The Rudolf Steiner Archive

You have seen that the most important concern of this course is to show how the history of language-forming originates in human soul qualities. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at an understanding of the vocabulary of any modern language without understanding its inner soul nature. So I would like to add today some examples to show you how the phenomena of language are related to the development of the folk souls.

First let me call your attention to two words that belong together: Zuber ‘tub’ and Eimer ‘pail’. They are old German words; when you use them today, you are aware that an Eimer is a vessel with a single handle fastened on top in which something can be carried; Zuber has two handles. That is what they are today when we use the two words, Zuber and Eimer. To investigate the word Eimerwe have to go back a thousand years and find it in Old High German as the word ein-bar. You remember that I introduced you to the sound group bar (lecture 2), related to beran, ‘to carry’. Through the contraction of ein-bar ‘one carry’, Eimer ‘pail’ came about. We have it clearly expressed, transparently visible in the old form: the carrying with one handle, for bar is simply something to carry with. Zuber in Old High German is Zwei-bar ‘two-carry’, a vessel carried by two handles, a tub. [The origin of tub from Middle High German tubbe surely has to do also with ‘two’.] You see how words today are contractions of what in the older form were separate pieces or phrases that we no longer distinguish.

There are many such examples; we can put our minds to a few typical ones. Take the word Messer 'knife’. It goes back to Old High German mezzi-sahs. Mezzi is related to ezzan, the old form of essen, ‘to eat’, with an introductory /m/. As for sahs (sax is another pronunciation of the same word), we need to remember that when Christianity spread across southern Germany, the monks encountered the worship of three ancient divinities, one of whom was Sachsnot or Ziu, the God of War [still present in English Tuesday ‘Mars-day’]. Sachsnot means ‘the living sword’; sahs has the same sound configuration. Therefore in the word Messer you have the composite ‘eating sword,” the sword with which you eat.

Interesting, too, is the word Wimper [‘eyelash’ today, but seems to describe eyebrow], which goes back to wint-bra. Bra is the ‘brow’ and wint is something that ‘winds itself around’. You can picture it: the ‘curving brow’. In the contraction Wimper we no longer distinguish the single parts.

Another word that characterizes such contractions, where originally the relationships were felt perceptively, you know as the fairly common German word Schulze ‘Mayor’. When we look back at Old High German we find sculd-heizo. That was the man in the village to whom one had to go to find out what one’s debt (Schuld) was. He told a fellow who had been up to some kind of mischief what his fine would be. The person who had to decide, to say (heissen) what debt or fine was due was the Sculd-heisso, Schuld-heisser ‘debt namer’. This became Schulze. I am giving you these examples so that you can follow me as we trace the course of language development.

Something else can be observed in this direction, something that still often happens in dialects. In Vienna, for instance, a great deal of dialect has been retained in a purer state than in northern Germany, where abstractness came about quite early. The Austrian dialect goes back to a primitive culture, as far back as the tenth century. The language-forming genius with its lively image quality was still active in southern German areas but did not enter the northern German culture. There is a picturesque word in Vienna: Hallodri. That's ‘a rascal, a rowdy’, who likes to raise a ruckus, who's a trouble-maker, who's possibly guilty of a few minor offences. The Hallo in the word points to how a person shouts [like English Hello! with a touch of holler]. The ri has to do with the shouting person’s behavior; it is a dialect holdover from the Old High German ari, which became aeri in Middle High German, finally becoming weakened in modern German to the suffix -er [This corresponds exactly to -er in English, as in baker, farmer, storyteller] If you take the Old High German word wahtari, there at the end of it is the syllable you encountered in the Austrian dialect word Hallodri. It means somehow or other ‘being active in life'—that is the syllable ari; waht is ‘to watch'. The person who takes on the office of watching is the wahtari In Middle High German it became wachtaere, still with the complete suffix. Now in Modern German it is Wächter ‘watcher, watchman, guard’. The ari has become the syllable -er; in which you perceive very little of the original meaning: handling or managing something. This you should feel in words with the suffix -er; retained from ancient times, for example: The person who handles or manages the garden is the gartenaere, the gardener: It is an illustration of the way language today makes an effort to adapt sound qualities—everything I would call musical—slowly into abstractness, where the full sense of the sound can no longer be perceived, especially not in the full sense of the concept or its feeling quality.

The following is an interesting example. You know the prefix -ur ‘original, archetypal’ in the words Ursache ‘first cause, original cause’, Urwald ‘primeval forest, jungle’, Urgrossvater ‘great-grandfather, ancestor’, and so on. If we go back almost two thousand years in the history of our language, we find this same syllable in Gothic as uz In Old High German, about the year 1000 A.D. we find the same syllable as ar; ir; or ur. Seven hundred years ago it was ur and so it remains today, having changed rather early. As a prefix to verbs it has become weak. We say, for instance, to express something being announced, Kunde ‘message’; if we want to designate the first message, the original, the one from which the other messages arise, we say Urkunde ‘document, charter’. In verbs the ur is weakened to er. To augment the verb kennen ‘to know’; (cognate: ken) we do not say—as might have been possible—Urkennen, but rather erkennen ‘to understand, recognize’. Er has exactly the same level of meaning in such a word as ur does in urkunde. If I make it possible for someone to do a certain thing, I erlaube ‘allow’” him something. If I change this into a noun, in a certain situation, it becomes Urlaub ‘vacation’, something I give a person through my act of ‘allowing’. Another word formation related to all this is exceedingly interesting—you know the expression “to make land urbar" ‘arable’. Urbar is also related to beran (‘to bear’; see lecture 2). Urbaris the ‘primordial cause inducing the land to bear’. There is an analogous meaning in the word ertragen ur-bear, to yield, endure’. If you say nowadays something about the Ertrag des Ackers ‘the yield of one’s land’, you are using the same word as in urbar machen des Ackers ‘making the field yield its first crop’. Originally the word urbar was also used to say ‘work the land so that it bears enough, for instance, to pay its taxes or rent’. [Note: English acre has become a measurement, whereas Acker is the land itself. Arnold Wadler in his One Language takes this word back to Agros (Greek, ‘soil’), further back to Ikker (Hebrew, ‘peasant’), and finally to A-K-R (Egyptian, ‘earth-god’) to show how ancient words with a spiritual meaning descend through the ages to a sense that is more and more physical and abstract. ‘God’—‘human being’—‘land’—‘measurement’. A similar change occurs from Agni, Hindu god of fire, to Ignis (Latin, ‘fire’) and finally ignition, ‘part of an internal-combustion engine’.]

To study the prefixes and suffixes of a language is in every sense most interesting! For instance, there is the prefix ge- in numerous words. This goes back to the Gothic ga, in which one truly felt the gathering. [Here the best example is offered in English: Anglo-Saxon gaed, ‘fellowship’, related to gador in ‘together’.] Ga- carries the feeling of assembling, pushing together. In Old High German it became gi, and in modern German ge [Wadler once described the consonant as the musical instrument on which the vowel-melody is played, hence the ever-changing vowels in epochs of time and in comparable languages.]| When you put ge in front of the word salle or selle ‘room, hall’, you come to Geselle ‘fellow, journeyman’ a person who shares a room with another or sleeps in the same lodging with him. Genosse ‘comrade’ is a person who geniesst ‘enjoys’ something together with another.

I want to call your attention to what is characteristic in these examples. Someone who experiences within the sounds of a word the immediate feeling for its meaning surely has a different relationship to the word than does a person without that feeling. If you simply say Geselle because you've known what it means since childhood, it is a different thing than if you have a feeling for the room and the connection within the room of two or more people. This element of feeling is being thrown off; the result is the possibility of abstractness.

Another example is part of many of our words, the suffix - lich (English -ly) as in göttlich ‘divine, godly, and freundlich ‘friendly’. If you look for it two thousand years ago, you will find it in Gothic as leiks. It became lich in Old High German, related originally to leich and also leib ‘body’. I told you (see lecture 2, pages 32-33) that leich/leib expresses the form' (Gestald left behind when a person dies. Leichnam ‘corpse’ is really a somewhat redundant expression, a structure such as a child creates when it combines two similar sounding words like bow-wow or quack-quack, where the meaning arises through repetition. Dissimilar sounding words, however, may also be combined in this way, and such a combination is the word Leichnam. Leich, as we said, is the form that remains after the soul has left the body. Nam, in turn, derives from ham and ham is the word still preserved in Hemd ‘shirt’, meaning shroud or sheath, Hülle. Leichnam means therefore the form-shroud’ that we cast off after death. Hence there is a combination of two similar things, form’ and—somewhat altered—‘sheath’, put together like bow-wow.

Out of this leiks/leich our suffix -lich has developed. When we use the word göttlich ‘godly’, it points toward a form’ with its - lich, which is leiks ‘form’: a form that is godly or divine, ‘of the shape or form of God'. This is particularly interesting in the Old High German word anagilih, which still contains ana from the Gothic; ana means ‘nearly’, ‘almost’. Gilihis the form. Today’s word ähnlich ‘similar, analogous’ means what ‘almost has the form'.

This is a good example for studying not so much the history as more particularly the psychology of language. It still shows how nuances of feeling, in earlier times, were vividly alive in the words people used. Later this feeling, this emotional quality slowly separated from any language experience, so that whatever unites a mental picture with speech sounds has become a totally abstract element. I have just spoken about the prefix ge-, Gothic ga-. Imagine that the ‘gathering together’ of ga-, which is now ge-, could still be felt and were now applied to the element of form’, to the leich, then according to what we could feel historically, it could mean ‘agreement of form'. This meaning lives in the word like an open secret. Geleich = gleich means ‘forms that agree’, forms that act together’: gleich ‘very similar, identical, equal’.

Consider for a moment a word that unveils many secrets. Today we will look at it from only one point of view. It is Ungetüm ‘monster’. [In German the two dots over an /ä/, /ö/ or /ü/, called an Umlaut, change the quality and sound of the vowel.¹ ] The /ü/ in Ungetüm was originally /u/ and this tum, if looked at separately, goes back to Old High German fuom, which is related to the verb tun ‘to do, bring about, achieve, bring into a relationship’. In every word containing the suffix -tum, the relationship of things working together can still be felt—as in Königtum ‘kingdomy', Herzogtum ‘dukedom, duchy'. The Ungetüm is a creature with whom no real working together is possible. Un, the prefix, denotes the ‘negative’; getum could be the ‘working together’.

We have numerous words, as you know, with the suffix -ig (English -y), such as feurig ‘fiery’, gelehrig ‘docile, teachable’, [cf. saucy; bony, earthy] and so on. This goes back to Old High German -ac or -ic and to Middle High German -ag or -ig. It signifies approximately what we describe with the adjective eigen ‘own, one’s own'. Hence, where the suffix -ig appears, it points to a kind of ownership. Feurig is feuereigen, something whose property is fiery’. I have told you that it is possible to observe how the genius of a language undergoes increasing abstractness, which is the result of this sort of contracting and what comes about then as the assimilation of sound elements, such as feurig from feuer-eigen.

It could be expressed like this: In very ancient stages of a people’s language development, the feelings were guided totally by the speech sounds. One could say language was made up only of differentiated, complicated images through the consonant sounds, picturing outer processes, and of vowel elements, interjections, expressions of feeling occurring within those consonant formations. The language-forming process then moves forward. Human beings pull themselves out, more or less, of this direct experience, the direct sensing of sound language. What are they actually doing as they pull themselves out and away? Well, they are still speaking but as they do so, they are pushing their speech down into a much more unconscious region than the one where mental pictures and feelings were closely connected with the forming of the sounds. Speech itself is being pushed down into an unconscious region, while the upper consciousness tries to catch the thought. Look closely at what is going on as soul-event. By letting the sound associations fall into unconsciousness, human beings have raised their consciousness to mental pictures (Vorstellen) and perceptions that no longer are immersed in language sounds and sound associations. Now people have to try to capture the meaning, a meaning somehow still indicated by the sounds but no longer as intimately connected with them as it had been. We can observe this process even after the original separating-out of the sound associations has taken place; just as people previously had related to the sounds, now they had to make a connection to words. By that time there had come into existence words with sound associations no one finds any relationship to; they are words connected through memory to the conceptual. There, on a higher level, words pass through the same process that sounds and syllables underwent earlier.

Suppose you want to say something about the people of a certain area, but you don't want to sound completely abstract. You wouldn't want to say “the human beings of Württemberg" [the German state where the lecture was being given]; that would be too abstract. And you probably wouldn't want to reach top level abstraction with “the inhabitants of Württemberg.” If you want to catch something more concrete than “human beings,” you might think of “the city and country people of Württemberg” (die Bürger und Bauern). This would denote not actually city people nor country people but something that hovers in between. In order to catch that hovering something, both words are used. This becomes especially clear and interesting when the two words, used to express a concept, approach from two sides and are quite far apart from each other, for instance when you say Land und Leute ‘land and people’. [Something similar in English: the world and his wife]. When you use such a phrase, what you want to express is something hanging between the two words that you are trying to approach. Take Wind und Wetter ‘wind and weather’: when you say it, you can't use just one word; you mean neither wind nor weather, but something that lies between, put into a kind of framework. [In English we have many similar double phrases from earliest times: might and main; time and tide; rack and ruin; part and parcel; top to toe; neither chick nor child—and many of them are alliterative, that is, repeating the same consonant at the beginning of both words.].

It is interesting to note that as language develops, such double phrases use alliteration, assonance, or the like. This means that the feeling for tone and sound is still playing its part; people who have a lively sense for language are still able, even today, to continue using such phrases and with them are able to capture a mental image or idea for which one specific word is not immediately available.

Suppose I want to describe how a person acts, what his habits are, what his essential nature is. I will probably hesitate to use just one word that would make him out to be a living person but passive—for I don't want to characterize him as living essentially a passive life nor on the other hand an active life; I want to deduce his activity out of his intrinsic nature. I can't say, his soul lebt ‘exists’; that would be too passive. Nor can I say, his soul webt ‘is actively in motion, weaves, wafts’; that would be too active. I need something in between, and today we can still say, Die Seele lebt und webt ‘Just as he lives and breathes'.

Numerous examples of this kind proceed from the language-forming genius. If you want to express what is neither Sang ‘song’ nor Klang ‘sound’, we say Sang und Klang ‘with drums drumming and pipes piping’. Or you might want to describe a medieval poet creating both the melody and the words of a song—people often wanted to say that the Minnesingers did both. One couldn't say Sie ziehen herum und singen ‘they wander about and sing’ but rather, Sie ziehen herum und singen und sagen ‘they wander about singing and telling’. What they did was a concept for which no single word existed. You see, such things are only what I would call latecomers or substitutes for the sound combinations we no longer quite understand. Today we form contractions of such phrases as Sang und Klang, singen und sagen, sound-phrases which in earlier times retained the connection between sound-content and the conceptual feeling element.

To take something very characteristic in this respect, look at the following example. When the ancient Germans convened to hold a court of justice, they called such a day tageding ‘daything’. What they did on that day was a ding We still use the expression Ding drehen, literally, ‘to turn a thing’; slang, ‘to plan something fishy'. A ding is what took place when the ancient Germans got together to make legal decisions. They called it a tageding. Now take the prefix ver-: it always points to the fact that something is beginning to develop (Anglo-Saxon for- used in forbear, forget, forgive, and so forth). Hence, the occurrences at the fageding began to develop further and one could say, they were being vertagedingt. And this word has slowly become our verteidigen ‘to defend, to vindicate’, with a small change of meaning. You see how the sound combination vertageding began to undergo the same process as the word combinations do later.

Thus we find that little by little the conceptual life digresses ever further from the pure life of language sounds. Consider the example of the Old High German word alawari. All-wahr, ganz wahr ‘completely true, altogether true’ was the original meaning, but it has become today's word albern ‘foolish’. Just think what shallowness of the folk soul you are looking into when you see that something with the original meaning of ‘altogether true’ has become ‘foolish’, as we hear and feel the word today. The alawari must have been used by tribes, I would say, who considered the appearance of human all-truth as something stupid and who favored the belief that a clever person is not alawari. Hence the feeling that ‘one who is completely honest is not very clever’, ie., albern ‘silly, foolish, weak-minded’. It has carried us over to something for which originally we had a quite different feeling.

When studying such shifts of meaning, we are able to gaze deeply into the language-forming genius in its connection with qualities of soul. Take our word Quecksilber ‘quicksilver, mercury’, for instance, a lively, fluid metal. Queck is the same word as Quecke ‘couch grass’, also called quick, quitch, twitch, or witch grass’, which has to do with movement, the same word as quick contained in the verb erquicken ‘to refresh, revive’; cognate, to quicken, ‘the quick and the dead’. This sound combination queck and quick, with the small shift to keck ‘bold, saucy’ originally meant ‘to be mobile’. If I said five hundred years ago 'er ist ein kecker Mensch’, I would have meant that he is a ‘lively person’, not one to loaf around, to let the grass grow under his feet, one who ‘likes work and gets going’. Through a shift of meaning, this keck has become ‘bold, saucy'. The path inward toward a soul characteristic led at the same time to an important change of meaning.

Another word frech originally meant kühn im Kampfe ‘bold in battle’. Only two hundred years ago frech ‘fresh, impudent, insolent’ meant a courageous person, someone not afraid to stand his man in a fight. Note the shift of meaning. Such shifts allow us to look deeply into the life and development of the human soul.

Take the Old High German word diomuoti. Deo/dio always meant ‘man-servant’; muoti is related to our word Mut ‘courage’; cognate, mood, but formerly it had a different meaning, to be explained today by attitude, the way we are attuned to the world or to other people. We can say that dio muoti actually signified the attitude of a servant, the mood a servant should have toward his master. Then Christianity found its way north. The monks wanted to tell the people something of what their attitude should be toward God and toward spiritual beings. What they wanted to express in this regard they could only do in relation to the feeling they already had for the ‘servant’s attitude’. And so diomuoti gradually became Demut ‘humility’. The religious feeling of humility derives from the attitude of a servant in ancient Germanic times; this is how shifts of meaning occur.

To study this process it is especially interesting to look at words, or rather the sound- and syllable-combinations where the shift of meaning arose through the introduction of Christianity. When the Roman clergy brought their religion to the northern regions of Europe, changes occurred whose fundamental significance can be outwardly understood only by looking at the shifts of meaning in the language. In earlier times before the advent of Christianity, there existed a well-defined master/servant relationship. About a person who had been captured in battle, put into service, and made submissive, his master—wishing to imply Der ist mir nützlich ‘he is useful to me'—would say Der ist fromm, das ist ein frommer Mensch ‘he is a pious man'. Only a last remnant of this word fromm exists today where, to put it a bit jokingly, it is only somewhat reminiscent of its original meaning in the phrase zu Nutz und Frommen ‘for use and profit’, that is, ‘for the greater good'. The verb frommen is combined here with ‘usefulness’, which originally was its identical meaning, but the idea of finding something useful is pointed out with tongue in cheek. The servant who was fromm was a most useful one. The Roman clergy did find that some people were more useful to them than others and these they called fromm ‘pious’. And so this word has come about in a peculiar way through the immigration of Christianity from Rome. With such words as Demut ‘humility’ and Frommsein ‘piety’ you can study some of the special impulses carried by Christianity from south to north.

To understand language and its development you have to pay attention to its soul element, to the inner experience that belongs to it. There exists in the forming of words what I characterized as the consonantal element on the one hand, the imitation of external processes, and on the other hand, the element of feeling and sensing, for instance, as interjections., when perceptions are expressed in their relationship to the external world. (See also expletives, lecture 3, p 48)

Let us consider a distinctly consonantal effect one can experience in one’s feeling for language, quite far along in its development.

Suppose that someone is looking at this form I am drawing here. A simple person long ago would have had two kinds of feeling about it. Looking at the form from below, that person perceived it as something pressed inward; the feeling itself slowly grew into the sound formation we have in our word Bogen ‘bow, as in rainbow’. However, looking at the form from above downward and perhaps bending it out as much as possible (drawing it), what I see now, looking down, comes into speech as Bausch ‘hump, bunch, ball’. From below it is a Bogen; from above, it is a Bausch. The two words still contain something of our perceptive feeling. When you want to express what is contained in both words together but is no longer attached to our perception, and goes outward to describe the whole process, you may say in Bausch und Bogen, ‘in bump and bow’ [lock, stock and barrel’ is a similar English idiomatic phrase]. In Bausch und Bogen would be an imaginative phrase for this (pointing to the drawing), seen from above and below. You can apply these two points of view also in the moral or social realm, in closing a business deal with someone, so that the final outcome is considered from both inside and outside. Looking at it from within, the result is profit; from outside there is the corresponding loss. When you close a business deal, whether for profit or loss, you can say it's done in Bausch und Bogen; you don't have to pay attention to either of the single components (as in the English phrase for better or for worse).

With all this I have wanted to explain to you that by following the development of speech sound elements as well as words and phrases, pictures will arise of the folk soul development as such. You will be able to discover many things if you trace along these lines the movement from the concrete life of speech sounds to the abstract life of ideas. You need only to open an ordinary dictionary or pick up words from the talk going on around you, and then trace the words as we have done. Especially for our teachers I want to mention that it is extraordinarily stimulating to point out such bits of language history occasionally to the children right in the middle of your lesson; at times it can truly enlighten a subject and also stimulate more lively thinking. But you must remember that it’s easy to get off on the wrong track; one must be exceedingly careful, for—as we've seen—words pass through a great variety of metamorphoses. It is very important to proceed conscientiously and not seize on superficial resemblances in order to form some theory or other.

You will see from the following example how necessary it is to proceed cautiously. Beiwacht ‘keeping watch together’ was originally an honest German word, like Zusammenwacht ‘together watch’, used to describe people sitting together and keeping watch. It is one of the words that did not wander from France into Germany as so many others did, but it somehow managed to wander into France, as did the word guerre (French, ‘war’) from the German Wirren ‘disorder, confusion’. In early times Beiwacht got to France and there became bivouac. And then it wandered back again, in one of the numerous treks of western words moving toward German regions after the twelfth century. When it returned, it became Biwak ‘an encampment for a short stay’. Thus an original German word wandered into France and then returned. In between it was used very little. Such things can happen, you see: Words emigrate, then it gets too stuffy for them in the foreign atmosphere—and back home they come again. There are many sorts of relationships like this that you can discover.

• 1. See discussion of the umlaut in lecture 6, page 90.

Anyone who wishes to attach any value to the form of spiritual-scientific world view that I will be speaking about today and tomorrow will need to familiarize themselves with the peculiar contradiction inherent in the development of humanity, namely that a spiritual current, a spiritual impulse, can be eminently timely from a certain higher point of view, and that this timeliness is nevertheless at first sharply rejected by contemporaries, rejected in a way that one might say is thoroughly understandable.

The impulse for a new view of the universe of space, which Copernicus gave at the dawn of the new era, was timely from the point of view that the development of humanity at the time of Copernicus made it necessary for this impulse to come. This impulse proved to be quite untimely for a long time to come, in that it was opposed by all those who wanted to hold on to old habits of thought, to prejudices that were centuries and millennia old. To the followers of spiritual science, this spiritual scientific world view appears to be in keeping with the times, and it is out of date from the point of view of those who still judge it from that perspective. Nevertheless, I believe that in the course of today's and tomorrow's lecture I will be able to show that in the subconscious depths of the soul of contemporary humanity there exists something like a yearning for this spiritual-scientific world view and something like a hope lives for it:

As it presents itself at first, this spiritual science wants to be a genuine continuation of the scientific work of the spirit, as it has been done in the last centuries. And it would be quite wrong to believe that this spiritual science somehow developed opposition to the great triumphs, to the immense achievements and the far-sighted truths that natural scientific thinking of the last centuries has brought. On the contrary, what natural science was and is for the knowledge of the external world, that this spiritual science wants to be for the knowledge of the spiritual world. In this way, it could almost be called a child of the scientific way of thinking, although this will still be doubted in the broadest circles today.

In order to give an idea, not a proof, but initially an idea that should lead to understanding, the following is said about the relationship between the spiritual science meant here and the scientific world view: If we look at the great, powerful of the development of natural science knowledge in the last three to four centuries, we say that on the one hand it has brought immeasurable truths across the broad horizon of human knowledge, and on the other hand that this thinking has been incorporated into practical life. Everywhere we see the benefits of this in the fields of technology and commerce, which have been brought to us by the laws and insights of natural science that have been incorporated into practical life. If we now wish to form an idea of the attitude of spiritual science to these advances, we can begin by making a comparison. We can look at the farmer who cultivates his field and reaps the fruits of the field. The greater part of these fruits of the field are taken into human life and used for human sustenance; only a small part remains. This is used for the new sowing of the fruits. Only the latter part can be said to be allowed to follow the driving forces, the inner life and formative forces that lie in the sprouting grain, in the sprouting fruit itself. What is brought into the barns is mostly diverted from its own developmental progress, is, as it were, led into a side stream, used for human food, and does not directly continue what lies in the germs, what the own driving forces are.

Thus, the spiritual science referred to here appears to be more or less what natural science has brought in the way of knowledge in recent centuries. By far the greatest part of this has rightly been used to gain insight into external, sensual-spatial facts, and has been used for human benefit. But there is something left over in the human soul from the ideas that the study of nature has provided in recent centuries that is not used to understand this or that in the sensual world, that is not used to build machines or maintain industries, but that is brought to life so that it is preserved in its own right, like grain that is used for sowing again and allowed to follow its own laws of formation. man imbues himself with the wonderful fruits of knowledge that natural science has brought forth, when he allows this to live in his soul, when he has a feeling for asking: How can the life of the soul be illuminated and recognized through the concepts and ideas that natural science has provided? How can one live with these ideas? How can one use them to understand the main driving forces of human soul life? If the human soul has a feeling for raising these questions with the spiritual treasure acquired, not in theory but with the full wealth of soul life, then what can only now, in our time, when science has been cultivated on its own ground, so to speak, for a while, merge into human culture.

And in another respect too, this spiritual science can be called a child of the scientific way of thinking, only the spirit must be investigated in a different way from nature. Precisely if one wants to approach the spirit with the same certainty, method and scientific basis as natural science approaches nature, then one must transform scientific thinking and shape it in such a way that it becomes a suitable tool for the knowledge of the spirit. These lectures will share some insights into how this can be achieved. Especially when one is firmly grounded in natural science, one realizes that the means by which it works cannot be used to gain spiritual knowledge. Time and again, enlightened minds have spoken of the fact that, starting from the firm ground of natural science, man must recognize that his power of knowledge is limited. Natural science and Kantianism — to mention only these — have contributed to the belief that the cognitive powers of the human mind are limited, that man cannot penetrate through his knowledge into the regions where the source lies, to which the soul must feel connected; where man realizes that not only the forces that can be grasped by natural science are at work, but other forces as well. In this respect spiritual science completely agrees with natural science. Precisely for the cognitive abilities that natural science has magnified, and on which natural science must also stop as such, there is no possibility of penetrating into the spiritual realm.

But in the human soul lie dormant other cognitive faculties, cognitive faculties that cannot be used in everyday life and in the hustle and bustle of ordinary science, but that can be brought forth from this human soul and that, when they are brought forth, when they are, as it were, from the hidden depths of the human soul, then they make something different out of the person: they permeate him with a new kind of knowledge, with a kind of knowledge that can penetrate into areas that are closed to mere natural science. It is (I attach no special value to the expression, but it clarifies the matter) a kind of spiritual chemistry through which one can penetrate into the spiritual regions of existence, but a chemistry that only bears a similarity to external chemistry in terms of secure logic and methodical thinking: it is the chemistry of the human soul itself. And from this point of view, in order to make ourselves understood, I will say the following by way of comparison: when we have water before us, this water has certain properties. The chemist comes and shows that this water contains hydrogen and oxygen. Take hydrogen: it burns, it is gaseous, it is quite different from water. Would someone who knew nothing about chemistry ever be able to tell from looking at water that it contains hydrogen? Water is liquid, does not burn, and even extinguishes fire. Hydrogen burns, is a gas. In short, would someone be able to tell from looking at water that it contains hydrogen? Nevertheless, the chemist comes and separates the hydrogen from the water. Man can be compared to water as he appears in everyday life, as he appears to ordinary science. In him are united the physical and the bodily and the spiritual-soul. External science and the world view that is based on it are quite right when they say: Yes, this person standing before us cannot be seen to have a spiritual-soul within him; and it is understandable when a world view completely denies this soul-spiritual. But that is just as if one were to deny the nature of hydrogen.

However, there is a need for proof that the spiritual-soul can really be represented separately from the human being, separate from the physical body, in spiritual-soul chemistry. This can be. That there is such a spiritual-mental chemistry is what spiritual science has to say to mankind today, just as Copernicanism had to say to a surprised mankind that the earth does not stand still, but moves around the sun at a furious pace, but the sun stands still. And just as Copernican writings were on the Index until well into the 19th century, so too will the insights of spiritual science be on the Index of other worldviews for a long time to come. These are worldviews that cannot free themselves from centuries-old prejudices and habits of thought. And the fact that this spiritual science can already, to a certain extent, touch hearts and souls, that it is not exactly outside the search of our time, we have a small proof of this, which I do not want to boast about, but which may be mentioned as a testimony to, I would say, the hidden timeliness of spiritual science in souls. Are we indeed in a position, already in our time, to build a free school of spiritual science on free Swiss soil; and can we not see, through the understanding of the friends of this spiritual current, the emblem of the same in the new architectural style of the double-domed rotunda, which is to rise from Dornach's heights, near Basel, as a first external monument to what this spiritual science has to offer to modern culture? That this building is already being erected, that the forms of its domes are already rising above the rotunda, allows us today to speak of spiritual science with much more hope and inner satisfaction, despite all the opposition, despite all the lack of understanding that it encounters and must still encounter in wide circles.

What I have called spiritual chemistry is certainly not something that can be achieved through external methods that can be seen with the eyes and that are brought about by external actions. What can be called spiritual chemistry takes place only in the human soul itself, and the procedures are of an intimate soul-spiritual nature, procedures that do not leave the soul as it is in everyday life, but which affect this soul in such a way that it changes, that it becomes a completely different tool of knowledge than it usually is. And they are not some kind of, one might say, miraculous exercises, some exercises taken from superstition, which are thus applied in spiritual chemistry, but they are thoroughly inner, spiritual-soul exercises, which build on what is also present in everyday life: powers of the soul , which are always there, which we need in everyday life, but which, in this everyday life, I would say, are only used incidentally, but which must be increased immeasurably, must strengthen themselves into the unlimited if man is to become truly a spiritual knower.

The one power that is active in our whole soul life, more incidentally, but must be increased immeasurably, we can call it: attention. What is attention? Well, we do not let the life that flows past the soul shape itself; we gather ourselves up inwardly to turn our spiritual gaze to this or that. We pick out individual things, place them in the field of vision of our consciousness, and concentrate the soul forces on these details. And we may say: Only in this way is our soul life, which needs activity, also possible in everyday life, that we can develop such an interest that highlights individual events and facts and entities from the passing stream of existence. This attention is absolutely necessary in ordinary life. One will understand more and more, especially when spiritual science also penetrates a little into the soul, that what people call the memory question is basically only an attentiveness question, and that will throw important light on all educational questions. One can almost say that the more one endeavors to put the soul into the activity of attentiveness again and again, already in the growing and also in the later human being, the more the memory is strengthened. Not only does it work better for the things we have paid attention to, but the more often we can exercise this attention, the more our memory grows, the more intensively it develops. And another thing: Who has not heard today of that sad manifestation of the soul that could be called the discontinuity of consciousness? There are people today who cannot look back on their past life and remember it in its entirety, who do not know afterwards: You were with your ego in this or that experience; who do not know what they have been through. It may happen that such people leave their home because they have lost the consistency in their mental experience; that they leave their home without rhyme or reason, that they go through the world as if with the loss of their own self, so that it takes them years to find their self again and to be able to pick up where their self left off. Such phenomena would never lead to the tragedy that they often do if it were known that this integrity, this consciousness of being fully aware of oneself, also depends on the correct development of the activity of attention.

Thus, the exercise of attention is something we absolutely need in our ordinary lives. The spiritual researcher must take it up, develop it into a special inner soul strengthening, deepen it into what could be called meditation, concentration. These are the technical terms for the matter. Just as in our ordinary life, prompted by life itself, we turn our attention to this or that object, so the spiritual researcher, out of inner soul methodology, turns all soul powers to a presentation, an image, a sensation, a will impulse, an emotional mood that he can survey, that is quite clear before his soul, and on which he concentrates all the soul's powers; but he concentrates in such a way that he has suppressed, as only otherwise in deep sleep, all sensory activity directed towards the outside world, so that he has brought all thinking and striving, all worries and affects of life to a standstill, as otherwise only in deep sleep. In relation to ordinary life, man does indeed become as he otherwise does in deep sleep; only that he does not lose consciousness, that he keeps it fully awake. But all the powers of the soul, which are otherwise scattered on external experience, on the worries and concerns of existence, are concentrated on the one idea, feeling or other that has been placed by will into the center of the human soul life. As a result, the powers of the soul are concentrated and that which otherwise only slumbers, only works for this life as it were between the lines of life, that power is brought to the fore, is shaped out of the human soul; and it actually comes about that through this inner strengthening of the human soul in the concentrated activity, in the attention increased to the immeasurable, this soul learns to experience itself in such a way that it becomes capable of consciously tearing itself out of the physical-sensual body, as hydrogen is dissolved out of water by the chemical method.

However, it is an inner soul development that takes years if the spiritual researcher wants to enable his soul to tear itself away from the physical body through such attention and concentration exercises. But then the time comes when the spiritual researcher knows how to connect a meaning to the word, oh, to the word that sounds so paradoxical to today's world, to the word that seems so fantastic to this world: I experience myself as a spiritual being outside of my body and I know that this body is outside of my soul – well, like the table is outside of my body. I know that the soul, inwardly strengthened, can experience itself in this way, even if it has the body before it like a foreign object, this body with all the destinies that it undergoes in the ordinary outer life. In what he otherwise is, the human being will completely express himself as a spiritual-soul entity separate from his body. And this spiritual-soul entity then displays very different qualities than it does when it is connected to the physical-sensual body and makes use of the intellect bound to the brain.

First of all, the power of thought detaches itself from physical experience. Since I do not want to speak in abstractions, but rather report on real facts, please do not be put off by the fact that I want to describe, unembellished and without prejudice, what may still sound paradoxical today. When the spiritual researcher begins to associate a meaning with the word: You now live in your soul, you know that your soul is a truly spiritual being in which you experience yourself when you are outside of your senses and your brain, then he initially feels with his thinking as if outside of his brain, surrounding and living in his head. Yes, he knows that as long as one is in the physical body between birth and death, one must return again and again to the body. The spiritual researcher knows exactly how to observe the moment when he, after having lived with the pure spiritual-soul, returns with his thinking to his brain. He experiences how this brain offers resistance, feels how he, as it were, submerges with the waves of his earlier, purely spiritual life and then slips into his physical brain, which now, in its own activity, follows what the spiritual-soul accomplishes. This experience outside of the body and this re-immersion into the body is one of the most harrowing experiences for the spiritual researcher.

But this thinking, which is purely experiencing itself and takes place outside the brain, presents itself differently from ordinary thinking. Ordinary thoughts are shadowy compared to the thoughts that now stand before the spiritual researcher like a new world when he is outside his body. Thoughts permeate each other with inner pictorialness. That is why we call what presents itself to the spiritual eye: imaginations - but not because we believe that these only contain something fantastic or imagined, but because what is perceived there is actually experienced is experienced, imagined; but this imagination is an immersion in the things themselves, one experiences the things and processes of the spiritual world, and the things and processes of the spiritual world present themselves in imaginations before the soul. —- Thus thinking can be separated from the physical-bodily life, and the spiritual researcher can know himself in a world of spiritual processes and entities.

But other human faculties can also be detached from the purely physical and bodily. When the thinking is detached, the spiritual researcher experiences himself first in his purely spiritual and soul-like essence, after all that has been described so far. But what he experiences there with the things and processes in the spiritual world is a completely different way of perceiving than the ordinary perception. When we usually perceive things, they are there and we are here; they confront us. This is not the case from the moment we enter a spiritual world in our spiritual and soul experience, which arises around us with the same necessity as colors and light arise around the blind man when he has undergone an operation. No, we do not experience the spiritual world in the same way as the external world. This experience is such that one does not merely have the things and beings of the spiritual world before one, but one submerges oneself in them with one's entire being. Then one knows: one perceives the things and beings by having flowed into them with one's being and perceiving that which is in them in such a way that they reproduce themselves in the images that one sees. One feels that all perception is a reproduction. One feels that one is in a state of constant activity. Therefore, one could call this revival of the imaginative world of thought a spiritual mimic, a spiritual play of expressions. One tears oneself out of the bodily with its soul-spiritual; but this soul-spiritual is in perpetual activity and submerges into the processes of the spiritual world and imitates what lives in them as their own powers; and one feels so connected with the beings that one can compare this submerging with standing before a person and intuiting what is going on in his life, and having such an inner experience of it that one would show the expression of sorrow in one's own countenance if the other were sad, and show the expression of joy in one's own countenance if the other were joyful. Thus one experiences spiritually and soulfully what others are experiencing; one becomes the expression of it oneself. In the spiritual countenance, one expresses the essence of things. One is driven to active perception. One may say: spiritual research makes quite different demands on the human soul than external research, which passively accepts things. The soul is required to be inwardly active and to be able to immerse itself in things and beings and to express itself in the way that things present themselves to it.

Just as the power of thought, as a spiritual-soul power, can be separated out of the physical-bodily in spiritual chemistry, so can another power, which man otherwise only uses in the body, which, so to speak, pours itself into the body, be separated out of this body. However strange it may sound, this other power is the power of speech, the power that we otherwise use in ordinary life when speaking.

What happens when we speak? Our thoughts live within us, our thoughts vibrate with our brain; this is connected to the speech apparatus, muscles are set in motion; what we experience inwardly flows out into the words and lives in the words. From the point of view of spiritual science, we must say that in speaking we pour out what is in our soul into physical organs. The detachment of the speech power from the physical-sensory body arises from the fact that the human being increases attention, as described, and adds something else – again, an activity that is usually already present and must also be increased to an unlimited degree. This power is devotion.

We know it in those moments when we feel religious, when we are devoted to this or that being in love, when we can follow things and their laws in strict research, when we can forget ourselves with all our feelings and thoughts. We know this devotion. It actually only flows between the lines of ordinary life. The spiritual researcher must increase this power to infinity; he must strengthen it without limit. He must indeed be able to give himself up to the stream of existence in such a way as he is otherwise only given up to this stream of existence – without doing anything himself to what he experiences – in deep sleep, when all the activity of his limbs rests, when all the senses are silent, when man is only completely given up and does nothing; but then he has lapsed into unconsciousness in his sleep. But if a person can bring himself by inner volition to do it again and again as an exercise for his soul, to suppress all sensory activity, to suppress all movement of the limbs, to transfer his physical-sensual life into a state that is otherwise only in deep sleep, but to remain awake, to keep his inner and develops the feeling of being poured into the stream of existence, wanting nothing but what the world wants with one: if he evokes this feeling again and again, but evokes it apart from attention, then the soul strengthens itself more and more.

But the two exercises - the one with attention and the one with devotion - must be done separately from each other; because they contradict each other. If attention requires the highest level of concentration on one object - deep meditation - then devotion, passive devotion to the flow of existence, requires an immense increase in the feeling that we find in religious experience or in other devotion to a loved one. The fruits that man draws from such an immeasurable increase of devotion and attention are precisely that he separates his spiritual-soul life from the physical-bodily. And so the power that otherwise pours into the word, that is activated by it not remaining within itself but setting the nerves in motion, this power can be separated from the outer speech activity and remain within itself in the soul-spiritual. In this way, the power of speech – we can call it that – is torn out of its sensual-physical context, and the person experiences what, in Goethe's words, can be called spiritual hearing, spiritual listening.

Once again, the human being experiences himself outside of his body, but now in such a way that he submerges himself in things and perceives the inner essence of things; but also perceives it in such a way that he recreates it within himself, as with an inner gesture, not just with a facial expression, but with an inner gesture, as with an inner gesture. The soul-spiritual, torn out of the body, is thus activated, as when we are tempted, through a special disposition in relation to our talent for imitation, to express through our gesture what occupies us. What is done only by special talents, the soul, which is torn out of the body, does in order to perceive. It plunges into things, and it actively recreates the forces that are at play within them. All this perception in the spiritual world is an activity in which one engages, and by perceiving the activity in which one has to place oneself, because one recreates the inner weaving and essence of things, one perceives these things. In the outer, sensory world, hearing is passive; we listen. Speaking and hearing flow together in spiritual hearing. We immerse ourselves in the essence of things; we hear their inner weaving. What Pythagoras called the music of the spheres is something that the spiritual researcher can truly achieve. He immerses himself in the things and beings of the spiritual world and hears, but also speaks by uttering. What one experiences is a speaking hearing, a hearing speaking in immersing oneself in the essence of things. It is true inspiration that arises.

And a third inner activity, a third kind of inner experience, can come over the spiritual researcher if he continues to develop increased attention and devotion. What occurs to and in the spiritual researcher as he experiences himself outside his body, I would like to discuss it in the following way.

Let us consider the child. I cannot speak about this in detail, I only want to hint at what is important for the purpose of today's lecture: it is a peculiarity of the growing human being that he must give himself his direction in space, that he must give himself the way in which he is placed in space, in the course of childhood. The human being is born unable to walk or stand, initially, as we say here in Austria, having to use all fours. Then he develops those inner powers that I would call powers of uprightness, and through this something comes to the fore in man that so many deeper minds have sensed in its significance by saying: because man can rise in the vertical direction, he knows how to direct his gaze out into the vastness of the celestial space, his gaze does not merely cling to earthly things. But the essential thing is that through inner forces, through inner strength and experience, man develops out of his helpless horizontal life, so to speak, into an upright vertical life. The scientist will readily understand that the inner activity of man is something quite different from the hereditary forces that give the animal its powers of orientation in the world. The forces at work in the animal that bring the animal in this or that direction to the vertical act quite differently in man, in whom a sum of forces is at work that pulls him out of his helpless situation and that works inwardly to instruct him in the direction of space through which he is actually an earthly man in the true sense of the word, through which he first becomes what he is as a human being on earth. These forces work very much in secret. One can only cope with them when one has already delved a little into spiritual science; but it is a whole system, a great sum of forces. They are not all used up in the childlike period of man, when he learns to stand and walk. There are still forces of this kind slumbering within man; but they remain unused in the outer life of the senses and in the outer life of science.

Through the exercises of increased attention and devotion performed by the soul, the human being becomes inwardly aware of how these forces that have raised him as a child are seated within him. He becomes aware of spiritual powers of direction and of spiritual powers of movement, and the consequence of this is that he is able to add to the inner mimic, to the inner play of the features, to the inner ability to make gestures, to the inner gesture, also the inner physiognomy of his spiritual and soul life. When the soul and spirit have emerged from the physical body, when a person begins to understand as a spiritual researcher what is meant by the words: 'You experience yourself in the soul and spirit' — then the time also comes when he becomes aware of the forces that have raised him up, that have placed him vertically on the earth as a physical, sensual being. He now applies these powers in the purely spiritual-soul realm, and this enables him to use these powers differently than he does in his ordinary life; he is able to give these powers other directions, to shape himself differently than he did in physical experience during his childhood. He now knows how to develop inner movements, knows how to adapt to all directions, knows how to give his spiritual self different physiognomies than as an earthly human being; he is able to delve into other spiritual processes and beings; he knows how to connect that he transforms the powers which otherwise change him from a crawling child to an upright human being, that he transforms these in the inner spiritual things and entities, so that he becomes similar to these things and entities and thus expresses them himself and perceives them through this. That is real intuition. For the real perception of spiritual entities and processes is an immersion in them, is an assumption of their own physiognomy. While one experiences the processes in the beings through inner mimicry, while one experiences the mobility of the spiritual beings by being able to recreate their gestures; one is now able to transform oneself into things and processes, one is able to take on the form of the spiritual, and in so doing one perceives it, that one has become it oneself, so to speak.

I did not want to describe to you in general philosophical terms the way in which the spiritual researcher enters into the spiritual worlds. I wanted to describe to you as concretely as possible how this spiritual-soul experience breaks away from the bodily, from physical-sensory perception, and submerges into the spiritual world by becoming active in it. But this has become evident, that every step into the spiritual world must be accompanied by activity, that we must know with every step that things do not reveal their essence to us, but that we can only know that about things and processes of the spiritual world, which we are able to recreate, to search for, by being able to behave actively perceptively. This is the great difference between spiritual knowledge and ordinary external knowledge: that external knowledge is passively surrendered to things, while spiritual knowledge must live in perpetual activity, man must become what he wants to perceive.

Even today, or one could also say, even today, one is forgiven when one speaks of a spiritual world in general. People still put up with that. But it still seems paradoxical in our time that someone can say: A person can detach themselves from all seeing, hearing, all sensory perceptions, all thinking that is tied to the nerves and brain, and then, while everything that is experienced in physical existence disappears completely before them, can feel surrounded, know that they are surrounded by a completely new, concrete world, indeed, by a world in which processes and beings are purely spiritual, just as processes and beings in the physical world are physical. Spiritual science is not a vague pantheism, it is not a general sauce of spiritual life. In the face of spiritual science, if one speaks only of a pantheistic spiritual being, it is as if one said: I lead you to a meadow, something sprouts there, that is nature; then one leads him into a laboratory and says: That is nature, pan-nature! All the flowers and beetles and trees and shrubs, all the chemical and physical processes: Pan-Nature! People would be little satisfied with such Pan-Nature; because they know that you can only get along if you can really follow the individual. Just as little as the external science speaks of Pan-Nature, just as little spiritual science speaks of a general spirit sauce; it speaks of real, perceptible, concrete spiritual processes and entities. It must not be afraid to challenge time by saying: Just as we, when we are in the physical world, first see people around us as physical beings among, one might say, the hierarchies of physical beings, of minerals, plants, animals and human beings, the same fades from our spiritual horizon when we immerse ourselves in the spiritual world; but spiritual realms and hierarchies emerge: beings that are initially the same as human beings, beings that are higher than human beings; and just as animals, plants and minerals descend from human beings in the physical world, there are beings and creatures ascending from human beings into higher realms of existence, individual, unique spiritual entities and creatures.

How the human soul places itself in the spiritual world, what its life is like within this spiritual world according to spiritual research, which in principle has been indicated today; how the human soul has to live in this spiritual world when it lays aside the physical body at death, when it traverses the path after passing through the gate of death, in a purely spiritual world, will be the subject of the day after tomorrow. The lecture the day after tomorrow will deal with individual insights of spiritual science about this life after death.

What spiritual science develops as its method – well, you notice it immediately – it differs very significantly from what our contemporaries can admit as such, based on the thought habits that have formed over the centuries and which are just as stuck in relation to this spiritual science as the thought habits of past centuries were stuck in relation to the Copernican world system. But how should spiritual science think about the search of our time if it wants to understand itself correctly and behave correctly towards this search of our time?

The first objection that can so easily be made from our time is that one says: Yes, the spiritual scientist speaks of the fact that the soul should first develop special powers; then it can look into the spiritual world. But for the one who has not yet developed these powers, who has not yet mastered the art of forming mental images, of separating thought, of separating the powers of speech, of separating the powers of spatial orientation, of separating the powers of orientation in the world of beings, the spiritual world would be of no concern to him! Such an objection is just like that of someone who would say: For someone who cannot paint, pictures are of no concern. — That would be a pity. Only someone who has learned to paint can paint pictures. But it would be sad if the only pictures a person who could paint could understand were those that had to do with the world of nature. Of course, only the painter can paint it; but when the picture stands before man, it is the case that the human soul has the very natural powers within itself to understand the picture, even if it is not able to paint it. And the human soul has a language within itself that connects it to the living art. Such is the case with spiritual science. Only he who has become a spiritual researcher himself can discover and describe the facts, processes and entities of the spiritual world; but when the spiritual researcher endeavors — as has been attempted today, for example, with regard to the spiritual scientific method — to clothe what he has researched in the spiritual world in the words of ordinary thoughts and ideas , then what he gives can be grasped by every soul, even if it has not become a spiritual researcher; if it can only do away with all that comes from contemporary education, from education that pretends to stand on the firm ground of natural science, but in truth does not stand on it at all, but only believes it. If only the soul can rid itself of all prejudices, if it can truly devote itself to the contemplation of a picture as impartially as the mind researcher knows how to tell, then the result of spiritual research can be understood by every soul. Human souls are predisposed to truth and to the perception of truth, not to the perception of untruth and falsity, if only they clear away all the debris that accumulates from prejudice. Deep within the human soul is a secret, intimate language, the language by which everyone at every level of education and development can understand the spiritual researcher, if only they want to.

But this is precisely what the spiritual scientist finds in the search of our time. In past centuries, people believed that they could only know something about the spiritual world through religious beliefs; in recent times, these souls have been able to believe that certain knowledge can only be built on external facts; in our time, souls do not yet know this in their superconsciousness, as one might say – what they can realize in concepts and ideas and feelings, it is not yet settled -, but for the spiritual researcher it is clear: we live in a time in which, in the depths of human souls, in those depths of which these souls themselves do not yet know much, longing for spiritual science, hope for this spiritual science, is being prepared. More and more it will be recognized that old prejudices must vanish. Especially in regard to thinking many things will be recognized. Thus there will still be many people today, especially those who believe themselves to be standing on firm philosophical ground, who will say: Has not Kant proved it, has not physiology proved it, that man cannot penetrate below the sense world with his knowledge? And now along comes a spiritual science that wants to refute Kant, wants to show that what modern physiology so clearly demonstrates is not correct! Yes, spiritual science does not even want to show that what Kant says from his point of view and what modern physiology says from its point of view is incorrect; but time, the still secret search of time, will learn that there is another point of view regarding right and wrong than the one we have become accustomed to. Let us see how the real practice of life – the practice of life that is the fruitful one – relates to these things.

Someone could prove by strict arguments that man with his eyes is incapable of seeing cells, for example. Such a line of argument could be quite correct, as correct as Kant's proof that man, with the abilities that Cart knows, cannot penetrate into the essence of things. Let us assume that microscopic research did not yet exist and it was proved that man cannot see the smallest particles. This may be correct. The proof can be absolutely conclusive in every respect and nothing could be said against the strict proof that man with his eyes cannot see the smallest partial organisms of the large organisms. But that was not the point in the real progress of research; there it was important to show, despite the correctness of this proof, that physical tools can be found, microscope, telescope and others, to achieve what cannot be achieved at all demonstrably if the abilities remain unarmed, which man has. Those are right who say: Human abilities are limited; but spiritual science does not contradict them, it only shows that there is a spiritual strengthening and reinforcement of the human powers of cognition, just as there is a physical strengthening, and that despite the correctness of the opposite train of thought, fruitful spiritual research must place itself precisely beyond such correctness and incorrectness. People will learn to no longer insist on what can be proved with the limited means of proof available; they will realize that life makes other demands on the development of humanity than what is sometimes called immediately and logically certain.

And another thing must be said if the real, not merely the imagined, search of the time is to be related to what spiritual research really has as its task, as its goal. Once again, reference may be made to the truly tremendous progress of natural science. It is not surprising, in view of these great and powerful advances in natural science, that there are minds today that believe they can build a world structure on the firm ground of natural science, which, however, does not reflect on such forces as have been discussed today. Today there is a widespread, I might say materialistically colored school of thought; but it calls itself somewhat nobler because the term 'materialistic' has fallen out of favor: the monistic school of thought. This monistic school of thought, whose head is certainly the important in his scientific field Ernst Haeckel and whose field marshal is Wilhelm Ostwald. This school of thought attempts to construct a world view by building on the insights that can be gained purely from the knowledge of nature. The search of the time will come to the following conclusion in relation to such an attempt: as long as natural science stops at investigating the laws of the outer sense existence, at visualizing the connections in this outer sense existence of the soul, as long as natural science stands on firm ground. And it has truly achieved a great thing; it has achieved the great thing of thoroughly extinguishing the light of life of old prejudices. Just as Faust himself stood before nature and resorted to an external, material magic, so today, anyone who understands science can no longer resort to such material magic. But it is something else that spiritual life itself, in the ways that have been characterized, imposes an inner magic on the soul. But against all these superstitious currents of thought, against everything that seeks to explain external nature in the same way that we might explain a clock, by saying that there are little spirits inside it, and against every explanation of nature that finds this or that being behind natural phenomena, natural science has achieved great things in negation, and as a worldview. And let us take a look at how the so-called scientific view of nature works, as long as the minds can deal with eliminating the old, unhealthy concepts of all kinds of spiritual beings that are invented behind nature. As long as a front can be made against such spiritual endeavors, a scientific worldview thrives on fighting what had to be fought.

But this fight has in a sense already passed its peak, has already done its good; and today the search of the time goes to ask: By what means can we build a world view in which the human soul has space in it? Since this scientific worldview, this Haeckel-Ostwald materialism fails completely when the person understands himself correctly. It will become more and more evident that the champions of the purely materialistic world-view, in their capacity as soldiers, are great in combating ancient superstition, but that they are like warriors who have done their duty and now have no talent for developing the arts of peace, for developing industry, for tilling the soil. Natural science should not be belittled when it becomes a world view in order to combat superstitious beliefs. As long as such world view thinkers can stop at the fight, they still have something in the fight in the soul that sustains them, but when the person then wants to build a real world view in which the soul has a place, then they are like the warrior who has no talent for the arts of peace. He stands before the question of his soul, let us say, in the peacetime of worldly life, and an image of the world does not build itself up.

Such a mood will assert itself more and more in the souls; the spiritual researcher can already see these moods in the depths of the souls. Where these souls know nothing about it, the longings for what spiritual research wants to bring to the world prevail. That is the secret of our time. But if, from a higher point of view, one might say, it is thoroughly in keeping with the times, this spiritual research world view is out of touch with many contemporaries who do not yet look deeply into what they themselves actually want. Therefore, this spiritual science initially brings a world view that is seen as if it does not stand on firm scientific ground. The other world view, that of so-called monism, wants to be built solely on the foundation of external science. This world view, one can see today from its reverse side, where it must lead if the soul really wants to see its hopes and longings fulfilled. In the activity of spiritual research, of which has been spoken, what really elevates the soul to the spiritual community arises for the soul, the spiritual world arises in perceptible activity, in active perception. Through spiritual science, man can again know of the true spiritual world, of spiritual reality. The so-called monistic world view has nothing to say about this. The spiritual search of our time.

But this seeking of our time, this seeking of human souls, cannot be suppressed, and so some of our contemporaries have already become accustomed to placing their thoughts about spiritual things within themselves in such a way that these thoughts run like scientific thoughts: that the external is observed in passive devotion. What has happened? The result is that a part of our contemporaries — those who occupy themselves with it, they know it — have fallen into the habit of wanting to look at the spiritual as one looks at the sensual. I am not saying that some things that are absolutely true cannot come about in this way; but the method of such an approach is different from that of spiritual science. What is called spiritualism wants to look at spiritual beings and processes externally, without active inner perception, without rising into the spiritual worlds, externally passively, as one looks at physical-sensory processes. Whose child is purely external, we may say materialistic spiritualism? It is the child of that school of thought that takes the so-called monistic point of view and succumbs to the superstition of materialism, the mere workings of external natural laws. What — some contemporary will say — spiritism, a child of Haeckel's genuine monism? — The search of the time will be convinced that it is just with this child as with other children. Many a father and mother has the most beautiful ideas about all the things that should develop in a child, and yet sometimes a real rascal can arise. What monism dreams of as a true cultural child is not important; what is important is what really arises. Mere belief in the material will produce the belief that spirits too can only operate and reveal themselves materially. And the more pure monistic materialism would grow, the more spiritualist societies and spiritualist views would flourish everywhere as the necessary counter-image. The more the blind adherents of the Haeckel and Ostwald direction will succeed in pushing back true spiritual science in matters of world view, the more they will see that they will cultivate spiritualism, the other side of true spiritual research. As firmly as the spiritual researcher stands on the ground of the researchable, the knowable, the knowable spiritual life, he can no more follow the method that wants to materialize the spirit and passively surrender to what is spirit, while one can only experience it in the active.

But I would also like to characterize the quest of our time, which cannot yet be understood in terms of another. A man who deserves a certain amount of esteem as a philosopher has written a curious essay in a widely read journal. In it he writes, for example, that Spinoza and Kant are quite difficult for some people to read. You read yourself into them; but the concepts just wander around and swirl around – well, it is certainly not to be denied that it is so for many people when they want to read themselves into Kant or Spinoza, that the concepts swirl around in confusion. But the philosopher gives advice on how this could be done differently, in line with the search of our time. He says: Today we have a device, a technical advance, through which what is presented to the soul in the merely abstract thoughts of Kant and Spinoza can be brought to the soul quite vividly, so that one can passively surrender to it in perception. The philosopher wants to show in a kind of cinematograph how Spinoza sits down, first grinds glass, how then the idea of expansion comes over him - this is shown in changing pictures. The picture of expansion changes into the picture of thinking and so on. And so the whole ethics and world view of Spinoza could be vividly constructed in a cinematographic way. The outer search of the time would thus be taken into account. It is remarkable that the editor of the journal in question even made the following comment: “In this way, the age-old metaphysical need of man could be met by an invention that some people consider to be a gimmick, but which is very much in keeping with the times.

Now, from a certain point of view, it might be entirely appropriate to the search of our time, but only on the surface, if one could read Spinoza's “Ethics” or Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason” in front of the cinematograph. Why not? It would take into account the passive devotion that is so popular today. It is so loved that one cannot believe that the spiritual must have a reality into which one can only find one's way by taking every step with it. That one expresses in oneself, in one's spiritual soul, what the essence of things is, that our time does not yet love. Let us take a look at a billboard! Let us try to guess the thoughts of the people standing in front of it. Not many people will go to a lecture where there are no slides, but only reflections that the souls also create the thoughts that are put forward, as opposed to a lecture where spiritual and psychological matters are supposedly demonstrated in slides, where one only has to passively surrender.

Anyone who looks into the search of our time, where it asserts its deepest, still unconscious hopes and longings, knows that in the depths of the soul, the urge for activity still rests; the urge to find itself again as a soul in full activity. The human soul can only be free, with a secure inner hold, if it can develop inner activity. The human soul can only find its way and find its bearings in life by becoming conscious of itself, by realizing that it is not only that which is passively given to it by the world, but by knowing that it is present when it is able to experience in activity; and of the spiritual world it can only perceive that of which it is able to take possession in activity. In reflecting on what spiritual science offers, the process of comprehension must develop into active participation; but in this way spiritual science becomes a satisfaction of the deepest, subconscious impulses in the souls of the present, and in this way it meets the most intimate search of our time. For with regard to the things touched on here, our time is a time of transition. It is easy to say, even trivial, that we live in a time of transition, because every time is a time of transition. Therefore, it is always correct to say that we live in a time of transition. But if one emphasizes that one lives in a time of transition, it depends much more on what any given time is in transition from. If we now want to describe our time in its transition, we have to say: it was necessary - because only through this could the natural sciences and what has been achieved through them come about - that for centuries humanity went through an education towards passivity; because only in this way, through devotion to materialistic truths, could it be achieved what had to be achieved, especially in the field of natural science. But the fact is that life unfolds in rhythms. Just as a pendulum swings up and then swings down again, swinging to the opposite side, so too must the human soul, when it has been educated in a justifiable way for a period of time to be faithfully and passively devoted, pull itself together again in order to find itself again; in order to take hold of itself, it must pull itself together to become active. For what has it become through passivity? Well, what it has become through passivity, I will say it unashamedly with a radical-sounding sentence that will certainly sound much too paradoxical to many. But on the other hand, it is precisely the assimilation of spiritual science that shows, as it actually is only the fact, that one does not pull oneself together to face the consequences of the scientific world view if one does not emphasize this radical result. They lack the courage to draw the real consequences, even those who claim to stand solely and exclusively on the ground of what true science yields. If they had this consistency, then one would hear strange words murmured through the seeking of the time.

The Old Testament documents begin with words – I do not want to talk about their inner meaning today; everyone may take the words as they can take them; some may consider them to be an image, others an expression of a fact: everyone can agree on what I have to say about these words – the words are: “You shall be as God, knowing – or discerning – good and evil!” The words resound in our ears, from the beginning of the Old Testament. However you look at it, you have to admit that it expresses something momentous for human nature and the human soul. It is attributed to the tempter, who approaches man and whispers in his ear: “If you follow me, you will be like a god and distinguish good from evil.” It will be possible to surmise that the inclination not only towards good would not express itself in man without this temptation; that without this temptation the inclination would have arisen only towards good, so that all human freedom is in some way connected with what these words express. But they do express that man was, as it were, invited by the tempter to look beyond himself as a different being from what he is: to behave like a god towards good and evil. As I said, however you may think about these words and the tempter, I am certainly not demanding today that you immediately accept him as a real being – although it is quite true for those who see through things, the word: “The devil is never felt by the people, even when he has them by the collar.” But he who is able to eavesdrop a little on the search of the time, hears today in this search of the time his whispering again. It is drawing near. Call it a voice of the soul or whatever you will: there it is — it can be said without any superstition. And for those who have the courage to draw the final consequences of a purely scientific worldview, it brings forth words of great peculiarity, of a strange wisdom. It is just that the people who claim to be on the basis of pure science do not have the courage to draw the final conclusion. They do include in their feelings and thoughts the belief in a distinction between good and evil, which they would actually have to deny if they wanted to be purely on the basis of science. It is a fact that as soon as one places oneself on the ground of mere natural science, not only does the sun shine equally on good and evil, but according to the laws of nature, evil is performed from human nature just as much as good. And so he, the tempter, drawing the conclusion, whispers to man: Don't you see, you are just like highly developed animals. You are like animals and cannot distinguish between good and evil. — This is what makes our time a time of transition, that the tempter speaks to us again in our time with the opposite voice to that with which he spoke according to the Old Testament: You are only developed animals and so, if you understand yourselves, you cannot make any distinction between good and evil.

If one had the courage to be consistent, it would be the expression of a pure, passively surrendered worldview. That time be spared from this voice – let it be said merely figuratively – that knowledge of spiritual life be brought into the seeking of the time: that is the task, that is the goal of spiritual science. Those who still fight against this spiritual science today from the standpoint of some other science will have to realize that this fight is like the fight against Copernicanism. Now that we are also being noticed more in the world through the building of our School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, which used to ignore us, the voices of our opponents are growing louder. And when I recently objected in the writing: “What is spiritual science and how is it treated by its opponents” that the opponents of spiritual science today stand on the same point of view as the opponents of Copernicus, one who felt affected rightly said: Yes, the only difference would be that what Copernicus said are facts, while spiritual science only puts forward assertions. He does not realize, the poor man, that for people of his mind the facts of Copernicanism at that time were also nothing more than assertions, empty assertions, and he does not realize that today he calls empty assertions what, before real research, are facts, albeit facts of spiritual life. And so one can find objections raised by both the scientific and religious communities regarding this spiritual science. Just as people said at the time of Copernicus, “We cannot believe that the Earth revolves around the Sun, because it is not in the Bible,” so people today say, “We do not believe what spiritual science has to say, because it is not in the Bible.” But people will come to terms with what spiritual science has to say, as they came to terms with what Copernicus had to say.

And again and again we must remember a man who was both a deeply learned man and a priest, who worked at the local university and who, when he gave his rector's speech about Galileo, spoke the beautiful words: At that time, the people who believed that religious ideas were being shaken stood against Galileo; but today – as this scholar said at the beginning of his rectorate – today the truly religious person knows that every new truth that is researched adds a piece to the original revelation of the divine governance of the world and to the glory of the divine world order. Thus one would like to make the opponents of spiritual science aware of something that could well have been, even if it was not really so. Let us assume that someone had stepped forward before Columbus and said: We must not discover this new land, we live well in the old land, the sun shines so beautifully there. Do we know whether the sun also shines in the newly discovered land? So it is that those who believe their religious feelings disturbed by the discoveries of spiritual science appear to the spiritual scientist in the face of his religious ideas. He must have a shaky religious concept, a weak faith, who can believe that the sun of his religious feeling will not shine on every newly discovered country, even in the spiritual realm, just as the sun that shines on the old world also shines on the new world. And anyone who faces the facts impartially can be sure that this is so. But in its quest, when time becomes more and more imbued with spiritual science, it will be touched by it in a way that many today still cannot even dream of.

Spiritual science still has many opponents, understandably so. But in this spiritual science one does feel in harmony with all those spirits of humanity who, even if they have not yet had spiritual science, have sensed those connections of the human soul with the spiritual worlds that are revealed through spiritual science. In particular, with regard to what has been said about the new word of the tempter, one feels in harmony with Schöller and his foreboding of the spiritual world. Through his own scientific studies, Schiller has gained the impression that he has to lift man out of mere animality and that the human soul has a share in a spiritual world. On the soil of spiritual science, one feels in deep harmony with a leading spirit of the newer development of world-views when one can summarize, as in a feeling, what today wants to be expressed with broader sentences, with the words of Schiller:

Now the dull barrier of animality fell,
And humanity stepped onto the cloudless brow!
And the exalted stranger, the thought,
Leaped out of the amazed brain!

In confirmation that animality receded and that the human being belongs to a spiritual world, in confirmation of such sentences, spiritual science today stands before the quest of our time.

The expansion, the strengthening, the securing of this innermost essence, this spiritual inner essence of the soul, is to be offered to the search of the time through spiritual science.

Dear attendees! The word “knowledge” undoubtedly evokes in people the feeling that it is something that is purposefully and coherently connected with the whole human destiny in life. And intimately connected with this feeling is the realization that by acquiring knowledge, man provides himself with a position within his existence and within the whole of human development that corresponds to his true destiny, to his goals.

Now, in the fields of knowledge that are connected with the study of nature, and perhaps also with the study of certain branches of human life, we can very soon see that they provide us with laws, that they show us certain forces of natural or other effectivenesses, through which we are able to intervene in life. We need only consider how, in certain respects, our knowledge of nature makes us masters of the forces of nature, how the laws of nature that we recognize enable us to equip ourselves with tools and devices that enhance life and advance man in existence. And when we allow the most remote fields of knowledge to come to mind, we will feel the connection somewhere between the laws that we acquire through knowledge and the actions through which we enhance our lives in a useful, purposeful way. Thus, when it comes to knowledge that can be directly implemented in our actions and behavior, we readily understand that they do not merely satisfy our curiosity, do not merely correspond to a certain urge to act, but that they arise from the much higher urge to shape life and existence ever more perfectly and completely. Thus, we gain the feeling that these insights have a certain mission, a task in our lives.

Now everyone knows that there are other fields of knowledge in which, when we think of this mission, it comes to mind to an even greater degree, which we can call human dignity and human destiny, humanity and human fulfillment. But these are insights that – in the way just described – are not directly applicable to the purposes and goals of practical life. These are insights that one says one acquires for their own sake. Man feels that he has an urge to explore and recognize the secrets of existence; he feels that knowledge is simply enlightening. It is something that satisfies the soul even if it cannot apply this knowledge directly, so to speak, cannot forge it into external instruments and tools or into actions of daily life that are related to external human goals.

A realization for its own sake, a realization that grows out of a deep need of the human soul and that should satisfy the human being through itself - such a realization is sought by the human being, and he seeks it all the more the deeper the inner needs of his soul develop. He seeks it perhaps less when he feels immersed in a life that drifts from event to event, from sensation to sensation, from work to work in everyday life. He may seek them less when life distracts him and keeps him fully occupied by his external demands. But especially in those moments when a person - perhaps not even of his own volition, but through those events and experiences that tear us out of everyday life - can be still within himself, that is when the urge for such different insights awakens. There are perhaps hours in which man suffers great losses in life, moments when perhaps what is most precious to him is snatched away, when he believes he must see his hopes for life fail. These are moments when a longing awakens in the soul that can never be satisfied by the outer life. And it is people who have this need for knowledge who gradually come to deepen their soul life more and more. Such people then begin to realize, initially through mere feeling, through sensation, that insights that are far removed from the everyday can act as a source of courage and strength where a person becomes weak, indeed that such insights can act as a balm where the soul is desolate and full of pain. Yes, then the soul can develop to a point where it feels that it would not want to live without such knowledge, that existence seems worthless and bleak without such knowledge.

When pondering such an experience of the human soul, the thought may arise: If one already feels that everyday knowledge, for example knowledge of nature or knowledge of the laws of human coexistence or the like, only fulfills its purpose when it not only satisfies the curiosity of our brain, but when it also inspires the strength of our hands and cause us to stir our hands in earthly existence, then one might ask, with what tasks of man, with what goals, are the other insights connected, which one so easily thinks are there for their own sake and find no direct practical confirmation? Do such insights have no task at all, to intervene in human life and to stimulate something that leads to deeds, to actions? That is the big question that one can ask oneself about knowledge and its task in life.

If one is aware of how the soul, in its state of dissatisfaction with the external existence, feels the necessity of knowledge, if one thus gains a certain insight that this intimate knowledge can become necessary for the innermost being of our soul, then one will think that such knowledge, which extends beyond the immediate external life, must be connected with the highest qualities, with the highest aspirations of our humanity, in other words with the essence of the human being itself. And one will soon notice that one must seek the connection between what man calls knowledge in the higher sense and the actual essence of man. But then one will have to organize one's search for knowledge after such an insight has been gained. One will say to oneself: You have to organize the search in such a way that consideration is given to the deepest, innermost nature of the human being. Anyone who believes that all existence is exhausted in the external sense world alone, that all science is exhausted in the knowledge we gain through rational processing of external sense phenomena, in short, anyone who believes that external observation of life and science directed at external being can be the only science, will be ill-equipped to provide answers to the question just raised.

Another science, the so-called spiritual science or “theosophy” - if one wants to use this much-abused and much-misunderstood term - gives us the possibility to answer this question little by little. This science refers to the spiritual, to that which goes beyond the sensual world; it is dedicated to research that alone can lead us to the essence of man. With the help of this science, one can feel that the innermost being of man comes from the spirit and that what is best in us - our true governing being - is spiritual. Only spiritual science can explore this innermost part of our being, and so we can also hope that through this spiritual science we can gain knowledge of the real nature of man and that in this way we can find the mysterious foundation that otherwise only manifests itself in life through a dark feeling that says: I want knowledge that gives me something that everything else cannot give me.

Spiritual science certainly follows different methods and seeks different paths than ordinary external science, but in our time there is still little inclination to see it as anything other than the eccentric or sad aberrations of individuals. It is not yet recognized in wide circles that this spiritual science works with the same strict means of knowledge as the natural sciences, that it applies the same strict means of knowledge, but only to a different area, thus not to the outer natural life, but to the spiritual life. In the course of this lecture we shall be able to point out some of the things that lead man into the spiritual world and the methods by which man can gain insight into the other, the supersensible world. But we want to take the starting point from the everyday. Through rational ascent from everyday life, and thus also from mere reason, one can indeed get some kind of inkling of a possibility to gain knowledge of the spiritual world.

How does this manifest itself in the outer life of the human being? Let us take the human being at four significant points, two of which we are usually unaware of because we experience them as a matter of course. But there are two other things that intervene in each life, one questioningly and the other shockingly. These four things are referred to as waking and sleeping, as living and dying. In these four words lies basically all the mystery of human life. Those who are able to obtain satisfactory explanations will see that the darkness of life becomes light and clear. Waking and sleeping alternate in our everyday life. From waking up to falling asleep, impressions arise in our soul that we owe to our mind. We know that during the state of sleep we shut ourselves off from pleasure and suffering, from instinct and desire. Thus we see our life unrolling from waking up to falling asleep. Then, as we fall asleep, we see all the experiences and activities of the soul descend into an indeterminate darkness. All perceptions and representations sink down. We are as if overcome by a faint; we cease to be connected to our environment. We feel transported from the conscious into the unconscious.

What actually happens when a person experiences this moment of falling asleep? Only an opinion that does not follow the laws of logic can believe that the whole world that sinks into darkness in the evening is reborn in the morning, that everything that a person has left behind in the physical world is reborn. Everyone must ask themselves the question: Where is that which is thought, intended, and felt during the day, what is felt as the power to take action? It is not difficult to see that what we can describe as the actual inner being of a person, what we feel as an inner drive, cannot simply have disappeared [when we fall asleep] and has to arise anew [after waking up]. It is therefore not difficult to understand what the spiritual researcher must say based on his research. He says: That which remains in bed, this human being, is not the whole human being. This human being, who sleeps at night, has released from himself that which, during the day, constitutes the innermost being. How is it that one does not see and cannot observe that which goes out? Everyone can give themselves the answer: You can observe it just as little as a blind man can observe colors. He who maintains that there is nothing that leaves the body and is outside of it at night is like the blind man who says, “Ah, what are you saying about your foolish fantasies, about red and blue colors; that does not exist!” What you do not perceive does not exist.

Of course, only spiritual science can explore what eludes the senses. But a certain beginning is sometimes made by everyday consciousness, albeit only in certain abnormal states of human life. There are experiences that actually every human being could have, that he has more often than he realizes, but they only last for a short time and are therefore not noticed by most people because the external impressions have too numbing an effect on the soul. A certain practice and inner calmness of soul, a special training for spiritual research, is needed if a person is to have such moments. There are people who have such moments and describe how, at the moment of falling asleep, they can experience something that is not usually experienced. Just as chemists describe some chemical process, so observers in this field describe what they experience at the moment of falling asleep.

They experience, as it were, a kind of alienation from everything they do in their sensory life. They experience the powerlessness to move their hands, they feel the powerlessness to move their tongue; they feel how the senses gradually lose the ability to interact with the outside world. And then, in a particularly embarrassing way, the person feels, with severe self-reproach, all the mistakes and wrongdoings they have committed. And then comes the moment when a kind of experience occurs that is aware of being free from the necessity of external sensory perception, but which is not unconscious, but feels that the soul is in the spiritual world: this is a subjective feeling. There is a stronger light, greater clarity, than can ever be present in the external sensory life. A blissful moment of feeling free occurs. Then, for those who are ordinary observers, there follows what appears to be a quick twitch, of which one is aware: Now that which during the day had passed through the hands and feet to work, which had lived in the eyes, which had lived in the brain, has now detached itself. But then what one might call a transition into unconsciousness occurs. A brief, intense feeling arises, combined with the wish: Oh, if only this moment could last forever!

These experiences are just as much facts as any others. They should not be dismissed by saying that only a few people have such experiences, that they have a special subjective ecstasy in their soul because they have an abnormal mental life. These doubts cannot be refuted unless one says: Yes, but spiritual science, on the other hand, knows from its own means and methods that it is right when it says: I cannot prove it, only certain people experience it; you too can experience it yourself if you methodically try to spread inner balance in your soul through completely normal means of education. One would not get very far, however, if one could only cite such rarities of human observational ability. What alone can lead to research and science in this field is the methodical schooling through which man can really achieve what makes him capable of consciously experiencing falling asleep almost as if by chance. If such a science is to come into being, it must be possible not only to rely on such abnormal rarities, but also to really experience, systematically and with full consciousness of the soul, what occurs almost by chance. That is, it must be possible to see, perceive and explore this emergence of the real inner being of the human being, preventing the human being from being unable to observe it precisely when he wants to perceive what is free of his body, because he is unconscious.

So how is it possible to get to know what a person otherwise only experiences unconsciously – the spiritual world in which he finds himself [during sleep]? If what is presented comparatively like [the experience of] a blind person born who gains his sight through an operation could be achieved at a higher level, if it were true that there are forces in the soul that cannot emerge in the outer body but that man and that can be brought out through certain methods - self-discipline and schooling of the soul - then the moment of a higher, spiritual power of vision could occur, and then it could be that the human being could experience that of which he must say: I know that there is a spiritual world.

This possibility exists if a person continues to do what we have emphasized as a natural prerequisite: instilling calm and inner balance in the soul. And if we do more and more in our soul to enable it to have experiences that it does not receive through external impressions, then we enable the soul to perceive for itself. I can only describe everything here briefly, but in my essays “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my book “Occult Science: An Outline of Its Principles” you will find a more detailed discussion. It is certainly no fairy tale, but can be confirmed by those who have achieved it, that the human soul is able to consciously experience the moment of falling asleep in the midst of everyday life. This can be characterized by the words: We can induce that moment when we consciously and deliberately suppress external impressions, when we withdraw with our perception from what makes an impression on us as light, color and sound, as warmth and cold, even as pressure and impact, as pain and joy. If we are able, through a strong willpower, to command all external impressions to stand still, then we are also able to make our soul consciously as empty as we make it empty when we sink into the unconsciousness of sleep. It is true that the one who arouses the strong will to consciously switch off external impressions comes to consciously live through a state in which, although it is empty of the expression of his soul, it is nevertheless permeated and interwoven on the inside by what we can call inner activity, inner awareness that we are something and that we can do something. However, what has been emphasized so far by such efforts leads to an empty soul, which is not unconscious, but whose consciousness is contracted into the basic feeling: You are there, but have nothing in you; you have yourself, but there is nothing in you.

A second step is necessary if man is to penetrate into the spiritual worlds. It is necessary that he should no longer remain empty in his soul. If nothing could penetrate into his soul, then there would be no means at all by which man could ever be brought to the conviction of a spiritual world in the scientific sense. If in such an experiment, which excludes external impressions, the soul remained completely empty, then that would be actual proof that the external sense world is the be-all and end-all of all existence. But anyone who wants to become a spiritual researcher continues this work of self-discipline and education of his soul, and now tries, through strong will, to evoke such ideas that can be called symbolic ideas, which do not depict external things but have other properties. When a person devotes himself to meditation and contemplation, he will feel and experience that these ideas evoke feelings and sensations from the depths of his soul just as external impressions evoke pleasure and displeasure.

When a person is alone with himself, when he allows strong, powerful images to live in his soul that do not mean anything external, then, with sufficient patience - sometimes it takes years - he can experience through experience that something is pushing into his soul that he knows for sure is reality. Then he begins to experience a different, higher world, then he enters the supersensible world. And he will keep going further and further with his observation. When he falls asleep, he can observe what now withdraws from the physical body and enters the spiritual world and reality and what, from the moment of falling asleep until waking up, is surrounded by the place from which man's original home originates – he is surrounded by the spiritual world. Then, through his methodical research, so regulated by his soul, the realization springs forth that man, with his actual inner being, withdraws from his outer man when he falls asleep, that he lives on in the spiritual world and that he, when he wakes up, again descends into the outer physical body.

When spiritual researchers present us with these facts, just as a chemical or physical truth is presented to us, we may ask: Is there nothing in life that can make the matter clearer and more distinct? Let us examine life to see if it confirms what the spiritual researcher says. Certainly, the majority of people today have the right to say: Well, we are not spiritual researchers; there may be some who can claim such a thing, but one would still have to find confirmation of what has been said in life. Therefore, let us examine life, assuming that something could help to confirm the researcher's statements.

We see that life proceeds in such a way that a person comes into existence through birth and leaves existence through death. We see that life alternates between sleeping and waking. We ask: Is there an inner meaning, a lawful significance, to the fact that a person always alternates between waking and sleeping? Well, ordinary phenomena of everyday life could make a person aware that it must have a significance. I do not take into consideration the hypotheses of natural science, but neither am I opposed to natural science. That which is to be derived from spiritual science is in perfect harmony with the facts of the most modern natural science. This the spiritual researcher can always show. One must only not confuse opinions of natural science with facts of natural science. Opinions are often in sharp contradiction to facts. Unfortunately, there is not enough time today to go into this in more detail. One phenomenon that can point to the meaningfulness of sleep is clearly evident to us every day: the phenomenon of fatigue. People tire and feel in their fatigue that their strength is waning. When they wake up, they feel how, as it were, the forces that enable them to live their lives from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep draw in and flow into them. Man could never make up for what he has lost through fatigue if he always remained in his physical body. Only by entering into another world in the evening, into the original home of his soul, can he draw from this original home the forces that he pours into his physical body in the morning, through which he balances out the forces he used the day before. The scientific hypothesis regarding fatigue will not be touched upon here. It is spiritual forces alone that we must pour into ourselves if we want to balance what we lose in the physical world, the sense world. We can never find these forces in the sense world itself. Man can fatally make acquaintance with the fact that he can never get the forces out of the sense world when he realizes what it means when sleep does not have a balancing effect. So we need sleep to dive into the spiritual reservoirs from which we draw the strength to live.

We have seen what a person brings with them when they wake up from sleep. But what do they take with them into sleep? These are the facts that take place between birth and death and which we include in the word: we develop into ever new states, into ever different abilities. What enables us to develop new abilities in later epochs of life? Take the fact that we can write, that we can express our thoughts in writing. Do we remember how we acquired the ability to hold a pen, for example? It would be bad if we were to consciously remember all the practice that was necessary to achieve this. We have a whole sum of experiences behind us that are no longer present to us, only in the form that they have enabled us to write as a result. The experiences have poured into the ability to write. What we have experienced in the physical world has - contracted - formed the ability that now wells up from within. What has happened there?

This can be gauged from a simple phenomenon that manifests itself in someone who, for their job, has to learn a lot by heart. Everyone will notice that they can only learn very poorly if they try to memorize and cram as much as possible in a row. But it will go better if a healthy sleep interrupts it; this will have a strengthening effect and will expand what we have learned and what we have acquired at an earlier point in time. When it comes to something as close to our soul as memorization, we notice how significantly the state of sleep is involved. Anyone who observes this will no longer be able to doubt what the spiritual researcher says. During sleep, what has been experienced during the day is transformed into ability and strength. The spiritual researcher shows us how this is the case in all areas of life. We would not learn to write if we were not able to draw the experiences of learning to write into ourselves again and again and to transform them into abilities during the state between falling asleep and waking up. In his primal home, the human being finds the strength to transform life experiences into abilities, to weave them around.

We see that the human being does indeed take something from everyday life into his sleep. He takes in what he appropriates in the sensual world so that he can activate his strengths, so that he can work fruitfully, because that is where experiences are woven into abilities. Today we know little of such things. But there were times in the development of humanity when the guides of humanity knew such secrets and expressed them in those poems that are not everyday poems but prove their worth by their effect over thousands of years. In art that is truly worthy of the name, the deepest, most truthful knowledge is at work.

Let us assume that a poet, knowing that the experiences of physical life are transformed into abilities during sleep, had wanted to express how someone prevents the soul from acquiring a certain ability, a certain power. He would have wanted to show, for example, how one could prevent the ability to love from developing. He would describe a person who ensures that what the external experiences of the day send into [the sleep] and what is woven into the night is again undone, dissolved. Homer wanted to give such a description when he showed how Penelope, Odysseus' wife, was surrounded by suitors who did everything to make her develop the ability to love them. But she prevented it by undoing what she had woven during the day at night.

I know full well that a light-footed contemporary aesthetic, which believes that it can grasp all the secrets of art from a certain obvious understanding, will perceive this as the pinnacle of interpretation. But that is not the point. Rather, it is about something else: anyone who penetrates the human spirit will recognize that the great artists have placed great secrets in their works of art and that these works of art have had an effect on the souls and hearts of people from era to era. So much for the illustration of what has been said about the meaning of waking and sleeping.

We must therefore say that a person progresses in life when he is able to develop abilities through sleep that he did not have before and that he can now utilize in the sensory world in order to live a meaningful and spirited life; thus, the human being is endowed with new abilities for his activity. The experiences are transformed by the fact that he can move into the spiritual original home of the soul, which one enters through the gate of sleep. All perfection depends on the human being transforming the experiences of the sense world into abilities through his connection with the spiritual world, in order to then pour the experiences into his outer being in the morning.

Everything that has been described now naturally has limitations. We can bring these limitations to mind when we think of certain tendencies and qualities that a person brings with them into existence at birth for their outer physicality and corporeality. In relation to certain forces that are connected to our innermost being, we can perfect ourselves through what we experience. However, the nature of our body sets a limit to this. And no matter how high our abilities become through our experiences, we cannot transform these experiences if we find limits to our outer body, because it is part of this process that abilities developed by the soul as powers connect with the whole configuration of the body. After all, the body is always the same when we wake up in the morning. We can only express the abilities that relate to the external body. We can influence these to a certain degree.

You can realize this if you consider what becomes apparent when you observe a person for ten years and follow how they work through ten years of insights [into the physical body]. Everything that can be called inner battles and victories and sometimes also inner decline or downfall lives in this. In someone who, for example, has completed the realization in himself over ten years, you can see how such realization, how such transformation of the soul pushes into the outer body, how it comes to expression in the physiognomy, in the gaze, and how, in fact, the person is able to process this into his body where the soul permeates the body so strongly. But if one sees that someone has had the opportunity to have experiences in the field of music, and [believes] that he could simply use these experiences to advance not only in terms of musical feeling but also of musical understanding and musical activity, then one must say that it is impossible for him to infuse this ability into his body from the experiences if he has an unmusical ear organization. Here we see the limits set to us in the fine structure of the organs of our outer body; they exist because we depend on descending into the same body every morning.

The question must be raised: Are such experiences, which find their limit in the transformation into abilities in the outer body, without significance for the life and development of the human being? We cannot answer this question if we stop within the life between birth and death. We can only answer it if we go out with the deep insights of spiritual science to what lies beyond the mysterious gate that we pass through at death. And just as we have tried to make plausible to ourselves from spiritual science that man does not go into a nothingness of unconsciousness [during sleep], but into a spiritual world, so we can ask: What happens to man when he passes through the gate of death and does not return to his corporeality? External science will not be able to pursue him; but spiritual science can. It arrives at a lawful connection which even today affects so many people that they regard it as fantasy, as folly, perhaps as madness: the law of re-embodiment, of repeated lives on earth - which is nothing other than the development of the realization that the soul and spirit can only come from the soul and spirit.

A few centuries ago, learned researchers still claimed that earthworms and fish could arise from river mud. With the same certainty, it was taught even earlier, in the 6th and 7th centuries, that new life would grow out of matter in a putrefying state. If you beat a horse carcass until it was mushy, then the matter would be able to grow bees out of itself, and if you did that with an ox carcass, then it would be able to sprout hornets and wasps out of itself. It was only in the 17th century that Francesco Redi taught that living things can only arise from living things. And that means nothing other than: If someone claims that living things arise from river mud, this can only be claimed as a result of inaccurate observation. But it must also be said that it is only due to inaccurate observation when we see a person come into existence through birth and believe that he acquires all the characteristics and traits from his ancestors. A close observation shows that the soul and spirit only comes from another soul and spirit, which struggles into existence and attracts the substances and fluids of its surroundings, thereby developing. Thus, the soul-spiritual comes from another soul-spiritual and has nothing to do with the inherited characteristics of the body. So when a child comes into existence, its soul-spiritual must be traced back to another soul-spiritual. It has nothing to do with the line of ancestors. The child receives its facial features and so on from its father and mother. But in the same way, we are led from the spiritual soul of the child to an earlier spiritual soul, because we will not be led from the spiritual soul of the child to the characteristics of the ancestors. Thus, spiritual science points us back to our own previous life on earth.

So we are talking about repeated lives on earth. This present life is the repetition of countless previous lives and is a prerequisite for the future. This law of repeated lives on earth plays the same role today as Redi's law did in the 17th century. At that time, Redi narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. Today, anyone who speaks of the law of re-embodiment is considered to be just as much a heretic as Redi was for those who wanted to hold on to the old ways. At that time, burning heretics was fashionable. Today it is fashionable to condemn as fools and fantasists those who teach new laws. But it will be the same with the law of repeated earth lives as with the law of Redi. There will come a time when people will not be able to understand how anyone could ever have believed that a person inherited his abilities only from his ancestors. Goethe says about himself:

From my father I have the stature,
the serious conduct of life,
from my mother the cheerful nature,
and the desire to tell stories.
[...]
What then in the whole creature
can be called original?

Try to see if you can separate out what is original and what he has acquired from the line of inheritance, in order to preserve those qualities by which he means something to humanity.

Thus we see that we have the prospect of a law that seeks to incorporate human culture and human education – a law that may still be called fantastic today, but which will later be said to be: It cannot be grasped how people could ever have believed that something other than the development of humanity existed in the sense of this law. If we understand life in this way, we can ask: What do we do with the experiences that we cannot transform into abilities within the limits of our physicality? What do we do if we have wanted to acquire musical abilities through musical experiences in life and have found limits to an unmusical ear? When we pass away, we discard our physical body and live in a purely spiritual world, where we now spend the entire time between death and a new birth preparing to be able to bring completely different, higher abilities into life through the new birth. Now we have the opportunity to build a new body for ourselves, to work with it and to shape it plastically into our new physicality. Then, with regard to the new birth, we must now make provisions for the shaping of our new body in such a way that we convert into abilities in the new life what was neglected in the previous life, and that we convert into ever higher forms through changing conditions that which we cannot use for our perfection. Thus we truly progress from life to life. Although we may suffer setbacks due to other influences, life as a whole is still ascending, and what we utilize in later lives is productive, creative and constructive for our being.

We may ask: What are the most important, meaningful abilities that a person can acquire? We look at the lives of those individuals who stand more clearly visible to humanity than others. Consider the creations of a great artist, a Raphael or a Michelangelo. Such creations have arisen through interaction with the external world. It is the victory over matter that speaks to us from the walls, elevating our souls and bringing us satisfaction. But then we turn our gaze to other facts, for example to Leonardo's painting “The Last Supper”. Goethe saw it in all its beauty in his youth, but now it has been destroyed. When we consider this, the thought that is undoubtedly true will surely suggest itself. Everything that great men have conjured into such works is doomed to destruction, condemned to the fate of descending. And a time will come when all these works will be crushed to dust. But if everything is doomed to destruction and will have disappeared, will nothing of what held sway on earth be saved into eternity?

We need only realize that Raphael and Michelangelo became different after they had conjured up these works. Not only does something arise that is communicated to the outer world, but something also enters the human soul. While working in the outer world, something connects with the soul and transforms it. What is reworked is connected with this soul, and if we really penetrate the principles of re-embodiment, we say to ourselves: May the works that Raphael has conjured up into the physical world disappear – the ability remains and will ignite new abilities in a new existence, and these will lead people ever further from step to step. Thus we see that the fruit of our labor extends through various embodiments. Even if our outer work disappears, what connects it to the soul will live on with that soul. Souls will preserve the fruits of their creations. The creations will perish, but the soul fruits of these creations live on in the souls. But what are the deepest, most intimate abilities? They are those that enable people to conjure up what gives millions of souls pleasure and can be transformed into works of art and of life. Such abilities are connected with the outer aspects of our lives.

But there is something in human life that is interwoven with the inner essence of our soul; there is something that we know has a different effect on us than what could be called an urge or an impulse, for my part the impulse from which Raphael painted his pictures. Instincts work in us, but we feel that instincts also have something in them that can be called talent. Instincts are changeable, something indefinite for man, where man is not completely there. No one can become a painter unless he has accumulated special abilities. But there is one thing that cannot be acquired: it is something that comes from our deepest, innermost being. This drive cannot be limited to external realization, but must be drawn from the spiritual itself, and that is the urge for knowledge - an urge that lives in us [deepest]. If the soul wants to work [in the world], we need external materials; for what we call the urge for knowledge, we need only life itself. And only this urge can spur us on to develop that power of thinking that allows us to penetrate into the world of imagination and thought and to unite its secrets with our being. Here we feel the transition between thinking and imagining on the one hand and recognizing on the other.

The person who believes that mere thinking can lead to knowledge is greatly mistaken. Only those who fill their ideas with a content that is not given in the external world will come to know what is behind the external world. What one has acquired in life connects with the innermost self, which is the same as the innermost being of our self. The spirit [in the world] is the same as the spirit within ourselves; the spirit outside in the world connects with the spiritual that we carry within us. There we draw the highest fruit from what we can acquire in our waking life. Knowledge is the human activity through which we draw the highest fruits from our experiences; it is the human activity that transforms into abilities in life, for which we find limit after limit to express them outwardly in life. But knowledge causes us to carry these abilities over through death [into the spiritual world]. And in death, because it is a central spiritual faculty, knowledge not only gives the certainty that we carry over the fruits of our present life to perfections that must be awakened again and again, but it also gives the certainty that we acquire abilities that last as long as the spirit itself - that must last as long as the spirit itself, because they have the same characteristics as the spirit. In knowledge we connect with the spirit, and from this connection arises not only the certainty of knowing immortality, but also the power to establish immortality - to establish it in ourselves - so that with knowledge we acquire the power to carry our essential core through the incarnations. Thus, the acquisition of the powers we regard as immortal is intimately connected with what we call knowledge. It is the activity between birth and death that gives us the immortality of our most individual being, our ego, precisely beyond death, for it is this most individual being that must acquire knowledge through its innermost, self-chosen urge.

For human beings, knowledge and immortality are inwardly related. It is true what spiritual researchers have always handed down from time to time: Man has a life that flows into eternity, but only through all the [forces] that have been laid in him [through life in] the material world. It is true what the spiritual researchers say: Nowhere out there in space can you find anything that can guarantee you this immortality. Only when you penetrate through knowledge to that which lives in you as the center, as spirit, do you gain in you the intimate connection between what you strive for in the noblest sense and what, in knowledge, creates in you for the ever-lasting elevation of your being. Thus we see from knowledge that it not only satisfies curiosity, but that it works on our soul, that it transforms the soul, just as external knowledge transforms the forces of nature. Knowledge is precisely that which makes true what spiritual research passes down to us in the following words:

Being follows being in the expanse of space,
Being follows being in the course of time.
If you want to penetrate from the realm of transience
into the realm of the eternal,
then make a covenant with knowledge,
For only so you will find the eternal
in you, the eternal outside of you
Beyond all space,
Beyond all time.

Each one of you will doubtless be aware that the title of this lecture is taken from Goethe's Faust. You all know that in this poem we are shown how Faust, the representative of the highest human effort, enters into a pact with the evil powers, who on their side are represented in the poem by Mephistopheles, the emissary of hell. You will know, too, that Faust is to strike a bargain with Mephistopheles, the deed of which must be signed with his own blood. Faust, in the first instance, looks upon it as a jest. Mephistopheles, however, at this juncture utters the sentence which Goethe without doubt intended should be taken seriously: “Blood is a very special fluid.”

Now, with reference to this line in Goethe's Faust, we come to a curious trait in the so-called Goethe commentators. You are of course aware how vast is the literature dealing with Goethe's version of the Faust Legend. It is a literature of such stupendous dimensions that whole libraries might be stocked with it, and naturally I cannot make it my business to expatiate on the various comments made by these interpreters of Goethe concerning this particular passage. None of the interpretations throw much more light on the sentence than that given by one of the latest commentators, Professor Minor. He, like others, treats it in the light of an ironical remark made by Mephistopheles, and in this connection he makes the following really very curious observation, and one to which I would ask you to give your best attention; for there is little doubt that you will be surprised to hear what strange conclusions commentators on Goethe are capable of drawing.

Professor Minor remarks that “the devil is a foe to the blood”; and he points out that as the blood is that which sustains and preserves life, the devil, who is the enemy of the human race, must therefore also be the enemy of the blood. He then—and quite rightly—draws attention to the fact that even in the oldest versions of the Faust Legend—and indeed, in legends generally—blood always plays the same part.

In an old book on Faust it is circumstantially described to us how Faust makes a slight incision in his left hand with a small penknife, and how then, as he takes the pen to sign his name to the agreement, the blood flowing from the cut forms the words: “Oh man, escape!” All this is authentic enough; but now comes the remark that the devil is a foe to the blood, and that this is the reason for his demanding that the signature be written in blood. I should like to ask you whether you could imagine any person being desirous of possessing the very thing for which he has an antipathy? The only reasonable explanation that can be given—not only as to Goethe's meaning in this passage, but also as to that attaching to the main legend as well as to all the older Faust poems—is that to the devil blood was something special, and that it was not at all a matter of indifference to him whether the deed was signed in ordinary neutral ink, or in blood.

We can here suppose nothing else than that the representative of the powers of evil believes nay, is convinced that he will have Faust more especially in his power if he can only gain possession of at least one drop of his blood. This is self-evident, and no one can really understand the line otherwise. Faust is to inscribe his name in his own blood, not because the devil is inimical to it, but rather because he desires to gain power over it.

Now, there is a remarkable perception underlying this passage, namely, that he who gains power over a man's blood gains power over the man, and that blood is “a very special fluid” because it is that about which, so to speak, the real fight must be waged, when it comes to a struggle concerning the man between good and evil.

All those things which have come down to us in the legends and myths of various nations, and which touch upon human life, will in our day undergo a peculiar transformation with regard to the whole conception and interpretation of human nature. The age is past in which legends, fairy-tales, and myths were looked upon merely as expressions of the childlike fancy of a people. Indeed, the time has even gone by when, in a half-learned, half-childlike way, it was the fashion to allude to legends as the poetical expression of a nation's soul.

Now, this so-called “poetic soul” of a nation is nothing but the product of learned red tape; for this kind of red-tape exists just as much as the official variety. Anyone who has ever looked into the soul of a people is quite well aware that he is not dealing with imaginative fiction or anything of the kind, but with something very much more profound, and that as a matter of fact the legends and fairy-tales of the various peoples are expressive of wonderful powers and wonderful events.

If from the new standpoint of spiritual investigation we meditate upon the old legends and myths, allowing those grand and powerful pictures which have come down from primeval times to work upon our minds, we shall find, if we have been equipped for our task by the methods of occult science, that these legends and myths are the expressions of a most profound and ancient wisdom.

It is true we may at first be inclined to ask how it comes about that, in a primitive state of development and with primitive ideas, unsophisticated man was able to present the riddles of the universe to himself pictorially in these legends and fairy-tales; and how it is that, when we meditate on them now, we behold in them in pictorial form what the occult investigation of today is revealing to us with greater clearness.

This is a matter which at first is bound to excite surprise. And yet he who probes deeper and deeper into the ways and means by which these fairy-tales and myths have come into being, will find every trace of surprise vanish, every doubt pass away; indeed, he will find in these legends not only what is termed a naive and unsophisticated view of things, but the wondrously deep and wise expression of a primordial and true conception of the world.

Very much more may be learned by thoroughly examining the foundations of these myths and legends, than by absorbing the intellectual and experimental science of the present day. But for work of this kind the student must of course be familiar with those methods of investigation which belong to spiritual science. Now, all that is contained in these legends and ancient world-conceptions about the blood is wont to be of importance, since in those remote times there was a wisdom by means of which man understood the true and wide significance of blood, this “very special fluid” which is itself the flowing life of human beings.

We cannot today enter into the question as to whence came this wisdom of ancient times, although some indication of this will be given at the close of the lecture; the actual study of this subject must, however, stand over to be dealt with in future lectures. The blood itself, its import for man and the part it plays in the progress of human civilization, will today occupy our attention.

We shall consider it neither from the physiological nor from the purely scientific point of view, but shall rather take it from the standpoint of a spiritual conception of the universe. We shall best approach our subject if, to begin with, we understand the meaning of an ancient maxim, one which is intimately connected with the civilization of ancient Egypt, where the priestly wisdom of Hermes flourished. It is an axiom which forms the fundamental principle of all spiritual science, and which has become known as the Hermetic Axiom; it runs, “As above, so below.”

You will find that there are many dilettante interpretations of this sentence; the explanation, however, which is to occupy us today is the following:—It is plain to spiritual science that the world to which man has primary access by means of his five senses does not represent the entire world, that it is in fact only the expression of a deeper world hidden behind it, namely the spiritual world. Now, this spiritual world is called—according to the Hermetic Axiom—the higher world, the world “above”; and the world of the senses which is displayed around us, the existence of which we know through the medium of our senses, and which we are able to study by means of our intellect, is the lower one, the world “below,” the expression of that higher and spiritual world. Thus the occultist, looking upon this world of the senses, sees in it nothing final, but rather a kind of physiognomy which he recognizes as the expression of a world of soul and spirit; just as, when you gaze upon a human countenance, you must not stop at the form of the face and the gestures, paying attention only to them, but must pass, as a matter of course, from the physiognomy and the gestures to the spiritual element which is expressed in them.

What every person does instinctively when confronted by any being possessed of a soul, is what the occultist, or spiritual scientist, does in respect of the entire world; and “as above, so below” would, when referring to man, be thus explained: “Every impulse animating his soul is expressed in his face.” A hard and coarse countenance expresses coarseness of soul, a smile tells of inward joy, a tear betrays a suffering soul.

I will here apply the Hermetic Axiom to the question: What actually constitutes wisdom? Spiritual science has always maintained that human wisdom has something to do with experience, and that painful experience. He who is actually in the throes of suffering manifests in this suffering something that is an inward lack of harmony. He, however, who has overcome the pain and suffering and bears their fruits within him, will always tell you that through suffering he has gained some measure of wisdom. He says:—“the joys and pleasures of life, all that life can offer me in the way of satisfaction, all these things do I receive gratefully; yet were I far more loath to part with my pain and suffering than with those pleasant gifts of life, for ‘it is to my pain and suffering that I owe my wisdom.’ ”

And so it is that in wisdom occult science has ever recognized what may be called crystallized pain—pain that has been conquered and thus changed into its opposite.

It is interesting to note that the more materialistic modern research has of late arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Quite recently a book has been published on “The Mimicry of Thought,” a book well worth reading. It is not the work of a theosophist, but of a student of nature and of the human soul. The author endeavors to show how the inner life of man, his way of thinking, as it were, impresses itself upon his physiognomy. This student of human nature draws attention to the fact that there is always something in the expression on the face of a thinker which is suggestive of what one may describe as “absorbed pain.”

Thus you see that this principle comes to light again in the more materialistic view of our own day, a brilliant confirmation of that immemorial axiom of spiritual science. You will become more and more deeply sensible of this, and you will find that gradually, point for point, the ancient wisdom will reappear in the science of modern times.

Occult investigation shows decisively that all the things which surround us in this world—the mineral foundation, the vegetable covering, and the animal world—should be regarded as the physiognomical expression, or the “below,” of an “above” or spirit life lying behind them. From the point of view taken by occultism, the things presented to us in the sense world can only be rightly understood if our knowledge includes cognition of the “above,” the spiritual archetype, the original Spiritual Beings, whence all things manifest have proceeded. And for this reason we will today apply our minds to a study of that which lies concealed behind the phenomenon of the blood, that which shaped for itself in the blood its physiognomical expression in the world of sense. When once you understand this “spiritual background” of blood, you will be able to realize how the knowledge of such matters is bound to react upon our whole mental outlook on life.

Questions of great importance are pressing upon us these days; questions dealing with the education, not alone of the young, but of entire nations. And, furthermore, we are confronted by the momentous educational question which humanity will have to face in the future, and which cannot fail to be recognized by all who note the great social upheavals of our time, and the claims which are everywhere being advanced, be they the Labor Question, or the Question of Peace. All these things are pre-occupying our anxious minds.

But all such questions are illuminated as soon as we recognize the nature of the spiritual essence which lies at the back of our blood. Who can deny that this question is closely linked to that of race, which at the present time is once more coming markedly to the front? Yet this question of race is one that we can never understand until we understand the mysteries of the blood and of the results accruing from the mingling of the blood of different races. And finally, there is yet one other question, the importance of which is becoming more and more acute as we endeavor to extricate ourselves from the hitherto aimless methods of dealing with it, and seek to approach it in its more comprehensive bearings. This problem is that of colonization, which crops up wherever civilized races come into contact with the uncivilized: namely—To what extent are uncivilized peoples capable of becoming civilized? How can an utterly barbaric savage become civilized? And in what way ought we to deal with them? And here we have to consider not only the feelings due to a vague morality, but we are also confronted by great, serious, and vital problems of the very fact of existence itself.

Those who are not aware of the conditions governing a people—whether it be on the up- or down-grade of its evolution, and whether the one or the other is a matter conditioned by its blood—such people as these will, indeed, be unlikely to hit on the right mode of introducing civilization to an alien race. These are all matters which arise as soon as the Blood Question is touched upon.

What blood in itself is, you presumably all know from the current teachings of natural science, and you will be aware that, with regard to man and the higher animals, this blood is practically fluid life.

You are aware that it is by way of the blood that the “inner man” comes into contact with that which is exterior, and that in the course of this process man's blood absorbs oxygen, which constitutes the very breath of life. Through the absorption of this oxygen the blood undergoes renewal. The blood which is presented to the in-streaming oxygen is a kind of poison to the organism—a kind of destroyer and demolisher—but through the absorption of the oxygen the blue-red blood becomes transmuted by a process of combustion into red, life-giving fluid. This blood that finds its way to all parts of the body, depositing everywhere its particles of nourishment, has the task of directly assimilating the materials of the outer world, and of applying them, by the shortest method possible, to the nourishment of the body. It is necessary for man and the higher animals first to absorb the oxygen from the air into it, and to build up and maintain the body by means of it.

One gifted with a knowledge of souls has not without truth remarked: “The blood with its circulation is like a second being, and in relation to the man of bone, muscle, and nerve, acts like a kind of exterior world.” For, as a matter of fact, the entire human being is continually drawing his sustenance from the blood, and at the same time he discharges into it that for which he has no use. A man's blood is therefore a true double ever bearing him company, from which he draws new strength, and to which he gives all that he can no longer use. “Man's liquid life” is therefore a good name to have given the blood; for this constantly changing “special fluid” is assuredly as important to man as is cellulose to the lower organisms.

The distinguished scientist, Ernst Haeckel, who has probed deeply into the workings of nature, in several of his popular works has rightly drawn attention to the fact that blood is in reality the latest factor to originate in an organism. If we follow the development of the human embryo we find that the rudiments of bone and muscle are evolved long before the first tendency toward blood formation becomes apparent. The groundwork for the formation of blood, with all its attendant system of blood-vessels, appears very late in the development of the embryo, and from this natural science has rightly concluded that the formation of blood occurred late in the evolution of the universe; that other powers which were there had to be raised to the height of blood, so to speak, in order to bring about at that height what was to be accomplished inwardly in the human being. Not until the human embryo has repeated in itself all the earlier stages of human growth, thus attaining to the condition in which the world was before the formation of blood, is it ready to perform this crowning act of evolution—the transmuting and uplifting of all that had gone before into the “very special fluid” which we call Blood.

If we would study those mysterious laws of the spiritual universe which exist behind the blood, we must occupy ourselves a little with some of the most elementary concepts of Anthroposophy. These have often been set forth, and you will see that these elementary ideas of Anthroposophy are the “above,” and that this “above” is expressed in the important laws governing the blood—as well as the rest of life—as though in a physiognomy.

Those present who are already well acquainted with the primary laws of Anthroposophy will, I trust, here permit a short repetition of them for the benefit of others who are here for the first time. Indeed, such repetition may serve to render these laws more and more clear to the former, by hearing them thus applied to new and special cases. To those, of course, who know nothing about Anthroposophy, who have not yet familiarized themselves with these conceptions of life and of the universe, that which I am about to say may seem little else than so many words strung together, of which they can make nothing. But the fault does not always consist in the lack of an idea behind the words, when the latter convey nothing to a person. Indeed we may here adopt, with a slight alteration, a remark of the witty Lichtenberg, who said: “If a head and a book come into collision and the resulting sound is a hollow one, the fault need not necessarily be that of the book!”

And so it is with our contemporaries when they pass judgment on theosophical truths. If these truths should in the ears of many sound like mere words, words to which they cannot attach any meaning, the fault need not necessarily rest with Anthroposophy; those, however, who have found their way into these matters will know that behind all allusions to higher Beings, such Beings do actually exist, although they are not to be found in the world of the senses.

Our theosophical conception of the universe shows us that man, as far as he is revealed to our senses in the external world as far as his shape and form are concerned, is but a part of the complete Human being, and that, in fact, there are many other parts behind the physical body. Man possesses this physical body in common with all the so-called “lifeless” mineral objects that surround him. Over and above this, however, man possesses the etheric or vital body. (The term “etheric” is not here used in the same sense as when applied by physical science.) This etheric or vital body, as it is sometimes called, far from being any figment of the imagination, is as distinctly visible to the developed spiritual senses of the occultist as are externally perceptible colors to the physical eye. This etheric body can actually be seen by the clairvoyant. It is the principle which calls the inorganic materials into life, which, summoning them from their lifeless condition, weaves them into the thread of life's garment. Do not imagine that this body is to the occultist merely something which he adds in thought to what is lifeless. That is what the natural scientists try to do! They try to complete what they see with the microscope by inventing something which they call the life-principle.

Now, such a standpoint is not taken by theosophical research. This has a fixed principle. It does not say: “Here I stand as a seeker, just as I am. All that there is in the world must conform to my present point of view. What I am unable to perceive has no existence!” This sort of argument is about as sensible as if a blind man were to say that colors are simply matters of fancy. The man who knows nothing about a matter is not in the position to judge of it, but rather he into whose range of experience such matters have entered.

Now man is in a state of evolution, and for this reason Anthroposophy says: “If you remain as you are you will not see the etheric body, and may therefore indeed speak of the ‘boundaries of knowledge’ and ‘Ignorabimus’; but if you develop and acquire, the necessary faculties for the cognition of spiritual things, you will no longer speak of the ‘boundaries of knowledge,’ for these only exist as long as man has not developed his inner senses.” It is for this reason that agnosticism constitutes so heavy a drag upon our civilization; for it says: “Man is thus and thus, and being thus and thus he can know only this and that.” To such a doctrine we reply: “Though he be thus and thus today, he has to become different, and when different he will then know something else.”

So the second part of man is the etheric body, which he possesses in common with the vegetable kingdom.

The third part is the so-called astral body—a significant and beautiful name, the reason for which shall be explained later. Theosophists who are desirous of changing this name can have no idea of what is implied therein. To the astral body is assigned the task, both in man and in the animal, of lifting up the life-substance to the plane of feeling, so that in the life-substance may move not only fluids, but also that in it may be expressed all that is known as pain and pleasure, joy and grief. And here you have at once the essential difference between the plant and the animal; although there are certain states of transition between these two.

A recent school of naturalists is of opinion that feeling, in its literal sense, should also be ascribed to plants; this, however, is but playing with words; for, though it is obvious that certain plants are of so sensitive an organization that they “respond” to particular things that may be brought near to them, yet such a condition cannot be described as “feeling.” In order that “feeling” may exist, an image must be formed within the being as the reflex of that which produces the sensation. If, therefore, certain plants respond to external stimulus, this is no proof that the plant answers to the stimulus by a feeling, that is, that it experiences it inwardly. That which has inward experience has its seat in the astral body. And so we come to see that that which has attained to animal conditions consists of the physical body, the etheric or vital body, and the astral body.

Man, however, towers above the animal through the possession of something quite distinct, and thoughtful people have at all times been aware wherein this superiority consists. It is indicated in what Jean Paul says of himself in his autobiography. He relates that he could remember the day when he stood as a child in the courtyard of his parents' house, and the thought suddenly flashed across his mind that he was an ego, a being, capable of inwardly saying “I” to itself; and he tells us that this made a profound impression upon him.

All the so-called external science of the soul overlooks the most important point which is here involved. I will ask you; therefore, to follow me for a few moments in making a survey of what is a very subtle argument, yet one which will show you how the matter stands. In the whole of human speech there is one small word which differs in toto from all the rest. Each one of you can name the things around you; each one can call a table a table, and a chair a chair. But there is one word, one name, which you cannot apply anything save to that which owns it and this is the little word “I.” None can address another as “I.” This “I” has to sound forth from the innermost soul itself; it is the name which only the soul itself can apply to itself. Every other person is a “you” to me, and I am a “you” to him. All religions have recognized this “I” as the expression of that principle in the soul through which its innermost being, its divine nature, is enabled to speak. Here, then, begins that which can never penetrate through the exterior senses, which can never, in its real significance, be named from without, but which must sound forth from the innermost being. Here begins that monologue, that soliloquy of the soul, whereby the divine self makes known its presence when the path lies clear for the coming of the Spirit into the human soul.

In the religions of earlier civilizations, among the ancient Hebrews, for instance, this name was known as “the unutterable name of God,” and whatever interpretation modern philology may choose to place upon it, the ancient Jewish name of God has no other meaning than that which is expressed in our word “I.” A thrill passed through those assembled when the “Name of the Unknown God” was pronounced by the Initiates, when they dimly perceived what was meant by those words reverberating through the temple: “I am that I am.”

In this word is expressed the fourth principle of human nature, the one that man alone possesses while on earth; and this “I” in its turn encloses and develops within itself the germs of higher stages of humanity.

We can only take a passing glance at what in the future will be evolved through this fourth principle. We must point out that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the ego, or actual inner self; and that within this inner self are the rudiments of three further stages of development which will originate in the blood. These three are Manas, Buddhi, and Atma:

Manas, the Spirit-Self, as distinguished from the bodily self;

Buddhi, the Life-Spirit;

Atma, the actual and true Spirit-Man, a far-off ideal to the man of today; the rudimentary germ now latent within, but destined in future ages to reach perfection.

We have seven colors in the rainbow, seven tones in the (musical) scale, seven series of atomic weights [in the Periodic Table of the chemical elements], and seven grades in the scale of the human being; and these are again divided into four lower and three higher grades.

We will now attempt to get a clear insight into the way in which this upper spiritual triad secures a physiognomical expression in the lower quaternary, and how it appears to us in the world of the senses. Take, in the first place, that which has crystallized into form as man's physical body; this he possesses in common with the whole of what is called “lifeless” nature. When we talk theosophically of the physical body, we do not even mean that which the eye beholds, but rather that combination of forces which has constructed the physical body, that living Force which exists behind the visible form.

Let us now observe a plant. This is a being possessed of an etheric body, which raises physical substance to life; that is, it converts that substance into living sap. What is it that transforms the so-called lifeless forces into the living sap? We call it the etheric body, and the etheric body does precisely the same work in animals and men; it causes that which has a merely material existence to become a living configuration, a living form.

This etheric body is, in its turn, permeated by an astral body. And what does the astral body do? It causes the substance which has been set in motion to experience inwardly the circulation of those outwardly moving fluids, so that the external movement is reflected in inward experience.

We have now arrived at the point where we are able to comprehend man so far as concerns his place in the animal kingdom. All the substances of which man is composed, such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc., are to be found outside in inanimate nature also. If that which the etheric body has transformed into living substance is to have inner experiences, if it is to create inner reflections of that which takes place externally, then the etheric body must be permeated by what we have come to know as the astral body, for it is the astral body that gives rise to sensation. But at this stage the astral body calls forth sensation only in one particular way. The etheric body changes the inorganic substances into vital fluids, and the astral body in its turn transforms this vital substance into sentient substance; but—and this I ask you to specially notice—what is it that a being with no more than these three bodies is capable of feeling? It feels only itself, its own life-processes; it leads a life that is confined within itself.

Now, this is a most interesting fact, and one of extraordinary importance for us to bear in mind. If you look at one of the lower animals, what do you find it has accomplished? It has transformed inanimate substance into living substance, and living substance into sensitive substance: and sensitive substance can only be found where there exist, at all events, the rudiments of what at a later stage appears as a developed nervous system.

Thus we have inanimate substance, living substance, and substance permeated by nerves capable of sensation. If you look at a crystal you have to recognize it primarily as the expression of certain natural laws which prevail in the external world in the so-called lifeless kingdom. No crystal could be formed without the assistance of all surrounding nature. No single link can be severed from the chain of the cosmos and set apart by itself. And just as little can you separate from his environment man, who, if he were lifted to an altitude of even a few miles above the earth, must inevitably die. Just as man is only conceivable here in the place where he is, where the necessary forces are combined in him, so it is too with regard to the crystal; and therefore, whoever views a crystal rightly will see in it a picture of the whole of nature, indeed of the whole cosmos. What Cuvier said is actually the case, viz., that a competent anatomist will be able to tell to what sort of animal any given bone has belonged, every animal having its own particular kind of bone-formation.

Thus the whole cosmos lives in the form of a crystal. In the same way the whole cosmos is expressed in the living substance of a single being. The fluids coursing through a being are, at the same time, a little world, and a counterpart of the great world. And when substance has become capable of sensation, what then dwells in the sensations of the most elementary creatures? Such sensations mirror the cosmic laws, so that each separate living creature perceives within itself microcosmically the entire macrocosm. The sentient life of an elementary creature is thus an image of the life of the universe, just as the crystal is an image of its form. The consciousness of such living creatures is, of course, but dim. Yet this very vagueness of consciousness is counterbalanced by its far greater range, for the whole cosmos is felt in the dim consciousness of an elementary being. Now, in man there is only a more complicated structure of the same three bodies found in the simplest sensitive living creature.

Take man—without considering his blood—take him as being made up of the substance of the surrounding physical world, and containing, like the plant, certain juices which transform it into living substance, and in which a nervous system gradually becomes organized. This first nervous system is the so-called sympathetic system, and in the case of man it extends along the entire length of the spine, to which it is attached by small threads on either side. It has also at each side a series of nodes, from which threads branch off to different parts, such as the lungs, the digestive organs, and so on. This sympathetic nervous system gives rise, in the first place, to the life of sensation just described. But man's consciousness does not extend deep enough to enable him to follow the cosmic processes mirrored by these nerves. They are a medium of expression, and just as human life is formed from the surrounding cosmic world, so is this cosmic world reflected again in the sympathetic nervous system. These nerves live a dim inward life, and if man were but able to dip down into his “sympathetic” system, and to lull his higher nervous system to sleep, he would behold, as in a state of luminous life, the silent workings of the mighty cosmic laws.

In past times people were possessed of a clairvoyant faculty which is now superseded, but which may be experienced when, by special processes, the activity of the higher system of nerves is suspended, thus setting free the lower or subliminal consciousness. At such times man lives in that system of nerves which, in its own particular way, is a reflection of the surrounding world.

Certain lower animals indeed still retain this state of consciousness, and, dim and indistinct though it is, yet it is essentially more far-reaching than the consciousness of the man of the present day. A widely extending world is reflected as a dim inward life, not merely a small section such as is perceived by contemporary man. But in the case of man something else has taken place in addition. When evolution has proceeded so far that the sympathetic nervous system has been developed, so that the cosmos has been reflected in it, the evolving being again at this point opens itself outwards; to the sympathetic system is added the spinal cord. The system of brain and spinal cord then leads to those organs through which connection is set up with the outer world.

Man, having progressed thus far, is no longer called upon to act merely as a mirror for reflecting the primordial laws of cosmic evolution, but a relation is set up between the reflection itself and the external world. The junction of the sympathetic system and the higher nervous system is expressive of the change which has taken place beforehand in the astral body. The latter no longer merely lives the cosmic life in a state of dull consciousness, but it adds thereto its own special inward existence. The sympathetic system enables a being to sense what is taking place outside it; the higher system of nerves enables it to perceive that which happens within, and the highest form of the nervous system, such as is possessed by mankind in general at the present stage of evolution, takes from the more highly developed astral body material for the creation of pictures, or representations, of the outer world. Man has lost the power of perceiving the former dim primitive pictures of the external world, but, on the other hand, he is now conscious of his inner life, and out of this inner life he forms, at a higher stage, a new world of images in which, it is true, only a small portion of the outer world is reflected, but in a clearer and more perfect manner than before.

Hand in hand with this transformation another change takes place in higher stages of development. The transformation thus begun extends from the astral body to the etheric body. As the etheric body in the process of its transformation evolves the astral body, as to the sympathetic nervous system is added the system of the brain and spine, so, too, does that which—after receiving the lower circulation of fluids—has grown out of and become free from the etheric body now transmutes these lower fluids into what we know as blood.

Blood is, therefore, an expression of the individualized etheric body, just as the brain and spinal cord are the expression of the individualized astral body. And it is this individualizing which brings about that which lives as the ego or “I.”

Having followed man thus far in his evolution, we find that we have to do with a chain consisting of five links, affecting:—

1. The Physical Body;
2. The Etheric Body and
3. The Astral Body.

These links are:

1. The inorganic, neutral, physical forces;
2. The vital fluids, which are also found in plants;
3. The lower or sympathetic nervous system;
4. The higher astral body, which has been evolved from the lower one, and which finds its expression in the spinal cord and the brain;
5. The Principle that individualizes the etheric body.

Just as these two latter principles have been individualized, so will the first principle through which lifeless matter enters the human body, serving to build it up, also become individualized; but in our present-day humanity we find only the first rudiments of this transformation.

We have seen how the external formless substances enter the human body, and how the etheric body turns these materials into living forms; how, further, the astral body fashions pictures of the external world, how this reflection of the external world resolves itself into inner experiences, and how this inner life then reproduces from within itself pictures of the outer world.

Now, when this metamorphosis extends to the etheric body, blood is formed. The blood vessels, together with the heart, are the expression of the transformed etheric body, in the same way in which the spinal cord and the brain express the transformed astral body. Just as by means of the brain the external world is experienced inwardly, so also by means of the blood this inner world is transformed into an outer expression in the body of man. I shall have to speak in similes in order to describe to you the complicated processes which have now to be taken into account.

The blood absorbs those pictures of the outside world which the brain has formed within, transforms them into living constructive forces, and with them builds up the present human body. Blood is therefore the material that builds up the human body. We have before us a process in which the blood extracts from its cosmic environment the highest substance it can possibly obtain, viz., oxygen, which renews the blood and supplies it with fresh life. In this manner our blood is caused to open itself to the outer world.

We have thus followed the path from the exterior world to the interior one, and also back again from that inner world to the outer one. Two things are now possible. (1) We see that blood originates when man confronts the external world as an independent being, when out of the perceptions to which the external world has given rise, (2) he in his turn produces different shapes and pictures on his own account, thus himself becoming creative, and making it possible for the Ego, the individual Will, to come into life. A being in whom this process had not yet taken place would not be able to say “I.” In the blood lies the principle for the development of the ego. The “I” can only be expressed when a being is able to form within itself the pictures which it has obtained from the outer world. An “I-being” must be capable of taking the external world into itself, and of inwardly reproducing it.

Were man merely endowed with a brain, he would only be able to reproduce pictures of the outer world within himself, and to experience them within himself; he would then only be able to say: “The outer world is reflected in me as in a mirror.” If, however, he is able to build up a new form for this reflection of the external world, this form is no longer merely the external world reflected, it is “I” A creature possessed of a spinal cord and a brain perceives the reflection as its inner life. But when a creature possesses blood, it experiences its inner life as its own form. By means of the blood, assisted by the oxygen of the external world, the individual body is formed according to the pictures of the inner life. This formation is expressed as the perception of the “I.”

The ego turns in two directions, and the blood expresses this fact externally. The vision of the ego is directed inwards; its will is turned outwards. The forces of the blood are directed inwards; they build up the inner man, and again they are turned outwards to the oxygen of the external world. This is why, on going to sleep, man sinks into unconsciousness; he sinks into that which his consciousness can experience in the blood. When, however, he again opens his eyes to the outer world, his blood adds to its constructive forces the pictures produced by the brain and the senses. Thus the blood stands midway, as it were, between the inner world of pictures and the exterior living world of form. This role becomes clear to us when we study two phenomena, viz., ancestry—the relationship between conscious beings—and experience in the world of external events. Ancestry, or descent, places us where we stand in accordance with the law of blood relationship. A person is born of a connection, a race, a tribe, a line of ancestors, and what these ancestors have bequeathed to him is in his blood. In the blood is gathered together, as it were, all that the material past has constructed in man; and in the blood is also being formed all that is being prepared for the future.

When, therefore, man temporarily suppresses his higher consciousness, when he is in a hypnotic state, or one of somnambulism, or when he is atavistically clairvoyant, he descends to a far deeper consciousness, one wherein he becomes dreamily cognizant of the great cosmic laws, but nevertheless perceives them much more clearly than the most vivid dreams of ordinary sleep. At such times the activity of his brain is in abeyance and during states of the deepest somnambulism this applies also to the spinal cord. The man experiences the activities of his sympathetic nervous system; that is to say, in a dim and hazy fashion he senses the life of the entire cosmos. At such times the blood no longer expresses pictures of the inner life which are produced by means of the brain, but it presents those which the outer world has formed in it. Now, however, we must bear in mind that the forces of his ancestors have helped to make him what he is. Just as he inherits the shape of his nose from an ancestor, so does he inherit the form of his whole body. At such times of suppressed consciousness he senses the pictures of the outer world; that is to say, his forebears are active in his blood, and at such a time he dimly takes part in their remote life.

Everything in the world is in a state of evolution, human consciousness included. Man has not always had the consciousness he now possesses; when we go back to the times of our earliest ancestors, we find a consciousness of a very different kind. At the present time man in his waking-life perceives external things through the agency of his senses and forms ideas about them. These ideas about the external world work in his blood. Everything, therefore, of which he has been the recipient as the result of sense-experience, lives and is active in his blood; his memory is stored with these experiences of his senses. Yet, on the other hand, the man of today is no longer conscious of what he possesses in his inward bodily life by inheritance from his ancestors. He knows naught concerning the forms of his inner organs; but in earlier times this was otherwise. There then lived within the blood not only what the senses had received from the external world, but also that which is contained within the bodily form; and as that bodily form was inherited from his ancestors, man sensed their life within himself.

If we think of a heightened form of this consciousness, we shall have some idea of how this was also expressed in a corresponding form of memory. A person experiencing no more than what he perceives by his senses, remembers no more than the events connected with those outward sense-experiences. He can only be aware of such things as he may have experienced in this way since his childhood. But with prehistoric man the case was different. Such a man sensed what was within him, and as this inner experience was the result of heredity, he passed through the experiences of his ancestors by means of his inner faculty. He remembered not only his own childhood, but also the experiences of his ancestors. This life of his ancestors was, in fact, ever present in the pictures which his blood received, for, incredible as it may seem to the materialistic ideas of the present day, there was at one time a form of consciousness by means of which men considered not only their own sense-perceptions as their own experiences, but also the experiences of their forefathers. In those times, when they said, “I have experienced such and such a thing,” they alluded not only to what had happened to themselves personally, but also to the experiences of their ancestors, for they could remember these.

This earlier consciousness was, it is true, of a very dim kind, very hazy as compared to man's waking consciousness at the present day. It partook more of the nature of a vivid dream, but, on the other hand, it embraced far more than does our present consciousness. The son felt himself connected with his father and his grandfather as one “I,” because he felt their experiences as if they were his own. And because man was possessed of this consciousness, because he lived not only in his own personal world, but because within him there dwelt also the consciousness of preceding generations, in naming himself he included in that name all belonging to his ancestral line. Father, son, grandson, etc., designated by one name that which was common to them all, that which passed through them all; in short, a person felt himself to be merely a member of an entire line of descendants. This sensation was a true and actual one.

We must now inquire how it was that his form of consciousness was changed. It came about through a cause well known to occult history. If you go back into the past, you will find that there is one particular moment which stands out in the history of each nation. It is the moment at which a people enters on a new phase of civilization, the moment when it ceases to have old traditions, when it ceases to possess its ancient wisdom, the wisdom which was handed down through generations by means of the blood. The nation possesses, nevertheless, a consciousness of it, and this is expressed in its legends.

In earlier times tribes held aloof from each other, and the individual members of families intermarried. You will find this to have been the case with all races and with all peoples; and it was an important moment for humanity when this principle was broken through, when foreign blood was introduced, and when marriage between relations was replaced by marriage with strangers, when endogamy gave place to exogamy. Endogamy preserves the blood of the generation; it permits of the same blood flowing in the separate members as flows for generations through the entire tribe or the entire nation. Exogamy inoculates man with new blood, and this breaking-down of the tribal principle, this mixing of blood, which sooner or later takes place among all peoples, signifies the birth of the external understanding, the birth of the intellect.

The important thing to bear in mind here is that in olden times there was a hazy clairvoyance, from which the myths and legends originated. This clairvoyance could exist in the nearly related blood, just as our present-day consciousness comes about owing to the mingling of blood. The birth of logical thought, the birth of the intellect, was simultaneous with the advent of exogamy. Surprising, as this may seem, it is nevertheless true. It is a fact which will be substantiated more and more by external investigation; indeed, the initial steps along this line have already been taken.

But this mingling of blood which comes about through exogamy is also that which at the same time obliterates the clairvoyance of earlier days, in order that humanity may evolve to a higher stage of development; and just as the person who has passed through the stages of occult development regains this clairvoyance, and transmutes it into a new form, so has our waking consciousness of the present day been evolved out of that dim and hazy clairvoyance which [was] obtained in times of old.

At the present time everything in a man's environment is impressed upon his blood; hence the environment fashions the inner man in accordance with the outer world. In the case of primitive man it was that which was contained within the body that was more fully expressed in the blood. In those early times the recollection of ancestral experiences was inherited, and, along with this, good or evil tendencies. In the blood of the descendants were to be traced the effects of the ancestors' tendencies. Now, when the blood was mixed through exogamy, this close connection with ancestors was severed, and the man began to live his own personal life. Thus, in an unmixed blood is expressed the power of the ancestral life, and in a mixed blood the power of personal experience.

The myths and legends tell of these things. They say: “That which has power over thy blood, has power over thee.” This traditional power ceased when it could no longer work upon the blood, because the latter's capacity for responding to such power was extinguished by the admixture of foreign blood. This statement holds good to the widest extent. Whatever power it is that wishes to obtain the mastery over a man, that power must work upon him in such a way that the working is expressed in his blood. If, therefore, an evil power would influence a man, it must be able to influence his blood. This is the deep and spiritual meaning of the quotation from Faust. This is why the representative of the evil principle says: “Sign thy name to the pact with thy blood. If once I have thy name written in thy blood, then I can hold thee by that which above all sways a man; then shall I have drawn thee over to myself.” For whoever has mastery over the blood is master of the man himself, or of the man's ego.

When two groups of people come into contact, as is in the case of colonization, then those who are acquainted with the conditions of evolution are able to foretell whether or not an alien form of civilization can be assimilated by the others. Take, for example, a people that is the product of its environment, into whose blood this environment has built itself, and try to graft upon such a people a new form of civilization. The thing is impossible. This is why certain aboriginal peoples had to go under, as soon as colonists came to their particular parts of the world.

It is from this point of view that the question will have to be considered, and the idea that changes are capable of being forced upon all and sundry will in time cease to be upheld, for it is useless to demand from blood more than it can endure.

Modern science has discovered that if the blood of one animal is mixed with that of another not akin to it, the blood of the one is fatal to that of the other. This has been known to occultism for ages. If you mingle the blood of human beings with that of the lower apes, the result is destructive to the species, since the one is too far removed from the other. If, again, you mingle the blood of man with that of the higher apes, death does not ensue. Just as this mingling of the blood of different species of animals brings about actual death when the types are too remote, so, too, the ancient clairvoyance of undeveloped man was killed when his blood was mixed with the blood of others who did not belong to the same stock. The entire intellectual life of today is the outcome of the mingling of blood, and the time is not far distant when people will study the influence this had upon human life, and they will be able to trace it back in the history of humanity when investigations are once more conducted from this standpoint.

We have seen that blood united to blood in the case of but remotely connected species of animals, kills; blood united to blood in the case of more closely allied species of animals does not kill. The physical organism of man survives when strange blood comes in contact with strange blood, but clairvoyant power perishes under the influence of this mixing of blood, or exogamy.

Man is so constituted that when blood mingles with blood not too far removed in evolution, the intellect is born. By this means the original clairvoyance which belonged to the lower animal-man was destroyed, and a new form of consciousness took its place.

Thus in the higher stage of human development we find something similar to what happens at a lower stage in the animal kingdom. In the latter, strange blood kills strange blood. In the human kingdom strange blood kills that which is intimately bound up with kindred blood, viz., the dim, dreary clairvoyance. Our everyday objective consciousness is therefore the outcome of a destructive process. In the course of evolution the kind of mental life due to endogamy has been destroyed, but in its stead exogamy has given birth to the intellect, to the wide-awake consciousness of the present day.

That which is able to live in man's blood is that which lives in his ego. Just as the physical body is the expression of the physical principle, as the etheric body is the expression of the vital fluids and their systems, and the astral body of the nervous system, so is the blood the expression of the “I,” or ego. Physical principle, etheric body, and astral body are the “Above”; physical body, vital system, and nervous system are the “below.” Similarly, the ego is the “above,” and the blood is the “below.” Whoever, therefore, would master a man, must first master that man's blood. This must be borne in mind if any advance is to be made in practical life. For example, the individuality of a people may be destroyed if, when colonizing, you demand from its blood more than it can bear, for in the blood the ego is expressed. Beauty and truth possess a man only when they possess his blood.

Mephistopheles obtains possession of Faust's blood because he desires to rule his ego. Hence we may say that the sentence which has formed the theme of the present lecture was drawn from the profound depths of knowledge; for truly—

“Blood is a Very Special Fluid.”

(From an incomplete transcript)

When we contemplate the world around us we find as our environment on Earth the beings of the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms, and whatever belongs to and is produced from these kingdoms—mountains, rivers, clouds and so forth. We look up to the heavens and as we contemplate the stars and the planets we shall realise as the result of anthroposophical study that, like the Earth, these different celestial bodies have their inhabitants. But as man turns his gaze to his earthly environment and also to the heavens, he finds in this spatial environment Beings who are connected with one part only of himself. We know from Anthroposophy that man is a fourfold being, composed of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, and that in sleep the Ego and astral body separate from the physical and etheric bodies. But the Universe we perceive through our senses is related to our physical body only, not to our astral body or Ego. The only exceptions are two celestial bodies: the Sun and the Moon. The Sun and the Moon are the abodes of spiritual Beings just as the Earth is the abode of man. The other celestial bodies are also peopled by spiritual Beings but during his life between birth and death man is related to them in an indirect way only. In this respect the Sun and Moon are exceptions. They are the two gates or portals through which, in physical life on Earth too, men are linked with the spiritual world. The Sun is connected with our Ego, the Moon with our astral body.

We shall begin to understand this if we turn to what has been said in the different books and lecture-courses.

You know that the Moon, now moving independently through cosmic space, was once united with the Earth; at a certain point of time it liberated itself and went out into the Universe where it now forms a kind of colony of the Earth. This applies not only to the physical Moon but also to the Beings who inhabit it. You know too that the Earth was once inhabited both by men and by certain higher Beings who were the first great Teachers of humanity. They were not incarnated in physical bodies as men are to-day but only in etheric bodies. Nevertheless intercourse between men and these Beings continued until the Atlantean epoch. In those primeval ages on Earth men were exhorted at certain times to maintain complete stillness and calm in their souls, to be oblivious of their physical environment. And then, in those primeval men—we ourselves, in fact, for we were all on Earth in previous lives—it was as if the Great Teachers spoke from within them and they felt this as Inspiration. These Beings did not communicate their messages and teachings to men as we communicate with one another to-day, but in the way I have indicated. Works giving expression to a wonderful, primordial wisdom were the fruits of this intercourse. Modern man is fundamentally arrogant, priding himself on being infinitely clever. And so indeed he is, in comparison with the men of those remote ages. But cleverness by itself leads neither to wisdom nor to real knowledge. Cleverness is due to the intellect and intellect is not the only instrument for acquiring knowledge. It was by deeper forces of the soul that men in primeval times were led to the knowledge which they did not express in intellectual phraseology or in terms of our pedantic grammar—for all grammar is pedantic—but in language that was half poetry. Beings at an advanced stage of evolution, the primeval sages who taught men through Inspiration, were the originators of works of supreme beauty, fragments of which have been preserved to this day. Only the dull-witted could fail to wonder at the Vedic literature, the Yoga and Vedanta philosophy of India, the lore of ancient Persia and Egypt. The more thoroughly we steep ourselves in these records, the more obvious it is that although we of the modern age are far cleverer than those ancient men, the knowledge they presented in a most beautiful, poetic form leads very deeply into world-mysteries. The scripts which fill us with such admiration and astonishment if our hearts are rightly attuned are only the last vestiges of the wonderful, primordial wisdom that once existed in humanity as oral tradition and that Spiritual Science alone is able to investigate. But men have outgrown this wisdom in its primal form. They would not have reached maturity nor achieved freedom in knowledge through their own efforts had they continued at the stage of that ancient wisdom.

The great Teachers, having fulfilled their task, left the Earth together with the Moon which as a physical planet had gone out into the Universe. Today the great Teachers form a kind of spiritual colony on the Moon and a seer who investigates the Moon with the help of Initiation-Science finds it peopled by those wise Beings who were once the companions of men. The wisdom of these Beings can even now be investigated through a higher development of the faculties described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. These Beings have an important task to perform for humanity—a task which it is difficult to describe in earthly words.

The Moon Beings keep the “books,” the records, of the whole past of humanity and of every individual man. These books are not, of course, anything in the least like the volumes in our libraries but this designation is nevertheless justifiable. The “books” contain records of what every individual human being has experienced in his successive earthly lives. When we are descending from the Cosmos to the Earth from the existence stretching between death and a new birth, we come into inner contact with the records of our past in these great “books” kept by the Moon sages. Before we arrive on the Earth, this past is imprinted in the astral body we bring with us into earthly existence and in that astral body are the “entries” made by the Moon Beings.

In ordinary circumstances these entries do not reach the head. During earthly life the head is by no means an organ of outstanding importance, although it is, of course, essential for the concepts and ideas relating to outer, material existence. What is inscribed into man during the final stage of his descent from the Cosmos to the Earth is inscribed—believe it or not as you will—into the part of him we call the spiritual side of the metabolic-limb system. The inscriptions therefore lie deep down in the unconscious, but they are actually there and they pass over into the process of growth, into the health and above all they determine what I will call the “curability” (Heilbarkeit) of a human being when he is ill on Earth. It is obviously important to understand the nature of illness but even more important to understand how to heal. Supersensible knowledge itself is an essential help, for this reveals what has been inscribed from the Akasha Chronicle by the Moon Beings into the forces of the process of growth, into the forces of nourishment, into the forces of breathing, and so on. It is these inscriptions that determine whether a man puts up strong or only slight resistance to the healing of an illness. One individual will be easily healed, another only with difficulty. This is entirely dependent upon how the karma from previous earthly lives makes it possible for the inscriptions to take effect.

When we think about what the Moon, together with the Beings who inhabit it spiritually, means for us on the Earth, we are finally led to say that the Moon is intimately connected with our past, with our previous earthly lives. To understand what the Moon existence out yonder in cosmic space means on Earth is to have intuitive perception of man's past. Destiny is formed out of what we bring over from our previous earthly life, that is to say, from our past, and what we experience during the present life. And out of what can be experienced in the present life, together with our past, our future destiny takes shape.

In its cosmic aspect, therefore, the Moon with its Beings is revealed as the power which carves the pattern of our past in our destiny. You will realise from this how little is known to-day about the true functions of the celestial bodies. Information about the Moon such as we are accustomed to hear from the physical sciences to-day is not knowledge in the true sense. A modern physicist who purports to describe the Moon assumes that the mountain ranges depicted on lunar maps were always there. This is a very naive belief. The Moon Beings themselves were always there, the soul-and-spirit belonging to the Moon was always there, but not the physical substance. You will be able to understand this by thinking of man himself. In the course of a man's earthly life the physical substances in his body are perpetually changing. After a period of seven to eight years, all the substances originally within us have been replaced. What has remained is the soul-and-spirit, and the same applies to the heavenly bodies. The substance of the Moon, although of longer duration than the substance of the human body, has all changed in the course of the ages; spirit-and-soul alone has remained. With these things in mind, our view of the Universe is altogether different from that presented by the material knowledge of to-day. This knowledge is extremely astute, highly intellectual; above all it can calculate with deadly accuracy. The calculations are accurate—but they are not true. Suppose someone makes calculations about the structure of the heart. He scrutinises it to-day and again in a month's time. It has changed, very slightly. After another month the change is again slight, and then he works out to what extent the heart changes in a year. He need only multiply and he has the figure for ten years. He can calculate what the measurements of the heart were three hundred years ago, and what they will be three hundred years from now. The calculations will certainly be correct. Only—the heart did not exist three hundred years ago, nor will it exist three hundred years hence! The same procedure is adopted in other cases. The calculations are invariably correct but they do not tally with the reality! The same applies to the outer substantiality of the heavenly bodies. Their substance changes but the element of soul-and-spirit remains. And in the case of the Moon it is this element of soul-and-spirit that is woven into our destiny by the great Recorders of our past life and therefore constitutes part of the web of our destiny.

So the Moon is in truth one of the portals showing man the way into the spiritual world—the world out of which his destiny is woven by Beings who were once his wise companions of the Earth in times when men themselves wove their destiny instinctively. The weaving of destiny now takes place entirely in the subconscious.

Still another portal leads into the spiritual world: it is the portal of the Sun. When through Initiation-science we acquire knowledge of the Sun, the Beings we encounter are not connected with the Earth in the same way as the Moon Beings; in the Sun sphere we do not encounter Beings who once had their abode on the Earth. The Beings we encounter in the Sun are referred to in the book Occult Science as the Angeloi and the higher Beings of the Hierarchies. When I say “in the Sun,” you must of course picture such Beings in the whole Sun sphere, in the flood of light radiating from the Sun.

The Sun is the abode of the Angeloi, one of whom is always connected with an individual human being. We ourselves, in respect of our Ego are connected with these higher Beings through our Sun existence. The Angeloi are in a certain sense the cosmic prototypes of men, for in future times man will attain their rank. These Beings, with whose nature we ourselves have a certain relationship, have their abode in the Sun sphere. From this you will realise that just as our past is connected with the Moon existence, so is our future connected with the Sun existence. Moon and Sun represent our past and our future. When we know on the one side that the Moon Beings are the “bookkeepers,” the “recorders” of our past, that records of our past earthly lives are inscribed, as it were, on the leaves of their books, Initiation-Science makes it clear that we must turn to the Angeloi when we give any thought to our future. Just as what we have done in the past works on into our present life, the things we do in the present must work on into the future. But this is possible only through the Angeloi who direct their gaze to a man's present deeds and bring them to effect in the future.

It is good and right to take account of this function of the Angeloi. We do many things that ought to bear fruit in the future. Humanity of the present age has become sadly thoughtless about such matters. When a man has performed some deed he should think of his Angelos, saying inwardly: “May my Guardian Spirit receive this my deed as a root and from it bring forth fruit.” The more definite and vivid the imagery used when a man addresses his Angelos in connection with deeds which should subsequently bear fruit, the more abundant this fruit can be in the future.

And so the Moon Beings preserve our past destiny and the Sun Beings weave new destiny for the future. It is not outer, physical light alone that the Sun and Moon send down to the Earth. Being connected as it is with our astral body, the Moon provides the initial impulse whereby everything from our past is woven into our destiny. The Sun is connected with our Ego and through the Beings who are a prototype of our future cosmic existence, has to do with our future destiny. And so the heavenly mirror-pictures of our destiny are images of the relationship between Sun and Moon.

Initiation-Science explains and confirms these facts. When a man has achieved the necessary degree of development as I have described it in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, he then sees, when he contemplates the Full Moon, not only what normal consciousness sees. In the light of the Full Moon he perceives his past destiny, the content of his previous earthly life. And when with enhanced spiritual vision he focuses his gaze upon the place occupied by the dark, physically invisible New Moon, its dark shadow becomes for him the great Admonisher formed by his destiny, proclaiming to him what his attitude must be to actions in his previous earthly life in order that he may make compensation for them in the further course of his karma.

It is possible for a man to establish a similar relationship with the Sun. This enables him to have an inkling of future destinies—a general glimpse, at least, without specific details.

If we now turn from the cosmic aspect to man himself, we find that human destiny is woven in a wonderful way out of two kinds of circumstances. When two individuals meet each other, one of them, let us say, in his twenty-fifth year, the other in his thirtieth, it may be the case—not, of course, always—that when the one or the other looks back over his life up to this point he realises with absolute certainty that each of them has pursued his path of life as though they were deliberately seeking for one another. To ignore such things simply denotes lack of thought. The child had already set out upon the path that led inevitably to the other human being and the latter's path too led to the common meeting-point. All this took place in the subconscious realm—but what has been at work there? Think of the one individual as A and the other as B. Before entering into earthly life, A descended through the Moon sphere. The Moon Beings had inscribed in their records and also into his astral body, what he had experienced in common with B in the past earthly life, and these entries made by the Moon Beings in the Akasha Chronicle influenced the paths taken by both A and B. From the moment they meet, the subconscious is no longer all-important, for the two now come face to face and make a certain impression on one another. This is not a case of conservation of the past; it is the present that is now at work. The Angeloi intervene and lead the individuals concerned to further stages. The forces of Sun existence are now operating, so that within a man's inmost being, Sun and Moon together weave his destiny. This can be clearly visualised by thoughtful perception of the course of human life.

When two individuals meet, the impression they make upon each other may be intrinsically different. There are cases where one of the two takes the other right into the sphere of his will, of his feelings. The outer, personal impression has had little influence here. Intellectualists have no understanding of what is going on inwardly in such cases, for one of the most wonderful experiences imaginable is to see what kind of relationship is formed when two human beings come across each other for the first time. It may happen that A takes B into the sphere of his will by saying to himself: What B does I want to do myself; what pleases him, also pleases me.—Now B may be unsightly and unattractive and nobody can conceive that he could possibly be pleasing to A.—You see, the attraction in this case is not caused by the reasoning mind or by the sense-impressions, but by the deeper forces of the soul—by the will and what goes from the will into the heart. However unsightly the other may be, he has become so only in the present earthly life. The origin of the bond between the two lies in the experiences they shared in the previous life. Seen from outside it seems that the two cannot possibly live in harmony, but the fact is that what is present subconsciously in each of them leads their wills together. Even in childhood this often becomes evident. A child tries so hard to be like “him,” to have the same wishes as “he” has, to feel as “he” feels. A karmic connection is certainly present in such circumstances.

That is one kind of meeting between individuals and if they were alive to such happenings—as will inevitably be the case in a by no means distant future, when more attention will be paid to man's inner nature—the working of the will would indicate that past earthly lives have already been spent in company with such individuals; moreover subconscious soul-forces give hints of experiences shared with others in the past incarnation.

The other kind of meeting is this.—One individual comes across another but no relationship whatever is established between their wills; the aesthetic or mental impression is predominant. How often it happens that a man A makes the acquaintance of man B, but does not afterwards refer to him with the warmth or abhorrence with which he speaks of someone with whom he has a karmic connection from earlier times. One may praise an individual with whom there is no karmic tie, one may appreciate him, consider him a splendid fellow, but he makes no effect upon the will—he makes an effect only upon the mind, upon the aesthetic sense.

That is the second kind of meeting between individuals. If the effect made by the two upon each other reaches into the will, into the heart, into the inmost nature, then a karmic connection exists; the two individuals have been led to each other as the result of common experiences in the past earthly life. If an effect made by another person reaches only into the intellect, into the aesthetic sense, this is not an outcome of the Moon's activity, but a situation brought about by the Sun and one that will have its sequel only in the future. And so through a thoughtful, observant study of human life we can learn to perceive the signs of karmic connections.

What I have now told you is a fruit of knowledge attainable through Anthroposophy, and just as nobody need himself be an artist to see beauty in a picture, as little need a man himself be an Initiate to understand these things. They can be understood because the ideas harmonise. There are people who say: The spiritual world is no concern of ours; we shall understand it only when we are actually in it.—They say this because they are accustomed nowadays to accept as proof only what can be confirmed in a material, physical way. Such people are like dunderheads who say: Everything in the wide world must be supported—otherwise it falls down; the Earth, the Moon, the Sun—all have their places in cosmic space but they must have supports to prevent them from falling! Such people do not know that the cosmic bodies mutually support each other. Anthroposophy calls for this kind of understanding. Its ideas cannot be supported by external, physical proofs, but for all that they mutually support each other. When you read an anthroposophical book for the first time, you may lay it aside because you are accustomed to find everything proved up to the hilt and in this book there are no such proofs. But if you read on you will find that like the cosmic bodies the ideas support and sustain each other.

The teachings can be understood even when one is not an Initiate, but through Initiation-Science they become much more concretely real and are experienced differently. Therefore someone who is sufficiently advanced is able to speak in a different way about the web of human destiny that is woven out of the past, the present and the future. The experiences of a person who has reached a certain stage of Initiation become much more concrete.—Suppose that somebody is standing in front of you; he tells you something and you hear it clearly. An Initiate can hear the inner voice as well as the outer; he can hear the spiritual speech which is no less clear than ordinary human speech. A person with whom an Initiate was karmically connected in the past and whom he meets in the present life, speaks to him as clearly and unambiguously as people speak in the ordinary way. The Initiate hears an inner speech. You will say: then an Initiate must have around him a whole collection of people who speak to him with varying degrees of clarity. And that is actually the case. At the same time it is concrete proof of the way in which the previous earthly life has been spent. I have said that the Moon Beings, the great Recorders, register destiny; but immediately an Initiate encounters someone with whom he was karmically connected in the previous earthly life, the light of the Full Moon radiates to him the recorded ‘entries’ of the other individual.

What we think and do in the immediate present does not at once speak to us, but after a certain time, by no means very long, our deeds that have been registered by the Moon Beings become living and, in a sense, articulate. The Akashic pictures are living pictures; if you discover the content of a past earthly life you learn to know both yourself and the other human being concerned. Common experiences of the past incarnation rise up into consciousness; no wonder that we hear them speak both from within ourselves and from within the other individual. We are united inwardly with those with whom we were associated in the previous earthly life.

In the future men must develop a delicate feeling for the stirrings of the will when meeting another person. In about seven to nine thousand years all human beings on the Earth will be able to hear those with whom they are karmically connected, speaking from within.

Now if, after Initiation has been attained, a meeting takes place with someone with whom there is no karmic bond, who is encountered for the first time, again the experience is different. Naturally, an Initiate may also come across individuals with whom he is not karmically connected. In any case his experience will differ from that of others. He has a fine and delicate feeling for new facts revealed by the individual confronting him, in this case, as a cosmic being.

An individual encountered for the first time enables us to see more deeply into the Cosmos. It is a piece of good fortune to meet such a person and recognition that this meeting enlarges our knowledge of the world must develop into fine sensitivity. An Initiate has a certain obligation in connection with every individual with whom he has no karmic connection from the past, whom he encounters for the first time in the Cosmos (the spiritual world). He must link himself with the spiritual Being belonging to the realm of the Angeloi who is the Guardian Spirit of this individual. He must become acquainted not only with the individual himself but with his Guardian Angel as well. The Guardian Angel of this individual speaks unambiguously from within him. Hence when an Initiate encounters different human beings with whom he has no karmic bond, he hears a clear and definite speech. He hears what the Angeloi of these individuals are saying.

This gives a certain character to the intercourse between an Initiate and ordinary men. He takes into himself what the Angelos wishes to say to the person who has come into his ken; he transforms himself as it were into the Angelos of this person and what he can say to the latter is therefore more intimate than it is for ordinary consciousness. The Initiate is actually a different being in all his contacts with individuals whose first meeting with him is in the Cosmos, because he has identified himself with the Angelos of each individual concerned. This is the secret of the faculty of self-transformation possessed by those who with the power bestowed by Initiation come face to face with other men. People to-day have very little feeling for such things compared with the faculty of perception they possessed in centuries by no means very long ago. It might have happened then that a sage, confronting twenty other persons, would have been described quite differently by each of them. The commonplace verdict in such circumstances would be that as each of the twenty descriptions given was quite different from all the rest, none of the twenty writers actually saw the individual in question. But perhaps they all did! He changed in every case by establishing a link with the Angelos of each person concerned.

In this connection a veritable abyss lies between what is accepted usage today and what was taken for granted not so very long ago. A great deal of learning is available in our time but it is communicated in an entirely different way. In the higher training given in an epoch not far behind us, those who were called upon to be leaders of the people as priests or teachers were taught to develop the capacity to unite themselves with the Angelos of a human being. But even remembrance of this has vanished. Knowledge of the Angeloi was indispensable for those who aspired to be leaders of mankind, in order to develop the power of self-transformation.

And now something else.—It will strike you as extraordinary—I have spoken of it in the book Christianity as Mystical Fact—that there are great similarities in biographies of ancient Initiates. Study these biographies and you will find that very many features are alike, for the great Initiates underwent similar experiences in their souls. Biographies of ordinary human beings would never be alike. If those who encountered Zarathustra had all written about him, every characterisation would have been different, because Zarathustra changed every time an individual came before him. What the world was meant to know about the great Initiates was biography inspired by higher Spirits.

When the meeting between an Initiate and some individual takes place for the first time in the Cosmos, the Initiate has to establish contact with the Angelos of that individual. In doing so he acquires a great deal of knowledge about the outer spiritual world. In point of fact one cannot acquire deeper knowledge of other human beings through spiritual faculties without learning to know a host of Angeloi. A true knowledge of man is impossible without knowledge of the Angeloi. Just as human beings not karmically connected with each other acquire knowledge of the surrounding world through ordinary perception, the Initiate gains knowledge of the world of the Angeloi—which is then the bridge between himself and the higher Hierarchies.

There are also other indications of the existence of a karmic connection. We may meet an individual and then have a great deal to do with him, work with him and so on, but we never dream about him. The reason is that the karmic connection is not with our astral body, but only with our Ego.

We may come across someone of whom we have only a fleeting glance and yet he follows us into our very dreams—into our waking dreams too. Our picture of him is quite unconnected with his outward appearance and has arisen entirely in the inner life, because we have a karmic tie with him. Again we may meet someone with whom we are karmically connected and feel impelled to paint him. An artist may paint a portrait in which an uncultured person sees no likeness whatever, whereas an Initiate may recognise a previous incarnation of the individual whose portrait has been painted. We get to know someone with whom we have a karmic connection in the depths of his being although the knowledge may remain subconscious. Through individuals with whom we have had no previous karmic connection, whom we meet for the first time, we enlarge our knowledge of humanity in general.

When you go to a tea-party or some such function, just keep your ears open and listen to the conversation.—If someone has met another individual with whom he is karmically connected, he will say little about the others present, but about this particular individual he will say something of real significance, especially if he is unaware of what is behind it all. At the same kind of tea-party you may get into conversation with someone with whom you have no karmic connection at all. Your interest in him is very superficial and he seems to you to be typical of all the other guests. Such a gathering is very brief as a rule, and a great deal of talk goes on about world affairs, about noted politicians and the like. After listening to these few people we may judge the whole of society by this criterion. The judgement may be erroneous but nevertheless it is through individuals with whom we have no karmic connection that another aspect of the world is presented to us. There was once a traveller who happened to reach Konigsberg Station at midnight. He asked for a cup of coffee and was addressed in very coarse language by the red-headed waiter who had been dozing. The traveller wrote in his diary: “The people of Konigsberg have red hair, are sleepy and coarse.” He was judging all the people of Konigsberg by this night-waiter—someone with whom he had no karmic connection!

Through studies of this kind we learn not only how to assess life and its values, but we get nearer to other human beings and are connected with them in a different way. We learn not only to understand human life—which is the essential task of Anthroposophy—we also learn to know cosmic life. Sun and Moon cease to be the subject of abstract theories and become living realities in the Cosmos—the great counterparts in the Universe of the microcosmic destiny of men on the Earth.

Sun-activity combines with Moon-activity in our life. The light radiating to us from the Moon is connected with our cosmic past and the light of the Sun is connected with our cosmic future.

It was the aim of the Christmas Meeting, when the Anthroposophical Society was given a new foundation, to stress the importance of Anthroposophy for life itself. It was said that esotericism in the true sense of the word must be a living power among us. The Christmas Meeting was not intended merely to be a festive gathering of a number of Anthroposophists, but its efficacy and its impulses were meant to endure. One new plan is to issue a News Sheet—as a matter of fact the first three numbers have already appeared—containing reports of what is going on in the Anthroposophical Society. The Society must become a kind of living, spiritual organism. On my journeys I have constantly found Members in The Hague, for example, saying: “We have no idea what the Members in Vienna are doing, and yet we belong to an Anthroposophical Society!”—I wonder how many here in Zurich could tell me what is going on in the Groups of the Society in Leipzig or Hamburg? But this is what must be possible in future. Members of the New Zealand Group should have a real picture of what is going on in Vienna, and so on. It will be helpful if the Members will send to the editorial office of the News Sheet accounts of their experiences both in the Society and outside it. This material will then be edited, and Members will be able to read about whatever is going on in the Society. I propose in future to include in the News Sheet short, concentrated aphorisms for use in the Group Meetings or on other occasions.

All these measures should instil real life, pulsating life, into the Anthroposophical Society, and every Member should realise that this was the aim of the Christmas Meeting. Moreover it is only because this is how things ought to be, and indeed must be, if Anthroposophy itself is to do justice to its past and future, that I have undertaken the Presidency, associated with an Executive which I know will work fruitfully from the centre at the Goetheanum. I had for many years kept apart from all administrative matters, and had it not been an absolute necessity I should not have thought of starting anew and repeating in old age what one did as a young man. I want to appeal to every Member of the Anthroposophical Society to help in ensuring that through the Christmas Meeting the foundation stone of anthroposophical life shall be laid in the hearts of our Members and that it shall develop as a living seed, so that active life may constantly increase in the Society. If that happens, the Society will also be able to send its impulse out into the world.

The previous lecture, which is followed by today's lecture, was about the hidden depths of the soul's life and explained that the soul's life is not absolutely bound to matter, that it is not only separable from the physical, but also from the ideas that are gained from it through the senses and the mind. The possibility of the separation of soul experiences from physical ideas was demonstrated by the difference between memories and dreams. Those [memories] arise without the original power of the soul's compassion, these [dreams] with the original accompanying phenomena of the emotional life of joy, suffering and the like. There - in memory - the soul life detaches itself from the life of imagination, which is gained in the outside world, and withdraws into the hidden depths of the soul, where it works and works, where it exercises its power by working on the entire human organism.

While the life of imagination often proves powerless – for we know not what goes on in the depths of the sea when the surface ripples – the hidden life of the soul proves itself to be a power. We see this in dreams, in the trance of mediums, in the work of art and in the knowledge of the spiritual researcher. For man can penetrate into it by training his mind, so that he learns to consciously draw from the sources of truly real life, into which he not only gazes without control like the dreamer and fantasist and thereby becomes a dreamer, hallucinist or even a liar, not like the one with atavistic gifted with atavistic clairvoyance, becomes the plaything of the spirits of such a soul or astral world in his dreams, nor alone, as the true artist draws from the spirit and shapes it in beauty, but as a knower, consciously seeing, can distinguish what is vision from what is true and self-willed. [...]

This knowledge of the hidden can only lead to the right spiritual research if it is gained, firstly, through self-knowledge, through descending into one's own inner being. With this self-knowledge, secondly, knowledge of the spiritual environment arises and grows. The greater the self-knowledge, the broader the spiritual horizon, the power to penetrate into the realities of the environment, into the hidden world spirit. l..]

Dear attendees! When approaching the subject of today's consideration, then one comes, starting from the points of view that are represented here, in a basically quite strange situation compared to everything that has been thought and researched in our age for decades about the important question of the origin of man. The reason why one finds oneself in a strange position is that, over the past few decades, the origin of man has been presented primarily in the form in which one believes one should think about the origin of man in the present day: in terms of the results of modern science. And who could deny that the great and tremendous advances in natural science in recent times have every right to have a say at the moment when this important question is put to man.

Most of the people present who are dealing with the question from the point of view of natural science must understandably have the impression that anything that can be said here from the point of view of spiritual science about this question is basically directly opposed to what natural science has to say about the point – understandably, dear attendees, and I ask you to bear in mind that this is being said. For it is precisely with such questions that what should emerge on the occasion of the two lectures of my last visit, which dealt with how to refute theosophy on the one hand and how to defend it on the other, always hovers in the background. Especially with questions like today's, the spiritual scientist must be completely clear that much, much can be brought forward from the ideas of the present, seemingly with good reason, against his assertions. Therefore, it must be understood that a lecture such as this evening's can provide some suggestions, but is far from quickly convincing someone who is still unfamiliar with the theosophical views. This is said as an introduction to characterize the attitude from which such a lecture is given. What have we experienced in recent decades [in relation to our topic today]? More and more, those [scientists] who believe they have a judgment in this area have come to the conclusion that man in the totality of his being has its origin from creatures that, in the sense of a systematic arrangement of living beings, actually belong to the sphere of what today's man calls his education, his culture, in fact, the sphere of his human activities. The extraordinarily fruitful principle of development has led to the belief that in the past, development would have progressed in such a way that from simple, primitive life forms, to which today's primitive life forms still resemble, through slow development - as a result of the “struggle for existence,” through adaptation - gradually more and more complicated forms of life have formed, up to the higher animals, and that in such a progressive development, man has risen, as it were, from the lower realms. So man's ancestors are sought in animal life, and there is such a conviction in [wide] circles on this point that anyone who wants to put forward something that does not agree with it is actually thought of as a retarded mind. Now, first of all, the natural scientists – not so much the natural scientists who remain in the realm of facts, but rather the natural scientists who have felt called upon to link worldviews, world mysteries to their research – they have felt compelled to present, so to speak, the outer form and the outer physical conditions of human life as a first as complications that arose from the forces that come from the realms that stand below the human, so that one would only have more complicated living conditions than in the case of animals, especially those that stand one step lower than humans, but that one must still derive the forces from what is already found in the lower living beings.

Those natural scientists who wanted to tie an outlook on life to the facts of natural science have strengthened this belief. But not only has this belief become established, but it has also become established that the higher intellectual powers, what we call man's aesthetic perception, his moral impulses, are also only higher forms of the spiritual, of the soul, that one finds in the animal kingdom, that one can also look for the more primitive forms more primitive forms of moral behavior in animals that can be grasped in terms of moral concepts in relation to humans, so that one is often convinced that man has emerged as an intellectual, moral, and aesthetic being only through complication from the living beings below him.

It must be conceded that in the face of the magnificent results of modern natural science, it is extremely difficult to come up with any other attitude, any other view. And it must be readily admitted that as a spiritual scientist one often finds oneself in a strange position when, on the one hand, one allows the achievements of natural science to take effect and, on the other hand, one has to deal with what certain more or less amateurish spiritual scientists believe they have to extract from the scientific results. When one compares the conscientiousness of the two presentations, it is the case that, in terms of conscientiousness, one would actually prefer to side with the natural scientist than with some amateur spiritual researchers.

Now the point is that spiritual research in this field is also in a very special position because, basically, it only comes into disharmony with the thoughts, ideas and hypotheses that have emerged from the results of natural science , while it becomes ever clearer to the spiritual researcher that the actual results of natural science virtually force human thinking to gradually take a perspective as it is given by spiritual science. Actually, the dichotomy between spiritual science and natural science is not that great, because the facts of natural science correspond more to spiritual science than to the monistic and materialistic [interpretations]. So, as a spiritual researcher, one feels in harmony with the facts as one progresses, and only comes into conflict with the hypotheses that are drawn from the facts from some quarters.

If one observes man in his development and wants to trace him back to his origin, it seems only natural that the views about him must be in line with the views one has about the course of the earth's development, [this going back] was indeed [previously] held entirely in the materialistic sense in which the biological theory of evolution, the theory of the development of living beings, is [carried out]. When one reflects on the course of the Earth's development, then as a rule one only considers what the external, inanimate forces, the forces of physics, chemistry, geology, can achieve, and one follows the Earth in a state in which it looked different from what it looks like today, in which it was perhaps in a state that, compared to our present-day Earth formation, resembles a gaseous ball. We know that this is a widespread hypothesis, that it is assumed that the Earth condensed from a gaseous state. It is known that if you trace this back even further into the distant past, you come to see the whole solar system in a gaseous state. The spiritual researcher recognizes that objections have recently been raised against this so-called Kant-Laplace theory, but in the broadest circles it still prevails. It is believed that the whole solar system itself emanated from a kind of primeval nebula that was in rotation, and it is also imagined that the planets, including our Earth, were separated by the forces that were at work in this rotation.

I have often pointed out how the so-called [Plateau's] experiment is carried out in schools to illustrate this Kant-Laplacean theory. You take a large drop of a substance that can float on water, let a sheet of card penetrate at the point of the equator, pierce it at the point of the axis with a needle and make the drop rotate, thus showing that small drops do indeed come off and move around the center. What could be simpler than to prove in this way how a planetary system could have formed in such a way? But in an experiment, it is important to take into account everything that needs to be logically included, and it turns out that something is forgotten in this experiment: one forgets oneself, forgets that one is standing there and turning, and that you only have the logical right to put forward the hypothesis [and to transfer the experiment to the solar system] if you assume that there is a giant teacher out there in the universe who has caused all this movement with a giant needle. If you do not make this addition in this experiment, then you are on completely unjustified ground.

Of course, spiritual science does not place a professor out in space, but it does say that nowhere is there a formless matter like this cosmic fog; that matter is permeated or at least directed by spiritual powers and forces everywhere, [without us falling into anthropomorphism in the process]. Therefore, for spiritual science it is clear: Even if it is justified in terms of material formation that such a primeval nebula is there, then a spiritual event underlies this outer event, just as the activity of the spiritual soul underlies the events in the human body. Spiritual science does not start from an analogy, but from spiritual research. In the specifically concrete, spiritual science seeks the spiritual events, the spiritual forces and the spiritual entities that underlie them, so that instead of external, materialistic hypotheses, it sees the spirit in them.

Now, if one were to undertake the usual presentations of the Kant-Laplacean theory and the associated operations, one could say that it is possible to derive what our body is and the shaping of physical and mental structures from the rotation in the primeval nebula. If we want to make the assumption that some kind of giant teacher is out there and sets the whole thing in motion, then we can speak, if need be, of the formation of the earth having emerged from the Kant-Laplacean primeval nebula. But then we come to a critical point again, and this has been seen not only by spiritual researchers, but also by thoughtful natural scientists. This point concerns the origin of life in general on our earth body. One can, of course, if one does not take certain conditions into account, perhaps indulge in the belief that living things could once have come into being through the spontaneous generation of certain substances. It would be a very long way indeed if one wanted to explain all the philosophical and other reasons that demonstrate the impossibility of deriving life from conditions that are purely physical. It is much more important that this impossibility has become clear to deep-thinking natures such as Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Preyer, the brilliant biographer of Darwin, that they found no way to come to terms with it in their thoughts, to see life emerging from a spiritless, [inanimate] earth. So these researchers have resorted to the assumption that our Earth, at the beginning of its formation, was by no means just any physical or physical-chemical body, but they assumed that, even if it is true for the present that the Earth body that we have under our feet, presents itself as a lifeless one to mineralogists, and that the living beings on it reproduce in their own realms through inheritance, this does not apply to ancient times, but Preyer and Fechner were forced to think of the earth in the distant past as a living being, as a large organism, so that in the sense of these naturalists the earth was originally a large living organism in the universe. Then the time would have come when certain substances and components of this earth crystallized out of this so-called living substance, and what crystallized out is our present body, containing chemical and physical forces. While originally the earth had a life of its own, it now gives its life, in its own way, to individual earth creatures, so that the origin of living beings could be thought of as the emergence of a living being from a living earth body.

It makes a strange impression when Darwin's biographer directs his thoughts to this primeval form of the earth and creates an image out of his thinking. When we read in Preyer that the earth organism was originally to be imagined as being alive, that its bloodstreams were glowing iron vapors, that the breath of this earth body was incoming world vapors from the environment and the nutrition of the earth body was matter that flowed to it from the universe - a strange mixture of natural physical ideas [with life processes]! He cannot completely free himself from his physical conceptions, but he must admit that something like nutrition, breathing and blood circulation can be assumed in the incoming vapors. We do not think of glowing iron as performing these functions when it comes to nutrition. But Preyer shows us one thing: that even natural scientists can feel compelled to recognize the earth as an organism. They meet spiritual science halfway; they admit that if you go backwards, you come to a starting point where the earth [was a large living organism], that the earth, as something dead, in the further course [of development], has set the living [...] aside, [specialized] into [the most diverse] beings, into [plants], animals, humans. They think of remote pasts imbued with full life. But there is still something missing, which spiritual science must ascribe from these prerequisites to this earth body: [The thought is missing] that the earthly body must in truth not only have a living starting point, but that it must be thought of as having a soul and a spirit, so that when we look at the origin of the earth, we are not only dealing with a living organism, but we have to imagine the earth as a soul-inspired, spirit-inspired organism.

Yes, now one could say: What is being done here, other than what is to be explained first, is being placed into what was originally assumed? Instead of developing the spirit, one assumes the spirit as originally existing. But that is what one must do, ladies and gentlemen, according to all the possible prerequisites of a science of knowledge, because it is nowhere possible, even conceivable, that the higher natural kingdoms develop from subordinate natural kingdoms; nowhere in the course of experience are we given a stepping out of the spiritual-soul from a merely physical, of a living being from a merely [physical-] chemical. What we encounter, especially in ourselves, is that we see the spiritual-soul working on the material; and anyone who has followed the lectures given here and has heard what has been said about this spiritual-soul will know how right it is to say that, especially in the case of human beings, the spiritual-soul works on the external physical-material.

We follow the person in us, let us say, in the time from that moment until we remember back in normal [human life], and see our experiences emerging from the depths of our consciousness in our memory. We see at the center of these events of consciousness becoming more and more alive that to which we apply the word “I”. It would be absurd to assume that this 'I' only began at the moment up to which we can remember. It must also have been there in the dream-like, dusky consciousness, when the child does not yet say 'I' to itself. The 'I' must have been there. How was it present in connection with the other soul forces? If we consider the ordinary life of the human soul, we can say that what emerges as consciousness in this stage is something special, something personal. We see how we work the special life energies, which are individual to us, into it. Therefore, we are compelled to think of what we see working within our consciousness later in life as the actual agent of our whole organism. We have to think that we inherit the general structure of this organism from our ancestors, but that the energies that make up our organism have to be worked into it, [right down to the finest plastic formations of the brain].

When we recognize this, then we are no longer far from being able to trace this individuality back to a previous life on earth. There we see the spiritual and soul forces at work on our inner physical and material being, and we can then say to ourselves that, as today, as in our earthly present, our ego with its soul forces is still working on our body in early childhood. This work is not inherited from our ancestors; rather, there is still a certain scope left in what we have become through the forces of heredity, in which we can work our spiritual and soul nature. We see this, for example, in the fact that we develop from a crawling creature into a walking one. We see how the spiritual-soul element lifts us up, we see the spiritual-soul element working on the physical.

Only when we progress to what was mentioned in the last lecture - about the hidden depths of the soul life - to the spiritual training through which one gains insight into the spiritual world behind the physical, then we can consider what has already been described here. If you apply the methods that you will find in my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds” to yourself, you will gradually come to a point where you, as a human being, are no longer dependent on living in the soul in such a way that you have to use physical tools. Spiritual science shows that man can apply methods of meditation and concentration to himself, through which he can acquire a spiritual essence, independent of the physical, so that he has experiences and knows that he did not have them with the help of the senses; but knows: Now you are experiencing something in your original spiritual-soul nature, you become aware of what you are beyond this physical being.

And it is particularly interesting that when you ascend to such a training, you have the feeling from the very beginning: Yes, you are now experiencing something supernatural. But at the same time, at the beginning you are not able to express what you experience in the same way in concepts and ideas and words. Why not? Because when you express ideas and concepts in words, you need the instrument of the brain. The ideas and concepts that people form are taken from the world, so that a gap opens up between what one experiences and what one can express. Only when one practices patience and perseverance and continues the exercises does the time come when one is able to truly express the experiences one brings down from the spiritual world in terms of concepts and ideas taken from the outer life. Before this possibility arises, one knows that one feels the brain as something that offers a great deal of resistance. One feels that in the further course of training, one must do the work of shaping the brain plastically, in a way similar to the way the child must shape the still clumsy brain plastically for life. The aim is to work such fine shapes into the brain that they cannot be recognized by natural scientists with external instruments. The work of the soul-spiritual being on the material substance of the body can, however, only be followed inwardly. Thus, we see again in the spiritual-soul realm the actual origin of what is becoming.

It is no longer an unjustified claim to say that, as things currently stand on our earth, the spiritual and soul life of man, as it was before the first material atom of our body came into being, is only able to use the scope that is limited in the general structure of our physical body. While this scope, over which the conditions of heredity have no power, shapes the soul and spirit, we see that the physical, the general human form, can only be preserved by human beings of a similar nature. Thus, under today's living conditions, the soul and spirit are only able to shape certain things within a body received through heredity.

If this is the case today – and if we assume that the earth has undergone an evolution, which even natural science admits – it is not to be said that in the distant past the spiritual-mental was only able to work within a certain scope. Take it for the moment as a hypothesis; it need not be dismissed out of hand as absurd, when spiritual science says: The further we go back into primeval conditions, the more powerfully the spiritual-soul [of man] is effective. In the remote past, this spiritual-soul was so significant, so powerful that it could also shape that which today can only be shaped within heredity. Just as we see today that the spiritual soul forms only a small part of the material human being, so we see that in ancient times it formed the entire organism, so that the human soul was present in the ensouled earth organism, and the earthly body was once able to yield such a substance that could be formed directly from the soul into a full human being by the spiritual-soul worlds.

Thus we look back into the ancient past, where conditions were not yet as they are today, where within the total soul of the earth organism the human souls were contained, that is, the earth organism also had organic substance that was different from the present one, which can only be classified according to the forces of inheritance in the human body. So we come back to an earth configuration - in contrast to the earth formation in which we stand - in which there was no such reproduction as in our time; we do not find such a connection between generations, between male and female. In the place of the interaction between male and female, we find the interaction between the spiritual soul and the living substance of the earth body. The spiritual-soul aspect had a fertilizing effect on the earthly substance and allowed that to emerge which the human being was at the origin of his earthly existence: a creature formed and developed purely out of the spiritual-soul core of his being.

If we look at present-day conditions with an open mind, this may seem like a daring hypothesis, but it is certainly not something absurd.

So we see that our earthly body is formed, as it were, out of living substance.

Something else must be said, which is also true. When the spiritual researcher refers back to epochs of the earth when it made no sense to speak of male and female, but when the heavenly and earthly fertilized each other, the views of the natural scientists get in the way, but not the facts of natural science that have emerged in recent decades. These facts have led natural scientists to particular assumptions. We see how, in recent times, which began with Ernst Haeckel's belief that he had to give a materialistic interpretation of human origin in his conception of the Darwinian theory at the [Stettin] Natural History Society [in 1863]; we see how the naturalists who hold this older point of view felt compelled to draw a straight line of development [from the monera] to man, and how they are always obliged to say that, before man came upon the earth, there lived a creature similar to the present-day ape. [But more recent research has] corrected this view. Everywhere we see that attempts have been made to bring man's ancestor closer to a physical, animal-like being, which, through the perfection of its physical organization, also produced the height of the spiritual organization.

We can no longer accept such things, that man had an ancestor who was somehow similar to a present-day animal form. We see the necessity for this. Naturalists say that there were once human ancestors that resembled today's apes. That which now lives as the animal world has arisen from decadence, so that what we have as apes is a being that has arisen from a declining formation of a higher form on the one hand, and on the other hand we have man. We see monkeys and humans as two branches leading back to a being that no longer exists, that was only in very distant geological times. This common ancestor of animal-kind and humanity, to which the facts lead the natural science worldview people, is [hypothetical], a being that is purely imagined.

Now, certain naturalists have been forced by careful results to move this being further and further up, so that many are already forced to say that even higher mammals do not resemble this hypothetical being, we would have to go back even further to a being from which the very first mammalian forms descended, and this being would have developed a branch at the same time that was always superior to animality and that finally developed into man. When one sees a monkey, one must always trace it back to an earlier stage of animal existence and then assume a purely hypothetical, purely imagined entity that developed a branch that became reptiles, while another branch was formed that became human. So we see the naturalist going to something that formed humans and animals from the same being.

How far removed are such scholars from what we have expounded from spiritual science? No further than that their habits of thought compel them to shape the conditions of the earth's development in such a way that they can only conceive of the origin of present-day life forms in a physical way, whereas the spiritual researchers put something in this place that emerged under completely different earthly conditions and from completely different conditions: the fertilization of the earthly substance by the spiritual soul.

We also find the possibility of thinking of the further progress of development up to the human being as an entity worked out of the spiritual-soul. Just as today's human being is the product of a father and a mother, so too was such a primeval human being, as I have now described him in the sense of spiritual science, joined together from two sides, from the substance of the earth and the spiritual-soul of the earth's surroundings. Thus we can say that the human being belonged to the spiritual environment. Through this primal element, the human being has lived more in the whole of the heavenly environment and felt his connection with cosmic conditions.

But we could only receive our spiritual and soul germ at a certain point on the earth. Through this, the human being is individualized, through the fact that he came [to a certain place], through this he has become a special being, a being that has become native, that has become firmly bound to the locality of the earth.

Thus in this primeval man we have at the same time: a general human and an individual, an earth-bound and a more heavenly, macrocosmic element. Strangely, we see the after-effects of what we have just characterized in today's man.

If we carefully examine everything that comes to man through heredity, it shows that, despite all the other circumstances that have been specialized through heredity, we find a general human element at the basis of man, and that every human nature is individualized into a second. We still find both today: something universally human and something specialized. If we examine present-day humanity, we find that the universal human element is inherited from the female side, while the specific, individual character is essentially inherited from the male ancestors, regardless of whether the individual as an individuality is male or female. This means that we can still see the after-effects of what manifested itself in primeval man as a general heavenly element – if the expression is not taken pedantically – and what came from the general life substance of the earth. Therefore, we need only assume that in the primeval men, who were formed out of the spirit, in the one case the macrocosmic element predominated, which had a fertilizing effect from the surrounding area, while the element that came from the earth itself receded more. As a result, some of the primeval men specialized. Where the heavenly element was more active, specialization led to the female principle, while where the earthly element predominated, where the specific earthly destiny gained the upper hand, the more individual was formed, the tendency towards the male. Thus we see how, out of these general conditions, the tendencies were formed in the original human being, consisting of soul and spirit, and how these tendencies became more and more concentrated and took shape as man and woman.

And this whole process, my esteemed audience, must be imagined in such a way that the conditions were always changing, that is to say, nothing else but that the conditions that had made it possible for the cosmic elements to fertilize from the spiritual environment were disappearing. The living earth substance released the purely mineral and chemical from itself and was therefore no longer able to release living substance. What had been brought into being through spiritual fertilization by the lower and the higher, and which could no longer shape the human being in this way, was replaced by something that emerged in a different way and became formative by being incorporated into the human being itself, so that reproduction occurred from generation to generation. We see that the forces that shape the human being lead back to each other in such a way that the female contribution leads back to a cosmic, heavenly element, and that which is given in reproduction by the male leads back to the original, organically living earth substance. We still see the general in the female and the individual in the male. No one will be able to shed light on the relationship of heredity and the contribution of male and female who does not take these things into account, even if only hypothetically. The forces that worked between the earth's environment and the earth itself had to be passed on to heredity.

We must now consider how the development of animals relates to this development of man, to this view of the origin of man. For in a certain way, the origin of man is not properly understood without considering the development of animals. It shows that man, as he stands before us today in his duality - so that on the one hand there is still a certain scope for the spiritual and soul to work, and on the other hand he receives what he has inherited - could only develop as he is today , if he retained this spiritual-soul education until a certain point in time, until the conditions on earth were such that they could no longer provide the possibility for the human being to arise from the spiritual-soul. Only then did today's form of reproduction develop. As a being formed from the spiritual-soul, the human being had to wait.

What would have happened if he had abandoned the origin of the spiritual and soul earlier and merely submitted to earthly conditions? Simple considerations can show us this. If the spiritual and soul had not remained in its original nature until the extreme moment of time, but had allowed earthly conditions to prevail, then the spiritual and soul would have become weak in the face of earthly conditions. If man had earlier adopted the mode of reproduction that is now his, his spiritual and soul forces would be weaker and that which comes from the earth would have gained the upper hand – because it was even more powerful when the earth still had organizing forces within it – and he would have descended to a lower level under the influence of the organizing forces of the earth.

This is the case with animality. The spiritual soul of the animals united with the earth at different times, descending into the spheres of the earth before man. The animal preceded man. But man does not descend from the animal, but from its spiritual archetype. Those spiritual archetypes that have become animals descended earlier than man, who remained longest at the top in the spiritual regions. Thus the lines of development do not lead to the archetype of the animal kingdom and of man. We must think of the archetype of the animal kingdom as separate from the soul-spiritual of man.

Thus we see how, in the sense of a logically developed theory of evolution, spiritual science places the human being in the context of the earth's overall development, and how this coincides with a properly considered scientific view. Spiritual science places man in such a line of development, in which the metamorphoses of the earth itself are taken into account, how then the animal forms arise and finally man arises, having waited so long in the spiritual surroundings of the earth, so that he could adapt to the conditions of the earth in such a way that the greatest scope was given for the spiritual and soul life.

Dear attendees, I have already indicated that what has been said today, especially by people who have equipped themselves with all the knowledge of today, must often be regarded as unthinkable, as absurd. And if only a few people have the inclination and the will to recognize that these things [of spiritual science] that play into cultural life should be pursued with the same seriousness as [those of] natural science, then that will be enough to show how this influence on cultural life occurs. Spiritual science starts from a different point of view, and admittedly arrives at something to which the natural scientist must still relate negatively, but those who want to can see that true natural science, based on facts, comes straight to meet what spiritual science has to give. Spiritual science starts from a different point of view from natural science, but it does arrive at something to which the natural scientist must still be hostile. If we disregard the fantasies of natural science and consider only the facts, we shall see that these everywhere substantiate and prove what has been characterized today.

But for man it is important to be aware that there is an independent spiritual element within him that is not the result of a material body, but that the physical is the result of a spiritual element that has its origin in the spiritual environment and has sunk its seeds into the now inanimate substance of the earth.

The study of the external facts in the development of the earth [does not contradict the independent significance of the spiritual and soul in human nature, but rather, through every deeper reflection, every living in its essence – like a soliloquy, like a conversation that the soul has with itself, must form itself, which, from the depths of human nature, must repeatedly shape itself in such a way that we can summarize the relationship of the human being to himself and to life in the words:

From the spirit man has sprung,

In the spirit man's whole life works and moves,

To the spirit man's whole being strives.

Dear attendees! When people of the present reflect on today's plight, today's misery, they first ask about the causes of this plight, this misery. And he also asks: How can we escape from the confusion, from the chaos of social human development that we have fallen into? Such questions will usually be directed towards the particular inclinations of today's man and towards the most immediate external causes, which lie in the terrible events of the last five to six years. Or their thoughts will be directed to measures that address the external factors in order to alleviate the suffering and chaos in which we find ourselves. However, many people will not be satisfied with what the very last few years can tell them. He will turn his attention to a longer period of time, to the last decades, perhaps centuries, during which, albeit less vividly for humanity, what has come to expression so terribly in recent years has prepared itself, as, figuratively speaking, a thunderstorm prepares itself over a long period of sultriness, and then suddenly discharges. But even here, we get stuck in seeking external causes and in seeking external measures to alleviate the misery. In a way, one-sidedly, with such thinking, with such a feeling, one is quite right. And to what extent one is right, what can fruitfully arise from an understanding of our world situation with regard to the external, I will take the liberty of talking about in more detail the day after tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen. Today, however, I would like to speak of those causes that were at work in the human inner life and that present humanity will have to consider changing if it wants to escape from the chaotic situation in which it finds itself.

Is it not, then, readily apparent to any observer who takes a somewhat closer and benevolent look at what is going on in humanity today, that we are in this age, in which we hear from so many hearts, from so many souls, we hear the call for a more social organization of our conditions than those we have had so far, is it not strange that, despite hearing this call, we see intense anti-social impulses prevailing everywhere in our present humanity? Yes, that is precisely the difficulty that confronts the serious observer of our world situation: the fact that one is supposed to direct one's energies towards a more social organization of our human life at a time when, from the depths of the soul, anti-social drives are rising up throughout our entire civilized world. This emergence of anti-social instincts is connected with the fact that it is very difficult for today's human being to fulfill a longing that is not even consciously, but more or less unconsciously, in his soul, but which, even if unconsciously, asserts itself so strongly in today's humanity that it often comes to the fore in a pathological way, both morally and even outwardly physically. The longing — as I said, it is not easily recognized, because for many people today it still expresses itself unconsciously — the longing is this: in a new way, in the way that people have been educated over the past decades, and even through the last three to four centuries, in the way of gaining a relationship to that which, as an inkling at least, if not as a fully articulated consciousness, lives in every soul, as an inkling of a superhuman being in our transitory, in our sensual human existence. One could say that today's human being is in search of the supersensible human being. And anyone who looks more deeply into the needs of our present time will, above all, feel that it is the first duty of the spiritual aspirant to meet this yearning and longing of contemporary humanity.

One of the most important tasks of our time is to satisfy this inner soul longing, which expresses itself in this yearning and longing. But the way in which people in the broadest circles still want to meet this longing today is not how I will speak to you this evening. What I will have to say to you is spoken from a point of view that I have been presenting for years now as anthroposophical spiritual science.

The task of anthroposophical spiritual science is to seek a path into the supersensible world for people who have absorbed the ideas, sensations, feelings and will impulses of modern times that have emerged from the scientific worldview. From this point of view, what can be said about present-day humanity is either found incomprehensible or unnecessary in the broadest circles today. The spiritual researcher is told: “You are offering something understandable; well, yes, but I won't be able to offer you anything that is so easy to understand, as many still offer today's people, who start from the inner comfort of the soul, which, with regard to the highest goals of spiritual human striving, exists in today's people. Everyone today admits that one must make some effort if one wants to get to know the scientific work that leads to knowing something, say, about the mountains of the moon or the moons of Jupiter; or about the cells of the organism. But when it comes to knowing something about the supersensible world, one rejects out of inner laziness the idea of going a similar difficult path. Today many still say: Man must come to the supersensible foundations of the human being and the world through simple confession or through simple, simple belief in the Bible. What anthroposophical spiritual science has to say is considered too complicated. But this is precisely one of the main problems of our time; one of the problems that underlie our confused social aspirations.

Those who are familiar with human life know that it is insufficient to remain at this simplicity of faith and confession; insufficient because if one cannot regard to the supersensible, if one remains in this comfort zone, then one cannot master the great questions of social life that are confronting humanity in our present time. We do not yet see it, but we will soon see how those who always want to remain with the “simple faith of the confession” cultivate the kind of thinking in humanity that is now manifesting itself in the social turmoil across Europe and in the civilized world in general.

They are calling on people to return to the simple faith of the confession, because they do not know that remaining with this simple faith has produced what appears today as chaos and confusion.

Therefore, anthroposophical spiritual science regards it as a first duty to speak to the present human being about these things from its very different point of view. When the present human being hears the intimation in his heart, in his soul, about the supersensible human being, then he looks up at himself in a kind of self-knowledge, away from the world. What presents itself to the human being, according to the state of the present consciousness? Today, when a person reflects on his own being, he expresses what presents itself to him when he reflects on his own being by saying: This human being consists of body and soul. And then the person believes that he gets to know his body by observing it with his senses; by then seeking to grasp the sensory observation with the thinking mind. And for that which man cannot attain by this path, he turns to current science, to natural science, to that which biology, physiology and so on have to say about the human body. And then man believes that he really knows something about the one part of the human being, about the human body, when he has taught himself in this way. And then he may also reflect on what lives in the depths of his soul as thinking, feeling and willing. But when he brings to consciousness what is in the depths of his soul, he is immediately confronted with the great mystery of the human being. For he must find that Yes, that which appears to me externally as my body is something quite different, something radically different, from that which reveals itself within my soul as thinking, feeling and willing. And then the human being asks: What is the relationship between what reveals itself to me inwardly as soul and what is external to me as body? And underlying this human puzzle lies something great and powerful in human nature. At the root of it lies the great question of the meaning of life; the question: How can I, if I believe that life should have a meaning, ever believe that what lives in what appears to me as the transient, sensual human body can arise and disappear with this external, sensual body? What is the relationship between the soul and this external, sensual body?

When this question confronts him, in most cases man cannot perceive it as anything other than a comprehensive mystery. And if he turns from his own, as a rule impotent, thinking about this question to those who, in accordance with today's thinking, want to scientifically determine the relationship between body and soul, he usually finds that they have no more to say than what he has already encountered in such a mysterious way: Philosophical and other worldviews leave the serious questioner in this field truly quite unsatisfied.

Spiritual science, as it is meant here, therefore takes completely different paths to the supersensible, and it cannot speak about this supersensible in any other way than in a way that is very different from the way of external science. For hardly anyone becomes a true spiritual researcher who has not learned, learned in his own way, how impossible it is to recognize anything about the supersensible human being through ordinary reflection and ordinary external science. Not only must one speak differently when discussing these things from the standpoint of anthroposophical spiritual science than what the senses and the mind offer to man, but one must also speak in a different way. And that is precisely why one is still little understood today because this way is unfamiliar. What is understood better, at least one believes this, is simple, unadorned faith. But this no longer satisfies humanity, which has been educated over the last three to four centuries. If you want to hear the spiritual researcher talk about the very first starting points of his spiritual science, you will hear something different from him than you hear from those who have gone through the external science of nature today.

Isn't it the case that when someone who has become a “specialist” in some field, as they say, tells us about what he has gone through in the laboratory, in the clinic, in the observatory, that he he speaks about everything he is talking about with a certain calmness, so that one can see that his state of mind was quite even while he was working on this or that scientific subject in the laboratory or in the clinic or in the observatory. The spiritual researcher cannot speak to you in this way about his way of knowing. Ask him how he arrived at his insights, and he will not be able to speak to you of that indifferent research that is of the kind I have just characterized. Instead, the spiritual researcher will have to speak to you of the inner soul struggles, the suffering and pain that his soul went through in surmounting them before he could take any step towards the insights we will be talking about this evening. The spiritual researcher who has come to real knowledge of the supersensible has repeatedly faced inner abysses in the face of which it seems as if the soul must plunge into nothingness. And he knows how to tell what it means to muster all one's strength in order to develop that in the soul which carries the soul into those regions in which the real supersensible human being, not just an illusion, can be seen.

This is what the spiritual researcher really has to go through within himself. For he must have a different relationship to external nature and to himself than the ordinary researcher. I do not wish to be misunderstood, my dear audience, so I will say from the outset: the one who has become a spiritual researcher in the sense meant here does not disdain the natural science of the present day, which has achieved such great triumphs. On the contrary, he regards it as the fundamental condition for his spiritual research that he has first familiarized himself with the great and powerful results of natural science of the last few centuries. And he fully recognizes this natural science. For only in this way does he know how to look beyond this natural science in order to penetrate into the spirit to which the human being also belongs.

The natural scientist is right to speak of certain limits to his knowledge of nature. And it is precisely the most cautious natural scientists who have said that natural science always leads people to concepts and ideas that cannot be taken further in the study of nature. Hasty people then speak of such limits as a restriction of human knowledge in general. The cautious natural scientist knows that he cannot go beyond these limits with natural research alone. He will therefore, as long as he remains a natural scientist, stop at these limits; let us say, at such concepts that present themselves to natural research as unbridgeable gaps, such as the essence of matter, the essence of force, and many others; the natural scientist stops there. The spiritual researcher cannot do that. The spiritual researcher begins his work precisely where the natural scientist must stop, by fighting out inner struggles with what is the limit of natural science. The whole inner life of the soul must be brought into activity. And while the natural scientist stops at such limits, the spiritual researcher begins to find his way vividly into ideas and concepts and perceptions and feelings of such limits. Then he experiences something by delving ever deeper into that which science cannot or should not say anything about; then he senses what it actually means to live with the limits of natural knowledge.

What I am going to say now, my dear audience, can of course be seen as not being logically provable in the usual sense. For it is not something that has been thought up. It is what spiritual research experiences at a certain point in its development.

In this inner, living experience, the spiritual researcher comes to a great, shattering conclusion by experiencing what can be experienced at the limits of natural knowledge: He has to give himself the answer out of inner experience, out of his own experience, that we as human beings could never become social beings in our physical-sensual life between birth and death if we were to transcend the limits of natural knowledge. In a remarkable way, we are adapted to the way of the world as human beings. We would not have something – this is recognized by the spiritual researcher in experience – we would not have something in our human nature if we were not stopped by limits when we want to explore nature; we would not have something very essential; we would not have that which is a basic condition of our social, human coexistence; we would not have in us the power of love.

You see, dear attendees, that is the first harrowing experience on the path into the supersensible world, that you get to know human nature in such a way that you say to yourself: We must be limited in our view of nature, then from us in looking at nature, the power that submerges into everything without limits; then we humans would pass each other by in physical life, could not develop sympathy and antipathy, could not develop the most diverse nuances of love, without which life cannot be. In order for man to live between birth and death, it is necessary that he be limited with regard to his knowledge of nature. Within this limit, the power of love can then arise. But this also points the way in which the path can nevertheless be followed, which, in a sense, leads to the knowledge of the supersensible world.

We have the power of love in ordinary life because we are physical human beings to a certain degree; and this degree is more or less sufficient for our external social life – admittedly very little in some epochs, as in the present – but when it is fully developed, it is sufficient for our external social life. What is necessary with regard to this power of love and other things in order to take the spiritual path into the supersensible, I have described in detail in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds'; today I can only hint at a few fundamental things, but that shall be done.

Above all, it is necessary that when one has gone through what I have just mentioned, one can be imbued with a certain inner state of mind that a person in ordinary life has only to a very limited extent; I would call this state of mind 'intellectual humility'. If you go through what I have described, you come to say to yourself: No matter how talented you are in terms of ordinary thinking and research skills, you have to admit to yourself: You cannot penetrate into the supersensible world at all with these ordinary thinking and research skills. That is what a person wants. That is why he is intellectually immodest in ordinary life.

But it is precisely this intellectual immodesty that must first be combated. We must be able to say the following, for example. Let us assume that a five-year-old child has a volume of Goethean poems in his hand. With his abilities, he will not be able to do with this volume of Goethean poems what should be done with it by virtue of the essence of this volume of poems. Just as this five-year-old child faces the essence of this book of poems, so — we must admit in intellectual modesty — we face the world and ourselves in relation to the supersensible essence with our ordinary abilities to think, feel and research. Just as a five-year-old child must first develop the abilities that will enable him to approach the essence of a book of poetry, so too, in full intellectual humility, must the human being, if he wants to become a spiritual researcher, first develop ordinary thinking, ordinary feeling and ordinary will. And just as the soul and physical abilities of a five-year-old child are developed from the outside through his education, so anyone who wants to know something about the supersensible world from direct perception must take his soul development into his own hands. But that means, my dear audience, that one must be able to make the confession in a real inner soul modesty: The strength you need to recognize the supersensible must be developed within yourself. And it must be developed in detail.

As a rule, one will not come to this development at all if one is not made aware of it through the experiences I have already described today, that no matter how deeply one has penetrated into the outer world of natural phenomena, that with this thinking, with the achievements about the outer natural phenomena, one can know nothing about what is going on in the human body, in order, for example, to gain a relationship to what we, as thinking, call an important soul activity. There one must first bring this thinking to a completely different level than it is in ordinary life. One must develop this thinking further. This can be done if one performs certain

of the soul that one does instinctively and unconsciously in ordinary life, if one gets into the habit of making these actions more and more conscious. I will pick out two things from the many things that the spiritual researcher has to do in this regard. The first is that the spiritual researcher must develop the powers of attention and interest in a completely different way than they are developed in ordinary life. In ordinary life, we become aware of something when our senses are drawn to it. We then direct our attention to the thing when we are made aware of it by external impressions.

But as a rule we do not exert ourselves out of the innermost power of our soul to strengthen the power of attention; something from outside awakens our interest. In ordinary life, it is always the case with a person that the interest aroused from outside makes his soul attentive. If a person now practices earnestly and worthily to be attentive, to pay constant and long attention to that which he wants to be attentive to only out of the inner power of thought, if he turns his interest to things that do not impose themselves on him, to which he turns out of his very own, innermost initiative , he does such exercises as I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” The path into the supersensible worlds is a long one, but if a person practices for a long time, he will finally notice that his thinking becomes quite different from what it is in ordinary life. He notices that this thinking begins to acquire an inner vitality. And he notices that he actually has a completely new kind of inner, living thinking in him, thinking that is set in motion from within. One really sees through what develops as a new thinking through effort, through a development; one really sees this when one patiently and gradually sees it arise in the soul: You have your old thinking; your thinking that more or less passively joins in with things, that continues even when you are not making an effort, when you are not somehow exerting your senses or your mind as the basis of this thinking. This thinking continues, it does not sleep. But as if standing above this thinking, observing it going on beside it, like a kind of dream, there then stands the other, the completely bright, never dreamy thinking, which one develops in the way I have just characterized.

Then one comes to an inner discovery, to an inner experience, which I would now like to describe as the second shattering event on the way into the supersensible worlds: one experiences inwardly that one's ordinary thinking cannot be distinguished from one's outer physical activity; but that the thinking that one develops through one's own power, that proceeds in such a way that one experiences it: It has nothing to do with any external physical activity; it has nothing to do with any nervous or other activity. When you think as I have just described, you know that you are moving in a purely spiritual element with your thinking, and you have your physical self beside you; you have really stepped out of your body. And now you realize that this human being, when it carries out its thinking in this way, when it carries out its inner soul activity, as it is often described in the everyday illusions of human beings. People also believe in many cases, based on today's popular science, that they are indulging in materialistic ideas: we have developed the nervous system into the wonderful brain; in this brain one can see how research in human development is progressing; with each stage of thinking, the brain develops further. And then people say: So thinking, imagining, arises through the activity of the brain, through the activity of the nervous system. And basically, people who know nothing of the independent bodiless thinking that I have just described to you cannot help it, if they are somehow religious, but think of the illusory body.

But the one who gets to know bodiless thinking knows from direct experience another. Let me give you an image: Imagine you are walking along a muddy path; on this path you find furrows; you find impressions in the softened soil that resemble human footsteps. Do you think that someone who now believes that down there, below the surface of the earth, there are forces at work that cause something like impressions of human footsteps to appear on the surface is saying something correct about this fact? No, the person who judges the situation correctly is the one who knows that the furrows have been pressed into the soft soil from the outside. The person who has come to know independent, bodiless thinking knows that the spiritual soul is as independent of the nervous system and the brain as the carriage rolling down the street is independent of the feet of the person walking down the street. Body-free thinking carves furrows into the brain. It is no wonder that, as thinking unfolds in the course of human development, the brain shows imprints of that which develops thinking everywhere. But it is a terrible illusion, one that misleads humanity, to believe that what the brain fears and thereby causes thinking in some way arises from within the nervous system. Only the living, body-free thinking that develops and unfolds out of intellectual modesty can provide insights into that which leads to the immortal human being.

Then, through this body-free thinking, one gets to know the first supersensible part of the human being, that which I have mentioned in my writings - names are not important, but one must have names for things - the etheric body or formative body. This is something that the human being carries within them, just as they carry their physical body, but it is something that cannot be grasped by the external senses and by ordinary thinking; it can be grasped when the human being develops this imaginative thinking - as I call it - which I have been talking about today. Then this imaginative thinking becomes a [mental organ] with which he sees the spiritual human content, the formative forces that permeate the human being, just as the human being has the physical body.

Thus one ascends to the first supersensible aspect of human existence. But one cannot ascend in this way without undergoing other experiences as one ascends to body-free thinking. From the relationship between the limits of knowledge and the power of love in the human being, of which I have spoken to you, you will be able to divine that there are deep, mysterious relationships between the powers of knowledge in the human being and social human life. If a person acquires supersensible thinking, as I have just described it, then he finds a new way in which social life, which takes place between human souls and human beings, is shaped.

We meet people in life. We develop a strong sympathy for some people and a less strong sympathy for others; we may even develop antipathy for some people. But a network of relationships with other people, shaped by the power of love, runs through our entire lives as we interact with others. If one learns to recognize the power of supersensible thinking, then this leads to the realization that the sympathies and antipathies we develop for the people we meet in the physical world come from the fact that we were already connected with these souls before we went through birth or conception. Through the development of thinking, the spiritual view of the world in which we have lived opens up from the physical life – we have lived spiritually and soulfully just as we live here physically and corporally – in which we have lived as in a spiritual world before we descended into the physical world through conception and birth. In our time, it is possible to see into the spiritual world from which we descended before our birth, through a powerful development of thinking out of intellectual modesty. It is neither speculation nor fantasy when we say from such knowledge: How you meet people here in life, soul to soul, is the continuation of how you met them, now entirely in the spirit, in the supersensible world, before those people who enter into relationships here descended into this sensual world. Just as man has been seeking out natural scientific connections in a new way for three to four centuries, so from today onwards he will have to seek them out - otherwise he will never feel his suspicions about the supernatural satisfied - he will have to seek out spiritual connections to the supernatural worlds.

It must be admitted that, when we speak in these terms today, we are still speaking of something quite incomprehensible and incredible to present-day humanity. But anyone who is familiar with the history of cultural development knows the significant way in which people relate to the great cultural advances. It was in the first half of the nineteenth century when a college of physicians and other scholars were asked whether railways should be built. They delivered the verdict – I am not telling a fairy tale, but something that is documented – that railways should not be built because they would undermine the health of those who travel in them due to the great vibrations during the journey. And if they are to be built after all, they said, if people are to be found who will travel in the railways, then at least large, high board walls must be erected to the left and right of the railway so that those who pass the railroad will not suffer from concussion. — Thus fear expressed itself against real progress.

Such fear lives unconsciously in humanity today before the supersensible. We will not be able to fight the anti-social instincts of humanity until we engage in this field, not believing that we get mental concussion when the supernatural is spoken of.

That, dear attendees, is the one link of the human being that looks into prenatal life.

In yet another way, man can take his development into his own hands through the modesty of his soul. This is when, as in the first case I described, he can further develop his thinking if he further develops his will. There is something again that the whole human being develops unconsciously in the course of his life. Let us just admit, my dear audience, that basically we change from week to week, from year to year, from month to month in the purely external development of the human being. We are always learning from life. Just look back at how different you are from ten or twenty years ago. But what we developed in ourselves then, we developed unconsciously. We did not learn to take our further development as human beings, our higher development as human beings, into our own hands. And again, there are methods – you can also read more about this in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' – by which one can learn continuously from life; whereby one looks at everything that presents itself in life in such a way that we intervene actively; then we say to ourselves: What we have done there – if we ourselves were higher, more maturely developed, we could do it better. If we constantly develop this modesty in relation to the will – our development can go on and on – and take the opportunity to take our will development into our own hands in the same way that we took our thinking development into our own hands in the way described above, then it turns out that we find our way into the supersensible world in a different direction. What we are now developing within us by further developing our willpower is that, as we go through life, we can always become our own spectator. We then become, as it were, as if we were floating above ourselves asleep at night and looking at our body lying in bed from the outside. Thus, through the inner development of the willpower of the soul, we learn to see ourselves in everything we do.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a strong human power. By immersing yourself in this power, you become independent of your body to a higher degree than simply by developing your thinking. In this way you get to know the higher supersensible being of the human being; that which I would like to call the body of movement, or - don't shudder back, it's just a name - the astral body of the human being. We learn to recognize what is supersensible in us by merely making an effort to move our hands, by working, by developing our will in our own growth, in our own human development. Then, in addition to the etheric body, we get to know the astral body of the human being, which, because we have it, uniquely and solely enables us to truly express the will in the outer world.

But when one experiences within oneself what willpower, developed in this way, actually is, then one looks into the supersensible world in a different direction. Then you first experience: You behave in one of two ways towards people you come into social contact with; you do them good or you do them little good; you do them something purposeful or inappropriate; you act towards them in such a way that they experience the consequences of your action. By developing the powers of will as I have just described, we learn to recognize that we experience what lives through the astral body, through the actual spiritual-soul. The expression 'body' is just an expression. What we develop there carries our supersensible being through the gate of death; and we will experience the continuation of what we have developed in our relationships with people here in the physical world in the manner just described in the spiritual world after death. That is to say, in the spiritual vision, there is an immediate insight into the world that we experience when we have passed through the gate of death. That which connects man with the spiritual world becomes visible when he develops the powers of his soul as I have described. But then, my dear audience, these two powers come together. The power that develops out of thinking, out of living thinking, and the power that develops out of the will, they enter into an inner marriage, as it were. And then, then the contemplation of one's own development becomes something new for man; then something quite new becomes what we call the history of mankind. Oh, the ordinary, external knowledge knows little about this history of mankind, only the external facts. But what is called history today is actually nothing more than a fable convenante. What lives in history, what advances humanity through history, is only really learned in its truth, with the forces that I have just described to you. There one learns to recognize how the spiritual rules in the historical development of humanity.

Now, I do not want to describe to you in abstract terms what I have to say in this field, but I would like to present to you what can have a direct bearing on the great tasks of humanity in the present day. The one who, as I am now doing, looks at more recent human history from the spiritually developed soul forces finds a significant turning point in the development of humanity in the middle of the fifteenth century.

You see, in life, things are often said that are actually illusions or one-sided truths. For example, it is often said that nature – and what is meant is basically the whole of world affairs – nature does not make leaps. In a sense this is true, but in another sense it is completely untrue. Nature is constantly making leaps. Look at a growing plant: the green leaf makes the leap to the colored petal, to the stamens, to the pistil and so on in further growth. So it has also happened in history, leaps and bounds continually; these leaps are not noticed because man does not follow the workings of history in a spiritual way, but only externally. The one who follows the development in history in a spiritual way can clearly see that since the middle of the fifteenth century the human spiritual condition in the civilized world has become quite different than before. We have to distinguish a long period of human development from our own, which began in the middle of the fifteenth century and in which we are still immersed in our developmental epoch. The immediately preceding developmental epoch began around the eighth century BC and lasted from the seventh century BC to the middle of the fifteenth century AD, which external history does not tell. If you look at history as I have described it today, it becomes clear that people were very different in the epoch that began in the eighth century BC and ended in the middle of the fifteenth century. People were so different then that I will briefly illustrate this with an image.

You all know, dear attendees, that today, as he develops in his childhood years, the human being goes through parallel stages with his soul and spirit in relation to his physical development. Just consider – and you can read about what this means in my little booklet 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science' – how deeply the change of teeth towards the seventh year intervenes in what is developing in the child. And for those who are able to observe well, how important it is that what intervenes in the life of the child intervenes in the soul and spirit much more intensively than people usually believe. This is the first epoch in which, alongside physical development, the human being undergoes a parallel development in relation to his soul and spirit. Man ends the second epoch with sexual maturity in the fourteenth or fifteenth year. Man develops quite differently between the seventh and fourteenth year. And again differently, but in such a way that he still has parallelism with physical development, up to the twenty-first year. And anyone who is able to observe closely in our time will see that today's humanity still shows a parallelism in terms of the spiritual and soul up to the age of twenty-seven. Then this parallelism ceases. Then, to a certain extent, we emancipate ourselves inwardly from the physical and bodily in relation to our spiritual and soul. Then these developments no longer go hand in hand. But what I am now describing as a characteristic of present human development, and on which everything that happens between human beings, everything in the human totality depends, was different before the middle of the fifteenth century, it was different throughout the whole long period, although it developed from the eighth century BC to the middle of the fifteenth century. For a much longer time, the human being was afflicted with a parallelism. Even into one's early thirties, one could still experience physical changes that corresponded to psychological changes, although not as strongly as during the change of teeth and sexual maturation. And anyone who really wants to understand what was there in the world with Greek culture, what entered human development with Greek culture, must know that what is usually called Greek human nature, what one perceives as the harmony of Greek culture, what has been felt in such a way that the offspring and also the aftermath of Greek culture are carried into our time, that this is based on this longer ascending developmental capacity of the bodily-physical of human nature. This goes parallel with that which the spiritual-soul qualities are. In the case of the Greeks and Romans, the spiritual-soul qualities were such that one can say: The powers of understanding and feeling developed more instinctively; instinctive feeling, instinctive logic, instinctive understanding, instinctive powers of research are found in that period.

Since the middle of the fifteenth century, the instinctive understanding has been replaced by the self-conscious powers of understanding and feeling. Everything in the state and in society, in the social organism, was different in the period from the eighth century BC to the fifteenth century AD than it can be in our age. From the innermost core of human development, that which stands for today's humanity in the outside world developed. The newer natural science with all that lies in the human soul could never have developed, the new industrialism could never have developed if, around the middle of the fifteenth century, something had not happened in human development that can be called the transition from instinctive to independent soul and emotional powers. Since the middle of the fifteenth century, therefore, man has wanted to place himself at the apex of his personality out of his inner nature. From these inner impulses of human development follows that which is outer economic life, which is economic, industrial order, which is also a scientific direction of knowledge; follows that which can be characterized in such a way that one says: Man, because he was to become self-conscious since the middle of the fifteenth century, had to develop a kind of materialism more or less in the realms of the intellect and also in the practical realm. To a certain extent, he had to be abandoned by the instincts of spiritual life. But today the time has come again when man, self-consciously, must also rise from the attainment of orientation in the material to the conscious grasping of spiritual life, as I have described it.

Now, the best way to see what has changed in the development of humanity is to turn one's gaze to the most significant event that has occurred within this development in the course of the entire human evolution on earth, to the event that gives the actual meaning to the evolution of humanity and the earth, when one turns one's gaze to the Mystery of Golgotha, through which Christianity was founded.

What did humanity, which developed its soul and physical powers as I have described from the eighth century BC to the fifteenth century AD, what did this humanity, which also remained capable of physical development, feel until the 1930s in the face of what mysteriously took place at the Mystery of Golgotha? With the powers of the soul that arise from the instinctive mind and instinctive soul, that arise from a body that, like ours, was only capable of development until the end of the 1920s, was capable of development until the 1930s, this humanity of the Greco-Latin age was able to look at the Mystery of Golgotha and feel a supersensible event in the event of Golgotha. This humanity of the Greco-Latin age could look at the mystery of Golgotha and feel a supersensible event in the event of Golgotha, which broke into human earthly development. In those days people instinctively understood that not just any man had lived in Nazareth or in Palestine at all, but that in this man Jesus of Nazareth a supersensible entity had lived, which the human beings before the development of Christianity could not look at because they were not yet connected with the earth. Through the event of Golgotha, a spiritual essence that had not previously been connected with human development on earth entered this human development through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Humanity, which was capable of development until the middle of the fifteenth century in the way I have described, understood this instinctively.

The development from the mid-fifteenth century to the present should have been different. There was no rule of instinctive understanding or instinctive powers of mind. Unlike the period up to the end of the 1920s, our bodies did not develop into our 30s; but instead of becoming independent today after about the 27th year, we develop the human personality to full freedom through the physical nature. But this education to freedom must find the spirit within itself. Therefore, it must look outward for a while and see only matter. If the spirit were to reveal itself to us through matter, we would have no need to educate ourselves to become spiritual. But under the influence of these human developmental impulses, even the truth of Golgotha has been subject to change. He who, inwardly, does not consider the prejudices of present-day external knowledge, but who inwardly considers the development of humanity's thoughts about Christianity throughout the centuries, knows that in the materialistic age that had to come over humanity since the middle of the fifteenth century, but that must be overcome again from today on, he knows that with that also the views on the mystery of Golgotha had to be materialized. We have already experienced it in the course of the nineteenth century and particularly at the beginning of the twentieth century that people, including theologians, were almost proud no longer to speak of Christ as a supersensible being who lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth; but they found it better, as they say, for the enlightened man of the present to speak merely of the 'simple man of Nazareth'. They have lost the Christ and describe the man of Nazareth in materialistic terms, as if the Christ had not lived in him as a supersensible, supermundane entity. They describe him only as a highly developed human being, but still only as a developed “human being”.

Modern humanity also had to go through this test. But it is a test, ladies and gentlemen. And by finding our way out of self-conscious reason, out of self-conscious powers of mind, out of intellectual modesty into the supersensible worlds, as I have described it, we will also find our way back to a supersensible understanding of Christianity. We will consciously learn to look at the Mystery of Golgotha as the people of the Greek era did, as people until the middle of the fifteenth century instinctively looked at the Mystery of Golgotha, which broke into human development after the first third of that Greek-Latin period as the earth's actual meaning. It will be a significant event in the more recent development of humanity when, through the conquest of the spiritual world, through the knowledge of the supersensible human existence, man will also find his way to the mystery of Golgotha in a new way.

Then this new knowledge of Christ will be able to take hold in the souls of the whole civilized world. Then this new Christ idea will overcome what today adheres to the conceptions of Christ out of conventional narrow-mindedness, even out of narrow-mindedness of religious creeds. People, however they may otherwise stand in terms of races and nations, if the path to the mystery of Golgotha is confidently found, they will find this path throughout the civilized world. Then, starting from this impulse, something will come that is being sought today, but from a utilitarian point of view. Today we hear of people who cling to the external, to the pursuit of a League of Nations. And one of those people, who unfortunately were also quite overestimated in Germany at a certain time, one of those who lead people into such abstractions, one of those people is Woodrow Wilson. When one speaks as he does about the founding of a League of Nations, one speaks about something for which one does not first create the conditions out of reality. Those who today speak of the fact that a League of Nations should arise from the aspirations of individual peoples speak in such a way that one can see that they have never grasped the great parable of the Tower of Babel. For what does he actually want? He wants to continue building the Tower of Babel. He wants to leave the nations as they are; he wants to found the League of Nations through the very thing by which they have become nations out of the unified whole. This will result in an illusion, in an abstraction. But it is the other way around. Through a new spiritual life, it is necessary to establish that which can be common to all human souls: the realization of the spiritual center of human development; the realization of the supersensible nature of the Mystery of Golgotha in its significance for all humanity, without distinction of religion and race and nationality. From this perception, from this looking to the Christ-event, the unique Christ-event, will come the real power for the new League of Nations. And people throughout the world, throughout the civilized world, will not find harmony until they have found the path to a new Christianity out of a new conquest of the spirit, a new Christianity that can unite people throughout the world. So we see: This provides the insight that I was able to describe to you, that it leads beyond birth and death to the eternal, supersensible nature of the human being. We see that this realization leads at the same time to such a penetration of human development that it must be one of the most important tasks of the present time. And if one grasps human nature at such a depth that one does not merely encounter the outer human being that today's outer scientific knowledge encounters, if one grasps the human being in such a way that one, out of intellectual modesty, the strength to develop further, as one has developed from childhood to the point where one has arrived in ordinary life, then one also finds the words that unite people.

A strong chaos lives over the civilized earth, a terrible confusion. In every soul must arise the longing to find the way out of such confusion, out of such chaos, confusion and chaos are great. The power that must be applied to escape from them must also be great; it must overcome strong, great prejudices. Even today, for many people, the prejudice that must be overcome may seem too strong, the path to the new understanding of the supersensible event of Golgotha must be taken. For humanity today has before it – we will now have to illuminate this from the outside in the next lecture – two paths. One path goes to the left, the other goes to the right. We can take a one-sided approach by letting the pendulum swing between the two, that which has developed in materialism, in the egoistic personality forces, since the middle of the fifteenth century. But we can also go to the right and consciously conquer the spirit again from our industrial and scientific age. If we learn to recognize that social, supersensible life is inherent in the development of humanity, then what many today still consider a superstition or an illusion will become a realization, that which Lessing pointed out, namely, repeated earthly lives. Lessing, the enlightened man, was the first to point out, as in the dawn of modern times, in his 'Education of the Human Race', that human beings go through repeated earthly lives as long as the earth is in its development. Between these repeated earthly lives, he lives in a spiritual-soul world from which he descends into the physical world through birth or conception, and from which he then ascends again through the gate of death. To find one's way into the great that has already begun with such thoughts with Lessing, with Herder, with Goethe and so on, leads in the right direction. And we in Central Europe, we must now, since the time of external adversity and external misery has perhaps begun for us, [that must] already be said in our difficult time, we must learn to tie in again with those steps that were taken in Central Europe by the great German minds that I have just mentioned, into the supersensible world. And we must have the courage to take further such steps, to go further into the supersensible world. Otherwise humanity will fall back into what can be characterized in the following way.

If humanity wants to go only to the left, then it will continue to develop that which had to come over humanity for a time so that the human being could develop his free personality. From a different point of view, I already described this in the early nineties in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom”. In order to achieve freedom, man had to develop what led him into the newer age in such a way that he mechanized his spirit. He only overlooks that which is machine-like in the outer world and comprehends it. If he stops at this, he cannot awaken his soul to what I have described today as awakening out of intellectual and volitional modesty; then, in addition to the mechanization of the spirit, there is the vegetarianization of the soul, the drowsiness of the soul. But then, because the body becomes ignoble if it is not glowed through by the spirit-illuminated soul, animalization occurs for the body in addition to the drowsiness of the soul. Then the social demands arise out of the animal instincts. This can be seen in the present. We have a mechanized spiritual life. But we also have the drowsy, plant-like soul, the vegetative soul, with regard to the supersensible human being. And we have what is currently emerging in Eastern Europe, on the large-scale Russian folk soul, as this folk soul is killing; emerging like a new set of social demands, but which is nothing more than the speech of animalized man. That is the third.

If we really want to find a way out of today's chaos and confusion, then we must look without prejudice at the fact that we in Central Europe, and that Western civilization have developed the mechanization of the mind and the drowsiness of the soul, and that as a result, in the East, the animalized passions , which man today only fears but must learn to understand in order to overcome them, so that he can come out of this illusionary, this corrupt socialism of the East and into a true socialism, which we want to talk about the day after tomorrow, a socialism that is permeated by the spirit and the soul. It is necessary for human beings not to go the way of mechanizing the spirit, of making the soul become like that of a vegetable, of animalizing the body, but to go the way that leads them to a penetration of the supersensible human nature and the supersensible nature of the world in general. That he may receive from his higher developed self-consciousness of modern times in his spirit the light, in his soul the warmth, the spiritual, and thereby in his body the ennobling that will lead to real social love, to genuine brotherhood. Only if we find the way to the illumination of the spirit, to the spiritualization of the soul, to the ennobling of the body, only then will we be able to enter into a better future. Then it will not be external matter, the economic process, but spirit and soul that will lead us into this new order. However, the spirit can only guide man if man meets the spirit halfway; if man allows his intellect to glow with humility through the spirit; if man allows the soul to be permeated by what he can experience as spirit. And do not believe that everyone in our time should become a spiritual researcher themselves, although to a certain extent anyone can become a spiritual researcher today; as I explained in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. But while in all other fields one can only look to the belief in authority of scientists in science, what people would like to claim is not true: that supersensible truths, when they are researched, can only be found to be true on the basis of belief in authority. No, human nature is so created that if it only removes the prejudices that the last four centuries have piled up before the human soul, then every single human soul, even if not yet today, will be able to look into the supersensible world and accept what the spiritual researcher has investigated. What the astronomer or the physiologist investigates is accepted by other people. Today, based on common sense, every soul can find the path into this supersensible world through the mere revelation of those who have researched this supersensible world. Then this soul will also find the path into a true social life. Because this social life can never be based on mere natural necessity, on mere external economic or economic necessity. The purified social life can only be based on freedom. But the freedom of external life can only be based on that highest freedom, which must be developed in the innermost part of the human soul. All external freedom may only be in the future, so that humanity may emerge from confusion and chaos. All external freedom may only be the direct announcement of the inner liberation of the human soul.

May man find the way to this inner liberation through the path of the spirit and of soul-searching, so that he can also find it to the outer social liberation.

How we look in our fateful time at those who stand outside in the east and west and with their blood, with their soul, stand up for what our time demands, we saw it eight days ago in the lecture. In this lecture too, I do not intend to violate the word that Bismarck has spoken in relation to those who have remained at home. At a time when great destinies are still being decided for humanity in other ways and in other fields than through the word, the word must not interfere in an improper manner with the decisions that must be brought about in a different way. Only that which speaks externally and to our hearts, wherever we look, triggers trust, hope and confidence; it triggers devotion and selflessness in such a wonderful way.

Now, in our time, where the basic tone of speaking is more materialistically colored than it can be here, there is much talk of heredity, of inherited traits. Today, in view of the great things happening outside, it is easier to translate into the spiritual what is spoken of today in a more materialistic sense as inheritance. What lives outside in the deeds of those who bleed for their people? And what should live in the hearts of those who want to be genuinely connected to the great fateful, destiny-bearing time?

Perhaps one will not encounter misunderstanding today if one still uses the word “inheritance” in a higher sense: if one points to the real powers that emanate from the great ancestors and continue to work, that blow through the ranks like a magic breath; if one points out that the same thing lives in the deeds of the warriors as lived in the great geniuses of the Central European people. And perhaps one will not encounter misunderstanding if one dares to say that by this life one means something real, that it is really not just as expressed in the Greek fairy tale: that the power of the great ancestors lives in the present as if blessing the present, but that this reality permeates and pulses through blood and souls. And since we, as human beings with full consciousness and knowledge, should actually live in what is also spiritually around us, perhaps two personalities may be singled out today from the ranks of the great Central Europeans who, so to speak, are still close to the present, two geniuses, one of whom has most certainly become part of the heart and soul of the Central European population, while the other, so to speak, can stand before us, expressing in his spirit the greatest and highest of this Central European population. Even if it may be said again today that there are perhaps many who play a heroic role in this time and yet know little of Schiller, and even less of Fichte, we can still be inspired by the fact that the same power that flows outwardly in Heldenbhute is the same power that flowed in Schiller, in Schiller's creations, and in Fichte's great encouragement of his people. Truly, not to evoke sentimental feelings in your hearts, but because I believe that there is indeed something characteristic in the fact that the German people so eagerly want to be intimately connected with the most important moments of their greats, I would like to point out the last moments of the earthly life of the two great geniuses who are to be discussed today.

Schiller –- he passed through the gates of death in such a way that the last-mentioned great German, Herman Grimm, could speak of Schiller's death: “Goethe passed away, Goethe fell asleep; Schiller died.” The younger Voß literally leads us into Schiller's death chamber. We see how Schiller lived with the greatest expenditure of the powers of mind and soul; we know that he was able to sustain himself up to the age that he unfortunately only reached, in that mind and soul achieved a tremendous victory over the body. Thus we see that in the last days, when the body was already in some respects given over to death, this soul is still heroically connected with all the great things it has thought, conceived and created throughout its life, and we follow at the hand of the younger Voß into the room where Schiller died; we see the last moments of the great genius. We see how his spirit, in his weak body, still tends towards his great ideals; we see how he then has his youngest child brought into the death chamber, how he looks at this child with the same eyes with which he had looked at the world, has looked at the world, looks at this child, looks deeply into his eyes, then hands him over to his attendants and then apparently – we sense this – takes a look into the deepest part of his soul, of which we can say: Certainly, the younger Voß is right when he says that Schiller may have thought that he could have been much more to his youngest child in life. But this act may appear to us symbolically, to the effect that we feel: if Schiller had looked into the eyes of all of us and then turned away into his own inner being, thinking that he also had much, much to say to us, then we feel as his heirs in a completely different sense than just the heirs of his works and of what he himself said; then we feel we feel connected to his innermost impulses, so connected that we know: we must, if we want to be like him, if we want to be worthy of him, if we want to place ourselves before life and the world from the same deepest impulses, want to be a spirit like his spirit!

And Fichte – in difficult times, he tried to shape and clothe in words what he had gained from the deepest reasons of his philosophical nature, which he spoke to his Germans in the time of German humiliation and German misery, in order to lift them up and breathe greatness into them for the further life of the people. And he was completely united with all that then led to the liberation struggles of his people. And it is a wonderful thing to look back now at the last moments of Fichte. He had often considered whether he should not go out to the battlefields himself; but he had then found that he could wield another sword better for the good of his people: the sword of the word – and he did so in a valiant manner. But his wife – she was a loyal carer for those who had fought in the battles – brought the military hospital fever home to him, and he was seized by it. During his last moments, his son brought him the news of the Germans crossing the Rhine and the state of the liberation struggle at that time. And now we see how one of the greatest philosophers, who has shaped the most powerful but also the most crystal-clear thoughts, lives out his feverish fantasies – but these feverish fantasies are characteristic. In the last moments of his life, he saw himself in spirit in the midst of the fighting. And what he believed he could give to the world and the German people from the deepest root of life's impulses, what he could have done for Germany's redemption, that resounded from the soul of the great German philosopher in his feverish fantasies; a moment that can deeply move us. The medicine was given to him. He rejected it with the words: “Leave that alone, I need no medicine; I feel that I have recovered!”

They stand there like warriors themselves, the two great minds, fighters for the best that the world has produced, and at the same time we see the two, Schiller and Fichte, united with everything that the time, the immediate present, demands.

And now we turn to the two greats; let us try to recognize in them what – to use this Fichtean saying – sprouts in the deepest root of German life. Let us turn to Fichte to help us, so to speak, to see for ourselves what we have to say for ourselves – even if not at first for others in these much troubled times – when judgments about European culture come at us from so many sides, coming from sources that certainly do not emphasize German nature and German spirit. We can see this from Fichte, the people who are now so often to be called barbarians.

Fichte posed three questions when he wanted to speak to his people about what could uplift this people; and we must be clear that when Fichte gave his so inspiring “Speeches to the German Nation” at that time, it happened in a different time than today, in a time with a different character. Fichte posed three questions that today - at most with a single intermediate sentence - can no longer be posed in the same way. But it is precisely from these three questions of Fichte that we can learn an enormous amount for the present day. The first question is:

“Whether it be true or not that there is a German nation, and that the continued existence of this nation in its original and independent character is now endangered?”

If we disregard the second part of this question, we have to say that it is impossible to ask this question today in this way, because Fichte's descendants have proven that there is a German nation. Similarly, his second question can no longer be asked today:

“Whether it is or is not worth the effort to preserve it?”

And the third question is:

“Is there any sure and effective means for this preservation, and what is this means?”

Well, here I have spoken year after year about the spiritual life of people. And truly, especially with regard to what has been said about this spiritual life of man, I was convinced that it is the further development of what was already before Fichte, before Schiller and other souls. Fichte tried to find the means to lead the Germans out of oppression and misery, the means for a German to become aware of himself, to work from the deepest root of life. Fichte wanted a complete transformation of education; and from the way in which the German people express themselves in their “language”, he wanted to recognize the way in which they relate to other cultural worlds. Today, there is no possibility of engaging with the way in which Fichte developed these questions; what matters is that the force that can inspire and invigorate us in Central Europe today is the same as it was for him. Today we shall seek to discover the nature of the German people neither in language, as Fichte did, nor in the spirit of the age, although we certainly want to honor the full significance of language; nor do we want to speak today of Fichte's educational system, which, after all, could not be carried out at the time. But we may point out that out of the impulses of life, out of which Fichte spoke his “Addresses to the German Nation” at that time for the self-preservation of his people, there resounds the spirit which, further developed, gives true spiritual science. We can gather this from many a thing that is perhaps not always sufficiently taken into account when these wonderful addresses of Fichte's to the German nation are read today. Let us speak today — and it has often been spoken of from this place — that there is not only materialistic science, materialistic knowledge, which looks at man as he develops between birth and death; that there is not only that knowledge which passively surrenders to external appearances and forms its judgment according to what is gained from the external world in the sense of this knowledge. Rather, we are talking about a courageous, active knowledge that dares to grasp the “innermost roots of human life,” as Fichte put it, in order to grasp man where his being reaches beyond birth and death, where, according to Lessing's great idea, he grasps what passes from life to life in physical reality. There is a knowledge that, through a brave and courageous grasp of the soul's inner powers, rises to that which, even after death, looks down on man's physical activity and on his corpse itself; there is a science that truly grasps the soul, the science that leads to the divine just as much as outer science leads to the natural. For if we grasp the outer man, the material man, with the help of outer science, natural science, we find that man emerges from all the forces of nature, as it were as nature's flower; but if we grasp man with the help of spiritual science, we perceive how the soul, with its deepest roots, is connected with the Divine, with that which lives and weaves in the spiritual. Even if we can no longer take Fichte's standpoint with regard to his individual statements, we can take what lives as an attitude, as a tendency in his thinking. Thus we find it ourselves, how the basic nuance, the fundamental tone of spiritual-scientific knowledge lies in the discourses through which he wanted to awaken enthusiasm in his people when he utters the words:

“Time and eternity and infinity beholds it (the philosophy he means) in its origin from the appearance and becoming visible of that One, which in itself is absolutely invisible, and only in this its invisibility is grasped, correctly grasped.”

“All persistent existence appearing as non-spiritual life is only an empty shadow, cast out of sight, and mediated many times over by Nothing. In contrast to this and through the recognition of this many-mediated Nothing, seeing itself is to rise to the recognition of its own Nothing and to the acknowledgment of the Invisible as the only True.”

It has been pointed out here several times how the soul can grasp itself in that innermost being in which it becomes aware of what goes beyond death. Then it may speak – not from a passive, but from an active science – of how, after death, man looks down from this eternal core of his being to his body in a higher consciousness. There is something strange in Fichte that lives in him like a presentiment. We can hardly imagine that someone who does not already have the presentiment of such spiritual knowledge, which can arise from his own presentiments, would use a simile as Fichte does. He speaks of a new education of his people; of how people should learn to find their way into something that people have not experienced before and that is difficult for them to find their way into because it is difficult compared to the familiar, which one must discard. And Fichte now describes what it is like for this people when it is to rejuvenate and will look back on its old being, from which it is to slip out, as it were, according to its ideal; and he speaks in such a way that the parable he uses seems to have been taken from the modern spiritual science of the immediate present. In that he wants to inspire the people, he says:

"Time appears to me like an empty shadow, which stands over its corpse, from which an army of diseases just drove it out, and laments, and cannot tear its gaze away from the once so beloved shell, and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plagues. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the deceased has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of life; the friendly voices of the sisters already greet her and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within her in all directions, to develop the more glorious form to which she is to awaken; but she has no feeling for these breezes or hearing for these voices, or if she had, she is absorbed in pain over her loss, with which she believes she has lost herself at the same time."

Truly, one feels that this comparison is taken from what modern spiritual science has to say about the experience of the soul! And then we stand, one might say, much more “faithfully” before Fichte than he could stand before himself, so that we say: Yes, something of that in which we want to hold fast as a spiritual knowledge of the true nature of man stirs in this personality.

And how did he who, in his spiritual life, at least for a time, lived in close union with Fichte, how did Schiller, like Fichte, seek, each in his own way, to reach the innermost source of the soul's life impulses!

Oh, today, despite the fact that Schiller has become so dear to our people, it has not yet been fully recognized what fruits the forces have borne in the people of Schiller and Fichte. And one would like to say: we have to catch up with our knowledge of what is already being gloriously demonstrated on the battlefields in the West and the East; for these are the same forces that have been spiritually elevated in Schiller. Schiller was incessantly seeking — to use his own expression — in human nature, in contrast to what the everyday person is, what the person is who lives with the things of the outer world, who takes these things of the outer world in and processes them; incessantly he sought, in contrast to this person, what he calls the 'higher person', which lives in everyone. And what Schiller expresses in his Letters upon Aesthetic Education concerning the search for this higher man is one of the greatest cultural achievements. In the last lecture I ventured to point out that one professes and reckons with Germanness in a different way than the members of other nations relate to their nationality: one is German, but one seeks an ideal that can still be elevated; one seeks something higher than what lives in ordinary human beings. And so, in his Aesthetic Letters, Schiller seeks to express how, on the one hand, man does not come to the fullest comprehension of his innermost stirrings of life – which is his higher self – if he lives only for the external world, only for the externally real. He who lives only according to external impulses is, as Schiller says, like a slave who lives under the impulses of external sensual necessity. But for Schiller, he who is inclined only toward abstract thinking, who submits only to the necessity of reason, is also not a complete human being. On the one hand, Schiller sees the necessity of reason; on the other, sensual necessity. But he seeks the human being in the everyday person who can live out his life in such a way that he is able to look at the ennobled nature in such a way that the sensual life meets him with the expression of beautiful spirituality, but to whom reason also reaches. Only he who is able to confront the spiritual with the same liveliness, with the sense of the beautiful, as the other confronts sensuality, is a complete human being. And from the middle mood that arises from this, Schiller believes he can deduce the manner by which a higher human being can be conjured out of the everyday human being. But that man must do this, Schiller finds as the highest ideal of man, and with that he is again one of the great inspirers of true spiritual-scientific knowledge, which seeks with all its powers what lives as a higher man in man, and which cannot help it if it wants to seek this in the truly modern spirit, as to tie in with the impulses, as they can flow, for example, from Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. Precisely what I took the liberty of saying in the lecture I gave eight days ago: how, as a German, one always seeks, not the “German” one-sidedly, but the human being who goes beyond all nationality, who regards all nationality as something that belongs to the outer man, — that so beautifully in what Schiller strove for, what he sought to express in his letters on the aesthetic education of man and what is basically expressed in all the works of art that Schiller presented to his people and that have become so dear to the people's hearts and souls.

And Fichte – does he shape a one-sided concept, a one-sided idea of Germanness? No! we can say; he coins a universal concept of Germanness, a concept of which it can truly be said: The German always wants to become; and he believes that one can only be a German in the fullest sense of the word if one is a human being in the fullest sense of the word. Hence the beautiful word in Fichte's “Address to the German Nation,” this wonderful, heartening word:

“The principle according to which it” — whatever Fichtean philosophy is — “has to conclude this is presented to it; whoever believes in the spirituality and freedom of this spirituality and wants the eternal development of this spirituality through freedom, wherever he was born and in whatever language he speaks, is of our race, belongs to us, and will join us.”

Those who think this way belong to us and will join us. This is Schiller's way, this is Fichte's way: to become German by seeking the higher man in man in the most comprehensive and universal sense of the word, who seeks the way to what is foreign to the outer man, who is human and great because he is able to love everything great and to be loved in other people of other nationalities as well. And this Schiller seeks as a whole German, in that he was allowed to speak the words, which only came out long after his death, not only in the face of the German people, but of all civilized humanity:

"He who forms and rules the spirit must ultimately gain the upper hand; for at the goal of time, if the world has a plan, if human life has any meaning at all, custom and reason must ultimately triumph, brute force must succumb to form – and the slowest people will catch up with all the fast, fleeting ones.

To him – the German – is destined the highest honor, and just as he is situated in the center of Europe's peoples, so he is the core of humanity, those are the flower and the leaf.

He is chosen by the world spirit to work during the struggle of time on the eternal construction of human education, to preserve what time brings.

Therefore, he has appropriated what was previously foreign and preserved it within himself.

He has preserved everything that was valuable in other times and peoples, that arose with time and disappeared, it is not lost to him, the treasures of centuries.

Not to shine in the moment and play its role, but to win the great process of time. Every nation has its day in history, but the day of the Germans is the harvest of all time.

Thus they spoke. And in their spirit – in the sense that as Germans we will always strive and never remain with what we have already achieved – we, their students and successors, can become like them. Swearing by these words of our ancestors to the letter cannot be our way. But this can be our way: to try to understand our time, to continue to work and to create out of the same innermost impulses of life that created them. And in so doing, we have turned our gaze to these great ancestors. We now ask ourselves – even if perhaps in the course of the nineteenth century and up to our time many things have become different from what these great geniuses directly imagined in their consciousness: have these impulses they have given produced something that corresponds to them? Is there something in Central Europe that reveals the spirit of Schiller's spirit, the soul of Fichte's soul?

Now, it is undoubtedly not easy to speak in the immediate presence of what one's own people have achieved, what lives in them. And you will understand that in a way one may shrink from even remotely coming to what seems like a self-characterization – even if only a self-characterization of the people – in our fateful times. Therefore, I will choose a different path, so that it cannot be said that this people, who have been called “barbarians,” indulge in self-praise and self-love. I would like to choose a path through which we can hear, as in an echo, what has become of the people of Schiller and Fichte. Let us choose words that have been spoken – in English – by the great American Emerson, words that are not our words. Emerson, the great American, spoke about the nature of the German people in the post-Schiller, post-Fichte period in the following words – as I said, not even in German – by saying what he had to say about Goethe:

"One particular phenomenon that Goethe shares with his entire nation makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public,

– as I said: a quality that Goethe has in common with his entire nation! – “that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of his conviction. In France, one is already delighted to see brilliant ideas going anywhere. In all these countries, however, talented men write within the limits of their gifts. If what they produce stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is sufficiently respected. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French liveliness nor the Englishman's understanding, honed to practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness; but what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: Where is this going? The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself on them.

There is intellectual activity: well then, what is it in favor of? What is the man's opinion? — Where does it come from? — Where does he get all these thoughts?

This, says Emerson, is what the German public demands of anyone who wants to speak to them and be something for them. We can hear another of Emerson's words as an echo of what emerged from the impulses of Schiller and Fichte:

“The English see only the particular and do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.... The Germans think for Europe.”

— The English-speaking man in America says this! —

”... The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

And what has become of these reasons that Emerson cites for himself here? He also provides the answer to that. Again, these are his words that I want to read:

"For this reason, the distinctive terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are so highly esteemed for their acumen and learning, look upon their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too closely connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves about it, Goethe speaks,»

— Emerson is speaking here in reference to the German nation, even though he is talking about Goethe —

"the head and the content of the German nation, not because he has talent; but truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says may be, he has something in view that is even better... He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from the truth."

Thus the English-speaking American on what has become of the impulses of those whom the Central European regards as his great geniuses.

Now, one sentence from Emerson's writings may be particularly engraved on our consciousness in our present time, the sentence where Emerson says: “The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.” It is self-evident that when we speak of spiritual knowledge, we are aware that when we speak of “man”, we can never speak of this man being identified with his nationality. Spiritual matters are matters of the whole of humanity; there are no differences between nations and races. So it is not individuals that are at issue; rather, if we, as we now want to do, turn our attention to what the German nation has of Schiller and Fichte, this is something that is above the national, that is anational, that is divine and eternal. And were we always of this opinion? We may ask. Did what was said in cooler days seem less significant to us than what is being said today?

Now, there is a strange anomaly here. And even if you do not want to go into the detailed book – or books – by Miss Wylie, which Lord Haldane has prefaced and which has also been published in German, you can still delve into Miss Wylie's arguments if you pick up the two special issues of the “Süddeutsche Monatshefte”, those brown issues that are available at every train station. I will just pick out one thing that an Englishwoman said about the nation of Schiller and Fichte shortly before the outbreak of the present war; and her words may be quoted because she lived in Germany for eight years and got to know the nation that Emerson says is not known in English-speaking countries. Miss Wylie not only got to know German intellectual life directly, but she also got to know how German intellectual life manifests itself in hospitals, schools, universities and industry. She says:

"We read much about the new Germany and its new spirit. But there is no new Germany and no new spirit. The existing one is the mature work of generations, what has always been there. Blinded by the sudden splendor of Germany's prosperity, we are inclined to forget that, except for prosperity, it has rarely occupied a place other than one of the very top among nations. In religion and philosophy, Germany shone at a time when everything around it was dark; in literature, it gave an epoch-making impetus; in music, it has always dominated.

— That is the echo! We are not saying it ourselves.

"German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. What we do know is how many dreadnoughts Germany has and how much its trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnought, but the brain of its builder, the courage and talent of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in turnover, but the human qualities that prompted it.

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence. And it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany has already reached its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined fight against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago... Its opponents are sitting on every border and across the water, commercially and politically, and are eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little to pounce on it and crush it. Germany knows this full well.

So says the Englishwoman. Yes – she knows it! But others have known it too. Last time I mentioned a book, “Germany in the Nineteenth Century,” by Herford, which was based on lectures given at the University of Manchester and was intended to educate those who know nothing - namely, as the book itself says, “the press people” - about what German character is. Today I may quote, even if only a few words, from this book, which was said as a kind of admonition about the German character in Manchester in 1912 – so also recently – because it refers to the real conditions of the very immediate present. This is how it was said in Manchester:

"On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Empire has contributed to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is fitting for the light of the past to shine on the present confusion, and in that higher light, things that appear hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find – spoken in Manchester, in English! “that our ancestors looked on France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason. ...

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe.

– and this was said in Manchester! –

"and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866 to 1871 once and for all put an end to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the hitherto unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed an inducement to war which in earlier centuries had so often on the wrong track; they enabled the German people to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish a new European system on a secure basis, which has maintained peace for forty years.

— So spoken in English in Manchester in 1912! —

“This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, could not have achieved, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a great war became the most dangerous of all ventures.”

So it has been recognized to some extent that there is some truth in what I had the liberty of saying in my lecture eight days ago, quoting Herman Grimm: that the German will indeed sacrifice himself for his fatherland at any time when the time demands it, but that he would not long for or bring about the moment when this can happen through war. And in view of the fact that we also hear this as an echo from outside, we may also turn our gaze to what our immediate present is. Therefore, I ask you now – I would like to say: to direct our feelings to the way we have to look at what we are in these fateful times – to remember what happened in the days at the end of July and the beginning of August, which is well known. I would like to try to characterize in a unique way how the events may present themselves; with words in which an unbiased observer of Central Europe – or may the others also say: a “biased” observer – could have expressed how this Central Europe feels about the great war. Let us remind ourselves of this. I will try to do so with the following words.

We recall the newspaper comments that came to us from Russia as early as the spring of this year. It could be seen from them how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German policy. These attacks increased during the following period to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge Austrian law. Germany could not lend a hand here; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? One might have believed earlier that it could be, because one said to oneself: we have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. When one speaks with Russian friends about such disagreements, one cannot exactly contradict them. However, the events showed that even a complete subordination of our policy to Russia's – for a certain period of time – did not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our efforts.

I believe these words could show what a person of the present day could say to characterize spring and summer. But I did not put these words together; I did not write them at all. I only changed them a little. These words were spoken by Bismarck on February 6, 1888 in the German Reichstag, when he had to defend a defense bill and wanted to explain that this defense bill was not in the interest of an aggressive war, but in the interest of peace. And now I will read his words to you:

”... how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, and I personally was suspected of my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year, until 1879, to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend a hand to this; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? I had believed earlier that it could be, telling myself: we have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even if our policy were fully implemented (for a certain time), we would not be protected from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

This characterizes the forces that have been present not for a year, but since that time, and which were well known to anyone who knew what smolders and glows in Europe. Those who look at the historical context in this way will be able to see from the mere fact that what can be felt today coincides with what Bismarck said at the time that it would have been impossible to avoid the conflict with Russia even if “German policy had fully taken Russian interests into account”. I think that this kind of historical perspective says a great deal. And what was the mood at the time when these words were spoken? Was it only Herman Grimm who spoke of the fact that Germany, that the German as such wants peace, that he also wants to put his armaments in the service of peace? In the same speech, Bismarck said something else that should also be borne in mind: he had done so much for Russia at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 that he should have been awarded the highest Russian order with diamonds for it – if he had not already had it. Nevertheless, he had to speak these words, which he spoke at the time. And we also hear him speak about the mood in which they flowed:

"One does not attack with the powerful machine that we are training the German army to be.” If I were to stand before you today and tell you – if the circumstances were different from what I am convinced they are –: “We are under considerable threat from France and Russia; it is foreseeable that we will be attacked; I believe this as a diplomat, according to military intelligence; it is more useful for us to use the advance of the attack as a defense that we are now about to launch; it is more advantageous for us to wage a war of aggression, and so I ask the Reichstag for a loan of one billion or half a billion to wage war against our two neighbors today – yes, gentlemen, I don't know if you would trust me to grant it. I hope not.

All this tends to confirm the conviction that Germany only wanted a war if it arose out of European necessities, and that she was far, far from wanting a war for the sake of war. But then one may decide whether these voices – including this voice about the immediate external events – correspond to what German intellectual life is. – I cannot help but say a few words about another impression that German intellectual life made at a certain point.

This summer we heard how one man truly could not find harsh enough words – and I say harsh – to berate German “barbarism”. This same man once cited three spirits who had most, or at least a great deal, influenced his worldview: the mystic Ruysbrock, the American Emerson, and the German mystical poet Novalis. The man who speaks of the German mystic poet Novalis among those who have led him to his spiritual vision poses a remarkable question: What, after all, is everything that is in Shakespeare's dramas, what is negotiated between the individual persons and what plays from person to person, what is that compared to what lives in many other poems? For suppose, he says, a spirit came to us from another planet, who lived under quite different conditions from the souls on earth: would he be in the least interested in what the persons in Shakespeare's plays experienced? Would we not have to offer him something quite different, something that is not expressed in everyday life, something that comes from the human soul, if he were only to pay attention to us? And then he remembers how a German mystical poet, Novalis, has brought him something that speaks of what he would rather remain silent about, but of which he believes that the soul of another who comes down from another world would see something worth sharing in it. And so the person in question speaks of Novalis, the German mystical poet, who has something in his soul that, as coming from the innermost part of the human being, could even be shown to a spirit alien to the earth if it asked:

Thus says a man who has been impressed by Novalis and wishes to express his views about Novalis. This is the same man who has now spoken in a very peculiar way – you will know it well – about Germanness and the German character: Maurice Maeterlinck. When we hear that something like this has been said by Maeterlinck, can we not say that he has actually changed his nature quite “essentially”? Could one not even say that his present words sound in such a way that one could say of them: In truth, it is difficult to question his soul and to hear its weak child's voice amidst the useless cries that surround it? One would truly like to count him among these useless screamers, against whom weak children's voices cannot prevail. But I also took these words from Maurice Maeterlinck; for they are his own words, which he also speaks on the occasion cited: “In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to hear its weak child's voice amidst the useless screamers that surround it.”

We have tried to fathom a little of what Schiller and Fichte wanted from their people. And we have tried to recognize, even if only in an echo, the extent to which these impulses have been realized. Today, there is much talk of all kinds of feelings that Germans are supposed to have towards other nations with whom they are at war; for example, there is talk of feelings of hatred that Germans are supposed to have towards Russians, towards the English, and also towards the French. Truly, after what I have said today and last time, what I am about to say now will not be interpreted by me as an un-German sentiment, but as one that must flow from the true foundations of spiritual science. For I believe that if we look at the innermost roots of the German's life, then these feelings of hatred and contempt for other nations are all untrue! Even if many a word may be spoken in the present day that we ourselves might perhaps find “un-German” within the German, the truth is what could be said about Schiller and Fichte: He who seeks the “human being,” the higher human being in the human being, as Fichte himself says, belongs to us! And the German relentlessly seeks to go beyond the narrow fetters of his nationality. Therefore, I do not believe that it can go beyond everyday life if feelings other than feelings of devotion are also spoken of as the most valuable in other peoples today. And are we not allowed to adduce evidence for this too?

Oh, we may believe that what has emerged as the highest fruit of German intellectual life really does live in the most primitive German nature. Does the German really hate the English? I would like to say: no. I would even coin the paradoxical word: the German has proved that he loves even the English more than they love themselves. Let us take seriously the saying: by their fruits ye shall know them. How has the German cultivated Shakespeare? Compare the importance Shakespeare has acquired in the German intellectual life with what he has become in England. We can then say: we see the new awakening of Shakespeare in the German intellectual life. The Germans have cultivated Shakespeare more than the English have, however this is taking things to an extreme. But as it was said that the marshal's baton is in the knapsack of every soldier, so this sentiment is in the soul of the humblest German, even if it must be sought for a little, since the German is now threatened from all sides. But we can also go to more recent times. We have spoken of Goethe. Goethe also belongs to those who, with the most loving disposition, have immersed themselves in what is universally human, in all nationalities and at all times. We see him immersing himself in that which was so dear to him, in ancient Greece; we see this immersion symbolically depicted in the second part of Faust, in the union of Faust with Helen, as a symbol for the union of the two national elements. And Goethe lets something emerge from this union: Euphorion, who, after all that we have already been able to say about Faust, can appear to us as something that is connected with Goethe's ideal of humanity. Euphorion is a strange figure. Let us remember words of Euphorion that can resonate deeply, deeply in our souls, especially today. Euphorion says:

No, I have not appeared as a child:
The youth comes to you in arms!
Join the strong, the free, the bold,
He has already done so in spirit.
Now away!
Now there
The path to glory opens up.

Then further:

And do you hear the thunder on the sea?
There, valley after valley thunders again,
Hordes upon hordes in dust and waves,
Thrust upon thrust to pain and agony!
And death
Is the law;
That is understood.

And then:

Should I watch from afar?
No! I share the sorrow and the need!

Who was Goethe thinking of when he wanted to paint this essence of humanity in front of his soul? Byron, the great English poet, was his model for what he presented in his “Euphorion”!

Sometimes it seems as if the Germans are also tempted to emphasize their distinctiveness in the face of foreigners. Then one must only know how in this emphasis there is always something that wants to defend itself against something. There are words that Friedrich Schlegel once spoke when Paris made a great impression on him: “Paris would actually be a wonderful city, only there are too many Frenchmen in it.” Of course, such words have also been spoken. But there is more to it than that. In particular, there is something that symptomatically indicates how the German wants to stand at least in the midst of cultural life. There is more to it than that, as Schiller looked to a great figure in world history. Others have also looked to this figure in world history: Shakespeare, Voltaire – an Englishman, a Frenchman. I am talking about the “Maid of Orleans”. If we really think about it, we cannot help but say: Shakespeare approached the Maid of Orleans in a narrow-minded national way; Voltaire treated her with cool, dismissive skepticism. On the other hand, it must be remembered that Schiller could only express himself about her by saying: “The world loves to blacken what is radiant and drag the sublime into the dust.” And so he sought to portray her, who for him had become a messenger of heaven, a messenger of the spiritual world. Schiller has often been criticized for creating the figure of the Maid of Orleans. Today, when considering the way in which the German places himself in the cultural life, one should remember how Schiller tried to live himself into everything that came to him from the French as a gift from heaven, in order to embody it, but which, in the judgment of the German spirit, is connected with struggle and conflict and victory. It is hard to believe, if you do not think like a German, that courage and a fighting spirit and a willingness to engage in a dispute can unite in the soul – and that humanity can still be preserved in the heart. That is precisely what Schiller wanted to express. Whereas people who do not think like a German say it is not possible, we have to say that, fundamentally, it is possible for every German, if we look at German nature at the roots of its vital impulses. The German, unlike many others, approaches battle and war, and it is in him – sometimes darker or clearer – that he has to treat the one with whom he is fighting only like an enemy in a duel. He does not hate him; he faces him and is happiest when he can touch him in the highest humanity. I would like to say: Schiller sought to infuse such a truly German quality into the Maid of Orleans. Those who know what the Maid of Orleans was will find it natural that Schiller was so moved by her, even at a time when the Germans had no reason to glorify the French spirit. But Schiller also — and that is why he has become the greatest source of inspiration for German intellectual life again — included the weaving of the forces of the unseen in his drama. And so they weave in as in the Invisible Man, in Talbot, who appears as a black knight. It has been widely criticized; but Schiller could not help but let the eternal spiritual powers also play a role in his drama. Therefore, he truly represents the quality that is quintessentially German: to make no distinction from nation to nation where the greatest, the highest in human life is at stake. That is why I said: I do not believe it when people today talk about feelings of hatred and antipathy of the Germans towards other nations, that these feelings go to the very roots of the German life. Therefore, one need not be blind and dull to what is coming to light; but one can distinguish between what comes from outside and presses upon man, and what man, with his higher nature, seeks to overcome. And Schiller is not so far removed from outer, practical life that we would have to say that he was blind to what is external to the various nations. He wrote a poem “The Beginning of the New Century”; in it we read the significant lines, which are also very close to our present life today:

Two powerful nations wrestle
For the world's sole possession;
To devour all countries' freedom,
They brandish the trident and lightning.

Gold must every landscape weigh for them
And, like Brennus in the rude times,
The Frank lays his brazen sword
In the scales of justice.

The British extend their merchant fleet
Greedily like a polyp arm,
And the empire of the free Amphitrite
He wants to close, like his own house.

These are also words of Schiller, which sounded, despite the fact that Schiller was one of those who, in a truly German way, wanted to cultivate the principle of not seeking the human in the national, or rather – one can also put it this way: to seek the human in every national. Therefore, it may be said that something for which Schiller and Fichte longed for their people may well emerge from our fateful days as the most beautiful fruit: the German has often said that he knows how to live together with other nationalities. And when we look today at a country that borders directly on Germany, and that has not only in an external sense, but also in the innermost depths of human behavior, managed to remain neutral, when we look at Switzerland, at the Switzerland in which Fichte found in Pestalozzi the roots for his German national education, we can say: We see in this model country of nationalities that it is possible for Germans to live together with other nations. Anyone who is able to follow Swiss life knows that it is of the utmost importance to the inhabitants of this country, where three nations live together in an exemplary manner, that they can maintain in spirit what is truly in their own interest for their national territory, the spirit of neutrality. But the spirit of neutrality should be respected and it should be remembered that the Swiss know full well from their own sound judgment what the historical mission of the German spirit is. And one should understand that it can justifiably offend this sensitivity if one floods an area that is of particular importance for the immediate present because it stands on the side of the most honest neutrality with what is today called “educational literature”. I believe that someone who speaks about the mission of the German language as I have done can also draw attention to this.

So we may now say: We can hear the effects of the impulses of Schiller and Fichte like an echo. Let us once more, in conclusion, place before our soul's eye the words that Emerson spoke of Goethe: “He is wise to the highest degree, though often his wisdom may be obscured by his talent. How excellent is what he says, he has something in mind that is even better... He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from dealing with the truth.” But from this ‘dealings with the truth’ also springs this trust, this confidence and hope, as well as the selflessness and sense of sacrifice that we see all around us and that are put at the service of our great time to make true what Emerson speaks of again:

"The world is young, great men of the past call to us in a friendly voice. We must 'write sacred scriptures to reunite heaven and the earthly world. The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie, to make everything we are aware of a truth, to inspire faith, determination and trust in the sophistication of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to inspire faith, determination and trust, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to inspire faith, determination and trust, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in and trust, and to honor each truth by not only recognizing it, but making it a guiding principle of our actions, from the beginning to the end, in the midst of our journey and for endless times to come.

In the contemplation of German life, which, out of an attitude such as that of Fichte and Schiller, strives towards true spiritual insight, personalities such as Emerson emerge. And then we understand how — as if from the elementary — that which is intimately connected with this search for the higher human being in the everyday human being is also expressed in Bismarck's speech of 1888. What is intimately connected? I already said at the beginning of the lecture when I pointed out how, in the end, the best German geniuses point the way to spiritual science: As the outer man rests in outer nature, so that which can be found as the higher man in man, that which passes from life to life, that which passes from one nationality to another in the course of earthly lives, rests in the divine All-existence. And when man grasps the roots of his innermost being, he feels connected with the God whose nature permeates and pulses through the world. And Schiller and Fichte speak of this God, of whom Bismarck also speaks, in his elementary way, in the already mentioned speech, calling out to the Germans the words:

"We can easily be bribed by love and goodwill — perhaps too easily — but certainly not by threats! We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God that makes us love and cultivate peace. But anyone who breaks it will see that the militant patriotism that called the entire population of the then weak, small and exhausted Prussia under the banners in 1813 is today common property of the whole German nation, and that whoever attacks the German nation in any way will find it united and armed, with every soldier with the firm belief in his heart: God will be with us!

The German has always tried to seek this God of his in the spiritual realm. As I indicated last time, the German has tried to create in Goethe that Faust figure which cannot be said to be “German” or “French”, “English”, “Russian” or “American”; but which can be said to be human and which can only arise from the German spirit. I also pointed out how one always becomes as a German. But Goethe places the figure of Mephistopheles, the embodiment of evil and, above all, of untruth, right next to his Faust. Thus the German may look in his consciousness at the juxtaposition of Faust and Mepistopheles – and, recognizing his mission in the world, as Emerson expresses it, he may emphasize: Wherever we Germans may spread our influence, we carry with us the consciousness expressed in the words of Faust: “On free soil with free people stand!” These are words that are spoken out of the spirit that in reality respects and understands the true value of every nationality and hates none. Thus the German can look with calmness at one of the last great ancestors, at Bismarck himself, and at the words: “We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.” And he can, listening to this great statesman, hear, as if from the spiritual realm, certain words that are nevertheless—one only has to know Bismarck—genuinely Bismarckian: “There is no doubt that the threats and insults, the challenges that have been directed at us, have also aroused a very considerable and justified bitterness in us, and that is very difficult for a German, because he is inherently less susceptible to national hatred than any other nation; but we are trying to appease them, and we want peace with our neighbors as much as ever.” Therefore, anyone who knows the German must search deeper if he wants to find something in him to despise, something to hate. Goethe searched, but he did not create a human being; instead of Faust, he created Mephistopheles! Wherever people live, we will seek out their humanity, regardless of nationality. But we must not be blind to what lives in people. by the spirit of untruth. Especially in our time, when so much that is harsh and untrue sounds to our ears, we may still say: it is as if we were hearing Bismarck's words. He always strove not to disdain his opponents, but to do them justice, for example when, living at war with the French, he pointed out the old French, the fine French nature, with which he so liked to negotiate. This was also the case with the speech already mentioned, where he said: “Bravery is the same in all civilized nations; the Russian and the French fight as bravely as the German.” Indeed, the German does not look to the others for what he might have to hate, reject or dislike. He is spiritually inclined, he looks for the spiritual, just as Goethe in his Faust looked for the spiritual in the lie in Mephistopheles. And so, in conclusion, we can say, as if we were hearing Bismarck himself, whispering to us from the realms of the spirit: When we hear untruths being spoken in the West, Northwest and East, we should not allow ourselves to be led to hate and contempt for personalities and nationalities; for just as it is true that the German, when he reaches into his higher self, finds the universal humanity that can be found everywhere on earth where the human face appears, so it is also true that the German must first find the object of his hatred through spiritual contemplation. It is true that just as the German feels united with his God in his innermost, most sacred self, so too can he only go to the deeper roots of his hatred in those places where he is allowed to hate, to the spiritual level. It is true, in a certain sense deeply true: the German fears God, but nothing else in the world. But in the face of all that comes to us, I would say, from all directions, the word may also be coined that will prove to be true once we look more clearly than today at the roots of the German character:

The German, basically, hates no nationality, no human being, insofar as they live on the physical plane. The German hates only – if it is to be spoken of – the spirit of lies and dishonesty; for he loves and wants to love the spirit of truthfulness wherever it can be found!

The isolation of man's ideas (especially his mathematical ideas) from his direct experience has proved to be the outstanding feature of the spiritual development leading to modern scientific thinking. Let us place this process once more before our mind's eye.

We were able to look back into ages past, when what man had to acquire as knowledge of the world was experienced in communion with the world. During those epochs, man inwardly did not experience his threefold orientation—up-down, left-right, front-back—in such a manner that he attributed it solely to himself. Instead, he felt himself within the universal whole; hence, his own orientations were to him synonymous with the three dimensions of space. What he pictured of knowledge to himself, he experienced jointly with the world. Therefore, with no uncertainty in his mind, he knew how to apply his concepts, his ideas, to the world. This uncertainty has only arisen along with the more recent civilization. We see it slowly finding its way into the whole of modern thought and we see science developing under this condition of uncertainty. This state of affairs must be clearly recognized.

A few examples can illustrate what we are dealing with . Take a thinker like John Locke, who lived from the seventeenth into the eighteenth century. His writings show what an up-to-date thinker of his age had to say concerning the scientific world perception. John Locke⁴³ divided everything that man perceives in his physical environment into two aspects. He divided the characteristic features of bodies into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities were those that he could only attribute to the objects themselves, such as shape, position, and motion. Secondary qualities in his view were those that did not actually belong to the external corporeal things but were an effect that these objects had upon man. Examples are color, sound, and warmth. Locke stated it thus: “When I hear a sound, outside of me there is vibrating air. In a drawing, I can picture these vibrations in the air that emanate from a sound-aroused body and continue on into my ear. The shape that the waves, as they are called, possess in the vibrating air can be pictured by means of spatial forms. I can visualize their course in time—all this, belonging to the primary qualities, certainly exists in the external world, but it is silent, it is soundless. The quality of sound, a secondary quality, only arises when the vibration of the air strikes my ear, and with it arises that peculiar inner experience that I carry within me as sound. It is the same with color, which is now lumped together with light. There must be something out there in the world that is somehow of a corporeal nature and somehow possesses shape and movement. This exercises an effect on my eye and thus becomes my experience of light or color. It is the same with the other things that present themselves to my senses. The whole corporeal world must be viewed like this; we must distinguish between the primary qualities in it, which are objective, and the secondary qualities, which are subjective and are the effects of the primary qualities upon us.”

Simply put, one could say with Locke that the external world outside of man is form, position, and movement, whereas all that makes up the content of the sense world exists in truth somehow inside us. The actual content of color as a human experience is nowhere in the environment, it lives in me. The actual content of sound is nowhere to be found outside, it lives in me. The same is true of my experience of warmth or cold.

In former ages, when what had become the content of knowledge was experienced jointly with the world, one could not possibly have had this view because, as I have said, a man experienced mathematics by participating in his own bodily orientation and placing this orientation into his own movement. He experienced this, however, in communion with the world. Therefore, his own experience was sufficient reason for assuming the objectivity of position, place, and movement. Also, though in another portion of his inner life, man again had this communion with the world in regard to color, tone, and so forth. Just as the concept of movement was gained through the experience of his own movement, so the concept of color was gained through a corresponding internal experience in the blood, and this experience was then connected with whatever is warmth, color, sound, and so forth in the surrounding world. Certainly, in earlier times, man distinguished position, location, movement, and time-sequence from color, sound, and warmth, but these were distinguished as being different kinds of experiences that were undergone jointly with different kinds of existence in the objective world.

Now, in the scientific age, the determination of place, movement, position, and form ceased to be inward self-experience. Instead, they were regarded as mere hypotheses that were caused by some external reality. When the shape of a cannon is imagined, one can hardly say: This form of the cannon is actually somehow within me. Therefore its identification was directed outward and the imagined form of the cannon was related to something objective. One could not very well admit that a musket-ball was actually flying within one's brain; therefore, the hypothetically thought-out movements were attributed to something objective.

On the other hand, what one saw in the flying musket-ball, the flash by which one perceived it and the sound by which one heart it, were pushed into one's own human nature, since no other place could be found for them. Man no longer knew how he experienced them jointly with the objects; therefore, he associated them with his own being.

It actually took quite some time before those who thought along the lines of the scientific age perceived the impossibility of this arrangement. What had in fact taken place? The secondary qualities, sound, color, and warmth experience, had become, as it were, fair game in the world and, in regard to human knowledge, had to take refuge in man. But before too long, nobody had any idea of how they lived there. The experience, the self-experience, was no longer there. There was no connection with external nature, because it was not experienced anymore. Therefore these experiences were pushed into one's self. So far as knowledge was concerned, they had, as it were, disappeared inside man. Vaguely it was thought that an ether vibration out in space translated itself into form and movement, and this had an effect on the eye, and then worked on the optic nerve, and finally somehow entered the brain. Our thoughts were a means of looking around inside for whatever it was that, as an effect of the primary qualities, supposedly expressed itself in man as secondary qualities. It took a long time, as I said, before a handful of people firmly pointed out the oddity of these ideas. There is something extraordinary in what the Austrian philosopher Richard Wahle⁴⁴ wrote in his Mechanism of Thinking, though he himself did not realize the full implications of his sentence: “Nihil est in cerebro, quod non est in nervis.” (“There is nothing in the brain that is not in the nerves.” It may not be possible with the means available today to examine the nerves in every conceivable way, but even if we could we would not find sound, color, or warmth experience in them. Therefore, they must not be in the brain either. Actually, one has to admit now that they simply disappear insofar as knowledge is concerned. One examines the relationship of man to the world. Form, position, place, time, etc. are beheld as objective. Sound, warmth, experience and color vanish; they elude one.⁴⁵

Finally, in the Eighteenth Century, this led Kant⁴⁶ to say that even the space and time qualities of things cannot somehow be outside and beyond man. But there had to be some relationship between man and the world. After all, such a relationship cannot be denied if we are to have any idea of how man exists together with the world. Yet, the common experience of man's space and time relationships with the world simply did not exist anymore. Hence arose the Kantian idea: If man is to apply mathematics, for example, to the world, then it is his doing that he himself makes the world into something mathematical. He impresses the whole mathematical system upon the “things in themselves,” which themselves remain utterly unknown.—In the Nineteenth Century science chewed on this problem interminably. The basic nature of man's relation to cognition is simply this: uncertainty has entered into his relationship with the world. He does not know how to recognize in the world what he is experiencing. This uncertainty slowly crept into all of modern thinking. We see it entering bit by bit into the spiritual life of recent times.

It is interesting to place a recent example side by side with Locke's thinking. August Weismann,⁴⁷ a biologist of the Nineteenth Century, conceived the thought: in any living organism, the interplay of the organs (in lower organisms, the interaction of the parts) must be regarded as the essential thing. This leads to comprehension of how the organism lives. But in examining the organism itself, in understanding it through the interrelationship of its parts, we find no equivalent for the fact that the organism must die. If one only observes the organism, so Weismann said, one finds nothing that will explain death. In the living organism, there is absolutely nothing that leads to the idea that the organism must die. For Weismann, the only thing that demonstrates that an organism must die is the existence of a corpse. This means that the concept of death is not gained from the living organism. No feature, no characteristic, found in it indicates that dying is a part of the organism. It is only when the event occurs, when we find a corpse in the place of the living organism, that we know the organism possesses the ability to die.

But, says Weismann, there is a class of organisms where corpses are never found. These are the unicellular organisms. They only divide themselves so there are no corpses. The propagation of such beings looks like this:

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One divides into two; each of these divides into two again, and so on. There is never a corpse. Weismann therefore concludes that the unicellular beings are immortal. This is the immortality of unicellular beings that was famous in nineteenth-century biology. Why were these organisms considered immortal? Because they never produce any corpses, and because we cannot entertain the concept of death in the organic realm as long as there are no corpses. Where there is no corpse, there is no room for the concept of death. Hence, living beings that produce no corpses are immortal.

This example shows how far man has removed himself in modern times from any connection between the world and his thinking, his inner experiences. His concept of an organism is no longer such that the fact of its death can be perceived from it. This can only be deduced from the existence of something like a corpse. Certainly, if a living organism is only viewed from outside, if one cannot experience what is in it, then indeed one cannot find death in the organism and an external sign is necessary. But this only proves that in his thinking man feels himself separated from the things around him.

From the uncertainty that has entered all thinking concerning the corporeal world, from this divorce between our thoughts and our experience, let us turn back to the time when self-experience still existed. Not only did the inwardly experienced concept exist alongside the externally excogitated concept of a triangle, square, or pentagram, but there were also inwardly experienced concepts of blossoming and fading, of birth and death. This inner experience of birth and death had its gradations. When a child was seen to grow more and more animated, when its face began to express its soul, when one really entered into this growing process of the child, this could be seen as a continuation of the process of birth, albeit a less pronounced and intensive one. There were degrees in the experience of birth. When a man began to show wrinkles and grey hair and grow feeble, this was seen as a first mild degree of dying. Death itself was only the sum total of many less pronounced death experiences, if I may use such a paradox. The concepts of blossoming and decaying, of being born and dying, were inwardly alive.

These concepts were experienced in communion with the corporeal world. No line was drawn between man's self-experience and the events in nature. Without a coastline, as it were, the inner land of man merged into the ocean of the universe. Owing to this form of experience, man lived himself into the world itself. Therefore, the thinkers of earlier ages, whose ideas no longer receive proper attention from science, had to form quite different ideas concerning something like what Weismann called the “immortality of unicellular beings.” What sort of concept would an ancient thinker have formed had he had a microscope and known something about the division of unicellular organisms? He would have said: First I have the unicellular being; it divides itself into two. Somewhat imprecisely, he might have said: It atomizes itself, it divides itself; for a certain length of time, the two parts are indivisible; then they divide again. As soon as division or atomization begins, death enters in. He would not have derived death from the corpse but from atomization, from the division into parts. His train of thought would have been somewhat as follows: A being that is capable of life, that is in the process of growth, is not atomized; and when the tendency to atomization appears, the being dies. In the case of unicellular beings, he would simply have thought that the two organisms cast off by the first unicellular being were for the moment dead, but would be, so to speak, revived immediately, and so forth. With atomization, with the process of splitting, he would have linked the thought of death. If he had known about unicellular beings and had seen one split into two, he would not have thought that two new ones had come into being. On the contrary, he would have said that out of the living monad, two atoms have originated. Further, he would have said that wherever there is life, wherever one observes life, one is not dealing with atoms. But if they are found in a living being, then a proportionate part of the being is dead. Where atoms are found, there is death, there is something inorganic. This is how matters would have been judged in a former age based on living inner knowledge of the world.

All this is not clearly described in our histories of philosophy, although the discerning reader can have little doubt of it. The reason is that the thought-forms of this older philosophy are totally unlike today's thinking. Therefore anyone writing history nowadays is apt to put his own modern concepts into the minds of earlier thinkers.⁴⁸ But this is impermissible even with a man as recent as Spinoza. In his book on what he justifiably calls ethics, Spinoza follows a mathematical method but it is not mathematics in the modern sense. He expounds his philosophy in a mathematical style, joining idea to idea as a mathematician would. He still retains something of the former qualitative experience of quantitative mathematical concepts. Hence, even in contemplating the qualitative aspect of man's inner life, we can say that his style is mathematical. Today with our current concepts, it would be sheer nonsense to apply a mathematical style to psychology, let alone ethics.

If we want to understand modern thinking, we must continually recall this uncertainty, contrasting it to the certainty that existed in the past but is no longer suited to our modern outlook. In the present phase of scientific thinking, we have come to the point where this uncertainty is not only recognized but theoretical justifications have been offered for it. And example is a lecture given by the French thinker Henri Poincaré⁴⁹ in 1912 on current ideas relating to matter. He speaks of the existing controversy or debate concerning the nature of matter; whether it should be thought of as being continuous or discrete; in other words, whether one should conceive of matter as substantial essence that fills space and is nowhere really differentiated in itself, or whether substance, matter, is to be thought of as atomistic, signifying more or less empty space containing within it minute particles that by virtue of their particular interconnections form into atoms, molecules, and so forth.

Aside from what I might call a few decorative embellishments intended to justify scientific uncertainty, Poincaré's lecture comes down to this: Research and science pass through various periods. In one epoch, phenomena appear that cause the thinker to picture matter in a continuous form, making it convenient to conceive of matter this way and to focus on what shows up as continuity in the sense data. In a different period the findings point more toward the concept of matter being diffused into atoms, which are pictured as being fused together again; i.e. matter is not continuous but discrete and atomistic. Poincaré is of the opinion that always, depending on the direction that research findings take, there will be periods when thinking favors either continuity or atomism. He even speaks of an oscillation between the two in the course of scientific development. It will always be like this, he says, because the human mind has a tendency to formulate theories concerning natural phenomena in the most convenient way possible. If continuity prevails for a time, we get tired of it. (These are not Poincaré's exact words, but they are close to what he really intends.) Almost unconsciously, as it were, the human mind then comes upon other scientific findings and begins to think atomistically. It is like breathing where exhalation follows inhalation. Thus there is a constant oscillation between continuity and atomism. This merely results from a need of the human mind and according to Poincaré, says nothing about the things themselves. Whether we adopt continuity or atomism determines nothing about things themselves. It is only our attempt to come to terms with the external corporeal world.

It is hardly surprising that uncertainty should result from an age which no longer finds self-experience in harmony with what goes on in the world but regards it only as something occurring inside man. If you no longer experience a living connection with the world, you cannot experience continuity or atomism. You can only force your preconceived notions of continuity or atomism on the natural phenomena. This gradually leads to the suspicion that we formulate our theories according to our changing needs. Just as we must breath in and out, so we must, supposedly, think first continuistically for a while, then atomistically for a while. If we always thought in the same way, we would not be able to catch a breath of mental air. Thus our fatal uncertainty is confirmed and justified. Theories begin to look like arbitrary whims. We no longer live in any real connection with the world. We merely think of various ways in which we might live with the world, depending on our own subjective needs.

What would the old way of thought have said in such a case? It would have said: In an age when the leading thinkers think continuistically, they are thinking mainly of life. In one in which they think atomistically, they are thinking primarily of death, of inorganic nature, and they view even the organic in inorganic terms.

This is no longer unjustified arbitrariness. This rests on an objective relationship to things. Naturally, I can take turns in dealing with the animate and the inanimate. I can say that the very nature of the animate requires that I conceive of it continuistically, whereas the nature of the inanimate requires that I think of it atomistically. But I cannot say that this is only due to the arbitrary nature of the human mind. On the contrary, it corresponds to an objective relating of oneself to the world. For such perception, the subjective aspect is really disregarded, because one recognizes the animate in nature in continual form and the inanimate in discrete form. And if one really has to oscillate between the two forms of thought, this can be turned in an objective direction by saying that one approach is suited to the living and the other is suited to the dead. But there is no justification for making everything subjective as Poincaré does. Nor is the subjective valid for the way of perception that belonged to earlier times.

The gist of this is that in the phase of scientific thinking immediately preceding our own, there was a turn away from the animate to the inanimate; i.e., from continuity to atomism. This was entirely justified, if rightly understood. But, if we hope to objectively and truly find ourselves in the world, we must find a way out of the dead world of atomism, no matter how impressive it is as a theory. We must get back to our own nature and comprehend ourselves as living beings. Up to now, scientific development has tended in the direction of the inanimate, the atomistic. When, in the first part of the Nineteenth Century, this whole dreadful cell theory of Schleiden⁵⁰ and Schwann⁵¹ made its appearance, it did not lead to continuity but to atomism. What is more, the scientific world scarcely admitted this, nor has it to this day realized that it should admit it since atomism harmonizes with the whole scientific methodology. We were not aware that by conceiving the organism as divided up into cells, we actually atomized it in our minds, which in fact signifies killing it. The truth of the matter is that any real idea of organisms has been lost to the atomistic approach.

This is what we can learn if we compare Goethe's views on organics with those of Schleiden or the later botanists. In Goethe we find living ideas that he actually experiences. The cell is alive, so the others are really dealing with something organic, but the way they think is just as though the cells were not alive but atoms. Of course, empirical research does not always follow everything to its logical conclusion, and this cannot be done in the case of the organic world. Our comprehension of the organic world is not much aided by the actual observations resulting from the cell theory. The non-atomistic somehow finds its way in, since we have to admit that the cells are alive. But it is typical of many of today's scientific discussions that the issues become confused and there is no real clarity of thought.

• 43. John Locke: Wrington by Bristol 1632–1704 Oates, Essex. Theologian, philosopher, and physician. Because raised Protestant and Puritan, he was persecuted in England and had to flee to Holland until after the English Revolution of 1689. From 1675–1689 Locke worked with many interruptions at his main work. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690. Originally he had planned a critical presentation of the already recognized teaching of primary and secondary sense characteristics, but then it grew to a perception theory or world view. His Essay was published 4 times in his lifetime. See Riddles of Philosophy, The Philosophy of Freedom, trans. Michael Wilson (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1964) and “Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa” in Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age.
• 44. Richard Wahle: 1857–1935, Vienna, Professor of Philosophy. Only valued perceptions, imaginations, and feelings, but rejected all philosophy hitherto written as theories of cognition. The “Ego” is for him “a summary of surface-like, physiologically accompanied pieces of consciousness, which are brought into being by invisible forces.” Some writings: The Whole of Philosophy and Its End, 1894; About the Mechanism of the Spiritual Life, 1906; The Tragic Comedy of Wisdom, 1915; Development of Characters, 1928; Basics of a New Psychiatry, 1931.
• 45. See Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 4.
• 46. Immanuel Kant: 1724–1804. Lived in Koenigsberg, which he seldom left. Philosopher, scientist, mathematician. Professor in Koenigsberg 1770–1794. Critique of Pure Reason, 1781. Its popular edition Dissertation on Any Future Metaphysics, 1783, his ethic Critique of Practical Reason, 1788, aesthetic and natural theology is handled in Critique of Judgment, 1790. He wrote the first mechanical cosmology 1755. It was taken up and changed by Laplace (1796) and known as the Kant-LaPlace Theory. Rudolf Steiner's exposition on Kant's theory is found in Truth and Knowledge, The Philosophy of Freedom, and An Autobiography, ed. Paul M. Alien, 2nd ed. (Blauvelt, NY: Steinerbooks, Garber Communications, 1980).
  
  E.g. in Critique of Pure Reason, “Transcendental Aesthetic, Common Remarks”: “We wanted to say that all our opinions are nothing but the conception of the appearance; that the things we look at are not actually what we take them for, nor is their relation constituted as they appear to us, and that if we would suspend our subject or even our subjective constitution of our senses as a whole, the whole constitution, all relationships of objects in space and time, even time and space itself would disappear. They would only exist in us, not as phenomena in themselves.”
• 47. August Weismann, Frankfurt A.M. 1834–1914 Freiburg. Biologist, genetic scientist. Theory of polarity between cells (soma) and seed plasma. Determinants as heredity carriers. Writing: Studies on the Descent Theory.
• 48. Goethe's recital from Faust I, Act 1, Scene 2, “Night,” Gothic Room, Wagner and Faust:
  
  “My friend, the time of past
  Is a book with seven seals.
  What you call the Spirit of Time
  Is fundamentally the Gentleman's own spirit,
  In which the times reflect themselves.”
• 49. Henry Poincaré: Nancy 1854–1912 Paris. Author of the popular philosophical writings Science and Hypothesis (1902), The Value of Science (1905), Science and Method (1909), and Last Thoughts (1912). The lecture in question was held by Poincaré shortly before his death in a lecture cycle Conferences de Foi et de Vie printed in Le Materialisme Actuel with M.M. Bergson, H. Poincaré, Ch. Gide, Ch. Wagner, Firm Roz, De Witt-Guizotfriedel, Gaston Rion. (Paris: 1918), page 53.
• 50. Mathias Jakob Schleiden: Hamburg 1804–1881 Frankfurt A.M. Lawyer, physician, and, mainly, biologist. Developed a cell formation theory in Contributions to Phylogenesis (1838).
• 51. Theodor Schwann: Neuss 1810–1882 Cologne, biologist. Founded the cell theory with his Microscopic Examinations of the Harmony in Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants (1839).

Today, I shall have to turn to a seemingly more remote topic that will fit in, however, with yesterday's and tomorrow's subjects. I have frequently mentioned that when the evolution of humanity is surveyed, people proceed too much from the premise that the general condition of human soul life has basically remained the same ever since any human development can be traced historically or in prehistory. However, this assumption simply does not correspond to the facts. It is difficult, of course, to ascertain what the successive metamorphoses of human soul evolution were like if one is merely in a position to study the facts recorded in historical documents. If, on the other hand, one is able to look back further than these facts allow, then even the historical traditions present themselves in a different light. It then becomes evident that the human soul condition was not always what it is today or what it was in the ages still discernible by external means.

Above all, people believe the following: Human beings utilize something like geometry, like arithmetic, which, as we know, is mainly the theory of counting. Furthermore, they master the art of weighing, of determining weights of given objects. People then consider what measuring and measures represent and contemplate the way one counts and weighs things today. Then people think: Surely, in the age when, according to modern, prevalent opinion, human beings were still completely childlike, they were incapable of measuring, counting, and calculating anything. But ever since human beings were capable of that, these matters have been carried out approximately in the same way we execute them nowadays.

This is not the case at all, and even though it will lead us into a more remote subject, as I said, we must acquire a more exact idea of measures, numbers, and weights before we go into the historical considerations about mankind. Even according to external historical tradition the views concerning numbers prevailing in the Pythagorean School differed somewhat from those of today. As all of you realize, the Pythagoreans connected certain ideas with the numbers one, two, three, four, and so no. They linked quite definite conceptions with an even and an odd number. In short, they spoke about numbers in a certain qualitative sense, not merely in a quantitative one.

When the underlying reason for this is considered from the standpoint of spiritual science, we arrive at the realization that the Pythagorean School, which as yet was still a kind of esoteric school, represented basically only the last vestige of a much more ancient wisdom of numbers, going back to primordial times of which only the traditions have been preserved. And what is handed down to us concerning a science of numbers by Pythagoras is in fact already a decline from a much older teaching of numbers. When these matters are pursued further with the methods of spiritual science, we arrive by way of measure, number, and weight at concepts essentially different from those we possess today. As I said, even though it might create difficulties for some of you, we must make it somewhat clear to ourselves how these concepts of measuring, counting, and weighing are constituted today.

Measuring—how do we measure? We can only have one measure and it must be assumed in some manner. We cannot claim that this measure on which we base everything, such as the metric measure today, is somehow determined absolutely. It is determined as a certain segment of the northern quadrant of the earth's meridian that passes through Paris, and this segment, the ten millionth part, is not even exactly contained in that original prototype meter located in Paris. It is assumed, however, and we say that we proceed from a certain measure. With it, we then measure other lengths or surface areas by forming a square measure out of the unit of length. Yet, the figures arrived at concerning the object being measured refer to something completely arbitrary that was at one time assumed. It is important to make it clear to ourselves that we actually take an arbitrary measure as the basis, hence, that we always arrive only at a relation of some object to this arbitrarily assumed measure when we measure an object.

It is somewhat different in the case of numbers. In the abstract manner of our life today, we count, 1, 2, 3; we do this when counting apples or people, horses or chairs. To the object that is to be determined by the number it matters not what we designate as 1. We apply our peculiar way of counting to all things we count off, which, as a unit, represent an integrated totality.

Please note that in measuring we proceed from an arbitrary measure and we then relate everything to this arbitrary unit of measure. This unit of measure is something, so to speak; it exists. It is even conceivable, as it were, almost like a thing, an object. The unit of numbers cannot be pictured in this way. The unit of number is a completely abstract concept applicable to anything. No matter whether we count years or people or stars, we are led into total abstraction, into something that cannot stand for any particular reality since it could stand for all realities. When we take the arithmetic unit as the basis, the minute objective element still retained in measuring is lost to us.

When weighing something, we do not see the whole extent of what we take as the basis of weighing. There, the whole matter escapes us even more than in the case of numbers. When we count chairs, for example, and we say, “one,” “two,” “three,” we are at least finished when we come to the third chair that stands before us as a unit. In the case of a scale, on the other hand, we place a weight on one side of the scales—a weight in itself is nothing if it is not subject to earth's gravity, as we say—and the object we weigh is equal to the weight of the weights. Here, however, we are no longer by ourselves; basically, the whole earth is involved. Our point of reference here lies somehow completely beyond the realm we oversee. We enter into a complete abstraction when we say that something weighs five kilograms. Just think what you actually picture when you say that something weighs five kilograms. You place a five kilogram weight on a scale, but this weight by itself is really nothing! We are not dealing with a property of the thing itself. When I say, “one chair,” this one is at least integrated in the chair. The five kilograms, on the other hand, must relate themselves to the earth. You merely deal with something that relates to something else the whole extent of which you do not see at all, namely, the whole body of the earth. And when weighing the other object on the scale, which is to weigh five kilograms, again, you have something that escapes you completely, belonging again to a totality that is even less than an abstraction.

Let us proceed from numbers. In former times, and here we actually go back as far as the second post-Atlantean epoch, all thinking concerning numbers was dealt with in a significantly different manner from the way we treat it today in the outside world. People then really had concepts of 1, 2, and 3. For us, 2 is nothing but the presence of two units of 1; 3 is the presence of three, 4 that of four units of 1. Thus we continue counting by always adding 1 more. hence repeating the same act of thinking. We can repeat it indefinitely.

This was not the case in the second post-Atlantean epoch. Back then, people sensed the same difference between, let's say, two and three that we today feel only between different objects. In the number 3, one sensed a significantly different element from that in the number 2. Not only was it the addition of one unit; rather, one sensed something integrated in the 3, something where three things relate to one another. The 2 had an open element, something where two things lie indifferently side by side. People recalled this indifference in lying side by side when they said “two.” They did not sense this in the number 3, but only something that belongs together, where each thing relates to all the others. Concerning 2, a person could imagine that one thing escapes to the left, the other to the right. The 3 could not be pictured that way; instead, it was felt that if one unit would disappear, the remaining two would no longer be what they had been, for then, they would exist indifferently beside each other. The 3 combined the 2 in a totality, so to speak; it made them a whole. The form of arithmetic we have today, our elementary counting, this repetition of the same act, did not exist at all in those former times. Only now, through spiritual science, we are once again directed in a certain sense to the qualitative element of numbers.

I can illustrate this with an example long since familiar to you so that you will realize that it is necessary to add not only 1 to 1, and so on, but to delve into the reality of existence with the numbers. In order to give you at least a very elementary idea of this matter, let me outline the following. In my book, Theosophy,¹ the individual members of the human being are described:

1. Physical Body
2. Ether Body
3. Astral Body
4. Sentient Soul
5. Intellectual or Mind Soul
6. Consciousness Soul
7. Spirit Self
8. Life Spirit
9. Spirit Man

To list the members of the human being side by side like this, however, signifies counting them off abstractly one after the other; it means that we do not delve into reality. Because these nine do not exist, we cannot count them like that at all: “1. physical body, 2. ether body, 3. astral body, 4. sentient soul.” You cannot count like that when you wish to comprehend the human organization and observe human beings today in their reality. In fact, it must be put like this: The physical body is delimited as an integrated whole, so is the etheric body. Pass on to the third member, on the other hand, it is not something self-enclosed. In the case of the actual human being, we cannot just add the sentient soul to the astral body. Instead, these two, the astral body and the sentient soul, must definitely be combined and thereby, passing from one to two to three in reality, we can, as it were, count off realistically, not merely finding in the 3 the simple addition of 1.

What develops in us as the “astral body” and the “sentient soul,” which interact with each other, is simply a third element, abstractly speaking, but by passing in reality to this third element, a third unit can no longer merely be added to the first two. Instead, we must realize that this third element is in itself different from the first two.

Then, the fourth member is counted off, which is actually the fifth, and again, in the modern human being, we must basically add together the sixth and seventh. Thus, we arrive at the way they are actually listed in my Theosophy: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. We have seven actual components, which, when they are abstractly counted off, are nine:

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Based on reality, we learn to say: By proceeding according to their inherent rules, one thing is not indifferent to the others. Just because this is the third member (see above, 3), it is something different. Certainly, due to our customary abstract thinking about numbers, we have to illustrate this a little, for this older way of thinking about numbers is foreign to ordinary consciousness. In ancient times, on the other hand, in the first and second period of the post-Atlantean epoch, it would not have occurred to anybody to imagine an indifferent addition in progressing from one number to the next. Instead, people experienced something when they passed from, say, 2 to 3, just as we experience something here when we pass from 2 to 3 (see above list). Today you can barely sense it in this example, but not yet in the number itself. In those former times people could sense it in the numbers themselves. They spoke of numbers in reference to their mutual relationships. Anything that existed in twos, for example, was felt to have a quality of openness towards the world, of not being closed off. Something existing in threes, as an actual three, was something closed off. You might now say that depending on what is counted a distinction has to be made. When you count, one man, one woman, one child, man and woman are equal to a duality, hence not closed off to the world; the child closes this duality off, forms a totality. When you count apples, on the other hand, we can indeed not say that three apples are more closed off than two. It was true that external matters were merely sensed in this way, but the number itself was experienced quite differently.

You might recall that certain aboriginal tribes still use their ten fingers to count, comparing to them the amount of objects present in their surroundings. So we could say that if we have three apples here, this is equal to three fingers.

For 1, 2, 3, however, these primitive people would not have said—naturally in the words of their own language—“thumb,” “index finger,” and “middle finger.” Although the objects they counted off in the outside world remained undefined, what represented those objects inwardly was very clearly defined, for the three fingers differ from one another. Well, mankind has now advanced so splendidly in the fifth period of the post-Atlantean epoch—basically, it was already like this in the fourth period—that we no longer need to count by means of our fingers. Instead, we say, “one, two, three.” The genius of language is not taken into consideration anymore. For if you would listen to what is contained in the words, purely based on feeling you would say: “Eins, entzwei” (“one, in two—cut in two.”)^T1 It is still retained in the language, and when you say: “Drei” (“three”), and you are sensitive to the sounds, you have something closed off. Three: when pictured correctly, three things can only be imagined as lying in a circle, connected to each other; two: into two (entzwei); three: self-enclosed, the genius of language still retains that.

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Well, as I said, we have “advanced so far” that we can abstractly add one unit to another. Then we feel that this is 2, that is 1; in case of 3, one more has been added, and so on. Yet, why is it that we can count in the first place? In reality, we don't accomplish it any differently from primitive peoples. Only they did it with their five physical fingers. We, too, count with the fingers, but with those of our etheric body, and we no longer know it. It takes place in our subconscious, and we leave that out of consideration. We actually count by means of the etheric body; in reality, a number is still nothing but a comparison with what is contained within us. The whole of arithmetic is in us; we brought it to birth within us through our astral body. It actually emerges from our astral body, our ten fingers being merely replicas of the astral and etheric. These two are only utilized by the external finger, whereas, when we do sums, we express in the etheric body what brings about the inspiration of numbers in the astral body; then we count by means of the etheric body, with which we think in the first place.

Therefore, we can say that, outwardly, counting is something quite abstract for us today; inwardly, the reason we count is connected with the fact that we are counted in the first place, for we are counted out of universal being and are structured according to numbers. It is most interesting to trace the various methods of counting among the different folk groups in the world—according to the number 10, the decimal system, or the number 12—and how this relates to their different etheric and astral constitutions. Numbers are inborn into us, woven into us out of the cosmic totality. Outwardly, numbers are gradually becoming a matter of indifference to us; within us, this is not the case. Within ourselves, each number has its own definite quality. Just try and imagine that you could eliminate numbers from the universe and then see what things formed in numbers would look like if one thing were merely added to the other. Imagine the appearance of your hand, if the thumb were here, and the next finger would be added as the same unit and then the next, and so on. You would have five thumbs on your hand and five on the other! This would then correspond to abstract counting.

The spirits of the universe do not count like that. They create forms according to numbers, and they do it in the manner formerly connected with numbers during the first and even the second period of the post-Atlantean epoch. The development of abstract numbers out of the quite concrete concept of the element and quality of numbers is something that only evolved in the course of humanity's evolution. We have to realize that it has profound significance that the tradition handed down to us from the ancient mysteries relates that the gods fashioned man according to numbers. The saying that the world abounds in numbers implies that everything is fashioned according to numbers and that the human being, too, is formed on the basis of numbers. Hence, the modern way of counting did not exist in those ancient times; on the other hand, an imaginative thinking in the qualities of numbers did exist.

As I said, this leads us back to an age of long ago, namely, the first and second post-Atlantean periods, the ancient Indian and Persian eras, in which our present form of counting was not at all possible. In those times people connected something entirely different from two times one with the number 2. And likewise they associated something other than two plus one with three. As you can see, the human soul constitution has indeed changed considerably in the course of time.

Turning now to the somewhat later period of time, the third period of the post-Atlantean epoch, we find that the measure was something quite different. Today, we measure on the basis of an assumed and arbitrary unit of measurement. Even in the third post-Atlantean period, for example, people did not really refer to such an arbitrary unit of measure. In measuring, they had in mind something quite pictorial. What they focused on may perhaps become clear to you from the following. Here, for instance, we see one column, there is another one (see sketch below); we look at these two columns. If we experience things abstractly, we say that the second column is twice as high as the first one; we measure it by the first one.

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That, however, is a very abstract conception. Picturing it concretely, we can interpret it in approximately the following manner: When we evoke a feeling for the column on the left, we experience it to be weak in comparison to the one on the right. We feel that it must grow, and when it grows and grows and reaches this point up here (pointing to the taller column), it has become something special. It has put so much energy into this growth that it now possesses a strength such that its two parts are both equally strong. You can sense something qualitative there. You can go further and say: I have a structure here; I measure it against the other one and thus arrive at the symmetry; the concept of the measure expands for me, entering into the picture.

In this way, we gradually come to the idea that measure actually has to do with something that is still sensed dimly when we speak of moderation^T2 in which case we are not thinking of measuring something. For example, when a person consumes only a certain quantity of some food, we might designate that as being moderate (maessig) without having measured the amount. We classify something else as immoderate (unmaessig). We are not measuring anything here, we make no comparison, measuring the stomach with what enters it, and so on. We don't measure the piece of meat and then eat it; we do not measure it against the size of the person. Instead, we refer to a quality when we speak of a moderate or immoderate intake of food. We arrive at something that is not so very different from what we term a measure today but it does show us that we refer to something abstract today when we speak of measure, namely, “the unit of measure contained in a certain quantity,” whereas formerly people defined it as something that was qualitatively connected with objects.

Above all, people sensed the measured symmetry of each member of man in relation to the totality of the human being without thinking at that point of a unit. One thing has remained from this, namely, that it seems abhorrent to us if, as artists, we are supposed to measure anything; for, if an artist actually has to take measurements so that the nose, for example, does not turn out to be too long or too short, this is not considered artistic. But we consider the work artistic when we see that the thing has the proper size for an organism. Therefore, we do not deal with an abstract process here but with something related to the pictorial element.

Finally, consider the unit of measure that still plays a certain role today, namely the so-called golden mean or golden section. It is not connected with measurements but only with a qualitative element. The smaller element is to the medium-sized one as the medium-sized one is to the whole. The smaller element may be any size, but it must always be to the medium-sized one as the medium-sized one is to the whole. We do not have a measurement in mind but something that reveals a certain interrelationship when we look at it. Yet, we speak of the harmonious measure that comes to expression in the golden mean. We cannot base the golden mean on any kind of unit of measure in the abstract sense as we do otherwise. Therefore, as we examine the various periods of humanity's evolution in regard to measuring, we find that in the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greco-Roman age, this vivid awareness of measure and symmetry gradually transformed itself into abstract measuring. This was actually not the case until the fourth post-Atlantean period. In the third period people experienced the relationships of measure, the proportions, much more the way we only experience the golden mean. Likewise, as we go back into ancient times, our abstract counting can be traced back to an experience of the inner quality of numbers.

In the case of weight, human beings are already far removed from what existed in the first post-Atlantean period as an experience of weight. You need only recall a well-known phenomenon that most of you have experienced in observing an athlete who lifts a heavy weight with the inscription, “200 kilograms”; he tries and tries to lift it, sweating all the while, and you almost perspire with him. Then, when he's let you sweat long enough, he suddenly lifts it up and carries it off. The whole thing really has no absolute weight; that has only been feigned. You feel the weight because of the abstract inscription “200 kilograms.” The experience of weight is something we are deprived of nowadays. Therefore, it is one of the most profound experiences when, in regard to natural phenomena, the experience of absolute weight appears in clairvoyant consciousness, as is indeed the case.

It is really true that in the first post-Atlantean epoch, designated as the ancient Indian epoch, a human being still experienced something of weight relationships within himself. I have pointed out many times that our brain actually floats in the cerebral fluid and therefore—according to the well known law whereby a floating body seemingly becomes lighter by the amount of the weight of water it displaces—loses a considerable amount of its weight. Otherwise, the brain would crush the blood vessels lying underneath. The brain floats in the cerebral fluid, but people in their abstract awareness no longer notice this today; neither are they aware of any other relationships within themselves. We no longer experience weight, pay it no attention. There is a major difference between experiencing one's weight at age twelve, and when one is, say five times that age. Most people have forgotten, however, how heavy they appeared to themselves at age twelve, and therefore they cannot very well make the comparison. But let's assume that according to the scales you have the same weight at two ages. Yet this does not matter; what matters is the experience of the weight. This experience of weight that for people today is present only in regard to the earth, was something absolute during the first postAtlantean epoch.

Today, we experience only a remnant of that in art but there in a very pronounced manner. I need only call your attention to the following. Let us assume that I draw two figures. According to my view, this is really something unclear and unresolved, something that should not be. Two objects like that side by side induce me to draw a third one. But I can shape the third object only in such a way that it appears larger, in a sense, holding the other two together. Then I have the feeling that the three are floating in air and can mutually support each other.

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When a painter nowadays draws three angels who are, after all, not viewed in connection with gravity, and he is concerned with composition, he distributes them in space in such a manner that they support each other, that one is borne by the other. Artistically, it would be the worst thing simply to draw three angels side by side on a canvas; such a painter would have no true artistic feeling. One must have a feeling for the weight of each one, how one thing carries the other. In artistic feelings, a slight touch has remained of what was mainly experienced inwardly by people in the post-Atlantean age as producing weight, as giving him weight.

The experience of weight, number, and measure developed during the first three post-Atlantean periods according to the way human beings experienced themselves within the cosmos. And based on what had shaped them from out of the cosmos, the other matters were judged, namely, what they produced. When people observed what their astral body pushed into the etheric body, they had to tell themselves that the astral body counts, counts in a differentiating way thus forming the etheric body. Numbers are found between astral and etheric body and they are something alive and active within us.

Something else is located between etheric body and physical body. Through the inner relationships something is formed out of the etheric body that we can then behold. Basically, even our organism is structured according to the golden mean: the forehead is to a certain other part of the head as that in turn is to the whole length of the head, and so on. All this is imprinted by the etheric body into our physical body out of the cosmos and its relationships. Contained within us, measure and symmetry represent the transition from the etheric to the physical body. Finally, in the transition from the ego to the astral body lives what can be inwardly experienced as weight. I have often pointed out that the ego was actually born in the course of human evolution. The people of the ancient Indian period did not yet experience such an ego. They did, however, experience within themselves something causing weight, the condition of possessing form; hence, they sensed this heaviness, this downward pull, as well as their buoyancy, their ascent. They sensed within themselves what is overcome when the child changes from a being that crawls on all fours to one that walks. The people in ancient India did not experience their ego, but they did sense that they were fettered by the Ahrimanic forces to the earth, that they were weighted down by them, and that, on the other hand, they were borne upwards, lifted up by the Luciferic forces. All this, they experienced as their position of equilibrium. If we were to study the ancient terms for the ego we would find that the above experience was contained in the formulation of the words themselves. Just as the words were fitted together in the verbs according to their inner configuration, so the ancient words for the ego contained the balance between floating and falling.

Weight, which isn't abstract anymore, for we confront something completely unknown; number, something quite abstract, for it is totally unrelated to what is being counted; measure, which has become increasingly abstract for us—these abstract conceptions of ours are actually projected from our inner being to the outside. Something that has very real significance within the human being since he is fashioned according to measure, number, and weight is transferred by him to the indifferent external things. In this process of abstraction the human being dehumanizes himself. It is therefore possible to say that mankind's evolution tends in the direction of losing the inner experiences of weight, number, and measure, retaining only a slight touch of them in the artistic realm. We no longer experience them in such a manner that we sense ourselves as having been formed out of the cosmos according to weight, number, and measure.

The geometry we have when we compare congruent and similar figures, when we say that an ellipse is generated by a point so moving that its distance from a fixed point divided by its distance from a fixed line is a positive constant, is something abstract. There, we basically measure the distances and find that their sum is always equal to the large axis of the ellipse. Even if it was not pictured in any way, the ellipse was nevertheless experienced by people in the third post-Atlantean period in this peculiar relationship of two different quantities. In the relationship of one to the other they already sensed the elliptic element, just as they sensed the circle during the same age. And in the same way the nature of numbers was experienced. Humanity evolved in this way from concrete experience to something abstract, developing geometry out of the ancient experience of measure, arithmetic out of the former experience of numbers, and having completely lost the ancient experience of weight and thus having utterly dehumanized themselves, human beings developed only external observation out of it.

All this slowly prepared the way for the increasing abstractness of inner human experience, a development that culminated in the nineteenth century. Thus, the human being became lost to his own conception. He can no longer comprehend himself; he no longer has any idea that he produces geometry because he has been formed according to measure out of the cosmos, that he counts through his very nature. He is surprised when the so-called savages use their fingers in order to compare external objects with them. He has forgotten that he has been fashioned according to numbers out of the cosmos. He does not know that in this regard he, too, always remains a “savage,” that his etheric body had imprinted the numbers into his astral body in accordance with the inner qualities of the numbers themselves so that he could later experience the numbers also outside himself. In the course of humanity's evolution, geometry, arithmetic, and the science of weight and weighing have all moved into the abstract domain and have contributed to the fact that the human being could henceforth only devote himself to a science and a form of scientific research that observes these matters externally.

What do we do when we are involved in scientific research today? We measure, count, and weigh. Nowadays, you can indeed read of strange definitions of existence. We already have thinkers who state that existence, being, is that which is measurable. Yet, they naturally refer only to measuring with an arbitrary unit of measure. It is odd that existence is traced back to something actually based on arbitrariness. Therefore, the human being dwells in something that has been completely detached, excluded from him and in regard to which he has utterly lost the connection with himself. Due to such influences, the human being has lost himself in modern knowledge; something I have emphasized from a number of viewpoints, particularly during this lecture course.

As I have often said, the human being has been lost in our perception of ourselves as merely the last step in the evolution of the animals. In society we have lost sight of the human being, for though we have invented extremely sophisticated machines, we are unable to integrate the significance of the people operating these machines into our social processes. We must learn to penetrate mankind's evolution; above all we must observe in this way how the process of man's intellectualization has come about. Just think how different people's frame of mind was in the first post-Atlantean period when they continuously experienced a changing equilibrium in placing one leg in front of the other. They always felt themselves become heavy, sensed a falling and floating. Picture how different it was when human beings felt that numbers permeate their own form, that they are built up according to measures. Think of how different that was from superficial measuring, counting, and weighing, leaving out the human being altogether. As I already indicated, at most it is possible for a person with a more sensitive awareness for language to gain some insight into the nature of numbers by means of what is in fact contained in the numerals, the words naming the numbers; or, from an artistic viewpoint, it is possible to sense that this, for example, in the sketch below is feasible:

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but that this is impossible in this connection:

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Such a person then has just a touch of the feeling for the inner condition of weight, the inner balance. If, by means of a line, I can follow some relationship in the other object, I have them balancing each other. However, if I sketch a protrusion over here, on the object on the right of second sketch, where there cannot be one, then I have no feeling for this balance. See how mankind has struggled to produce the external proportions out of its inner being, so to say, the outer appearance in contrast to the inward experience. Take a look at the painting by Raphael—it is actually true of all of Raphael's paintings but especially obvious in this one—depicting the “Marriage of Mary and Joseph,”² and see how the figures are positioned and painted in such a way that they support each other and that the viewer thus loses the feeling that anything exerts a downward pull. In particular, however, when ancient painters drew some flying creature, study how that was motivated, how you can clearly discern from this figure that it is not pulled down by weight but, rather, supports itself somehow by means of the relationship to other elements in the painting.

So, here we have the transition from the experience of the inner weighting to the external determination of weight: thus, here we have the course of mankind in the post-Atlantean epoch from inward experience to intellectualism, this struggling ascent to the intellect where everything experienced in our concepts is divorced from the human being; where we no longer experience the tearing in the word entzweien, (“to fall out with each other”; literally: “tearing in two”) when we say Zwei (“two”).

All this comes about slowly. When this term is employed further, when we say, zweifeln, “to doubt,” we sense the derivation from entzweien. After all, one who doubts something implies: Perhaps this is correct, perhaps it is not. It is open in both directions, the feeling of entzweien is inherent in the conceptual act. It is also already contained in the word for the number 2, zwei. Three—there you cannot experience this in the same manner when you apply it to something. Apply it to a judgment, where you have the major premise, the minor premise and the conclusion: a triad, a matter enclosed within itself. Take the syllogism about the most famous logical personality, the one about Gaius Julius Caesar:

All men are mortal;
Gaius is a man;
therefore Gaius is mortal

It all belongs together, the major and minor premise and the conclusion. However, if you take merely the first two, the matter remains open.

Hereby, I only wished to indicate to you what mankind's path to abstraction was like and how, in fact, by losing himself, man brought the intellect into his evolution.

We shall continue with this tomorrow. Today's subject was intended only as an episode, but you will see how it will fit in with further considerations.

• 1 . Rudolf Steiner: Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man. Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1973. RSE 592.
• T1. Translator's note: In the original German, Rudolf Steiner's example is quite clear. This is the reason the German words were retained and the English translation given in parenthesis.
• T2. Translator's note: In German, this example is immediately clear. Mass means “measure;” maessig and massvoll mean “moderate.”
• 2 . “Il Sposalizio”, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano. Raphael, 1483–1520, Italian painter.