained how, by becoming part of the world, he can come to appear as Helen; for what appears in Helen is the human reproduction of what passes through the secrets of the world.

Thus, in Goethe we see the setting out for a world picture. The German spirit is aware: I must go out through the gate to what is present in living nature; then, in the continuous development of my soul, a world picture will come about. This world picture, however, demands what it means to experience the world. Patience for this was not yet present in the second half of the nineteenth century. Therefore, the striving for a world view, as it was inaugurated by Goethe, is being held back. So it could come about that in the second half of the nineteenth century — characteristically in Karl Vogt, Büchner and Moleschott, who are referred to as the “materialists,” Haeckel himself could be mentioned in this context — that which the British world view has brought has been resurrected. One can say that the British world view was absorbed by the German spirit in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is Haeckel's tragedy that he must now turn against the British world view, even though it has entered into the German striving through the characterized development.

But in this respect, too, the German conception of the world differs from the British one: the British conception is satisfied with the pursuit of ideas that merely synthesize the external sense world, and it allows “faith” in some spiritual world to coexist with the external conception of the world in which it believes, as a “scientific” conception of the world. Thus, for Darwin, faith can arise as he expressed it in his main scientific work, saying: “Thus we have traced the life of organisms back to a few to whom – as he puts it – the Creator has breathed life!” Yes, the remarkable thing happened that the German translator even left this sentence out at first! For the German mind everything must be capable of furnishing the basis for a Weltanschhauung; for the British mind this demand need not be satisfied, because it does not have the consistency to build up its Weltbild to such an extent that everything becomes material for its Weltanschhauung. It can afford a “double entry”: the scientific world provides it with the building blocks for what it considers to be scientifically correct; for the rest, there is faith. For the German mind, no double-entry bookkeeping is good enough. That is why German idealism was overwhelmed by English empiricism. That is why we see strange phenomena in the German pursuit of a world view. I will cite only Du Bois-Reymond: in him lives the admiration for the Descartes-Laplacean spirit, which thinks the world as a great mathematician might have put it together from atoms and forces. But: Ignorabimus! We can never know anything about the soul and spirit. Cartesius and Giordano Bruno did not need to go so far as this. But Du Bois-Reymond goes so far as to say: “[...] that where supernaturalism begins, science ends.” Descartes does not say this, but Du Bois-Reymond does, where we find the German spirit overwhelmed by Descartes. And so one can show further how the Italian spirit, that of Giordano Bruno, has flowed into numerous endeavors of the German striving for a world view. Thus today we already find many who show how the plant has a “soul” and how everything is ensouled. We need only think of Raoul France. But we could also mention many of his contemporaries, even Fechner himself, who says that everything has a soul: a revival of the spirit of Giordano Bruno. But something is missing. What is missing is precisely what lived in Giordano Bruno. That is why I have often been able to point out: when someone like Raoul France comes and says: there are plants – when certain animals come near them, they attract them, lure them; once the animal has crept into them, they close up a gap and suck it dry... don't we see a soul life in the plant? We have to say: if you read the same thing in Giordano Bruno, you would fully understand it because it is imbued with the impulse of the sentient soul. But when it occurs, as it has done through the clarity and distinctness of German idealism, then what I have often stated applies: there is something that, by the very nature of its being, attracts small animals, absorbs them – very much like the Venus flytrap – and then even kills them. It is the mousetrap. And just as one can explain the ensoulment of plants in the sense of Giordano Bruno, so one can also want to explain the ensoulment of a mousetrap.

The fact that certain ideological impulses poured into the worldview of German idealism, which is the protest against all externalization of the worldview, means that something has taken place that can be said of: German idealism has retreated for a while into German souls and minds. And today we see it only as an ideal of struggle, of inner discipline; we see it as transformed into outer action, again filling souls with hope and confidence and with strength. But we must realize that this power is the same power that once sought an inward world-view through an inward struggle on the road to the world-picture of idealism. And this world-picture of German idealism is in reality that which the German spirit must seek as lying on its own predetermined road. And our fateful time contains many, many admonitions, but undoubtedly also the admonition that the German spirit must struggle to bring forth again that which is in its deepest depths, so that it may be an obvious part of all its striving, of all its work.

I do not believe that this could lead to a lesser understanding of the peculiarities of other nations, that the German spirit will become aware that it must become the bearer of the world view of inwardly experienced idealism. On the contrary: the more the German brings to the world that which lives in his soul as his deepest being, the more he will be valued in the world. We shall be all the more understood if we bear in mind the words of Goethe:

“The German runs no greater danger than that of rising with and by his neighbors; perhaps no nation is better suited to develop out of itself, because it has been to its great advantage that the outside world took notice of it so late.”

And indeed, it has taken so little notice to this day that it was possible to make such judgments about the German character as were heard.

This is what German idealism calls to us as a warning in our fateful time: may the self-confidence of the German national soul awaken in our souls! This German idealism had to produce a moral, logical, artistic world view in the house, since it already reigned, I might say, in the house; it had the gift of recognizing the world – in paintings in the house. And it must find the way through the gate into the surrounding area. And he must recognize what this path looks like, in contrast to others, which leads not only to looking at the surroundings through the windows, as is the case with the British world view, but to reaching these surroundings through the gate, to lovingly reach everything in the world by becoming one with it. If German idealism practised itself by contemplating the world pictures of the microcosm, the human body, it will also find the gate out of the body to the path already indicated by Goethe, and which leads to seeking the world view experienced with things instead of the merely conceived, devised, inwardly fought world view. is contained in the first ominous lines of Jakob Böhme, which in Goethe's work have taken on clear contours and shine forth as an ideal for the future, and which does not remain limited to the ideas suggested by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who were looking at the paintings in the house, but which can also find its way through the gate to connect the living human soul with the living soul of the world.

If we conceive of the relationships between quantities, we have general arithmetic. Special arithmetic deals with specific quantities of units. Algebra is named after “Algeber” (an Arabic mathematician).

First relation between numbers: addition. One number is added to another: \(a + b\) and so on. This is extended to a series:

\(a + b + c + d + e + f\) and so on.

Second relation:

subtraction; you take one number away from another: \(a - b\). This expands: \(a - b - c - d - e\) and so on.

One prerequisite is necessary here, namely that \(a\) is greater than \(b\).

\(a \gt b\) (then \(a\) is greater than \(b\))
\(a = b\) (then \(a\) is equal to \(b\))
\(a \lt b\) (then \(a\) is less than \(b\))
\(c =\) the result: \(a - b = c\).

If \(a\) is greater than \(b\), then the question is how much remains if I take away \(b\) from \(a\)? \(c\) remains. \(c\) is the number by which \(a\) is greater than \(b\). If \(a\) is equal to \(b\), then \(c = 0\). If \(a\) is smaller than \(b\), then there is also a \(c\), for example: \(3 - 5 =?\) Here you ask how many units are missing from \(a\) if \(a\) is not as large as \(b\).

[This means: For] a number that is minus, it means: There was a subtraction; in this subtraction, the minuend was too small. — A negative number can only be understood as the result of an arithmetic operation.

The addition can be such that some numbers are equal to each other or all are equal to each other.

\(a + b + a + c\) and so on, or
\(a + a + a + a + a + a\) and so on

If all numbers are equal in the addition, we have multiplication. The number that tells you how many times the same number is in the sum is called the multiplier.

\(a \times b\) means: \(a\) is to be added to \(b\) the same number of times.

or \(a \cdot b\): \(a\) is multiplied by \(b).

\(a \cdot b \cdot c \cdot d\) (means: \(a\) is multiplied by \(b\), \(c\), \(d\) and so on one after the other).

When subtracting, you may subtract different numbers:
\(a - b - c - d - e - f\) and so on, or the same ones, for example \(a - b - b - b - b - b\) and so on.

The question is: how many times can I subtract b from a?
\(a : b\) is division (or a hidden subtraction).

The divisor is actually a minuend. The dividend is actually a subtrahend.

It is a special case of subtraction.

\(a \cdot b \cdot c \cdot d \cdot e \cdot f\)
\(a \cdot a \cdot\) and so on, m times (meaning: the same number multiplied over and over again by itself), is denoted by \(a^m\) (\(a m\) times)
\(a \cdot a \cdot a \cdot a \cdot a \cdot a\) and so on, multiplied by \(m\) (meaning: the same number multiplied over and over again by itself) is designated by \(a^m\) ( \(a m\) times)

\(a^m = P\) (\(a m\) times taken gives \(P\) = exponentiation).
\(a\) to the mth [power] \(=\) P

\(a =\) the root, the base or the factor.
\(m =\) the exponent.
\(P =\) the power.

The fifth arithmetic operation is exponentiation.

If P and m are known and a is sought:
\(\sqrt[m]{P} = x\) Square root.

abbreviated division:
\(P\) = radicand
\(m =\) root exponent
\(x(a) =\) radix.

If \(m\) is unknown, write \(a^x = P\).
To what power of a do you have to raise a to get \(P\)?
\(x = log_a P\) (the exponent in the parenthesis is the logarithm)
\(2 = log_3 9\) (\(2\) is equal to the log of \(9\) with respect to the root \(3\))

Taking logarithms is the seventh arithmetic operation.

\(a \cdot b\)
\(+a \cdot +b\)
\(+a \cdot +a \cdot +a \cdot +a + b - times\)
\(+a \cdot +b = +ab\)
\(-a \cdot +b = -ab\)
\(+a \cdot -b = -ab\)
\(-a \cdot -b = +ab\)

Multiplying equivalent numbers by each other yields a positive result; non-equivalent numbers yield a negative result.

\(+a \cdot -b = -c\)
\(+a \cdot +b = +c\)
\(-a \cdot +b = -c\)
\(-a \cdot -b = +c\)

Similar numbers divided by each other give a positive result, unlike numbers divided by each other give a negative result.

\(a^b = c\) where \(+a\) and \(+c\)

or \(-a\) and \(+c\)

\(\sqrt[b]{c} = a\)

\((+a)^+b = +c\)

\((-a)^+b = +c\)

\(c\) negative \(= -c\)
\(a^x = -c\)
\(\sqrt[x] - c = a\)

To denote a negative power, imaginary numbers must be found that are neither positive nor negative.

A triangle is a figure bounded by three straight lines. We distinguish triangles according to the size of their sides and their angles. First, we distinguish a triangle in which all three sides are equal, calling it an equilateral triangle, which also has all three angles equal. A triangle in which only two sides are equal and the third unequal is called an isosceles triangle. It has two equal angles, which are adjacent to the unequal side. Then one, which is unequal; all sides and angles are unequal. Size ratios of the angles of a triangle.

2. Secondary angle

Measuring the angle: The angles are measured according to the relative size of the arc. You measure an angle by drawing a circle around it.

First divide the circle into four parts, then again into two parts, then each of these into five and each of these into \(9\) parts = \(4 \times 2 \times 5 \times 9 = 360°\) (degrees). The angle is as large as the angle is of the \(360°\).

Two minor angles always add up to \(180°\).

Two vertex angles.

You name the angle by writing a letter in it.

\(\angle a\) is called angle \(a\)

\(\angle a = \angle b\) as vertex angles

\(\angle a + \angle b = 180°\) as an angle between

Four pairs of opposite angles

\(x\) the intersecting line
\(y\), \(z\) the lines intersected

When two straight lines are intersected by a third, four pairs of opposite angles arise, namely those that lie on the same side of the intersecting line and on the same side of the intersected line.

Alternate angles are those that lie on different sides of the intersecting line and on different sides of the line being cut. Four pairs of alternate angles.

Angles are those that lie on the same side of the intersecting line and on different sides of the line being cut. Four pairs of angles.

\(a\) and \(b\) are opposite angles.

If two parallels are intersected by a third, then the opposite angles are all equal to each other.

\(b\) and \(a\) are alternate angles.

Assume that \(b\) and \(a\) are alternate angles at [two intersecting parallels].

Alternate angles between parallel lines must always be equal.

\(b\) and \(a\) alternate angles \(=\) assumption.

Proof:

\((\angle b = \angle c)\)
\(\angle b = \angle c\) as opposite angle
\(\angle a = \angle c\) as vertex angleergo: \(\angle a = \angle b\)

If two quantities of a third are equal, they are also equal to each other.

This is an axiom, on which the proof is based. An axiom is a proposition that is neither capable nor in need of proof.

\(a\) and \(b\) are angles.

Proof:

\(\angle a\) and \(\angle b\) are angles (assumption)
\(\angle a = \angle c\) as opposite angle
\(\angle b + \angle c = 180\)° as adjacent angle
ergo: \(\angle b + \angle c = 180°\)
Proof that two angles are always \(180°\).

Axiom: In every calculation, one quantity can be replaced by another equal to it without changing the calculation.

\(ABC\) a triangle (assumption)
\(DE || AC\)
\(\angle a = \angle d\) as alternate angles
\(\angle c = \angle e\) as alternate angles
\(\angle b = \angle b\)

\(\angle d + \angle b + \angle e = 180°\)
ergo: \(\angle a + \angle b + \angle c = 180°\)

The sum of the three angles of any triangle is [\(180°\)].

\(A B C D\) quadrilateral. Given
\(\angle e + \angle a + \angle g = 180°\)
\(\angle f + \angle h + \angle c = 180°\)
\(\angle c + \angle a + \angle g + \angle f + \angle h + \angle c = 360°\)
\(\angle a + \angle b + \angle d + \angle c = 360°\)
ergo: In every quadrilateral, the sum of the \(4\) angles is \(360°\)

Line: spatial size of one dimension - length
Area: spatial size of two dimensions - length + width
Body: spatial size of three dimensions - length + width + thickness
? Spatial size of four dimensions

A two-dimensional space is bounded by a surface. A right angle has a quarter of a circular arc between its legs.

A square is a surface that is bounded by four equal lines and has four right angles.

Line with four units of measurement, \(e\) one unit of length, \(ab = 4 \times e\) (\(4 \times\) the unit), \(A B = 4 \times e\)

You can measure a length by counting how many times the unit is included.

\(e\) (size \(e\)) squared is the unit area. The unit area is a c described in terms of the unit length.

Area unit. Question: How much larger than the area unit is the whole square when the side is four times larger than the length unit?

\(A B C D = AB^2\)

The area of a square is found by multiplying one side by itself and raising it to the power of two.

\(1^2 = 1\)
\(2^2 = 4\)
\(3^2 = 9\)
\(4^2 = 16\)
\(5^2 = 25\)
\(6^2 = 36\)
\(7^2 = 49\)
\(8^2 = 67\)
\(9^2 = 81\)
\(10^2 = 100\)

The two sides of a right angle form the cathets. The opposite line is the hypotenuse.

\(3^2 = 4^2 = 5^2\)

\(BDEC = BC^2\)
\(HEFJ = \angle ABC + HJCE\)
\(CE =BC\)
\(HEFJ = \angle ABC + HJCE\)
\(CE =BC\)
\(ABC = BDG\)
\(JKC = BGK\)
\(BDEC = BGHECB + BGD + HCE\)
\(HEFJ = HJCE + CEF\)
\(HJGB = HBJK + BGK\)
\(HJCE + EEF + BGK + ABKJ =\)

\(BGHECJKB + ABC + ABKJ\)
\(BGHEC + ABC + ABJK + JKC\)

\(BEDC = BC^2\)
\(BGE = DCF\)
\(EHD = BAC\)
\(BKCDHG = BKCDHG BGK = JKC\)
therefore
\(BKCDHG + ABC + DFC =\)
\(KKCDHG + BGE + EHD\)

\(EB = BC\), \(ED = BC\), \(CD = BC\)
\(ABC\), \(BGE\), \(EHD\), \(DFC\) are right triangles on equal hypotenuses, and therefore equal, since all the angles correspond; therefore, triangle \(EGB = DCF\) and \(EHD = ABC\); [illegible] \(BGHD:CK\) is equal to itself.

You can plot the angle Alpha a degree.

\(BC:AC\) – The ratio \(BC:AC\) is the ratio of the angle Alpha. The ratio is called the sin. (sine) of the angle. (\(AC:AB =\) cosine of Alpha)
\(BC:AC = \sin(\alpha)\)
\(AB:AC = \cos(\alpha)\)
\(BC:AB \tan(\alpha) = tg \alpha\)(\(BC:AB = \)tangent \(a\))
\(AB:BC \cot(\alpha)\) (\(AB:BC =\) cotangent \(a\))

You can determine a crooked line in a plane by calculating the distances between it and two straight lines. This method was first used in the last few centuries, by Cartesius. This method is called analytical geometry.

\(x^2 + y^2 = r^2 =\) the equation of the circle.

By determining the lawfulness of the distance on a particular system of intersecting lines, you get the circle.

(0\) is the center of the coordinate axis system. The ancients (Ptolemy) assumed the center of the earth, but Copernicus assumed the sun. He related everything to the Sun. However, he still took into account the fact that the Earth has its own motion in addition to its motion around the Sun, and that this motion is like the Earth's motion around the Sun. In schools, the third sentence of Copernicus is usually left out. In the Copernican system, the Earth actually moves in a helical path (Rod of Hermes).

Ptolemy's system was based on the astral plan. Copernicus's discovery meant that the relative motion of the planetary system was based on a different point of origin (the physical point of origin).

In Dante's Divine Comedy, everything is based on the astral plan; the Earth is the center.

At the angle you can see the curvature of the line. The mathematician determines the angle according to the tangent. With each new distance, the tangent becomes different, larger or smaller.

tan a is absolutely variable with respect to the curve at very small distances. Then tan a is called a differential quotient. One goes from finite quantities to infinitely small quantities. Newton also called it flexion calculus (calculus of motion). Leibniz made the discovery at the same time. It was necessary to find the infinite on the physical plane itself.

\(\tan(\alpha) = \frac{x}{y}\) (if \(a\) and \(b\) are variable)

Two lines going to infinity, between them an infinitely large area.

Fl. \((ab) = \infty\) (infinitely large)
Fl. \((ac)= \infty =2 \infty\)
(Dividing one infinity by the other gives \(2\))
\(\frac{\infty}{\infty} = 2\)

An infinite straight line is a circle. However, this is not possible in three-dimensional space because it would take an infinite amount of time. If it is not a three-dimensional but a two-dimensional space, then it is different. Then time itself is the fourth dimension. Then not only movement in that direction takes place, but also another change. Suppose you move in one direction (a ball that gets bigger and bigger). Then, when the ball has reached a certain size, it will be possible for the ball to diverge on the other side. But then there must have been forces holding it together. In the astral space, the effect as a fourth dimension is added.

One can also call the third dimension, which represents space, the dimension of impermeability, of seclusion. On the other hand, in comparison with the third dimension, the fourth dimension can be called that of the intermediate space, of permeability, of openness. Just as in the physical the third dimension, in the psychic the sixth dimension is also a dimension of seclusion, of fortification and demarcation, because there everything psychic in a particular, the I, secludes itself from the environment. In the self-consciousness the I, the individuality, separates itself from the other beings of the sixth dimension. In the same way as the fourth dimension is a dimension of permeability, of openness in comparison to the third dimension, the seventh dimension is also a dimension of opening up in comparison to the closedness of the sixth dimension. In the seventh dimension the I goes out again as a pure, selfless thought into the environment. In the ninth dimension a closing takes place again, in self-created forms. And in the tenth dimension, on the other hand, a coming forth takes place again, the coming forth of a new cosmos.

We know that the point has no extension. It is assumed to be the boundary of a line, but it is in truth also the boundary of a three-dimensional body, and its boundary inside, at the center. A straight line goes from one starting point to another. If we assume that starting point and end point coincide with the straight line, a circle is formed. That, which is infinite, finds only in itself a closedness, but is never closed to the outside, otherwise it would be finite. Therefore also the infinite straight line is closed in itself, forms a circle. Likewise, the infinite surface, which is not closed to the outside, finds its closure in itself; it forms a sphere. In order for the line to be infinite, it must curve into a circle. In order for the sphere to be infinite, it must also curve back into itself, out of every point of its circumference.

A sphere curved back into itself, an infinite sphere, converges again in one point, its center. There the sphere is in the fourth dimension. This center of the sphere in the fourth dimension is then bounded by spheres. Twelve spheres form the boundary of the sphere which has passed into the four-dimensional. The four-dimensional sphere is the intermediate entity between the twelve spheres, a thirteenth entity enclosing the twelve spheres.

In the same way, a cube can be thought of as passing into the fourth dimension. It must plunge into the center with its three dimensions terminating in its eight corners; the eight corners then coincide with the center. To the outside then the intersecting surfaces of eight cubes arise, which, each standing on a corner - standing in the center - in which the opposite corner is folded back, appear cut through. These cut faces form hexagons. Thus, when a cube transitions to the fourth dimension, to the midpoint, the boundaries of that point form the eight cubes standing on their tops, folded back into themselves, with eight hexagons as the cut faces outward.

So, in the case of the cube that has passed into four-dimensional space, the shadow image in the third dimension is a structure bounded by eight cubes. The relation of outside and inside has changed here. The physical cubes are outside to the fourth dimension, which is inside. Nevertheless, the four-dimensional structure is just as well in the center of the eight cubes as around them, and the center is connected with what is around the eight cubes. We must imagine the eight cubes not as a boundary, like the surfaces at the cube from the outside, but as a boundary in the inside of the four-dimensional structure, so to speak - as left out of the space; and the four-dimensional structure around the physical projection, the shadow image of the eight cubes. While the third dimension is the dimension of closedness, the fourth dimension is the dimension of openness, of being in the air, of growing, of mobility.

Inside and outside stand there in constant connection. While on the one hand the three-dimensional structure in the fourth dimension flows continuously into the center, it flows on the other hand continuously out of the center. It is a continued cycle, from the center outward and from the outside back to the center. Therefore, the fourth dimension is not a fixed one, but a flowing one; to be made vivid by the curved paper strips. A thing can only change into another form, which can bend back into itself and emerge from itself again. It must go back into the starting point and emerge in a changed way. This happens by bending - curvature of the paper strips. If I divide a three-dimensional object, I always get only single pieces of the same object. If however a four-dimensional structure, which can bend itself, divides, then something new arises - paper strips with 180 degrees turn. Thus, all changes of the living arise from the ability to bend back into itself, from the ability to flow back into the point, and then to emerge from the point.

The spherical formations known as cells in all growing things, in all living things, have the ability to flow back into themselves, to form a center, and to grow forth anew from that center. This is the basic condition of all growth, to flow back into oneself, to concentrate and then to emerge anew with the gathered forces. The transition into the fourth dimension means with the sphere as with the cube a curving back into oneself and then again a going out over oneself. So center and periphery coincide, merge into each other, form one, because they are alive. They cannot do that with the dead, the three-dimensional. For this, one must go over into the four-dimensional. If we follow this picture further, we will find that the first dimension has emerged from the nothing dimension, from the point. The first dimension can be observed only at the second, at the surface, and this only at the third, at the body. So the first dimension can be observed also only at the third dimension. Now the third dimension goes over again into the nothing dimension, the point, and grows out in lines. The fourth dimension radiates out of the point and fills everything three-dimensional with its life; the atoms of the third dimension are thereby loosened and extended. Growth arises. Through the flowing together of the growing in time, in the fourth dimension, sensation arises, and through the flowing together of sensation, self-consciousness arises. This is again a closed, limited thing. Man must go beyond that again. He has to contract his self-consciousness in the I, to summarize himself in one point. He can do that if he rises above space, time and sensation and above selfishness, the desire to add something to himself. He extinguishes himself outwardly; he turns inwardly, no longer desires expansion, outward growth, but sinks into the one point where the divine shines to him, into his divine spark of life. He gives up his outer being and flows back into his inner being - turned away from the world, turned towards God. And there from this one point he sends again his inner being into the environment in the pure thought. Radiantly, he passes again into the environment, freed from all that he wanted to possess for himself; there his inner being emerges - shining like the sun and purified like the snow. His higher self crystallizes. There he enters the seventh dimension. By connecting his higher self with the higher life, he forms out of himself not only rays, but images, there he is in the eighth dimension; and by connecting himself with the will of the world, the creative power, there he brings forth forms. There he lives in the ninth dimension. Finally, he connects with the primordial being of the earth, with the planet itself, and works in such a way that he can multiply his own being and bring forth new living beings. In the seventh dimension he interpenetrates with the world-mind and produces thoughts; in the eighth dimension he interpenetrates with the world-life and produces images; in the ninth dimension he interpenetrates with the world-will and produces figures; and in the tenth dimension he interpenetrates with the world-being and produces living beings, the multiplication of himself.

Just as in the transition from the non-dimension to the first dimension, from the third to the fourth, and from the sixth to the seventh, there is always a confluence in the point and a springing forth of something new from that point, so in the transition from the ninth dimension to the tenth the whole cosmos flows into the individuality of man and emerges from him again as something new.

It is the whole evolution an inhalation and exhalation, physically, mentally and spiritually. At a higher stage, man will no longer take nourishment from physical substance, but will live and grow by inhaling and exhaling. Thus he will supply the body with the substances it needs to live and grow. Taking in physical food is related to being bound to the third dimension. Once we live more consciously in the fourth and higher dimensions, the necessity of taking in physical food falls away more and more. Then the physical body becomes more and more what it is supposed to become: a temple in which the divine self dwells, and a tool, a means through which the I can enter into connection with all the forces of the universe. It will become the key to all the secrets of the world. The secrets of the world will be revealed to man in the same measure as he learns to live no longer for the physical body, but to live through the physical body. If he learns to use the physical body as what it is, as a condensed spirit, as an imprint of the whole cosmos, as the microcosm, then the microcosm must open up to him. For this the way is the overcoming of the third dimension, the spatially solid, closed, impenetrable and the overcoming of the sixth dimension, the being closed in the I.

The ego, however, is the only way to penetrate the seventh dimension, but it is also supposed to be only this possibility. It is the way, the narrow gate, the door to the temple of the higher self. But through this gate must be passed in order to reach the higher self. One must not stand still in it, just as one must not narrow one's consciousness by the third dimension of space.

Conquering the ego is growth into the higher worlds. By overcoming the ego, the higher worlds open up.

Infinite is only that which finds its conclusion in no second, but runs back into itself, which finds a conclusion only in itself. Therefore also only the line is an infinite straight line, which finds its conclusion in itself, namely that, which forms a circle. Straight is the line, which always keeps the same direction. The circle line is the only line which always keeps the same direction. Because it has the direction after its starting point back. Any line that maintains this direction back to its starting point, returning to that starting point, forms a circle.

So, if we transfer the finite relations of bodies into the infinite, we find there a transformation of all things. The human being stands in the infinity. What we can see of man is like a moment cut out of his infinite cycle, the moment in which past and future meet. If we go further in the mental image, man must return to the past in the future. But this return is an enriched one. He has grown, bringing with him all the experiences he has gained along the way. The circle, the snake biting its tail, is not only a representation of the infinite straight line, but of all infinity.

The following can be learned from the example of the strip of paper glued together. First, if the strip is placed with its ends on top of each other and then cut lengthwise - following the direction of the line - two circular strips of equal size are formed. Think of this in terms of space. By dividing an object located in three-dimensional space, two parts of a body previously forming a whole are created.

Second, if the strip is rotated around itself one and a half times (180 degrees) and then cut through, the result is a strip twice as large when cut through in the direction of the line. So any circular line in space that is rotated one and a half times around itself, when it splits, creates one twice as big. This is the secret of growth.

To do this, a body must live in the fourth dimension, in time. In space, through division, division takes place; in time, in the fourth dimension, through division, growth takes place.

Thirdly, by further rotation of the strip of paper, division always produces new entities. These represent the manifold growth phenomena in nature: In the single rotation (360 degrees): the two intertwined circles; in the one-and-a-half rotation (540 degrees), the loop; in the double rotation (720 degrees), a circle and a second one that wraps all the way around once, forming a loop through which the other circle can be pushed.

All these operations illustrate the possibilities of the fourth dimension, the dimension of time, of growth, of change from within, of life, of movement, of the fluid, of the stream of time returning into itself and emerging from itself, emerging into something new.

Every sound we speak, every word brings forth vibrations in our environment, vibrations that spread in waves in all directions. These vibrations propagate through the air, but also through the denser bodies. Through our organ of hearing, these vibrations of the air and also of the denser bodies, for example the vibrating string of an instrument, are fed to our brain and interpreted there by the consciousness; that is, the sound vibrations are converted there into consciousness vibrations. If we could now make the vibrations, which are produced by our words, visible, they would produce visible changes in the matter around us. If we would let a certain word sound continuously, and if we could give form to this word in the matter around us, then our environment would finally form the formation of this word. Our surroundings would then have become the expression of the word emanating from us.

When we thus communicate ourselves to our surroundings through sound, we set everything around us into a certain vibration, into a movement, into a rhythm. One hears our words only by the fact that we let them sound, but also let them fade away again. We create a rhythm through our words and then let it fade away again. At first our environment is without this rhythm produced by us through the sound. Then it is put into rhythm by the sound. Then the rhythmic waves flood off again, and everything goes back to a state of immobility. If we would let a word sound continuously, the oscillations would always remain the same; one would follow the other without a cessation of the movement. If these vibrations were to follow one another without interruption, one would not be able to distinguish one vibration from the next, and this continuous following and passing over of vibrations would be equal to complete rest. So we can think of such a degree of movement, of rhythm, which is equal to rest. It is then a uniform, uninterrupted rhythm.

If we were able to transfer the rhythm of a word to our whole environment, this environment of ours would at last become the expression of that word; we would set the matter around us in such motion by our word and keep it in a certain tension by the continuously sounding word, which at last would also be visibly expressed.

So also in the beginning, that is, at the beginning of our earth's development, the divine Creator's Word resounded and set the earth in a certain rhythm, and by the continuance of this rhythm the movements of matter became condensation; matter was kept in a certain tension by the sound of the Word. However, this divine creator word sounded not only in the beginning. It sounds incessantly. If it would sound only one second no more, then the world would be changed immediately into a chaos. Everything around us is the expression of this divine word of creation that resounds through the world. Everything visible is the outwardly perceptible vibrational limit of the divine word; it is the rhythm of life pushed to the surface that we behold in the sense world around us, and the forms of the sense world are the thoughts of God expressed in this divine word of creation.

The world is in a constant rhythm brought forth by the divine Creator Word. The Divine is all that is there; the Word is the movement that enters into the Divine Eternal; all that enters into appearance is the thought of the Divine flowing out through the Word from within the Godhead. Thus, out of the divine Being, out of the rest, which is at the same time unceasing, undifferentiated movement, life comes forth through the Word and puts everything into the unceasing differentiated movement and thereby shapes the thought of God in what was previously undifferentiated. Thus the Divine is everywhere at the same time eternal rest, according to being; then eternal life, which is like eternal change, for eternal life means eternal change, eternal springing up, growing forth, and last of all eternal consciousness; a constant expression of the God-thought that has become is the world.

All that we perceive externally in the world is the consciousness transformed into external being by the divine life. Man also develops one day to the point that he can send his consciousness outward through the Word and transform it into an external creation. For this he must first be able to send out the clear thought from within himself. Then he must be able to imbue this thought with a life. Then he must be able to imprint this living, rhythmic thought permanently on the environment, to bring it to embodiment. Then he himself has become a creator in a higher sense, then he is godlike. When he sends out clear thoughts into the world, he works by the power of the divine spirit; when he produces living thoughts, he works by the power of the Son; when he sends out formative, living thoughts, he works by the power of the Father.

Everything that comes to manifestation in the world is God-thought, the Spirit of God; that it can be expressed is conditioned by divine Being, the Father; who expresses it is divine Life, the Son.

So the world lives through the life of the Son and brings to expression, to revelation the spirit, the consciousness, the thought of the divine Father-power. In this divine Father-power the future worlds all slumber; in the divine consciousness they are already eternally there; the consciousness rests eternally in the divine Being; Father and Spirit are one. Through life the consciousness emerges and becomes in the divine being the revelation, the world of forms. The being encloses the world - the consciousness rests in it -; the life brings the consciousness in the being to the appearance. Father and Spirit are one; but the Son expresses the Spirit and thereby establishes the Trinity. The Son is the life of the Father, which expresses the Spirit.

We are first met by the expressed Spirit in the formed reality; then we find the life which expresses the Spirit; then the life leads us up to the fountainhead of being, the Father. That is why Christ could say, "No one comes to the Father except through me." He is the world life that leads to the Father. By our thinking we can become one with the Spirit; by our living we become one with the Son; by our willing we become one with the Father, having united ourselves with the Spirit and the Son.

As long as we immerse ourselves in the world only with the thought, we come to understand the Spirit; but when we place our life in the rhythm of the world, we become one with the Son, the Word; we help to keep the thought alive. As soon as we unite our whole will with the divine will, we become partakers of the power of the Father, from which everything comes forth.

We behold in the environment the creator thought that has become. That we do not see the becoming itself, the life, that we do not really hear the world-word sounding, that comes from the fact that we have developed only the senses which can take up the becoming, the embodied thought. Now we cannot recognize life with our physical senses, because our physical senses are the expression of our desire for the world that has become, for the existence of the senses. We have infused all our powers into this sense life and are initially absorbed in it. We are completely immersed with all our powers into the sense existence. That is why we miss everything that stands behind it, the real life of the world; that is why we only see what is, but not what will become, [we see] what has become and not what is becoming. And we do not hear the word of life itself, but see only the external expression of this word in the material sense world around us. Just as the whole world with its forces has turned itself outward to the objective existence, to the external world of appearance; just as the objective creation has emerged from the living Word, just as if the bottom of the sea had lifted itself out of the depths and risen above the surface of the water, so also man has lifted all his forces of the soul out of this reason of the soul and directed them outward in the sense organs, which bring to his consciousness the world that has risen out of the sea of life.

With the emporium of the Word of Life, man is able to see the world that has risen out of the sea of life. With the rising of the sense world out of the sea of the soul world, of the world life, there also rose up in man the ability to receive the sense world, to live in it. Man also went through the world process in his development. The life that stands behind what has become, the sea of worlds out of which what has become rises, is now recognized by man only outwardly in the eternal change of things. The eternal change of the world of appearances is that which proclaims to man that behind it flows a living, never ceasing power, which eternally generates itself anew. On the waves of the world life the appearances flow. Seemingly at rest, the outer world of appearances is nevertheless just the eternally changing. Just as our thoughts detach themselves in unceasing succession, so outside in the world the forms that have become detach themselves. The life behind it is eternal. Thus the world that has become floods up and down in the eternal life, like the waves of the air flood up and down through the sounding of the tone. The Creator Word sustains all things in eternal becoming.

If man had remained only in the process of eternal becoming, he would never have become an embodied thought of God. He also had to pass for a time through the world in which there is not only eternal life without change, but in which there is becoming and passing away, living and dying. Now if he had rested constantly in the eternal life, life itself would never have become his own consciousness. He had to learn to recognize what had become externally, he had to recognize himself as a special being, a being that had become, in contrast to the indiscriminate life. He had to win once for a time the mainland emerging from the sea of the world, in order to incorporate from there himself consciously as a special, individual being of the environment. He had to make a part of the divine consciousness his own in such a way that he himself could believe for a time that his consciousness, his life, his existence was separate from all the rest; he even had to be alienated from God for a time, so that he could find him again self-consciously afterwards. If the world life had not brought the world thought to the outer expression, then man could never have become a thinking, self-conscious being himself. He would have lived in the world-thought, but he would never have grasped the world-thought for himself. Now he cuts out, as it were, a piece of the world-thought for himself with every thought that he thinks in the sense of the world-thought. He thus consciously appropriates the world thought. He could only do this by descending into the world of the senses, by emerging as an individual being from the totality of life. Only through this he could himself become partaker of the divine consciousness.

At every incarnation he goes through this process of becoming. He appears first as an individual being, as a special, physical being. Then in this physical body the life works and comes to expression in it. Then the thought, the spirit, connects with it, and man awakens to self-consciousness. The cosmic career repeats itself with every embodiment of man. The descent into physical existence, into the body world - from the spirit world, consciousness and the soul world, life - happens in the same sequence as the cosmic descent of the world and of man into condensation. This descent repeats itself before every birth in the higher worlds, in secret. Spirit and soul were there first; only then the physical body was formed. The ascent happens in every single life also like in the cosmic life. First the formation of the physical, in the world of the senses, happens; then the formation of the sensation, in the world of the soul, then the formation of the thinking, in the world of the spirit.

When man has learned all that he should learn in the world of the senses, namely, when he has learned to read out the thoughts of God from the world of appearances and has united himself with the pure thought of God, with the spirit of God, then he can fertilize his soul with it and awaken to life in the soul the powers slumbering therein. Then the life force itself begins to blossom there, and he begins to realize, through the soul's own life forces, the life of the world, the life and being of the Word. He then lives in a world that transcends the world of the senses. And new organs open up to him and become for him the key to life itself.

He then hears the word, because he himself can consciously resonate in his inner being with the world-word. Then he hears the world word in everything that has become. He then recognizes everything that has become as a vibrational expression of the world-word. He then recognizes the sense world as floating on the ocean of world life. Consciously he then incorporates himself into this world-life.

The world-light has become manifest in the world of appearance. As visible light the world wisdom has appeared before us. The light shone into the darkness of the twilight dream life of mankind, so that they could see the thoughts of God appear before them in objective forms. But the darkness did not understand the light. The people did not read out of the world of appearance the thought of God, which became clearly visible before our eyes through the light. That is why they could not yet rise to the consciousness of the world life, to the recognition of the word. First we have to understand the light, the God-thought that became objective; then we can understand the word, the living God-thought. The Word was there first, but we comprehend it later. What was there from the beginning is recognized only at the end. Thus closes the circle of human development, which emerges from the divine through the Word and re-enters the divine through conscious becoming one with the Word.

We should recognize the divinity in what has become. We should live in it through union with life itself. It is this life that connects us to the primordial power of being, from the beginning. Through this life we flow back into the primordial power of being and then consciously flow forth as a part of it. Then our consciousness also becomes creative consciousness. Then, just as we now live consciously and producing in the physical, we will live consciously and producing in the spirit, and through our word we will bring our consciousness to form. A new cosmos will then emerge from us.

Primal force and primal substance are one unity. From this unity all that is revealed emerges. It was the consciousness of this primal power and primal substance that drove it to manifestation, just as it is the consciousness of man that drives him into physical incarnations. This consciousness also rests in the primordial cause; but it comes to expression through the emergence from this primordial cause. In order for it to emerge, it needs a part of the primordial force, of life, and of the primordial substance, of being. Thus the consciousness, the thought of God, emerged at the beginning, based on the other parts of the divine unity, on the power and the substance or the life and the being. The consciousness is the spirit, the life is the son, the will is the father. The consciousness is the willed, the force is the willing; the life carries out the will of the primordial force.

To survey itself, the consciousness of the primordial power lifted itself out of that primordial power on the waves of life. Thus the consciousness emerged like the rays of light from the inside of a luminous body. It was carried out by the rhythm of the life springing from the inside. The carrier of consciousness remains hidden, just as the core of a luminous body remains hidden. We do not see the center of the shining sun, the center, the core of a flame remains dark; the power of human manifestation within man, which radiates the aura, appears even to the eye of the seer like the dark core of a flame.

The consciousness of the elemental force is the infinite space, and the thoughts of the elemental force meet us in this space as the figures. While we see in the forms the highest expression of the consciousness of the elemental force, we behold in the change of appearance the expression of the life of the elemental force; but the highest force itself rests in the unity from which the multiplicity emerges. There are two poles of the primeval force in the world; where force and substance appear as one, as undivided in themselves, is one pole; and the other pole is where both force and substance appear as many particulars, in physical manifestation. But since primordial force and primordial substance in this highest division also attain the highest degree of consciousness, this highest division of force and substance also forms a part of the perfection of the divine being. The perfection of the consciousness side of the divine lies in the possibility of consciously beholding itself through the divided cosmos. The greatness of power lies in unity, the greatness of consciousness in diversity, the greatness of life lies in the constant maintenance of the interrelation between primordial power and manifestation.

In the One, force and substance are together in eternal rest; in life, force and substance are in motion, in rhythm; in consciousness, force and substance face each other. Consciousness confronts that which has come to expression through itself. There first enters the objectivity of the world, opposite the subjectivity of consciousness.

Consciousness rises from the unified original substance and the original power through life. Now in that which has become it beholds the two poles, force and substance; but in that which is becoming, life, it recognizes their union, and thereby it also recognizes their original unity. Thus the trinity of all being joins together.

There is a law that the effect of a force decreases in the same proportion as the squares of the distance from it increase. In the physical cosmos we see the manifestation of the Godhead, the outworking of its consciousness. In this shaping of the divine consciousness, in the strongest emergence of the thoughts of God, we also see the greatest distance from the elemental force. Therefore, in the outer, visible world, the diversity of the thoughts arising from the elemental force can be recognized best for us, but the greatness of the force appears least to us there, because the force has given itself there by appearing in many individual phenomena. It is the outline of the elemental force that we recognize in the physical world, that we recognize in the figures. Only then we can recognize the meaning of the physical world, which appears to us in the space, if we regard the space as the consciousness of the Godhead, the figures in it as the thoughts of the Godhead. Everything that is around us in space are thoughts in the consciousness of the eternal, divine primeval power. While the primeval power and primeval substance is one and fills and encompasses everything that is and lives, it forms its thoughts in space, and communicates to them a part of its power, a part of its substance, as with the mineral; in addition to this, a part of its life, as with the plant; and in addition to this, a part of its consciousness, as with the animal and human kingdoms. To this it gave to man still the power of freedom, that is, to become self-aware. Through man, the Godhead beholds itself. And thereby it communicated to man the power to recognize the Godhead; [to recognize that men are both - like all created things - the become thoughts of God and that they receive their life from the Godhead and their power, their will rests in the will of the Godhead.]

Each individual embodied God-thought is a reflection of the original Unity. The greatest objectivity in the world is the reflection of the greatest subjectivity. From the One, through the life emanating from it, many individual forms emerged, and all these individual forms express a part of the powers of the One. Every form in the world is perfect when it expresses that part of the primordial power which it is intended to express, to which this primordial power has destined it.

The mineral world is to express above all the primordial being, the primordial substance in many individual beings. The plant world is to express the one life in many living forms; the animal kingdom is to express the sentience in many individual beings. Man is to become a reflection of the whole primordial power, and for this purpose he was given the possibility of self-consciousness and liberation. He became a child of the Godhead, gifted with all divine powers in such a way that he can develop in freedom to God-likeness. All physical beings are God-thought, but man is such a God-thought that turns back into the life of the Godhead and the will of the Godhead. Emerged from the will and the life of the Godhead as a thought, he turns back in the thought into the life and the will again, and thus he closes the cycle of the God-power, thus he leads the emerged, articulated God-power back again into its one original ground.

In the physical world of forms we recognize the highest division of the Godhead according to the side of the force as well as according to that of the substance, because force and substance are basically always connected. The close connection of the individual particles in all mineral forms is only a deception. Just as the individual shapes are recognizable for our senses only by the fact that they are separated, also the individual particles of the shaped in the mineral world are recognizable for us only by the fact that there are spaces between all atoms. Just as light and shadow came into being through the separation of the individual shapes, so that they thereby became visible to the physical eye, so also all mineral substances are visible to the physical eye because they cause light and shadow through separation of the atoms. If all mineral substances were an undifferentiated unity and we were likewise undifferentiated in this unity, then we could recognize nothing objectively in the environment. Then there would be no separation, but also no light and shadow, no external physical perception by the physical senses. So that the objects could emerge - as single ones -, separation had to occur, it had to become light between us and the objects. What has happened with the formation of the thoughts of God, which come to us as special individual beings, has also happened in the whole substance; the individual atoms came apart. We could not cut a body if its substance formed a continuous mass. Water cannot be cut through, air cannot be cut through, because the particles of water and air are more closely connected than the particles of solid substances. But one can separate nevertheless water and air particles by solid substances which are pushed in continuously. We know, however, that both the water and the air particles have the tendency to flow together again and again. We find something similar with some solid substances, for example with magnetic iron, that they also have the tendency to flow together. The finer and less perceptible to our physical senses a substance is, the more intimate is its connection, the less we can separate the individual particles from each other, the faster the gaps fill in, the greater is the force that holds the individual particles together. The original substance cannot be divided by any other force, it is in itself one, undifferentiated; and where there is any gap in the other substances which proceed from it, it fills it up by itself, or by the substances divided out of itself. Thus everything is permanently filled with the fullness of the Godhead.

As it descends, the primordial substance becomes less and less dense. Solid matter is actually the least dense, because it is the least continuous, the most changeful, the most irregular, the expression of the highest separateness and the strongest antipole of the one primordial substance. The primordial substance, in which substance and force are completely one, is the origin of all life. Life is the interaction of force and substance. There emerges from the unmoved a movement which runs rhythmically. By the will of the divine primal ground this movement arises, and all life emerges from this movement. The two poles are formed out of the divine One, substance and force; what holds them together is life. In life, substance and force are united. Life is stretched like a string from the pole of force to that of substance; and like a string it vibrates rhythmically between these two poles, thus bringing everything that is into rhythmic movement. This rhythmic movement, which is both substance and force, which occurs in the tension between substance and force, is that which expresses itself in all living things. The stronger the tension, the stronger the life; the less strong the tension, the less life there is. But only in the less strong tension can life express itself. In the case of the string that is stretched tightly, we hardly notice the vibrations at all. In the case of the less tightly stretched string, we can see the oscillations more clearly. The movement of the infinitely taut string cannot be seen at all, because it is too fast and the rhythm is so continuous that it is like immobility. Life can become perceptible to us only where it occurs in the lesser tension between force and substance. The least tension is there in the physical, there we see the movement of life in the passing and arising of the forms. These are the slowest vibrations, the greatest waves of life, but they also have the least force, which emerge the most, but also flow away the farthest. The stronger tension of life concentrates life in itself; it does not emerge so strongly and therefore does not flood off so strongly. It remains more within itself, although the power and the speed of the rhythm is significantly greater there. The greatest rapidity coincides with the greatest calmness, the greatest power lies in being completely closed, [in] not stepping out of oneself.

So we recognize in the external existence the division of the divine consciousness into individual thoughts; and the greatest waves of the divine life in the appearances flowing up and down. Only in the fact that the individual forms stand before us, objectively, and in the fact that life flows up and down, we recognize the divine will. In building up and destroying the divine will makes itself known. There is the power, which lets the life flow up and down, and the power, which lets formations arise from the sea of life. That everything comes into being and passes away again is the divine expression of will. The will of God itself is always one, eternal, imperishable, completely undifferentiated, but its reflection is the succession of life and death. That which called the figures into life also calls them back out of life, just as the ego of man drives him into incarnation and pulls him back out of it again. The consciousness of man is expressed in the thought, the consciousness of God in the figures. That which shapes them, which gives them growth, that is the divine life. But that the consciousness shapes itself vividly, that proceeds from the divine will.

In the whole world we see the formed thoughts of the Godhead. That the thoughts of the Godhead could become visible externally, is possible by the sacrifice of the life into the mineral kingdom. There the life has given itself to bring the thought to the expression. There the life steps back completely behind the expression of the thought. Our thoughts are to become just as purely from all remainder, which mixes itself with it, as the crystal unclouded and uniformly, in itself united and eagerly expresses a God-thought. The crystal is the perfect expression of a God-thought. The substance has arranged itself there according to the lines of the thought sent out by the divine consciousness. The crystals are an expression of the forms of the archetypes of life, but not imbued with life. If the life rhythms of the Godhead are streamed into such pure thoughts of God, then they arise alive before our eyes. The plant world appears before us as living thoughts of God. It expresses the pure rhythm of life. Also the plant is still desireless. It is thought and life, but without passion, without will of its own.

Now, if a part of God's will flows into the living forms, a realm of passion arises, as we see it in the animal kingdom and in the lower human nature. There is nothing rooted in the whole anymore. It separates itself from the whole as something special. In its external movement it becomes independent of the whole. This is brought about by the divine will that appears in it. It represents the own will separated from the God-consciousness. Passion, too, is a power of the Godhead, which brought forth independence in the created forms. The desire is first the expression of the independence won in this way. Now, however, the divine will sank into man in such a way that the divine life and the divine consciousness could also become his own possession, and through the divine consciousness he recognized himself as a part of the Godhead, as having emerged from the Godhead. He could unite himself anew with the Godhead first through the consciousness; thereby the separation was overcome. Then he had to become one with Him also in the realm from which his life was taken, and then in the realm which drove him into existence, in the realm of the will of God, the Father-power.

The realm of thought is like the periphery; the realm of will like the center; the realm of life like the rhythmic movement between center and periphery. In the realm of thought man becomes independent; through the rhythm of life he lets himself be carried back into the primordial ground from which he emerged. In the realm of individual phenomena he forms himself into an individuality, into the I; by flowing back into the realm of life on the waves of life together with other individualities, he finds the way back to the Father-power.

According to the law, which is even more strongly expressed in the higher worlds than in the physical, that there can be no emptiness, according to the law the being of man renews itself in the measure in which he surrenders himself to the higher life. The more he surrenders, the stronger the higher life flows to him. He must die in order to become. The more he dies, the more he becomes, until at last he enters life, where there is no longer any distinction at all between becoming and passing away, where becoming takes place so rapidly from passing away that everything is one continuous life.

As we recognize in the mineral kingdom the kingdom of God's thoughts, so we recognize in the plant kingdom the kingdom of life. It is the intermediate kingdom between the elaboration of the divine thought and the divine will in the individual beings. The plant kingdom mediates the life currents in the world. Without the oxygen that the plant kingdom provides, the animal and human kingdoms could not live, and everything plant serves to build up the animal and human bodies. The mineral kingdom does not contain life, man cannot maintain his life from it; in the animal kingdom we see life in stasis; that which man uses for food from the animal kingdom also does not promote life in him, but the stasis of life, passion. The plant kingdom is the one in which man breathes and which also forms his natural food that promotes his life development. Thus, on the one hand, the mineral kingdom is built up from the dead plant kingdom, and on the other hand, the animal and human kingdoms are kept alive from the living plant kingdom. According to the substance, the kingdom of life thus serves for the continued building up of the mineral kingdom, and according to the power, it serves for the continued development of the animal and human kingdom. There also the two poles of substance and power meet us in the life and weaving of the plant kingdom, the actual kingdom of life.

This also represents the institution of the Lord's Supper. In the life of the world both are contained, substance and power. In the bread is symbolized the dead plant which builds up the mineral in the world and also the body of man; in the wine is symbolized the life force which the world life infuses into the substance. As long as man still dwells in the mineral existence, he must take substance from the kingdom of life in order to build himself up, and take strength in order to live. When he himself passes from the realm of the mineral world, of becoming and passing away, into the realm of life, then he finds substance and strength in himself as the two poles of his being between which his life runs. Then he no longer needs to build himself up minerally, but he gains form in the higher worlds, in life itself. Form and life are then united in him, and he then leads the whole earth permanently over into the eternal rhythm of life.

In order for man to reach this stage of development, he must allow the forces at work in the mineral and plant kingdoms to arise in him. The desireless, mineral ideal forms of the crystals represent for him what is to become his thought. The crystal is the expression of the pure, chaste, divine thought. As the plant gives up its whole life to express the divine will, without its own desire, without its own passion, so also man is to live and grow in the world only as an expression of the divine power which the Godhead has sunk into him.

What it leads to, if he lives a life of passion, he recognizes in the animal kingdom. There he sees how passion brings suffering because it distracts beings from the light of wisdom. The animal kingdom is the expression of passion, the realm of joy and pain. The unpurified power expresses itself in the animal kingdom. Through the unpurified power, man is also driven into joy and pain. But by purification of the power he grows beyond joy and pain. For how he should purify the force, the calmness and unity of the mineral kingdom and the desireless life of the plant kingdom are a model for him. His thoughts must become as concentrated as the forms of a crystal; his life must be as rhythmic as the life of the plant, then he will stamp the divinity in his being. Then the power in him will no longer be expressed as passion, but as supreme blessedness and as an expression of blissful resting in the will of the Godhead, and what substance there is in him will then serve him only for the shaping of a sublime expression of the power of God.