The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have been busy getting acquainted with the way man's life processes and the sense-zones locate him in the cosmos, and we have tried to look at some of the consequences that follow from the facts on which this knowledge is based. Above all, we have to some extent cured ourselves of the trivial notion, held by many who want to befriend the spirit, that everything that can be referred to as ‘material’ or ‘perceptible to the senses’ is to be despised. For we have seen that here in the physical world it is precisely the lower organs and functions that reflect higher activities and relationships in the human being. In their present state, we can only view the senses of touch and life as being very dependent on the physical world—equally so the ego sense, the sense of thought and the sense of speech. But we must accustom ourselves to seeing those senses that in the Earth sphere only serve the inner being of the organism as the shadowy reflections of something that is immense and significant for the spiritual world once we have passed through death: the sense of movement, the sense of balance, the sense of smell, the sense of taste and, to a certain degree, the sense of sight. We have emphasised the fact that in the spiritual world the sense of movement enables us to move among the beings of the various hierarchies in accordance with the way they attract or repel us. After death we experience our connection with the hierarchies as spiritual sympathy or antipathy. Physical balance, as we know it here in our physical bodies, is not the only thing the sense of balance provides for us; it also holds us in balance between the beings and influences of the spiritual world. It is similar with the other senses: taste, smell, sight. And, in so far as a hidden spirituality plays into the physical world, it is of no use to turn to the higher senses for clarification. Rather we must enter the realms of the so-called lower senses. Mind you, these days it is not possible to speak about many of the highly significant things that lie in this direction. For today there are such strong prejudices that all one has to do to be misunderstood and accused of all kinds of things is to speak out about precisely those things that are interesting and significant in a higher spiritual sense. So, for the time being, I must forgo speaking about some of the interesting things that go on in the realm of the senses.

In this respect, the situation was much more favourable in earlier times. In those times, however, there were not the same possibilities of disseminating information, either. Aristotle could discuss certain truths much more unguardedly than they can be discussed today, when such things are immediately taken personally and awaken personal sympathies and antipathies. In Aristotle's works, for example, you can find profound truths about the human being which one simply could not explain to a large audience of today. I was referring to some of these in the last lecture when I said that the Greeks did not fall prey to materialism even though they knew more than we do of how our soul-spiritual nature is related to our physical, bodily nature. In Aristotle's writings, for example, you can find wonderful descriptions of the external appearance of a brave person, or a coward, or an indignant person, or of someone who is addicted to sleep. There, in a manner that from a certain point of view is correct, you find described what kind of hair and complexion and wrinkles cowardly people have, what sort of bodies drowsy people have, and so on. To say even this much would create problems these days; other things would be even more problematic. People of today take these things much more personally. In many respects they positively want to use the personal to keep themselves in the fog about the truth. That is why some circumstances today compel one to speak in more general terms if one wants to speak truthfully.

Specific insights about every kind of human being and every human activity await those who, in the right spirit, turn to our preceding considerations with the necessary questions. We have said, for example, that the human senses are presently located in more or less separate, static regions. They are just like the constellations, each of which remains motionless in its own region of the cosmos—in contrast to the planets, which appear, circling, wandering, changing their location in a relatively short time. Moreover, the boundaries of each sense region are fixed, whereas the life processes pulse through the whole organism and circulate through the individual sense-zones, permeating them with their influence.

Now we also have said that our sense organs were more like vital organs during Old Moon. There they functioned more as vital organs, whereas the organs that are now vital organs were essentially more related to the soul. Consider, then, something that has been emphasised more than once: that sometimes people will regress to, or return to, an atavistic state that was a natural and usual state in an earlier time—in this case, during the Old Moon period. We have noted that there is a form of regression that revives the dreamlike imaginative vision of Old Moon. Today, such an atavistic regression into the visionary state of Old Moon is a form of illness.

Now I ask you please not to lose sight of something: namely, that the visions themselves are not pathological. If that were so, we would have to say that everything mankind experienced on Old Moon was the product of illness, for there one lived entirely in such visions. And we would have to say that Old Moon was an illness that humanity had to go through—an illness of soul, at that—so that the humanity of Old Moon was necessarily insane. Naturally, one cannot say this; it is utter nonsense. The pathological aspect does not lie in the visions themselves, but rather in the fact that they cannot be sustained by the human organisation in its present, earthly form. The earthly, human organisation adapts to such visions in a way that is not appropriate to them. Just consider: when someone has the kind of vision one had on Old Moon, this vision is only adapted for engendering the kind of feelings, activities and acts that were appropriate to Old Moon. The illness consists in someone having such a vision here on Earth and responding to it in ways that only an earthly organisation can respond. This only happens because the earthly organisation cannot tolerate this vision with which it is more or less impregnated.

Take the most obvious, concrete kind of case: circumstances arise in which someone has a vision. Then, instead of remaining in quiet contemplation of the vision and relating it to the spiritual world, which is the only world to which it can rightly be related, the person applies it to the physical world and behaves accordingly. In other words, he starts to go berserk because the vision is doing what it should not do—permeating his body and bringing it into action. This is the most obvious kind of case. Today, when an atavistic vision arises that the body cannot tolerate, it does not remain in the domain which has brought it to life, which is where it should remain. A person becomes powerless if, his physical body is too weak to stand up against the vision. If the physical body is strong enough to stand up against it, the vision is weakened. Then the objects and events in it cease to appear—falsely—as if they really belonged to the world of the senses, for that is how they seem to someone who is made ill by them. Thus, if the physical body is strong enough to counter the falsifying tendencies of an atavistic vision, the following occurs: in such cases, a person relates to the world in a fashion that is similar to that of Old Moon, and yet he is strong enough to reconcile this Moon mode of experience with the earthly organism in its present state.

What does this imply? It implies that this person has somewhat altered his inner zodiac with its twelve sense-zones. It is changed in such a way that what happens in this zodiac of the twelve senses is more like a life process than a sense process. Or, better expressed, one could say that events in the regions of the senses, events which actually do impinge on the sense processes, are transformed into life processes—so that the sense processes are lifted out of their present, dead state and transformed into something living: you still see, but something lives in that seeing; you hear, but simultaneously there is something living in that hearing. Something lives in the eyes or in the ears which otherwise only lives in your stomach or on your tongue. The sense processes are truly brought into movement. And it is quite in order for that to happen. For then our modern sense organs acquire qualities that could otherwise only be possessed in the same degree by our vital organs. The forces of sympathy and antipathy flow strongly through our vital organs. Now just consider how much of our whole life depends on sympathy and antipathy—on which things we accept and take up and which we reject! And now those very powers of sympathy and antipathy, powers that are otherwise developed in the life organs, once more begin to pour into the sense organs. The eye not only sees red, it experiences sympathy or antipathy along with the colour. The sense organs regain the capacity to receive and be permeated by the life forces. So we can say: in this way the sense organs are brought once more into the sphere of life.

For this to happen, there must be changes in the life processes. Through these changes, the life processes become more ensouled than they otherwise would be in earthly life. The ensouling takes place in such a way that the three life processes—breathing, warming and nourishing—are more or less united. Then they begin to manifest themselves more in the sphere of the soul. With normal breathing, one breathes the prosaic, earthly air; the normal process of warming involves earthly warmth; and so on. But when they are ensouled, the life processes are united by a kind of symbiosis. They cease to be separated in the way they are usually separated in the present-day human organism; they establish connections with each other. Breathing, warming and nourishing unite to form an inner association with one another. And this is not nourishing in the coarse, material sense, but is rather the process of nourishing. The process occurs without it being necessary for anything to be eaten, and it does not occur on its own, as when we eat, but in conjunction with the other processes.

The four remaining life processes are united in a similar fashion. Secretion, growth, maintenance and reproduction are united to form a single, more ensouled process, a life process that has more to do with the soul. And then these two parts can unite yet again-not just gathering all the life processes together so that they function as one, but by combining three of the processes in one group and the other four processes in another so that these two groups, in turn, can function in concert.

In this way three new soul faculties arise. In character they resemble—but are not identical with—the earthly faculties of thinking, feeling and willing: here is another triad of soul faculties. The new faculties differ from thinking, feeling and willing as they normally present themselves on Earth. They are more like life processes, but not so differentiated as the life processes otherwise are on Earth. When someone is able to sustain this sinking-back into Moon without lapsing into visions, a very intimate, subtle process takes place. The sense-zones are transformed into regions of life, the life processes are ensouled, and there arises a kind of understanding that is faintly suggestive of the Old Moon visions. Nor can a person remain constantly in this state, for then one would cease to be fit for life on Earth. To be fit for Earth one needs the kind of senses and vital organs we have described previously. But in special circumstances a person can enter into this other state. Then, if the state tends more towards the will, it leads to aesthetic creation; if the state tends more towards perception, it leads to aesthetic enjoyment. Truly aesthetic human behaviour consists in the enlivening of the sense organs and the ensouling of the life processes. This is an extremely important truth about humanity; it explains much. This enlivening of the sense organs and this new life in the regions of the senses is to be found in the arts and the enjoyment of art. Something similar occurs with the vital processes, which are more ensouled in the enjoyment of art than they are in normal life. These days, it is impossible to understand the full significance of the changes a person undergoes when he enters the artistic sphere, because a materialistic approach is incapable of grasping the facts in their full reality. Today a human being is seen as concrete and fixed. But, within certain limits, people actually are variable. This is demonstrated by the sort of variability we have just been observing.

Elucidations such as those that have just been presented contain far, far-reaching truths. To mention only one such truth: there is the fact that precisely those senses that are most adapted to the physical plane of existence are the senses that must undergo the most radical changes when they are led halfway back into a quasi-Moon existence. In order to serve someone who follows this road halfway back into the time of Old Moon, the sense of the I, the sense of thought and the sense of physical touch must be wholly transformed, for these senses are robustly adapted to Earth existence.

It is of no use to art, for example, to confront the I or the world of thoughts the way we normally do. At the very most, you might find the usual relationship to the I and to thought in some minor arts. No art describes or portrays a person's I directly, in the way the person actually lives, standing within the real world. The artist must go through a process whereby the I is lifted out of the specialisation it has acquired on earth; it must give him a generalised sense of meaning, a sense for the typical. An artist does this as a matter of course. Similarly, an artist cannot directly express the world of thoughts in the way in which it is usually expressed here on earth. Otherwise he would not be able to produce any poetry or works of art at all, but at the very most only didactic things, things that contain some lesson and are not artistic in the true sense of the word. The changes that the artist makes in the world that confronts him enliven the senses by leading them back to a previous condition in the way I have been explaining.

But, regarding this change in the senses, there is something else that must still be considered. I said that the life processes intermingle. Just as the planets come into conjunction, and just as their mutual relations are significant—in contrast to the immobile stars—the sense-zones can also come into motion; once they have been transposed to the planetary dimension of human life, they can come to life and attain to relationships with one another. This is the reason why artistic perception is never as restricted to specific sense-zones in the way in which our usual perception is. The particular senses also develop certain relationships with one another. Let us consider an example—say, painting.

A consideration that is based on true spiritual science would discover the following things. Sight, the sense of warmth, the sense of taste, the sense of smell—these have their discrete zones as far as normal sense observation goes. Their respective areas are separate. In painting, however, these sense regions merge in a remarkable fashion, not only in the concrete organs, but also in their spheres of influence as I have described them in preceding lectures.

A painter, or someone who is enjoying a painting, does not merely see the content as colours: the red or the blue or the violet. Instead, he actually tastes the colours, although of course not with the actual organ, or else he would have to lick the painting with his tongue, which he does not do. But a subtle process that is similar to the process of tasting nevertheless takes place in all those areas allied to the sphere of the tongue. When you use the processes of sensory perception to see a green parrot, your eyes see the green colour. But when you enjoy a painting, other subtle, imaginative processes also participate in the act of seeing. These processes are associated with your tongue and belong to your tongue's sense of taste. They are similar to the subtle processes that occur when you taste something, when you eat your food. Now, the act of seeing simultaneously involves other processes—not the processes that actually happen on the tongue, but rather fine, physiological processes associated with these—so that in the deeper sense of the word the painter really does taste the colours.

And he smells the nuances of the colours—not with his nose but rather with the more soul-allied things that accompany the act of smelling from deeper in the organism. Therefore, the individual sense-zones begin to merge as they become areas more given over to the life process.

When we read a description intended for instructing us as to how something looks or how something happened, we employ the sense of speech, or the sense of word. Through it, we obtain information about one thing and another. But if we listen to a poem in the same way as we listen to straightforward information, we will not be able to understand it. The poem does manifest itself to the sense of speech, of course, but it cannot be understood solely through the sense of speech. In addition to the sense of speech, the ensouled senses of balance and movement must also be focused on the poem—not just the usual senses of balance and movement, but the ensouled senses. So we again see that the senses merge. The regions of the senses have become life regions and the sense organs function in combination. Furthermore, this whole process must be accompanied by life processes that relate to the soul instead of functioning like the usual life processes in the physical world.

Someone who engages the fourth life process so intensely that he sweats when he listens to a piece of music has gone too far; that is no longer appropriate to the aesthetic realm, for secretion has been taken as far as physical secretion. The first point is that the process should remain on the soul level and not lead to physical secretion, even though physical secretion is based on exactly the same process. The second point to note is that secretion should not emerge as a discrete process, but rather in an association of four processes—all of them on a soul level: secretion, growth, maintenance and reproduction.

On the one hand, spiritual science has the task of linking the development of Earth to the spiritual worlds. From many points of view we have seen that mankind is headed for disaster unless this link is established. On the other hand, however, spiritual science must also revive the capacity for grasping and understanding the physical world in terms of the spiritual. Not only has materialism led to an inability to rise to the spirit, it also has led to an inability to understand the physical. The spirit is alive in everything physical. If it is lost sight of, it becomes impossible to understand the physical. Just ask yourselves, what could someone who knows nothing of spiritual realities know about the way an entire sense-zone can become a life-zone, and about the way vital processes can manifest as soul processes? What do contemporary physiologists know about these subtle processes that occur in us? Materialism has gradually brought us to such a pass that we have lost all contact with concrete reality. We live only in abstractions, and now we are abandoning the abstractions, too. At the beginning of the nineteenth century people still spoke of vital energy, or of life energy. Naturally, one cannot do anything with such an abstraction, for matters can only be grasped when one enters into the concrete. Once you have a full grasp of the seven life processes you are involved with the realities, and what matters is to re-establish a connection with reality. People try to put new life into all sorts of greyish abstractions, abstractions like elan vital. Even though they may intend exactly the opposite, they are only leading mankind deeper into the crudest materialism, materialism that stoops to mysticism. These abstractions say nothing; they simply testify to an inability to understand. The development of humanity in the immediate future depends on a knowledge of things that can only be discovered in the spiritual worlds. We must make real progress in our spiritual understanding of the world.

In this regard, we ought to go back to the good Aristotle, who was closer to the ancient vision than people are today. I only want to remind you of one characteristic thing about old Aristotle. A whole library has been written about the notion of catharsis, by which he attempted to show what is at the root of tragedy. He said: Tragedy is a unified presentation of events from human life, events which arouse fear and pity as they unfold; furthermore, the soul is purified because of the way this fear and pity unfold, and so the effects of the fear and pity are also purified. The age of materialism has written so much about this passage because it does not possess the organ for apprehending Aristotle. The only ones on the right track were those who saw that Aristotle's expression ‘catharsis’ is medical, or quasi-medical, and not so in the sense of today's materialistic medicine. The aesthetic experience of tragedy really does engender processes that reach right into the physical body and are the organic events that normally accompany fear and pity. It does this because vital processes are changed to processes of soul. A tragedy purifies these vital effects because they are simultaneously elevated to processes of soul. And if you read further in Aristotle's Poetics you will find a hint of this deep understanding of the aesthetic man—not understanding in the modern style, but out of the ancient traditions of the Mysteries. You will find yourself much more in the grips of immediate life reading Aristotle's Poetics than you ever will by reading the tract of some modern aesthetician who can only sniff around and dialecticize, but is unable to get hold of realities.

Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man marks another high point in the understanding of aesthetic man. He lived in a more abstract time, however. Today we need to add the spiritual—the spiritually concrete—to the idealism of that time. But when we look at the more materialistic time of Goethe and Schiller, we see that the abstractions of Schiller's letters on aesthetics nevertheless contain something of what we have been talking about. It is only that the process has descended nearer to the physical plane—but only so that the material may be all the more thoroughly penetrated by an intensively grasped spirituality. What does Schiller say? He says: Humanity, as it lives on earth has two basic drives: it has rational impulses and natural impulses. The logic of the impulse to reason functions as a natural necessity. One is forced to think in a certain way; thinking is not at all free. What avails it to speak of freedom as regards this sphere of natural necessity where one is forced to think that three times three is nine, and not ten? Logic implies a strict rational necessity. For this reason, Schiller says that the person who conforms to the necessities of pure reason is subject to spiritual compulsion.

Schiller contrasts the necessity of reason with the necessities of the world of the senses—of everything that lives in the drives and emotions. There, also, a person must follow a natural necessity rather than his own free impulses. Then Schiller looks for a middle condition between the necessities of reason and the necessities of nature. He finds it in what occurs when a person forms something aesthetically—when rational necessity inclines towards what the person loves or does not love, and when his thinking follows or avoids inner impulses and pictures instead of being bound by rigid, logical necessity. But this state also suspends natural necessity. For one ceases to follow, as through compulsion, the necessities of the natural senses. These necessities are ensouled and spiritualised. A person ceases simply to want what the body wants; instead, sensual pleasures are spiritualised. In this way, the necessity of reason and the necessity of nature approach one another.

Naturally, you must read Schiller's letters on aesthetics for yourselves; they are among the most significant philosophical productions of world history. There, living in Schiller's analyses, you will discover the very things you have just been hearing, only there they are described in metaphysical abstractions. The way vital forces are returned to the sense-zones is contained in what Schiller calls the freeing of natural necessity from rigidity. And what Schiller calls the spiritualisation of natural necessity—he might more aptly have called it ‘ensouling’—contains what we referred to as the functioning of the life processes as soul processes. The life processes become more ensouled, the sense processes come more to life—that is the true process that you will find described in Schiller's letters on aesthetics. There it is put more in abstract, rather ghostly concepts, because that was how it had to be in that era. At that time thinking was not yet spiritually strong enough, not strong enough to descend with the spirit into the regions sought by the seer. In those regions there is no opposition between matter and spirit; rather there is an experience of how the spirit everywhere saturates matter so that there is no possibility of ever bumping into spiritless matter. Contemplation that is merely mental is merely mental only because the person is not able to make his thoughts as strong and as spiritual—as concretely spiritual—that the thoughts can cope with matter. In other words, he is not able to penetrate to what is truly material. Schiller is not yet able to see that the vital processes can function as soul processes. He is not yet able to go as far as to be able to see how the processes that work physically as nourishing, warming and breathing can be formed into something that ceases to be material and instead lives and bubbles in the soul. When this happens, the material particles are scattered by the force of the concepts with which one grasps the physical process. And Schiller is equally unable to look up to the realm of the logical in such a way that he ceases to experience it as merely conceptual. He is not able to come to that stage of development, which can be reached through initiation, whereby the spiritual processes are experienced in their own right and whereby a living spirituality enters into what would otherwise be mere knowing. Thus the attitude that lives in Schiller's aesthetic letters is that ‘I do not quite trust myself to directly approach concrete experience.’ Nevertheless, that which one grasps more exactly when one tries to approach the realm of life through the spirit, and the realm of material through the living, is already stirring in these letters.

Thus we can see all areas of life struggling to move towards the goals of spiritual science. At the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century there arose a philosophy which expressed a longing for greater concreteness. This philosophy had a more or less conceptual form, however, and the longing could not be satisfied. And, because its initial vitality ebbed, this longing for greater concreteness gradually degenerated into the coarse materialism that has lasted from the second half of the nineteenth century into our own time. But something else must also be understood: For spiritualism to establish links only with the spirit is not enough; the material world must be conquered—we must learn to recognise the spirit in matter. That happens through such knowledge as we have been discussing. It leads one to discover new connections, such as the unique place of aesthetic man in Earth evolution. To a certain extent, aesthetic man lifts himself above the stream of development and enters a different world. And that is important. The aesthetically inclined person and the person who works in an aesthetic field do not act in a way that is entirely appropriate to someone on earth, but rather their sphere of activity is in a certain way lifted out of the Earth sphere. With this discovery, aesthetics leads us to some profound secrets of human existence.

On the one hand, anyone who expresses such things as these is touching on the highest truths; on the other hand, what he says can sound virtually nonsensical—mad and distorted. But we will never understand life as long as we timidly hold ourselves back from the real truths. Take any work of art that you wish—the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo: if it really is a work of art, it is not entirely of this earth. It has been lifted out of the stream of earthly events. That is self-evident. And what lives in a Sistine Madonna or a Venus of Milo? That which lives in them also lives in the human being. It is a power that is not entirely adapted to Earth. If everything in humanity were adapted to the earth, mankind would not be able to live on any other level. But not everything in the human being is adapted to the earth and, for occult vision, not everything in humanity is attuned to being earthly man. There are mysterious forces that some day will provide mankind with the impetus to lift itself out of the sphere of earth existence. Nor will we ever understand art as such until we see that its task is to point beyond the merely earthly and beyond what is solely adapted to the earth—to point to the sphere where that which lives in the Venus de Milo truly does exist.

The more you cast your gaze towards the humanity of the future and towards the spiritual challenges of the future, the more you must take certain facts into account, certain facts that are necessary to any truthful picture of the world. Today we still are living with many versions of the assumption that anyone who states something logical and who logically substantiates what he says is necessarily saying something significant about life. But being logical—logicism—is not enough on its own. And because people are always so satisfied when they can produce something logical, they maintain the truth of all imaginable kinds of world view and philosophical system. And of course, all of these can be supported logically: no one who is acquainted with logic would question that they are supportable by logic. But mere logical demonstration does nothing for life. What is thought, what is held in the light of consciousness, needs to be more than just logical, it needs to measure up to reality. What is merely logical is not necessarily valid; only what measures up to reality is valid. I will use just one example to show you what I mean. Suppose you are describing a tree trunk that is lying here before you. You can describe it quite systematically and demonstrate to someone that something really is there because you are describing it just as it is. All the same, your description is a lie. For what you describe does not exist in its own right and cannot possible be a tree trunk in the state in which it is now lying there, cut off from it roots and branches and twigs. It is only a part of existence when seen along with its branches, blossoms and roots, and it is nonsense to think of the trunk as existing in its own right. It is not a reality when it is only seen as it is, lying there. It must be seen with all its shoots and with everything in it that enables it to come into being. One must become convinced that the trunk lying before one is a lie because the truth is before one only when the whole tree is there. Logic does not require us to see a tree trunk as a lie, but it accords with reality that we see it so and that we only accept the whole tree as the reality. A crystal is a truth. In a certain respect it exists in its own right, although only in a certain respect, mind you, for all is relative here, too. A crystal is a reality, but a rosebud is a lie if it is seen only as a rosebud.

So you see how all manner of things occur today because the concept of being in accordance with reality is lacking. Crystallography and, at a pinch, mineralogy are still sciences that accord with reality. But when you get to geology, it no longer accords with reality, for it is an abstraction in the way the tree trunk is an abstraction. It is an abstraction, not a reality, even though it is lying there before you. Things contained in the earth's crust came into being along with what grows out of the earth's crust and thus cannot be conceived without it. We need philosophers who are not satisfied to limit themselves to their powers of abstraction, thinking up new abstractions. More, and increasingly more, there must arise a thinking that accords with reality and is not merely logical. Thinking alters the whole course of world evolution. For what is a Venus de Milo or a Sistine Madonna from the standpoint of thinking that accords with reality? If you take them just as they are before you, you are not in contact with reality. You must be enraptured. To see a work of art truly, you must be lifted out of the earth's sphere and removed from it. To really encounter the Venus de Milo, your soul must be different from the soul that responds to earthly things; precisely the things that do not exist on this earthly plane are what transport the soul to the plane where they really do exist—to the realm of the elemental world, which is where what is in the Venus de Milo really exists. One is able to stand before the Venus de Milo in a way that accords with reality precisely because she possesses the power to tear us away from mere sense-bound vision.

I have not the slightest desire to promote teleology in the negative sense of the word. Nor shall I say anything about the uses of art, for that would be adding pedantry and philistinism to teleology. I shall say nothing about the uses of art. But we can well speak of the sources of art and how art comes to be a part of our lives. We do not have time to cover the whole subject today, so I will just make a start with a few preparatory words. A counter-question leads us to part of the answer: What would happen if there were no art in the world? If that were so, all the forces that are now devoted to art and the enjoyment of art would be used to produce a life that runs counter to reality. If you were to remove art from the development of humanity, then human development would contain just as many lies as it now contains works of art! Here art displays that unique and dangerous relationship that arises when one nears the threshold of the spiritual world. Just listen yonder, where things always have two sides! If a person has a sense for being in accord with reality, then an aesthetic attitude gives him access to higher realities. An aesthetic attitude leads someone who lacks the sense for being in accord with reality directly into a world of lies. There is always a dividing of the ways and it is very important to be aware of this fork in the road. This does not just apply to occultism; it already applies when you come to the realm of art. To bring about a way of seeing the world that accords with its reality is an aim of spiritual science. Materialism has given us a way of seeing things that goes directly against reality.

As contradictory as this all seems, it is only contradictory for those who judge the world according to their preconceptions, rather than in accordance with what is really there. We really do live in a phase of development in which the direct influence of materialism is putting more and more distance between us and the ability to comprehend what even a normal object of the senses is—an ordinary thing of the physical world. There have been some very interesting experiments that shed light on this problem.¹³ They conform exactly to a materialistic way of thinking but, like so many things produced by materialistic thought, they support the development of precisely those abilities that mankind needs for developing a spiritual world-view. The following experiment has been carried out—I am taking just one example from among the many such experiments. A whole event was planned ahead of time: A person is to give a lecture in the course of which he says something injurious and upsetting about someone present in the audience. All of it is planned. The lecture is given word for word as planned beforehand. The person against whom the insult is directed is supposed to jump up and a real scuffle is to develop—this is how events are supposed to develop. During the course of the argument, the man who has jumped up is to reach into his pocket and draw out a revolver. Other details of the incident are planned out exactly. In other words, you must imagine the unfolding of a fully programmed, detailed scene. Thirty people were in the invited audience—not just any people, but advanced students of law, and lawyers who had already completed their studies. After the scuffle is over, each of the thirty was asked to describe what happened. Others who were privy to what was going on were there to ensure that protocol was followed and that the whole event went exactly according to plan. So each of the thirty is questioned. Each has seen the event. None of them is thick-headed. They are all educated people, the very ones who later will go out into life and investigate what really has occurred in the case of such a fracas or of other incidents. Yet of these thirty, twenty-six falsely described what they saw and only four could produce an acceptably accurate account—only four tolerably accurate accounts! Such experiments have been going on for years in order to demonstrate how the truthfulness of witnesses should be weighed in a court of law. Every one of the twenty-six sat there and could say, ‘I saw it with my own two eyes.’—One forgets to consider what is required in order to be able to correctly describe something that has occurred before one's very eyes!

We need to consider the art of maintaining a true perspective on what happens before our very eyes. Someone who is not conscientious towards events in the world of the senses will never be able to develop the feeling of responsibility and the conscientiousness necessary for viewing spiritual facts. Just look at this world of ours that is presently so under the influence of materialism and ask yourselves how many are aware that it is possible for twenty-six people out of the thirty who have witnessed an event to be unable to describe it without committing falsehoods, with only four who are able to give even tolerably accurate accounts. In view of something like this, you can begin to feel what immeasurable significance the results of a spiritual world-view have for ordinary life.

Now you might ask yourself whether things were different in earlier times. Our current mode of thought has not always been current. The Greeks did not yet possess the abstract manner of thinking that we have, and need to have, in order to get about the world in a way appropriate for today. But the manner of thinking is not the important thing; the truth is what matters. In his own way, Aristotle tried to use more concrete concepts to describe the inner aesthetic mood and the aesthetic attitude. But the aesthetic constitution was understood in an even more concrete, imaginatively clairvoyant fashion by the early Greeks, who were still connected with the Mysteries and who experienced pictures instead of concepts. In those times, one looked back to the age of Uranus, who embodied everything that we can take in through our heads and through the powers that now are manifest in the outer world through the sense-zones. Uranus—the twelve senses—is wounded. Drops of his blood fall, foaming, into the ocean called Maya. Here you see the senses beginning to come to life and sending something down into the ocean of the life processes, and there below you see how the blood of the senses pulses through the life processes which begin to foam up and become processes of soul. And the ancient Greeks' understanding of this led them to see how Aphrodite¹⁴—Aphrogenea, the goddess of beauty—is created out of the foam that arises when the blood of the wounded Uranus drips into the ocean of Maya. This, the more ancient of the myths about the creation of Aphrodite, expresses the condition of the aesthetic man and is one of the most significant imaginations and one of the most significant thoughts in the whole of mankind's spiritual evolution. But still another thought needs to be placed beside the thought of this ancient myth which shows Aphrodite being born from the drops of blood of the wounded Uranus that fall into the sea—rather than as the child of Zeus and Dione. We need a further imagination—one that penetrates even more deeply into reality and goes beyond the realities of the elemental world into the physical realities. We need an imagination from a later age—one that approaches the physical-sensory world. Alongside the myth that shows how Aphrodite, beauty, was born into the world of mankind, we need to place the great truth about how original goodness entered into humanity. We need to show how the spirit descended into Maya-Maria, just as the drops of Uranus' blood trickled into the ocean whose name also was Maya—and how, out of the beautiful foam that arises [*The German for foam—Schaum—has many suggestive echoes. For example, there is the word schauen, ‘show’ or ‘spectacle’, and also ‘Schema’, which means ‘perceptible manifestation, semblance, or appearance’, and which refers to a concept that is central to Schiller's account of aesthetic man. (Tr. note.)], the herald who announces the approaching dawn of a new age is born. The sunrise that announces the eternal regency of the Good ... of understanding of the Good, The True-and-the-Good, the spirit. This is the truth Schiller intended when he wrote the words:

Only through beauty's dawn-lit gate
Can you pass into the realms of knowledge.¹⁵

The knowledge he refers to is primarily moral knowledge.

You can see how the tasks of spiritual science are growing—not mere theoretical ones, but real life tasks. In our day it is no wonder that the misunderstandings about spiritual science multiply among those who are not devoted to the truth. We have to accept that as an inevitable side-effect.

Many people have been caught in the grip of a most peculiar attitude towards the truth, especially in our materialistic age. And if I had to tell you about the letters I receive, then today I would have to make yet another addition to that part of our collection where the enemies of the truth are exhibited. I do not even like to mention the latest incredible nonsense, which came in a letter I received yesterday. Yes, my dear friends, this is something we must feel; just reflecting a little on it is not enough. For although our time demands it, bringing spiritual science to mankind in a form that is appropriate to our time is not such a simple task. One must speak out in spite of thereby being exposed to the dangers involved in telling numbers of people—and it truly is more than a few—about truths that not only touch upon what is highest and most holy, but that also go most deeply, affecting heart and soul. Think of the times when there were not a few sitting in the auditorium who later became thorough-going enemies and falsified what was being said! Those who, at any rate, still take the Society seriously, must go through this experience of speaking to many people who, like yourselves, are supposedly friends, while knowing that in the past there have been some who turned out to be enemies—people who later falsified the truths they heard and used what they received here to attack the truth. One must always reckon—sometimes while watching it happen—on the possibility that the person who is listening to what is being said may turn against us in the way others have turned in the past. Today this must colour our work in the realm of spiritual science: knowledge of the human soul takes on special significance.

Such things are not to be taken too lightly. Let us try to refresh our memory for a moment, our memory of truth's path as it has appeared in cosmic development, in the evolution of humanity, and remind ourselves of how much was involved in the progress of truth! I will not say any more about it today. But we have touched on an area that is closely related to the direct connections between this life and the spiritual world. Only by understanding it can we shed lights on such things. One must take such opportunities as this to touch on what today's representatives of the truth must undergo. And I hope that there are at least a few of you who know why every now and then I have something bitter to say about the way people relate to the truth, and that there are some who know that it is not quite truthful to say that I am the guilty one. Perhaps I might characterise our contemporaries' much-loved illogicality with an anecdote that would seem silly in other circumstances. But this false logic is used, not in the service of the truth, but in the service of lies.

Once there was a man who took another man's estate away from him. After he had taken it, the former owner did not possess it as before, but instead had to begin all over again to work for what he already had earned once. A trial was conducted. The former possessor of the estate was there and also the man who had taken it away. Each had his own advocate. Now, advocates are not always there to present the unconditional, absolute truth, but rather to say what is useful to the person they represent. In this case, the advocate who was lodging the complaint was the first to speak, the one representing the man from whom something had been taken. And, indeed, to begin with he seemed on the way to convincing the court. But then the advocate of the man who had taken the estate away took the floor and said to the judge, ‘Your Honour, you have heard that my client confesses to having done everything that he has done. You have asked my client, “Do you plead guilty, or not guilty?” To that my client answered, “I took all those things, but I do not feel that I am guilty.” And my client is entirely correct in saying this. He will concede that he took all those things; but he need not feel guilty about it. Nor can Your Honour find him guilty, for in order to establish the guilt one must go back to the original cause of the matter. Just consider, Your Honour, this man has become a thief. But he never would have become a thief if the other man had not possessed these things he took away from him! The original owner is the one who has trespassed! If he had never had the possessions, my client could never have become a thief! So he is truly the guilty one! It was only when my client saw that this man had these possessions that he was tempted to become a thief.’ And this advocate spoke so eloquently that the court finally declared, ‘Yes, until today we have always believed that the thief is the guilty one. But all those who have believed that the person who takes something is guilty have been mistaken, for when one examines the real, original cause, one sees that the person from whom the things were taken, the original possessor, is the guilty one.’

Everyone will see that what I am telling you is utter nonsense. But this is exactly the sort of logic that is used today against spiritual science. Spiritual science makes its way into the world and accomplishes certain things. Then these things are distorted by people who say they only do so because they see the truth in spiritual science. They are using the same logic as someone who says that the person from whom something is taken is the guilty one because he has tempted the other to take it from him. Such is the logic abroad today and, if you will only take care to observe the life around you, you will see instances of this kind of logic.

Yesterday I was blamed—among other things—for everything that happens in the world when someone or other lies about spiritual science and commits certain acts. This is the same logic as that followed by one who says: ‘The real guilt does not lie with the person who takes, but with the person from whom something is taken, for he is the one who created the original cause of the theft.’

• 13. The experiment referred to was carried out by Franz von List, a professor of criminal law.
• 14. The birth of Aphrodite: Compare lines 188 ff. of Hesiod's Theogony:
  
  But the members themselves, when Kronos
  had lopped them with the flint,
  he threw from the mainland
  into the great wash of the sea water
  and they drifted a great while
  on the open sea, and there spread
  a circle of white foam
  from the immortal flesh, and in it
  grew a girl, whose course first took her
  to holy Kythera
  and from there she afterward made her way
  to sea-washed Cyprus
  and stepped ashore, a modest lovely goddess,
  and about her
  light and slender feet the grass grew,
  and the gods call her
  Aphrodite, and men do too,
  and the Aphro-foam-born
  goddess, and garlanded Kythereia,
  because from the seafoam
  she grew, and Kythereia, because she came forth
  from wave-washed Cyprus,
  and Philommedea, because she appeared
  from medea, members ...
  
  (Hesiod, translated by Richmond Lattimore. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1959.)
• 15. Schiller, when he wrote the words: The words in question are to be found in the poem, Die Kunstler (The Artist).

Let us now approach the problem which lies before us in these lectures once more from another starting-point. For in spiritual science it must be so: we must always seek to encompass a problem and approach it from many different aspects.

Broadly speaking, one thing especially must strike us when we consider such a life as Goethe's. It is a great riddle in human evolution, even when we take into account repeated earthly lives and their effect in moulding the life of man. How is it that isolated individuals like Goethe are able to produce such wonderful creations out of their inner life? We think especially of Goethe's Faust. How is it that a single human being' can have so great an influence on the remainder of mankind through his creations? How does it come about that single individuals are thus lifted out of the remainder of mankind, summoned, as it were, by universal destiny, to do such mighty works? We will compare the life and work of every man with these great lives and works, and ask ourselves: What can we tell by this difference between the life of any individual and the lives of great men so-called?

This is a question we can only answer if we consider life a little more' in detail by the means which spiritual science affords. All that a man can perceive to begin with, especially with the knowledge of our time, is calculated to conceal certain truths, keeping them far removed from the free and open vision of mankind. This too makes it necessary for us to begin to speak of many things in connection with spiritual science, which alone will enable us to understand them rightly.

In spiritual science, as you know, we describe the human being as follows. Man, we say, as he appears to us in life, consists of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego. We then characterise the alternating conditions of sleeping and waking. In waking life, we say, the Ego and astral body are inside the physical body and the etheric, in sleep they are outside.

For an initial understanding of the matter that is enough, and it is quite in accordance with the spiritual-scientific facts. But the point is that in thus describing it we are giving only a portion of the full reality. We can never comprehend the full reality in one description. Whatever we describe, it is always only part of the full reality, and we must look for light from other quarters, rightly to illumine the partial reality which we have thus described.

In general, it is so: sleeping and waking represent a kind of cyclic movement for the human being. Strictly speaking, it only applies to the head when we say that the Ego and astral body of man are outside the physical and etheric body during sleep. In actual fact, precisely because they are outside the physical and etheric head of man, the Ego and astral body in sleep are acting all the more vividly upon the rest of man's organisation. During sleep—when the Ego and astral body are working- upon man as it were from without—all that is not 'head' in man, but the remainder of his organisation, is subjected to a far stronger influence by the Ego and the astral body, than it is in waking life. Indeed, we may truly say, the influence which the Ego and astral body wield over the head of man in waking life,—this influence they wield over the remaining organism during sleep. In a certain sense we may compare, notably the Ego of man, to the Sun. When it is day with us, the Sun is shining on our regions of the Earth. When it is night, the Sun is not merely out yonder; it actually illumines the other side of the Earth, making it daytime there. So in a certain sense it is the 'day' in our remaining organism, when for our sense-perception, which is mainly bound to the head, ˃t is the night-time. And it is night for our remaining organism when it is day-time for our head. For when we are awake the remainder of our organism is more or less withdrawn from the Ego and from the astral body. This too must be added, to illumine the full reality and so to understand the human being in his totality.

To understand what I have just said, we must however also realise the connection of the soul and the physical being of man in the following respect. I have often emphasised that the nervous system of the physical body is a single organisation. It is mere nonsense, not even justified by external anatomy, to divide the nerves into 'motor' and 'sensory.' The nerves are all of one kind, and they all have one function. The so-called motor nerves differ from the so-called sensory nerves only in this respect: the sensory nerves are so arranged that they serve for our perception of the outer world, whereas the motor nerves, so-called., enable us to perceive our own body. A motor nerve is not there to enable me to move my hand. That is mere nonsense. It is there to enable me to perceive the movement of my hand, that is, inwardly to perceive, whereas the sensory nerves are there to help me perceive the outer world. That is the only difference.

Now our nervous system, as you know, has three distinct members: first there are the nerves whose chief centre is in the brain—nerves, therefore, which are centred in the head. Then there are the nerves which are centred in the spinal column, and lastly, there are the nerves which we include in the so-called sympathetic system. These, in the main, are the three kinds of nerves which man possesses. Now the point is for us to recognise the relation between the three kinds of nervous systems and the spiritual members of man's organisation. Which is the most advanced, as it were the most refined member of the nervous system, and which the least advanced?

It goes without saying—those that come from the ordinary scientific outlook of to-day will answer—the nervous system of the brain is of course the most refined, the highest; for it distinguishes man from the animals. But it is not so in reality. The nervous system of the brain is connected in the main with the organisation of our etheric body. Needless to say, there are more far-reaching relationships on every hand, and our brain system also has its relations to the astral body and the Ego. But these relations are secondary. The primary, the most original relations are those between our brain-nervous-system and our etheric body. This does not affect the other aspect which I once explained, namely that the whole nervous system has come into being with the help of the astral body. That is an altogether different matter and should be kept distinct. In its original plan and predisposition, it was brought about during the old Moon epoch. But it has gone on evolving, and other relationships have entered in since its prime formation. And so in fact, our brain-nervous-system has the most intimate and important relations with our etheric body. On the other hand, the nervous system of the spinal column has the most intimate and primary relations with the astral body, such as we have it in us now. Finally, the sympathetic nervous system is related to the Ego, the real Ego of man. These are the primary relationships, as we now have them.

Bearing this in mind, we shall readily conceive that there is a peculiarly vivid relationship in sleep between our Ego and our sympathetic nervous system. This system, as you know, is mainly spread out in the abdominal organism, and with its strands it envelopes the spinal column from without ... Now these relations between the Ego and the sympathetic system are loosened during our day-waking life. They are still there, but they are loosened. In sleep they are more intimate. Moreover, the relations between the astral body and nerves of the spinal column are more intimate in sleep than in our day-waking life. Thus we may say: during our sleep the most intimate relationships arise, between our astral body and the nerves of our spinal column, and at the same time between our Ego and our sympathetic nervous system. In sleep, with our Ego we live more or less intensely in connection with our sympathetic system. Once the mysterious world of dreams is more accurately studied, what I am now saying out of spiritual- scientific research will soon be recognised.

If you bear this in mind, you will find the way over to another most essential thought. Something deeply significant is given to our life inasmuch as there is this rhythmic alternation, for example, in the living-together of the Ego with the sympathetic and the astral body with the spinal nervous system—a rhythmic alternation which is really identical with that between sleeping and waking. It will not appear altogether surprising to you, if we now assert: Inasmuch as the Ego is well inside the sympathetic system and the astral body well inside the spinal system during sleep, man with respect to his sympathetic and his spinal nervous system is awake in his sleep and asleep in his waking life.

Only this question may perhaps be raised at this point: How is it that we know so little of this wide-awake activity which is said to be unfolded during our sleep? Well, you must bear in mind how man has come to be. It was only during the present Earth- evolution that the Ego took up its abode in man. The Ego is in fact the 'baby' among the members of our human being. If you bear this in mind you will be less surprised that this Ego, in its life, cannot yet bring to consciousness what it experiences in the sympathetic nervous system during sleep, while it can well bring to consciousness what it experiences when it dwells in the fully perfected head. For the head, as you know, is in the main the outcome of all the impulses that worked throughout the old Moon and Sun and so on. What the Ego can bring to consciousness depends on the instrument it is able to use. The instrument it uses in the night is still comparatively tender. In former lectures I have explained that the remainder of man's organism was not evolved until a later time. Only at a later time was it added to the more highly perfect head-organisation. It is in fact a mere appendage of the latter. We say that in his physical body man has gone through the long stages of evolution from old Saturn onward,—but in reality we can only say this of the head. What is attached to the head is to a large extent a subsequent creation—Moon-creation, nay, no more than Earth-creation. Hence we are scarcely conscious, to begin with, of the vivid life which is unfolded in our sleep, the organic source of which is chiefly in the spinal column and the sympathetic system. But this life is therefore no less vivid, nor is it any the less important to us. Just as we say, In waking life man must be able to rise into his senses and his brain- system, so we may say with equal truth, In sleep he must be enabled to descend into his sympathetic system. No doubt you may reply, How complicated this makes it,—how it confuses all that we have learned hitherto. But man is a complicated being. We cannot understand him unless we receive with open mind these complications of his nature.

And now imagine, happening- with any human being, what I described in Goethe's case. The etheric body is loosened. When the etheric body is loosened, quite a different relationship arises in waking life between the soul- and-spirit and the physical-organic nature of man. He is placed, as I showed in the last lecture, on a kind of insulating stool. But such an effect necessarily involves another. It is very important to bear this in mind. Such a relationship cannot take place one-sidedly. Broadly speaking, we may say: Through the loosening of the etheric body the entire waking life of man is influenced; but this cannot happen unless his sleeping life is influenced at the same time. In such a case as Goethe's the consequence is simply this: The human being comes! into a less close relation to the impressions on his brain, and thereby, even in his waking life, he comes into a stronger and more intimate relation to his spinal and his sympathetic nervous systems. This too was the effect of Goethe's illness. He developed, as it were, a looser relation to his brain, and at the same time a more intimate relation to his sympathetic and spinal nervous systems. Now we may ask, generally speaking, what will be the result of this? What does it signify for the human being to come into a more intimate relation to his sympathetic and spinal nervous systems?

The fact is that he thereby comes into a quite different relation to the outer world. We are indeed always in a very intimate relation to the outer world,—we only do not observe how intimate it is. How often, for example, have I drawn your attention to this: The air which you carry within you at one moment, is outside you in the next moment, and another air is then inside you. What is now outside you, will, in the very next moment, have the form of your body; will have united itself with your body. The human organism is only apparently separated from the outer world. In reality it belongs to the whole outer world. When therefore such a change arises in its relation to the outer world, this will soon make itself felt very strongly in the whole life of man.

Here you may say: 'Surely the result would be that the lower nature of a man like Goethe would come into play with unusual intensity. For that which is connected with the spinal column and the sympathetic nervous system, is generally thought of as man's lower nature, and in this case the forces have withdrawn from the head and come more closely into connection with the sympathetic and the spinal nervous system.'

But we only begin to understand the matter when we fill ourselves with the perception that what we call 'understanding' or 'Intelligence' is not so closely bound to our individuality as we are wont to assume. These are things of which our present time has the most incorrect ideas,—naturally enough, according to its fundamental notions. These are the things which it is least able to tackle—a fact which emerged recently in the somewhat dense and idiotic way in which even the great scholars of our time received the alleged sensational discoveries and experiences with learned animals: dogs, monkeys, horses and the like. You know how suddenly the news went out into the world, about the learned horses, who were able to speak and to do all kinds of other things besides. Or of the learned dog which made such a sensation in Mannheim. Or of the learned monkey in the Frankfort Zoo, which was taught arithmetic and other arts, the details of which one would rather not explain in polite society. For by contrast to the remaining members of his tribe, the Frankfort chimpanzee learned to behave, with respect to certain human functions, not in the way monkeys generally behave, but like a human being. I will not pursue the matter any further.

Now all these things gave rise to great astonishment, not only among the ordinary public, but in the most learned circles. Even the most learned folk were quite enraptured when they heard, for instance, how the Mannheim dog had written a letter, after the death of a dear relative, of how the dear relative (the offspring of the dog) would now be with the archetypal soul, and what sort of a time it would be having, and so on ... It was really a most intelligent letter which the dear dog had written. Well, we need not concern. ourselves with the peculiarly complicated intelligence which was shewn in other matters. Let it suffice that all these animals performed sums of arithmetic. People afterwards spent much time investigating what such animals could do. In the case of the Frankfort monkey a strange discovery was made. When a sum was laid before him, which he was expected to work out to a certain number as the answer, he would point to, the required number. A series of numbers being placed side by side before him, he would point to the correct answer, for instance, of an addition sum. Alas, eventually they discovered that the learned monkey had simply grown accustomed to follow the direction of his trainer's look. Some who had formerly been astonished now declared: There is not a trace of intellect; it is all in the training. Indeed, it was only a more complicated instance, as when a dog fetches a stone you throw. So did the monkey pick out of a series of numbers the one to which—not the line of throw this time, but the line of vision of his trainer was directed.

Undoubtedly, on a closer investigation similar results would emerge in the other cases too. There is only one thing which must surprise us, namely, the fact that people are so astonished when animals occasionally perform these seemingly human feats. For after all, how much more spirit, how much more intelligence—taking intelligence objectively—is needed to achieve what is already so well known to us in the animal kingdom! I mean what the creatures do out of their so-called instinct. Things of untold significance are done in this way. Deep and profound relationships are here contained, which truly make us marvel at the Wisdom which everywhere holds sway, wherever the world's phenomena appear before us. We have Wisdom not only in our heads. Wisdom surrounds us everywhere, like light. Wisdom is working everywhere, and through the animal creatures also.

Incidentally, these unusual phenomena can only astonish those who have not entered seriously enough into the developments of modern learning. As to the men who write such learned dissertations nowadays about the Mannheim dog or other dogs, or about the horses or the Frankfort monkeys or the like,—I should like to read them a passage from Comparative Anatomy, by Carus, published as early as 1866. Nor is this by any means an isolated instance. And since they will not listen to me, I will read the passage to you now. Carus says, on page 231: "When a clog for instance has long been treated with tenderness and consideration by its master, these human qualities are impressed upon the animal, objectively, although it has no sense for the concept of goodness as such. These qualities become amalgamated with the sensible image of the human being, whom the dog sees so often. They cause the dog to recognise the man as the one who has shown it kindness in the past; even without the sense of sight, merely by smell or hearing it will know him. If therefore some injury is now done to the man, or if he is only made unable to show the dog further kindness, the creature feels it as an evil done to itself and is moved to wrath and vengeance. All this takes place therefore without any abstract thinking, merely by the sequence of one sense picture on another.' (It is undoubtedly true that for the dog one sense picture follows another in this way, but at the same time, intelligence and wisdom hold sway in the whole process.) 'It is, however, wonderful how near this interweaving, separating and re- associating of images of the inner sense can come to actual thought, and how like it can be in its effects! Thus I once saw a well-trained white poodle' (not the Mannheim dog,—the passage was written in 1866!) 'which rightly selected and put together the letters of the words which were recited to it. Or again, the animal seemed to solve simple sums of arithmetic by carrying the several figures, written (like the letters of the alphabet) on separate sheets of paper. Or again, it seemed able to count how many ladies there were in the room, and so on. Had it been a question of any real understanding of number as a mathematical concept, all this would have been impossible without true thought and reflection. But in the end it was found that the dog had been trained to perceive a very slight sign made by its master, and accordingly to pick out of the row of papers, along which it went up and down, the leaf with the right letter or number. Then, at another equally silent signal (like the flicking of the thumb nail with the nail of the fourth finger), it would lay the paper down again in another row and thus achieve the apparent miracle.'

So you see, not only has the phenomenon itself long been known, but even the solution, which the learned folk are rediscovering to-day, because they do not concern themselves with what has already been achieved in the development of science. Only so can these things come about, and they bear witness to the advancement not of our science but of our ignorance. On the other hand, the following comment has quite rightly been made. Such explanations as are given nowadays are certainly naïve, for, as Hermann Bahr has rightly said, Here comes Herr Pfungst and proves how these horses will react to the slightest signs, which the men who train them are quite unable to perceive—signs which they make unconsciously and which he himself was only able to perceive when he had spent a long time in his psychological laboratory, constructing the1 apparatus to perceive the minutest play of features. And as Hermann Bahr goes on to say, it is a strange conclusion. Only the horses are clever enough to observe such play of features, while a University lecturer needs many years—I think it was ten years or even more—to contrive the apparatus to perceive them.

There is of course a fragment of truth in all these things. But we must only consider them in the right way. Then we shall see that they can only be explained if we imagine objective Wisdom, objective Intelligence, implanted in the things of the world, just as it is in the instinctive actions of animals. We must imagine the animal included in the whole 'circuit' of objective Wisdom-relationships flowing through the World. We must not have the limited idea that Wisdom came into the World merely through man. We must think of Wisdom holding sway throughout the World, while man is only called upon through his peculiar organisation to perceive more of the Wisdom than the other creatures do. That is the difference between man and the other creatures. He, by virtue of his organisation, can perceive more of the Wisdom than they can. Nevertheless, the other creatures, through the Wisdom that is implanted in them, can perform functions as wise as men,—only that they are filled with Wisdom in another way. For one who studies the world in real earnest, the abnormal phenomena of Wisdom's working are indeed far less important than those that are constantly spread out before our eyes. These are far more significant. If you bear this in mind, you will no longer find the following so unintelligible. The animal is harnessed into the universal Wisdom so as to be connected with it quite instinctively,—far more so than the human being. The animal's route is, as it were, mapped out for it far more exactly than man's; man has been left far more free play. By this very means it is made possible for man to save up certain forces for his conscious knowledge of the world's relationships.

The most important thing is this: In the animal—especially the higher animal—the physical body is harnessed in the same World-connections, in which man is only harnessed with his etheric. Therefore, while man knows more about the World-relationships, the animal lives within them more closely, more intimately,—is more deeply contained in their circuit.

Think, therefore, of this objectively prevailing Intelligence, and say to yourself: All around us is not only light and air, but the prevailing Intelligence is everywhere. We move not only through the space of light, but through the space of Wisdom, filled with the all-prevailing Intelligence. Now you will estimate what it may mean for a man to be connected with the Universe—not in the ordinary way but in another way, with respect to the finer conditions of his organs. In normal life man is connected with the spiritual relationships of the Universe in such a way that the connection between the Ego and the sympathetic nervous system, and that between the astral body and the spinal nervous system, is to a large extent broken in his day-waking life. Because the connection is thus weakened, man in his ordinary normal life pays little heed to what takes place around him—what he would only be able to perceive if he actually perceived with his sympathetic nervous system just as he ordinarily perceives through his head.

Now in a case like Goethe's, because the etheric body is withdrawn from the head, the astral body is brought into a more living relation to the spinal nervous system, and the Ego to the sympathetic system. Such a human being, therefore, comes into far more living intercourse with that which is always going on around him, which in normal human life is veiled from us inasmuch as we only enter into relation with our spiritual environment when we are asleep at night. In this way you will understand how such things as Goethe described were, for him, real perceptions. Of course they could not be so brutally clear and bright as the perceptions we receive from the outer world through our senses. Nevertheless, they were brighter than the perceptions a man ordinarily has of his environment where it is spiritual. What then did Goethe perceive most vividly in this way? Let us make it clear to ourselves by an example.

Goethe, by his peculiar Karma—by complications of Karma, as I have indicated—was destined to grow into the life of learning, not like an ordinary scholar, but in quite another way. What did he experience in this way?

For long centuries past, a man who grows into the life of scholarship and learning has had to experience a peculiar duality. It is more hidden today than it was in Goethe's time. But everyone experiences a certain split, inasmuch as in all our recorded learning we have before us an immense field wherein we find what has been preserved, more or less, from the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch. It is preserved in terminologies, word-systems which we are obliged to put up with. Far more than we imagine, we burrow in mere words. This has indeed become less flagrant in the 19th century, inasmuch as countless experiments have now been made. When we grow up into the life of knowledge we see far more than people used to see. And so, to some extent at least, such sciences as Jurisprudence have fallen from the very high throne they used to occupy. But when Jurisprudence and Theology still occupied their very lofty thrones, much that a man had to absorb as heritage from the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch was an immense system of words. That was what one had to enter into, to begin with. But alongside of it, what was emerging from the real needs of the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch was making itself felt increasingly,—the immediate life which springs from the great achievements of modern time. A youth who is merely driven forward from class to class may not feel it consciously, but one like Goethe felt it in the highest degree. I say again, one who is merely crammed from class to class does not feel it consciously, but he undergoes it none the less. Here we are touching on a real secret of modern life. Take the students who go through their University curriculum. Of course, we can fix our attention on what they actually go through, what they themselves know of it; but that is not all. Their inner life is something very different. They who thus experience the interwoven strata of the 4th and 5th Post- Atlantean epochs,—what if they only knew what a certain member of their being, all unawares, is doing within them? They would have quite a new understanding of what Goethe as a young man secreted into his Faust. For unconsciously, countless individuals who enter the modern life of education are undergoing this.

Through all that Goethe developed in himself by virtue of his special Karma, the human beings whom he came near during his youthful years were to him something quite different from what they would have been to him, had he not had this special Karma. He felt how the human beings, with whom he was growing up, must somehow be benumbed in order not to experience the Faustian life within them in its full reality. They must have it benumbed. This experience he had. For what was living so mysteriously in his fellow-men made an impression on him, such as is ordinarily only made by one human being on another when intimate relationships arise,—I mean when love arises between the one and the other. For when this happens, even in ordinary life the connection of the Ego with the sympathetic nervous system, and of the astral body with the spinal nervous system, is powerfully at work. However unconsciously, a peculiar activity here comes into play. In ordinary life, it only happens in this relationship of love. For Goethe it arose in a far wider circle. He had an immense sympathy and compassion, more or less subconscious, with these poor fellows who did not know what their inner life was passing through, while outwardly they were being driven from class to class, from examination to examination. All this became in him a rich experience. Now experiences become ideas. Ordinary experiences become the ideas of everyday life. These experiences became the ideas which Goethe thundered forth into his Faust. They are simply the experiences he underwent in wide circles around him, because the life of his sympathetic and spinal nervous systems was called, as it were, into greater wakefulness than usual. This was the other pole as against the damping-down of his head- life. But this tendency was already there in him from boyhood. We can see it from the descriptions he gives. He describes, for instance, how in his piano lessons not only the part of the human being which is otherwise concerned but his whole human being was brought into activity. Goethe, in fact, entered into communication with Reality far more intensely with his whole human being than others are wont to do. Therefore, we may truly say, Goethe was more awake by day than other men. So it was in the youthful time when he was working at his Faust. For this very reason he needed what I described in the last lecture as the period of sleep in the ten years at Weimar. This, too, was necessary—it was once more a 'damping-down. '

Thus Goethe was drawn into the Wisdom-filled working—the purely spiritual working—of the World around him, far more consciously than other men. He perceived what was living and weaving mysteriously in the human beings around him. Yet man is always standing in the midst of this. What is it in reality? Placed into the world as we are in the ordinary crude waking life, we are placed into it with our Ego; we are connected with it through our senses and our every-day ideas. But as you have seen, we are really connected with it far more intimately than this. For our Ego is in an intimate relation to our sympathetic system, and our astral body to our spinal system, and by virtue of this relation we have a far deeper and fuller connection with our environment than we have by virtue of our senses-system, our head. And now consider: Man needs this rhythmic alternation. His Ego and his astral body are in the head during his day-waking life and outside of it during his sleep. Inasmuch as they are outside the head during sleep, they develop a vivid inner life together with this other system, as I described before. The Ego and astral body need this alternation of diving down into the head, and going out of it. When man is outside the head with his Ego and his astral body, he develops not only the intimate relation to the rest of the body through the sympathetic and the spinal nervous system. For on the other side he also develops spiritual relations to the Spiritual World. Corresponding to this active living-together with the spinal and with the sympathetic nervous system, we have an active living-together in soul and spirit with the Spiritual World. At night the soul-and-spirit is outside the head, and consequently unfolds this vivid life in the remaining organism. Conversely we must say that in the day-waking life, when the Ego and astral body are more in the head, we are living together spiritually with our surrounding spiritual environment. We dive down, as it were, into a spiritual inner world in our sleep; but on awakening we plunge into a spiritual world around us.

In a man like Goethe this living- together with the spiritual environment i.s only more alive; he dreams it—he is like a man who, instead of 'sleeping like a log,' dreams in his sleep. It is rare for a man to dream thus consciously during his waking life. People like Goethe, however, do come into a kind of dreaming during their waking life. What for ordinary men remains unconscious, thus becomes for them, so to speak, the dream-woven forming of life.

Here then you have a more precise description of the matter. Of course you may now deduce from it a rather conceited notion, for you may say to yourselves: If that be so, we could all of us write Fausts, for we experience Faust inasmuch as in the daytime we penetrate into the surrounding world and live together with it. That is quite true; we do experience Faust. Only we experience it as we generally experience the other pole during the night, with our Ego and our astral body, when we are not dreaming. Only Goethe did not experience it thus unconsciously; he dreamt the experience, and was therefore able to express it in his Faust. Goethe dreamt the experience. What men like Goethe create is related to what ordinary men experience unconsciously, like dreaming and deep sleep are related on the other side of life. It is no different—this is the full reality! Like dreaming and deep sleep,—so are related the creations of the great spirits to the unconscious creations of other men.

Some things may still remain a riddle, even now. Nevertheless, you can here gain some insight into a fact which is deeply connected with the life of man,—which we may characterise somewhat as follows. Undoubtedly we could always tell a very great deal of the relation of our Being to the surrounding World if we were able to awaken, to- the level of a dream, our connection with the surrounding World. We need only awaken to the level of the dream; then we should experience immense things and be able to describe them, too. But this would have a peculiar effect. Think what would happen if—to put it tritely—all men were so conscious as to be able to describe what is in their World-environment. If, for example, all men could describe experiences expressible like those of Goethe which he expressed in his Faust, where should we get to? What would become of the World? Strange as it may sound, the World would come to a standstill! The World could not go on. The moment all human beings were to dream in the way a poet like Goethe dreamt his Faust,—the moment every one were to dream his connection with the outer World—human beings would spend in this way the forces they evolve out of their inner life, and human existence would in a certain sense consume itself. You can gain a feeble idea of what would happen if you consider the devastating effects which are already taking place because so many people—though they do not really dream—imagine that they dream, and go about parroting the reminiscences which they have picked up elsewhere. What I mean is that there are far too many 'poets.' Who does not believe himself to-day a poet or a painter or the like? The World could not exist if it were so, for all good things have their disadvantages, all good things cast their shadow.

Schiller, too, was a poet, and he dreamt many things in the way I just described. But what would happen if all men, who like Schiller were prepared in their youth to become doctors, hung up their medicine on a peg as Schiller did, and (since they would need support) were appointed Professors of History by wire-pulling from above, without ever having studied History in the proper way? What would happen, even if like Schiller they gave very stimulating lectures? After all, the students of Jena did not really learn what they needed to learn at Schiller's lectures. Indeed, by-and-bye Schiller let them drop and was very glad that he need no longer hold the lectures. Imagine that it happened so with every would-be Professor or Doctor! … All good things cast their shadow, that goes without saying. The World mu.st be preserved from coming to a standstill. Therefore, not all men can 'dream' in this way. It may sound trite to put it so, but it is a profound truth-—so deep that we may call it a truth of the Mysteries. For the forces with which ordinary human beings dream must still be used in the outer World to other ends,—namely to create the foundations for the further evolution of the Earth, which would indeed come to a standstill if all men were to dream in this way.

We have now arrived at a point where a very strange thing emerges. What are these forces in men really used for in the World? If, looking with the eyes of Spiritual Science, we ask what they are used for—these forces of which you might say at first, 'If only they were used for dreaming in every human being!'—what do we find that they are used for? (For in effect they are not spent in dreaming but in deep sleep.) They are used in all that is poured out, for the evolution of mankind, in the manifold work of human callings and professions. All this is poured into the multitudinous labour of our several callings.

Compared to such work as Goethe did in his Faust or Schiller in his Wallenstein, our work at our several callings in life is like deep sleep compared to dreaming. In our work at our particular calling we are asleep. This will sound strange to you, for you will say: That is just where you are wide awake. No, in this idea there is a great illusion. Man is not engaged with full waking consciousness in that which is actually brought about through his work at his life's calling. True, some of the effects of his calling upon his soul are brought home to his waking consciousness. Nevertheless, men know nothing of what is actually present in the whole texture of work, in craft and calling anfd profession, which they are constantly weaving about the Earth. It is indeed astonishing to find how these things hang together. Hans Sachs was a shoemaker and a poet; Jakob Boehme was a shoemaker and a mystical philosopher. In these cases, by a special constellation as it were—of which we may yet have opportunity to speak—we have 'sleeping' and 'dreaming' alternately, passing from one into the other.

What signifies—in such a man as Boehme—this interplay, this alternating life in the labour of his calling (for he really did make shoes for the brave men of Görlitz) and in his writings of a mystical and philosophic character?

Some people have strange views about these things. I have told you what we found on one occasion when we were at Görlitz. One evening before my lecture—I was about to lecture there on Boehme—I fell into conversation with a master of the local Grammar School. We spoke of the statue of Jakob Boehme, which we had just seen in the park. The people of Görlitz, as were told, called it, 'the cobbler in the park.' We remarked that the statue was beautiful. But the schoolmaster did not think so. Boehme, he said, is made to look like Shakespeare. One does not see that he is a cobbler. If you are going to make a statue to Jakob Boehme, he opined, you ought at least make him look like a cobbler.

Well, we need not concern ourselves with such an opinion. When a man like Jakob Boehme was writing down his great ideas in mystical philosophy, this was an outcome of something which can only have come into existence when Man was being gradually built up through the Saturn time, the Sun time, the Moon time and on into the Earth-epoch,—when, as we might say, a broad stream was flowing onward which in the last resort came to expression in this work of Jakob Boehme's. It is only by special karmic relationships that this broad stream can so express itself in an individual. Altogether, for the very existence of the human being upon Earth, all that has gone before, through the old Sun and Moon time, is necessary. So, too, needless to say, all this was necessary to create what was there in Jakob Boehme. (Only it was necessary here in a peculiar way.)

But then again, Boehme set to work and made boots and shoes for the worthy folk of Görlitz. How are these things connected? Undoubtedly, the fact that a man could acquire the skill for making boots and shoes is also connected with the same broad stream. But when the shoes are finished, they leave the man, and in the effects which they then have, they have no more to do with his skill and craftsmanship. Now they have to do with the protecting and warming of feet, and so forth. They go their way, independently, and here, too, they fulfil certain functions. They are loosed from the man, and what they now bring about out there in the world, will only have its effects at a later time. For it is only a beginning. The thing is now as follows:—[At this point in the argument the reader must imagine Dr. Steiner drawing on the blackboard as he speaks.]

Suppose I draw the initial cosmic activity which eventually led up to Jakob Boehme's mystical philosophy in this way. I out the very first beginning here. (See the drawing.) Then I must put the first beginning of his cobblery here. This streams on, and in the future Vulcan evolution will have reached the same perfection which has now been reached by what took place from Saturn evolution onward and flowed into his work as a mystical philosopher. This is an end; his mending of shoes is a beginning. We say, the Earth to-day is Earth,—and so of course it is. But if we could follow it back even beyond Saturn, then we should say: With respect to certain things the Earth is 'Vulcan.' We should then have to assume 'Saturn' at this point (in the drawing). Taken in this way, everything is relative. So we may also say: The Earth is Saturn, and Vulcan as it were is Earth. That which is done on Earth in Jakob Boehme's labour at his calling—not in his free production which goes beyond his 'job,' but what he does as his life's calling—that is the starting-point of something which on Vulcan will be as far advanced as that which was achieved on Saturn is now, on the present Earth. For Jakob Boehme to be able to write his mystical philosophy on Earth, something had to be done on Saturn, analogous to what he himself does in his cobbling. And this again he does, in order that in the future Vulcan evolution something may be done analogous to his writing of mystical philosophy on Earth.

A remarkable truth lies hidden here. That which on Earth we often value so little,—we value it little because it is the starting-point of what we shall only value in the future. It is natural for men to be far more intimately connected, in their inner being, with the past. They must first grow together with what is now in the beginning. Therefore, they are often far less fond of it than of what comes over to' them from the past. As to the whole range of those things into which we must yet be placed during this Earth-epoch in order that something of significance may come into being upon Vulcan, the full consciousness (which we have already upon Earth for such a thing as the philosophy of Jakob Boehme) will only arise when the Earth has evolved on through the Jupiter and Venus to the Vulcan time. Hence what is truly significant in man's external labour is wrapped in unconsciousness to-day, even as man was wrapped in unconsciousness on Saturn. For it was only on the Sun that he developed sleep-consciousness, and on the Moon dream-consciousness, and on the Earth waking-consciousness, with respect to his present conditions.

And go man really lives in deep sleep- consciousness with respect to all those things into which he enters when he places himself into any calling or profession. For it is just through his calling that he creates the future values. Not through what delights him in his calling, but through what unfolds without his being able to enter into it. If a man is making nails and he goes on and on, making nail after nail—well, my dear friends, naturally enough, to-day it gives him no great pleasure. But the nail goes on its way. It has its proper task. He concerns himself no longer with what happens to the nail; he does not follow up every nail that he manufactures. Nevertheless, all that is there veiled in the unconsciousness of deep sleep, is destined to come to life again in the future.

Thus, to begin with, we have been able to place side by side what the ordinary human being does—even the most insignificant labourer at his calling—side by side with what appears to us as the highest achievements. The highest achievements are an end; the least significant labour is always a beginning. I wanted to place these two conceptions side by side to start with. For we cannot understand the way man is connected with his calling through his Karma, if we do not know already in a wider way how a man's work in life (with which he is often connected quite externally) is related to the whole cosmic evolution in the midst of which the human being stands. So we shall presently go forward to work out the real Karmic question of a man's calling or profession. I had to give you these conceptions to begin with. For we must first gain, as it were, a universal concept of what flows from man into his calling.

Moreover, all these things are calculated very strongly to mould our moral feelings in the right direction. For our valuations are often incorrect because we do not envisage things in the true way. A grain of corn may often seem most insignificant when we see it lying there beside the beautiful unfolded flower. Nevertheless, the flower of a future evolution lies hidden in the grain of corn. And so I wanted to explain to you to-day, in connection with human work, how seed and flower are related in the evolution of all mankind.

There has hardly been a time in the development of humanity when it was as necessary as it is in the present to delve into the riddles of the supersensible life, although there has hardly been a time when there was as much rejection of this delving into supersensible problems as there is in the present. The questions that appear to be most remote must be of particular concern to the soul of the modern human being. And so today let us first consider what the materialistic attitude of the present day believes it must keep as far away as possible from human consciousness, but which is in fact infinitely close to human life. And to know that what is meant is infinitely close to human life is precisely one of the special tasks of our time. We want to start with a few remarks that are well known to us, in order to approach a subject that we have often considered from this or that point of view from a different point of view.

We all know that for spiritual scientific observation, it has a special significance to observe human life again and again according to its two great opposites, which play into everyday life, to observe it according to the special essence of the alternating states of sleeping and waking. It is precisely these polar opposites of sleeping and waking that we have had to consider again and again from the most diverse points of view in our spiritual scientific investigation.

Now you already know from the most diverse communications that this distinction, as it is usually made between sleeping and waking, according to which human life is divided up in such a way that one lives in an awake consciousness for about two-thirds or more of the day – or even less – and spends one-third in a sleeping consciousness, is at first only an external and superficial observation. Even if one continues to develop the matter as it is immediately given in this way, in order to get behind the character of sleeping and waking, it still remains somewhat superficial for spiritual-scientific views in relation to the depths that can be reached here. For we must be clear about the fact that the state of sleep is not only present in our soul life when we sleep in the superficial sense, not only in the time that passes between falling asleep and waking up, but that our soul also carries the state of sleep to a certain extent into the so-called waking state. In truth, even when we are awake for ordinary consciousness, we are only partially awake. We are never fully awake in this ordinary state of consciousness. And if we ask ourselves from a spiritual scientific point of view: to what extent are we fully awake? — then we have to give ourselves the answer: we are awake with regard to everything that we call perception of the external sense world, as well as the processing of these perceptions of the external sense world through the ideas. In our life of perception and imagination, in our thinking life, we are undoubtedly awake. We would not even think of speaking of our waking state if we did not want to describe as such a waking state a certain inner state of mind that is present when we perceive the external world in a fully conscious state and think about it, forming ideas about it.

But we cannot say that we are awake for our emotional life in the same sense as we are for our perceptual and imaginative life. It is only an illusion if one believes that one is as awake with regard to one's emotional life, one's affective life, one's emotional life from waking up to falling asleep as one is with regard to one's perception and thinking or imagining. Those who surrender themselves to this illusion do so because we always accompany our feelings with images. We not only imagine external things, we not only imagine chairs and tables and trees and clouds, but we also imagine our feelings; and by imagining our feelings, we wake up in the images of our feelings. But the feelings themselves surge up from the subconscious depths of the soul. For the one who can observe the inner soul processes, the feelings, the affects, the emotions, and the passions do not arise in a greater inner wakefulness than the impressions of the dream. The impressions of the dream are pictorial. We know how to distinguish them quite precisely for the ordinary consciousness of the external perceptions. Our consciousness is no more alert to the real feelings than it is to the dream. If we were to add an image to every dream as soon as we wake up, without being able to distinguish between the dream and the presentation of the dream, just as we always add a thought, an image, to our feelings, we would also consider our dreams to be the content of an awake experience. In themselves, our feelings are not experienced in a more awake state than our dreams.

And even less are our volitional impulses experienced in a waking state. With regard to the will, man sleeps continually. He imagines something when he wills something; he has an idea when he — let us take a simple volitional impulse — stretches out his hand to grasp something. But what actually happens in the life of soul and body when we stretch out a hand to draw something near remains in the unconscious, like dreamless sleep. While we dream our feelings, we oversleep our will impulses in reality. As a person of feeling we dream, as a person of will we also sleep in the so-called waking state, so that actually even when we are awake, that is, from waking to falling asleep, we are only awake with half of our being, while we continue to sleep with the other half of our being. We are awake in relation to our perceptions and our thoughts, but we continue to sleep and dream in relation to our will and our feelings. Such things can hardly be proved or corroborated more strongly than by what has just been said in the way of suggestion. For the recognition of such things depends on whether one can properly observe the life of the soul. He who can properly observe this life of the soul will unerringly discover the inner psychic equality of feelings, affects, passions and dreams. There is a very beautiful essay by Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the so-called V-Vischer, who is particularly well known in this city, about “Dream Fantasy”, in which he emphasizes this correct observation of the relationship between the emotional and passionate life and the dream world in a very beautiful way.

So we also go through life in a waking state, not only surrounded by the world we perceive through our senses, by the world we think, but also surrounded by a world that we can only dream of in our feelings, of which we, as with our will impulses standing in it, no longer experience more than we experience of our surroundings in our sleep, namely actually nothing. But a world that we do not experience when we are asleep is still just around us. Just as the tables and chairs and the other objects are in the room where there is a sleeper who, however, is unaware of them while he sleeps, so man is unaware of the world from which his emotional and volitional impulses come because he is constantly asleep with regard to this world. But this world, in relation to which we are constantly asleep, is the one that we have in common with human souls that are no longer embodied in the body.

We have tried from a variety of perspectives to build a spiritual bridge between the so-called living and the so-called dead. We can also build this bridge conceptually by becoming aware that we are connected to people in their physical bodies in our ordinary waking state because they are accessible to our perception and our thought life. We are not connected to the so-called dead in our ordinary waking state because we are constantly asleep to part of the world around us. If we were to penetrate into this world, which we so oversleep, we would no longer be separated from the world in which man lives between death and a new birth. Just as we are surrounded by the air, so we are surrounded by the world in which man finds himself between death and a new birth, only we know nothing of this world, precisely for the reason given: because we oversleep it. The clairvoyant consciousness, in the way we have often characterized it, leads to the recognition of this world, which is otherwise overslept, this world in which man finds himself between death and a new birth. To enter into this world in such a way that one can be certain that one's soul passes through the gate of death, enters another world and returns in a new earthly life, is not difficult in itself, if one carefully considers what is contained in the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' or in similar books.

It is much more difficult to penetrate into this world, which man passes through between death and a new birth, in such a way that concrete, definite relationships can be established between the person here in the physical body and concrete dead people. These relationships are always there to a certain extent, at least between certain living people and certain dead people. But the reasons why a person is not aware that relationships always exist between him and certain so-called dead people can be seen in what I have already said today. And precisely that which the seeing consciousness experiences when it can relate to individual dead people can teach us why man in ordinary waking consciousness learns nothing of his relationships with the dead, which, as I said, are always present as real relationships. If such conscious relations are to be established between the seeing, awakening consciousness and certain dead, one must appropriate certain soul experiences that are quite different from the soul experiences to which we have become accustomed in waking consciousness. It is precisely in this area that it becomes apparent how one must discard all habits that one has developed for the purpose of knowing the physical environment and replace them with others if one wants to penetrate with a seeing consciousness into the concrete spiritual world. When the seer is confronted with a very specific individual so-called dead person, then he can indeed communicate with him properly, but he must just get beyond certain soul habits. The way one experiences the soul in such a case naturally causes bewilderment in someone who is not accustomed to such visions.

When we stand here in the physical world and converse with another person, we know that When we say something to the other person, it comes from our own vocal organs, so to speak, radiating out from us and going to the other person. And when he answers us or in turn communicates something to us, it radiates out from his vocal organs and over to us. —- It is quite different when one has concrete relationships between the seeing consciousness and a very specific dead person. In that case, one has to completely change one's habits. When we ourselves communicate something to the dead, when we ask the dead, when we tell him something, then we must — as strange as it may sound — have acquired the ability to perceive what we ourselves say as coming from him, as emanating from him and radiating to us. In order to be able to convey a message to a dead person, we have to be able to tune out ourselves and live in him in such a way that he actually speaks when we ask him, when we convey a message to him. And again, when he answers us, when he wants to convey a message to us, it comes from our own soul, it announces itself in such a way that we know: it radiates from us, so to speak. So we have to turn around completely, turn back, if we want to come into a real relationship with a specific dead person. This is, even if it can be characterized in a simple way, an extraordinarily difficult thing to do in our emotional experience. To behave in an almost opposite way to the world around us, as we are accustomed to in the physical world, is something that is extremely difficult to acquire. But genuine communication with the so-called dead is only possible under these conditions.

On the other hand, if you consider that you have to completely change your inner attitude, you will understand that relationships between the so-called living and the so-called dead are always possible, but that the so-called living will show little inclination to recognize these relationships. For the living are accustomed—and such an habit means more than one usually thinks—when they say something, to perceive it radiating from themselves; when the other says something, to perceive it radiating from the other. And anyone who is completely rusty in the prejudices of the physical world will, from the outset, have to find something like what I have just said quite foolish. But it is like this: you cannot penetrate into the spiritual world if you do not familiarize yourself with the fact that in the spiritual world, much - I say much, not everything - is exactly the opposite of the habits we have acquired here in the physical world. And what I have just discussed is one such thoroughly opposite experience. Only when one has familiarized oneself with such unusual things through very intimate practice can one form an opinion about the nature of the ordinary relationships that each person has with certain dead people, and how these relationships develop.

As I said, these relationships are constantly present. We just have to bear in mind, if we want to take a look at these relationships, that in addition to the polar opposites of the day's experiences, waking and sleeping, we have two others that are particularly important for the relationships between the so-called living and the so-called dead, but which, when consciously experienced, go against the usual habits of human beings. In addition to the usual waking and sleeping, there is also the process of falling asleep and waking up. These fleeting moments of falling asleep and waking up are just as important for the overall spiritual life of a person as the long periods of sleeping and waking, but they pass by in a flash. The reason a person does not experience the moment of waking up is because the full awakening follows immediately afterwards, and the person is not inclined to perceive as quickly as they would have to perceive if they wanted to grasp the fleeting moment of awakening; it is drowned out, deafened, by the waking life that follows. In more naive human conditions, where people knew a lot about such things, they also hinted at what it means for the human soul in this respect. But little by little, as materialism progresses, these things are being lost. Among naive, primitive people in the countryside, you still often hear it said that when you wake up, you shouldn't look straight into the bright window, you shouldn't open your eyes right away. Such talk arises from a very deep instinct, from the instinct not to immediately deafen the moment of waking through the waking day life, in order to be able to hold on to something that is there in the moment of waking.

But the moment of falling asleep is equally important, only that usually one falls asleep immediately afterwards. Then consciousness ceases. And so the moment of falling asleep is not properly observed by the ordinary consciousness.

What is important for the relationship between a person embodied in the physical world and the dead, however, is what can be experienced and is actually experienced in the moments of falling asleep and waking up. Such things can, of course, only be observed with the seeing consciousness. But when the seeing consciousness has brought about a state in which it can establish such relationships with certain dead people, relationships that can only be established through the complete transformation and readjustment of the soul's state that I have mentioned, then it can also judge what the real, but unconscious, relationships of the so-called living to the so-called dead are like. The most favorable moment to bring to the dead all kinds of relationships we ourselves have developed in our souls to certain dead people is when we fall asleep. And the most favorable moment to receive answers, messages from the dead into physical life on earth is when we wake up.

You do not have to be put off by the fact that what I have just said requires the person to address a question to the dead person when falling asleep, to send a message to the dead, and only to receive an answer or a return message at the moment of waking up. With regard to the supersensible world, the time conditions are quite different. What is separated by hours here for the physical world does not necessarily have to be separated in real supersensible life. One can definitely say: While here in physical life, when one asks someone, one expects an answer immediately, there one perceives the relationship in such a way that when one addresses questions to the dead while falling asleep, one receives the answer upon waking up. This relationship really always exists between the living and the dead. In fact, every person who has lost their loved ones to the physical plane by crossing the threshold of death has such relationships, which experience their most important development when falling asleep and waking up. They are not brought up into consciousness only because these favorable moments flit by quickly and man is not accustomed to taking into consciousness what approaches his soul in these quickly fleeting moments. To hold on to what approaches us in such fleeting moments, there is nothing more suitable than to occupy oneself with the finer, more subtle thoughts of spiritual science. If someone appropriates spiritual science in such a way that it is not mere head knowledge, but an inner substance of the soul itself, something that is grasped not only with cleverness but with love, so that it passes completely into the soul, if someone does not just cling to the thoughts of spiritual science with scientific curiosity or curiosity, but pursues them with love, to such a person this love sinks into the soul with such power that, with a little attention, he gradually becomes aware of the great significance of the moments of falling asleep and waking up. And the more spiritual science will sink into the souls of men, the more men will take up into real life not only what they experience when awake, but also what comes to them from a supersensible world when they fall asleep, but especially when they wake up. We must only be clear about the fact that we can only establish such real relationships, as I mean them now, with those dead with whom we are somehow connected karmically. But we are connected karmically with many more souls than we realize. For the conscious or unconscious communication between the living and the dead, however, the karmic connection is as necessary as it is necessary to direct the eye to a sense object in order to perceive it. Just as the sense relationship must be established, so it is a prerequisite for communication between the living and the dead that certain karmic relationships exist between them, or at least be established.

If we now consider the moment of falling asleep, it is the moment that is particularly favorable for us to bring up the relationships we have developed with someone who has passed away and who was dear and precious to us, who was otherwise karmically connected to us. The moment of falling asleep is particularly good for this. We naturally develop our relationships with the dead, with whom we are karmically connected, in the waking day life from waking up to falling asleep. We commemorate the dead. Everything we think in relation to the dead, that we would like to bring to them, that we would like to tell them, is then compressed in the moment of falling asleep and, even if it remains unconscious to us, reaches the dead for the ordinary consciousness. Only a certain state of mind is particularly favorable for these communications, another state of mind unfavorable.

You see, mere dry, cold thinking about the dead is not very suitable for really reaching the dead, for getting a message through to them. If we want the moment of falling asleep to become, as it were, a gateway through which our own experiences of soul that are related to the dead can reach the dead, then we must occupy ourselves with the dead in a different way while we are awake than by thinking cold, dry thoughts. We must try to stir up thoughts that connected us with the dead person while he was still living among the so-called living. But we must then put particular thought into what can establish a connection through the heart. Thinking of the dead person indifferently does not help much. But everything that keeps us connected to him through our hearts is good to call to mind: how one was with the dead person here or there, how one just talked with him, by developing an active interest in something that particularly interested him, out of one's own feelings; or to recall a situation in which one was once dead man here in life and something that touched him also touched you, or vice versa; how you were tempted to share something you had experienced with the other person because you liked him, to experience it together with him. Not dry thoughts, but thoughts permeated with love, with feeling! These thoughts then remain in our soul until the moment we fall asleep. And that is when we find the gate through which they can safely reach the dead person as a message.

We should not deceive ourselves about these things. We dream of the dead. When we dream of the dead, in a great many cases – not all, of course – it is because of a real relationship with the dead person. But what we dream, in so far as it follows the moment of falling asleep, is actually only a dream-like, pictorial transformation of what we want to communicate to the dead person. We do not experience the moment of falling asleep as the moment when thoughts, as just characterized, really go over to the dead, because this moment of falling asleep passes by so quickly. But this moment of falling asleep actually resonates in the following sleep, resonates in the dream. If we understand the matter correctly, we will not interpret dreams of the dead as messages from the dead. They could be, but usually are not. They are half-remembered impulses that tell us the following. If we dream of a dead person, it means that on a previous day we addressed such a thought to the dead person, either voluntarily or involuntarily, as I have characterized it. This thought has found its way to the dead person, and the dream indicates to us that we were actually speaking to the dead person. What the dead person then answers us, what the dead person communicates to us, these messages from the dead come in particularly easily at the moment of waking up. And they would come much more easily to the so-called living if they only had time in our present time, if they had the inclination to pay a little attention to what comes up between the lines of life from deep within their consciousness.

Yes, today's man is vain and selfish, and when something arises in his soul, he is usually clear about the fact that it is his genius that has caused it to arise. Being modest is an admonition put into life; being modest in the depths of one's being is not so easy for a person. Being modest also means that one really learns to distinguish between what arises from one's own soul and what arises from one's own soul from foreign, supersensible impulses. Just as the one who has the seeing consciousness feels and perceives the dead person's answer rising up from his or her own soul, so these answers from the dead, these messages from the dead in the waking period, from waking to falling asleep, come up from the depths of the soul. However, one can say: Just as a person does not see the stars during the day – although they are constantly in the sky – because sunlight drowns them out, a person is just as unaware of what is constantly coming up from the depths of his soul in his ordinary consciousness because the external life, which is caused by the impressions of the senses, drowns it out. When we become familiar, I would say, with our own soul, when we learn to distinguish between that which originates from ourselves and that which sounds from our own soul as something foreign, then, little by little, we also learn to recognize messages from the dead in our waking daily life. But then one connects something extraordinarily important with this knowledge. Then one says to oneself: We are actually not separated from the dead, the dead live among us. They do not announce themselves in the same way as other sensual beings, who send their impulses to us from outside, but they announce themselves from within, they speak to us through our own inner being, they carry us.

However, humanity in the present and near future will find it difficult to get used to the idea that the impulses under which they act come only from the sensual world around them, to recognize that in what we call our social, our other life, not only the so-called living lives, but also the so-called deceased, that the dead are always there and work in us and with us. In mythical form, the ancients knew this. When the ancients revered the deceased as tribal lords, as ancestral gods, it was because the ancients had atavistic knowledge that the dead are always there, that they are always at work through the living. This awareness had to be lost for good reasons for humanity, but it must come back! We must know again that the dead are in our midst, that the dead speak through our soul, that we have fellowship with the dead. We must recognize that spiritual science must be asked how life is actually constituted and that external science about life must be misleading because it does not know how to distinguish between what comes from the sensual world and what comes from the supersensible world. Our historiography has gradually become something grotesquely absurd. People speak of ideas that are supposed to live in history as if the ideas flew in like hummingbirds or other birds, whereas in truth the impulses that are often present as historical impulses are precisely the impulses of the dead.

This awareness of communal life with the dead must be developed. And as this awareness develops, and as human soul life becomes more refined through the concepts of spiritual science, which only then do not refine human life when they are conceived theoretically and not lovingly, all this will, so to speak, make the dead present for the consciousness of humanity as well. Then the great part of reality that today remains unconscious and unconsidered will also be considered. Only then will one live with the full reality and in the full reality. This is a task for humanity from this time on. For humanity is presently living in a great catastrophe. The deeper reasons why this catastrophe has arisen are that people have forgotten how to live in reality. Through their materialistic consciousness, people are far removed from reality. They believe that they are close to reality because they only accept one part of reality, the sensual reality, and consider the other to be mere fantasy. But it is precisely by not recognizing one half of reality that one separates oneself from reality. This does not lead to a deeper understanding of reality. If only people would realize that what I have just said is very, very practical for the present day!

Our children and young people are learning history today. In modern times, and for a long time already, people have become accustomed to learning history, that is, what they regard as history. But how much have people learned from history? Well, people today are very often called upon to ask themselves in the face of events that occur as elementary events every hour: What does history teach us about this? The phrase can be read again and again: one can learn this or that from history. People just don't learn anything from reality. Never before could one have learned so much from reality as in the last three and a half years. But countless people are oversleeping this infinitely meaningful reality. When these catastrophic events began, very clever people who believed that they had learned a great deal from history expressed their opinions about how long these war events, as they called them, could last. With the reasons they could have, they were also able to substantiate what they had expressed; they said: Four to six months; according to the knowledge one can have, this war catastrophe cannot last longer than that. They were experts who spoke in this way. Well, the facts turned out differently. And one truly does not need to be an insignificant person to judge in this way, seduced by what we call history in more recent times. In 1789, a truly significant person took up his professorship in history at the university and gave an inaugural address in which this truly significant person said at the time that history teaches that it is very likely that in the future the peoples of Europe will have all sorts of quarrels with each other, but that they will no longer be able to tear each other apart; after all, humanity is too advanced for that. In 1789, a not insignificant person, Friedrich Schiller, made this statement when he took up his professorship, based on his study of history, to which Schiller himself could devote himself. But what followed what Schiller said? The French Revolution; the great wars at the beginning of the 19th century. And if it were a lesson of history that the people of Europe, as members of one great family, could never again tear each other apart, then all the events of the present would be all the more impossible.

However strange it may sound, it is necessary to change our thinking about these things. What has been called history is not history at all. The forces that are supersensible are at work in the historical life of mankind. The dead have an influence on historical life, and a judgment based on history will only emerge when this judgment is made on a spiritual-scientific basis. Until this happens, history will never teach anything, history will never become a practical science, and it will never be suitable for providing maxims for what is to happen. This is why people today are so helpless in the face of events, because it is necessary in our time that spiritual maxims become the practical basis of life. As long as this does not happen, catastrophic events cannot truly be overcome.

I have said: thoughts that arise from an emotional relationship with the dead person and that are remembered in such a way that one also remembers this emotional relationship are particularly favorable for getting in touch with the dead. It is particularly favorable to get an answer from the dead, particularly favorable for the dead to influence our lives, if we really know the dead, if we have the opportunity to delve into his being. Spiritual science will also be able to provide the impetus to delve into the nature of other people. Because today, due to the materialistic state of mind, it is hardly possible for people to know each other in life. They think they know each other, but they just pass each other by, talk past each other. Today, you can be married to someone for thirty or more years and know very little about them. It requires a certain refinement of soul to know the nature of another. If one can know the nature of the other as one's own, then the prerequisite is to call one's nature before the soul. If we call the nature of a dead person to whom we want to ask questions before our soul by visualizing something that connects us emotionally with him, and if we imagine his nature quite vividly, then we are sure to get surely receive an answer; then it is only for us to develop the necessary attention for the interplay of what we address to the dead, with what is sure to come back from the dead when the emotional relationships mentioned are recalled. It is then possible that what we bring to the dead will find its answer from the dead if we can vividly imagine what we have truly understood of his nature.

The consciousness that sees can provide information about many other specific relationships with the dead. Today I will speak of one more. You see, those who pass through the gateway of death as our relatives or friends or otherwise karmically related to us, they either pass away as children or young people or as older people. If you observe with the seeing consciousness what the relationships are like with the various dead, then you can say the following with regard to this passing away at different ages. When children or young people pass through the gate of death, the relationship they maintain with those left behind can be described as follows: those who were their relatives here do not lose their children or younger people; they actually remain right there in the vicinity. And that, which we feel as pain, as grief, takes on its character through this. When a human being endowed with consciousness observes the pain of soul that a mother or father feels over a child who has passed away, this pain of soul is quite different from the pain felt as a young person when an older person dies. Of course, on a superficial, external level, these experiences of the soul are more or less the same, but if you look at them more intimately, they are fundamentally different. The people who have died younger do not go away, they actually remain – that is how you can describe the relationship – and they live on with our souls, live on in our souls. And actually the pain we feel, the grief we feel, is what the younger deceased experience in us. This is transferred into our pain, into our grief. They stay with us. It is a transference of their own pain, which does not have to be pain, but then becomes pain for us when it is transferred into our souls.

The grief we feel for an older person is actually a personal pain. I would say it is less a pain of sympathy and more of selfishness, our own selfish pain. For if we want to describe the relationship of the younger person left behind here to the older deceased from the point of view of the observing consciousness, we can say: the older deceased does not lose us. We do not lose the younger deceased; the older deceased does not lose us, those left behind, but to a certain extent takes the soul with him, carries it with him in its forces on his further path. He does not lose those who remain behind. And so our relationship to such an older deceased person is quite different from that to a younger deceased person. The older deceased does not tend to live in the soul of the person who remains behind, because he takes with him the inner being, the imprint of the inner being.

What I just said is not insignificant in life, because what we call the memory of the dead is given a very specific light through it. In younger people it is good to cultivate this memory – I would say the cult of the dead – in such a way, to develop it, that we remain more general, that we arrange the thoughts or the cultic actions or other things that are intended to cultivate the memory in such a way that we do not go into the individual, the personal side of the dead person, but have great world feelings and thoughts in view of the dead. In this way, the one who died young and remains with us feels at home. In the case of someone who died older, it is especially good if one can go into his individuality, if the thoughts one addresses to him are shaped in such a way that they have something to do with his personality, are shaped towards his personality. For someone who has died more recently, it is particularly good if the funeral service is arranged in such a way that a kind of cult, a generally established cult that has a symbolic meaning, is developed. For people who have died more recently, the Catholic funeral service is particularly suitable, which in most countries is less concerned with individual circumstances or not at all, but is a symbolic general funeral service for everyone. For souls who have died young, who of course remain there, it is best to develop general world symbols, general world feelings with regard to them, with rites that apply equally to everyone. For those who have died older, the Protestant funeral service, where more attention is paid to the individual course of life and more reference is made to the personal side of the deceased, is better. And also in the individual memory that one dedicates to such a deceased person, that which is personally connected with him, which is not applicable to every deceased person, but only to him, is to be preferred.

If one knows these things, then our emotional life with regard to the deceased will also be graded and differentiated. We know how to distinguish how the soul should behave towards a younger or older deceased. Life is enriched in its most intimate relationships when one absorbs the idea from spiritual science that not only the souls living in physical bodies belong to one another, but also the disembodied souls. Only then does man enter into full reality. It must be said again and again: to speak of the spirit in general does not lead very far. To speak of spiritual life in general, as certain philosophers do, or as people do who today also believe that they can overcome materialism by speaking in general of spirit and spirit and spirit: that does not lead very far. We muster the courage to penetrate into the concrete spiritual life. We muster the courage to unreservedly confess such conditions, as we have discussed them again today, before the world, no matter how great the mockery of materialistic thinkers may still be at present. Today one cannot see how much that is infinitely fatal for humanity, infinitely disastrous, is connected with the fact that people know nothing about these things in the most important parts of the world and therefore do not think about them, and are therefore so far removed from reality, which must then devastatingly befall them. The present earth catastrophe will be ascribed to all possible impulses, only not to those in which it really originates in the deepest sense.

This is the place to reflect on the full significance that an anthroposophically oriented spiritual-scientific worldview must have in European intellectual life, as we understand it here. How people relate to the spirit and to spiritual content will be of great importance in the not-too-distant future. For important and significant things are preparing themselves in the life of mankind on earth. One cannot help but, if one comes even a little out of the sleepy state in which, unfortunately, so many people are, think more deeply about certain things than has been thought in Europe for centuries. The times urge people to learn to rethink. Actually, you can see that people are rethinking; the only question is whether they are doing so in a truly profound way or whether they are refraining from doing so altogether, or whether they are doing so in the way that very many people are doing now. You can see that people are rethinking, it's just that sometimes it comes out in a very strange way. You could give not hundreds, but thousands of examples.

You see, one of those people who have changed their thinking terribly over the last three and a half years is the former French socialist and journalist Gustave Herve. He publishes a newspaper, he calls it 'Gloire', which has also been renamed from a less provocative name. This Herve is actually one of those who currently write in the spirit of the most furious French jingoism. One can say that even compared to a tigerish, bullish chauvinist like Clemenceau, Herve is actually even more French-chauvinist – and he has changed his views. Four years ago, he was still quite a cosmopolitan, who laughed at anyone who was somehow, I won't even say, French-chauvinist, but who was just somehow French-nationalist. He was a true cosmopolitan, this Herve. Now what he writes is so vitriolic that one can read between every line one reads of his: he would actually prefer that the French tricolour become an instrument to slay everything opposed to the French. Nevertheless, Herve did make a significant statement, though it was before this war. This saying is the following: The tricolor belongs on the dunghill! — So little was this man, who is now one of the most chauvinistic Frenchmen, nationally minded as a Frenchman, that he rose to say: the tricolor—he means the French tricolor—belongs on the dunghill. So he despised everything national. He has already relearned, rethought, only of course in a way that is not very profound. What should happen in a time happens – it is important to note this; the only question is how it turns out for one or the other, how one or the other really pays attention to their task for humanity. Above all, it is necessary in this re-education that the European man does not oversleep the significant things that are currently being prepared for all of humanity on earth. Over in Asia, especially in the Orient, a sum of judgments is being prepared about Europe, namely about Central Europe – we are particularly interested in Central Europe at the present time – judgments are being prepared that will gradually actually combine to form historical impulses. The Oriental, the Japanese, the Indian, the Chinese, are gradually feeling challenged to develop certain impulses within themselves. And to a high degree, such impulses have already been formed. To a certain degree, there are judgments, especially among leading Orientals, about Central European, about German nature, which should certainly be heeded, because what lives in these impulses will become history in the not too distant future. It may seem very strange, but today one should develop a fine sensitivity for such things; one should know that today it is necessary to foresee a little of what must come in order to keep pace with reality. The Orientals who are preparing to enter into a relationship with Europe, who are forming their judgments, which will become world politics in the future, these Orientals have their age-old views about spiritual life. They see what has been going on in Europe for centuries, but they see it only in a one-sided way, because this Europe, namely this Central Europe, shows them their own nature in a one-sided way. Yes, what do the leading Orientals believe, for example, about this Central European nature? They believe what they must believe from what they actually see. They believe that Central Europe is particularly skilled at organizing state, commercial and other relationships; that Central Europe is particularly skilled at submitting to the external science taught in schools in Europe and surrendering to the authority of this science. These Orientals cannot particularly appreciate what comes from this organization or from science, because they are aware that they have an ancient spirituality that is based on completely different impulses than we Europeans can have. The leading Oriental, in particular, will never be impressed by what European natural science, for example, has to offer; he will never be impressed by what European industry produces, even if he, like the Japanese, will accept it in an external way; he will never be impressed by what European organization is able to achieve. For he is aware that none of this establishes a relationship to the real essence of things. He feels that this relationship exists between his soul and the soul of the universe. He feels spiritually akin to the soul of the universe. Let us be quite clear about this. The Oriental would approach what corresponds to such a way of looking at things, as we have practiced here or elsewhere today, quite differently than he would approach the European machine, the European organization, the European external science of the mind. And however strange it may seem, we may well ask ourselves what the Orient would say if it could know that from the fruits of the spiritual life in Europe, as expressed by Herder, Schiller, Goethe, and the Romantics, , a true, concrete spiritual contemplation of the world, which adds something special to the oriental contemplation of the spirit that the Oriental cannot find through his disposition, but which he could appreciate and with which he could agree? Of course, you may say: Goethe is sufficiently known throughout the world, and the leaders of Oriental intellectual life can also get to know Goethe, and Goethe is a source, an infinite source for the intellectual life of Central Europe. All this is true, absolutely true. But has Central Europe already come to truly recognize Goethe as such a source? One could talk about this point at length. The Oriental looks at what Central Europe has been able to make of Goethe. Much could be said about this, but I will give just one example: Central Europe has known how to pass over the most important impulses of Goethe in silence, but it has a Goethe Society. This Goethe Society was founded at a truly propitious moment. The starting point was an excellent one. It may be said that few constellations were as favorable for such things as this one at the end of the 1880s. When the last descendant of Goethe handed over the estate to a princess, everything could have been well initiated, would have been well tackled, and would have given an initial impulse from which one could have believed: now the spiritual sources will be drawn from Goethe! Much has happened, and the Goethe Society was also founded at that time. But let us take the Oriental who asks: In the Orient we have a life that connects the soul directly to the world soul. Over there they have organizations of state and social conditions, over there they have machines and industry, they have a science that is taught in school and weighs on the soul with tremendous authority; but they have no relationship of the soul of the human being to the soul of the universe. If he knew what relationships were lying latent, if he knew what could be his after what could be experienced in Goethe, he would speak and think and feel differently. But what does he see? Well, he may ask himself: Yes, this Central Europe has managed to found a Goethe Society to honor one of its greatest minds. But it has also managed to have a former finance minister as the president of this Goethe Society today. - It is only symbolic of much more. One can say: there must live in our soul the impulse to make the world aware that from the source of the German spirit can emerge the impulses of spiritual science. They will not be overlooked in the Orient. If they were overlooked, then the judgment would have to form in the Orient as a historical impulse: This Central European culture is actually harmful to humanity. — And this judgment has become established to a high degree. It would certainly be corrected if it were known that this Central European spiritual life is capable of transforming even the most mechanical of mechanisms into beauty, into soul, through those impulses that it has within itself and that it can develop into real knowledge and real processing of the supersensible. So it could actually work in one direction.

And if we look at the other side: in the West, in America, not only the Central European way of life but the whole of Europe is seen in the same way as one can only get to know it from the outside, because of course not only the Goethe Society, with the former finance minister at its head, but also the other things are seen in a similar way, but not what can live in souls as what has passed through our souls today. While in the Orient they say: This Europe, this European life is harmful – in America they find it superfluous. Because the Americans can build machines, organize industry, and found Goethe Societies with people who understand Goethe scholarship as much as what is needed to put together financial budgets. But what flows from Goethe as the deepest source of spiritual life, the Americans cannot do that; they can only have it if they take it from the Central Europeans.

It is not just some mystical eccentricity, my dear friends, it is a question deeply connected with the practical necessities of life in the present, how we relate to the impulses to let the world know and feel, as much as is possible in us, what could live in European culture in terms of spirituality, which paths it could currently have to the supersensible. Today more than ever it is necessary to remember that spiritual science in our sense is not just something with which we want to do good to our own soul, but that spiritual science must become something through which we as human beings in the right sense, as human beings of Central Europe, can fulfill our task in the development of humanity.

Today, my task will be to contribute further to the fundamental theme in our quest to understand the problems of our time. It is justifiably required that man should be awake, and pay due heed to the many spiritual influences that affect and transform him over comparatively short periods of time, and also that he acquaint himself with what must be done to further the particular spiritual and cultural impulses at work in our time.

I have tried from various viewpoints to draw your attention to the greater post-Atlantean period, by describing wider aspects as well as details from it, because only our understanding of that period makes our own comprehensible. To allow the whole of mankind's post-Atlantean evolution to work upon us awakens understanding for our own time.

I want today to speak about that same period by bringing before you some different characteristic aspects. However, in order to understand what I want to describe I must ask you to bear in mind what has been said about humanity as such becoming ever younger and younger. I described how, immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe, mankind's age was 56 and that by now it has dropped to 27. This means that modern man develops naturally up to that age. After the age of 27 he develops further only if he cultivates impulses received directly from the spirit out of his own inner initiative. So let us turn our attention to how the 27 year old human being of today came to be as he is.

Let us look back once more to the time immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe. I have pointed out how very different, compared with today, man's social feelings and in fact his whole social structure then were. I would like to draw special attention to the unique soul constitution of the first post-Atlantean people, particularly of those in the southern part of Asia, and also remind you of certain facts, already known to you from my writings, about that ancient Indian culture. There was at that time a complete absence of what modern man can hardly imagine a social structure without, namely the concepts of laws and rights. You will be aware of the immense importance attached to these and related concepts today. Things of this nature were never mentioned; they were unknown in the first postAtlantean epoch. It would have been impossible at that time to imagine what might be meant by laws and rights, whereas we cannot visualize society without them. When guidance was needed concerning what ought to be done or left undone, or about arrangements to be made either in public or private life, one turned to the patriarchs, i.e., to those who had reached their fifties.

It was assumed, because it was self-evident, that those who had reached their fifties were able to recognize what ought to be done. They had this ability because people remained capable of development in the natural sense like children right into their fifties, by which time they had also attained in the same natural way a certain worldly maturity. No one disputed the fact that people of that age were wise and knew how life should be arranged and human affairs conducted. It would never have occurred to anybody to doubt that people who had developed normally into their fifties would know the right answers to life's problems. When a human being today, in the course of his natural development, reaches puberty, a change takes place in his inner being. In that ancient time inner revelations came to people in their mature years, simply because natural development continued until late in life, the consequence of which were the capabilities I have indicated. Thus, when advice was needed, one consulted the natural lawgivers, the elders, the wise ones.

Why exactly did they have this extraordinary wisdom? The reason they were so wise was that they experienced themselves at one with the spirit, more particularly with the spirits that live in light. Today we sense the warmth in our environment; we are aware of the air as we breathe it in and out; we sense a force in water as it evaporates to come down again as rain, but we experience this only physically, through our senses. The people of the first post-Atlantean epoch did not experience things that way. When they were in their fifties, they felt the spirit in warmth, in currents of air, in circulating water. They did not just experience the wind blowing but the spirits of wind; not just warmth but the spirit of warmth; when they looked at water, they saw also the water spirits. This caused them, when they had reached a certain age, to listen to the revelations of these elemental spirits, though only in certain states of wakefulness. What the elemental spirits revealed to them formed the basis for the wisdom they were able to impart to others. When people who had reached that age had gone through normal development, they were geniuses; in fact, they were much more than what we understand by genius.

Today a child's soul development reveals itself gradually up to a certain age while the body's development takes place. In those days something similar happened in old age when wisdom arose from the bodily nature itself. It came about because many not only developed naturally during the body's thriving growth, but continued to do so during its decline when it became sclerotic and mineralized. The body's forces of decline, its calcification, caused the soul and spirit to develop, and this was bound up with another aspect of evolution. If you imagine vividly what I shall now describe, you will find it easy to understand. People who had reached the age when the body began to decline, clearly perceived the beings of the elements. At night the normal senses enabled man to perceive not only the stars but also imaginations. He saw the spiritual aspect of the starry sky. I have often drawn attention to old star maps with their curious figures. These figures are not as modern science would have it—creations of fantasy—but originate from direct perception.

Thus the ancients, the wise ones, were able to give counsel and regulate the social structure through what they directly perceived. They had an intimate relationship with that part of the earth they inhabited because they perceived its spiritual content. They perceived spirituality in the water that issued from it, in the air surrounding it, in the climatic conditions of warmth and so on. But these interrelationships differed from place to place. In Greece they were different from those in India and different again from those in Persia and so on. As a consequence the wise ones, the sages, had perceptions that were related to the particular section of the earth which they occupied. The ancient Indian culture developed the way it did through the relationships prevailing in that part of the earth. Likewise there arose in Greece a culture specifically related to the elements in that part. These differences were experienced quite concretely.

Today something similar is experienced only in regard to the human being. We would regard it as grotesque were it suggested that the ear could be situated where the nose is or vice versa. The whole organism is so formed that the nose could only be where it is and likewise the ear. However, the earth itself is an organism, but for that there is no longer any feeling or understanding. When a culture develops, it must of necessity have a certain physiognomy through the influence of the earth's elemental beings. What developed in ancient Greece could not have been transferred to ancient India or vice versa. What is so significant about ancient times is that cultures developed which reflected the earth's spiritual physiognomy. Nothing of this is known to man today because, when he reaches the age when he could know, his natural ability to develop ceases. People do not pause to wonder why it is that, when the white man immigrated to North America, the appearance of those who settled in the eastern part became different from that of those who settled in California. The expression in the eyes of the settlers in the east changed completely, and their hands became larger than they would have been in Europe; even the color of their skin changed. This applies only to the eastern part of America. The development of a civilization and its relationship to its part of the earth's organism is no longer taken into account. Man no longer knows what kind of spiritual entities, what kind of spiritual beings live in the elements of the earth. Man has become abstract; he no longer experiences things as they truly are.

What I have described applies to the first post-Atlantean epoch. Things changed in the following epoch, in the course of which mankind's age dropped to between 48 and 42. During this second post-Atlantean epoch the natural ability of the human being to develop lasted only into his forties. Therefore he did not attain the kind of wisdom he had attained in the first epoch. His soul-spirit being remained dependent on the bodily nature only in his forties. The ability to sense his relationship with the elements became weaker. However, the ability was still there, only weakened. People now became aware that when they were outside the body during sleep, they were in the spiritual world. They became aware of this once they had reached, their forties. They also became aware that when they awoke and plunged into the body once more, the spiritual world became dark. The teaching about Ormuzd and Ahriman, about Light and Darkness, originated from this experience. Man was aware that he was in the spiritual world during sleep, and he experienced the descent into the body as a descent into darkness. There was no longer the close dependence on the piece of land one inhabited; instead, there was an experience of participating in night and day. The constellations of stars were still seen pictorially through the faculty of imagination. This atavistic ability had remained from the time of Atlantis and enabled man to know that he had a living soul and that during sleep he was in a spiritual world which he could experience through imagination.

In the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, the ability to experience oneself so completely at one with the whole cosmos receded still further. In Persia it had been taught by Zarathustra, but had in general been known through tradition. During the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural epoch, in the course of normal evolution, man's sense perception became stronger while the old spiritual perception became weaker. As a consequence the main form of worship in the third epoch was a star cult. Earlier, in Persia there had been no star cults; the spiritual world had been experienced directly through imagination and music of the spheres. In the third epoch things were more interpreted rather than seen directly; the pictorial aspect became fainter. A proper star cult developed because the stars were clearly seen.

Then came the fourth epoch when the surrounding spiritual world had faded from man's consciousness. Only the physical aspect of the stars was perceived; the world was seen more or less as we see it. I have already described how man experienced the world in ancient Greece. That the soul lives in the body and expresses itself through the body—of this the Greeks were aware, but they no longer felt to the same extent that the cosmos was the soul's true home. I have often referred to Aristotle who, because he was not initiated, could not perceive the spiritual aspect of the stars; instead he founded a philosophy of the world of stars. He interpreted what he saw physically. His interpretation was based on his awareness that man's soul resides in the body between birth and death. He was also aware in a philosophical sense, that the soul has its home in that outermost sphere in which, for Aristotle, the highest God held sway, while lesser Gods held sway in the nearer spheres. He also evolved a philosophy of the elements, of earth, water, air, and fire or warmth; it was, however, philosophy, not experience. No philosophy of the elements had existed before when they were still directly perceived and experienced. By the fourth epoch it had all changed; mankind had been truly driven from the spiritual world. The time had come when something had to intervene: the Mystery of Golgotha.

In these lectures I have pointed to the deep significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. I explained that by the time it took place mankind's age had dropped to 33; man's natural development proceeded only up to that age, and Christ, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, experienced just that age. A truly wondrous coincidence! As I have described, immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe man remained capable of natural development right up to the age of 56, then 55, later 54 and so on. At the beginning of the second epoch this ability lasted only up to the age of 48, then 47 and so on. At the beginning of the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch it lasted only to the age of 42, receding to the age of 36. The Graeco-Latin epoch began in the year of 747 B.C. when man retained the ability of natural development only up to the age of 35, then 34 and when it receded to the age of 33 then—because this age is below 35 when the body begins to decline—man could no longer experience the cosmic spirit's union with the soul. Therefore, the spirit that is the Christ Spirit approached man from outside. You see how essential was the Christ Spirit's entry into mankind's evolution.

Let us look back once more to the patriarchs in ancient times who were, one might say, super-geniuses. They were consulted on all questions concerning the arrangement of human affairs because their natural inner development enabled them to embody the divine-spiritual element. The possibility of receiving higher counsel from human beings diminished ever more. When mankind's age receded to 33, Christ had to come from other worlds and enter the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Man had to receive from a different direction the impulse which through his natural evolution he had lost.

This allows us deep insight into the indispensable connection between mankind's evolution and the Mystery of Golgotha. Science of the spirit reveals Christ's entry into human evolution as an inherent necessity. The need for new insight and deeper understanding of the Christ Impulse can be seen at every turn.

I recommend you read the latest number of Die Tat (The Deed), for it contains much of interest. You will find an article by our revered friend Dr. Rittelmeyer¹ and also one of the last articles written by our dear friend Deinhard before his death.² In this same number there is also an article by Arthur Drews which is significant because here he again discusses the role of Christ Jesus in the modern world.³ I have often spoken about Drews. He came to the fore in Berlin at the time when the attempt was made, from the so-called monistic viewpoint to prove, among other things, that Jesus of Nazareth could not be a historical person. Two books appeared concerned with what was called the “Christ Myth” to show that it cannot be proved historically that a Jesus of Nazareth ever lived.

This time Drews discusses Christ Jesus from an odd point of view. In the June number of Die Tat you will find an article entitled “Jesus Christ and German Piety.” He builds up the peculiar idea of a piety that is German; this is just about as clever as to speak of a German sun or a German moon. To bring national differences into these things is really as nonsensical as it would be to speak of the sun or moon being exclusively German; yet such absurdities attract large audiences these days. It is interesting that Drews, who would not dream of evoking Eckart,⁴ Tauler⁵ or Jacob Boehme,⁶ here does evoke Fichte,⁷ although normally he would not do so even if philosophical matters were discussed. He takes the greatest trouble in his attempt to justify his idea of German piety, and also to show that, especially if one is German, the truth about Jesus Christ cannot be arrived at through theology or historical study, but only through what he calls German metaphysics. And says Drews, no historical Christ Jesus can be found through metaphysics.

Drews' whole approach is closely connected with what I have drawn to your attention in these lectures, that the only concept of God modern man can reach is that of the Father God. The name of Christ is interspersed in the writings of Harnack,⁸ but what he describes is the Father God. What is usually called the inner mystical path can lead only to a general Godhead. Christ cannot be found in either Tauler or Eckart. It is a different matter when we come to Jacob Boehme, but the difference is not understood by Drews. In Boehme the Christ can be found for it is of Him that he speaks. Christ is to be found neither in Arthur Drews' writings nor in Adolf Harnack's theology, but Drews is, from the modern point of view, the more honest. He seeks the Christ and does not find Him, because that is impossible through abstract metaphysics held aloof from historical facts. But the real facts of history can, as we have seen, enable us to understand the significance even of the age of Christ Jesus in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha. Drews fails to find Christ because he remains at abstract metaphysics, which is the only standpoint acceptable today. Certainly, the healthy person can through metaphysics find a general God but not Christ. It is an outlook that is directly connected with what I explained, that atheism is really an illness, the inability to find Christ a misfortune, not to be able to find the spirit a soul blindness. Drews cannot do otherwise than say, “What is discovered through metaphysics cannot honestly be called Christ; we must therefore leave Christ out of our considerations.” Drews believes he is speaking out of the spirit of our time, and so he is inasmuch as our time rejects spiritual science. He believes he is speaking the truth when he says that religion must be based on metaphysics, and therefore cannot, if it is honest, entertain any concept of Christ.

Let us now turn to the actual words with which Drews ends his extraordinary article: “Every historical tradition”—he means traditions depicting Christ historically—“is an obstacle to religion; as soon as the great work of reformation, only just begun by Luther, is completed, the last remnant of any faith based on history will be swept away from religious consciousness.”

I have often mentioned that spiritual science seeks to establish a faith based on history because it provides a concrete impetus towards the spiritual aspect of evolution which leads as directly to Christ as abstract metaphysics leads to an undifferentiated God. Drews says, “German religion must be either a religion without Christ or no religion at all.” That expresses more or less what I have often indicated, namely that the present-day consciousness is bound to remove Christ unless it comes through spiritual science to a concrete grasp of the spiritual world and thereby rekindles understanding of Christ.

Drews continues:

When one recognizes God and man to be essentially the same, [Imagine, to suggest, as is done here, that God and man are the same!] when every person is seen to have a natural tendency to become a “Christ”; i.e., to become a God-man, then there will be no room for a Jesus Christ. One can certainly draw attention to acts attributed to Christ in order to elucidate and illustrate certain religious procedures, as for example mystics have done. One can also refer to sayings of Christ to make one's own opinions clear, just as one can refer to words and doings of other outstanding individuals.

Here we have the peculiar situation that what is said never to have existed is yet referred to as if it had. On the one hand Drews sets out to prove that Christ never was, and on the other he says that it is permissible to refer to His words and deeds in order to elucidate one's own. He continues:

“German” religion of the God-man has no use for a historical redeemer or even for an exceptional human being who, like Jesus, haunts our liberal theologians. It needs no symbolic representative who only serves to confuse the issue. Such a symbol must be recognized as superfluous and even dangerous because it introduces into our “German” concept of religion not only an alien element which, however sublime, is nevertheless onesided, but also unacceptable Protestant ethics. It is this which has caused modern man's alienation from Christianity. Furthermore, such imposed ethics contradict the duties, so deeply felt at the present time, placed upon us by our own nature.

This is certainly a passage of which I can make no proper sense. How is one to come to terms with the way modern man thinks? That is something difficult to understand when one's own thoughts relate to reality. Drews continues:

All that is great and significant in the Gospels is not lost to mankind even if there never was a Jesus. The words attributed to him would then have come from some other source. In any case, our salvation cannot be dependent on whether there was a Jesus or not. Regarding Jesus as principle of salvation draws in its wake not only the whole dualistic metaphysics of Palestinian Judaism, which is incompatible with the modern spirit, but also makes religion inseparable from history. It introduces vague opinions and brings forward doubtful historical events as proof of external religious manifestations. The “German” religion of the God-man is not only a religion of freedom, but a religion of the most individual and deepest inwardness. It will no sooner have entered life than we shall be free both of external Church functions with their subsidiary demands, but also of Jesus Christ. As Fichte said: “It is through metaphysics, not history, that salvation is obtained! And metaphysics knows of no Jesus Christ.”

It would be well if people become conscious of the fact that without spiritual knowledge modern education leads logically to such a conclusion. To present a different result would be a compromise and therefore dishonest. If this were recognized spiritual science would not be seen as something arbitrarily introduced at the present time, but as the answer to the deepest and truest needs of the human soul.

Since the year 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha, man has lived in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch during which through human evolution he becomes ever more estranged from the spiritual world. We can find our connection with spirituality only through impulses that are no longer provided by man's bodily nature but are innate in the soul itself. People today succumb to the kind of abstractions I have described because as yet they are not sufficiently permeated by Christianity to sense the soul's necessity of union with the spiritual world. That is why nowadays all concepts, all ideas are abstract. Truly they go together—today's unchristian attitude and the unreality and abstraction of ideas. Indeed our concepts and ideas will remain unreal unless we learn to permeate them once more with the spirit, the spirit in which Christ lives. Through Him our concepts will again become as living and real as those of the ancient Indian patriarchs who through their personalities made concrete and effective what was instituted as rights and laws. Our rights and laws are themselves abstract. When a bridge is built and it collapses, one soon realizes that its construction was based on wrong concepts. In society such connections are not so easily detected; all kinds of incompetence may be practiced. The result reveals itself only in the unhappiness people suffer in times such as ours. When a bridge collapses, one blames the engineer who built it. When misfortune overtakes mankind because the inadequate concepts of those in charge are incapable of intervening in events, then one blames all kinds of things. However, what ought to be blamed, or rather recognized, is the circumstance that we are going through a crisis in which people no longer have any true sense as to whether a concept has any connection with reality or not.

I would like to give you an example taken from external nature to illustrate once more the distinction between concepts that are connected with reality and those that are not. If you take a crystal and think of it as a hexagonal prism, closed above and below by hexagonal pyramids, then you have a concept of a quartz crystal that is connected with the reality, because that is true of the crystal's form and existence. If on the other hand you form a concept of a flower without roots, you have an unreal concept, for without roots a flower cannot live, cannot have an existence in reality. Someone who does not strive to make his thoughts correspond to reality will regard the flower torn off at the stem as just as real as the quartz crystal, but that is untrue. It is not possible for someone who thinks in accordance with reality to form a mental picture of a flower without roots. People will have to learn anew to form concepts that correspond to reality. A tree which has been uprooted is no longer a reality to which the concept tree corresponds. To feel the uprooted tree as a reality is to feel an untruth, for it cannot live, but withers and dies if not rooted in the earth. There you have the difference.

No one whose thinking corresponds to reality could suggest, as professor Dewar does, that it is possible to calculate by means of experiments how the world will end.⁹ Such speculations are always unreal. It must become habit to train one's thinking to correspond to things as they truly are, otherwise one's thoughts about the spiritual world will be mere fantasy. One must be able to distinguish the concept of a living entity from that of a lifeless one, otherwise one cannot have true concepts of the spiritual world. One's thoughts remain unreal if a tree without roots, or a geological stratum by itself—for it can exist only if there are other strata lying below as well as above—is regarded as true reality. Those who think the way geologists or physicists and especially biologists do are not formulating real thoughts. Biologists think of a tooth, for example, as if it could exist on its own. Today, spiritual science apart, it is only in the realm of art—though not in pure realism—that one finds any understanding for the fact that the reality or unreality of something can depend on whether that to which it belongs is present or not.

These examples are taken from the external physical world, but today other spheres, such as national economy and political science in particular, suffer from unreal thoughts. I have pointed out the impossibility of the political science outlined by Kjellen in his book The State as a Form of Life.¹⁰ You know that I have great respect for Kjellen. His book is both widely read and highly praised, but if some aspect of natural science had been written about in a similar way, the author would have been laughed at. One may get away with writing in that way about the state, but not about a crocodile. Not a single concept in Kjellen's book is thought through realistically.

It is essential that man develop a sense for the kind of thoughts that do relate to reality; only then will he be able to recognize the kind of concepts and ideas capable of bringing order into society. Just think how essential it is that we acquire concepts enabling us to understand people living on Russian soil. Remarkably little is done to reach such understanding. What is thought about the Russian people, whether here or in the West or in Central Europe, is very far from the truth. A few days ago I read an article which suggested that Russians still have to some extent the more mystical approach to life of the Middle Ages, whereas since then in the West and in Central Europe intellectuality has become widespread. The article makes it clear that the Russian people should begin to acquire the intellectuality which other European peoples have had the good fortune to attain. The writer concerned has not the slightest inkling that the character of the Russian people is utterly different. People nowadays are not inclined to study things as they truly are. The sense is lacking for the reality, the truth, contained in things.¹¹

One of our friends made the effort to bring together what I have written about Goethe in my books with what I said in a lecture concerning human and cosmic thoughts.¹² From this material he produced a book in Russian, a remarkable book already published.¹³ I am convinced it will be widely read in Russia by a certain section of the public. Were it to be translated into German or any other European language, people would find it deadly boring. This is because they lack the sense for appreciating the finely chiseled thoughts, the wonderful conceptual filigree work that makes this book so striking.

What is so remarkable about the Russian character is that as it evolves something will emerge which is different from what has emerged in the rest of Europe where mysticism and intellectuality exist, as it were, apart. In Russia a mysticism will appear which is intellectual in character and an intellectuality which is based on mysticism. Thus it will be something quite new, intellectual mysticism, mystical intellectuality and, if I may put it so, quite equal to its task. This is something that is not understood at all. It is there nevertheless, though hidden within the chaos of Eastern Europe, and will emerge expressing the characteristics I have briefly indicated.

These things can be understood only if one has a feeling for the reality inherent in ideas. To acquire this sense, this feeling that ideas are realities is one of the most urgent needs of the present time. Without it abstract programs will continue to be devised, beautiful political speeches held about all kinds of measures to be taken which prove unproductive, though they need not be. Nor can there be any feeling for events in history which when followed up, can be an immense help when it comes to understanding our own time.

Let me give you a characteristic example. Concern about the problems facing mankind at the present time causes one to turn repeatedly to events that took place in the 18th century, particularly in the '60s of that century. At that time remarkable impulses were emerging in Europe. An attempt to understand them can be most instructive. As you know that was when the Seven Years War took place. England and France were deeply divided, mainly through their colonial rivalry in North America. In Europe, England and Prussia were allies; opposing them was the alliance consisting of France and Austria. In Russia a strong hostility prevailed against Prussia during the reign of Czarina Elizabeth. Therefore one should really speak of an alliance between Russia, France and Austria against Prussia and England. One could say that on a smaller scale conditions were similar to those of today; just as now there was then a danger of complete chaos in Europe. In fact, when the situation in the early 1760s is investigated, it is found to be not unlike the present one in 1917. But the remarkable incident I want to mention is the following.

I believe it was on January the fifth, 1762, that Czarina Elizabeth died; or to put it as the historians have done, her life, not very often sober, had come to an end; she had spent most of it inebriated. The Czarina Elizabeth was dead, and her nephew, her sister's son, stood before those authorized to place the crown upon his head. It was an extraordinary person who, on January the fifth 1762, prepared himself to be elevated to Czar. He was clad in his regiment's ceremonial uniform, consisting of green jacket with red collar and cuffs, yellow waistcoat and stockings, leggings to above the knee (he had already as Grand Duke made a habit of never bending the knees when walking as this, to him, seemed more dignified) long pigtail, two powdered coils, a hat with upturned brim, and as his symbol he carried a knobbed staff. As you know, his consort was Catherine, later to become Catherine the Great. History describes Czar Peter III as an immature young man.¹⁴ It is extraordinarily difficult to ascertain what kind of person he actually was. Very probably he was very immature, even backward. He became Czar at a significant moment in the history of Europe. At his side was a woman who already as a seven year old girl had written in her diary that there was nothing she desired more than to become the absolute ruler of the Russian people. Her dream was to become ruler in her own right. And she seemed to be proud that for the sake of direct succession she need never bear a child that was necessarily that of her husband, the Czar. When he became ruler, the war had been going on for a long time; everybody longed for peace. Peace would be a blessing if only it could be attained.

What happened next was that already in February—that is, soon after the feeble-minded Peter III had ascended to the throne of the Czars—all the European powers received a Russian manifesto. This event was very remarkable, and I would like to read to you a literal translation. The manifesto was sent to the embassies in Austria, France, Sweden and Saxony. Saxe-Coburg was at that time part of Poland. The document reads as follows:

His Imperial Majesty, who through good fortune ascended to the throne of his forebears, regards his first duty to be promotion and increase of the welfare of his subjects. It is therefore with great sorrow that he Witnesses the present war which has already lasted six years and is an immense burden to all the countries involved. Far from showing any signs of coming to an end, it is, to the misfortune of all the nations, spreading ever further the longer it lasts. The suffering of humanity through this calamity is all the greater because of the uncertainty concerning the outcome, which shows no sign of lessening. In these circumstances, out of humanitarian feelings and compassion for the useless spilling of innocent blood, his Imperial Majesty on his part wishes to put an end to this evil. He therefore finds it necessary to turn to Russia's allies reminding them that God's first commandment to sovereigns, namely the preservation of the people entrusted to them, must take precedence over all other considerations. They on their part would wish to secure the peace so necessary and valuable to them also, and at the same time to contribute as much as is possible to see peace established in the whole of Europe. To this purpose His Majesty is prepared to sacrifice the conquests made in this war by Russian forces. His Majesty hopes that the allies on their part will consider the return of peace a greater benefit than anything they could expect to obtain through a prolonged war and further bloodshed. Out of the best and deepest feelings his Imperial Majesty advises all to devote their best forces to achieve so great and beneficial an objective. St. Petersburg, February 23, 1762.

I do wonder if anywhere today there is a true feeling for the fact that this manifesto is absolutely concrete, is based completely on reality. One should be able to sense that it is a document that carries the conviction of truth. However, the diplomatic notes sent in answer to the manifesto are all declarations written more or less in the same vein as are today's declarations concerned with the entente, especially the ones sent by Woodrow Wilson. Everything in these diplomatic notes is utterly abstract with no relation to reality, whereas what I just now read to you, written on the 23rd of February 1762, is in a style of a different order, and contains something quite remarkable, all the more so in view of the Czar's condition, which I described to you. There must have been someone with power behind the scenes, with a sense for the reality of the situation, who could cause this action to be taken. Later, when the abstract replies had reached Russia—replies containing the same kind of abstractions as those used today, like “peace, free from annexation” or “freedom for the people”—Peter, the feeble-minded, sent an answer delivered by the Russian envoy, Count Gallitzin, to the Court in Vienna on the 9th of April. Listen to what it contains:

The friendship which has existed between the Russian Imperial Court and the Prussian Royal Court ever since the time of Czar Peter I has lately suffered a setback merely through accidental changes in the constitution of Europe. The war which is a result of these changes can neither last forever nor destroy the advantage of a friendship which for many years proved to be a useful confederation and could be so again. His Imperial Majesty therefore proposes to the King of Prussia that they conclude not only a lasting peace, but a treaty of alliance in their mutual interest and to their mutual advantage.

Please note the stroke of genius in what follows:

The reason for these deliberations on the part of his Russian Imperial Majesty is obvious and needs no lengthy explanation, as it is easy enough to demonstrate that no good can come of a general peace such as was concluded in Westphalia. Peace cannot be expected to last when there is an unending shifting of arms and such variety of intentions. Such a peace necessitates all conquered territories to be protected, as is the case in Westphalia. But now the matter hinges on pretentions which have only arisen out of the war. These can hardly be reconciled due to the eagerness early in the war to mobilize as many powers as possible with little consideration for possible consequences of hastily concluded treaties and amalgamations.

One cannot imagine a more ingenious diplomatic document. Think about it—if only somebody could recognize now that the pretentions made today have only arisen because of this war! The document continues:

The Russian Imperial Court alone has always insisted that, before a general congress is arranged, it is necessary that conflicting interests and demands are reconciled. It would appear that the Sovereign Court in Vienna also recognizes this, and therefore never directly answered the Russian Imperial communique. The Sovereign Court made only brief reference to points that were in its favor, passing over others in silence preferring, it would seem, to await possible fortunes with arms. ... The war that has since broken out between England and Spain only increases the general misery. Although it engages England at sea, it does nothing to lessen the war in Germany. Sweden is without hope and is suffering losses; her glory waning, she seems to have courage neither to continue the war nor to withdraw from it. The Sovereign Courts all appear to be waiting to see who will be the first to make a decisive move towards establishing peace. His Russian Imperial Majesty alone is ready to do so, through compassion and also in view of the complaisance shown by his majesty the King of Prussia. His Imperial Majesty wishes to take the necessary steps at the earliest possible moment, especially as this intention was communicated to all the Sovereign Courts as early as the 23rd of February, soon after the start of his reign.

Peace was established, and indeed as a result of what was initiated with this concrete document based on reality. It is of the greatest importance that a sense is developed for what history conveys, a feeling for the difference between concepts and ideas that are incapable of intervening in reality, and those that are themselves rooted deeply in reality and therefore have the power to affect it. One should not imagine that words are always mere words; they can be as effective as deeds if based on reality. It must be realized that mankind is going through a crisis. It is all-important that a new path, a new connection, be found to truth and reality. People are so alienated from what is real that they have lost the sense for truth and for the right way of dealing with things. It is important to see that the crisis we are in and the untruthfulness that abounds are related. Let me give you one small example: a periodical has appeared, calling itself The Invisible Temple, obviously a publication in which those inclined towards mysticism expect to find something very deep. “The Invisible Temple”—Oh, the depth of it! Subtitle? A Monthly Magazine for the Gathering of Spirits.¹⁵ I will say no more on that point, but in one issue monists and theosophists are mentioned. Various foolish things are said, including a passage I will read. The periodical is the mouthpiece for a society which is at present led by Horneffer.¹⁶ The society claims it is going to renew the world.

This is the passage:

Monists and theosophists may go in different directions; they may vigorously fight and despise one another; yet in one respect they are strangely alike. Both lay claim to the word “science.” Both insist that their pursuit is true science, and that everybody else's science is pseudo-science. You will find this stated in the writings of Haeckel as well as of Rudolf Steiner.

I request you to go through everything I have said or written and see if you can find anything of what is here maintained. But who today is prepared in a case like this to call something by its right name, and say that it is an outright lie, and a common one at that. That Horneffer should write such things comes as no surprise. When he published Nietzsche's works, I had to point out to him that he did not have the faintest understanding of Nietzsche. What he had compiled and published was rubbish. So what he writes now is no surprise. But people take such things seriously, and thus it comes about that the worst, most stupid foolishness is confused and mixed up with the earnest striving of spiritual science, and worse still, what is-truth is called lies, whereas lies are accepted as truth.

It must be learned that a new link to reality has to be found. In the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch the patriarchs when they reached their fifties, received the spirit into themselves as part of their natural development. We may ask if this has in any way remained through the Greek epoch up to our own? The answer is that all that has remained is what we call genius. When the faculty of genius appears today it is still to some extent dependent on man's natural development. However, the men of genius appearing during the fifth cultural epoch will be the last in earth evolution. It is important to know that no genius will appear in the future. We must face the fact that as a natural gift the faculty of genius will disappear. Instead, a new quality of originality will appear, a quality that no longer appears as a gift of nature but must be striven for. It will arise through man's intimate union with the spirituality that reveals itself in the outer world.

A very interesting man, a psychologist, died in March, 1917. I have often spoken about Franz Brentano.¹⁷ He was not only the most significant expert on Aristotle, but a characteristic thinker of our time. I have mentioned before that he began a work on psychology. The first volume appeared in 1874; the second was to appear that same fall and further volumes later. But neither the one expected in the fall nor any later volumes appeared. I became thoroughly familiar with Franz Brentano's characteristic way of lecturing when I lived in Vienna. I have read every published line of what he has written, so I am well acquainted with the direction of his thoughts. Because I know him so well I am convinced that Franz Brentano's innate honesty prevented him from publishing further volumes. There are clear indications already in the first volume of his struggle to reach a clear conclusion regarding immortality of the soul. However, without spiritual science—with which he would have nothing to do—he could not get beyond the first volume, let alone the fifth, in which he planned to furnish proof of the soul's immortality. There was no room for science of the spirit in his outlook. He is, in fact, the originator of the saying so much quoted by 19th-century philosophers: “Vera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est” (”True science of the spirit can have no other method of research than natural science.”)¹⁸ He composed this sentence for his inauguration thesis when in 1866, having left the Dominican order, he became professor at the university at Wurzburg. Philosophy was already then rather scorned. The first time he entered the auditorium, where formerly a follower of Baader¹⁹ had lectured, he was met with slogans such as “sulfur factory” written on the walls.

Franz Brentano was a gifted man, and he worked out his chosen subject as far as it was possible for him to do. The reason he came to a standstill after the first volume of his intended work was his refusal to enter into spiritual science. His later writings are fragments. But one treatise, a rendering of one of his lectures, is extremely interesting. It is entitled Genius. Although he was a keen observer he was not someone able to ascend from physical observations to spiritual ones. The treatise is basically an attack on the idea of genius. He opposes the idea that from some unconscious strata of the soul could arise what is called genius. He argues that what comes to expression is just a quicker, more commanding grasp of things than is normally attained by ordinary people. As I said, Brentano's treatise is very interesting although he did not come to a spiritual-scientific viewpoint. He was a keen observer and for that very reason could not find, when observing life today, anything to justify the claim of genius. And because he was honest he opposed the idea.

The riddle of genius, among other things, remains inexplicable till one investigates the deeper aspects of mankind's evolution, unless one knows that in the future, what has been known as “genius” will be replaced in certain people by a new way of communion with the spiritual world. When they achieve this, they will receive impulses which will come to expression in the external world in ways that will be equivalent to what was created by geniuses in the past. To recognize that things were different in the past and will be different again in the future is to understand evolution rightly.

I know full well that one is ridiculed for saying such things, but they are the result of direct observation of concrete facts. They are also a contrast to the way people nowadays base their actions not on facts but on some idea with which they have become enamored. To give an example, a man concerned with healing got the idea that movement is good for certain illnesses, which is quite true. However, someone consulted him who had a complaint which the practitioner thought would benefit from movement. He recommended that the patient take plenty of exercise, to which he got the reply: “Forgive me, but you must have forgotten that I am a postman.” One must recognize that concepts are only the tool, not the reality, and also that one must never be dogmatic. I have sometimes referred to another unreal concept, frequently acted upon when it is said: “the best man in the right place!”—whereupon it is immediately found that one's nephew or son-in-law is the best man! What matters are the facts as they truly are, not the idea one is in love with. Unless a feeling for these things is acquired one will fail to learn what is to be learned from history, and fail also to recognize the real issues in things and events around one. And the possibility to find the Christ again will elude one.

We shall continue these considerations next week.

• 1 . Friedrich Rittelmeyer, 1872–1938, professor of theology, pastor in Nurnberg and Berlin, co-founder of the Christian Community.
• 2 . Ludwig Deinhard, 1847–1917, Das Mysterium des Menschen im Lichte der psychischen Forschung, Berlin 1910.
• 3 . Arthur Drews, 1865–1935, see: “Ist Jesus eine historische Perstinlichkeit?” in Hat Jesus gelebt?, Berlin and Leipzig 1910, and Die Christusmythe, Jena 1910 and 1911.
• 4 . Meister Eckart, 1260–1327, German mystic and preacher.
• 5 . Johannes Tauler, 1300–1361, German mystic and preacher.
• 6 . Jacob Boehme, 1575–1624, German pantheist mystic and philosopher.
• 7 . Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German idealist philosopher.
• 8 . Adolf Harnack, 1851–1930, German Lutheran theologian.
• 9 . Professor Dewar, 1842–1923, chemist, lecturer at the Royal Institution in London.
• 10. Rudolf Kjellen, 1864–1922, Der Staat als Lebensform, Leipzig 1916.
• 11. See also Lecture VI, p. 117 and Lecture VIII, p. 157.
• 12. Rudolf Steiner, Human and Cosmic Thought (Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1967).
• 13. Boris Bugajeff (Andrej Bjelyi), 1880–1934. Rudolf Steiner and Goethe in der Weltanschauung der Gegenwart.
• 14. Peter III, Czar of Russia 1768–1762.
• 15. Der unsichtbare Tempel; Monatsschri ft zur Sammlung der Geister, Mtinchen 1916–1920, 5 volumes edited by the brothers Dr. Ernst and Dr. August Horneffer.
• 16. Ernst Horneffer, 1871–1954, professor in Giessen, followed Dr. Fritz Koegel as editor in the Nietzsche archives. See Nietzsches letztes Schaffen, Jena 1907.
• 17. Franz Brentano, see note 2 to Lecture I.
• 18. Franz Brentano, Das Genie, a lecture held in the Center for Engineering and Architecture in Vienna, published in Leipzig, 1892.
• 19. Franz Xavier Benedikt Baader, 1765–1841, philosopher.

If things really went on in political life—or in public life generally—in the way imagined by many people at the present day, one could only give up all hope of any personal action, any direct human intervention, being able to effect anything towards the betterment of social conditions. More particularly, one cannot but remember that there are quite a number of people at the present day, who are under the idea, that the phases of economic life run their course almost like natural phaenomena: that after one set of economic occurrences has played itself out, another set of occurrences will follow, with an inevitability of cause and effect in every way comparable to the inevitability with which a substance, possessing certain properties, will catch fire when brought together in a certain way with another substance. And in the same way many people have the idea in economic life, that when some phase like a ‘favorable business conjuncture’ has been evolved for a while, that then this ‘favorable business conjuncture’ will of itself inevitably evolve a crisis, and that this will then be succeeded for a while by a bad run of business and a declining phase of economic conditions; until again a sort of recovery sets in, and a rise takes place so to speak in economic life.

This way of depicting economic processes was one peculiarly favoured in latter times by the theoreticians of economic thought, by political economists, who would have liked to describe everything as part of a chain of external cause and effect, to the exclusion of all intervention from the human will. It has actually been asserted, for instance, that the important economic crisis, which took place towards 1907 and during that year, was one that was bound to follow of necessity, as a consequence of the boom that preceded it.

It may be thought perhaps, that a study of processes which cover such a wide range of economic life as favourable or unfavorable conjunctures cannot be of so much concern for the private individual; but this is not the case. And in particular any person, who wants himself to embark on any sort of undertaking, must each time pay good heed to the ‘conjunctural aspect’ into which he is launching.

It is of course only too comprehensible, that the whole natural-science way of thinking during the last three to four hundred years should give rise to this belief in an inevitable chain of cause and effect. As you know, it is the Marxian school of social thought more especially, whose devotees indulge in this sort of ideas, and would like to make such ideas too the basis of social action. In the eyes of many persons to-day it seems quite foolish to criticise anything of this kind; for people look upon natural science and its methods of thought as presenting a downright ideal; and they look upon it as a great achievement, that this natural-science method of thought has been extended to the affairs of practical life as well.

Here it is, that spiritual science, which, according to the views represented at all times in this place,¹ is the only science from which a sound, social way of thinking can proceed ... here it is that spiritual science must come in and rectify errors; and it is able to rectify them through its whole essence, which has nothing whatever in it of that peculiar abstract, theoretic character assumed by materialist, natural-science thought in modern times,—which, on the contrary, educates in a man something which leads him to look plainly at the actual facts of life, and not to let these facts of life be mystified with a fog of theories.—I have pointed out in my "Roots of the Social Question", that it is just the working classes of the day who are peculiarly prone to bow down to a world-conception which from first to last is purely theoretic. The reason of this is simply, that the working classes of the day,—finding no understanding of what they were in search of,—took over from the middle-classes,—who were developing ever more and more materialistically,—the only world-conception that these middle-classes stood for: that of Materialism. And now they believe in this materialist world-conception as in an infallible gospel, and simply cannot free themselves from it.

Spiritual science allows of no bowing down to theories, and—above all—of no tendency to phantasies of any sort. For, if one has any latent tendency as a spiritual scientist to be at all fantastical, then everything one may see in the spiritual world will become thereby distorted,—caricatured: one will only get into quite a distorted world. The first, necessary foundation for spiritual science is, that it should train its disciples to realities,—in a certain measure indeed, as I might say, to sober commonplace. But, once anyone has trained himself in the spiritual field, firstly to strict, clear logic, and secondly to the careful consideration of actual facts, then he is in a position to carry this training on into practical every-day life as well, and in every way fitted, there too, to let facts tell their own tale and to allow them their due weight.

What do the political economists and theorists do, and the other people who sit at their feet, when they want, for instance, to study something like the economic crisis of 1907? They first begin by studying the economic conditions that went before it, in 1906, and come there to a year of favourable conjuncture. And they then attempt to find in these conditions, that went before, the origin of the economic collapse, that came after. If one follows this procedure, one is apt to confuse one's mind with all sorts of nebulous notions, and becomes in the end altogether incapable of thinking straight in social matters. Whereas, if one has trained oneself in the things such as spiritual science absolutely requires, then one examines the actual economic facts; and then one discovers something of this kind, (we might have chosen any other example), that—as regards the crisis of 1907—there was a powerful combine of finance-magnates in America, who owned 30 banks and over 30 long lines of rail, besides a number of other things. This powerful combine had, on the quiet, bought up big quantities of stock in certain speculative concerns, which were also being traded with on the European exchanges; so that nearly the whole of this stock was in the hands of this combine of financial magnates. They then, through all sorts of business manipulations, induced a number of European banks, and European undertakings generally, to buy stock of this kind ‘for future delivery,’ and succeeded so well at that time as to get quite a large number of people to buy stock of this kind ‘for future delivery.’ Now let us suppose that a business undertaking concluded a purchase ‘for future delivery’ in stock of this kind, in order to sell it again; and that, at the same time with the European undertakings, these banks in America concluded purchases ‘for future delivery’ in the same stock. Suppose then, a European undertaking had bought these stocks, on the one hand, and, on the other, was pledged to sell them again at a specified term,—but didn't possess them, because they had all been bought up again in advance by the Morgan-Combine; so that they had first to buy them back again from over there. The business undertakings in Europe were to a very wide extent under obligations to deliver stock of this kind; but now, in the meantime, during the period which had elapsed between the speculative purchase and the term of delivery, they had succeeded on the American side in screwing up the value of this stock enormously high; and the consequence was an extraordinary drain upon the European money-market; of which the result was this crisis: The crisis, that is, was created by a purely financial speculation brought about by a small number of definite individuals.—Those, who recall it, will remember that the bank discount at that time rose in England as high as 7 per cent, and in Germany at times as high as 8 per cent; and a rise in the bank discount is always a barometer for crises.—This crisis, therefore, was really brought about by the will of these particular persons; and it is to facts, such as these, one must look, that is, to quite specific, concrete facts of actual life, and not to general theories, if one wants to understand actual life in its social manifestations. It may be all very clever, it may seem uncommonly clever and convincing, when Carl Marx, for instance, takes a particular form of economic life, and proceeds to deduce from this with a kind of logical necessity all that people subsequently think. But at bottom this is all a product merely of ‘the study table;’ and it is a most characteristic symptom, that just this purest sample of a ‘study-table’ product,—Carl Marx's ‘Capital,’—should have become so popular a book, and indeed a sort of gospel amongst the working classes. If one would learn to know life, however, one must observe life itself. And one will then find, that spiritual science is the very best training for this decidedly somewhat troublesome observation of life. It is on the whole certainly much less trouble to construct abstract theories, than to consent to examine actual life.

And now you will ask: ‘Well, but aren't the things all quite right, which the theorists produce and the agitators carry out amongst the people, and which are so plausible? If one only thinks of the army of figures, of the infallible tables of statistics, with which these things are usually supported! Think of the books we have today, showing the course of social affairs, and especially on the different economic theories,—why, they are simply swarming with data! And what can be more obvious, than that, if a person can support a thing with figures, then his conclusions must be right!’—There are however other statistics also, which, looked at in one way, really seem intended to represent a certain natural course in human life,—or at least a course definable by natural science. For instance, take the insurance statistics, as forming the basis of that eminently practical branch of life, Insurance. One calculates out, how many out of a number of persons, who are now 20 years old, will be still living in 30 years time, and how many will have died. One only needs to take the number large enough, in order to get very constant figures: Out of so and so many persons of 20 years old, only so and so many will be living in 30 years' time. And from this one can then calculate the amount of insurance, the rate of insurance, which the person in question will have to pay. And one may say, that here undoubtedly statistics afford a result with which one can to a certain extent reckon for the practical purposes of life.—You know, I daresay, that there is also a ‘suicide statistics;’ that one need only take a large enough area and a long enough period of time, and one can tell, that during this number of years so and so many people will commit suicide within this area. But would anybody be right in concluding from the necessity—the apparent necessity—of a definite number of suicides occurring every five years within a particular area, that therefore the people are not free; but that just as a stone falls of necessity to the ground, so these human beings are necessarily forced to kill themselves? Most certainly he would not be right in drawing such a conclusion. The existence of certain laws does not mean that man's free will is excluded. There is no question of itl And even it it should happen, that at 50 years old you came to look round you, and saw, that with this solitary exception all the rest were dead, of those who at 20 years old were calculated to die before 50, yet you certainly will not say: Well, now I must die too! Statistics are meant for something quite different; and not to state anything about Man's free will,—not even suicide statistics! Neither are any economic laws whatever in a position to state anything about the free intervention of human initiative in economic affairs. Though here, certainly, there is something besides, which comes into question:—

Assume a condition of things such as had come about towards the year 1907: there was a favourable business conjuncture, which had lead to certain habits of life amongst a large number of people. One can tell, that when a number of people have been in comfortable circumstances for a few years, they will acquire certain habits of life; and when such habits of life have become established, those people who care to take advantage of the situation,—whose interest it is to take advantage of these habits of life,—can then do the sort of thing which the Morgan-Combine did in 1907. They may say to themselves: ‘Now is the time when people are inclined to do this and that; it is our chance for a speculation’ It is just the same, for example, as when certain influences are at work in a country; and people succumb to these influences, and a certain number commit suicide. And yet, notwithstanding, these people commit suicide of their own free will,—insofar as one can talk of ‘free will’ in ordinary life. (I have discussed the subject fully in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom’).

The real fact of the matter is, then, not that there is a certain constellation in economic life in the first place, and that what happens after, follows as a consequence of this; but what happens, follows solely and simply as a consequence of what people do. And if the people choose to do something which in a way is ‘calculable,’ what does this prove?—Well, here one need only look at a procedure which will be familiar to you all. Suppose, there is the dog ‘Trusty,’ and you hold out a piece of meat to him. You can calculate pretty accurately what he will do: he will snap at it; and the cases will be extremely rare, in which Dog Trusty does not snap at the piece of meat. But when a human being in a given situation does something which is calculable, then it only proves, that the level of the human soul has sunk; and the more one is able to calculate, or determine causally, in social life, the more it indicates that men have sunk towards the level of the animal. And so all these suicide and other statistics, and calculations from favourable or unfavourable business conjunctures, are proofs of nothing except the state of men's souls;—though then, indeed, one must go on to examine the general atmospheric conditions under which certain states of soul are possible; Such a thing as was done by the Morgan Group in 1907, by which any number of human existences in Europe were flung into ruin,—such a thing could only take place in this present age;—such a thing would not have been possible 150 years earlier.

How has it come about, that such a thing is possible? It has come about through the emancipation of the money-market from the goods-market. This emancipation dates from about the years 1810 to 1815. It was at this period first, that the earlier, purely economic conditions controlling public life, gave place to a control of public life by the money-market. It was the time when the bank-system first really became the dominant factor in economic life. And for economic situations to be created by transactions solely in the money-market, on the grand scale that was possible by 1907, was something which only came about through money having become what I might call an ‘actual abstraction,’ that spreads through our whole economic life and to all other life as well.

We go back in thought to the time, when a man was himself involved with the thing he produced. The money, in those days, was practically no more than a sort of equivalent for the specific article produced. People clung to their specific productions; it was in those days by no means a matter of indifference, what one produced; one grew together with one's specific article of output. By to-day it has already become somewhat fabulous, when one meets with an incident like the following, which I tell as an example: It happened that I was staying in Budapest, and wanted to get my hair cut; and there I discovered a hair-dresser, who still cut hair really with enthusiasm, and declared: ‘My aim is not to make money; my aim is a really handsome cut of hair!’ And he said it in such a tone, as really to give one the impression of inward truth and sincerity.

This close association, between the man and the things he puts out, is totally disappearing: all that is aimed at now, is to bring in a sufficient income to satisfy personal needs. And it comes then to be a question of Capital and Wages, and how much these will bring in. Just like abstract principles, which can be extended to cover every sort of thing, so this abstractified money extends over every conceivable thing. It is after all—in the minds of many people to-day—a matter of complete indifference, when the object is to earn a certain number of shillings a day, it is a matter of complete indifference, whether one does so by manufacturing shoes, or by manufacturing text-books. Money is the actual Real Abstraction, just as general principles are abstract; and, like them, it can be applied to every sort of thing. And this abstract money, emancipated from the real reality of life, has made the kind of atmosphere possible, in which transactions can then go on such as went on in 1907; and yet these transactions, nevertheless, proceed absolutely and entirely from the will of human beings.

In saying this, I merely wish to point out, that Spirital Science, from the first, is directed to grasping realities in their true shape. Materialistic science—whether it be natural science, or historical—has become altogether divorced from realities; it has run into theorisations. Spiritual Science is obliged to go into realities; and therefore it does not let itself be mystified by theoretical conceptions. For this very reason, though, it arrives at a real understanding of actual life, and therefore will be the only science which is able to help in any way towards building up a new social edifice in the future.—It has gradually come to be the custom in question of national economy altogether, to take only things like ‘supply and demand’ into account, or questions of that kind: conditions of the market, af trade, of exchanges, and so forth. And what is really meant by it always is something purely abstract, which figures as ‘returns’. And when one comes to examine the way in which people to a very large extent think about economic problems to-day, they really think about these things only so far as to take into account the factors of returns. And in consequence, the whole of economic life is left out of account, which has to do with consumption. Consumption is simply left to proceed, I might say, automatically from whatever one may get as returns from anything. What one looks at, in going into any sort of business, is the amount it brings in, not at the kind of consumption that is connected with the particular business. One doesn't take into account in the least any special qualification in the article, insofar as it is an article of consumption; from the national-economy aspect, one considers it solely on the side of returns, not on the side of consumption. People think, that everything is to be found out by studying the returns side; how conjunctures develope, whether favourable or unfavourable; how upward or downward tendencies develope in economic life, and so on. If one altogether neglects however to give any economic thought to the other, to the consumption side, the result is that consumption gradually becomes anarchic; it runs wild; and one gradually loses all possibility of coping with consumption.

Now Consumption has a peculiar property. It holds a definite relation, a sort of causative relation, toward man's moral nature, towards men's psychic disposition. It holds an opposite relation as regards man's psychic disposition, to what Production does. The moral, the psychic disposition plays a part too in Production; but here the psychic factor is the causative one. If I produce an article by means of which I defraud other people, this proceeds from a moral defect. But the way people live, that is, what possibilities they have of consumption,—whether they consume one article or the other,—all this acts as a cause upon the disposition of their souls, upon their moral nature; and this factor is the one which is left out of account in the whole of modern national economy. For this reason, national economy got completely out of hand. It is simply impossible for any sane thinking to comprehend, from the conditions of Production (although there were some circumstances of Production too as causes), why the number of strikes went up 87 per cent between the years 1907 and 1919; but one gets a picture of the whole matter, directly one looks at the conditions of Consumption.

Now the various things in economic life have all a certain connection with each other; a connection which has of course been considered by the political economists and the business-men; but the real causes have not been studied by these people, because their calculations were directed solely to the paying side. And if one thinks of everything as a natural science, one comes gradually quite away from all economic thinking,—in particular as regards everything that has to do with the consumers. That is why the modern business-man knows so little, and has so very little to say, about the connection between strikes and any particular species of production. He knows—for he is in the habit of thinking of this—what returns one or other species of production will yield. He knows, if he was, for instance, a manufacturer of cri-cris in Paris (to take an extreme case), that this is an article Which is likely to have a very favourable run for a year or two. These cri-cris were quite curious little machines: it was a strip of steel fitted into a little metal case; and if one put it in one's pocket and went into the street, and then pressed on the steel, it made a most excruciating noise, so that the people in the street got horribly cross at the noise. It was last century, somewhere in the 'seventies: the streets were made downright intolerable by these cri-cris. But the ‘returns’ which the inventor of cri-cris got from them were enormous: he became a multi-millionaire. But he didn't in the least take into account the cost on the consumers' side. For of course, as regards human existence, the manufacture of cri-cris might quite well have been dispensed with. And now, just calculate how many people were employed in these cri-cri factories, who all paid their costs of consumption out of these returns. The consumption, that is, of so and so many cri-cri workers, arose out of unnecessary human labour. These things have their effect in social life. Unnecessary human labour has immense significance in social life.

I might take a different example again. Even Lichtenberg in his day once said, that 99 per cent more literary works were turned out in one year than was enough for the happiness of the whole of mankind. And, as regards the present day, one might venture to say indeed, that if 99 per cent fewer books were produced it would probably be very much to the happiness of mankind. Just think of the batches of lyrical poems (always emanating of course from unrecognised geniuses!), that are turned out in editions of 3 to 5 hundred strong, of which not 50 copies at most are disposed of: how much unnecessary work is performed there! This unnecessary work might well be saved; and it would have an uncommonly beneficial effect upon the general conditions of consumption.

This is to say, that when one merely reckons with returns, one can do so without the very least relation to the actual requirements of life: one may leave these quite out of account in all one's schemes for the regulation of life. This is at the back of the great crisis we are going through now; it is at the back of our present down-slide; and it is a thing quite beyond the calculation of the people who reckon in the old economic style, because they make no connection between unnecessary human labour and human suffering. Here is the point where Spiritual Science is able to come in, and to show the great connections; because Spiritual Science never looks to the one side only, but to all sides. I don't mean a kind of spiritual science that soars aloft into abstract, mystical heights, and that sort of thing, but a spiritual science which is bent on giving men an education that will make them of use for practical life. Spiritual Science, rightly applied, is an education for life, for the actual, full-lived up-building of life; and therefore the national economy which it founds will be one that knows the connection between unwillingness to work, unfittedness for work, and the manufacture of particular kinds of products.

Such a way of thinking should lead on in the end to practical undertakings; and this was really the idea which lay at the bottom of an undertaking like the "Kommender Tag". It is obviously not possible to put such an undertaking straight away upon a sound basis in respect to every concrete detail; but nevertheless, where an isolated undertaking of this kind is directed solely by people thoroughly imbued with the kind of education which comes from Spiritual Science, then all the practical measures that are taken will of themselves tend towards people not being burdened with unnecessary work, but only with necessary work;—it will have to consider the consumption side of the general economy; and then the kind of arrangements will naturally grow up, which can lead on in the end to economic recovery. To someone who is merely bent upon getting returns, it is a matter of indifference, what he is producing for and what he is paid for, so long as he gets his money; money is abstract in economic life, and for money he can get everything. But what is needed, is to bring our general economy into a form in which it shall depend in an honest way upon the human will,—not depend on it in a dishonest way. How can it be brought to depend in an honest way upon the human will? By means of the Associations. When you have Associations, then all that takes place in economic life proceeds from the direct will of the people joined together in these Associations; the transactions that take place in economic life will then be transacted between the different Associations; then you will have transactions between live people, and what is produced will be the proceeds of this kind of transaction between live people, one with another, in the Associations. When it is a question of starting a factory, people will not consider it merely from the point of view of how much ‘returns’ it will yield under the existing conjuncture; but they will start from a collective insight into what is needed. It requires no government regulations: that would only tie the whole thing up in red tape—what it requires, is the practical knowledge of the people actually engaged in the various businesses and the various branches of business; and this gives the means of finding out whether a particular business-works is needed. If it is needed, then one may go on to production, and the people can make their earnings by it too. It will be done by way of the Associations; and in this way everything will become eliminated which might acquire an unhealthy influence. For then it will not be possible to trade in financial measures, as was done in the case of the Morgan-Combine; people will then work to meet economic needs. This results of itself, when it is a question of men, and not of money-balances.

It is curious, how hard many people find it in these days to bring themselves to look at the realities of life. To look at realities! That is the most urgent demand of these days! How does it come about—one might ask—that people in the present day have wandered so wide of real life? It comes precisely from the materialism of the day; for the peculiarity of materialism is, that, at the same time, it trains people's minds to abstractness. Spiritual Science has just the opposite peculiarity: it trains people to concreteness, to actual-mindedness, practicality.

That is what I wanted to throw into the discussion to-day. A very great deal, however, will be needed, before habits of thought, habits of feeling, and the actual practices of feeling, will become all that is necessary to enable us fully to overcome the many evils which have thus crept into modern economic life, and into the whole public life of modern times. This matter-of-fact thinking can only come as the result of real penetration into the depths of the spiritual world; and the new rise will come from the depths of the spirit, not from mere continuations, in some form or other, of what people have been used to look upon as ‘the right thing’ for the last tens, one might say indeed, for the last half-hundred of years in the nineteenth century. And anyone in these days, who has not the will to go in quite radically for a move forward in this direction, for a change in old habits of mind, a change of thinking, I could almost say, a change of living,—he will be able to do nothing to help towards a new rise, he will only go on helping to hurry us full steam into the downfall. And then indeed those things will come to pass which people like Oswald Spengler have given us a picture of, in his book ‘The Decline of the West.’ And then, in actual fact, the result will be that Western civilisation will pass over into barbarism. And if one is not willing to have barbarism, then one must actively will the thing that can prevent this barbarism; and the only thing that can prevent it, is a spiritual education of the West; for nothing but a spiritual education can open men's eyes to actual reality. We need this eye-opening;—Let us achieve it,—and then we shall get forwards!

(In the course of the discussion which followed, a speaker said, that the following argument was very commonly used in cases like that of the cri-cri workers: “The cri-cri workers gave rise to unnecessary consumption; but they would have figured as consumers too, even if they had produced something different.” How would Dr. Steiner explain the difference?—Dr. Steiner replied:)

The question is one that may quite well be asked. But in asking it, people have not really quite thought out where the point lies. The point is, not to look at what is taking place at one particular spot in life, but to look at what the results are in the whole context of life. It is quite true that these cri-cri workers would have figured as consumers too, even if they had not made cri-cris, that is to say, if they had not done this unnecessary work. But they would all the same have done something: they would have done necessary work, which is a matter of all essential importance for the general economy; and that is the point. There are a great many people, who esteem themselves very practical;—they read the ‘Roots of the Social Question’ [‘Die Kernpunkte,’ published as The Threefold Commonwealth.], and think it ‘utopian.’ The real fact of the matter is, that these people themselves are the unpractical ones and the ‘Utopians;’ and since these unpractical Utopians are in the main the people who dominate the whole of life—which is just what has brought us to the present state of things!—so it is just these people who have so little perception for what is in the true sense practically conceived; and one is always particularly glad, when the ‘practical men’ interest themselves for what is practical. Only recently, a practical man from the North said to me that the ‘Roots of the Social Question’ [‘Die Kernpunkte,’ published as The Threefold Commonwealth.], takes one to the most important question of all, the question of prices; that people are busying their minds at this moment with every conceivable thing, except the fact, that the price of any commodity is, strictly speaking, something that must not rise above a certain level, and mustn't sink below a certain level. That was a thing which this practical man could see. And directly one sees that the price question is one of such importance, that questions of Capital or Wages really fade into the background, then one has a sound thinking-basis to go upon. No doubt the cri-cri workers would have figured as consumers too; but this is not the connection in which one must consider them; for, what goes to make up the whole life of the general economy, and is ultimately connected with the price of any commodity, is very closely involved with whether necessary work is performed, or unnecessary. Only people do not think out the matter consequently; and this consequential thinking must be carried down into all the details of life.

I had a discussion once with an acquaintance at table, over picture post-cards, somewhere in the year 1902–3. I said, I didn't like writing picture post-cards; in fact I never wrote picture post-cards; for I couldn't help thinking that, for every picture post-card, a postman might perhaps have to run up several flights of stairs—just for the sake of a picture post-card; and I would gladly save him the labour,—seeing that picture postcards don't exactly rank among the necessaries of life. The other man's reply was: “I know that I give people pleasure by sending them picture post-cards, and I write a great many: it contributes to the general pleasure. And if it should happen in some place or other, that a single postman isn't enough for all the post-cards, then they will put on an extra one, and that contributes to the possibilities of livelihood.” But in saying so, he didn't think the matter out further and reflect, that when one appoints an extra postman for picture post-cards, it leads to the production of nothing which is needful for life; but that when the needful requirements of life only are produced, the extent of their production means a certain price. And anyone, then, who performs unnecessary work, will undoubtedly be a consumer too; but if he is not employed in delivering unnecessary picture post-cards, he will no longer be increasing the amount of unnecessary work; and in consequence he will then do real proper work that corresponds to requirements; and this will have a very essential influence upon the whole character of our general public economy.

As regards the things of practical life, there are two important points in question, of which as a rule people only consider the one. The first is, whether a thing is theoretically right; and the second is, whether it is in accordance with the realities. People think it quite sufficient for an idea to be theoretically right; but it requires also to be in accordance with the realities. And until this reality of thinking has gained general ground, we can not possibly find our way out of the perplexities of actual life. If somebody thinks therefore, that the cri-cri workers would figure as consumers in life too, even though they didn't manufacture cri-cris, he doesn't reflect, that the number of people who are consumers would of course not be diminished, but that the character of the general economy would be changed in respect of necessary or unnecessary work. And that is the point. One must learn to look at those points which are necessary and of importance; this is the thing which we have to acquire in social matters. And this is what it is hoped to inaugurate through the book, thenRoots of the Social Question, and the whole movement for the Threefold Social Order.

(A speaker said: There were other forms of production, not merely unnecessary, like cri-cris, but deliberately harmful—like shell-making. Through such work the workers become stupified and blunted. Dr. Steiner laid special stress on the human being for any regeneration of social life. The speaker would ask: “Can one hope to found a new economic system at all with the existing generation?”

Another speaker asked; How the demands of consumption are to be regulated? People's wants are very various. Some want patent-loather boots; others picture post-cards. Should certain wants be prohibited or prevented? or how can they be regulated?

Another speaker said, That amongst the underlying causes of the crisis of 1907 were the monster ‘lock-outs.’ The industrialists had already manufactured so much on stock in advance, that they could not maintain the rate of output. He was convinced that in a few weeks there would be another series of crises and collapses. He wanted to know: what forms these crises would assume?

Another speaker asked: How could the over-production in literature be brought by some sensible method into a normal course, corresponding to real needs?

A written question asked: “What are the spiritual causes underlying the divorce of the Money-market from the Goods-market in 1810-15? How do these same causes act in other fields, outside the economic one?”

In conclusion Dr. Steiner replied:)

In the first place, as to the patent-leather boots, I should like to say, that here too, things have their connections in life; and it would soon be found, if once unnecessary forms of production ceased, that certain wants would disappear too. Of course, when one talks of ‘regulating consumption,’ one is in a way again upon a sort of false track. To try and regulate consumption in any way dictatorially, certainly won't do. But when all the economic arrangements tend towards the gradual disappearance of unnecessary work, this, in the whole context of economic life, will have a certain consequence: the consequence, namely, that a person who wants unnecessarily to have patent-leather boots will not be able to pay for them. And, because one thing is connected with another, it should be obvious that one must not directly attack something which will infallibly disappear with something else. That would make one into a tyrant. The facts of life are such, that if one wants to respect Freedom, one simply can't abolish anything over night; but certain things cease of themselves, through the influence of other determining conditions. When a kind of economic thinking gains ground, under which unnecessary work more or less disappears, then wants of this sort will disappear too:—amongst other things, the money for them will not be forthcoming. One can perceive this, solely through a practical connexion with real life. The conditions of consumption cannot be regulated by any sort of ordinances, but only by a progress, so to speak, in the ways of life.

I might say the same thing too with respect to literature. I can only point out, ... and here of course it is a question merely of social conditions; one can quite well have a feeling for somebody who has lyrical poems he would like to print! ... but I might point to the example of our Anthroposophical Press in Berlin. It has never had books that were not sold. It has not got a great many books, which are in great demand; but it has never had batches of books which are just stacked up and don't get sold. It was always carried on on the basis of what one might call a ‘spiritual want.’ A book was not printed before knowing that a certain number of readers were there. The work began by first making people acquainted with the subject-matter, and so creating the readers; it was not done by any sort of ‘dictatorship.’ From the economic point of view, it must be said, that the Anthroposophical Press at any rate did not lead to the performance of unnecessary work.

It all depends from which point one starts working in economic life. If one sets out from returns on production, this of itself leads on into unnecessary production. If one starts from understanding of requirements, then a kind of production gradually springs up in the rear, which is not continually piling up: the work goes on ahead; and where the work is of a kind to create requirements, these requirements find their satisfaction subsequently in the rear. In talking solely of work for returns, people are harnessing the cart before the horse as it were. It is a case of looking at life clearly, and knowing from which end to begin working. It is not a case of making ‘regulations’ about anything; but simply of laying hold of actual life in such a manner that things can take their proper course.

As regards the present crisis, it is one which is more or less a final consequence. It cannot be examined by quite the same tests as other crises; and yet again it must be examined—not by theories, but by the actual facts. Consider, I beg of you, what has taken place in these last few years; How much has been produced by human labour power since 1914, in order that we might successfully bring it to the point, when from 10 to 12 million men have been shot dead in the course of 5 years, and three times that number disabled for life! How much labour-power has been expended upon this; and labour thereby withdrawn from life, which might have been employed very differently in life's service! I think one may not unjustly take the view, that what was there produced in order that men might be shot dead, was perhaps also unnecessary work, and work that might have been left undone. If one only thinks, what a long time was needed for deliberation, as late as 1912, when a million was required for educational purposes; and how very quickly the money was to hand, when a million was required for turning into powder! And then take what came after. Take this quintessence of abstraction; that money became an abstraction in the course of the 19th century; and now it has reached the perfection of abstraction: Look and see, how many paper-notes the stamp-press turns out every day. One can really only find use for it all, because the usage is artificially provided for! [Spoken during the time of the great inflation in Germany.] And behind it all, is the fact that we are living on the plunder of what is left over from the years 1911–18. That will come to an end at some time: Then the crisis will come! The present crisis has been brought about by men's utter frivolity of mind, in thinking that one could employ people for years in manufacturing unnecessary things, and take them away from doing necessary work.

“Whether one can really succeed in building up anything new with the existing generation?”—I have often recurred to this question in the paper of the Threefold Order, and often pointed out, that it Is a sign of unprofitable thinking to put questions of this kind. What I set value upon in this connection is the human will,—not so much the faculty of perceiving the existing state of things, as of firing the will. And when I hear that “one can do nothing with the existing generation,” I still cannot but assume, that those who pass such a criticism on the existing generation are nevertheless of the opinion, that with themselves at any rate something “can be done.” And since I set more value upon the will than upon the observation, I call upon all these people: “Come then! and together we will see what we can do with you!” There would be quite a large enough number of them already. And so we will call together all these people who “can do nothing with the existing generation,” and we will work together with them.

There is one more, and a very searching question, which has been put: “What are the spiritual causes underlying the divorce of the money-market from the goods-market?”—We can only find the answer to a question like this, if we are clearly aware, that statements such as I made to-day must be taken in their exact sense, and not as being merely historical remarks, which are relatively exact so far. When one says, “through the emancipation of money a certain atmosphere was created,” one must look exactly at what this atmosphere is. In considering this abstractionising of the money-market,—where it is a matter of indifference, what the money stands for,—one must point out further, that this was necessary for the general progress of evolution. I have often pointed in this connection to the strong impulse which exists amongst the civilised peoples since the middle of the fifteenth century, to detach the individual from the group-spirit; how democracy has come more and more to be the general impulse of mankind; how the individual human being is tending more and more to become a factor of importance; and those things too are ever more gaining in importance, which proceed from a man's own soul. For this whole course of human evolution the abstractionising of economic life through money was a necessity; and we only require to recognise, that everything, which comes into being, will need after a certain time to be put straight,—or must be supplemented by something else which will counteract the mischief. For in actual life it is not possible to find anything which is absolutely good: everything in life is relative only. One can't say, if my boots are in holes to-day, that they are unconditionally bad; only, it is the fate of good boots to wear bad in course of time. It is inherent in the best system of economic life, that, when it has fulfilled certain functions, it should show signs of detriment. And so it is with the money-system too: it was not detrimental from the first. If one studies the historical circumstances of the time, in the middle of the 19th century, they very essentially contributed amongst other things to the rise of democratic conceptions. But then came the time, when this kind of abstraction reached its proper limit. I may rightly say ‘abstraction,’ for the function of money may in every way be compared to the soul's inner process in abstracting.

Of this we may see a striking illustration. There exists also a theosophical movement,—with which this anthroposophical movement had a sort of external connection at one time. This theosophical movement is, really, a materialistic one. It talks indeed of the “higher, spiritual” parts of Man; but all it really means in talking of the aether-body for instance, is that it is something thinner and less substantial than the physical body; and so with the astral body, that this is again something still thinner, and so on. That is, they only apply the materialistic notion. And when they wanted for once to be unusually brilliant, they said—these people in the theosophical movement—“Man lives recurrent lives on earth.” But the materialistic notions were terribly fast set in their heads; and so there must now be something, which passed over into the man's next incarnation. These people had been taught by natural science, that Man is made up of atoms. The atoms fall at Man's death into the earth; and now these people had thought out in their own minds a doctrine of the Permanent Atom: this one atom didn't fall into the grave, but passed over beyond death; and round this one permanent atom all the other atoms could then congregate in the next life.—Here, under the semblance of a spiritual movement, we have the crassest materialism. So it is, when one becomes altogether involved in abstractions:—so we have abstractions in the soul's life; and so we have money (when it is an abstract commodity) in economic life. And since what takes place in economic life is only the outer side of the spiritual life, there is a very real connection between the spiritual life and the economic one. For it is quite a mistaken view to think, that down below there are only economic processes going on, and that on the other side there is the spiritual life, which is only ‘ideology.’ The real truth is: that the economic life of a particular time, and the spiritual life of a particular time (the times are not quite identical) hold the same relation as the nut to the nutshell; the economic life is invariably the shell which the spiritual life has thrown out, and which takes its cast from the spiritual life. And therefore, since economic life has become so abstractionised, the spiritual life too can only be abstract. And so we are in an age of abstract thinking, of life-remoteness—unreal conjunctures and such things.

These are connections which should be carefully considered. And when one considers them carefully, one is led to a fruitful conception: to the conception of the threefold order of the body social, and comes to see, how the three systems of the whole living organism work one into the other, and combine together to a unity from the very fact that each is allowed its own independent basis of development, in the same way as in the human organism. In the human organism, we distinguish between: the nerve-and-sense system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic, or digestory, system;—these, functionally considered, make up the whole human being. The three systems work in co-operation; yet each, for itself, is relatively independent. And they must be independent. No good results can come of mixing everything together. Of an abstract unity, such as the modern state aims at, (such as is aimed at in particular by the socialist state to-day in the East), there can be no question; it is a question simply of learning to know the conditions of life in an individual organism, and of recognising that they find expression in this joint threefold system. Anyone who is willing to examine the matter will see, that the three different systems of life are in the first place independent, each for itself; and, again, that they work in cooperation with one another, and work best in co-operation, when they have first developed independently, each on its own basis. The unity is then an outcome from within, instead of being imported from without. An abstract, lifeless unity bears no fruits, and destroys itself. The unity which grows up as the final form of independent parts, becomes a living, life-bearing unity, something of that kind alone which can really live and grow.

• 1. The Branch-House, No. 70 Landhausstr., in Stuttgart; the first building specially erected and designed for anthroposophical work; opened by Dr. Steiner in October, 1911.

Dear attendees,

At the invitation of the local Free Student Body, I would like to speak to you today about the nature and task of the anthroposophically oriented worldview. In a few introductory words, I would like to point out, above all, that this anthroposophically oriented worldview seeks to be in full harmony, firstly, with the most essential cultural demands of the present and - as far as one can recognize them - of the near future. Above all, however, this world view also seeks to be in complete harmony with what has emerged over the last three to four centuries for the development of humanity through what is called the scientific world view. It is fair to say that this anthroposophically oriented worldview, which is still viewed by many people today as nothing more than a sect, the quirk of a few unworldly people, seeks to listen very carefully to what is most deeply moving our time, and to grasp very intensely, so to speak, a matter of conscience for our time, and even more so for the near future.

May one not say, esteemed attendees, that for about three to four hundred years, through that which is scientifically oriented world view, many of the old ways of thinking that satisfied the human heart and mind have been has brought man into conflict with man himself, that much that was sacred to centuries, to millennia, has had to be discarded, that science has shown as illusion what older worldviews had counted among their most valuable possessions? And is it not clear from the hardships and catastrophes of our time that the moment has come, the moment in world history, when this scientific world view must now, so to speak, also fulfill what many have expected of it for a long time: that it must once again open up a path to those spiritual heights without which man cannot live after all and from which the old path has taken him? With this question, ladies and gentlemen, the anthroposophical world view would like to be taken very seriously. Now, I am certainly under no illusion that in the short time of a lecture I could convince anyone in this hall of what anthroposophy actually strives for. In a sense, I will only be able to hint at some of the paths that are being taken in this field. And I will be able to suggest a few things regarding the way in which research and questions should be asked in this field of anthroposophically oriented world view.

In its essence, anthroposophy is completely different from all other current scientific knowledge. And because its fundamental nature is different, especially from what is usually regarded as the only scientific knowledge today, it is misunderstood in many circles and, one might say, treated badly. In ordinary science, as in life in general, what can be experienced through the senses and what the mind, the intellect, can gain from this sensory world through observation of natural laws and the like is regarded as the sources of human knowledge. In this way, an attempt is made to gain an overview of what is in man's world environment. In this way, one tries to gain insights into man's own position and task within the world order. In a sense, one looks at the human being as he is born into the world, as he can be educated and taught in the ordinary sense of the word, and how he can then, on the basis of this being born into the world, look around scientifically or otherwise in life, solely on the basis of his abilities and qualities inherited as a human being, on the basis of what ordinary education produces.

Anthroposophy does not take this view. It appeals to something in the human being that is still actually a rarity in human nature today and that, when humanity fulfills its next cultural task, will have to assert itself in human culture in a completely different way than it is present today. Anthroposophy appeals to what I would call intellectual modesty. I often use a comparison to make clear what I mean by this intellectual modesty – this immediately leads us into the essence of what anthroposophy actually wants to be. If we have a five-year-old child and we give this five-year-old child a volume of Goethe's poems, for example, what will he do with this volume of Goethe's poems? It will probably play with it at first and then tear the book apart; in any case, it will have no idea of what this volume of Goethean poems is actually intended for. If we teach the child, if we bring it up, we will bring it to the point where, as an adult of 17, 18, 19 years of age, it will make a completely different use of this volume of Goethean poems. We can say that the five-year-old child had precisely the same relationship to the book as the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old. However, the relationship of the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old to the book is quite different from that of the child, because something has been cultivated in him, something has been drawn out of the depths of his inner being, and this also determines a different relationship to the book than before. Applied to the human being's relationship to nature, to the whole world, what emerges is what I would call intellectual modesty, namely, when the human being decides to say to himself, simply as a human being: however old I get, however I am educated and taught in ordinary life, I stand in relation to the whole of nature and to the whole of the environment in such a way that I relate to it as the five-year-old child relates to the volume of Goethe. And in order to behave differently, I must first bring up from the innermost part of my being something that lies deep within me. Then something will reveal itself to me that cannot be offered to me through ordinary sensory observation, not through the ordinary combining mind, as it is active in conventional life and becoming. That is the essence of anthroposophical world view: that one does not approach the investigation of things as one is, but that one first brings out something that is hidden in the human interior. And only after one has taken one's own development into one's own hands in a certain sense, after one has brought oneself further than one is by being born, by being educated and taught in the usual sense, after one has made oneself a different person, only then does one approach the investigation, the research of things. So, the transformation of the entire human soul life before the exploration of things, that is what initially constitutes the essence of what underlies the striving for an anthroposophically oriented world view.

And here I must say that an anthroposophically oriented world view is based on two cornerstones - namely, of scientific life. One cornerstone is the limits of knowledge of nature. In relation to the knowledge of nature, anthroposophy is based on conscientious research, which sets very definite limits to natural research itself, just as an anthroposophically oriented world view seeks to be in full agreement with everything that science legitimately brings to light. But we do, of course, necessarily come up against limits, not by dabbling in some area of natural science, but by immersing ourselves in it objectively and professionally.

And we must, after all, set ourselves certain concepts at these limits, of which I would like to present the two concepts of the atom or matter and force today, just to cite one example; many other examples could be cited. We then come to work scientifically with such concepts as force and matter, force and substance. Much philosophical thinking has been linked to such concepts as force and substance. In more recent times, people have even gone so far as to want to found a philosophy of “as if”, that is, they said to themselves, one cannot, after all, gain any very clear, luminous concepts of force and matter, and so one should conduct research in the wide sphere of phenomena, of perceptions, “as if” such concepts corresponded to a reality that one does not know, “as if” they had some justification. It may well be said that it is a desperate world view, this philosophy of “as if”, however plausible it may appear to some people today. We have arrived at one of the cornerstones of human knowledge when we come to this concept, to this borderline concept of knowledge of nature. In our knowledge, these concepts, when pursued only intellectually, become a kind of cross, a crux.

The spiritual researcher, the anthroposophist, now tries to deal with this concept in a completely different way than the ordinary philosophers. Ordinary philosophy seeks to continue the intellectual process even at the points where one has arrived at the boundaries of natural science. Spiritual science, as I mean it here, tries to start something completely different in the human soul. Once we have arrived at this borderline concept, one part of the methodology of spiritual science and spiritual research becomes apparent. This part consists not at all of confused or bad mystical meditation, but of systematic, well-structured, thoroughly strict and conscientious meditation. I would like to describe this meditation to you at least in principle. You can find more details about it in the literature, especially in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. It is about the fact that one must practice again and again - and I emphasize explicitly, patience and energy are needed for these things. To do research in the chemical laboratory or in the observatory may seem difficult to some; it may seem easy to achieve something by systematically transforming the soul. But anyone who adheres to the truly strict method in this field knows that all research in the laboratory, in the clinic, in the observatory is relatively easy compared to those procedures that are imagined to be easier than they are, and that consist in a transformation of our soul life.

It begins with the fact that one initially places strictly comprehensible, simple concepts – let us say, for the time being, those that one has formed oneself, some symbols or the like – at the center of one's mental life. It does not matter, my dear audience, that these concepts, these ideas correspond to a truth, because what matters is what is effected in our soul life by these ideas. What matters is that, to a certain extent, we carry out a strict self-education, a strict self-discipline with these ideas in our intellect. We therefore place such concepts, which we can strictly survey, those that we have formed ourselves or that we have been advised to use by experienced spiritual researchers, at the center of our soul life. We try to shut out everything else from our consciousness and to concentrate solely on these clearly defined concepts. The danger is that at the moment we concentrate on such concepts, our bodily images and memories may indeed fly in from all sides, as if we were in a swarm of bees and the bees were flying towards us, and actually destroy our inner methodology. We have to expend ever greater and greater strength. And what matters is the expenditure of this strength; what matters is that we drive the will, with all our might, into the life of imagination, into the act of imagining, so that we actually grow stronger in this driving of the will into the life of imagination.

That is one side of strictly scientific meditation, or rather of meditation that leads to science: that we drive the will into the life of imagination. Such exercises cannot be completed in a few days. Such exercises require years of effort. One must return to them again and again. It is not a matter of completing these exercises in one day. One might say that a few minutes are enough for a day. But to return to them again and again, that is what it is all about. Then one finally experiences how the soul summons up quite different powers from its lowest regions than are summoned up in ordinary life and also in ordinary science. If one applies it by concentrating all possible volitional effort on such self-made volitional content, then after some time, as I said, I can only hint at the principle, the exact You can read more about this in my books. The possibility of approaching the boundary concepts of natural science, such as matter and force and the like, in a way that is not merely intellectual. I could also mention others.

Then the following happens: one no longer speculates, one no longer philosophizes at these boundaries of natural knowledge, but one experiences something at these concepts. Something takes place in the soul in the face of these concepts that encompasses experiences that we otherwise only experience when we love outwardly or when we are otherwise immersed in the struggles of our external lives. What matters, my dear audience, is that, by disregarding the external world, we undergo something within ourselves that leads us into a reality that is just as intense for us, that presents itself to our consciousness just as intensely as the external reality that we justifiably touch and work with our hands and feet is otherwise. And when we have worked our way through to a consciousness that is inwardly, in the intellect, willfully strengthened, through concentration and meditation, then what one can characterize as follows finally occurs: Just as one otherwise recognizes red as a color through external observation, just as one recognizes blue, just as one hears C-sharp or C, so, when one has worked one's way through in this way, no longer , no longer using the nervous system or the like as a tool, but by experiencing it at the merely mental level, one recognizes that there is a soul in itself - one knows this in direct consciousness.

At this moment, my dear audience, it is where one says the following to oneself through direct experience - I would like to suggest it through a comparison. Let us assume that we are walking along a path that is soaked, we see ruts in the path from carts, we see footprints. If we are reasonable people, it will not occur to us to say: These ruts in the soaked path are caused by forces below the surface that bring the earth into such a configuration that these ruts, these footprints arise. We will say to ourselves: There comes something to the earth's surface that is indifferent to this earth's surface as such, that comes to it from outside; carts, human feet have indeed gone over it, which are indifferent to what the earth forms out of itself. If we really come to know the inner configuration of soul life in the way I have described, then we will see everything that is the physical organization of the brain in such a way that we can say: This is not at all shaped by the inner forces of the bodily constellation, but rather the soul, which we have only just come to know, has worked from the outside in the same way as human footsteps or carts have worked in the softened soil.

In other words, dear attendees, one does not get to know the soul through speculation; one only gets to know it by gradually working one's way up to experiencing the soul, by leaving what ordinary life and ordinary science would like to consider the end — the intellectual, the concepts of perception — by leaving that to be the beginning. Once you have reached the point where you have experienced this soul life in this way in direct perception, then, through this method, through this kind of anthroposophical methodology, you are on the threshold of an experiential, tangible grasp of what I human preexistence, the spiritual-soul preexistence of the human being, because this kind of beholding does not lead to speculation about what is called human immortality, but to an immediate insight into preexistence. In the spiritual vision, one sees inwardly, in the soul, that which works in the body and configures the body. One beholds it, and in beholding it, one can also trace it back to before birth or, let us say, before conception. Thus, in its essence, Anthroposophy pursues the idea of immortality differently than ordinary philosophy. Ordinary philosophy seeks to deduce from what is experienced between birth and death that which extends beyond birth and death. Anthroposophy regards even the work of deduction as only a preparation; it seeks to live completely in the process of deducing the borderline concepts, so that it can experience what figures as the immortal in the human being, what is active in him. What fills the human consciousness becomes more active subjectively than we otherwise have it in consciousness. And that is what is really important – I will have to come back to this in the later part of the lecture – that above all, through this methodology of anthroposophy, the human being becomes more and more active. He actually ceases to passively surrender to the course of events, at most to what he has produced in the course of recent times through the arrangement of the experiment, whereby, however, he again passively surrenders to what the experiment tells him. All of this is certainly justified, and it is the last thing that spiritual science would dispute. But beyond that, anthroposophically oriented methodology elevates itself to active thinking, to a thinking that, in the very act of thinking, directly grasps the immortal essence of the human being. I know how much can be said against this experience, which must take the place of ordinary discursive reasoning, but only to the extent that this can be justified philosophically - I will come back to this briefly. I just wanted to show, on the one hand, how this part of anthroposophical methodology, which is based on an evaluation of thinking and on the will's effect on the intellect, actually leads to a truly essential knowledge of the preexistence of the human being. That which is immortal is grasped, which exists in spiritual worlds before conception, before birth, and which cannot be explained from the physical, because it proves itself to be that which works on the physical, and because precisely the physical, the bodily, results - as I will also show in an example in a moment - as that which is shaped out of this spirit.

The second important part of the anthroposophical method consists in approaching one's own self in a different way than is usually the case. People usually approach their own self through what is called mysticism in the ordinary sense of the word. Just as the anthroposophist must no longer entertain illusions regarding the limits of knowledge of nature, and must see this knowledge of nature in its true form through the experience just described, so anyone who truly wants to become an anthroposophical researcher must also have no illusions about the deceptions and illusions of ordinary mysticism. Anyone who believes that they can look into the human soul in the way that mystics of all times have described it, and as is often hinted at in religion, will not truly come to know the human self. My dear audience, there is no way to get beyond the element of deception in this way.

How much does a person really know of what he has heard here and there, say, in childhood? He needs only to have once lain in a meadow and heard a distant peal of bells. No sooner has this fact entered his consciousness than he has forgotten it again. Decades later, as a man, as an adult, he encounters some event in the world. Something appears quietly within this series of events, something that echoes the almost unnoticed peal of bells. And a whole series of images that one believes to have welled up from within are nothing more than a reminiscence of what we went through in early youth. Anyone who really endeavors to explore the human soul in a more rigorous way than is usual today knows how much human self-knowledge is subject to deception. He knows to what extent what the mystics of all times believed they were drawing from their inner being as some kind of power is nothing other than the transformed, perhaps nebulous, but in any case metamorphosed experience of an earlier age. Just as one must go through what I have just described in order to approach the limits of knowledge of nature without deception, one must not indulge in nebulous mysticism in the usual sense, but one must—again in a different way—systematically train the soul at the other cornerstone of human knowledge. And this can only be done by approaching something that one otherwise pays little attention to in life.

We experience our existence between birth and death from decade to decade, from year to year. We passively surrender to many things. We actively and willingly put ourselves into few things. Anyone who wants to become a spiritual researcher in the sense meant here must consider what I would like to call strictly systematic self-discipline as the second link in the path of knowledge. You have to resolve again and again – that is why the path of knowledge takes years, many years – you have to resolve again and again: You want to incorporate these or those qualities – as Nietzsche called it – “into yourself”. You want to make this or that out of yourself. — If I thus acquire the possibility of building a bridge, as it were, between the present and a point in time that may have been five, ten or fifteen years in the past, if I have incorporated something into my soul through my own activity for five, ten or fifteen years, then I am in a position to see the effect of what I have incorporated over the past five, ten or fifteen years – something that I have made my own through self-discipline. In other words, I then perceive how something has become something else today, how it appears as a new element.

If I succeed, dear readers, in bringing that which otherwise functions only as will into intellect, concept, representation – as I have thus brought the will into the intellect – then I must now bring the intellect into my life, into that volition which otherwise usually flows past me, as I passively surrender to life. I take my life into my own hands. In this way I try, as it were, to walk beside myself, to look at myself - you just have to do it with the necessary naivety, then you won't lose your naivety of life either. Through such processes one thus becomes, as it were, one's own double. And one arrives at making the life of the will something that one observes, as one otherwise merely observes external nature. If you manage to duplicate yourself in this way, to make yourself into a spectator and an actor at the same time, you have achieved something that manifests itself in a very peculiar way. What you previously only saw as memory now becomes clear to you in a new way. The memory images bring what one experienced ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, and so on, into the present. Now one experiences something quite new, which seems like a transformation of memory.

But lest I be misunderstood, I wish to state explicitly: Of course – in all other respects one retains one's ordinary memory; only for spiritual research does one experience the transformation of memory that is to be described. One experiences something like this that one otherwise only experiences in space. In space, let us say, one walks along an avenue. One turns around: you see not only the images of the trees you have passed, no, you see – albeit from a different perspective than before – the trees themselves. In the same way, it rises in consciousness. You look back on your life, but now not just by having the images, the phantasms of the past, but you recognize - just as when you look around in an avenue in space - from the different perspective that you survey life in the immediate present, as if time had become space. What is otherwise memory becomes a completely new mental power, a looking into time. And only now, in a certain sense, do we gain real insight into that mysterious element in our own being, which is just as little known to us as the content of sleep, of dreamless sleep, is known to ordinary consciousness. We gain such insight into the nature of the human will, and we actually gain the opportunity to see this nature of the human will at work in the physical body. And by getting to know the will in this way as transformed memory, one gains an immediate insight into the other end of life, into the post-existence, into that in us which carries us out through the gate of death and into a spiritual world. Again, it is through the development of a very special soul element into an immediate experience that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to penetrate to a comprehensive world view.

Now, my dear audience, by dealing with the two cornerstones of human knowledge in this way, knowledge of nature on the one hand, knowledge of the self on the other, by entering on the one hand into the soul itself through the limits of knowledge of nature – not through speculation, but through direct experience -, into the soul itself, and on the other hand, by entering into the element of one's own will - not by dabbling in mysticism, but by methodically developing one's memory through strict self-discipline - one awakens in the depths of the human being that which is immortal in that person. And that seems to me to be a continuation of what, although it is not the external scientific method of the present, is scientific education.

I may well confess that it seems to me that the one who, out of blind authority or out of complacency, does not stop at what science has to offer today - this admirable science - but who allows himself to be guided by science in the great question that science imposes on the soul, must, as I have described in my “Riddles of Philosophy”, feel impelled not only to speculate, to philosophize, beyond what science provides, but he must seek to further develop what he applies by experimenting, to a more active intellect, to a more active will. Then he attains to that intensity of soul life of which I have just spoken, where immortality is not speculated but directly beheld. And then, my dear audience, what is described in my book “Occult Science” or in some of my other books, and which to people today still seems like a wild fantasy, will gradually come about as a matter of course, I believe, precisely because of the enigmatic nature of science itself. How do we go about understanding natural science? By strict methods! And anyone grounded in anthroposophy will be the very last to fail to recognize these strict scientific methods. But you see, for example, we are faced with the following. We say to ourselves: We are developing certain geological ideas; and we are trying to gain a picture of the geological stratification of the earth in the present day, based on the starting points of Lyell and other geologists. We then try to gain a picture of the past from this picture, using the well-known methods, by going back millions of years – more or less, of course, the time periods are disputed. Other researchers go millions of years forward by prophetically anticipating this or that about the end of the earth from a physical or geological point of view. We do indeed form a picture of the development of our Earth, and with the Earth, the human being has developed. Now, however, I cannot give a complete insight into the results of spiritual scientific research in the short time available in a lecture. If you look through the relevant literature, you will see that certain things are available. I can only suggest and hint at the way in which things are being sought.

Take the example of the human heart examination. We get a picture of how this human heart transforms in the organism over five, ten years and so on. We can then deduce what the human heart was like thirty years ago and can also do this for a person who is forty years old, but not for someone who is only twenty years old. However, we could take the mere deduction further and could proceed similarly, using a very strict mathematical method. We could ask ourselves: What was this heart like thirty years ago? We would not be using a different method from that used by today's geologists if we were to say about this or that layer of rock what it was like millions of years ago, because we forget that the Earth may not have existed before these millions of years, just as man was not there as a physical being at that time. And when we today, according to some laws of physics or geology, assume something prophetic about some end of the earth after millions of years, it is as if we now calculate, according to the degree of change that the human heart has undergone in five years, what that heart was like in a person three hundred years ago.

At first glance, this appears to be something tremendously paradoxical. And yet, my dear audience, there is something quite justified for the one who does not delve into the present-day admirable science with his intellect or with what authority has brought him up to, but with his whole soul and with an unbiased human nature. And this science of the present itself can benefit greatly from the kind of approach I have suggested, for it is indeed still the case today that one has few co-workers in the field of spiritual science. Those who one would wish to have as co-workers are truly not laymen or dilettantes – the matter is much too serious for that. As co-workers I would most like to have those who have immersed themselves for years in some field of science, who have learned to work scientifically and who have retained in this scientific work all the impartiality necessary to then reshape the human powers of knowledge and soul forces in the way I have indicated, so that one can then enter into that which leads to a much more concrete, truly realistic knowledge, for example, of human nature itself. Anthroposophy will be the best foundation for an anthropology that can be used for medicine and also for social science.

That is why it gave me such great satisfaction – and I mention this because it is very relevant to the matters I would like to discuss today – when I was able to hold a week-long course for forty doctors and medical students in Dornach, where we have established the School of Spiritual Science with an anthroposophical orientation in the Goetheanum. The course was about way in which the bridge between pathology and therapy can be built, which so many people, including doctors, long for today: how this bridge can be built through such an insight into the human being, which can be gained when we no longer think in abstract terms about the relationship between body and soul, but when we come to look into the concrete. I would like to give a small example of this, albeit a somewhat more remote example, but it will be able to point to the concreteness with which spiritual science wants to treat specifically scientific problems.

It is now the case that speculation is taking place about the relationship between body and soul; parallelist theories, interactionist theories and so on have been put forward. However, what is missing is a real insight into the soul and spirit on the one hand, which can only be achieved in the way I have described today, and into the physical on the other. The more materialistically oriented worldview suffers from the tragic fate of not being able to master matter. We cannot look into material processes since we have materialism, because the inner workings of material processes are spiritual, and one must first see the spirit in order to recognize material processes.

So I would like to show you, so to speak, more as a result of what one comes to in terms of knowledge of a developmental moment of man when one proceeds in a spirit-scientific way. We see how man grows through birth into physical existence. We then see how there is an important conclusion in a certain respect when the human being undergoes the change of teeth around the sixth, seventh or eighth year. This change of teeth is only understood in the right sense if we take into account the whole bodily, spiritual and soul life of the human being, as it changes in this important epoch of life. And we see – I can only hint at it – when we consider the soul, firstly that which I have already dealt with here in lectures that I have given more for lay people. We see how the child, who develops as an imitator until the change of teeth, becomes the being who likes to educate himself under the influence of the authority of his surroundings, how, with the change of teeth, the principle of imitation passes over into the principle of authority. But leaving that aside, if we are able to really look at this human soul life, if we have learned to deepen our observation of the soul - and one truly learns to deepen when one develops everything within oneself that I mentioned today as will and intellect training today, if we look at everything that happens to a person around the time of the change of teeth, then it is noticeable how what first grows in a person as the ability to remember undergoes a certain change with the change of teeth. It is noticeable how, from this period on, our imagination begins to take shape, how it begins to become continuously memorable ideas. And I could show many examples! But I would have to talk for a long time if I wanted to show how the transformation of the whole intellectual soul element shows itself purely empirically around the period of the change of teeth.

If one then pursues further what can be investigated in this field, pursuing it with that concrete empiricism that arises precisely from having sharpened one's soul eye through the method I have described , then one finds that the ability to push out the second teeth, so to speak, reveals something that works in the human being throughout the first seven years of life, finally pushing itself out and reaching a climax, a culmination, with the change of teeth. Now, as the teeth change, the soul becomes different. Concepts take shape. The entire ability to remember, which is of course present earlier, is transformed, and by extending the concepts of Goethe's metamorphosis theory to such developments, one recognizes how the soul-spiritual life has emancipated itself from the physical-bodily , how the same thing that later works in the realm of imagination, that is, in the intellectual, has worked in the body - has worked in a formative, plastic way - has reached its culmination in the change of teeth and, after the teeth have been pushed out, shows itself spiritually and mentally. In this way, one follows concretely, no longer abstractly, as one otherwise speculates about body and soul, this formative power, which one later looks at, directly at, when the person brings sharply contoured concepts, not phantasms, out of memory. One follows how it forms, how it drives the forces into the change of teeth. By extending the observation over time, one sees how the spiritual-soul works in the bodily-physical.

Then again, when one approaches the human being in the period of life when sexual maturity occurs, one notices how the will element in particular consolidates during this time from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. But it is still active in the body, and one can see from what occurs – in boys it shows in the change of voice, in girls it shows in a different way, but still – namely, how the will takes possession of the human organism between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. While the intellectual emancipates itself, becomes free with the change of teeth, and works independently, the will becomes free by puberty. I would like to say that a purely spiritual element connects with the body, so that this change, which occurs in the boy during the change of voice, clearly shows how the life of the will manifests itself in the body.

From these two elements that I have given, you can see how one approaches the human being through concrete observation with spiritual empiricism. But what I have shown there then leads from the human being out into the cosmos, and one learns to recognize it as one otherwise gets to know the external sensory content through sensory perception. Through this spiritual vision, one learns to recognize a deeper, but also a more essential element of the cosmos. For example, one learns to recognize what consists in the cosmic forces in which the human being is embedded, which is effective up to the change of teeth on the one hand, and up to sexual maturity on the other. In one case, it acts as an intellectual force, shaping the body until the teeth change, then it emancipates itself and acts on the other side as a volitional force, which takes hold of the human body intensely at sexual maturity.

Now one learns to recognize how that which, as it were, drives out the teeth, what works in the human organism so that it then passes over into the sharply contoured concepts of memory, is the same as what one can only call light in representation. But actually it is all that which bears the same relation to sensory perception as light bears to the eye. One learns to recognize how light is that which actually works in the human organism, and how through the power of light, which thus works in looking with the eyes - but actually it is only the representation, we could speak of the same element for all the senses - that which is otherwise experienced as heaviness is overcome. We see light and heaviness, light and gravitation fighting each other. The cosmic light, the cosmic gravitation is effective in the human being until the permanent teeth have come through. And then again one sees how from the permanent teeth coming through until sexual maturity, gravitation gains the upper hand, how the light-filled, which in turn only represents the rest of perception, is the content of sensory perception, but how gravitation achieves a victory , an inner victory, over this light-filled element and thereby forces the will into the human nature and thereby configures the human being inwardly with what then makes him sexually mature, and guides his organization towards his center of gravity.

This insight into human nature, dear attendees, this direct, concrete, empirical connection between the spiritual and the material, is what the anthroposophically oriented worldview offers. It is truly not some nebulous mysticism, but a rigorous method of research, not only as strict as that otherwise usual in science, but much more rigorous, because each individual aspect approached is accompanied by what the soul has made of itself, so that it sees something new in the old. In this way, what is recognized in man in an anthropocentric way is extended into the cosmic, without becoming anthropomorphic. It will be seen that it is a strict scientific method when something like this is developed, as I have been able to sketch out in my “Occult Science”.

It is easy for those of you, dear readers, who laugh at such a book because you do not understand all the effort that has been expended and all the paths that have been taken to achieve something like this. But something like this must be said in the present time. The materialistic orientation has led to the inability to recognize matter, but only to speculate about the connection between spirit or soul and body or matter. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should teach us to recognize the human being – to truly grasp him as spirit, soul and body – and from there open up the paths into the cosmos, because the human being is something that encompasses everything else in the cosmos. We can conjure up an event that occurred long ago but which we have experienced and which we carry within us in the form of an image — the event is no longer there — from what is in our soul, as an image in us. Because I was once with my mind, with my intellect and feelings and with my perception at this event in life, I can conjure it up. Man was present in all that has ever happened in the cosmos, and thus, when he grasps his whole being, he can really grasp something cosmic - and in a different way than if he had to achieve it externally. As I have described it, inner knowledge also provides a certain cosmology, so that anthroposophy expands into a true cosmology, as I have tried to present it in my “Occult Science”, which may still seem ridiculous to our contemporaries today, but which is based on a strict scientific method, only it has emerged from the nature of anthroposophical orientation.

Dear attendees, what may be described as the essence of anthroposophy can, in a sense, be justified philosophically. And anyone who has followed my writings from the beginning, as I tried to do in the 1880s, commenting on Goethe, working out an epistemology, as I tried to do in my little book “Truth and Science”, to establish the relationship between what human inner life is and what is outside in the cosmos, as I then tried to do in my Philosophy of Freedom, to extend this to a complete world-view for the human being, will find that a great deal of effort has already been expended, as far as has been possible to date, to philosophically justify what I would call higher, spiritual empiricism as spiritual science, as anthroposophy.

I must say that for decades I had to wage a stubborn battle against Kantianism – a stubborn battle against Kantianism, which, in my opinion, has misunderstood the epistemological problem and thus the fundamental philosophical problem of my conviction. I don't have enough time to go into Kant's philosophy or epistemology, but I can say a few words about what it is philosophically that is at stake when we really want to understand the human being. We can start by looking empirically at how man reaches this limit of knowledge of nature, how he comes to a cornerstone at this limit of knowledge of nature that has not yet been expanded anthroposophically, where he stakes the concepts of matter, force and so on. Yes, the point is that the one who is now able to investigate this limit of knowledge of nature by experiencing it, also comes to why man - and I ask you to forgive me the “why” at this point, it is to be understood as merely rhetorical, not teleological —, why man is organized in such a way that he must, at a certain point, impale concepts that are, as it were, obscure, inscrutable to ordinary consciousness.

If we were always able to look into the things of the world, to make them intellectually transparent, including human beings, we would not be able to develop in our human nature what we absolutely must have and develop for ordinary life, especially for ordinary social existence between birth and death: we would not have what lives in us as the element of love. Anyone who studies the connection between knowledge and love in depth will notice that this separation from things that have become intellectually opaque to us, which presents itself to us through the limitations of knowledge of nature, is necessary. It is necessary so that we can develop the power of love within us, in our entire human organization. Not what Kant raised in the “Critique of Pure Reason” and the like, but what we develop within us as the power of love, that is what prevents us from making things transparent in an intellectualistic way. We only attain intellectualistic transparency through the paths I have described today. The human being is organized in such a way that he must buy the power of love around the limits of knowledge of nature. But the human being is the being who, through the power of love, receives his true value and human dignity between birth and death.

And on the other hand, we have the other cornerstone, which some people so lightly want to overcome through a nebulous mysticism and which can only be methodically overcome through the self-discipline that I have described today: that cornerstone lies in self-knowledge. Yes, my dear audience, if we could always look into ourselves, if we could gain the knowledge that, as it were, turns time into space, that, in a changed time perspective, makes earlier events experienceable in a supernatural way in a spiritual vision, that tore away the veil of memory, as it were, and allowed us to look into the past and thereby also into the future in a certain sense, if we always had that, then we would see through it, but we would not have the power of memory, of recollections. We need this power of memory just as we need love in our ordinary human lives. Those who know what disruption of memory means for the continuity of the self, who know that this self is based on the power of unimpaired memory, will also be able to appreciate how this other cornerstone must be placed. The power that makes us a remembering being between birth and death is the only thing that makes it possible for us to tear this veil of memory using the spiritual-scientific anthroposophical method and to look into our own inner being in self-insight. So anyone who understands this organization, who, with real psychology, compares what occurs in memory with what is self-knowledge, knows that we must also have this other cornerstone in ordinary human knowledge and life. It is therefore due to our organization – in a somewhat different way than Kant described it – that we must first grow beyond what organizes us in ordinary life if we want to penetrate into the depths of nature that can be aspired to and longed for.

But then, my dear attendees, for this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, if it is inwardly alive on this path, something arises that is very daring today, very daring to express. But what use is it to leave such things unspoken when it depends on them? Anyone who looks at how we have to imagine the world today in terms of the thoughts and ideas that have emerged over the last three to four centuries can never bridge the gap between what arises in the soul as an ethical, moral, social and religious ideal and what arises from knowledge of nature.

On the one hand, there are natural phenomena. They lead us, albeit hypothetically or in the philosophy of “as if”, to a beginning, to an earlier state of the physical universe; they then lead us to metamorphoses of this physical universe, showing us how one law, or let us say two laws, but which are actually one, prevails in this physical universe. If these laws prevail in the way that today's knowledge of nature can imagine, then no bridge can be built to the other, to the ethical, to the social, to the religious ideal. And these two laws are the law of the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter. If the world in the universe outside, in nature, changes in such a way that matter is indestructible and force, in eternal preservation, only transforms itself, then - then our ethical ideals, our religious ideals, are nothing but smoke that rises, then they are our great illusions. And when the world has long since transformed its substance and its forces in a certain way, then those world experiences that we enclose within our moral ideals, within our religious ideals, and so on, will be carried to the grave, sunk into nothingness. These things are usually not pointed out. But what splits many souls inwardly in the present, what tears many souls inwardly in the present, that is more or less unconsciously present as a result of this complete failure to bridge the gap between knowledge of nature and spiritual grasp of the moral, of the religious, as a mood of the soul.

But, my dear attendees, if we experience our own intellect at the limits of knowledge, as I have described it today, then we see how our intellect also belongs only to a certain part of external existence , and that we cannot grasp the beginning of earthly existence with the intellect that we are only really getting to know in the experience described, because this intellect belongs to that which lies only after this beginning and which lies before the end. If we apply this intellect to the whole process, if we go back millions of years or millions of years forward, as geologists and physicists do, then we do the same as if we thoughtlessly talk, for example, about the transformation of the heart as it appears in humans before or after three hundred years. We must be clear about the nature of this intellect: that it does not come close to the other powers of knowledge that we have to acquire in the way described today.

With anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, no Rickert or Windelband theory of value is established, where values are supposed to assert themselves out of the blue, without reality. Rather, it opens up for us what we survey in the intellect. We feel obliged to somehow integrate value into the currents of being. But this will be completely impossible as long as we do not overcome the crushing law of the conservation of energy and matter. We must come to think of matter and force as transient. It is only an illusory world that has arisen from our intellect and that leads us to believe in the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of force. It is certain that 19th-century science could lead to nothing else. But for those who see through the world as it has been presented today, what substances and forces are, something that perishes like this year's plants, and what lives in us as an ethical ideal, as a religious idea, is something that we experience as a germ, like the germ in the flower of the present plants. We look at this germ, which is perhaps just a mere point at present; we know that it will be a plant next year when what is surrounding it now as a flower or as leaves has vanished. We see this outer world in a spiritual vision when we apply our intellect to it. We do not get to know it under the principle of the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy, but we get to know it as a dispersing one, and the germs in it are what prevails in our souls as a moral element, as a religious idea. What surrounds us today in a sensual way will be dispersed! What grows and thrives within us will be the world of the future, the cosmos of the future. In my opinion, only anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can lead to this bridge between spirit and nature, under today's conditions.

Dear attendees, I was allowed to speak these few stimulating sentences here at the request of the “Free Student Body”. I know that they cannot be conclusive or convincing, but they are intended only as a stimulus. However, because I have been given the opportunity to speak on behalf of the student body today, for which I am very grateful, I would like to point out that it is particularly natural for someone who has to look at the world today, who is himself at the end of his sixth decade, to look towards today's youth. In the hearts and souls of today's youth, one really sees the seeds of the future, for one looks back to one's own youth. Four decades ago – and this I would like to say to the esteemed young friends who invited me today – was when people of my age were young. We looked into the world back then, but we were dependent on it, in a sense, we looked into a world of illusions. We were dependent on it back then. It is true that many of the great achievements of external life still awaited people, but the civilized Europe that was present for us at that time also looked different than it does now. Now a man of spirit, Oswald Spengler, is writing about the decline of Western civilization. Back then, three or four decades ago, ladies and gentlemen, was the time when the motto “How did we get it so good?” was perhaps most prevalent – a time, however, when people were very much wrapped up in illusions. The strength of these illusions only dawned on some of those who were of that age when this modern civilization rolled into a terrible catastrophe in 1914. At that time, an infinite pain settled on the souls of the thinking, the waking elders, and they looked back on that time when they were not allowed to say - because the illusions were too great -: We need something that is not just a renaissance, but that is a naissance, that is the birth of a new spiritual life.

Now, after years of pain, now, my dear audience, I believe that life is different in youth. Now the great need is here, and now it is evident in all areas that one cannot indulge in the illusion that we have come so gloriously far. But now, I believe, there is something in every waking person, or in the one who can awaken, that leads him to the inner admonition: Use your will! In the external, objective world, everything points to decline. But the Spenglers, those who only speak of decline and even want to prove this decline, will be wrong if that fire asserts itself in today's youth, if that strength asserts itself in youth that wants to awaken the soul to create and to will, because only through the creativity and will of people who are fully aware of themselves can there be improvement today, not through speculating about forces in which we are supposed to believe. No, it must lie in activating the forces that can be found in our own will, in our own ability.

Therefore, I would like to end this lecture, for which I am very grateful to the esteemed student body for inviting me, with Fichte's words, which read: “Man can do what he should; and when he says, I cannot, he will not.” If we become aware of the spirit that shines towards us from the universe through spiritual vision, that wages its battles with gravity within us, then this spirit will inspire us to create, and then precisely from the present youth will emerge that which every alert person today must hope for, that which every alert person today must long for. Yes, we need not just a renaissance, we need a naissance of the spirit. It will come to us when today's youth understands and honors their task.

Dear attendees! The theme of this evening's lecture was not chosen with the intention of linking the observations of spiritual science to a well-known historical phenomenon – as it is done in many other fields – and thus to have the opportunity to speak about spiritual science with regard to a well-known phenomenon. Rather, this theme has arisen from the fact that, in the light of spiritual observation of our time, certain aspects of the artistic phenomenon of Raphael can indeed present themselves to the modern spiritual researcher, and these aspects virtually demand a spiritual-scientific way of looking at things, especially in the case of this subject. This can happen to you, as it has to me, when you observe a phenomenon such as that which can be observed in the literary and artistic activity of Herman Grimm. Herman Grimm, the brilliant art historian, is known to have written a “Life of Michelangelo,” which, however much it may be outdated in details today, makes a great impression on every receptive soul through the breadth of its points of view and the coherence of its approach.

Herman Grimm then also made an attempt – he himself characterizes it only as an attempt – to write a 'Life of Raphael'. With this 'Life of Raphael', Herman Grimm has now experienced something quite peculiar, and what happened to him, so to speak, will be able to make a great impression on those who, through an ever-deepening immersion in Herman Grimm's way of presenting and looking at things, recognizes that, despite some justified criticism that can be made of him, he has precisely what one can call a sense of shared experience with his observed subject in all its particulars, a struggle to gain the insights and opinions to which he advances. Well, he made the attempt – in the 1860s – to write about the life of Raphael; and at the end of his life, he admits that the attempt was not enough for him and that he repeatedly started to approach this task in a different way. We have an interesting fragment from Grimm's estate, “Raphael as a World Power,” in which he once again approached this task shortly before his death and in which he confesses that nothing he has written before can satisfy him. He died while working on the final version of his views on Raphael. But it is still interesting to observe how such an important mind repeatedly approaches this task, how he undertakes the matter again in the twilight of his life and how he struggles to understand Raphael. You can see that from the fragment.

His struggle to understand Raphael is particularly interesting, because he describes the world-famous painting 'The Marriage of the Virgin', which is in Milan, in an attempt to understand it. He needs a significant, longer introduction, and this longer introduction is actually a piece of world history. It is a reflection on the nature and essence of Roman culture, a reflection on the impact of the Christ impulse on this Roman culture, a reflection on the further development of this Christ impulse within European spiritual culture, and then follows a further reflection on the renewed impact of Greek culture on the Roman spiritual culture of Raphael's time. And in this, Herman Grimm maintains that it is necessary to consider all this in order to understand this painting by Raphael, 'The Marriage of the Virgin', because what is expressed in this painting appears to him so comprehensive, so arising out of the entire development of the human spirit, so that everything that has been felt, thought and seen within the European spiritual life since the impact of the Christ impulse until the creation of this picture appears to him as mysteriously embedded in Raphael's creation. The title of this Raphael fragment, as given by Herman Grimm, was also derived from feelings that arise from such an opinion. It means – one might be tempted to find it strange – “Raphael as world power”, because Herman Grimm actually feels inclined to place Raphael in all the causes, effects, and connections of all modern spiritual life in order to understand him. Anyone who has an intuitive sense of how certain all-embracing ideas arise in a human soul when contemplating any object or any entity will be able to understand what took place in Herman Grimm's soul when he wrote the words in this, his last Raphael fragment:

Raphael is a citizen of world history. Like one of the four rivers, he is, who, according to the beliefs of the ancient world, came from paradise.

There may be many scholarly discussions about the significance of Raphael, but one would like to say: Compared to all of them, it seems to be something tremendously significant that a contemplative human soul has been moved to make such statements about this spirit.

If you let something like this sink in, so to speak purely from the intellectual life of our time, which in Herman Grimm is not yet strongly influenced by what we today call [in our circles] spiritual science, you have to recognize the urge to a deeper contemplation of Raphael – the urge to look at him in such a way that what he has created for the intellectual eye grows out of the continuous stream of human development. And indeed, to anyone who delves into Raphael's soul with an open mind, it appears – especially in view of a certain kind of isolation from everything around him – as a kind of revelation, because, try as one might, one cannot succeed in immediately in the environment in which Raphael lived, as reasons for explaining how it comes about that this extraordinary phenomenon enters into the spiritual path of humanity and presents to humanity precisely that which has had such a profound and powerful effect on the individual devoted spirits. I would like to note from the outset that, naturally, it is not possible to go into details in the course of this lecture, because individual pictures can only be fruitfully discussed if one is able to show reproductions. [Rather, the aim is to use such presuppositions, as they have just been given and which arise from our present spiritual life, to lead in a very natural way to a consideration of Raphael from the point of view of spiritual science.]

In a sense, Raphael seems comprehensible to us only if we take him as a very young child, somehow out of his environment. He was born, as is well known, in Urbino in 1483. The first impressions of his soul come from the palace building of Urbino, which was an extraordinary event for that time and through which the soul of the very young Raphael was able to absorb what was expressed not only in architectural forms, but also in all artistic decoration and the work associated with this palace building. These were impressions that can be said to be capable of shaping the soul through themselves. But then we see Raphael transferred to Perugia, and when we look at life in Perugia at the time when Raphael was an apprentice painter there, the peculiar, isolated nature of Raphael's soul immediately becomes apparent to us. We see, when we follow life in Perugia, how it is filled with events that are in part repulsive to our modern consciousness. Strife between the individual classes rages among the passionate people of Perugia, and there is no doubt that Raphael was able to see there what was taking place in the way of stirring hatred and antagonism in human nature.

If we start from there and take a look at what Raphael's art gave in its serenity, which already meets us in the “Marriage of the Virgin”, created in the twenty-first year of his life, then we find that it is justified to say: this Raphael appears to us as a personality as if he were only externally present in this whole life of touched it with the hem of his garment, and actually only looked at it in reference to something which I would not describe in the abstract, but rather in the concrete, by directing the thoughts to a historian of the time, who quite vividly describes a scene that took place in Perugia in the nineties of the fifteenth century. There we really become witnesses, through the vividness of the description, of how the leader of an exiled family from the neighborhood invades Perugia; we are told how this leader of an exiled family, Astorre Baglione, enters the city on horseback and acts like a Saint George, but at the same time slaughters everything that comes his way. We feel from the description of the chronicler Matarazzo how something grand, powerful, but uncomfortably cruel lay in the scene. When we let Raphael's painting, “Saint George,” take effect on us in its entire composition, it seems as if Raphael had known this scene from reality, but as if all of the cruel background of reality had not existed for his eyes, as if he had lifted the flower from this cruel background and elevated it to a creation of pure spiritual beauty and greatness. It is precisely in the way in which it enters into the whole way of creating Raphael, the way in which it flows into his soul, that one sees how peculiarly isolated this soul is from its surroundings, and how these surroundings only touch it, but how he can only produce what he takes from them from his own soul. Thus this soul appears [to the observer] as a revelation, as something that is placed in this environment and cannot be explained from within it. When we take a look at the pictures of Raphael's teacher in Perugia, the Perugino, we see how, despite the greatness of the Perugino, these pictures show us that something is being presented to us in the individual holy persons of the Christian view that is a reproduction of what a person can absorb when Christianity lives all around him. We see the individual figures of Christian legend juxtaposed as only someone who, though a great painter, only knows things from the outside can do. As these paintings appear to us, we feel the path from Christian tradition, from what was alive in the Christianity of the time, to Perugino's canvas everywhere. Then we follow the creations of his student Raphael. There the matter appears different to us: we look at a soul that brings everything that the other, Perugino, presents to life from within. Everywhere we see Raphael's soul itself, a spirit that has not absorbed Christianity as it lived in its environment at the time, but we see a spirit to which all the origins of Christian impulses are linked. It is perhaps no exaggeration to use the following expression: it is as if Christianity itself conjured up its soul on a canvas painted by Raphael.

And then we follow him further as he arrives in Florence in 1504 and in Rome in 1508. In Florence, he arrives at a time when the momentous wave of spiritual renewal, I might say, had just passed over Florence, which is linked to the name of Savonarola. We encounter an atmosphere that is tired of [these struggles] - the drama of Savonarola has taken place, and many of its repercussions are still present. It is interesting to juxtapose these two figures: Savonarola and Raphael. Both present the impulses of Christianity to their contemporaries [in their own way]; they present them in such a way that we perceive the fire of an inner enthusiasm everywhere, but [in Savonarola's case] also an enormous fanaticism that leads to the impossibility of living out the impulses in the face of one's contemporaries. When we look at Savonarola, it is as if a person were standing before us who, in all phases of his soul, in the best that his soul can feel and sense, was seized by the greatness and power of Christianity, a person who now radiates what has had a very elementary and direct effect on his soul, and who then stands up for what has become so great in his soul itself. And now to Raphael: He presents himself in very strange contrast to a figure like Savonarola. We see, when we look at Raphael's paintings, that Christian impulses are expressed in a, one might say, superhuman greatness. We see these Christian impulses brought to soulful life in many details. We really see Christianity shining through in these paintings. But at the same time, we feel and sense that a soul that had only just been directly touched by the Christianity in the world around it could not have attained the same calmness, naturalness, and serenity as Raphael's soul.

While with Savonarola one has the feeling everywhere that his soul is only appropriating the greatness of Christianity during his lifetime, with Raphael one has the feeling that his soul is already born as if it were entering the world with the — with such impulses that, by passing from early childhood into the whole human being, take hold of the whole human being and, through this development, can reach heights that these ideas and forms never reach in a human being when they first appear in an elementary, direct way. And if we are not pedantic, if we have a certain feeling for the real life of a human soul, we will no longer be able to doubt that a soul like Raphael's soul, as a soul, as a spiritual being, brings with it from the supersensible worlds from the outset everything that could never live itself out if it had to first flow through the whole of personal education and development. Of course, such things cannot be proven in one evening; the supersensible truths cannot be proven - as I discussed the day before yesterday - in the same way as the external truths of natural science; but they can be proven nonetheless, because they show themselves in their effects. One must first find the way to recognize from the effects what is present as the cause behind them. Then we follow Raphael back to Rome, where he encounters an atmosphere that is strangely related to Christianity. Pope Julius II becomes his patron. Raphael paints the greatest pictures on his behalf, which many people believe are among the greatest pictures in human painting; they capture the human soul and spirit in the very depths. And he paints them in such a way that the entire spirit of Christianity lives in them, and lives in them in a completely natural way. He paints – it could not be any different – to the satisfaction of the Pope. But what kind of Pope was this Julius? He was a Pope who, according to today's somewhat different concepts, perhaps cannot really be called a Christian at all. Machiavelli, who was not particularly moral, said that he was a devilish character, a man who was primarily concerned with power and external position – with fame, perhaps not for himself personally, but for the greatness and power of the church. He was a personality who was not choosy about the means he used to achieve his ends, who was not at all Christian when it came to acquiring power, fame and greatness. That is Raphael's patron. And in other respects, too, if we consider the Rome of Raphael's time, it stands in quite a remarkable contrast to him. But it is precisely from this contrast that something as powerful as what is presented to our eyes even today in the two pictures “The School of Athens” and “Disputa” arises, even though these pictures have often been painted over. In them, a magnificent pictorial representation of the course of human development presents itself to us, a pictorial representation that is steeped in the spirit of Christian impulses.

If we look at the one painting, the so-called “School of Athens” – it is not my view that this designation is justified, but it is the easiest way to communicate – and let it take effect on us, we see, perhaps without being fully lived in Raphael's consciousness, that it represents what the human soul can recognize when it turns its gaze to the external, sensual reality and makes use of the intellect that is tied to the human brain, to the human personality. This is presented to us in a wonderful way in all its details. If we turn our gaze to the right group in the picture, we see how all kinds of things are determined and calculated astronomically, and then we feel: not only the usual calculations are being done, but great events in world history are being deduced from the movement of the stars – science is being unfolded in a cosmic sense. And if we then turn our gaze to the left, we see in the expressions of [the figures] connecting the right with the left, how what is read on the right from the star constellations is written down on the left, and if we could really get the books in front of our eyes, we could see how the secrets of the world are written on the left, which are then determined by sensory observation [on the right]. We see this, but Raphael need not have been aware of it; the tradition of the time lay in this, as in the deep mystery that constitutes the essence of [the rise of Christianity over Greece]. And whether we take the view of those who see Plato and Aristotle in the central figures, or whether we see an evangelist on the left-hand side, in both cases what is being discussed is perfectly understandable.

Then we turn to the other side of the “Camera della Segnatura” and find that magic has been poured over the whole picture, illustrating how the development has progressed from the contemplation of the sensual world by the human spirit to a deepening into the supernatural, the invisible. This immersion of the human soul in the supernatural reigns and weaves in the picture of the so-called “Disputa”. The symbolic arrangement of the stars, in connection with the scenes below, must show that something significant has happened in the course of human development, in that man has become inwardly focused through the impact of the Christian impulse on the spiritual development of humanity, which on the one hand signifies a deepening of the human soul, and on the other hand, through this inward deepening, leads to the realization, to the intuition of supersensible worlds. These can only be reached when the human soul educates itself and thereby acquires those powers through which it can sense or see the worlds that lie behind the [sensory] worlds.

It is not my intention to explain such images pedantically, for example by means of theories, but one must use words that are not just comments on images, but that are intended to suggest what one feels naturally. Otherwise, it could be as unappealing as the comments in travel guides, and one would not be interested at all in what the individual figures mean, but what is interesting is ] the artistic, the sensation that moves through the soul, and we are not placed directly on the horizon of human spiritual development by abstract reflection, not by abstract reason, but by sensation. We feel the impulse that lives and moves through the history of human development. And again, If we now disregard these images and look into Raphael's soul, we have to say that she lived in the midst of an environment that showed nothing of the intimacy and soulfulness that lies in these images, and [despite this] Raphael managed to conjure up the innermost impulses and the innermost forces of Christianity in the course of world history into these images.

This is the case with many of the other works we see, and if we then go on to what can still make the deepest impression on the viewer today, when we go on to that which is the culmination of Raphael's to the “Sistine Madonna”, if one lets this remarkable picture in Dresden take effect on oneself, then one comes to a very special understanding of this so self-evident Raphael soul, then one comes to the active spiritual Christ impulse. If, on the other hand, one stands purely intuitively before this “Sistine Madonna”, then one has the impression that something lifts one above the ordinary human. That is the first impression, but it is one that becomes ever stronger and more powerful; it lifts one up above ordinary human feeling. One becomes a participant in another world through one's soul, and if one then asks oneself, “Why is that so?” perhaps it is best to let the feelings of spiritual science enlighten one. How can these feelings of spiritual science arise?

Let us turn our gaze away from the point of view of spiritual science and look at the whole development of humanity. This puts us on the ground of a serious, comprehensive theory of development, but one that is very different from the materialistic one, which is today considered by so many to be an absolute gospel. This theory does follow phenomena back to a certain origin - tracing them back to these origins is justified for sensory perception. One arrives at material origins that show very simple forms and that, through slow perfection and development, have resulted in today's point of view. This theory of evolution is particularly proud of the fact that it understands man as a being that gradually rises from other beginnings of primitive living beings, to his present size, as he appears to us today as a physical human being. Some materialists see this as the very essence of the human being. Spiritual science also takes us back into the past, but when we turn our spiritual gaze back using methods described the day before yesterday, we do not arrive at other material life forms from which humans are thought to have developed, but we ultimately arrive at a spiritual beginning of development. We arrive at origins that are purely spiritual. And on the one hand we see matter itself emerging from the spirit, and on the other hand we see the spiritual developing into later spiritual forms in accordance with its original spiritual purpose.

If we look at the human being himself, at the whole human being, at the spiritual and soul aspects within the human being, and trace the development back, we come to an ancient and distant past in which the human being already appears; he is already present before the other beings that surround him today in the three kingdoms of nature have come into being. These prove to be a kind of descending side currents, so to speak, flowing away from the great line of development: man is the original, he is there first, but as a spiritual being, and as he develops further, he repels the other kingdoms of nature from his undercurrent, as it were. We can choose an image for this development. Let us assume that we have a liquid in a glass, mixed with something that can maintain itself purely. The finer part of the liquid remains at the top, the coarser part settles at the bottom. So we have the fine part at the top and the solid part at the bottom.

In spiritual science, we return to the origin in which man exists as a spiritual-soul being; he develops in his spiritual life into purer forms, which lie precisely in his later mission and which [compared to] the original form signify a finer development of his soul nature. In order for this abstract soul to emerge purely, he must separate the other natural kingdoms: These are there, as it were, to provide the basis for man's higher development. If we allow this thought to take effect in us, not in its conceptual form but as a feeling, if we transform it into feeling, then, when we turn our gaze to all that surrounds us in the physical realm of nature, we have the present us; but if we turn our gaze to what emerges from the human soul, we perceive something that we cannot understand - if we merely let our gaze wander over the external earthly nature and do not direct it upwards to something supermundane. We feel that the present humanity could only come into being within its earthly mission because it is the result of something that comes to us from other spheres, which is a higher humanity that has, as it were, descended to fill the earth with the present nature kingdoms. We feel that human nature tells us of its origin in spiritual heights. We feel how humanity is elevated when we, in our feelings, rise to what spiritual science can speak of.

If you disregard all theory and now stir within yourself the feeling that can arise when we sense the human being in his supersensible approach to his sensual mission, then we have - one must compare the feelings - the same feeling as when we visualize Raphael's “Madonna Sixtina”, in which we also encounter the image of Isis with Horus. And anyone who can really get into the unearthly origin of man can have similar feelings when he sees the “Sistine Madonna” floating in from the etheric spheres with the child Jesus, the exalted humanity, and when he can see the clouds as the foundation, the etheric foundation from which comes that which is the true, spiritual, supermaterial origin of man. It must be said, however, that such considerations need not have been present in Raphael's soul, but we have repeatedly emphasized that this human soul had a twofold nature, that something was going on in the upper regions of consciousness that the [lower] human did not need to know about, but which was no less real; and the impulses, the impulses of feeling and emotion, which worked as just described, alone make it possible to understand how precisely this image could have arisen from Raphael's soul.

I have tried to make all these observations for the reason that I would like to make understandable what appears to me to be in harmony with spiritual science in Raphael: we have before us in his soul, isolated from its surroundings, something that is predetermined from the outset, that is called to realize the spiritual impulses in their Christian nuances in a pictorial way. In the “Sistine Madonna,” Raphael rises in a certain way to a super-Christian point of view, to the point of view that goes beyond the historical, beyond the traditional Christian, in that he feels and artistically represents the spiritual-cosmic origin of the human being. Seen in this light, the soul of Raphael does not allow itself to be equated with that of another soul, such as that of Savonarola.

With Savonarola, we can show, so to speak, at every point in his development, how he connects with Christian ideas, how everything becomes and gushes forth; with Raphael, it seems self-evident that the Christian view is already given to him at his birth. We feel that the Christian impulses are connected with Raphael, but we do not feel anything else: we do not feel that which is connected with the soul of Raphael and which it particularly needed from its surroundings, and that was Greek culture. This Greek element is embedded in the spiritual development of humanity in a very special way. I have often pointed out that we spiritual scientists have to look at human development in such a way that, as we go further and further back into ancient times, we find human souls with different states of consciousness than they have today; everything is in development – the human soul especially! and when spiritual science is recognized in its true value, people will see how one-sided it is to look at evolution in a purely materialistic way, going back to human forms in which the soul would develop its consciousness in a more animal state. If you go back in spiritual science, you will find a completely different state of development, and today you may already be able to find truth in what spiritual research has to say about older states of the human soul from older spiritual products, myths and legends.

We are coming to understand that in primeval times, human souls were endowed with an original clairvoyance, a dream-like clairvoyance. What we today call our clear sensory perception, our sharply defined intellectual concepts, our self-awareness, was not present in the human soul in primeval times. For this to come about, the original clairvoyance had to fade away, to be subdued. This state cannot be compared to ordinary dreaming today, but rather to a dream-like life, which is organized in images in the manner of dream images, but which are nevertheless images of spiritual realities. In primeval times, the human soul was endowed with such a dream-like clairvoyance. This clairvoyance diminished, and now we stand in development where the old clairvoyance had to fade away in order to develop self-awareness and sharply contoured concepts of the mind.

When something is to develop to perfection, other things must recede. This law of balance governs all of nature, so that when we ascend to full self-awareness – in the distant future, humanity will once again associate a certain clairvoyance with it – we have, as it were, a descending line of human development from the original clairvoyance and now an ascent of sorts through [the development of] self-awareness, intellectual concepts and external scientific observation to clairvoyance. And what do we feel in the middle? We feel the Greek element – this Greek element, which is so remarkable precisely because on the one hand it signifies the conclusion of the ancient dream-like consciousness of clairvoyance and on the other hand the beginning of the consciousness of external objects. Therefore, we see this Greekness with its very special characteristics, which consist in the fact that the Greek experienced the spiritual much more directly, but not in the way that man in prehistoric times experienced it, seeing it, so to speak, externally, but in the way that the Greek felt his own personality interwoven with all external existence. He still felt himself in the cosmos, standing inside the outer world, and felt the laws that weave and live through the outer world in his own being.

It may seem hypothetical, but anyone who engages in spiritual science will find what I am saying to be true: when the Greeks created their sculptures, which have only come down to us in an imperfect form, they did not need models in our sense. When they depicted anything, especially the human form, they did not depict it in imitation of the external model, but from inner consciousness. He knew what forces are at work in space, and his consciousness of these forces was formed in such a way that he had an awareness of the inner forces from the form of space. And so he imprinted what he saw inwardly in the external material as a form from the inside out. Just as prehistoric man felt that images of space arose and was so connected in his soul to the entire cosmos that these images reflected reality, so the Greek was connected to the laws of the world, which he felt permeated the body. He created what he experienced, and in turn he created this in a sculptural work. If he wanted to depict Zeus, then he knew how Zeus's physiognomy was connected to those experiences that express themselves in external forms. He created what he experienced inwardly in the external material. We can look at Greek culture in this way; it is still a worldview in which a feeling is bound to an immediate human consciousness.

It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between the genuine Greek and his relationship to nature and to the whole of existence, and a personality who, in essence, is separated from the impact of the Christ Impulse on humanity by only three or four hundred years, a personality such as, say, St. Augustine. Read any work by this Father of the Christian Church, who was also a great philosopher, and try to compare what Augustine gives through his innermost experience of the soul, through his inner feeling for the nature of the human soul, with everything that was given in Greece, be it philosophically or poetically. In the Greek spirit, we feel how it cannot detach itself from the external, how it is one with the external world, perceiving the course of the external world flowing into itself and experiencing itself as belonging to the external world. In Augustine, we see the gaze directed inward to the inner, soul world. This makes this inner creation appear in a form that is unthinkable for any creation of ancient Greece. It could not internalize itself because its greatness was still connected with the consciousness of the outside world. It was an enormous impact on the whole spiritual development of mankind, and one does not need to be on the ground of positive Christianity to see this enormous impact. One could even go so far as to say, paradoxically, that even someone who had never heard of Christ, when considering the Greeks and Augustine in their peculiarity, would have to say to themselves: something has happened in the ongoing development that has turned the external into the internal; and this internalization is the fundamental impulse of Christianity, growing out of the external and growing into the internal.

If we look at it this way and then look back at Raphael, we can say: What appears to be the basic nerve of Christianity lives in Raphael's soul as this soul passes into existence through birth. We see this in its development, if you approach the work without prejudice and do not want to read everything into this Raphael soul with a materialistic-historical sense. If we look at it impartially, it appears as if it has already brought with it, through birth, the Christian impulses that we have to describe as its very own. But now Raphael is born at that turning point of the whole spiritual development of mankind, placed in that time when that which was memory was to be reborn, reborn in a certain outer sense. And here we see a great law of development that can only be penetrated with the help of spiritual science. Usually, we imagine development as a simple succession of cause and effect. But things do not happen that way, because a close examination shows us that such a linear development is a fantasy. The real development proceeds in such a way that a certain current progresses from one point to another, and when it has arrived at a certain point, an old one is taken up again. The later connects with the earlier, which has not passed through a developmental current, but has been preserved in its original form. We have a falling back upon and a taking up of something that has remained at an original stage and that connects with something later.

Thus, in Raphael's work, we see that what, in his time, seemed to be a character of mere inwardness has once again become an external revelation. Just imagine how St. Francis of Assisi is depicted in the works of Giotto. We see how, even in painting, everything remains inward; it does not transition into form and color. We must go back to the inner event everywhere, and when we transition to the inner event in Giotto's work, the outer representation is the less interesting part. This is not the case with Raphael. Here, we never feel the need to look beyond what he reveals to us directly, beyond what is there, what stands before us in color and form; rather, in Raphael's work, everything interior has flowed into the exterior. For this, Raphael's soul, though born with the internalized impulse of Christianity, needed the assimilation of Greek culture. In Raphael, we now see how this earlier state of development is being revisited, even though it was fundamentally new to him. It is remarkable how, on the one hand, this Greek style rested in the bosom of the earth until Raphael's time, so that Raphael's contemporaries were the first to see again what came to the surface at that time [through the excavations], and how, on the other hand, Greek style was awakened again in Raphael, only now transformed into the inward, which had created Greek style in the external sculptural form. What the Greeks had achieved in the form of sculpture was not immediately suitable for Raphael; but what was incumbent on him was to bring the inner life to external expression. To do this, painting, which, unlike sculpture, can make the inner into the outer, had to adopt Greek forms again. It adopted them in particular from Raphael. It is well known to me that one could list many other names, but nowhere else does this phenomenon occur as characteristically as in Raphael. Thus, in Raphael, we see how he acquires Greek influence through the Christian impulse. If we consider his soul from this broader point of view, it appears to us as if it had brought with it all Christian impulses at birth, but not the Greek ones – these play in from the environment. From picture to picture, one can follow how Raphael, translated into painting, appropriates more and more Greek art.

Now, anyone who delves deeper into spiritual science – let it be a mere hypothesis for my sake – will see how such a hypothesis gradually offers certainty, though not in a convenient way. When we look at Raphael's soul from this perspective, we see that it already contains the Christian impulses at birth. It therefore appears as if Raphael's soul had already made a pact with these before birth. While we can see the direct impact of the Christian impulses in Savonarola [through his environment], it seems to us that Raphael's soul already contains these Christian impulses. Just as Savonarola appropriated the Christian impulses directly through the effect of his environment in his Savonarola existence, so Raphael's soul developed them in an earlier earthly existence in such a way that it could not appropriate the Greek impulses at the same time in this earlier existence. It comes from an existence in which it has appropriated the Christian impulses so that, after the soul has gone through a life between death and a new birth, these have become a matter of course for it, as we then encounter in Raphael's paintings. And what Greek culture has achieved is only acquired by this soul, which in its previous life on earth may have been “Greek-like”, in this later Raphael life. In the soul of a Raphael, we see how what we can intuitively place in an earlier life on earth and what in later lives on earth merges with what we already bring with us at birth. Whenever I have studied this, just as Herman Grimm repeatedly made a fresh start [to write about Raphael's life], the spiritual-scientific view was really drawn to this fact by itself. It is to be assumed that Herman Grimm would not have agreed with his last presentation either, even if he had completed it, because, you see, certain things that are connected with the spiritual life of humanity only begin to become clear when one takes into account the fact of repeated lives on earth. Such a merging of the Christian impulses with the Greek ones, as was the case with Raphael, can only be understood if one is able to call the explanation from repeated earthly lives to help. It may still be foreign to our contemporaries today, but I have often used the comparison [with what] Francesco Redi said. He said that it is wrong that animals can arise from river mud; living things can only come from living things. — And in the same way, spiritual and psychological things can only come from spiritual and psychological things. ]

[Today, you would be branded a heretic if you tried to point out that a human life cannot be explained only in terms of its immediate environment. If one examines these things more closely, one will realize that when something flashes up in a human soul that cannot be explained by its environment, this leads back to a previous earthly existence, to something that this soul acquired in a previous earthly existence and that, when the soul has passed through death and a new birth, takes on the form of the self-evident in its new earthly existence, as something connected with the being, as something belonging to it. Thus, the Christian impulses are naturally connected with Raphael's being, so connected that Raphael cannot be thought of without them.

[If one presupposes the spiritual-scientific realization that the human soul goes through repeated earthly lives, then it becomes understandable that what a person has acquired in an earlier earthly life becomes forces in a later earthly life. One experiences and observes how they enter the soul and go through the stages that a person goes through between death and rebirth, and there they become one with the soul. And when the person then enters a new existence, he works with these forces on his entire inner physical form and makes his body in such a way that what he creates in the next life on earth seems to emerge naturally from his being. It seems to me that there will certainly come a time in the development of humanity when people will realize, precisely through unbiased observation of the facts, that only the great phenomena can be understood from the law of repeated lives on earth. Then it will also be clear that it is not only necessary to look at the greatest phenomena, but that every single human life can be understood if one takes the view of repeated lives on earth.

But when one directs one's human gaze to these great phenomena, which are so intimately connected with human development, with all that is the innermost impulses of the progressing human spirit, then something emerges from this contemplation that strengthens the human soul, giving it inner support, inner confidence, inner strength for work, as has often been discussed here. It leads the human soul not only to know but also to feel the germ of a following earthly existence, just as we feel how the plant has gathered its strength and summarized it in the germ and thus becomes aware that a new plant will emerge from this germ in summer. The soul can have this awareness, this feeling of having incorporated everything, as a guarantee for a future earthly life. What is already in the germ in this earthly life is transformed by the mere knowledge of immortality into a feeling of the immortal human germ, into a feeling for what builds up the future life.

Once again, it was very strange to me that it was precisely Herman Grimm's approach to such things, which were just being discussed, that compelled me to read a certain passage at the beginning of his book about Raphael. He who regards Raphael from the standpoint of spiritual science will naturally come to regard repeated earthly lives as necessary if he wants to understand Raphael quite concretely. And from the realization of repeated earthly lives we draw that strength which gives us the insight for what we will encounter in the future. Truly, it is surprising when one feels this as the effect of science: When someone approaches a phenomenon like Raphael and never comes to terms with it, but nevertheless, in the face of Raphael's greatness, receives a feeling, not yet of the reality of coming earth lives, but that in the face of this fulfilled human life, he feels a kind of desire for a coming earth life. The certainty of repeated earthly lives can only arise through spiritual science, but when contemplating Raphael's life, Herman Grimm felt a sense of security in the face of eternity, which he expresses with the strange word:

I see developments in humanity that I will be denied the opportunity to partake in, but which appear to me to be so brilliantly beautiful that it would be well worth starting human existence all over again for their sake.

It is now highly remarkable that we can translate the desire that arises in Herman Grimm through the contemplation of Raphael's life into the contemplation of a reality.

And so we can summarize what was the subject of today's contemplation in an overview of our feelings: It seems natural that in the face of a personality like Raphael's, where one feels so certain that a single life on earth is not enough to understand it, that for someone who allows this personality to have a complete effect on them, the desire that spiritual science describes as reality arises – the vision of repeated lives on earth. And so, an unbiased spiritual-scientific consideration of such great human beings as Raphael may lead to people being led more and more to develop such habits of thought through the contemplation of these great human beings. These habits of thought may still be very much opposed to today's opinions, but they will most certainly become part of people's spiritual life. As surely as the contemplation has become established – living things can only come from living things – so surely will the contemplation become established: spiritual and soul things can only come from spiritual and soul things. And it is precisely the contemplation of human greatness that can sink into our soul that which leads to such [new] habits of thinking. Wanting to try to understand human greatness also brings forth in us the opinion, indeed the certainty, that the truths of which we convince ourselves through an ever-deepening immersion in things and in the spirit of things, even if they initially meet resistance after resistance, will ultimately find their way into human hearts. No matter how narrow the chinks through which the truth must squeeze to reach the hearts of men, truth will find the way even through the narrowest chink. Those who can only see the germ of spiritual science today can be inspired by this sentence, which has been so deeply confirmed by the spiritual development of mankind, for it is only a germ. But he can also, by looking at this germ, develop confidence in his soul so that this germ will surely rise, blossom and bear fruit for the human soul. Answering

No question: I request that this lecture be printed.

Rudolf Steiner: In view of the number of lectures that have already been printed, I would prefer if nothing more were printed. What has been printed has not yet penetrated everywhere as far [into people's consciousness] as it could have.

Question: What do you do with the [standstill in development]? Is there [any] progress at all, [so that] the direction changes?

Rudolf Steiner: Anyone who has really listened will not easily be able to ask such a question. It is like this: [first there is] change, then [a] standstill. We see this in every house, [which was first built and then remains as a result for years].

Question: Is it possible for a person who can consciously leave their body to consciously remain in other spheres and no longer return to their body? And is the body then asleep or dead?

Rudolf Steiner: It is dead, of course. It is not about the real impossibility of returning, but about the moral one. Morally, one is obliged not to thwart one's karma. Natural laws and moral order are becoming more and more aligned. The natural law is increasingly becoming a moral natural necessity, and then such questions are no longer asked. [These are just as nonsensical as the question:] Could someone who has just made a watch pick up a hammer and smash the watch right away? Of course he could, but it wouldn't be reasonable.

Question: Is color blindness a hindrance to occult self-development?

Rudolf Steiner: Read my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds” - it is, however, out of print: Gazing [into the spiritual world] does not depend on our sense organs, we are, after all, becoming free of them. It is in no way disturbing if any sense organ is imperfectly developed, not even blindness [is an obstacle]. It is a mistake to confuse what appears in spiritual science with ordinary clairvoyance. Ordinary clairvoyance is not clairvoyance that really takes place in supersensible worlds. Ordinary clairvoyance is based on a certain mood in the sense organs or at least comes about with their active participation. Two clairvoyants, one blind and the other not, have the same experience when they encounter the same thing. When one says of such an experience, “It is the same as what one experiences with the color blue (or red),” one means that the same thing is experienced as one experiences with the color blue (or red). That is why it is called that, but it is not the same as the external experience of color. Because most people have a normal development [of the senses], one can proceed from this point of view; but it may be necessary to choose different starting points for those born blind; but one arrives at the same [spiritual experience].

Question: Can one get an impression of spiritual science by reading Tolstoy's books?

Rudolf Steiner: From reading Tolstoy, one cannot come to the idea that there is a spiritual science.

Question: Is it permissible to anesthetize a dying person with opium, [or] if not, [then] as with operations?

Rudolf Steiner: In the ideal case, one should act according to the appropriate knowledge that applies [also to] one, which appears to be humanly possible. One should not resist [applying that which] can provide relief to a person; [otherwise] it would lead to impossibilities.

Question: Can devout prayer grant wishes?

Rudolf Steiner: Prayer should actually be a bowing of the soul to the divine spirituality that lives and permeates the world, so that prayer actually loses its meaning when it is selfish. And only that prayer is justified which ends in the words of the original prayer: “But not my will, but yours be done.” This postscript gives prayer the right mood. Then it is a right prayer, when it is not selfish, otherwise practical contradictions arise immediately. For what should the granter of wishes do when one farmer wants something to sprout and asks for rain, but the other in the same area asks for dryness, or when of two armies, each of which certainly wishes to win, one asks for victory, but the other also asks for victory? So one should not be selfish in prayer. Therefore, the question of whether wishes are granted or not has no real meaning, because a proper prayer cannot expect wishes to be granted. I know that this is offensive to many souls, but one should only look at the nature of things and one will find that things really are like that.

Question: What about vegetarianism [in the light of the Bible? There are] the words of Christ: “My oxen are slaughtered,” or the paschal lamb, or even the banquets. And what about alcohol at the wedding at Cana or at the Last Supper, [when] the bread is dipped in wine?

Rudolf Steiner: It would be going too far if the corresponding words of the Gospels were explained [now]. But it would be shown that many of the things one reads in the Gospels today are only translation errors. Apart from that, it can be said that the development of spiritual views can be facilitated by a vegetarian lifestyle. But it is nothing more than stating the fact that he [the vegetarian] can make his path easier, just as one makes many other things easier by abstaining from meat. But it is not the task of spiritual science to promote vegetarianism in a one-sided way. Spiritual science does not subscribe to one-sided propaganda. For spiritual science, precise thinking is necessary, not only for comprehension and understanding, but also for [better] engagement with the finer webs of thought. Many a person believes they have to object to this or that, but these objections only stem from thinking that has stopped halfway. These things are not based on the consistency of scientific thinking, but on habits of thinking, on a lack of logic. Spiritual science is based on the fact that only what is known is believed: this is the view of every science. But to penetrate [into spiritual science] in such a way that one can really participate, it is necessary to relieve one's thinking of its burdens, to make it finer, so that one is able to follow paths along which one would otherwise not be able to follow – and the vegetarian way of life contributes to this.

One should also consider the relationship to the other kingdoms of nature. Today, humanity cannot even think of making vegetarianism a general diet, because it is very personal whether a person wants to do that or not. One can thoroughly spoil oneself if one wants to live in an abstract vegetarian way. This applies not only to today, but to all periods of time. Of course, today we can claim things that made no sense 2000 years ago; what is true today does not have to be true for all time. This only applies to materialistic truths. When we talk about modern man and man at the time of Christ, we are not talking about the same thing; we are only obliged to use the same word. Many things change over time. The Easter lamb does not have to mean a slaughtered lamb. Even if what is written on the note is correct, it was a different time. It cannot be deduced from this that [vegetarianism] cannot apply to today, when the finer structures of human nature have become quite different from what they were then, and that it is not a means of helping spiritual science if one becomes accustomed to vegetarianism. Now, one should not believe that one can “eat one's way up” into the higher worlds, [because it is] irrelevant whether one eats or refrains from eating. [Vegetarianism is] only a means of facilitating, not a means of comfort.

If you were in the Cathedral last night you could have seen written there in illuminated lettering: C. M. B. As you will all know, these letters represent the names of the so-called Three Holy Kings, according to the tradition of the Christian Church: Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar. These names awaken quite special memories for Cologne. An old legend tells us that some time after they had become bishops and died their bones had been brought here. Another legend relates that a Danish king had once come to Cologne, bringing with him three crowns for the Three Holy Kings. After he had returned home he had a dream; in his dream the three kings appeared to him and offered him three chalices: the first chalice contained gold, the second frankincense, and the third one myrrh. When the Danish king awoke the three kings had vanished, but the chalices remained; they stood before him; the three gifts which he had retained from his dream.

In this legend there is profound meaning. We are to understand that the king in his dream attained a certain insight into the spiritual world by which he learnt the symbolic meaning of these three kings, these three wise men of the East who brought offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh at the birth of Christ Jesus. And from this realisation he retained a lasting possession: those three human virtues which are symbolised in the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh: self-knowledge in the gold; self-piety, that is the piety of the innermost self—which we can call self-surrender—in the frankincense; and in the myrrh self-consummation and self-development, or the preservation of the eternal in the self.

It was possible for the king to receive these three virtues as gifts from another world because he had endeavoured to penetrate with his whole soul into the profound symbol lying concealed in the three kings who brought their offerings to Christ Jesus.

There are many features in this legend which lead us a long way towards understanding the Christ-principle, and what it is to bring about in the world. Among its profound features are the Adoration and the Presentation by the three Magi, the three Oriental Kings, and only with the deepest understanding may we approach this fundamental symbolism of the Christian tradition. Later the idea was formed that the first king was the representative of the Asiatic races; the second, the representative of the European peoples; and the third, the representative of the African races. Wherever people wanted to understand Christianity as the religion of earthly harmony they saw in the three kings and their homage a union of the different lines of thought and religious movements in the world into the One principle, the Christian principle. When this legend received this form those who had penetrated into the principles of esoteric Christianity saw in Christianity not only a force which had affected the course of human development, but they saw in the Being embodied in Jesus of Nazareth a cosmic world-force—a force far transcending the merely human that prevails in this present age. They saw in the Christ-principle a force that indeed represents for mankind a human ideal lying in a far distant future, an ideal which can only be approached by our understanding the whole world more and more in the spirit. They saw in man, in the first place, a miniature being, a miniature world, a microcosm, an image of the macrocosm, the great, all-embracing world. This macrocosm comprises all that man can perceive with his external senses, see with his eyes, hear with his ears, but comprises, besides, all that the spirit could perceive from the perceptions of the least developed human spirit up to perceptions in the spiritual world. This was how the esoteric Christian of the earliest times regarded the world. All he saw in the firmament or on our earth, all he saw as thunder and lightning, as storm and rain, as sunshine, as the course of the stars, as sunrise and sunset, as moonrise and the setting of the moon—all this was for him a gesture, something like a mimicry, an external expression of inner spiritual processes. The esoteric Christian looks on the universe as he looks on the human body. When he looks on the human body he sees it as consisting of different limbs: the head, arms, hands, and so on. When he looks on the human body and sees the movements of hand, eye, etc., these are for him the expression of the inner spiritual and psychic experiences. In the same way as he looked through the human limbs, and their movements, into that which is eternal, spiritual in man, the esoteric Christian regarded the movements of the stars, the light that streams down from the stars to humanity, the rising and setting of the sun, the rising and setting of the moon, as the external expression of divine-spiritual Beings pervading all space. All these natural phenomena were to him deeds of the gods, gestures of the gods, expressions in mime of those divine-spiritual Beings, as also was everything that occurs among mankind, when people establish social communities, when they submit to moral commandments and regulate their dealings through laws, when from the forces of nature they create instruments for themselves. These implements, indeed, they make with the help of the forces of nature, but in a form in which they are not to be found directly. All that was done in humanity, more or less unconsciously, was for the esoteric Christian the external expression of inner divine-spiritual sway. But the esoteric Christian did not confine himself to such general forms, he pointed to quite definite single gestures, single parts of the physiognomy of the universe, of the mimes of the universe, in order to see in these single parts quite definite expressions of the spiritual. When he pointed to the sun he said: The sun is not merely an external, physical body; this external, physical solar body is the body of a spiritual-psychic Being; one of those psychic-spiritual Beings who are the rulers, the leaders of all earthly fate, the leaders of all natural occurrences on the earth, but also of all that happens in human, social life, in the relationship of men among each other as determined by laws. When the esoteric Christian looked up to the sun he revered in the sun the external revelation of his Christ. In the first place the Christ was for him the sun's soul, and the esoteric Christian said: “From the beginning the sun was the body of the Christ, but men on earth and the earth itself were not yet matured for receiving the spiritual light, the Christ-light, which streams from the sun. Men had, therefore, to be prepared for the Christ-light.”

Then the esoteric Christian looked up at the moon and saw that the moon reflects the light of the sun, but more feebly than the sun's light itself; and he said to himself: “If I look with my physical eyes into the sun I am dazzled by its shining light; if I look into the moon I am not dazzled; it reflects in a feebler degree the shining light of the sun.” In this subdued sunlight, in this moonlight, pouring down on the earth, the esoteric Christian saw the physiognomical expression of the old Jehovah-principle, the expression of the religion of the old law. And he said: “Before the Christ-principle, the Sun of Righteousness, could appear on earth, the Jahve-principle had to send down on earth this light of righteousness, toned down in the Law, to prepare the way.” And so what lay in the old Jehovah-principle, in the old Law—the spiritual light of the moon—was for the esoteric Christian the reflected spiritual light of the higher Christ-principle. And with the pupils of the ancient Mysteries the esoteric Christian—until far into the Middle Ages—saw in the sun the expression of the spiritual light ruling the earth, the Christ-light, and in the moon the expression of the reflected Christ-light, which would blind man in its full strength. And in the earth itself the esoteric Christian saw with the pupils of the ancient mysteries that which at times disguised, and veiled for him, the blinding sunlight of the spirit. And for him the earth was just as much the physical expression of a spirit as was every other bodily form an expression of something spiritual. He imagined that when the sun looked visibly down on the earth, when it sent down its rays, beginning in the Spring and continuing through the summer, and called forth from the earth all the budding and sprouting life, and when it had culminated in the long summer days—then the esoteric Christian imagined that the sun cherished and maintained the external, up-shooting life, the physical life. In the plants, springing from the soil, in the animals unfolding their fertility in these seasons, the esoteric Christian saw the same principle, in an external, physical form, that he saw in the Beings whose external expression the sun was. But when the days became shorter, when autumn and winter approached, the esoteric Christian said: the sun withdraws its physical power more and more from the earth. But in the same degree as the sun's physical power is withdrawn from the earth, its spiritual power increases and flows to the earth most intensively when the shortest days come, with the long nights, in the season afterwards fixed by the Christmas festival. Man cannot see this spiritual power of the sun. He would see it, said the esoteric

Christian, if he possessed the inner power of spiritual vision. And the esoteric Christian had still a consciousness of what was a fundamental conviction and experience of the Mystery-pupils from the earliest times into the newer age.

In those nights, now fixed by the festival of Christmas, the Mystery-pupils were prepared for the experience of inner spiritual vision, so that they could see inwardly, spiritually, that which at this time withdrew its physical power from the earth most completely. In the long Christmas winter night the novice was far enough advanced to have a vision at midnight. The earth was then no longer a veil for the sun, which stood behind the earth. It became transparent for him. Through the transparent earth he saw the spiritual light of the sun, the Christ-light. This fact, which marks a profound experience for the mystery-novice, was recorded in the expression: To see the sun at midnight.

There are places where the churches, otherwise open all day, are closed at noon. This is a fact which connects Christianity with the traditions of ancient religious faiths. In ancient religious faiths the Mystery-pupils said, on the strength of their experience: “At noon, when the sun stands highest, when it unfolds the strongest physical power, the gods are asleep, and they sleep the deepest sleep in summer, when the sun develops its strongest physical power. But they are widest awake on Christmas night, when the external physical power of the sun is weakest.”

We see that all forms of life which desire to unfold their external physical power look up to the sun when the sun rises in the sky in Spring and strive to receive the external physical power of the sun. But when, on a summer noon, the sun's physical power pours most lavishly on to the earth, its spiritual power is weakest. In the winter midnight, however, when the sun rays the least physical power down to the earth, man can see the sun's spirit through the earth, which has become transparent for him. The esoteric Christian felt that through absorption in Christian Esotericism he approached more and more that power of inward vision through which he could imbue his feeling, thinking and his will-impulses in gazing into this spiritual sun. Then the Mystery-novice was led to a vision of the greatest importance: As long as the earth is opaque the separate parts appear inhabited by people of different confessions, but the unifying bond is not there. Human races are as scattered as the climates. Human opinions are scattered all over the earth and there is no connecting link. But in the degree in which men begin to look through the earth into the sun by their inner power of vision, in the degree in which the “star” appears to them through the earth, their confessions will flow together to one great united Brotherhood. And those who guided the great separated human masses in the truth of the higher planes, towards their initiation into the higher worlds, were known as “Magi.” They were three in number, as in the various parts of the earth various powers express themselves. Humanity had, therefore, to be led in different ways. But as a unifying power there appears the star, rising beyond the earth. It leads the scattered individuals together, and then they bring offerings to the physical embodiment of the solar star, appearing as the star of peace. Thus was the religion of peace, of harmony, of universal peace, of human brotherhood, connected cosmically and humanly with the ancient Magi, who laid the best gifts that they had in store for humanity before the cradle of the Son of Man incarnate.

The legend has retained this beautifully, for it says: The Danish king attained an understanding of the Wise Men, of the three Kings, and because he had attained it they bestowed on him their three gifts: first the gift of wisdom, in self-knowledge; secondly, the gift of pious devotion, in self-surrender; and, thirdly, the gift of the victory of life over death, in the power and development of the eternal in the self.

All those who have understood Christianity in this way have seen in it the profound idea in spiritual science of the unification of religions. For they had the firm conviction that whoever understands Christianity thus can rise to the highest grade of human development.

One of the last of the Germans to understand Christianity in this way is Goethe, and Goethe has laid down for us this kind of Christianity, this kind of religious reconciliation, this kind of theosophy, in the profound poem, The Mysteries, which has, indeed, remained a fragment but which shows us in a deeply significant way the inner spiritual development of one who is penetrated and convinced by the feelings and ideas that I have just described. Goethe first invites us to follow the pilgrim-path of such a man, but indicates that this pilgrim-path may lead us far astray, that it is not easy to find it, and that one must have patience and devotion to reach the goal. Whoever possesses these will find the light that he seeks. Let us hear the beginning of the poem:—

A wondrous song is here prepared for many.
Hear it with joy! Tell all from far and near!
The way will lead you out o'er mount and valley;
Now is the view obscured, now wide and clear,
And if the path should glide into the bushes,
That you have gone astray, you need not fear,
For by a persevering, patient climb
We shall draw near our goal, when it is time.

But no one will, despite profound reflection,
Unravel all the wonders hidden here:
Our mother earth brings forth so many flowers,
And many shall find something to revere;
Maybe that one will gloomily forsake us,
Another stays with gestures full of cheer:
For many wand'ring pilgrims flows the spring,
To each a different pleasure it will bring.

This is the situation to which we are introduced. We are shown; a pilgrim who, if we were to ask him, would not be able to say in formal words what we have just seen to be the esoteric Christian idea—but a pilgrim in whose heart and soul these ideas live, transformed into feeling. It is not easy to discover everything that has been secreted into this poem called The Mysteries. Goethe has clearly indicated a process occurring in human life, in which the highest ideas, thoughts and conceptions are transformed into feelings and perceptions. How does this transformation take place?

We live through many embodiments, from incarnation to incarnation. In each one we learn things of many kinds; each one is full of opportunities for gathering new experiences. It is impossible for us to carry over from one incarnation to the other everything in every detail. When we are born again it is not necessary for everything that we have once learnt to come to life in every detail. But if we have learnt a great deal in one incarnation, and die and are born anew, although there is no need for all our ideas to live again, we come to life with the fruits of our former life, with the fruits of what we have learnt. The powers of perception and feeling are in accord with our earlier incarnations.

In this poem of Goethe's we have a wonderful phenomenon: a man who, in the simplest words—as a child might speak, not in definite intellectual or abstract terms—shows us the highest wisdom, which is a fruit of former knowledge. He has transformed this knowledge into feeling and experience and is thereby qualified to lead others who have perhaps learnt more in the form of concepts. Such a pilgrim, with a ripe soul, which has transformed into direct feeling and experience much of the knowledge which it has gathered in earlier incarnations—such a pilgrim we have before us in Brother Mark. As a member of a secret Brotherhood he is sent out on an important mission to another secret Brotherhood. He wanders through many different districts, and when he is getting tired he comes to a mountain. He journeys up the path at last—(every feature in this poem has a deep significance)—and when he has climbed the mountain he finds himself before a monastery. This monastery here indicates the other Brotherhood to which he has been sent. Over the gate of the jnonastery he sees something unusual. He sees the Cross, but in unusual guise; the cross is garlanded with roses! And at this point he utters a significant word that only he can understand who knows how again and again that motto has been spoken in secret Brotherhoods: “Who added to the Cross the wreath of Roses?” And round the Cross he sees the Triangle shine, radiating beams like the sun. There is no need for him to understand in ideas the meaning of this profound symbol. The experience and understanding of it live already in his soul, in his ripe soul. His ripe soul knows its inner meaning. What is the meaning of the Cross? He knows that the Cross is a symbol for many things; among many others, for the threefold lower nature of man; the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. In him the “I,” the Self is-born. In the Rose-Cross we have the fourfold man: in the Cross the physical man, the etheric man and the astral man, and in the roses the Self. Why roses for the Self?—the esoteric Christian added roses to the Cross because by the Christ principle he felt called upon to develop the Self more and more from the state in which it is born in the three bodies, to an ever higher Self. In the Christ-principle he saw the power to develop this Self higher and higher. The Cross is the symbol of death in a quite particular sense. This, too, Goethe expresses in another beautiful passage when he says:

And until thou truly hast
This “dying and becoming,”
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

“Die and be re-born”—overcome what you have first been given in the three lower bodies: deaden it, not out of a desire for death, but purify what is in these three bodies so as to attain in your Self the power to receive an ever greater perfection. If you overcome what is given you in the three lower bodies, the power of consummation will live in the Self. In the Self must the Christian absorb in the Christ-principle this power of consummation down to the very blood. Right into the blood this power must work.

Blood is the expression of the Self, the “I.” In the red roses the esoteric Christian saw the power of the Christ-principle purifying and cleansing the blood, thus purifying the Self, and so guiding man upwards to his higher being—he saw the power that transforms the astral body into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life-Spirit, the physical body into Spirit Man. Thus the Rose-Cross in its connection with the triangle shows us the Christ-principle in profound symbolism. The pilgrim, Brother Mark, who arrives here, knows that he is at a place where the profoundest meaning of Christianity is understood.

Full weary by a long and tiring journey,
With a sublimest motive underta'en,
A pilgrim, brother Mark, came through the thicket,
With staff in hand, his footsteps to sustain,
And longing for a little food and drinking,
One beauteous eve he reached a quiet plain.
Its wooded gorges soothing hope bestowed
Beneath a friendly roof to find abode.

But lo! a path he scarcely can distinguish,
High up a mountain steep before him wending.
He follows it, as more and more it rises,
In curvings in and out the boulders bending,
Until again by sunlight warm enveloped,
He turns and sees how fast he is ascending.
At last the summit comes within his sight,
Inspiring him with heart-felt, deep delight.

Next it the sun, majestic in its setting,
Enthroned 'mong clouds within the dark'ning sky.
Now for the peak! For all his weary toiling
He hopes to be rewarded there on high.
O'erlooking all the country 'fore him spreading,
A human home he will perchance espy.
And while he climbs, oh sound how full of cheer!
The chime of bells is wafted to his ear.

And as at length he has attained the summit,
Below a softly sloping valley lies.
His quiet look with inward pleasure brightens;
Before the forest full of joy he spies
A stately building in a greening field,
Which the departing sun with lustre dyes.
E'er long he nears through meadows dewy damp
A monastery lit with gleaming lamp.

He soon arrives outside the quiet homestead,
With hope and peacefulness his soul enfolding,
And on the arch above the closed portal
A symbol full of mystery beholding.
He stands and ponders, whispers words of prayer,
The deep devotion of his heart unfolding;
He ponders long: What does this sign convey?
The sun has set, the chiming dies away.

The sign he sees erected here on high
That brings consoling hope to all mankind,
Which many thousands pledged their lives to shield,
To which in fervour prayed the human mind,
That has destroyed the bitter powers of death,
On victors' banners fluttered in the wind:
A stream of comfort permeates his being,
He sees the cross and bows his head in seeing.

He feels anew the faith of all on earth,
The power of salvation streaming thence;
But as he looks, he feels his very soul
Pervaded by a new and unknown sense:
Who added to the cross the wreath of roses?
It is entwined by blooming, clusters dense,
Profusely spreading just as though they could
Endow with softness e'en the rigid wood.

While light and silv'ry clouds, around it soaring,
Seem heavenward with cross and roses flowing,
And from the midst like living waters streaming
A threefold ray from out one core is glowing;
But not a word surrounds the holy token,
The meaning of the symbol clearly showing.
And while the dusk is gath'ring grey and greyer,
He stands and ponders and is lost in prayer.

The spirit of deepest Christianity which pervades this dwelling is expressed in the cross entwined by roses, and as the pilgrim enters he is actually received in this spirit. When he enters he becomes aware that in this house not this or that religion holds sway—but that there rules here the higher Oneness of the religions of the world. Within this house he tells an old member of the Brotherhood that lives there at whose behest and on what mission he has come. He is made welcome and hears that in this house there lives in perfect seclusion a Brotherhood of twelve Brothers. These twelve Brothers are representatives of different human races from all over the earth; every one of the Brothers is the representative of a religious faith. None is accepted here in the un-ripeness of youth, but only when he has explored the world, when he has struggled with the joys and sorrows of the world, when he has “worked and been active in the world and won his way to a free survey beyond his narrowly confined domain. Only then is he placed and accepted in the circle of the Twelve. And these Twelve, of whom each one represents one of the world religions, live here in peace and harmony together. For they are led by a thirteenth who surpasses them all in the perfection of his human Self, who surpasses them all in his wide survey of human circumstances. And how does Goethe indicate that he is the representative of true Esotericism? Goethe indicates, by the words the Brother speaks, that he is the bearer of the religion of the Rosy Cross. He said: “He was among us; now we are in deepest sorrow because he is about to leave us; he wishes to part from us. But he finds it right to part from us even now; he desires to rise to higher regions, where he no longer needs to reveal himself in an earthly body.”

He is worthy to rise. For he has risen to the point that Goethe describes with the words: “In every religion there is the possibility of attaining the highest purity.” When each of the twelve religions is ripe to form a basis of harmony, the Thirteenth, who has before brought about this harmony externally, can pass away. And we are beautifully told how we can achieve this consummation of the Self. First, the life-story of the Thirteenth is related; but the Brother who has received Mark knows many details, which the great Leader of the Twelve cannot tell himself. Several features of profound esoteric significance are now recounted by one of the Twelve to Brother Mark. He learns that when the Thirteenth was born a star appeared to herald his life on earth. Here there is a direct connection with the star which guided the three holy kings, and with its inner meaning. This star has an enduring significance: it shows the way to self-knowledge, self-surrender and self-consummation. It is the star which opens the mind for the gifts which the Danish king received from the vision in his dream, the star which appears at the birth of anyone ripe enough to absorb the Christ-principle. And there were other signs. There were signs showing that he had developed to that height of religious harmony which brings the peace and harmony of the soul. Profoundly symbolical in this sense is the vulture which swoops down at the birth of the Thirteenth, but instead of destroying it spreads peace around it among the doves. We are told still more. While his little sister is lying in the cradle a viper winds itself round her. The Thirteenth, still a child, kills the viper. Hereby is wonderfully indicated how a ripe soul—for only a ripe soul can achieve such a thing after many incarnations—kills the viper in early childhood: that is to say he overcomes the lower astral nature. The viper is the symbol for the lower astral nature; the sister is his own etheric body, round which the astral body winds itself. He kills the viper to save his sister. Then we are told how he submitted obediently to every demand of his parents. He obeyed his stern father. The soul transforms its knowledge into ideas and thoughts; then healing-powers develop in the soul and can bring healing into the world. Miraculous powers develop: they are represented by the sword with which he strikes a spring out of the rock. We are here definitely shown how his soul follows the path of the Scriptures. Thus gradually there develops the higher man, the representative of humanity, the Chosen one, who works as the Thirteenth here, in the society of the Twelve, the great secret Brotherhood which, under the sign of the Rose-Cross has taken upon itself for all mankind the mission of harmonising the religions scattered in the world. This is how we are made acquainted, in a profound, manner, with the soul-nature of that one who has until now guided the Brotherhood of the Twelve.

At last he knocks. The myriad stars above him
Look down with shining eyes as they appear.
The portal opes, and he is bidden welcome
By brethren wont to comfort and to cheer.
So he relates how far by hill and valley
The will of higher Beings led him here.
They stand amazed, for well they see their guest
Was sent to them by heavenly behest.

They crowd around him, and their inmost being
They feel by a mysterious power stirred,
Their breath they hold to listen, for he rouses
An echo in their hearts with ev'ry word.
Like deepest lore, yet uttered by a child,
The wisdom flowing from his lips is heard:
He seems so innocent, like crystal clear,
As though descended from another sphere.

At last an aged brother cries: Oh welcome,
If with consoling hope thy path is blessed!
Thou seest us, our souls are moved within us
By thee, and yet we can but stand oppressed:
Our greatest bliss from us is being taken,
Anxiety and dread disturb our rest.
Thou comest as a stranger, yet to share
Portentous hours of mourning and of care:

For he, alas! who all of us united,
To whom as father and as friend we bow,
Who light and fortitude within us kindled—
Our leader—is prepared to leave us now.
Yea, he himself his passing has predicted,
Refusing though to tell us when and how:
The mystery of what must needs befall
Brings bitter tribulation to us all.

Thou seest us grey and aged ev'ry one,
By nature destined for repose and rest:
Not one was here admitted who, a youth,
Desired to fly from wordly joy and zest.
Each one has met with life's vicissitudes,
Its burdens, pleasures and its anxious quest,
Until, matured, too old to longer roam,
Within these walls we found a shelt'ring home.

The noble man who led us to this haven,
Within his heart the peace of God does dwell;
Along the path of life we walked together,
His ev'ry action I remember well;
But now his fervent praying, his seclusion,
The hour of his departing must foretell.
How small is man! Oh would that he could give
His life, so that a greater one might live!

This is my heart's profound and only wish!
Fulfilment is denied to my desire.
How many have preceded me in death!
How bitter is the thought he must expire.
Had he been here, with hearty welcome's warmth
He would have given all thou didst require;
But now in spirit-regions dwells his mind,
Already far from those he leaves behind.

Each day one hour he lingers in our midst
And speaks to us, by strange emotion stirred:
The wondrous paths that Providence has led
Within his life he lauds with ev'ry word;
We hark and heed, for after-ages hoarding
With care the merest trifle that occurred,
While one writes down his words to make us sure
His memory shall live both true and pure.

I hear him speak, but oh, how much there is
That I would rather far myself relate,
For all is still alive within my mind,
The least of circumstances I would state;
Impatiently I list, can scarce conceal
How sore it is thus silently to wait:
One day I shall no more restrain my zeal,
The splendours of this beauteous life reveal.

I should disclose how first an angel's voice
His coming to his mother prophesied,
And how, when he was christened, in the sky
A star with brilliant lustre was descried,
How down a vulture swooped with mighty wings
To settle by the gentle pigeons' side,
But not to pounce on them in greedy wildness,
A harbinger he seemed of peace and mildness.

How as a child a viper he destroyed,
This is a miracle he ne'er has told.
He found his sister peacefully asleep,
The clinging reptile round her arm was rolled.
The nurse had fled and left the babe alone,
He killed the pois'nous snake, resolved and bold;
His mother came and saw the daring deed
And thrilled with joy she found her daughter freed.

He ne'er related that a spring arose
From out the barren rock before his sword,
And as a brook, with rippling waves alive,
Its plenteous waters down the hill-side poured;
E'en now, as quick as forth it gushed at first,
It bickers silver sparkling o'er the sward.
But those who saw the wondrous stream appear,
Dared not to drink, o'ercome by solemn fear.

For when a man excels by gifts of nature,
It is no wonder if his life is blessed;
In him we worship the Creator's power,
Through feeble human clay made manifest;
But he who overcomes himself has gained
The greatest triumph, stood the hardest test,
And well may he to all the world be shown:
Yea, this is he, this deed is his alone!

With all our strength we strive to live and labour,
Where'er by fate our twisting paths be wended;
Whereas the world oppresses, e'er impeding,
And seeks to tear us from the way intended;
Within this inner storm and outer struggle
Our spirit hears a word scarce comprehended:
The power that holds constrained all humankind
The victor o'er himself no more can bind.

This man who had overcome himself, that is, who had overcome that ego which is man's portion at first, has become the Head of the chosen Brotherhood. And thus he leads the Twelve. He has led them to a point at which they are matured enough for him to leave them. Our Brother Mark is then conducted further to the rooms where the Twelve work. How do they work? Their activity is of an unusual kind, and we are told that it is an activity in the spiritual world. A man whose eyes observe only physically, whose senses experience only the physical plane, and only what is done by people in the physical world, cannot easily imagine that there is still another task which may even be far more vital and important than what is done externally on the physical plane. Work from the higher planes is far more important for mankind. Naturally, whoever wishes to work on the higher planes can only do so on condition that he has first completed the tasks of the physical plane. These Twelve had done so. For this reason their combined activity is of great importance as a service to mankind.

Our Brother Mark is led into the hall where the Twelve were accustomed to assemble, and there he sees in deep symbolic guise the nature of their combined activity. The individual contribution of each of the Brothers to this combined activity is expressed by an individual symbol above the seat of each one of the Twelve. Symbols of many kinds are to be seen there, expressing profoundly and in very different ways the contribution of each to the common task, which consists in spiritual activity, so that these streams flow together into a current of spiritual life which flows through the world and invigorates the rest of mankind. There are such brotherhoods, such centres from which such streams emanate and have their effect on the rest of mankind.

Above the seat of the Thirteenth, Brother Mark again sees the sign: the cross entwined with roses; this sign, which is at the same time a symbol for the four-fold nature of man, and in the red roses the symbol of the purified Blood or ego-principle, the principle of the higher man. And then we see what is to be overcome by this sign of the Rose-Cross, portrayed in a symbol of its own, to the right and left of the seat of the Thirteenth. On the right Mark sees the fiery-coloured dragon, representing the astral nature of man. It was well known in Christian Esotericism that man's soul can surrender to the three lower bodies. If it succumbs to them it is dominated by the lower life of the threefold bodily nature. This is expressed in astral experience by the dragon. It is no mere symbol but a very real sign. The dragon represents what has first to be overcome. In the passions, in those forces of astral fire, which are part of man's physical nature, in this dragon, Christian Esotericism, which has inspired this poem and which has spread through Europe, saw what mankind has received from the torrid zone, from the South. It is the South that has bestowed on mankind the fierce passion, tending chiefly towards the lower senses. The first impulse to fight and overcome it was divined in the influences streaming from the cooler North. The influence of the cooler North, the descent of the Ego into the threefold physical nature of man, is expressed according to the old symbol taken from the Constellation of the Bear and shows a hand thrust into the jaws of a bear. The lower physical nature expressed by the fiery dragon is overcome; and what has been preserved, represented by the higher rank of animal life, was expressed in the bear; and the Ego, which has developed beyond the dragon nature, was represented with profound appropriateness by the thrusting of a human hand into the bear's jaws. On both sides of the Rose-Cross there appears what must be overcome by the Rose-Cross, and it is the Rose-Cross which calls upon man to purify and raise himself more and more.

Thus the poem really describes the principle of Christianity in the profoundest manner and, above all, shows us what we ought to have before our mind's eye, particularly at a festival such as we are keeping to-day.

The eldest of the Brothers living here, and belonging to the Brotherhood, tells the Pilgrim Mark expressly that their combined activity is of the spirit, that it is spiritual life. This work for mankind on the spiritual plane has a particular meaning. The Brothers have experienced life's joys and sorrows; they have passed through conflicts outside these walls; they have accomplished tasks in the world; now they are here, but that does not mean that their work is at an end; the further development of mankind is their unending task. He is told: “You have seen as much now as can be shown to a novice to whom the first portal is opened. You have been shown in profound symbols what man's ascent should be. But the second portal hides greater mysteries: those of the influence of higher worlds on mankind. You can only learn these greater mysteries after lengthy preparation, only then can you enter through the other gate.” Profound secrets are expressed in this poem.

In him I scarce as virtue may denote
The power of good which e'en his youth inspired
And taught him to respect his father's word,
When harshly he his services required,
With duties burdening his leisure hours;
The son obeyed with ardour, never tired,
Like some poor boy who, friendless and astray,
Is glad to work for but a trifling pay.

On foot he joined the warriors in the field,
In lowering tempest and in dazzling light,
The horses he did tend, the meals prepare,
And armed the soldiers ready for the fight.
Oft as a messenger, both keen and fleet,
He hastened through the woods by day and night;
To live for others both in thought and action
Seemed but to give him joy and satisfaction.

And brave and cheerful always, in the strife
He sought the arrows scattered on the ground;
Then hastily he gathered curing herbs,
With which the burning wounds he cooled and bound;
And just as if his very touch were healing,
Ere long the sufferers were strong and sound;
How all regarded him with joy and pride!
Alone his father seemed not satisfied.

E'en as a ship, despite its heavy load
From port to port with speedy lightness sailing,
He bore the burden of his parents' word
That in obedience ne'er he should be failing;
As pleasure is for boys, for youths distinction,
For him his father's will was all-prevailing,
So that he might demand whate'er he would,
Each task was soon fulfilled, each test was stood.

At last the father yielded and acknowledged
The merit of his son in word and deed;
While of a sudden all his sternness vanished,
He gave the youth a swift and precious steed;
Henceforth a sword replaced the shorter #8224,
And from his lesser duties he was freed:
Thus, destined by his birth and well acquitted,
Into an Order he was now admitted.

Ah, well could I report for many days
Amazing things to every one who hears;
And higher than the most delightful tales
His life will be esteemed in coming years;
For what in poetry and fiction charms,
Yet to our mind incredible appears,
Will here with greater pleasure still be heard,
Because it has in real event occurred.

The name of him whom Providence has chosen
That wondrous things on earth he should achieve,
Whom I may often praise, though ne'er sufficing
Whose destiny we scarcely can believe,
His name—it is Humanus, Saint and wise one,
The best of men whom I did e'er perceive:
By origin another name he bears,
Which with illustrious ancestors he shares.

The aged brother would have spoken on.
Filled with the miracles that he did know,
And he shall gladden us for many weeks
With all the stirring facts he still can show;
But he was interrupted, just as now
His heart was pouring forth in fervent flow.
The others softly in and out had passed
And deemed it time to intervene at last.

When Mark had bowed before his hosts and prayed
In gratitude for the sustaining meal,
A bowl of crystal water he requested.
They brought what he had craved with friendly zeal.
Hereafter led him to their festive hall,
Therein a sight unwonted to reveal.
Of what he saw you soon will be aware,
For everything shall be described with care.

No ornament was here, the eye deluding,
A cross-arched vault rose sternly from the ground,
And thirteen chairs against the walls, he noticed.
Were like a pious chorus ranged around,
By clever hands full delicately carven;
In front of each a little desk he found.
Devotion seemed to fill the very air,
Fraternity and restfulness and prayer.

Above each chair was hung a special shield,
Thirteen in all the number he espied.
They seemed to be important, purposeful,
No boast of ancestors in shallow pride.
And brother Mark, with longing all aglow,
Desired to learn what secret they did hide:
Lo, in the middle one the mystic sign,
The cross which clustring roses do entwine.

Each object will arouse to life and action
The soul which to its inspiration yields;
Some places are adorned by swords and lances,
While helmets hang above these other shields;
Here battered weapons are to be discovered,
Such as one may collect on battle-fields:
There spears and banners, come from distant lands,
And even fetters here and iron bands!

Each brother sinking down before his chair,
In silent prayer profoundly wrapt they rested;
Then softly chanted fervent hymns of thanks,
By cheerfulness and piety suggested;
With mutual blessing they retired to sleep,
A short repose, by fancies unmolested:
But Mark remains, surrounded by a few,
Still wishing more attentively to view.

Though tired in body, full awake his mind,
Preoccupied by many hidden things:
For here, his thirst in raging flames appeasing,
A dragon is enthroned with fiery wings;
And here between his jaws a bear is holding
An arm from which the blood it loses springs,
Both shields, in distance corresponding quite,
Hung next the Rosy-Cross to left and right.

The paths were wonderful that led thee here,
The aged brother speaks unto his guest:
Oh let these symbols bid thee stay until
The many heroes' deeds we manifest;
Our mysteries we will confide to thee,
For what is here concealed, can ne'er be guessed;
Although thou wilt divine what here was done,
Endured and lost, and last what triumph won.

Do not believe that but of times gone by
The brother spake. Here wonders never fail;
And more and ever more thou shalt behold,
Until withdrawn is the enshrouding veil.
One portal only 'tis that thou hast passed:
And if thou feelst the call, O friend, prevail!
The foremost court as yet thou didst attain,
But worthy art the very core to gain.

After a short sleep our Brother Mark next learns to divine something at least of the inner mysteries; in the powerful symbols he has let the ascent of the human Self work upon his soul, and when he is awakened by a sign from his short rest he comes to a window, a kind of lattice, and hears a strange threefold harmony sounding thrice, and the whole as if intermingled with the playing of a flute. He cannot look in, cannot see what is happening there in the room. We do not need to be told more than these few words as an indication of what awaits the man who approaches the spiritual worlds, when he is so far purified and perfected by his endeavours to develop his Self, that he has passed through the astral world and approaches the higher worlds—those worlds in which are to be found the spiritual archetypes of the things here on earth. When he approaches what is called in esoteric Christianity the world of heaven, he approaches it through a world of flowing colour; he enters into a world of sound, into the harmony of the universe, the music of the spheres. The spiritual world is a world of sound. He who has developed his higher Self to the level of the higher worlds must become at home in this spiritual world. It is indeed Goethe who clearly expressed the higher experience of a world of spiritual sound in his Faust when he lets him be carried up to heaven and the world of heaven is revealed to him through sound.

The sun-orb sings, in emulation
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:

The physical sun does not sing, but the spiritual sun sings. Goethe retains this image when, after long wanderings, Faust is exalted into the spiritual worlds (Faust, Second Part): “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, see the new-born day appearing.” “Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes—eye is blinded, ear amazes: The Unheard can no one hear!”

Through the symbolic world of the astral, man, if he evolves higher, approaches the world of the harmony of the spheres, the Devachanic domain, the spiritual music. Only softly, softly, does Brother Mark, after passing through the first portal, the astral portal, hear floating out to him the sound of the inner world behind our external world, of that world which transforms the lower astral world into that higher world which is pervaded by the triple harmony. And in reaching the higher world man's lower nature is transformed into the higher triad: our astral body is changed into the spirit-self, the etheric body into the life-spirit, the physical body into the spirit-man. In the music of the spheres he first senses the triple harmony of the higher nature, and in becoming one with this music of the spheres he has the first glimpse of the rejuvenation of man when he enters into union with the spiritual world. He sees, as in a dream, rejuvenated mankind float through the garden in the form of the three youths bearing three torches. This is the moment when Mark's soul has awakened in the morning from darkness, and when some darkness still remains; his soul has not yet penetrated it. But precisely at such a time the soul can gradually look into the spiritual world. It can look into the spiritual worlds as it can look when the summer noon is past, when the sun is losing in power and winter has come, and then at midnight the Christ-principle shines through the earth in the night of Christmas. Through the Christ-principle man is exalted to the higher trinity, represented for Brother Mark by the three youths who are the rejuvenated soul of man. This is the meaning of Goethe's lines:

And until thou truly hast
This “dying and becoming,”
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

Every year anew Christmas will indicate to the one who understands esoteric Christianity that what happens in the external world is the mimicry, the gestures, of inner spiritual processes. The external power of the sun lives in the spring and summer sunshine. In the Scriptures this external power of the sun, which is only the forerunner of the inner spiritual power of the sun, is represented by John the Baptist, but the inner, spiritual power by Christ. And while the physical power of the sun slowly abates, the spiritual power rises and grows in strength until it reaches its zenith at Christmas time. This is the meaning underlying the words in the gospel of S. John: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” And he increases until he appears where the sunforce has again attained the outer physical power. So that man may henceforth revere and worship in this external physical power the spiritual power of the sun, he must learn the meaning of the Christmas festival. For those who do not know this meaning the new power of the sun is nothing but the old physical power returning. But whoever has become familiar with the impulses which esoteric Christianity, and especially the Christmas festival, should give him will see in the growing power of the solar body the external body of the inner Christ which shines through the earth, which gives it life and fruitfulness, so that the earth itself becomes the bearer of the Christ-power, of the Earth-Spirit. Thus what is born in every Christmas night will be born for us each time anew. Through Christ we shall experience inwardly the microcosm in the macrocosm, and this realisation will lead us higher and higher.

The festivals, which have long ago become something external to men, will again appear in their deep significance for mankind if they are led by this profound Esotericism to the knowledge that the occurrences of external nature, such as thunder and lightning, sunrise and sunset, moonrise and the setting of the moon, are the gestures and physiognomy of spiritual existence. And at the turning-points which are marked by our festivals we should realise that these are also times of important happenings in the spiritual world. Then we shall be led on to the rejuvenating spiritual power represented by the three youths, which the ego can only win by devoting itself to the outer world and not egotistically shutting itself away from it. But there is no devotion to the outer world if this external world is not permeated by the Spirit. That this Spirit shall appear every year anew for all men, even for the feeblest, as Light in the darkness, must be written every year afresh in the heart and soul of man.

This is what Goethe wished to express in this poem, The Mysteries. It is at once a Christmas poem and an Easter poem. It would indicate profound secrets of esoteric Christianity. If what he wished to indicate of the deep mysteries of Rosicrucian Christianity is allowed to work upon our souls, if we absorb its power even in part, then for some few at least in our environment we shall become missionaries; we shall succeed in fashioning this Festival once more into something filled with spirit and with life.

When after short repose within his cell
A deep resounding bell awakes our guest,
His soul is filled with longing for devotion,
He rises quickly with unwearied zest
And hastens to the church, with all his heart
Responding to the gladly heard behest,
Obedient, peaceful and by prayer bestirred;
Alas! The door is locked, he stands deterred.

But hark! a blow on dull resounding ore
Three times in equal intervals renewed,
No chime it seems to be of clock or bells,
From time to time with tones of flute imbued;
The floating music fills the heart with joy,
Mysterious 'tis and scarce to be construed,
It sounds like singing, solemn and entrancing,
To which the couples interlace in dancing.

Bewildered and by strange emotion moved,
He hastens to the window there to gaze;
The day is dawning in the distant east,
The sky o'erflown by lucent streaks of haze.
And may he trust his eyes? A mystic light
Is fleeting through the garden's winding ways;
Three youths with torches in their hands he sees
Who haste along the paths between the trees.

He clearly sees their wonderful apparel,
The white resplendent garments which they wear,
Their girdles made of intertwining roses,
The wreaths of flowers in their curly hair;
They seem to come from some nocturnal dances,
With joy of movement thrilled, enlived and fair.
But as the stars will fade, when day is near,
Extinguishing their torch, they disappear.

This is lecture 9 of 16 from the lecture series: The Inner Human Impulse for Improvement, Goethe and the Crisis in the Nineteenth Century

In the lectures given here for some time it has been my task to draw attention to certain impulses, certain forces which work in the souls of men and thence into all that these souls bring to expression in earthly life. I have pointed out how these impulses and forces developed at the dawn of modern spiritual life. Today, because I want to call your attention to a particular kind of modern spiritual striving, we will consider, once again, an important starting point for modern spiritual life, which we have already considered but which is one of the most, important and essential of all. When we inquire into the forces that are at work in modern souls, we are compelled to recognize the importance and significance of this event in history. I refer to the whole destiny and development of the Order of the Knights Templar.

I should like, then, to put before you once more, the picture of the Order of the Knights Templar in order to show how what proceeded from this Order worked on in broad streams which flow even into the feelings and perceptions of men of our own times.

We know that the Order of the Templars was founded in connection with the Crusades. It was, so to speak, an important accompanying phenomenon to that great event in history whereby the peoples of Europe sought in their own way to come nearer to the Mystery of Golgotha than they had previously been able to do. The Order of the Templars was founded almost at the very beginning of the Crusades. Leaving on one side all that is known externally about the founding of the Order and the further course of its activity—you can easily read it in history books—we find that this Order of the Knights Templar, inwardly considered, expresses a specially deep approach to the Mystery of Golgotha on the part of modern humanity. First of all, a small number of souls who were faithful and devoted followers of Christianity gathered together at a place that lay near to the ancient Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and established there a kind of spiritual order. As we have already said, we will not consider now the more external side of the event, but will look at it from a spiritual point of view and turn our attention to what gradually began to live in the souls of the Templars.

In their blood, as the representative of that which distinguishes earthly Man, in their I, but also in all their feeling and thinking, in their very being and existence, these souls were, in a sense, to forget their connection with sensible physical existence; they were to live solely in what streams from the Mystery of Golgotha, and fight for the continuance of the strongest impulses that are connected with the Mystery of Golgotha.

The blood of the Templars belonged to Christ Jesus—each one of them knew this—their blood belonged to nothing else on earth than to Christ Jesus. Every moment of their life was to be filled with the perpetual consciousness of how in their own soul there dwelt, in the words of Paul, “Not I, but Christ in me!” And in bloody and severe combats, in devoted work such as the Crusades demanded, the Templars lived out in practice what they had spiritually resolved. Words are impotent to describe what lived in the souls of these men, who might never waver in their duty, who, even if a three times stronger power confronted them on the physical plane, might never flee, but must calmly await death, the death that they were ready to endure in order to establish more firmly in earth existence the impulse which went forth from the Mystery of Golgotha. It was an intense life of the whole human being in union with the Mystery of Golgotha.

And now, when such an intense life is lived in the right rhythms, so that it can take its place in the whole stream of cosmic and earthly forces, then something of real significance develops out of such a life. I say advisedly of real significance. For when such a consciousness as this is placed inwardly, mystically, and with a certain rhythm into all that goes on in the outside world, then Man can experience again and again how his own inner being is brought into connection with the divine and spiritual. But something else, something that has still greater effect is developed when this inner experience is brought together with the course of external history and placed into the service of the course of events. And it was intended that what lived consciously in the souls of the Knights Templar should be in harmony with what had to be done in the attempt to regain power over the sacred grave. A deeply mystical life developed in this way among those who belonged to this so-called Spiritual Order, an Order which on this very account could accomplish more for the world than other Spiritual Orders. For when in this way a life that is lived mystically is also in connection with the life going on in the surrounding world, then what is experienced mystically streams into the invisible and super-sensible forces of the surrounding world of that human being. It becomes objective—it is not merely within his own soul, but works on further in the course of history. Through a mysticism of this kind, it comes about that an experience of the soul is not simply there for the single human being, but turns into objective forces which were formerly not there in the spiritual stream that carried and upholds humanity. These forces come to birth and are there. When a person performs his daily task with his hands or with implements, he places some external material thing into the world. With a mysticism such as was unfolded by the Knights Templar, something spiritual is added to the spiritual “effects” of the world. And inasmuch as this took place, humanity was actually brought a stage further in its evolution. Through this experience of the Templars, the Mystery of Golgotha was understood, and also experienced, at a higher stage than before. Something was now present in the world, in regard to this Mystery of Golgotha, which was formerly not there.

The souls of the Templars had however at the same time achieved something else. Through this intense inward penetration into the Mystery of Golgotha, they had gained the power actually to attain Christian initiation by means of the historical event. Christian initiation may be attained in the manner described in our books, but in this case it was attained in the following way. Their external deeds and the enthusiasm that lived in these deeds drew forth the souls of the Templars, so that these souls, apart from the body, outside the body, lived with the spiritual progress of humanity and penetrated in soul and spirit the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha. Many and deep experiences were then undergone, and not for the individual soul alone but for all humanity.

Then, as we know, the Order of the Knights Templar increased and spread, and in addition to the immensely powerful influence that it possessed spiritually—more in a super-sensible manner than through external channels—it acquired great wealth. And I have already described how the time came for these external treasuries, which the Knights Templar amassed to greater and greater extent, to be converted into temporal power. I have told you how, through a kind of initiation with the evil principle of gold, Philippe le Bel was chosen to be the instrument who should oppose the Templars. That is to say, he wanted in the first place to possess their treasures. But Philippe le Bel knew more than most men in the world. Through what he had experienced he knew many of the secrets of the human soul. And so it came about that Philippe le Bel could be a fitting instrument in the service of Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic powers whose aim and object it was to render ineffective the Templar Movement in the form it had first of all taken.

Philippe le Bel was, as we have said, the instrument of other, spiritual, Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic powers. Under the inspiration of these powers Philippe le Bel knew what it would have meant if, into the spiritual streams which flow through the world just as truly as do the outwardly visible events, if into these streams had been allowed to flow what the Templars had gained as knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha and as feelings and impulses of will connected with that Mystery. What had thus developed must therefore be torn away from the normally progressive divine-spiritual powers; it must be turned into other paths. To this end it had also to be brought about that something which could only live in the souls of the Templars should be torn out of the individuality of the Templars themselves. Just as that which the Templars had experienced in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha did not remain with them as individuals, but was placed out into the general evolution of humanity, so now something else was also to be removed, as it were, from the individuality and embodied in the objective spiritual stream. And this could only be accomplished by means of a particularly cruel deed, by means of a terrible act of cruelty.

The Templars were committed for trial. Not only were they accused of external crimes, of which they were most certainly innocent—as can be proved on historical grounds, if one is but ready to see the truth—but they were accused above all of blaspheming Christianity, of blaspheming the Mystery of Golgotha itself, of worshiping idols, of introducing paganism into the Mystery of Golgotha, of not using the right formula in the act of consecration at the Transubstantiation, nay, even of desecrating the Cross. Of all sorts of other crimes also, even unnatural crimes, were the Templars accused. And hundreds and hundreds of them were subject to the cruel torture of the rack.

Those who committed them for trial knew what this torture on the rack meant. The ordinary day consciousness of those who underwent this torture was suppressed, so that during the torture they forgot, in their surface consciousness, their connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. But they had become acquainted—and this is the case with everyone who truly sees into the spiritual world—they had become acquainted with all the trials and temptations which beset a person when he really approaches the good divine-spiritual powers. With all the enemies who work out of the lower spiritual kingdoms and want to bring Man down and lead him into evil, who are able to work in the impulses and desires and passions, and especially in hatred and mocking and irony against the Good, with all these the Templars had become familiar. In many an hour that was for them a sacred hour of their life, they had gained those inner victories that Man can gain when with open eyes he passes through the worlds that lie beyond the threshold of the world of the senses; for these worlds must first be overcome before Man can enter with strengthened powers into the spiritual worlds where he rightly belongs.

During their torture, the vision of the Templars that could look out over these spiritual worlds to which they belonged, became clouded and dim; their surface consciousness was dulled, and their inner gaze was directed entirely and only to what they had experienced as something to be overcome, was directed to the temptations over which they had gained victory after victory. And thus it came about that, during the moments while they were actually being tortured on the rack, they forgot their connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, forgot how with their soul they were living in the spiritual and eternal worlds. And the trials and temptations which they had resisted and overcome stood before them, like a vision, whilst they lay stretched on the rack, and they acknowledged the very thing that each one for himself had overcome; they confessed it to be a custom within the Order. They confessed themselves to be guilty of just that over which they had again and again won the victory. Every one of these Templars was obliged to seem to be the man in him over which he had inwardly gained the victory, over which he had to gain the victory before, with higher forces, he could attain to the highest and holiest of all. (I speak of all true Templars—abuses can of course be found everywhere).

All this the opponents knew. They knew that, just as on the one hand the Mystery of Golgotha had been placed out into the evolution of humanity as an influence for good, so now, in the same way, because the ordinary consciousness had been dulled, therefore what lived in this evil consciousness was by this means placed outside, objectified, and embodied in the evolution of humanity. It had become a factor in history.

Two streams were thus allowed to flow on into modern history: what the Templars experienced in their holiest moments, what they had worked out and developed within the progressing spiritual stream of humanity, but also what had been wrested from them by Ahriman-Mephistopheles, fetched up out of their consciousness in order to make it objective, in order to form it objectively and make it effective in the further progress of the centuries.

At this point a simple-minded person might easily put the question: Why do the divine-spiritual powers of providence allow such a thing to happen? Why do they not guide humanity through the course of history without Man's having to undergo such painful trials? Such a thought is “human, all-too-human.” It arises in the mind of one who can believe that the world would be better if it had been made, not by Gods, but by men. Many people may think this; they may think that, with their intellect, they can criticize the wisdom that works and weaves in the world. But such a way of thinking leads also to the very extreme of intellectual pride.

We human beings are called upon to penetrate into the secrets of existence, not to criticize the wisdom-filled guidance of the world. We must therefore also gain insight into the place and significance of the evil currents which are permitted by the wise guidance of the world. For if only the good were allowed, if good impulses alone worked in history, human beings would never be so guided in their historical evolution that they could develop freedom. Only through the fact that evil holds sway in the spiritual course of human history can humanity develop to freedom. And if the Gods were to turn away Man's gaze from evil, he would have to remain forever an automaton—he would never become free. Things are indeed so ordered in the progress of humanity that even that which causes the deepest sorrow is led at last to good. Pain is only a temporary thing—not that it is on that account any less great and deep. We must not deceive ourselves as to pain and fall a prey to some cheap mysticism that will not see the pain; we must be ready to partake in it, ready to sink ourselves in it, ready to pour it out over our own soul. But, at the same time, without criticizing the spiritual purpose and will of existence, we must also learn to understand how the most varied impulses of a positive and negative nature are introduced into the evolution of humanity in order that human beings may become not only good, but also free and possessors of their own impulses.

And so in the evolution and destiny of the Templars we see an impulse that is important for all the succeeding centuries of modern times. If it had been possible for the purpose of the Order to continue to be lived out with the intensity and strength with which it was at first lived out by the great Templars, succeeding humanity would not have been able to bear it. The speed of evolution had, as it were, to be checked; the stream had to be held back. But in this way it was made more inward. And so we see how, in the two streams we have indicated in modern history, deep inwardness of life developed alongside external materialism. For the Mephistophelian impulse, which Mephistopheles-Ahriman, through his instrument Philippe le Bel, dragged out by force, lived on. It lived on, together with many other things, in the materialistic thoughts and feelings of men and in all the materialistic impulses which appeared among mankind from the 15th to the 19th century. Hence it has come about that what we know as materialism has spread itself so widely over the soul and spirit of Man and over all his social life and has prepared the ground for the karma of our own time.

Had things not gone in this way, had the stream of materialism not been allowed to spread so far and wide, neither could, on the other hand, our connection with the spiritual world have become so deep and intimate. For indeed, what the Templars had accomplished by entering in a living spiritual sense into the Mystery of Golgotha was not lost. It lived on. And the souls of the Templars—after their terrible experiences on the rack, fifty-four of them were put to death—the souls of the Templars who had, under these circumstances, passed through the portal of death, were now able to send down from the spiritual world streams of spiritual life for those who lived in the succeeding centuries.

Fifty-four Templars were burned at the stake in 1314. Fifty-four souls went up into the spiritual worlds. And from that time on, supersensibly and invisibly, without its being outwardly perceptible to the facts of history, there began in European humanity a spiritual development that owed its origin to the fact that individual souls were continually being inspired from the spiritual world with what these fifty-four souls carried through the gate of death into the spiritual world.

Let me give you an example of this. It is one I have mentioned before, but I will now deal with it in more detail from another point of view.

Before the tragedy broke out in the Order of the Templars—a whole century before the year 1312—Wolfram von Eschenbach composed his poem Parzifal. Working alone, or in a very small circle, Wolfram von Eschenbach produced this song about a soul who strives by means of inward purification to attain the life which the Knights Templar also held before them continually as their ultimate goal. In a wealth of picture and in wonderful imaginations, Wolfram von Eschenbach unrolls before our view the inner life of Parzifal, who was for him the representative of the Templar ideal. Now let us inquire: Do we see any important external result of Parzifal—who was for him the representative of the Templar ideal—in the historical development of succeeding times? We do not. In the further history of European humanity it was, as we know, Richard Wagner who first presented Parzifal again, and then in quite another way. But the spiritual power, the spiritual impulse that was able to flow into the soul of Wolfram von Eschenbach—at that time still from the earth—became in succeeding centuries for many others an inspiration from the spiritual world. And one who is able to perceive the mysterious connections between the life on earth and the spiritual life, knows that the impulses which were carried into the spiritual world through the destiny of the Templars flowed also into the soul of Goethe. It was not to no purpose that Goethe began in the eighties a poem which he never finished. It is significant that he began it, and equally significant that even he was not strong enough to bring to actual expression the mighty thought of this poem. I refer to the poem The Mysteries, where the Brother Mark goes to the lonely castle of the Rosicrucians and enters the circle of the Twelve. Goethe grasped—in his own way, of course, the fundamental thought which is also contained in Parzifal, but he was not able to complete it; and we may see in that very fact an indication of how all of us are standing within the same spiritual development which Goethe experienced in its beginnings, and at which we must work and work and work that we may be able to give form to these beginnings and make further and further progress in the penetration of the spiritual world. Goethe devoted to the first beginnings of this spiritual development the best powers of his existence; he let them flow into his Faust where he set out to portray Man's connection with the forces of the spirit, which include for him the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian forces.

One who observes history concretely in its spiritual development can see quite clearly that into the soul of Goethe on earth there followed from the spiritual world what the Templars—whose manner of death had been so cruel and so significant—had carried up into the spiritual worlds; and, just because they had gone through the gate of death in this way, could pour down as inspiration into the souls of men. It flowed down, and if with more significance into Goethe's soul, it was not into his soul alone but into many others; and it continues to live, although but little noticed by human beings. The spiritual element in Faust itself still almost escapes notice in the outside world! It lives on however, and is moving towards an ever richer life, and will have to become more and more fruitful if humanity is not to drift into decadence instead of evolving in an upward direction. But this lies in our own choice. In our age of time it is given into Man's own hands. The choice is set before him—and will be so more and more definitely—as to whether he will fall into decadence and continue to hold to materialism, or strive upwards into the spiritual worlds.

For we human beings, as we live on earth, it is only in our physical body that we live a life connected with the earth. The body that is woven of light and sound and life and is within this physical body—the so-called ether body—partakes not only in the life of earth, but in the life of the cosmos. And when a human soul descends from the spiritual worlds to enter existence through birth, then, already before the event, forces are directed in the cosmos in a right way for the building up of the ether organism of the human being, even as the physical body of Man is built up from the physical forces and physical substances of earth.

In the very simplest of Man's ideas lives pride and arrogance and this is especially true in our materialistic age. In this materialistic age, parents actually believe that they place their children into existence all by themselves. And as materialism spreads, it will be more and more believed that it is the parents alone who bring the children to existence. Seen spiritually, it is different. Human beings here on earth only provide the opportunity for something spiritual to come down to them. What a human being can do as a part consists solely in this, he can make ready the place by means of which an ether body that is being prepared from out of the far spaces of the cosmos may be able to sink down to earth. This ether organism of the human being is just as much an organized entity as is the physical organism. The physical organism—we see how it has head, arms, hands, trunk and all the parts that the anatomist and physiologist discover—for spiritual vision, this physical organism is shone through and glowed by the ether organism. The physical organism breathes in air, and breathes out air. The ether organism breathes out light, and this light it gives to us. And when it breathes out light and confers the light upon us, we live by means of its light. And it also breathes in light. As we breathe in and out air, so does our ether body breathe in and out. And when it breathes in light, it uses up the light, just as we use up air physically. (You may read of this in a passage in my Mystery Dramas where this secret of the ether world is unfolded dramatically.) The ether body breathes in light, uses up the light and changes it into darkness, and can then receive into this darkness the sound of the worlds that lives in the Harmony of the Spheres, can receive into it the impulses of life. As we receive physical nourishment so does the ether being that lives in us breathe light in and out. As we use up in us the oxygen of the air and make carbonic acid gas, so does the ether body use up the light, shooting it through with darkness, so that it appears in colors, so that the ether body shows itself to clairvoyant vision in waves of color. And while the ether body prepares the light for the darkness and thereby carries on an inner work of breathing, it lives, in that it receives this sound of the worlds and changes the sound of the worlds into the life of the worlds.

But now what we receive in this way as our ether body, comes down to us from the wide spaces of the cosmos, and it comes at certain times, from the far spaces of the cosmos. It is today not yet possible to show in all detail how the human ether body draws downwards on the paths of light when these paths are guided in a particular manner through the constellation of the stars at the time. For that to be possible, human beings will have to lift themselves to a higher stage of morality. For today, this mystery of the in-drawing of the human ether bodies on the paths of the light and on the paths of the sound of the Harmony of the Spheres, would be misused by human beings in the most terrible way. For what is contained in this mystery would, if people of lower impulses wanted to acquire it, give parents unlimited power over the whole of their descendants. You will accordingly understand that this mystery of how the ether bodies come to the human beings who are incarnating—of how they come on the paths of light and on the paths of sound from out of the Harmony of the Spheres—will have to remain a mystery for a long time to come. Only under certain quite definite conditions can one learn anything of this mystery. For the failure to comply with the conditions would mean, as I have said, that parents could acquire a hitherto unheard-of power over their offspring, who might be completely deprived of all independence, of all personality and of all individuality and have the will of their parents thrust upon them. Wisely is this mystery hidden away for mankind in the unconscious and takes its course there in a good and healthy way, working through the will of the wise world-guidance.

Our ether body travels quite a different path from our physical body. After we have passed through the gate of death, we still carry, as you know, our ether body for a few days; then we have to give it back to the cosmos. In the spiritual, in the cosmos, our ether body remains only as a picture for our own further life between death and new birth. It is incorporated into the cosmos in the most varied manner—in one way in the case of people who die early through some accident or otherwise, and in a different way in the case of those who attain maturity. But when one looks across into the world that lies beyond the threshold, one knows that both—the early death as well as the later death—have great significance in the whole cosmic connections. For our ether body that we give up continues to work on spiritually.

Fundamentally speaking, seen from a deeper aspect, we all grow old. Physically, one dies earlier and another later; seen from a spiritual aspect, we all become old alike. If we die early, our physical body comes to an end early; but our ether body continues to live on for the cosmos, and just because we have died early, our ether body has other functions in the cosmos than if we had died only later. When we count up the years that we live in physical and in ether body as human beings—we have the deeds on earth that we accomplish in the physical body, and we have what we accomplish in the ether body also after death, and the life that we live there not for ourselves but for others, for the world—when we add up all this in its years, then we find that everyone lives to about the same age.

But now, when an event takes place such as happened with the Templars, something different again comes about from when it is only a case of the individual lives. The life that we lead as an individual remains within our own person; but there is also the life that can be objectively separated from us—as in the case of the Templars. On the one hand, what they were able to do for the continuance and spread of the Mystery of Golgotha and, on the other hand, what happened through the working of Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic forces for the impulse of modern materialism, all this also continues to live on as fragments of the ether body. But it is incorporated into the whole process of history. So that some of the life Man lives in his ether body lives on further with the human individuality, while some of it is incorporated into the course of history—when it has been torn away from the human being in the manner described. And the ether body is the means or medium whereby what a person lives in his soul so objectively that it can go out of his soul—whereby this may have, as it were, something to hold on to for its further life—it is the ether body that provides for this.

What flowed into the etheric world from the spiritual impulses of the Templars lived on etherically, and through this continued etheric life many souls were prepared to receive the inspirations that I have described as coming out of the spiritual world from the souls of the Templars themselves. That is what has actually been taking place in modern times.

Into what flowed from the souls of the Templars, however, there began to enter more and more that which flows from the Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic impulses and is steeped in the Mephistophelian element, and which was inaugurated on the racks where the Templars were tortured, inasmuch as they were forced under torture to speak untruths about themselves. This fact—not alone, but as one of the spiritual grounds of modern materialism—has to be understood if one would acquire an inner understanding of modern materialistic evolution.

And so it came about that in modern times, while certain individuals were inspired with high spiritual truths, the general culture became more and more materialistic in character; and the eye of the soul grew dim for what now surrounds us spiritually and also for that whither we go when we pass through the gate of death and whence we come when we pass through the gate of birth. More and more was the gaze of Man turned away from beholding the spiritual, and this was true in all the different spheres of life—the spiritual sphere, the sphere of religion, the sphere of social life. More and more was the gaze directed to the material world as it showed itself to his senses. And the result has been that, since the rise of modern times, mankind has fallen into a great many errors.

Again let me say, I am not criticizing the fact, I am not passing judgment on it. Through the fact that errors found their way into human evolution, human beings have to experience these errors, and they will gradually come to see them; and, in overcoming them, get stronger forces than they could have had if the path to their goal had been implanted in them automatically. And now the time has come when this insight must be developed and human beings must see how, in all that is material, live impulses to error. Today Man is called upon again and again to make up his mind to see through the errors and overcome them.

It is not our intention to lay blame on anything that has happened in history, what we want to do is to look at history objectively. The events of modern times have brought it about that Man's thoughts and feelings run their course only in accordance with external physical reality, only in accordance with what Man experiences between birth and death. Even the religious life has gradually assumed a personal character, inasmuch as it aims merely at putting into Man's hand a means whereby he may find blessing in his own soul. The religious life of more modern times, that turns Man's gaze more and more away from the concrete spiritual world, is really permeated with the materialistic outlook. As has been said, we have no intention of casting aspersion on any event in history; the events of history, must however be described in such a way that they may be rightly understood—that is, if the coming generation is not to fail into decadence but to take a turn, and move upwards.

We see the stream of materialism flow on and, side by side with it, the parallel hidden stream; and then at the end of the 18th century we come to a tremendous event, an event the influence of which was felt throughout the whole of the 19th century and right on into the present time. At the end of the 18th century, we see the French Revolution spreading its currents far and wide over European civilization. Many things took their course in the French Revolution as the historians have described them. But in addition to the understanding one has already of the French Revolution, in addition to the impulse one has recognized as proceeding from it and working on in European history, we must also understand the spiritual effects of materialistic Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic impulses. The French Revolution strove for a very high ideal. (As I said before, we are not concerned with finding fault but with understanding the events of history.) The French Revolution strove for a very high ideal; and it strove for it in a time upon which still felt the shadow of the event I have described today, the event which left Mephistopheles-Ahriman mighty to send forth into European life the impulse of materialism. And we may say of the best of those who were responsible for the French Revolution that they believed in the physical plane alone. It may be that in their consciousness they thought they believed in something else. What people profess with words is however of little account; the important thing is to have a live consciousness in one's soul of what is really working in the world; and those who were responsible for the French Revolution were conscious only of the physical plane.

They strove, it is true, for a high ideal, but they knew nothing of the trinity in Man, the body that works by means of the etheric principle in the human being, the soul that works through the astral principle, and the spirit that works in Man to begin with through the I. At the end of the 18th century, Man was already regarded in the way that he is regarded—to his lasting harm and loss—by modern materialistic physiology and biology. That is to say, even if in a religious way men had some notion of a spiritual life and perhaps also talked about it, their gaze was really only actually directed upon what is lived out here in the physical world between birth and death—what is lived out here, that one can understand. (Even that of course is not yet entirely understood; nevertheless one can understand it when one directs one's attention solely to the external physical body.) What lives in the entire human being, that can only be understood when it is known that with the external physical body are united an etheric principle, an astral principle and an I-principle. For even while we stand here in the physical world, there is living in us something that is of soul and spirit and that belongs to the spiritual world. Body, soul and spirit are we here. And when we have gone through the gates of death, we shall again be threefold beings, only with another spiritual body. So that anyone who observes and studies Man living out his life as physical Man between birth and death, is not studying the whole human being, and is bound to fall into error in regard to the whole human being.

The events that happen in the world must not be looked upon as erroneous in themselves. What makes itself manifest in the world is indeed truth; but the way in which Man regards it and turns it into deed and action often causes confusion. And confusion arose in the minds of men at the end of the 18th century, because everything was applied to the body, and ideals which only have meaning when Man is seen as a trinity were aspired to as the ideals for a purely physical “monon.” And so it came about that lofty and beautiful ideals were on everyone's lips in a time when men were not capable of understanding them, but only confused and falsified them, because they tried to comprehend them all together, believing as they did in the physical body alone. As a matter of fact, of the threefold ideal, Brotherhood, Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood is the only one that holds good for the physical body of Man. Freedom only has meaning when it is referred to the human soul, and Equality when it is referred to the spirit as it lives in Man, in the I. Only when it is known that Man consists of body, soul and spirit, and when the three ideals of the end of the 18th century are referred Brotherhood, to the body; Freedom, to the soul; and Equality, to the I, only then is one speaking in a sense and meaning that is in accord with the inner meaning of the spiritual world.

Brotherhood we can develop, inasmuch as we are physical human beings bearing physical bodies of the earth; and when we accept Brotherhood into our social order, then for the social order on the physical plane, Brotherhood is a right and true thing. Freedom Man can acquire only in his soul, inasmuch as it is with the soul that he incarnates on earth. And Freedom only prevails on earth, is only possible on earth, when it has reference to the souls of men who live on the earth in their social orderings, to the end that they acquire the faculty of holding the balance between the lower and the higher forces. When we are able, as human beings, to hold the balance between the lower and the higher forces in the human soul, then we develop the forces that can live here between birth and death, and the forces too that we shall need when we pass through the gate of death. So that alongside of the social order, a soul order is necessary on earth, wherein the souls of men may take their places individually and be able to develop the forces of freedom, which they can carry with them through the gates of death, but which they will only carry with them if, already here in this life, they prepare themselves for the life after death. That a true intercourse between souls shall be established on earth, that souls shall be able to develop the forces of freedom, that all human events, great and small, and all attempts to give form to human activity and creation shall have as their aim, Man holding the balance in his soul in regard to what lives and works spiritually—this must come to be an ideal. Man becomes free when he is in a position to acquire these forces of the soul in the external physical world, as he can acquire them, for example, when he is able to follow the beautiful forms that live in an art that really has its sources and beginning in the spirit. Man becomes free, when there is an intercourse and communion between soul and soul of such a nature that the one soul is able to follow the other with an ever-growing understanding and with an ever-growing love. If it is a question of the bodies of men with which we are concerned, then Brotherhood comes into consideration; if it is a question of the soul, then we must look to forging those delicate and subtle links that arise between soul and soul, and that must find their way right into the structure of our life on earth and must always work in the direction of engendering interest—deep interest in one soul for the other. For in this way alone can souls become free, and it is only souls that can become free.

Equality applied to the external physical world is nonsense; for equality would be uniformity. Everything in the world is undergoing change; everything in the world is compelled to be in number; everything in the world is obliged to come to expression in multiplicity and variety. To this very end is the physical world there, that the spiritual may go through a multitude of forms. But in all the multiple and manifold life of Man, one thing remains alike, because it is still in its beginning. The rest of our human nature we have carried in us since the Saturn time, the Sun time and the Moon time; the I we have for the first time in this life of earth. The I is only in its beginning. During the whole of our life between birth and death we come no further in the spiritual than to say to ourselves “I,” and to take cognizance of this I. We can only behold the I, either when through initiation we are outside the body here between birth and death, or when we have passed through the gate of death and it is given us to look back in memory on our earth body and behold the I spiritually. But through this I all possible variety comes to expression here on earth. And our life on earth must be so constructed as to give possibility for all the variety that can enter earth life in human individuality to come to expression. One human being manifests one individuality, a second another, and a third a different one again. All these individualities in their several workings are focused in a point, the point of the I. There we are alike, and through this focus-point where we are alike can pass all that we communicate to one another as spirits. The fact that we all have this I—point where we are alike gives the possibility for the development of mankind of a community life. That which is different in all of us passes through what is alike. Consequently, it is not the establishment of what is contributed by the single human individual to the whole stream of cosmic spiritual evolution that is achieved in spiritual equality; rather it is so, that because what has placed us each into a different kind of life passes through our I, through the spiritual in us, it becomes something that can be shared by all, it flows on as a common good in the stream of cosmic evolution. Equality belongs properly to the spirit.

No human generation will understand how the three ideals of Brotherhood, Freedom and Equality can come to realization in the life of mankind, unless they understand that Man carries in him this threefoldness of body, soul and spirit. That people were unable in the 18th century and have continued to be unable throughout the 19th century to understand this, was a result of the strength of the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian stream which entered modern evolution in the way I have described. The 18th century mixed up Equality, Freedom and Brotherhood, and applied all three to external physical life. In the way it has been understood in the 19th century, it can only mean social chaos. And mankind will have to drift further and further into this chaos, if they do not receive spiritual science and spiritual life, which will lead to an understanding of Man as a trinity and to a reconstruction of earth life for threefold Man.

Man had to go through materialism. His forces would have been too weak for the times to follow, if he had not gone through materialism. For strange and amazing is the evolution of mankind. Let us look back for a moment to an event of the Lemurian epoch. We find there a certain moment in evolution—it lies thousands and thousands of years back—when the mankind of the earth was quite different from what it is now. You will know from the descriptions I have given in Occult Science of human evolution on the earth that the various impulses entered into Man only gradually. There was a moment in evolution when what we today call magnetic and electric forces established themselves within Man. For magnetic and electric forces live in us in a mysterious manner. Before this time, Man lived on earth without the magnetic and electric forces that have developed ever since, spiritually, between the workings of the nerves and the blood. They were incorporated into Man at that time. The forces of magnetism we will leave out of consideration, and a portion of the forces of electricity. But the forces which I will distinguish as the electrical forces in galvanism, voltaism, etc.—forces that have taken deep hold in the culture and civilization of our time—these forces found entry in that far-off time into the human organism and united themselves with human life; and this very fact made it possible for them to remain for a long time unknown to human consciousness.

Man carried them within him, and for that very reason they remained unknown to him externally. The forces of magnetism and the other electrical forces we learned to know earlier. Galvanism, the electricity of contact, which has a much deeper determining influence on the karma of our age than is generally realized, was, as you know, only discovered at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, by Galvani and Volta. People give far too little thought to such facts as these. Just consider for a moment! This Galvani was dealing with the leg of a frog. “By chance,” as we say, he fastened it to the window, and it came in contact with iron, and twitched. That was the beginning of all the discoveries that rule the earth today by means of the electric current. And it happened such a little while ago! People do not generally stop to think how it is that mankind did not come to this knowledge earlier. Suddenly this thought emerges in a human being, in a perfectly miraculous way; he stumbles on it—as it were, perforce. In this materialistic age of ours, we naturally never stop to think about such a thing. And this is the reason why we can understand absolutely nothing at all of the real becoming of the earth. The truth of the matter is as follows:

After mankind had passed the moment in the Lemurian time when it implanted into it, or received implanted into it, the forces that go through the wire today in electricity and work in an invisible manner in Man himself, after this time had passed, electricity lived inside the human being. Now evolution does not proceed in the simple, straightforward way in which people are inclined to picture it. They imagine that time goes ever forward on and on into the infinite. That is an altogether abstract conception. The truth is that time moves and turns in such a way that evolution is constantly reversed and runs back. It is not only in space that we find movements in curves as in a lemniscate, but also in time.

During the Lemurian epoch, Man was at the crossing point of the lemniscate movement, and that was the time when he implanted into himself the principle of electrical force. He traversed the returning path in the Atlantean time and, in respect of certain forces, in the Post-Atlantean time, and arrived about the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century exactly at the point in the evolution of the worlds at which he was in the old Lemurian time when he implanted into himself from the cosmos the principle of electricity. There you have the explanation of how it came about that Galvani discovered electricity at that particular time. Man always goes back again in later times to what he experienced earlier. Life takes its course in cycles, in rhythms. At the middle of the materialistic age which had been developing ever since the 14th–15th century, mankind was standing at that point in the world. All through which he had passed long ago in the Lemurian epoch. And mankind as a whole in that moment remembered the entry of electricity into the human being, and thereupon as a result of this memory impregnated his whole civilization with electricity. The soul and spirit in Man found again what it had once experienced long ago.

Truths like this must be clearly envisaged again, for it is only with truths like this that we shall escape decadence in the future.

Under the influence of the inspirations of which I have been speaking to you today, certain minds came upon such truths. For the fact that people went on such paths was the result of the fact that many and different currents work in human evolution. If, for example, what the Templars wanted to attain had been the sole influence working in history, quite a different evolution would have resulted for Man. Through the fact that the other stream too—the Mephistophelian—has been intermixed with it (the Mephistophelian stream was of course also there from the beginning, but it was given new life by the destiny of the Templars), Man has been brought, in our time, into materialism just in the way that it has actually happened. These Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic forces are needed in the evolution of mankind. And, as I have said, certain great minds were led by the inspiration that comes from the Rosicrucian Temples and has its source in the spiritual world to recognize this principle of which I am here speaking.

Do not imagine that a great poet, a really great poet who creates out of the spiritual world, puts together his words in the superficial way that people often imagine they are at liberty to take them! No, a poet like Goethe, for instance, knows what is contained and implied in the Word; he knows that in the Word we have something that lets spirit resound through the person speaking. “Person,” did I say? Here we must remind ourselves that “persona” is a word that comes from the Latin for the mask that the actor carries and through which his voice sounds. “Personare” means to sound through. All this is closely connected with the evolution of the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Divine was the Word.” The Word was not in Man; nevertheless human personality is closely connected with it.

The whole evolution, as we have said, is carried forward inasmuch as not merely good forces are working, but others also. And a man like Goethe uttered in his Faust—even though in part unconsciously, nevertheless under inspiration—notable and great truths. When the Lord is conversing with Mephistopheles in the Prologue in Heaven, he says at last to Mephistopheles that He has no objection to his work and influence. He recognizes him and allows him his place in the evolution of the worlds. It is owing to him that there are such things as enticements and influences that must needs create what is evil. But then the Lord turns and directs his word to the true and genuine Sons of the Gods who bring forward normal evolution, and with whose working the working of the other stream is united. And what does He say to these true Sons of the Gods?

But ye, the genuine Sons of Heaven, rejoice!
In the full living beauty still rejoice!
May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!

The Lord gives to His Sons the direct command to set in the world's places enduring thoughts! Such an enduring thought was placed into the world when the principle of electricity was implanted into Man, and Man was led back again to the enduring thought when he discovered the principle of electricity implanted it into his materialistic civilization. Of immeasurable depth is the thought expressed in these lines:

May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!

And it means a deep experience for the soul, to feel that mystery of the “enduring thoughts.” For then we feel how in the world here and there the Eternal stands at rest in the form of an enduring thought, and we who belong to the world of movement are passing through what is being placed into seeming's changeful forms as enduring thoughts, as the beauty that weaves and works everlastingly, reveals itself in order that we may comprehend it when the right moment comes.

And may a right moment also come for mankind in the near future, even as it is predestined to come if mankind is not to fall into decadence. May Man understand that he has to pass through the next point, which reverses materialism into its opposite, the point where the great thought of the spiritual world can ray into mankind. Preparation is now being made for this in those whose karma has allowed them to come to Spiritual Science. And it will be the continually recurring task of Spiritual Science to turn its work in this direction. For to the materialistic age that has found the enduring thought which in its newest form Ahriman-Mephistopheles has placed into modern evolution, to this materialistic age must be added what can be experienced in passing through a spiritual enduring thought. Spiritual Science must see to it that mankind does not omit to grasp this spiritual thought. Therefore also must we not grow weary in warning Man again and again, lest the moment of time for the comprehension of Spiritual Science slip by and be lost.

It is quite plausible, and probably also plausible to you, that at this moment many things are being prepared that will have a significant impact on European development, that, so to speak, decisive turns are imminent. This may justify our discussing today, both in retrospect and in aphorisms — I must emphasize that it is not possible otherwise in terms of the development over time — some of the events that are connected with the bringing about of the current catastrophic events. We will certainly try, because it is appropriate within our anthroposophical movement, to use what I will have to say, so to speak, as a summary of aphoristically presented historical remarks, in order to then perhaps tie in more far-reaching spiritual-scientific, spiritual-scientific-historical considerations tomorrow. However, it cannot be assumed that each of you has at hand the material for further perspectives, insofar as they can be gained from spiritual-scientific foundations, the actual, outwardly evident material. Therefore, I would like to discuss some of this actual material here today, without making any demands on you. It is indeed necessary that a feeling develops for the fact that humanity will gradually have no inner right to pass over contemporary history indifferently and to let happen whatever happens, but that in our age of the development of the consciousness soul, the other feeling must assert itself, namely that each of us should have our eyes open and, with an alert consciousness, should at least follow the events that are happening without prejudice. It is natural that not everyone is placed in a position from which they can somehow make use of such knowledge. But none of us can know when we might be called upon, on a smaller or larger scale, to advise or influence this or that, for which we then need an open, unprejudiced knowledge of events.

Now, however, much of what are recent events will quickly become obsolete in their connection with the rest of historical development; some of the most significant recent events will be of little importance for the further progress of even the external history of civilization in the world. But in the future it will be necessary to face what is happening with open eyes and an alert mind. Therefore, it will be good to follow some of the past events in order to get a feeling, a sense of how to face the events.

By way of introduction, I would just like to say that over the course of time during which these catastrophic events have been taking place, outwardly visible, clearly visible even to the sleepy, in the form of the so-called war of the last four and a half years, I have spoken many a word to you, here or there, to shed light on this or that. And so I would like to say by way of introduction that I now, at this moment, at this time, when decisive facts are taking place that are crucial for the assessment of the whole situation, although not decisive in the sense of bringing about a conclusion - I would certainly not want to bring about that belief that we are on the verge of a conclusion - but where, in a certain sense, decisive facts are taking place that are crucial for the assessment of the whole situation, I would like to emphasize that I am exactly in the same position with regard to the illumination of events as I was at the beginning of the onset of the so-called war catastrophe. For one of the most significant facts that mankind has been able to observe in the course of these last few years is this: how endlessly strong, how immeasurably strong it was possible to corrupt human judgment in all its aspects, to lead this human judgment into wrong channels, namely by always endeavoring from different sides to get the maxims of judgment, the directions of judgment, from the wrong quarters. It is true that during the course of these years judgments have been passed from the most diverse areas of interest. Every so-called nation had its own area of interest and passed judgment with more or less, but mostly with less, knowledge of the facts that had taken place. And this false direction, in which these judgments were moving, was often nourished and often used by the relevant authorities, at least by the questionable relevant authorities – but one could ask: where were the others in the last four and a half years? — this false direction, in which these judgments were moving, was often nourished and often used to achieve this or that.

Above all, from the outbreak of this so-called war to the present day, the so-called question of guilt has played a major role in these events from the most diverse points of view, one could say from the most diverse interests. In the judgments of people here and there, this so-called question of guilt has played a significant role. But it cannot be said that this so-called question of guilt has played any kind of favorable role. It is precisely this question of guilt and the way in which this question of guilt has guided public judgment that has had such an enormously corrupting effect on the intellectual and moral judgment of people. And there is an infinite amount to be made good, and it can only be done by spiritual science if the corruption that has occurred in relation to intellectual and moral judgment throughout the civilized world is to be even partially corrected. In this context, one thing must not be left unmentioned. Among the various judgments that have been passed, there are some that have been passed in so-called good faith, if not always with a true conscience, with a true conscience that is aware of the responsibility towards the word. They are judgments that have been passed in so-called good faith, even on the basis of what was known at the time, so that no charges should be brought against either of the judges. But above all, the course of events itself will not initially have a corrupting effect on the judgment. The course of events will perhaps be more likely to influence the judgments in an unfavorable sense, and it would be particularly appropriate for an anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement to correct many things in itself and in others simply by really moving the whole level of judgment, the whole level of assessment, out of those spheres in which judgments have been made about the whole world so far and to place them in a completely different light.

Above all, it is important that, encouraged by the course of events, a large number of people will now agree with those who can say: We have always said it, on the part of the Central Powers of Europe, a war has been staged without them being provoked in any way. The Central Powers must be blamed. Well, directing the judgment in this direction has not the slightest meaning in view of the real facts. And if one wanted to start from the immediate question of guilt – I am now talking about an immediate question of guilt – then a fair judgment would certainly not be able to address the question from the point of view just mentioned. The question: Did the Central Powers bear any blame for the outbreak of this war? – this question actually has no serious meaning in reality. And if one objects to it, it is mainly because bringing the verdict in this direction has no actual tangible content and meaning.

It makes least sense in terms of the facts, which must come to light at some point. For example, the fact that the Central Powers were planning to wage a preventive war, that a so-called preventive war was to be waged. This point of view, which would have the Central Powers say: the war will come anyway, so it might as well come under less favorable conditions for us, so we'd better start it sooner, because then we have a certain advantage – this point of view does not make the slightest bit of sense in the face of the facts. There can be absolutely no question of arriving at a judgment about the situation by directing one's judgment in this direction. In such a matter, it is really a matter of looking the facts in the eye without prejudice. And there one must - and I do it today aphoristically - of course point out details, those details that are symptomatically serious. Of course I cannot go back to Adam and Eve. In order to give a historical account, one is always tempted to do so to some extent when one wants to express something. But I cannot go back to Adam and Eve. I will say only a few things at first and extend my considerations over a short period of time.

This leads us to a kind of disposition of our aphoristic reflections, in that the starting point, I might say the impetus for this so-called war, was the ultimatum fabricated in Austria and sent to Serbia. It may therefore be useful to link the historical symptoms to this starting point of the so-called military events under consideration. Well, this starting point leads us back to the 1870s. We cannot look at what happened between Austria and Serbia without going back to the so-called occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in 1878. This occu of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in 1878, which marked the beginning of a certain Austrian policy, which in its further course actually led to what can be called the Austro-Serbian ultimatum. The so-called Congress of Berlin had emerged from the turmoil that had arisen in Europe as a result of the Russo-Turkish War in the 1870s. And this Congress of Berlin, among other 'deeds, and mainly under the influence of British policy at the time, also gave Austria the mandate to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina for the time being.

Basically, much of what has happened in the Balkans is connected with this occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary. Therefore, the question must be raised: How did it actually come about that Austria could be induced to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina? — This even has something to do with the causes of the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War. To the southeast, Balkan Slavic peoples border on Austria-Hungary. But Austria-Hungary itself has a Slavic population to the southeast. It has the southern Slavs, it has the Croats, it has the Slavs, who, especially the latter, the Croats and the Slavs, feel very close to the Serbs. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, which until the 1770s were in a somewhat dubious, but nevertheless in a relationship of subservience to Turkey, the Slavic and Turkish populations were mixed. This led to unrest, which initially appeared to the European world as unrest directed against the rule of the Turks. Of course, I would have to be much more detailed if I wanted to do more than sketch, but I just want to sketch a few things for you. Now it is interesting to find out how these riots actually came about at the time, the last suppression of which was to consist in the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria. Because the way these unrest came about is of extraordinary importance in terms of contemporary history.

If the Herzegovscans and the inhabitants of Bosnia, the Bosniaks, had been left to their own devices at the time, it is unlikely that the unrest that particularly worried Europe would have broken out. But such things happened often under the old regime, which was not just the old regime in that place, but was basically the old regime throughout the civilized world until now. Certainly, unrest had broken out among the Bosniaks and the Herzegovans; they were not satisfied with Turkish rule. But if they had been left to their own devices, there would have been no need to stir up unrest in Europe. What actually happened was certainly the result of the instigation of numerous meetings held in Vienna by generals and sub-generals of the most diverse, and in particular Slavic, nations. For those who were mainly involved in the uprising that preceded the Russo-Turkish war in those questionable provinces were mostly people from neighboring Austria and Dalmatia, that is, Dalmatians and Dalmatian-Austrian Montenegrins who had been sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Vienna arranged it so that the Dalmatian population was sent to neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, causing unrest. The necessary ammunition and war material were also transported through the numerous passes. The government behaved in such a way at the time that, in order to be justified in the eyes of Europe, it stationed gendarmes at a pass to intercept any person carrying a little ammunition who was crossing the pass into Bosnia , at the same time that people were sent over from Dalmatia and also from Trieste and were allowed to pass quietly through other passes with ammunition and war material.

Then the unrest was staged, and the corresponding stock exchange telegrams were always sent from Trieste to Europe about the course of these terrible riots. And when the journalists of the “Neue Freie Presse” - you know that journalists not only want to interview important personalities, but also events - came over, the events were staged for them. They were placed in a place where it was possible to present large rebel masses, more than had been sent. But that was arranged, you see – I am drawing a plan (it is being drawn) –: the brave journalists are standing there, and the insurgents are passing by. But the arrangements were made in such a way – you know, like in the theater: they go out there and in there again – that they were led past three times. That is how such an earth-shattering uprising was staged! Of course, the journalists could also state the enormous number they saw there. What else could the European public, which does not believe in authority but does believe in newspapers, do but know that there are enormous numbers of insurgents and that something must be done about it.

Well, things then led to the military involvement and to the Berlin Congress. And so Austria-Hungary was given the mandate to restore order in these provinces, where everything is so restless and where one must always fear that unrest will break out. And it was not given the annexation – it was already the time when one could not bring oneself to make radical decisions – it was given the occupation. That is such a half or quarter thing. It was the beginning of something that in a sense was bound to happen in Central Europe, as a result of the differences that had arisen between the Central European population, the North German population and Austria, and the South German states in 1866, which had led to a situation in which Berlin's policy was to push Austria, as the Habsburg Empire, more towards the east, towards the Slavs. And you can believe that a man like me, who was right in the middle of it, just when the decisive feelings among the Germans of Austria were developing about these events, that he is now, after so many years, I can almost say decades, able to talk about this matter in an unbiased way. The fact that the Germans of Austria were being pushed to the wall had to be seen as a side effect of this pushing over of the Habsburg Empire to the Slavic East. This was, of course, in the spirit and style of Berlin politics, again for the reason that there cannot be two empires in Central Europe with a decidedly German coloration; therefore, Austria was to be given a more Slavic coloration.

But this meant that certain preconditions were in place that, if they had been steered in the right direction, would have been extremely suitable for turning this so-called Danube Monarchy into a European entity with a grand mission. One could not imagine anything more beautiful than to see the Austrian Germans pushed against the wall by this tendency to slowly push the Habsburg monarchy over to the east – but they would have been able to create their own destiny – if, at the right moment in world history, a true mission had been instilled into this framework that had emerged. It can truly be said that this would have been of the utmost importance, not only for Europe, but for the entire civilized world. Because there was good material in this area of Europe. We must not forget the following: the Germans of Austria themselves are so predisposed – I have already pointed out some of their character traits – that any imperialistic impulse is as far from them as possible. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that one could hold a vote, not only on the word, but on what imperialism as an impulse is: one would truly find very few people among the real German-Austrian population who have any idea that one could turn to such a thing. That is why the German-Austrian population resisted the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with all their might, which, albeit a kind of sham, was still a kind of attack on an Austrian-imperialist policy that was actually an historical impossibility because Austria is not such that it could ever have developed an imperialist policy out of its own essence. This German-Austrian population, as I said the other day, lived, corrupted by clericalism, in many respects a kind of plant-like existence. But it is precisely from this vegetative existence that strong individualities have the potential to develop. And in terms of spirituality, not a little has developed in individualities precisely from these German areas of Austria, even in the period when, from Germany, German-Austria was pushed to the wall because they wanted to Slavicize the Habsburg Empire.

Now we must not forget that within this territory there is an exceptionally strong chauvinistic element that bears the specific character of chauvinism: this is the Magyar element, which has always sought to implement its chauvinism in the most ruthless way and has also known how to implement it. This has always been a very bad addition, and it would have been so even if the Austrian framework had been filled with a mission of some kind. But then, for Austria, there are the most diverse Slavs, the most diverse Slavic population, and this Slavic population of Austria has not in the least had any imperialistic policy in its tendencies in the period under consideration for the preparation of the present catastrophic events, in which it certainly plays a very large part. The Slav population, including the Polish part of the Austro-Slav population, was very far from any imperialistic policy. And I will never forget the speech that Otto Hausner, the Polish liberal member of parliament at that time, held in 1879 against the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, precisely from the point of view of condemning imperialistic policy.

What the Slavs in Austria were doing was essentially always, however, national – that is the bad thing about it – but national cultural policy. They wanted to advance as nations, to develop what lies in their nature as peoples, not in a chauvinistic way – that distinguishes them or at least always distinguished them from the Magyars. If someone had known how to combine everything that was in the nature of the various peoples of Austria and what was included in the framework of Austria into one mission, then something really great and significant could have come of it. Because the Slavic population of Austria was never, not even at the beginning of this world war, inclined to enter into any kind of confederation with the Slavic population of Russia. The Slavic population of Austria, perhaps with the exception of the Poles, who would have liked to have their own separate empire, but the other Slavic population of Austria, was, especially in the early days of the war – and this war had various phases that are not yet being taken into account and distinguished – not at all inclined towards Russia. What the Slavic population of Austria wanted, as expressed by their leaders, was a Slavic cultural policy of the Austro-Slavic peoples, perhaps with some extension to the Balkan Slavs, but decidedly directed against tsarism. Of course, individual phenomena deviate from this, but on the whole they are not important; but that is why, basically, the rapid and major turn of the Austrian Slavs towards Russia only happened with the fall of tsarism. The fall of tsarism had an enormously decisive effect for Austria, because with a tsarist Russia, the Slavs of Austria could never have been united in their sympathies, and that is what mattered; because the Czechoslovak question became one of the most important in the course of events.

Now Austria did not understand how to see all this and unite it into one mission, and that was Austria's tragic fate. They just did not understand it at all. Now, of course, there was a great ferment among the Slavic population of Austria, which aimed to realize what I have just hinted at: liberation of the Slavs as a nation in such a way that they could freely develop their talents within the framework of Austria. Unfortunately, all this was not turned into a great cultural mission, but in Austria, under the influence of the Habsburg power politics and clericalism, it was forced into a policy that Moriz Benedikt, not without reason, called an “Aryan policy”. It is hard to describe it differently. It is a policy that is a confused mixture of sloppy military organization, even sloppier bureaucracy, a not quite completed but also rather sloppy pedantry, and so on.

This is precisely the kind of thing that I could recently say was none of my business. But now, we must not forget: such fermentations, which then know no territorial boundaries, are material for coming events. Isn't it true that if, say, the Czechs are fermenting somewhere, if you want something there, then some great powers can, as it were, race for the sympathies of such a community — also for the real sympathies that then lead to something. Great Powers that have nothing to do there take possession of such a region. This gives rise to unnatural conditions in the world. In the example I have chosen, the Czechs sympathize with a Great Power from which they expect support in their aspirations, with a Great Power with which they could not otherwise develop any further sympathy. As a result of these given preconditions, those who were clever, those who understood politics in the old sense, had numerous opportunities for scheming, if one wanted this or that. This created fuel for conflicts, which one could then use. Well, the long-standing Austrian Prime Minister, Count Taaffe, who was entrusted with the task of bringing about a so-called policy of reconciliation between the various peoples of Austria, himself described the basic character of his own policy: “fortwursteln”. Yes, it is perhaps difficult to translate, “fortwursteln”; so it means: to carry on as before, without any idea of how to proceed. You just go on and on and on until the cart can go no further.“—”Muddling through” was what Count Taaffe called the essence of his own policy. Then others came and took over from Count Taaffe, but they also muddled on. They always looked upon conciliation in such a way that they granted a university to one nationality, and some other time granted some kind of a provincial committee or something similar to the other nationality, founded a bank or the like. In this way they only confused the nationalities more and alienated them from a real mission that could have been found and would also have been understood if it had only really been carried out.

And so it went on until the unfortunate year of 1914. It cannot even be said that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was much more than an external cause for what was then presented as a so-called ultimatum from Austria-Hungary to Serbia. For it had long since ceased to be the case that such events as those that had now befallen us were directly decided by the fact that these or those contradictions existed. These or those antagonisms were only used to achieve quite different things. Now, if one wants to answer the question: Did anyone within Austria want the war that came? — then one would direct the question in the completely wrong direction if one wanted to accuse one or the other people of Austria, or even if one wanted to accuse the Austrian government. For the Austrian government in 1914: an emperor well over eighty years old, no longer capable of thought, for whom waging war was not really a priority; a pathologically incompetent foreign minister, Count Berchtold, who was well suited to being pushed around, but who could not be expected to have the initiative to unleash any kind of war. And those who surrounded him as his creatures, especially in his more immediate office, were certainly not very likely to start a war either. So anyone looking for blame for this war within the Austrian government or within the Hofburg in Vienna is actually taking the question in a completely wrong direction, because such incompetence does not start wars. I am not saying this out of emotion, nor am I saying it to pass judgment on anything, but as a summary of facts.

But we must not forget the other side. We can also look at the situation from a different perspective. We must be clear about the fact that underlying everything that has happened in recent years was the possibility of war, a possibility of war that could have been realized in a variety of ways. And this possibility of war lies, I would say, in an historical development itself. I have often spoken of this here. It simply lies in the fact that the English-speaking population of the world, under certain conditions, strives for world domination. This is a fact that must be accepted as a fact. But it is not true that, in the face of such a fact, all people who do not belong to it do not strive for world domination, but they have all sorts of aspirations, and thus many things can happen. So that simply through the presence of English imperialism, which has emerged ever more visibly and visibly in the twentieth century in particular, of course, all sorts of opportunities for war have arisen. These opportunities for war were, of course, always something that could be used by those people who needed wars. Now the situation in Austria was such that there were financial circles in Vienna and Austria which for several years had been hoping to be able to boost their economy by means of a war. It may be said that it is, of course, extremely easy for the Entente governments to prove that they did not cause the war. Nothing could be easier than that, but it does not mean much, because that is not the issue. The real instigators of the war, especially in this period, were not those in government office in any country, but the powers behind them. I spoke at length here a year ago about the major powers that were now completely behind it.

Now these big business circles could use all kinds of differences and disharmony that existed to direct world history, so to speak. Of course, there were such consortia in Vienna as well. They were the real driving forces there. I would not even want to examine the origin of such consortia. Such consortia do not even have to be from one's own country, they can come from elsewhere. But territorially, such consortia were there in any case. In a certain respect, they were the driving forces. And since everything that was fermenting in the Slavic population of both Austria and the broader East could always be used, and the whole non-existent mission of Austria could be used, it was of course possible to exploit such existing tendencies if one wanted to contribute something to bringing about some kind of war. The differentiations and aspirations of the Slavic peoples of Austria and the East were certainly very, very strongly involved in this, but basically they were also only used as objects, as what one used.

If we look at the next ones to push, then basically they are financial powers, capital powers, not so much in the usual sense as big capital powers, founding capital powers and the like. That was what was behind it. Of course, for decades this has been the ruling force in contemporary humanity. More than anyone who is asleep can believe, the international world of finance, the world of the founders in the big, stands behind the events of the last decades. Isn't it true, the powers I have spoken of here, in turn used the world of finance, but the world of finance gave the next pushes. And it was from this financial world that what had been present for years as a combustible material in Austria also went off. There was a favorable time for the possibility that financial powers, who were very clear about their chances of winning but otherwise very, very much in the dark, could arrange something. A propitious time had arisen. And the way in which this catastrophe occurred shows that an extraordinarily propitious time had arisen for these powers. They also knew how to exploit this propitious time in the right way. One has only to think of what it means when the machinery of entire empires can be set in motion to achieve something purely commercial. In modern times such things have been prepared for a long time, and the time was particularly favorable just at the outbreak of our military disaster. Much has been stirred up that had been lying dormant in the subconscious of the nations, but one cannot imagine anything more devilishly ingenious than the exploitation of the world economic situation in recent decades by international financial powers.

You see, the power of the Central European empires and, in fact, of the Russian Empire – for England not the power of the empire, but the power of finance – has actually gradually become impotent. The empires did not really mean anything special, nothing that brought about decisions in the course of world history. Decisions in the course of world history were brought about by the transactions of the great capital powers, the international great capital powers, which used the empires as instruments. And for that, just as 1914 approached, the world economy was extremely favorable. Austria gradually came to be only the instrument of financial consortia. But Germany, too, came to be only the instrument of financial syndicates. This was brought about by the fact that in Austria an old man sat on the so-called throne, who was hardly capable of taking in what was going on around him, who no longer knew what was going on around him, who could be persuaded could be persuaded to do anything that was made to appear plausible to him from the outside. These circumstances, as I have described them to you, this muddling through, had gradually made it possible to install the most absolute incompetence in the ministries. For if one wanted a menagerie of nothing but incompetents, one needed only to put together the various Austrian ministries of recent times. That was a good field that could be used as an instrument. For one needed only to direct things so that a respectable army organization was used in such a way that a financial consortium could promise itself a corresponding world transaction through this use. Behind what happened in Austria in July and August 1914, there were financial powers, which perhaps did not even originate in Austria itself, but for whom Austria was an instrument to achieve certain things. Count Berchtold could really be pushed wherever you wanted, like a chess piece, if you were a real financial chess player. That was one thing.

The other thing was that, due to the unfortunate circumstances of the last few decades, the German Reich had gradually become an instrument for financial and industrial operations. The most erroneous thing that one can do when raising blame or other questions on this occasion is to believe that a German government was a powerful government that wanted something on its own. It really did not want anything special. For most of those in Germany, in the so-called government of Germany, could be added to the others I have just mentioned, and they would not differ so much from them, especially in terms of their political qualities. In addition, there was another circumstance. The fact that a very insignificant, actually highly insignificant ruler in terms of his intellectual qualities, was staged in a kind of - one may use the word again, which has been used frequently today - theater policy. And no less than the old Austrian emperor, the German emperor, who is quite wrongly regarded by many as important, was the appropriate instrument within the world economic situation that I have indicated and characterized. The greatest error to which civilized humanity has succumbed is that some important personage would have sat on the German imperial throne – one cannot speak of a German imperial throne under constitutional law, but you know what I mean. That was definitely not the case. So here, too, the industrial world, which is more to the fore here, but in conjunction with the financial world, provided the actual pushers. Thirdly, of course, it should be noted that no less insignificant was the Russian ruler, who was an instrument in just the same way and could now be used for all sorts of not only financial and industrial powers, but also for many other dark forces. In addition to all this, the expansion of imperialism of the English-speaking empires was behind all that was taking place in the world economy. This must not be overlooked. Because all the contradictions that I have just listed are influenced by other contradictions, such as the European impasse, which can be described as the Alsace-Lorraine question, and the like. These factors all play a role to a certain extent. But the thing that could have led to war from all these angles, if one had wanted it, is the transformation of English politics, which had become so liberal in the mid-nineteenth century, into English imperialism in the twentieth century.

Now, of course, all this created all sorts of, I might say, powder kegs, into which one only had to add the spark. It also created those peculiar ideas with which the financial chess piece pushers mainly count. You see, one must not forget: when the idea came more and more to certain financial people in Austria that a war would be good for us, they thought above all of this: we can achieve what we want in business transactions and their consequences, and what will follow from them if we wage a Balkan war. There were, of course, two significant eventualities in the prospect of a Balkan war. One of these was this: how could such a financier in Vienna, for whom war was quite pleasant, for example, how might he speculate? He said to himself: Is it likely that we, if we use Austria as our instrument, will be attacked by Russia? Is that likely? It is just as likely as it is unlikely. It does not have to be. You take a risk, but it is not unreasonable to take that risk, because it is not impossible under all circumstances for us to be left alone by Russia if, for example, we invade Serbia. That was the one thing that had to be considered. The person in question said to himself: It is not at all certain that Czarist Russia will attack us, because there is a certain solidarity of dynastic interests, and if no other powers intervene in Russia, which perhaps cannot be taken into account to such an extent , it is not entirely unlikely that the Tsar, out of dynastic solidarity with the Emperor of Austria, with the Austrian dynasty, will indeed mobilize and make a huge show of force, but only so that he can say that he is the protector of the Slavs. He will not strike anyway. He will perhaps, however, take the risk that his mobilization will prevent the Austrians from going too far. But you also know that in 1914 there was much talk of a private letter that the Austrian Emperor had written, or that was written to the Austrian Emperor – how can one say? You can't say, but you might understand from what I mean – wasn't there much talk of such a private letter being written to the Russian Tsar? That is in line with such considerations. Well, that was certainly the consideration of such a financier.

Then such a financier said to himself: Yes, so we must try everything to make possible what can be, to use the instrument of government, the Reichsinstrument. — But now, isn't it true, Count Berchtold certainly didn't have great abilities, but he certainly had a terrible fear. By being pushed in this way, he must have been terribly afraid. And now, from an external point of view – of course, one must always consider the deeper motives in such matters, the historical motives, but one must first gain an external understanding of these things – what happened was disastrous. Not true, I must point out the other nasty thing that such a financier had to consider. He had to say: Yes, but what will happen to this German Reich, with which we are allied? To risk that this German Reich realizes the alliance, is actually disastrous for Austria. Because if the German Reich strives to realize the alliance, then there is a world war. Then you are crushed, then you risk too much. It was certainly much more important to the financial circles not to bring the matter into any kind of confusion with the German Reich. But there is a certain distance between the intention of the financial people and what Count Berchtold was supposed to do, who was seized by fear. And the other people who had to deal with Count Berchtold were naturally no less afraid, were they? Well, there is a certain distance, and in the pursuit of this distance, the question arose in Berlin as to whether, if Russia were to attack, the alliance would be considered as given. They asked the very person who was always in the hands of German and international industrialism and international and German financial circles; they asked the Kaiser. Now one of this Kaiser's peculiarities was to speak without thinking, to blurt things out, to blurt things out for the sake of prestige. And here too, of course, the intention of industrialists and financiers lay behind the matter.

This whole constellation led to the fact that, of course in a non-binding way, because it was not a government act, the emperor performed a great deed, he would not allow himself to be belittled this time, and he would, if Russia was to be mobilized in any way, certainly mobilize and so on. Now, one must not forget that this particular person could very easily be made into an instrument of other circles, because there were whole circles around this person who were constantly concerned with keeping this person in a good mood, distracting him from what he should be doing.

Not true, whoever was sensible among the German people never gave much credence to the words of this person. The foreign countries have done the German people the greatest injustice with all these judgments about this imperial capital, regardless of whether some were enchanted by the German Emperor or whether some later, especially during the war, considered him a devil – he was much too insignificant for both, he is much too insignificant. The foreign countries have done the German people the greatest injustice with all these judgments, and will presumably continue to do so. For even the most devoted surroundings, those surroundings that are particularly accustomed to the not quite straight back, this loyal environment testified in its behavior best of all to how things actually are. One need only recall the palace revolution in Berlin in 1908. This palace revolution in Berlin in 1908, which has an extraordinary amount to do with this world conflict when one considers the external historical events, actually expresses, I would say, everything that has to be said at this point in the discussion. It is what I mean, the famous Daily Telegraph affair. An English journalist from the Daily Telegraph wanted to interview Kaiser Wilhelm. Perhaps Kaiser Wilhelm found this a little boring, and so he told the journalist: oh, he has already talked so much about his relationship with England. He then told him a few things and advised him to put together the other things he had already said about England. And so the journalist put together a detailed interview.

This interview is a masterpiece of politics. In this interview — I can only characterize it in terms of its meaning, otherwise it would be too detailed — it was said: You English are actually all crazy chickens, because you judge me and my politics quite wrongly. If you wanted to get the truth, you would have to realize that there is only one real friend of the English in the whole of Germany, and that is me; otherwise you are actually the most hated people in the rest of Germany. And you should not believe that I have ever done anything against English politics. Because just think about this: When the Boer War broke out, I took a look at the situation with the Boers, then I took a pen and quickly sketched out the campaign that the English would have to wage against the Boers in order to bring it to a successful conclusion. Then I handed the map I had drafted to my general staff. They further elaborated it; you can still find it in your archives over there. I was actually able to see how the English war against the Boers was waged and how it progressed according to the map I had drawn up. Besides, you should not believe that I have ever done anything against English politics, because I have been offered alliances by France and Russia; they have given me the order not to talk about it, but I told my grandmother, and from that you can see how I actually love the English and how I really am England's only friend. It is only thanks to me that this alliance between France, Germany and Russia has not come about. And if you think that I am building a fleet against you, you are mistaken; my fleet is to serve the interests of Japan in the Pacific Ocean. Well, this whole interview was written up by the English journalist and shown to Wilhelm II, who liked it very much. He sent it to Prince Bülow, who was his so-called Chancellor at the time. Prince Bülow was just on summer vacation in Norderney and said: Oh yes, that's a thick interview from H.M.; he can't expect me to spoil my summer vacation reading his superfluous remarks. What H.M. says, I don't need to deal with that first. He gave it to a junior official without any special instruction. And the matter soon came to light because the English journalist actually published it in the Daily Telegraph. And now the story was complete, wasn't it, a prime example of German politics. It then came about that even the conservatives revolted against H.M., and that it was very close to abdication at the time. But then he declared himself willing to say no more, which was expressed in such a way that he would continue to ensure the continuity of politics. It was just a different way of putting it. Well, that lasted three months, then he started talking again; it was the same old story. That's just to give you a sense of his character. But now we must not forget: All these things had led to a situation that can be characterized as follows: financial syndicates in Central Europe, who had become very familiar with the history, had carried out machinations in which Austria and Germany were to be used as instruments. These machinations were quite ordinary business machinations, and they competed with English business combinations. That was the antagonism. That antagonism was there. It is quite natural: in England no one could understand that Central European financial consortia wanted to make transactions, wanted to make enterprises, which only England is entitled to make. No, that is quite natural, no one there can understand it! One also understands that no one can understand it.

But all these things had led to the Russian mobilization, of which one could not really know what was wanted. How could one have known what was wanted there! The tsar certainly did not know what was wanted; others wanted this, others wanted that. Things went haywire.

Now, one must not forget: in Berlin, a government that was actually non-existent, that was completely out of touch with the course of events, that had been pursuing such bad policies for years as was somehow possible, and that had arrived at the point in 1914 that it did not govern at all, that it allowed to happen what happened. A terrible situation was there; a truly terrible situation was there. Actually, the entire burden of the events was now dumped on the German military leadership. One must not forget that: the entire burden of the events and the entire responsibility for the events was dumped on the German military leadership. Because whatever is said about any conference proposals and the like that have been made by the Entente Powers, all of it is nonsense, it could never have led to anything, because what it could have led to could never have been accepted by the Central Powers in their then condition. Of course, it is very easy to prove from the course of these conference proposals and so on that the governments of the Entente are innocent of the outbreak of war. But this proof does not do the slightest bit of good. It is a 'triviality with which you can go peddling, claiming all sorts of things, but in doing so you take all the questions at issue in absolutely the wrong direction.

We must know exactly, hour by hour, what happened in Berlin in the last days of July 1914 and perhaps even in the first days of August. And the opportunity will arise to speak to the world about what happened in Berlin from hour to hour, and it will be seen that what happened there happened under no impulse other than that of: What should be done in this terrible situation that has arisen? — If there had been a government that had an overview of things, the circumstances would naturally have been quite different. If there had been a monarch who had done the least, who had even participated in the slightest in the decision, who had not kept himself completely aloof from any initiative, although he was present, then of course everything would have turned out differently. But everything was left to its own devices, except for the military command, which of course could only have the single obligation of doing its duty. So that what has been done, if normal conditions had existed, could never have looked like any declaration of war.

It has been said many times recently - but there are very few people, actually really terribly few people, who know the circumstances exactly - that in Berlin they slid into the war more than they wanted it. It is true that we did slip into it. We must not forget that in a certain respect it was only natural that the military command, at the moment when the entire responsibility was resting on it, said to itself: Every hour lost means an enormous loss. One must take into account that the German army was still in no way in a condition to be able to carry out what an expert could have great confidence in, that it would come through what was bound to happen. For it was known that at the moment the alliance was invoked, everything else would follow automatically. — And it did follow automatically, and it was taken for granted that it followed automatically. But one must not forget that precisely those who knew the circumstances well thought that not a moment could be lost, could not afford to lose a moment, for the simple reason that after all that had happened in the various preceding years, one could not possibly believe that this army could have grown in any way. The most formidable world coalition, which one conjured up, of course, when one decided to go to war. One must not forget: By the end of September, this army had already run out of ammunition! Two days before the declaration of war on Russia, an urgent request had been received by the Ministry of War from the Foreign Office to reduce the orders for ammunition. After all, these are not things that you do when you are planning a preventive war, are they? And such things could be listed by the hundreds and thousands if one did not know anyway that no one was thinking of a preventive war.

But it comes into consideration, because it was taken for granted in this terrible situation of the mobilized Russian Empire with the allied France, that this German army was indeed a dubious instrument. Because one must not forget: For many years, under the aegis of General von Schlieffen, the training of this army was carried out in the most incredible way. The matter was only improved as nonsense when Moltke became Chief of General Staff. Because this army was drilled in such a way that the Kaiser always led divisions under General Schlieffen during the large maneuvers, without having a clue about anything in the conduct of war or the like. All the orders were given in such a way that, of course, His Majesty would win. So you just have to imagine how you could train an army if you had to make those theatrical coups, so that everyone in the division where His Majesty was not present would necessarily have to order things in such a way that he would suffer a defeat so that His Majesty could win. Such things cannot be improved in a short time, but rather require a great deal of work. This, of course, creates the mood that one must take action when one is dependent on it, yes, to do something where the appointed authorities do nothing at all. So that what happened in Berlin in July 1914 also happened in the first days of August 1914 is not even remotely what one might consider, as Harden does, a textbook case of a preventive war, but rather, in the most eminent sense, it is what must be called: something happens through people who have been pushed into impossible situations under tremendously difficult circumstances. One may condemn as one wants: since in warfare success decides when one is victorious, so of course failure decides when one is defeated, when one does not achieve what one expects with any military cause. It is quite natural that from that moment on – I say this quite impartially, perhaps also exposing myself to the danger that such a judgment will be found strange – when the invasion of Belgium could not achieve anything, when it was destroyed by the days of the Battle of the Marne, this invasion was a mistake. Someone may think so from some philistine point of view, but it has never been judged differently. And when America and the Entente conclude a peace—well, it won't be peace, but something like that, we would have to find a new name for the things—then we will see that it is not about different points of view, but about the points of view that have always been at stake in the course of human development, when such things were considered, where questions of power and the like were decided. The other thing corrupts judgment in the most terrible way. But one must not forget that it is historically verifiable, as I have emphasized here several times, and that will have to be historically proven one day, and it can be historically proven. And I dare say that I should not be afraid to say that, among the many things I have endeavored to do in the last years, was that a simple presentation of the real events of July 28, 29, 30, 31 and August 1 in Berlin should be given to the world without judgment. I did not achieve it. But much would have been achieved if this simple presentation had actually been given.

One can prove with such evidence, as I have already shown here, to the point of almost indisputable certainty, but with this simple presentation one would be able to show to the point of full certainty, to the point of the most absolute certainty, that if the English government had seriously wanted to, the invasion of Belgium could have been avoided. Please, not in any other way than how I say it! I have always been careful not to express this in any other way. I am not saying that the English government did anything different with regard to this question, and above all I am not saying anything about Germany's relationship to the invasion of Belgium. But that is what can be strictly proven before the world, that if the English government had wanted, if above all Sir Grey, Lord Grey, who does not exactly resemble Count Berchtold, but who was also quite foolish, had wanted, the invasion of Belgium would not have taken place. That is something that can be proven simply by a straightforward account of the events.

Of course, this does not blunt what one can form as an opinion about this incursion into Belgium, but it perhaps raises the question in the other direction: why was it not prevented, since it could have been prevented? - Because it is precisely after this moment, when it became clear in Berlin that the incursion into Belgium would not be prevented from England, that all events actually begin to take on an irrational character. From that point on, it is no longer possible to follow events with any kind of rationality.

These are a few aphorisms. It is getting late; we will continue the discussion tomorrow.