The Rudolf Steiner Archive

after the eurythmic-dramatic presentation of the “Easter Vigil”

Among the Easter performances that have just passed before our minds were also those that depict how a soul that is about to pass through the gate of death through its own decision is brought back into the world of earthly life through the Easter message. I believe that, of the many impressions that the Faust story can have on us, this scene must be one of the most profound. Now, after the transformation, I would like to say, after the transformation, ¹ the scene that signifies the world with its evolution, bring that you have absorbed as a prospect within the Faustian poetry into your soul, in connection with what was said here yesterday, so to speak, before the transformation, about that meaningful real vision that can arise in the human soul when it steps before the symbol of Jesus Christ resting in the tomb. Let us bear in mind that yesterday we were able to say that the sight of what is connected with human life through its development on earth in relation to the world of Lucifer and Ahriman is evoked through a corresponding spiritual contemplation or spiritual perception. Let us bear in mind that in the Faust epic we have a soul which announces itself to us immediately at the beginning of the poem as having absorbed Ahrimanic knowledge and insights. And then let us look into this soul as it struggles out of its connection with the Ahrimanic wisdom towards the — we may say from our point of view — Christ-imbued source of life: a momentous moment that is presented to us for a human soul. Let us visualize this human soul! There she stands before us with all the knowledge she has absorbed through observing the external material world and its interrelations, with the insight she has been able to gain through the instruments by which the external naturalist attempts to penetrate the interrelations of nature... And what has this soul come to with all the research that is linked to the various instruments and also to the phial containing the juices that “quickly make one drunk” for earthly life? We feel how an Ahrimanic nature already rules at the side of the Faust soul, and how this Ahrimanic nature is linked to what is earthly death. Do we not see how this human soul, filled with Ahrimanic nature, draws the result of its Ahrimanic insights? And this result of knowledge that Ahriman can give to man on earth is what is summarized in the words:

I greet you, you only vial!
Which I now bring down with devotion,
In you I honor human wit and art.
You epitome of the sweet slumber potions,
You distillation of all deadly subtle powers,
Do show your favor to your master!
I see you, pain is alleviated,
I grasp you, the striving is diminished,
The spirit's flood tide ebbs away little by little.
I am expelled into the high sea,
The mirror tide glistens at my feet,
A new day beckons to new shores.

And already this soul has the vision of coming to the other shore, where it may be able to find that which it must believe it cannot find on this earth because of its ahrimanic entanglement. Already it has the vision of crossing over to the other shore:

A chariot of fire floats, on light wings,
Towards me! I feel ready,
On a new path to penetrate the ether,
To new spheres of pure activity.
This lofty life, this divine bliss!
You, still a worm, and do you deserve them?
Yes, just turn your back resolutely
to the lovely sun of the earth!
Dare to tear open the gates,
before which everyone likes to sneak by.
Here it is time to prove by action
That manly dignity does not give way to the height of the gods,
Not to tremble before that dark cave,
In which the imagination condemns itself to its own torment,
To strive towards that passageway,
Around whose narrow mouth the whole of hell is aflame;
To take this step serenely,
And, even if it means flowing into nothingness,

And now that he has also taken up the other Ahrimanic instrument, he is ready to take the path over to those realms that he learned in Ahriman's school are numberless to the soul as long as it is enclosed in the earthly body. And this soul is torn out of this mood by the sound of the Easter bells and the choir of the Easter song. And so the Faust soul has lived an earthly life to now seek within the earthly body what this human soul, as a result of its seeking in the earthly body, is to carry through the gate of death, so that it can carry it up into the spiritual realm where it needs it for its further development.

What you have heard today from the first part of Goethe's “Faust”, and much of what belongs to this part, to this scene of Goethe's “Faust”, first appeared as the completed first part of the poem in 1808. But before that, in 1790, Goethe had already published “Faust, a fragment”, this fragment, which did not yet have the last Gretchen scene. But this fragment did not even have the scene that has brought the events of such significance for Faust's soul to our own soul today. In 1790, Goethe published his fragment without this Easter scene and without the monologue that leads to the deepest depths of human and spiritual experience. And at the end of the 19th century, what Goethe had finished in the 1780s, even as early as the 1770s, was discovered in the 1790s. It was then published under the tasteless title “Urfaust”. In this Urfaust, we do not find, one might say, of course, this Easter scene. Why is it not there? Yes, Goethe, who was a child of his time, had to mature in order to be able to depict the effect of the Christ impulse on Faust's soul in his own way, in accordance with his soul; he first had to mature for this. And Goethe was not ripe for it until 1790. The nineties saw the deepening of Goethe's soul, which found its reflection in the well-known “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”. It falls into the time between the moment when “Faust” was published without the Easter scene and the moment when it was published with the Easter scene. Goethe's soul experienced a profound deepening through what it developed in the “Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”. And it was only through this experience that Goethe realized how he could allow the Easter experience scene to affect Faust's soul.

Now, let us look into this soul of Faust itself, and try to put ourselves in the place of the beginning of Goethe's “Faust,” which is more or less the same in the various successive publications. We know that it reads:

I now, alas! have philosophy,
Jurisprudence and medicine,
And unfortunately also theology!
Thoroughly studied, with hot endeavor.
There I stand now, I poor fool!
And am as wise as before;
I am called Magister, even Doktor,
And for ten years now,
Up and down and hither and thither,
I have led my students by the nose –
And I see that we cannot know anything!

So he has been a lecturer for ten years. Let us assume that he entered the teaching career regularly, then we might think that he became a lecturer around the age of thirty. In fact, he has been leading his students by the nose since the age of thirty! Let us recall what I said yesterday. In the thirties, the human being will stand before the image of the Jupiter existence when he visualizes the seduction I spoke of yesterday. And a vision, a prophetic vision of this seduction, is what one has before one when one stands before Christ Jesus lying in the tomb. Do we not have this vision dramatically developed in Faust? Does he not stand before us before the Easter Mystery, and does he not stand before us, one might say, at the end of the 1830s, before the Easter Mystery? May we not assume that in his feelings, what man must feel from the Easter Mystery, rumbles like a premonition of the Jupiter experience with Lucifer and Ahriman? In Goethe's time one could not present it as one can present it now, but Goethe could present the rumbling sensation in the heart towards the Easter Mystery, and it rumbled in Faust's soul. And is it not as if Faust felt, when Mephisto-Ahriman approaches him, how his soul has fallen prey to the Ahrimanic powers? How he has to save himself from something? Yes, but from what? From what must he save himself? Can we not say that Goethe sensed something of this when, as a mature man, as a mature soul, he allowed the spirit of his own Faust to take effect on him again, as he was able to sense it in his time, of the Easter mood that we have been picturing in our minds these days, and that this gave rise to the need to insert the Easter scene into “Faust”, which did not have this Easter scene before? The “Faust” was re-written into Christian verse with the insertion of the Easter scene between the years 1790 and 1800.

So what years did Faust have to live through? Before which years of life did he shudder so much that he wanted to reach for the vial himself? Well, before the second, descending part of life, that part of life of which we have said how man, when he stands before the vision of the Jupiter existence, knows that later on he must carry to Jupiter that which the Christ can give him as provisions for the journey, because otherwise he would have to go without nourishment in the second half of life. What is Faust seeking? He seeks nourishment for the soul for the second half of life. We have all been seeking it since the time when the Mystery of Golgotha has passed over the evolution of our Earth. We are all seeking it. For that which will take physical and psychic form on Jupiter is already living in the depths of our souls, and we must all feel something of this Faustian mood. We need a power that we cannot have through that which, as human beings, only gives us freedom and thus leads us to Ahriman and Lucifer; we need a power for those impulses in us that are connected with the descending half of life. It is the power of Christ, the power of Christ, which the Christ has after he has passed through the gate of death and has not lived through in an earthly body the second half of man's life. Why did he not live through it? Because this power, which must be bestowed upon people in the second half of life, had to flow into the earth aura so that all people can find themselves through the evolution of the earth. Through the Easter mystery, that which we need to enable us to journey through our entire life on earth with our soul is resurrected. And now imagine this profound connection in Goethe's “Faust”. Faust has absorbed within himself — Goethe knew how to absorb this, because he presented it without the Easter mystery when he published his fragment without the Easter mystery — Faust has absorbed within himself what man can absorb through the connection with Lucifer and Ahriman, what gives us the possibility of a free soul. But Faust, who measures the depths of the soul, is aware that he cannot continue to live with him; he needs something else in order to live. And Goethe was ripe to show what Faust needs, what is the impulse of the Easter Mystery. Does not the Easter Mystery stand profoundly before us in what Goethe made of his “Faust” only as a fully mature man, what he could not yet have included in 1790 because he did not yet understand it?

How did the poetic idea for this poem, which takes us to such depths, come about in the young Goethe? We know that the young Goethe was deeply impressed both by the puppet show of Faust, which he saw, where the fate of Faust was simply presented through puppets, and by the folk play of “Doctor Faust”. This thoroughly popular element came before Goethe's soul. What then is this Faust? And Goethe's soul immediately realized: this Faust must be the striving human being in general, who, through his striving, can dive down into all the depths of the human soul and must find the way up to the bright heights of the spirit. That an inner path must be traversed by a human soul, the young Goethe knew that. For what is it, after all, if not a meditation that Faust experiences in his soul as he gazes at the various signs? It is a meditation that ultimately leads him to the vision of the Earth Spirit that flows through and permeates the Earth. The meditation receives the words in response:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action,
I surge up and down,
Weaving back and forth!
Birth and death,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So I work at the whirring loom of time
And weave the living garment of divinity.

Meditation and counter-meditation! It leads Faust into the depths of life, but how to get out? How to ascend to spiritual heights?

Now that we have placed ourselves before the soul, what a grandiose idea of the striving Faust in Goethe's soul arose from the puppet show and the folk play, and what form this grandiose idea took through the penetration of the Goethean soul into the mystery of the soul, we now ask ourselves: What did Goethe make of Faust throughout his life? After we have realized the magnitude of what Goethe's soul was capable of through the impact of the Faust impulse, we may well ask ourselves: What did these impressions become in artistic and poetic terms? Well, one thing I just said can help us in our quest to understand this 'Faust' in aesthetic and artistic terms as well. Goethe published a fragment that roughly concludes with the cathedral scene in 1790. What makes the “Faust” seem so grandiose to us today is not in it. He added it later, when he was in Rome. In 1787, he added what we now know as the “Witches' Kitchen”. He inserted other scenes into the manuscript at other times. The original manuscript was written and copied by someone else, and at the time the later scenes were added, Schiller himself described it as a “yellowed manuscript”. And when Schiller called upon Goethe at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century to do something to round off Faust, Goethe said that it would be difficult for him to take on the old monster Faust again and to appropriately complete what had been left unfinished for so long. Goethe was afraid of incorporating into this his “Faust” that with which he had later matured, into all that he was and had appeared by the year 1790.

And now let us look at the first part of this “Faust”. Is it not a work that we can clearly see has been patched together from what was created at different times? If people were not attached to traditional judgments, they would see in “Faust” the most magnificent poetic idea that has ever come into the world with regard to the individual human being. At the same time, they would have to admit to themselves that in terms of art and poetry, this “Faust” is the most inconsistent, that it is a thoroughly disharmonious work, into which one could still put many things that are not in it, that has cracks and fissures everywhere, that is artistically far from perfect. Goethe's great genius could only ever complete fragments of what was before his soul. And however much we may admire the magnificent beauty of individual scenes, if we are not merely attached to the traditional judgment that literary historians have passed, but if we are unbiased, we cannot deny that “Faust” as it is is not a harmonious work of art, that it is glued in many places, but shows cracks and fissures everywhere. Why is this so? At a very advanced age, Goethe once again undertook to complete the second part of his Faust, for which he already had individual scenes, to which he added what he could add in his very old age. For example: the beginning of the classical-romantic phantasmagoria, the Helena interlude, was already completed around the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, and some parts were completed earlier. And again, we have every reason not to say, as some literary historians say, that one cannot understand the second part of “Faust,” or, as a very clever man, who is by no means stupid, said, that “Faust” is “a cobbled-together, patched-up concoction of old age.” It is not! On the other hand, it is a work whose task was so great that even Goethe's rich life experience was not enough in his time to shape it. One may well have one's own opinion even about the greatest things in the world. But why is that so? Well, I have already indicated on one occasion, in a lecture series held in The Hague, that this Faust is by no means, I would say, so extraordinarily young in world history. Faust, as he lived in the folk play that Goethe saw and as he lived in the puppet show, represents the human being descending into the depths of spiritual life and the human being wanting to rise to the light of the heights; he represents him in such a way that the greatest poet of modern times needed the Easter mystery for the liberation of his soul. As he appears in the folk play, he is a combination of the external physical reality, of the Dr. Georg Faust, who lived in the second half of the Middle Ages and wandered around like a tramp; of whom Trithem of Sponheim as well as other important men who met him report, and who even had a certain respect for him, the respect that one has for a remarkable personality who, through the way he expresses himself emotionally, knows many things and is capable of many things. And it was not for nothing that this real Doctor Faust was called by the name, as I have once stated here:

Magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus Junior, fons necromanticorum, Magus Secundus, Chiromanticus Aeromanticus, Pyromanticus, in hydra arte secundus.

That was the name he gave himself. Now, it was common in those days to have many titles, and a long list of similar-sounding titles could be said of Giordano Bruno and many other important minds of the Middle Ages. If today's sophisticated people may find it strange that Trithem von Sponheim and others who knew about the existence of this real Faust thought that he was in contact with demonic powers of the world and the earth and through them was able to accomplish many things, then we must remember that in Luther's time, for example, there was nothing special about telling such a story. We know how Luther himself wrestled with the devil. We know that all this was common practice, the views and stories of that time. But a feeling lived in all this, which helped to shape Faust in the popular consciousness. The feeling lived — I say the feeling and not the concept, not the idea — natural science is coming up, natural science, which brings the Ahrimanic part of real reality before the human soul. And from this arose the feeling that Faust is a personality, and always has been, who has something to do with these Ahrimanic powers. People saw, as it were, the secret spiritual connecting threads that went from the soul of Faust to the Ahrimanic powers. And they found that Faust's destiny was tied to this inclination towards the Ahrimanic powers. That the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic has to do with the entire evolution of the human soul was still sensed and felt from the remnants of ancient clairvoyance and clear-sighted knowledge. And so the Faust figure was linked to this feeling of man's connection with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. But at the same time, this intuitive knowledge was already descending into twilight, becoming unclear. And so, one might say, the feeling arose that one could depict the striving human being with all his temptations and dangers for his soul in the figure of Faust. But how this striving of the human being is connected with Lucifer and Ahriman was no longer known exactly. It had become blurred, and that is where the tremendous vagueness came from, which one gets a sense of when one picks up the medieval Faust book, in which all that the folk character is said to have experienced is where everything is thrown together in a grotesque ragout of all kinds of adventures that the human soul experiences in its quest to master all possible demonic and elementary spirits, Ahriman and Lucifer. After they were no longer seen in their full form, after they were shattered and ground into a ragout with all possible elemental spirits of nature, the figure of Doctor Faust was now placed in this ragout in this folk book. It was only Goethe's inspired insight that was able to discern in this gruesome ragout the mighty fundamental idea and to develop it to the point of the Easter Mystery. But it is really quite interesting to observe how, I might say, Lucifer and Ahriman were gradually dismembered into such ragout pieces.

If we go back and search for the figure of Faust in ancient times, we can look in books that were written as popular books at the time and that were in the hands of all those who were dealing with matters related to such things at the time. Augustine's works were very widespread when this book was written, cobbled together, glued together. One has the feeling of a bookseller who wanted to make a book that was as thick as possible, and not as if it were from a writer or even a literary man. But he must have known his Augustine, especially the biography of Augustine. And Augustine presents himself to us in all his development in such a remarkable way. How he at first cannot understand what Christianity is in its essence, how he gradually overcomes the inner resistance that he must bring to bear on Christianity in the development of his soul, first to what can now become known to him from the Manichaean doctrine. And from a great and important man within the Manichaean sect, Augustine receives knowledge from the Manichaean bishop Faustus. And we almost sense who this Faustus senior is, in comparison to whom the Faustus I mentioned earlier calls himself Faustus junior. He is the one whom Augustine once encountered in ancient times, the one who represented something of the Manichaean doctrine as Faustus, as bishop of the Manichaeans.

But what did he represent of the Manichaean doctrine? That which is corroded by Ahriman, that which no longer allows one to see how man, with his soul, is connected to the whole cosmos, to all cosmic, all stellar impulses. One can say: Even in the Manichean Bishop Faustus, the bond of knowledge that leads up to the cosmic insights that show how the human soul is born out of the cosmos, and which one must know if one wants to understand the Easter mystery in truth, is already torn. So it could be that in the person who wrote the folk book about Doctor Faust, precisely through the figure that Augustine describes as the Manichean bishop Faustus, it could emerge in this writer and compiler through the figure of Faustus, who had fallen prey to Ahriman. But since everything had become blurred, he did not understand that it was going against Ahriman. We see the scraps of the Ahrimanic danger shimmering through the stories of the folk play, but we see nothing clear. Yet we can get a clear feeling that Faustus is to be presented as the representative of the striving human being, so that danger threatens him from the Ahrimanic side. And much of what has been added to the Faust figure as it developed up to Goethe has been added by that Manichean Bishop Faustus, Faust senior. Many chapters of the folk tale seem as if they had been copied, but badly copied, only from the book in which Augustine describes his own development and his encounter with Bishop Faustus. We can prove that the Ahrimanic trait in the Faust figure points in this direction, and that when the folk book was written only the last dark urge remained to depict the Ahrimanic elements of human nature in the Faust figure.

And now, what about the Luciferic element? How were the Luciferic elements chopped up into those ragout pieces, which were then cooked into the ragout of elemental spirits and pieces of Lucifer and Ahriman, as I just said? Yes, we have to search if we want to find the connection between Faust and Lucifer. We can also search for it historically, we don't even have to go terribly far, we just have to go to Basel, and we can find clues in Basel as to how Lucifer was chopped up into a ragout. We are told that Erasmus of Rotterdam met with Faust in Basel, where they wanted to have a meal in the college, but could not find the right food. And since Erasmus lacked something that should now taste good to him, he told Faust, who was sitting with him and wanted to eat with him, but they had nothing right. So the Faust saga tells us that Faustus was now able to suddenly bring to the table, cooked and roasted, from somewhere - we don't know where - very strange birds that were not otherwise available in Basel. So we see a scene between Erasmus of Rotterdam and Faust, in which Faust is able to present such birds, which could not be bought in Basel at the time, nor far and wide in the surrounding area, to Erasmus. What is it actually? As such, it is not at all comprehensible in the legend, one can say, completely incomprehensible, but it becomes more understandable to us if we go back and bring together what we can gain from the writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who himself tells us that he made the acquaintance of a certain Faustus Andrelinus in Paris. This Faustus Andrelinus was an extremely learned man, but also an extremely sensual man. At first, Erasmus became so familiar with this Faustus that he had no real taste for the sensual sides of this Faustus. But again, we hear about a meal that the two are said to have eaten together. Now, however, two learned gentlemen of the time, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Faustus Andrelinus – we cannot expect them to serve each other such birds and in such a way, as Faustus of Basel is said to have served them to Erasmus. So it is likely that what has been handed down to us is just a kind of, I would say, joking speech that the two exchanged at the meal. But we do get a little behind this jocular talk when we also hear within this talk that Faust – this time it is probably Faust – was not satisfied with what was served to him, and demanded something else. Faust would now like to eat, in order to particularly torment himself, strange birds and rabbits; yes, strange birds and rabbits. Erasmus initially has the idea that this must mean something. So he behaves exactly like some theosophists who reflect on what things mean. Well, then the other one says, okay, he wants to do without the rabbits. Erasmus said: Could it not mean flies and ants? He wants to do without the rabbits. But the birds really are flies, and he wants to kill himself with flies for a change. Now we are very far. Now the birds have transformed into flies through astral transformation. And in Goethe we have the god of the flies in the figure of Mephisto. All that is needed is the spirit that commands these beings, and it could conjure up these beings. And so we have built the connecting bridge from the incomprehensible Basel legend and the strange birds to the flies that simply come from the devil. And we need not be surprised that the devil presents flies to him whom he invites to the table. But what kind of soul Faustus Andrelinus has, what kind of soul he has, that much becomes clear to us when we follow Erasmus a little further on his journey in Paris. In Paris, Erasmus was not yet quite inclined to engage with this Faustus Andrelinus character. But then he has to make a trip to London. There he writes that he has now learned – truly, Erasmus, think! , that he had manners like a coarse peasant, — that he has now learned to bow and even knows how to move around on the court parquet! And, yes, Erasmus writes it, that he lives in an atmosphere where, as you come and go, you always kiss each other by mistake. One recognizes from this that he wants to meet the tastes of his Parisian friend. He writes: “Come over here.” And if the gout prevents you too much, come over through the air in the spirit chariot. That is an element for you! — One sees that Faustus has a connection with the Luciferic kind of soul tendency.

With Goethe, we then encounter how Faust carries out his seductions by seducing Gretchen and so on. Lucifer has really fallen so far from the surroundings of the Faust figure that one must already do such literary investigations if we want to state the connection of Faust with Lucifer in the Parisian Faust. But we literally see Faust standing there, Lucifer and Ahriman at his side, albeit indistinctly through the confused time, boiled down into a ragout in the folk play. Should we be surprised to find in the folk play and folk drama, and even in Marlowe's Faust, something that is a remnant of ancient beliefs, still rooted in those times when man's connection with Ahriman and Lucifer was recognized through atavistic clairvoyance? But all this has become blurred, and in the literary product of which we have spoken, it is presented in a thoroughly blurred way. Goethe sensed the deep connection. But what could Goethe not do? He could not separate Lucifer and Ahriman from each other. They merged for him into the hybrid figure of Mephisto, in whom one does not really know whether it is the devil, Ahriman, or the real Mephisto. For he has also taken upon himself what Lucifer has. Goethe receives the ragout, as it were; he senses that Ahriman and Lucifer are at work, but he cannot yet sort it out; he devours them in the occult impossibility of the figure of Mephisto, who is a hybrid of Ahriman and Lucifer. One would like to be able to name the time that Goethe looked into by getting to know the Faust book: the last darkening of an old knowledge of this matter, the dying evening twilight of the old knowledge of Ahriman and Lucifer. And Goethe's Faust is the first dawn of the as yet unascended knowledge of Ahriman and Lucifer, dark and confused in the figure of Mephisto, Ahriman and Lucifer still mixed up. But already with the need to depict what the human soul can have by allowing itself to be affected by what has flowed into the earth's aura through the Christ being having passed through the mystery of Golgotha!

The Easter Mystery appears to us as the dawn of a new era of spiritual life for humanity in Goethe's “Faust”, which, despite its grandiose nature, still has something confused about it, something of a dark, foggy dawn. It appears to us as something within this dark dawn that we can see when we climb a mountain and see the sun rise earlier than we could see it before we stood on the mountain. We feel how one of the greatest of men, in his striving for the renewal of ancient knowledge, turns his soul towards the Paschal Mystery, when we allow Goethe's Faust to take effect on us. And if we allow it to take effect on us in the right way, then we feel what can take place in the heart of one of the greatest of men when this human heart has been touched by the Paschal Mystery, as Goethe himself felt at the same time. There is also something in this intuitive presentiment of Goethe to the Easter Mystery in Goethe's anticipation of it, is something like a hint: Yes, after the dawn, into which the first dark-light rays of the Easter Mystery shine, will come the sun of a new spiritual knowledge. The human soul will rise from the grave of darkened knowledge into which it too must descend. In the course of its development, the human soul will experience the Easter Mystery, the resurrection of that which is the Christ impulse in its deep, grave-like depths, when it unites with the power that emanates from the contemplation of the Christ Easter Mystery.

So, one would like to say, we feel Goethe's call and, after letting the tragedy of the Easter mystery take effect on us, would like to transform it into the call: May spiritual knowledge appropriate to the future rise in human hearts, in human souls! May human hearts and human souls, after sensing the deepest tragedy of the Easter mystery, feel and experience its depth in their innermost being, and may they experience resurrection in themselves through Christ!

May you, today, through the words that I have taken the liberty of speaking to you, absorb something of the feeling in your soul, so that you are united here, in our building dedicated to spiritual research, so that you, through the power of your souls into the future, something of that resurrection impulse which is so powerfully illustrated in the Easter mystery, and from which we could see how the greatest spirits of that time, which has now passed away, longed for it.

Feel in “Faust” something of what the magical sound of the Easter bells can resonate in the spirit of your souls.

• 1. At the words “Christ is Risen,” the black color of the scene transformed into a red one.

The truth of repeated lives on Earth was once expressed in German literature in impressive words to which attention has often been called in the Anthroposophical Movement. At the height of his powers Lessing wrote his memorable treatise, The Education of the Human Race, at the end of which he declares his belief in repeated lives on Earth. In monumental sentences he declares that the historical development of humanity can be intelligible only on the assumption that the individual man passes through many lives on Earth and carries over into other epochs of evolution what may have been experienced and accomplished in an earlier epoch. In this connection, two facts only need be borne in mind: when attempts are made by historians to explain later events as the effects of earlier causes, all kinds of reasons are brought forward—the influence of ideas, of physical happenings, and so forth—in short, pure abstractions. The truth is that the same individuals who were living, let us say, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, lived in earlier epochs as well; they then absorbed what was happening around them or what was to be experienced from their fellow human beings, carried it all through the gate of death into the spiritual world in which man lives between death and rebirth, and brought it down again with them into a new earthly life. They are therefore themselves the bearers of what has passed over from one epoch to another in the course of the evolution of humanity.

The past is forever being carried over to the future by individual men. This is the one fact that can fill the soul with a feeling of reverence when it is taken with due earnestness. And the other fact is that on reflection, all of us sitting here will be able to say: We ourselves have lived on the Earth many times and what we are to-day is the product of those previous lives. When we survey history and let it shed light upon our own experiences, the realisation that there are repeated lives on Earth may well imbue knowledge with a mood of reverence, and Lessing must certainly have experienced something of the kind when he wrote: “Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest, because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?” [Translation by F. W. Robertson, 1872.] And he voices his consciousness of realities such as those indicated above, in the monumental words: “Is not then all Eternity mine?”

The line of spiritual development which could have been introduced into German culture at that time through Lessing's treatise, was broken. And in any case its continuance would certainly have been ridiculed by the mentality of the nineteenth century.

More than twenty years ago in Berlin, when we were beginning anthroposophical work within the framework of the Theosophical Society, it was announced on the programme of the meeting held in connection with the founding of what was then called the German Section of the Theosophical Society, that the title of one of the first lectures I proposed to give would be: “Practical Exercises for the Understanding of Karma” (über praktische Karma-Übungen). It was a matter at that time of introducing the idea of karma with such forcefulness that it could have become one of the leitmotifs in the development of the Anthroposophical Movement. But when I spoke about what I meant by this title to one or two well-known members of the old Theosophical Society who had come over to Berlin, there was general opposition. Such a subject was considered to be quite impossible. And as a matter of fact—although I am not suggesting that these people were right—it would have been premature at that time to speak to wider circles about these intimate esoteric truths. If one wishes to avoid abstract generalisations and to speak in a concrete way about karma and its significance in the historical life of mankind, this is not possible without touching upon matters of a deeply esoteric nature and making use of the concepts of esotericism. Hence in a certain respect everything in the way of knowledge that has since been developed in the Anthroposophical Society was a necessary preparation, because in the days to which I have referred the members of this Society were not sufficiently mature.

But sooner or later the time must come when it is possible to speak concretely of the truths of karma and their connection with the evolution of humanity. If we were to wait any longer this would be a grave defect on the part of the Anthroposophical Society. Hence one of the intentions expressed at the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum was to the effect that communication of the findings of genuine spiritual investigation into these more intimate questions of the evolution of humanity should no longer be withheld. And in line with this, the Anthroposophical Movement will in future be attentive to what the spiritual Beings desire, not to what timidity and caution regard as inopportune or untimely.

In this connection the Christmas Meeting at the Goetheanum was not only of qualitative significance for the Anthroposophical Movement but something that was to mark the beginning of deeper and more intensive anthroposophical work. And it is from this point of view—which must also become a point of view of the whole Movement—that I shall speak to you to-day.

We witness great happenings in history and are aware that the keynotes in certain domains of life are set by particular personalities. It should be obvious to us that some historic personality who not so long ago was the inaugurator of the kind of thinking under the influence of which we are still living to-day, can only be understood—as the historical aspect in general can only be understood—when anthroposophical investigation penetrates into earlier incarnations of such personalities. This leads to something else as well. By observing personalities of whom history tells we become aware of threads of destiny running through their different lives on Earth and the light thus shed upon karma helps to make our own personal destiny intelligible. This is of very great importance.

There must be no sensationalism in the study of karma; the sole purpose of such study must be to illumine the circumstances of human life and the experiences of individual human souls. We see, for example, that particularly in the last two thirds of the nineteenth century, a materialistic attitude of soul became general; in certain respects this attitude continued on into the twentieth century and has helped to produce the chaos and confusion prevailing in culture and civilisation to-day. There is a radical difference between the trend that was perceptible—above all in German spiritual life—after the close of the first third of the nineteenth century and the earlier character of this spiritual life. Perceiving this difference, we naturally ask about its origin. In the last two thirds of the nineteenth century there are men who cannot fail to interest us, whose individualities we feel urged to trace back to their earlier lives on Earth.

The seer who is able to carry out such investigations is led back, to begin with, not to Christian but to non-Christian incarnations. It is natural here—for it tallies approximately with the indications given of the length of the intervals between successive lives on Earth—to go back to the very widespread spiritual movement of Mohammedanism, or Arabism, which arose about half a millennium after the founding of Christianity. Starting from Asia, Christianity spread across to Spain and thence to all Western Europe, having had a slight influence upon civilisation in North Africa; it also spread across Eastern and Middle Europe, but in its expansion was flanked, as it were, by Arabism which, with the impulse of Mohammedanism active within it, forced its way on the one side through Asia Minor and on the other side through Africa across to Italy and Spain. And the many wars of which history tells bear witness to the bitter conflict waged between European civilisation and Arabism. Here again it is important to ask: What are the concrete facts underlying the evolution of the human soul?

We will now consider some of these concrete facts. For example: at the time when Charlemagne was ruling in very primitive conditions of civilisation in Europe, brilliant spiritual culture was being developed at the Court of Haroun al Raschid over in Asia. At this Court were gathered the greatest minds of that time, men of outstanding brilliance, whose souls were deeply imbued with oriental wisdom but who also combined with this wisdom the culture that had come over from Greece. The spiritual life cultivated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid embraced Architecture, Astronomy (as it was then understood), Geography, Mathematics, Poetry, Chemistry, Medicine, and the most illustrious representatives of all these branches of learning living at that time had been brought together there.

Haroun al Raschid was an energetic and active patron, a personality who provided the foundations for a truly wonderful centre of culture in the eighth/ninth century A.D. And at this Court of Haroun al Raschid there was a remarkable personality, one who in the life spent at the Court would probably not have given the impression of being an Initiate. But he himself, as well as the Initiates, knew that in an earlier life on Earth he had been one of those who were most highly initiated. Thus in a later incarnation, at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, there lived a personality who did not appear outwardly as an Initiate but who had been an Initiate in an earlier life. The others at the Court had at least some knowledge of this nature of Initiation-life in days of antiquity. The personality of whom I am speaking was a magnificent organiser—as we should say nowadays, using a rather unworthy expression—of all the sciences and arts at the Court of Haroun al Raschid.

We know that Arabism in its external aspect spread under the impetus of Mohammedanism across Africa, Southern Europe, Spain and farther into Europe. We know too of the wars and conflicts that were waged. But the campaigns came to an end. It is usually considered that Arabism was driven out of Europe by battles such as those fought by Charles Martel, at Xeres de la Frontera. But there was a tremendously strong spiritual impulse in, Arabism, and the remarkable thing is that when it was outwardly beaten back as a political and belligerent power in Europe, the souls of eminent Arabists, when they had passed through the gate of death, were intensely concerned in the spiritual world with the question of how the influence of Arabism could be made effective in Europe. In the spiritual world the outer form of things is not of primary importance. Between two successive incarnations of an individuality there may be little outer resemblance; the significance lies in the inner nature and character. This is a difficult idea for our contemporaries to grasp. In an age when it can be held against a man that he once wrote not unfavourably about Haeckel and subsequently wrote in a different vein regarded by pedants as contradictory, [Dr. Steiner is here referring to criticisms of his own writings on the subject of Haeckel.] when such a lack of insight is in evidence, there will be little understanding of how outwardly different individuals can be in two successive lives on Earth, although the same fundamental impulse is at work in both.

The development of the great Arabist souls between death and a new birth was such that in the spiritual world they remained connected with the impulse that had streamed from the East to the West; they remained connected with their own deeds. In the external world, civilisation advanced; forms of culture quite different from those characteristic of Arabism made their appearance. But the souls of individuals who had been eminent figures in Arabism came again to the Earth and without carrying over Arabism in its outer form, bore its inner impulses into a much later age. They appeared as the bearers of culture in the sphere of language, in the habits of thinking and feeling and in the impulses of will of a later age. But in the souls of these men the impulse of Arabism was working on, and it is not difficult to see that the stream of spiritual life dominating the last two thirds of the nineteenth century was deeply influenced by minds that were the product of Arabism.

Our gaze turns to the soul of Haroun al Raschid, passing in that life through the gate of death. Between death and a new birth this soul continues to develop and appears again in the modern age in quite different conditions of civilisation. For the individuality of Haroun al Raschid appears in English spiritual life as Lord Bacon of Verulam. In the universality of Bacon's mind we have to see the rebirth of what Haroun al Raschid had achieved at his oriental Court in the eighth/ninth century. We know how intensely and profoundly European culture was influenced by Bacon and has continued to be so influenced. It is true to say that in scientific investigation and the scientific approach to things, men still think as he did. This of course cannot be said of every detail but it is true of the general trend of the age. If we contemplate the brilliant achievements of Haroun al Raschid and their influence upon the outer world, and then, having learnt through spiritual investigation that he appears again in Lord Bacon of Verulam, we think of the known course of Lord Bacon's life, we shall certainly find consistency, similarity—not in the external forms but in the inner trend of these two incarnations.

I spoke of a personality who lived at the Court of Haroun al Raschid and in an earlier incarnation had been an Initiate. It may well happen—I say this in parenthesis—that one who was an Initiate in bygone times does not, in a later life, give the impression of having attained Initiation. When I speak again and again of a number of ancient Initiates, of teachers and priests in the Mysteries, you are bound to ask yourselves: Where are they to be found? Why are they not living among us at the present time? Now an individuality with great spiritual enlightenment in an earlier life can work in a later life only through the medium of the body and the education afforded by that later epoch. But for a long time now, the character of education has made it impossible for what once lived in these Initiate-souls to express itself. They are obliged to operate in quite different forms of life and only those endowed with a power of intimate observation are able to realise that men in whom the Initiate is not apparent in the later earthly life have nevertheless passed through lives during which they reached Initiation.

One of the most striking examples in this respect is Garibaldi, the hero of the freedom of Italy. The elemental forcefulness displayed in a truly remarkable life is in itself enough to indicate that this personality lived at a level transcending the conditions of the immediate earthly existence. He had been an Initiate in an earlier incarnation and became a political visionary—for that is what he must be called. In an earlier life he had been an Initiate, filled with impulses of will which then, in the later life as Garibaldi, he brought to a head in the way that was possible for a man born in 1807. But think of the peculiar features of his earthly life. The starting-point for me was that I observed how Garibaldi's path of destiny in the nineteenth century was linked with three other men with whom he was connected and with whom he worked in a way that on the face of it is really not entirely comprehensible. In the depths of his nature Garibaldi was an intensely loyal Republican, yet he rejected everything that would have united Italy under the flag of a Republic. Convinced Republican though he was, he set out to establish the Empire, and moreover under Victor Emmanuel.

Occult investigation has now to concern itself with this enigma: How came it that Garibaldi was the one responsible for making Victor Emmanuel King of Italy?—for it was he, Garibaldi, who made him King. And then our vision falls on two other personalities: Cavour and Mazzini. The circumstances are remarkable. Garibaldi was born in 1807 and the others within the space of a few years. Garibaldi was born in Nice, Mazzini in Genoa, Cavour in Turin, Victor Emmanuel not far away. All of them were born within a small area.

A concrete starting-point is needed for researches into karma. It is not much help to know how clever a man is or what scientific knowledge he has acquired. Even if someone has written thirty novels in his life, this fact will not provide a starting-point for penetrating with vision into earlier lives on Earth. Whether a person limps or has a habit of blinking is much more important for investigation of an earlier incarnation. It is precisely by what seem to be insignificant features in life that the occultist is guided along the paths where light is shed from one earthly life into earlier incarnations.

And so a criterion for occult research in the case of Garibaldi was the way in which, in the nineteenth century, he established relations with the other three individuals. There was another criterion as well. Outwardly observed, Garibaldi was a man with a strong sense of concrete reality, one who stood firmly on his feet, mindful only of practical exigencies. But in this Garibaldi-life there were intimate phases, showing clearly that Garibaldi stood at a level above the conventional experiences of life. While still quite young he took part in many dangerous sea voyages on the Adriatic, was several times captured by pirates but on every occasion freed himself again by very hazardous means. It is also noteworthy that the first time Garibaldi saw his name in print was when he read in a newspaper the announcement of his own death-sentence. This is a biographical incident that does not happen to everybody! The death sentence had been passed on account of his participation in a conspiracy, but it was never carried out. Garibaldi fled to South America and there led an adventurous life, rich in inner experiences and full of vital force.

How very little the ordinary conditions of earthly existence affected Garibaldi is shown, for example, by the way in which he contracted his first marriage—which for many decades was an exceedingly happy one. How he became acquainted with the woman he married is a strange story. He was on board ship, still some distance out at sea, and looking towards the land through a telescope he saw a woman standing there. He fell in love with her at once. Falling in love through a telescope is by no means an everyday occurrence and in such a case the ordinary bourgeois conditions of life mean nothing! What happened? Garibaldi steered at once to the land and met a man who was so taken with him that he invited him home to a meal. This man was the father of the girl he had seen through the telescope! A slight drawback was that Garibaldi spoke only Italian, she only Portuguese, but although neither knew the other's language he made her understand that they must unite for life. It turned out to be the happiest and also one of the most interesting marriages imaginable. She shared in all his undertakings and experiences in South America and once, when a report reached her that Garibaldi had been killed in one of the many fights for freedom, she searched every battlefield—as legend narrates of other women. She lifted every corpse in order to look at the face but finally discovered on her journeyings that her husband was still alive. During these adventures she gave birth to her first child who would have died from cold if she had not bound it with a sling around her neck and kept it warm against her breast. These are not ordinary circumstances and the companionship was anything but a conventional one in the bourgeois sense. Some time after the death of his wife, Garibaldi married again, this time in perfectly conventional circumstances. But this marriage—which had not been arranged through a telescope—lasted no longer than a day! These happenings and similar features of Garibaldi's life are clear evidence that there was something quite out of the common about him.

Spiritual vision revealed to me that in an earlier incarnation¹ in the Christian era, this personality had been an Irish Initiate; he had come over with a mission from Ireland to Alsace where he taught in a centre of the Mysteries and where he had as pupils those individualities who were born later on in approximately the same period and in the same region as he. Now in various Mysteries where Initiation was attained there was a law according to which the connection of certain pupils with the teacher must be so close and strong that the teacher might not desert them when circumstances brought them together in a later life. Garibaldi was bound to feel a very strong tie with the individuality of Victor Emmanuel because the latter had been his pupil in an earlier Initiation-life. In such a case, theories are of no account. In a later life what is of real importance is not any external undertaking, but obedience, even if an unconscious obedience, to that inner law by which men are brought together in accordance with impulses working in the intimate processes of historical evolution.

The whole of Garibaldi's life indicates how the attainments of one who was an Initiate in a previous life are obliged to express themselves in a later incarnation because the bodily constitution and the education provided in a given century do not make it possible for such a personality to appear outwardly as an Initiate.

The same applies in the case of the personality who lived at the Court of Haroun al Raschid and who, when he had gone through the gate of death, was bound to take a different path from that of Haroun al Raschid himself. This personality was connected in the very depths of his soul with all the mysteries of Initiation he had received from oriental wisdom. He could not follow the path that was taken, more with an eye to outer renown, by Haroun al Raschid. He was obliged to take a different path. These paths led to reincarnation in a later epoch when the two individualities worked in the currents of civilisation and culture that were under their own influence—the influence, that is to say, of Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor. The soul of this Counsellor appeared again as Amos Comenius, who again was not able to bring the Initiation-principle to outward manifestation but whose forceful and effective intervention in the world of education in the age that is also the age of Bacon, shows that profound and significant impulses were alive in him. And so we see how after his life at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, the soul who has now become Amos Comenius is reincarnated with a more inward vocation; we see how Haroun al Raschid himself reincarnates; and we see how in these personalities, civilisations, cultures, flow together. If we contemplate the spiritual life of Europe as it developed particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we shall everywhere find Arabism in its new forms. In everything that has been influenced by Bacon, Arabism is present in a more outwardly brilliant form. In everything that has been influenced by Amos Comenius, the deep inwardness of oriental wisdom can be perceived.

What I am telling you is not a made-up story. These things are not discovered by speculation but only by uniting oneself inwardly with the spirit-entities concerned and by means of inspired investigation seeking the way from the one earthly life into the other. Through the incarnation of souls in repeated lives a great deal has been brought over from Arabism into the modern age. What is all-important is that the character and purpose of such investigation shall not be misunderstood. I told you that it is not a question of following clues that in materialistic life would usually be considered significant. Nothing much will be discovered by so doing.—I will give you an example.

I had a teacher—I have also spoken of him in my autobiography—who was a really excellent geometrician. At a certain period in my fife he began to interest me very deeply. There was something absolutely original about him, a one-sidedness that amounted almost to genius; he had other characteristics as well, but his geometrical talent provided no pointer to his earlier incarnation. This really first-class constructive geometrician had a certain external peculiarity—a club-foot. Now investigations which lead over from one incarnation into another very often reveal that everything connected in the one incarnation with the development of the legs is connected, in another life, with the development of the head. A remarkable metamorphosis takes place of the inner forces which in one life are those of the limb-system and in another, those of the head-system.

My teacher's club-foot became for me the starting-point of occult investigation. And what transpired? The vision that was focused upon this defect led me to another personality who also had a club-foot namely, Lord Byron. I now knew: this has to do with reincarnations connected in some way with each other. And it turned out that in a previous incarnation there was something in the souls of both these men that had led them to common action, although in their last incarnation, as far as their earthly activity was concerned, they were not actually, but almost, contemporaries. I stress the point here that I am not dealing with incarnations as women because in past epochs life in a man's body was more important. Incarnations as women are only now beginning to be of importance, although in the future it will be of very special interest to take account of them. In considering many historical personalities, however, one often omits intervening incarnations as women.—You must not conclude from this that there have been no such incarnations, but I am speaking now of aspects which lead back first and foremost to previous incarnations as men.—And so through these two personalities whose connection with each other I had perceived, I was led back to a time—it was either in the tenth or eleventh century A.D. but I have not been able to determine this exactly—when they had lived in the East of Europe, in regions that are now part of modern Russia. They were comrades. At that time the legend of the Palladium and its changing whereabouts in the world had already reached the ears of a few.—You know, perhaps, that the Palladium was regarded as a holy treasure upon which the fortunes of civilisation depended. According to the legend, this Palladium was first in Troy, then in Rome and was then transferred with pomp and splendour to Constantinople by Constantine the Great, who caused a pillar to be erected over it for his own glorification. At the top of this pillar was a statue of Apollo. In a chaplet were pieces of wood which Constantine had caused to be brought from the Cross of Christ. Everything was done with an eye to his own glorification. The legend related that the Palladium would at some time be carried northwards, whither the civilisation centred in Constantinople would then be transplanted.—This legend came to the ears of the two comrades of whom I am speaking and they were seized with enthusiasm to obtain possession of the Palladium in Constantinople. They did not succeed but they embarked on many adventurous undertakings with the aim of removing this holy treasure to the North. Especially in the case of the one who was subsequently reincarnated in the West as Byron, we see how his enthusiasm for the cause of freedom was a karmic continuation of the search for the Palladium in the earlier life. And the same spiritual configuration was to be seen in the intimate impression made by my geometry teacher upon those who knew him: here was a sense of freedom in the domain of science.

And so the paths led from details of secondary importance—in this case the club-foot—to earlier incarnations of the personalities in question. When it is a matter of speaking of the karmas of individuals one must always have an eye for the inner configuration of life.

Let me give one more example.—In the eighth/ninth century A.D., in the region that we should today call the North East of France, there lived a personality who in those days would have been considered a well-to-do landowner. But he was adventurous and went out on predatory expeditions in the neighbouring provinces. Incredible as it seems today, such things as the following did happen in those times.—He would leave his house and estate and wage campaigns sometimes more, sometimes less successfully in the neighbouring districts. On returning from one of these expeditions he found that he had been robbed of his property; another man was in possession and he had so many soldiers and weapons that the property could not be wrested from him by its rightful owner. There was no place to which the latter could go and he became a serf—as it would have been said later on—of the one who had dispossessed him. And so a strange relationship developed between these two men. The former owner of the estate was obliged to reverse his position. The property that had once been his now belonged to someone else and he himself was in the position previously occupied by the new owner. He (the former owner) and like-minded companions would hold all kinds of meetings—as we should call such gatherings nowadays—in the neighbouring forests by night, voicing vehement resentment against the one who had taken possession of the property and against conditions where such things were tolerated. The intense resentment and the things that were said at that time as an expression of it are an interesting study.

I was able to follow the paths taken by these two men who passed through the gate of death in the ninth century and were born again in the nineteenth. The one who had been an owner of property of which he was afterwards dispossessed, appeared as Karl Marx, the founder of socialism in the nineteenth century. However greatly the outer circumstances differ, speculation leads nowhere. But by following certain underlying currents we find in the dispossessed landowner of the ninth century the soul of Karl Marx in the nineteenth. The one who had persecuted and abased him so cruelly in that earlier century became his friend Friedrich Engels. There is no question of sensationalism here but of understanding life and history from the concatenation of circumstances in earthly existence.

Such matters must be taken with deep earnestness, unmixed with any trace of sensationalism. In this example we have an illustration of European spiritual life, but it was into this spiritual life that Arabist trends were inculcated. In the modern age too, a great deal of Arabism will be found—but in a quite different form.

Now a predecessor of Haroun al Raschid, one of the earliest successors of the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century A.D. was Muawiyah. He was a remarkable personality who longed to make conquests in the West but achieved little; his inner longing for the West could not find fulfilment, but he was still aware of the urge towards the West when he passed through the gate of death, and this impulse continued through his life between death and a new birth. Then this individuality of one of the Prophet's earliest successors appeared again, exercising a dominant influence upon the conditions prevailing in the twentieth century. Before the Christmas Foundation Meeting I had spoken of many things that are confirmed by what can be known about the repeated lives of a certain personality. People understood little of what I said on those occasions, for the power of conviction with which these utterances were made came ultimately from the observation of karmic relationships through many lives on Earth. Muawiyah appeared again in our age as Woodrow Wilson, who carried Arabist abstraction in its most radical form into external civilisation. In Woodrow Wilson there appeared an individuality who brought Arabism to very strong expression in our time, particularly in the famous Fourteen Points. The calamities for which Woodrow Wilson was responsible can best be studied by comparing the actual phrasing of those Fourteen Joints with certain passages in the Koran. You will then find that a great deal becomes intelligible and you will discover remarkable things once you have knowledge of the true circumstances.

The fact is, my dear friends, that the study of history to-day can be satisfactory from the human point of view only when the concrete phenomena of repeated lives on Earth are taken seriously, together with the perception of karma and the inner connections in the individual earthly lives of men. Since the Anthroposophical Society has for two decades been prepared for what ought now to be brought about under the influence of the Christmas Foundation Meeting, the “Practical Exercises for the Understanding of Karma” that were announced in 1902 when the German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded, may surely be put into practice today with greater and greater thoroughness. These exercises, devoid of all sensationalism, should form part of our anthroposophical life, becoming the foundation for greater and stronger impulses that must be at work within the Anthroposophical Society. What has now been said ought also to be regarded as an expression of the fact that esotericism must stream through the Anthroposophical Movement which is now embodied in the Anthroposophical Society. But let us also realise with what deep earnestness these things must be studied. If this earnestness is present we shall be carrying farther the threads that were beginning to be woven when, at the end of his treatise on The Education of the Human Race, Lessing drew attention to the fact of repeated lives on Earth. For out of a deeper, more intimate study of man and of his destiny, humanity must come to realise that through Spiritual Science we gaze into the true being of man, the being who, having knowledge of his own nature can utter the words: “Is not then all Eternity mine?” But the expression of this Eternity in the concrete facts of karma and of destiny in the historical life of mankind must be recognised and known.

• 1. See Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume I, p.194 (lecture XII).

Dear attendees! For a number of years now, I have been privileged to give lectures here in this city in the field of spiritual science. Since the friends of our spiritual science movement have also requested such lectures here for these fateful times, I would like to present you with a reflection that takes more of an attitude of spiritual science as its starting point today; and tomorrow we will then delve deeper into questions of spiritual knowledge that move the heart and soul. It will be understandable that this introductory lecture is being held today, since everything that can move us today, especially when it is close to the heart and soul, must really be carried out after the fateful events in the midst of which we stand.

One could say that the nations of Central Europe are locked in a fortress, a large, mighty fortress. And in the east and west, the existence of this Central Europe is, so to speak, being called into question. And what a sum of courage, sacrifice and devotion have we seen in the months since the beginning of the war; and how much suffering and pain have we had to witness! How the days of suffering and pain, with their events, affect families, how fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are connected with them!

Therefore, it must be important to us to introduce our reflections on the spiritual development and spiritual hopes of humanity with a few thoughts and feelings that are directed towards the difficult situation of our time. We hear this Central European culture vilified from all sides, reviled. We hear all sorts of things today from the east and west and from all sides about this Central European culture. We may undoubtedly, my dear attendees, see the significant deeds of our people and see them as related to the whole essence of our people's organism. I would like to say: what is happening today is happening through the arms of this organism. But it befits the very essence of the German people to consider the arms, the essence of the spirit, the essence of the soul of this organism. And what better way to do that than by remembering, at such a fateful and fateful moment, the significant and important deeds of the soul and spirit of the German people, and by drawing strength from them for our hopes and goals for the future.

And I would like to take the starting point of what we, as the essence of the German people, can envision from two outstanding geniuses of this people: Schiller and Fichte. Within the German essence, has it always been the custom, in difficult times, to draw strength from those who, as great ancestors, can provide this strength? And I would like to make this connection today, truly not to stir up emotional feelings in you, but because I believe that such a connection can be meaningful in our days, the connection to the days of the death of these two mentioned geniuses. It is possible for us – as I said, not to stir our emotions, but because I believe that this point of view is particularly close to our hearts and souls in these days – it is possible for us to look at the last days, yes, the hours of Schiller's and Fichte's death very intimately, very confidentially.

Schiller's death was described to us by his then young friend, the son of Johann Heinrich Voß, Heinrich Voß, the so-called younger Voß. And we can follow him, our Schiller in the last days of his life, as he is already dying, sustained solely by the powers of the spirit that prevail in him. Yes, with Schiller we can say that basically the body was long since doomed to die, while the strong, energetic spirit still prevailed and just dragged the body along. For, as this body was so completely decrepit, Heinrich Voß shows us, so to speak. He leads us into Schiller's death chamber, and we take part in the last hours of the great spiritual hero. We are told how Schiller, in these last hours, with his body already completely subject to death, with a yellowed face, with extinct eyes, still strong in spirit in these moments, how he had his last, his youngest child come to him in these last hours, how he looked the child long in the eye and then sent thoughts out of these eyes, one would like to say into the eyes. The younger Voss wanted to divine these thoughts, and we can say that, as he tells us, they will be correctly divined. It was as if Schiller wanted to say to the child – what he could only express in these rasping words: I should have been your father for much longer, I still have much to do for you. Then he handed the child back, turned away and looked at the wall again.

Do we not feel, my dear audience, as if the whole German nation, the soul of the whole German nation, could recognize itself in this child? Schiller, who died young, could also have said to our nation: I could have been much more to you, I have left much unsaid and undone for you. But he dies fully imbued with the inner energy of that which he felt to be the German spirit, that spirit which carried him through life, inspired him to his creations, sustained him as his body wasted away, that spirit whose world-historical mission he himself described in such moving words that we may well bring these words before our souls in these times. These words only became known long after Schiller's death, but they bear witness to how Schiller thought about the spirit of his people:

He who forms the mind, rules,
must ultimately become the ruler, because
finally at the goal of time, if the
life has any meaning at all,
must custom and reason triumph,
the brute force of form succumb
and the slowest people will catch up with all
the fast fleeting ones.
[...]
Him

– the German –

is destined for the highest,
and just as he is in the center of
Europe's peoples,
he is the core of humanity,
those are the flower and the leaf.

He has been chosen by the world spirit, during
the battle of the ages
to work on the eternal construction of human education,
to preserve what time brings,
Therefore, he has so far appropriated what is foreign
and preserved it within himself.
Everything that was valuable in other times
and peoples, that arose, developed and faded with the times, he has preserved;
he has not lost the treasures of
centuries;
Not to shine in the moment and
play a role, but to win the great
process of time. Every people
has its day in history, but
the day of the Germans is the harvest of
all time.

And today, in these fateful days, we may well remember the spirit that Schiller believed must be the harvest of all time, the harvest of the cultural development of mankind.

And if we turn our attention from Schiller, the great poet, to his friend, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, we see no less of the German spirit in the soul of a human being when we look at Fichte's last hours on earth. Schiller was often able to tie in what he had to say to his people in a work, which will be discussed shortly, with Fichte's strong, forceful philosophy. Yes, Fichte's philosophy is energetic and powerful. It is as if, from the whole scope, the universality of the genius of the philosopher Fichte, he wanted to extract everything that this German mind has of load-bearing capacity, to draw out everything that can affirm the strongest will in the strongest thought. And so, as Fichte spoke the beautiful word: “What kind of philosophy you have depends on what kind of person you are,” it can be said that we see this word proven in truth in Fichte in particular; because he felt connected to the German spirit, which was so dear to him, Fichte felt at the same time connected with the rule and weaving of the whole world spirit, felt in every word he spoke, carried by the spirit that permeates and flows through the world. But this philosopher did not live only in the abstract spirit. When Germany was going through the difficult times at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Fichte, the philosopher, often considered whether he should not take part as a warrior in the fateful events of the time. But then he found that he could do more for his nation through his intellectual work. So it happened that at first only his wife took part in the military hospital service in Berlin. But she brought illness into his house by contagion. She recovered, but he himself, the philosopher, was carried off by the military hospital fever.

And now we see how Fichte, who presented the diamond-bright, crystal-clear thoughts of the most German philosophy to humanity, lay on his sickbed in the last days of his life, waiting for news of Blücher's crossing of the Rhine and everything that the people in the west had to undertake. We see how he, who had decided not to be physically among the fighting because he wanted to serve his people and humanity with his mind, we see how he took part in the warlike events of his time in his feverish dreams in his last hours. And we experience the wonderful interplay of a worldview with life even in illness and even in the death rattle when we see how Fichte allowed everything that he wanted to give to the German people through his powerful philosophy to flow into his feverish dreams. We see how he feels in his dreams in the midst of the struggling, and how he feels at the same time as resting securely with his soul in the spiritual world. The dying philosopher Fichte, without fear and full of hope for his people, said when they wanted to give him medicine: “I do not need medicine, because I know I will recover.” Shortly before, he had been given the news of Blücher's crossing of the Rhine. Thus, in the life of the man who is fully immersed in German intellectual life, this intellectual life and the immediate life of the surroundings interact. For this German intellectual life is not an idealistic, dreamy one, but one that always enters into all the individual achievements of its German people. And today, we can justifiably claim that everything achieved in the face of blood and death, pain and suffering, is sustained by the power that permeates our intellectual experience.

And so we see this Fichte, imbued with the best power of the German spirit! Today, we can only sketch out some of the characteristics of what lived in Fichte's mind. In one of Germany's darkest hours, when Germany had been brought to its knees by the western conqueror, Fichte spoke his “Speeches to the German Nation”. Certainly not everything that Fichte spoke at the time can be agreed with today, word for word. But the spirit that inspired him must also be ours. Just as Fichte assumed at the time that the German language is a primal language that developed like an organism from the starting point of German history in Europe, while the Romance languages of the West and South suffered a break in their development, while they originally started from something Germanic, but adopted something foreign that they put over the folk essence in the Romance essence.

If Fichte infers something from the character of this original language, which developed out of the essence of the German and grew like an organic force, then today this may be contestable from a linguistic point of view. But what inspired Fichte, what constitutes the fundamental character of his philosophy of will and thought, is that Fichte reflected on what is most original in man, what is connected in man with all the sources of life in the soul. Fichte sees flourishing and truly authentic destiny hopes only where the soul is able to bring forth from itself what lies in its depths. Fichte saw an emblem of the fact that the German spirit aspires to this in the German language. But even if we can no longer go into the details of Fichte's point of view today, we must still look at how what he then expressed in accordance with his time was formed in Fichte.

What did Fichte strive for in his philosophy? We need only recall what spiritual science actually wants to be. It wants to be a knowledge that does not passively surrender itself merely to the phenomena of the external world, that does not merely allow itself to be passively stimulated with reference to the mind that is bound to the brain, but spiritual science wants to be, if we want to use the expression in all humility, a brave science. It wants to be a science that comes about through the development of the higher human being in man, as Schiller said, the actual spiritual human being, through the development of that which is connected in man's own being with the great spiritual being of the world, which lives in man in such a way that when man recognizes it, he at the same time knows himself to be living and weaving in the divine-spiritual world being itself. But this is what Fichte was constantly seeking. And so he feels connected to the most spiritual part of the world through the knowledge that he sought to acquire from the human soul. Or how could one express the spiritual certainty that man can attain more forcefully than when Fichte uses the words:

There is no doubt about it, it is the most certain thing there is, indeed, the basis of all other certainties, the only absolutely valid objective, that there is a moral world order, that every rational individual is assigned his specific place in this order and counted on for his work.

Thus Fichte's most German philosophy brought about the realization that it was the most certain thing for Fichte to know that he was a single soul in the entire spiritual world, that there is such a world order into which the individual is woven.

Fichte merely renewed in a manner appropriate to modern times that which has always prevailed in the German spirit: the striving for knowledge that arises from the powers of the human soul, which cannot end with death. And when we hear such words as those just quoted from Fichte, we are reminded of the words of the great German mystic Angelus Silesius: “It is not I who live and die in me, but God Himself who lives and dies in me.”

This striving for knowledge not only gives the soul a sense of security in the world spirit, but at the same time certainty with regard to its immortality. For how could one, in the soul experiencing and knowing God in the soul, not be aware of this immortality? For if the God in the human soul dies, then death is precisely a new resurrection. The German spirit constantly strove for such knowledge, which conquers death, for knowledge of the soul, so that this soul recognizes itself not only through the instruments of its body, but through purely spiritual instruments, so that it faces its bodily experience, its own body, in a body-free state, in brave science, as it were, just as one faces external objects in the body. But from such knowledge there arose such a wonderful saying as that of Jakob Boehme, in which is summarized, as it were, all that the German spirit has to say about the great riddles of life in their connection with the destiny of the human soul: “He who does not die before he dies, will perish when he dies.”

But that means nothing other than Jakob Böhme wants to suggest that a knowledge of the nature of the soul can be gained in life, of the soul as it will be once it has passed through the gate of death and looks back at its body. Because the one who does not acquire such knowledge before he dies will, in Jakob Böhme's view, perish when he dies.

And so spiritual science today not only seeks knowledge of the spiritual, which is, so to speak, an increase of ordinary knowledge in the body, but spiritual science seeks knowledge in the soul, insofar as this soul, between birth and death, ing can forces that it will also have after death, when it will look back on the body and the bodily life, where the body and bodily life will again be not subject but object, as in everyday life. And if today a spiritual scientist wants to use, so to speak, what German spirit can bring us today to make a comparison for something that Fichte wanted to say in his time, then he could take this comparison for a particular case from this spiritual science. I will develop this particular case before you.

Fichte, when he was thinking about what he wanted to say to his people, about how they could realize their hopes and find their goals in these fateful times, pointed to a completely new education that goes to the source of the stirrings of life in the soul, to the higher human being in the human being. Fichte knew at the time that what he wanted to present to his nation with this education – we can no longer think in this way today, but we can look to Fichte's intentions, perceptions and feelings – was probably clear to Fichte's soul as the salutary for the future, but when he compared it with what had been regarded as the essence of education up to his time, it could appear to him as something completely new that must wriggle out of the old, so that this new has no longer any similarity with the old. Then the more recent spiritual researcher could say, precisely on the basis of spiritual science, which Fichte did not yet have: “Now, I compare this new, this completely new education with the soul that has wrestled itself free from the body at death and now looks back on it.

And the spiritual researcher today could describe how the soul looks back on the body and the life of the body after death. There is a passage in Fichte's “Addresses to the German Nation” that is particularly significant in this regard. It is a passage that one might easily overlook, but it is good to bring it to mind today. Fichte himself sought a symbol for the relationship between his new education and the old one. And he says: “What I am putting forward as a new educational plan appears different from everything that has been thought to be right, so that it will not be easy for anyone to understand me.” And when Fichte seeks a symbol for the relationship between this new education and the old one, he uses the following image:

Time appears to me as an empty shadow that stands over its corpses, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, 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 plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed has entered, have already taken her in and are surrounding her with warm, loving whispers; the secret voices of the sisters are already greeting her and welcoming her; she is already stirring and expanding within all directions, in order to develop the more glorious form to which she is to awaken, but she still has no feeling for these airs 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.

We see from this, my dear attendees, that Fichte himself uses the image that we use today from a spiritual scientific consciousness. Fichte uses it from what he feels as the depth of the German spirit weaving within him and what he wanted to present to his people at the time. How deeply this awareness of the interweaving of the soul with the All-Spirit is linked to German spiritual life, when we see that what is being sought today and achieved in spiritual science is working its way out of the great philosopher of the German people like an energetic presentiment.

And if we go back from him to Schiller, we can see how the search for the most spiritual part of the soul runs through one of his most intimate, most beautiful, most magnificent prose works, one of those prose works in which man perceives what he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears, not only in terms of external sensuality, but experiences the spiritual in it through the deepening of the soul within himself, and this is so full of life in him that he experiences it pictorially artistically or, as one would say today, spiritually scientifically as reality. There the human being is free, there the human being gives birth to his higher self.

Schiller's highest aspiration is to seek the higher human being within himself. And here, ladies and gentlemen, we can see how basically everything that the German mind has achieved at its highest levels is connected with its universal striving towards spirituality, towards the intimate coexistence of the soul with the spirit. With Schiller, with Fichte, with Goethe, the same striving is everywhere to be found. And for these minds, the most characteristic thing is that being German coincides with being human in the right sense, in the striving for the highest human ideal. And with a mind like Goethe's, in particular, we see this once again, and the most beautiful expression of this is his “Faust”.

It is precisely in these minds that we see how being German is something different from being Italian, French, British or Russian. Here we have to use the word: you can be Italian, you can be French, British or Russian, but you become German. You are constantly becoming German. Then one is best of all Germans, when Germanness floats before one like a higher ideal, or one could say like a living spiritual goal in the distance, which one has to approach more and more. Therefore, the word that Lagarde spoke in more recent times: “Being German lies not in the blood, but in the mind.” — is extremely true precisely for these minds.

Therefore, it is difficult to make those who live around this Germanness understand it, and on whom this Germanness of Central Europe has to send its rays of influence. And from Fichte's mouth we hear an important and significant word about being German, and again in the “Speeches to the German Nation”:

[...] whoever believes in spirituality and freedom of this spirituality, and wants the eternal development of this spirituality through freedom, that wherever it is born and in whatever language it speaks, it is of our kind, it belongs to us and will join us.

This is the universal position of the greatest Germans with regard to what they felt as Germanness, as Germanity. This is how Germany's great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke in his “Speeches to the German Nation”, which he, as he said in one of the first speeches, wanted to hold by Germans per se to the German per se.

I said: Everything that asserted itself as the striving for spirituality, as the essence of Germanness, is concentrated, as it were, in what Goethe was to his people. And now we might ask ourselves: Has anyone in the world tried to form a correct idea of this essence and this striving of the German people? There were times when one could hear one or another European nation praising the German essence and emphasizing it in one way or another. But in many cases one has to say: the experiences of today in particular show us how little reason, how little inner truth there was in what was felt about the German character in the world. Indeed, there are people like the French philosopher Bergson – one does not know whether he will still call himself Bergson now that St. Petersburg is no longer called St. Petersburg but Petrograd – this French philosopher Bergson, he found that the he had to give to philosophy in our time, basically borrowed it entirely from the philosophy of German idealism. In German idealism, it appears comprehensive and universal, but in Bergson's work, it appears meager and threadbare. But he, who should know the German character, pointed out in a chauvinistic speech he gave last Christmas how the Germans had forgotten everything they had achieved in the way of spirituality. How the Germans once had something like spirituality, but now they only show themselves to be purely mechanistic. One need only point to what the Germans are now producing: mechanistic cannons, rifles, machines, everything has been transformed into mechanism.

One must be truly amazed at the logic that is going around the world today. After all, is it logical to speak as Bergson does? Even if one admits that the Germans once had Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, what, one might ask, did Bergson expect with his French logic? Did he expect that when the Central European peoples were threatened from all sides, threatened by a superior force two and a half times as strong, that they would then confront their enemies reciting Goethe and Schiller or declaiming Fichte's philosophy? Because they do not do this, the philosopher Bergson finds that the Germans have become a mechanistic people because they face their enemies with guns and cannons. Well, and from this French philosopher to that Monsieur Richepin, it is a straight line between what all the ranting and raving about the German people, the German essence can be heard. All the nuances of the ranting can be found. Richepin could not avoid saying that the Germans are wild, crazy, dirty beasts that must be strangled like wild pigs, all of them. There is a scale from the philosopher Bergson to such vilifications of the German people, which today vibrates throughout Europe. But then we may well ask ourselves: Has one always thought so about the German essence? About that German essence, which under today's conditions can naturally show nothing but its armies, but that German essence, which certainly only has to defend itself with its armies, but which has its foundation only in spirit and soul. It is interesting to contrast what is pulsating through the world today with this German essence in terms of its world position and its mission in the world. And here it is certainly no pleasant task to praise oneself, as it were, for that to which one is attached. So let us choose a different path, the path of looking around to see whether this German essence has always appeared “barbaric” to those who call it “barbaric” today, to those who have tried to understand it.

There is a thinker, a great thinker of the nineteenth century, an American thinker who spoke and wrote in English, Emerson. Since we do not want to judge German character ourselves, let us hear what a non-German, speaking English, Emerson in America, has to say about the nature of the German and his mission. Emerson ties in with Goethe, who is for him the representative of the German character, Goethe, in whom is summarized that which must also appear to us as the essential in Fichte and Schiller.

One phenomenon in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public: 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 its conviction. In France, people are delighted to see brilliant ideas going wherever they want. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts reach. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind possesses neither the French vivacity nor the Englishman's understanding, honed to practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness. But what it does possess 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 about them. There is intellectual activity, well and good: what is it in favor of? What is the man's opinion? Where does he get [–where] all these thoughts?

The English [...] see only the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

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

It is true that one would be cautious if one had to coin such words oneself, but they were first uttered by an English American in English. Then he continues, looking at what the German mind has to give to world development:

For this reason, the terms of distinction used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and French, who are praised for their acumen and erudition, approach their studies and points of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says is, he has something even better in mind. [...] He has that awe-inspiring independence that arises from dealing with the truth.

Now, one could say that these are old stories. Emerson has been dead for a long time, and the Germans have changed according to those who judge them now in their lack of reflection caused by the passage of time. Perhaps we may look at something else that was said not decades ago, not a few months before the outbreak of the war, not by a German, not in Germany, but by an Englishman in Manchester. These words have also been translated into German and published under the title “Germany in the Nineteenth Century”.

In the preface, we are told that the lectures were given to provide journalists and other people with a little insight into the German character. You can judge for yourselves how well this has been received from what you now read in English newspapers about the German character and how it is viewed in England. But at that time the following was said, and not in German, but in English and in Manchester, in the British Isles themselves:

The highly favored elite among Descartes' and Newton's countrymen

- that is, the English [and French] —

the spirit of science was unquestionably known; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, mainly by thousands of German researchers.

Imagination, feeling, will asserted their right to be heard beside or above reason, and under their transforming pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful.

It is strange what these Englishmen in Manchester know about the German character.

The irrational was recognized as a source of illumination; wisdom was sought from the child and the flower; science, philosophy and poetry drew near each other. With us in England this revival of the imagination created a noble poetry, but left the sciences and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to understanding the whole period

- please note that an Englishman is saying this –

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

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

Yes, my dear attendees, one can only say: Yes, why do your fellow countrymen now call the people of Schiller and Goethe a “barbarian people”? This question will be asked by history about the development of these peoples for a long, long time, since they could know better. For I did not begin this consideration in order to answer the question: Why do they call the people of Fichte and Schiller a “barbarian people”?, but rather to show that this question will be asked for a long, long time [in the histories of Germany's enemies], and they, these other peoples, will have to answer it.

In these lectures, which these Englishmen gave to Englishmen, there is something that a German would truly not say in Germany; but it is not meant to be said here, only quoted: “No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, faithful.”

Now, why then call the German people a “barbarian people”? And about the German Reich, the following was said in the same lectures:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has been beneficial 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 it to let the light of the past shine on the confusion of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find that our ancestors

- he is, of course, referring to his English ancestors -

that our ancestors regarded France with far greater fear than the wildest noisemakers fear Germany today. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason. [...]

To sum up, the founding of the German Empire was a gain for Europe, and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866-1871 put an end once and for all to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war that had so often often tempted into the wrong channels, they enabled the German people to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish on a firm basis a new European system that has preserved the peace for forty years. 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, had never been able to achieve, namely to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, if that is the case, why do they call the people of Central Europe a “barbarian people”? There is a strange preamble to the lectures from which I have quoted. You will have heard the name of Lord Haldane mentioned in an unpleasant way in the early weeks of the war. But it was this same Lord Haldane – who also spoke of the fact that the English, out of an overabundance of morality, could do nothing but join the other enemies of Germany to attack the Germans – well, this same Lord Haldane wrote a preface to the lectures, from which I would like to share a sample with you. In this preface, the Lord, who now claims that England could not help but punish Germany, says:

The source of the stream of its

- that is, Germany's -

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

Yes, it is almost shameful to hear such a thing said. But I am not saying it, I am merely quoting it. Then Lord Haldane says:

Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the need to prepare for attacks that none of us really has in mind.

And a woman who spent eight years in Germany, an Englishwoman who visited hospitals and lecture halls and studied schools and everything she could get her hands on in Germany for eight years, she differs from the other Englishwomen in terms of her knowledge in that she really got to know the Germans and their institutions. She published a book called “Eight Years in Germany” by Miss Wylie. This book appeared very recently, just a few weeks before the outbreak of war. Miss Wylie has described some of the things she has learned about the German character here in Germany. I will share just a few words from her book with you, and you will see how the question that is the subject of our discussion today must be put.

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 is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined fight against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...]

On every border and across the water

- that is, over the Channel –

its opponents are sitting, both commercially and politically, and are waiting anxiously for the moment when Germany slackens up just a little, so that they can pounce on her and overwhelm her. Germany knows this [too] only too well.

We see that the German character was not entirely unknown to other nations. Therefore, we must consider the question of today's consideration as the question that will be asked of these nations by later history.

But at the same time, there is a complete lack of understanding of what is most deeply rooted in the German character, of what is most spiritual about it! Herman Grimm, the great art historian, was the one who uttered a wonderful word. He, this Herman Grimm – one can almost feel him as Goethe's governor in the second half of the nineteenth century – he, who was completely immersed in the German essence and was spiritually and emotionally connected to it, he spoke a very significant word about Goethe's biography, which the Englishman Lewes wrote. Lewes tried to weaken the old prejudices of the English with regard to Goethe. Because up until Lewes, every Englishman believed that the Germans revered a man, Goethe, who was actually a completely immoral fellow, despite having produced some beautiful things. With regard to Goethe's ethical nature, Mr. Lewes has achieved something. But Herman Grimm is right: when you read Lewes' biography, which is entitled “Goethe: His Life and Work”, you get the feeling that Lewes is writing about a person who was born in Frankfurt in 1749, a person to whom Goethe's life story is attributed, to whom Goethe's works are ascribed, and who died in March 1832. But what the German has in his Goethe is not even hinted at in Mr. Lewes' biography.

That is precisely what is so deeply ingrained in the German soul: universality, the desire to merge into that flowing spirituality and to transform the stream of spirituality into one's own being. That is what the peoples around Germany lack, and what they have basically still taken in very little to this day. And so one can say: What Herman Grimm once said with reference to the people of the East is true and right. There, he said, there was a Russian who had also written a biography, the biography of Beethoven. Nothing of what Beethoven really is lives in the biography.

Just compare the selfless, devoted way in which the German mind, always wanting to become, wants to delve into what is spread throughout the world, how it, disregarding its own character traits, knows how to find its way into those of others. How the German spirit has united Shakespeare's spirit with its own. When something like this is experienced in a nation, then a Herman Grimm is justified in saying this with reference to Mr. Lewes' alleged biography of Goethe. And when one sees how little heart and mind were actually present in those who have often called themselves the leaders of other nations, one understands a lot. One understands a lot when one really delves into what one can experience together with the German spirit. One can say: There really is something in this German spirit of that Faustian mood, which on the one hand has hidden life's great riddle in: “All that is transitory is only a parable,” but on the other hand says: “Whoever strives can be redeemed.” And in the German spirit lives something that must lead beyond all pessimism, something that establishes a true foundation for future security and future hope. But how little this has basically entered into the hearts and souls of those who, with some sincerity, seek in other nations what can liberate the spirit and bring harmony to the liberated human soul.

I would like to characterize for you how one of the most important Russians, Alexander Herzen, established a kind of spiritual entente with the Englishman Stuart Mill; how one of the best Russian minds, Herzen, immersed himself in the philosophy of the Englishman Stuart Mill, in that basically entirely materialistic world view, that he found, looking across Europe, that basically this culture of Europe can give no consolation, no hope for the future of humanity. It is the characteristic words of this Russian that really illuminate in a flash what has been confronting each other in Europe for a long time, and what now had to be expressed in these terrible flames of war. Herzen says of Stuart Mill:

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

And we add: Not only England! For Stuart Mill believes that with England, the whole of Europe must become China. We only get the answer to the question: How could such an opinion arise even in the heart of an aspiring person? We get the answer when we see how he passes by that striving of which Goethe says in his Faust: “Whosoever strives, we can redeem him.” He also passes by what Fichte, Goethe and Schiller can mean for the whole of modern development. Those who speak thus do not know the German spirit, that German spirit of which we shall say in our fateful days: in it lives the power which, though not, as the Russian thinks, to the scaffold and the stake, yet to pressure and death, to infinite pain and suffering, goes to defend what the German soul and its mission in the world is.

However, if Emerson sees in Goethe the very representative of the German spirit, and one of the present-day intellectuals of Russia finds the following words about Goethe, Mereschkowski, who even claims to revere Goethe - one should not be deceived, one should not be deceived in his “Leading Spirits,” which have now been translated into German, for anyone who truly recognizes Goethe cannot utter such words about Goethe, the representative of modern intellectual life, as the Russian Mereschkowski has done. He says:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed by an evil spell and shrink to the size of a dwarf; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German bourgeois and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, a “Herr von Goethe”, a privy councillor of the Duke of Weimar and a respectable son of the respectable Frankfurt shopkeeper.

Let us assume that Goethe would appear to Mereschkowski in certain situations in his life; but anyone who recognizes Goethe and what he is to humanity would not say such a thing. For it does not merely depend on whether one considers something to be right, but whether one has enough spirituality to say it or not. There is something in these words that the world has yet to learn from the German spirit.

But when we now see how what is German spiritual life is to be trampled underfoot from the east, how this German spiritual life, in alliance with the western peoples, is to be trampled underfoot from the east, then we may ask: What about the understanding and the possibility of understanding on the part of what is there in the east, with regard to the German essence?

Now, esteemed attendees, once again it is not a German speaking, once again I do not want to speak myself, but I let a member of the Russian people speak for himself, the philosopher Solowjow, who is basically not just a philosopher, but a seer, who is regarded by the most excellent Russians themselves as a representative of Russia. Let us ask him. How does he, who has been vilified for decades by Russian intellectuals and other seducers of the Russian people, how does he judge this deification of the race principle to the exclusion of the education principle, how does he judge this brute force in relation to Europe? Let us hear him, not ourselves; let us hear the Russians about the Russians, not about the intimate forces of the Russian people, but about the forces that have come about through the conspiracies of mendacious Pan-Slavism and mendacious grand duchies. Let us hear the Russians talk about all that has been in preparation for a long time. He says: “Why does Europe not love us?” And he answers:

Europe [...] looks at us with apprehension and dislike, because the elemental power of the Russian people is dark and mysterious, its spiritual and cultural powers inferior, but its demands clear, determined and great.

The clamor of our rationalism, which seeks to destroy Turkey and Austria, to beat the Germans, to conquer Constantinople and, if possible, India, is loudly heard in Europe. But if we are asked what we will do for humanity after taking and destroying all of that, we can only remain silent or spout meaningless phrases. [...] Thus [...] the most essential, indeed the only important question that honest and reasonable patriotism should address is not Russia's power and mission, but its sins.

Because the subject that the Russians themselves must discuss has been introduced by the powers that I have just mentioned, for decades preparations have been made for what is now devastating Europe with such terrible storms, coming from the east. For if the question is raised from so many sides: “Who wanted the war?”, then the question needs only to be transformed into another: “Who could have prevented the war?” And there is a clear answer to this question, which history must also provide: only Russia could have prevented the war. Of course, the Western powers will also have to bear the consequences, because without them Russia would have avoided the war, at least for now. But only hints can be given about this. For the German who allows what I have been able to sketch with charcoal to take effect in his soul, what is now to be fought for in the East and West, at such unspeakable cost, must be something that opens our eyes, that shows us how much we need to reflect on ourselves, to reflect on that which allows us to find the strong forces of the German character. By the number of his enemies, the German can gauge the necessity of this search for his own strength, which depends on himself. In this respect, many things can be instructive for us.

We believed that an understanding would dawn, especially among the French, for the German way of being. Strangely enough, even shortly before the war, there were people who believed that an understanding could be found for the German way of being in youthful France. I must, in conclusion, shed some light on this matter. Some of our best Germans were amazed that a Frenchman, Romain Rolland, who was one of the first to join with Verhaeren and others in directing the bitterest invective against German “barbarism,” found in Romain Rolland a mind that understood the German essence, that understood Germany. Why did they find this? Yes, the question is difficult to answer, very difficult. This Romain Rolland has written a novel. In this novel, a German, Jean-Christophe, plays a role. I am well aware that I am passing judgment, and that my judgment can stand up to any aesthetic, and I am prepared for those who find the judgment I am passing “barbaric”.

So Romain Rolland wrote his novel “Jean-Christophe”. The hero is German, but he is concocted in such a way that a wild chaos results. This character is concocted from Beethoven's youth, the fates of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. All this is concocted in a jumble in this character. A character is shaped out of this, which in an artistic-aesthetic sense is basically repulsive to anyone who really has an appreciation for characterizations. And this Jean-Christophe – in German, this Johann Christof Kraft – is presented to us as he is placed in the terrible German circumstances. He spends his youth as a German among Germans, but he cannot stand these German circumstances. He has to get out of these German circumstances; he is not recognized in Germany. He does find some admirers, but he just can't stand the German way of doing things. He then goes to France. It is only in Paris that he finds what makes him a complete human being. This is described, along with other things, which are basically quite chaotic, just like Jean-Christophe himself.

And we have even been told by critics that this novel is one of the most significant achievements in the reconciliation of the German and French minds after 1870. And someone said the following about this novel:

I find myself at a loss as to how many times I should actually thank you. The human, the bon vivant, the artist, the German, the [worldly] side of me, each wants to come forward and say a word. But another time the artist should talk about this novel, another time the bon vivant, and the human wants to wait until he can shake your hand again. Today only the German should say thank you; for I have the feeling that French youth has become closer to us through this book, which has done more than all the diplomats, banquets and associations.

Someone printed this review as a letter to Romain Rolland.

In this book – forgive me for emphasizing this passage, but I can emphasize it without violating any artistic principle, simply because in Romain Rolland's work, which is a poor novel, you can hear Romain Rolland himself through his characters. When he gives his characters traits that are pleasing to him because he wants to talk about this German essence that he “knows so well”. It depends on what nuances are apparent to this young Frenchman, since he is supposed to understand the German essence so well. So we read the following, which comes about during a conversation with a visitor:

Since the German victories, the Germans did everything they could to compromise, to bring about a disgusting mishmash of new power and old principles. They did not want to abandon old idealism: That would have been an act of frankness that one was not capable of; in order to make it subservient to German interests, one had contented oneself with falsifying it. One followed the example of Hegel, the cheerfully duplicitous Swabian, who had waited for Leipzig and Waterloo to adapt the basic idea of his philosophy to the Prussian state

— In 1806, under the thunder of the guns at the Battle of Jena, Hegel wrote his fundamental work, which contains the basic outlines of all his later works. The Frenchman, who has not read Hegel either, or if he has, then without understanding, says that Hegel “waited for Leipzig and Waterloo”. And further.

and now, after interests had changed, it also changed its principles. When one was defeated, one said that Germany's ideal was humanity. Now that one was beating the others, it was said that Germany was humanity's ideal. As long as the other countries were the more powerful, one said with Lessing that love of one's country was a heroic weakness that one could very well do without, and one called oneself a citizen of the world. Now that victory had been achieved, there was no lack of contempt for “French” utopias: world peace, brotherhood, peaceful progress, human rights, natural equality; it was said that the strongest nation had an absolute right over the others, while the others, as the weaker ones, had no rights over it. It seemed as if the living God and the incarnate spirit, whose progress was achieved through war, violence and oppression.

That's how well the Frenchman understood the Germans!

Power, now that it was on his side, was canonized. Power had now become the epitome of all idealism and all reason.

To give honor to the truth, it must be said that Germany had suffered so much for centuries from having idealism without power that after so much trial she was well excused for now making the sad confession that she needed power above all, however it might be constituted. But how much hidden bitterness lay in such a confession of the people of a Herder and a Goethe! And what renunciation, what humiliation of the German ideal lay in this German victory! - And oh, this renunciation found only too much compliance in the lamentable tendency of all the best Germans to subordinate themselves.

“What characterizes the Germans,” said Möser more than a century ago, “is obedience.”

And Frau von Stael: “They obey properly. They use philosophical reasons to explain the most unphilosophical thing in the world: respect for power and the habituation to fear, which transforms respect into admiration.”

Christof found this feeling in the greatest and the smallest in Germany

- that is why he has to leave Germany -

from Wilhelm Tell onwards, the thoughtful, little bourgeois with the porter's muscles, who, as the free Jew Börne says: “to reconcile honor and fear, walks with his eyes downcast in front of the post of the tyrannical Mr. Gessler, so that he can invoke the fact that he did not disobey, who did not see the hat,” up to the honorable seventy-year-old Professor Weiße, one of the most respected scholars in the city, who, when a lieutenant passed him, quickly left the footpath to him and went down to the road.

Germany

— so says this good German-understander of France at another point,

Germany really bears the main burden of sin in Europe. If you have won the victory, you are responsible for it: you have incurred a debt against the vanquished; you have assumed the tacit responsibility of stepping forward and showing them the way. The victorious Louis XIV brought the world the splendor of French reason. What light did Germany of Sedan bring to the world?

Well, my dear audience, you may not find it wonderful when you have heard this that this Frenchman was among the first to weep with the others in the “Matin” over German “barbarism”. But you will find it wonderful that this book, this novel by Romain Rolland, was believed to be one of the most significant acts since 1870 in bringing about peace. It was quickly translated into German. The first three volumes were published shortly before the war. But this Frenchman wants to know the Germans, he also wants to describe them, where he finds characteristic moments in these Germans. As I said, he practices the technique of bad novelists, who are always audible when they let their characters speak. So this Frenchman, who is particularly surprising when he blows into the horn of the “Matin” et cetera, describes something that he really likes about the Germans. He describes how an admirer found Jean-Christophe a professor in Ulm. He visits him. Then the Frenchman describes what he calls a “German meal.” It was so good, the German meal, that even the cook Salomé peeks through the door to see how the gentlemen sitting with Jean-Christophe like it. That's when the Frenchman finds the “greatness” of Germany.

It was an exhibition of unforgettable, honest, unadulterated German cuisine with its aromas of all herbs, its thick sauces, its nutritious soups, its exemplary meat dishes, its monumental carp, its sauerkraut, its geese, its homemade cakes, its aniseed and caraway breads.

He describes something that he wants to depict as good about the Germans. But now, among those who came to see the German professor back then, there is one man who can sing well and who is truly not described in an outstandingly beautiful way by the Frenchman who understands Germans so well. And Romain Rolland loves music. His critics said that his novel was “the novel of modern music”. And he himself had grown to love Germany precisely because of music. So he describes someone who can sing. And he describes him in such a way that you can see that he, Jean-Christophe, wonders why a German can sing.

That is because the Germans do not know how to sing. They are seized by the power of song and the song works through them as if through an instrument. The spirit of the songs takes hold of them and they obey it. Because the soul of the German must do that. This soul obeys the song as the soldier obeys the general.

This is roughly how the Frenchman, who understands the Germans so well, describes the [German] art of singing.

And then he also gives us some insights into what the person who sings like this looked like. And so that you also have something good from the Frenchman's book in this area, I will also tell you that he describes this singer, who he admits sings excellently, for the reasons I have given, as a fat person who always sweats when he takes steps, but especially when he makes sounds. He describes his nature, his whole figure. Then he says: He looked like a Bavarian, a particular variety of German. He thinks that there are quite a few of these Bavarians, because they have the secret of preserving this human race, which “has come about through a system of noodles similar to that used to fatten poultry”.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I could tell you many more things about the characteristics of what is behind what is now physically expressed. Particularly when one considers the contrast between Frenchness and Germanness, as expressed so clearly in the fact that, driven out of their minds by the eternal desire for revenge, the French have done something that they will only realize in the future: they have allowed themselves to be dragged eastwards, about which we have even heard a Russian speak. When one considers this antagonism between Central Europe and the immediate West, then words such as these might come to mind – truly, when one looks at everything that has been produced on the other side of the Rhine, when one summarizes it all – words like this might come to mind:

To the best of my knowledge, there is no natural law and no heavenly parliamentary act on the basis of which France alone, among all earthly beings, does not have to give back some of its plunder if the plundered owner can take it back. Nobody except France itself at this moment can believe that there is such a natural law. Alsace and Lorraine did not come to France in such a providential way that they could not be taken away from it. Richelieu's cunning, Louis XIV's grandiose saber; these are France's only legal titles to the German lands. Richelieu unscrewed them. And General Turenne happened to be unscrewed at the same time. Because Turenne was a real German by blood and nature. But Francis I had set his ancestor, the little Duke of Bouillon, on the path we saw above, and he gradually made him French.

And so on. And further:

For me, the saddest symptom in France at present is the figure its geniuses are now making, its highest literary voices, which should be its prophets and seers and which this figure has in fact been making for a generation. These voices apparently believe that new heavenly wisdom is radiating from France over all other peoples, who are sitting in deep shadow. France is the new Zion of the universe. And all the sad, dirty, half-crazed and in large part positively infernal stuff that French literature has preached to us in the last fifty years is a true gospel from heaven, full of blessings for all the children of men. Ah, one understands that France made its great revolution; that it raised its terrible voice of destiny against a world of human illusions, proclaiming with the trumpet of the Last Judgment: There shall be no more illusions!

These words were not coined by Germans! Rather, the words that I have just read were translated by the Würzburg professor of psychiatry, Rieger, from a letter that was indeed published in the Times on November 18, 1870 and that was written by Thomas Carlyle about France and the French way of life, French greed, and the claims to Alsace-Lorraine. It is a rather nice symptom that a psychiatrist found this letter and translated it, because there will be many a psychiatric chapter in world history when everything that is now being brought into the world from the east and the west about the German character has to be judged.

But if, on the other hand, we allow ourselves to be influenced by this German essence in the way that not pride but humble self-awareness has done, if we see what Germany's best minds have achieved in the German spirit, if we see how intuitions of spiritual science, spiritual insights have emerged in Schiller and Fichte, so that we have to say to ourselves: In this German essence lie seeds that oblige us to develop them further into blossoms and fruits, then we must fill our soul with the right future securities and future possibilities. And we will know that when our fateful and destiny-laden days are again replaced by such days in which history again speaks objectively, that then the question will hang over the enemy nations like one of the most terrible questions: Why do they call the people of Schiller and Fichte a “barbarian people”?

And in answering this question, one will feel how the German spirit has not completed its tasks in the world as a whole, in the development of humanity. One will feel how right Goethe was when he said to Luden, even in a fateful time:

The destiny of the Germans is not yet fulfilled. If they had had no other task than to break up the Roman Empire and create and organize a new world, they would have perished long ago. But since they have continued to exist, and in such strength and efficiency, I believe that they must still have a great destiny.

When one feels the German essence, one will feel how it has to defend itself today as if locked in a great fortress – even the enemies who do not understand it and want to trample it underfoot – and one will find that this German essence has not yet reached completion, that this German spirit must fight for its existence not only for its own good but also for the good of the development of the earth. And today we may summarize what this reflection could only contain in hints, we may summarize it in words that point out how, even if the German spirit has already achieved great things, what it has achieved must appear in the present as the germ of future blossoms and fruits. And one would like to call out to those over whom the question will hover as historical fate: Why do they call the people of Fichte and Schiller a “barbarian people”? In answer, one must call out to them what we want to conclude today's reflection with:

The German spirit has not completed
what it is to bring to the world.
It lives hopefully in future concerns,
It hopes for future deeds] full of life; -
In the depths of his being, he feels mightily
Hidden things that must have their effect as they mature.
How can a mindless enemy
Wish for his end to come:
As long as life reveals itself to him,
Which holds him in the roots of his being?

In this lecture I want to develop the relation of the theosophical movement to the big cultural currents in the present, and on the other side I would want to design a picture of the theosophical world view in the talks which are entitled: The Basic Concepts of Theosophy. Hence, I ask you to consider this lecture absolutely as an initiating one and to accept as such.

What I have to discuss today should be the question what, actually, the present human beings find within the theosophical movement, which needs of the present human being can find their satisfaction within the theosophical movement. And in this manner I want to approach the other question: why do we have something like a theosophical movement today? I want also to approach the question, why that which theosophy wants, strives for is misunderstood and misjudged by so many people.

Whoever wants to understand the theosophical movement in its whole being has to be aware above all which task it has to fulfil in the present. It has also to be clear to him to whom it wants to speak today. What is then, actually, the present human being about whom we are just talking? I consider somebody as this present human being who has familiarised himself with the questions occupying the present, who lives not only in the everyday, but has also concerned himself with the cultural tasks of our time and is familiar with it, to whom the questions which our civilisation puts are needs of heart and mind. Briefly, I would like to understand the human being as somebody who tries hard to tackle the questions of education and knowledge of our time. I would like to put the question in his sense and answer it roughly: what does he find in the theosophical movement? Is something generally to be found within theosophy that he needs inevitably?

We have to look back to the time in which the theosophical movement has entered the world if we want to understand its task. We have to realise that this movement is three decades old and that when it entered the world approximately thirty years ago it took a shape which was determined by the relations of that time. Who wants to understand why it took this shape has to imagine the development of education and pedagogy of the last years. We still stand in the currents which the 19th century has produced, and those who brought the theosophical movement to life believed to give something to the world that it needs. And those who teach theosophy today believe that it is also something that leads into the future.

Today it has become almost a phrase, and, nevertheless, it is true: what has settled down into the souls of our contemporaries has brought a fissure in many of the contemporaries, a conflict between knowledge and faith, which expresses itself in a longing of the heart. This conflict is characteristic for the second half of the 19th century. It means not only for some people, but for a big part of the human beings generally that which separates humanity and causes a contradiction in the individual human soul. Science had come, up to the last third of the 19th century, to a height which is admirable, indeed, for someone who has an overview of the centuries. This science is something that fulfils the 19th century with just pride. It is the big heritage which the 19th century is able to hand over to all the coming ones. But this science has apparently thrown old traditions out at the same time. It has apparently brought in a disturbance to that which as old religious contents performed so big services to the souls in former times. Above all, these were those who had looked at science deeper who did no longer believe to be able to harmonise the scientific knowledge with that which religion had offered to them. The best of them believed that a quite new confession must take place and that it has to replace the old religious contents. Thus we see a true revolution of the human thinking gradually taking place.

The question was even put whether it is generally still possible that the human being can be a Christian; whether it is still possible to retain to the ideas which gave consolation at death and which have shown to the human being for so long time how he had to understand his determination which should reach beyond death, beyond the limited. The big question “where from” and “where to” should be taught in a new way illuminated by science. One spoke of a “new faith” and thought that it has to be the opposite of the old one. One did no longer believe that one could form a world view from the old religious books. Yes, there were not a few who said that there childish images are given which are only possible at the childhood age of humanity; now, however, we have become adults, and that is why we have also to have adult views. Many also said that they wanted to adhere to the old religious images; they did not want to be converted to the radical point of view of the new ones.

But the course of the mental development of humanity does not depend on these human beings. There were always a few, there were always those who stood at the summit of their time and gave the keynote of the future development. Thus it happened that those who wanted to know nothing about the “new faith” also thought to not take care of the conflict between faith and knowledge; but one could also imagine and say that that would be different in the future. David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874, German theologian, The Old and the New Faith, 1872) elaborated his new faith at that time that there is nothing else in the world than what happens between birth and death, and that the human being has to fulfil his task here on earth. One can see that in the present the consolation of the religious images dies down to many people, and one can suppose that our children and grandchildren have nothing more of it. Hence, those may have seen uneasily into the world who believed that salvation depends on these religious images. They were the best.

The 19th century has even produced the fruits of that which was sowed in the preceding century. Everything has prepared during the previous centuries. This is to be attributed, above all, to those who strove for the extension of the human ken from the middle of the 15th to the 16th century, and also to the popularisation of education. Look back and you will see that the religious element formed quite differently during the past centuries. Apparently, the world view was totally changed. The human beings have formed wrong concepts about anything because the thinking is basically different from that which one thought centuries ago.

However, the consciousness that the human actions work on all human beings and all times had just got lost to those who were the bearers of education in the last centuries and the most significant people in the 19th century. People had designed world views to themselves in quite different way than in former times. Astronomy had shown them how one can collate world views from the mere sensory observation. Copernicus taught the human beings to look out into the worlds and to create a world view which does not contain, however, the human being. Look back at the old world views: the human being had a role in them; he had a place in them. Now, however, he had a system of stars before himself which was obtained with the means of science. But this contained the earth only as a small being. It appeared like a dust particle under that sun which is only one among countless suns.

Under the effect of that all it was impossible to answer the question: what about the human being, this small inhabitant of the earth, of this dust particle in the universe? That is why science had to investigate the world of life. It investigated the composition of the plant, the human and the animal bodies the smallest living beings with the microscope and found that they are built up from the smallest structures which one calls cells. Again one had advanced a further step of sensory knowledge, but again only something was understood that was a sensuous view, something that made the physical existence more explicable. But again something was eliminated a little bit that the human being has to ask for most intimately: what is the soul and its determination? One could not ask the new teaching where the soul came from and where the soul goes to. Then we see how one left the old world views and the question was answered with the means of science.

In geology one investigated the sensuous origin of the human being. The different layers which there are on our earth became known. Once one had spoken of the fact that the earth developed on account of immense revolutions and went through different states; states of particular kind, so that one could imagine only that spiritual powers had gradually brought about what we know today. Today one believes that the same forces, which build the earth even today, have also built it in old past. We see the river flowing from the mountain and picking up scree and creating thereby land and plains. We see the wind carrying sand over open regions and covering large parts with sand. We see the climate and also the earth's surface gradually changing by such influence. And now the geologists say: as well as the earth is today changed, it was also changed in former ages; and thus one also understands how bit by bit the earth has formed. Everything that is not perception for physical instruments, for the calculation and for the human senses was eliminated from the explanation of the earth. One investigated the different layers of the earth and recognised that not only that is found in them which was deposited as lifeless products; one also found beings which lived millions of years ago on our earth. In the lower layers one found the most imperfect beings, more on top one found more perfect beings and even more on top one found the layers in which the human being appears. The human being appears only in relatively young earth periods. If we apply this picture which I have just outlined, if we kept to this picture, one could imagine nothing else than that the human being has developed from below that he has only done a little jolt and he was nothing else before than an higher animal.

Then that came which is called Darwinism which says that everything that lives on earth is related with each other that something perfect develops from something imperfect and that this development is based on certain laws which find complete expression within the sensuous existence. The catchword of the “struggle for existence” arose. One said that any animal and any plant are variable. They can develop in this or that way whether the beings are adapted or not to the external conditions of life. Those beings develop and keep best of all which are adapted best of all to the conditions of life. However, one could not find why the conditions of life are better with the one than with the other. One was dependent on chance. The being survived which was the better by chance; the less developed one was destroyed in the struggle of all against all.

Thus we have an astronomical view and a view of life which science has outlined to us. But the human being is not there and, above all, that is missing which one called the divine determination before. The divine origin and the divine goal are missing. A statement is characteristic which a great naturalist made, who contributed mostly to the design of the universe: when Laplace (Pierre Simon L., 1749–1827, French astronomer) faced Napoleon I and explained the view of the sun and the planets to him, Napoleon said: but in such a world view I find nothing of God.—Laplace answered: I do not need such a hypothesis.—The astronomical world view did not need the hypothesis of a spiritually working being, of God. And also the other sciences do not need one. Is anything of spiritually working forces contained in their view of life? Such a thing is nowhere contained in the view which science has outlined and has outlined rightly. If we look for an explanation, we find that the human being with his mental qualities is an orphan child of sorts. Indeed, science has found enthusiastic words how miraculous the forces are which steer the stars how miraculous the forces are which have developed life up to the human being. However, we see that in this sublime view science has nothing of those ideas which were so valuable for the human beings for so many centuries. And from whom the human being could have expected the answer to the questions: where from do I come? where to do I go?, unless from science? The answer to these questions was always given by science.

Go back to the first centuries of Christianity, take Origen and the other first church teachers. You find there that with them not only believing, not only suspecting and meaning held good, but that these were men who had the whole education of their time, who answered the worldly worldly, but were able at the same time to ascend to the spiritual. They answered the spiritual in accordance with the science of their time. Only the last century knows the conflict between science and faith. However, this conflict must be resolved. The human being cannot endure it: faith on the one, knowledge on the other side.

Those who found no other way out than to put a new scientific faith against the old faith were, nevertheless, significant men. We cannot call these men unscientific or non–religious who said: the religious ideas are contradictory to our knowledge, and, therefore, we must have a new faith. We see the scientific materialism developing which considers the human being as a higher disposed animal, as a member of the physical-natural creation, as a small unimportant being, as a dust particle. You have this being before yourselves in that which the freethinkers and those have developed who try to solve the various riddles of the world in this sense as you can see in the sensational book by Haeckel (Ernst H., 1834–1919), German zoologist and philosopher) about the Wonders of Life (1904). There you have a view developed by science which is not able to produce harmony with the views of the previous centuries.

This was the situation at the end of the 19th century; this was the only thing that the 19th century could have given as a legacy to the 20th century unless another impact had come. This impact prepared itself and came into the world in the theosophical movement as a fruit. That was prepared which we recognise in the theosophical movement as the essential part, by the fact that one got to know the true physical figure of the universe and the evolution of life on one side, because the old religious images were no longer sufficient, and was prepared on the other side by the fact that one subjected the spiritual development to a study. So not only the evolution of life was subjected to a study, but also the spiritual development itself. As well as one investigated the forces from which living beings developed, one also investigated the spiritual forces, the spiritual contents of humanity as we observe them in the course of the historical and also prehistoric development. One not only turned to that which happened before the sensory eyes, but also to that which people believed. It was clear that modern science was something radically different from the old religions. Only our time of investigations made the mental development of humanity clear to the human being. One investigated ancient religious ideas according to their true form and content, and there one found something particular. On account of the deciphering of the documents of the Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Babylonians, and Assyrians one was able to penetrate into these ancient human ideas. As well as science brought light to the natural sciences, science now brought light into the religious ideas of ancient peoples. One recognised that something is contained in them that, indeed, one has thought of only a little in our age and with our freethinking being.

One had believed that humanity went out from ignorance, from certain mythological ideas, from poetic images which one had formed about God and soul in imperfect, primitive way. One approximately imagined that humanity would have developed from the imperfect to the delightfully perfect state of our time. But one did not know the ideas of the ancient peoples, and when one got to know them, they aroused astonishment and admiration, not only with religious people but also with the researchers. This admiration has been expressed over and over again, the more they were investigated. The farther we go back in the life of the ancient Egyptians, in the life of the ancient Indian, Babylonian and Assyrian or even Chinese spiritual world, the more we see that there exist so sublime world views as only a human thought can grasp and a human heart can feel. There we see human beings who deeply have beheld, indeed, not into the appearance which natural sciences explain to us today, but into the internal spiritual.

Confucius gave profound moral philosophies and created commandments of the social living together. Compare yourselves what in the present time philosophers have produced in moral philosophy, compare Herbert Spencer (1820–1903, English philosopher, biologist, sociologist) or the moral philosophy of Darwinism, and compare the modern moral philosophies with those of the Egyptians, with the ideas about ethics of Laozi (Lao Tse), of Confucius, of Zarathustra. Then you must say to yourselves that the new conceptions are commensurate, indeed, with our time that we look up, however, admiring to the sublime moral philosophies of the ancient peoples which cannot be compared with our science. Max Müller (1823–1900, German Orientalist and language scholar) says about the Tibetan moral philosophy: if this people may be ever so far from the so-called cultures of our time, in front of the sublime moral of Tibet I bend my head in reverence! The Orientalist and objective scientist Max Müller spoke approximately that way. He could no longer believe that humanity went out from ignorance. His researches rather supplied to him the result which can be summarised in the words that, indeed, this wisdom cannot be understood with the reason, not with the senses that, however, humanity must have gone out from such wisdom. Then the researcher gradually learnt to speak of “primal revelation”, of “primal wisdom”. This was the one, the positive side.

The other side was that which the criticism, the investigation of these religious images made its task. Then it became obvious that the most important documents did not withstand to the scientific criticism if one takes them in such a way as one was used to take these documents since centuries. I want to refrain from everything else, and also not to deal with a criticism of the Old Testament, but only to point with a few words to that which this criticism has performed concerning the Gospels. The historical criticism now asked concerning the Gospels in which one had still read hundred years ago with quite different eyes: when did they come into being, and how did they originate? Science had to take away piece by piece from the old authority of the Gospels. It has shown that they came into being much later than one had believed; it had to show that they are human work and cannot claim the authority one ascribed to them.

Let us take together these three matters: on one side the progressive natural sciences, on the other side the knowledge of the miraculous contents of all ancient religious images and at the same time the criticism which relentlessly tackled what one thought once about the history of the religious documents. This brought the human being in a fairway that he became uncertain and could hardly move his ship forward in the old way. Someone who wanted to consult science from all sides lost his faith in the spirit. The cognition of the human beings was that way at the end of the 19th century.

There came the theosophical movement, just with the intention to give something to those who were in this uncertainty, to bring a new message to those who could not harmonise their new knowledge with the old faith. They should get answer to the question why this Gospel has such a deep content, and why it lets its moral philosophy speak to the human beings in such a divine-lofty way.

This theosophical movement was much misjudged, because it speaks a language that has developed in the last century. In the first time when the theosophical movement entered, the world could hardly understand it. What did the theosophical movement give to humanity? I only note something: on account of certain studies two books, Esoteric Buddhism by A. P. Sinnett (1840–1921) and Isis Unveiled by Helena Petrowna Blavatsky (1831–1891) appeared. Then a 2-volume work, the Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky was published. These were books which designed another world view than science had done it up to now, also another world view than the world views of the religions were. This world view had a characteristic. Just the scientific person, who approached these books with good will who did not take them with arrogance without denying and criticising them from the start, found that he got something that could satisfy his needs. There were not few people who received the books with great interest immediately after their publication. People who were able to academically think but had just lost their belief in the scientific progress in the course of time, just in that which science could offer. Now these saw in the new works Esoteric Buddhism, Isis Unveiled, Secret Doctrine something that satisfied the deepest needs of their hearts, of their knowledge and of their scientific conscience. Where did this phenomenon come from and who were those who felt such a satisfaction in the new theosophical works? If we want to understand these few people, we must have a closer look at the further progress of the scientific development.

Science had designed an astronomical world view, a view of the life on earth up to the understanding of the physical human being. At the same time, it had worked out the method to investigate the physical realm with all miraculous tools which the recent time has created. It investigated not only the smallest living beings with the microscope, no, this science has done more. It has contrived to calculate the planet Neptune, long before it was seen! Today science is also able to take a photo of heavenly bodies which we cannot see. It can give a scheme of the conditions of the heavenly bodies with the help of spectral analysis, and it has shown in extremely interesting way how the heavenly bodies hurry through space at a speed of which we had no idea before. If the heavenly bodies pass us, we can see the movement. If they move, however, away from us or to us, they seem to rest. Science has contrived to measure the movement of these heavenly bodies with an especially interesting method. This is an argument where this knowledge can lead us. We are thereby also enabled to closer study the physical nature gradually. There something resulted that is still more important for the human mind than that which he had put as new science to the place of the old one.

During the last years science has lost its faith in its own preconditions. Just because it has become so perfect, it has overcome itself, it has undermined its own foundation in certain way. It stated that the struggle for existence has caused the perfection of the living beings. Now probably, the naturalists have investigated the matters, and just because they have investigated them, it became obvious that all the conceptions, which they had formed about them, could not be maintained. Now one speaks of a “powerlessness of the struggle for existence.” Thus the natural sciences have undermined their knowledge foundation with their own methods. And thus it went on bit by bit. When in the last decades the human being became more and more attentive to the way how he has developed on our earth, one came to the idea at the end that the human being has developed from the advanced animals. That is why it happened in the last decades that careful and more reasonable naturalists have spoken of the impossibility to understand the spiritual world, which must be behind our sensory world, with the scientific means. The famous address of Du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896, German physiologist)) gave the first impulse in Leipzig (1872) in which he expressed that the natural sciences are not able to solve the most important riddles of the world and to answer questions regarding this. Science stops where the issues of the origin of substance and of the origin of consciousness begin. We will not be able to know anything with scientific means: “ignorabimus.” Ostwald (Wilhelm O., 1853–1932, German chemist), a good disciple of Haeckel, who already spoke on the naturalists' congress in Lübeck of overcoming the scientific materialism, has openly expressed in a presentation at the last naturalists' meeting that the methods with which one wanted to come behind the riddles of the world are to be regarded as failed. Natural Sciences and World View is the title of his book. Just the natural sciences want to go beyond themselves and to have a higher observation point of the world view.

As well as these naturalists stand today before the whole objective research, few people stood already with the beginning of the theosophical movement. It was clear to them that that which natural sciences say is something indestructible, is something which we must rely on. But at the same time it was clear to them also that these natural sciences themselves must lead to a development where they can no longer give answer to the higher questions with their means. They found this answer, however, in the mentioned theosophical writings. They found it, not making profession to a faith, but by the way of thinking and feeling which express itself in the theosophical movement. This is the significance of the theosophical movement for the modern human beings that it can fully satisfy those who look for the harmony of knowledge and faith in science who do not want to live in struggle against science, but to live with science.

One still believed few years ago that science were contradictory to the old religious images. One spoke of a new faith in contrast to the old faith. The theosophical movement has taught us that, indeed, the old times expressed themselves differently than modern science, that, however, that which the ancient peoples taught about the spiritual forces, about what is not to be seen with eyes what is not to be heard with ears, is for us something that can satisfy the religious need just as the need of the most modern science. Indeed, you have to become absorbed without prejudice, with good will and impartially in the old images; you have to really believe that the farther you penetrate into them, the more you can also gain from it.

Then something appears. Natural sciences still taught something else to us in the course of the 19th century. They showed us the structures and functions of our own organs. They showed us how the eyes must be arranged, so that they see light and colours; they showed us that the eye is a physical apparatus which transforms that which proceeds outside round us into the coloured world which we have before us. One has said that it depends on the nature of the eye, as well as on the world itself. Imagine that the world would be inhabited by not sighted beings. Then the world would be without colours! The 19th century developed physiology in all directions. We realise that the world would be dark and silent around us if we had no eyes and ears. Unless we had our senses, the world, which we do not see and hear, would not be there in its causes which have an effect on us through the senses. There cannot be effects on a human being for whom the organs are missing under usual circumstances. Or may there be effects, nevertheless, on a human being for whom the organs are missing under usual circumstances? This was the question which natural sciences had to put to themselves! This question is really scientific.

Also in this field the theosophical movement produced works of basic significance. It not only delivered a world view, but it also produced works which gave instructions for the development of higher organs, of higher capacities. If the human being develops these higher capacities in himself, he faces the world in a new way. Transport yourselves just a moment into a dark world in which a bright light shines, and imagine that you unlocked an eye: suddenly the world has a new quality! The world also existed when it was dark and you saw no light. Now, however, you can perceive it. If you were able to develop higher organs, you would experience that even higher worlds are there, are effective because you can perceive them now.

Light on the Path (1885 by Mabel Collins, theosophical author, 1851–1927) is such a work which was produced by the theosophical movement, too. It is an instruction how the human being can develop spiritual eyes and ears to behold and to hear spiritually. Thus the theosophical movement claimed to solve the riddles of the world in a quite new way. Not only because it makes the capacities accessible to the human being which he already has but also because it wakes up those which are slumbering in him. We perfect ourselves this way, as this has happened since primeval times; we penetrate only into the secrets of the worlds around us. The life that remains concealed to the external senses is revealed to us that way. Even if natural sciences could penetrate ever so far, even if they could achieve the most marvellous things, nevertheless, they would have to admit that there is yet something with that they do not get to grips. However, science may teach humanity this using the methods theosophy has given. Because humanity could scientifically investigate the world extensively but never in its deepness, theosophy provides assistance to modern science. This science has been enlarged; however, the theosophical world movement has to deepen it.

It became now clear and understandable why the human being must stand admiring also as a scholar before the ancient religions. It became clear that always perfect beings lived beside imperfect ones in the world. It became also clear why the idea of revelation was academically destroyed and was given back to the human being, on the other side, in a brighter light. It became also clear that the Gospels and other old religious documents have not come from lack of wisdom, but from wisdom. They have come from forces that rest in every human breast, that were already developed in single human beings at that time and that revealed that world showing us the determination of the soul and the eternity of the human life. What had been recognised by such spiritual eyes is kept to us in the religious documents. What you cannot find if you look at the world you can really find in these religious documents.

We understand now why the answer of Laplace had to be as it had been. What had Laplace observed? The external sensory world! He had no longer understood the spiritual world in which the earth is embedded. Hence, he was right answering that he could not find the divine in the world with his instruments. One had taught once to use the spiritual senses in order to observe the spiritual world. What you read in the scientific documents was not got from the stars. But what is written in the biblical documents was from those who beheld with spiritual eyes. One needs spiritual eyes to behold into the spiritual world as well as one needs the senses to look at the sensory world.

Even if anybody lost his faith in science a sure support was now won. One recognised the big spiritual connections which are clear before the soul of the human being if he only tries to find the ways there. The theosophical movement tries to provide the adequate ways.

Now you will understand above all what this theosophical movement wants and why it was misunderstood at first. It must be misunderstood. This is connected with the development of the age. Let me touch the deepest reason of misunderstanding in modern science. People believed that the “struggle for existence” brought the human beings on a lofty level of development. But it is characteristic that this world view has already appeared in the beginning of the 19th century as Lamarckism: Philosophie zoologique (1809) by Antoine de Lamarck, 1744–1829. Darwin taught nothing substantially new. But only since Darwin this view spread farther. This is connected with the living conditions of the 19th century. Life had changed. The social life itself had become a struggle for existence. When Darwin's theory spread generally, the “struggle for existence” was reality, and still today it is reality. It was struggle for existence at that time when the Indian tribes were eradicated in America and it is also a struggle for existence today with those who try hard to achieve external prosperity. Nobody thought of anything else than: how can “welfare” be achieved best of all? “If the rose decorates itself, it also decorates the garden” by the contentment of every human being the contentment of all should be achieved.

Then one came to the strange doctrine of Malthus (Thomas Robert M., 1766–1834, Essay on the Principles of Population, 1798), to that doctrine which says that the number of human beings increases much more than the necessary quantity of food, so that it must come bit by bit to such a struggle for existence in the human realm itself. One believed that the struggle is necessary because the foodstuffs do not suffice. One might consider as sad that it is in such a way, but one believed that it has to go this way. Malthusianism was the starting point of Darwin's doctrine. Because people believed that the human being must struggle for existence, they believed that the struggle also has to go in the whole nature that way. The human being has brought his social struggle for existence to the realm of life, to the heavenly realm.

People were very proud saying to themselves that the new human being has become modest. He should be nothing more than a small being on the dust particle earth, while he once strove for redemption. However, the human being has not become modest! Projecting that social struggle in humanity into the world he has made the world the image of the human being. If the human being once considered his soul, he explored it from all sides to recognise the world–soul from there. He has now investigated the physical world and has imagined it in such a way that he sees an image of humanity with its struggle for existence in it. If the theosophical movement wanted to achieve anything, it had to understand this fact. If the human being rediscovers the divine really in himself, so that he finds God in his inside, then he can say to himself: God who is working in my inside is the God of the universe, is that who is working within and without me. I recognise Him and I am allowed to imagine the world in such a way as I am, because I know that I imagine it as something divine, because I know how I can attain this new knowledge from new depths of my soul and new feelings of my heart.

Thus one could also investigate the different religious systems with their profound truths. The religious researchers like Max Müller and his great colleagues initiated this theology, and theosophy had to continue it. The human being has to see with spiritual eyes and hear with spiritual ears what no physical eye can see and no physical ear can hear. The theosophical movement had paved the way for this. It would have been impossible to achieve anything in these two points really unless in the centre of this whole movement one thing had been pushed which is suitable to bear the new knowledge, the new science and the new faith from the human soul. The human being believed in the middle of the 19th century to get to perfection only through struggle and made thereby the struggle the big world principle. Now we have to learn to develop the opposite of struggle in our souls: love which cannot separate the happiness and the well-being of the individual from the happiness and the well-being of the fellow man. Love does not regard the fellow man as anybody on whose expenses we can make progress, but whom we have to help. If love is born in the soul, the human being is also able to see the creative love in the outside world. As the human being created a view of nature in the 19th century which went out from his idea of struggle, he will create a world view of love because he develops the seeds of love.

A reflection of that which has love in the soul will be the new world view again. The human being may imagine the divine again how he finds his own soul but love should live in this soul. Then he recognises that not struggle is the quality of the force system working in the world, but that love is the primal force of the world. If the human being wants to recognise God, creating love and pouring out love, he has to develop love in his soul. This is the most important principle which the theosophical movement made its own: forming the core of a general human brotherhood which is built on human love. The theosophical movement thereby prepares the human beings in comprehensive way for a world view in which not struggle, but love creates and forms. The sighted human mind will see the creative love approaching him. The creation of love in him leads to the knowledge that love created the world. And the Goethean thought is fulfilled:

The human being,
May he be noble,
Helpful and good!
For this only
Distinguishes him
From all beings
We know.

This legacy of the great poet is the impulse of our theosophical movement. The modern human being should develop the most significant factor of the advanced development in him through the theosophical movement. He should aim at the cooperation in the social life. Thereby he would become able to progress in wisdom and with energy, imbued with wisdom also in the spiritual worlds. Then the human being recognises his eternal being and determination more and more. He knows how he works on the “whirring loom of the time” (Earth Spirit in Faust I, verse 508), as a member in a spiritual not only sensuous world chain. He knows that he does his everyday job and that this work does not only consist of itself, but that it is a small link in a big human progress. He will know that every human being is a seed which needs a force to its blossoming and prospering, which pushes the germ out of the dark earth. What the soul creates must be got out of the spiritual earth as the plant sprout must be got out of the physical earth. As the physical sprout is got out by the sun to the sun, the blossoming and prospering human plant will be got out by a spiritual solar force, which theosophy wants to mediate and to teach the human beings. It will lead him to the marvellous and immense spiritual sun which one needs not only to express, but also to recognise and to understand. This is the spiritual sun which lives outside in the spiritual world which lives, however, inside the human being, too.

The theosophical movement has as its first principle that those who unite to this society develop the capacity in themselves to behold this spiritual sun which lives inside of the human being and in the big spiritual outside world. It is the propelling force in the spiritual realm and is really a force, like all the other physical forces, only a higher one and this is the force of creative love. A new divine knowledge will come to the fore. Then the human being recognises the creative love in the outside world if he allows this love in himself to become bigger and bigger. Then theosophy will deliver not only knowledge, but will also bring about the spiritual future with the growing and prospering love.

following a eurythmy presentation of the first scene of the second part of “Faust”

It will be understood that it is hardly possible to give a Whitsun lecture in the usual sense this year, especially at this time, namely at Whitsun itself. Let us consider what characterizes the time of Whitsun in the document of Christianity, the New Testament. We will find that the significant characteristic of the Pentecost is that the Spirit is poured out on those who are called apostles. And the consequence of the outpouring of the spirit is, as we see from the second chapter of Acts, that the people of the most diverse languages, who are gathered together at the Feast of Pentecost, ten days after the so-called Ascension, each hears what is to be proclaimed to them in a way that sounds familiar to him, even though each one expressly emphasizes that he is only capable of his mother tongue.

And so the outpouring of the spirit at the Feast of Pentecost appears like the outpouring of the spirit of love, of unity, of harmony among those who speak the most diverse languages across the globe. Or, to put it better, to match the wording of the Bible, the matter could be put in the following way. One could say: In the Pentecost proclamation, something is given that resonates so powerfully with the human mind that everyone can understand it, even though they only understand their mother tongue.

Almost everyone feels that it contradicts what surrounds us at this year's Pentecost festival if only one interpretation of what this Pentecost proclamation can mean is given. We need only consider that nineteen centuries after this Pentecostal proclamation, the world has managed to follow this Pentecostal proclamation in such a way that this Pentecost now sees thirty-four different speaking peoples fighting with each other, in a sense completely contradicting the meaning of Pentecost. Perhaps this language of fact will at least lead a certain number of people to realize that the Pentecost message has not yet spread throughout the world in a far-reaching way, that it has not yet sufficiently taken hold of people's minds and that it must speak to the minds of men in a new form, more urgently, more meaningfully than it has spoken up to now, so that it can be understood in the future in the way in which it must be understood.

And so this year, as a Whitsun reflection, a general point of view will be taken, so to speak, a point of view that can bring us closer to the new Whitsun proclamation from a certain side, which we mean by spiritual science. For we must regard what has just been explained in the lectures that we have completed here as a Pentecostal proclamation to humanity; we must understand this spiritual science as a Pentecostal proclamation.

Let us take what we know about the Mystery of Golgotha and let it enter our soul. What is the essence of this Mystery of Golgotha? This essence of the Mystery of Golgotha consists in the fact that a spiritual entity, which we know to belong to the cosmic spheres, descended and underwent earthly destinies, earthly suffering in a physical human body, that the Christ-entity lived for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Through what the Christ-being experienced in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, this Christ-being has been united since the Mystery of Golgotha with what we can call the spirit of the earth, what we can call the auric of the earth. So that for us the entire evolution of the earth breaks down into a time before the Mystery of Golgotha, when that which the Christ-spirit is can only be hinted at when man rises through initiation out of the earthly sphere, in order to perceive not that which lies within the earthly sphere, but that which the earth has no part in, which is only predetermined for it for a later future, and in the time after the Mystery of Golgotha. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, we know that the human being, with his spiritual soul, does not need to flee from the earth, but can remain within the earthly sphere and can perceive within this earthly sphere the impulses contained in the Christ-being.

Now we must realize that for centuries until our time, a part of humanity has become aware that the Christ Impulse is connected with earthly existence. Something has changed in the collective consciousness of those human beings who have felt and sensed something of the Christ Impulse. Something has changed in the overall consciousness of these people. The belief has entered the soul that the Christ is with man, that the human mind can unite with the Christ, that the human mind can experience something within earthly existence that is vividly imbued with the Christ impulse. But an understanding of what the Christ impulse is in the entire earthly existence in the development of humanity must first really penetrate into human souls through spiritual science. And for this it is necessary to recognize how this Christ impulse works in the human soul in such a way that two other spiritual impulses are, as it were, kept in balance.

This is what our sculpture, which we are erecting in the east of our building, will have to depict. There we will place the representative of humanity, the representative of the human being insofar as this human being can experience the deepest things in himself, insofar as this human being can experience what one experiences when one has taken up the Christ impulse as a living impulse in one's soul. For my sake, the main figure in the building in the east can be called the Christ; he can also be called the representative of the internalized human being in general. But one will have to see this spirit, which speaks through a human body, in connection with two other spiritual entities, with Lucifer and Ahriman. The representative of humanity will have to express his relationship to Lucifer and Ahriman while standing upright. Everything about this figure must be purely characteristic. Above all, you will notice later, when this figure has just been set up, that the gesture of the raised left hand and the gesture of the lowered right hand are very special. This gesture of the hands will be understood when one sees how, above, on the rock toward whose summit the left hand of the Representative of Humanity is raised, the left arm rises, just as above, on this rocky summit, Lucifer falls from the reason that he breaks his wings.

Now one can easily believe that this breaking of the wings would be caused by the power emanating from the arm of the representative of humanity, as if, as it were, this power radiated out to Lucifer and broke his wings. That would be a false conception. And hopefully we will succeed in preventing this false conception from arising through the vivid description. For it is not a matter of something emanating from the fully Christianized human being that breaks Lucifer's wings, but rather that Lucifer experiences something within himself when he senses the proximity of the Christ, which leads to the breaking of his wings. Because he cannot bear the Christ-power, the Christ-impulse, he breaks his wings. It is a process that is not brought about by a battle between Christ and Lucifer, but it is a process within Lucifer himself, something that Lucifer must experience within himself, and there must be no doubt for a moment that it would be impossible for Christ to feel hatred or feelings of struggle against Lucifer. Christ is Christ and only fills the world-being with positive things, does not fight any power in the world! But it must fight against the power that now comes into its proximity as the power of Lucifer. Therefore, the hand raised on the left must not work aggressively, nor must the left half of the face work aggressively with this peculiar gesture. Rather, it is as if it is pointing out that, in the context of the world, Christ has something to do with Lucifer. But it is not a fight. The fight arises only in the soul of Lucifer himself. He breaks his own wings, they are not broken by Christ.

And it is the same with Ahriman, who crouches in a rocky cave under the right side of the thoroughly Christianized human being, under which the earth is driven upwards: the material that is driven into people, but which cannot gain strength and weakens because the power of Christ is near it.

In turn, the power of Christ, flowing through the arm into the hand, must betray nothing of hatred against Ahriman. It is Ahriman himself who weakens and who, through what is going on in his soul, wraps the hidden gold in the veins of the earth around him like fetters, so that he makes fetters out of the gold of the earth and forges them for himself. He is not forged by Christ, he forges himself on by feeling the proximity of Christ.

But this only lays bare, I might say, the primal relationship, which must be recognized so that what the Christ impulse is can really be understood by human souls.

A simple parable can be used to explain this Christ impulse in abstract terms. Imagine a pendulum. The pendulum swings to one side, then falls to the lowest point under its own gravity and swings to the other side, and so on until there is a point on this other side that we call the point of equilibrium. This point would be a dead point, a stationary point, if the pendulum did not now swing to the other side. There is life in the pendulum in that it swings to both sides and has a resting point in the middle.

Since the Mystery of Golgotha, we can imagine the evolution of the Earth in the following way: a pendulum swing to one side, to the Luciferic side, and a pendulum swing to the other side, to the Ahrimanic side. And the point of equilibrium is the Christ in the middle.

That this must first be recognized may be seen from a significant historical fact. We all admire the painting that Michelangelo called 'The Last Judgment'. You know it from reproductions of the original, which is in the Sistine Chapel. We see there, painted with magnificent mastery by Michelangelo, Christ, sending some to hell, triumphantly, to the evil spirits, and sending the others, the good, to heaven. And if we look into the face of this Christ, we see the wrath of the world in him. And if we have taken in spiritual science, if we have truly united in love with our minds everything that we have been able to take in of spiritual science so far, then today, despite our admiration for what Michelangelo created, we say: This is not Christ, because the Christ does not judge! People judge themselves, as Lucifer and Ahriman experience their own processes, not what is brought about by any kind of struggle of the Christ against them.

When Michelangelo created his Christ, the time had not yet come to recognize the Christ in true perfection. I might say that a lack of clarity still prevailed in people. In Christ Himself, something was seen of which we know today that it must be attributed to Lucifer or Ahriman. And we can understand something of it today when people have found something of Lucifer or Ahriman in the Michelangelo Christ, for He is not yet free, as Michelangelo portrays Him, from that of which the Christ is completely free.

If we take a good look at ourselves, we can see that from the perspective that gave birth to Michelangelo, it was impossible to create an image of Christ that corresponded to a true understanding of the mystery of Golgotha, because the one thing that had to be known was still unresolved: the relationship between Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman.

How often has it been emphasized in our circles that it is a false sentiment to point to Lucifer and say, “I want to flee from him,” or to point to Ahriman and say, “I want to flee from him.” That would only mean wanting to make a pact with weakness, would mean advising the pendulum to remain in a state of equilibrium, not to swing to the left or to the right, but always to remain at rest. We cannot escape the world forces that we call Lucifer and Ahriman; we just have to find the right relationship with them. And we find this right relationship when we understand the Christ impulse in the right way, when we see in the Christ Being the guide who can place us in the right relationship with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, which must one day be the powers of the world.

Let us consider everything that Lucifer brings into human life. He brings into it everything that is connected with perception, with the passions, with the life of feeling and of the emotions. Life would be dry, sober, abstract if it were not for the living sensation and feeling that permeate it. If we look at the development of history, we see what passion, often called the noble passion — and rightly so, the noble passion — has achieved in history, what feeling and sensation have achieved. But we are never able to cultivate feelings and sensations at all without entering the sphere of Lucifer. It is only because we never enter this sphere without the guidance of the Christ impulse.

And on the other hand, we see how necessary it has become, especially in more recent times, to understand the world more and more, to develop science, to master the external forces of nature. Ahriman is the master of that which is external science, of that which lives in the external forces of nature. And we would remain foolish and stupid if we wanted to flee the Ahrimanic element. It is not a matter of fleeing the Ahrimanic element, but of entering, under the guidance of the Christ Impulse, into that sphere in which Ahriman rules in the world. And thus not indolently seeking merely the point of rest, but to witness the living movement of the world pendulum, to experience it in such a way that we do not take a step without the guidance of the Christ Impulse. Knowledge of Christ is only possible when the relationship of the Christ impulse to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces of the human soul has become clear. Therefore, the proclamation of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic side of the world is part of what our spiritual scientific movement had to take up, since it was aware that it had to place itself on the ground of the Christ impulse. And that is why you cannot find anything in the non-Christian theosophical teaching about the Ahrimanic and Luciferic elements, because this Luciferic and Ahrimanic element had to arise at the moment when the spiritual scientific movement had to reckon with the Christ impulse in a serious way.

I think it is something extraordinarily important for the human soul to feel how spiritual science has the task of really bringing something new into human consciousness, something so new that we ourselves may measure it against such great creations of humanity as the Michelangelesque Christ of the “Last Judgment”. And what we have in mind through spiritual science must appear to us as the new Pentecostal proclamation in the true sense of the word.

Around Easter time, we saw how one of the great minds of modern times, Goethe, wrestled with the question of how to relate the one he presented as the representative of humanity, Faust, to the Christ impulse. And we have seen how Goethe was not yet able to do this in his youth, but only in his mature years. And so, in many ways, spiritual life, as it has developed up to the present day, appears to us as a struggle, as an unceasing struggle. It truly appears to us in such a way that we must become extremely modest when we see how the most exquisite spirits of humanity have labored to gain insights and perceptions of what the Christ Impulse signifies. We realize how modest we must be in our human striving for this knowledge of the Christ Impulse.

Goethe – as we have seen – was initially concerned with allowing what works around people as a Luciferic and Ahrimanic element to really take a back seat to his representative of humanity, to Faust. And we have seen how Goethe mixed up the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic element so that it is not easy to distinguish them in the figure of Mephistopheles. We have shown in the Easter lectures how the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements are mixed together in the figure of Mephistopheles, because Goethe was not yet able to have a clear insight. Basically, Goethe felt throughout his life the striving within him to come to a clear understanding of the relationship between man and Lucifer and Ahriman. When, at the end of the 18th century, he was asked by Schiller, as a mature man, to continue his “Faust” and saw again what he had written in his youth, he called what he had put together at different times a tragelaph – half animal and half human; that is how his “Faust” appeared to him. And he called his “Faust,” to indicate the difficulty of continuing it now, “a barbaric composition,” so that we have the judgment of Goethe, who must have known more about his “Faust” than those who are not Goethe, that the “Faust” is a tragelaph, “half animal and half human,” that it is a “barbaric composition”! What I wanted to present at Easter, and what can so easily be misunderstood, ultimately leads back to a judgment of Goethe's own. Yes, of course, very clever people see in “Faust” a perfect work of art, see in “Faust” that which cannot be surpassed. It was not Goethe's opinion and must not be our opinion either. Even if we see in Faust a rise to the highest, we must realize that this Faust suffers above all in its inner composition from the fact that in his figure of Mephistopheles, Lucifer and Ahriman are mixed together in a completely inorganic way.

But despite all this intermingling, Goethe felt darkly: Lucifer and Ahriman should have appeared together. Goethe just mixed everything together and called it all “Mephistopheles”, so that in the individual scenes in “Faust” Lucifer is often Lucifer, in other parts Mephistopheles or Ahriman. But this was quite clear to Goethe: something is happening in the human being that is taking place under the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman, of Lucifer and Mephistopheles. Such things happen in people.

Now let us look at the end of the first part of Goethe's “Faust”. How does it end? Faust has incurred the most terrible guilt imaginable, has a human life on his conscience, has betrayed a person, incurred the terrible guilt, towards himself and towards the other person. And the last word of the first part of “Faust” is: “Her zu mir!” (To me!), at the same moment as, only through a voice as if from heaven, resounding: “Heinrich, Heinrich!” (Henry, Henry!) We therefore know from this end of the first part where Faust has come. He has come to Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles has him. There is no doubt about that.

And now we see the beginning of the second part. This beginning of the second part presents us with a charming scene: “Faust, tired, restless, lying on a flowery meadow, seeking sleep.” Ghosts appear. And from what they say, we get the impression: we are dealing with nature, yes really, with nature – we just need to go out at this time of year – and we have this nature. Whitsun nature, for example! Whitsun mood, for example! This Whitsun mood has an effect on Faust. And afterwards he continues on his journey through life.

A scholar made a comment about what Goethe had done, which, it can be said, has something to it, even though the remark is philistine and pedantic. The scholar said: When you have incurred a grave guilt, as Faust did towards Gretchen, then go to a charming region, to a flowery meadow, perhaps go on a mountain expedition, and your soul will be cured and capable of further deeds. One could say that, realistically Ahrimanically conceived, this saying of the scholar Rieger has much to be said for it. For it should actually be unbearable for all people who, in the usual sense of today, have a purely materialistic world view, to let the second part of “Faust” have an effect on them, after the great, powerful guilt that Faust has taken upon himself is characterized in the first part. But unfortunately, when it comes to the human and personal, we do not take humanity's greatest work of literature – for that is “Faust”, despite being a barbaric composition and a tragicomedy in its first part – we do not take it literally enough. If we took it literally enough, we would know that the line “Her zu mir!” (“To me!”) is true... Mephistopheles has Faust. As he has him, Faust is now lying on a flowery meadow, restlessly seeking sleep. We must not think of Faust as being separate from the infernal powers at the beginning of the second part. But Goethe was striving for true spiritual knowledge. How close Goethe was to spiritual knowledge may be seen from a passage in a letter that Goethe once wrote to his friend, the musician Zelter. It is a significant passage! Goethe writes: “Consider that with every breath an etheric Lethestrom permeates our entire being, so that we remember the joy only moderately, the suffering hardly.” With every breath, our inner being is indeed permeated by an etheric life stream, but that means nothing other than: Goethe knew very well about the etheric body that humans have. Of course, in his time he only brought this up in his circle of friends.

How Goethe stood by the entire human being, how he, looking at this human being, said to himself: This human being can become guilty, because something dwells in him that is under Mephistophelian influence, that belongs to Mephistopheles belongs. As Goethe looked at this human being, who belongs to this sphere, it was clear to him at the same time that something lives in human nature that can never fall prey to this influence, that can be protected from the Ahrimanic-Luciferic influence. And it is this element in Faust that can be protected from the influence of Ahriman and Lucifer that we are dealing with at the beginning of the second part. Faust, who was capable of guilt, who allowed himself to be drawn by Mephistopheles into the most trivial, most banal pleasures of life, who then tempted Gretchen, has become guilty. In our spiritual language we would say: This part of Faust must wait until the next incarnation.

But there is something in the nature of man that is his higher self, that remains in relationship to the spiritual powers of the world. Therefore, the spiritual powers of the world confront this eternal in Faust. We must not imagine the Faust that we see at the beginning of the second part in the realistic sense as Faust who has become so and so much older, but he is really only the representative of the higher self in Faust. He still wears the same form. But this form is the representative of something that could not have been guilty in Faust. This, which could not have been guilty in Faust, now enters into a relationship with the servants of the Earth Spirit.

From his youth, Goethe longed to gain an insight into the nature of human guilt, of evil in the world, and yet to know that something hovered over all that must have a balancing effect on guilt and evil. And so Goethe ventured, since he had to surrender, so to speak, Faust's one nature to Mephisto – “Come to me!” And we must be quite clear about this: now, at the beginning of the second part, it is not the same Faust that speaks as we know from the first part, but a different, a second nature that only externally bears Faust's form and that can enter into that which, as a spiritual being, permeates the external world. But what has no immediate connection with Faust's outer physical body must find its way into it. For the physical body naturally retains, as long as we remain in the same incarnation, all the signs of the guilt into which we have fallen. Only that in us which frees itself from the physical body can truly connect with what the higher self is. And so Faust must undergo this transformation, which we can call the transformation of guilt into higher knowledge.

He will carry what he bears as guilt into his next incarnation. For this incarnation, he bears the guilt as the source of a higher knowledge that opens up to him, a more precise knowledge of life. And so, despite bearing the most monstrous guilt on his soul, the possibility opens up for Faust that his higher self will be brought into connection with what pervades, lives through and interweaves the world as spiritual.

Faust's higher self comes into contact with a spirit of the earth aura. Goethe wanted to show, so to speak, that what is highest in man could not be grasped by Mephistopheles, we would say: Lucifer-Ahriman, — that must have been preserved, that must be able to enter into other spheres. And so Goethe is quite sincere when he says that this higher self in Faust now enters into a relationship with what the elemental world contains as spiritual beings.

We shall see later how this is connected with what has already been said here in the Easter lectures. But now let us consider how these spiritual beings, which are under the guidance of the air spirit, for such is Ariel, how these spirits, which we can thus call air spirits, are connected with the outer processes of nature, but how they reveal themselves as that which is another spiritual world, in contrast to the self that is not exposed to the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman in the supermundane nature:

When the blossoms of spring rain
Over all, floating sinks,
When the fields of green blessing
All earth-borns flashes,

— so when nature sprouts and sprouts in the spring-whitsun time, then the elemental spirits come out. They are small for the external material, they are great as spirits, for they are exalted above that which in the human heart can fall prey to good or evil.

Small elf spirit size
Hasten where it can help;
Whether it be holy or evil...

— this is left to the next incarnation, it is not the concern of these spirits —

Whether he is holy or evil,
The man of sorrows laments...

The spirits are dealing with his higher self, which is preserved from what has to play out in karma or incarnation. But these spirits can only work in their own element, in which the human being is with his essence when he has left the outer bodily shells as a spiritual soul. And now Goethe explains what these elves, with their greatness as spirits, have to achieve:

You who hover around this head in airy circles,
Show yourselves here in a noble elfin way,
Calm the grim bouquet of your hearts;
Remove the glowing, bitter arrows of reproach,
His innermost being cleansed of the horror he has experienced.

This cannot happen to Faust, who is exposed to Ahriman-Lucifer. This purification is called: Bring out Faust's higher self, present it purely. - And now something that proceeds like an initiation with Faust, who is outside of his body, is taken seriously:

There are four pauses in the night,

— from six o'clock in the evening until six o'clock in the morning the elves fulfill their duty by connecting the soul from falling asleep to waking up with what spiritually permeates and interweaves earthly existence.

Now without delay, she fills it kindly.

— the four pauses that the soul experiences from falling asleep to waking up.

First sinks his head upon the cool pillow,
Then bathes him in the dew from Lethes flood;
Joints soon are the cramp-frozen limbs,
When he strengthened towards the day rests;

- when he has taken in what the spirit that permeates the world has to offer, when this spirit has entered into that which is preserved in Faust's being as a higher self.

The elves' most beautiful duty perform,
Give him back to the holy light.

What happens externally between falling asleep and waking up are real, actual processes, similar to an initiation. And now we see what happens in each of the three hours from six to nine, from nine to twelve, from twelve to three and from three to six. First, there is the break from six to nine:

When the air is gently warmed
Around the green-bordered square,
Sweet scents, veiled in mist
Dawn descends;
She softly whispers sweet peace,
Lulls the heart to child-like calm,
And to the eyes of this weary one,
Locks the day's gate shut!

The soul is gone, separated from the body.

The second part:

Night has already fallen,
Star joins star in holy union;
Great lights, little sparks
Glitter near and shine afar;
Glitter here in the lake, reflecting,
Shine above the clear night,
Sealing the deepest rest,
The moon's full splendor reigns.

The harmony and wisdom of the spheres are absorbed by the great lights, the small sparks. And the secrets of the moon, all that we absorb in spiritual science from the secrets of the spheres, is sunk into Faust's higher self.

The third part of sleeping:

The hours have already faded away,
Pain and joy have vanished away;
Feel it first! You will recover;
Trust the new day's view.
Valleys green, hills swell,
Bushes to shadowy rest;
And in swaying silver waves
The seed of the harvest undulates.

Inwardly connecting with the existence of nature; we have also spoken of this before. Read the last Hague cycle, how the human soul, when it rises from the body, becomes one with the surging and weaving of external existence. But it also means the becoming in the soul of Faust:

And in surging silver waves
The seed - the soul of Faust - surges towards the harvest.

And do you remember how I said that during sleep, man desires to re-enter the body? That is the last part of the night.

Desire to fulfill desires.
Look at the brightness there!

The sun can already be sensed.

You are gently embraced,
Sleep is a shell, throw it away!

An important sentence! A great poet does not write empty phrases! What does it mean: Sleep is a shell, throw it away!? — For someone who sleeps through an ordinary sleep, sleep is not a shell; for someone for whom this time from falling asleep to waking up becomes an absorption for the secrets of the world, sleep is a shell.

Do not delay to take heart,
When the crowd hesitantly roams;
Everything can be achieved by the noble,
Who understands and quickly seizes.

And now the tremendous roar that announces the approach of the sun, reminding us of what Goethe said in the “Prologue in Heaven” in the first part of “Faust” about this sounding of the sun:

The sun sounds in the old way
In brotherly spheres of singing,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderclap.
Its sight gives strength to the angels,
When no one can fathom it;
Its incomprehensibly high works
Are glorious, as on the first day.

When the sun comes up and the light pours over the physical plane, the soul, when it is outside the body, hears this approach of the sun as music of the spheres, as a special element in the music of the spheres. Spirits hear it naturally. Man does not hear it because he must hear through his physical body. But that is incorporated in the physical plane, and when the sun is in the physical plane, that is the time when man can be awake. Therefore spirits must withdraw. What Ariel, the spirit of the air, now says to his servants, that is suggestive of the approach of the music of the spheres. The spirits can hear it. He who is outside of his body can hear it. Faust can still hear it, this rising of the music of the spheres. Then he returns to his body. Then Ariel has the task of disappearing. Ariel instructs his servants what they have to do: they have to disappear from the physical plane. Because when the sun, which they can only find as a sounding sun, strikes them with its light, they go deaf from it. They go deaf from the light, while they can easily bear the sounding sun, in whose tones they themselves live.

Hark! Hear the storm of the hours!
The new day is already born
for the ears of the spirit.
The gates of rock creak and clatter,
Phoebus' wheels roll and clatter;
What a roar brings the light!
It trumpets, it trompets,
The eye blinks and the ear is amazed,
Unheard-of things cannot be heard.
Slip to the flower corollas,
Deeper, deeper, to dwell in silence,
In the rocks, under the foliage;
If it strikes you, then you are deaf.

And now the elves disappear. Faust returns to his body. But Faust remains unconscious of his guilt. He does not stand before us. He has descended deep into Faust's subconscious and remains there until the next incarnation. Faust, who has just experienced being with the whole spiritual cosmos, must now realize how what he has experienced relates to the four breaks of sleep-life, to how he now perceives the world. He now lives as a higher self in his body.

A person who, after sleeping one night and not having everything within himself that Faust has within himself, a person who then, after waking up in the morning, would say: You, Earth, were also constant this night – would be a fool, because no one expects anything other than that the Earth was also constant this night. But indeed, if one has gone through what Faust experienced as an initiation with the spirits of the earth, then one has experienced something through which one could indeed believe that the whole earth had been transformed. Then it is justified to say that one has become a new person, or rather, that the new person has been awakened in one: “You, Earth, were also constant this night - despite what I have experienced. Then the world appears completely new, because it is indeed given to a new person.

Life's pulses beat freshly alive,
Gently welcoming ethereal dawn;
You, Earth, were also constant this night
And breathe newly refreshed at my feet,
You are already beginning to surround me with joy,
You stir and move a strong resolve,
To strive for the highest existence forever. —

Even now, when the mind has freed itself from what must be stored for the next incarnation!

In the twilight the world is already revealed,
The forest resounds with a thousand-voiced life,
Valley after valley a strip of mist has poured out;
But heavenly clarity descends into the depths,
And twigs and branches, freshly refreshed, have sprung
from the fragrant abyss where they slept submerged.
And color after color is released from the ground,
where flowers and leaves drip with dew,
A paradise is all around me.

This is what a person sees when he, I am not saying, undergoes the initiation, but when he lives the initiation. And he has reason to see the world anew. He would not utter the words he now speaks if only the person who had become guilty and who would live under the impression of this guilt in this incarnation were in him.

Look up! The mountain peaks
already announce the most solemn hour;
They may enjoy the eternal light early,
Which later turns down to us.
Now to the green meadows of the alp
new splendor and clarity is bestowed,
And step by step it has succeeded; –
She steps forward! – namely, the sun – and unfortunately already blinded,
I turn away, pierced through by eye pain.

The higher self is now unable to see what the senses were able to see, the sun. Nevertheless, Faust has learned so much that the sun is now something essentially different for him. And now something stirs within him that is connected with human knowledge:

So it is when a yearning hope
The highest wish,
Finds wings spread open at the gates of fulfillment.

What fulfillment gates? Only those that have become close to him during his sleep. But even the ordinary world now appears to him as if it were breaking like a blaze of flames from eternal reasons:

But now from those eternal depths
A blaze of fire breaks out, we stand amazed;
We wanted to light the torch of life,
A sea of fire embraces us, what a fire!
Is it love? Is it hate?...

We know this from the past, but what we are experiencing now is more than love and hate.

Is it love? Is it hate? The feelings that burn within us,
Alternating between pain and joy,
So that we look down at the earth again,
To hide ourselves in the most youthful veil.

He cannot look at the sun now; he looks at the waterfall, in which the sun is reflected, and which shows him the colors of the rainbow in an arc. He turns away from the sun. He becomes a world observer, just as this world shines in as a reflection of spiritual life – this world of which one can say: All that is transitory is only a parable of the eternal.

So let the sun remain behind me!

He has looked at it before. Now he turns to the waterfall.

The waterfall, breaking through the rock,
I look at it with growing delight.
From fall to fall it now rolls in a thousand,
Then again in a thousand streams,
Foam rushing high into the air.
But how wonderful it is to benefit from this storm,
The colorful arch of changing duration arches...

- which reflects in seven colors what is in unity in the sun.

Sometimes drawn in, sometimes dissolving into thin air,
spreading cool, fragrant showers around.
It reflects human endeavor.
Contemplate it, and you understand more precisely:
We have life in its colored reflection.

We have life in its colored reflection! – This is how far Faust has come after this night: he no longer wants to plunge into life as Faust did in the first part, when he was thrown into guilt and evil, but instead turns to its colored reflection. It is the same colored reflection that we call spiritual science, which appears to him only as a colored reflection, and through which we gradually ascend to experience reality.

What now follows, the second part, is the colored reflection of life at first. It is nonsense to understand this second part merely realistically. We have Faust, who, with his higher self, contemplates life through the physical body in its colorful reflection; he now carries this physical body through life as something he is preserving, so that everything in him can develop that, as his higher self, preserves him from that which comes in later incarnations.

It was quite difficult for Goethe to continue his “Faust” after Mephistopheles' word had been spoken: “Come to me!” But we see how Goethe strives to penetrate the secrets that we today recognize as the secrets of spiritual science. How he approaches them. And then follow this second part, how Mephistopheles really has Faust at first, how Mephistopheles is everywhere in what happens at the “imperial court” and so on. And how, through the after-effects of the initiation living in him, Faust gradually breaks away from Mephistopheles in the course of the action of the second part. But these are further secrets of the second part. Goethe himself said that he had mysteriously included much in this second part! — People have not taken the word seriously enough. Through spiritual science, they will now gradually learn to take such words more and more seriously.

But there is one thing you will have gathered from today's reflections, and that is that Goethe, in his “Faust”, strives to go further in this respect than in the first part, to express something in his “Faust” of the mood that is really symbolically hinted at here in the course of the seasons.

When Pentecost approaches, and when the spirits of the elemental world draw near to men in such wise that it may be said of them:

When the blossoms' spring rain
Over all, floating sinks,
When the fields' green blessing
All earthly born,
Little elves, size of a ghost,
Hurry, where they can help,
Whether holy or evil,
The unfortunate man laments them.

Pentecostal mood! Outpouring of the spirit in the next sentences, which the choir speaks, in the four times of sleep from falling asleep to waking up!

Thus we also show through this Faust from a certain point of view the necessity that humanity be handed down little by little what spiritual science wants to proclaim to it as a new Pentecost message. Faust is so well suited to show us how complicated that is, which exists down there at the bottom of human nature. It lives down there in human nature, which is constantly exposed to the Ahrimanic-Luciferic powers of the world, and there lives that which man can find when he places himself in the guidance of the Christ impulse.

Why do we speak of a threshold? Why do we speak of a guardian of the threshold? We speak of it because, as if by a grace of the wisdom-filled steering of the world, what struggles and rumbles and wages war in our everyday lives was initially withdrawn from the human soul, down there on the deep underground of the human soul. It is as if there were a surface, and below it rumbles and fights and wages war in our everyday life. And even what we live through in our everyday life is a continuous victory. Only it must be fought for again and again. And in the future it will only be fought for again if people will know that which has unconsciously guided them up to now, a benevolent, wisdom-filled world guidance. In the depths of the soul we must really find that which is not known in ordinary everyday life, but which the spiritual can experience. In those human depths where the human being is connected with those powers of the world that transcend good and evil with their spiritual magnitude.

I would like to express this with a Whitsun saying, in which I have combined how man, at the bottom of his soul, has elemental powers that oppose each other, and how that which lives in his consciousness is victory over that which wages war down there in the depths of his soul.

We will speak tomorrow, or perhaps the day after tomorrow, about how these things relate to the context of human life. Today, however, I would like to conclude with this Whitsun saying, which basically expresses what always lives as the innermost nerve in our spiritual science, and to which we have also referred today:

Where sense knowledge ends,
There stands the gate,
Which reveals the realities of life
To the soul's existence;
The soul creates the key,
When she grows strong within herself
In the struggle that world powers
on their own ground
with human forces,
When they banish through themselves
the sleep that envelops the powers of knowledge
at the boundaries of their senses
with a spiritual night.

When we seek the answer to the question to which we referred in the last lecture as to how human beings may establish a relationship with the Christ today, the objection is made by many that a number of human beings already have a relationship with Him. I have spoken frequently about this objection, and we know that it is invalid. On more careful consideration, it turns out to be a thoroughly egoistic objection that can be made only by a person who has the following view: “I have a faith that makes me happy; anything else is no concern of mine.” But in general, humanity's relation to the Christ-Being is not satisfactory; that is easily recognizable from the events of our times and little needs to be added. The necessary answer to this objection can be given by everyone by saying that a basic element in the confession of Christ must be the truth that He died and rose for all men—for all men alike—and that, when man turns against man for the sake of external possessions, it can never be done in His name. It is possible for a person to turn away from this general human destiny to apply himself solely in egoistic fashion to his own creed. Certainly, but then no attenion is paid to the fact that the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha is something that primarily concerns human society. We will now have to mention something that may draw our attention to what is essential in the path that leads to Christ, since it is obvious that each soul must find the way to Him for himself with those means that are suitable for the present time.

When we seek to understand in a more profound sense what the Christ Being signifies for the earth, we must first acquaint ourselves with the truth of an essential element in the Mystery of Golgotha; that is, it actually occurred only once at a definite point in space and time. When we fix this in our minds, we shall discover a contradiction of a view that is generally held, even by us; we should not simply seek to remove it by argumentation since it is justifiable and must first be recognized if we desire to remove it for our own souls. You see, provided the Mystery of Golgotha is an inner and genuine truth, it cannot represent anything but the meaning of the evolution of the earth. But, as we know, everything that occurs in time and space belongs to the realm of maya, the great illusion; that is, it does not belong to the real and eternal, the essential nature of things. Thus we face the highly significant contradiction that the Mystery of Golgotha belongs to maya, the great illusion, and we must place this contradiction before our souls in its full validity.

Now, since this Mystery of Golgotha occurred during the time of the earthly evolution of humanity, let us first consider this evolution. We know, of course, that what we have to deal with is that the human being has come over from earlier worlds and that at a definite point of time, as we have set forth in my book, An Outline of Occult Science, he was subjected to what may be called a luciferic temptation, a seduction. We have often considered this luciferic seduction in the sense in which spiritual scientific investigation shows it, and we know it was expressed in a magnificent image at the beginning of the Old Testament. In the so-called “Fall of Man,” the image of Lucifer as a serpent in Paradise is one of the mightiest representations of religious documents.

When we survey the time through which humanity passed from the luciferic temptation to the Mystery of Golgotha, we find it to be a time in which human beings gradually descended from a primeval, atavistic clairvoyant, revelation that was brought over from earlier planetary stages in which the spiritual worlds had a real existence before their souls. During the centuries preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, therefore, they were no longer able to look up to the spiritual world as they had done before, but they now possessed only echoes of the ancient knowledge of the spiritual world.

Taking now a relatively short period of earthly time since we cannot go all the way back to the luciferic temptation, let us review the successive descending stages of human evolution down to the Mystery of Golgotha. If we go back far enough, we discover that what men possessed at an earlier time as an atavistic wisdom, as a real perception of the spiritual world, now echoed in the world conceptions of the religions as reverence for a more or less significant, but highly regarded, ancestor. That is to say, in various regions of the earth we find religious cults that we may call ancestral cults. Such cults in which men look up with reverence to an ancestor still survive among those who have remained at a more or less early stage of evolution. What is the reason for this adoration? What is the reality behind this looking up to an ancestor in ancient times? In those most ancient times to which history can still look back, in that hoary antiquity, we have a certain epoch in which ancestral cults are customary (cf. chart on p. 194).

Such ancestral cults were not based on fact, as is supposed by superficial contemporary science, that those belonging to them imagined they had to look up to a certain ancestor, but the nature of the most ancient ancestral cults was such that men had a direct vision of their ancestors at a certain time in their lives. At these times, in a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping such as was universal in the earlier stages of human evolution, a person who looked up to an ancestral god really attained a condition of union with what he reverenced as his ancestor. The ancestor appeared to him not merely in a dream, but in a dream-like image that signified something real to him, and those individuals to whom the same ancestor appeared belonged together in a single ancestral cult. What these individuals beheld in spirit was, to be sure, a human form elevated to a lofty level, but something entirely different was concealed behind it. If we wish to know what was really concealed behind this spirit form, we must realize that the ancestor had once died and had left the earth as a highly regarded personality who had wrought much good for a human community. He had passed through the portal of death and when these individuals looked up to him, he was on the way between death and a new birth. As these human beings looked up to him, what was it they saw of him?

We know, of course, that when a human being passes through the portal of death, he remains for a short time in his etheric body before it is cast off. But the casting off of this body signifies that it passes over into the spiritual worlds, into the etheric world. The human being continues to develop in his ego and his astral body; the etheric body passes over into the etheric world. Since this man had performed something lasting on earth, the memory of his etheric body continued for a long time. It is this etheric body of the ancestor that was beheld in the ancient atavistic, dream-like clairvoyance and people revered what was revealed to them through it. But during the period between death and a new birth, this etheric body comes into contact with the spirits of the higher hierarchies; most particularly with those belonging to the hierarchy of the archai, the spirits of time. Since this particular ancestor was a significant personality for human evolution, he thus established a union with the time spirit who was bringing human evolution one step forward.

What made itself known through this ghost, as we may call it, of the ancestor was, in reality, one of the time spirits; so worship within the most ancient religions was really directed to the time spirit. Wherever we go back into those times that we may look upon as the hoary antiquity of history, we find that human beings worshipped the etheric bodies of their forefathers to cause the time spirits to reveal themselves. That is to say, as we go back to the ancestral cults, what we find is the worship of the time spirits, the archai.

Men then descended further and began to worship those gods who are known to us from the various mythologies, and whom we call archangels; even Zeus in Greek mythology possessed archangelic manifestations. In the most ancient times people looked up to the time spirits; later, they looked up to those spirits who are not time spirits but are of equal value with the spirits who control the guidance of different peoples, the archangels. Thus we may say that polytheism, when human beings worshipped archangels, follows after ancestral worship.

Then human beings descend still further to the period in which the ego is gradually to be born in the individual. We now find that the most advanced nations pass over to monotheism at a relatively early period—the Egyptians, for example, even in the second millennium before Christ, the people of the Near East later. That is, they begin to worship angels, every person his or her own angel, rather than an archangel. They descend from the higher polytheism to the lower monotheism. After what has previously been presented to you, you will not consider what I am about to say as something strange. You will see that people must cure themselves of the pride that permeates the entire field of religious studies, which deems itself justified to consider monotheism as a religion superior to polytheism. By no means is it so, but the relationship of the two is just as has been described.

Why, then, could the ancient peoples still worship archai, archangels, and angels? They could do so because they still preserved a remnant or echo of the atavistic clairvoyant capacity. For this reason they were able to lift themselves up to what is superhuman; they could, in a certain sense, rise above the human and elevate themselves to the superhuman. In the ancient mysteries, this process of elevating oneself to the superhuman was especially cultivated. Human beings were developed so they could unfold within themselves what extended beyond the human, whereby the human soul lifted itself into the realm of spirituality. But then came the time when the human ego, as it lives here between birth and death, was born for human beings. This was the period coinciding with the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not occurred, people would have degenerated; they would have descended from worshipping angels to worshipping the next subordinate hierarchy, man himself. When we recall how the Roman Caesars had themselves worshipped as gods, how they really were “gods” to the people, we shall know that at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha human beings had degenerated so far that they now no longer prayed to archai, archangels, or angels, but to man. In order to save men from praying to earthly human beings, it was necessary for the Divine Man to appear.

The entrance of the Divine Man into history signified an important new way to relate oneself to religious life. Where had the worship of angels, archangels, archai, and even that of man in the form of the Roman Caesars, been found? In man himself; no one worshipped the Caesars through the Caesars, but through the worshipper himself, obviously; this had arisen from man; it came from the human soul. It was necessary that the Christ should appear as historic fact in the evolution of humanity; it was necessary that He should be seen, like the phenomena of nature, from without. He had to come into touch with human beings in an entirely different way from that of the gods of the ancient religions—in an entirely different way. “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” This is an important principle in Christianity because it signifies that, whereas it is possible through mere individual mysticism to find angels, archangels, even archai, it is not possible by this individual mysticism to find the Christ. Those who wish to practice individual mysticism, as this is often described even among theosophists, generally reach only the individual angel. They simply internalize this angel more, even making him often somewhat more egoistic than other persons make their gods. The Christ is found in different ways, not through the mere development of one's inner being, but when we are most of all aware that the Christ belongs to the community of human beings, to the whole of human community.

We now come to a most important differentiation, which can be taken into the human mind, we must admit, only with great difficulty. It is imperative, however, that we force ourselves to its level. When we face another human being in life, it is in maya that we, as human beings, face each other. Just as we have before us only the maya of natural phenomena, so are we likewise confronted only with the maya of the other human being. It is within maya that this human being stands before our external senses and all that is connected with the external world of the senses; then he stands before us as belonging to his family, his nation, his time. If we should survey him completely, we should see behind him the angel, the archangel, the archai, but they all express themselves in what the person is. It is because the archangel and the archai stand behind the observer and the human being observed, the latter is in a sense a member of certain human groups. In other words, the observed person in this way stands within heredity and hereditary relationships. Only our shortness of vision—understandable because we are human—prevents us from consciously judging a human being before us according to these essential connections; unconsciously we always do this. Unconsciously we face one another within this differentiation, which must inevitably be brought into humanity by these three hierarchies. But the Christ demands something more, something different. He demands in reality that when you face someone, you shall feel that what such a human being appears to you to be in the external world is not the entire and complete human being. When you face a human being, you should perceive his or her real being as coming not only from archai, archangels and angels, but from higher spirits no longer belonging to the earthly or even planetary evolution because this begins with the archai, the higher heavenly spirits, as you know from An Outline of Occult Science. You must see that with the human being something enters into maya that is supramundane.

To understand fully what I have just expressed, you must not allow it to remain a mere concept but carry it over completely into your feelings. It is necessary to understand clearly that in every human being something supramundane in his nature comes to meet us, something not to be understood by earthly human means. Then everyone will experience that sensitive reverence in the presence of all that is human. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, man had gradually lost this superhuman element and had descended all the way to being human. The superhuman element had been lost because—listen carefully—when a human being such as a Roman Caesar comes to be worshipped as a god, he loses his humanity and sinks to the level of the subhuman. He ceases to be a human being if he permits himself to be worshipped as something superhuman in social life. Man was threatened, therefore, with the loss of his humanity and it was restored to him through the appearance of Christ on earth. Read the cycle of lectures, From Jesus to Christ,¹¹⁸ in which I spoke on this question, telling you that something is really imparted to every individual human being through the fact that Christ was on earth.

Thus, the coming of the Christ has brought it about that we recognize in every earthly human being, even if he is a sinner or a publican, the Christ who is behind him. The Christ sat down with sinners so that we shall recognize in every earthly human being the truth of the statement, “What thou dost to the least of My brethren, thou has done unto Me.”¹¹⁹ As I have said, this concept must be transferred entirely into our feeling nature; only then shall we attain to its full truth. Then one also sees all concepts and ideas that separate men from one another fall away, and something belonging to all men in common spreads as an aura over the entire earth when we vow that we shall carry our search, not merely to the archai, but upward to what stands above them whenever we are in the presence of a human being.

If we look back again to the ancient mysteries, we find that in them the human being endeavored to transcend his own being in order to have his soul coalesce with the spiritual world. But through the occurrence of the luciferic temptation this is only partially possible. In this ascent the possibility is lost to ascend still further. It is not possible to bear anything more up into the higher world. Why is this so? The answer to this question will come to us if we fix our attention on the profounder meaning of the luciferic temptation. What does Lucifer truly purpose for humanity? We have often emphasized this. Humanity lives in maya, something that is not the real world but only a mirror of it. What, then, is Lucifer's intention? In this mirror the human being can lift himself up a few stages as far as to the archai, but he must then be taken over by Lucifer if he desires to rise still higher into the spiritual. In a certain sense, he must then take Lucifer as his guide; Lucifer, who constitutes the light that guides him further. If the luciferic evolution had continued, if Christ had not entered into human evolution, the following would have come about after the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha ought to have taken place: human beings within the mysteries would have developed to such an extent that the archai would have been openly visible to them. Then they would have entered into the luciferic world. In that case, however, all that the higher gods such as the exusiai implanted into earthly evolution in the form of the human element would have remained on earth. Man would have spiritualized himself in an entirely ascetic way and would have entered into the spiritual luciferic world in this ascetic spiritualization, leaving behind the corporeal. Human souls would have found their salvation, but the earth would have remained purposeless. The bodies of human beings would never have been able to render the service to the souls that they really ought to render. To prevent this constitutes the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must now look back once more to the evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha if we wish to understand this matter completely. From the very beginning of the evolution of the earth, it was Lucifer's intention to lead men away from the earth into his spiritual kingdom. He had no interest in the rest of earthly evolution but wanted only to possess what the higher gods had initiated in connection with man. He wished to lead this away in the form of the soul from the earthly evolution after it had remained for a time in the earthly form that comes from the exusiai, the spirits of form. In other words, he wished to lead the souls away and leave the earth to its fate. Why is it, then, that human beings did not follow this endeavor of Lucifer, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to lead them into a luminous world? Why didn't they? You may understand the reasons from many suggestions I have given here, even in these very lectures. They did not follow Lucifer because something was introduced into the evolution of the earth by the higher gods that prevented them from becoming light enough to do so.

As I have shown you, what is called the eighth sphere was introduced into earthly evolution in ancient times. As one of its aspects, the eighth sphere consists of man's acquiring such a preference for and attachment to his lower nature that Lucifer is not able to remove the higher nature from it. Every time Lucifer endeavored to spiritualize human beings, they were too strongly habituated to the flesh to follow him. If they had not been possessed by this cleaving to the flesh, to the physical nature, they would have followed Lucifer. This is one of the great mysteries of cosmic existence, that a divine element was actually implanted in human nature so that it might have, as it were, a greater heaviness than it would have possessed if this divine and necessary element had not been implanted in it. If it had not been implanted, human souls would have obeyed Lucifer. When we go back into ancient times, we find everywhere that the religions lay emphasis on the necessity of human beings reverencing what is earthly, what is an earthly connection living in flesh and blood so that they may be heavy enough not to be led out into the universe. Since all things having a relationship to both the human and the cosmic require not only an earthly, but also a cosmic arrangement, what you find described in my Occult Science occurred. At a certain time, as you know, not only was the earth formed, revolving in its orbit around the sun, but it was provided with the moon as its satellite.

What does it mean that the earth has a moon as its satellite? It means nothing more than that it acquired a force through which it can attract and hold the moon nearby. Should the earth not possess this power to hold the moon, then the spiritual correlative of this force would not be able to chain man to his lower nature because this force, from the spiritual point of view, is the same as that with which the earth attracts the moon. It may be said, then, that the moon is placed in the universe as an opponent of Lucifer in order to hinder him. I have already alluded to this mystery¹²⁰ and pointed out that in the period of materialism of the nineteenth century, this truth has been exactly reversed in Sinnet's book, Esoteric Buddhism.¹²¹ There the moon is described as something actually hostile to man. The truth is that it is not hostile to him but prevents him from falling victim to the temptation of Lucifer; it acts as the cosmic correlative of what constitutes the attachment of the human being to his lower nature. Rather than tearing the souls out of the lower nature and thereby preventing its concomitant spiritualization, a subconscious process was required. Had the arrangement been conscious, man would have followed the urges of his lower nature in full consciousness and would have sunk to the animal level. There had to be something in the lower nature of which man was not conscious and which he did not follow except as a human being on earth would follow what flowed into his lower nature as a divine element. Especially the God of the Old Testament, the Jahve God, was concerned that the human being should remain on earth. Jahve is connected in this mysterious way with the moon, as you will find explained also in Occult Science. From this statement you can estimate how materialistic it was to designate the moon as the eighth sphere, whereas it really is the force itself, the sphere, that attracts the moon. In her misguided ways, Blavatsky developed special malice in her Secret Doctrine by maligning the Jahve God as a mere moon god. She wanted to replace him with Lucifer whom she undertook to represent as the friend of the spirit. To be sure, Lucifer is just that, but only in the particular sense I have explained. Blavatsky tried to represent the Jahve God as the god of the mere lower nature, whereas what really constituted an opposition to Lucifer was implanted in the lower nature.

You see how dangerous it is to set up truths that may be perverted to their opposite. Blavatsky was misled by certain beings who had an interest in guiding her into putting Lucifer in the place of Christ, and this was to be achieved by introducing precisely the opposite of the truth of the eighth sphere and by maligning the Jahve God, representing him merely as the god of the lower nature. Thus did those cosmic powers who desired to advance materialism work even through what was called “theosophy.” Materialism would obviously have sunk to its worst abyss if men had come to believe that the moon was really the eighth sphere in the sense indicated by Sinnet or Blavatsky, and that Christianity must be fought in every way.

Now, placing the opponent of Lucifer in the lower nature of man was only possible so long as the human being had not developed his ego in the manner in which this took place at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. The degree to which this ego was subdued in ancient times is greatly underestimated. It was subdued and appeared only during the centuries just prior to the Mystery of Golgotha. Then it no longer sufficed merely to place in the subconscious, or unconscious, nature what strove against Lucifer. Something had to come that the human being could take up into his consciousness; this is the Christ, who follows the Jahve God in evolution. It was necessary that the Christ should come so that through an avowal of Him the human being might consciously oppose mere spiritualization as this was striven for on the part of Lucifer. Christ descended for all human beings and only through our feeling related to everyone else do we belong to the earth. The deeper understanding of the Christ derives from our connection with all human beings and from our effort to attain a full and complete connection with them.

You see, as long as men lived without the fully developed ego before the Mystery of Golgotha, they passed through the portal of death into the spiritual world and entered into relationship with archai, archangels and angels. But since they had not yet developed the complete ego here on earth, even after they had passed through the portal of death they did not need to develop a connection with the higher spiritual beings consciously. This was regulated through the atavistic powers that lay within them. But since the Mystery of Golgotha—not by reason of it but since that time—everything has become quite different. Let us look at ourselves and see how things have changed.

A human being passes through the portal of death as do others or perhaps one person passes through the portal of death and others remain here on earth. By virtue of his or her passing through the portal of death, an individual continues to be a human being and if we desire to keep our connection with such an individual, our relationship to him or her cannot change. Let us now bear in mind, however, that at the present time, since we live after the Mystery of Golgotha, the human being in ascending into the spiritual worlds passes through the hierarchies of the angels, archangels, and archai. Since he is now within the period in which his ego has developed here on earth, he possesses a consciousness also for the other hierarchies that are above them. That is to say, he develops consciously the forces poured into him from beings that are even higher than the archai. What does this signify? Let us take a concrete case and assume that through death a person loses one who is dearly beloved. The one who has passed through the portal of death maintains for many years, of course, the connection with certain inclinations and tendencies that he had during his lifetime. However, since he developed his ego here in his lifetime as a human being, something in him begins consciously to work on the perspective of his next incarnation immediately after he has passed through the portal of death. This occurs in a decisive way in what I have called in the¹²² the midnight of existence; it appears to some extent in human consciousness immediately after death. When a person is in this state, however, there lives in him what already draws him away from what he was born into in his last life. Let us suppose that in his last life he belonged to a certain nation. The person who has remained behind continues to belong to this nation in his physical body, but a force belonging to an entirely different nation takes possession of the one who has died. How can the bond between the two continue beyond death undiminished in strength? Only when the one who remains here has an understanding for what extends above the angels, archangels and archai; that is, above what one may develop here through one's inclination toward relationships to human groups. If someone remains behind as a member of a certain nation and loses a friend through death who is already preparing to be a member of a different nation, the bond of love with the dead person cannot remain undisturbed. Only through the fact that both confess Christ, that they understand Christ in what extends above all differentiations of men can this bond be supramundane. What did John the Baptist say when Christ Jesus came to him to be baptized? “Behold, the Lamb of God, who beareth the sins of the world.” The full significance of these words might make us grow pale were we to take it in its full weight.

It may be asked why Christ has been victorious and not Mithras. During the time when Christianity was spreading from the East toward the West, the Mithraic cult expanded along the Danube all the way to France and Spain in Western Europe. The cult of Christ, however, has been victorious over the Mithraic cult. Why? Because the cult of Mithras had developed from extending above angels, archangels, and archai, and through this upward extention wished to attain to the Light-giver and Ruler of the World. What is the Christ in contrast to this? The Christ is He who took upon Himself for the evolution of the earth all that is bound up with angels, archangels, and archai; that is, all that chains man to the earth. He bears the sins of the world, those sins that have come into the world through human differentiation. He is a being in whose presence we must say, “I belong to a single human community, but because I belong to a single human community, to something connected with the earthly, I separate myself from the divine. From this I can be redeemed only by a Being who has nothing to do with human differentiation. The Christ in me leads me beyond earthly differentiations, teaches me to feel that what has been produced by earthly differentiation is suffering, that it brings death. Only through such an understanding of the Christ in me do I find my connection with the spiritual world.” All that entered humanity through the fact that differentiations have come about has been removed from it through the entrance of Christ into the world. Christ could not, therefore, be a divinity like Mithras, who guides the human being beyond himself. He is the one God who descended to earth and took away the sins of differentiation and cleansed man of them. Mithras rushes through the world with a sword in his hand that he thrusts into the lower nature to slay it; under him the lower nature dies. Christ offers Himself as the Lamb of God, who takes the lower nature into Himself in order to redeem it.

Much lies in this comparison, immeasurably much! It is for this reason that the idea of Christ is not to be separated from the idea of death and resurrection. Only when we realize that what leads man to the earth brings him death, that there is more in him than what brings him into the earthly atmosphere, and that something is in him that is the Christ Who leads him away again: In Christo morimur—only then do we understand the Christ and know that we are united with Him. Thus, the representations of the ancient gods could set triumphant beings before us, but the Christ could only be presented by the joining of human beings in suffering and death because Christ endured all that enters into the differentiations of man throughout the earth. It is thus that Christ becomes the One Who leads man through death and back into the spiritual world, but this also makes Him the Divinity Who may be approached here on earth as we pass beyond maya or illusion. As the Christ is born here from the womb of maya, so must we draw near to Him by advancing beyond maya and appealing to Him in all the higher reality that projects into maya, but isn't maya itself.

If it is to turn to this worship of Christ, mankind will still need a long time on earth. Nevertheless, we must begin again to take Christianity earnestly. It is taken least of all seriously by the theologians who are frequently in conflict over whether or not Christ performed miracles and, for example, drove out demons through them. Well, it is entirely superfluous to argue over whether or not Christ drove out demons. It is more important that we learn to reproduce His miracles and thereby cast the demons out now where we can. We still have little power to cast out demons in the higher sense as antiquity knew how to do through its atavism. That is the destiny, the karma, of our epoch. But we can begin to drive out those demons of whom I spoke yesterday; they are there and it is negative superstition to suppose that they are not. How do we drive them out? Humanity will be convinced that they are being driven out when what is unholy service today becomes holy; that is, permeated with the Christ consciousness. In other words, this means that we must change to a sacramentalism in which man's deeds are imbued by the consciousness that the Christ stands behind him everywhere. Thus, he ought to do nothing in the world except that in which the Christ can help him. If he does something else, the Christ must also help him but He is thus crucified again and again in human deeds. The crucifixion is not merely a single deed; it is a continuing deed. So long as we do not drive out the demons through what lives in our souls by changing external mechanical actions into holy actions, we will continue to crucify Christ. It is from this point that our education to a true Christianity must begin. What was symbolically practiced in the ancient cults of Christianity and was once performed only on the altar must take hold of the entire world. Humanity must learn to deal with nature as the gods have done; it should learn not to construct machines in an indifferent way but to fulfill a divine service and bring sacramentalism into everything that is produced.

It is already possible to make a beginning in many things. Most of all, human beings can begin to develop sacramentalism in two areas. The first is that of educating and teaching children. We will begin to spiritualize what the religions call “baptism” when we look upon every human being who enters the world through birth as bringing his/her Christ forces with him/herself. Thus we will have the right reverence before the growing human being and can then direct the entire education and especially the teaching of the child in this spirit so that we bring in this teaching a sacramentalism to fruition. We can achieve the same end when we not only look upon educating and teaching the child as a divine service, but also make it such a divine service. Finally, when we endeavor to bring what we call our knowledge into our consciousness in such a way that, as our souls are filled with ideas of the spiritual world, we are aware that the Spiritual world is entering into us and that we are being united with the spiritual; when we look upon that as a “communion;” when we can realize true knowledge in a sentence you find expressed before 1887: “Thinking is the true communion of humanity,”¹²³ when the symbolic sacrament of the altar will become the universal sacramental experience of knowledge. It is in this direction that the Christianizing of man must move forward. You will then come to the knowledge that, everywhere in life, reality enters into maya in everything that is related to the Christ, and that to look upon reality after the manner of modern science with its world conception is in the most eminent sense unchristian.

It is strange how people nowadays are so easily able to adjust to what is unchristian and how little they can find their way to everything in Christianity that is appropriate to our time. As yet, we can see very little that counteracts materialism from, as I might say, a darkling inclination. If there are some beginnings, people embracing them proceed on false paths in that they, in a confused way, turn to old relations rather than to spiritual science.

Forgive me if I mention in this connection something that concerns me personally, but I am doing this only to cite an example. I may already have pointed out in these lectures that Hermann Bahr,¹²⁴ a contemporary personality whom I knew very well in my youth, is again in the process of seeking spiritual things. He is not seeking them in spiritual science because his interest for it is very limited. Take his very fine and intelligent book on expressionism and you will discover that he has only a marginal interest in spiritual science. But you can also see from the book itself that up to its publication he has informed himself about spiritual science only to the extent of his having read Levy's book¹²⁵ on my world view and on the people who oppose it. He has not found the way yet to really engage himself more deeply. However, it is interesting that he wrote a novel whose hero becomes acquainted with everything: contemporary chemical laboratories and so on, attending Oswald's¹²⁶ lectures in Leipzig, busying himself a bit with the theosophers in London, and so forth. His hero becomes exposed to everything which the present day offers in spiritual sensations, and he even dabbles in spiritism. And then he asks someone—I don't remember who it was—to give him esoteric exercises, which he practices for a while. But he is impatient, continues them only for a short time, does not achieve results and then abandons them; in fact, he gives up on all his endeavors after a short while. Then he has some strange experiences—the most interesting thing for me has been that, in a curious way, much in this book is reminiscent of what I have mentioned most recently in lectures, even about actual events, although I haven't seen Hermann Bahr for the past twenty-eight years except once, but then we definitely did not discuss questions related to our views of the world. Recently, Hermann Bahr also had a play of his staged which is entitled The Voice. One need not defend this play for the simple reason that Hermann Bahr just is not trying to find his way into spiritual science, which he finds too difficult, but is relapsing into orthodox, or let's say, more recent Catholicism. At any rate, he is in search of spiritual life.

It is interesting how the hero of this play is in search of spiritual life. He is married to a lady, the daughter of a very orthodox mother and herself very orthodox in view. This lady is deeply serious about Christianity—more so than can be expected of a human being. However, her husband, the hero of the play, is a disciple of Oswald and Haeckel and is quite a materialist. Since his wife and mother-in-law are serious Christians, they are, of course, pained by the fact that the husband is a disciple of Oswald and Haeckel¹²⁷ and does not want to hear anything about the spiritual world. The wife grieves so much about this that she dies. After her death, the husband, from an unknown dark feeling, frequently thinks his deceased wife is calling out one thing or another to him. One day, in the sleeping compartment of a train, he hears the voice of his wife with special clarity. This almost makes him insane; when the train stops at a station he rushes out and behaves like a lunatic in what I believe was the waiting room of a station. The train went on without him, and later, it was demolished in a railroad accident. The injured people are carried into the station and then he realizes that he had been saved by the voice of his deceased wife; she had caused him to leave the train in which he would have otherwise perished. This was the first time that he associated the voice of his wife with the conditions of reality. I do not want to condemn this; I simply want to tell you what a contemporary human being commits to paper these days. The hero of the play, by experiencing this apparent miracle and the after-effect of this woman's being beyond her death, realizes that he has been saved by her and this causes him to reflect anew about the connection of human beings with the spiritual world. Later, his wife continues to communicate with him frequently and the ensuing intimate friendship between his soul and the soul of his deceased wife leads him back to Christianity in the truest sense, and he overcomes his materialistic world view.

Even though we do not need to defend this play as such, we see that there are human beings nowadays who strive to instill the view into life that a truth of the spiritual world can manifest itself in maya, the great deception. Only a clear understanding of Christianity will build the bridge between the life here on earth and the life that exists in the spiritual world. Quite a few people today have a need for this spiritual world but we must admit that their number is insignificant in relation to the large number of those people who are either mired in traditional religions—and thus have fallen prey to materialism even if they don't admit it—or whose lives are directly determined by materialism and who do not have a real connection with the spiritual world. As I said before, we need not defend Bahr's play but it can nevertheless direct us to this important realization: Whoever wants to understand Christianity in its deepest meaning must get beyond the problem of death. After all, the most interesting thing in this play is that it takes as its point of departure the relation between the human soul and the human body which transcends the portal of death. To be sure, there is a basic error in all these things: instead of being led to Christianity—for which process spiritual science, as we understand it, wants to make a real beginning—we are again led back to an individual religious denomination.

If human beings would only understand the Christ in the way I have indicated today—and if we may still continue to speak here, I will deal with this matter more thoroughly—if they could so understand the Christ as the matter has been explained today in only the most elementary suggestions, then the feeling and conceptions that are developed in regard to Him could be conveyed to all human beings. Christ did not die only for those who belong to some Christian sect, but He died and rose again for all mankind. We must not associate some specific religious confession with the Being of Christ, but every religious confession is to be brought into connection with Christianity. If all people would come to understand how to conceive the Christ as has been indicated, Christianity would spread over the entire earth because the revelation of Christ and the revelation of Jesus are two different things.

If we go as missionaries to foreign cultures, or even to people in our own lands, and wish to force upon them the worship of Jesus within a religious denomination, we will not be understood since the knowledge of these people extends far beyond what is brought to them by this or that missionary. I should like to know, for example, what a Turk would say if a modern Protestant pastor should try to convey to him his conception of Christ. This conception as it is dealt with by modern Protestant pastors holds that there was once a Socrates, and then one who was somewhat more than Socrates, the Christ, the human being, the special human being, but still the human being—or any of those confused things that are said today in modern Protestantism about Christ. The Turk would say to him, “What! You tell me such a thing and you wish to be called a Christian? Just read the nineteenth chapter of the Koran;¹²⁸ much more is contained in it about the Christ than what you are telling me!” In other words, the Turks know a great deal more concerning Christ Jesus than what the modern Protestant pastors are prone to present because the Koran contains more about Him and Christ is represented much more as the Divinity in the Turkish confession than in that of the modern Protestant. This is simply not realized because nowadays people do not often go so far as really to read the original religious documents; rather, they utter much superficial nonsense regarding all possible religions.

The Jesus revelation, too, will touch men in the proper way, but they themselves must attain its truth by their own power. They will be able to do this after having passed through a sufficient number of incarnations. Everyone today is to some degree prepared to receive the Christ revelation; this is a distinction that must be made. However, many forces are at work to suppress the real Christ revelation and genuine spiritual science. In this regard you need only to remember some of the things I previously mentioned regarding my characterization of various endeavors which lay claim to being occult.

And now I would like to conclude today's lecture, but not without offering a short supplement which, for definite reasons that will become apparent to you momentarily, should not be considered as part of the lecture itself. What I have stated thus far I have said without reservations whatsoever; but what I am about to add I shall have to formulate, at least for the time being, with certain qualifications. That is why I am presenting these additional remarks separately. If I mention them today, it is because I consider them somewhat important within the framework of the considerations at hand.

I had indicated earlier that materialism reached its zenith in the middle of the 19th century. During that time, the people who knew that spiritual life would always be necessary for humanity considered teaching mankind that our environment really contains spiritual beings and effects. But I had also indicated that the leading occultists in those days branched off into two groups. One of them maintained that mankind was not yet ready to accept spiritual things, while the second one was saying in the middle of the century that mankind was indeed ready to be exposed in an elementary way to the most important concepts of spiritual life.

This second group, which advocates the teaching and the dissemination of the doctrine, has been reduced to a tiny number of people. However, the anthroposophical movement subscribes to the belief that the dissemination of the doctrine, as it is practiced by us in today's activities, is important for the transmission of spiritual knowledge to mankind. This question was first raised in the fourth decade of the 19th century, but those who held this view were, in a way, outvoted. After that had happened, they agreed to chart a new course and adopt the practice of spiritism. These people attempted to show that spiritualistic media—individuals who can be considered psychics—are able to receive messages from the spiritual world and that it would be possible by these means to get in touch with the realms of the spirit.

I have characterized these things before, and I also indicated that this entire attempt was a failure. It was a failure because in contrast to what I explained in my recent speech in Bern, the people involved in the experiments were unable to pinpoint the various stages of our connection with the dead. Yet, the people in question did not want to deal with that phenomenon and, thus, the entire attempt was unsuccessful. All of the psychics indicated in the most primitive and elementary way that they were in direct communication with the deceased persons, and people always wanted to receive direct pronouncements from some deceased person through these media. Please note, this is not to say that what passes through a medium in an experiment cannot in some way lead to a contact with a dead person. But it is another matter to decide whether or not this is an unconscious, a genuine, and a proper mediation, and whether the mediation is possible at all. Some entirely different results were expected from the experiments. The psychic media were expected to make people understand that not only sensuous, but also spiritual forces flow continuously into human beings. Moreover, the experiments were supposed to teach people that spiritual things were preferably to be sought in the immediate environment, and not in the announcements of this or that dead person.

Since the whole attempt has proven to be a blunder, the serious occultists withdrew from this spiritistic experiment, and mankind now has to pay for this in that the psychic media have been usurped by all kinds of occultists. The latter do not pursue purely occult endeavors, but they chart a course that serves some specific human purpose. I have often mentioned this before: The person who wants to be a genuine occultist cannot merely serve a specific human purpose; rather, he must serve general human purposes, and above all, he or she must never employ improper and incorrect means in order to reach any goals whatsoever. But what isn't called occultism these days! You could get a notion of this if you read the report of the last Theosophical Convention, which contained the speeches of Mrs. Besant¹²⁹ and Mr. Leadbeater.¹³⁰ In these speeches, the present situation is depicted as the big struggle between Lords of Light, on whose side Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater are naturally to be found, and the Lords of Darkness. In these speeches the opinion is expressed that any neutral person not taking sides with any of these opposite parties, or more properly, with Mrs. Besant's and Mr. Leadbeater's Lords of Light, is a traitor. But still other things were discussed in these meetings. Mr. Leadbeater, for example, related from one of his profound occult insights that Bismarck¹³¹ was supposed to have gone to France before 1870 and established magnetic centers in the North, South, East, and West of France. During the 1870/71 war, these magnetic centers established by Bismarck had been at work, according to Mr. Leadbeater, because otherwise the war with France would have been lost. This is the kind of stuff people listen to in theosophical meetings! Yes, they do listen to it, and one can only marvel at this or do something more drastic when one learns such things are mentioned. But as I said, there are many kinds of occultism in our age.

Now that serious occultists have withdrawn from spiritism, it is important to keep in mind that the latter has been taken over by people pursuing specific purposes. And it is quite easy to do this. Please keep in mind what I want to say in this supplement: Spiritism originated from an honest attempt to find out whether mankind nowadays is ready to accept spiritual truths. Also, remember that the attempt was a failure and that all kinds of movements, occult brotherhoods, as well as individuals—especially from America—have attempted to manipulate the psychic media one by one for their own specific purposes.

Following all this, I now want to speak about a report that our dear friend, Mr. Heywood-Smith, gave to me yesterday concerning the book that deals with the experiences of Sir Oliver Lodge.¹³² I repeat, I am relating this with every possible reservation because I only have a report in front of me; it, however, is revealing enough. I reserve the right to make further comments when I am in possession of the book itself. However, since I do not consider the matter unimportant, I would like to deal with it today. Should the report prove to be incorrect, I would, of course, clarify the things mentioned today. That is why I speak with reservations.

It is an extraordinarily significant fact, isn't it, that one of the most renowned scientific personalities of England, the great naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge, has written a book¹³³ containing things which, when accepted as he presents them, should be counted among the most significant pronouncements of the present time. We know, of course, that Sir Oliver professed in some of his other books that he acknowledges the existence of the spiritual world. But let me come to the facts:

Sir Oliver Lodge had a son by the name of Raymond who was born in 1889 and who, when the war broke out, volunteered for military service while Sir Oliver and his wife were in Australia. In March 1915 Raymond came to a vicinity of Ypern—and you can imagine how worried his parents were. Soon thereafter, Sir Oliver received a message from an American medium, a Mrs. Piper, which was dated August 15. This message from America had a peculiar content which, according to the report that I have in front of me, reads as follows: “Myers will take an interest in whatever fate has ordained for you and will protect you.” However, this message was couched in the classical form of a poem by Horace. To repeat, Sir Oliver was notified by an American medium in August that Myers, formerly chairman of the Society for Psychical Research in London¹³⁴ but deceased fourteen years prior to the date of the letter, would protect and support Sir Oliver Lodge during a difficult event of which he, Sir Oliver, would be a part and thus work toward his protection. Please bear in mind that this message mentions only that Myers would help Sir Oliver during a difficult event.

Now, when Sir Oliver's son Raymond was killed in action in September 1915, Sir Oliver at first related the message which had indicated that Myers would help him, to the death of his son. Subsequently, however, Sir Oliver's family was the subject of all kinds of pronouncements by the psychic media; in fact, several psychic media appeared on the scene simultaneously and delivered quite a few messages. Little by little, it turned out that all these messages had the following basic content: “Myers is united with your son”—Sir Oliver's and Lady Lodge's son, because seances were conducted with her as well. “Myers is helping your son, whose primary concern is that you receive word from him and, especially, that Sir Oliver should thereby be placed into a relationship with the spiritual world.”—If one reads the various pronouncements of the individual psychics as presented in this report, one thing stands out everywhere. Throughout, the pronouncements exhibit interesting examples of psychic elevation; everything happens at a precise time; questions are being asked and so on, and they are then answered by the media. The whole process is extremely interesting. Even a picture of Raymond Lodge that was unknown to his family is found because the deceased son points to it and describes it, and it is then found in exactly the same place that he pinpointed. In short, in this book there seems to be compiled with extraordinary precision and exactitude all that can be experienced in many a spiritistic séance and which could lead to the events narrated. It is known that Sir Oliver had always been somewhat inclined toward these practices, much to the displeasure of his sons. However, after these happenings they became believers, too. Sir Oliver himself seems to have described in the most detailed manner how this bridge to his deceased son was constructed through the various psychic media.

What is important and what is presented is the fact that such a highly respected personality is induced to transcend into the spiritual world through the use of psychic media. I have to say this: From what I know about the various séances, they themselves do not reveal too many new features.—But something else is very important. We have here a modern scientific personality of the first rank who, when writing in this fashion, can have a tremendous influence on the minds of human beings and who feels compelled to write in this way. That is very important because such writing influences many people and causes them to turn to the “media enterprise,” which seeks to relate itself with the spiritual world in this fashion.

We are, of course, presented here with the same mistake of wanting to attain access to the spiritual world through spiritism which I previously described to you. But now let me ask you to look at the matter more closely. In the first message by the medium Piper which Sir Oliver Lodge received from America, a forecast is made of only one event against which Myers would protect Sir Oliver. To be sure, this event could have occurred in several ways. Suppose the son hadn't been killed in action. In that case, the statement that followed would have been quite compatible with the content of the message: “Well, you have been told that Myers protects your son in the spiritual world and keeps him from dying on the battlefield.”—You will probably not doubt that the people in America could have known that Raymond Lodge had been stationed in an endangered zone of the battlefield and that, therefore, one could have made pronouncements similar to those of the old oracles: “Myers will protect your son.” And had the son come out of the war unscathed, one could have said after the fact: “Myers did protect him by getting him out of the battle zone alive.” Suppose, however, the son was killed in action, one could then easily relate the prophecy to Myers' role as a mediator in bringing father and son together from the spiritual world. Thus we can see that the original pronouncement was shrewdly phrased. The whole affair was contrived in America. Since such fellowships extend, of course, over the whole world, the next medium was then put in touch with Lady Lodge. It is not necessary to know how such an anonymous session, as it is called in the report, comes into being. The procedures are as is customary in those sessions. But by now the sad news of the son's death had been received and Lady Lodge's psyche harbors all the after effects that such a message evokes. It is not difficult to demonstrate that what dwells in one soul migrated into another and communicates through the medium. Moreover, the son survived beyond death in the soul of his mother, in the manner that we are all acquainted with. Therefore, the accomplishment of the medium was nothing more than a rendering of what was already present in the souls of Lady Lodge or her family. This can be nicely substantiated from the protocol of the seances, which in each case is modulated to allow for the character of the major participants in these sessions. The name Myers is mentioned even by the media who were not acquainted with him. That, however, is not all that miraculous because Sir Oliver Lodge was a very good friend of Myers and had worked with him and so on. In short, everything would have been fine if only Sir Oliver, aside from the personal interest he took in his son's fate, had been content with carrying out an experiment whose sole purpose it was to show that there are spiritual effects in our environment. This was the original intention of the occultists, but then they abandoned this path.

I do not want to make judgments as I am sure the book itself will explain this matter, too. However, it seems we are confronted here with the obvious. Some people want to use Sir Oliver in order to attain definite special purposes. By using the constellations at hand, one very sorry occult brotherhood is likely to cite our case as characteristic when it makes its thrust to possibly, if you will, win over science to spiritism. Spiritism always likes to be considered as being “scientific,” and it can be easily used to attain special purposes.

To mention just one example, the attempt had been made in another place in America to cure mankind of the idea of reincarnation. What took place? During the time when the events I characterized had already happened, that is, when the serious occultists had already left spiritism, a certain Langsdorff,¹³⁵ if I am not mistaken, organized all kinds of séances in several localities. When media were put in touch with the dead, the latter everywhere gave testimony that they were not at all waiting for reincarnation. And so the doctrine of repeated lives on earth was especially attacked in America. One can accomplish a great deal if one allows people to be approached in this matter by the pronouncements of the dead.

I wanted to discuss this matter quickly with you in a few words because I had talked about these things recently and because the example cited seems to be an especially good one. For how will the world be informed about this? The world will learn that a renowned scientist has confessed his allegiance to spiritism. Then, people will read the book, and most likely—we see this from our example—they will think that the case for spiritism has never been made so convincingly as in this book. As I said, I am speaking in this supplement to our lecture with qualifications because I reserve the right to come back to the matter after I have read the book myself. We are probably confronted here with an attempt by the so-called brotherhood of the left wing to attain special things by these very means. This may not be clear at first blush, but it is well known that there are numerous brotherhoods who wish to attain their special purposes in this fashion, and more is attained in this way than people are accustomed to believe. We will talk about these things some more later on.

• 118. Von Jesus zu Christus (Karlsruhe, 1911), Bibl.-No. 131, CE (Dornach, 1974). From Jesus to Christ, (London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973).
• 119. Matthew 25:40.
• 120. Cf. the lectures in Die okkulte Bewegung im 19. Jahrhundert und ihre Beziehung zur Weltkultur, Bibl.-No. 257, CE (Dornach, 1969). The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, (London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973).
• 121. Alfred Percy Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism (1883).
• 122. Rudolf Steiner, Vier Mysteriendramen [Four Mystery Plays], Bibl.- No. 14, CE (Dornach, 1962). Four Mystery Plays, (Steiner Book Centre, Toronto, 1973).
• 123. Cf. Preface to: Goethe's Scientific Writings, II, Rudolf Steiner, ed. (1887) in Kürchner's Deutsche National-Litteratur. Photomechanic reprint, 5 vols., Bibl.-No. 1 a-e, CE (1975). Goethe the Scientist, (New York, Anthroposophic Press, 1950).
• 124. Hermann Bahr (1863–1934), a Viennese writer who was the author of the book Expressionismus, 3rd edition (Munich, 1919) and of the play Die Stimme [The Voice] (Berlin, 1916).
• 125. Eugene Levry, Rudolf Steiners Weltanschauung und ihre Gegner [Rudolf Steiner's World View and its Opponents] (Berlin, 1913).
• 126. Wilhelm Oswald (1853–1932) was a chemist.
• 127. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a renowned zoologist.
• 128. The nineteenth sura of the Koran is entitled “Mary.“
• 129. Cf. footnote 99.
• 130. Charles Webster Leadbeater (1847–1934) was a prominent personality in the Theosophical Society.
• 131. Otto Furst von Bismarck (1815–1898) was the Prussian Chancellor who founded the Second German Empire in 1871.
• 132. Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) was an English physicist and a member of the Royal Society.
• 133. Oliver Lodge, Raymond, or Life and Death (1916).
• 134. Frederic W. H. Meyers (1843–1901), a spiritist and friend of Sir Oliver Lodge, was a co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research in London.
• 135. Georg von Landsdorff was a physician who had previously lived and worked in Freiburg i.Br.

Dear attendees! For many years now, I have been able to give spiritual science lectures in this city every winter. Even in these fateful times, our friends in the spiritual science movement have asked me to give this lecture today. Now it will seem understandable that in this time, in which such tremendous but also such painful things are happening, in which something so immeasurably significant for European and world history is preparing, that in this time I want to tie such considerations to what moves us all, to that which those who stand in the East and West and who have to stand up for what the great duty of the time demands through blood and death. In such a time, words also want to be directed where feelings and emotions take them, where blood and death defend the great goods of Central Europe, where tremendous decisions must be made. And so today my words are dedicated to the contemplation of that which is being defended in our present time, which is being attacked, defamed and reviled from all sides in this our time. I would like to begin by touching on what I would call the basic principle and aspiration of spiritual science, and then show how this basic aspiration, this innermost impulse of spiritual science – which wants to be a motive that penetrates into the spiritual cultural movement of the present and into the future – how these spiritual scientific impulses are firmly anchored in the supporting forces of the German spirit. And then some highlights will be thrown on the way in which Germany's enemies today disparage, misunderstand and more of this kind this German spirit, this German nature, this Germanness in the east and the West.

I have often had the opportunity to explain here how spiritual science wants to be the true successor of the scientific world view, but that it is in turn the opposite pole of this scientific world view in that it wants to approach the worlds of spiritual life with a truly scientific character. For the spiritual-scientific world view, spirit is not just something that can be grasped in terms, ideas, or abstract concepts. Rather, for spiritual science, spirit is that which reigns in a world that is behind our sensory world, that contains the reasons and driving forces for everything that our sensory world and life, including historical development, offer us, and that takes place within the sensory world. As I said, I can only touch on this today and must refer you to the reading.

Spiritual science prepares the human soul, if he wants to prepare himself for it, so that a realization, a real experience of this soul takes place, which is not bound to the forces of the body, is not bound to the senses, not bound, like the ordinary mind, to the brain, but spiritual science prepares the soul for a body-free cognition through what has been mentioned here more often: meditation, concentration of the life of thought. You can find a more detailed description in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds?” or in the second part of the book “The Secret Science” or in the book “Theosophy”. These books describe the paths that lead people, through inner activity and inner experience, to free the soul-spiritual from its bondage to the body, so that it can dwell in the life and activity, in the reign and work of the spiritual world. What still appears to many people today as fantasy, as absurdity, is to be introduced into today's culture precisely through spiritual science. It is understandable that people say: spiritual science contradicts everything that the five senses comprehend.

It is understandable that people who speak in this way regard spiritual science as a form of dreaming or fantasizing. But people once also regarded the Copernican worldview as a form of dreaming and fantasizing, which, it was said, should also contradict the five senses and their statements. Just as people's thinking habits have become accustomed to accepting the Copernican worldview, so people's thinking habits will also find it increasingly more and more soul-satisfying, a necessary soul experience, a necessary soul harmony to accept spiritual science , which shows how the soul can truly penetrate into a spiritual world in a body-free knowledge, a spiritual world that is not merely a sum of concepts and ideas, but something very concrete, a real spiritual world, a living spiritual world. Thus, as a spiritual researcher, one looks at something that must come, as Copernicanism once entered into human development.

When we take a good look at this view of the living spirit and the relationship of the human soul to it, and then look at what has been prepared over many centuries in the development of the German people and the German character, we may say that all the forces that the German character has applied over the course of many centuries are ultimately aimed at leading to this spiritual science. There is nothing that spiritual science could not find as a germ of itself in what the German spirit has striven for over the centuries. Let me first present you with a characteristic example from more recent times.

The German essence, which for example in the second half of the eighteenth century, when Lessing, when Herder entered the horizon of this German essence, could not be satisfied with a spirit that is only an abstraction, only a sum of ideas. Herder, the great pioneer of the German intellectual world, once called out to Voltaire: “Ideas can only [bring forth ideas].”

For Herder, it was about man finding a way in his soul to experience a truly living, vibrant and vital spiritual world through inner development, just as he lives in the world of the senses through his eyes and ears. And history was not to be understood in such a way that one could speak of history being dominated by ideas, but for Herder history was such that real spiritual beings are active within historical activity, to whom man can look up as to beings of a supersensible world, just as he looks down into the realms below him to the sensual beings of the three natural kingdoms. And so convinced was Herder, the great predecessor, indeed one can say, the teacher of Goethe, that true science of the spirit comes to a real spirit and that humanity is aiming to find such a spiritual science, that he himself, Herder, expresses with beautiful words: [“The human race will not pass away until everything has happened! Until the genius of enlightenment has traversed the earth!”]

By enlightenment he means that knowledge which the German mind has always sought, not through the outer senses and the intellect, but through the inner experience of the soul, which, however, takes one further than happens in everyday life. In his way, Herder took up again what we encounter centuries earlier in the German mystic who stood at the dawn of modern times. In the moment when Angelus Silesius speaks in his images, in which he gives instructions for the path of the soul into a spiritual world. He expresses in one of his images: “It is not I who live and die, but the God-spirituality reigns in me, it is born in me, it lives and dies in me.

The German soul has always sought such a connection with the living spirit. And so the soul's intimate search for this connection with the active spirit was so intense that even the idea of immortality for Angelus Silesius follows directly from the spiritual inner knowledge, the spiritual inner life. For in that he was conscious that the eternal God reigns in me, he also knew that this eternal God is in my soul at the moment of death, where the eternal God cannot die. Since that which lives in the soul is at the same time experienced by God, the idea of immortality is experienced from the spiritual. The idea of immortality, of merging into a spiritual world, is an experience for Angelus Silesius.

As the soul becomes aware of the God within it, it knows that this God cannot die, that death leads into the spiritual world.

And let us think of the great mystic at the beginning of the modern era of German intellectual life, Jakob Böhme. Not to preach a false allegorical activism, but to point out that the life of the senses is only understood when man comprehends that which is not only alive between birth and death, but which passes through the gate of death, I would like to quote Jakob Böhme. He realized that man must penetrate the secrets of death during life. That his powers are kindled when he knows what calls him to a new life in dying, that these powers must already be recognized in this life. That is what the wonderful saying of Jakob Böhme means:

He who does not die before he dies;

He perishes when he dies.

When such words resound from the German spiritual life, one feels how the best souls of German development are permeated by the living supporting forces of the spirit. For it is the supporting power of the German spirit through which the soul, in its highest striving, knows itself to be inwardly and vitally connected with the spirit, so that it experiences that what it can do as the highest, the spirit itself does in it. The soul feels carried by the concrete spirit, not merely by ideas and concepts, which are an abstraction of the human mind and reason and which do not vividly represent the spirit that truly prevails in life. This spirit therefore develops its carrying capacity for the whole of German intellectual life.

And when we look at our best intellectuals, one can see how this sustaining power of the German spirit works in their hearts and souls, how they demonstrate it everywhere in their lives and in their intellectual endeavors.

Truly not to evoke sentimental feelings in you, esteemed attendees, but to show how the sustaining power of the German spirit works in the best German minds right down to the most immediate life, two great minds are taken as the starting point for today's reflection. And these two great minds, let them be considered at the moment of death, Schiller is the first.

We can look into the last days of our Schiller, right into his death chamber, through a friend, the son of the translator of Homer, Voß, the so-called younger Voß. There you see how this Schiller, as his last weeks approach, one could say, already walks around as if he were almost dead, but still participates in all that can be called intellectual interests in his Weimar residence. You can literally see how the strong cohesive forces within him carry him through his last weeks and days with intellectual life. Then we are led into the death chamber. We experience with the description of the young Voß, how Schiller can hardly look out of his eyes, which always looked so benevolent, so loving, so spirited. He has his youngest child brought to him. Voß describes how his eyes, from which on one side death, but also still the mighty soul of fire, how his eyes look at the child. And we can believe that Voß is right when he says in his description that something like the thought spoke from these eyes: “You, my child, I have to leave you so small, I should have been a father to you in so many ways.” Then the dying Schiller handed the child back and turned away, towards the wall.

In reliving these moments, we as a German nation feel as if we could relate to Schiller as this child did. We feel that the sustaining power of the German spirit, which Schiller carried into death, lives on in the German people. But looking up at such great minds, we have to say: Not only much that is great, much that is powerful has been achieved by them, but also much that is embryonic and has yet to be developed. Schiller's thoughts also apply to the German people, that he could still have given them much. But how was Schiller also connected to what can be called the fundamental power of the German spirit? We have a remarkable document that was only found long, long after Schiller's death. In this document, Schiller expresses the following beautiful words about the spirit that the one who gets to know it feels as its supporting force.

He who forms and rules the mind
must ultimately become master, because
finally, at the goal of time, if the
world has a plan, if human
life has any meaning at all, finally
must custom and reason triumph,
the brute force of form succumb
and the slowest people will catch up with all the
fast, fleeting ones.
[...]
Him

– the German –

is destined for the highest,
and just as he is in the middle of
Europe's nations,
he is the core of humanity,
they are the flower and the leaf.
He is chosen by the world spirit, during
the struggle of time
to work 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.
Everything that was estimable in other times
and peoples, that arose, developed and faded with the times,
he has preserved;
the treasures of
centuries are not lost to him.
Not to shine in the moment and
to play his 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 that time.

Thus Schiller felt connected to what can be called the driving force of the German spirit.

And if we now turn our gaze to another great mind, to a mind that, so to speak, has summarized all the power of the German mind, a philosopher who, out of a strong humanitarian character, has created a philosophy of dramatic clarity, we turn to the speaker of the “Speeches to the German Nation,” we turn to Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

Let us also look to him for the driving force of German intellectual life, with which Fichte felt so connected that he knew how to inspire German hearts in a rare way through his speeches during one of Germany's most difficult times. Let us see how the driving force of the mind had an effect on his immediate, everyday life. When Germany took up its great struggles against Western foreign domination, Fichte consulted with himself as to whether he was called to help in any way, and in the end he knew that he could achieve the most through intellectual activity. His wife, however, devoted herself to nursing. She was the one who brought the fever home from the military hospitals, but she recovered. But Fichte was infected by his wife's illness. And as he lay there sick, it was remarkable how, in the last days, his philosophical thoughts, which are among the strongest of this kind in the development of mankind, among the most luminous, how they merged into the feverish fantasies of the dying man. And strangely, Fichte, the clear-thinking, diamond-bright philosopher, he guided in his soul, which was completely occupied with the spirit that reigns through the German being, his philosophical thoughts in such a way that he believed himself outside on the battlefields, in the midst of the armies, as Blücher's Rhine crossing took place.

Thus we see a confluence of the highest intellectual development even in the feverish fantasies of a dying German. His son brought him a medicine. Fichte felt as if he were connected to the power of the German spirit, which he firmly believed would lead the German people to victory. He pushed the medicine away and said, “I do not need medicine, for I feel that I shall recover.” Then he died. These were, so to speak, his last moments. This is the Fichte from whose soul the sustaining power of the German spirit speaks in such a way that one sees how, in his case, knowledge is directly grasped by the will that rules in his soul, so that one can say: In every word of Fichte we feel this power of the German spirit penetrating through, which cannot but confess that the spirit is not an abstraction, but something that permeates and flows through the world and works in it, and in which the soul knows itself, can experience itself. How beautifully Fichte expresses something like this when he says:

There is no doubt about it, it is the most certain thing there is, [indeed the basis of all other certainties, the only absolutely valid objective, that there is a moral world order, that every rational individual is assigned his or her specific place in this order and counted on for his or her work.

That is the confession of the spiritual world made by the sustaining power of the German spirit. And so closely does Fichte feel connected with this spiritual world that he once said the following to his students in words that are as much thoughts as they are the will welling up from the whole soul: “You stars that walk above me, you mountains all, ... if you all collapse at once, when lightning strikes you, when the elemental forces crush you so that not a speck of dust remains of you, you tell me nothing about the nature of my own soul. This defies your power, this is not eternal, as you are not eternal.” Thus Fichte spoke out of the direct power of connection with the spiritual world in his own soul. This is not mere philosophical speculation, these are not just thoughts, but this is inner soul life, a confluence of the soul with the spirit. This is the result of the sustaining forces of the German spirit.

And as a spiritual scientist today, one can truly refer to Fichte. One example among many that can prove how one can refer to Fichte today with today's spiritual science: It is written in the “Addresses to the German Nation”, and many may perhaps overlook it, but it is important for those who do not want to grasp Fichte merely on the surface of his words, but want to penetrate into the depths of his views. Fichte held the “Addresses to the German Nation” before his people, for his people, through which he wanted to stir up the German spirit in the German hearts, so that the German essence would triumph in Europe. And the means he recommended at the time was a completely new kind of education. Regardless of one's opinion of his plan today, one must admit that it was a grand and bold idea, an idea that truly contained something of the fundamental strength of the German spirit. But Fichte knew that by expressing this before an audience that was indeed willing to receive the word dedicated to the service of humanity, by expressing what characterized his plan, he was saying something that had to permeate all ideas about the education and development of the human being. In doing so, he demanded something completely new of people. And so he made a comparison between what he thought of as something new for previous habits of thought and what they had already grasped as a /Lücke im Text>.

And now we ask ourselves: How could spiritual science, which is a science of the spiritual life, how could it use a comparison if it wanted to characterize what it wants, what it strives for? After all, spiritual science wants to lead to a real inner enlightenment, so that the soul outside the body looks at the body with its physical experiences in the same way as one looks at an external object. In this way the spiritual researcher gains knowledge of how this soul behaves after death, how the soul looks at the body with spiritual eyes, how it surveys it like an external element. And so today, by standing firmly on the ground of this spiritual science, the spiritual scientist comes to say: this new thing behaves like a soul that leaves the body and looks back at the body. One would take a symbol that today, however, people still see as a reverie. But let us ask what symbol Fichte himself chose when he wanted to characterize the new of his education system in relation to the old.

[Time seems to me like a shadow that stands over its corpse, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, 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 plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of love; the secret voices of her sisters already greet her joyfully and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within all directions, in order to develop the more magnificent form into which it is to grow; but as yet it has no feeling for these breezes or hearing for these voices, or, if it had, it is absorbed in pain over its loss, with which it believes itself to have been lost at the same time.

That is the living Fichte! Must we not say that what today's spiritual science wants to unfold and recognize out of a real knowledge of the spirit, we encounter it where Fichte abandons himself to the deep intentions of his spirit and chooses a comparison that is deeply rooted in the supporting forces of the German people. It is the confession of the real, living, flowing and weaving spirit. And so it is rooted in the best of this German intellectual life.

And do we not see how these supporting forces of the German spirit also work in Goethe? Is it not already apparent from the fact that Goethe, even in his youth, had to declare himself unsatisfied with everything that can only enter the human soul as concepts and ideas through speculation of the intellect, as a reflection of the external world of the senses, that he felt something like the Faustian urge not only to indulge in abstract concepts and sensual perceptions, but to unite with the innermost powers of the soul with the spirit that rules the world. And it was out of this urge, which then sought to express itself artistically, that Goethe created what he presented in his Faust; in that Faust, which in its entirety represents a work of art that no other nation can have. For everything that man can strive for through the deepest powers of his soul on the path to the spiritual world is to be seen in this Faust. Do we not see how Faust, after feeling unsatisfied in the outer world of the senses, wants to reach the sources of life? How he passes through error and overcoming, through temptation and seduction, and how he first stands and recognizes in the spirit that seizes him in his innermost self, at the same time, what surges and weaves as spirit through the world. Thus, in the first part of the drama, Faust comes to recognize this spirit that reigns not only in nature but also in the human soul. He feels a connection to this spirit, which he perceives as a living entity truly rooted in German intellectual life, in the following words, which could be quoted again and again:

[Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature for a kingdom,
the power to feel and enjoy it. Not
only dost thou allow cold-eyed visitors,
allow me to look into her deep chest,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
past me, and teach me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches
And neighbor trunks squashing down
And the hill muffled hollow thundering,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Then myself, and my own chest
Secret deep wonders open up.]

How these sublime words express how man, when he has found the sustaining powers within himself, also wants to find them in all that is sensual. And how Faust is then led back, after he has thus recognized the spirit, to the rule of the spirit in his own breast.

Then You lead me to the secure cave, and then You show me myself, and in my own breast deep, secret wonders are revealed.

We can call this: the weaving of the spirit in the spirituality of the world, in which beings are of a supersensible nature, as in the sense world there are beings of the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom. And so we see how this spirit reigns and works in our greatest and sustains them.

But we also see how, in German spiritual culture, efforts are being made to truly unite with this spirit, to penetrate with it in a living way, to marry with it. One could point to hundreds of important historical events to show how in German intellectual life the longing arises to unite with the spirit that has carried the German essence through the centuries; to seek how it works not only in the present, but how it has worked through all the times of development. And wherever a German can find something, wherever the spirit confronts him as a figure, wherever he has encountered it, there you can see how fervently the German is able to grasp the German spirit that can carry him. I would like to give an example, an event during Goethe's lifetime.

A world view of German intellectual life emerged, the so-called Romanticism; a view that wanted to go back to an earlier stage of German intellectual life, because something occurred, so to speak, in which the German spirit appeared before the German soul in a form in which it wanted to grasp the German spirit with religious fervor. That was the case when, after the republican masters of the West, of that West that claims today that it had to fight against the German “barbarians”, when these masters, just as the masters of the West today - of course, they did it in their opinion back then and they also do it today for the freedom and for the rights of the people - went to war. These gentlemen invaded the Lower Rhine region and the Dutch territories. We can see these gentlemen ravaging palaces, churches, monasteries, and everything in their path. As in those days, the devastation was immense and incalculable, and the finest works of art in these regions were scattered and looted all over the world. Of course, the gentlemen said at the time that they were fighting for freedom, justice and humanity. And then you could see how the remains of these devastated works of art turned up again, of course only sparse remains, fragments in the Rhenish cities. The broken, the devastated, then came into the hands of a number of people, including the brothers Boisserée, who professed the worldview of the young Romantic school. And at that time something emerged in this school that can be called /gap in the text]. Something emerged for these younger German Romantics that they perceived as the divine rule of the German spirit itself, which they tried to introduce into life. And if we were to study the development of art in Central Europe in the nineteenth century, we would find how that which emerged from the devastated ruins, from the sustaining forces of the German spirit, continued to work in poetry and in the best works of art. We would find it everywhere.

But not only did this power impress itself on the soul of what was already there, the souls were also prepared for such a seizure. And even if he does not belong to the younger, but to the older Romanticism, one of those German poets is - one may believe it, more and more he will be appreciated in his wonderful way of thinking - I mean Novalis. He is one of those in whom the sustaining power of the German spirit reveals itself so clearly that in much of what he has left us, in part fragmentarily, we see something that emerges from the unconscious of his soul, but which only needs to be developed in order to lead to what humanity will one day have to grasp as spiritual science.

And one can say: the world has already grasped to some extent what Novalis developed out of the sustaining power of the German spirit. This is even being grasped not only by the “barbaric Germans,” as the enemy nations are now expressing themselves, but even by some French writers who understand something of the nature, even among those who today so revile the German essence and decry it as “barbaric.” We know, of course, how not long after the outbreak of the war Maurice Maeterlinck could not find enough words to revile and insult German “barbarism”.

Now one would like to point out to Maeterlinck another, perhaps a different French spirit, who has delved into what Novalis can give of himself, who has written about what Novalis has inspired in his soul. And this French poet, philosopher and artist, what did he find in Novalis, in the now so despised, let us say in Maurice Maeterlinck, so despised German “barbarism”? He felt compelled to say: Yes, what Sophocles, even Schiller and other poets have produced, what the figures of the poets do, Hamlet and so on have to do with each other and with their surroundings, these are certainly feelings and sensations that interest earthly souls. But, as this French writer says, one must assume that if beings were to gaze down from the cosmos, they could not be interested in what Schiller, Sophocles and others created, and what these figures have to do with each other. But Novalis would be a person – so this French poet-philosopher believes – who has something to say from his soul about things that could not only interest earth people, but that must interest even spirits who visit the earth from heavenly spheres.

He speaks such words in connection with Novalis, in reference to what he experienced with Novalis. We must call these words literally before our soul:

But if he needed other evidence, it would lead him among those whose works almost touch silence. She would open the gate of the kingdom where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small gestures of her body. They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises [by one step] and where all those who are restless about themselves [feel] attentively survey the immense ring that connects the world of appearances to our higher worlds. She would go with him to the boundaries of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably only begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are [only] in the invisible, where he must be constantly on his guard.

He is always talking about Novalis. He wants to turn to areas where Novalis dwells, to worlds for which human words are no longer sufficient to characterize them. That is why he says “their works almost border on silence”. He then continues:

On these heights alone are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and images that resemble her and are as commanding as she is. There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly lit peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a [strange] reason; but [the people I am talking about have] come out of the small village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community.

So this French poet-philosopher on Novalis, on that which Novalis has inspired in him. This Novalis, who is borne entirely out of the primal power and destiny of the German genius. Would this poet-philosopher not hurl at Maurice Maeterlinck when he comes and speaks of “barbarism”: Look to Novalis, whose works are so sublime that they “almost touch silence”.

One might think that these words, coming from the philosophical poet, would be hurled at Maurice Maeterlinck. But the fact of the matter is that these words I just read were actually written by Maurice Maeterlinck himself! Admittedly, by the Maurice Maeterlinck who lived years ago and allowed the German spirit to influence him; not by the Maurice Maeterlinck who now calls the Germans a “barbarian people”.

Such are the experiences of Germanness in European culture today, besieged as it is in a great fortress. It may be said that this Germanness, so misunderstood today, has truly not always been misunderstood in this way in the world. The world has felt the sustaining power of the German spirit. And one can present evidence of how this German spirit has been regarded in the world. It is somewhat uncomfortable to express certain sympathetic, I would even say emotional judgments about the German spirit in German. So then another way must be chosen. Let us first consider what a leading English thinker of the nineteenth century in America had to say about the German essence. Emerson, a great and characteristic personality, once brought the German character before his soul. And to show how the sustaining power of the German spirit has been felt and sensed, Emerson says, speaking of Goethe – and we shall see from the words themselves how he sees in Goethe almost the representative of the newer German spirit – Emerson says:

One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public: that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America

— please, it is not in German, but written by an American, an American Englishman in English —

in England and America, talent is respected, but one is only satisfied when it is working for or against a party of one's convictions. In France, one is already delighted when one sees brilliant thoughts, no matter where they want to go.

And it was not a German who said this; it was said by an English American to characterize the Germans, the German character!

In all these countries, however, talented men write to the extent of their gifts. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French vivacity nor the Englishman's understanding, honed by practicality, nor, finally, the American spirit of adventure. 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?”

One might think that it was said by a German, it would be vainly oriented.

The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself about them. Intellectual agility is present, well and good: what does it stand for? What is the man's opinion? Where does he get all these thoughts from?

The English [...] always see only the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

Consider, not a German is saying this!

For this reason, the terms of distinction used in high-level conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are mentioned with distinction because of their acumen and erudition, approach their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks, not because he has talent, but the 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 is, he has something even better in mind [...] He has that awe-inspiring independence that arises from dealing with the truth.

Now, of course, one could say that Emerson has been dead for a long time, and that this is a characteristic that was already given about the German character a decade ago. After all, such minds as the one who is regarded as the most important French philosopher today [gap in the text], after the speech he gave in which he portrayed the Germans of today as devoid of everything that lived in them during their great era. One also finds in him, in this French philosopher with the name that sounds so beautifully French, at least before the war, one also finds in him an emphasis on how these Germans have become so different in recent times.

And so it is that we also look again at what is being said on the German side, but instead listen to an English voice. And now we will even choose critical voices that were uttered not long ago, barely two years before the war; voices characterizing the German essence. Lectures were held in Manchester under the title “Germany in the Nineteenth Century.”

The preface emphasizes why these lectures on the German character were given in Manchester. It is said that the newspaper people in England should learn something about the German character. Perhaps two things can be seen from this introduction, this preface: that at the time, those who gave these lectures as learned Englishmen considered the newspaper people to be in need of such an education. But the other thing can also be seen; I can leave it to your judgment whether what was said to the newspaper people was of much use, based on today's experience. But what was said to the English newspaper people back then? As I said, the lectures were not given in German in Leipzig or Berlin or Hamburg, but in English for the English foreigners. There it was said:

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

As I said, not spoken in Berlin or Leipzig, but in Manchester!

Imagination, feeling, and will asserted their right to be heard alongside or beyond reason, and under their transformative pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful. The irrational was recognized as a source of enlightenment; wisdom was sought from children and flowers; science, philosophy, and poetry came close together.

This was how the German essence was characterized in Manchester.

Over here in England, this revival of the imagination gave birth to noble poetry, but left the sciences and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to understanding the whole period is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical and scientific movements flowed mostly in separate channels, in Germany they touched or merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius of poetry in the net of his logic; and the thought that discovers and explains, and the imagination that creates, worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

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

Thus, the German character was characterized by English scholars in Manchester.

You will have come across a name that, after the outbreak of war, could not find enough words to describe the high morality that guided the British government in declaring war on the German Reich: Haldane. He wrote the preface to the lectures that were collected and in which you can find what I have just read. And that Lord Haldane wrote the following in the preface, although it was some time before the war:

The source of the stream of

— Germany's —

spiritual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a great extent practical and concrete. [...] Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the burden of arming ourselves against attacks that in reality none of us has in mind.

Thus spoke this leading English intellectual. You know how he spoke after the outbreak of the war. The same scholar who spoke the words that were read out spoke even more words back then in Manchester to enlighten the newspaper people. He said:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has been beneficial to world peace.

Spoken in Manchester.

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 for history to shed light on the tangled web of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For if we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And our ancestors had good reason to fear them. [...]

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866-1871 put an end once and for all to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war that had so often often tempted into the wrong channels; they put the German people in a position to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish on a firm basis a new European system that has preserved the peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all her expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to accomplish, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a great war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

It is fair to say that these words were spoken in praise of the sustaining power of the German spirit, indeed, one might even say of the soul-sustaining power of the German spirit for Europe. Can one say more than this Englishman said in Manchester to the newspaper people, with whom it then had such a good impact!

And right up to the most recent days, we can follow such phenomena. We have seen how Emerson expressly emphasized how little the English can actually understand of what is the fundamental force of the German character. But once they have really got to their feet and got to know this German spirit, they have learned to think differently about it. Just a few words should be mentioned, which an Englishwoman wrote down shortly before the outbreak of the war, after spending eight years in Germany. She did not get to know it in the way that most English people get to know Germany, but she was in schools, clinics, she got to know philosophy and other lecture halls. I could now quote many words that are deeply characteristic, but I will just read one passage that was written by an English expert on the German character. Miss Wylie writes the following words:

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 battle against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. (...]

At every border and across the water, opponents sit, both commercially and politically, eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little, so that they can pounce on her and bring her down.

There is truly no need to boast about the sustaining power of the German spirit; one need only listen to what people have to say when they are speaking out of consciousness, and not out of unconsciousness, if that is said by the countries whose objectivity has been proven. If you look around, you will find many judgments similar to these about the German character and its sustaining power. This sustaining power of the German spirit is demonstrated precisely by the fact that this German spirit, in every soul of the German being that seeks the path to the spirit, has an illuminating effect on these souls, so that it can indeed be said: In what emerged as German idealism at the turn of the eighteenth to nineteenth century lie the seeds for an ever-more-vibrant and vibrant spiritual experience. And so it came about that not only in the course of the nineteenth century, through spirits who in later times would play a great role, Troxler and Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, great beginnings of today's spiritual science can be found; of that which we ourselves can bring out of the spiritual world again. These fundamental forces of the German spirit can be found in the entire development of German intellectual life. And here again is a case in point, the case of one of the best, the deepest, the most German of Germans from the second half of the nineteenth century: Herman Grimm.

Herman Grimm is an extraordinary art historian who has written about many artists and works of art with inner experience. One often has the feeling: where does Herman Grimm get what he has to say about art and works of art not from ordinary evidence but from direct experience of aesthetic judgment? Then one must go to the artistic and poetic works that he has produced. There one finds in his novellas that the sustaining power of the German spirit is also evident in them, which is transferred there, albeit not as spiritual science, but into the artistic. Of course, one cannot cite artistic products as evidence for the results of spiritual science. But if the spiritual scientist can say that the sayings in the work of art are almost expertly correct for the described spiritual experiences, then it is permissible to point to such an occurrence, as is to be done today.

Herman Grimm always wants to point out that one can only understand the world if one is able to look not only at what [gap in the text], but also at what protrudes from the supersensible into the sensual. He then presents spiritual processes that show how he strives to show that the world is more than just the sensual world. There he wrote a novella: 'The Songstress'. He describes the fate of a somewhat flirtatious songstress who is nevertheless endowed with a deep soul. There is a man who loves the songstress, but she rejects him. The novella continues in an extremely meaningful way until the songstress's death. A friend leads the singer straight to the house where her lover, whom she rejected, committed suicide. The suicide occurs the moment she enters. She is consumed by guilt and is unable to sleep from that hour on. The friend, the owner of the house, has to watch over her. Now Herman Grimm describes how the singer sees the spirit of the deceased rising up in bed and approaching her. And Herman Grimm presents this in such a way that it is clear from this description that he does not want to reflect on an imagination; rather, in a spiritual experience that the guilt-ridden singer has, he wants to show how forces are effective beyond death, and wants to point to the fate that works beyond death. The singer dies after her beloved; she is, as it were, taken. Spiritual science would say: what can be announced as the next phenomenon to appear to a person after they have passed through the gate of death is presented to the soul of the singer: the appearance of the etheric body, which has to bear the fate that is to be borne beyond death.

But this is not the only case with Herman Grimm. He has written a cultural-historical novel: “Unüberwindliche Mächte” (Insurmountable Forces).

The most important thing is: the young heroine Emmy is portrayed. Emmy is also brought to the point where the fate of the beloved dead man affects the living, not only through the inner forces of the soul, but in such a way that this effect is meant by the soul - after passing through the gate of death - still having a real effect on life. Herman Grimm describes how Emmy, as it were, dies after her beloved. And we find a wonderful scene at the end of the novel 'Unüberwindliche Mächte' (Insurmountable Forces). Emmy dies, and Herman Grimm describes how a figure rises out of the dying Emmy, out of the physical body, a figure with arms similar to the physical arms, with a face similar to Emmy's face, which disappears over and into the spiritual world. Herman Grimm is able to grasp the moment of death artistically, just as spiritual science can grasp it in a living vision.

One can see that the sustaining power of the German spirit also works in this poet's soul, which comes from German idealism to grasp the living spirit life. The fact that Herman Grimm can present the matter in a novelistic way, but in the fullest reality, that he is capable of doing so, is the power of spiritual life that prevails through the German spirit. Herman Grimm felt - he had, after all, grown up entirely in what had entered into German intellectual life from Goethe's intellectual life - he felt with all his soul in the stream of German intellectual life. He knew this German spiritual life because every phase of this German spiritual life was a phase of his own life. And how did Herman Grimm characterize this mood of the German being in 1895, shortly before his death? Anyone who knows German life knows that this description is true; what I am about to read from Herman Grimm is true as words that are intended to represent the mood of the German being. He wants to express – he who has so often pointed out how dear to him repeated lives on earth are – he wants to express how German spiritual life aims to recognize the spiritual world, but not to develop a nationality in a one-sided way, but to absorb the most general human element. The words are beautiful, but also deeply significant for the characterization of German intellectual life, which Herman Grimm spoke in 1895.

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

Then he continues:

We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war. The assurance that keeping the peace is our [all] most sacred wish is not a lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men” permeates us.

This is how Herman Grimm describes the mood in Central Europe. But then he shows that he is not a dreamer, but that he can judge the situation well. For he continues:

Recognizing people as a totality, they see themselves as subject to an invisible court enthroned in the clouds, before which they consider it a misfortune not to be allowed to exist, and whose judicial proceedings they seek to adapt to their internal disputes. With anxious eagerness they seek their right here. How the French today are trying to present the war against Germany, which they are planning, as a moral imperative, demanding recognition of it from other nations, even from the Germans themselves.

Anyone who is familiar with the mood in Central Europe will know that Herman Grimm spoke the truth at the time. And they will then be able to judge what is actually meant when those who today want to assert this truth from Central Europe are repeatedly called out from left and right, from west and east: “Who wanted the war?” One must say that this “who wanted the war” comes across as if a number of people with threatening gestures are standing around a house and the master of the house sees that they want to attack the house, and he then goes out and can't help but beat them up. And then the question would be: “Who wanted this beating?” It is the same logic. Yes, one can even say many things about this logic that prevails in the world today. One can even say: this logic is - one is almost embarrassed to say it, because it is so flimsy when it is said: “We did not want the war, but in Central Europe it was wanted.” it is the same logic as when it is said: “Yes, we could not wage war if the Germans had not invented gunpowder, because then there would be no war; so who wanted the war?” It would be the same logic if the people in Central Europe wanted to blame us for using printing ink to accuse the German people of being “barbarians”. The Germans, after all, invented the process of printing with printing ink on paper. But with this intention it does indeed look strange to those who not only look at what has happened in the last few months before the war, but look at what has been preparing for decades as the driving impulses. Those who have really been able to look with open eyes at what is going on in Europe, who have wanted to see it, have already seen how this war, so to speak, in its basic impulses, was preparing itself from the East. And the one who would correctly ask the question today: Who could have prevented the war? will of course have to point to Russia. But those who saw clearly knew that. We see this in the words that were spoken long before the war.

As for me, I am in no doubt for a moment that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic world is imminent, that it will ignite either through the Orient, specifically Turkey, or through the nationality dispute in Austria, perhaps both, and that Russia will take the lead in it on one side. This power is already preparing for the eventuality; the Russian national press is spewing fire and brimstone against Germany. [...] The German press is already sounding its warning cries. It has been a long time since Russia gathered itself after the Crimean War, and it seems that it is now considered expedient in [St. Petersburg] to take up the Oriental question once again. If the Mediterranean Sea was once to become a “French Sea”, according to the expression that was more pompous than true, Russia has the even more positive intention of making a Russian lake out of the Black Sea and a Russian pond out of the Sea of Marmara. It is an established goal of Russian policy that Constantinople must become a Russian city and Greece a direct vassal state of Russia, which finds its lever of support in the common religion and in Pan-Slavism. The Danube would then be closed at the Iron Gate by the Russian turnpike.

But this was not said recently, but in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War; and it was said by those who were not speaking off the top of their heads, but who knew how forces were gradually gathering from the east , how the Austrian soul was permeated with distorted Slavophilism, in order to finally lead to what led to the war today and which the Western powers fell for.

I would like to read you one more passage that can show you how the connection with the active forces and impulses presents itself to those who really want to see them. When looking at what happened in the summer of 1914 and what then led to the war from the eastern side, could one not use the following words - I will read out words that could be coined for the time in the first half of 1914:

[...] a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, [...] I was personally suspected in my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year, 1879, to strong demands for pressure to be exerted on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend my support to this, because if we alienated 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 previously believed 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 the complete subordination of our policy (for a certain period) to the Russian one would not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

What has happened, however, shows that the European center can save itself from such an attack. The words I have read to you could be a characteristic of the forces that played in 1914. But I have in fact only changed a few words that were not written or spoken in 1914, but were said by Bismarck in the German Reichstag on February 6, 1888. And I will now read them to you in their true form. You will see how they correspond to what I read to you as being appropriate for the spring of 1914. Bismarck said these words when he spoke out against the military bill in the Reichstag:

[...] a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics and personally suspecting me of ulterior motives. These attacks intensified during the following year, until in 1879 there were strong demands for pressure to be exerted on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge Austrian law. I could not lend my hand to this; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily fall into dependence 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, saying to 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 had explained this to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our policy (for a certain period) to the Russian one would not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

So one can say: The balance of power between the European East and the Center had to be characterized in 1888 in exactly the same way as for the year 1914. One dares to say again that people were living in Central Europe in 1914 who brought about this war. Anyone with a healthy sense of fact will not be able to make such an assertion. One must, however, have a healthy sense of facts. How was the mood prepared in this European East, which then led to the fact that this firebrand, through the connection of the East with the West, finally led to the present-day siege of the European center - what was prepared there in the European East?

We saw, among other things, the mood of Slavophilism emerge in the nineteenth century. Among these Slavophiles there were idealists, but there were also people who later transformed the Slavophile sentiment into complete absorption and idolization of what is now present in Russia; they did not see Russia's mission in pursuing the inner soul forces of the Russian people, but in the power and might that now prevails there. And those who are the best among these Slavophiles have worked in such a way that the conviction has spread widely that the culture of Western Europe, and especially of Germany, is a culture of decline and that a rebirth of European life must come from the East. This has become a dogma. And this dogma has slowly and gradually become established in what can be called Russian life. Certain perceptions of this Russian life are completely imbued with it. The best minds, by being interwoven with Russian life, are also interwoven with this idea of Slavophilism.

Even the great Soloviev had a time in his life when he was a Slavophile, when he believed, albeit in a different way than [Aksakov, Katkov and Danilevsky], that something could already be in Russian life that had the mission to cover all of Europe, so to speak, with a new culture. But then he became more and more familiar with what had become of Slavophilism in present-day Russia. He learned to consider how what had become of Slavophilism in present-day Russia would have to affect the European center, the European West. And there it was, at the time when he said the following to himself – these are Soloviev's, the Russian philosopher's, own words; he says that Slavophilism had become a “commodity of the fair trade” that “filled all the dirty streets, squares and alleys of Russian life with wild, animalistic shouting”. These are Solowjow's own words. At the time when Solowjow was faced with the question of conscience that it is important to ask yourself from time to time; that question of conscience that goes like this: “Why doesn't Europe love us?”

He actually wanted to raise the question: What must Europe see when it looks at us? And Solowjow, the great philosopher of the second half of the nineteenth century, answers this question from the Russian spirit:

Europe [...] looks at us with apprehension and with displeasure, [since the elemental power of the Russian people is dark and mysterious, its spiritual and cultural powers inferior, but its demands] clear, definite and great.

These are not the words of a German, but of a Russian, about the forces that have been at work for decades and that have now been expressed with the firebrand. Solowjow continues:

[The clamor of our nationalism can be heard loudly in Europe, which wants to destroy Turkey and Austria, beat the Germans, conquer Constantinople and, if it succeeds, India as well. But if we are asked what we will do for humanity after taking and destroying all of that, we can only remain silent or babble senseless phrases.

"Thus [...] the most essential, indeed the only important question that an honest and reasonable patriotism should address is not Russia's power and mission, but Russia's sins.]

Thus the great Russian on Russian character. Must not then the question be put from the center of Europe to the east: “What do you want?” If you could somehow get the center of Europe in your hands, what do you want?” The best, the most significant, the most beneficial Russian of the nineteenth century answers:

If we are asked [what we will do to benefit humanity after conquering and destroying everything, we can only remain silent or spout meaningless phrases.

Then we see what it is that needs to be defended, what the forces that have taken up the defense of the German character to the left and to the right have to defend in reality.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is no wonder that this German essence, this fundamental force of the German spirit, is misunderstood everywhere. It arises, one might say, from the intimate association of the individual German with the German spirit, which the individual German must feel to be a living one. And from this arise those misunderstandings that we encounter everywhere when we ask people who are not as enlightened as we have come to know them today among other nations. We sometimes hear that what Herman Grimm, who also knew Goethe well, said about the German character with reference to Lewes' biography of Goethe is true; what Herman Grimm said about this book is true: Lewes wrote a book about Goethe, that is, he wrote a book about a man who was born in Frankfurt, to whom he attributes Goethe's works, and who he claims died in 1832. But the way he describes him, what he presents as the soul of the man in the book, bears no resemblance to the feelings of anyone who feels connected to Goethe in German intellectual life.

And so, wherever we try to find a relationship to the German spirit, we only find misunderstandings. Finally, I would like to mention something that may be a more or less inconsequential but perhaps interesting episode.

The movement to which we belong had some connection with the movement that started from Adyar. [Our friends could no longer go along with it because of their lack of involvement in German intellectual life and its supporting forces] when English materialism, masquerading as Theosophy, went so far that the absurdity was believed by some that the spirit of Christ had revealed itself in a little Hindu boy. We know under what guises all this was practiced. It was then that the German sense of truth arose and the German mind had to turn away from those activities calling themselves theosophical. Now, however, the president of that movement has the following to say, inspired by the English spirit, about the connection between the separation of the German spiritual-scientific movement, which is united in the Anthroposophical Society. The following was truly written in England. Please excuse me for bringing my insignificant person into the whole context, but this was written months after the war had broken out.

Now, looking back in the light of German methods as revealed to us by the war, I realize that the long-standing efforts to capture the Theosophical Society and place a German at its head, the anger against me when I frustrated these efforts, the complaint that I had spoken of the late King Edward VII as the protector of European peace instead of giving the honor to the Kaiser - that all this was part of the widespread campaign against England, and that the missionaries were tools, cleverly used by the German agents here to carry out their plans. If they could have turned the Theosophical Society in India, with its large number of officials, into a weapon against the British government and got them to look up to Germany as their spiritual leader, instead of standing up, as it has always done, for the equal alliance of two free nations, then it could gradually have become a channel for poison in India. To achieve this, it was first necessary to overthrow her president, who, as is well known, has stood for the alliance of the two peoples for the last twenty years.

So, we are supposed to have been annoyed that she did not present the German Kaiser, but Edward VII, as a stronghold of peace, and therefore broke away from her, while the break occurred because we could not go along with what was said on that side about the Christ presence. But then she gives us far too much honor by mentioning all that the German spiritual science movement is said to have done to initiate the present war; that is, those who spoke on the other side about our spiritual science movement. Now we are learning about their plans from an English point of view. It is remarkable what we are said to have done, what we are said to have intended. One can see how this is viewed from this side, which necessarily had to happen for the sake of the German sense of truth, the German sense of truth, for the sake of what feels like being within the supporting power of the German spirit. Then one must say: When one sees how this German spirit with its supporting power has worked in hundreds and thousands, how it has brought German idealism, which contains the seeds for grasping and experiencing the living spirit , then one must say that Goethe's words, which Friedrich Lienhard also cites in his pamphlet 'Germany's European Mission', are deeply true. Goethe spoke these words in 1813 in a conversation with Luden:

The destiny of the Germans is not yet fulfilled. If they had had no other task than to break up the Roman Empire and create and organize a new world, they would have perished long ago. But since they have continued to exist, and in such strength and efficiency, I believe that they must still have a great destiny.

This conversation of Goethe's is still valid today. And if we now live in these fateful times, we, dear attendees, feel that everything that has to do with the great historical development of the German character, which stands before us as a living organism. If we look at what has lived in the German spirit, what has lived in a Wolfram von Eschenbach, in Herder, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, and in Herman Grimm, we see what has been achieved by the German spirit in terms of spiritual and intellectual power, as if from a single source. This is the driving force of the German spirit.

Now the German spirit has another task. It must flow into the sacrificial deeds that must be accomplished through death and blood in defense of what we wanted to contemplate with these admittedly insufficient words today. But what this shows us is that the German spirit, as it has emerged, has not yet fulfilled its task in the world, that it is to be defended, because it has a mission for the world that it must still fulfill in order to fully grasp the living spiritual life. And so, when we consider the fundamental strength of the German spirit, we can draw hope and confidence for the future of Germany. But all of this also speaks to our feelings and emotions, which on the one hand make us look wistfully, but also consolingly, but also with the greatest admiration, at what Germany has to do now in this fateful time. Our feelings and sentiments are with all those who bleed and suffer, but who also accomplish great deeds in the East and the West, when we see in all this only another expression of the German character. And those who, as mothers and fathers, as brothers and sisters, lose a dear relative, they know that they lose him for that which must be worked out as German spirit, as German future, as the whole German essence that still has something to do in the world, to which one must look as to an essence that has not yet been completed.

And so let us summarize, in terms of feeling and sentiment, the impulses that arise from this contemplation, in the words: Yes, this German essence, we see it growing, and only a lack of understanding can speak of a decline of this German essence. Rather, something else is true. What is true is what I, in summary, would like to express the thoughts of this evening in words that express how what can be observed in the German character ultimately comes together in our minds in a hope, a confidence, a certainty of the further development of the German character:

The German spirit has not yet accomplished
What it is to bring to the world.
It lives in hopes for the future,
It hopes for future deeds full of life; —
In the depths of its being, it feels powerful
Hidden things that must still mature.
How can a wish for his end arise in the power of the enemy without understanding, so long as life reveals itself to him, which holds him in the roots of his being?

Dear attendees! Every winter I have been able to give a few lectures in different European cities, including here in Munich, on topics in the field of spiritual science. I believe it is a legitimate sentiment that the lectures I am giving this winter should take their starting point from what is so close to us in these fateful days. The impulses that these days stir in our hearts and souls will be the subject of today's introductory lecture. Do we not have the feeling that in these trying times of ours, no word can be spoken that is not accompanied by an intense feeling, which looks towards those fields in the east and west, where powerful judgments are being written into the course of human development, not by words, but by deeds? One could see how, since the days of August, what lives in the deepest impulses of the German people has been drawn out like a mighty breath of the spirit; one could see how, in our time, courage to make sacrifices, selflessness, devotion, and an infinite love have grown out of the depths of souls. All this has given rise to a unified feeling, the like of which we have not seen for a long time. It is not for me, in these reflections, to transgress Bismarck's 1870 warning to those whom fate has left behind from the fields of battle, that they must not, above all, anticipate events with words and reflections until something decisive has happened. I will not deal with what lies in the impulses of the day, but with what runs through these impulses of the day and what can, must occupy the spiritual researcher in particular - albeit in complete harmony with the feeling that has seized everyone.

Dear attendees! In recent times, there has been much talk of heredity in schools of thought that are more or less influenced by materialism. By this heredity one means something that is fundamentally quite external to the spiritual contemplation of things and entities: the survival of the qualities of preceding beings in subsequent beings. I do not intend to discuss the essence of this idea of inheritance today; but I would like to draw attention to how something similar to this inheritance is present in the lower spheres in the entire progress of the spiritual development of humanity, and in particular in the life of a nation, as a kind of spiritual inheritance, but more comprehensive and universal than what is usually called by that name.

What is it that holds the souls of a people together, that can pour fire into the souls of a people, as it now passes through the spiritual veins of the people? One can say: It flows down like a real, actual stream, like a stream [from] the spiritual world; in this stream live the impulses of the best leading spirits, the best leading geniuses of a people. Not only in the sense of the Greek fairy tale is it real for the spiritual researcher that the forces that were connected in the leader-geniuses with a people remain with this people, in that the same forces live on in this people, and that one can truly say that out there in the fields to the east and west, the same forces live in those who have to enter the scene of events with blood and soul, the same forces live as they lived in the best leadership geniuses of the people.

Two of these leading geniuses shall be singled out today. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” says a weighty word; by the fruits one can also recognize what is contained in the deepest forces of the national soul, and these fruits, these highest fruits, which grow out of the roots and trunk of the national soul, these are the deeds of the leading geniuses of a nation. Therefore, one can say: Let the forces blow over our fields in the east and west, which we can also perceive in such spirits as those who are to be singled out today from the culture of Central Europe, in Schiller and Fichte.

And let us start from a moment that is particularly suitable for these two guiding geniuses, to bring them close to our feelings. I do not want to evoke sentimental feelings by starting with the last moments of Schiller and Fichte, with those moments when they passed through the gateway of death, but because I believe that the symbolic and the symptomatically significant of these geniuses are indeed characteristically expressed in the moment of their death.

Here we turn to Schiller. It is indeed remarkable that we have grown so fond of spirits like Schiller that literature, to our great satisfaction, gives us the means to observe the most intimate personal side of these geniuses as well. And so we can almost step in front of Schiller's sickbed and dying bed from the accounts of the younger Voß, Schiller's friend, and let the fact have its effect on us, in which the victory of the soul over the external body has been expressed in this spirit.

We can follow the last days of this genius, can follow how his body was visibly dedicated to death and only maintained itself through the tremendous power of his soul. Then we accompany him into the death chamber, see how this spirit, in the hour of death, is directed towards the highest things, see how he has his youngest child brought to him, how he takes it and looks deeply into its eyes, how he gives it back and turns away. We can guess, as the younger Voß suggests, what thoughts may have crossed his mind: how much he, as a father, could and should have been for this child. And it is truly not a sentimental feeling when one says: this looking into the eyes of the child, one feels it as a symbolic looking into the eyes of the German people. When one allows the whole personality of Schiller to take effect on oneself, then one says to oneself: He had to go through the gate of death with the feeling of how much should have emerged from the seeds he had sown in the cultural field of the German people. That is why we, with a deep interest in the development of German culture, are looking closely at the living Schiller, at the Schiller who is still alive today, at the Schiller from whom radiate the forces that can still be effective in our souls today.

A similar moment is the moment of death in Fichte, in Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great German philosopher, one might say the most energetic philosopher who has ever walked through the history of philosophy. When the German people had experienced the deepest humiliation, Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke to them the most invigorating words in his “Discourses to the German Nation,” and when the time came for the German people to seek liberation from their humiliation, Fichte took the most heartfelt interest, interest with his whole personality, and we feel this interest most keenly when we look at his last days. His wife was a nurse. She brought the military hospital fever home with her. She recovered, but passed it on to the philosopher himself. And now we see him: a kind of victim of the war in his last days and hours. The philosopher who had found the most powerful words to characterize the inner life of the human soul in its strength, the philosopher who, in his “Speeches to the German Nation,” sought to understand and proclaim the German essence, as he himself always said, from the “roots of life's stirrings,” where did his thoughts dwell in his last hours? Oh, it is very characteristic: in the feverish delirium of his last hours, he felt - Johann Gottlieb Fichte - his soul at the battlefields, at the crossing of the Rhine, which was just taking place under Blücher. His thoughts were absorbed in the feverish fantasy of participating in the war. When his son approached his bedside and offered him a medicine, Fichte said that he could not have experienced anything more satisfying than this upsurge of his people. He pushed the medicine away and said, “I know that I will recover.” These were his last moments. A philosopher, ladies and gentlemen, bearing in mind the saying: “You shall know them by their fruits.”

What Schiller and Fichte can be to their people expresses what also lives in this people today, what this people fights and bleeds for. That which is real in the world reveals itself outwardly in the most diverse stages of transformation; but one can recognize that which lives in the national instincts, in the subconscious soul stirrings of the members of this nation, by the fruits, where it is expressed at its highest peak.

It was in a time of great difficulty that Fichte delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” to his oppressed people. Right at the beginning, he raised three questions, three questions that can be said to have only limited significance today. The first question is: Is there a German nation in truth and reality and is its existence in danger? Regarding the last words, however, the question can still be asked today. The second question is: Is it worth the effort to devise the means for this German nation to continue to exist and to exist in what way? Well, I think one need only look at Schiller and Fichte and the others related to them and one will find: The nineteenth century answered this question through the facts of its German cultural development. And the third question that Fichte raises is: what means are suitable for helping the German people to achieve a future that corresponds to them? Today, we should be particularly concerned with what Fichte sought as the sources from which he spoke at that time about these means for his people, what occupied him as the sources from which he tried to hint at the essence of Germanness, as he said.

It must be admitted that what he said about Germany, what he indicated as the means for developing this Germanness, did not find its expression in the nineteenth century, and today we must think differently about things than Fichte did, differently about the significance of a nation's language than Fichte thought at the time, differently about the effectiveness of precisely the kind of educational method that Fichte indicated, because in it he saw the means to secure the future of the German people. What matters is not that, but rather the soul-germs out of which Fichte spoke his powerful words at that time; for out of these soul-germs the German people still live today.

And I believe I am not saying anything unjustified when I say that in particular what I have meant from this place as spiritual science has often been discussed, and may be linked to Johann Gottlieb Fichte , for even if what he spoke in his time sounds different from the results of spiritual science today, the same soul-germs gave rise to Fichte's science in his time and to spiritual science in our time, as I believe. This can be shown in detail. For those of the honored listeners who in past years have heard much of what has been said from this place about spiritual science, it will be clear without further ado what I want to suggest briefly and in general terms about spiritual science.

What is the essence of spiritual science? In relation to the search for spiritual results, it consists in the fact that spiritual science, unlike the other sciences, the external sciences, does not merely go to what presents itself to the external senses and shines to the mind when it devotes itself to the external world, but that it goes to what arises in the soul when it remains passive to things, but that it goes to what can only be can be recognized and experienced when the soul - allow me to use this word of Johann Gottlieb Fichte - goes to the deepest roots of its life impulses, when it actively seeks to recognize inwardly, when it not only allows the world to flow into it, but when it tries to embrace the world in its innermost core by invoking the deepest forces lying within the soul.

And so, one could say, without being presumptuous about respect to conventional science, spiritual science is a kind of science that relies on the inner courage of the soul, on being inwardly stirred, on grasping the world in one's activity. And here we may say: in all the impulses of the development of German culture – this is particularly evident in minds such as Fichte and Schiller – in all these impulses of the development of German culture, it is found, either in a germinal or more or less explicitly suggested form, that man finds knowledge of the world by seeking knowledge of the soul in his innermost being. We need only recall what is so epigrammatically presented to us in Goethe's Faust, where Faust encounters the spirit and speaks to it:

Exalted spirit, thou hast given me, given me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not in vain
turned Thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
the power to feel and enjoy it. Not
only dost Thou permit cold, wondering visit,
but givest me the right to look into her deep breast,
as into the bosom of a friend.
Thou leadest the line of the living
before me, and teach me to know my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.

And then, after this suggestion of how the spirit – the spirit that lives and moves in all things – reveals the secrets of nature to him, Faust draws attention to how this knowledge is connected to the living comprehension of one's own soul.

And when the storm rages and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce topples, crushing neighboring branches
And neighboring trunks, sweeping down
And the hill thunders hollowly with its fall,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Then myself, and to my own chest
open up to me, and the deep, secret wonders of my own breast are revealed to me.

The one - and this is more or less the meaning of the whole spiritual cultural development of Central Europe - the one who is able to recognize himself in the deepest soul as a spiritual being, does not get involved in setting the boundaries of knowledge, because he knows: wherever he goes, the spiritual part of his soul goes with him. And he will find spiritual essence everywhere. And so arises (I can only hint at this today) from this spiritual science, living in the activity of the soul, a knowledge of the human being, the human being that goes through its temporal existence in the body between birth and death, but which belongs to eternity, which enters through birth into physical existence, which through the gate of death again emerges into the spiritual world and there experiences its further destiny. And it is not only in a theoretical sense that the nature of the soul is spoken of in spiritual science, but spiritual science, in its active recognition, brings to life that which lives in man as an eternal being; it makes this recognizable by showing that one can look from the spirit, which is free from the body, at that which lies between birth and death in the human body.

Spiritual science does not merely want to provide theories, but rather an expansion of spiritual experience. And so it comes to the conclusion that it is possible for those who apply the spiritual research method to their own soul to experience the moment that a person experiences in the natural progression when they pass through the gate of death: to look at what the body and bodily laws are from the being that is outside of the body. The retrospective view of the bodily and the sense of oneself in the spiritual as a real inner experience is one of the foundations of spiritual-scientific knowledge.

Now we turn to Fichte, to something that he gave right at the beginning of his “Speeches to the German Nation”. And from what he gave there, one can see what he meant by what he often emphasized: to make human wisdom out of the innermost “roots of the stirrings of life.” Fichte wants - I have to say this so that his words can be understood - to indicate how it seems to him when someone comes to him and says: Oh, what you tell us about a special education, , about rejuvenating the nation, that can no longer make an impression on us; because it is all so contrary to what we have experienced so far that we lack the possibility of having confidence in this completely different thing. And then Fichte says, as it were, as an objection: He who speaks in this way seems to him to be a person whom he now characterizes in the following way. Fichte says:

Time

— he means his time —

seems to me like a shadow that stands over its corpses, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the formerly so beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plagues. Although the invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of love, although she is greeted by the [joyful, secret] voices of her sisters and welcomed, although she is already stirring and expanding [within herself] in all directions, to develop the more glorious form into which it is to mature, but as yet it has no feeling for these [breezes] or no hearing for these voices, or if it did have it, it is absorbed in pain over its loss, with [which] it believes itself to have been lost.

Fichte rejects one objection and characterizes the person who wants to look back at the old that is facing the new, as well as the spiritual researcher who comes to the certainty: When the soul has gone through the gate of death, it stands as a truly observing being in front of its corpse and looks at it like an external object.

Now, esteemed attendees, I do not believe that anyone can doubt that Fichte could only arrive at such a symbol because the seeds of spiritual science were already alive in him, just as they were able to live in the energetic philosopher in his time. And was it not Fichte who, time and again, at every opportunity, tried to make clear how all being of the outer sense is rooted in the spiritual?

Only a few characteristic words from his penetrating “Speeches to the German Nation” will be mentioned here:

Time and eternity and infinity beholds

– and he means his philosophy –

in its emergence from the appearance and becoming visible of that One, which is absolutely invisible in itself, and only in this invisibility of it is grasped, correctly grasped. (..)

All persistent existence appearing as non-spiritual life

- says Fichte —

is only an empty shadow, cast out of seeing and mediated many times over by the Nothing. In contrast to this and through the recognition of this as a many times mediated Nothing, seeing itself is to be elevated to the recognition of its own Nothing and to the acknowledgment of the Invisible as the only true thing.

One grasps Fichte, as it were, at the very root of his being when one hears such words from him, and when did he utter such words? They came to him at a time when he wanted to speak about the essence of Germanness, as he coined the word. But what is it that this essence expresses? For Fichte, it is that which does not lead to a philosophy of death, to a philosophy of matter, to a philosophy of outer sensuality or observation of the senses, but which leads to the knowledge of that world in which the eternal is rooted in the human soul as in the universal cosmic eternal. And out of the energy of his being, out of the deepest 'roots of life impulses', Fichte tried to grasp in its cosmic significance that which gives the human being within him the guarantee of his eternal being. Fichte opposes everything that can be sensually perceived in its highest forms, everything that confronts man in the outer sun and planets and in other outer beings; and he opposes all this with what he believes he knows to be the essence of the self rooted in man, the eternal self that passes through birth and death.

And in his writing, which he was compelled to write because of the charge of atheism, he spoke in a wonderful way about this energetic consciousness of the eternal nature of the human soul. He also addresses what is external reality, and in contrast to this external reality, he sets the spiritual, which can be grasped in the innermost inner human being. It is as if he were addressing what passes before us as sun and planets, to which Fichte says:

You are changeable, not I. All your transformations are only my spectacle, and I will always hover unscathed above the ruins of your forms. That the forces which are to destroy the inner sphere of my activity [which I call my body] are already in effect now does not surprise me; this body belongs to You and is transient like everything that belongs to You, but this body is not I. I myself will hover over its ruins, and its dissolution will be my spectacle. That the forces are already at work which will destroy my outer sphere [that has only now begun to become so in the next points] - which will destroy you, you shining suns all, and the thousand times thousand world bodies [that roll around you], cannot alienate me; you are [by your birth] doomed to death. But [when, among the millions of suns that shine above my head, the youngest will have long since exhausted their last spark of light,] then I will still be the same, unharmed and unchanged, as I am now; and when [from your ruins, new solar systems will have converged as many times as there are of you, all of you shining above my head, and the] youngest of all her [last] sparks of light [will have long since been exhausted], then I will still be, unharmed and unchanged, the same as I am today.

Dear attendees, these are words that may be said – as the spiritual researcher may mean – one might claim that Fichte's soul sought the body within the Central European people in order to find the language with this corporeality, thus to speak of the eternity of the human self, of its triumph over the external world of the senses. Everything that Fichte, one might say, out of this consciousness, also transferred into his “Discourses to the German Nation” as their deepest inner forces, all this is basically for Fichte always the basis for answering another question, the question that can be characterized as the question: How does man find what he is supposed to be in the highest sense of the word? And there we stand, one might say, before the peculiarity of how German culture actually wants to understand this humanity.

Fichte, with powerful words, has indicated how it is basically in the nature of Germanness to transcend Germanness precisely through Germanness, to represent humanity in its generality, to seek out in the human soul that which is elevated above all nationality, above all limitations of space and time. Therefore, one can say: the Englishman is English, the Frenchman is French; the same cannot be said for the German, fundamentally, if one wants to grasp the essence of his Germanness in the spirit of such geniuses as Fichte and Schiller were. The Englishman is English, the Frenchman is French, the German has at his innermost being the question: How can I become German? And this German is always standing before him like an ideal, which he wants to approach, which he first wants to become. And when he believes he has grasped it, which lies in the innermost stirrings of human life, in order to become such, then, precisely through his Germanness, he rises above the narrow bounds of nationality.

Fichte's statement is characteristic in this regard:

The principle according to which she

- he means German philosophy -

to conclude this, is presented to her what spirituality and freedom [this spirituality believes] and the eternal development of this spirituality through freedom wants, that wherever it is born and in whatever language it speaks, it is of our kind, it belongs to us and it will join us.

It is certainly legitimate to point to this ideal of becoming German in our own day, when the word “German barbarism” has arisen from all corners of the compass and when, as it seems and as we shall shortly will be shown, the judgments that are passed on Germanness today are based on nothing other than the necessary misunderstanding that must arise when there is no sense of what Schiller and Fichte, for example, understood to be the essence of their people.

Let us now turn our gaze away from Fichte and towards Schiller! One could cite many things about Schiller; one could go into this or that of his poetry and writings! But to grasp what connects him to Fichte and what connects him to the essence of German culture, one must point to a work by Schiller that unfortunately is appreciated very little, and basically, but which, if it is appreciated properly, shows how this striving for becoming German, which for Schiller is identical with becoming human, how this striving has been expressed in Schiller. And this writing is the one in which Schiller expresses himself in a very general, human, non-philosophical way: the “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”. What does he want to present to his fellow human beings in these letters?

Oh, Schiller is deeply convinced that the outer man who stands before us, who goes through birth and death, is only the outer shell of man, and that man's endeavor must be to seek the higher man in man. Schiller seeks it in his own way, according to the peculiarities of his own time, but he seeks it characteristically. On the one hand, he says to himself: out there is the world of the senses, sensory forces that have an effect on people. Schiller summarizes everything that is brought about in man under the concept of external natural necessity, also in man. Can man truly be human if he is subject to this natural necessity, he asks. No, is the answer, then he is a slave to this natural necessity. There is something else, there is the rigid concept of reason; everything that can be understood by theory, everything that reason can think up, can man, if he devotes himself to it, be fully human? No, says Schiller, because then man is subject to the compulsion of the necessity of reason, he is its slave. How do you free the true human being from himself, as it were? Then we release him, when we come to feel what reason inspires in us in the same way that we feel the sweetness of a sensual impression, when we lovingly feel what higher spirituality is in the same meaningful way that we can lovingly feel through the senses what makes an impression on them. Schiller seeks to elevate what is sensual into the sphere of spirituality, and to grasp what is spiritual with the freshness and liveliness of the senses. Then, in this middle state, man becomes free. When this thought is suggested, it cannot immediately make the impression it does when the human soul completely immerses itself in it. This is a thought that seeks to answer the question of what path of development a person should embark upon if they want to rise above themselves, if they want to redeem the person hidden within them and come to a higher conception of reality.

One could say that such thoughts arose at the pinnacle of human development. And how does Schiller seek to interweave his thoughts with everything that he is aware of as the essence of his people? In our days, Schiller's words have often been quoted – beautiful words – in which he, as it were, sees the essence of the German people, which he himself, as the highest human being, seeks to fathom in his aesthetic letters.

To

- says Schiller -

who forms and rules the mind,

must ultimately become the ruler, because

finally at the goal of time, if the

world has a plan, if human

life has any meaning, finally

must win the custom and reason,

the brute force of form must succumb

and the slowest people will catch up with

all the fast, fleeting ones.

[...]

He is destined for the highest,

and just as he is in the middle of

Europe's nations,

he is the core of humanity,

they are the flower and the leaf.

He is chosen by the world spirit, during

the struggle of time

to work on the eternal construction of human education

to preserve what time brings,

therefore he has appropriated what was previously foreign

and kept it within himself.

Everything that was valuable in other times

and peoples, which arose with time and vanished, he has preserved;

it is not lost to him, the treasures of

centuries.

Not to shine in the moment and

to play his role, but to win the great

process of time. Every people

has its day in history, but

the day of the German is the harvest of

all time.

And so one may say, when looking at these two geniuses, Fichte and Schiller, that the deepest German search and striving is to seek and fathom the most general human, the higher self in man - as spiritual science would say - and how one can live one's way into it. In this they stand, one might say, at the dawn of the development for which we seek the sun, of that development which a culture is capable of creating, which, whatever external undertakings it may pursue, to whatever flowering it may come in the external world, seeks only to use this external world to find the body for a soul, for that soul which we can best characterize when we look to such geniuses as Schiller and Fichte.

One may now raise the question: did the people of Schiller and Fichte live on after these geniuses had departed from the physical world? Is it disputable that the spirit that lived on a peak in Schiller and Fichte, that it also progresses in the plains of German intellectual life?

Well, esteemed attendees, I was reluctant to talk about this question when I should somehow be calling upon German judgment itself. This could very easily be taken as a kind of self-aggrandizement, as a kind of self-deception. So let another way be chosen to characterize the extent to which the belief can be justified that in the course of intellectual culture after Fichte and Schiller down to our time something of this Fichte and Schiller and all the geniuses related to them, above all also of Goethe, whether something of this lived. We need not dwell on what Germans can think about this survival of the soul in Fichte and Schiller and Goethe; we may first refer to a man who did not think and write in German, but who stood on the heights of nineteenth-century cultural development: Emerson.

What I want to present as an opinion about what survived of Schiller's, Fichte's, Goethe's soul, is presented with words that were originally written in English by the English American Emerson. He – not a German, but an English-speaking American – says:

One quality in particular that Goethe shares with his entire nation makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public: 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 wherever they want. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts reach. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours.

He continues:

The German mind has neither the French liveliness nor the Englishman's practical understanding 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 does this lead?” The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and express himself in a way that is appropriate to them: intellectual activity is present, so what does it stand for? What is the man's opinion? Where does it come from? Where does he get all these thoughts?

At another point he says:

The English [...] see only the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

The English do not grasp the depth of the German mind.

And now another of Emerson's judgments about this German character:

For this reason,

he says,

the distinctive terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are honored for their acumen and learning, approach their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks, not because he has talent, but the 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. No matter how excellent what he says is, he has something even better in mind [...] He has that fearsome independence that arises from dealing with the truth.

So judges, dear ladies and gentlemen, a nineteenth-century writer writing in English, one of the greatest, about those who are today called the German “barbarians”. What could be characterized as self-aggrandizement or something else, if only it could be taken out of German judgments, must be understood differently if it comes from such a place.

But now, esteemed attendees, is such a judgment only heard at such heights of humanity as Emerson's, and do others perhaps have a different judgment in general? We may point to a very recent judgment, as it were, juxtaposing it with that judgment about Germanness. Those who do not have the time or opportunity to read Miss Wylie's book 'Eight Years in Germany' can also take the very nice excerpts that Hofmiller has made of it and find important sayings from that book in them, getting an overview of an English-written judgment on the German character, written a few months before the outbreak of the war. But when and how was it written? Not written in the way that many people write today when they speak of the German “barbarians”, but written in such a way that the writer first spent eight years in Germany, got to know everything, delved deeper into the essence she wanted to describe. After visiting hospitals, schools, medical and other institutions, she wrote about the German character in English:

We read a lot [...] about the new Germany and its new spirit. But there is no new Germany and no new spirit. What exists is the mature work of generations, what has always been. 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 her was dark; in literature, she gave an epoch-making impetus; in music, she has always dominated [...].

German literature, German religion, German philosophy are

- to us Englishmen -

are books with seven seals. What we know is how many dreadnaughts Germany has and how much her trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnaught, but the brain of its builder, the courage and skill of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in sales, 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 is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined battle against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...]

At every border and across the water, opponents sit, commercially and politically, eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little, to pounce on it and overwhelm it. Germany knows this very well.

Many of the judgments, esteemed attendees, that are being read today, where are they being read? In newspapers, including English newspapers. Not so long ago, in 1912, a number of scholars in Manchester gave lectures on German nature, German politics, German history, German education, German economics, German literature. In the preface to the book, which was also translated into German and is called “Germany in the Nineteenth Century”, published by Herford, we are given a hint as to why these lectures were given. They were given, so we are told, to teach people from the press somewhat correct ideas about the German character.

We shall quote only a few of Herford's individual words, spoken in England and in English, about the German character:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich 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 for history to shed light on the tangled web of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For if we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And our ancestors had good reason to fear them. [...]

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866-1871 put an end once and for all to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war that had so often often tempted into the wrong channels; they put the German people in a position to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish on a firm basis a new European system that has preserved the peace for forty years. 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, had never been able to achieve, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

In 1912, these words were spoken in English in England, for the press, so that they would be better informed about German character. I leave it to each individual to decide what these press people learned from these lectures. When these lectures were printed, a man whose name may have also come up for discussion in recent days wrote a preface to them. In this preface, written by Lord Haldane, are the words:

The source of the stream of

—Germany's—

spiritual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of modern Germany is to a great extent material and practical.

And further:

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

Dear attendees, in this book there is something else that is highly, highly remarkable, something quite unique. Something that was also spoken in English in Manchester in 1912: “No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, loyal.”

I do not wish to express this as something that only sounds out of the German soul, but we have heard it across the Channel: “true, thorough, faithful” are words that, more than any other words, are “imbued with the juice of national ethics”.

Now, let us – without, of course, engaging in day-to-day politics or speaking about the events without authorization – let us tie what we are experiencing in our days to these words. In recent weeks, it has often been rightly pointed out how the current war originated in southeastern Europe, and how Austria's mission – one might say – in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina is linked to these war events, all the way down to the Balkans.

I, esteemed attendees, lived in Austria during the aftermath of Austria's undertaking this mission. Those who lived in Austria at the time and tried to look into the course of events in the 1980s often heard a word that had been cleverly and humorously coined by Bismarck, but which, one might say, expressed something related to fate. “There are autumn crocuses in Austria,” he said. Autumn crocuses! You see, the Austrian liberals had a leader named [Eduard] Herbst. He was a great, important man. These liberals, under Herbst's leadership, had resisted what Bismarck considered to be Austria's advance into the east, which was in keeping with the times and his views. That is why Bismarck called them “Herbstzeitlose” (autumn crocus). Well, one does not need to cite human judgments everywhere, which arise very easily from feelings and passions, which come from sympathies and antipathies; but history is actually the real teacher of things.

What, then, did Austria do that led to the events that are intimately connected with what is happening today, with everything that is happening today? All of this goes back to its ultimate beginning, to the mission that was assigned to Austria at the Congress of Berlin to advance into the Balkans. Who was it that opposed Russia's intentions at the Congress of Berlin and advocated this mission for Austria? It was British policy. Above all, it was those who represented British policy at the time who assigned this mission to Austria. This put Germany in a difficult position with regard to Russia.

Everything that happened after that, up to the assassination of the Archduke, is only the consequence of what was conferred upon Austria at the Congress of Berlin, for anyone who looks back in history with understanding. Today Germany and Austria must take the stage for what England conferred upon Austria at that time, and England is among the enemies of Germany and Austria.

That, dearest present, is the consequence of history. When one speaks of loyalty, there is also a loyalty to what one has once done. When one is characterized from the English point of view, one cannot help but say: “No words are so deeply imbued with the ‘juice of national ethics’ as those that describe these things: ”true , thoroughly, faithfully” – one cannot help but take these words seriously, and one would like to ask: Is it inner truthfulness to act in 1914 against what one initiated decades earlier? Is it thorough, and above all, is it faithful? Such questions may be raised today.

And when you consider all of this, then yes, then you have to say: Is it really possible to discern from the most recent events what the German character is, how it is connected to its great geniuses, and how this German character must relate to today's events? It cannot truly be seen from the latter, no matter how many compilations are made about the very latest events. It must be seen from what ruled in the deeper forces of Europe and what ultimately led to today's events. But something ruled in these forces of Europe, that is what lived on in Fichte, Schiller, Goethe and the others in the German people, in the peoples of Central Europe.

One man whom I would always like to mention is Herman Grimm, whom I would always like to call Goethe's governor. He tried to express in beautiful artistic words what he had absorbed from the great German period, what had become a world view. And these words of Herman Grimm, which express a feeling, not a judgment, and may therefore be taken from the German essence itself – in contrast to the judgments of non-Germans cited above – are cited as a testimony to how the seeds of the spiritual way of thinking of Fichte, Schiller and Goethe have taken root in people. How beautifully this was expressed in Herman Grimm's words, which he wrote in his Homer book:

The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people is today the church that unites us all. We are looking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious aspirations of the masses have only this one goal. The separation of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national distinction exists in the face of the ethical world view. We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from anticipating or bringing about the moment when this can happen through war. The assurance that keeping the peace is our [all's] most sacred wish is no lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men” permeates us.

So Herman Grimm 1895 - since 1901 he is dead, and then how the look into the spiritual world of Herman Grimm's words:

Recognizing people as a totality, submitting to an invisible court enthroned as if in the clouds, before which not to be allowed to exist is considered by them as a misfortune, and whose judicial proceedings they seek to adapt to their internal disputes. With anxious eagerness they seek their right here. How the French of today are at pains to present the war against Germany that they are planning as a moral imperative, demanding that other nations, even the Germans themselves, recognize it.

Anyone familiar with the German character knows that these words are taken from the innermost being of the German people, that they were truly not a lie in the mood of the German character. But the Germans have never subscribed to an opinion that is different, which Herman Grimm expressed in 1895:

How the present-day French are endeavoring to present the war against Germany, which they are planning, as a moral imperative, demanding recognition of it from other nations, even from the Germans themselves.

Dear attendees, compared to what one could know by looking at the driving forces of Europe with a gaze that is strengthened by the essence that has reached its highest level in Schiller, Fichte and Goethe – looking at these forces means recognizing that the answer to what has recently been heard again from across the Rhine must be given in a completely different way: Who wanted this war, those of mine who want to answer this question themselves? I believe that, when faced with the deeper forces at work in European life, it can be said with certainty, if one wants to proceed with a certain external sophistry: this or that did not want the war. One can say perhaps: not everyone wanted it – this can be proven sophistically. But one can also ask a different question, because whether the answer is correct depends on the correct formulation of the question. Who would have been able to avoid the war? And here only one answer is possible: only the Petersburg politicians would have been able to avoid the war. But this too need not be proved from the most recent events, from Blue and Yellow Books; it can be proved from the effective forces at work in the last decades within the life of the nations of Europe. And I will try, in a way that may perhaps be felt to be peculiar, to draw attention to how one can find the thing that has come to expression in this terrible war today as competing effective forces.

Let us assume that someone had taken it upon themselves to observe how provocative press reports were coming from Russia this spring, as these hinted at a certain mood that became more and more intense during the spring. He would then have followed the events of July, the last days of July, and he would also have tried to talk to some well-meaning Russian friends who see the better sides of the Russian people and would like to overlook what was going on as a real will directed against peace. What could someone who had proceeded in this way have said today, that is, this summer? He could have characterized this summer as follows: He could have described how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics. These attacks intensified into strong demands for pressure that Germany should exert on Austria in matters where Germany could not easily attack Austrian rights. One could not lend a hand to this, because if one alienated Austria from Germany, then one would necessarily become dependent on Russia in Germany. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? One could have believed it earlier by saying to oneself that one had no conflicting interests with Russia, one could even ask Russian friends who would explain this or that to one, and one could not contradict them. But the process, in view of everything, shows, when one considers what is happening in Russia, that even a complete subordination of Germany to Russia cannot protect us against our striving not to come into conflict with Russia. With these words one can characterize what took place between Europe's center and east; the words fit our present situation.

But now I have done something strange; I have only slightly altered words; because I did not make these words myself, not for our present situation; they are altered from words that Bismarck spoke in the German Reichstag in 1888. Bismarck said in 1888:

[...] how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics and personally suspecting me of ulterior motives. These attacks intensified during the following year until 1879, with strong demands for pressure to be exerted on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge 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 a dependency have been tolerable? I had previously believed it could be, by 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 the complete subordination of our policy (for a certain time) to the Russian policy did not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think that if the very same words can be applied to 1914, which were aptly applied by Germany's greatest statesman in 1888, then this is an extremely strong indication of the explosive elements that have always been present; that one must look for what is at stake in this war in terms of something other than merely the most recent events is proven by this. And do only people who are steeped in a certain spirituality say that it is the nature of the German to proclaim “peace on earth and goodwill toward men”? I said that anyone who looks into the German essence cannot perceive this as a lie. But those who would like to believe that such a thing only existed in the spiritual heights on which Herman Grimm stood, should look at the words with which Bismarck, in the same session of the Reichstag in 1888, characterized his attitude towards the German sentiment that Herman Grimm expressed when he said: “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men”. That is what is rooted in our deepest souls.

They are remarkable words that Bismarck spoke at the time; he said, roughly: “In a machine like the one we have, you don't wage wars of aggression.” And he concludes his deliberations in this sense, saying: Suppose I were to come before you – in the Reichstag that is – and explain that it is better that we attack, and demand that you grant so many millions of marks, would you have the confidence to grant it? Bismarck said: “I hope not.”

One must look at the moods, at the forces prevailing within the soul, if one wants to recognize the truth, the actuality in this regard. However, Bismarck recognized the truth; he knew that because he stood up for England's demands on Austria regarding the Balkans at the Congress of Berlin, he provoked Russia's antagonism towards Germany, but he also knew that he had had done everything that could mitigate this antagonism, so much so – he said himself – that he could have believed that he would have been awarded the highest Russian order for his services to Russia if he had not already had it. But that was precisely Bismarck's constant endeavor, to postpone for as long as possible what threatened from the east.

These are just a few examples, esteemed attendees, of what history says, what history says to those who delve into the fundamentals that can provide real answers to the question of who wanted this war.

Now, dear attendees, in German intellectual life, as it radiates from such geniuses as Fichte, Schiller, and Goethe, lies much that can, so to speak, give us a clue as to how we are to understand what now so often confronts us as a characteristic of what are called German “barbarians.” Then one could find some very peculiar tests.

There is a European spirit that has also made a great impression in Germany. He once spoke about this in one of his writings, in which he particularly expressed his inclination towards the spiritual life, towards mysticism; he spoke about what he owes to the three greatest mystics, whom he cites and as the third of whom he names a German spirit, Novalis; he speaks about Novalis and what he was to him. Novalis, he says, is like a spirit that leads to heights that are the real heights of humanity. It is basically a very, very beautiful and intimate characteristic of the German spirit Novalis. If an angel - so he says - or a genius from the cosmos descended to earth and wanted to experience on earth what is actually particularly important for the cosmos on earth - one would like to show him everything that Shakespeare has written, what happens between Hamlet and Ophelia and others - that may be very important for the Earth, he says, but even if it is important for the Earth, it would not be necessary for a genius who descended from another planet to Earth to learn something special. This characterization lists many other things that would be unimportant to someone who descended from the cosmos to Earth. But what lives in Novalis' soul, which – for anyone who knows Novalis – is clearly drawn from the deepest depths of the German national spirit, is characterized by this characterization with beautiful words:

But if he needed other evidence, it would lead him among those whose works almost stir to silence.

Because what can be spoken does not express the deepest human essence, he finds in Novalis:

She would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small [gestures] of their bodies. [They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises by one level] and where all those who are restless about themselves [feel] attentively circumvent the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our [higher] worlds. They would go with him to the boundaries of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably [only] begins [and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are only in the] invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. On these heights alone are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas [that resemble it and are] as commanding [as she is.] There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the realm of spirits: Their reflection is truly the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a foreign reason; but the people I am talking about have come out of the small village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community.

Such are the words of the Novalis critic in Novalis. He who once spoke of Novalis, who once characterized the German soul as giving experiences to the genius who descended from cosmic heights, is Maurice Maeterlinck.

Dear attendees, I have nothing to add to what Maurice Maeterlinck has said today, to what I have quoted, but I would like to say that Novalis spoke a wonderfully beautiful word from a truly German soul. “The only true temple” - says Novalis - “is the human body. In it lies a uniquely heavenly form. It is said to touch heaven when you feel the human body.” So Novalis at a perhaps tangible point.

It is the same as what Goethe says: “What would all the suns, all the stars in the sky, be, all the splendor of the stars, if it did not all shine in the human eye, flow into human hearts and a human soul could delight in it with admiration.”

Those who spoke like Goethe and Novalis felt this out of their spirituality: that there is a supreme work of art, a higher work of art than all human works of art: the human form, the work of divine art. However, only those who know that spiritual beings permeate the world and who see the greatest work of divine art in the human being will speak of the human form as Goethe did. Perhaps this may be recalled in an age when the German is accused of particular “barbarism” because it is said to have happened that some cannonballs also fell on the cathedral of Reims. Now, after seeing this cathedral in 1906, I know for sure that I am the equal of anyone in my admiration of this work of art – however, I have also gained the impression that it is fragile, so that it will not last for much longer will not last long, that it must be damaged by natural causes, but in many a judgment it depends not only on how one stands in relation to this judgment, how one perceives something, but whether one makes this judgment at all or not.

In view of the fact that, against the background of our fateful events, the human form, the work of the gods, is destroyed in countless cases when challenged by fate, then, yes, the judgment may be made that a human work of art can also be fired upon.

And I believe it is already apparent from what I have only been able to hint at, that this German character is intimately, intimately connected with humanity's search for spirituality, for the invisible, and that this search, which has found expression in the German leaders, , is also connected with this, even if only unconsciously, those who with blood and soul in our fateful days must make the sacrifices that must be made for the further development of humanity. And once you have delved into the essence of Central Europe, as expressed in the geniuses we have mentioned, you will no longer be able to object; you will no longer be able to doubt that this Central Europe is a body for a soul, that it contains an invisible power, which invisible power must have a perceptible impulsivity for a higher purpose in its own essence.

And when you look at things this way, then you can feel, no matter what may come: you can feel trust, strength, confidence when once again the German world is faced with the question of being or not being. Not a Hamlet answer, a Faust answer can give the German essence: “Whoever strives, we can redeem them.” One is always becoming German. When Germany has grown old, it can become young again. Goethe has one of the symbols in his “Faust” be the rejuvenating potion.

And where he talks about Goethe, not a German, again the English-speaking Emerson, says with reference to what has become of Goethe, the words:

The world is young, great men of the past call to us with a friendly voice. We must write sacred scriptures to connect the earthly and heavenly worlds. The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie, to make [everything we are aware of] a truth, to inspire certainty and confidence in books and in people, and to honor every truth, as in the beginning and as in the end, as for endless times, by making it a guide to our actions.

Thus Emerson in reference to Goethe, whom he designates as the head and the content of the nation. And one can be mindful of the words of the American Englishman that it may lie precisely in the mission of the people of Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, to do something of what Emerson points out: “We must write sacred books to reconnect heaven and the earthly world. The secret of genius is not to tolerate that a lie should remain in existence for us."

To what extent this is connected with today's lecture, I leave to you to judge. But I believe that I have at least stammered out the one thing that this lecture has hinted at, which is about the essence of Central Europe, about this culture that, according to Schiller's words, is the heart of Europe - the other is the leaf and the flower - what “great men of the past” make us feel about this culture.

Emerson says: “They call to us with a friendly voice”. We want to hear something of these friendly voices, because perhaps it can be used in our time. How we can arrive at something that can be suggested for our present time by really listening to the living spirit of these minds will be discussed tomorrow. Today, as an introduction, I wanted to point this out, not so much what was in my words, but what emanates from certain German geniuses and can flow into our hearts as consolation, hope, confidence, as a support in our mental and physical life for the present. For it can, when one feels vividly what flows over from the spirits, whose essence lives on in the German national spirit, it can, what flows over, in the soul to a hope, to a confidence, but also to something dense, what one can feel as the deepest truth in Central Europe.

And it is peculiar that, as if from the same spirit in which Goethe, Schiller and Fichte worked, the German-minded Schleiermacher wanted to coin his word about the connection of all human striving with the invisible, who also fell upon it, one can say, to suggest the deepest German essence by pointing to the invisibility of this German essence. And this invisible, this spiritual essence, which Fichte spoke so energetically in times when the German nation was in decline, to encourage it, it still sounds to us today in the right way, even if not in times of humiliation, but in times when we experience a supreme, a wonderful thing, we can just point to what the German nation has always striven for as its most precious. Today, as if from the soul of this German people and for our own consolation, we can say with Schleiermacher, saying with him, still expressing our feelings today in the center of Europe, in the heart of Europe: “Germany is still there and its invisible power is still unweakened.” And today we may add, after all that has developed out of German strength, it may justifiably hope: this invisible strength of the German people is not only unbroken today, it is also indestructible for an incalculable time.

At the beginning of yesterday's lecture I pointed out how different are the impressions received by the soul when, on the one hand, it allows the well-balanced, calm, passionless, emotionless, truly wise nature of the Bhagavad Gita to work upon it, and on the other hand that which holds sway in the Epistles of St. Paul. In many respects these give the impression of being permeated by personal emotions, personal views and points of view, by a certain, for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, agitating sense of propagandism; they are even choleric, sometimes stormy. If we allow the manner in which the spiritual content of both is expressed to work upon us, we have in the Gita something so perfect, expressed in such a wonderful, artistically rounded way, that one could not well imagine a greater perfection of expression, revealed poetically and yet so philosophically. In the Epistles of St. Paul, on the other hand, we often find what one might call an awkwardness of expression, so that on account of this, which sometimes approaches clumsiness, it is extremely difficult to extract their deep meaning. Yet it is nevertheless true that that which relates to Christianity in the Epistles of St. Paul is the keynote for its development, just as the union of the world-conceptions of the East is the keynote of the Gita. In the Epistles of St. Paul we find the significant basic truths of Christianity as to the Resurrection, the significance of what is called Faith as compared with the Law, of the influence of grace, of the life of Christ in the soul or in the human consciousness, and many other things; we find all these presented in such a way that any presentation of Christianity must always be based on these Pauline Epistles. Everything in them refers to Christianity, as everything in the Gita refers to the great truths as to liberating oneself from works, to the freeing of oneself from the immediate life of action, in order to devote oneself to contemplation, to the meditation of the soul, to the upward penetration of the soul into spiritual heights, to the purification of the soul; in short, according to the meaning of the Gita, to the union with Krishna. All that has just been described makes a comparison of these two spiritual revelations extremely difficult, and anyone who merely makes an external comparison will doubtless be compelled to place the Bhagavad Gita, in its purity, calm and wisdom, higher than the Epistles of St. Paul. But what is a person who makes such an outward comparison actually doing? He is like a man who, having before him a fully grown plant, with a beautiful blossom, and beside it the seed of a plant; were to say: “When I look at the plant with its beautiful, fully-developed blossom, I see that it is much more beautiful than the insignificant, invisible seed.” Yet it might be that out of that seed lying beside the plant with the beautiful blossom, a still more beautiful plant with a still more beautiful blossom, might some day spring forth. It is really no proper comparison to compare two things to be found side by side, such as a fully-developed plant and a quite undeveloped seed; and thus it is if one compares the Bhagavad Gita with the Epistles of St. Paul. In the Bhagavad Gita we have before us something like the ripest fruit, the most wonderful and beautiful representation of a long human evolution, which had grown up during thousands of years and in the Epistles of St. Paul we have before us the germ of something completely new which must grow greater and greater, and which we can only grasp in all its full significance if we look upon it as germinal, and hold prophetically before us what it will some day become, when thousands and thousands of years of evolution shall have flowed into the future and that which is planted as a germ in the Pauline Epistles shall have grown riper and riper. Only if we bear this in mind can we make a proper comparison. It then also becomes clear that that which is some day to become great and which is first to be found in invisible form from the depths of Christianity in the Pauline Epistles, had once to pour forth in chaotic fashion from the human soul. Thus things must be represented in a different way by one who is considering the significance on the one hand of the Bhagavad Gita, and on the other of the Pauline Epistles for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, from the way they can be depicted by another person who can only judge of the complete works as regards their beauty and wisdom and inner perfection of form.

If we wish to draw a comparison between the different views of life which appear in the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we must first inquire: What is the chief point in question? The point in question is that in all we are able to survey historically of the two views of life, what we are chiefly concerned with is the drawing down of the “ego” into the evolution of mankind. If we trace the ego through the evolution of mankind, we can say that in the pre-Christian times it was still dependent, it was still, as it were, rooted in concealed depths of the soul, it had not yet acquired the possibility of developing itself. Development of an individual character only became possible when into that ego was thrown, as it were, the impulse which we describe as the Christ-Impulse. That which since the Mystery of Golgotha may be within the human ego and which is expressed in the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that could not formerly be within it. But in the ages when there was already an approach to the Christ-Impulse—in the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha—that which was about to take place through the introduction of the Christ-Impulse into the human soul was slowly prepared, particularly in such a way as that expressed in the act of Krishna. That which, after the Mystery of Golgotha, a man had to look for as the Christ-Impulse in himself, which he had to find in the Pauline sense: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that he had, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to look for outside, he had to look for it coming to him as a revelation from cosmic distances. The further we go back into the ages, the more brilliant, the more impulsive was the revelation from without. We may therefore say: In the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha, a certain revelation came to mankind like sunshine falling upon an object from without. Just as the light falls upon this object, so did the light of the spiritual sun fall from without upon the soul of man, and enlightened it. After the Mystery of Golgotha we can speak of that which works in the soul as Christ-Impulse, as the spiritual sunlight, as though we saw a self-illumined body before us radiating its light from within. If we look at it thus, the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha becomes a significant boundary line in human evolution. We can represent

the whole connection, symbolically. If we take this circle (Diagram 1) as representing the human soul, we may say that the spiritual light streams in from without from all sides into this human soul. Then comes the Mystery of Golgotha, after which the soul possesses the Christ-Impulse in itself and radiates Forth that which is contained in the Christ-Impulse (Diagram 2). Just as a drop which is illumined from all sides radiates and reflects this illumination, so does the soul appear before the Christ-Impulse. As a flame which is alight within and radiates forth its light, thus does the soul appear after the Mystery of Golgotha, if it has been able to receive the Christ-Impulse.

Bearing this in mind we can express this whole relation by means of the terms we have learnt in Sankhya philosophy. We may say: If we direct our spiritual eye to a soul which, before the Mystery of Golgotha, is irradiated from all sides by the light of the spirit, and we see the whole connection of this spirit which pours in upon the soul from all sides radiating to us in its spirituality, the whole then appears to us in what the Sankhya philosophy describes as the Sattva condition. On the other hand, if we contemplate a soul after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, looking at it from outside as it were, with the spiritual eye, it seems as though the spiritual light were hidden away in its innermost depths and as if the soul-nature concealed it. The spiritual light appears to us as though veiled by the soul-substance, that spiritual light which, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is contained in the Christ-Impulse. Do we not perceive this verified up to our own age, indeed especially in our own age, with regard to all that man experiences externally? Observe a man today, see what he has to occupy himself with as regards his external knowledge and his occupation; and try to compare with this how the Christ-Impulse lives in man, as if hidden in his inmost being, like a yet tiny, feeble flame, veiled by the rest of the soul's contents. That is Tamas as compared with the pre-Christian state, which latter, as regards the relation of soul and spirit, was the Sattva-state. What part, therefore, in this sense does the Mystery of Golgotha play in the evolution of mankind? As regards the revelation of the spirit, it transforms the Sattva into the Tamas state. By means of it mankind moves forward, but it undergoes a deep fall, one may say, not through the Mystery of Golgotha, but through itself. The Mystery of Golgotha causes the flame to grow greater and greater: but the reason the flame appears in the soul as only a very small one—whereas before a mighty light poured in on it from all sides—is that progressing human nature is sinking deeper and deeper into darkness. It is not, therefore the fault of the Mystery of Golgotha that the human soul, as regards the spirit, is in the Tamas condition, for the Mystery of Golgotha will bring it to pass in the distant future that out of the Tamas condition a Sattva condition will again come about, which will then be set aflame from within. Between the Sattva and the Tamas condition there is, according to Sankhya philosophy, the Rajas condition; and this is described as being that time in human evolution in which falls the Mystery of Golgotha. Humanity itself, as regards the manifestation of the Spirit, went along the path from light into darkness, from the Sattva into the Tamas condition, just during the thousand years which surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we look more closely into this evolution, we may say: If we take the line a-b as the time of the evolution of mankind, up to about the eighth or seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha, all human civilisation was then in the Sattva condition.

 7th Century B.C. 15th, 16th Century A.D. A-------------------------x------------------------x-----------------------B
 Chald-Egypt. Graeco-Latin Period. Our own age. 

Then began the age in which occurred the Mystery of Golgotha, followed by our own age some fifteen or sixteen centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. Then quite definitely begins the Tamas age, but it is a period of transition. If we wish to use our customary designations we have the first age—which, in a sense, as regards certain spiritual revelations, still belongs to the Sattva condition—occurring at the same epoch as that which we call the Chaldean-Egyptian, that which is the Rajas-condition is the Graeco-Latin, and that which is in the Tamas condition is our own age.' We know, too, that what is called the Chaldean-Egyptian age is the third of the Post-Atlantean conditions the Graeco-Latin the fourth, and our own the fifth. It was therefore necessary one might say, in accordance with the plan of the evolution of mankind, that between the third and fourth Post-Atlantean epochs there should occur a deadening, as it were, of external revelation. How was mankind really prepared for the blazing up of the Christ-Impulse? How did this preparation really occur?

If we want to make quite clear to ourselves the difference between the spiritual conditions of mankind in the third epoch of humanity—the Chaldean-Egyptian—and the following epochs, we must say: In this third age in all these countries, in Egypt as well as in Chaldea, and also in India, there still was in humanity the remains of the old clairvoyant power: that is to say, man not only saw the worlds around him with the assistance of his senses and of the understanding connected with the brain, but he could also still see the surrounding world with the organs of his etheric body, at any rate, under certain conditions, between sleeping and waking. If we wish to picture to ourselves a man of that epoch, we can only do so by saying: To those men a perception of nature and of the world such as we have through our senses and the understanding bound up with the brain was only one of the conditions which they experienced. In those conditions they gained as yet no knowledge, but merely, as it were, gazed at things and let them work, side by side in space and one after another in time. If these men wanted to acquire knowledge they had to enter a condition, not artificially produced as in our time, but occurring naturally, as if of itself, in which their deeper-lying forces, the forces of their etheric bodies, operated for producing knowledge. Out of knowledge such as this came forth all that appears as the wonderful knowledge of the Sankhya philosophy; from such a contemplation also went forth all that has come down to us in the Vedas—although that belongs to a still earlier age. Thus the man of that time acquired knowledge by putting himself or allowing himself to be put into another condition. He had so to say his everyday condition, in which he saw with his eyes, heard with his ears, and followed things with his ordinary understanding; but this seeing, hearing and understanding he only made use of when occupied in external practical business. It would never have occurred to him to make use of these capacities for the acquiring of knowledge. In order to acquire knowledge and perception he made use of what came to him in that other condition in which he brought into activity the deepest forces of his being.

We can therefore think of man in those old times as having, so to say, an everyday body, and within that everyday body his finer spiritual body, his Sunday body, if I may use such a comparison. With his everyday body he did his everyday work, and with his Sunday body—which was woven of the etheric body alone—he perceived and perfected his science. One would be justified in saying that a man of that olden time would be astonished that we in our day hew out our knowledge by means of our everyday body, and never put on our Sunday body when we wish to learn something about the world. Well, how did such a man experience all these conditions? The experiencing of these was such that when a man perceived by means of his deeper forces, when he was in that state of perception in which, for instance, he studied Sankhya philosophy, he did not then feel as does the man of today, who, when he wishes to acquire knowledge must exert his reason and think with his head. He, when he acquired knowledge, felt himself to be in his etheric body, which was certainly least developed in what today is the physical head, but was more pronounced in the other parts; man thought much more by means of the other parts of his etheric body. The etheric body of the head is the least perfect part of it. A man felt, so to say, that he thought with his etheric body; he felt himself when thinking, lifted out of his physical body; but at such moments of learning, of creative knowledge, he felt something more besides; he felt that he was in reality one with the earth. When he took off his everyday body and put on his Sunday body, he felt as though forces passed through his whole being; as though forces passed through his legs and feet and united him to the earth, just as the forces which pass through our hands and arms unite them with our body. He began to feel himself a member of the earth. On the one hand, he felt that he thought and knew in his etheric body, and on the other he felt himself no longer a separate man, but a member of the earth. He felt his being growing into the earth. Thus the whole inner manner of experiencing altered when a man drew on his Sunday body and prepared himself for knowledge. What, then, had to happen in order that this old old age—the third—should so completely cease, and the new age—the fourth—should come in? If we wish to understand what had to happen then, it would be well to try to feel our way a little into the old method of description.

A man who in that olden time experienced what I have just described, would say: “The serpent has become active within me.” His being lengthened out into the earth; he no longer felt his physical body as the really active part of him; he felt as though he stretched out a serpent-like continuation of himself into the earth and the head was that which projected out of the earth. And he felt this serpent being to be the thinker. We might draw the man's being thus: his etheric body passing into the earth, elongated into a serpent-body and, whilst outside the earth as physical man, he was stretched down into the earth during the time of perceiving and knowing, and thought with his etheric body.

“The serpent is active within me,” said he. To perceive was therefore in the olden time something like this: “I rouse the serpent within me to a state of activity; I feel my serpent-nature.” What had to happen, so that the new age should come in, that the new method of

perceiving should come about? It had to be no longer possible for those moments to occur in which man felt his being extended down into the earth through his legs and feet; besides which perception had to die out in his etheric body and pass over to the physical head. If you can rightly picture this passing over of the old perception into the new, you will say: a good expression for this transition would be: “I am wounded in the feet, but with my own body I tread under foot the head of the serpent,” that is to say, the serpent with its head ceases to be the instrument of thought. The physical body and especially the physical brain, kills the serpent, and the serpent revenges itself by taking away from one the feeling of belonging to the earth. It bites one in the heel.

At such times of transition from one form of human experience into another, that which comes, as it were, from the old epoch, comes into conflict with that which is coming in the new epoch; for these things are still really contemporaneous. The father is still in existence long after the son's life has begun; although the son is descended from the father. The attributes of the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin were there, but those of the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, still stirred and moved in men and in nations. These attributes naturally became intermingled in the course of evolution, but that which thus appears as the newly-arisen, and that which comes, as it were, out of the olden times, continue to live contemporaneously, but can no longer understand each other properly. The old does not understand the new. The new must protect itself against the old, must defend its life against it; that is to say, the new is there, but the ancestors with their attributes belonging to the old epoch, still work in their descendants, the ancestors who have taken no part in the new. Thus we may describe the transition from the third epoch of humanity to the fourth. There had therefore to be a hero, as we might say—a leader of humanity who, in a significant manner, first represents this process of the killing of the serpent, of being wounded by it; while he had at the same time to struggle against that which was certainly related to him, but which with its attributes still shone into the new age from the old. In the advance of mankind, one person must first experience the whole greatness of that which later all generations experience. Who was the hero who crushed the head of the serpent, who struggled against that which was important in the third epoch? Who was he who guided mankind out of the old Sattva-time into the new Tamas-time? That was Krishna-and how could this be more clearly shown than by the Eastern legend in which Krishna is represented as being a son of the Gods, a son of Mahadeva and Devaki, who entered the world surrounded by miracles (that betokens that he brings in something new), and who, if I may carry my example further, leads men to look for wisdom in their everyday body, and who crushes their Sunday body—the serpent; who has to defend himself against that which projects into the new age from his kindred. Such a one is something new, something miraculous. Hence the legend relates how the child Krishna, even at his birth, was surrounded by miracles, and that Kansa, the brother of his mother, wished to take the life of the child. In the uncle of the child Krishna we see the continuance of the old, and Krishna has to defend himself against him; for Krishna had to bring in the new, that which kills the third epoch and does away with the old conditions for the external evolution of mankind. He had to defend himself against Kansa, the inhabitant of the old Sattva age; and amongst the most remarkable of the miracles with which Krishna is surrounded, the legend relates that the mighty serpent Kali twined round him, but that he was able to tread the head of the serpent under foot, though it wounded his heel. Here we have something of which we may say the legend directly reproduces an occult fact. That is what legends do; only we ought not to seek an external explanation, but should grasp the legend aright, in the true light of knowledge, in order to understand it.

Krishna is the hero of the setting third Post-Atlantean epoch of humanity. The legend relates further that Krishna appeared at the end of the third cosmic epoch. It all corresponds when rightly understood. Krishna is therefore he who kills out the old perception, who drives it into the darkness. This he does in his external phenomena; he reduces to a state of darkness that which as Sattva-knowledge, was formerly possessed by mankind. Now, how is he represented in the Bhagavad Gita? He is there represented as giving to a single individual, as if in compensation for what he has taken away from him, guidance as to how through Yoga he can rise to that which was then lost to normal mankind. Thus to the world Krishna appears as the killer of the old Sattva-knowledge, while at the same time we see him at the end of the Gita as the Lord of Yoga, who is again to lead us up to the knowledge which had been abandoned; the knowledge belonging to the old ages, which we can only attain when we have overcome and conquered that which we now put on externally as an everyday dress; when we return once more to the old spiritual condition. That was the twofold deed of Krishna, He acted as a world-historical hero, in that he crushed the head of the serpent of the old knowledge and compelled man to re-enter the physical body, in which alone the ego could be won as free and independent ego, whereas formerly all that made man an ego streamed in from outside. Thus he was a world-wide historical Hero. Then to the individual he was the one who for the times of devotion, of meditation, of inner finding, gave back that which had at one time been lost. That it is which we meet with in such a grand form in the Gita, which at the end of our last lecture we allowed to work upon our souls, and which Arjuna meets as his own being seen externally; seen without beginning and without end—outspread over all space.

If we observe this condition more clearly we come to a place in the Gita which, if we have already been amazed at the great and mighty contents of the Gita, must infinitely extend our admiration. We come to a passage which, to the man of the present day, must certainly appear incomprehensible; wherein Krishna reveals to Arjuna the nature of the Avayata-tree, of the Fig-tree, by telling him that in this tree the roots grow upwards and the branches downwards; where Krishna further says that the single leaves of this tree are the leaves of the Veda book, which, put together, yield the Veda knowledge. That is a singular passage in the Gita. What does it signify, this pointing to the great tree of Life, whose roots have an upward direction, and the branches a downward direction, and whose leaves give the contents of the Veda? We must just transport ourselves back into the old knowledge, and try and understand how it worked. The man of today only has, so to say, his present knowledge, communicated to him through his physical organs. The old knowledge was acquired as we have just described, in the body which was still etheric, not that the whole man was etheric, but knowledge was acquired through the part of the etheric body which was within the physical body. Through this organism, through the organisation of the etheric body, the old knowledge was acquired. Just imagine vividly that you, when in the etheric body, could perceive by means of the serpent. There was something then present in the world, which to the man of the present day is no longer there. Certainly the man of today can realise much of what surrounds him when he puts himself into relation with nature; but just think of him when he is observing the world: there is one thing he does not perceive, and that is his brain. No man can see his own brain when he is observing; neither can any man see his own spine. This impossibility ceases as soon as one observes with the etheric body. A new object then appears which one does not otherwise see—one perceives one's own nervous system. Certainly it does not appear as the present-day anatomist sees it. It does not appear as it does to such a man, it appears in such a way that one feels: “Yes! There thou art, in thy etheric nature.” One then looks upwards and sees how the nerves, which go through all the organs, are collected together up there in the brain. That produces the feeling: “That is a tree of which the roots go upwards, and the branches stretch down into all the members.” That in reality is not felt as being of the same small size as we are inside our skin: it is felt as being a mighty cosmic tree. The roots stretch far out into the distances of space and the branches extend downwards. One feels oneself to be a serpent, and one sees one's nervous system objectified, one feels that it is like a tree which sends its roots far out into the distance of space and the branches of which go downwards. Remember what I have said in former lectures, that man is, in a sense, an inverted plant. All that you have learnt must be recalled and put together, in order to understand such a thing as this wonderful passage in the Bhagavad Gita. We are then astonished at the old wisdom which must today, by means of new methods, be called forth from the depths of occultism. We then experience what this tree brings to light. We experience in its leaves that which grows upon it; the Veda knowledge, which streams in on us from without.

The wonderful picture of the Gita stands out clearly before us: the tree with its roots going upwards, and its branches going downwards, with its leaves full of knowledge, and man himself as the serpent round the tree. You may perhaps have seen this picture, or have come across the picture of the Tree of Life with the serpent; everything is of significance when one considers these old things. Here we have the tree with the upward growing roots, and the downward-turning branches; one feels that it goes in an opposite direction to the Paradise-tree. That has its deep meaning: for the tree of Paradise is placed at the beginning of the other evolution, that which through the old Hebrew antiquity passes on into Christianity. Thus in this place we are given an indication of the whole nature of that old knowledge, and when Krishna distinctly says to his pupil Arjuna “Renunciation is the power which makes this tree visible to mankind,” we are shown how man returns to that old knowledge when he renounces everything acquired by him in the further course of evolution, which we described yesterday. That it is which is given as something grand and glorious by Krishna to his only individual pupil Arjuna as a payment on account, whilst he has to take it from the whole of humanity for the everyday use of civilisation. That is the being of Krishna. What then must that become which Krishna gives to his single individual pupil? It must become Sattva wisdom; and the better he is able to give him this Sattva wisdom, the wiser, clearer, calmer and more passionless will it be, but it will be an old revealed wisdom, something which approaches mankind from without in such a wonderful way in the words which the Sublime One, that is to say, Krishna Himself, speaks, and in those in which the single individual pupil makes reply. Thus Krishna becomes the Lord of Yoga, who leads us back to the ancient wisdom of mankind, and who always endeavours to overcome that, which even in the age of the Sattva, concealed the spirit from the soul, who wishes to bring before his pupil the spirit in its ancient purity, as it was before it descended into substance. Thus in the spirit only does Krishna appear to us in that mutual conversation between Krishna and his pupil to which we referred yesterday.

Thus we have brought before our souls the end of that epoch, which was the last one of the ages of the old spirituality; that spirituality that we can so follow that we see its full and complete spiritual light at its beginning, and then its descent into matter in order that man should find his ego, his independence. And when the spiritual light had descended as far as the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, there was then a sort of reciprocal relationship, a Rajas relationship between the spirit and the more external soul-part. In this epoch occurred the Mystery of Golgotha. Could we describe this epoch as belonging to the Sattva-condition? No! For then we should not be describing just what belonged to that epoch! If anyone describes it correctly, as belonging to the Rajas-age—making use of that expression of Sankhya philosophy—he must describe it according to Rajas, not in terms of purity and clearness, but in a personal sense, as aroused to anger about this, or that, and so on. Thus would one have to describe it, and thus did St. Paul portray it, in the sense of its relation to Rajas. If you feel the throbbing of many a saying in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, to the Corinthians, or to the Romans, you will become aware of something akin to rage, something often like a personal characteristic pulsating in the Epistles of St. Paul, wrenching itself away from the Rajas-condition—that is the style and character of these Epistles. They had to appear thus; whereas the Bhagavad Gita had to come forth clear and free from the personal because it was the finest blossom of the dying epoch, which, however, gave one individual a compensation for that which was going under, and led him back into the heights of spiritual life. Krishna had to give the finest spiritual blossoms to his own pupil, because he was to kill out the old knowledge of mankind, to crush the head of the serpent. This Sattva-condition went under of itself, it was no longer there; and anyone, in the Rajas age who spoke of the Sattva-condition spoke only of that which was old. He who placed himself at the beginning of the newer age had to speak in accordance with what was decisive for that time. Personality had drawn into human nature because human nature had found the way to seek knowledge through the organs and instruments of the physical body. In the Pauline Epistles the personal element speaks; that is why a personality thunders against all that draws in as the darkness of the material; with words of wrath he thunders forth, for words of wrath often thunder forth in the Epistles of St. Paul. That is why the Epistles of St. Paul cannot be given in the strictly limited lines, in the sharply-defined, wise clearness of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita can speak in words full of wisdom because it describes how man may free himself from external activity, and raise himself in triumph to the spirit, how he may become one with Krishna. It could also describe in words full of wisdom the path of Yoga, which leads to the greatest heights of the soul. But that which came into the world as something new, the victory of the spirit over that which merely pertains to the soul within, that could at first only be described out of the Rajas-condition; and he who first described it in a manner significant for the history of mankind, does so full of enthusiasm; in such a way that one knows he took part in it himself, that he himself trembled before the revelation of the Christ-Impulse. The personal had then come to him, he was confronted for the first time with that which was to work on for thousands of years into the future, it came to him in such a way that all the forces of his soul had to take a personal part in it. Therefore he does not describe in philosophic concepts, full of wisdom, such as occur in the Bhagavad Gita, but describes what he has to describe as the resurrection of Christ as something in which man is directly and personally concerned.

Was it not to become personal experience? Was not Christianity to draw into what is most intimately personal, warm it through and through, and fill it with life? Truly he who described the Christ-Event for the first time could only do so as a personal experience. We can see how in the Gita the chief emphasis is laid upon the ascent through Yoga into spiritual heights; the rest is only touched upon in passing. Why is this? Because Krishna only gives his instructions to one particular pupil and does not concern himself with what other people outside in the world feel as to their connection with the spiritual. Therefore Krishna describes what his pupil must become, that he must grow higher and higher, and become more and more spiritual. That description leads to riper and riper conditions of the soul, and hence to more and more impressive pictures of beauty. Hence also it is the case that only at the end do we meet with the antagonism between the demoniacal and the spiritual, and it confirms the beauty of the ascent into the soul-life; only at the conclusion do we see the contrast between those who are demoniacal and those who are spiritual. All those people out of whom only the material speaks, who live in the material, who believe that all comes to an end with death, are demoniacal. But that is only mentioned by way of enlightenment, it is nothing with which the great teacher is really concerned: he is before all concerned with the spiritualising of the human soul. Yoga may only speak of that which is opposed to Yoga, as a side-issue. St. Paul is, above all, concerned with the whole of humanity, that humanity which is in fact in the oncoming age of darkness. He has to turn his attention to all that this age of darkness brings about in human life; he must contrast the dark life, common to all, with that which is the Christ-Impulse, and which is first to spring up as a tiny plant in the human soul. We can see it appearing in St. Paul as he points over and over again to all sorts of vice, all sorts of materialism, which must be combated through what he has to give. What he is able to give is at first a mere flickering in the human soul, which can only acquire power through the enthusiasm which lies behind his words, and which appears in triumphant words as the manifestation of feeling through personality. Thus the presentations of the Gita and of the Pauline Epistles are far removed from each other; in the clearness of the Gita the descriptions are impersonal, while St. Paul had to work the personal into his words. It is that which on the one hand gives the style, and tone to the Gita, and on the other to the Pauline Epistles; we meet it in both works, almost, one might, say in every line. Something can only attain artistic perfection when it has acquired the necessary ripeness; at the beginning of its development it always appears as more or less chaotic.

Why is all this so? This question is answered if we turn to the wonderful beginning of the Gita. We have already described it; we have seen the hosts of the kindred facing each other in battle, one warrior facing another, yet both conqueror and conquered are related to one another by blood. The time we are considering is that of the transition from the old blood-relationship, to which belongs the power of clairvoyance-to that of the differentiation and mingling of blood which is the characteristic of our modern times. We are confronted with a transformation of the outer bodily nature of man and of the perception which necessarily accompanies this. Another kind of mingling of blood, a new significance of blood now enters into the evolution of mankind. If we wish to study the transition from that old epoch to the new—I would remind you of my little pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood—we must say that the clairvoyance of olden times depended upon the fact that the blood was, so to say, kept in the tribe, whereas the new age proceeded from the mixing of blood by which clairvoyance was killed, and the new perception arose which is connected with the physical body. The beginning of the Gita points to something external, to something connected with man's bodily form. It is with these external changes of form that Sankhya philosophy is mostly concerned; in a sense it leaves in the background that which belongs to the soul, as we have pointed out. The souls in their multiplicity are simply behind the forms. In Sankhya philosophy we have found a kind of plurality; we have compared it with the Leibnitz philosophy of more modern times.

If we can think ourselves into the soul of a Sankhya philosopher, we can imagine his saying: “My soul expresses itself in the Sattva or in the Rajas or in the Tamas condition with respect to the forms of the external body.” But this philosopher studies the forms. These forms alter, and one of the most remarkable changes is that which expresses itself in the different use made of the etheric body, or through the transition as regards blood-relationship we have just described. We have then an external change of form. The soul itself is not in the least affected by that with which Sankhya philosophy concerns itself. The external changes of form are quite sufficient to enable us to consider what takes place in the transition from the old Sattva age to that of the new Rajas, on the borders of which stands Krishna. It is the external changes of form which come into consideration there.

Outer changes of form always come into consideration at the time of the change of the ages. But the changes of form took place in a different way during the transition from the Persian to the Egyptian epoch from what they did in that from the Egyptian to the Graeco-Latin; still an external change of form did take place. In yet another manner took place the transition from the Ancient Indian to the Persian, but there too there was an external change of form. Indeed it was simply a change of form which occurred when the passing-over from the old Atlantis itself into the Post-Atlantean ages took place. A change of form: and we could follow this by holding fast to the designations of the Sankhya philosophy, we can follow it simply by saying: The soul goes through its experiences within these forms, but the soul itself is not altered thereby, Purusha remains undisturbed. Thus we have a particular sort of transformation which can be described by Sankhya philosophy according to its own conceptions. But behind this transforming there is Purusha, the individual part of the soul of every man. The Sankhya philosophy only says of this that there is an individual soul-part which is related through the three Gunas-Sattva, Rajas and Tamas—with external form. But this soul-part is not itself affected by the external forms; Purusha is behind them all and we are directed to the soul itself; a continual indication of the soul itself is what meets us in the teaching of—Krishna, in what he as Lord of Yoga teaches. Yes, certainly I but the nature of this soul is not given us in the way of knowledge. Directions as to how to develop the soul is the highest we are shown; alteration of the external forms; no change in the soul itself, only an introductory note.

This first suggestion we discover in the following way if man is to rise through Yoga from the ordinary stages of the soul to the higher, he must free himself from external works, he must emancipate himself more and more from outer works, from what he does and perceives externally; he must become a “looker-on” at himself. His soul then assumes an inner freedom and raises itself triumphantly over what is external. That is the case with the ordinary man, but with one who is initiated and becomes clairvoyant the case does not remain thus; he is not confronted with external substance, for that in itself is maya. It only becomes a reality to him who makes use of his own inner instruments. What takes the place of substance? If we observe the old initiation we meet with the following: Whereas man in everyday life is confronted with substance, with Prakriti—the soul which through Yoga has developed itself by initiation, has to fight against the world of the Asuras, the world of the demoniacal. Substance is what offers resistance; the Asuras, the powers of darkness become enemies. But all that is as yet a mere suggestion, we perceive it as something peeping out of the soul, so to say; we begin to feel that which pertains to the soul. For the soul will only begin to realise itself as spiritual when it begins to fight the battle against the demons, the Asuras.

In our language we should describe this battle, which, however, we only meet with in miniature, as something which becomes perceptible in the form of spirits, when substance appears in spirituality. We thus perceive in miniature that which we know as the battle of the soul when it enters upon initiation, the battle with Ahriman. But when we look upon it as a battle of this kind, we are then in the innermost part of the soul, and what were formerly material spirits grow into something gigantic; the soul is then confronted with the mighty foe. Soul then stands up against Soul, the individual soul in universal space is confronted with the realm of Ahriman. It is the lowest stage of Ahriman's kingdom with which one fights in Yoga; but now when we look at this as the battle of the soul with the powers of Ahriman, with Ahriman's kingdom, he himself stands before us. Sankhya philosophy recognises this relationship of the soul to external substance, in which the latter has the upper hand, as the condition of Tamas. The initiate who has entered initiation by means of Yoga is not only in this Tamas state, but also in battle with certain demoniacal powers, into which substance transforms itself before his sight. In this same sense the soul, when it is in the condition not only of being confronted with the spiritual in substance, but with the purely spiritual, is face to face with Ahriman. According to Sankhya philosophy, spirit and matter are in balance in the Rajas condition, they sway to and fro, first matter is above, then spirit, at one time matter weighs down the scales, then spirit. If this condition is to lead to initiation, it must lead in the sense of the old Yoga to a direct overcoming of Rajas, and lead into Sattva. To us it does not yet lead into Sattva, but to the commencement of another battle-the battle with what is Luciferic.

And now the course of our considerations leads us to Purusha, which is only hinted at in Sankhya philosophy. Not only do we hint at it, we place it right in the midst of the field of the battle against Ahriman and Lucifer: one soul-nature wars against another. In Sankhya philosophy Purusha is seen in immense perspective; but if we enter more deeply into that which plays its part in the nature of the soul, not as yet distinguished between Ahriman and Lucifer; then in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas we only find the relation of the soul to material substance. But considering the matter in our own sense, we have the soul in its full activity, fighting and struggling between Ahriman and Lucifer.

That is something which, in its full greatness can only be considered through Christianity. According to the old Sankhya teaching Purusha remains still undisturbed: it describes the condition which arises when Purusha clothes itself in Prakriti. We enter the Christian age and in that which underlies esoteric Christianity and we penetrate into Purusha itself, and describe this by taking the trinity into consideration: the soul, the Ahrimanic, and the Luciferic. We now grasp the inner relationship of the soul itself in its struggles. That which had to come was to be found in the transition in the fourth epoch, that transition which is marked through the Mystery of Golgotha. For what took place then? That which occurred in the transition from the third to the fourth epoch was something which can be described as a mere change of form; but now it is something which can only be described by the transition from Prakriti into Purusha itself, which must be so characterised that we say: “We feel how completely Purusha has emancipated itself from Prakriti, we feel that in our innermost being.”

Man is not only torn away from the ties of blood, but also from Prakriti, from everything external, and must inwardly have done with it. Then comes the Christ-Impulse. That is, however, the greatest transition which could take place in the whole evolution of the earth. It is then no longer merely a question of what might be the conditions of the soul in relation to matter, in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, for the soul no longer has merely to overcome Tamas and Rajas to raise itself above them in Yoga, but has to fight against Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is now left to itself. Hence the necessity to confront that which is presented to us in that mighty Poem—the Bhagavad Gita—that which was necessary for the old times-with that which is necessary for the new.

That sublime Song, the Bhagavad Gita, shows us this conflict. There we are shown the human soul. It dwells in its bodily part, in its sheaths. These sheaths can be described. They are that which is in a constant state of changing form. The soul in its ordinary life lives in a state of entanglement, in Prakriti, In Yoga it frees itself from that which envelopes it, it overcomes that in which it is enwrapped, and enters the spiritual sphere, when it is quite free from its coverings. Let us compare with this that which Christianity, the Mystery of Golgotha, first brought. It is not here sufficient that the soul should merely make itself free. For if the soul should free itself through Yoga, it would attain to the vision of Krishna. He would appear in all his might before it, but as he was before Ahriman and Lucifer obtained their full power. Therefore a kind divinity still conceals the fact that beside Krishna—who then becomes visible in the sublime way described in our last lecture—on his left and on his right there stand Ahriman and Lucifer. With the old clairvoyance that was still possible, because man had not yet descended into matter; but now it can no longer be the case. If the soul were now only to go through Yoga it would meet Ahriman and Lucifer and would have to enter into battle with them. It can only take its place beside Krishna when it has that ally Who fights Ahriman and Lucifer; Tamas and Rajas would not suffice. That ally, however, is Christ. Thus we see how that which is of a bodily nature freed itself from the body, or one might also say, that which is bodily darkened itself within the body, at the time when Krishna, the Hero, appeared. But, on the other hand, we see that which is still more stupendous; the soul abandoned to itself and face to face with something which is only visible in its own domain in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred.

I can well imagine, my dear friends, someone saying: “Well, what could be more wonderful than when the highest ideal of man, the perfection of mankind, is placed before our eyes in the form of Krishna!” There can be something higher—and that it is which must stand by our side and permeate us when we have to gain this humanity, not merely against Tamas and Rajas, but against the powers of the spirit. That is the Christ. So it is the want of capacity to see something greater still, if one is determined to see in Krishna the highest of all. The preponderating force of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna-Impulse is expressed in the fact that in the latter we have incarnated in the whole human nature of Krishna, the Being which was incarnated in him. Krishna was born, and grew up, as the son of Visudeva; but in his whole manhood was incorporated, incarnated, that highest human impulse which we recognise as Krishna. That other Impulse, which must stand by our side when we have to confront Lucifer and Ahriman (which confrontation is only now beginning, for all such things, for instance, as are represented in our Mystery Dramas, will be understood psychically by future generations), that other Impulse must be one for which mankind as such, is at first too small, an Impulse which cannot immediately dwell even in a body such as one which Zarathustra can inhabit, but can only dwell in it when that body itself has attained the height of its development, when it has reached its thirtieth year. Thus the Christ-Impulse does not fill a whole life, but only the ripest period of a human life. That is why the Christ-Impulse lived only for three years in the body of Jesus. The more exalted height of the Christ-Impulse is expressed in the fact that it could not live immediately in a human body, as did Krishna from his birth up. We shall have to speak further of the overwhelming greatness of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna. Impulse and how this is to be seen. But from what has already been characterised you can both see and feel that, as a matter of fact, the relation between the great Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul could be none other; that the whole presentation of the Gita being the ripe fruit of much, much earlier times, may therefore be complete in itself; while the Epistles of St. Paul, being the first seeds of a future-certainly more perfect, more all-embracing world-epoch, must necessarily be far more incomplete. Thus one who represents how the world runs its course must recognise, it is true, the great imperfections of the Pauline Epistles as compared with the Gita, the very, very significant imperfections—they must not be disguised—but he must also understand the reason those imperfections have to be there.

We have seen that we approach certain riddles of the universe I and of mankind when we begin to observe man himself, seeing in his two-fold form something of the solution of the world-riddle. In meditating over all these things one can gain great help by thinking more deeply of the formula: The world as totality is a riddle, and man himself, again as totality, is its solution. We must not expect, however, to solve the world-riddle in a moment; human life itself in its completeness, what we experience between birth and death and again between death and a new birth—that is actually the solution of the world-riddle. So this is a very serviceable formula: The world is a riddle and Man is its solution.

We have seen that when we regard man's external physical form, we can distinguish in it the head-part and the remaining part. We can consider the head-part in its spherical form as an image of the whole cosmos, not only as a comparison but as an actuality. We can truly say that the whole starry heaven is at work to bring about the form, the shaping, the inner forces of the human head. Of course, it is also true—speaking lightly—that everyone has his own head. Man certainly has that. For as you know, the configuration of the starry heaven always differs, according to the special spot on earth and the special time at which one observes the stars. So that by taking the starry heavens, not in general, but in their configuration at the place and at the time in which the person is born, this must result in each person's having his special head according to the position of the stars in the heavens. Let us keep in mind that it is not the star-heaven in general that builds up our head, but its special configuration. And from the various studies we have pursued we can realize that a considerable part of man's task between death and rebirth consists in his becoming familiar with the mysteries, the spiritual secrets of the stars. One can even say in a certain sense, that the head is not merely given us quite passively but that we make it ourselves. Between death and a new birth we come to know all the laws that prevail in wide cosmic spaces. In fact, when we think of it spiritually, the wide universe is our home between death and a new birth. And just as here on the earth we learn to know the laws by which houses and other things are constructed, so in the time between death and rebirth we become familiar with the laws of the cosmos. And we ourselves take part in working in the cosmos. And from the cosmos, together with the purely spiritual beings who dwell there, we work chiefly upon the head. So that when the human head appears here in the physical world, it is only apparently determined by mere heredity from one's ancestors. I have said repeatedly that everyone acknowledges that the magnetic needle does not turn by itself to the North and the other pole to the South, but that cosmic forces are at work, namely, that the earth is working there. In the case of the magnet, people own that the universe plays a part, it is only when one comes to the origin of a living being that they are not yet willing to see that the whole universe participates in it. In the case of man, it is with the formation of his head that the whole universe is concerned. The head has not merely come about through heredity, from father, mother, grandparents, etc. but forces from the whole universe are at work within it. It is principally from man's limbs and members that the configuration of cosmic forces acts upon what is in his head. On the other hand, we actually receive the rest of our organism, in so far as it is physical, through a kind of hereditary transmission from the generations of ancestors.

Modern natural science, my dear friends, is moreover very close to the discovery of this from its own standpoint. In fact the natural science of today only struggles against those parts of the truth that are suggestive of Spiritual Science. Natural science is very near at many points to a meeting with spiritual science. I said in other lectures and have indicated the same thing here, that natural science is very near to a discovery of something that has met with opposition even in spiritual science. People who read my Theosophy often find themselves repelled by the chapter where I speak of the human aura and how man's forces of soul and spirit are expressed for clairvoyance in a colour aura that sparkles round him. Now Professor Moritz Benedict, whom I have often mentioned in other connections, has recently made experiments in Vienna with persons who have a gift for using the divining-rod. Professor Benedict did not make clairvoyant experiments; as he is very unwilling to acknowledge clairvoyance, but he made experiments in a dark chamber with those gifted for using the divining-rod, which has played such a great role in this war. You probably know that it has played a very special role in this war. Since water was needed for the soldiers, persons able to use the divining-rod were posted to various army-groups in order to discover springs of water for the men. This went on very largely in the southern areas of the fighting. Driven by necessity, of course, one had to do such things. Now in the camera obscura and with the method of natural science Professor Benedict has examined people who can find water or metals under the earth by means of the divining-rod. In the case of a woman who was quite small, he discovered that she showed under treatment in the camera obscura, an immense aura, so that she looked like a giant. He could even describe the right side as bluish, the left side as yellowish-red. This can all be read today as scientific findings, since Professor Benedict has published the whole matter in his book on the divining-rod. What has been observed by Professor Benedict through these methods is the aura, as I have mentioned on earlier occasions. It is not the aura of which we speak; we mean much more spiritual elements in man than this lowest, almost physical aura which Professor Benedict is able to find by natural means in the camera obscura. Still there is a connection. Precisely that part of my book Theosophy which has met with the most opposition and abuse, has thus shown its point of contact with ordinary science. Things will move quickly, and it will be the same with regard to what I have just touched upon. At no distant time, and purely from researches of natural science it will be possible to establish that what a man bears within him as inherited from ancestors is not the form of the head nor its inner forces, and that the head in fact is produced by forces of the cosmos. We should never be nationalistic, my dear friends, if we were to follow our head alone. The head is not in the least adapted to be nationalistic, for it is derived from the heavens, and the heavens are not nationalistic. All the dividing of men into groups that finds a place in our thoughts does not come from the head; it comes from that element through which we are connected with the hereditary stream of humanity. This of course plays into the head when man is living here between birth and death, for the rest of the organism continuously exchanges its nerve-forces and blood-forces with the head.

When we speak of heredity, however, and that the part of man which excludes the head received its forces from ancestors, we must only refer to the physical, for as regards the spiritual part of the remaining organism, it is another matter. And therefore it is very important for us now to consider a fact which can only be brought to light through spiritual science. Thus natural science will discover, as it has discovered the aura, the fact that the head is only influenced through heredity by being added to the rest of the organism. That man is only related to his ancestors in respect of the rest of the organism—this will be discovered even by natural science. But we touch upon another field which natural science cannot of course enter forthwith. Inasmuch as we are born we bear in our head the forces of the universe; they shape our head. A little, to be sure, can be outwardly substantiated. One who observes children in their development will perhaps know that in the very early days it can often be asked—whom does the child really resemble? And the likeness often only comes out strongly in later childhood—some at least of you will have already noticed that. It rests on the fact that the head is mainly neutral as regards earthly conditions; the rest of the organism must first affect the head (it can do so of course even in the embryonic stage) and then the features and so on can show a likeness to the ancestors. If one has a feeling for such things, one can see for oneself externally the truth that lies in this domain.

But the matter goes deeper. Between the spiritual universe—for the universe is filled with spirit and spirit-beings—and the earth on which we dwell there is an intermediary which is never at rest. A fine substance, which cannot be produced in the chemical laboratory since it does not belong to the chemical elements, streams in continuously on to the earth out of the wide universe. If one wants to draw it schematically, one can say: if the earth is here in universal space (see diagram), from all sides universal matter continuously streams in upon the earth, a fine universal substance (arrows inwards), and this fine substance penetrates a little below the earth's surface. So that this continually takes place—substances from the whole of cosmic space sink down towards the earth. It is not physical substance, not a chemical element, but actually spiritual, auric substance that sinks down below the surface of the earth. When we come down to earth from the spiritual world, to find a place in a human body, we use the forces that lie in this substance.

Now it is significant that this substance which streams into the earth and again streams out, is made use of by man when he

dies. He finds in the out-streaming substance, forces which take him into the spiritual world. This substance, which I have shown coming inwards towards the earth, enters the surface to a certain depth and then streams away again (arrows pointing outwards). So that one can continually perceive a sort of inbreathing of ether or auric substance into the earth, and again an out-breathing.

This is an observation which is not so very easy to make. But if it has once been made, if one has once realized that the earth actually inhales and exhales spiritual substance continuously, then one knows how to apply it to all circumstances and, above all, to human life in the way I have just described. Thus we come into our bodily nature with what I have indicated as inwardly directed arrows, and with those pointing outwards, we pass out again in death.

In this case I will relate how I came upon this fact years ago. The forces that play here, the in-streaming and out-streaming forces, are not solely concerned with human life, but with every possible kind of earthly condition. Now a special problem for me was how matters stood with the cockchafers—yes, cockchafers. Cockchafers are in fact extraordinarily interesting because, as you probably know, when there are a great many cockchafers in a year then in three to five years there are very many grubs—(their larvae). These grubs affect the potato crop very seriously, one gets very bad crops if there are many grubs. And a man who has anything to do with potato culture knows that there will be a bad crop three to five years after a year in which there are great numbers of cockchafers. Now I had looked on that as an interesting fact, and then I discovered that the life of the cockchafer is connected with the in-streaming substance and the life of the grubs with the out-streaming substance. I will only stress this as a matter by which you can see how one comes upon such things from quite a different side. One comes to such things with the most certainty when one does not observe them on the direct object but on a relatively indifferent object, to which one can most easily maintain a neutral attitude. You see, however, from this that the substances of which I have spoken, penetrate under the earth and remain there for a time. The substance that in a certain year streams in, only streams out again after several years. This is also connected with the fact that the out-streaming substance is on the whole heavier than the instreaming substance. This latter is more active, streams in quicker, the out-streaming substance is heavier and streams out more slowly.

When one makes intensive observation of human life one can see how man makes use of the forces in the instreaming substance when he comes out of the universe to birth. Then in later years he loses connection with them. You will realize from what has been said that it is the head which is chiefly concerned with this instreaming substance. But the human head is a hard globe. It is indeed a hard globe, and among all the organs it is the most ossified. And thus, relatively early—not in childhood, but relatively early—it loses connection with the instreaming forces. Hence its formation and development are finished early. Man continues in his childhood his union with these instreaming forces and then they cease to influence him, at least this is so in our time-cycle. It was not always so on earth—I will speak of this presently—but it is so in our time. Now while man lives here on earth, the rest of his organism, apart from the head, takes possession of the out-streaming substances and their forces. This remaining organism imbues itself with them, and it is these forces which can rejuvenate the organism from without, as I indicated yesterday. They are the rejuvenating forces which act upon the etheric body, and which, while we are growing old physically, make it more and more chubby-faced. Thus the human being, as etheric man becomes chubby. In this process undergone by the etheric body that is connected with the remaining organism there work the forces streaming out of the earth. And it is these too which we use when we go through the portal of death to return to the cosmos, to the spiritual world.

The earth, as you see, has a share in our life, is inwardly interested in it. And something is connected with what I have now said that can very easily be brought into a formula, into an essentially important formula. For a long time we live as souls between death and rebirth before we enter physical life through birth, and again we live as souls when we have passed through the gate of death, even up to our next incarnation. The dead live a spiritual life, and this life is connected with the stars as here on earth we are connected with physical matter. Since our head has been formed and shaped by the forces which we have lived through between death and a new birth, since we build up our head, as it were, out of cosmic forces, our own real being of soul and spirit fairly early finds its spiritual grave in our head. We possess the head-forces that we have here on earth because our head is actually the grave of our soul-life as we led it before birth, or before conception. Our head is the grave of our spiritual existence. But inasmuch as we have come down to the earth, the rest of our organism is adapted to make us resurrect, for it takes up the forces which stream from the earth into universal space, in order to form its spiritual element. And whilst our physical organism falls away from us, our spiritual part with our forces that stream out from the earth passes through cosmic space into spirit existence.

This is the wonderful polarity that prevails in the universe in regard to man. We become physical out of the spirit, burying our spirit nature in the head, in the head is the end of our spiritual existence before birth. Here upon earth it is reversed. We leave the physical behind; the physical goes to pieces gradually during our life and the spiritual arises. We can say therefore: Birth denotes the resurrection of the physical, the spiritual being changed into the physical; death denotes the birth of the spiritual, the physical being given over to the earth, just as the spiritual is given over to the universe through our birth. We give our spiritual element to the universe by reason of our being born, and by reason of our dying we give over to the universe our physical element. By giving our spiritual part to the universe through our birth, we are physical human beings. By giving our physical part to the earth through death we are spiritual human beings in the period between death and a new birth. That is the polarity.¹ And our life here consists in developing our spirit organism. But we can only develop it in the right way for our present earthly cycle when what I said yesterday is taken into consideration. That is to say, when one reaches the point where both members of human nature enter into a real correspondence, when head-life and heart-life enter into correspondence with one another, and the shorter head-life really lives itself into the whole man. Thus the whole man can then be rejuvenated during the lifetime to be lived through, when in fact the head has long since lost its mobility, its power of inner development.

It will be the special task of a future educational science to make anthroposophical spiritual science so fruitful that the human being comes to feel how he is built up out of the cosmos, how he actually ‘shells himself’ from the cosmos and how he gives back to the cosmos what he has won for himself upon earth. This education must be given through all sorts of narratives, all sorts of things which are adapted moreover to youth—but so adapted that one can keep one's interest in them through every age of life. I only beg of you, my dear friends—I will not say to think-through something, for that is not of much use—to feel-through, thoroughly to feel-through something. Here too, you see, is a point where modern natural science is already concerning itself with what can be investigated through spiritual science. I have mentioned how intelligent geologists have expressed their view that the earth is already in a dying-out condition. The earth has overstepped the point where as earth-being she was actually in the middle of her life. In the excellent book by Eduard Suess, The Countenance of the Earth, you can read how the purely materialistic geologist Suess states that when one walks over fields today and looks at the clods of earth, one has to do with something dying out that once was different. It is dying out. The earth is dying. We know this from Spiritual-Science, since we know that the Earth will be transformed into another planetary existence which we call the Jupiter existence. Thus the earth as such is dying away. But man, that is the human-race as sum of spiritual beings, does not die with the earth; humanity lives beyond the earth, as it lived before the earth was Earth, in the way I have described in my Occult Science. And so one can permeate oneself—not in thought as I said, but in feeling and experience—with the conception: ‘I stand here on this earthly soil, but this ground on which I stand, in which I shall find my grave, has but a transitory appearance in the cosmos.’ How then does a next earth, a new planet, arise out of this earth, on which the humanity of the future can dwell? Through what does it arise? It arises through the fact that we ourselves carry piece by piece what is to form this new planetary existence. We human beings—the animal kingdom is also to some extent involved—inasmuch as we always carry within us something belonging to the next life, are already here during our physical life preparing the next planet that will follow the earth's existence. In the forces that go back again lies what is to be the future of the earth. We do not live merely in the present, we live in the future of the earth, but we have to keep returning into incarnation since we have many things still to fulfil on earth as long as earth exists. But we are involved in the future life of the earth. We have said that the earth breathes spirit-substance in and out. In the in-breathed substance we carry the past and the laws of the past, the forces of the past. In what is breathed out, given back again by the earth we bear in us what belongs to the future. In the human race itself rests the future of the earth's existence.

Think of all this made really fruitful with feeling and warmth, instead of all the stupid things that are imparted to the young nowadays: think of this made alive in hundreds and hundreds of vivid narrations and parables and brought to youth! Then think what a feeling towards the universe would be aroused—what there is to do! What there is to be done if our civilization is to go forwards—what there is to do concretely! This is very important to consider. And it can be considered all the more since it is connected with what I have called the rejuvenation of man. That present-day humanity has come to such calamities is connected with the fact that it has lost the secret of changing head-life into heart-life. We have hardly any real heart-life. What people generally speak of is the life of instincts and desires, merely that, not the spiritual element of which we have spoken. Today men let what streams out into the universe just peacefully stream out, and they do not bother themselves about it. They pay no attention to it.

Some individuals instinctively take it into account. I have recently given an example of how individuals take it into account, in which case however they differ very much from others. I have related the difference between Zeller and Michelet, the two Berlin Professors. I have said that I spoke with Eduard von Hartmann about the two men, just when Zeller had obtained his pension, since at seventy-two he no longer felt able to hold his lectures at the University. But Michelet was ninety-three years old. And Hartmann related how Michelet had just been there and had said to him ‘I don't understand Zeller, who is only seventy-two years old saying he cannot go on lecturing. I am ready to lecture for another ten years!’ And with that he skipped about the room and rejoiced over what he would lecture upon next year and could not imagine how that lad Zeller, the seventy-two-year-old Zeller, put in a claim to be pensioned off—no more to address the students!

This keeping young is connected with a proper mutual action taking place between head and heart. This can of course happen in the case of single individuals, but on the whole it can only occur rightly even in single individuals, when it passes over into our civilization, when our whole cultural life becomes imbued with the principle that it should not have mere head-life but heart-life as well. But you see, to acquire heart-life needs more patience. In spite of the fact that it is more fruitful, more youth-giving to life, yet for heart-life more patience is required than for head-life. Head-life ... well, you see, one sits down and crams. When we are young we prefer to stick to our cramming in spite of all the talk of the pedagogues. For, my dear friends, certain customs have remained from earlier times, when things were still known atavistically, but people no longer attach a right meaning to such customs. I will remind you of one.

Everything that has been preserved from relatively not very early times, before materialism had become general, has a deeper meaning. In recent decades the habit has already been lost, but when I was young—it is some time since—there was an arrangement in the Grammar School—in the Lower School in the second Class—to have Ancient History, and then in the fifth Class one had Ancient History again. Those who planned such regulations at that time no longer knew why it was so, and the teachers who dealt with these matters did not act as if they were aware of the reason. For anyone who had been aware of it, would have said to himself. ‘When I give history to a boy in the second Class, he crams it, but what he takes in needs a few years for it to become at home in his organism. Therefore it is a good thing to give the same again in the fifth Class, for only then does the knowledge that entered this poor head three or four years ago, bear its good fruits.’ The whole structure of the old grammar school was really built up on these things. The monastic schools of the Middle Ages had still many traditions derived from ancient wisdom, a wisdom that is not ours, but one that—preserved atavistically from olden times—arranged such things logically.

In fact it needs the principle of patience if life of the head is to pass over into life of the heart. For the head-life quickly unites with us, the heart-life goes more slowly, it is less active—so that we must wait. And today people want to understand everything all at once. Just imagine if a modern man had the idea of learning something and then had to wait a few years in order fully to understand it. Such a principle is scarcely to be associated with the frame of mind of modern men. The feelings of modern men lie along very different lines.

One can find examples of this and it is well to point them out. Two plays have lately been produced in Zurich by people connected with The Anthroposophical Society, in fact it has been widely pointed out that the two people are connected with the building in Dornach, with Spiritual Science and so on. In this case, to be quite just, it must be owned that these two Zurich performances by Pulver and Reinhart have really been very well received in Switzerland. But one can find remarkable things in the correspondence that has gone out from Switzerland. The foreign correspondents have shown themselves, well, less interested, shall we say, than in this case the Swiss audience themselves. Thus I have had a newspaper given me in which these two Swiss first performances by Pulver and Reinhart were discussed, where the correspondent cannot forego pointing out that the two authors are connected with our Movement and have drawn a good deal from it. Today people are not only afraid of the wrong teaching of the Gnosis, as I related yesterday, but they are afraid of anything concerning the life of spirit. If something about world-conception creeps into anything—Oh, that is dreadful! And this actually rests on the fact that there is no feeling for this relation of head-life and heart-life. All life to be found in mankind today outside the head is purely life of instinct and desire; it is not spiritual. And so the life of instinct and desire is irritated with the mere head-life. Head-life is very spiritual, very intellectual today, but more and more will it become—can one say—‘un-purified’ by the instinct and desire life. Hence thoughts come forth in a very curious way. And this correspondent of whom I speak—you can perhaps best judge of the confusion of his head through his instincts if I read you a characteristic sentence showing his fear that questions concerning world-conception play into these plays of the two authors. Just think, the man goes as far as writing the following:

‘But Pulver's belief in Christ ought to grow out of depths of sorrow and doubt if from the stage he wished to win disciples. The star flower plucked by Reinhart's seeker after Paradise at his studio window in the very first scene ought to bloom only at the end and from a bleeding heart.’

And now comes the sentence which I mean:

‘Both poets had their world conception already complete in their head as they began to write; it would have been better for the dramas if they had had to wrestle for their religion as they wrote.’

Now just think of that: nowadays one manages to make it a serious fault for anyone with a world conception to write! One is supposed to sit down as a perfect fool in face of the world to scribble away, and then in the scribbling, at the end, a world-conception is supposed to spring forth. Then the thing is produced at the theatre, and this is supposed to please the audience! Just imagine such stupid nonsense being actually spread abroad in the world today; and many people do not notice that such rubbish is being circulated.

Such things simply depend on the fact that the life of the head is not worked on by the whole man. For of course the journalist who wrote that was a very ‘clever man’. That should not be disputed.

He is very clever. But it is of no possible use to be clever, if the cleverness is mere head-life. That is the important thing to keep in mind; that is extraordinarily important.

Here we touch upon something fundamental, very necessary to our present civilization. One can make such observations in fact at every turn. Logical slips are not made today because people have no logic, but because it is not enough to have logic. One can be wonderfully logical, pass examinations splendidly, be a brilliant University Professor of National Economy, or any other subject, and in spite of being so clever and having any amount of logic in one's head, one can nevertheless go off the rails again and again. One can accomplish nothing connected with real life, if one has not the patience to lead over into the whole man what is grasped by the head, when one has not patience to call on the rejuvenating forces in human nature. That is the point in question. Anyone having to do with true science, such as spiritual science, knows that he would be ashamed to give a lecture tomorrow on what he had found out or learnt today—because he knows that that would be absolutely valueless. It would only have value years afterwards. The conscientious spiritual investigator cannot lecture by giving out what he has only recently learnt; but he must keep the things continually present in his soul so that they may ripen. If he brings forward what he has only just acquired he must at least make special reference to the fact, so that his audience may make note of it. One will only be really able to see what the present time needs if one bears in mind these demands on human nature. For what is necessary for the present age does not lie where today it is mostly sought; it lies in finer structures that nevertheless are everywhere spread abroad. One really need not touch on politics in calling attention to the following:

There are numbers of people today—more than is good for the world at any rate—who are of opinion that this war must continue as long as possible so that, from it, general peace may arise. If one ends it too quickly, one does peace no service. In the last few days—in what I say now I am passing no judgment on the value or lack of value of the so-called peace negotiations between the Central Powers and Russia, but it has been interesting all the same in the last few days to see what a curious sort of logic it is possible to work out. I have been given an article that is really extraordinarily interesting in this sense. The gentleman in question (his name is of no consequence here) argues against a so-called separate peace because he considers that through it universal peace would not be furthered. A direct way of thinking—but one perhaps that has gone a little deeper—might rather say to itself ‘Well, we may make a certain amount of progress if at least in one spot on earth we leave off mowing each other down’. That would perhaps be a straightforward, direct mode of thinking. But a thinking that is not so direct might be thus expressed: ‘No, one really dare not leave off in one place, for in that way “universal peace” would not be promoted.’ And now the gentleman in question gives interesting explanations—that is, explanations interesting to himself—as to how people quarrel over words. It is his opinion that those people who say ‘One must be enthusiastic about any peace, even if it is only a separate peace’, are only hypnotized by words. But one must not be dependent on words; one must go to the core of the matter, and the matter is just this—that a separate peace is harmful to the general peace of the world. Among the various arguments that the gentleman adduces is one of the following sentence, an interesting sentence, a most characteristic one for the present day—where is one to begin, not to reduce matters too much to the personal?—Well—‘Whoever is honest must admit that this is the motive of many’ (not all!) ‘among us who so delight in a “separate peace” and in Lenin and Trotsky’, (he means that enthusiasm for the word ‘peace’ is the motive) ‘while at the same time they shout tirelessly against anti-militarists and show little appreciation for our Lenins and Trotskys’. (He is speaking of Switzerland.)

‘We, however, who are not dupes of any word, but want to get at the matter itself, we do not want simply German peace, but peace, we want general peace. For us the word “separate” is a contradiction to the word “peace”.’

(If one goes into it seriously, one must carefully distinguish between peace and peace! Moreover the article is headed ‘Peace and Peace’.)

... ‘We too who do not want German peace, but peace, we want general peace. For us the word “separate” stands in contradiction to the word “peace”.’

Thus the gentleman who inveighs throughout the whole article against the worship of a word, then writes the following:

‘... For us the word “separate” stands in contradiction to the word “peace”. Separation is the principle of strife, not the principle of peace. After this World-War we need a World-Peace in which all nations come at the same time to a great mutual agreement. What we see in Brest-Litowsk, this game of a select circle of diplomats, imbued with all the subtleties of diplomacy, with the naiveté, the idealism, (also the dogmatism) of the representatives of a new order, is a spectacle that can please no one who wishes the ideal to remain pure. It is to be feared that we may get a Devil's peace, which will only produce more frightful war, instead of God's peace which finally leads to an end to all war.’

Well, my dear friends, this is certainly logic, for the article is written with ingenuity; it is brilliantly ingenious. This article ‘Peace and Peace’ is even boldly and courageously written in face of the prejudice of countless people, but its logic is devoid of any connection with reality. For the connection with reality is only found through that of which we have spoken, through the maturing of knowledge; what the head can experience must be reflected upon in the rest of man and this must mature. It may be said that what the very clever men of today lack most of all is this becoming ripe. It is something that is connected with the deepest needs and deepest impulses of the present. You see, the present day has no inclination at all to go in for the study of these things. Naturally I do not mean that every single person can go in for such study, but men whose métier is study, ought to occupy themselves with such things, and then that would pass over into the common consciousness of mankind. For do we not find that journalists—with all respect be it spoken—write what they find accepted as general opinion.

If instead of Wilsonianism or some such thing, Mohammedanism were to be represented as the accepted common opinion, European journalists would write away about something Mohammedan. And if spiritual science had already grown into a habit in human souls, then the same journalists who today grumble at Spiritual Science would, of course, write very finely in the sense of Spiritual Science. But nowadays there is a disinclination to go into such things among the very people whose task it should be.

You see, as man stands here on the earth, he is really connected with the whole cosmos. And I have said before that what holds good today on earth has naturally not always held good. That we may be informed at least about the most important things, we shall speak now principally of the period of time since the great Atlantean deluge, the Flood. Geology calls it the Ice Age. We know that changes took place in mankind at that time, but there was a humanity upon earth even before this, although in a different form. (You can read in Occult Science how mankind lived then.) The Atlantean evolution preceded the present evolution. In that part of the earth, for instance, where the Atlantic Ocean is today—as we have often said—there was land. A great part of present-day Europe was then under the sea—conditions on earth were quite different during the age of this Atlantean humanity. The ancient Atlantean civilization went down. The Post-Atlantean has taken its place. But the Atlantean followed the so-called Lemurian civilization, which again had several epochs. Thus we can say that we are in the post-Atlantean civilization in the fifth epoch, following the first, second, third and fourth epochs. Before this was the Atlantean civilization with its seven epochs (see diagram), before this again was the Lemurian civilization with its seven epochs. Let us turn our attention to the seventh epoch of the Lemurian civilization. It lies approximately 25,900 years before our epoch. It was about 25,000-26,000 years ago that this seventh epoch of the Lemurian age came to an end on earth. However remarkable it may sound, there is a certain resemblance between this seventh Lemurian epoch and our own epoch. Similarities are as we know always to be found between successive periods, similarities of the most diverse kinds. We have found a close similarity between our age and the Egypto-Chaldean. We will now speak of one which is more distant; there is also externally, cosmically, a resemblance. You know that our epoch which begins in about the 15th century of the Christian era is connected with the cosmos through the fact that since that time the sun has its Vernal Point in Pisces, in the constellation of Pisces, the Fishes. The sun had previously been for 2,160 years in the constellation of Aries, the Ram, at the Vernal Equinox. Here in this seventh Lemurian epoch (left) there were similar conditions. Twelve epochs ago the sun was in the same position. So that towards the end of the Lemurian age there were conditions similar to ours.

This similarity contains, however, an important difference. You see, what we acquire today of inner force of spirit and head-experience, as we have described it in these studies, was also experienced by the Lemurian human being of that time, though in a different manner. The Lemurian man was constituted in quite a different way from the man of today, as you may read in my Occult Science. What could enter into him out of the universe, really entered right in. So that the Lemurian man received practically the same wisdom as the man of today gains I through his head, but it streamed into him out of the universe, I and only in this sense was it different. His head was still open, his head was still susceptible to the conditions of the cosmos. Hence powers of clairvoyance existed in ancient times. Man did not explain things to himself logically, he did not learn them, but he beheld them, since they entered his head out of the cosmos, whereas today they can do so no longer. For what comes in ceases in relatively early youth. As I have said, the head no longer stands in such intimate relation to the cosmos. That is so in the present epoch, at that time it was not so; at that time the head of man still stood in much more inward relation to the universe; at that time the human being still received world-wisdom. This did not lack that logic which is nevertheless lacking in what man gains for himself today. That original wisdom was an actually inspired wisdom, one that came to man from without, arising from divine worlds. Present-day man is unwilling to consider this; for modern man believes (forgive me if again I express myself somewhat drastically) that ever since he has been on earth he has had a skull as hard as it is today. This, however, is not true. The human head has only closed in relatively recent times. In ancient times it was responsive to cosmic in-streamings. Only an atavistic remainder is still there. Everyone knows that when he observes a child's head (a really young child's head) there is still one place that is soft. This is the last relic of that openness to the cosmos, where in ancient times cosmic forces worked in a certain way into the head and gave man cosmic wisdom. Man at that time still had no need of that correspondence with the heart, for he had a small heart in the head that has become shriveled and rudimentary today. Thus does the human being change. But conditions alter over the earth and man must grasp this and change too—adapt himself to other conditions. We should have been perpetually tied to the apron-strings of the cosmos, if our head had not ossified. We are shut off in this way from the cosmos and can develop an independent ego within us. It is important that we bear this in mind. We can develop an independent ego by reason of having acquired physically this hard skull. And we may ask when mankind actually lost the last remnant of the memories, the living memories of the ancient archetypal wisdom? This remnant really only faded away in the epoch that preceded ours, the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, during the Greco-Roman civilization. Human beings had then, of course, long since possessed closed skulls, but in the Mysteries there still existed original wisdom preserved from quite ancient times, from the epoch that preceded the Lemurian Pisces-age, from the Lemurian Aries-age.

As much as man could have of his ego in the Lemurian times was also revealed to him from the cosmos; his inmost soul-force was manifested to him from the cosmos. This came to an end in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Latin time. The heavens closed their last door to man. But instead they sent down their greatest Messenger precisely at that time, so that man can find on earth what he formerly received from heaven—the CHRIST. The Mystery of Golgotha is indeed a cosmic fact, inasmuch as there would have ceased for man what had been revealed to him from the heavens, cosmically revealed, from Lemurian times. Then there appears the Impulse which can reveal it to him from the earth. Only man must gradually develop what has been revealed to him from the earth in the Christ Impulse, and develop it, precisely by that process of rejuvenation of which we have been speaking.

Now, it is a result of this human development that we bear something within us today that is—so to speak—quite wonderful. I have already mentioned in yesterday's lecture that the knowledge of our time is the most spiritual it is possible to have; man however does not remark it because he does not let it mature. What can be known today about nature is far more spiritual than what was formerly known. What man formerly knew brought down certain realities out of the cosmos. In the stars, as I mentioned yesterday, the Scholastics of the Middle Ages still saw angelic Intelligences. Modern Astronomy does not of course see any angelic Intelligences, but something that one can calculate by mathematics or mechanics. But what was formerly seen has been thoroughly passed through a sieve; it is there, but sifted to the last vestige of spirituality. It belonged to the quite lovable genius of Novalis to see rightly in this point. In the Aphorisms of Novalis you find the beautiful expression—I have often quoted it—‘Mathematics is in truth a great poem’. But in order to see how mathematics, by which one also calculates the worlds of the stars and their courses, is a great poem, one must be oneself a poet, not as the modern natural scientists are perhaps, but such a poet as Novalis. Then one stands in wonder before the poetry of mathematics. For mathematics is phantasy. Mathematics is nothing observed through the senses, it is phantasy. It is, however, the final product of phantasy that has still a connection with the immediate external reality. Mathematics in fact is Maya thoroughly passed through a sieve. And if one learns to know it, not merely in the schoolmaster sense that prevails in the world today, but learns to know mathematics in its substance, learns to know it in what it can reveal, then one learns indeed to know something in it that has as much reality as an image that we see of ourselves in a mirror, but which nevertheless tells us something, in certain circumstances tells us a good deal. But to be sure, if one considers the mirror image as a final reality, one is a fool. And if one even begins to want to hold conversation with the reflection because one confuses it with reality, one is not really looking for reality at the right spot. Just as little can reality be found in the mathematical calculations in Astronomy. But the reality is certainly there. As a mirror reflection is not there without the reality, so the whole spiritual existence, that is calculated purely mathematically, is there; it is only passed completely through a sieve, and must force its way back to reality.

Precisely because our age has become so abstract, has been formed so purely by the head, it has such an immense spiritual content. And there is actually nothing that is so purely spiritual as our present science; it is only that men do not know nor value this. At any rate it is almost ridiculous to be materialistic with modern science! For it is a funny way of going through life if one takes modern science materialistically, and yet almost all learned men do take it thus. If one asserts, with the ideas that modern science can develop, that there is only a material existence, it is actually comic; for if there were only a material existence, one could never assert that there was a material existence. Merely by making the statement ‘there is a material existence’—this action of the soul is in fact the finest spiritual element possible, it is a proof in itself that there is not solely a material existence. For no person could assert that there was a material existence if there were only a material existence. One can assert all sorts of other things, but one can never assert that there is a material existence, if one only accepts a material existence. By asserting that there is only a material existence one actually proves that one is talking nonsense. For if it were true what one asserts, if there were only a material existence, nothing could ever arise from this material existence which became somewhere or other in a person the asserting—which is a purely spiritual process—‘There is a material existence’.

You see from this that nowhere has such a logical proof been put forward that the world is of the spirit, as by the science of our time which does not believe in it—that is to say, does not believe in itself—and by our whole age, which does not believe in itself. Only because mankind has spiritualized itself increasingly from epoch to epoch and has arrived at having such sharply refined concepts as we have today, only because of this has mankind reached the point of now seeing solely the quite ‘sieved’ concepts and can of its own volition connect them with the heart forces. This is shown very plainly now in external life, it is shown too in the great catastrophic events.

For, my dear friends, if one really studies history, there is a great difference between what is now called the present world-war—which is really no war at all, but something else—and earlier wars. People today are not yet attentive to these things, but in all that is going on this distinction is shown. One could refer to many proofs of the fact that this is shown. But you see, there are many men who speak from the standpoint of a quite particular ingeniousness in such an unclear way as the man from whose article I read you a sentence. For this modern acuteness gets to the point of again and again defending the peculiar sentence ‘One must prolong this war as long as possible so that the best possible peace may be established’. No one would have spoken like that about earlier wars. In many other respects too they would not have spoken as is spoken today. People do not yet notice that, as I said, but nevertheless it is so. If you take all earlier wars you will always find that fundamentally in some way or other men could say why they were waging war. (I will bring forward two things to illustrate this, though hundreds might be brought forward.) They wanted something definite, clearly to be outlined, to be described. Can the men of today do this? Above all, do they do it? A great part of those who are heavily involved in the war, do not do it. No one knows what really lies behind things. And if someone says that he wants this or that, it is generally so formulated that the other has no real idea of what he wants.

That was certainly not the case in earlier wars. One can go through the whole of world history and not find it. You can take such grievous events in earlier times as, for instance, the invasions into Europe of the Tartars, the Mongols, and you will always find that they were quite definite things, that could be sharply defined, that could be understood, and from which one could understand what actually happened. Where is there today a really clear definition of what is actually going on, a really clear description?

That is one thing. But now, my dear friends, let me say something else—what was generally the actual result of wars in earlier times? Look wherever you will and you will find that it was certain territorial changes, which people then accepted. How do people face these things today? They all explain that there must be no territorial changes. Then one asks oneself again ‘What is the whole thing for?’ Compared with former things this is really how the matter lies: people cannot in any case fight for what they always fought before, because that simply cannot be done. The moment that is somehow supposed to happen there is an instant declaration ‘That simply cannot be done’. Thus according to the impulses that prevail there can really never be a peace; for if one were to leave everything as it was before, there was no need to begin. But since one has begun and nevertheless wants to leave everything as it was before, one can naturally not leave off, for otherwise there would have been no need to begin!

These things are abstract, paradoxical, but they correspond to profound realities; they really correspond to conditions that ought to be kept in mind at the present time. One must in fact say that what is discussed here as the lack of correspondence between head-man and heart-man is today world-historical fact. And, on the other hand, one can say: men stand today in a quite particular period of development; they cannot control their thoughts in a human way. That is the most significant characteristic of our time; men cannot humanly control their thoughts. All has become different, and people are not yet willing to notice that all has become different.

Thus, one is not merely concerned with something that has a significance in questions concerning world-conceptions, but with something that very deeply affects the most wide-spread event of our time, the most crushing event for humanity. Men no longer find from out their soul the connection with their own thoughts. And this can show us how not only the individual but humanity too in a certain way has forgotten how to call upon the rejuvenating forces. Humanity will not easily be able to extricate itself from this condition. It can only do so when there is a belief in the rejuvenating forces, when we get rid of much of what cannot be rejuvenated. Whether we look at individual persons or consider what is going on around us, we find the same thing everywhere. We find a sifted and sieved head-wisdom, head-experience, without the will to let things ripen through the heart-experience. This is, however, so deeply linked with the needs of the common evolution of mankind, that man should turn his closest attention to it for the present and the immediate future. We have indeed often spoken of it before from the most varied aspects. It is precisely this state of things that shows how necessary it is for spiritual science to enter the world today—even, one might say, as something abstract. But it is fruitful, it can remould the world because above all it can send its impulse into actual, concrete conditions of life. Man would face sad times if he should continue no longer to have faith in the becoming older, if he wanted to stop short at what the short-lived head can experience. For I have said already that the utmost extreme of what the short-lived head can acquire is abstract Socialism, which does not proceed from concrete conditions. Yet this is really solely and alone what people believe in. The philosopher constantly asserts today that there is only matter—on account of his refined spirituality. But he ought to give up this judgment at once, for it is nonsense. But the mainspring of the present so-called war is to be found in the general world-condition from which there is no way out—just as there is no way out from the sentence ‘There is only matter’. For the present time is in fact spiritual! And this that is spiritual needs condensing, needs strengthening, so that it may grasp reality; otherwise it remains mere mirror-image. In the way humanity works today it is as if one did not wish to work in a workshop with actual men, but as if one thought one could work in a workshop with mirror-pictures.

And so it is in the most extreme form of head-concept-socialism, which on this account is so plausible for great masses since it is logical head-experience, purely logical head-experience. But when this logical head-experience cannot meet the spirit element of the other man, with what then can it meet? That is what we have often spoken of, in fact, even today. It then unites with blind desires and instincts. Then there results an impure mixture between the head-experience, which is really quite spiritual, and the blindest instincts and desires. That is what they are now trying to join together in the East, in a world historical way! A socialistic theory, pure head-experience, has nothing whatever to do with the actual concrete conditions of the East;

what is devised by men like Lenin and Trotsky has nothing to do with what is developing as concrete necessities in the East. For if Lenin and Trotsky, through some peculiar chain of circumstance, had landed up in Australia instead of Russia, they would have thought they could introduce the same conditions that they wished to introduce into Russia. They fit Australia, South America, just as much, or just as little, as Russia; they would fit just as well on the Moon, since they fit no real concrete conditions at all. And why? Because they come from the head, and the head is not of the earth. Perhaps they would really fit better on the Moon, since they are purely from the head. The head is not of the earth. That they are intelligible, comes from the fact that they are closely related to the head. But here on earth such things must be established as are related to the earth; a spirituality must also be found which is connected with the earth's future, in the way we described yesterday.

That leads into quite deep and significant things. And when one considers them, one will see how little inclined the man of today really is, to go into these things. And they are as necessary as our daily bread. For otherwise, if the path to rejuvenation is not found, the evolution of mankind will either get into a pit or a blind alley.

• 1. See: ‘Prayers for mothers and children’—and ‘Earthly Death & Cosmic Life’.