The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we gathered here a year ago, we were still, so to speak, occupied with the thoughts that arose from the intention at that time to gain some insight into the foundations, into the underlying forces of the current catastrophic events. Some time ago, several of our friends expressed the wish that more should be said than had been said so far about the specific, deeper forces that have contributed to these catastrophic events. And we occupied ourselves at the time with the intentions, with the aspirations of certain circles, which seek to introduce their intentions, one might say, in a hidden way into the world, and which proceed from certain goals which, as we have seen, are by no means generally human goals, but are the group-egoistic goals of certain narrower circles, which, however, know how to calculate - in the sense that one has to calculate in the world if one wants to carry out certain things - which know how to calculate with large time periods.

We have been able to refer back to aspirations that are to be pursued, they are to be pursued even further back, but for the time being they are to be pursued in continuous progression until the 1880s, aspirations that have reckoned with the trends and forces asserting themselves in the present cultural world. And perhaps from these considerations we have been able to gain some understanding of the course of events, some understanding that is independent of what dominates the whole world today, independent of the national and other group-egoistic aspirations that lead to such sad consequences. We may have been able to gain a view that is independent of the narrow perspectives that dominate almost all people today, and we may have been able to form, albeit less frequently expressed, certain inner views of what is necessary for the salvation of humanity in the present time.

And it is from what is necessary in the present time that the other endeavors have also emerged, which are currently being tried to be asserted on the basis of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. In the last year in particular, my public lectures, as friends may have noticed, had a certain basic character. They had the basic character of drawing attention to certain important hidden sides of human nature. Everywhere I was able to lecture this year, I endeavored to awaken a deeper understanding of the human being from this point of view, insofar as the human being is part of the overall human process of the world order. We need only look back at the public lectures that have been held here in Switzerland over the past few months. The aim everywhere, including the more detailed observations that I was able to make in Zurich, was to show how the human being, as a human personality, as a human individual, carries within himself the forces that actually belong to different states of consciousness. How he not only carries within himself forces that belong to his waking consciousness, but also other forces that remain in the subconscious, but which are by no means meaningless, but play their role in the historical development of humanity, which play their role in social and ethical life. Through such endeavors, the idea should be awakened of how necessary it is in the present to strive for a deeper understanding of human nature. In these lectures, even in the public lectures, the connection between the so-called dead and the living was deliberately mentioned. Although such references must still be subtle in public lectures, they have been tried in a more insistent way, especially in recent times.

The underlying tone of these lectures was intended to be one that arises from the, I believe justified, insight that salvation in the development of humanity can only come about in the present if humanity truly takes up certain spiritual-scientific impulses. And in the public lectures, an attempt was made to build a bridge between what humanity now chooses to believe and what leads to deeper truths. The attempt was made to build this bridge in such a way that it can be seen that a way can be found, if good will is applied, from what the individual scientists do not push towards, but what contemporary science as such does. It was attempted to show that actually the scientists of the present time are in discord with the results of their science, that science itself opens up the direct perspective into spiritual-scientific truths. And in particular, it was attempted to show how these spiritual-scientific truths have their significant consequences for practical human life, for all the various branches of this practical human life. The tone of these reflections, including the public ones, was such that, if there was good will for understanding, at least such an understanding could be achieved that one could say: something must happen in terms of human understanding of the world; there must be a kind of reversal of certain directions that have been taken, there must be good will.

It has been shown that suggestions have fallen on fertile ground here and there. But today there is still a formidable obstacle in the way of adopting a new direction. And this obstacle comes in particular from the human desire for mental comfort, which is so decisive today, from the self-chosen difficulty that many people find in getting away from old thoughts, in really activating their thinking, to banish certain ingrained prejudices from their souls and to take in certain new concepts that are necessary for the further course of human development, certain concepts, certain ideas, above all, ideas that engage with reality. The tone was set in the reflections of this year in such a way that this necessary turning to reality, to reality steeped in truth, was emphasized and particularly highlighted.

One might have thought that outside our circles there would be a larger number of people here and there who, inspired by such reflections, would have come to the question: Which paths should one take in this or that field? - that people would have emerged who feel that contemporary thinking has lost touch with true reality.

Admittedly, not much of this has been shown. The thinking, the feeling, the perception of people today is casual, comfortable, lethargic, and also haughty, and self-satisfied with what has been handed down. This can be seen from the fact that few people ask themselves: What can be learned from the events of recent years? How many, many people today still take it for granted that they are building on the same principles, which they call ideals, whose collapse they could clearly see through these catastrophic events. Even today, theories and views are still being expounded that could be known to have been shipwrecked by the events of recent years. Currents continue under the same principles under which they used to work, even though one could see that these currents, in their principles, are far removed from the forces that rule reality and that destroy reality if man does not prepare to include the nature and workings of these forces in his imagination, in his view.

Such things are not said for the sake of criticizing. Nor are they said for the sake of creating pessimism, but they are said because it cannot be emphasized often enough that the most necessary thing in the present is an understanding of true reality, a departure from the straw-like, insubstantial abstractions that have plunged the world into misfortune! Such straw-like, insubstantial abstractions dominate the world today. And it is urgently necessary for the human soul to turn to this direction.

For example, some people today take it for granted when clever people repeatedly declare that it is not people who matter, but rather the ideas that are spread in the world. Such a statement is therefore dangerous because it is a strong temptation. In the real world, everything depends on people, and the best principles and ideas can have no significance if they are represented by people who do not have the strength within themselves to realize what, according to the nature of time, must be realized, who do not have the strength within themselves to find their way to reality with their own hearts and minds. Remoteness from reality is the word that can be used for almost everything that is often proclaimed with grandiose words as an ideal in the world. And a dawn, as humanity must experience it, can only come when, time and again, New Year's reflections come that, on the one hand, reject the impulse of alienation from reality and, on the other hand, attempt to unite man in his soul with reality.

It is almost a truism to say, and yet necessary in the present situation: humanity has come under the influence of insubstantial word sounds, under the influence of insubstantial phrases of principle. People are not very inclined to look into where this or that comes from when they hear it, and so they come into tremendous discord with what is real and essential. For the world is not governed in the right way by the words that are spoken, if these words are not spoken from the heart of reality, if these words are only borrowed from the treasury of words and ideas that now flows on the surface of human existence, the content of which can be repeated without being understood. If one disregards the things that unfortunately have this character and are corrupting the world today, and focuses on something that may be insignificant in the face of great world events but is nonetheless characteristic because it is repeated in great world events, if one wishes to draw attention to something, one can say: It is quite natural in the present cycle of humanity that numerous people make good poems, because such good poems simply arise from the impulses rooted in the languages and the social circumstances of people. One need only, so to speak, put together what is already there, and good things will come out in the old sense. This is the case in the other arts and in the other areas of life.

Today, however, it is much more necessary to be able to pay attention to what may emerge as something new, perhaps in a stammering and imperfect way, than to be able to keep an eye out for what is pleasing and beautiful. That which carries future possibilities within it may emerge in a rather imperfect way; but the important thing would be to discover in this imperfection the impulsive germ for the future. If efforts were made in this direction, we would try to make it a general principle, as we have done in particular in the construction of this building here at Dornach: to break with the old, even at the risk of being quite imperfect in the new. If that were to become a general method, then some good would come to humanity from such a thing.

Above all, it is necessary to break away from the fixed, because the fixed is dying. There is something dying and something coming to life in the historical life of humanity. And it was not without reason that I said in those days: There is something dangerous even in the use of words themselves. One need not go as far as Fritz Mauthner, who in his “Criticism of Language,” in his “Philosophical Dictionary,” enumerates countless sins that people commit by pursuing the cult of the word everywhere. Certainly, Fritz Mauthner carries a correct thought to the point of absurdity when, for example, he asserts that Christianity in Europe is actually essentially a collection of twenty to thirty loan words, that is, it has developed in such a way that people have fallen in love with twenty to thirty words, to which they cling and consider them realities. Of course, we need not go that far. Nor can we entirely agree with Fritz Mauthner when he actually sees the most essential thing in the bringing about of these catastrophic events as being that people have practised idolatry with words, although it is absolutely true that idolatry with words has been practised.

This is something that must stop. The word has gradually become something that floats on the surface of human life and to which one clings. The word has gradually become something that is taken for granted. When you try to get to know more intimately what dominates thinking and thought habits today, then, for example, when I see this, I remember an argument that I often encountered during my childhood and up to the age of twenty-five of youth, of boyhood friends, often encountered: I was often asked by this or that person – please excuse the perhaps somewhat offensive topic that comes up – what the actual difference is between love and friendship when it comes to relationships between young men and young women. And a great deal of emphasis was placed on defining the terms “love” and “friendship” as precisely as possible. These were supposed to be well-nested terms. I really did have – I can say this without being silly – the aspiration not to look at such abstractions, but to look at reality. I always said: in case A I see a relationship between a male and a female individual, and the same in case B; these are all concrete relationships of the most diverse kinds. Whether you call it “love” or “friendship” is all the same to me, because what matters is the objective.

In contrast to what must be lived out in a social relationship between people, another interest does indeed arise. The interest of codification arises, and then, of course, nested concepts and nested words are needed. How could laws be made without adhering to words! But the alternative cannot be to say: no nested words, but direct human life! Such an alternative would be about as clever as it is clever to raise the ideal of establishing a paradise on the physical plane. But the physical plane is not suitable for establishing a paradise. One can raise the demand, but one can never fulfill it.

One can also raise other demands. In recent times, the demand for an international organization has been raised many times. You can make the demand; you can also codify such demands; it can of course come about. But what reality will have to say about that after ten years is another question! Reality takes the paths that you only recognize when you also want to engage with reality in your recognition. Establishing principles, representing principles, these are soon brought together. Founding associations, having programs in these associations, people-pleasing programs, beautiful, admirable programs that cannot be objected to - you can set them up. It is even a thankless task to have to point out that it is so easy to do so. In some cases, you may even - let me say this in parenthesis - come into rather harsh collisions if you have no inclination towards such codification.

For example, the Berlin branch of the Anthroposophical Society, in which I myself am involved, has not yet managed to draw up statutes for fifteen years because we have always considered real life to be more important than statutes, than codified life. You can have the most beautiful statutes, wonderful statutes. They may be quite good, but only for the purpose of enabling one to deal with certain outside powers. They have no significance for the inner life of a matter. A truly living thing actually resists statutes and principles. I am not criticizing the making of statutes, but nevertheless, the making of statutes and the founding of associations often seems to me to be just as clever as when a father and a mother have a baby of a few months and draw up a detailed program for this little child. There you have the clash of life with codification, the clash of life with abstract principles. The world will not cease to be a living being, even if a number of idealists — let us say, in order not to hurt them — are now setting up all kinds of world-blessing programs from intergovernmental organizations.

Spiritual science does not seek abstract ideals, unreal ideas, but spiritual science strives to seek the real impulses from the realm of life, to recognize that which is, because social principles can only be truly put into practice on the basis of what is. To do that, it takes discomfort to even take such things into one's heart, discomfort is necessary. It is convenient for seven or eight people to sit down together today and establish a world-blessing association with magnificent statutes. You can do that. The statutes will always be right if people are reasonably sensible. You can then also win followers, and there is no objection to such things, because the things are of course right. But it would be necessary for the people who often gather under such flags to first sit down for a few months and study the subject for which they want to achieve something. They do not do that. Instead of people spending a few months familiarizing themselves with the issues at hand, one finds that such associations have made a global impact, have gained thousands and thousands of followers, but that after twenty years there are not five among these thousands of followers have in the meantime taken the trouble to study the subject matter of the weekly journal published by the association, in which the same phrases are repeated over and over again, when the readers, who quickly forget and have forgotten history, which has already been so often.

Breaking away from the idolatry of words, breaking away from the idolatry of abstractions, is an essential part of what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should bring to people. “With words one can argue excellently, with words one can prepare a system.” And one could add: And then one can live comfortably with the system. But life is complicated, and complicated life needs to be considered. And it is perhaps a very good time to point out such a contemplation of life when we are at the end of a year that concludes a series of such sad years for humanity. In such times, we should turn our gaze again to what the basic ideas of spiritual science can inspire in us. These basic ideas of spiritual science admonish us again and again to really study the character of our time.

We try to do many things to study the character of our time. Yesterday I referred to the great teacher and friend of Dante, to Brunetto Latini. In Brunetto Latini we have at the same time a man who, in the age of Dante, pointed in a penetrating way to what was to come for humanity. The initiation writing, one can already call it such, which comes from Brunetto Latini, contains approximately the following: He returns from his mission to Alfonso of Castile. On his way back, he learns that events have taken place in Florence, in his city, which, in his opinion, must end the old splendor and glory of Florence. Brunetto Latini senses, in expressing this, the approach of the fifth post-Atlantic period. After all, this initiation writing was still written at a time when there was still an awareness of the connection between man and the spiritual world in the furthest reaches, at a time when numerous human secrets about the spiritual world were still known, and therefore at a time when there was not yet the tendency towards such insubstantial abstractions as there is today. For in an age in which intellectual life is vibrant, in an age in which the life of feeling is truly present, there is no inclination towards insubstantial abstractions. Insubstantial abstractions are always related to the tendency towards materialism.

Brunetto Latini has this age, in which we now live, before him. He is approaching Florence. He knows that what Florence has become under the impulse of direct human life, of direct intellectual impulses, is to be buried under the advent of institutions that arise from abstraction. He is approaching Florence. He describes how the pain causes him to lose his way in a forest, a desolate forest. When he comes to his senses, he notices a path and a giant female figure in the middle of a magnificent world creation - which is his imagination. We hear that under this giant female figure he addresses “true nature”, not the nature that today's science describes, but “true nature”. This “true nature” teaches him about what lives in man, about the secrets of the human soul, about the secrets of the four human temperaments, about the secrets of the human senses, about the secrets of the elements, about the secrets of the planets. He is then led out beyond the planetary realm into the ocean of world existence as far as the Pillars of Hercules, mind you, at a time when Copernicanism had not yet been discovered, at a time when America had not yet been rediscovered. Then he is made aware that he has to leave all this, that is, the whole visible world. Only then would he recognize the secrets of good and evil; only then would he recognize the God of love and so on. One is tempted to say that this approach by Brunetto Latini is a proper New Year's reflection on the fourth post-Atlantic period in the cosmic New Year season of the approach of the fifth post-Atlantic period.

In the circles from which Brunetto Latini and others had grown, it was known that man has a connection with the spiritual world, and that the mere literal grasping of the spiritual world must lead to disaster. A preliminary climax has also been reached in science in the 19th century by mere literalness. Everything was prepared, but in the 19th century the matter reached its peak. And from science, the corresponding tendencies have spread to the rest of human experience. But now the time has come to find the courage to break with the old idolatry of words, with the old idolatry of even some word contexts and word combinations regarded as natural laws.

The mere fact that a word exists does not accomplish very much in itself. At the beginning of the new era, the Mystery of Golgotha took place. Since that time, Christianity has existed. There were, however, centuries in which this Christianity was sought to be grasped with the whole human soul. But then came other times. Then came the times when human comprehension became weak and was no longer sufficient to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. And now, in the broadest circumference of the Mystery of Golgotha, almost nothing remains but the name of Christ Jesus. But I have shown in these considerations that what is associated with the name of Christ Jesus is, in the light of spiritual science, not much more than an angelic being. And the fact that this is not noticed is due only to the idolatry of words. This idolatry of words has a suggestive power. Anyone who has felt this suggestive power - without becoming an idolater - could experience it in the most diverse fields. Sometimes it is good to make a personal connection without becoming maudlin. In this case, allow me to set an example.

I often think, when I try to characterize the tenor of the present time, of the lectures I once heard on constitutional law. Let me pick out just a very small part of these lectures on constitutional law: Now, gentlemen, what is judicial sovereignty? Judicial sovereignty is the sovereign right that lies within the omnipotence of the state. And now followed that which all falls within this state omnipotence. Gentlemen! What is financial sovereignty? Financial sovereignty is the sovereign right that lies within the omnipotence of the state. What is political sovereignty? Political sovereignty is the right inherent in state omnipotence... - and now followed again that which lies in state omnipotence. What is cultural sovereignty? Cultural sovereignty is the right inherent in state omnipotence.

Now imagine the human soul, made out of straw, presented with these contrived concepts and developing social efficacy – what do you have then? What you see around you now and what you close your eyes to, so that you can consider it something quite sensible, that has only slipped somewhat in recent years, but that is good and must be continued! But truth is not recognized by words, truth is recognized by realities. One can speak beautifully, and of course also truly, about the excellence of a democratic state administration, about the exemplary nature of a democratic state administration. But the insight into whether this is right or wrong is not shown by reality; rather, reality is shown by the fact that such a democratic state administration brings a Mr. Wilson to the head of almost the whole world. That is where reality is to be found. And talking about reality is not very popular. It was not without reason that I pointed out the hollowness of Mr. Wilson's personality in my Helsingfors cycle before this war. You can read about it in the cycle that was held on the Bhagavad Gita and its occult foundations. One of our friends found himself saying at the end of the lecture that it was terrible that something like that comes to influence and power.

Nothing happens in the world with principles. In the world, things happen through realities. In social life, the realities are the personalities. This is something to which spiritual science, in particular, must strongly and vigorously point out, because spiritual science honestly and sincerely wants to help the development of humanity, because it does not want to join in the parade of phrases that dominates the world today. And by this phraseology I do not mean merely that people utter phrases, but I mean something much worse: that people try to realize phrases, that they make phrases into institutions, that they do not decide to call things by their real names.

A great deal would be done in the world if people wanted to call things by their right name. It would lead to many things, as I have often pointed out: that one should not give so much importance to outward appearances, as if the most essential thing about the current catastrophic events were that the so-called Entente is at war with the so-called Central Powers, and that peace must be achieved again! I have often pointed out that this is not the most essential thing, this is not the most important thing, because appearances are often deceptive. What is being fought over in the world is something essentially different. The battle of the reality-seeking phrase against the living reality is fundamentally something much more universal. Only by reflecting on oneself can one see how attached one is to the comfort of the phrase.

There are already some opportunities for this here in this place. For us, who are connected by love to this building and to what is connected with it, for us, to a certain extent, what lies in time is symbolically expressed by the fact that this building has been started like one of the centers from which what humanity must transfer into a future according to the demands of the present, and how this building was interrupted, stands interrupted by that which now stands in the background of all human contemplation and all human works: the great collapse of the institutions of humanity, which, out of a love of phrase, have been growing for centuries.

Not without reason, during the weeks in which we were once again able to be together, until now, at the turn of the year, I have maintained a serious tone in our deliberations here at the building site itself and have repeatedly emphasized the necessity, at least in what is left to our discretion, to seek the necessary seriousness of life; in what is left to our discretion in our understanding, in the unprejudiced pursuit of events. That this structure, too, has been delayed for an indefinite period of time is perhaps a small event within the catastrophic events of the present, but it is symptomatic, it is symbolic in a certain respect; symbolic the reason that one could draw a line between what is loved for humanity from the intention of this building and what is loved from the word “idolatry” and what is associated with it.

At the present time, at this turn of the year, the great catastrophic event still looms in the background of everything that can be observed and done. And at this turn of the year we must think back to the turn of the year before. One month after that turn of the year we parted. I still think of the contrast that my words, often harshly characterizing the situation, have found even in our circle. Anyone who knows from what impulse the catastrophic events arose could not have imagined a year before that 1917 would not be even worse than the previous one. That was what people said at the time. Although on the one hand one had to say and could say how infinitely sad it was that a well-intentioned proposal - as I said at the time in my Christmas and New Year's reflection - was shouted down by what calls itself “four-fifths of humanity”, and how, under this shouting down, there was no right mood to look optimistically into this year 1917, so it is, when looking back again, only an unbiased look when one says to oneself: Is there anything that there is a prospect of this or that being achieved out of his or her selfish group interest? Is there anything that can be achieved by such interests and for which the prospect has increased after another year of terrible bloodshed? No! The world situation at the end of 1916 was exactly the same as it is today; for this world situation will only change when reason comes into thinking.

Anyone who believes that anything essential has changed in the past year is mistaken, mistaking the external for the internal. This is not to say that this or that, which a comfortable view of life may initially label as something favorable – until after a few months people see that it is not favorable – cannot be done. But the things lie much deeper; they lie so deep that, according to the experiences that have been made, it is not even possible, especially with regard to the events of the present, to speak the decisive word here either. Humanity has a task at the present time. And after a year like this, one can say a few words about this task.

That these catastrophic events have occurred was certainly not a task for humanity. That these catastrophic events are continuing is certainly not a task for humanity either. This is a task for humanity: to get out of these catastrophic events; to really get out of these catastrophic events and to recognize that it is a task to get out of them.

It does not matter if one wants to continue in the old way in this or that respect. It can already be said: if some socialists believe that what they believed seventeen years ago for the good of humanity can now be used as a universal remedy to get out of the great human calamity, then that is a mistake, a mistake that stems from being out of touch with reality.

These catastrophic events are composed of two things that we are not able to truly understand today in everything that exists outside of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. On the one hand, these catastrophic events have only been made possible by the way in which certain goals have been used to exploit the great antagonism that has developed in humanity over the last three to four centuries between everything that is industrial, commercial and so on imperialism, and socialism, which is opposed to it. That is one thing. The other is that which has emerged through the psychology of nations, which plays a particularly important role in Eastern and Central Europe. Both issues contain problems of the most comprehensive kind for humanity.

We must start where we are least disturbed by the outside world today, where external codification still has the least say, in science and art. Or we could establish a bank based on our principles.

Many things could be mentioned that would show, alongside this wood and concrete construction, a kind of ideal building, but one that is taken from life and from friendship with reality. This wood and concrete construction stands unfinished today; that is a symptom, that is a symbol. These things, neither the real nor the ideal building or buildings, can be completed if there is only understanding in the world for the opposite, for that which must extinguish all individualism, all personality impulses, from humanity. If man must reconquer that which is lost in abstract institutions, in the tyranny of abstract institutions, then much time will be necessary.

Some things must be spoken of only in a roundabout way, if I may put it that way; everyone may try to draw from the things what he can draw. But above all, we should draw the conclusion that, if certain things have been repeated again and again this time, it is not without reason: the admonition to turn away from all that is empty words, even if these empty words have gained an external semblance of reality, and to turn to the truth, to true reality. For it is this true reality that we seek through our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Through it, we want to penetrate into the understanding of what is, of that which must work. And we want to free ourselves from that false idealism - false idealism because it is an abstract idealism - that believes it can work in the world without study, without knowledge and without love for reality.

In the times when one year follows the other, it is so close to the human soul to have more serious thoughts about how one's own soul relates to life and the essence of being. Today, one cannot think of more serious thoughts than those that come from the contrast between a world that is alien to reality and so proud of its friendship with reality, and between what should be striven for through a real friendship with reality, as it strives for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Let us assume that, in addition to what we can so easily develop, we have a certain inclination to take in spiritual truths because they present our relationship to eternity and the like to our soul in a pleasant way. Let us assume that what is a kind of inclination to deal with spiritual-scientific truths, we also carry a real, inner, strong, devoted impulse: to look at life, at all life in the light of this spiritual science. Let us try to carry over from one year, which was truly not easy to live through, into the next, which will also not be easy to live through, let us try to carry over the will to look at life in the sense of spiritual science, the will to become free from the mere phrase that dominates the world today. For something has already been done if there is at least a small group of people in the world who can make a New Year's reflection to not join in the idolatry of the phrase in their thoughts. This is something. Let us get used to new words, new concepts, new ideas for many things that need them! This is said – since we could have another New Year's Eve reflection within this unfinished building, with whose forms, with whose reality we associate so many thoughts for the future – so that we can grasp the idea of living over into this New Year in such a way that, like a burning impulse, like a fire within us, so that this spiritual science is not just a theory that we cultivate in the privacy of our own rooms, but becomes something that passes into our head, into our heart, into our hands, into everything that is to become and happen in our lives.

In view of the words that may have sounded harsh but that were nevertheless spoken only out of love for humanity, I would like to give you the impulse, I would like to point you to the impulse, to think through this turning point of two years in such a way that the thought can be the starting point for a truly unbiased examination of what is real and what is unreal. For more than humanity thinks today depends on this. And one would truly like to have something other than weak words for a small circle at a time when so much more would be needed in New Year's reflections than what is so often spoken as New Year's reflections today. But let us be aware that spiritual science has a certain right to demand such a desire for otherness from us!

The things I am now presenting in a somewhat prosaic way in this last lecture, in contrast to the great vistas we have been accustomed to in these meditations, do, however, have a certain inner connection with our entire meditations and also with the present time. And in a sense it was important to me, even if it can only be done in aphoristic form for these things, and again in the form of remarks, perhaps even without further context (otherwise one would have to talk for days on the subject). Just as we tried to penetrate the period that culminated in the 8th century with a few remarks, so we want to consider today the following period, which then culminated in a certain sense in the 15th century for European life.

This 15th century is extraordinarily interesting to consider in the most diverse respects, especially to see how it emerges from the European living conditions of the preceding centuries. This century is significant for the reason that it was only in the 15th century that the conditions in Europe were formed within which we are currently living. People think, one might say – we have mentioned this from other points of view – in the short term; they imagine that the way they experience the circumstances around them is constant. But it is not. Living conditions are subject to metamorphoses. And if one does not look at everything from the present-day point of view, as unfortunately happens so often in modern history, but tries to understand the nature of earlier times, which can only be done through spiritual science, especially in practical matters, one comes to the conclusion that times have changed quite considerably. I think I already mentioned in the course of these lectures that, when I recently presented something similar in a lecture, a gentleman said to me at the end: Yes, but spiritual science assumes that these epochs, as they developed, were different from one another; and history shows us that people have actually always been the same, that they have always had the same vices, the same jealousies and so on, that people have not changed significantly; what causes conflict today also caused conflict in the past. I replied to the gentleman at the time: You can go even further with this approach, you can simply take certain very obvious sources of conflict in the present and look for them among the Greek gods, who certainly have very different conditions of existence from all earthly men, and you will find that the things you are looking at can even be found among the Greek gods.

Of course, certain human conditions that have been the same everywhere can be found if you look at things abstractly. Indeed, there are even some scientific observations at present that find very similar conditions, family relationships and the like in these or those animal species. Why not! If you just apply enough abstractions, you will find such similarities. But that is not the point. Such a way of looking at things is eminently impractical.

Above all, people today, and truly not only people in the broader circles, but precisely influential, very influential circles, look at what national conditions are in Europe and in the educated world in general, as if these national conditions were eternal things. They are not eternal things; but precisely that form of feeling that arises from the national, for example, for today's man, is entirely dependent on what emerged in the 15th century, because before that, especially with regard to these things, Europe was something completely different. What the national structures are today, crystallizing into states, only dates back to the 15th century. And what Europe was before that has nothing to do with the national formations of today. This should be clear from a historical study of the past.

If, however, the past does not go back further than the 15th century, then it might happen that someone might express the judgments that can be made about the present as if they were eternal conditions. If, for example, a state structure such as did not exist in Europe before the 15th century could only be established according to European ideas in a territory that became known for European conditions only after the 15th century, which therefore does not have a past in the sense of Europe, where one therefore only thinks in terms of a few centuries and then considers this thinking to be eternal conditions, if one were to think up state ideas or even ideas of nations with such thinking, then at least the judgments that one can make about the present would have to be expressed as if they were eternal conditions. past in the same sense as Europe has, where one thinks only in terms of a few centuries and then mistakes this way of thinking for eternal conditions. If, with such thinking, one were to conceive of state ideas or even ideas of nations, then at least the Europeans should know that such ideas of nations must necessarily have very short legs.

In the 15th century, something else occurred that is connected with what I had to mention about the beginnings of Christian development in Europe, especially in the vast Roman Empire. I stated at the time that the Roman Empire had found its downfall through various forces, but that among these forces there was also the fact that there was an incredibly strong outflow of gold to the Orient, that the vast Roman Empire became poor in gold. Now this did not benefit the Romans, who were accustomed to needing gold in the institutions of their empire, and now they had none. This led to decadence.

But it benefited the peoples storming in from the north. Due to the various circumstances we mentioned last time, they were organized precisely for direct natural economy. And the strange thing is that – despite the fact that certain conquerors, of whom we have already spoken, laid hold of the lands that had previously been at peace – a certain settledness emerged from the coexistence of the conquered people and the conquerors. Those who were already there in Europe loved their land in a certain sense, and those who had been drawn to it sought a plot of land. And so, out of that event which is usually called the migration of peoples, favorable living conditions arose that can be called: natural economy versus monetary economy.

Europe had gradually become such that the Carolingians were forced to take into account the need to set up the conditions in such a way that, to a certain extent, the generous circulation of money could be dispensed with. The Carolingians, and even the Merovingians, these dynasties of rulers, often only meant something for the inner course of events – if you want to look at it objectively – what is called the hour and minute hands of the clock. You are also convinced, aren't you, that it is not the hour and minute hand that forces you to do this or that, and yet you do it; or when you tell the story, you say: I did this at twelve o'clock or one o'clock. - So in the historical account, it depends on the intention that one associates with it. When I say this, I mean the time, the living conditions in this time. But one must be aware that a person like Charlemagne meant something in Europe through his personality, through his outward appearance; because things are concretely different. Louis the Pious, of course, meant nothing more. And when playwrights find themselves dressing up Louis the Pious's family quarrels as grand state affairs, it's nonsense that may interest childish minds sitting in the theater; but it has nothing to do with any “history,” it is worlds away from any real history.

It is different when you take the tone-setting Charlemagne and then look away from the lesser ones who came after him; sometimes they are already strangely characterized by the epithets popular in such circles; history has some strange epithets for them: “the Simple,” “the Fat,” which, well, doesn't exactly seem meaningful for something that made a world-historical epoch. But there was a certain tone, a certain tendency in Carolingian life, and this tendency had a much broader effect than perhaps the tendency of any personal center since the 15th century has been able to have. In the Middle Ages, people lived in a time when personality still had a far greater value, a far greater significance, than it had later. Now, these Carolingians had to take into account that, out of the conglomeration of the migration of peoples, settled humanity had gradually emerged over Europe. This settled way of life, which was particularly characteristic of the Saxons in Central Europe and of their descendants who then came to England, to the British Isles, was a general characteristic of the Germanic peoples – I mean in this period, in the Carolingian period, after the migration of peoples had subsided. Settledness, combined with dependence on what is produced directly on the land, thus a farming population, administered by the count in the way I have recently discussed, administered by the clergy, a population in the vicinity of the cities, administered by the bishoprics in the cities; but a population that was settled in terms of agricultural production, in terms of commercial production, and that held something dear to the place with which it was associated, because the conditions of life kept them connected to that place. Of course, trade relations were beginning to develop, but these were more towards the coastal areas. In the areas that were of primary importance for medieval life, people were settled. And the consequence of this was that they were not able to administer and manage as they were accustomed to in the Roman Empire. They had adopted the traditional practices of the educated people who knew what was customary in the Roman Empire. They had adopted this or that practice, and administered it in the Roman Empire in a certain way, and it had proved to be correct. But that was not applicable to the conditions that had developed throughout Europe. It was not applicable because the entire Roman Empire, after it had once reached a certain size, was actually built on the military system of the Roman Empire, on the military system of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire is inconceivable in its size without the possibility of sending soldiers everywhere, right into the periphery. The soldiers had to be paid.

I already mentioned last time that this required the circulation of gold. And when the gold circulation slowed down, it was no longer possible. And while these conditions were developing, while an empire was developing that was entirely dependent on its internal support, the possibility of its internal expansion, the possibility of developing itself, all views were formed in such a way that everything in these views was based on the military. So one could have said in the Carolingian period: I hire someone who is familiar with the administrative and legal techniques of the Roman Empire. For that had remained with them. But it did not help much, because what was built on the legion system of administrative art could not be applied where it was supposed to be applied across the whole of Europe and now also into Italy, because these conditions had developed for everything, where one had to deal with settled farmers. For at that moment, when one would have forced the peasants, or those who settled down as landlords and were only large farmers, to form legions, as was the case in the Roman Empire, then one would have deprived them of their living conditions. Under such a monetary economy as that of the Roman Empire, the legions could be sent anywhere. But conditions had gradually developed within Europe in such a way that if one had wanted to do it exactly the same way as in the Roman Empire, if the farmer had to go to war or the lord of the manor as a count had to lead the farmers in war, they would have had to take all their fields with them on their backs – which, as is well known, they cannot.

The consequence of this was that, since movement was needed among the peoples, something quite different had to gradually develop, an element that is not now like the legion system in the Roman Empire. And this element that emerged came about in the following way. It came about in the following way: I am now talking about the centuries that followed the Carolingian period, because what I am telling you happened over the course of centuries. Gradually, some of the landowners attracted people who entered into their special service and became dependent on them. These were mostly those who were now surplus to requirements in the wide field of natural economy. And these people, who were redundant in the field of natural economy, could be gathered around them when they wanted to undertake military campaigns and military expeditions. These people, who were either redundant due to overpopulation there or there, or who were redundant because they had others do their work for them, these were now the people from whom, gradually, all over Europe, what is now from the Middle Ages onwards as knighthood; knighthood - essentially what one might call “quality warriors”, people who made war their trade, who thus carried out what they did in the service of this or that lord for the sake of this trade. With knighthood, then, a special people of war developed at the same time, which became a special class throughout Europe.

And from this arose another necessary consequence: there existed, as it were, two circles of interests. Without realizing these two circles of interests, one does not understand the Middle Ages. There were the wide interests of those to whom it was actually absolutely indifferent whether these knights or their leaders undertook this or that, who wanted nothing more than to cultivate their soil and trade in the immediate vicinity, to pursue their trade. This interest gradually gave rise to the sentiment in Europe that was not yet present at the time of the migration of peoples, which later appeared particularly in the crafts of the cities: the bourgeois sentiment. This spread within one class of the population, and the chivalrous sentiment, which was based on the quality warrior, went parallel to it, but quite apart from the other sentiment.

In this way you have given an example – if you look at world history correctly, you will find such things everywhere, only in a different form – but you have given an example of how different classes develop out of certain concrete necessities that arise over time. But that was where a discrepancy occurred. Those who gradually rose through the ranks – isn't that right? I can't tell the whole story, I can only make aphoristic comments – rose from being a landed gentry, by gradually making their surroundings dependent. The whole essence of the Merovingians came about in no other way than that large estate owners extended their networks further, making more people dependent; for when we speak of a Merovingian “state” in history today, it is almost a cliché in comparison! What we call a state today only begins after the 15th century.

The Merovingians, who rose to power, initially had to deal only with the people who had joined them as a knightly population, so to speak, the supernumeraries who shared their adventures. Because the territory was a common one, they continually had the other interest groups either against them or had them beside them in such a way that they did not know how to deal with them properly. At that time there was no question of any real organization, such as a state administration, that would have reached into all aspects of life. If one speaks of princes for that time, then these princes basically only had some influence over those who had joined them. Those who sat on their own little plot of land regarded themselves as the independent lords of their own little plot and, if I may use the trivial expression, cared little about those who wanted to rule with them. They did as they pleased.

When going back to the time of Louis the Pious, one should not read history today as if what is attributed to him as the “empire” could be attributed to him in such a relationship, so-called to his government, as a state is to its government today. That is not the case at all. These things must be considered in concrete terms. And so one can say that it has been shown that there were constant, diverse, and strongly differentiated interests. This must be taken into account in particular because the historical life of the Middle Ages emerges from these things.

Now I said: the 15th century is remarkable for the reason that in the 15th century, again, especially through the natural development of mines and the like, gold appeared in Europe, later through the voyages of discovery; so that since the 15th century, circumstances have arisen that are fundamentally different from the previous ones in that gold has appeared again. And this 15th century, which we can also call the age of the Christian Rosenkreuz, is therefore the one through which we again sailed into the monetary economy in Europe. There is also a mighty turning point in this respect. The last times of the fourth post-Atlantic period in Europe were the moneyless ones, those of the natural economy. That is what we have to bear in mind. And now, during this time, through all the holes in that, what I have described developed, which then, from the 15th century onwards, brought about the gradual change in circumstances so that we can now speak of compact nationalities separated into states.

To speak of such a contrast between Germans and French, as one can do since the 15th century, is still quite impossible for the period up to the 15th century, and is even meaningless. What can be called the French nation has only formed very slowly and gradually. Of course, the Franks were distinct from the Saxons; but the Frankish character was no more distinct from the Saxon character than I described it last time. There were tribal differences, not ethnic or national differences, no greater differences than there are today between Prussians and Bavarians, perhaps even smaller in many respects.

But everything that had developed there is still connected with the circumstances we have just described. For that which then became the French kingship really emerged from landowning circumstances. And the great difference in the formation of the closed French nationality and the so-called German nationality, which was open in every direction, in the center of Europe is essentially due to the fact that the French members of the Merovingians, Carolingians and so on could more easily smooth over the differences between themselves and the others due to the tribal character; they got along better with the opposing elements. For from all that I have described, it emerged that, initially, the people who were settled on the land, the settled people in general, did not want to go along with anything, did not greet the Gessler's hat anywhere. That was already the custom throughout Europe: nowhere to greet the Gessler's hat.

But even those who had become knights gradually sought to settle here and there. Of course, after they had first attained a certain position under the protection of this or that feudal lord, that is, prince, they were very inclined to become independent again. Why should one not be as powerful as the one under whose protection one had become powerful?

But this meant that the one who was something like a ruler soon had to deal with unruly elements. And the period of the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries essentially developed in such a way that there was a continuous struggle between the opposing elements and those who wanted to rule over them. What had emerged from the consequences of the migration of peoples could not easily be reduced to some abstract form.

One wonders how it actually came about that in what later became France a unified nationality was able to develop relatively early on? For the historical observer, this is in a sense a kind of puzzle that immediately presents itself, and one must try to solve such a puzzle. For one cannot get away from the general saying: nations develop in this or that way. In every corner of the earth, what is a nation develops differently, even if it is later called the same in each case. One asks oneself: how did it happen that from the Merovingian period until the 15th century this compact French nation was able to develop?

Now, this is still connected with somewhat earlier conditions. Even when the Roman Empire was still powerful, fewer inhabitants and personalities of the Roman Empire were transferred to Central Germany than to what later became France. The western regions of Europe were actually already very, very much permeated with Romance elements at the time of the Roman Empire. And I said that many things penetrated through the gaps in these conditions. Otherwise, in principle, present-day France is no different from what it was in those centuries, but there is one difference: intermingled with the other population were many Romance elements, Romance personalities with Romance views, interests, inclinations, remnants of the old Roman Empire. And on the wings of the old Roman Empire, one might say, Christianity had gradually spread throughout Europe.

Christianity came to France with the Roman element, and came in the same way as it had made its entry into the Roman Empire itself. And it was therefore of some advantage in this area if those who wanted to rule adhered to what was left of the Roman element. Because the settled people and the knights all had a characteristic that made them appear well suited for administration when there were others who were different. If, as in Central Europe, there had been no one as such for a long time, then of course these people had to be used. Right? In Central Europe they did it like this: The people of a certain area came together through purely oral agreements and from time to time they organized what was called a thing. And there, with ideas that were all from the atavistic Hell, they discussed how to punish one or the other who had done something wrong. This was arranged orally, and it was actually quite common in the areas of Central Europe to arrange these things orally. Little was written because the sedentary farmers and knights had the peculiarity that none of them could read or write. You may know that Wolfram von Eschenbach, the famous poet of the Middle Ages, could not read or write a single letter. But the Romance elements that had flooded into Western Europe could. They were also, in the sense that we call it today, educated people. The consequence of this was that, of course, those who wanted to rule made use of these “educated” people, apart from the fact that the clergy were of course taken first from this class. This also led to the connection of the administrative civil service with the spiritual element, which consisted to a large extent of the influx of the Romanic element.

But with this and with the church at the same time, which was thus drawn from the Romanic, it came about that the linguistic element began to play an enormous role. And the puzzle that I have hinted at cannot be solved otherwise than by gaining an idea of the tremendous suggestive power of language. With the language that was transformed from Romance in Western Europe, but which retained the Romance style, if I may say so, with this language not only a language but an entire spirit was transferred. For a spirit lives in language with tremendous suggestive power. And this spirit had an overwhelming effect. And the arrival of the Romance spirit on the wings of the Romance language, from the Carolingian period to the 15th century, was a fact.

And now the peculiar thing happens: Western Europe is now quite different from the conditions in Central Europe. In Western Europe, what language, which had gradually developed from a Romance element, has suggestively achieved in people's souls, as if from below, is complete. What lay in the broad popular consciousness, in what I have just described as the settled farmers, this settled peasantry with its ancient atavistic clairvoyance - even if these people had become Christians - with the bringing up of their, not faith, but direct insight into what was in the spiritual worlds, that did not emerge everywhere for the people who ruled or administered there above. But in Western Europe, an upper class emerged that, by shaping the language, also had a suggestive effect on the lower classes. We do not need to consider this upper class in terms of how it administered and what legal and administrative conditions emerged; but we do need to consider it as a class of civil servants, as a class of language that into the lower class and with the language the whole suggestive element, which spread as a uniform over a certain territory, before the people from below reacted against what had formed as a ruling class. Because we see until the 15th century what had formed as a ruling class, making its various manipulations; and what is below, does not care about it, remains free, until clashes occur. What rules has the tendency, after all, to draw more and more to itself. By the time the country had reached the point where the peasantry, the original folklore, reacted, the linguistic element with its suggestive power had already been vigorously effective. And you can find it particularly significant in Western Europe, you can see how the broad masses of the people react, who were still within their old spirituality, in their atavistic spirituality.

The messenger, the genius of this mass of people, is the Maid of Orleans. With the Maid of Orleans, there arises that which, after language has worked through its suggestive power, is the reaction of the people from below, which forces the French monarchy to take the people into account. You see, until the 15th century, until the appearance of the Maid of Orleans, who actually made France as France, Romanesque flooding, then the appearance of the people's messenger. So that even in this way of the appearance of the folk through the shear science of Joan of Arc, it shows how what was naturally alive everywhere in this folk reacts upwards and only then actually becomes “history” for external history.

There were such Maidens of Orleans throughout Europe in those centuries, not with the power of action but with the power of vision. And the foundation on which the Maid of Orleans built was the element spread over the broad peasantry and the broad masses of the people. In the Maid it only came to the surface. It is not described for the people. You have to codify Louis as stupid – no, pious – and his councils and all the stuff that is in the chronicles, what they wrote together, as “history” and you have to make people believe that these great landowners were rulers of states and the like. But basically that is outside of real concrete life. But real life was permeated with what then came to the surface in the genius of the Maid of Orleans and entered into the French character at a time when the suggestive power of language was being exercised. And thus, from below, what was national strength was poured into the French character. That is how it came about.

This was not the case in Central Europe. There was no language that exercised such suggestive power. All other conditions were similar, but there was nothing that welded a larger tribal group into a national force through the suggestive power of language. Therefore, in national terms, what exists in Central Europe remains a fluid mass, and – peculiarly – can easily be used for colonization. But the colonization that is done with the population of Central Europe is different from what it is today. When colonization is done today, it is usually to acquire foreign territories. But in the past, people were sent to foreign lands – and in large numbers they were called, the colonizers – and what they then understood from their homeland, they carried into foreign lands.

This is what happened in the eastern part of Europe in the broadest sense. But it remained a fluid mass. And while in the West, in particular, the suggestive power of language was effective, in Central Europe there remained the brawls, the quarrels, the differentiated interests that I have described, insubordination above all against those who wanted to rule, which then had the consequence that a widespread, uniform nationality could not develop as it could in the West. There was nothing to suggest the power of language. Therefore, in many cases, those who were the stronger as a result of the circumstances arose. Hence the territorial principalities, which had remained even beyond the 15th century, and which essentially arose because there was no such suggestive power as the power of language in the West.

The other element, which now really understood how to deal with some of these circumstances, had to take them into account: the ecclesiastical element, which gradually emerged in Rome from the perished Roman Empire. This ecclesiastical element is called in occult circles the grey shadow of the Roman Empire, because it took over everything that was the way of thinking about administration and the like from the Roman Empire, but applied it to ecclesiastical conditions. This striving of the church had to go in the direction of differentiating itself into what was developing in Europe. And I have already hinted to you a few times about how they in Rome knew how to deal with the situation. From the 9th century to the end of the 10th century and the beginning of the 11th century, they knew how to deal with the situation perfectly well, in that they in Rome now actually endeavored to force what they called Christianity into all these situations in an administrative form. If it was possible to convert a city into a bishop's see, then that was done; if there was a peasantry somewhere that one wanted to win over, one built a church for them so that they would gather around it; if there was a lord of the manor somewhere, one tried little by little to replace this lord of the manor by training his son or the like to become a clergyman. The church used all circumstances. And indeed: as never later was the church within these centuries put into the possibility of becoming a universal European power. This process, how the church worked in the 9th, 10th, 11th centuries, is tremendously significant because it really aims to take into account all the concrete circumstances. One must only consider this.

The people who were Catholic clergy or priests at the time were not so foolish as to believe that the spirits that people spoke of in atavistic clairvoyance were not spirits; they reckoned that these were real powers, but they sought the appropriate means to fight them. While the princes were not at all able to cope with them, the church was actually able to gradually provide the ideas - which were quite justified for them - with a nomenclature. It is true that in Rome they knew very well that the atavistic clairvoyance is not all about devils, but that these demons are our opponents and we must fight them.

One weapon in this fight was to label them as devils, to ascribe them to a particular category. This was a very real fight against the spiritual world that was waged in those days. It was only from the 15th century onwards that people no longer had any awareness of the spiritual powers at work. The strength of the spreading ecclesiastical Christianity lies in the fact that one knew how to deal with what is real: with the spiritual powers. And in the 11th and 12th centuries the process was actually completed to a certain extent.

You will only be able to judge the history of the Middle Ages correctly if you bear in mind that all the ecclesiastical arts that were effectively applied and which were great and meaningful arts, had actually been developed in the church from the 9th century, when it was shown, for example, under Pope Nicholas I, how one reckoned strongly with the spiritual powers, how one had to reckon with everything that the people knew through atavistic clairvoyance. And the art of working in the spiritual realm is what actually made the Church great. But by the 11th and 12th centuries these arts had been exhausted. Of course, the old arts were still practiced, but new ones had not been invented, so that one can say: everything else that happens is actually in the service of this mighty spiritual struggle. For even that which appears to set the tone, the establishment of the German-Roman Empire, which passes, not truly, from the West to Central Europe under the Saxon emperors, this coupling of Central Europe with Italy, this recedes more or less in the face of the tremendous power that lies in the fact that the church in these times is pouring an international over Europe that only from the 15th century onwards becomes a national. It is only from the 15th century onwards that the conditions under which people in Europe live at present have developed, also with regard to the peoples of Central Europe. It must be emphasized again and again, for what was actually the basis of what constantly took place between the so-called Roman-German emperors and the popes? You can study this especially if you read the accounts of Henry IV, who may have been distorted in history but was very clever politically. What was at the root of it was always that it was necessary for those who wanted to rule, who should rule for my sake, to tame the unruly. The spreading church was, of course, a good means of combating the unruly - if the church helped. Hence the perpetual binding together of secular power with ecclesiastical power, which in that time could only be achieved through a certain relationship between those who were elected in Central Europe and who, precisely because of what they achieved through this election in Central Europe, had little of their rule but the powers over the unruly, the powers over those whom they actually did not want at all.

Just think about it: we are dealing with an elective monarchy. The kings were elected. They were elected by the so-called seven electors. Of these seven electors, however, three were the ecclesiastical princes. The ecclesiastical princes, with the help of the ecclesiastical means, as I have just indicated, were powerful. The archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier had three of the seven votes, and they were powerful. The only other powerful figure was the Count Palatine of the Rhine, who was still in a position to deal with his vassals – as they were later called, subjects – under the circumstances that had developed. But the other three electors, so-called electors, one of whom, for example, was the King of Bohemia, who was unruly himself; the other two ruled over what were then still entirely Slavic regions, along the Elbe and so on, with a strong Slavic population. Kingship really meant nothing more than what the Carolingian Empire meant. The only difference was that Carolingianism had an easier time dealing with what was striving to the surface because the suggestive power of language was there. That was not the case in Central Europe.

There is much more I could tell you about how these differences developed in detail, but you can read about it in any history book. If you follow the same points of view that we are applying here, you will read history with different eyes.

When the relations that had gradually developed between the papacy and the empire had died down a little, the ecclesiastical element had become so strong that it wanted to pursue independent policies. This was essentially the case in the 11th and 12th centuries. And it is interesting that Pope Innocent III now administered the affairs of Italy, which had been anarchic until then - in a sense, the clergy were the most difficult there - from Rome. Actually, Innocent III is now, as a human and spiritual power, the creator of a national consciousness of the so-called Italians with what came from him. Innocent III is a Lombard offspring, but one can say that what came from him basically made the Italian nation, which actually also became a nation through the impulses that Innocent III laid. The nationalization process was also completed by the 15th century. So it is essentially the church itself that created the national element. Thus, in the formation of the French nation, one must look for the suggestive power of language, and in the Italian nation, directly, the ecclesiastical element. These things only confirm what is obtained in a concrete way from spiritual science, which we have already considered for the various nations.

It is quite characteristic of Innocent III that he actually set very specific tasks for the Catholic Church. And one might ask: What then is the task that the papacy set itself after the great period of which I have spoken, from about the 10th, 11th or 12th century onwards, and what has been the mission of the papacy since those centuries? The mission of the papacy, in the Catholic Church in general, consists essentially in keeping Europe from recognizing what the Christ Impulse actually is. More or less consciously, the aim is to establish a church that sets itself the task of completely misunderstanding the actual Christian impulse, not to let the people know what the actual impulse of Christianity is. For wherever an attempt is made to place in the foreground some element that wants to approach the Christian impulse more closely - let us say the element of Francis of Assisi or something similar - it is consumed, but not incorporated into the actual structure of the church's power. The situation in Europe has developed in such a way that the people of Europe have gradually accepted a Christianity that is not Christianity at all. Christianity must first become known again through the spiritual-scientific discovery of Christianity. The fact that the Europeans have accepted a Christianity that is not Christianity has contributed significantly to the fact that talking about the Christian mysteries is an absolute impossibility today. Nothing can be done about this; first, long preparations are needed. For what matters is not that one uses the name of Christ, but that one would be able to properly grasp the essence of what Christianity is. But that was precisely what was to be concealed, what was to be suppressed by what popes like Innocent III did.

The external circumstances were already strange, as Innocent III shaped them. For one must not forget that at that time a remarkable victory had been won by the papal side. There was – as you will know from external history – a twofold current in Central Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe: a more papal-friendly current, the so-called Guelph, and an anti-papal current, the Hohenstaufen. The Hohenstaufen were, after all, more or less always in conflict with the popes. But that did not prevent Innocent III from joining forces with the French and the Hohenstaufen to defeat the English and the Guelphs. For it had already come to the point that on the papal side they were now reckoning with the circumstances that subsequently became political. In its better times, the Church could not yet reckon with political circumstances; it had to reckon with concrete circumstances.

This gives you a picture of the configuration of Europe and of the gradual insertion, insertion of the universal church into this configuration of Europe. Now, we must not forget that it was essentially a overcoming of the old clairvoyant element by the church. That was one side of it. But the old clairvoyant element continued to develop nevertheless, and you see everywhere where secular and ecclesiastical powers make their compromises that there or there the talk is of the princes or the popes having to lead the fight against the heretics. Just think of the Waldensians and so on, of the Cathars; there are heretical elements everywhere. But they also had their continuation, their development. Gradually something emerged from them, and these were the people who, little by little, looked at Christianity on its own merits. And the strange thing is that, from among the heretics, people gradually emerged who looked at Christianity on its own merits and were able to recognize that what comes from Rome is something different from Christianity. This was a new element in the struggle, which, if you follow it, can be particularly strong for you to face, as the kings of France, who were allied with the Pope, had to wage war against the Count of Toulouse, who was a protector of the heretics of southern France. And you can find something like that in all fields. But these heretics looked at Christianity and could not agree with the political Christianity that came from Rome. So while the conditions I have described were forming, there were also such heretics everywhere, who were actually Christians, who were violently opposed, who often kept quiet, founded all kinds of communities, spread secrets about it. The others were powerful; but they strove for a special Christianity.

It would be interesting to study how, on the one hand, the continuous advances from Asia became occasions for what are called the Crusades. But for the papacy, at the same time, the call that was made by Peser of Amiens and others 'on behalf of the pope to the Crusades' was a kind of means of information. Even in those days, the papacy needed some kind of improvement. What had become purely political needed to create an artificial enthusiasm, and essentially the way the papacy conducted the crusades was designed to instill new enthusiasm in the people. But now there were people who actually emerged from the ranks of the heretics, who were the direct development of the heretics.

Gottfried von Bouillon was particularly characteristic of these heretical people, who had, however, looked at Christianity; for Gottfried von Bouillon is always distorted in history. It is always presented in history as if Peter of Amiens and Walter of Habenichts went first, could not accomplish anything right, and then, under the same tendency, Gottfried von Bouillon went to Asia Minor with others, and they wanted to continue what Peter of Amiens and Walter of Habenichts should have done. But that cannot be the case. Because this so-called first regulated crusade is something completely different.

Gottfried von Bouillon and the others associated with him were essentially - even if they did not outwardly show it - emerged from the ranks of the heretics, for the reasons that I have discussed. And for these, the goal was initially a Christian one: with the help of the Crusades, they wanted to establish a new center against Rome by founding a new center in Jerusalem, and to replace the Christianity of Rome with a true Christianity. The Crusades were directed against Rome by those who were, as it were, initiated into their real secrets. And the secret password of the crusaders was: Jerusalem against Rome. - That is what is little touched upon in external history, but it is so. What was wanted from heretical Christianity in contrast to Roman political Christianity was to be achieved indirectly through the Crusades. But that did not work. The papacy was still too powerful. But what came about was that people's horizons were broadened. One need only remember how narrow they had become in Europe since the time of Augustine. In my book, “Christianity as Mystical Fact,” you will find that Augustine is quoted as saying, and Gregory of Nazianzus and others have also said: Yes, certain things cannot, of course, be reconciled with reason, but the Church, the Catholic Church, prescribes them, so I believe it. - This version, this disastrous information, which was necessary for Europe in many respects, had, however, brought with it the fact that great points of view, which were capable of linking to great sensations, to great worldviews, were avoided. Read the Confessions of Augustine, how he flees from the Manicheans. And actually it is that in the Manichean doctrine he has a world view. One is afraid of it, one is afraid of it, one shies away from it. But over there in Asia, on the basis of what I have described in a very material way as the influx of gold into the Orient, the old Persian doctrine had blossomed and taken a great upswing. The Crusaders broadened their horizons considerably, were able to take up what had actually been buried, and thus many secrets were revealed to them, which they carefully guarded. The consequence of this was that, because they did not have enough power to carry out “Jerusalem against Rome,” they had to keep things secret. Hence, orders and all kinds of associations arose, which preserved certain Christian things under a different guise, because the Church was powerful, in orders and the like, but which are precisely opposed to the Church.

At that time, the difference actually emerged that now only comes up when you have visited a church somewhere, let's say in Italy, and someone inside has just preached against the Freemasons: you see people standing there who, of course, couldn't care less about the Freemasons; they don't know any names, but the pastor rants against the Freemasons from the pulpit. This antagonism between the Church and Freemasonry, which nevertheless developed out of heresy, essentially took shape in those days.

These and many other phenomena could be cited if one really wants to understand in detail what actually happened in reality back then. And you will have gathered from the whole that life was partly a very varied one, but that the most diverse spiritual interests played havoc with each other. People were confronted with such contradictions as those between the heretics, many of whom were actually Christians in the best sense of the word, and the church Christians. One could cite many other things that then led to the Reformation in Germany, for example, and the like. One could mention that the politicization of the church has led to the church losing more and more of its power, while in earlier times it would have been unthinkable that the church would not have found a way to get what it wanted. In certain areas, one must say, despite the fact that the church was able to burn Hus at the Council of Constance: Husitism has survived and as a power it actually had quite a significance.

But what is the actual timbre of these medieval scholars? It is true that a religious movement spread that ultimately took on a purely political form. It's a shame that time is so short; there would be many more interesting things to be said. A religious movement spread that takes on a universal character. Due to the different circumstances, the nationalities in Europe are gradually developing. If you consider that Christianity has brought with it ideas that have become so ingrained in Europe, such as the Fall of Man, then it is possible to create plays like the “Paradeisspiel”, which was performed in large parts of Europe, especially in the 12th century. It has penetrated into the most individual, most elementary circumstances. Ideas that go deep into the heart and soul have become widespread, ideas about what man could actually have been according to – if one may say so – God's original plan and what he has become.

This created an atmosphere in which, perhaps never before, and certainly not in our time, has a question been raised again and again and again, emotionally, in so wide a range, the question that is based on the difference between this world here and the world of paradise, between the world that can make people happy. This question, in the most diverse variants, already dominated wide circles. And people who were intelligent, people whose longings were intellectual, often came to direct their striving in a naive, but often also in a matter-of-fact way, towards such riddles. Just look at the whole configuration of the time. With the Roman Empire, Europe became poor in gold. The economy of nature came. Under the natural economy, conditions gradually arose that did not appear paradisiacal to the people. You only have to think of the medieval law of the jungle, of the intermarriage of the ruling families, and so on. The church had spread, for many to such an extent that they said to themselves: It is not Christianity, it is rather there to conceal Christianity, gives rather a false idea of the Christ mystery than a right one. But all this has indeed had the effect that we are not happy. The question: Why is man on earth not happy? Yes, one can say that, more than eating and drinking, this question gradually occupied people in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, especially those who felt something in the right way about the Mystery of Golgotha. Which, of course, has a deep meaning and another meaning, that connected itself with the question for people: Why are we not happy? Under what conditions can a person be happy on earth?

Something emerged as a result – in the form it took, it can be traced back to the cause I am about to mention – which will be clear to you from the descriptions I have given. Europe was without gold; natural economy was the basis on which unhappy humanity developed. The Roman papacy veiled Christianity. 'But people should strive for something that is a real human goal. And so, to put it briefly, it sounds paradoxical, but in wider circles, especially in those that emerged from the heresy circle, the mood has developed: Yes, we have become poor in Europe, Romanism has gradually made us poor. And it was realized that only those work their way out who work their way out in the same way that the Roman Empire became great, who had come to gold. How can you paralyze that? How can you paralyze the power of gold? If you can make gold!

Thus, the widespread art of experimenting and trying to make gold is connected with the very specific circumstances of the time when there was little gold and only a few individuals came into gold who could use it to tyrannize over others. People strove to balance this out. Because they knew that If everyone can make gold, then gold has no value. Therefore, the ideal became to be able to make gold. They said to themselves: In any case, you can only be happy in a world in which you can make gold. And it is similar with the quest for the “philosopher's stone”, even with the quest for the “homunculus”. Where interests arise as they did from family circumstances - as seen in the divisions of the Carolingians and so on - people cannot be happy. But this is connected with the natural reproduction of man. In any case, if a paradise is possible, it is more likely to be possible if homunculi are created than if ordinary reproduction with all its family relationships continues. Such things, which today sound quite paradoxical and twisted, were something that moved countless minds in those days. And you don't understand the time if you don't know that it was moved by such questions.

And then came the 15th century, and that put an end to gold-seeking, of course, in that they discovered America and brought the gold back from there. And then the phenomenon I have just characterized subsided. Universally summarizing all those elements that were active in the Crusades, deepening during the Crusades, summarizing all the longings that lay in the Middle Ages - the art of making gold, of creating the homunculus , to summarize all this in a truly spiritual way so that it could become an active impulse, that was essentially what the companions of Christian Rosenkreutz set out to do. To do this, it was first necessary to come to terms with all the things that had developed up to the 15th century.

The time had not yet come to draw new truths from the spirit, and so the impulses of Christian Rosenkreutz, like the efforts of Johann Valentin Andreae, ultimately remained unsuccessful. What did they lead to? They led to the emergence of what I am about to say now, and I would ask you to please pay attention and take it into consideration: Europe is differentiating itself; differentiated structures have emerged from what used to prevail there.

It would be interesting, but there is no more time, for me to also tell how the British nation formed in a similar way. Even in the east, the Russian-Slavic nation formed in a corresponding way. All of this could be described. Everywhere it has happened with a reaction from below, only in France it is so significant because the genius from below had a direct character in that it appeared in Joan of Arc.

In the face of this differentiation, to do something truly universalistic – for that Romanism is not suitable for being universalistic had just been shown by Innocent III, who founded the Italian nation; so the church is no longer universalistic – to find a spiritual impulse so strong that it transcends all these differentiations, and truly makes humanity a whole, that was essentially what underlay Rosicrucianism. Of course, humanity was not ripe enough to adopt the means and ways to achieve this. But it has always remained an ideal. And just as it is true that humanity is a whole, a unity, it is also true that, even if it takes some time in different forms, such an ideal must be taken up again. And history itself, the way it tends towards the fifteenth century and the way it develops the peculiar configuration in the fifteenth century, is the most vivid proof of this. There is no need to resurrect the old Rosicrucianism, but the ideal on which it was based must be taken up.

These are a few aphoristic remarks that I wanted to make at the end. I really wanted to give more suggestions than anything detailed and exhaustive, now that I will have to say goodbye to you again for some time. Over the years, if I may say so, it has become increasingly difficult to say goodbye because it has always happened under less hopeful circumstances. Now, I do not need to assure you that I view the structure and everything associated with it in an honest and sincere way as something that is essentially a real factor in the aspirations that should actually become the aspirations of our time in the broadest sense. I have never seen this structure as merely the hobby of a few individuals or something similar, but I have always seen in this structure and in what it emerges from, on the basis of which it is built, something that must be the cultural ferment of our time, namely, of the future.

Therefore, it can be said that a great deal depends on those who have come to understand the significance of this building to also really understand it emphatically and seriously and to represent it with all dignity. Certainly, the building is a first attempt in every respect. But if humanity is to be redeemed in the human being, if that which is trampled underfoot today is to be cultivated in humanity again, then forces will be needed that are of the same nature as those meant by our building, and that are connected with our building.

Today, when old religious beliefs and the like criticize this, it sounds very strange; after all, these old religious beliefs have had quite a long time to take effect. And if humanity has reached an impasse today, then it is perhaps not unfounded to ask: If you are saying the same thing you said before, why hasn't it worked before? If it is considered correctly, this may perhaps lead to an understanding of the necessity of what is actually meant here, and what is intended here.

And now, however time may change – every time I left, I asked you: May these or those circumstances arise, to the extent that you are able, hold fast to what has led to this undertaking. It is certainly true that the hostility is growing; but consider that even in this unfavorable time, in the course of the last few years, here and there and even in wider circles, some sympathy has arisen precisely for the nature of this undertaking and what is connected with it. And if one does not consider the great task of our spiritual scientific movement, the difficulties it has, the wide gap between what is to be achieved and what is there, if one finally, without becoming foolish on the one hand, but on the other hand without misjudging things, looks at what is developing - one can also look at the good for once - then it is there! Things are moving forward. If you follow with a finer feeling, for example, how such a detail as the eurythmic art has been developed here over the last few years – I think you can see that – then you can say that there is no standstill in our ranks. And if you were to look at the more intimate progress that is taking place within the creation of this building, you can speak of a certain progress. I can even say this today, when I have to say goodbye to you again for some time, with a certain inner heartfelt emotion.

When the first steps were taken to create this structure, the first thing to be done was to draw the larger lines, to ensure that this or that happened. But even though we have to focus our attention with deep pain and sorrow on the way this structure has suffered from the general catastrophic conditions of humanity, something else can be said: the circumstances have led me to work much more intensively on the details that arise here at the building site. And it is precisely for this reason that I can say that I may express it here with an agitated heart: what is being built really does express more and more visibly and intimately what is connected with the greater impulses of humanity. Recently, for example, I was able to tell you about the new legend of Isis, which story is meant to be characteristic of the entire situation of the building, characteristic of what I would like to express with it, in saying that this building is meant to be a kind of – let me use the philistine expression, a landmark that separates the old, which will finally have to recognize that it is old, from the new, which wants to become because it must become if humanity is not to end up in ever more catastrophic circumstances. The time will come when people will regret that what was intended with this building was often seen as folly. For this catastrophe of humanity will also have the consequence that many things will be recognized that would not have been recognized without this catastrophe. For it speaks with very, very clear signs. That humanity can be redeemed from man precisely through such impulses as are connected with this building is really supported by many things that could be observed during its construction.

Today, you will be particularly confronted with how many cultural works come about externally. Ask yourself whether wherever a church or something similar is built today - it could also be a department store - it is always built in such a way that those who build it and those who work with them are completely immersed in the purpose for which the things are built. One could build some great cathedrals in which the master builders do not really believe in the symbol that is inside. But here it is already a truth that the one works best who is most deeply connected with the matter at hand, who is able to use not only his art but his whole being, who not only works with the outer forms but who wholeheartedly not only works with this world view but lives this world view. And so I must say: It is of particular importance to me, especially this time, to express not only my outward thanks to all those who dedicate their work, their life forces, their thoughts to this building, to those who want to work with us here to bring this work to fruition, but to tell them that I really feel deeply, deeply, what it means that people have come together who want to work here on this work of culture. And out of this feeling, which indeed binds us even more deeply in times when people are as bound as they are in these, I say to you today, as we come to the end of these lectures, a kind of farewell for the time being, for the external physical circumstances. We will remain together in thought. Physical circumstances cannot separate us. But that which will connect us best will be when the power remains alive in us that wants to be built and formed into that which wants to develop into human peace in the stormy times of humanity.

Today I would like to present something that is purely historical, as it were. I believe that the ninth century and the fifteenth century, which I will speak about in a future lecture, can indeed be considered in such a way that important things can be seen from the consideration of the cultural content of precisely these two centuries, from which much can be learned for the present, for the assessment of current conditions. We are dealing in the 9th century with a significant historical period of European life, in that in this 9th century, so to speak, the Occident is already approaching us in the sense that it has become Christianized. The earlier centuries are actually centuries in which Christianity is only just being integrated into Western life. And in the 9th century, that is, in the period that followed the century of, for example, Charlemagne, we see that Europe has a Christian character, that Christian character that has then been working through the centuries in the lives of the people of Europe. But the fact that Europe has become so Christian, as it actually appears to us in the 9th century, has many prerequisites. And one can only judge how Christianity has become established if one considers these manifold prerequisites.

We know, of course, that at the time of the emergence of Christianity, the Roman Empire was just beginning its imperial period, that it was beginning to encompass, in a unified administrative form, basically the whole world known at that time, or to assert this encompassing, to really experience it. We know that this is the time when Hellenism as an external political form of existence is already declining, that Hellenism has long since penetrated into Romanism as a ferment of education and culture, and we then have to direct our attention primarily to the fact that from the beginnings of Christianity, which we do know, this Christianity gradually settled into the entire form of the Roman Empire, into all the administrative and constitutional forms of the Roman Empire. And we see then how Christianity, developing under the most diverse conditions in Europe, in the first, second, and third centuries, becomes established in what is there as the Roman way of life. But then we see how this assimilation of Christianity is initially connected with a complete anarchization of European life. We know how the Roman Empire, from the moment in world history when it was at its most widespread, clearly showed the seeds of its decline.

The question will always occupy the mind of anyone who contemplates these things: how did this Roman Empire, which rose to such glory, actually perish in the first three or four centuries of the Christian era? One can believe that the onslaught of the northern, Germanic peoples alone was responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire. One can then find some of this guilt in the spread of Christianity itself. One will misinterpret the deeper basis for the downfall of the Western Roman Empire if one seeks the only motives for this downfall in these factors. For the Western Roman Empire shows, if one looks at it more thoroughly, that such structures do have a life of their own, that they have, so to speak, a birth, a youth, a certain age of maturity, and that they then gradually die, and that the causes of this dying-off must be sought within the state itself, just as, in the case of an individual organism, the causes of its aging and physical dying-off must be sought within the organism itself and not in external conditions. However, it is possible to discern from external appearances how this gradual aging and eventual dying-off of such a thing as the Roman Empire took place.

What must be taken into account when considering European development into the 9th century is that two phenomena clearly emerge before the eye that looks at history. One is the gradual decline of the Roman Empire and all that was connected with it; the other, however, is that at the same time the oriental way of life flourishes. We see that in the East, far beyond the areas bordering the Roman Empire to the East, a cultural flowering develops, albeit an external, material cultural flowering. In other words, these countries, to which the Roman Empire, one cannot even say that it bordered them in its cultural flowering, but which it nominally included, these countries develop a brilliant material cultural flowering. Without this material cultural flowering, which formed on the periphery of the Roman Empire, it would have been impossible for Islam to flourish and for the Arabs to assert themselves in the historical development later on, when they were able to lay claim to a large part of the world in such a brilliant way until the 8th or 9th century. We see that up to the 8th or 9th century the Arab domination spread under the spiritual banner of Mohammed as far as Spain, but that in other directions, too, European life came into clear contact with all the cultural blossoms that arose all around. What the Arabs achieved in Spain and Sicily and in the East, before they became the enemies of Europe, must have been rooted in a rich and splendid material civilization. Only on such a foundation was it possible for the Arabs to accomplish such brilliant conquests. Where does this phenomenon come from, which is more closely connected than one might think with what happened in Europe up to the ninth century? How did this phenomenon come about, that on the one hand the Roman Empire was declining, and on the other hand the oriental character was taking a brilliant upswing and had an extraordinary effect on the Occident? For it did not only work through its conquest, it worked in an extraordinary way spiritually. One cannot believe how much of what the Arabs, partly through the Greek education that they themselves had only recently adopted and interwoven with their own nature, has influenced the European Occident.

This European Occident, through the way it has developed until the 9th century, does not have just one current in itself. All of us, insofar as we have participated in the formation of the Occident, have two distinct currents within us. It is a great mistake to believe that only the Christian current has spread in the Occident; spiritually, what has come from the Arabs has spread throughout the Occident. The way of thinking, the way of imagining, has been deeply influenced by the Arabs in European conditions. In what today's man - I do not mean the man who is intellectually ill, but the man of general education - thinks about fate, about the natural order, about life in general, the most diverse Arab thoughts are found in it, right down to the peasant's head. And if you take much of what dominates minds today, you will find that Arab thoughts are in them.

What, among many other things, can be said to be characteristic of this Arab way of thinking that spread to Europe? It can be said to be particularly characteristic that this Arab way of thinking is, first of all, subtle and abstract, does not like the concrete, and therefore prefers to view all world and natural conditions in abstractions. Alongside this is a development of fantasy that cannot be called merely flourishing, but voluptuous. Just think, what develops alongside the sober, abstract way of thinking, which even shows itself in the artistic in Arabdom, what develops in fantasy about a kind of paradise, about a kind of afterlife with all the pleasures transferred from the sensual into this afterlife. These two parallel things: sober, materialistic observation of natural and world conditions, on the other hand, a lush fantasy life, which of course then becomes dulled and becomes intelligent, is something that has been passed down to the present day. For if today you want to present something of the spiritual world, yes, if it is in the form of fantasy, then people still respond to it. Then they do not need to believe in it, but can accept it as a figment of the imagination. They put up with that, because alongside it they want to have what they call genuine, real. But that must be sober, that must be dry, that must be abstract.

These two things, which live as a second current in the soul-life of Europe, came essentially with the Arab element. Although the Arab influence has been pushed back in many respects, this way of thinking has penetrated deeply into European life, especially into southern, western and central European life, less so into eastern European life; but even there, at least into what is called “education”, it has partially penetrated. So that Christianity, which is quite different in relation to these things, had to struggle with these opposing ideas. If we want to understand Europe's development up to the 9th century, we must not forget that such Arab ideas have penetrated into Europe. It is hard to believe how much in Europe is actually close to Turkishness, to Muslim culture in the thoughts that the European has about life, destiny and so on.

But how did it come about that something could arise, or rather take root, on the periphery of the Roman Empire that caused Europe so much trouble? This is connected with the ever-increasing expansion of the Roman Empire. This Roman Empire, as it spread more and more, was obliged to obtain many, many products from the Orient to meet the needs that arose in this vast empire, and all of them had to be paid for. And we see with the development of the Roman Empire, precisely from the beginning of our calendar year, that a significant phenomenon in the development of the Roman Empire is that the Romans have to pay so much for what they obtain from the Orient. In other words, we see that during this period there is an enormous outflow of gold from the Roman Empire to the periphery. The gold flows out. And curiously enough, no new sources of gold open up. And the consequence of this is that the wealth conditions of the Roman Empire change completely, that with the development of Christianity the Roman Empire becomes poor in money, that is, poor in gold and silver. This is a phenomenon of fundamental significance. So that Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire in a region that increasingly tended towards primitive conditions in terms of its economy. For wherever there is a lack of money, wherever there is a lack of gold – on the physical plane that is the case – there the necessity very soon arises to return to primitive forms of natural economy, to primitive forms of a kind of bartering by merely exchanging goods. But that is not even the significant thing. The significant thing is that when such a scarcity of gold occurs, it becomes impossible to create extensive and meaningful human connections. As a result, people are dependent on the exploitation of much closer relationships; they are enclosed within much narrower limits in their needs in the exchange and in their coexistence.

And so it came about that the Roman economy gradually grew more and more into a way that it was not accustomed to as an empire. The institutions in the Roman Empire were all affected, all kinds of administrative institutions, administration and so on, everything that is referred to as the connection between the regions and their authorities and so on, was set up so that one had money. And now the money was getting less and less. You can clearly observe it in a particular area. Of course, as the empire grew larger and larger, the Romans needed more and more legions, especially in the outer parts of the empire; they needed soldiers. They had to be paid. You could not always transport infinite masses of things produced in Italy itself to the periphery. The soldiers wanted to be paid in gold, so that they could then trade for it from the others. But gradually the gold was no longer there. The soldiers could no longer be paid. This was the case in many areas. The Roman Empire thus died, so to speak, of its own greatness. And in its periphery, a very special wealth developed, which then of course also resulted in a certain basis for a spiritual life.

Now something else is added to this: the Romans had gradually come to be unable to live according to their old habits. Of course, one must not look at the individual people, but at the whole institutions. In the north, however, fresh peoples were there; they were organized according to their customs and habits precisely for natural economy. Among them, the tendency and urge towards natural economy had gradually developed. They were organized for such conditions, also through their deeply rooted, elementary inclinations and sympathies. These Germanic peoples – that is what they are called in their entirety, as they spread in Western and Central Europe, in the north of the Roman Empire – had gradually become, over the centuries, both at the time of complete anarchy in the 3rd and 4th centuries and up to the time of complete consolidation in the 9th century, they had gradually come to prefer a natural economy to the Roman one, because it corresponded to their customs and habits, as well as to their sympathies and inclinations. Above all, however, the natural economy corresponded in a certain sense to the institutions, the way people in these northern regions lived together.

We must now take a look at these northern regions. In general, we say: in the first Christian centuries, Germanic peoples were there. We call what spread in the north Germanic peoples only because, when something is far away, it appears uniform. When a swarm of mosquitoes is very far away, it looks like a uniform gray mass. If you were to look at each individual mosquito, it would look different. And so what spread in the north while the Roman Empire was falling apart due to the conditions described above, should not be generally referred to as “Germanic peoples”, as it appears now in the temporal distance. Above all, we must consider how it actually came about that what came from the north collided with the Roman Empire in the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries. That must be borne in mind. Yes, even when Tacitus, in the first Christian century, saw these northern regions, it was the case that the process that had taken place there, when there was still little contact with the Roman Empire, had emerged from the fact that in all these areas there was originally a kind of native population that, if you go back in the development of Europe, leads straight back to Celtic culture, at least for Western Europe and Central Europe.

Everything that was cultivated in Europe in ancient times, of course before the emergence of Christianity, belongs to a certain Celtic indigenous population. This Celtic indigenous population can basically be found as the basis of the entire European population. The descendants of Celtic blood flow everywhere in Europe, not only in Western Europe, but above all in Central Europe. There are very many people in Bavaria, Austria, Thuringia, in whom, if one may be imprecise in describing these things, the succession of Celtic blood flows, quite apart from Western Europe. It is even highly probable that less Celtic blood flows in Western Europe than in Central Europe.

Into these primeval Celtic conditions something has been pushed which is actually rather unclear in its origin to external history. All kinds of theories have been advanced about this, but the truth is this: through what is usually called the migration of peoples, which also took place somewhat differently than it is usually described in the history books, a people element – one cannot even say a people element, but rather a larger number of people from the most diverse regions, also from Asia via Northern Europe – has pushed its way into the Celtic original population. And through the mingling of this new element with the old Celtic element, through the manifold minglingsome were stronger, some weaker, some in which the Celtic element remained in the foreground, some in which it receded into the background, the various shades of the European population came into being. And from these shades developed, on the one hand, those conditions that then became the folk conditions of Western and Central Europe, but also those conditions that led to the forms of life, to the forms of constitution and administration. There was a time when the Celtic element of the indigenous population lived relatively comfortably, perhaps even very frugally in some areas, but comfortably from year to year, not caring much about any innovations and the like, but lived along not much differently than you can see today, though less and less, in some abandoned area, where people live just from year to year without taking on any innovations. So this Celtic element lived in a certain comfortable calm, which was actually not at all appropriate for the national character of the Celts, but had gradually occurred. Then came these other masses of people, who actually only created Germanic culture by mixing with the Celts. The next thing that emerged was that, as I have already indicated, in one area the old element retained the upper hand, while the new element receded – in some areas it was the other way around – and as a result, different shades of blood emerged.

But on the other hand, the result was that the habitual residents were flooded by the intruders. The intruders became the masters. They were the ones who disturbed the peace and thus became the masters. And from this relationship between the conquering immigrant masters and the remaining original inhabitants, the relationship between the free, the semi-free and the unfree emerged. The original inhabitants were gradually pushed down into slavery. Those who had immigrated gradually formed the master class, and that determined the living conditions.

Thus Europe was settled by a population that arose in the way I have characterized it, but within which the distinct configuration of a master caste and a kind of serf or slave caste emerged. And on this basis, all the other conditions then developed. Through the nuances of which I have spoken, the various Germanic branches formed, especially towards the west, but also as far as the areas of present-day northern Bavaria, even into the areas of present-day Hesse and so on. What we call the Franks were, in some respects, the most active population, in some respects, in terms of external intellect, the most understanding, active, and in some respects, the most domineering group of the various groups that emerged as nations. This was the population group that spread more towards the west, the element of the Franks. The word is still present today in the word combination “frank und frei”; everyone knows what “frank und frei” means in its composition, and “Franken” is related to the word “frank”, which has a close relationship with the word: to want to feel free, independent, outwardly free, independent.

In the middle remained the population that could be described – if one wants a summarizing name – as the Saxon population, which spread into Thuringia, into the northern areas opposite Thuringia, down the Elbe, to the coast. This was the population that was more stubborn in terms of its older national character, that particularly held on to its original identity, that, so to speak, embodied the human-personal-conservative feeling.

And so there were other groups. It would be too much to list all these groups. What is important is that the British population developed from the Saxon group, through a variety of mixtures but with a strong predominance of the Saxon group, and that the British population, if one may say so, belongs to the Saxon tribe in its essential origin, leading back to these centuries.

Now we have to consider what the life of this population, which has developed in this way, actually was. This population, which lived there, was a youthful, childlike population in relation to the southern population, to the Roman and Greek population. What had become old in Celtic culture had not become very old at all, but had become old early on. A rejuvenation process did take place, however, in that certain ethnic groups pushed in from northern Europe and also indirectly from Asia. Above all, the population had sympathies for the southern element, for the natural economy, for the economy of barter, which placed little value on the money economy, which only comes into play when an empire is at an advanced stage.

Those who, despite the migration of peoples – which is, after all, somewhat different than presented in the history books – developed within these newly emerging European conditions, were actually basically only connected to their neighbors, to their closest neighbors. But there was also a very specific peculiarity in the intellectual relationship. All these nations still had something that the Greek and Roman populations had long since lost. Even well into the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, they all had, to a much greater extent than the most uneducated Greek and Roman populations, an original atavistic clairvoyance. These people all lived in connection with certain spiritual beings. For them, there was not only an external material nature, there were not only seasons and wind and weather, but for them there was, because they saw it in those states that were more than a dream, the god Wotan, whom the people knew. Many at least knew: they themselves saw the god Wotan, who moved with the wind, on wings of wind.

The people knew that. They also knew, for example, the god Saxnot, who helped them in their battles when they had to fight. When they had fought the battles, or before they fought them, their god Saxnot appeared to them, and much more. They were also familiar with the rapidly changing weather conditions not only in a material way, but they were spiritually familiar with the elements, with the god Thor, with his hammer, and the like. These were real experiences for these people, they still knew that. And besides, these people had a belief in guidance from the spiritual world because they knew from their own experience that there is a spiritual world. They believed that everything that happens in the days, in the seasons, is guided by spiritual forces and beings. If any tribe was victorious, it knew that the tribal god had stood by and guided it.

You could say of the tribal god: He led. You cannot say of a general human god that he is the god of battle. You can say that of a tribal god just fine. The people were right when they said of their tribal deities that they were led by them. Of course, any tribe can say that it has been protected and cared for by a tribal god, but the same cannot be said of a god to whom the whole of humanity is attributed in the same sense.

The priesthoods, which developed – there were also mysteries in these areas, we have often spoken about such things – in order to have, so to speak, the leadership in this whole context of people with the divine spiritual powers. But this leadership was a very specific one because the people knew that there are spiritual powers, that there are spiritual forces and entities.

So outwardly these people lived in a certain primitive way with a natural economy; inwardly, one can say, they lived a kind of spiritual life. There were no educated people in the sense that there were in Greece and Rome. The priests were leaders; they organized the life that the others also knew. But they were not educated in the sense that the Greek philosophers or the Roman philosophers, or the Roman poets or those who could read and write in Greece and Rome and were educated in this sense; because the people did not know all this. Of course there was no reading and writing. So you are dealing with a population that lived in primitive natural conditions and that led a spiritual life in a certain way.

There was a certain inner strength due to the revitalization that had come into this Celtic culture; it was suitable for the primitive conditions. The southern part was not suitable for the primitive conditions. In certain points, what was a new, young element there clashed with what was present in the south, was present in such a way that in an empire perishing from lack of money, Christianity took root, was adopted in the way you know things. And it was particularly at such points, where the two areas, the old dying and the young emerging, collided, that the Romans still founded their cities, their border cities on the periphery of their empire. Cologne, Trier, Mainz, Strasbourg, Basel, Constance, Salzburg, Augsburg, these were urban structures that had existed since Roman times.

Now it should be clear to you: the Romans thought of these urban structures of Cologne, Trier, Mainz, Strasbourg, Constance, Basel, Salzburg and so on as a kind of protective fort against the onslaughing people. But when Romanism - not through anything else, but through itself - gradually disintegrated, the cities were in a very special situation. In the countryside it was good for primitive conditions. In the cities it was nothing special under primitive conditions. And the consequence of this was that the cities would have been deserted if they had not been used in some other way. But the emerging church, which had taken hold of Christianity, was a good observer that knew: one must hold to the cities. And so the dioceses were transferred to the cities, which would otherwise have been deserted. But as a result, the cities gradually became a point of concentration for the surrounding people, who were unfree, over the centuries towards the 9th century, because the dioceses were transferred there, because education came into them – for the bishop initially came from the southern regions. The free had no particular reason to move into the cities, which would gradually have become deserted; so they followed the bishops and clergy into the cities only to a limited extent. But those who were unfree followed the calls from the church to move into the cities.

And if you now look at the basic conditions, you will easily understand: the unfree were, after all, the stragglers, the descendants of the original population. There was a great deal of Celtic blood in them. What flocked together in the cities was basically an element that wanted to free itself from those who had become the masters there. This gave the cities, little by little, the character of medieval free enterprise. This was essentially due to the fact that it was often the seething of the Celtic blood in the cities that the cities flourished in the Middle Ages, in the early Middle Ages up to the 9th or 10th century.

Then we must realize that all these conditions were real historical necessities. It is hard to believe how little man's character could be guided by external abstract means, especially in earlier times. But it could be guided if one first studied the conditions and then linked them to the concrete. Thus we see – and we could cite many examples, but I can only give a sketch – how a new element arises and how the old element in the south gradually dies out due to its own nature. This dying out can be seen from the fact that, on the one hand, in the south, ancient science and the ancient element of education gradually reach their particular height but then come to a dead end, freeze; they can no longer advance. In the sixth century, Emperor Justinian abolished the office of consul in Rome, helped to condemn the teachings of Origen and closed the last remnants of the Athenian schools of philosophy. The old Athenian schools of philosophy were transferred to Persia. There, Gondishapur was founded as an academy. The Athenian philosophers follow the paths that gold has taken, settling where a spiritual life can develop on the basis of a certain wealth. In Europe, it is necessary to take into account the primitive conditions that have arisen.

And two factors initially knew how to deal with these primitive conditions. It can be said that the other factors knew little how to deal with them. But two factors knew well how to reckon with these primitive conditions, namely, the papacy, which was a good observer, not only of the bad, but also of the good, because in those days the papacy had very many good qualities, and those - they were basically nothing more than large landowners - who gradually asserted themselves within the Frankish tribe as Merovingians, Carolingians and so on.

What did the papacy need? The papacy could not easily spread Christianity as a doctrine. It did make a thorough, even very thorough attempt to spread Christianity as a doctrine; but in such matters one must always take into account the concrete, real conditions. Pope Gregory the Great sent fifty emissaries to England and Ireland, and from there the emissaries went to Central Europe, Gallus, who is connected with St. Gallen, and many others. But here you could count on people who came from a peoplehood and had a great gift of persuasion. This was a current through which Christianity was spread in a certain spiritual way, spread in such a way that it also went among the rural population, who lived under the characterized conditions, built churches. And around these churches, Christianity gradually took hold in such a way that the people who, as Franks, Saxons, Alemanni and so on, populated these northern regions did not significantly change their concept of God. They still had this concept of God from their atavistic clairvoyance. They did not particularly change it; but, take any area, some messenger came, built a small church - in Alsace, for example, this has happened over and over again in many areas - near a place where there was an image, a statue of the god Saxnot or something like that. He builds a small church, and he knows how to take the people. After he has built his church with his comrades – they did everything themselves, they were hardworking people, not just book writers – he goes to the people and says: Now you have your god, it is the rain god; praying to him will achieve nothing!

Such a messenger knows how to make it plausible to them that the God for whom he built the church is better. Now, this required persuasion, because, of course, the God whom he called the Christ had not shown any direct influence on the rain either. But this was mixed up with the fact that the ideas about the gods that had emerged from the military campaigns were gradually brought into contact with Christianity. When some tribe was defeated by another that had already converted to Christianity, it turned out that the people said, “Our god did not help us; their god helped them.” I am only trying to express that the Christian God was equated with the individual tribal deities. But people did not arrive at any other concept of God than that which they had from their atavistic clairvoyance. From this arose the necessity, when the Roman Church naturalized Christianity by using this, that the old tribal deities had to be gradually eradicated, root and branch. For they wanted, as it were, to replace the name of God with the other deities.

As I said, attempts were made to spread Christianity as a doctrine, as a spiritual way of life. But it may be said that, owing to the most diverse circumstances, another element was more successful at first, and that was the warlike element of the Franks, who were the most enterprising tribe, the most active, who, through their intellect, through their understanding, really knew: they could make something out of the adoption of what was bound to perish in the Roman Empire, through this adoption of institutions and so on. Through these and similar circumstances a connection arose between the Frankish folk element and the shadow of the Roman Empire, with the institutions and the views of the Roman Empire.

This began in the 8th century, continued into the 9th century, and the result was that Christianity was associated with the conquering element. The Saxon tribe, which was conservative and stubborn, was indeed overcome in a conquering manner; and from the West spread that which arose initially from a combination of the old customs and habits with regard to the judiciary and human coexistence with Christianity. This combining of the original customs with the southern element, which came from Christianity but in which Romanism lived, is evident in everything. Today we no longer realize how much it is evident in everything. For example, people believe that a count is a particularly Germanic institution, while the word 'count' is nothing more than something related to graph, stylus, and writing. Writing and administration were taken from the south. The one who administered was the count. And in the event of war, he also led the district, the area. The word “count” has the same root as graphology and stylus and is related to writing. But everything that concerns writing, pen-pushing, everything that concerns education, that came from the southern areas, and which has its real life in dying. So that these two elements interacted well into the 9th century. The most powerful element had just become the Frankish element through Charlemagne, whose power was based primarily on the fact that it had absorbed ecclesiastical Christianity and was now renewing the shadow of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne was indeed crowned in Rome; the old Caesaranity was to rise again.

These things, however, had only an artificial supporting power in themselves, not a natural one. We know then: after Charlemagne, the wide areas that Charlemagne supposedly held together initially still followed, and which were also still ruled like a kind of empire by Louis the Dumb - that is to say, the Pious. And when the power of the original conditions became more pronounced, when the Germanic-Frankish breakthrough came – because this Frankish element emerged, as I said, from a large part of what is now called Germany – when that breakthrough came, then the Treaty of Verdun, 843, had to divide. Why did it actually have to be divided? It had to be divided because it was unnatural to hold together. The real cement was Romance, but it was actually effective through the chancellery and through what developed as the first primitive schools and the like, and through what the clergy did, which asserted itself as such. The cement was Romance, but life was not Romance, life was Germanic. The people were organized in small groups. At the head of such small groups stood a duke – not by law. The laws only came into being when what was the custom of the Ripuarian Franks was written down in the Lex Ripuaria or the Ripuarium, in the Salic Law, Lex Salica, and so on. In small communities, the duke was originally the one who brought in the strangers, who led the army that made the settled population into serfs. He gradually disappeared. The count was appointed where there was a duke. You can say that the dukes survived as far as Bavaria and Thuringia. But the count is placed there; he is placed there, judges, administers, where the duke used to be, whom the people called that because he was there before they came to the area. The count is installed and gradually becomes a landowner, gathering the unfree around him and making them his serfs. The feudal system comes into being, the development of which would be very interesting to observe, but we do not have the time.

And we see that it is actually through the interaction of such details that those great landowners come into being. Because that is what they are, namely those great landowners that we see in the Merovingians and Carolingians. They are great landowners; and they were now sitting inside, far removed from following Roman law, because according to Roman law one could not have divided up the land as in the Treaty of Verdun! So you divide when you are the owner and divide among your sons. That was an old custom where the personality was involved. That was right according to ancient custom. Roman law could not have allowed that in reality.

These were such disintegrating elements. They were everywhere, these disintegrating elements, so that one can only properly understand this 9th century, which is crucial, if one knows that all of Western and Central Europe was flooded by the Romanic element, the popular nature. This was even more pronounced later, as we will discuss in the 14th and 15th centuries, when it will become even more apparent. Of course, educated people are placed in the form of clergy and so on, but it is the Romanic element that overflows these areas. But the Germanic element lives in the people - throughout Europe from the 9th century onwards, yes, even in England, in the British Empire. And this Germanic element is first expressed particularly in the element of the Franks. It was only through this division of the heritage, which actually took place according to purely private, arbitrary circumstances, that this tripartite structure came into being, so that one received this middle long strip along the Rhine and Italy, the other received what was to the west of it, and the third received what was to the east of it. And this then became the basis for the later division of the German and French characters, as a result of the Treaty of Verdun. And what Lothar got in the intermediate line created the happy basis for Central and Western Europe to fight with each other forever! But these things are connected in this way.

Now we must bear in mind that there are various and variously important factors at work: the Germanic element, particularly in this period, finding expression in the Frankish element; but the Romance element, which, as a shadow of ancient times, flits across the scene like a ghost, an old inheritance. And into this development, according to the corresponding conditions given by this nature – whereby the Germanic nature, always arising out of the strength of the people, thus out of reality, wanted to shatter the Romanic semblance – into this development, Christianity had to be spread from Rome. One had to take into account all these conditions, one had to reckon with the urban elements, with the rural elements, and one had to try to introduce Christianity in such a way that people could understand it. In spite of Constantine and his successors, it could not be introduced in Rome, because education, although it had reached a high level, had reached a dead end. It had to be introduced into popular elements that had original, youthful vigor in them.

Therefore, one had to push back to the East what had just frozen into dogmas, what wanted to remain at a certain point of view. And in the West, one had to reckon with a popular element that wanted to develop out of the ecclesiastical, out of all the elements that I have indicated. The papacy in particular could already count on these elements. There was already active calculation on the part of the papacy when Charlemagne was crowned; for one simply reckoned with this large landowner, who also let himself be reckoned with. And then it was always the policy of the papacy, first and foremost, to introduce Christianity in such a way that it was suitable for seizing the souls of those who had just outgrown the old atavistic clairvoyance.

It is of particular importance that from the ninth century onwards, and influenced by the separation from Oriental Christianity, the Roman Church began to take the European ethnic elements and conditions into account in an eminent way, when under Nicholas I, the great Pope, the Orient began to separate from the Occident within the Christian element. The underlying reason for this separation was the necessity to take into account what was rooted in European conditions, as I have outlined in very sketchy fashion. If we now consider the 14th and 15th centuries in terms of their basic character, we will see that the period from the 8th to the 14th century is characterized by the interaction of the papal element, the interaction of the Central European element, and the development of that European configuration, which then changed again when the great discoveries and the Reformation and the like came.

I just wanted to show you the factors that culminated in the ninth century in purely historical terms. In the development of Europe, one can clearly distinguish the first three Christian centuries, which led to a kind of anarchy. Everything is topsy-turvy. In the third century, everything is mixed up. But then, through the natural conditions, the situation developed over the next five or six centuries, into the ninth century, in such a way that one can say that Christianity was carried into the circumstances in the way I have indicated, but that these circumstances were actually given by the way people lived.

Today I would like to request you once again, without exception, to refrain from taking notes. This applies to all three days.

Most of you were present last Thursday at our discussion in Basel. I now want to bring to your attention once more quite a short extract of what we talked about then, as I consider it not unimportant for these thoughts to become known to us.

I described how the wisdom about Christ was destroyed root and branch by dogmatism, namely, that wisdom which was present in Gnosis which itself was rooted out, since what remains of it now is no more than a fairly good number of fragments. Gnosis was a remnant of ancient wisdom arising out of an atavistic knowledge of the spiritual worlds in the days of early mankind. Those who possessed this ancient wisdom, which was still understood by the Gnostics at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, knew that it contained a view—the names were different then—of the hierarchies which underlie the creation of the world, and they were thus able to conceive of the significance of Christ. Together with Gnosis there disappeared the possibility of comprehending the Christ-Being as a cosmic being. Instead there remains dogma which has perpetuated certain incomprehensible concepts—the Credo and so on—about the Christ-Being.

What was important in centuries now gone by was not so much the wisdom about Christ as the fact itself, the fact that Christ turned towards the earth and fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha. A true understanding of the Christ-Being will first have to be won through the new Gnosis, which is something entirely different from the old Gnosis, for it is anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

More important for our point of departure today is something else I introduced last Thursday, namely that in the North in very early pre-Christian times—I said 3000 years BC—there was a certain custom among peoples whom Tacitus called the Ingaevones. This custom was guided by Mystery priests in a Mystery centre focused on what is today Jutland, part of Denmark. This Mystery centre was able to work at that time and in those parts because all the climatic conditions in those colder regions differed from any in the southern, warmer regions—for all material conditions also have their own spiritual background. While the warmer regions were more suited to developing an understanding of the Christ-Being in Gnosis, the colder parts lent themselves more to evolving feelings about Jesus because of ideas still prevalent about ancient customs.

Thus it was that, in the South, Gnosis had more of an understanding of the Easter Mystery, the Christ Mystery. But the understanding, as I have said, was destroyed root and branch by dogma. In the North, in contrast, there was more of a comprehension of the Jesus Mystery, a feeling for the child who comes into the world to save mankind. This was based not so much on actual ideas, which had died out, but on feelings which live longer than ideas. The feeling of these ancient customs made comprehension possible. So it came about that in the South it was the task of the church to root out the Christ Mystery, whereas in the North it was its task to root out the Christmas Mystery, to transform it into something innocuous. Thus later, in the Middle Ages, the idea of Christmas came into being which, one might say, reckoned with the rise of bourgeois values of more recent times, which appeared increasingly as the age of materialism dawned. For bourgeois values in the widest sense are a concomitant of materialism. We have to be clear, though, that greater, more significant ideas, in the form of feelings, lived in Central Europe right into the eighth, ninth and even the tenth centuries, for these feelings originated from prevalent usages, such as processions and other folk customs.

Let me briefly sketch these ancient customs once again. Among the Ingaevones the life of the people was firmly guided by the Mystery centre which laid down the season when provision could be made for procreation. The union of man with woman was permitted only in the days of spring, around the first full moon after the spring equinox. It was approximately the time we now call Easter time. The remainder of the year was taboo as far as human reproduction was concerned, and those born at a time which showed that their conception had been out of season were regarded, in a way, as not quite proper people.

So the births of people conceived at the correct time all came together in the middle of winter, just after our present Christmas time. All those regarded by the Ingaevones as fully human had to be born at this time. The births had to fall at the time of the darkest winter days, when the trees were covered in snow and the people confined to their primitive homesteads. To use the language of today, every child was in a way a Christmas child, a child of the winter solstice.

This affected people's frame of mind and soul. Because nothing to do with procreation occurred at other times of the year, the old dream-conscious clairvoyance was preserved. And when the time of conception approached as the permitted spring days drew near, conditions of unconsciousness took over. Conception was brought about in a state of unconsciousness, not in waking consciousness. The woman who was conceiving was truly conscious, however, of the visionary appearance of a spiritual being descending from spiritual worlds to announce the coming child. These women even foresaw the face of the coming child. And this annunciation, as we saw, is echoed in the time of the Luke gospel in the annunciation to Mary by the Archangel Gabriel. We saw that there even exists a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon rune song which tells of what existed in the old consciousness and that on the Jutland peninsula there really was a Mystery centre which then migrated eastwards.

Now mankind is, of course, developing, and development is a part of mankind. So this Mystery centre could only exist in most ancient times, for, had it persisted, there would have been no development of the type of consciousness needed as the task of the fourth, and then of the fifth post-Atlantean period. To clairvoyant consciousness the custom is hardly to be found anywhere in northern regions, where it flourished, even in the second millennium BC, and it is seen to have disappeared fully by the first millennium BC. By then, human conception and birth were spread more or less over the whole year and there is no more knowledge of a coming-down out of cosmic worlds via the starry constellations, nor of how much depends for a person's destiny on earth on the constellation under which he is born. Human conception and birth are spread over the whole year.

Parallel with this development is the rise of a new consciousness, the rise of the possibility of freedom for the human being and so on.

One last thing remained, however. Something had existed in the region where Denmark is today; it migrated from tribe to tribe until it reached the East, where the Christ-Being was to be incarnated in one last body still seen in connection with the constellations. The first-born of many brothers became the last-born of those who were seen in connection with the starry constellations. In evolution the last remnant of the old always links up with what is new.

Because in northern regions the feeling had evolved that the human being appears on the earth during the consecrated season, it came about that here, too, surrounded by the echo of those atavistic feelings, the feeling for Jesus could evolve. Thus you will find in these northern regions that the paramount feeling and better understanding was for the Luke gospel, and that the Christmas Mystery worked more strongly than the Easter Mystery, which was imprisoned among the secrets of the church, whereas the Christmas Mystery became quite general.

I hinted last Thursday, and shall perhaps be able to follow through in more detail during these three days, that every three years special attention was paid to the one born first after the twelfth hour of the night that we now call Christmas Eve, the first-born of every fourth year, the first to be born after three years. This first-born was destined to undergo certain procedures until his thirtieth year. Until his thirtieth year he was kept apart and brought up by the Mystery priests. His soul was given a distinct direction. His soul was destined to undergo experiences in a quite special way during the first thirty years of his life. These experiences and procedures were to lead him—this is barely comprehensible today—in his thirtieth year to an inner understanding of the link between the human being and the surrounding spiritual world. Certain quite specific inner experiences during these thirty years were to lead him gradually to this point.

First of all this first-born was to understand, even as a tiny child, how the human being is linked to the spiritual world through his angel. Separated from the rest of the world, undisturbed by the concepts which usually enter a child's soul from his environment, he was to remain close to spiritual workings and spiritual events and, to start with, develop a profound awareness of his links with the angel-being who was his guide—his angelos. In this way this child was equipped with a soul which was taught something very special, about which we may perhaps speak during the next few days. This special learning was expressed by saying that the child had become a ‘raven’. This was a stage of initiation which was disseminated over wide regions and was contained particularly in the Persian Mithras initiation, of which I have spoken in past years. Then this soul was to ascend to an even more intense feeling for its connection with the spiritual worlds; this first-born was to relive in his soul the secrets of the spiritual worlds.

This would not be possible today, for our consciousness develops under different conditions. But, in those ancient times, when it was possible to develop a dream consciousness this was still perfectly possible. When the child had grown into a youth—it was always a boy, a girl did not count—he was given the leadership over individual districts, smaller sections of the tribe. Finally, he had to serve in the administration and government of smaller communities. But it is important to remember that these affairs of government were always conducted in such a way that the youth was ever protected from external influences, especially shielded from the influences of various egoisms; he was most carefully shielded from the influences of egoisms, from influences which came about on the basis of external experiences.

Thus it was achieved that, towards the end of these thirty years, he could take on the role of representative of the whole tribe. When he reached the age of thirty he was ready to absorb consciously the connections of man with the whole cosmos. He became what is called in the Mystery centres a ‘sun hero’. Now he was destined to rule the tribe for three years. None but a ‘sun hero’ could rule the tribe. He was permitted to rule for only three years. At the end of the three years something else, about which I shall speak, was done with him under the guidance of the Mysteries. In particular, in all the arrangements that emanated from the tribe of the Ingaevones, nobody was allowed to be king for longer than three years, and none was allowed to become king who had not undergone what I have described.

You see, forming in these tribes, as it were the skeleton, out of which the gospels later created the life of Christ Jesus. These communities lived in very ancient times. Only symbols of what had gone before come down to later ages. Thus the vision of the annunciation of the child to the mother came down to later ages as the worship of Nerthus, of Ertha. And the fact that the act of conception had to take place unconsciously in olden times is still hinted at in the Nerthus myth told by Tacitus a hundred years after the birth of Jesus. He describes how Ertha—who is male-female, not only female, for she is the same as the god Nerthus—arrives in her chariot; in other words, she is none other than the angel of the annunciation. Then those who have served her have to be drowned in the sea—slain. This is an echo of the submergence into unconsciousness of the act of conception in those ancient days.

In this myth of Ertha in her chariot and the slaves who accompany her but are drowned as soon as their service is concluded, in this myth of Nerthus, we have in the feeling-life an echo of something that was formerly an astral reality, something that had been experienced astrally. Nerthus processions were held in some districts until quite recently in history, right into the early Christian centuries. There were Ertha processions even in Swabia. These were echoes of ancient days. Those who in olden times, through certain rites which still existed as an echo of ancient heathen times, knew something about these earlier millennia, felt and thought about these processions of Ertha in her chariot: This is what our ancestors did. And when that single event then occurred which was the life of Jesus, it was brought into connection with what had been more general in ancient times. This was then better understood in the feelings, at the level of the feelings.

Therefore the monks and priests made every effort to root out anything which might remind their flocks of these things. Such things were rooted out just as carefully in the North as was Gnosis in the South. Otherwise people would have known, by bringing together these ancient customs with the Mystery of Golgotha, that this Mystery, in so far as it is a Christmas Mystery, was not an ancient, natural custom brought into the present but rather that it was replaced in the feeling for the Christmas Mystery by something at a higher level of consciousness. But this was not to be known consciously. This was to be suppressed into the subconscious, for there are always certain powers who reckon with the unconscious. A great part of what happens in history comes about because things conscious and things unconscious are brought together by those who know how to bring such things together.

We rightly speak of what happens in going from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period. But even in the transition from the third to the fourth there was a step forward in human consciousness towards increased ego-consciousness, increased waking consciousness. The ancient dream visions of the spiritual world have disappeared. In the North this was expressed by saying that the Vanir, who were connected with what is given in visions, had been replaced by the Aesir, who are indeed gods for a well-developed day consciousness. This is what was said in the North during the fourth post-Atlantean period, until all such memories had been rooted out by the priests. In the fifth post-Atlantean period, when materialism, or rather ‘Christianityism’, appeared, these things had already disappeared. While in the South the Greeks had their gods: Zeus, Apollo and the others, the people of the North had the Aesir, a word which is connected with esse, to be, which in turn is connected with being seen, being seen with the eyes. But during the third post-Atlantean period the ancient peoples who inhabited the North of Europe had the Vanir. These Vanir were far closer to the people. Nerthus, which became Nört in the North, is one of the Vanir, who announced every conception or birth. Now I said that what had existed earlier was always preserved in later times in symbols. Thus something that I have so far only sketchily described to you and which we may be able to go into more deeply in the next day or two, namely, the knowledge bound up with becoming ‘king’, becoming the ‘sun hero’, was carried over first into the cult-myth and then into the myth. We have to distinguish between the cult-myth and the myth as such. The cult-myth is something that is still performed in external customs like a ‘dream performance’ of what reminds people of the ancient clairvoyant visions.

Thus, at a time when what I described to you no longer worked, we have in the Baldur myth, the myth of the god Baldur which was performed in many tribes as a mystery play, an echo of what was involved in ‘becoming king’. First it existed as a reality. Later it was performed as a mystery play. Then it became a myth that was merely recounted. And finally it was rooted out by the monks and priests. Baldur is one of the Aesir, that is, he was one of the ruling spiritual powers at a time when man had already awakened to ego-consciousness. The Vanir had already faded, and yet Baldur remains as a representative of that being who was to become king, the first-born who came every three years.

It is told that, at a certain time in his life, Baldur had dreams announcing his death. Later these dreams came true. But this did not mean merely that he had felt the approach of his physical death. It meant that, having accomplished three years of service as king, he was raised from the consciousness appropriate for that, to a higher level of consciousness. Until then he had been shielded from contact with the outer materialistic world. A king such as this was to live within the priesthood so that all egoism should depart from his soul and none could enter in. He was not permitted to be king for more than three years. Towards the end of the three years Baldur sensed the approach of the end of his time of kingly dignity. This meant, according to the ancient beliefs, that he was ready for contact with the outside world. First he had to rule, but he had to do this solely in accordance with the wishes of the spiritual world. After that he was to become something else; he was to enter the outside world.

For someone who had never had such contact before this was, in truth, a kind of death. This is what was expressed in his dreams. The myth describes how the gods heard about these dreams and became uneasy. We must always think of the human element in relation to the divine element in the way that the two are united in the ancient Mysteries. When, towards the end of his time as king, Baldur felt the moment approaching, the gods—that is the Mystery priests—became uneasy and made all the creatures and all the conditions of the earth swear that they would not harm Baldur. They forgot only one insignificant little plant—mistletoe, the Christmas plant. Loki, the enemy of the Aesir, found the mistletoe. And he made use of it at the festival of the gods, that is, at the event of the god Baldur's first contact with the outside world.

Here we have an ancient Christmas festival, and the mistletoe custom linked with Christmas is still today a memory of this ancient custom which had to do with establishing a new king in place of the old. The contact of the old king with the material world is depicted in the mystery play and the myth. All created things have sworn not to harm Baldur. They are now used by the gods who throw them at Baldur and shoot them at him. Nothing—no plant, no animal, no illness, no poison—can harm him. Only Loki has discovered the mistletoe, which he has brought amongst the community of gods—that is, the priests—and given to the blind god Hödr. Hödr says: What shall I do with the mistletoe? I am blind and cannot see where Baldur is standing, I cannot shoot at him as the other gods do. But Loki showed him the direction and he shot at Baldur with the mistletoe twig. Baldur was wounded and died.

So Hödr is the one who appears as the representative of the outside, material world, in so far as this material world is not comprehended in its connection with the spiritual world but lives like a parasite. ‘Höd’ is the ancient name for battle or war, while ‘Baldur’, as it still exists today, can be traced back to another designation of which the best, still preserved, appears in Anglo-Saxon. As I showed recently, ‘Tag’ appears at an earlier stage of the sound shift as ‘day’. ‘Bal day’ is a possible name, even though Anglo-Saxon. It means ‘shining day’, which expresses Baldur's connection with daytime consciousness, that consciousness which did not come to mankind until the fourth post-Atlantean period. Hödr is a representative of matter, of darkness, but also of battle and conflict. Baldur is the representative of understanding, of knowledge, of light—namely, that light which shines in the human soul in the state of consciousness which has developed since the fourth post-Atlantean period.

So in the Baldur myth we have a special version of the Christmas Mystery. Awareness of the connection between the Baldur myth and the Christmas Mystery was also rooted out by the monks and priests. For Baldur has some of the good qualities of Lucifer, and Hödr has some of the good qualities of the later Mephistopheles-Ahriman. I do not mean ‘good’ in the moral sense but rather in the sense of what is necessary for evolution. Such things, too, are connected with evolution as a whole. During the fourth post-Atlantean period it was still possible for a human being to be guided into the spiritual world in the ancient way as was the case in the old northern Mysteries. This had to be changed as time went on, for the tentative way, later only present in an atavistic form, the tentative, clairvoyant way—still with a certain echo of dream consciousness, which was fitting for the fourth post-Atlantean period—could not resist the more robust demands of the materialistic age. This relationship of ancient clairvoyance from the fourth post-Atlantean period to what came later is expressed in the myth depicting the contrast between Baldur and Hödr. What is working here, what is behind the fact that Baldur—the representative of human consciousness, which can be illuminated by the divine—can be killed through the influence of the evil power of Loki over Hödr, the god of battle, of war and of darkness? Behind all this lies the fact that in our age, as it has been for a long time and as it will still be for some time to come, there must always be a working together of light and darkness. To try and make people believe that anything in the physical world, the world of maya, can be totally good, is nothing but religious egoism. Every light has its shadow, and a thorough comprehension of this fact is extremely important and significant.

Let us take an example. Under the influence of the Christmas Mystery it will be possible for us to go more deeply into a number of matters we have discussed recently. So let us take an example. I have often suggested that if Spiritual Science comes to be taken up more fully by people then, for instance, it will influence medicine, the art of healing. Certain more physical methods of healing will be found for sicknesses of the soul, and more spiritual methods for bodily illnesses. I told you why this is not yet possible: It is simply because the sins have been created by the law and not the law by the sins. So long as the laws work in such a way that materialistic medicine is considered to represent them—and that is the case today—so long will individuals, however thorough their insight, be unable to do anything and, indeed, they ought not to do anything. But a time will come in the not too distant future when medicine, the art of healing, will incorporate the impulses which come from spiritual knowledge. I merely want to point this out for the moment, since I am actually leading up to something else. Knowledge of the healing forces is inseparable from knowledge of the forces of sickness. One cannot be taught without the other. No one in the world can gain knowledge of the healing forces, without at the same time learning about the forces of sickness. So you can see how important it is for people to be morally good through and through as regards such serious matters. For someone who can heal a person's soul can also make a person's soul sick in the same degree. Therefore such truths may not be imparted by the gods to man until a stage of morality has been reached at which the healing medicine cannot be transformed into poison.

This applies not only to the situation in which we are dealing with abnormal states of body or soul but also to what goes on in social life. In what has been said in recent lectures you will have seen quite clearly that impulses work in the social life of human beings, good and bad impulses, which can be guided by those who understand such things, and are indeed often guided in rather extraordinary ways. You will realize that it is simply necessary for this to be so, for mankind must learn on its own account how to achieve the good. I know very well how little these things are taken seriously, even in our circles, and how narrow-minded are the excuses and objections. But this also has to be so at present.

As with the individual, so is it also in social life: Certain impulses can be steered and guided to one side or the other. In social life, in particular, it is still possible nowadays to make use to a considerable extent of the unconscious, for every age has its unconscious aspect. As soon as you start to reckon with the unconscious or the subconscious it is possible to achieve effects which differ considerably from what can be done consciously, for today's consciousness will not achieve its natural connection with the cosmos until the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. Today, those who reckon with the unconscious bring things over from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch in either a mephistophelean or a luciferic way. Now, it fits in well with our present endeavours in these grave times to apply general truths of this kind to specific situations, for it is appropriate not just to play theosophical games but to gather serious knowledge which affects reality, even though this serious knowledge might make demands as to the degree of prejudice existing in our feelings. Also, we are in accord with a feeling for Christmas if we make the decision to approach the earnestness of life. Nowadays we cannot allow ourselves to indulge luxuriously in sentimental Christmas-tree feelings, for a true Christmas mood involves feeling one's way to its connection with the grave and shattering experiences of the present time.

You can see, particularly in people's everyday lives, what happens if they are being influenced at a subconscious level. You can hypnotize an individual person, so that once he is hypnotized he is in your power, and you can make him do things he would never even consider doing in a waking state. You can hypnotize him, which means putting him into a state of consciousness belonging to ages long past, and you may have all sorts of intentions for doing so. In the same way it is possible to hypnotize whole communities. An individual person is stronger in the physical world than is a group, and it is therefore necessary to lower his consciousness considerably more in order to work through him while he is in this other consciousness. In the case of a community or group of people the lowering of consciousness need not even be noticeable, for it can be far more slight. Yet certain things would not be achieved by continuing to speak, for instance, in the way we speak with one another. Therefore I must stress again and again: I shall never consider speaking other than in difficult concepts which require intellectual understanding, so that each person is forced to follow the line of thought and form concepts of what is being said. If we take the fifth post-Atlantean period and its requirements seriously, there can be no question of wishing to bring about any kind of intoxication, or of intending to work on anything other than the intellect. Even someone who knows nothing of Spiritual Science, but has a certain awareness of what it means to be in the fifth post-Atlantean period, will respect the inner freedom of the human being and speak in a way which does not dupe the feelings or create disturbances in the soul.

It would be different with a person who wanted to achieve effects different from those I have described, that is, if someone wanted to make use of a lowered consciousness, which can be achieved far more easily with a crowd than with an individual, since for a crowd no hypnosis is needed. You know how a crowd, a group, can be seized by a certain intoxication if it is handled in a suitable way. I have said on earlier occasions that I have met orators who knew by instinct how to speak in a way which does not directly address the intellect but uses slogans and telling images to speak to a consciousness that is somewhat askew, somewhat delirious. As I said, the approach has to be stronger in the case of an individual, but for a crowd no more is needed. I have given you examples of this.

It is entirely fitting to contemplate these things in a mood of inwardness which befits these days, for they are deeply bound up with the Christmas and Easter Mysteries. I described some time ago how I was moved in my youth when I met with such an effect in a certain situation. I have recounted this example quite often: My karma led me at the right time to hear the sermons of a very important Jesuit father. I could watch as a certain image was intensified in the people by means of particular words; I saw them being convinced in a manner that did not involve their intellect but brought about a certain kind of delirious mood. Let us look at the example. The Jesuit was preaching about the necessity of believing in the Easter confession and he said, in effect, the following: Well, of course non-believers think that the Easter confession was instituted by the Pope or the college of cardinals. What an idea, my dear Christians! Someone who maintains that the Easter confession has been established by the Pope and the priests might be compared with somebody watching a trooper standing beside his cannon, with an officer next to him giving orders. The trooper only has to light the fuse and the cannon goes off. My dear Christians, compare the trooper with the Pope in Rome and the officer giving the orders with God! Just imagine the officer standing there shouting ‘Fire’, and the trooper lighting the fuse without any will of his own. The cannon goes off. This is what the Pope does. He listens to God's commandments. God commanded—the Pope was like the trooper who lit the fuse—and there was the Easter confession. Would you say that the trooper standing by the cannon and lighting the fuse had also invented the gunpowder? It is as unlikely that you would say the trooper invented the gunpowder as it is that you would maintain that the Pope invented the Easter confession! And all the people were convinced, of course! It was perfectly obvious.

In certain communities these things have to be learned, namely, how to describe things in pictures, how to use images, bring about intensifications, and employ comparisons. This is a special art which is diligently practised in the grey brotherhoods. But there is no need to belong to a grey brotherhood in order to practise such an art. One can be dependent in one way or another on the grey brotherhoods, perhaps without even knowing how dependent one is, and then one can use these methods.

What is all this based on? It is based on the fact that a different kind of soul life is present when we speak with one another in a manner suited to the fifth post-Atlantean period, for then we direct ourselves to the intellect and not to a kind of delirium which would be brought about if we used some of the means I have just sketched. In the fifth post-Atlantean period we have to learn to withstand Hödr, we have to learn to withstand the remnants of an earlier time that resemble the mistletoe which has become a parasite in the plant world. We have to learn to withstand Hödr, the unconscious one, the blind one, the passionate one, the delirious one.

We can only win this capacity by making our understanding such that we feel quite isolated from the world, whereas those who develop a delirious type of consciousness immediately attract to themselves cosmic effects; they draw cosmic effects down into the present. With the consciousness of the fifth post-Atlantean period we stand in isolation on the earth. In a delirious consciousness, cosmic effects are drawn into the soul. And these, of course, have to be utilized in an appropriate way. Let us take an actual case.

Someone who today wants to work on others, on those whose consciousness is delirious, with the aim of achieving a particular end, can do the following: He can remember when something similar existed in an earlier age when the starry constellations were also similar. Now since everything goes in waves in the world, so that a particular wave returns to the surface after a certain time, in order to achieve certain effects he can make use of an event which under similar cosmic conditions is like a copy of an earlier event; he can make it a copy of an earlier event. Let us assume that someone wants to achieve something by influencing others in their delirious consciousness, by carrying out certain procedures involving certain facts. He goes back in history and recalls something which happened at an earlier date under a similar starry constellation.

Assume someone wants to bring something about on a day in the spring of a particular year. Having established that it is Whitsuntide, he goes back through time until he finds an event that is similar to the one he wants to bring about. And it must fall in a year when the date of Whitsun fell approximately on similar days of the month. Then the starry constellation will also be roughly the same. By utilizing all this it will then be possible to work on those in a delirious state of consciousness. In a sense it will be possible, by bringing about a state of delirious consciousness under a particular starry constellation, to hit the target of a group of people who are always a kind of Baldur in the fifth post-Atlantean period; in other words, to play Loki with blind Hödr, or through blind Hödr.

Now let us take an actual case: In an earlier age Whitsuntide fell on 20 May 1347. At this time on a particular day the heralds, flourishing their trumpets, marched with a crowd—it does not matter that their relationship to the Whitsun Mystery differed from ours today—leading Cola di Rienzi, who made the proclamation, from that important place in Rome under that very starry constellation which fell on 20 May, which was to give him the title of tribune of Rome. The impression he made was comparable to the impression made on a group or crowd in a state of delirious consciousness. For the crowd believed that Cola di Rienzi had brought the Holy Ghost; and utilization of the starry constellation of the time made it possible, though for a very short time only, for him to achieve what he intended.

A remarkable copy of this event took place under the same starry constellation in 1915 when, not Cola di Rienzi, but Signor d'Annunzio called together a crowd on the same spot in a very similar way! Again a delirious consciousness was affected by ideas and symbols which conjured up pictures that were eminently suitable for speaking to this delirious consciousness. I am not criticizing anybody's consciousness but merely reporting facts—facts which, if you like, have been pushed as far as possible down into the unconscious. But this does not alter their effectiveness. On Whitsun-day 1915 the same happened in Rome as had happened on Whitsun-day 1347, which also fell on 20, 21 May. One day makes no difference. On the contrary, the constellation was all the more identical. At Whitsun 1915 there was a repeat performance of what had happened under Cola di Rienzi in 1347. The new event was thus particularly effective, for it was borne on the same vibrations, the same waves, the same conditions.

History will only be understood when such facts are known, when it is known what can be achieved with the help of such facts. Regardless of what the influences were, Signor d'Annunzio, through the life he had led so far, had the potential of succumbing to all sorts of influences, and he had the strength to put these influences to use. Let me remark merely that, because of his earlier poetry, this poet was called by a number of critics representing the healthy side of Italy ‘The singer of all shameful degeneracy’. In ordinary life his name was Rapagnetta, which I am told means ‘little turnip’, but he called himself d'Annunzio.

Under this starry constellation Signor d'Annunzio gave a speech which you may judge for yourselves because I am going to read it aloud to you to the best of my ability. To put you in the picture: There were two parties in Italy at that time, the Neutralists and the Interventionists, and Signor d'Annunzio set himself the task of transforming all the Neutralists into Interventionists. The Neutralists wanted to preserve neutrality, and Giolitti, a man who had been very active in Italian political life for a long time, was for neutrality. That speech by d'Annunzio, which was like a repetition of the one made long ago by Cola di Rienzi under the same starry constellation, went as follows:

‘Romans!

Yesterday you presented a noble show to the world! Your never-ending, well-ordered procession resembled those solemn processions of ancient days which gathered here in the temple of Jupiter Maximus; and every street through which such power marches, such power coupled with such dignity, becomes a Via Sacra. Invisible in your midst you drew, on an invisible carriage, the statue of our great mother.

Blessed be the Roman mothers I saw in the procession yesterday, the mothers who bore their sons in their arms and wore on their foreheads the mark of resigned courage and silent sacrifice.

Is there any need for exhortations when the very stones are eloquent? The people of Rome were prepared to tear up the paving stones trampled by the horses which ought long since to be standing firm at the borders of Istria, instead of remaining here, humbled by shame, to defend the nests of poisonous creatures, the houses of traitors! What must have been the sadness of our young soldiers!—What a show of discipline and self-denial they gave, when they protected, against the just anger of the people, those very men who denigrate and slander them, humiliating them before their brothers and before the enemy. Let us cry: “Long live the army!” That is the call of this hour! Of all the vile actions committed by Giolitti and his pack this is the vilest: the denigration of our arms and of our national defence. Until yesterday they got away with the dissemination of doubt, suspicion, and disregard for our soldiers—our handsome, good, strong, brave, impetuous soldiers, the flower of our people, the reliable heroes of tomorrow. With what heavy hearts did they fix their bayonets in order to repulse the very people whose only purpose was to avenge them!

O my admirable comrades! Today every good citizen is a soldier for the freedom of Italy! Through you and with you we are victorious, we have brought confusion to the ranks of the traitors. Hear, O hear! The crime of high treason has been declared and proved, and publicly announced. The dishonourable names are known; punishment is needed!

Do not be taken in, do not be moved to pity. A rabble like that has no twinges of conscience, no remorse. Who can teach another taste to the beast who is accustomed to the filth in which he rolls and the trough from which he gorges?

On the twentieth of May in the solemn gathering of our union, we shall not tolerate the shameless presence of those who, for months, have been negotiating the sale of Italy with the enemy. Clowns may not be permitted to clothe themselves in the tri-coloured mantle, and bellow from unclean throats the holy name of the fatherland. Write out your list of proscription without pity. It is your right, it is your duty! Who saved Italy in her hour of darkness, who but you, her people, pure and profound?

Never forget that! The others may escape punishment only by flight! Let them go! This is the only leniency permitted towards them. Was not a certain one, even this morning, still inclined to join in the plots whose net is being spun among the blossoming rosebeds of the villa on the Pincio—now to be confiscated—by the fat German spider who lives there? We never believed for one minute, of course, that a ministry formed by Herr Bülow could have received the approval of the King—or rather, that the King could have become an accomplice to such a thing.

In his great heart the King has heard the exhortation of Camillo Cavour: The hour of the House of Savoy has come!

The hour has come. It tolls under the high heavens which arch over your Pantheon, O Romans, and over this eternal Capitol! Here, where the plebeians held the meetings of their council; here, where every increase in the empire of Rome was consecrated, where the consuls exacted the levies and received the oaths of the soldiers; whence the magistrates of the republic departed to take over command of the armies and control the provinces; where Germanicus set up the trophies of his victory over the Germans; where the triumphant Octavian solemnly confirmed Roman dominance over the whole of the Mediterranean basin; here, at this place, the starting point and the goal of all our victories, we celebrate the voluntary sacrifice, we cry the words of consecration and desire: Long live the war, long live Rome, long live Italy, long live the army and the fleet, long live the King! Glory and victory!’

Thus spoke the new Cola di Rienzi. Then he received the #8224 presented to him as a special souvenir of Nino Bixio. This #8224 stemmed from ancient days and had been treasured by the Podrecca family. The #8224 is presented—pardon me, but this is really true—by the editor of Asino! Asino is a particularly obscene satirical journal. But d'Annunzio takes hold of the #8224, kisses it solemnly, strides through the crowd and enters—not, like Cola di Rienzi, a horse-drawn triumphal chariot, for times have changed—he enters a motor car, having first commanded all the church bells to be rung. The delirious consciousness must not be allowed to fade too soon. All the bells are rung to keep it going a little longer. Then d'Annunzio halts his car at the telegraph office and sends a telegram to the editor of Le Gaulois who answers—I am sorry I do not know how to pronounce this in French so I shall have to say it in the German way—who answers to the name of Meier:

‘Rome, 1 p.m., great battle fought. Have just spoken on the Capitol to an enormous, delirious crowd. The bells are sounding the alarm, the cries of the people rise up to the most beautiful sky in the world. I am drunk with joy. After the French miracle I have now witnessed the Italian miracle.’

Without making any comments or taking sides I simply wanted to point out certain facts in order to show, by the way in which they are connected, how things happen that are hardly noticed by our unobservant contemporaries. I wanted to show that although the ‘singer of all shameful degeneracy’, as he was called in Italy, probably did not believe very strongly in the miracle of Whitsun, he nevertheless succeeded very well in working on certain unconscious impulses by using a repetition of an event which made available considerable forces within a delirious consciousness. This man, who in his own country is called ‘the singer of all shameful degeneracy’ and who has succeeded in writing a novel which trumpets forth his relationship with a famous woman in the most contemptible way—this man found another whole series of effective images in another long speech, this time in the Constanzi theatre. The image of the cannon, which I have already mentioned, is rather less significant. I cannot read the whole speech to you as this would take too long. Let me give you a passage from the beginning and another from the end. It begins:

‘Romans, Italians, brothers in faith and in yearning, my new friends, and my companions of old!’

Well, so he says ‘of old’!

‘Your greetings of warm kindness, of generous recognition, are not intended for me. It is not the homecomer in me you are welcoming, I know, it is the spirit that leads me, the love that fills me, the idea that I serve.

Your welcome goes through me and beyond me to a higher goal. I bring you the tidings of Quarto, Roman tidings to the Rome of the Villa Spada and of Vascello.

This evening the daylight has not gone from the Aurelian walls and it will not go: the glimmer remains on San Pancratio.

Let us this evening confront cowardice with heroism and remember that sixty-six years ago today the leader of men led his legion, already destined to become the June miracle, from Palestrina back to Rome. Let us this evening confront shame with fame and remember that fifty-five years ago at this very hour the thousand on the march from Marsala to Salemi were bivouacking, their muskets stacked together, eating their bread or sleeping quietly. In their hearts they carried the stars and the words of their leader which still sound vital and commanding to this day: “If we unite, our task will be easy. To arms!” It was the call of Marsala, which continued with the robust threat: “Those who do not arm are cowards or traitors!” If he, the saviour, could but descend from the Janiculus into the plain, would he not brand with one or the other of these signs and charge with shame all those who secretly or publicly work towards disarming Italy, shaming our fatherland, returning it to a state of servitude, nailing it back on its cross or leaving it to die in a bed that has sometimes seemed to us a grave without a cover?

Some need fifty years to die in their beds, some need fifty years to complete their disintegration in their beds. Is it possible we would allow strangers in our midst or from without, enemies who live in our house or who have entered it forcibly, to impose this kind of death on a people who yesterday raised with a shudder of power an image of their highest myth upon their shore, a monument of their true will, their Roman will, O citizens? For three days now an indefinable stink of treachery has been seeking to suffocate us.’

And so it goes on. Then, at the end we find a new, warmed-up version of something we know so well from the gospels. D'Annunzio of all people dares to speak the following words:

‘Blessed are they who have more, for all the more shall they give, all the more shall their enthusiasm be inflamed! Blessed are they who have for twenty years a pure spirit, a hardened physique, a courageous mother!

Blessed are they who refrained, waiting and trusting, from squandering their strength, preserving it instead with a warrior's discipline!

Blessed are they who scorned unfruitful dalliance, saving their virginity for this first and last love!’

D'Annunzio of all people says: ‘Blessed are they who scorned unfruitful dalliance, saving their virginity for this first and last love!’

‘Blessed are they who shall tear out the hate rooted in their breast with their own hands and then offer their sacrifice!

Blessed are they who yesterday still resisted the event, yet today silently accept it as a profound necessity, desiring now to be no longer the last but the first!

Blessed are the young men who hunger and thirst for glory, for they shall be satisfied!

Blessed are the compassionate, for they shall wipe away the shining blood and bind up the lustrous pain!

Blessed are the pure in heart, blessed those who return victorious; for they shall see the new countenance of Rome, the re-crowned head of Dante, the triumphant beauty of Italy.’

So even in our own time such things are sometimes said! And it is so important, my dear friends, not to pass by these things. For not all people act in accord with the One Whose birth we celebrate in the holy night—not those who scream out such beatitudes into the world. To belong, not to the darkness, but to the light which has entered into the world: This is a feeling with which to fill our souls at the time of this holy feast. To dedicate ourselves to the light, instead of to that inattentiveness which brings us only darkness: This, too, can be something in these grave times which it is important for us to inscribe in our souls on Christmas Eve.

The time from Christmas until about now is actually an important, a significant time of the year, also in occult terms. It is called the time of the thirteen days. And the remarkable thing is that this period of thirteen days is sensed in its importance by those people who, in their entire soul disposition, have retained something of the old connection of the human soul with the spiritual world, of which we have often spoken. We know that more than the person of today's urban population has retained from the connection with the spiritual world that once existed in ancient times, the primitive person who lives out in the countryside or in a population that is even less affected by our urban culture. And there we find much that is related in folk poetry about the experiences of the soul, about experiences of the soul during the period from Christmas to Epiphany, January 6.

This is the time when, after the annual eclipse has most befallen the earth, immediately after the winter solstice, when the sun begins its victorious course again, with nature's deepest immersion and release and redemption, the human soul can also undergo very special experiences if it still has special connections with the spiritual world. Those people who no longer have the old clairvoyance but are still connected to the spiritual world in their soul feel a difference in the abnormal world of dreams at this time of year. What the soul can experience there becomes meaningful, because the soul, if it is still receptive, can really get most involved in the spiritual world then. For the modern man, the year really is such that he no longer particularly distinguishes the individual seasons, because while the snow storms outside, darkness already begins at four o'clock in the afternoon and it only gets light late, the city dweller feels the same as in the summer months, when the sun can unfold its full power. Man is torn out of the old connection with the cosmos in which he lived when he was outside in nature. But for those who have retained a connection with nature, it is not the same thing that falls during the Christmas season as what happens at another time, for example, at midsummer. While in midsummer the soul is most emancipated from what is connected with the spiritual world, in the time when nature is most dead, it is most connected with the spiritual world and used to experience special things during this time.

Now there is a beautiful folk tale in the old Norwegian language, a tale that was rediscovered only recently and has quickly become popular again due to the peculiar understanding of the Norwegian population. It is about a man who still had a connection to the spiritual world, about Olaf Åsteson. What Olaf Åsteson experiences in the time between Christmas and Epiphany is beautifully depicted in this poem.

At the New Year's celebration in Hannover in 1912, I first tried to put this folk tale of Olaf Åsteson into German lines so that it could also be performed before our souls. Tonight's program will begin with the Song of Olaf Åsteson, which contains Olaf Åsteson's experiences during the thirteen nights.

It was followed by a recitation by Marie von Sivers.

The poetry itself is old. But, as I said, it has recently been rediscovered by the Norwegian people as if by magic and is spreading rapidly. The fact that something like this is spreading will, among many facts prevailing at present, also be one that proves how it is pushing towards an understanding of the mysteries that anthroposophy can bring us today. For that something like what is described here is taking place in a soul, or at least could take place relatively recently, is not just a 'fiction'. This writing is not just fantasy, but reality, it is real. And with Olaf Åsteson, it is pointed out to people of those Nordic regions who, in the Middle Ages, around the middle of the Middle Ages, still had the opportunity, one might say, to literally experience something as it is expressed here.

When our Norwegian friends gave me this poem during my penultimate visit to Kristiania and wanted to hear something about it from me, it was initially this fact, interesting from a general spiritual scientific point of view, that was emphasized, that pushed itself into the soul. But what led to our wanting to include this poem in our spiritual scientific program, so to speak, is that one can also go into the details more and more. Through anthroposophical understanding, one finds oneself delving ever deeper into what comes to light in the poem. For example, it was significant to me that Olaf — which is an old Norwegian name — has the epithet Åsteson: Åsteson. The son of what? Of Äste. And I tried to find out what kind of mother this son actually is. Of course, one can argue about the meaning of the word “Äst” in many different ways, and there are also things that can be disputed. It is not possible today to sort out everything that comes into question. But if we take into account everything that is in question, then a name such as Olaf Åsteson means: he who is still a son of that soul that goes down from generation to generation and is connected with the blood that runs from generation to generation. But we have traced this name back to what we have so often discussed in the field of anthroposophy, that in ancient times, ancient clairvoyance was connected with the kinship of the blood that runs through the generations. And one would be able to translate Olaf Åsteson as: Olaf, born of many generations and still carrying the characters of many generations in his soul.

If we now go into the experiences, it is extremely interesting to see what the sleeping Olaf Åsteson goes through from Christmas Eve through thirteen days, during which he does not wake up, that is, is in a kind of psychic state. If one allows the individual verses to take effect, which allow the individual experiences to arise before the soul with a broad, folksy comfort, one is reminded of certain descriptions of the first stages of initiation, where it is said that such and such a one has been led to the threshold of death. The poem shows that Olaf Åsteson comes to the gates of death. And it will be particularly vivid when he feels like a corpse himself – except for the earth that he feels between his teeth. If we remember that the etheric body of the person to be initiated grows beyond the boundaries of the skin and the person becomes bigger and bigger, so that the person lives into wide cosmic spaces, then we are pointed to in this poem how the person descends deeply, empathizes with the depths of the earth and ascends to cloud heights. What a person has to go through after death, for example in the sphere of the moon, is also what Olaf Åsteson has to go through. It is poetically described how the moon shines brightly and how the paths stretch far and wide. Then the gulf that has to be crossed in the world is shown, the one that lies between the human and the one that leads out into the cosmic expanse. And the bridge of heaven connects what is human with what is cosmic. Then our attention is drawn to the interplay of the beings that find expression in the constellations of Taurus and Ophiuchus. But for those who can see into the world spiritually, the constellations are only the expression of what is present in the spiritual realm in the vastness of space. And then the world of Kamalokaw is depicted in the description of 'Brooksvalin'. It is shown how a kind of retribution takes place, how people there go through - but in a compensatory way - what they have not acquired here on earth. But one does not need to interpret all the details of this poetry, one should not do that at all with such poetry. But one should feel that they emerged from such an atmosphere, which is closely related to what was present in such a people for much longer than in peoples who lived more in the interior of the continents or came into contact with big city culture. The Norwegian people, who still have much in their vernacular that comes close to the boundary of occult secrets, had the possibility for longer to keep the souls connected with what lives and moves behind the outer material phenomena.

Do you remember how I have dealt with the way the course of the year has its spiritual parallel series of facts? How in spring, when plants sprout from the earth, when everything comes to life, when the days get lighter, we have to recognize what we can call a kind of falling asleep of the elementary and higher spirits that are connected to the earth. In spring, when the earth awakens outwardly, in spiritual contemplation we are dealing with a kind of falling asleep of the earth. When outer nature dies down again, we are dealing with the awakening of the spiritual nature of the earth. And when outer nature is asleep around Christmas time, then that is the time when the spiritual of the earth, which is connected with earthly existence both through elemental, less significant beings and through great, powerful beings, is most active. It only appears so when viewed superficially, as if we had to compare spring with the awakening of the earth and winter with its falling asleep. For occult observation, it is the other way around. The spirit of the earth, which consists of many spirits, awakens in winter and sleeps in summer. Just as in the human organism the organic and vegetative are most active during sleep, as the forces play up into the brain, and as the purely organic activity is killed off during waking, so it is with the earth. When the earth is most active, when everything has sprouted, when the sun is at its highest around Midsummer, the spirit of the earth sleeps. And it is not without connection to these occult truths that Christmas, the festival of the awakening of the spirit, has been moved to the winter season. The things that have come down to us as customs from ancient times correspond in many ways to these occult insights.

Those who know how to live with the spirits of the earth do not just celebrate Midsummer in the summer. For the celebration of St. John's Day in summer is already a kind of materialistic celebration. One celebrates what external materialistic revelation shows. But he who has the connection with the spirit of the earth, with that which lives spiritually in the earth, awakens to his inner self, that is, he sleeps for his outer self, like Olaf Åsteson, best at Christmas time during the thirteen days. This is also an occult fact, which means exactly the same for occultism as, for example, the fact of the external position of the sun for external materialistic science. Of course, materialistic science will take it for granted that within astronomy it describes the activity of the sun in summer and in winter in a certain purely external way; it will consider it foolishness what is a fact for the occultist that the spiritual position of the sun is most intense in the winter time and that therefore the conditions are most favorable for those who want to come close to a deepening of the soul, which is connected with the spirit of the earth and with all spiritual. Therefore, for someone who wants to seek a deepening of their soul, it may turn out that they can have the best experiences during the thirteen days of the Christmas season, when, without us realizing it, the experiences arise from the soul, although the modern person is already so emancipated from external events that the occult experiences can come at any time. But in so far as the external can nevertheless have an influence, the time between Christmas and New Year is the most important.

Thus we are reminded in a very natural way by this poem how much of what we could mention when discussing the time between death and the next birth was still quite close to certain areas of the world relatively recently, as some people still knew from direct experience.

This is the first opportunity I have had of addressing you since the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum and before beginning the lectures themselves I want to speak of certain matters connected with the impulse which came into the Anthroposophical Movement through that Christmas Meeting. We were glad on that occasion to welcome a number of Members from England, above all Mr. Collison, a friend of many years and the President here, and I should like now to renew the greeting I gave him in Dornach then as the representative of the English Society.

The deep significance of the impulse brought into the Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Foundation Meeting must be realised to the full and many things that were said by way of characterisation before that Meeting will now have to be expressed in opposite terms. The Society had passed through difficult times both outwardly and in an occult sense too, because in the post-war period a number of different enterprises were set on foot from within the Society itself and this made it necessary that the Society should be imbued with a new impulse.

So far as I myself am concerned—and I may be permitted to say it here—this was connected with something of very great significance.

Some time before Christmas I was faced with a question—although the intention to give a new foundation to the Society had taken shape long before then.

It became necessary for me to decide on taking the very step I had for good reasons refused to take at the time when the Anthroposophical Society separated from the Theosophical Society. I had started then from the supposition that if I abstained from all administrative work and from the official leadership of the Society, merely occupying the position of a teacher, certain things connected with the inner life would present less difficulties than is the case when the teacher also holds an administrative office.

But what was to be expected in the years 1912 and 1913 did not come about; things have not worked out within the Anthroposophical Society as one assumed they would. And so I was obliged to give most earnest consideration to the question of whether I should or should not take over the Presidency. I came to the conclusion that it was necessary to do so. But among our English friends too I want to emphasise something that was inevitably associated with the decision to assume the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society. Vis-à-vis the Movement as a whole such a step was hazardous for it placed one before a very definite eventuality.

The whole basis of the Anthroposophical Movement is that revelations of the substance of spiritual knowledge flow down from the spiritual world. If one wishes to carry out the work of the Anthroposophical Movement, it is not possible to devote oneself exclusively to human affairs and activities. One must be open to receive what may flow from the spiritual worlds. The laws of the spiritual world are definite and inviolable; they must be strictly obeyed. And it is difficult to combine the demands of an external office to-day—even though it be the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society—with the occult duties connected with the revelations coming from the spiritual world. And so one was obliged to face the question: Will the Spiritual Powers who have showered their blessings upon the Anthroposophical Society hitherto, continue to do so?

You will certainly be able to realise what such an eventuality meant. The answer of the Spiritual Powers might well have been that this must not be, that there must be no assumption of any external, official position.

But to-day it can truly be said, before all the Spiritual Powers connected with the Anthroposophical Movement, that the links between the spiritual worlds and the revelations which should flow through the Anthroposophical Movement have become more intimate still and the revelations have been vouchsafed in even greater abundance than before; so of the two eventualities, the fortunate one for the progress of the Movement has actually come about. It may now be said that ever since the new Foundation of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum last Christmas, those Spiritual Powers from whom our revelations are received have showered upon us even greater grace than before. Therefore in this respect too, a heavy care has been removed from the Society.

Before the Christmas Meeting it was often necessary to emphasise the distinction between the Anthroposophical Movement which is the reflection on earth of a stream of spiritual life, and the Anthroposophical Society which had an external form of administration in that its functionaries were elected or formally appointed.

Since Christmas, the opposite holds good. The Anthroposophical Movement is now one with the Anthroposophical Society; the two are no longer to be distinguished from each other. For since I myself have become the President of the Society, the Anthroposophical Movement has become identical with the Anthroposophical Society.

This made it necessary in Dornach last Christmas to institute an Executive Council—which is not a Council in the exoteric sense but is to be regarded as an esoteric Executive Council, responsible for its actions to the Spiritual Powers alone, and which has not been elected, but just formed. The whole procedure at Christmas differed from that usually adopted at foundation gatherings. This Executive Council may be called a Council of initiative seeing its tasks in what it actually carries out. Hence the Statutes adopted at the Christmas Meeting are not worded in terms of ordinary Statutes but are a simple statement of the relationship that should exist between man and man, between the Council and the Members, between the individual Members themselves, and so forth. The intentions of the Council are set forth as a statement of what we intend and wish to do; they are “Statutes” in respect of form only. The whole procedure was quite different from that usually adopted by Societies.

The fact of salient importance is that an esoteric trend has now been brought into the Anthroposophical Society. The whole Movement, flowing through the Society as it now does, must have an esoteric character.

This must be taken in all earnestness. Only those impulses for human action which come from the spiritual world will be determinative so far as the Executive is concerned. It will not be a matter of giving effect to certain paragraphs or the like, but of promoting the true spiritual life unreservedly and with no other intent.

Reference may here be made to a matter that may seem of secondary importance. New Membership Cards have been or are in course of being issued. As we now have about 12,000 Members all over the world, the same number of Membership Cards have had to be prepared. All these Cards will now bear my own signature. Many people considered that a stamp could be used for this purpose. But in the Anthroposophical Movement from now onwards, everything must have a directly individual, human character and I must obey this even in a detail like the above. Every Membership Card must lie before my eyes, I must read each name and sign my own below it with my own hand. In this way a relationship is established with every individual Member—slight though such a relationship may be to begin with, it is nevertheless real in the human sense. It would of course be much easier to let somebody else stamp the 12,000 Membership Cards, but this will not be done. This is a symbolic indication that in the future the human element prevailing in the Society is all-important.

If the Executive Council at the Goetheanum is met with understanding from the Members, you will see that as time goes on every one of the intentions implicit in the Christmas Meeting will be carried into effect—although things can only be done by degrees and patience will be necessary. The Council must be met with understanding for it cannot take the fifth step before the second or the second before the first and if up to the present it has taken only half a step, the time will come when it is ready to take the fifth. If things are to be conducted in a really human way, one cannot live in the realm of abstraction; one must always enter into the concrete.

And so a new trend will become apparent in the Anthroposophical Movement. The Movement will be esoteric in spirit; it will no longer seek for the esoteric in external things. Certain truths that it will be possible to communicate will be esoteric for the reason that only those who participate in a living way in what goes on in the Society will be capable of really working upon and assimilating them. But the Lecture-Courses will no longer be withheld from the outside world as hitherto; they will not be sold through the trade but they will be available for those who wish to obtain them. We shall, however, make a certain spiritual reservation by stating that we can recognise only such objections or criticisms as may come from those who are qualified by knowledge to pass judgment upon the contents of the Lecture-Courses. Whatever people may choose to say in the future, in the domain of the occult one's actions must be positive, not negative.

All these things must be understood as time goes on. If the understanding is really there, the Anthroposophical Movement will take on an entirely new character. It will be realised that the Executive Council at the Goetheanum feels itself responsible only to the spiritual world and every individual in the Society will feel united with this Executive.

It may then be possible to achieve what must be achieved by the Anthroposophical Movement if it is to fulfil the aim which in the course of these lectures I shall set before you from the depths of the spiritual life.

For centuries now men have become less and less accustomed to turn their minds to the spiritual world. We say, and rightly say, that the last few centuries have inaugurated an age of materialism which has set its stamp not only upon man's thinking but also upon his will, his actions, indeed upon his whole life. And we in the Anthroposophical Society realise that the purpose of this Society is to awaken forces whereby men will be released from their bondage to matter, from influences which make them deny the reality of the Spiritual.

But if the Anthroposophical Movement is to provide the impulse that is needed in the evolution of humanity, all the teachings, all the treasures of wisdom which have for many years been flowing through it must be applied with real earnestness. We must ponder deeply on the realities of man's life to-day. He comes into the world through birth with traits inherited from parents and ancestors, he is influenced and guided by current views and opinions and at a certain age he becomes alert and awake to the life that surrounds him in the outer world. He pays attention to the ideas, the thoughts, the deeds, the impulses to be found in his environment; he tries to understand his place as a member of a particular nation, as a member of humanity in general, and so forth.

In the Anthroposophical Movement we accept the enlightening truth that all of us who are present here have passed through earlier lives on the earth. We have carried into this present life the fruits of those earlier lives. And we are mindful not only of what we are within our present nation, within modern humanity, but we realise that we have already passed through a number of incarnations on the earth and that in other conditions of existence between death and rebirth we have so worked at the development of the Self, the Ego, that we have made ourselves what we are to-day.

But in his everyday consciousness man does not realise that these previous earthly lives must also be taken into account. Nor will any progress be possible unless he studies the whole of life in the light of karma, of destiny taking shape from one earthly life to another. The historical life of humanity must, above all, be studied from this point of view. We say to ourselves that here or there an outstanding personality appeared, one who accomplished great things for mankind. Do we really understand such a personality if we merely consider that he was born at a certain time and then follow the experiences and events of that single life? If the teachings available in the Anthroposophical Movement are taken seriously, our attitude must rather be this: There we see a personality who in his incarnation now or in the past, represents the fruits of earlier earthly lives, and we cannot really understand him without taking those earlier lives into account.

If this point of view is seriously adopted, however, our conception of history will be radically different from that prevailing to-day. It is customary nowadays to recount the facts and events of the various epochs of human history—in connection, let us say, with a statesman, a painter or some other outstanding figure. Accounts are given of his life and deeds on earth, but the idea that earlier earthly lives play over into a given incarnation is never seriously considered. Yet there can be no real understanding of history without the knowledge that what happens in a later time is the fruit carried over by the human being himself from earlier into later epochs. The human beings who are living to-day or who lived centuries ago were also on the earth in past ages and have carried over into this later epoch the results of what they thought and experienced in those bygones times.

How, for example, are we to understand a phenomenon of the present age as disturbing as the following?—For well nigh two thousand years, all that was inaugurated through the Mystery of Golgotha has been with us; ever since then the Christ Impulse has been working in European and Western civilisation. But in the very same world through which the Christ Impulse has passed, warming the hearts and enlightening the minds of men, a different element has taken root. In that same world are to be found the results of all that is inculcated even into our children through the introduction of modern science into the schools, all the ideas and views presented to us by the newspapers every morning at breakfast. Then again, think of the prevailing conceptions of the nature and being of man, think of all that science has introduced into public life, all that art and other branches of culture have produced .. . it cannot be said that these things are permeated by the Christ Impulse. They are there side-by-side with the Christ Impulse. Indeed many men are at pains to prevent the influence of the Christ Impulse finding its way into the domains of anatomy, physiology, biology or history, and to keep all such fields of knowledge separate and apart.

Why is it so? As long as we merely speak of some personality who was, let us say, a scientist, who received this or that kind of education, who engaged in some form of research, or again, if we merely speak of a statesman as having been a Liberal or a Conservative, we shall not understand how the Christ Impulse can flow through modern civilisation simultaneously with elements that need have nothing whatever in common with Christianity. How can this be? We shall, however, be able to understand if we study the different earthly lives of outstanding personalities, for we shall realise then that human beings carry over into later epochs the thoughts, the impulses of will they unfolded in their earlier incarnations.

We observe personalities in history who have had great influence upon our own epoch. Think, for example, of one whose influence upon external life, especially in domains where science plays a part, has been deep and far-reaching—I am referring to Bacon, Lord Bacon of Verulam. He appears in the world and details of his life are well known. We see him working in the sphere of Christian civilisation. Yet there is no trace whatever of the Christian Impulse in his writings. Bacon of Verulam might equally have arisen from some non-Christian civilisation. What he actually says about Christianity is extremely superficial compared with the real impulse that was within him. The same characteristic is to be perceived in Bacon the scientist, Bacon the philosopher, Bacon the statesman.

Again, think of a personality like Darwin. Darwin was a good and sincere Christian, but there was no connection whatever between his Christianity and his ideas about the evolution of animals and man. The trend of thought in both cases is altogether different from that of the Christian Impulse.

We shall make no headway unless we ask ourselves: What can there have been in the earlier earthly lives, let us say of Bacon, or of Darwin? What had they carried over from their earlier incarnations?

If the Anthroposophical Society is to fulfil its purpose, such questions must no longer remain abstract. The mere knowledge that man lives many times on the earth, that one thing or another is carried over from an earlier into a later life will not lead us far. There is of course nothing against reflections of this kind; they amount to no more than a general belief and are innocuous. But what we must do is to study the concrete realities of man's being and understand his life in some later epoch in the light of what he was in earlier incarnations.

We shall now proceed to study these matters, beginning with an example taken from history, in order to tackle the subject of karma in all earnestness. Observing the progress of evolution revealed by civilisation, by the deeds of humanity, we shall be able to perceive how individuals carry over into a later epoch what they acquired and made their own in an earlier one.

For example: Bacon of Verulam appears in a certain age; Darwin appears in a later epoch. We discern a certain similarity between them. Superficial study merely sets out to discover how Bacon, how Darwin, evolved their particular views and ideas. But if we go more deeply into the matter we find that both of them introduce into Christian civilisation an element which, to begin with, is altogether inexplicable as a product of that civilisation.

As we look back, the question arises: Had not Bacon and Darwin passed through earlier lives on earth? They carried over from those earlier incarnations the traits and characteristics revealed in their later lives. When we understand them as individuals, then and only then do we understand their real place in history. For when the reality of karma is taken seriously, history resolves itself into deeds of men, into streams of human lives flowing from remote ages of the past into the present and thence into the future.

From now onwards these things will be spoken of without reserve; we shall speak of facts of the spiritual life in such a way that external history and the external world of nature will themselves reveal to us the spiritual realities lying behind.

It is certain that these questions, bearing as they do upon the spiritual and physical worlds alike, will, to begin with, be taken less seriously than is their due. For judgments about such matters cannot be formed as judgments are formed about the things of ordinary life. And in order to indicate the many underlying factors which have to be taken into consideration, I should like to make a certain personal reference—although it is meant to be quite objective—before we come to answer the questions: Who was Bacon in his previous life? Who was Darwin in his previous life?¹

In the Goetheanum Weekly, as you know, I am writing the story of my life. But in a periodical intended for the outside world as well, it is not possible to speak of everything and certain additions must be made for the sake of those within our Movement who earnestly desire to find their way into the spiritual world. And so to-day, before I proceed in the next lectures to answer such questions as have here been raised, I should like to make this brief personal reference.

Those who like myself were born in the sixties of last century have lived through the epoch when the Gabriel Rulership of the preceding three and a half centuries was superseded by the Michael Rulership. The Michael Rulership, that is to say the entry of the Sun-Impulse belonging to Michael into the civilisation of humanity, began at the end of the seventies of last century. In the time immediately after the entry of the Michael influence, in the eighties and nineties, when the Michael Rulership was beginning to take effect behind the scenes of external happenings, those who were passing through the period of the development of the Intellectual or Mind Soul—that is to say between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five—were really living in a kind of aloofness from the physical world. For when a human being is consciously active and alert in the Mind Soul he is aloof in a very real sense from the material world.

We speak of man as a being composed of physical body, etheric body, sentient body. With his physical body he stands clearly within the physical world. With his etheric body, sentient body and sentient soul too, he is strongly involved in the external world. But he can live aloof and apart from the external, material world when he is fully conscious in the Mind Soul, before the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul awakens in the thirty-fifth year of life. Full consciousness within the Mind Soul can transport a man altogether into the world of soul. And so in the eighties and nineties of last century there was opportunity for those possessed of the corresponding faculties to live in the Mind Soul, aloof to a greater or less extent from the physical world.

What does this mean? It means that in the Mind Soul, aloof from the material world, one was able to live in the very world into which Michael was entering on his way down towards the earth. The eighties and nineties produced many things that evoked wonder and admiration, there were many fields in which men became expert and many ways by which culture was enriched. Modern literature has words of high praise for this period. Think only of what was achieved by newspapers and in the world of art from the years 1879, 1880–1890 onwards. But in these very years there were happenings of an altogether different character.—Behind a thin veil, a very thin veil at that time, was a world adjoining our physical world. Peculiar conditions prevailed shortly before the close of Kali Yuga at the end of the 19th century. In a neighbouring world, separated from the physical world by a veil so thin that it was impenetrable only to the everyday consciousness of men, things were taking place which must come to clearer and clearer evidence in the physical world and their influences brought to effect.

In very truth something mysterious was at work in the closing decades of the 19th century. There were momentous happenings, grouped around the Spirit we name Michael. Participating in these happenings were strong and forceful followers of Michael, human souls living at that time in their existence between death and rebirth, not yet incarnate in the physical body; but there were also mighty demonic Powers who under the sway of Ahrimanic influences set themselves in rebellion against what was thus to come into the world.

If I may now be allowed to make a personal reference, it is this: Conceptions of the reality of the spiritual world presented no difficulty to me at any age. What the spiritual world revealed penetrated into my soul, formed itself into ideas, into thoughts. On the other hand, things that came easily to others were difficult for me. I was always able quickly to grasp the arguments of natural scientific thinking, but concrete facts would not remain in my memory, simply would not register there. I could without effort understand the wave-theory, the arguments of the mathematicians, physicists and chemists; on the other hand, unlike most others, I could not recognise a particular mineral if I had seen it only once or twice; I was obliged to look at it perhaps thirty or forty times before I could recognise it again. I found it difficult to retain concrete pictures of the things of the external, material world. It was not easy for me to come fully into the physical world of sense.

For this reason I lived with all the forces of the Mind Soul through what was taking place in this world behind the veil, in this sphere of Michael's activity. And it was there that the great challenge arose once and for all to deal earnestly with the reality of the spiritual world, to bring these momentous questions to the light of day. External life offered no incentive, for all that was done there was to hash up once again the old, well-worn biographies of men like Darwin and Bacon. But there behind the scenes, behind this thin veil, in the region where Michael was at work, the great questions were brought to an issue. And this above all was borne in upon one: What a vast difference there is between asking these questions inwardly and putting them into actual words!

At the present time people think that once something is known it can immediately be spoken about. Indeed everything that enters people's ken to-day is at once put into words and announced. But when the questions at issue in Michael's sphere in the eighties and nineties took hold of a man, they worked on into the 20th century. And even after having lived with these questions for decades, every time one wanted to utter them, it was as though the opponents of Michael gathered round and sealed one's lips—for about certain matters silence was to be maintained.

Much that remained a Michael secret had therefore to be carried onward in the heart of the Anthroposophical Movement itself—above all the truths relating to historical connections of the kind to which reference has been made. But for a certain time now—actually for months—it has been possible for me to speak of these things without reserve. That is why I have been able to speak freely of the connections between earthly lives, and shall also do so here. For this is part of the unveiling of those Michael Mysteries which took the course I have described to you.

This is one of the subjects which, up till now, has been dealt with in a more abstract way. At the beginning of the lecture I spoke of an eventuality, namely that the spiritual world might have withheld consent. It has not been so. What has actually happened is that since the Christmas Foundation Meeting and above all because of the opportunities vouchsafed to me for occult work, the demons who hitherto prevented these things from being voiced have been compelled to remain silent. The things to which I refer are not, of course, entirely new, for they were experienced a long time ago in the way I have indicated to you. But it must be remembered that in occultism things that are discovered one day cannot be communicated the next.

I have now spoken of a certain change in circumstances and am telling you these things in order that when, in the future, reference is made to concrete realities in the repeated earthly lives of conspicuous or inconspicuous personalities, you may understand them with the necessary earnestness. Such things must not be lightly taken but with the respect that is their due.

In the forthcoming lectures such indications will be multiplied and elaborated. But before speaking about earlier incarnations of men like Darwin and others I wanted first to emphasise by what kind of spiritual atmosphere these things must be pervaded and the nature of the enlightenment that needs to be shed upon them.

• 1. Dr. Steiner did not speak further of Darwin in these lectures. Readers are referred to his lecture in Dornach, 16th March, 1924. Karmic Relationships, Vol. I.

This is the first opportunity I have had of addressing you since the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum and before beginning the lectures themselves I want to speak of certain matters connected with the impulse which came into the Anthroposophical Movement through that Christmas Meeting. We were glad on that occasion to welcome a number of Members from England, above all Mr. Collison, a friend of many years and the President here, and I should like now to renew the greeting I gave him in Dornach then as the representative of the English Society.

The deep significance of the impulse brought into the Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Foundation Meeting must be realised to the full and many things that were said by way of characterisation before that Meeting will now have to be expressed in opposite terms. The Society had passed through difficult times both outwardly and in an occult sense too, because in the post-war period a number of different enterprises were set on foot from within the Society itself and this made it necessary that the Society should be imbued with a new impulse.

So far as I myself am concerned—and I may be permitted to say it here—this was connected with something of very great significance.

Some time before Christmas I was faced with a question—although the intention to give a new foundation to the Society had taken shape long before then.

It became necessary for me to decide on taking the very step I had for good reasons refused to take at the time when the Anthroposophical Society separated from the Theosophical Society. I had started then from the supposition that if I abstained from all administrative work and from the official leadership of the Society, merely occupying the position of a teacher, certain things connected with the inner life would present less difficulties than is the case when the teacher also holds an administrative office.

But what was to be expected in the years 1912 and 1913 did not come about; things have not worked out within the Anthroposophical Society as one assumed they would. And so I was obliged to give most earnest consideration to the question of whether I should or should not take over the Presidency. I came to the conclusion that it was necessary to do so. But among our English friends too I want to emphasise something that was inevitably associated with the decision to assume the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society. Vis-à-vis the Movement as a whole such a step was hazardous for it placed one before a very definite eventuality.

The whole basis of the Anthroposophical Movement is that revelations of the substance of spiritual knowledge flow down from the spiritual world. If one wishes to carry out the work of the Anthroposophical Movement, it is not possible to devote oneself exclusively to human affairs and activities. One must be open to receive what may flow from the spiritual worlds. The laws of the spiritual world are definite and inviolable; they must be strictly obeyed. And it is difficult to combine the demands of an external office to-day—even though it be the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society—with the occult duties connected with the revelations coming from the spiritual world. And so one was obliged to face the question: Will the Spiritual Powers who have showered their blessings upon the Anthroposophical Society hitherto, continue to do so?

You will certainly be able to realise what such an eventuality meant. The answer of the Spiritual Powers might well have been that this must not be, that there must be no assumption of any external, official position.

But to-day it can truly be said, before all the Spiritual Powers connected with the Anthroposophical Movement, that the links between the spiritual worlds and the revelations which should flow through the Anthroposophical Movement have become more intimate still and the revelations have been vouchsafed in even greater abundance than before; so of the two eventualities, the fortunate one for the progress of the Movement has actually come about. It may now be said that ever since the new Foundation of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum last Christmas, those Spiritual Powers from whom our revelations are received have showered upon us even greater grace than before. Therefore in this respect too, a heavy care has been removed from the Society.

Before the Christmas Meeting it was often necessary to emphasise the distinction between the Anthroposophical Movement which is the reflection on earth of a stream of spiritual life, and the Anthroposophical Society which had an external form of administration in that its functionaries were elected or formally appointed.

Since Christmas, the opposite holds good. The Anthroposophical Movement is now one with the Anthroposophical Society; the two are no longer to be distinguished from each other. For since I myself have become the President of the Society, the Anthroposophical Movement has become identical with the Anthroposophical Society.

This made it necessary in Dornach last Christmas to institute an Executive Council—which is not a Council in the exoteric sense but is to be regarded as an esoteric Executive Council, responsible for its actions to the Spiritual Powers alone, and which has not been elected, but just formed. The whole procedure at Christmas differed from that usually adopted at foundation gatherings. This Executive Council may be called a Council of initiative seeing its tasks in what it actually carries out. Hence the Statutes adopted at the Christmas Meeting are not worded in terms of ordinary Statutes but are a simple statement of the relationship that should exist between man and man, between the Council and the Members, between the individual Members themselves, and so forth. The intentions of the Council are set forth as a statement of what we intend and wish to do; they are “Statutes” in respect of form only. The whole procedure was quite different from that usually adopted by Societies.

The fact of salient importance is that an esoteric trend has now been brought into the Anthroposophical Society. The whole Movement, flowing through the Society as it now does, must have an esoteric character.

This must be taken in all earnestness. Only those impulses for human action which come from the spiritual world will be determinative so far as the Executive is concerned. It will not be a matter of giving effect to certain paragraphs or the like, but of promoting the true spiritual life unreservedly and with no other intent.

Reference may here be made to a matter that may seem of secondary importance. New Membership Cards have been or are in course of being issued. As we now have about 12,000 Members all over the world, the same number of Membership Cards have had to be prepared. All these Cards will now bear my own signature. Many people considered that a stamp could be used for this purpose. But in the Anthroposophical Movement from now onwards, everything must have a directly individual, human character and I must obey this even in a detail like the above. Every Membership Card must lie before my eyes, I must read each name and sign my own below it with my own hand. In this way a relationship is established with every individual Member—slight though such a relationship may be to begin with, it is nevertheless real in the human sense. It would of course be much easier to let somebody else stamp the 12,000 Membership Cards, but this will not be done. This is a symbolic indication that in the future the human element prevailing in the Society is all-important.

If the Executive Council at the Goetheanum is met with understanding from the Members, you will see that as time goes on every one of the intentions implicit in the Christmas Meeting will be carried into effect—although things can only be done by degrees and patience will be necessary. The Council must be met with understanding for it cannot take the fifth step before the second or the second before the first and if up to the present it has taken only half a step, the time will come when it is ready to take the fifth. If things are to be conducted in a really human way, one cannot live in the realm of abstraction; one must always enter into the concrete.

And so a new trend will become apparent in the Anthroposophical Movement. The Movement will be esoteric in spirit; it will no longer seek for the esoteric in external things. Certain truths that it will be possible to communicate will be esoteric for the reason that only those who participate in a living way in what goes on in the Society will be capable of really working upon and assimilating them. But the Lecture-Courses will no longer be withheld from the outside world as hitherto; they will not be sold through the trade but they will be available for those who wish to obtain them. We shall, however, make a certain spiritual reservation by stating that we can recognise only such objections or criticisms as may come from those who are qualified by knowledge to pass judgment upon the contents of the Lecture-Courses. Whatever people may choose to say in the future, in the domain of the occult one's actions must be positive, not negative.

All these things must be understood as time goes on. If the understanding is really there, the Anthroposophical Movement will take on an entirely new character. It will be realised that the Executive Council at the Goetheanum feels itself responsible only to the spiritual world and every individual in the Society will feel united with this Executive.

It may then be possible to achieve what must be achieved by the Anthroposophical Movement if it is to fulfil the aim which in the course of these lectures I shall set before you from the depths of the spiritual life.

For centuries now men have become less and less accustomed to turn their minds to the spiritual world. We say, and rightly say, that the last few centuries have inaugurated an age of materialism which has set its stamp not only upon man's thinking but also upon his will, his actions, indeed upon his whole life. And we in the Anthroposophical Society realise that the purpose of this Society is to awaken forces whereby men will be released from their bondage to matter, from influences which make them deny the reality of the Spiritual.

But if the Anthroposophical Movement is to provide the impulse that is needed in the evolution of humanity, all the teachings, all the treasures of wisdom which have for many years been flowing through it must be applied with real earnestness. We must ponder deeply on the realities of man's life to-day. He comes into the world through birth with traits inherited from parents and ancestors, he is influenced and guided by current views and opinions and at a certain age he becomes alert and awake to the life that surrounds him in the outer world. He pays attention to the ideas, the thoughts, the deeds, the impulses to be found in his environment; he tries to understand his place as a member of a particular nation, as a member of humanity in general, and so forth.

In the Anthroposophical Movement we accept the enlightening truth that all of us who are present here have passed through earlier lives on the earth. We have carried into this present life the fruits of those earlier lives. And we are mindful not only of what we are within our present nation, within modern humanity, but we realise that we have already passed through a number of incarnations on the earth and that in other conditions of existence between death and rebirth we have so worked at the development of the Self, the Ego, that we have made ourselves what we are to-day.

But in his everyday consciousness man does not realise that these previous earthly lives must also be taken into account. Nor will any progress be possible unless he studies the whole of life in the light of karma, of destiny taking shape from one earthly life to another. The historical life of humanity must, above all, be studied from this point of view. We say to ourselves that here or there an outstanding personality appeared, one who accomplished great things for mankind. Do we really understand such a personality if we merely consider that he was born at a certain time and then follow the experiences and events of that single life? If the teachings available in the Anthroposophical Movement are taken seriously, our attitude must rather be this: There we see a personality who in his incarnation now or in the past, represents the fruits of earlier earthly lives, and we cannot really understand him without taking those earlier lives into account.

If this point of view is seriously adopted, however, our conception of history will be radically different from that prevailing to-day. It is customary nowadays to recount the facts and events of the various epochs of human history—in connection, let us say, with a statesman, a painter or some other outstanding figure. Accounts are given of his life and deeds on earth, but the idea that earlier earthly lives play over into a given incarnation is never seriously considered. Yet there can be no real understanding of history without the knowledge that what happens in a later time is the fruit carried over by the human being himself from earlier into later epochs. The human beings who are living to-day or who lived centuries ago were also on the earth in past ages and have carried over into this later epoch the results of what they thought and experienced in those bygones times.

How, for example, are we to understand a phenomenon of the present age as disturbing as the following?—For well nigh two thousand years, all that was inaugurated through the Mystery of Golgotha has been with us; ever since then the Christ Impulse has been working in European and Western civilisation. But in the very same world through which the Christ Impulse has passed, warming the hearts and enlightening the minds of men, a different element has taken root. In that same world are to be found the results of all that is inculcated even into our children through the introduction of modern science into the schools, all the ideas and views presented to us by the newspapers every morning at breakfast. Then again, think of the prevailing conceptions of the nature and being of man, think of all that science has introduced into public life, all that art and other branches of culture have produced .. . it cannot be said that these things are permeated by the Christ Impulse. They are there side-by-side with the Christ Impulse. Indeed many men are at pains to prevent the influence of the Christ Impulse finding its way into the domains of anatomy, physiology, biology or history, and to keep all such fields of knowledge separate and apart.

Why is it so? As long as we merely speak of some personality who was, let us say, a scientist, who received this or that kind of education, who engaged in some form of research, or again, if we merely speak of a statesman as having been a Liberal or a Conservative, we shall not understand how the Christ Impulse can flow through modern civilisation simultaneously with elements that need have nothing whatever in common with Christianity. How can this be? We shall, however, be able to understand if we study the different earthly lives of outstanding personalities, for we shall realise then that human beings carry over into later epochs the thoughts, the impulses of will they unfolded in their earlier incarnations.

We observe personalities in history who have had great influence upon our own epoch. Think, for example, of one whose influence upon external life, especially in domains where science plays a part, has been deep and far-reaching—I am referring to Bacon, Lord Bacon of Verulam. He appears in the world and details of his life are well known. We see him working in the sphere of Christian civilisation. Yet there is no trace whatever of the Christian Impulse in his writings. Bacon of Verulam might equally have arisen from some non-Christian civilisation. What he actually says about Christianity is extremely superficial compared with the real impulse that was within him. The same characteristic is to be perceived in Bacon the scientist, Bacon the philosopher, Bacon the statesman.

Again, think of a personality like Darwin. Darwin was a good and sincere Christian, but there was no connection whatever between his Christianity and his ideas about the evolution of animals and man. The trend of thought in both cases is altogether different from that of the Christian Impulse.

We shall make no headway unless we ask ourselves: What can there have been in the earlier earthly lives, let us say of Bacon, or of Darwin? What had they carried over from their earlier incarnations?

If the Anthroposophical Society is to fulfil its purpose, such questions must no longer remain abstract. The mere knowledge that man lives many times on the earth, that one thing or another is carried over from an earlier into a later life will not lead us far. There is of course nothing against reflections of this kind; they amount to no more than a general belief and are innocuous. But what we must do is to study the concrete realities of man's being and understand his life in some later epoch in the light of what he was in earlier incarnations.

We shall now proceed to study these matters, beginning with an example taken from history, in order to tackle the subject of karma in all earnestness. Observing the progress of evolution revealed by civilisation, by the deeds of humanity, we shall be able to perceive how individuals carry over into a later epoch what they acquired and made their own in an earlier one.

For example: Bacon of Verulam appears in a certain age; Darwin appears in a later epoch. We discern a certain similarity between them. Superficial study merely sets out to discover how Bacon, how Darwin, evolved their particular views and ideas. But if we go more deeply into the matter we find that both of them introduce into Christian civilisation an element which, to begin with, is altogether inexplicable as a product of that civilisation.

As we look back, the question arises: Had not Bacon and Darwin passed through earlier lives on earth? They carried over from those earlier incarnations the traits and characteristics revealed in their later lives. When we understand them as individuals, then and only then do we understand their real place in history. For when the reality of karma is taken seriously, history resolves itself into deeds of men, into streams of human lives flowing from remote ages of the past into the present and thence into the future.

From now onwards these things will be spoken of without reserve; we shall speak of facts of the spiritual life in such a way that external history and the external world of nature will themselves reveal to us the spiritual realities lying behind.

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In the Goetheanum Weekly, as you know, I am writing the story of my life. But in a periodical intended for the outside world as well, it is not possible to speak of everything and certain additions must be made for the sake of those within our Movement who earnestly desire to find their way into the spiritual world. And so to-day, before I proceed in the next lectures to answer such questions as have here been raised, I should like to make this brief personal reference.

Those who like myself were born in the sixties of last century have lived through the epoch when the Gabriel Rulership of the preceding three and a half centuries was superseded by the Michael Rulership. The Michael Rulership, that is to say the entry of the Sun-Impulse belonging to Michael into the civilisation of humanity, began at the end of the seventies of last century. In the time immediately after the entry of the Michael influence, in the eighties and nineties, when the Michael Rulership was beginning to take effect behind the scenes of external happenings, those who were passing through the period of the development of the Intellectual or Mind Soul—that is to say between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five—were really living in a kind of aloofness from the physical world. For when a human being is consciously active and alert in the Mind Soul he is aloof in a very real sense from the material world.

We speak of man as a being composed of physical body, etheric body, sentient body. With his physical body he stands clearly within the physical world. With his etheric body, sentient body and sentient soul too, he is strongly involved in the external world. But he can live aloof and apart from the external, material world when he is fully conscious in the Mind Soul, before the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul awakens in the thirty-fifth year of life. Full consciousness within the Mind Soul can transport a man altogether into the world of soul. And so in the eighties and nineties of last century there was opportunity for those possessed of the corresponding faculties to live in the Mind Soul, aloof to a greater or less extent from the physical world.

What does this mean? It means that in the Mind Soul, aloof from the material world, one was able to live in the very world into which Michael was entering on his way down towards the earth. The eighties and nineties produced many things that evoked wonder and admiration, there were many fields in which men became expert and many ways by which culture was enriched. Modern literature has words of high praise for this period. Think only of what was achieved by newspapers and in the world of art from the years 1879, 1880–1890 onwards. But in these very years there were happenings of an altogether different character.—Behind a thin veil, a very thin veil at that time, was a world adjoining our physical world. Peculiar conditions prevailed shortly before the close of Kali Yuga at the end of the 19th century. In a neighbouring world, separated from the physical world by a veil so thin that it was impenetrable only to the everyday consciousness of men, things were taking place which must come to clearer and clearer evidence in the physical world and their influences brought to effect.

In very truth something mysterious was at work in the closing decades of the 19th century. There were momentous happenings, grouped around the Spirit we name Michael. Participating in these happenings were strong and forceful followers of Michael, human souls living at that time in their existence between death and rebirth, not yet incarnate in the physical body; but there were also mighty demonic Powers who under the sway of Ahrimanic influences set themselves in rebellion against what was thus to come into the world.

If I may now be allowed to make a personal reference, it is this: Conceptions of the reality of the spiritual world presented no difficulty to me at any age. What the spiritual world revealed penetrated into my soul, formed itself into ideas, into thoughts. On the other hand, things that came easily to others were difficult for me. I was always able quickly to grasp the arguments of natural scientific thinking, but concrete facts would not remain in my memory, simply would not register there. I could without effort understand the wave-theory, the arguments of the mathematicians, physicists and chemists; on the other hand, unlike most others, I could not recognise a particular mineral if I had seen it only once or twice; I was obliged to look at it perhaps thirty or forty times before I could recognise it again. I found it difficult to retain concrete pictures of the things of the external, material world. It was not easy for me to come fully into the physical world of sense.

For this reason I lived with all the forces of the Mind Soul through what was taking place in this world behind the veil, in this sphere of Michael's activity. And it was there that the great challenge arose once and for all to deal earnestly with the reality of the spiritual world, to bring these momentous questions to the light of day. External life offered no incentive, for all that was done there was to hash up once again the old, well-worn biographies of men like Darwin and Bacon. But there behind the scenes, behind this thin veil, in the region where Michael was at work, the great questions were brought to an issue. And this above all was borne in upon one: What a vast difference there is between asking these questions inwardly and putting them into actual words!

At the present time people think that once something is known it can immediately be spoken about. Indeed everything that enters people's ken to-day is at once put into words and announced. But when the questions at issue in Michael's sphere in the eighties and nineties took hold of a man, they worked on into the 20th century. And even after having lived with these questions for decades, every time one wanted to utter them, it was as though the opponents of Michael gathered round and sealed one's lips—for about certain matters silence was to be maintained.

Much that remained a Michael secret had therefore to be carried onward in the heart of the Anthroposophical Movement itself—above all the truths relating to historical connections of the kind to which reference has been made. But for a certain time now—actually for months—it has been possible for me to speak of these things without reserve. That is why I have been able to speak freely of the connections between earthly lives, and shall also do so here. For this is part of the unveiling of those Michael Mysteries which took the course I have described to you.

This is one of the subjects which, up till now, has been dealt with in a more abstract way. At the beginning of the lecture I spoke of an eventuality, namely that the spiritual world might have withheld consent. It has not been so. What has actually happened is that since the Christmas Foundation Meeting and above all because of the opportunities vouchsafed to me for occult work, the demons who hitherto prevented these things from being voiced have been compelled to remain silent. The things to which I refer are not, of course, entirely new, for they were experienced a long time ago in the way I have indicated to you. But it must be remembered that in occultism things that are discovered one day cannot be communicated the next.

I have now spoken of a certain change in circumstances and am telling you these things in order that when, in the future, reference is made to concrete realities in the repeated earthly lives of conspicuous or inconspicuous personalities, you may understand them with the necessary earnestness. Such things must not be lightly taken but with the respect that is their due.

In the forthcoming lectures such indications will be multiplied and elaborated. But before speaking about earlier incarnations of men like Darwin and others I wanted first to emphasise by what kind of spiritual atmosphere these things must be pervaded and the nature of the enlightenment that needs to be shed upon them.

A truth, intimately united with human aspiration and for centuries closely associated in the human heart with the festival whose modern symbol is the Christmas tree, is expressed in the words that have resounded ever since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and that must be impressed still more deeply into the evolution of the earth. This truth, which has shone down through the ages, is associated with the words, et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine (and is born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary).

Most of the people of today seem to attach just as little significance to these words as they do to the Easter mystery of the Resurrection. We might even say that the central mystery of Christianity, the resurrection from the dead, appears to modern thought, which is no longer directed to the truths of the spiritual world, just as incredible as the Christmas mystery, the mystery of the Word becoming flesh, the mystery of the virgin birth. The greater part of modern humanity is much more in sympathy with the scientist who described the virgin birth as “an impertinent mockery of human reason” than with those who desire to take this mystery in a spiritual sense.

Nevertheless, my dear friends, the mystery of the incarnation by the Holy Spirit through the Virgin begins to exert its influence from the time of the Mystery of Golgotha; in another sense it had made itself felt before this event.

Those who brought the symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the babe lying in the manger knew of the Christmas mystery of the virgin birth through the ancient science of the stars. The magi who brought the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh were, in the sense of the ancient wisdom, astrologers, they had knowledge of those spiritual processes that work in the cosmos when certain signs appear in the starry heavens. One such sign they recognized when, in the night between December 24 and 25, in the year that we today regard as that of the birth of Jesus, the sun, the cosmic symbol of the Redeemer, shone toward the earth from the constellation of Virgo. They said, “When the constellation of the heavens is such that the sun stands in Virgo in the night between December 24 and 25, then an important change will take place in the earth. Then the time will have come for us to bring gold, the symbol of our knowledge of divine guidance, which hitherto we have sought only in the stars, to that impulse which now becomes part of the earthly evolution of mankind. Then the time will have come for us to offer frankincense, the emblem of sacrifice, the symbol of the highest human virtue. This virtue must be offered in such a way that it is united with the power proceeding from the Christ Who is to be incarnated in that human being to whom we bring the frankincense.

“And the third gift, the myrrh, is the symbol of the eternal in man, which we have felt for thousands of years to be connected with the powers that speak to us from starry constellations; we seek it further by bringing it as a gift to him who is to be a new impulse for humanity; through this we seek our own immortality, in that we unite our own souls with the impulse of the Christ. When the cosmic symbol of world power, the sun, shines in the constellation of Virgo, then a new time begins for the earth.”

This was the belief held for thousands of years, and as the magi felt compelled to lay at the feet of the Holy Child the wisdom of the gods, the virtues of man, and the realization of human immortality, symbolically expressed in the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, something was repeated as a historical event that had been expressed symbolically in innumerable mysteries and in countless sacrificial rituals for thousands of years. There had been presented in these mysteries and rituals a prophetic indication of the event that would take place when the sun stood at midnight between December 24 and 25 in the sign of the Virgin, for gold, frankincense, and myrrh were also offered on this holy night, to the symbol of the divine child preserved in ancient temples as the representation of the sun.

Thus, my dear friends, for nearly two thousand years the Christian words, “incarnatus de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine” have resounded in the world, and so it has been ever since human thought has existed on the earth. In our times we can now present the question, “Do human beings really know to what they should aspire when they celebrate Christmas?” Does there exist today a real consciousness of the fact that, out of cosmic heights, under a cosmic sign, a cosmic power appeared through a virgin birth—spiritually understood—and that the blazing candles on the Christmas tree should light up in our hearts an understanding of the fact that the human soul is most intimately and inwardly united with an event that is not merely an earthly but a cosmic earthly event? The times are grave, and it is necessary in such serious times to give serious answers to solemn questions, such as the one raised here. With this in mind we will take a glance at the thoughts of the leading people of the nineteenth century to see whether the idea of Christ Jesus has lived in modern humanity in such a way as to give rise to the thought: the Christmas mystery has its significance in the fact that man wills to celebrate something eternal in the light of the Christmas candles.

Firstly we will take the words of a writer, Ernst Renan, who has given much study to the personality of Jesus and who has tried to give a picture of Christ Jesus out of the consciousness of the nineteenth century. We will listen to some of the voices of leading thinkers of the nineteenth century. Ernst Renan regarded the cities of Palestine with his physical eyes in true materialistic fashion. He desired to awaken in his own soul, from a materialistic standpoint, a picture of the personality known through the centuries as the Redeemer of the world. This is what he says:

“A beautiful outer nature tended to produce a much less austere spirit—a spirit less sharply monotheistic, if I may use the expression—which imprinted a charming and idyllic character on all the dreams of Galilee. The saddest country in the world is perhaps the region round about Jerusalem. Galilee, on the other hand, was a green, shady, smiling district, the true home of the Song of Songs, and the songs of the well-beloved. During the months of March and April the country forms a carpet of flowers of an incomparable variety of colors. The animals are small and exceedingly gentle—delicate and lively turtle doves, blue birds so light that they rest on a blade of grass without bending it, crested larks that venture almost under the feet of the traveler, little river tortoises with mild, lively eyes, storks with grave and modest mien, which, laying aside all timidity, allow man to come near them, seem almost to invite his approach.”

Ernst Renan never tires of describing this idyll of Galilee, so remote from the world's historic events, so as to make it seem natural that in this idyll, in this unpretentious landscape, with its turtle doves and storks, those things could happen that humanity for centuries has associated with the life of the Savior of the world.

So, my dear friends, that truth from which the earth received its meaning, the truth toward which humanity has looked for centuries, is attractive to a thinker of the nineteenth century only as an idyll with turtle doves and storks.

Ernst Renan proceeds, “The whole history of infant Christianity has become in this manner a delightful pastorale. A Messiah at the marriage festival, the courtesan and the good Zaccheus called to his feasts, the founders of the Kingdom of Heaven like a bridal procession—that is what Galilee has boldly offered and what the world has accepted.”

This, my dear friends, is one of the voices of the nineteenth century. Let us listen now to another, the voice of John Stuart Mill, who also desires to find his way from the consciousness of the nineteenth century to the being whom humanity for hundreds of years, and to the prophetic mind of man for thousands of years, has recognized as the Savior of the world.

John Stuart Mill says, “Whatever the rationalist may destroy of Christianity, Christ remains, a unique figure as different from his predecessors as from his successors, and even from those who enjoyed the privilege of his personal instruction. This estimate is not diminished if we say the Christ of the Gospels is not historical, for we are not in a position to know how much of what is worthy in Him has been added by His followers, for who among His disciples, or their followers, has been able to think out the speeches ascribed to Jesus, or to imagine a life and personality such as is portrayed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fisher-folk from Galilee, nor even St. Paul, whose whole character and inclination are of quite another kind, nor the early Christian writers. The kind of words that could be added and inserted by a scholar can be seen in the mystical part of the Gospel of St. John, who borrowed words from Philo and the Platonists of Alexandria and put them into the mouth of the Savior, who said many things about Himself of which not the slightest trace appears in the other Gospels. The East was full of people who could have stolen any number of such sayings, even as the many sects of the Gnostics did in later times. The life and teachings of Jesus, however, bear the stamp and impression of such profundity and personal originality that, if we deny ourselves the expectation of finding scientific exactitude, the prophet of Nazareth is placed in the foremost rank of venerated people of whom the human race may boast, even in the estimation of those who do not believe his divine inspiration. As this extraordinary spirit was equipped with the qualities of the greatest reformers and martyrs who have ever lived on earth, we cannot say that religion has made a bad choice” (Made a choice! We even choose in the nineteenth century!) “that religion has made a bad choice in setting up this man as an ideal representative and leader of humanity; also it would not be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better way of giving concrete expression to the abstract laws of virtue than to accept Christ as the model for our way of living. If, finally, we admit that even for the skeptic there remains the possibility that Christ was actually the person He said He was—not God; He never made the slightest claim to that; He would have seen in such a claim as great a blasphemy as would the people who judged Him—but the man expressly entrusted by God with the unique mission of leading humanity to truth and virtue, we may surely conclude that the influences of religion upon character, which would remain after the rationalistic critic had done his utmost against religion, are worthy of retention and, though they may lack direct proof as compared with other beliefs for which better evidence exists, the greater truth and correctness of their morality more than compensate for this lack.”

There we have the picture that the rationalists of the nineteenth century, by denying their own spirit, have given to that being whom humanity for centuries has recognized as the Savior of the world. Let us hear another voice, the voice of the international spirit, Heinrich Heine, and what he has to say:

“Christ is the God whom I love most, not because He is a God by inheritance, whose Father was God who had ruled the universe from time immemorial, but because He had no love for courtly, ceremonial display, although He was born the prince of heaven; I love Him because He was no aristocratic God, no panoplied knight, but a humble God of the people, a God of the town, a good citizen. Verily if Christ were not a God, I would choose Him for one and would much rather listen to Him, the God of my choice, than to a self-decreed, absolute God.”

“Only so long as religions have to struggle with each other in rivalry, and are more persecuted than followed, are they beautiful and worthy of veneration, only then do we see enthusiasm, sacrifice, martyrs, and palms. How beautiful, holy, and loveable, how heavenly sweet was the Christianity of the first centuries, as it sought to equal its divine founder in the heroism of His suffering—there still remained the beautiful legend of a heavenly God who in mild and youthful form wandered under the palms of Palestine preaching human love and revealing the teaching of freedom and equality—the sense of which was recognized by some of the greatest thinkers, and which has had its influence in our times through the French Gospel” (of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity).

Here we have this Heine Creed which regarded Him, whom humanity for centuries has recognized as the Redeemer of the world, as worthy of praise because we ourselves would have chosen Him, in our democratic fashion, even if He had not already held that exalted position, and because He preached the same Gospel as was preached later, at the end of the eighteenth century. He was therefore good enough to be as great as those who understood this Gospel.

Let us take another thinker of the nineteenth century. You know that I think very highly of Edward von Hartmann. I mention only those whom I do admire in order to show the manner in which the thought of the nineteenth century about Christ Jesus expressed itself.

“We see,” says Edward von Hartmann, the philosopher, “that the spiritual faculties of Jesus could not have achieved such good results without the magic of an impressive and loveable personality. This personality was endowed with unusual oratorical power, but His quiet majesty and personal tenderness must have been extraordinarily charming to his followers, not only to the men but to the women who made up so large a part of his following, in which prostitutes (Luke 7:37), married women of high rank (Luke 8:3), and young maidens of all classes mingled without discrimination. They were mostly eccentric persons, the epileptic, hysterical, or crazy, who believed themselves to be healed by Him. It is a well-known fact that such women are very prone to project or individualize their religious emotions and enthusiasms onto the person of an attractive male whom they proceed to make the center of a cult. Nothing is more obvious than that these women were of such a kind, and that even if they did not awaken in Jesus the idea of His Messiah-ship, yet it was so nourished by their adoring homage that it struck deep roots. According to modern psychological and psychiatrical opinion it is not possible for healthy religious feeling to flourish in such unhealthy soil, and today we would advise any religious reformer or prophet to shake off such elements in his following as much as possible, for they would merely end in compromising both him and his mission.”

Yet another voice I wish to quote, the voice of one of the principal characters in a romance that exercised a wide and powerful influence during the latter third of the nineteenth century over the judgment of the so-called “educated” humanity. In Paul Heyse's book, Die Kinder der Welt, the diary of Lea, one of the characters in the book, is reproduced. It contains a criticism of Christ Jesus, and those who know the world well will recognize in this judgment of Lea's one which was common to large numbers of human beings in the nineteenth century. Paul Heyse has Lea write, “The day before yesterday I stopped writing because an impulse drove me to read the New Testament once again. I had not opened the New Testament for a long time; it had been a long time since its many threatening, damning, and incomprehensible speeches had estranged and repelled my heart. Now that I have lost that childish fear, and the voice of an infallible and all-knowing spirit can be heard, since I have seen therein the history of one of the noblest and most wonderful of human beings, I have found much that greatly refreshed and comforted me.

“But its somber mood again made me depressed. What is more liberating, gracious, and comforting than joy in the beauty, goodness, and serenity of the world, yet while we are reading this book (the New Testament) we hover in a twilight of expectation and hope, the eternal is never fulfilled, it will only dawn when we have struggled through time; the full glory of joy never shines, there is no pleasantry, no laughter—the joy of this world is vanity—we are directed to a future that makes the present worthless, and the highest earthly joy of sinking ourselves deep in pure and loving thoughts is also open to suspicion, for only those can enter heaven who are poor in spirit. I am such a one, but it makes me unhappy to feel so, yet at the same time if I could break through this limitation I should no longer be what I am, thus my salvation and blessedness are not certain, for what transcends me is no longer. And then this mild, God-conscious man, in order to belong to the whole human race, departed from his own people with such strange hardness that he became a homeless one—it had to be so, but it chilled my feeling. Everything great that I had formerly loved, even when shrouded in majesty, was yet happily and comfortably linked with my being by ties of human need.”

Here you see the New Testament represented as it had to be if it was to provide satisfaction to such a typical person of the nineteenth century. Thus she says that everything great that she had formerly loved, even when shrouded in majesty, was yet happily and comfortably linked with her being by ties of human need. Because the New Testament contains a power that cannot be described in these terms, therefore, the Gospel failed to meet the needs of a person of the nineteenth century.

“When I read the letters of Goethe, of the narrow home life of Schiller, of Luther and his followers, of all the ancients back to Socrates and his scolding wife—I sense a breath of Mother Earth, from which the seed of their spirit grew, which also nourishes and uplifts mine own which is so much smaller.” Lea thus finds herself more drawn even to characters like Xanthippe than to the people of the New Testament, and this was the opinion of thousands and thousands of people in the nineteenth century.

“But this picture of a world forlorn alarms and estranges me, and I am unable to justify it by any belief that everything is guided and ordered by God.”

It is fitting, my dear friends, to ask in these grave times what is really the attitude of soul of people today with regard to the candles they burn at Christmas? For this attitude of soul is a complex of such voices as we have just examined and that could be multiplied a hundred or thousand fold. But it is not fitting in serious times to ignore and disregard the things that have been said about the greatest mystery of earthly evolution. It is much more fitting today to ask what the official representatives of the many Christian sects are able to do to check a development that has led human beings right away from an inwardly true and genuine belief in that which stands behind the lights of Christmas time. For can humanity make of such a festival anything but a lie, when the opinions just quoted from its best representatives are imposed upon that which should be perceived through the Christmas mystery as an impulse coming from the cosmos to unite itself with earthly evolution? What did the magi from the East desire when they brought divine gifts of wisdom, virtue, and immortality to the manger, after the event whose sign had appeared to them in the skies during the night between December 24 and 25 in the first year of our era? What was it these wise men from the East wished to do? They wanted, by this act, to furnish direct historical proof that they had grasped the fact that, from this time onward, those powers who had hitherto radiated their forces down to earth from the cosmos were no longer accessible to man in the old way—that is, by gazing into the skies, by study of the starry constellations. They wished to show that man must now begin to give attention to the events of historical evolution, to social development, to the manners and customs of humanity itself. They wished to show that Christ had descended from heavenly regions where the sun shines in the constellation of Virgo, a region from which all the varied powers of the starry constellations proceed that enable the microcosm to appear as a copy of the macrocosm. They wished to show that this spirit now enters directly into earthly evolution, that earthly evolution can henceforth be understood only by inner wisdom, in the same way as the starry constellations were formerly understood. This was what the magi wished to show, and of this fact the humanity of today must ever be aware.

People of today tend to regard history as though the earlier were invariably the cause of the latter, as though in order to understand the events of the years 1914 to 1917 we need simply go back to 1913, 1912, 1911, and so on; historical development is regarded in the same way as evolution in nature, in which we can proceed from effect to impulse and in the impulse find the cause. From this method of thinking, that fable convenue which we call history has arisen, with which the youth of today are being inoculated to their detriment.

True Christianity, especially a reverent and sincere insight into the mysteries of Christmas and Easter, provides a sharp protest against this natural scientific caricature of world history. Christianity has brought cosmic mysteries into association with the course of the year; on December 24 and 25 it celebrates a memory of the original constellation of the year 1, the appearance of the sun in the constellation of Virgo; this date in every year is celebrated as the Christmas festival. This is the point in time that the Christian concept has fixed for the Christmas festival. The Easter festival is also established each year by taking a certain celestial arrangement, for we know that the Sunday that follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox is the chosen day, though the materialistic outlook of the present time is responsible for recent objections to this arrangement.

To those who wish, reverently and sincerely, to tune their thoughts in harmony with the Mystery of Golgotha, the period between Christmas and Easter is seen as a picture of the thirty-three years of Christ's life on earth. Previous to the Mystery of Golgotha, with which I include the mystery of Christmas, the magi studied the heavens when they wished to investigate the secrets of human evolution or any other mysterious event. They studied the constellations, and the relative positions of the heavenly bodies revealed to them the nature of events taking place upon earth. But at that moment in which they became aware of the important event that was happening on earth, by the sign given to them through the position of the sun in Virgo on December 24 and 25, they said, “From this time onward the heavenly constellations themselves will be directly revealed in human affairs on the earth.”

Can the starry constellations be perceived in human affairs? My dear friends, this perception is now demanded of us, the ability to read what is revealed through the wonderful key that is given us in the mysteries of the Christian year, which are the epitome of all the mysteries of the year of other peoples and times. The time interval between Christmas and Easter is to be understood as consisting of thirty-three years. This is the key. What does this mean? That the Christmas festival celebrated this year belongs to the Easter festival that follows thirty-three years later, while the Easter festival we celebrate this year belongs to the Christmas of 1884. In 1884 humanity celebrated a Christmas festival that really belongs to the Easter of this year (1917), and the Christmas festival we celebrate this year belongs, not to the Easter of next spring but to the one thirty-three years hence (1950). According to our reckoning, this period—thirty-three years—is the period of a human generation, thus a complete generation of humanity must elapse between Christmas festivals and the Easter festivals that are connected with them. This is the key, my dear friends, for reading the new astrology, in which attention is directed to the stars that shine within the historical evolution of humanity itself.

How can this be fulfilled? It can be fulfilled by human beings using the Christmas festival in order to realize that events happening at approximately the present time (we can only say approximately in such matters) refer back in their historical connections in such a way that we are able to perceive their birthdays or beginnings in the events of thirty-three years ago, and that events of today also provide a birthday or beginning for events that will ripen to fruition in the course of the next thirty-three years. Personal karma rules in our individual lives. In this field each one is responsible for himself; here he must endure whatever lies in his karma and must expect a direct karmic connection between past events and their subsequent consequences.

How do things stand, however, with regard to historical associations? Historical connections at the present time are of such a nature that we can neither perceive nor understand the real significance of any event that is taking place today unless we refer back to the time of its corresponding Christmas year, that is 1884 in this case. For the year 1914 we must therefore look back to 1881. All the actions of earlier generations, all the impulses with their combined activity, poured into the stream of historic evolution, have a life cycle of thirty-three years. Then comes its Easter time, the time of resurrection. When was the seed planted whose Easter time was experienced by man in 1914 and after? It was planted thirty-three years before.

Connections that reach over intervals of thirty-three years are essential for an understanding of the time rhythms of historic evolution, and a time must come when people in the holy time that begins with Christmas Eve will say to themselves, “What I do now will continue to work on, but will arise as outer fact or deed (not in a personal but in a historic sense) only after thirty-three years. Furthermore, I can understand what is happening now in the events of the outer world only by looking back across the thirty-three years of time needed for its fulfillment.”

When, at the beginning of the 1880's, the insurrection of the Mohammedan prophet, the Mahdi, resulted in the extension of English rule in Egypt, when at about the same time a war arose through French influence between greater India and China over European spheres of control, when the Congo Conference was being held, and other events of a like nature were taking place—study everything, my dear friends, that has now reached its thirty-three years fulfillment. It was then that the seeds were sown that have ripened into the events of today. At that time the question should have been asked: what do the Christmas events of this year promise for the Easter fulfillment thirty-three years hence? For, my dear friends, all things in historic evolution arise transfigured after thirty-three years, as from a grave, by virtue of a power connected with the holiest of all redemptions: the Mystery of Golgotha.

It does not suffice, however, to sentimentalize about the Mystery of Golgotha. An understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha demands the highest powers of wisdom of which the human being is capable. It must be experienced by the deepest forces that can stir the soul of man. When he searches its depths for the light kindled by wisdom, when he does not merely speak of love but is enflamed by it through the union of his soul with the cosmic soul that streams and pulses through this turning point of time, only then does he acquire insight and understanding into the mysteries of existence. In days of old the wise men who sought for guidance in the conduct of affairs of human beings asked knowledge of the stars, and the stars gave an answer; so, today, those who wish to act wisely in guiding the social life of humanity must give heed to the stars that rise and set in the course of historic evolution. Just as we calculate the cyclic rotations of celestial bodies, so must we learn to calculate the cyclic rotations of historic events by means of a true science of history. The time-cycles of history can be measured by the interval that extends from Christmas to the Easter thirty-three years ahead, and the spirits of these time-cycles regulate that element in which the human soul lives and weaves in so far as it is not a mere personal being but is part of the warp and woof of historic evolution.

When we meditate on the mystery of Christmas, we do so most effectively if we acquire a knowledge of those secrets of life that ought to be revealed in this age in order to enrich the stream of Christian tradition concerning the Mystery of Golgotha and the inner meaning of the Christmas mystery. Christ spoke to humanity in these words, “Lo! I am with you always even to the end of the world.” Those, however, who today call themselves His disciples often say that; though the revelations from spiritual worlds were certainly there when Jesus Christ was living on earth, they have now ceased, and they regard as blasphemous anyone who declares that wonderful revelations can still come to us from the spiritual world. Thus official Christianity has become, in many respects, an actual hindrance to the further development of Christianity.

What has remained, however? The holy symbols, one of the holiest of which is portrayed in the Christmas mystery—these constitute in themselves a living protest against that suppression of true Christianity that is too often practiced by the official churches.

The spiritual science we seek to express through anthroposophy desires, among other things, to proclaim the great significance of the Mystery of Golgotha and the mystery of Christmas. It is also its task to bear witness to that which gives to earth its meaning, and to human life its significance. Since the Christmas tree, which is but a few centuries old, has now become the symbol of the Christmas festival, then, my dear friends, those who stand under the Christmas tree should ask themselves this question, “Is the saying true for us that is written by the testimony of history above the Christmas tree: Et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine? Is this saying true for us?” To realize its truth requires spiritual knowledge. No physical scientist can give answer to the questions of the virgin birth and the resurrection; on the contrary, every scientist must needs deny both events. Such events can only be understood when viewed from a plane of existence in which neither birth nor death plays the important part they do in the physical world. Just as Christ Jesus passed through death in such a way as to make death an illusion and resurrection the reality—this is the content of the Easter mystery—so did Christ Jesus pass through birth in such a way as to render birth an illusion and “transformation of being” within the spiritual world the reality, for in the spiritual world there is neither birth nor death, only changes of condition, only metamorphoses. Not until humanity is prepared to look up to that world in which birth and death both lose their physical meaning will the Christmas and Easter festivals regain their true import and sanctity.

Then, and only then, my dear friends, will our hearts and souls be filled with inner warmth of tone, fortified by which we shall be able again to speak to our little ones, to speak to them even in earliest childhood, of that Child who was laid in the manger, and of the three wise men who brought to him their gifts of wisdom, virtue, and immortality. We must be able to speak of these things to children, for what we say to the child about the Christmas mystery will be celebrated by him as an Easter festival, it will reappear in his life when he has lived through thirty-three years. For in historical evolution the responsibilities of humanity are such that one generation can only express as Christmas impulse those forces that the next generation will experience as Easter impulse. If we could realize this with consciousness, my dear friends, one generation would think of its successor in the following way: in the Christmas star I teach you to receive into your soul as truth that which will arise as the Easter star after thirty-three years. If we were conscious of this connection of the present generation and its successor, each one of us could say, “I have received an impulse for work that extends far beyond the limits of the day, for the period between Christmas and Easter is not merely the weeks that lie between these festivals but is really a period of thirty-three years; this is the true cycle of an impulse that I have implanted in the soul of a child as a Christmas impulse, and that after thirty-three years will arise again as an Easter impulse.”

Such things, my dear friends, should not encourage pride in mere theoretical knowledge; they achieve value only when they are expressed in practical deeds, when our souls become so filled with conviction concerning them that we can do nothing but to act according to their light. Only then is the soul filled with love for the great being for whom the deeds, in this light, are done; then this love becomes a concrete thing, filled with cosmic warmth, and quite distinct from that sentimental affectation that we find today on all lips but that has led, in these catastrophic times, to some of the greatest impulses of hatred among humanity. Those who for so long have talked about love have no further right to speak of it when it has turned to hate; to such persons falls rather the duty of asking themselves, “What have we neglected in our talk of love, of Christmas love, that out of it deeds of hatred have developed?” Humanity, however, must also ask, “What must we seek in the spiritual world in order to find that which is lost, that love that rules and lives warmingly in all beings but is only real love when it wells up from a vital understanding of life.”

To love another is to understand him; love does not mean filling one's heart with egotistical warmth that overflows in sentimental speeches; to love means to comprehend the being for whom we should do things, to understand not merely with the intellect but through our innermost being, to understand with the full nature and essence of our human being.

That such a love, springing from deepest spiritual understanding, may be able to find its place in human life, that desire and will should exist to cherish such love, may still be possible in these difficult times for him who is willing to tread again the path of the magi to the manger. He may say to himself, “Just as the wise men from the East sought understanding to find the way, the way of love, to the manger, so will I seek the way that will open my eyes to the light in which the true deeds of human love are performed. Just as the magi surrendered their faith in the authority of the starry heavens, added to their knowledge of the stars their sacrifice of this knowledge, and brought the union of immortality with this stellar wisdom to the Christ Child on that Christmas night, so must humanity in these later times bring its deepest impulses of soul as sacrifice to that being for whom the Christmas festival stands as the yearly symbol. Inspired by such a consciousness, the Christmas festival will again be celebrated by humanity sincerely and truly. Its celebration then will express not a denial but a knowledge of that being for whom the Christmas candles are lit.”

This year's General Assembly of the Goethe Society on May 8, 1891 was a particularly solemn one, as it took place in the middle of the festive week dedicated to the commemoration of that momentous moment in German art when the Weimar Court Theatre was opened under Goethe's direction one hundred years ago. The connection between the two celebrations also found special expression in the fact that Prof. Suphan, the director of the Goethe Archive, was able to report on an important discovery of documents relating to Goethe's management of the theater. The meeting was extremely well attended. Their Royal Highnesses, the Grand Duke, the Grand Duchess, the Hereditary Grand Duke and the Hereditary Grand Duchess as well as the Princesses Auguste and Olga of Saxe-Weimar honored the meeting with their visit. The following foreign guests were present: Minister von Goßler, Privy Councillor von Loeper, Wildenbruch, Bodenstedt, Spielhagen, Julius Wolff, W. Freiherr von Biedermann, Privy Councillor Freiherr von Bezecny, Lud. Aug. von Frankl, Erich Schmidt, Jul. Rodenberg and many others. The meeting was chaired by Privy Councillor von Loeper, who welcomed the society and expressed his regret that President von Simson was unable to attend due to health reasons. Privy Councillor Dr. Ruland then presented the annual report, which showed that the number of members on December 31, 1890 was 2988; the Society's assets on that day amounted to 37,289 marks, of which 21,396 marks served as a reserve fund. As a Christmas gift for the members of the Goethe Society, a publication on Goethe's relationship to the Weimar theater was promised on the basis of the above-mentioned discovery of files by Dr. C. A. H. Burkhardt and Dr. Julius Wahle. Prof. Dr. Valentin from Frankfurt a.M. gave the keynote speech "On the classical Walpurgis Night". The lecturer endeavored to refute those views that want to see contradictions everywhere in Goethe's "Faust" and deficiencies in its unified composition. Despite some gaps and unevenness in the progression of the plot, "Faust" is a consistent, unified poem. It is the counterpart to Wilhelm Meister. But while in the latter work the poet allows his hero to find the goal of his striving in the real world, he places such a powerful urge for human perfection in Faust's soul that it becomes impossible to grant it satisfaction in this finite world. Faust's striving is for something infinite and eternal. But one that not only represents the sum of all that is finite, but goes into the depths of all being. Mephistopheles cannot understand the latter. He only knows the former infinity. Therefore he leads Faust from pleasure to pleasure. But what Faust seeks, he cannot grant him. This is why the role of Mephistopheles changes in the course of the play. From Faust's guide, which he was in the first part, he becomes in the second part the henchman who procures the external means for Faust's higher purposes, the latter of which he no longer even suspects. He gives Faust the key to the Mothers' apartments, but remains completely unaware of his fate in this spirit realm. In Mephistopheles' "Nothing", Faust finds the symbol of all beauty, Helena, and brings her to the upper world, but initially only as a dream image, as a shadow. She needs to be embodied, to exist in the flesh. This can only be achieved if a germ of humanity is produced from the forces of nature that is capable of cloaking the shadow of beauty with real life. This is the homunculus. It becomes Faust's guide into classical antiquity, where it dissolves in order to continue to act as the force that forms Helena's body from the elements of nature around her spirit. Thus Faust is in possession of this only one of the women; but he still cannot be satisfied, for no finite thing, whether it is in the past or the present, can satisfy him. Only when he wants to banish all magic from his path through life, when he renounces all finite, selfish pleasure and lives only in the anticipation of a happiness that he has created but no longer enjoys, does he reach that supreme moment when he wants to say: "Linger on, you are so beautiful". Faust's soul is lost to Mephistopheles, who believed he could hold on to it in his final enjoyment.

This keynote speech was followed by Prof. Suphan's presentation of the files he had found. These represent a large part of the old theater archive. They were found in a barely accessible corner of the part of the palace known in Weimar as the "Bastille" and were donated to the Goethe and Schiller Archive by His Royal Highness the Grand Duke on December 24, 1890. There are seventy-eight volumes and fascicles. One part consists of the so-called DirektionsAkten, i.e. those documents from the management of the Court Theater Commission set up in 1797. This commission consisted of Goethe, von Luck and Kirms, later Goethe, Kirms and Rat Kruse. The second part consists of the files of the branch theaters where the members of the Weimar theater performed during the summer season. 35 of the volumes in this section relate to the Lauchstadt theater and are from the years 1791 to 1814. This series contains the documents relating to the famous Leipzig guest performance of 1807. Three volumes concern the theater in Halle since 1811, seven Erfurt (1791-95 and 1815), ten Rudolstadt (1794-1805), one Jena, three Naumburg. Goethe dictated and reviewed a large number of these plays. A manuscript of the prelude "Was wir bringen" (from the hand of the scribe Geist) is among the files, as well as 44 letters from Goethe to Kirms and 34 to other people. In addition to purely business matters, the former also deal with matters of literary and artistic interest. The collection also includes letters from Schiller, such as one in which he expresses his approval of the Wallenstein performance in Lauchstädt. Karl August's relationship to the theater is evident from many of the documents. Of particular importance are those sheets that show the care with which Goethe managed the theater and how nothing was too small for him to concern himself with it.¹

After these announcements, Prof. Suphan gave a special report on the Goethe Archive and the Goethe Library. With regard to the former, it was emphasized that Goethe's natural science estate had also recently been viewed and processed for the edition. The work of Prof. Bardeleben from Jena and the writer of these lines has progressed so far that readers of the Weimar Goethe edition will probably be able to see a larger part of the discovered estate in the course of this year. It will make a significant contribution to finally making Goethe's pioneering work in the scientific field clear to even the greatest doubters. Goethe tackled morphology in such a way that he has not yet been caught up with by specialist science; in the field of osteology, there are works on the skull of mammals and the shape of animals, which introduce a method into anatomy that was only recognized as the correct one decades later by Merkel and others.

The library was augmented by purchases of valuable items, particularly of older literature, and by numerous donations. The Grand Duke donated 106 letters by Wieland to the archive, which was significantly enriched by the acquisition of Otto Ludwig's manuscript estate, which is being edited by Erich Schmidt.

Geheimrat Hofrat Ruland now presented the report on the Goethe National Museum. The museum is continuing to organize its collections, in particular Goethe's library.

The General Assembly was followed by a communal lunch, during which Minister Groß made toasts to the Emperor, Privy Councillor von Loeper to the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, Erich Schmidt to the Weimar Theater and Minister von Gossler to the Goethe Society. Ludw. Aug. von Frankl brought a festive greeting from Vienna. The festival concluded with a performance of Paul Heyse's new play "Die schlimmen Brüder" in the court theater.

• 1. The aforementioned publication of the Goethe-Gesellschaft, which will be sent to members as this year's Christmas gift, is to be entitled: "Documents on the History of Goethe's Theater Management 1791 to 1817", by C. A. H. Burkhardt and J. Wahle.

Privately printed for the members of the College of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum. No one is considered competent to pass judgment upon these writings who has not acquired the prerequisite knowledge demanded by this school, either through the school itself or in a manner approved by it. Opinions expressed by other persons will be disregarded; the authors of the writings in question will engage in no discussion regarding them.

This lecture was given at Basel in December of 1918, and is included in Volume 187 of the Bibliographic Survey, 1961. It is lecture 1 of 8 from the lecture series: How Can Humanity Find the Christ Again? It was published in German as, Wie Kann die Menschheit den Christus Wiederfinden? Das Dreifache Schnattendasein Unserer Zeit und das Neue Christus-licht. It has been translated from notes unrevised by the lecturer, by Olin D. Wannamaker.

Like two mighty pillars of the spirit have the two annual festivals, the festivals of Christmas and Easter, been set by the Christian cosmic feeling within the course of the year, which should be a symbol of the course of man's life. We may say that in the conception of Christmas and the conception of Easter there stand before the human soul those two spiritual pillars upon which are inscribed the two great mysteries of man's physical existence which he must look upon very differently from the way in which he views other events in the course of his physical life. It is true that a super-sensible element is projected into this physical life—through sense observation, through intellectual judgments, through the content of feeling and will. But this super-sensible element is in other cases clearly manifest as such—for instance, when the Christian cosmic feeling undertakes to symbolize it in the festival of Pentecost. In the Christmas conception, however, and that of Easter, attention is drawn to those two events occurring within the course of the physical life which are in their external appearance purely physical but which—in contrast with all other physical events—do not immediately manifest themselves as physical events. We can look upon the physical life of man as we look upon nature; we can thus look upon the external side of the physical life, the external manifestation of the spiritual. But we can never view with our physical vision the two boundary experiences of the course of human life—not even the external aspect, the external manifestation—without being brought face to face, even through our physical vision, with the tremendous riddle, the element of mystery, in these two events. They are the events of birth and death. And in the life of Christ Jesus stand these two events of man's physical life—and likewise in the Christmas and Easter conceptions, reminding us of them—confronting the responsive Christian heart.

In the thought of Christmas and the thought of Easter, the soul of man wills to look upon the two great mysteries. And, as it thus looks, it finds in this contemplation strength filled with light for man's thought, content filled with power for the will, an upright lift of the whole man, from whatever situation he needs this upright lift. As they thus confront us, these two pillars of the spirit—the thought of Christmas and the thought of Easter—they possess an eternal worth.

But, in the course of man's evolution, his capacities of conception have approached in manifold ways the great Christmas thought and the great Easter thought. During the earliest times of the evolution of Christianity, when the Event of Golgotha had penetrated with shattering effect into human emotions, men gradually found their way to the view of the Redeemer dying on Golgotha, as they came during the earliest Christian centuries to feel in the Crucified One hanging on the cross the thought of Redemption, and gradually formed for themselves the great and powerful imagination of the Christ dying on the cross. But in the later times, especially since the modern age began, Christian feeling—adapting itself to the materialism rising in human evolution—has turned to the picture of the childlike element entering the world in the newborn Jesus.

We can certainly say that a sensitive feeling will find in the way in which the Christian sentiment of Europe has turned during recent centuries to the Christmas manger something of a materialistic Christianity. The craving—this is not said in a bad sense—to caress the infant Jesus has become trivial in the course of the centuries. And many a song about the infant Jesus felt in our day to be beautiful—or charming, as many express it—will not seem to us to possess a deep enough seriousness in the presence of these more serious times.

But the Easter thought and the Christmas thought, my dear friends, are two eternal pillars, eternal memorial pillars, of the human heart. And we can truly say that our age of new spiritual revelations will cast a new light upon the Christmas thought; that the Christmas thought will gradually come to be felt in a new form and in a glorious way. It will be our task to hear in the present world events the call to a renovation of many an old conception, a call to a new revelation of the spirit. It will be our task to understand how a new conception of Christmas, for the strengthening and uplifting of the human soul, is working its way up through the present course of world events.

The birth and death of the human being, no matter how we may analyze them, how intensely we may look at them, manifest themselves as events which play their role directly upon the physical plane, and in which the spiritual is so dominant that no one who earnestly reflects upon things could deny that these two events, these earthly events of human life, give evidence as they work upon the human being that man is the citizen of a spiritual world. No vision of the natural world can ever succeed—in the midst of what can be perceived by the senses, understood by the intellect—in finding in birth and death anything other than events in which the intervention of the spirit is manifested directly in the physical. Only these two events manifest themselves thus to the human heart.

As to the Christmas event also, the event of birth, the human and Christian heart must have an ever deepening sense of mystery. We can say that men have seldom risen to the level whence they could, in the true sense, direct their look to the mysterious nature of birth. Very seldom, indeed, but then in concepts that speak to the utmost depths of the human heart.

So it is, my dear friends, in the conception associated with the spiritual life of Switzerland of the fifteenth century, with Nicholas von der Flue. It is related of him—and he himself related this—that, before his birth, before he could breathe the outer air, he had beheld his own human form, that which he would wear after his birth should have occurred and his life should have begun its course. And he had beheld before his birth the ceremony of his own christening, the persons who were present at the christening and who shared in his earliest experiences. With the exception of one elderly person who was then present and whom he did not know, he recognized the others because he had already seen them before he beheld the light of the world.

However we may view this narration, we shall not be able to escape the impression that it points in a way to the mystery of human birth, which confronts world history so magnificently symbolized in the Christmas conception. In the story of Nicholas von der Flue we shall find the suggestion that there is connected with our entrance into the physical life something which is concealed from the every-day view of humanity only by a very thin partition wall; by a wall which can be broken through when such a karmic situation exists as was present in the case of Nicholas von der Flue. Such a startling allusion to the mystery of birth and of Christmas still meets us here and there; but we must say that humanity has as yet become very little aware of the fact that birth and death, the two boundary pillars of human life facing us in the midst of the physical world, reveal themselves even in their physical manifestation as spiritual events, such as could never occur within the mere course of nature; as events in which, on the contrary, spiritual divine Powers intervene, as is evident in the very fact that both these boundary experiences of the course of human life must still remain mysteries, even in their physical manifestation.

The new revelation of the Christ now leads us to contemplate the course of man's life—so we may safely say—as Christ wills that we should contemplate it in the twentieth century. Let us recall today, as we desire to enter deeply into the thought of Christmas, a saying reported to have been uttered by Christ Jesus which can rightly lead us to the Christmas conception. The saying runs thus: “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” “Except ye become as little children”—this is truly not an exhortation to strip away all the mystery character of the Christmas conception, and to drag it down to the triviality of “dear little Jesus,” as many folk songs and artistic songs have done—but the folk songs less than the artistic—in the course of the materialistic evolution of Christianity. This very saying—“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven”—impels us to look upward to mighty impulses surging through the stream of human evolution. And in our own present time, when all that is taking place in the world surely does not give occasion for lapsing into trivial conceptions of Christmas, when the human heart is filled with so much that is painful, when this human heart must reflect upon so many millions of human beings who have met their death in the last few years, must reflect upon countless multitudes who hunger for food,—in this time surely nothing is fitting for us save to behold the mighty thoughts within world history which impel humanity in its onward course, thoughts to which we can be guided by the saying, “Except ye shall become as little children,” which we can supplement by this other saying: “Unless you live your life in the light of this thought, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

My dear friends, the very moment when the human being enters into the world as a child he withdraws from the world of spirit. For what occurs in the physical world, the procreation and growth of his physical body, is only the ensheathing of that event which cannot be described otherwise than by saying that man in his deepest being withdraws from the spiritual world. Man is born out of the spirit into a body. When the Rosicrucian said: “Ex deo nascimur,” he meant the human being to the extent that he enters the physical world. For that which constitutes the sheaths around the human being, which renders him a physical totality here on the earthly globe, is what is indicated by the saying: Ex deo nascimur. If we look at the centre of the human being, at the inner midmost entity, we must say that man journeys out of the spirit into the physical world. Through that which occurs in the physical world, that upon which he has looked down from the land of the spirit before his conception or his birth, he is enveloped in his physical body, in order that he may experience in his physical body things which cannot be experienced except in such a body. But, in his centre-most being, man comes out of the spiritual world. And he is of such a nature that in his earliest years—to the eyes of those who will to see things as they are in the world, who are not blinded by the illusion of materialism—he is of such a nature, this human being, that he reveals even in his earliest years how he has come out of the spirit. What we experience in connection with the child is of such a character, for those who possess insight, as to reveal to one's feeling the after effects of experiences in the spiritual world.

It is to this mystery that such narrations as that associated with the name of Nicholas von der Flue are intended to allude. A trivial view, strongly influenced by a materialistic mode of thinking, declares in its simplicity that the human being gradually develops his ego in the course of his life from birth to death; that this ego becomes more and more powerful and mighty, more and more distinctly manifest. This is a naive way of thinking, my dear friends. For, if we look upon the true ego of man, upon that which comes into a physical sheathing at the birth of the human being out of the spiritual world, we then express ourselves very differently about man's whole physical evolution. That is, we then know that, as the human being progressively develops in the physical body, the true ego actually vanishes out of the physical form, that it becomes less and less manifest; and that what develops here in the physical world between birth and death is only a mirrored reflection of spiritual occurrences, a dead reflection of a higher life. The right form of expression would be to declare that the entire fullness of the being of man gradually disappears into the body, becoming continually less and less manifest. As the human being lives his physical life here upon the earth, he gradually loses himself in his body, to find himself again in the spirit after death. So does one who knows the facts express himself. But one who is ignorant of the facts declares that the child is incomplete, and that the ego little by little develops to an ever greater perfection, growing out of the undefined subconscious levels of man's existence. He who knows what is beheld by the spiritual seeker must express himself in just this realm otherwise than is done by the sense-consciousness of our age, enmeshed in external illusions, still always materialistic in the trend of its sentiments.

Thus man enters the world as a spiritual being. His bodily nature, while he is a child, is still undefined; it has as yet laid small claim to the spiritual nature, which enters the physical existence as if there falling asleep—but appearing to us so little filled with content only because we can perceive this spiritual being, in ordinary physical life, just as little as we can perceive the sleeping ego and astral body when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies. But the fact that we do not perceive a being does not make it less perfect. This is what the human being has to acquire by means of his physical body—that he entombs himself more and more in the physical body for the purpose of achieving by means of this burial in the body capacities which can be acquired only in this way, only through the fact that the spirit and soul being for a time loses itself in the physical existence. In order that we may always remember our spiritual origin, that we may grow strong in the thought that we have journeyed out of the spirit into the physical world—it is for this reason that the Christmas conception stands there like a mighty pillar of light amid the Christian cosmic feeling. This thought, as a Christmas thought, must grow ever stronger in the future spiritual evolution of humanity. Then will the Christmas conception become powerful again for humanity; then will mankind once more approach the Christmas festival in such a way as to draw forces for the physical life out of the Christmas conception, which can remind us in the right way of our spiritual origin. Seldom can this Christmas thought be so powerful at the present time as it will then be in human hearts. For it is a strange fact, but rooted in the very laws of spiritual existence, that what comes to light in the world—bearing mankind forward, helpful to mankind—does not at once appear in its ultimate form: that it first appears, as it were, tumultuously, as if prematurely brought forth by unlawful spirits in world evolution. We understand the historic evolution of humanity in its true meaning only when we know that truths are not to be understood only as they first appear oftentimes in world history, but that we must consider in relation to truths the right moment for their entrance into human evolution in their true light.

Among many kinds of thoughts which have entered into the evolution of modern humanity—certainly inspired by the Christ impulse, but at first in a premature form—is the conception of the equality of mankind before God and the world, the equality of all men, a thought profoundly Christian but capable of an ever increasing profundity. But we should not place this thought before men's hearts in such a generalization as that given to it by the French Revolution, when it first appeared tumultuously in human evolution. We must be aware of the fact that this life of man from birth to death is involved in a process of evolution, and that the primary impulses working upon it are distributed in time. Let us reflect about the human being as he enters into the sensible existence: he enters life filled with the impulse of the equality of the human nature in all men. We sense the child nature with the greatest intensity when we see a child permeated through his whole being by the conception of the equality of all men. Nothing which creates inequality among men, nothing that so organizes men that they feel themselves different from other men—nothing of all this enters at first into the child's nature. All this is imparted to the human being in the course of the physical life. Inequality is created by the physical existence; out of the spirit human beings come forth equal before the world and God and before other human beings. Thus does the mystery of the child declare.

And to this mystery of the child the Christmas conception is united, which is to find its deeper meaning in the new Christian revelation. For this new Christian revelation will take into account the new Trinity: the human being, as he directly represents humanity; the Ahrimanic; and the Luciferic. And, as it comes to be known how the human being is placed in the world in a relationship of balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, it will be understood also what this human being really is in the external physical existence.

Most of all must understanding come about, Christian understanding, in reference to a certain aspect of human life. Clearly will Christian thought proclaim in future what has already been affirmed by certain spirits since the middle of the nineteenth century, though in stammering accents and never quite distinctly. When we grasp the fact that the thought of equality enters the world in the child, but that forces of inequality later develop in man, as if from the fact of his having been born, forces that do not seem to belong to this earth, then just in regard to the conception of equality another profound mystery faces us. To see into this mystery, and through seeing into it to gain a true conception of man, will belong from the present time onward among the weighty and essential needs in the future evolution of the life of the soul. This is the depressing problem that faces man: Truly, human beings grow to be unlike, even though they are not so in childhood, by reason of something that is born within them, that is in the blood: their varied gifts and capacities.

The question of gifts and capacities, which cause so many inequalities among men, faces us in connection with the thought of Christmas. And the Christmas festival of the future will always admonish men most earnestly, reminding them of the origin of that which differentiates them so widely over the earth, the origin of their gifts, capacities, talents, even the gift of genius. They will have to inquire about the origin of these. And a true balance within the physical existence will be attained only when the human being can point rightly to the origin of the capacities which differentiate him from other men. The light of Christmas, or the Christmas candles, must give to evolving humanity an explanation of these capacities; it must answer the profound question: Do individual human beings suffer injustice between birth and death under the ordering of the universe? What is the truth about faculties and gifts?

Now, my dear friends, many things will be seen in a different light when humanity shall have been permeated by the new Christian feeling. Most particularly will it be understood why the Old Testament occult conception possessed a special insight into the nature of the prophetic gift. What were the prophets who appear in the Old Testament? They were personalities who had been sanctified by Jahve; they were those personalities who were permitted to employ in the right way special spiritual gifts reaching far above those of ordinary man. Jahve had first to sanctify their capacities, which are born in men as if by reason of their blood. And we know that Jahve works on human beings between their falling asleep and awakening We know that Jahve does not work within the conscious life. Every true believer of the Old Testament said within his heart: That which differentiates men as regards their capacities and gifts, which rises to the level of genius in the nature of the prophet, is born, indeed, with the person, but it is not used by him for a good purpose unless he can sink down in sleep into that realm in which Jahve guides his soul impulses, and transforms from the spiritual world gifts which are otherwise only physical, inherent in the body.

We point here to a profound mystery of the Old Testament conception. The Old Testament view, including that in regard to the nature of the prophet, must disappear. New conceptions must, for the redemption of humanity, enter into the cosmic historic evolution. That which the ancient Hebrew believed was sanctified by Jahve in the unconscious state of sleep the human being must become capable of sanctifying in the modern age while he is awake, in a state of clear consciousness. But he can do this only if he knows, on the one hand, that all natural gifts, capacities, talents, even genius, are Luciferic endowments, and work in the world Luciferically. unless they are sanctified and permeated by all that can enter into the world as the impulse of the Christ. We touch upon a tremendously important mystery of the evolution of modern humanity when we grasp the central kernel of the Christmas conception, and call attention to the fact that the Christ must be so understood and so felt by men in their hearts that they stand as New Testament human beings before the Christ and say: “In addition to the inclination of the child, his aspiration, toward equality, I have been endowed with various capacities and talents. But they can lead permanently to good results, to the welfare of humanity, only provided these gifts, these talents, are dedicated to the service of Christ Jesus; only if the human being strives to permeate his whole nature with the Christ, in order that human gifts, talents, genius may be freed from the grasp of Lucifer.”

The heart permeated by the Christ takes away from Lucifer what works otherwise Luciferically in man's physical existence. This thought must powerfully influence the future evolution of the human soul. This is the New Christmas thought, the new annunciation of the influence of the Christ in our souls, bringing about the transformation of the Luciferic—which does not enter into us because we journey out of the spirit, but is to be found in us because we are clothed in a blood-permeated physical body which bestows upon us capacities derived from the line of heredity. Within the Luciferic stream, within that which works in the stream of heredity, do these characteristics appear, but they are to be conquered and mastered during the physical life by that which the human being can feel in connection with the Christ impulse, not through Jahve inspiration in sleep, but through the fruition of man's experiences in full consciousness.

“Direct yourself, O Christian, to the Christmas thought”—thus does the new Christianity speak—“and lay there upon the altar set up for Christmas every differentiation you have received as a human being from your blood, and sanctify your capacities, sanctify your gifts, sanctify even your genius as you behold it illuminated by the light which comes from the Christmas tree.”

The new annunciation of the spirit must speak a new language, and we must not be dumb and unheeding toward the new revelation of the spirit which speaks to us in this deeply serious age in which we live. When we are sensitive to such thoughts, we are living with the power with which man ought to live in this time in order to discharge the great duties which are to be assigned to humanity in this very age. The full gravity of the Christmas thought must be experienced: that in our day there must enter into the waking consciousness of humanity what the Christ willed to say to men when he uttered the words: “Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” The thought of equality which the child manifests, if we look upon him in the right way, is not convicted of falsehood by reason of these words, for that Child whose birth we commemorate on Christmas eve, proclaims to human beings in the course of their evolution through the history of the world—revealing ever new thoughts—clearly and distinctly, that the differentiating gifts we possess must be placed within the light of the Christ who ensouled this Child; that all which these differentiating gifts bring about within us human beings must be placed upon the altar of this Child.

You may now ask under the inspiration of the Christmas thought: “How may I experience the Christ impulse within my own soul?” Alas, this thought is often a heavy burden in men's hearts.

Now, my dear friends, that which we may call the Christ impulse does not become rooted in our souls in a moment, forthwith and tempestuously. And in different ages it takes root differently in man. In our day man must take into himself in full clear waking consciousness such cosmic thoughts as have been stammeringly imparted by spiritual knowledge as guided by Anthroposophy, to which we belong. As these thoughts are proclaimed to him—provided he truly understands them—they can awaken within him the assurance that the new revelation, the new Christ impulse of our age, truly enters into him on the wings of these thoughts. And such a person will sense the new impulse if only he pays heed to it.

Make the endeavour, in the sense we intend, in living reality as is appropriate to our age, to take into yourselves the spiritual thoughts of the guidance of the world; seek to take them into yourselves, not as mere teaching, not merely as theory—-seek so to imbibe them that they will move your souls to their very depths, warming, illuminating, permeating them—that you shall bear them livingly within you. Seek to feel these thoughts so intensely that they shall become to you something which seems to pass through your body into your soul and to change your very body. Seek to strip away from these thoughts all abstractions, anything theoretical. Endeavour to discover for yourself that these thoughts are such as constitute a true nourishment of the soul. Seek to discover for yourself that, with these thoughts, not merely thoughts alone enter your souls, but spiritual life coming from the spiritual world.

Enter into the most intimate inner union with these thoughts, and you will observe three things. You will observe that these thoughts gradually eliminate something from within you, which appears so clearly in human hearts in our age of the consciousness soul: that these thoughts, however they may be expressed, eliminate self-seeking from the human soul. When you begin to notice that these thoughts kill egoism, destroy the force of self-seeking, you have then, my dear friends, sensed the Christ-permeated character of spiritual thought guided by Anthroposophy.

In the second place, when you observe that, in the moment when untruthfulness approaches you anywhere in the world, no matter whether you yourself are tempted to be too careless about truth or whether untruthfulness approaches you from another direction—if you observe that in the moment when untruthfulness enters the sphere of your life, an impulse makes itself felt by you, warning you, pointing to the truth, an impulse which will not permit untruth to enter your life, always admonishing you and impelling you to hold fast to truth, then do you sense, in contrast with the life of the present day, so strongly inclined toward mere appearance, the living impulse of the Christ. No one will find it easy to lie in the presence of spiritual thoughts guided by Anthroposophy, or to lack all feeling for mere appearance and untruth. A sign pointing your way to the sense of truth—apart from all other knowledge—you will feel in the thoughts of the new revelation of the Christ. When, my dear friends, you shall have reached the point where you do not strive for a mere theoretical understanding of spiritual science, as this is sought in relation to any other science, but when you have reached the stage where the thoughts so penetrate you that you say to yourself: “When these thoughts become intimately united with my soul, it is as if a Power of conscience stood beside me admonishing me, pointing me toward truth,”—then will you have found the Christ impulse in the second form.

In the third place, when you feel that something streams from these thoughts which works even into your body, but especially into the soul, overcoming sickness, making the human being well and vital, when you sense the rejuvenating, refreshing power of these thoughts, the adversary of illness, then will you have sensed the third part of the Christ impulse in these thoughts. For this is the goal toward which humanity strives through the new wisdom, in the new spirit—to find in the spirit itself the power to overcome self-seeking: to overcome self-seeking through love, the mere appearance of life through truth, the force of illness through health-giving thoughts which bring us into immediate unison with the harmonies of the universe, because they flow from the harmonies of the universe.

Not all that has been indicated can at present be attained, for man bears within him an ancient heritage. It is a mere lack of understanding when such a back-stairs politician as Christian Science twists into a caricature the thought of the healing power of the spirit. Yet, even though our ancient heritage renders it impossible for thought to become sufficiently potent at present to achieve what the human being craves thus to achieve—perhaps, from a self-seeking motive—nevertheless thought possesses healing power. In such things human thinking is always perverted. Some one who understands these things may say to you that certain thoughts give health, and the person who hears this may at a certain time be affected by this or that illness. Indeed, my dear friends, the fact that we cannot at present be relieved of all illnesses by the mere power of thought is due to an ancient heritage. But are you able to say what illnesses would have overtaken you if you had not possessed the thoughts? Could you say that your life would have been passed in its present degree of health if you had not possessed these thoughts? In the case of a person who has applied himself to spiritual science guided by Anthroposophy and who dies at the age of 45 years, can you prove that, without these thoughts, he would not have died at 42 or 40 years of age? Human beings tend always to think from the wrong direction when they deal with these thoughts. They direct their attention to what cannot be bestowed upon them, by reason of their karma, but do not pay attention to what is bestowed upon them by reason of their karma. But if, in spite of everything contradictory in the external physical world, you direct your look with the power of inner confidence which you have gained through intimate familiarity with the thoughts of spiritual science, you then come to feel the healing power, a healing power which penetrates even into the physical body, refreshing, rejuvenating—the third element, which the Christ as the Healer brings with his never ceasing revelations into the human soul.

We have desired to enter more deeply, my dear friends, into the thought of Christmas, which is so closely bound up with the mystery of human birth. What is revealed to us today out of the spirit as the continuing extension of the Christmas thought we desired to bring in brief outline before our minds. We can feel that it gives strength and support to our lives. We can feel that it places us amid the impulses of cosmic evolution, no matter what may befall, so that we can feel ourselves in unison with these divine impulses in the evolution of the world; that we can understand them, and can draw power for our will from this understanding, and light for our life of thought. Man is evolving; it would be wrong to deny this evolution. The only right course is to go forward with this evolution.

Moreover, Christ has declared: “I am with you always even to the end of the world.” This is not a phrase; it is truth. Christ has revealed Himself not only in the Gospels; Christ is with us; Christ reveals Himself continually. We must have ears to harken to what He is ever newly revealing in the modern age. Weakness will overcome us if we have no faith in these new revelations; but strength shall be ours if we have such faith.

Strength will come to us if we have faith in the new revelations, even should they speak to us from life's seemingly contradictory suffering and misfortune. With our own souls we pass through repeated earth lives during which our destiny comes to fulfilment. Even this thought, which empowers us to sense the spiritual behind the external physical life, we can realize only when we take into ourselves in the truly Christian sense the revelations following one upon another. The Christian—the true Christian—when he stands before the candles on the Christmas tree, should begin to work with the strengthening thoughts which can come to him today from the new cosmic revelation, to give power to his will, illumination to his life of thought. And his feeling should be such that the power and the light of this thought may enable him in the course of the Christian year to draw close to that other thought which admonishes of the mystery of death—the Easter thought, which brings the final experience of the earthly life of man before our souls as a spiritual experience. For we shall sense the Christ more and more if we are able to place our own existence in the right relation with His existence. The medieval Rosicrucian, uniting his thought with Christianity, declared: Ex deo nascimur; in Christo morimur; per spiritum sanctum reviviscinius. Out of the Divine have we been born as we contemplate ourselves as human beings here on the earthly globe. In Christ we die. In the Holy Spirit we shall be again awakened. This actually pertains to our life, our human life. If we turn our look away from our life to the life of Christ, then what is represented in our life is a mirrored reflection. Out of the Divine are we born; in Christ we die; in the Holy Spirit we shall again be awakened. This saying, which is true of our first-born Brother, the Christ living in our midst, we can so affirm that we shall feel it to be the Christ-truth raying forth from Him and mirrored in our human nature: Out of the Spirit was He begotten—as this is represented in the Gospel of Luke in the symbol of the descending dove—out of the Spirit was He begotten; in the human body He died; in the Divine will He rise again.

Truths which are eternal we can take into ourselves in the right way only when we see them in their contemporary reflection—not made into something absolute, made abstract in a single form. And if we feel ourselves as human beings, not only in an abstract sense but human beings existing actually at a certain time when it is our duty to act and to think in harmony with this time, then shall we seek to understand the Christ, who is with us always even to the end of the world, in His contemporary language as He teaches us and gives us light regarding the Christmas thought, filling us with the power of the Christmas thought. We shall desire to take this Christ into ourselves in His new language. For the Christ must become intimately related to us. Then shall we be enabled to fulfil in ourselves the true mission of Christ on the earthly globe and beyond death. The human being in each epoch must take the Christ into himself in his own way. This has been the feeling of human beings when they have looked in the right way at the two great pillars of the spirit: at the Christmas thought and the Easter thought. Thus did the profound German mystic, the Silesian, Angelus Silesius, contemplating the Christmas thought, declare:

Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.

And, contemplating the Easter thought, he said:

The cross of Golgotha must be upraised in thee
Ere from thy sin its power shall make thee free.

Truly the Christ must live within us, since we are not human beings in an absolute sense, but human beings of a definite epoch. The Christ must be born within us according to the sound of His words in our epoch. We must seek to bring the Christ to birth within us, for our strengthening, for our illumination, as He has remained with us until now, as He will remain with mankind throughout all ages even to the end of earthly time, as He wills now to be born in our souls. That is, if we seek to experience the birth of Christ within us in our epoch, as this event becomes a light and a power in our souls—the eternal power and eternal life entering into time—we then behold in the true way the historic birth of Christ in Bethlehem and its counterpart in our own souls.

Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.

As He creates the impulse in our hearts today to look upon His birth—His birth in human events, His birth in our own souls—so do we deepen the Christmas thought within us. And then we look away to that night of consecration which we ought to feel coming to pass within us for the strengthening and illumination of human beings for the endurance of many evils and sorrows which they have had to live through and will yet have to live through.

“My Kingdom,” said Christ, “is not of this world.” It is a saying which challenges us, if we look upon His birth in the right way, to find within ourselves the path to the Kingdom where He abides to give us strength, where He abides to give us light amid our darkness and helplessness through the impulses coming from the world of which He himself spoke, of which His appearance on Christmas will always be a manifestation. “My Kingdom is not of this world.” But He has brought that Kingdom into this world, so that we may always find strength, comfort, confidence, and hope out of this Kingdom in all the circumstances of life, if we only will come to Him, taking His words to heart—such words as these:

“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”