The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear Friends, what I should like to bring to you now will have to be said—as has everything that I have had to say recently about Anthroposophy—with a certain undertone called forth by the painful event which befell our work and our Society on last New Year's Eve: the Goetheanum in Dornach, for the time being, is no more; it was consumed by flames in the night before the New Year. And all who witnessed the destruction in this one night of the work of ten long years, accomplished by so many of our friends, and performed by them with complete devotion—all who have loved this Goetheanum very much, just because of this work, and because of what the Goetheanum was to us, will of necessity be weighed down by the thought that we no longer have this particular outer sign of Anthroposophical activity. For, even if some other building for our work shall arise on the same site—which should by all means occur—owing to the trying circumstances of the present time it can, of course, never be the old Goetheanum. Therefore, behind all that I have had to say since those days there actually stands in the background the fearful glow of the flames, which in such a heart-rending way interrupted the development of all our work. Since this outer sign has vanished, we must dedicate ourselves all the more to laying hold of the inner forces and inner realities of the Anthroposophical Movement and of what is connected with it for the entire evolution of humanity. Let me begin then with a sort of consideration of the nature of the human being. I have presented very much of this kind here in your midst, and I should like now to consider again one phase from a certain point of view.

I should like to start with a consideration of the human being entering the world, of the human being who has descended from the pre-earthly existence and is, as it were, taking his first steps here in the life on earth. We know, of course, that at the time of this entrance into the earth-life, a condition governs the soul which has a certain similarity to the ever-recurring condition of man's sleep-life. As the ordinary consciousness has no remembrance, upon awaking, of that which the soul-spiritual part of man has experienced between going to sleep and waking up (with the exception of the varicolored multiplicity of dreams, which actually float away, as we know, when we sink into sleep or when we wake, and which for the ordinary consciousness do not result from deep sleep)—as, then, the ordinary consciousness has no remembrance of this condition, so for the entire earth life this same consciousness remembers only back to a certain point of time in childhood. With one person this point of time is somewhat earlier, with another later. What occurs in the earthly life prior to this is really as much concealed from the ordinary consciousness as are the events of the sleep state. Of course, it is true that the child is not actually sleeping; it lives in a sort of dreamy, indefinite inner activity; but from the point of view of the whole later life, this condition is at least not very much removed from dream-filled sleep.

There are three activities, however, which set in at this time, three things. which the child is learning. There is what we ordinarily sum up in the expression learning to walk, then what is connected with learning to speak, and what for the child is connected with learning to think. Now, in the expression “learning to walk”, for the sake of our own convenience we actually characterize something which is extraordinarily complex in an exceedingly brief way. We need only to recall how the child is at first utterly unadapted to life, how it gradually gains the ability to accommodate its own position of balance to the space in which it is to move during the entire life. It is not merely “learning to walk” which we observe in the child, but a seeking for the state of equilibrium in the earthly life. Connected with learning to walk is all use of the limbs. And for anyone who is able to observe such a matter in the right way, the most remarkable and most important of life's riddles actually find expression in this activity of learning to walk; a whole universe comes to expression in the manner in which the child progresses from creeping to the upright position, to the placing of the little feet, but also in addition to holding the head upright and to the use of arms and legs. And then anyone who has a more intimate insight into how one child steps more on the heel, and another is more inclined to step on the toes, will perhaps have an inkling of what I shall now have to tell you with regard to the three activities mentioned and their relation to the spiritual world. Only, I should like first to characterize these three activities as to their outer aspects.

On the basis of this effort to attain equilibrium—or, if I may express myself now somewhat more learnedly, perhaps also somewhat more pompously, this search for a dynamic of life—on the basis of this effort, learning to speak is then developed. For, anyone who is able to observe knows quite well that the normal development of the child proceeds in such a way that learning to speak is developed on the basis of learning to walk and to grasp. With regard to learning to talk it will be noticed at the very first how the firm or gentle tread of the child is expressed in the act of talking, in the accenting of the syllables, in the force of the speech. And it will be noticed further how the modulation of the words, how the forming of the words, has a certain parallel with the way the child learns to bend the fingers or to keep them straight, whether it is skillful or unskillful. But anyone who can then observe the entire inner nature of the human organization will be able to know—what even the present-day teaching of evolution concedes—that “right-handed” people not only have the speech-center in the left third convolution of the forehead, in the so-called Broca convolution, which represents in a quite simple physiological way the characteristic relation between speech and the ability to grasp, the entire ability to handle the arm and the hand, if I may make use of the pleonasm; but we know also how closely the movement of the vocal cords, the whole adjustment of the speech organism, takes on exactly the same character which the movements of walking and grasping assume. But in the normal development of the child, speech which, as you know, is developed in imitation of the environment, cannot develop at all unless the foundation is first laid in the quest of the state of equilibrium in life.

With regard to thinking: Even the more delicate organs of the brain, upon which thinking depends, are developed in turn from the speech organization. No one should suppose that in the normal development of the child thinking could be evolved before speech. Anyone who is able to observe the process will find that with the child speech is not at first an expression of “thinking”—not at all! It would be ridiculous to believe that. But, with the child, speech is an expression of feeling, of sensation, of the soul-life. Hence you will see that at first it is interjections, everything connected with feelings, which the child expresses by means of speech. And when the child says “Mama” or “Papa”, it expresses feelings toward Mama or Papa, not any sort of concept or thought. Thinking is first developed from speech. It is true that among human beings many a thing is disarranged, so that someone says, “This child learned to speak before it walked.” But that is not the normal development, and in the rearing of a child one should by all means see to it that the normal course of development is actually observed: walking—speaking—thinking.

However, the real character of these activities of the child is truly perceived only when we observe the other side of human life: that is to say, if we observe how in later life these activities are related to each other in sleep; for they arise out of sleep, as I have indicated, or at least out of the dreamlike sleep of the child. But what do these activities signify during the later earth life?

In general, it is not possible for the scientific life of the present day to enter into these things. It actually knows only the exterior of the human being; it knows nothing of the inner relationships of the human being with the Cosmic Being, in so far as the Cosmic Being is spiritual. In every realm human civilization, if I may use the expression—or let us say human culture—has been developed to a certain materialism, or naturalism. Do not think that I wish here to upbraid materialism: if materialism had not come into human civilization, human beings would not have become free. Materialism is therefore a necessary epoch in the evolution of humanity. But today we must be very clear as to the way we have to go now—as well as in the future. And we must be clear about this in every realm. In order that what I now have to say may be better illustrated, I should like to make it clear to you by means of an example.

You all know and can learn from my books that earth humanity, before it passed through those cultural epochs which are only partly similar to the present one—the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, the Greco-Latin, and then our own—passed through the so-called Atlantean catastrophe. And during this Atlantean catastrophe the humanity which is now the European, Asiatic, and American civilized humanity lived chiefly on a continent where there is now sea—namely, the Atlantic Ocean. At that time this area was occupied mostly by land, and for a very long time, humanity had been developing upon this Atlantean continent. You can read in my books and cycles what humanity passed through during those epochs. I will not speak of other human experiences during the ancient Atlantean time, but only of musical experiences.

The entire musical experience of the ancient Atlantean would necessarily appear very curious, even grotesque, to a man of the present time, if he could hear it—which, of course, he cannot do. For what the ancient Atlanteans were in quest of in music was, for example, the chords of the seventh.

These chords of the seventh had the peculiarity of affecting the souls of these ancient people—in whose bodies we were all ensheathed, for in repeated earth lives we passed through that time also—in such a way that they were immediately transported out of their bodies when they lived in their music, this music which took into special consideration the chords of the seventh.

They knew no other frame of mind in music than a state of rapture, of enthusiasm, a state in which they were permeated by the God; and, when their extraordinarily simple instruments sounded—instruments intended only for accompaniment to singing—then such an Atlantean immediately felt himself to be actually weaving and living in the outer spiritual world.

Then came the Atlantean catastrophe. Among all post-Atlanteans there was next developed a preference for a sequence of fifths. You probably know that for a long time thereafter fifths played a most comprehensive role in musical development; for example, in ancient Greece, fifths played a quite extensive role. And this preference for a sequence of fifths had the peculiarity of affecting people in such a way that, when they experienced music, they now no longer felt drawn out of their bodies, to be sure, but they felt themselves to be soul and spirit within their bodies. During the musical experience they completely forgot physical experience; they felt that they were inside their skin, so to speak, but their skin was entirely filled with soul and spirit. That was the effect of the music, and very few people will believe that almost up to the tenth and eleventh Christian century the natural music was as I have described it. For not until then did the aptitude for thirds appear, the aptitude for the major and the minor third, and everything of the nature of major and minor. That came relatively late. But with this late development there was evolved at the same time the inner experience of music. Man now remained within himself in musical experience. Just as the rest of the culture at this time tended downward from the spiritual to the material, so in the musical sphere the tendency was downward, from the experience of the spiritual into which he passed in ancient times when he experienced music at all, to the experience of music within himself—no longer as far outward as to the skin, but entirely within himself. In this way there first appeared also at that time the major and minor moods, which are actually possible only when music is inwardly experienced.

Thus, it can be seen how in every domain man has descended from the spiritual into the material, but also into himself. Therefore, we should not always merely say, in a narrow-minded fashion, that the material is something of minor value, and we must escape from it. The human being would not have become truly human at all, if he had not descended and laid hold upon the material life. Precisely because he apprehended the spiritual in the material, did the human being become a self-conscious, independent Ego-Being. And today, with the help of Anthroposophical spiritual science, we must again find the way back into the spiritual world—in all realms we must find the way. This is the reason it is so painful that the artistic endeavor, made by means of the Goetheanum at Dornach, has been obliterated as is now the case. The way into the spiritual world must be sought in every realm.

Let us next consider one activity which the child learns—namely, speech—with regard to the entire evolution of the human being. It must really be said that what the child learns there is something magnificent. Jean Paul, the German poet, has said that in the first three years of life—that is, the years in which the essential things we learn are to walk, to speak and to think—the human being learns much more than in the three academic years. Meanwhile the “three” academic years have become many, but a man still learns no more in those three years than he learns as a child in the first three years of life.—Let us now consider speech. In speaking there is first the outer physical-physiological factor: that is, the larynx and the rest of our speech organs are set in motion. They move the air, which becomes the medium of tone. Here we have, in a way, the physical-physiological part. But in what we say there is soul also. And the soul permeates and gleams through all that we utter in the sounds. In as far as speech is something physical, man's physical body and his etheric body have a share in it. As a matter f course, these are silent from the time of going to sleep until the time of wakening. That is, the normal human being does not speak between going to sleep and waking; but in as much as the soul and the ego have a share in speech, they—the astral body and ego—take with them the soul power of speech, when they pass out of the physical and etheric bodies at the time of going to sleep—and they actually take with them everything of a soul nature which the person has put into his speech during the whole day. We are really different beings each evening, for we have been busy talking all day long—one more, another less, many all too much, many also too little—but, no matter, we have been occupied with talking throughout the day, and we have put our souls into what we have said. And what we have put into our speech, that we take with us into sleep, and it remains our being between sleeping and waking.

Now it may be that in our present materialistic age the human being no longer has any notion that idealism or spirituality may be expressed in the speech. People today usually have the idea that speech is intended to express only the external, the tangibly-objective. The feeling that ideals may be expressed in the speech has almost entirely disappeared. For this reason, it is also true that people today generally find so “unintelligible” what is said to them about “spirit”. For what do people say to themselves when spirit is mentioned? They admit that “words” are being used, but of these words people know only that they indicate what can be grasped or seen. The idea that words may also signify something else, something supersensible, invisible, people no longer like at all. That may be one way in which people regard speech; but the other may, of course, be that people shall find the way again to idealism even in words, even in language, knowing that a soul-spiritual experience may sound through each word, as it were.

What a person who lives entirely in the materialism of the language, so to speak, carries over in sleep into the spiritual world brings him, strangely enough, into a difficult relation with the world of the Archangels, the Archangeloi, into which he should enter each night between going to sleep and waking; while the one who preserves for himself the idealism of speech, and who knows how the genius of the language lives in it, comes into the necessary relation to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, especially to that Archangel to whom he himself belongs in the world between sleeping and waking. Indeed, this is expressed even in outer world phenomena. Why do people today seek so frantically for an outer relation to the national languages? Why did this frightful misfortune come upon Europe, which Woodrow Wilson has considered good fortune?—but he was a curious illusionist.—Why then did this great misfortune come upon Europe, that freedom is bound up with the convulsive desire to make use of the national languages, even of the smallest nations? Because in reality the people are frantically seeking externally a relationship which they no longer have in spirit: for in going to sleep they no longer have the natural relation to the language—and also, therefore, not to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi! And humanity will have to find the way back again to the permeation of all that pertains to language with idealism, if they do not wish to lose the way into the spiritual world.

How does humanity today regard what takes place for the individual human being between going to sleep and waking? People do not take account of this sleep condition at all. If we recollect our past life, we seem to have before us a complete life picture. That is not the case; the time spent in sleep has regularly dropped out; the whole picture is continuously interrupted. We always connect the morning with the previous evening, but between them is the night. And what has occurred during sleep in the night constitutes outwardly, in the first place, at least a third of the human life (at all events, among “respectable” people it is so); and, secondly, it is much more important for the inner man than the outer activity during the whole day. To be sure, the outer activity is more important for external civilization; but our inner development during life is brought about by our coming into relation with the spiritual world in the right way while we sleep during the night.

And the same is true regarding what forms the basis of the other activities; that is to say, if the human being in his actions—that is, what he does throughout the entire realm of the movements which he first learns upon entrance into the earth life—if he puts idealism into the whole realm of his actions, that is, if his life contains idealism in its realization, then the human being finds again the right relation with the Hierarchy of the Archai. And if the thoughts contain idealism, if they are not materialistic, the human being finds during sleep the relation with the Hierarchy of the Angels. This is what we discover if, with the help of Anthroposophical spiritual science, we inquire into the relation to the sleep state of these three activities acquired during childhood.

But this relation may be revealed in a much more comprehensive degree, if we observe the entire life of the human being in the cosmos. You are acquainted with the description in my book Theosophy. When the human being passes through the gate of death, he first experiences for some days the condition which consists in the dissipation of the thoughts, of the concepts. We may express it by saying that the etheric body expands into the distances of the cosmos, the human being “loses” his etheric body. But that is the same as if I say that man's concepts and thoughts are dissipated. But what does that actually mean: that the concepts and thoughts are dissipated? It really means very much. It means, namely, that our entire waking life departs from us. Our entire waking life departs from us in the course of two or three days, and nothing at all would be left of our life, if we did not then live through that of which we remain unconscious during the earth life; that is, if we did not then begin to live through in full consciousness what we have experienced during our sleep life. This sleep life is spiritually infinitely richer, more intense, than the waking life. Whether the sleep be short or long, the sleep-life is each time a reversed repetition of the day life, but with a spiritual impulse: What you have accomplished as actions during the day brings you at night into a relation to the Archai, to the Primal Powers; what you have said in the daytime brings you at night into a relation to the Archangeloi, the Archangels; and your thinking brings you in the same way into a relation to your Angel-being, to the Angeloi.

And what man experiences during sleep is independent of time. It is unnecessary to say: “Very well, but the following is possible: At night I go to sleep; something makes a noise; something awakens me; in this case I certainly cannot complete my going back over the day in retrospect.” Even so it is completed, because the time relations are entirely different; that can be experienced in a moment which otherwise might continue for hours if the sleep were undisturbed. During sleep the time relations are quite different from those of the day. Therefore, it can be stated positively, and must so be stated, that each time a person sleeps he once again experiences in retrospect what he has lived through here in the physical world since the last waking, but this time in spiritual manner and substance. And when the waking life of concepts is dissipated into the cosmos, a few days after death, then the human being lives through the very experiences which he had during the third of life spent in sleep. I have, therefore, always had to describe how man requires a third of his earth-life in order then to live through what he has experienced during the nights of his life. Naturally, it is essentially like the day life, but it is experienced in a different way. And at that time, as the second condition after death, he lives through this retrogression, when he actually experiences once again, in a third of the time, the entire life back to birth. Then when he has again arrived at his birth, he enters into that condition which I have already described to you here in another connection; that is, he enters into that condition in which every conception of the world is essentially altered for him.

You see, here on earth we are in a definite place; the world is around us. We know ourselves very little, indeed, with the ordinary consciousness. The world we observe with the outer senses; that we know. Perhaps, you will say that the anatomists know the inner part of the human being very well. Not at all; they know only the outer aspect of the inner being. The real inner part is something entirely different.—If you call to mind today something which you experienced ten years ago, then you have in the memory something which is in your soul, do you not? It is condensed, a brief remembrance of, perhaps, a very, very extended experience. But it is merely a soul picture of something which you have passed through in the earth life. But now enter into yourself—not now into your memories, but into your physical organism, that is, the apparently physical organism—and observe the wonderful construction of your brain, of your lungs, and so forth. Within you there, rolled up as it were, are—not the experiences of this earth life, but rolled together there is the whole cosmos, the entire universe. Man is really a small universe, a microcosmos. In his organs the whole universe is rolled together. But the human being does not know this with the ordinary consciousness. When he is on earth, he has the memory of his experiences. He does not know that he himself in his physical nature is, as it were, the embodied memory of the whole cosmos.—When, therefore, the backward journey through the life, which I have just indicated, has been completed, then, between death and a new birth, we enter into a cosmic life, where we are not, as now, surrounded by the world with its mountains, clouds, stars, seas, and so on, but where our environment consists of the riddles of the inner human being, where everything concerning the mysteries of the inner human being of which we are deprived in the earth life, now constitutes our environment. Here on the earth, as you know, we live within our skin, and we know about the stars, clouds, mountains, rocks, animals, and plants. Between death and a new birth we know about the human being. All the mysteries of the human being are our environment. And do not suppose that it is a less interesting environment than that of the earth! To be sure, the starry heavens are magnificent, the mountains and the seas are grand; but what the inner being of man contains in a single small vessel is grander and mightier than our earth environment, when between death and a new birth we are surrounded by it in its majestic greatness. The human being is the world between death and a new birth, and he must be the world, because we prepare the next earth life. Together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, we must help to prepare the future earth man. As we here are occupied with our outer culture and civilization, as here on earth we make boots or coats, use the telephone, do people's hair, give lectures, do something artistic, or whatever belongs to our present civilization, so, between death and a new birth, together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, we prepare what the human being is, and what we ourselves shall again be in the physical body in the next earth life.

That is the goal of spiritual culture, and it is grander, infinitely grander and more magnificent than the goal of earthly civilization. Not without reason have the ancients called the physical human body a “Temple of the Gods”, because together with the Gods, with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, this human physical body is formed between death and a new birth. That is what we do, that is where we are with our ego—among the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, working on humanity, together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. We move about, as it were, among the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; we are spirits among spirits.

What we do there we can, of course, do only according to what we have accomplished here in the earth life; and that also is revealed to us in a certain sense in the relation of sleep to waking. Just think how chaotic the dream is! I do not undervalue the wonderfully varied multiplicity and the grandeur of the dream; but we must nevertheless recognize that the dream, compared with the earth life, in whose images it is clothed, is chaotic. You need only to recall that dream which I have mentioned before as an illustration (Volkelt told this dream, according to a report from Württemberg, but we know of such, do we not?). A city lady visited her sister, who was the wife of a country parson, and she dreamed that she went with her sister to church to hear a sermon; but everything was quite peculiar; for, after the Gospel was read and the pastor went up to the pulpit, he did not begin to preach, but instead of raising his arms, he lifted wings, and finally began to .crow like a cock! Or recall another dream in which a lady said she had just dreamed of considering what good thing she should cook for her husband, and nothing at all occurred to her until finally the thought came to her that she still had an old pickled grandmother upstairs in the attic, but she would be very tough yet.—You see a dream can be as chaotic as that—strangely chaotic. But just what does it mean that the dream acts so chaotically? What does it really mean?

While we sleep, we are, with our ego and astral body, outside of our physical and etheric bodies. And during that time we experience again in reverse order—especially with regard to the moral significance—all that we have done, have said and have thought during the day. We live through that in reverse order. We are preparing for ourselves our karma for the next earth life, and this appears in pictures already in the time between going to sleep and waking. But these pictures are still very bungling; for when, upon waking, we are again about to enter into the physical body, the picture does not yet fit in properly: that is, we are not able to conceive things in conformity with the macrocosm; instead we conceive something entirely different, perhaps a “pickled grandmother”. That is because, with regard to what we have already formed in our sleep, we do not understand the adaptation to the human physical body. This adaptation to the human physical body is exceedingly difficult; and we acquire it in that working together, which I have described, with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies between death and a new birth. There the soul-spiritual self must first readjust what otherwise in the dream so often enters so awkwardly, when the sleep consciousness is again fully overcome, and the person without his own cooperation has plunged again into his old physical body. This soul-spiritual self, between death and a new birth, must penetrate all the mysteries of the physical body, in order that the body may be built up in the right way. For the body is really not formed by the parents and grandparents alone. To believe that is one of the perfect follies of science. (We are justified in making such a statement!) For how does science approximately set forth this human development? Well, it says that as the basis of material substance we have molecules, which are built up in a complicated way from atoms. The albumen molecule, which is contained in the embryo-cell, is the most complicated of all, and because it is so complicated (naturally no scientist can describe it, but he points to its exceeding complexity) because it is so complicated, a human being can originate from it. That is the simplest sort of explanation of the human being! It is simply asserted that the entire human being is already contained in the molecule; it is merely a very complicated molecule.—The truth is, however, that the albumen molecule must completely revert to chaos, must become dust of disorganized matter, if a human being is to originate from it. We have in the outer world organized matter in crystals, in plants, and so on: if anything is to originate, even a plant, or an animal, then the matter must first completely return to dust. And only when it no longer has a definite form does the entire cosmos work upon the tiny bit of stuff, making in it an image of itself. How is it, then, with the human being? Between death and a new birth, we form this human image, with all its mysteries, into which we weave our karma, and we send this image down before us into the body of the mother. So we have first formed the spirit germ—only, this is very large in comparison with the physical germ—and this descends into the matter which has become chaotic. That is the truth—not what the present-day physiology dreams.

In this time of which I have been speaking, the Ego lives as a soul-spiritual being among soul-spiritual Divine Beings, actively occupied with learning to know completely the inner human being as such for the next earth life. Of that which is then spiritually experienced in tremendous majesty and grandeur, an image marvelously appears in the child in the individual actions in attaining equilibrium. It is very interesting to see how the Primal Powers, or Archai, work over from the life between death and a new birth into the whole effort of the child to attain balance or, as we trivially say, to learn to walk. Anyone who can see in everything earthly an image of the spiritual can see in all the practice in walking, in the use of the hands, and so on, an image of those soul-spiritual deeds which we performed between death and a new birth in seeking spiritual equilibrium as an ego among higher egos.

And, when we have completed those conditions in which we are a spirit among spirits, in which we prepare what is to be manifested in our earth life in the body, in the members, through which we again become a human being of such and such a nature, and experience our karma—when we have passed through these conditions yonder in the world between death and a new birth, then a condition appears in the pre-earthly life in which we can no longer distinguish the individual spiritual Beings with whom we have worked for so long, but in which there is only a general perception of the spirit. We know then, to be sure, that we live in a spiritual world; but, because we are now already approaching the earth life, the impression which the spiritual world makes upon us becomes one of greater uniformity, and is no longer a perception of the particular, individual spiritual Beings.

I can express myself by means of a trivial comparison, in order that we may be able to understand one another, but please be very clear about this, namely, that in doing so I refer, nevertheless, to something very exalted. If a little cloud appears somewhere in the distance, you say that it is a little cloud; but when you approach it, you become aware that it is a swarm of gnats. Then you are distinguishing the separate individuals. Well, in the spiritual world between death and a new birth, it is reversed: there you distinguish at first the single individualities of the spiritual Beings; then the impression becomes a general one. What I mean is that the manifestation of the spiritual replaces experience of the spiritual.

Indeed, this condition, which separates us, as it were, from the spiritual world, because we are already seeking the way down to earth again—this condition is reflected now in the inner something within us which forms the basis of human speech. Suppose we speak. It begins with the larynx (that is not exact, but approximate), and the other organs of speech are set in motion. But behind this there lies that which is essential. What is essential lies in the heart, behind the larynx; it lies in the breathing process and everything connected with it. Just as learning to walk, seeking equilibrium, is an earthly image of our movements in the spiritual world, so that which underlies speech is likewise an earthly image of the condition of manifestation in which we perceive the divine-spiritual Beings only as a blurred mass. So the child experiences again when it learns to walk a condition which it has gone through between death and a new birth.

And when we have sent down the spiritual germ of our physical body, when through conception it has gradually become united with the body of the mother, then we are still above. At the end of the time before earthly embodiment, we draw together our etheric body out of all the regions of the universe. And that action, which takes place in the supersensible world in attracting the etheric body, finds expression in the child's learning to think.

Now you have the three successive conditions: experience in the spiritual world in learning to walk; manifestation of the spiritual world in learning to speak. (For this reason, that which as Cosmic Word underlies speech we call the Cosmic Logos, the inner Word. It is the manifestation of the universal Logos, in which the spiritual expresses itself, as do the gnats in the swarm of gnats; it underlies speech.) And then what we do in the forming of our etheric body, which actually thinks in us—we think the whole night through, only we are not present with our ego and astral body—that is the last part which we gather together for ourselves before we descend to earth, and that activity is what extends over into the thinking. Thus, in learning to walk, to speak, and to think, the baby organizes into the physical body what it brings down from the pre-earthly existence.

This is what leads to real spiritual knowledge and also at the same time to the artistic and the religious comprehension of the world; namely, that we are able to relate each single occurrence in the physical sense existence to the spiritual world. Those people who would always like to speak of the divine-spiritual only “in general” I have often likened to a man who should go out into a meadow, and to whom should be pointed out daisies, dandelions, wild chicory, whereupon he would say: “All that does not interest me; they are all just flowers!” That is easy, to say they are all just flowers. But something in the flower-being is differentiated there. And so it is also in the spiritual world. Naturally, it is easy to say that something spiritual underlies everything of a sense-physical nature. But the point is that we should know more and more what spiritual something lies at the foundation of the various sense-physical phenomena; for only in this way can we from the spirit actually lay hold again upon the sense-physical course of life.

By means of this principle, for example, our Waldorf School pedagogy becomes a unique pedagogy, which actually considers the human being. This will appear even more clearly when once this pedagogy shall be developed for the child's first years. As there it would be adapted to learning to walk, to speak, and to think, and the further evolution of these faculties, so we now naturally adapt the method to the years following the sixth and seventh, in such a way that we consider questions such as these: What embodies itself in the child at this moment? What comes to expression in the child's life, with each week, with each month, of that which existed before birth? Thus the pedagogy is really developed from the spirit.

That is one of the impulses of which we must rediscover many, if humanity does not wish to remain in the downward course, but intends to begin to ascend. We must find the way again into the spiritual world; but we shall be able to do this only when we learn quite consciously to find ways and means to act and to speak from the spirit.

In the time immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, human beings lived from the spirit—that is, each individual—because each could be told on the basis of the point of time at which he was born, what his karma was. At that time astrology did not signify that dilettantism which it often represents today, but it signified livingly experiencing the deeds of the stars with them. And as a result of this living experience, it was revealed from the Mystery Temple to each individual human being how he had to live. Astrology had a vital significance for the individual human experience. Then came the time, about the 6th, 5th and 4th pre-Christian centuries, in which people no longer experienced the mysteries of the starry heavens, but in which they experienced the course of the year. What do I mean by it when I say that human beings experienced the “course of the year”? It means that they knew from direct perception that the earth is not the coarse clod which present day geology contemplates. Upon such an earth as geology represents, plants could never grow, to say nothing of the appearance of animals and human beings. There could be none of these, because the earth of the geologists is a rock; and something will grow directly on a rock only if the entire cosmos works upon it, only if it is united with the whole universe. What man must learn again today was known even in ancient times, namely, that the earth is an organism and has a soul.

It is true that this earth-soul also has its special destiny. Suppose it is winter here with us, Christmas time, the time of the winter solstice—that is the time when the earth soul is fully united with the earth. For, when the cover of snow is over the earth, when, as it were, a mantle of cold surrounds the earth, then the earth-soul is united with the earth, rests within it. It is also true then that the earth-soul, resting within the earth, sustains the life of a multitude of elemental spirits. When today a naturalistic view believes that the seeds which I plant in the earth in the autumn merely lie there until the following spring, that is not true; the seeds must be protected throughout the winter by the elemental spirits of the earth. This is all connected with the fact that during the winter time the earth-soul is united with the earth-body.

Now let us take the opposite season, that is, midsummer, St. John's season. Exactly as the human being inhales the air and exhales it, so that at one time it is within him and at another time outside of him, so the earth breathes in her soul—that is during the winter; and at the height of summer, St. John's season, the earth-soul is entirely breathed out, sent out into the far reaches of the cosmos. At that time the earth-body is, as it were, “empty” of the earth-soul. The earth in her soul lives with the events of the cosmos, the course of the stars, and so on. Therefore, in ancient times there were the winter-mysteries, in which man experienced the union of the earth-soul with the earth; and then there were the summer-mysteries, in which man was able to perceive the mysteries of the universe, from the experience which the earth-soul shared with the stars, for it was granted to the human souls of initiates to follow the earth-soul out into the cosmic spaces.

That people had a consciousness of these things you can learn even from the fragments of ancient tradition which are still extant.—It is now a long while ago, but I often sat—right here in Berlin—with an astronomer, who was very famous here, and who started a fearful agitation about the Easter Festival, saying that it was very disturbing when the Easter Festival, let us say for example, did not fall each year at least on the first Sunday in April, and it was awful that it should be on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. Naturally, it helped not at all to give reasons against his argument, for the fact which lay at the root of the matter was the fear that a dreadful confusion was caused in the debit and credit columns of the ledger, if Easter falls at a different time each year! This movement had already assumed rather large dimensions. (I once mentioned the fact here that on the first page of the ledger there usually stand the words, “With God”, but generally what is in these books is not exactly “with God”.) In those times when the Easter Festival was established according to the course of stars—when the first Sunday after the spring full moon was dedicated to the sun,—in those times a consciousness still existed that in the winter season the earth-soul is in the earth; that at St. John's season the earth-soul is wholly outside in cosmic spaces, and in the spring it is on the way to cosmic spaces. Therefore, the spring festival, the Easter Festival, cannot be established only with reference to the earth, on a definite day, but must be regulated according to the constellations of the stars. There is a deep wisdom in this, which comes from the times when, as a result of the ancient instinctive clairvoyance, human beings were still able to perceive the spiritual reality in the course of the year. We must attain to this again, and we can attain to it again in a certain sense if we lay hold upon the tasks of the present in connection with just such explanations as we have carried on together here.

I have already often said here that, of the spiritual Beings with whom man is united each night, in the way I have told you—for instance, through speech with the Archangels—certain Beings are the ruling spiritual powers throughout a certain period of time. In the last third of the 19th century the Michael-time began, that time in which the Spirit who in the records is usually designated Michael, became the determinative Spirit in the affairs of human civilization. These things are repeated in cycles. In ancient times men knew something of all these spiritual processes. The ancient Hebrew age spoke of Jahve, but it spoke always of the “countenance of Jahve”, and by the countenance was meant the Archangels who actually mediated between Jahve and the earth. And when the Jews expected the Messiah on earth, they knew that it was the time of Michael; that Michael was the agent of Christ's activity on earth. They misunderstood, however, the deeper significance of that fact. Now, since the '70's of the 19th century, the time has come again for the earth when the Michael Power is the ruling spiritual power in the world, and the time has come when we must understand how to bring spirituality into our actions, to arrange our life from the spirit. That means to “serve Michael”—not to order our life merely from the material point of view, but to be conscious that he who has the overcoming of the low Ahrimanic Powers as his mission—that is, Michael—must become our Genius, so to speak, for the evolution of civilization. How can he become that?

Well, he can become our guiding spirit if we call to mind how we can again make connections with the course of the year in the spiritual sense. There is actually great wisdom in the entire cosmic course in the fact that we may unite with the spring festival the festival of the resurrection of Christ Jesus. The historical connection—I have often explained it—is a completely right one: The only possibility is for the spring festival—that is, the Easter Festival—to occur on a different day each year, precisely because it is viewed from the other world. Only we upon the earth have the narrow-minded conception that “time” runs along evenly, that one hour is always as long as another. We determine time by means of our earthly expedient, mathematics; whereas, for the actual spiritual world, the cosmic hour is something living. There one cosmic hour is not equal to another but is longer or shorter. Therefore, it is always possible to err if we establish from the earthly point of view something which should be fixed according to the heavens. The Easter Festival has been established rightly in accordance with the heavens.

What kind of a festival is it? It is that festival which is intended to remind us, and which once reminded humanity with the greatest vividness, that a God descended to earth, took up his abode in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, in order that, at the time when human beings were approaching the development of the ego, they would be able in a suitable manner to find the way back through death into the spiritual life. I have often explained this here. The Easter Festival is, therefore, that festival in which man sees in the Mystery of Golgotha death and immortality following it. We look upon this spring festival in the right sense when we say to ourselves: Christ has affirmed the immortality of man in that He Himself has conquered death; but we human beings only rightly understand the immortality of Christ Jesus if we appropriate this understanding during the earth life; that is, if in our souls we vitalize our relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, and if we are able to free ourselves from that materialistic concept which would dissociate from the Mystery of Golgotha all spiritual significance. Today people no longer wish to acknowledge “Christ” at all, but merely “the humble man of Nazareth, Jesus.” A man would feel embarrassed, as it were, in the presence of his own scientific instincts, if he were to grant that the Mystery of Golgotha involves a spiritual mystery in the middle of earth existence—namely, the death and resurrection of the God.

When we experience that fact spiritually, we prepare ourselves to have spiritual experience of other things also. This is the reason it is so important for the human being of the present time to attain the possibility of experiencing, at the outset, the Mystery of Golgotha as something purely spiritual. Then he will experience other spiritual facts, and he will find the approach, the way, to the spiritual worlds through the Mystery of Golgotha. But then, beginning with the Mystery of Golgotha, the human being must understand the Resurrection while he still lives; and, if he feelingly understands the Resurrection while he lives, he will thereby be enabled to pass through death in the right way. In other words, Death and Resurrection in the Mystery of Golgotha should teach the human being to reverse the condition; that is, during life to experience Resurrection within the soul, in order that, after this inner soul resurrection, he may pass through death in the right way. That experience is the opposite of the Easter experience. At the Easter season we should be able to immerse ourselves in the Death and Resurrection of the Christ. As human beings, however, we need also to be able to immerse ourselves in what is for us resurrection of the soul, in order that the resurrected soul of man may pass rightly through death. As we in the spring acquire the true Easter mood when we see how the plants then germinate and sprout, how nature is resurrected, how nature overcomes the death of winter, so we shall be able, when we have experienced summer in the right way, to acquire a feeling of certainty that the soul has then ascended into cosmic spaces. We are then approaching the autumn, September is coming, the autumnal equinox; the leaves which in the spring became budding and green, now become brownish, yellowish, and drop off; the trees stand there already partly denuded, nature is dying. But we understand this slowly dying nature if we look deeply into the process of decay, into the approach of the snowy covering of the earth and say to ourselves: There the earth-soul is returning again to the earth, and it will be entirely within the earth when the winter solstice shall have come.

It is possible to feel this autumn-time with the same intensity as the spring-time. And if we feel in spring, at Easter-time, the Death and Resurrection of the God, then we shall be able to feel in the autumn the resurrection and death of the human soul; that is, the experience of resurrection during the earth-life in order to pass through death in the right way. Then, however, we must understand also what it signifies for us, for our present time, that the earth-soul is breathed out into the cosmic spaces during St. John's season, in the summer, is there united with the stars, and comes back again. He who has insight into the mystery of this succession of the seasons in the course of the year knows that the Michael-force, which in former centuries did not come down to earth, now comes down through the nature forces! So that we are able to meet the autumn with its falling leaves, when we perceive the Michael-force coming down from the clouds to the earth. Indeed, the name “Michael” is to be found in the calendars on this date, and Michaelmas is a festival day among the peasants; but we shall feel the present time spiritually, in such a way that earthly human events are for us closely connected with the events of nature, only when we again become capable of understanding the year's progression to such an extent that we shall be able to establish in the course of the year the annual festivals, as people of old established them from their ancient dream-like clairvoyance. The ancients understood the year, and on the basis of the mysteries which I have been able only to indicate today, they established Christmas, Easter and the St. John's Festival. At Christmas people give one another gifts, and do some other things also; but I have often explained, when I have given Christmas and Easter lectures here, how little remains with humanity today of these ancient institutions, how everything has become traditional and external. If we shall come to understand again the festivals, which today we merely celebrate but do not understand, then, from the spiritual knowledge of the course of the year, we shall also have the power to establish a festival which will have true significance only for the humanity of the present time: that will be the Michael Festival at the end of September, when autumn approaches, the leaves become withered, the trees become bare, nature moves toward decay—just as it moves toward the sprouting of the Easter season. We shall have the power to establish such a festival, if in decaying nature we perceive how then the earth-soul unites itself with the earth, and how the earth-soul brings Michael with it from the clouds! If we have the force to create from the spirit such a festival as shall again bring into our social life a community of interest, then we shall have done it from the spirit; for then we shall have originated something among us of which the spirit is the source. It would be more important than all the rest of social reflection and the like—which, in the present confused conditions, can only lead to something if the spirit is in them—if, to begin with, a number of intelligent persons were to unite in order to establish again upon earth something from the cosmos: that is, to originate something like a Festival of Michael, which would be worthy of the Easter Festival, but as an autumn festival would be the counterpart of the Easter Festival! If people were able to decide upon something the motive for which lies only in the spiritual world, but which in such a festival would again bring among men a feeling of common interest, something which would be created in the immediate present, out of the full, joyous human heart, that would result in something which would socially unite people again.

For in ancient times the festivals made strong bonds between human beings. Just consider what, has been done, and what has been said and thought on behalf of the festivals and at the festivals for the whole civilization!

That is what has been gradually interwoven into the physical world through the fixing of festivals directly out of the spirit. If people of today could decide in a worthy manner to establish a Michael Festival at the end of September, it would be a deed of the greatest significance. For this purpose, people would have to have courage, not merely to dispute about outer social organizations and the like, but to do something which will unite the earth with the heavens, which will again connect physical conditions with spiritual conditions. Then, because by this means the spirit would again be brought into earthly affairs, something would actually happen among men which would be a mighty impulse for the extension of our civilization and of our whole life. There is naturally no time to set forth in detail all that this would mean for scientific, religious and artistic experience, but such a new festival, created from the spirit, in grand style, would affect these realms just as did the ancient festivals. And how much more important would be such a creation from the spiritual world, than all that is developed today in social tirades. For what would be the significance of such a creation? Oh, it signifies much for the deep observation of the human soul, if I see what a man intends, or if I understand his words rightly. If we today are able to learn from observation how the whole cosmic course operates when autumn approaches, if we can unriddle, can decipher, the entire physiognomy of the universe, and out of our knowledge can act creatively, then we shall disclose not only the willing of human beings in the creation of such a festival, but we shall disclose the willing of Spiritual Beings, of Gods!

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.

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.

The fact that I am speaking today is a consequence of the question posed in the preceding history seminar. This question concerns the question of guilt for the last war catastrophe, and it is certainly such an important question, and one can already say today that it is also a thoroughly historically important question, that the answer to this question, as far as it is possible to answer it in such a narrow framework in a short time, must not be withheld from you.

I would just like to make a few preliminary remarks so that you are aware of the context in which I wish to speak about this question. I have never held back the views I have formed on the subject of today's discussions in lectures I have given at the Goetheanum in Dornach, and I have never made a secret of the fact that these views appear to me to be the ones that should be expressed to the whole world above all others. I do not believe that the situation today is such that we should keep saying that we must first leave the objective judgment to history, that we will only be able to form an objective judgment on this matter in the future. In the course of time, especially as a result of prejudices that continue to have an effect, just as much will be lost in terms of the possibility of forming a sound judgment on this question as might perhaps be gained from one or the other. I say “might” expressly, because I myself do not believe that in the future one will be able to form a better judgment on this question than one can already in the present.

That is the first thing I would like to say. I must say it for the following reason: As you well know, those attacks – I do not want to label them with any epithet now – that relate precisely to the cultural-political side of my work within the borders of Germany, come mainly from the side that one could call the “Pan-German” side, and I must of course be aware that on this side, everything I present in any way will be interpreted in the wildest way. On the other hand, I do not think I need to say any special words of defense in this direction, for the silly accusations that something is being done against Germanness are refuted by the fact that that the Goetheanum was already built during the war in the northwestern corner of Switzerland, a symbol of what is to be achieved not only within Germany, but also before the whole world through German spiritual life. If one has borne witness in this way to what it means to be German, then I think there is no need to say many more words to refute malicious accusations in any way.

What I have to say further is this: I have always endeavored not to influence in any way the judgments of those who hear what I say in this regard, and I would like to continue to do so today as far as possible – of course it is only possible to a limited extent if one has to be brief. In everything I have said, I have endeavored to provide everyone with the basis for forming their own judgment by listing these or those facts, these or those moments. And just as I never anticipate a judgment in the full scope of spiritual science, but only try to provide the material for forming a judgment, so I would also like to do so in these matters related to the historical external world.

Now, I would like to comment on the matter itself: it seems to me that the discussions taking place today on the question of guilt are, more or less everywhere in the world, based on impossible premises. I, for my part, believe that with these same premises, if only applied in one way or another, one can easily prove that the entire blame for the war lies with the somewhat strange Nikita, the King of Montenegro. I believe that with these arguments one can ultimately even prove that Helfferich is an extraordinarily wise man, or that the formerly fat Mr. Erzberger did not slither through all possible undergrounds and basements of European will in a remarkably lively manner during the war. In short, I believe that one can do very little with these arguments. On the other hand, I believe that the present German Foreign Minister Simons was quite right when he said in his recent speech in Stuttgart that it is necessary to seriously address the question of guilt. I just have the additional view that this should really be done. Because emphasizing that it is necessary to do this does not mean that we have done everything that needs to be done. It is necessary to address the question of guilt, and this is clear from the fact that the most cunning statesman of the present day, Lloyd George, put it at the forefront of those last ill-fated London negotiations. only call it, one is at a loss to find the right words for what is currently being said - the sentence: 'Everything we negotiate is based on the assumption that the Entente Allies have decided the question of guilt.

Now, if everything we can negotiate is done under the aspect that the question of guilt has been decided, then, if it has not been decided, it is all the more important to begin the negotiations by seriously raising the question of guilt and treating it in a serious manner. It must be emphasized that, so far, nothing has been done in relation to this question of guilt except for a very strange decision by the victorious powers. This decision is based, entirely in accordance with the rules of world affairs today, not on an objective assessment of the facts, but simply on a dictate from the victors. The victors need to exploit their victory in an appropriate way by dictating to the world that the other side was to blame for the war. You cannot exploit victory, as the Entente would like, as you even – it can be admitted – must exploit it from that point of view, if you do not blame the other side entirely. You will easily see that one could not act in this way if one were to say: Yes, people cannot actually be judged at all as they were, say, during the war catastrophe.

So it is a matter of the fact – because everything else has remained only literature or has not even become literature – that for the time being nothing more has been done for the question of guilt than for the dictation of a victor to flow. And the fact that this has happened in an incomprehensible way, which basically should never have happened, that this victor's dictation has been signed, has created a fact that cannot be regretted enough. For one cannot say: this signature had to be given in order not to make the disaster even greater. Those who look into the real events know that one can only get through the present world situation with the truth and with the will to the full truth. Even if what flows through the need may lead to tragic situations, today one cannot get by with anything else. The times are too serious, they call for great decisions, they cannot be resolved otherwise than with the full will to truth.

I would like to emphasize: Since I am unable, in the short time available to me, to present the matter in such a way that the content of my sentences fully substantiates what I am saying, I will at least try to give you a basis for forming an opinion in this area by the way I present the facts, the way I try to find the nuances in the way things are presented. Now, through many years of experience and careful observation of what is taking place in world-historical development, I have found out how, especially among the Anglo-Saxon people and in particular among certain groups of people within this Anglo-Saxon people, a political view exists that is, in a certain sense, quite historically generous. Certain backers, if I may call them that, of Anglo-Saxon politics have a political view that I would summarize in two main points: firstly, there is the view – and there are a large number of personalities behind the actual external politicians, who are sometimes straw men, are imbued with this view — that the Anglo-Saxon race, through certain world-developing forces, must fall to the mission of exercising a world domination, a real world domination, for the present and the future of many centuries. This conviction is deeply rooted in these personalities, even though it is rooted, I might say, in a materialistic way and in materialistic conceptions of the workings of the world. But it is so deeply rooted in those who are the true leaders of the Anglo-Saxon race that it can be compared with the inner impulses which the ancient Jewish people once had of their world mission. The ancient Jews, of course, conceived of it more in moral and theological terms, but the intensity of the conception is the same in the actual leaders of the Anglo-Saxon race as it was in the ancient Jews. So we are dealing primarily with this principle, which you can also observe externally, and with the particular way of looking at life that is present among the Anglo-Saxon people, among their representative men in particular. The prevailing view is that when something like this is at hand, everything must be done that lies in the spirit of such a world impulse, that one must not shrink from anything that lies in the spirit of such a world impulse. This impulse is brought into the minds of those who then lead political life in the more inferior positions — but this still includes those of the state secretaries — in an, it must be said, intellectually extraordinarily magnificent way. I believe that anyone who is not aware of the fact just mentioned cannot possibly understand the course of world development in modern times.

The second point on which this world policy, which has been so sad and so disastrous for Central Europe, is based, is the following. People are far-sighted. From the point of view of Anglo-Saxonism, this policy is generous, it is imbued with the belief that world impulses rule the world and not the small practical impulses by which this or that politician often allows himself to be guided with arrogance. This policy of Anglo-Saxonism is generous in this sense; it also counts on the world-historical impulse in individual practical measures. The second thing is this: It is well known that the social question is a world-historical impulse that must necessarily be realized. There is not one of the leading figures among the Anglo-Saxon personalities who does not look at it with an, I might say, extraordinarily cold and sober gaze and say to himself: The social question must be realized. But he also says to himself: It must not be realized in such a way that the Western, the Anglo-Saxon mission might suffer as a result. He says, almost literally, and these words have been spoken often: the Western world is not suited to being ruined by socialist experiments. The Eastern world is suited to this. And he is then inspired by the intention of making this Eastern world, namely the Russian world, the field of socialist experiments.

What I am about to tell you is a view that I was able to establish – perhaps it goes back even further, I don't know for the time being – to the 1880s. The Anglo-Saxon people were well aware that the social question would have to be resolved, that they would not let it ruin their Anglo-Saxon way of life, and that Russia would therefore have to become the experimental country for socialist attempts. And in this direction politics was tending, it was clearly tending towards this policy. And in particular all Balkan questions, including the one by which in the Berlin Treaty Bosnia and Herzegovina were snatched away from the unsuspecting Central Europeans, all these questions were already being treated from this point of view. The whole treatment of the Turkish problem by the Anglo-Saxon world is from this point of view, and it was hoped that the socialist experiments, by taking the course they must take when the erring proletarian world world follows Marxist or similar principles, that these socialist experiments will also be a clear lesson for the working world in their outcome, in their futility, in their destruction, that it cannot be done this way either. Thus the Western world will be protected by showing the East what socialism can achieve when it is allowed to spread as it would not be allowed to in the Western world.

You see, these things, which it will be possible to explain in full historical terms, are what has been lying at the bottom of the European situation, and the world situation in general, for decades. And from these things, I would say, emerges what shows a level of world-historical events that is now already too close to the physical world. We need only read very carefully what the fantasist Woodrow Wilson, who is, however, a good historian in the present sense, lets shine through his words in his various speeches. But we only need that to have a symptom of what I want to say. Throughout modern history, it has become apparent that the Orient, although this is usually not noticed, is a kind of discussion problem for all of European civilization. The objective observer has no choice but to say to himself: through the world-historical events of modern times, England has been favored in a certain inauguration of the mission characterized by you. This goes back a long way, back to the discovery of the possibility of reaching India by sea. From this privilege, basically, the whole configuration of modern English politics goes out, and there you have – if I may briefly indicate this schematically; what I am saying now would of course have to be discussed in many hours, but can only hint at the matter in this answer to a question. It goes from England through the ocean, around Africa to India. There is an enormous amount to be learned from this line. This line is the one for which the Anglo-Saxon world mission is really fighting and will fight to the finish, even if it is necessary to fight to the finish against America. The other line, which is just as important, is the one that represents the overland route, which played a major role in the Middle Ages but has become impossible for more recent economic developments due to the discovery of America and the incursions of the Turks into Europe. But between these two lines lies the Balkans, and Anglo-Saxon policy is directed towards dealing with the Balkan problem in such a way as to eliminate this line completely in relation to economic development, so that only the sea line can develop. Anyone who wants to see it can see what I have just indicated in everything that has happened from 1900 and even earlier, up to the Balkan Wars, which immediately preceded the so-called World War, and up to 1914.

Another thing is the relationship between England and Russia. This line is of course of no interest to Russia; but Russia is interested in its own behavior in relation to this line. As you have already seen, England has something special in mind with Russia, the socialist experiment, and therefore it must base its entire policy on the one hand on the realization of this economic line, and on the other hand on Russia being so restricted and contained that it can provide the ground for the socialist experiments. Nevertheless, that was basically the world situation. Everything that had been done in the field of world politics up to 1914 was influenced by this world tendency. As I said, it would take many hours to go into this in detail; but I wanted to at least touch on it here.

What I had to face and what I tried to throw light on when I wrote my appeal 'To the German People and the Cultural World' in 1919 is the other fact that unfortunately people in Central Europe have always refused to believe that they had to gain a political perspective from the point of view of such generous historical impulses. Unfortunately, it was not possible to get anyone within Europe, within the continent, to look at the measures that were taken from the point of view of dealing with such generous tendencies. You see, then people come and say: You have to do practical politics! A politician must be a practitioner! Now let me give you an example to make clear what such people actually mean by practice. There are numerous people who say: It is all nonsense, what the Stuttgart people are doing with their threefold social order, with their “Coming Day” and so on. It is all impractical, they are impractical idealists! Well, put these people in front of you now and think how it will hopefully be when the years come when we have been lucky, if I may put it this way, when we have achieved something, have accomplished something that stands in the world. Then you will see that the same people who now say: All this is impractical stuff – will then come and want to be hired to use their practical knowledge to spread what they previously shouted down as impractical stuff, using all their powers of speech and action. Then all at once the thing is regarded as practical. That is the only point of view these people have for their practice. Whatever the matter may be, this is what it is always about: one must realize that things must be considered at their origin and that what the “practical” impractitioners call “impractical” is something that is often sought precisely as the basis of their practice. They just don't want to put themselves in the other person's shoes, and that makes them unsuitable for dealing with real-life situations.

The practice followed by the politicians of Europe was more or less the same. There is no other way of putting it. And it is absolutely essential to realize that the nullity, the arrival at zero in relation to this policy, was a tragic relationship for Central Europe, when things were coming to a head. What is at issue here, then, is that we must also recognize that it is absolutely necessary for us in Central Europe to rise to the level of a generous, spirit-filled political point of view. Without that, we will not be able to escape from the turmoil of the present. If we do not resolve to do so, then only what we are now seeing will come about. I am of the opinion that the political problems which are still being treated today under the influence of the old maxims are so tangled and so confused that they cannot be solved at all, at least not from these old impulses. And let us assume that the Entente statesmen had sat down together – I am telling you this as something that I have formed as an honest opinion – and had, under the leadership of Lloyd George, if you like, concocted the peace demands that they put out into the world before the London Conference; but let us assume that they then lost the elaboration of these peace demands through some event and they had even forgotten what these peace demands were – of course this is an impossible hypothesis, but I want to make a point here – and now let us assume that Simons had received this document and had made these same demands, quite literally, I am convinced that they would have been rejected with the same indignation with which Simons' offers were rejected at the London Conference. For it is not a matter of solvable problems, but of beating about the bush with regard to problems that are initially insoluble from this point of view. That is what must be said for those who seek the truth in this field.

Now, I would like to go down another layer, to the purely physical events. You know that the external beginning was the catastrophe of the war with the Serbian ultimatum. I have spoken so often about the causes of this ultimatum, about everything that preceded it, and it will be possible for you to inform yourselves about these things, so that today I may speak more cursorily. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia set in motion the whole series of complications. Now, anyone who is familiar with Austrian politics, especially the historical development of Austrian politics in the second half of the 19th century, knows that this Austro-Serbian ultimatum was indeed a warlike gamble, but that, having made the policy that was pursued, it was then an historical necessity. One cannot say anything other than this: Austrian politics took place in a territory in which it was simply impossible from the 1870s onwards to muddle along with the old principles of government. That they did muddle along is not a term I have invented; it was said by Count Taaffe, whose name was often misspelled as “Ta-affe” in Austria, in parliament itself. He said: We can do nothing else but muddle along.

Now, the necessity arose, precisely because of the complicated Austrian circumstances, to move on to a clear insight into the question: how does any association of nationalities study what are intellectual matters, and in an association state, such as the Austrian one was, did national issues really amount to something like the outpourings of intellectual life? Austrian politics has not even begun to look at this question properly, let alone study it in reality. And if I survey the situation with a certain will to weigh things, not to group them according to passions or to take them from external history, then other things appear to me in the prehistory of the Serbian ultimatum as more decisive than the murder of the Austrian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand, around which the events then gathered. I see, for example, that from the fall of 1911 into 1912, economic debates took place in the Austrian parliament that had significant repercussions on the streets and that were always linked to the conditions existing in Austria at the time. On the one hand, a large number of companies were closed down at the time because Austrian politics as a whole was so cornered that it didn't know what to do and tried in vain to find new markets, but couldn't find them. This led to the closure of numerous businesses in 1912 and to a huge increase in prices. At that time, inflationary unrest, which reached revolutionary proportions, arose in Vienna and in other areas of Austria, and the debates on inflation, in which the late Member of Parliament Adler took such a great interest in the Austrian Parliament, led to the Minister of Justice being shot five times from the gallery. This was the signal; economic life cannot be maintained in this way in Austria, economic life cannot be sustained. What did Minister Gautsch find to be the main content of his speech back then? He said that all energy, that is, the old administrative measures of Austria, must be used to ensure that the agitation against the inflation disappears. That is how you see the mood on the other side.

Intellectual life was played out in the national struggles. Economic life was driven into a cul-de-sac – you can study this in detail – but no one had the heart or mind to study the necessity of the further development of intellectual and economic life separately from the old state views, which were shown to be null and void in Austria. In Austria, the necessity arose to approach the study of world-historical affairs in such a way that the matter worked towards a threefold structure of the social organism. This follows simply from the facts I have just described. Nobody wanted to think about it, and because nobody wanted to think about it, that is how things turned out. You see, what happened in Austria under the influence of the effects of the Congress of Berlin in the early 1880s, you just need to shed a little light on it and you will see what forces were at play. In Austria, conditions had already deteriorated to such an extent by the beginning of the 1880s, and even earlier, that the Polish member of parliament Otto Hausner publicly spoke the words in parliament: If things continue in Austrian politics at this rate, in three years' time we will no longer have a parliament at all, but something completely different. — He meant state chaos. Now, of course, people exaggerate in such arguments, they make hyperboles. What he had prophesied for the future of the next three years did not come in three years, but it did come in a few decades.

I could cite countless examples from the parliamentary debates in Austria at the turn of the seventies and eighties, from which it would be clear to you how people in Austria saw that the agricultural problem was also looming in a terrible way. I remember very well, for example, how it was said at the time, following the justification of the construction of the Arlberg railway, by individual politicians of the most diverse shades, that the construction of this railway had to be tackled because it was shown that it was simply no longer possible to continue working in the right agrarian way if the enormous influence of agricultural products from the West continued in the same way as before. Of course the problem had not been tackled in the right way, but a correct prophecy had been spoken. And all these things – one could cite hundreds – would show how Austria, in the end, in 1914, had reached the point where it had to say: either we can no longer go on, we must abdicate as a state, we must say we are helpless! or we must get out of this somehow by a desperate gamble, by doing something that will create prestige for the ruling class. Anyone who still held the view that Austria should continue to exist – and I would like to know how an Austrian statesman could have remained a statesman if he did not hold this view – even if he was as foolish as Count Berchtold, could say to himself no other words than: Something like this had to happen – there was no other way to play a game of chance. No matter how strange it may appear from certain points of view, one must understand this in its historical impulses.

Now, so to speak, we have the starting point in one place. Consider this starting point in another place, namely in Berlin. Now, I would like to begin by telling you some purely factual details in order to give you an idea of what was at work there: Please do not take it amiss if I also characterize it quite objectively: In 1905, the man who, in 1914 in Berlin, nevertheless had the decision on war and peace on his shoulders, the then General and later General-in-Chief before Moltke, was appointed Chief of Staff. At the time of his appointment, the following scene took place – I will describe it as briefly as possible: General von Moltke could not, in accordance with his convictions, take on the responsible office of Chief of Staff without first discussing with the supreme warlord, the Kaiser, the conditions of accepting this office. And this argument had approximately the following course. The point was that until then, due to the position of the generals in relation to the supreme commander, the matter was such that the latter – you may have already read about this here or there – often led the supreme command on one side or the other during maneuvers, and you know that this supreme commander also regularly won. Now the man who was to be appointed in 1905 said to himself, the responsible office of the Chief of General Staff: Of course, under such conditions, one cannot take it on; because it can also be serious, and then you should see how you can wage war under the conditions under which you have to put together maneuvers when you have the supreme commander in command, who must win. — Now General von Moltke decided to present this to the Kaiser in a very open and honest way. The Kaiser was extremely astonished when the person he had chosen to be his Chief of Staff told him that it would not do, because the Kaiser did not really understand how to lead a war in a real situation. Therefore, things had to be prepared in such a way that they could be used in a real situation, and he could only take on the role of Chief of Staff if the Kaiser renounced the leadership of any side. The Kaiser said, “Yes, but what is the situation? Have I not really won? Has it been done like that? He knew nothing about what his entourage had done, and only when his eyes were opened to it did he realize that this would not do, and it must even be said that he then accepted the conditions with considerable willingness; that should certainly not be kept secret.

So, ladies and gentlemen, having presented these facts to you for your own judgment, I ask you – and perhaps I may add in parenthesis that there is ample reason today not to color anything in such matters, because I can be checked at any moment by a personality present here – having presented these facts to you, I also ask you now to consider whether there have been any aberrations, whether it was not also a very peculiar thing that personalities were found around the supreme commander – who have also found their succession – who at least did not speak as the later General-in-Chief von Moltke did in 1905, but who also acted differently after taking office. Today there is no need to keep telling the world that one must wait until one can establish the objective facts; it is only a matter of having the sincere will to point out these objective facts.

And now there is really no need to speculate about a Kronrat of 1914, when it is certain that Generaloberst von Moltke had no idea that it had taken place, because he was absent in July 1914 until shortly before the outbreak of the war for a cure in Karlovy Vary. This is important to emphasize because when the talk comes to Germany's warmongers, one must then say the following: Of course there were such warmongers, and if one were to tackle the specific problem of warmongering, there would be a lack of such personalities, whom I have also mentioned earlier, if one wanted to whitewash them completely. And finally, what I said, that one can also ascribe a heavy burden of war guilt to Nikita of Montenegro – I don't know if he is white or black – may be inferred from the fact that as early as July 22, 1914, the two daughters, these – forgive the expression—demonic women in St. Petersburg, in the presence of Poincare, at a particularly magnificent court celebration, told the French ambassador, who did the strange thing of telling the story himself in his memoirs in old age, “We live in a historic time; a letter from our father just arrived, and it indicates that we will have war in the next few days. It will be magnificent. Germany and Austria will disappear, we will join hands in Berlin. Now, the daughters of King Nikita, Anastasia and Militza, said this to the French ambassador in St. Petersburg on July 22 – please note the date. This is also a fact that can be pointed out.

Well then, I would like to say that there is no need to worry about all the less important details. On the other hand, the fact that things in Berlin came to such a head by July 31, 1914, that all decisions about war and peace were actually placed on the shoulders of General von Moltke, and he naturally could not form an opinion about the situation based on anything other than purely military grounds. That is what must be taken into account; for in order to judge the situation in Berlin at that time, it is actually necessary to know exactly, I might almost say hour by hour, what took place in Berlin from about four o'clock in the afternoon until eleven o'clock at night on Saturday. Those were the decisive hours in Berlin, when an enormous tragedy in world history took place. This world-historical tragedy took place in such a way that the then Chief of Staff, from what had happened, or at least from all that could be known in Berlin about what had happened, could do nothing else but to have the General Staff plan carried out, which had been prepared for years in case something like this happened, which in the end could only be foreseen as the thing to happen.

The various alliances were such that one could not think about the European situation in any other way than this: if the Balkan turmoil extends to Austria, Russia will definitely take part. Russia has France and England as allies. They will have to take part in some way. But then things automatically go like this – there is no need to ask any further – that Germany and Austria must go together, and from Italy they had the most definite assurance, even stipulated in detail by an agreement reached shortly before, except for the number of divisions, how it would participate in a possible war. These were the facts known in Berlin, these were the facts available to a man who, in view of the world situation, really only had two points of departure. These were the two maxims of General von Moltke: firstly, if it comes to war, then this war will be terrible, something dreadful will happen. And anyone who knew the very fine soul of General von Moltke knew that such a soul would truly not be able to plunge into what it considered the most terrible thing with a light heart. But the other thing was an unbounded devotion to duty and responsibility, and that in turn could not help but work as it did.

If what happened should have been prevented, then it should have been prevented by German politics; what you yourself may judge should be prevented, if I draw your attention to the following facts: It was On Saturday afternoon, the event that was to lead to a decision approached, and after four o'clock the Chief of Staff, von Moltke, met the Kaiser, Bethmann-Hollweg and a number of other gentlemen in a state that actually seemed to be quite rosy. A report had just come from England – though I think it is hard to believe that it was properly read, otherwise it could not have been understood as it was – according to which German politicians believed that England could still be persuaded to change its mind. No one had any idea of the unshakable belief in the mission of Anglo-Saxons, on the other hand, one had always driven ostrich policy, that was tragic. Now one believed to be able to read with a light heart from such a telegram that the things could also play differently, and it happened that the emperor did not sign the mobilization document. So, I would like to explicitly note that on the evening of July 31st, the mobilization document was not signed by the Kaiser, although the Chief of Staff, based on his military judgment, was of the opinion that nothing should be given on such a telegram, but that the war plan must be carried out without fail. Instead of this, the officer was ordered on that day, in the presence of Moltke, to telephone that the troops in the west were to hold back from the enemy border, and the Kaiser said: Now we certainly do not need to invade Belgium.

Now what I am about to tell you is contained in notes that General von Moltke himself wrote down after his very strange dismissal. These notes were to be published with the consent of Mrs. von Moltke in May 1919, at that crucial moment when Germany was about to tell the world the truth, just before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. And anyone who reads what was to be published at the time and what flowed from the pen of Herr von Moltke himself will not for a moment be able to gainsay the judgment, since these things so much bear the expression of inner honesty and sincerity that they would not have made a significant impression on the world before the Versailles Dictate. Well, the thing was printed, printed on a Tuesday afternoon, and was to appear on Wednesday. I will not go into further details. A German general appeared at my house who wanted to make it clear to me from a thick bundle of files that three points in these notes were incorrect. I had to tell the general: I have been doing philological work for a long time. I cannot be impressed by bundles of files until they have been assessed in a philological sense, because one must not only know what is contained in them, but also what is not contained in them, and anyone who undertakes a historical investigation does not only investigate what is contained in them, but also what is missing. — But I had to say the following: You have cooperated, the world naturally assumes that you know exactly what the facts are. If I publish the memoirs of Moltke, will you swear that these three points are incorrect? — and he said: Yes! — I am completely convinced that the three points are correct, because they can also be proven to be correct from a psychological point of view. But of course it would have been of no use at the time if the brochure had been published – all the other harassments were added to that – the brochure would simply have been confiscated, that was perfectly clear. I could not have a brochure published that had been sworn to before the whole world, that the three points in it were not correct. For we live in a world in which it is not a matter of right and wrong, but in which power decides.

I know that what I wrote in this brochure on page V was particularly resented, but I thought it necessary to shed the right kind of light on the situation. I wrote: The disastrous incursion into Belgium, which was a military necessity and a political impossibility, shows how everything in Germany was geared towards the peak of military judgment in the period leading up to the outbreak of war. In November 1914, the writer of these lines asked Mr. von Moltke, with whom he had been friends for many years: What did the Kaiser think about this incursion? and the answer was: He knew nothing about it before the days preceding the outbreak of war, because, given his character, one would have had to fear that he would have blabbed the matter to the whole world. That could not be allowed to happen, because the invasion could only have been successful if the opponents were unprepared. — And I asked: Did the Reich Chancellor know about it? — The answer was: Yes, he knew about it. So politics in Central Europe had to be conducted in such a way that one had to take account of garrulity, and I ask you: Is it not a terrible tragedy that politics must be conducted in this way? Therefore, the full proof can be provided from these underground sources that what the otherwise unpleasant Tirpitz says about Bethmann-Hollweg is correct, that the latter would have sunk to his knees and that the nullity of his policy would already have been expressed in his physiognomy. This nullity was also later expressed by the fact that he emphasized to the English ambassador that if England did strike after all, his entire policy would prove to be a house of cards. And it was a house of cards, and it collapsed, and the Chief of Staff had to write in his memoirs about the situation he was in at the time, on Saturday evening: “The mood became increasingly agitated, and I was left standing all alone.

Thus the military judgment was left standing all alone, while politics had lapsed into nullity. This was brought upon the Germans by their own refusal to rise to the great challenges to which they were particularly called, challenges that emerged in the great, significant epochs of German cultural development, challenges that they refused to face at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The fact that only disaster could follow from such a situation now weighed heavily on the mind of the Chief of Staff. When an officer came to him to sign the order to withdraw the troops from the Franco-Belgian border, which had been ordered by telephone border, the Chief of Staff slammed his pen down on the table, breaking it, and said that he would never sign such an order, and that the troops would become uncertain if such an order came from the Chief of Staff as well. And the Chief of Staff was then brought out of his most painful and despairing mood. It was now well past ten o'clock. Another telegram had arrived from England, and - I'd rather not go into the details - the words of the supreme commander were: Now you can do whatever you want!

You see, you have to go into the details, and I have only given a few main features of what was happening on the continent, so to speak. I would also like to mention the counter-move that occurred on the other side. It will become authentic one day – again, I can say that I am not telling you this carelessly – it will become authentic one day that the two people Asquith and Grey said at the same time as what I have just told you happened in Berlin: Yes, what is this actually? Have we been pursuing English policy with our eyes closed until now? They said that this English policy had been made by a completely different side; they had been blindfolded. And they said: Now the bandage has been removed from us – that was Saturday evening – now that we are seeing, we are standing at the abyss; now we can only go into the war. This is the reflection on the other side of the Channel, and I ask you to take all this as something that could be greatly amplified, because in the time allotted to me I can do nothing but give a kind of mood, present to you something that at least sheds some light on the things that have happened.

And then, if you take all this into consideration, I ask you to read what I have written in my “Thoughts During the Time of War”, which I deliberately titled “For Germans and Those Who Do Not Believe They Must Hate”. Every single thing in it has been carefully considered. I ask you to consider what I wrote there from these points of view, that it is not a matter of what is usually called moral guilt or moral innocence, but that things must be raised to the level of historical development , in which something extraordinarily tragic took place, something that can be called a historical necessity, and about which one should not pry with judgments such as those I have mentioned at the beginning. Matters are much more serious than the world on both sides still believes; nevertheless, they are such that they should absolutely be made known to the world, that they should actually be the starting point for the order of the confusion. But truly, at the present time, there is no possibility that what is undertaken in this direction will be presented to the world in any other way than by being distorted and slandered.

What I have told you today about General von Moltke gives us an opportunity to judge this man in this decisive hour; but, as you know, there are people who, as they themselves worked on the general staff, say the most defamatory things about General Moltke, including the absurd lie that anthroposophical events were held in Luxembourg before the Battle of the Marne and that the General Chief of Staff therefore failed to do his duty. If such things can be said from such a position, then it can be seen from this what moral condition we have entered into today, and it is difficult to pave a right path for the truth within this moral condition. For this we would actually need many, very many personalities, and only after I have given you the conditions I have spoken of, only now I would like to read from Moltke's memoirs a sentence that will show you what lived in this man's soul, firstly in relation to his opinion of the necessity of war and secondly in relation to his sense of responsibility. For it is absolutely essential that we do not construct a brutal concept of guilt, but that we delve into what lived in the souls of those times. It is a very simple sentence that Moltke wrote, a sentence that has often been spoken, but there is a difference between it being spoken by the next best person and by the one on whose soul the decision about the war lay at the time. He wrote: “Germany did not bring about the war, nor did she enter into it out of a desire for conquest or aggressive intentions against her neighbors. The war was forced upon her by her enemies, and we are fighting for our national existence, for the survival of our nation, our national life.”

When examining facts, you don't start somewhere; you have to start where the realities and facts play out, and if you can prove that an essential part of the facts plays out in a man's mind, then it is one of the facts that created the situation when such an awareness prevailed in that mind. In order to assess the situation, it is also essential to take a close look at what happened among the forty to fifty personalities who were actually involved in the outbreak of this horrific catastrophe. Anyone who does not form an opinion out of prejudice but from expertise about these things, knows that basically everyone was actually quite unsuspecting except for the forty to fifty personalities who brought about the outbreak of war, who were actually active under the constellation of European conditions.

During the war, I truly had the opportunity to talk about the situation with many people who were able to judge it, and I never minced my words. For example, I said to a personage who was close to the government of a neutral state: It can be regarded as notorious that in our time, which calls itself democratic, about forty to fifty personalities, among whom — and it is not only within the Anthroposophical Society that there are women — there were quite a few women, about forty to fifty personalities, were directly involved in this catastrophe in the international world. It would be necessary to first elevate oneself to a point of view from which one could fundamentally assess this situation. Instead, there is an enormous amount of talk about these serious, world-shaking events from the superficialities of the White Papers and the like, and it is extraordinarily difficult for someone who would not talk if he did not know things differently from many others, always to bring the necessary here or there to bear where the situation has been judged since 1914. For me, this began in Switzerland, when the “J'accuse” books were being thrown at me everywhere, and I could not tell people – you know how dangerous the situations sometimes were – anything other than the truth, even though it was often the least understood: “Don't read the legal technicalities in such a book,” I said, ”read the style, read the whole structure, the whole presentation of the book, and if you have taste, you must say: political underground literature! I have had to say it repeatedly to people who belonged to neutral and non-neutral fields. Of course, I am not saying that this “J'accuse” book does not contain some correct things; but it is least of all based on such a point of view, which is suitable for judging the world-historically tragic situation in which, one can already say, the world found itself in 1914. And one must point out the underlying causes, even if only in order to be able to discuss the question of guilt.

Yes, but this question of guilt should also teach us something. You see, immediately after Germany's ill-fated declaration of peace in the fall or winter of 1916 and the whole fantastic sequence of events that followed with Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points, I immediately – I was not intrusive, people came a long way to meet me, more than halfway – - approached those who were in positions of responsibility with the request, which admittedly seemed paradoxical to some, that the idea of the threefold social order could be put forward to the world in the face of these quixotic fourteen points of Wilson's, which, however, despite their quixotic nature, were able to bring ships, cannons and men into play. And I had to experience that yes, many people realized that something like this had to happen, but that no one actually had the courage to do anything in this direction, no one, absolutely no one. For the conversation I had with Kühlmann, I think the witness who was present is here again today. So I can't make up any stories about these things. But I still have to explain that, and here too I would certainly not tell you something that is not true, because it is well known how the matter was carried out.

Here too, I must say the following, for example: You see, as early as January 1918, I considered the spring offensive of 1918 to be an absolute impossibility, and I happened to be on a trip from Dornach to Berlin with a certain personage - it was known that when the decisive moments approached, this personality would be called upon to lead the business. I came to Berlin when I had actually found a certain understanding for the threefold social order. There I had the opportunity to talk to a personage. Those who were able to inform themselves at the time about the way things were going already knew about the offensive in January 1918; one could only not speak of it. And I had the opportunity to talk to a military personage who was extremely close to General Ludendorff. The conversation took a turn such that I said: I do not want to expose myself to the danger of being accused of wanting to interfere in military-strategic matters, but I want to speak from a certain starting point from which this military dilettantism, which I might have, would not come into consideration. I said that in a spring offensive Ludendorff might possibly achieve everything he could ever have dreamed of; but I still consider this offensive to be absurd – and I gave the three reasons I had for it. The man I was talking to got quite excited and said: What do you want? Kühlmann has your paper in his pocket. That's what he went to Brest-Litovsk with. That is how we are served by politics. Politics is nothing for us. We military can do nothing but fight, fight, fight. — In 1914, the Chief of Staff was in a situation that he had to write about in the evening hours: “The mood became more and more agitated and I was all alone.” For the mood between ten and eleven o'clock he had to write: The Kaiser said: “Now you can do whatever you want!” — And in 1918 one could be told: Politics is out of the question, it is null and void; we can do nothing but fight, fight. — My dear audience, it was no different then and it is no different today, and I would like to provide you with negative, albeit subjective, proof that it is no different.

Once again, the same unworldly, abstract language has been used, with which Woodrow Wilson spoke, as evidenced by the way Woodrow Wilson stood in Versailles. Then Harding spoke from the same place, and I see in his speech, which is as confused as possible and delivered with no sense of reality, which only repeats the old phrases, now that we are facing economic decisions just as much as political ones, I see in this speech nothing that suggests that people are somehow concerned about what is looming again. It is almost impossible to get people to make a judgment. Whether we have the first Wilson showing his confusion at Versailles, or whether we were speaking from the same area a little later, it does not matter. What would matter is that one would have a keen sense of reality.

Then one would also look at such things as the fact, which is almost unheard of for someone who has a sense of judgment in political situations, that this very statesman, Lloyd George, who is characteristic in today's sense, recently said: You cannot blame Germany for the war in the old sense; people have slipped into it in their stupidity. He spoke in this way a few weeks ago, and you know how he spoke in London to Simons. From this you can judge the truth in the speeches people make, and if people still have no impetus to look at these things – they must get it, they must get it by developing a sense for the big picture. These great aspects were present in this catastrophe, and our misfortune is that no one had any idea of these great aspects. It must be made possible for the great aspects, on which things depend, to be thrown into the decision-making process in Central Europe today.

But as long as those who believe that they have a peculiar monopoly on Germanness slander what is true, as long as such people call us traitors to Germanness , and they call us traitors to our Germanism, although if these people would only understand what we have to say, it would do nothing but help the true Germanic people to achieve the position they deserve. Until these people change, until people who are willing to recognize the truth come together.

Of course, there were warmongers in Germany as well; but everything that came from them was of no importance at the decisive moment. What was important, however, was what I explained in the last chapter of my “Key Points”: that by losing sight of the big picture, we had arrived at the zero point of political effectiveness. We shall only rise again as Germans when we rise to great heights; for anyone who stands in the German tradition with a warm heart, not just with words – forgive the somewhat crude expression – knows that true Germanness means being rooted in great principles. But we must find our way back to the great principles of the German people. And it is basically also from experience that I am speaking these things to you today. Despite the way the question was phrased, I might not have answered; but I wanted to answer this question, and something that leads to the answer of such questions will become clear to you when I present the final passage that the questioner gave me in a supplement. He writes: I consider it very valuable to publish the correct, clear view on the whole question of war guilt in a memorandum, for example, and to distribute it widely. Well, that should have happened in May 1919. The memorandum was also printed. The world within Germany prevented this memorandum from being published. Let us not just sit here forming our opinion; something like this should be done: support those who do not want to be satisfied with their opinion but have long since tried to do what is being proposed here at the decisive moment. Then we will make progress.

Dear attendees, because I do believe that there are personalities among the German youth who will find their way back to true Germanness, who have minds and hearts and open minds to receive the truth, therefore, because I might have been able to speak here with some prospect of reaching younger people in particular, the best part of our youth perhaps, I have decided to make these suggestions to you today.

Emil Bock asks for questions.

Constantin Neuhaus: Yesterday we heard that we must redeem ourselves from personal sin. How does that relate to karma? What place do forgiveness, sacramental penance have according to these premises?

Rudolf Steiner: Yesterday I distinguished the whole process that lies in redemption and in original sin. Now, in the case of forgiveness, it is not a matter of our receiving forgiveness for something. What we receive forgiveness for and what we experience in the forgiveness is, of course, included in karma if one absolutely wants to refer back to karma. I think that the two things, the deed and the forgiveness for it, are karmically connected. Of course, you would hardly assume that it can be a matter of forgiveness for which one does nothing at all. However, as soon as we talk about the church as a serious community, it can certainly be said, even with the inclusion of the karma current, that the church as such takes on certain things that the individual does in his actions, whereby the church would thus assume a kind of collective karma. Of course, in return, one belongs to the church.

It is always a little difficult to take karma as such so abstractly, because karma is something very complicated. For example, you can say that if you draw a line somewhere in life under the positive and negative deeds, that is, under the good and evil deeds, you get a certain life balance. But this life balance can be changed again immediately by one item or another. It is not at all a matter of this being a rigid balance, but rather a matter of the fact that one actually has a life balance at every moment of life. But there can certainly be items on one side or the other that simply exist because one belongs to some community that then takes them on. In the Catholic Church, it should be the case that if it claims to forgive sins, then it should take on this burden of sin collectively as a church. That is also the original meaning of the forgiveness of sins, the taking over of the burden from the individual and its collective assumption; of course, a strong sense of such responsibility is usually lacking, at least within the Roman Catholic Church.

Constantin Neuhaus: So evil is made good again?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes.

Constantin Neuhaus: Is that repentance, when I have been immoderate and then make amends through temperance, through abstinence?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is possible.

Constantin Neuhaus: And to do good, I receive the strength from Christ for that?

Rudolf Steiner: I receive the strength from Christ to ensure that the general human original sin does not prevent me from having the strength [to do good]. I have no strength at all to do good in our time after the Mystery of Golgotha if I do not have this strength from Christ in relation to the original sin. I have no strength without the redemption of the original sin.

Constantin Neuhaus: And the mere weaknesses, are they not diminished?

Rudolf Steiner: If the mere weaknesses and the like were diminished, we would be disturbed in our personal development. Perhaps this will be most vividly illustrated by the following. Please do not be shocked by it. It can be examined what impression it makes on the dead - that is, on the human being who has passed through the gate of death - when he, as it then is, bears in his characteristics the consequences of his deeds on earth. This is something that, according to the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine, even extends into eternity, because Catholic clergy do indeed talk about the fact that a person has to look at his sins forever, or rather, has to suffer because of his sins.

Now this does not agree with the observation that can be made. The soul that has passed through death is indeed in this state. But when someone asks: Does the soul suffer from this? — then one is at a certain loss to answer. Suffering is there, but the soul desires the suffering, because strength comes from overcoming suffering. In this case, one is at a loss for words. One cannot say that the soul suffers, but the soul would be unhappy if it did not carry the consequences of its transgressions within it after death, and then as qualities. That which is action in life, or rather the character of action, is transformed into qualities, and these qualities are transformed in the life between death and new birth into powers, abilities, and so on, which are then inherited by the next birth. And these are transformed into unconscious desires, which then condition karma [in the next life] between birth and death. Therefore, it is also the case – and this has been asserted by a great many people who knew nothing at all about any repeated lives on earth – that if one examines one's early life from birth onwards from a certain point in life, one finds that the events [in life] are connected in such a way that one comes to one's unimportant and important acts in life through unconscious desires. One cannot overlook the fact that the power that brings one to experience this or that is identical with the unconscious desires that bring one to this or that.

A participant: I would like to ask whether original sin was necessary for the development of humanity or whether humanity could also develop freedom without original sin. Another question is whether there are beings, primeval men, who did not fall into this original sin?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the question must actually be answered like this: You see, supersensible knowledge can never actually be pure teleology, but it is observational, and therefore the questions of the purpose of anything actually fall away in supersensible knowledge. This is something that was implied in your question: Can human beings [attain freedom without original sin], or did human beings incur original sin in order to attain freedom? — It is simply a fact that we, as the human race, have been living in the development of freedom from the 15th century onwards. This life in freedom is only possible under the influence, the inner influence of mere intellectuality, which actually has no content. Descartes' sentence “Cogito, ergo sum” is actually wrong. The sentence should actually read: Cogito, ergo non sum, I think, therefore I am not, because thinking never illuminates a reality, but on the contrary, it is the destruction of reality. Only when one can approach the I through imagination, inspiration and intuition, is there real certainty of the I. When we have become accustomed to applying the criteria of being to our environment, we must say: I think, therefore I am not. It is precisely in this non-being that the possibility of taking in something new lies. That is what lies in intellectuality. Intellectual concepts are actually empty in the face of reality; they are holes in the universe, and this is necessary for the development of freedom. You can see how intellectualism gradually emerges. It comes up through such thinkers who were still contemporaries of Nicolaus Cusanus. Then it goes further, but in particular Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton are the real intellectualists.

Now, this state of consciousness, which brings about freedom, could not be there if man were inwardly filled with a content, because this content would have to be a divine one. This divine content, which was to some extent strongest in the beginning, had to decrease first and reach its zero point here (it is being drawn), and now the intellectualistic development occurs here. This gives man freedom and, as we become more aware of it, will in turn give our soul a content. So passing through [the zero point], being thrown down into matter, which certain occultists call the 'fall into procreation', for example, was absolutely necessary for freedom. You can only say it afterwards: because human beings fell into original sin, they gained freedom. It would be quite wrong for me to hold back these things from you, even if they are slightly shocking for a present-day consciousness.

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Beings who know nothing of original sin do not partake of freedom either. Such beings are, for example, those who belong to the stages immediately above human beings. These beings have greater wisdom than human beings, and also have greater power, but they do not attain freedom, their will is always actually the divine will. Only under certain conditions, which have not yet occurred in the development of the world, but which may still occur during the development of the earth - they lie in a certain future - will these entities, which Catholicism calls angels and archangels, have the possibility of straying from their inner soul necessity, not in probability, but they would have the possibility of doing so. But nothing can be said about it because it will depend on what the whole world constellation is like. So we have beings that have nothing to do with original sin. Even those entities, which were the actual tempters of men in the course of the development of the earth, which are represented by the snake in paradise, these entities also have nothing to do with original sin, but with a sin freely committed by them. Only in man does it become original sin. It is that which is called original sin and then again freedom, that which is actually specific to man. We find that the establishment of each level of existence in the entire universe has its good meaning, so that nothing is repeated in a vertical direction. So what is in the animals is not in the human beings, and what is in the human beings is not in the angels, and so on.

A participant: I wanted to ask to what extent the Mass can be justified by the Gospel?

Rudolf Steiner: To what extent can the mass be justified by the Golgotha mystery? I have said something about this. The point is that, for anthroposophical knowledge too, the Golgotha mystery is not a single historical fact in a limited time. The beginning of the event of Golgotha lies, of course, in Golgotha, but then, in a sense, the effect is an ongoing one. This continued effectiveness of the Mystery of Golgotha has also been depicted in many different ways, I would even say in mythical ways. I am reminded of the legend of the Holy Grail, in which the blood of Christ was caught and carried on to Europe, and this suggests that the Mystery of Golgotha continues to have an effect. Now, in the sense that I explained yesterday as the development, the continuing effect of the Mystery of Golgotha is such that we actually have the possibility of gaining a real connection to the power that emanates from Golgotha as a counterweight against original sin. This is the continuing power of the Mystery of Golgotha.

As I have explained, the Catholic Church has now established the external act as that through which the efficacy of the Mystery of Golgotha is to pass. So it is simply through the successive sacrificial masses that the power of the Mystery of Golgotha is effective. If now the Mystery of Golgotha is a real power, that is, if a real power emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha, then we must indeed imagine the matter in this way: You see, if we are honest, then, according to the intellectualistic view, we would have to say to ourselves — because the intellectualistic view is the ultimate consequence of original sin —: We are facing the danger of the death of our morality in our earthly existence. For if the earth undergoes such a development as it would actually have to undergo in the scientific sense, if, that is, the earth has emerged from the Kant-Laplacean nebula and ends in heat death, then for anyone who wants to be honest, that is, who wants to accept this scientific view without reservation, the moral world ends with it. And for the person who accepts this, the fear that he will have to go through moral death, through the destruction of what he has acquired as morality, would have to arise with the scientific view. There would then be no further development of morality. That would mean approaching a great cemetery for everything moral. Therefore, we need not only the abstract power, which is often assumed by modern theology today, because it cannot save itself from the power with which science calculates. No one can merely predict that the moral power can take on what is really happening if the scientific view is right. According to the scientific view, the moral force is a force that lies purely in consciousness; that is to say, for the intellectualistic age and for the following ages, we need a force that works as a moral force and at the same time has the ability to take on physical forces. This power, which enters us through our elective affinity, as I said yesterday, with what has gone through Golgotha, with Christ as the spiritual ancestor, this power, which can take on [the physical powers], can be found by the individual human being, as I described yesterday. And it would never be found if the Mystery of Golgotha had not existed. So it is absolutely true what even individual theologians — they are white crows — have said, for example Martensen, a Dane: the Mystery of Golgotha will only be properly understood again when we are in a position to attach a real physical- earthly significance for the development of the earth, and all the dialectical arts that speak of the fact that despite all natural science, what has been attained in faith can assert itself, they are actually not true inwardly, they are only there to delude themselves. The power of the Mystery of Golgotha can only be effective when it works in man in such a way that it can take on the physical and earthly forces in man. And it can do that. And that is what is to be conveyed to Catholicism in the Sacrifice of the Mass. For the one who takes the rituals that I have discussed this morning, it is the case that in his consciousness, which develops through performing the action, in the knowledge of the processes, lies the power to encounter this Christ-power that emanates from Golgotha. That would then be the connection with the sacrifice of the Mass.

A participant: I wanted to ask whether we can find anything in the New Testament to justify the mass sacrifice.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, you see, there is actually no such justification for the sacrifice of the mass in the testament itself. No passage of the New Testament can be used to justify the sacrifice of the mass. But the primeval sacrifice of the mass, of which the Gospels speak, is precisely the Mystery of Golgotha, and so we can only speak of how we correctly understand the words that are spoken in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha: “This do in remembrance of me,” that is, in remembrance of what takes place through the Mystery of Golgotha, and in such a way that first of all the Lord's Supper, which is an important part of the Mass, is already instituted. The Lord's Supper, however, is found in the Gospels; but the other must be sought in the necessity that arises more and more for the developing human being. In order to perform transubstantiation in a worthy manner, knowledge of the Gospel is essential, as are the sacrifice and the subsequent communion, which, by the way, is an integral part of the Lord's Supper if you will.

Hermann Fackler: I would like to ask a theoretical and a practical question. The theoretical question would be: How do we actually conceive of the origin of evil in the anthroposophical sense? We heard yesterday that the term “original sin” is actually blasphemous; the question arises: must not evil actually fall back on divine power in its ultimate origin, since this divine power needs sin to lead human beings to freedom?

Rudolf Steiner: I can only refer you to the question, I would like to say, facts. If we imagine what underlies our intellect in us, so if we imagine that the sphere of sensory perception is here (it is drawn on the board, bottom left), we would then form the concepts that reminiscent concepts radiate back into our consciousness, so that there (see drawing) would be a mirror, so to speak – you will understand the image, we do not look behind our memory down – so there below, under the memory lies the sphere of destruction. Here all natural laws dissolve, all earthly laws of the world dissolve there in the human being. There is indeed a center of destruction here, and this center of destruction must be in us just as a coating must be behind the mirror. We need this, otherwise the memory would not be there. So there must be a center of destruction in us. For something to be in the world, spiritual forces must be there to bring it about. In my anthroposophical view, I call the spiritual forces underlying this focus of destruction ahrimanic forces.

Now look at this matter from two different points of view. First, look at it from the point of view of human beings. Human beings are protected by the threshold that exists in their memory mirror; they do not normally enter this focus of destruction without further ado. But this focus of destruction must be there. The Ahrimanic forces, which are connected with these destructive forces, that is to say with the forces of dissolution for what takes place in the physical world, these Ahrimanic forces are not actually evil when one looks at the world from their aspect. For what they do, the destroying, is not at all evil in the divine plan of the world. But if a person is so abstracted that he lets the destructive forces pass through his mirror of memory, then something happens here in the physical world that has a good meaning in the next higher world, something that is only out of place in the physical world. So that what we call evil in physical life is a necessity in a higher world. It is only possible for man to let that enter his sphere of experience which, if he wants to remain an innocent person, is, as it were, out of place in it. So evil is only evil within the earthly world; and for man only the consequences of this evil remain when he now goes through the gate of death, that is, the consequences of the actions. In this way we arrive at the conclusion, which I believe is correct, that the existence of evil in the physical world can be reconciled with the cosmic scheme of things, if we realize that even the Almighty God can exist only under certain conditions.

Now you can say: evil is also present in another aspect; it is present as imperfection, as badness, as pain. But then the question is: If you study a real physiology – not the university physiology that is official at the universities, but a real physiology – then you learn to recognize that, for example, the eyes are initially built out of pain. Everything that is built into the human organism is actually first built in through pain. The eyes are built in this way, which you can find confirmed in animals. So what is a later perfection must be built up out of pain. And in subjective development, anyone who is just beginning to have a little knowledge of the supersensible will tell you that he has acquired the experiences of life through pain. He will tell you: I thank my Creator for the joys of my life, I accept them, but I would not want to do without my pains, because without pains I could never have become a knowing human being. Just as you cannot demand a triangle with four corners from an almighty God, you cannot demand the creation of any perfect things without the foundation of pains. It would be a completely abstract, external thought, perhaps no more than a mere phrase. And just as little can you demand freedom in the world without building it on the foundation of evil.

Hermann Fackler: How should a practical theologian behave in office who wants to serve the anthroposophical movement and, in the course of time, also implement anthroposophical worship? To what extent does anthroposophy desire the cooperation of the church, and how is such cooperation conceivable in such a way that, on the one hand, the purity of the anthroposophical idea is preserved, but on the other hand, the present form of the Protestant church is not virtually blown up? Finally, is it conceivable and possible for anthroposophical communities to come into contact with independent communities?

Rudolf Steiner: I must say that there is hardly any such practical difficulty on the part of the Anthroposophical movement. For, in view of the present stage of human evolution, the Anthroposophical movement must now stand on the standpoint of gaining the knowledge that can be gained and spreading it among humanity. This is a self-contained activity that can be carried out without anyone other than its opponents bothering about it. It is not something that causes difficulties for anything else. Things will admittedly become somewhat more difficult when, in the future, in about the sixth or seventh millennium of the earth's development, human beings will take on a completely different form. You will be surprised that I say this. But it is actually the case that in the sixth or seventh millennium woman will become infertile, will no longer reach maturity but remain infertile. Man will then be in contact with the earth in a much more spiritual form, then there will be direct practical activity, and then a separation between religion and anthroposophy is no longer conceivable. For as long as there is no practical activity, but only the mere dissemination of impulses and so on – or at most the dissemination of impulses such as threefolding, which of course works entirely through the ordinary channels – as long as anthroposophy must work as it does today, there is no difficulty from this side. From the point of view of the denominations, from the point of view of the old denominations and perhaps also from the point of view of the new communities to be founded, I can indeed imagine that this relationship will develop in such a way that the communities will take up from anthroposophy what they can take up, according to their subjective ability and discretion, and according to what they consider acceptable or unacceptable in principle. I can well imagine that this movement, which is to begin here, will relate to the general anthroposophical movement as a self-contained entity. They are two distinct movements, but each movement can accept from the other what it can only give for itself. Since the anthroposophical movement will have research as its primary goal, the attainment of certain supersensible results will come from the anthroposophical side, and practical religious exercise will come from the other side; and thereby the same relationship, which existed at a naive stage, will be reestablished, only indirectly, as soon as we return to the time before the Mystery of Golgotha, where there was no antagonism between religion and science. Their representatives were the same people, at least essentially, and that which one should experience religiously was expressed in forms that resulted from the corresponding research. So I can imagine that absolutely harmonious cooperation is possible. I do not believe, for example, that the splitting of communities, to which you, I believe, have pointed out, could ever come from the anthroposophical movement. I would like to say that the anthroposophical movement will remain neutral on this.

It could, of course, come about through [something like that] that precisely from the ecclesiastical or theological side, there is dissatisfaction with the previous theology and religious development; but then the religious, the theological movement would lead to disruption. The Anthroposophical Movement as such cannot lead to disruption. I cannot imagine it being otherwise. I can only point out that the Anthroposophical Movement only wants to respond to the signs of the times.

Once, I gave a lecture in Colmar on the Bible and on wisdom. Those who were present in Stuttgart will know this. There were two Roman Catholic theologians in the audience. Now, in that lecture - that was many years ago, when the excommunication of the anthroposophical view had not yet been pronounced, which is there today, that is only since 1918, so it was not all that is there today, today it would no longer be able to happen - there were two Catholic theologians in it at the time. Now, if you give a lecture on alcohol, for example, in organic chemistry, you don't immediately give a lecture on all the carbon compounds, and so the two dear Catholic theologians found nothing in this lecture on the Bible and wisdom that they could contradict with their dogmas. They then came to me and said: In terms of content, we have no objections at all, but the way you present it is only for a select few who have acquired a certain education; but we speak for all people. I said, Reverend Sir, I want to hold you to your claim that you believe you speak for all people; that may be true from your subjective point of view. Everyone will have the right to say, from their subjective point of view, that they speak for all people. But it is of no importance to the world what our subjective point of view is. Standpoints – although today people always say, “I have a standpoint,” there are as many standpoints as there are people – standpoints are actually highly irrelevant to humanity, and one should, to put it radically, be fundamentally ashamed of constantly revealing one's subjective standpoint to the world. So it's not really a matter of points of view. But it is a matter of something else, of what the signs of the times objectively demand, and here I ask you: Do all people still go to church with you today? They couldn't say “yes” there, they had to say that some do stay away. I said, “I am speaking for those who stay away from church and who also want to find the way to Christ.” The facts suggest that it is not right for you to say that you speak for all people.

So let us listen to what lies in the facts. That is precisely what must underlie anthroposophical work, and here I can only say to you: there can actually be no collision with anything that develops in dependence on or alongside anthroposophical work. If you follow the whole polemic and the whole fight against anthroposophy, one might almost say that one could become a naughty boy when one looks at all this; one always wants to say: but I didn't start it, never. You can follow it: if someone has been attacked in some way, the attacks always came from outside; just follow it historically and you will see that it is so.

Emil Bock: The question was raised as to how we should think about the state of existing churches in the future.

Rudolf Steiner: The future of the existing churches? Yes, the future of the churches truly does not depend on anthroposophy, and, I am convinced, it does not depend on what is founded here either, but on their own crisis of disintegration. I cannot help it, it seems to me that way. I am absolutely clear about one thing: according to what is active today in the depths of human development, we will have no church at all within the present civilized world within a century, unless something like what is is intended here, because all the present church constitutions and church communities have the seed of their own destruction within them, and that is a continuous, I would say, yes, really, a continuous apologizing of the church. Some give up as much as possible in an intellectualistic way – Harnack, for example, gives up Christ, which means that the essence of Christianity, in the sense of Harnack's book, is actually pure Judaism; in principle it is, despite the recognition of the love of Jesus and so on, but in principle I mean. On the one hand, we have the intellectualist endeavor to reveal as much as possible, until we actually arrive at what Dr. Geyer so aptly called the day before yesterday: It is an X and the X is actually a Nix. But what is still an X today will become a Nix, the other things cannot change that. On the other hand, we have the violent maintenance of the institution and the dogmatic relationships, for example, of the Roman Catholic Church by external power. How can such power be pushed back? You can see that happening now in the Orthodox Church in Russia. Then we have, I would say, the intermediate churches, such as the Old Catholic Church. These are human reactions against the existing processes of disintegration, human reactions which, I believe, already contain within them the germ of transformation, even if this cannot be realized immediately in every single moment. But the existing churches – I can't say much about what they will look like, it's just going downhill on an incline, I don't have any other idea. But I think the main reasons why the majority of you are here or all are here are that the story is going downhill.

A participant: My question is intended to dispel certain concerns. It was said in yesterday afternoon's lecture that we actually only have one way to God, and that is the way of love, and that we actually cannot have the other ways, neither the way of power nor the way of wisdom. Now the question is: How can we walk this way of love? How do we get on this path of love? And here I turn to the Gospels and find there how people are won for God precisely through this pure divine love. We find that it is precisely through the experience of love that people come to God; we see this in the case of the prodigal son: it is simply love that leads him back.

Now I actually have a concern, which is of course perhaps evoked in me by my Protestant past, whether or not through this cult that we are introducing, through this externality, through these many external things, which are of course all essentially justified, we do not turn away from the essential, namely from a proclamation of the gospel, that is, from proclaiming to people the love of Jesus Christ, which has descended from heaven to earth. As far as I can see at present, there is a danger that people will focus on the outward form of this cult and be distracted from the one way of love, which is kindled only by proclaiming the gospel.

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: the point is not merely to discuss such a question in the sense of theoretical concerns or in the sense of objective belief, but rather, in the way of love, the question is the practical question of the innermost life, of course. The content of the Gospels, made into mere doctrine, runs the risk of having a strong effect on people's selfishness. For man has not only the possibility of leaning towards something in love, but love is at the same time something that also does man subjective good. There is always an elevation of egoism in the experience of love, even of the most spiritual kind, and this devotion in love in a merely abstract, even if soul-abstract, form, is something that very strongly leads to ego and this is lived out in our time in the fact that actually the objective sense of responsibility is no longer strongly present in people, but people tend very strongly to the mere subjective sense of responsibility.

You see, when a representative of a religious confession like Frohnmeyer claims quite strictly, like an absolutely ascertainable truth, that over there [at the Goetheanum] a figure of Christ is being set up, with Luciferic features at the top and animalistic features at the bottom, that is an objective untruth. One could hear from a university professor of theology from a neighboring university: Yes, Frohnmeyer said that to the best of his knowledge and belief. One wants to refrain from convincing oneself of the reality of what one claims. Just think how different the path of humanity would be if it had not taken this strong tendency towards subjectivity, which always invokes the best of knowledge and belief and spares itself the test.

We cannot accept what is invoked in the abstract as divine love if it does not have a counterweight in something like cult. But there are other dangers as well. It is not my intention to create a backwards history, but I just want to point this out. You see, if Protestantism, which is the defining consciousness of modern times, had not abolished worship, had not done away with everything cult-like – which it has – then we would not have materialism either. Materialism is the necessary corollary of the removal of all cultic forms. In religious matters, the human being lives in the community, and so this certainly has something to do with the modern Protestantism that has increasingly come to refer people to divine love, as it has been done, for the development of the human being, which is linked to strong egoism. And with something else. Isn't it true that nothing can be done about facts? So anyone who is grounded in anthroposophical spiritual science knows about preexistence as well as postexistence. And now I would like to point out that in our practical religious practice, even for advanced Protestants, only the post-mortal existence is actually present. The other has no practical significance anywhere. It has no significance for the practical religious practice of pastoral care. But now I ask you – perhaps this is sometimes necessary – to also look at how the matter then lies in the sermon in a great many cases. Try to visualize how much of the sermon is devoted to maintaining faith in immortality by counting on that selfishness that simply does not want the soul to perish at death. Of course, you have to take that very seriously, how much the sermons rely on this egoism of not wanting to die with death, on this egoism of people for the preservation of the belief in immortality. In this, there is practically such a one-sided tendency towards the abstract. The moment you go to the other side, you practically come to preexistence. You cannot base preexistence on egoism at all; you can only base it on selflessness. Egoism is absolutely indifferent to what came before birth. That is why, in our modern language, on the one hand we have a word for immortality, but on the other hand we have no word for being unborn, because the concept of immortality is inconceivable without the word immortality, just as the concept of being unborn is inconceivable without the word being unborn.

We have now arrived at such things through what you just called the Protestant past. We must get away from it. Man must again find the way to objectivity; but he can only find it spiritually and soulfully. He can find it spiritually only through cult. I can imagine that what I am saying in this way may offend Protestant minds very much. But I cannot help that. The point is that if there are difficulties, one overcomes them; many people everywhere have gone through these difficulties.

A participant: I wanted to look at the problem from a different angle, namely, you said, Doctor, in the lecture the other day that the proximity of Jesus was a cult for his disciples, and I believe that Protestantism places more emphasis on conveying a religious feeling than on the cult. And the eternal nearness that one feels is something that has the significance of cult for a Protestant, so that the outer form of a cult is the sacrament. And I wanted to ask how that which one might call inner cult, how that relates to each other.

Rudolf Steiner: It is not the case that the mediation between inner and outer cultus is precisely that the apostles had a different relationship to Christ than their successors. The inner cultus was at the same time an outer cultus. I have just tried to prove this in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, where I have endeavored to show that what happened at Golgotha had previously taken place in the form of an image or tragic action in every true mystery, so that those leading the mysteries understood these things. We cannot say that we have only an inner cultus at Golgotha, but at Golgotha there is also an outer cultus. But naturally the distinction must arise just at the time when the Christ Jesus has become invisible; then, of course, the distinction arises. For everything that will arise from the supersensible in the immediate present, which would, so to speak, be the realized mystical fact, is actually comprehended in the outer cultus, that is, only in the sense that one sees the supersensible-living in the sensual. You place the cultus facts only as supersensibly effective facts in the midst of the other conditions of the sensually effective facts. —

But perhaps that is not quite in line with your question.

A participant: I would still like to ask one more thing: I believe that the essential opinion of Protestantism is that one should think more about the life of Jesus before the Mystery of Golgotha, that one should, I do not want to say imitate him, but emulate him, to shape one's activity in the way that Christ worked on earth. Rudolf Steiner: You think that the essence of Protestantism is that one's activity on earth should be shaped in such a way that it becomes a following of Jesus?

This is a factual error and, in addition, a terrible arrogance. It is not actually Protestant, but rather it has been more like this in a current such as the saints, which found the most beautiful expression - there was already something like this - in a figure like Francis; there we are dealing with emulation. But this emulation does not correspond to the facts. Because first of all, it is impossible to emulate Christ Jesus, because it is just not possible. It is presumptuous, basically. Besides, it has no real content, because, isn't it true, a life that takes place in a physical body is a whole. You cannot imagine one act without the other, it is a whole. Every single act, every single thought has its shading from the whole, and to the Christ Jesus life belongs precisely the death on Golgotha. I cannot grasp how one can come to a concrete concept of following. It is also no longer Christian, because in the Christian sense Christ is not the model, but the helper. I ask that this be clearly distinguished: Christ is the helper. We turn to him for help, we take him in so that he can become our helper. That is humble, that is what can be. The other, basically, includes a terrible arrogance, which is on the same path as the one who said: If there were a God, how could I stand not being a god. It is the same path. I know how tempting it is to see Christ as a role model. But He is the helper that we take within us. But I can never really connect the idea that we should become like Christ Jesus Himself; in any case, it is not Christian.

Gertrud Spörri: The question has been raised many times as to what extent women's activities will develop as independent activities, and whether it will already be possible for a woman today to found and independently lead a free community.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to answer this question in another context as well.

Constantin Neuhaus: One does not think that one could become perfect like Christ, but nevertheless Christ is also our model, and he is also presented to us as an ideal that we should imitate in the “Imitatio Christi”.

Rudolf Steiner: “Imitatio” is not the same as emulating. Imitatio is a concept that is one step lower. Imitatio Christi is certainly a possibility, but it is something else; imitatio is an emotional concept. In the sense of Francis of Assisi, you cannot understand imitatio Christi any differently, except as an emotion. It is not a mere concept. The concept of “imitatio” actually implies that we shape ourselves in our feelings so that our feelings become similar, our inner life becomes similar to the life of Christ. This is not actually the same as regarding him as a model. Of course, in abstract thinking, we do not have these sharp distinctions between becoming similar and emulating. Thus imitation of Christ is not excluded, although I would prefer to speak of imitation of Jesus rather than imitation of Christ. In this sense, one can say that one can naturally become similar to Jesus in one's human qualities. But this similarity comes to an end when the Mystery of Golgotha enters upon its final acts. How this similarity with the Mystery of Golgotha can be achieved is something I cannot understand. The Christian can become similar to Christ in that the Christ in the Pauline sense lives in him. That is the correct Christian concept, and it cannot be understood in any other way than that the Christ comes to life in him through his presence. When a person becomes similar to Christ, it is through the Pauline “Christ in me”. This is certainly the case with anthroposophy. But the anthroposophical idea, which seeks to correspond to the facts, is that we can only become similar to Christ [through] the Christ living in us. Without this idea, becoming similar would be nothing more than an illusion. You cannot form an [abstract] concept of becoming similar. The anthroposophical idea is quite certain; it also seems to me to be the correct Christian idea: if we can become similar to something, it can only be to Christ in ourselves.

One participant points out that in educating children, only the ethical example of Christ is ever shown to them and believes that it would be necessary to bring the religious personality of Christ more vividly to life for children. But the current trend of the times is to only illustrate the ethical side of Jesus' life.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, from my point of view, which is the anthroposophical one, I consider this to be a movement that leads away from real Christianity. I consider this movement to be the most dangerous one in the present day, which actually strays from Christianity, because these lessons have nothing to do with the complete history of Christ Jesus on earth. Weinel's Jesus is indeed the teacher of something, which Weinel regards as a form of Christianity, but Weinel's Jesus is not a Christ, because he has no Christ within him. So you can say, you can of course teach Weinelianism in schools, but you cannot work in the Christian sense if you take something like that as a basis.

A participant: Yes, but the central question is: What is ultimately the heart of religious education? Is it the ethical-ideal side or is it the religious? The clergy say: The heart of religious education is to place Christ at the center as the religious personality, while the teaching staff say that only this Jesus of Weinel is to be placed at the center and only the attitude of Jesus and his pure way of life.

Rudolf Steiner: Formally, there is no question that the clergy are right. The question is whether they are giving the right portrayal of Jesus if one wants to judge the matter as a whole. But that they are formally right in contrast to the materializing un-Christian nature of Weinel's Jesus, in my opinion, and also in my anthroposophical view, there can be absolutely no doubt about that.

A participant: I for one have no doubt about it, but it is a moot point.

Rudolf Steiner: The thing is, however, that I have to go back to what I have already said here. Let us assume that this ethical teaching were actually practised; we would then only address the abilities in man that come to an end with death, that do not pass through death, and as pastors we are not allowed to do that at all. Rather, we must concern ourselves with cultivating the eternal in man before all else, so that the ideal abilities can sprout. I say this as an anthroposophist. What can be given to man in an ethical way from the Weinel views is something that has to do only with man's temporal existence between birth and death; and I see nothing in this movement but an influence of our materialistic age. They wear the most diverse masks, these outgrowths of our materialistic age.

A participant: How should we understand the words: “If anyone loves me, let them take up their cross and follow me.” This passage causes me difficulties.

Rudolf Steiner: What difficulties?

A participant: That we should follow Jesus, emulate him.

Rudolf Steiner: But precisely when this saying causes you difficulties, then this difficulty is relatively not difficult to resolve, because it is pointed out immediately what this succession should consist of: Take up your cross and follow me - then you do what you do in my interest. It does not say: Live so that your life becomes like mine. It is not commanded to emulate, but it is said: Take up your cross – which in this context means everything that one has to bear in life – take up your cross and follow in all patience. That does not mean emulating, but regarding Christ as a guide. A leader is a helper in the right direction. These distinctions must be very delicately handled. The leader in the right direction is the one who helps you to go the right way. But one cannot say that Christ said: “Seek, by following me, the Way, the Truth and the Life,” but rather, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” And Paul was right to add: We find the Christ only when he is in us. He is a helper, not a role model in the sense that one could speak of a complete role model.

The difficulty is easily resolved, and the other words you quoted were also to be understood in the ancient age as nothing other than following the leader.

A participant: Perhaps the first question can be answered in the course of the lecture. It concerns ritual and sacrament. Does ritual not actually have a subconscious effect on people? And how can this be reconciled with our present-day aspirations and attitudes, which seek to raise everything more consciously? And the other question: In what way do sacraments differ from other ritual acts? Does something objective happen in the spiritual realm here, so that Paul's words could be understood: Whoever eats [the bread] and drinks [the cup] eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not distinguish the Lord's body from common food. Therefore many are weak and sickly among you (1 Cor. 11:29-30).

The first question is a single question, and the second question is asked from a very intellectual point of view: Doctor, you said that Harnack may be a very honest man, but he is no longer a Christian. There are so many people today who take Harnack's view and yet have a very strong inner religious life and also make a very strong religious impression. Now it is intellectually tempting to say: name is sound and smoke; can't people actually speak from an inner connection with Christ and just can't find the right word for him?

Rudolf Steiner: On the contrary, they use the wrong word. The wrong word in this case is “Christ”. They must, of course, address the real content of the matter. I have expressly said: where Harnack has the word “Christ”, simply put “God” in its place and you will get the right thing. This person has a strong religious life; I will never deny that such people can have a strong religious life and feeling, only they are not Christians. If one wants to be a Christian, one must profess Christ. And it is not true that Harnack says that Easter faith originated in the Garden of Gethsemane, but what really happened there is none of our business. That is not acceptable. What Harnack is doing is a misapplication of the word 'Christ'. That is what I said.

A participant: People do not have a differentiated sense.

Rudolf Steiner: They have no differentiated feeling. But one must be clear about that. One can say: Christianity is antiquated, we have no need to distinguish the Christ from the Father, we can go back to a mere monotheism that does not distinguish between Father and Son. Then one can hold the position, but then one must not make the claim in intellectualism to be a Christian.

A participant: We have a strong aversion to the view that says: a person can be whatever they want, as long as they are a believer.

Rudolf Steiner: Then we might just as well let go of Christianity; we don't need Christianity, we'll introduce Brahmanism or Buddhism. Christianity makes it necessary to have the differentiation between the Father and the Son. Go to the Russians in the East and you will have the strong experience that father and son are differentiated. It would never occur to a Russian to fall into Kant's error and speak about God from the point of view of ontology. Up to Scotus Eriugena, one still had this experience of the differentiation between Father and Son, then the whole history of the proofs of God's existence begins. The moment you start proving God's existence, you no longer have him. In the works of Scotus Eriugena, we still find [differentiated] views; there is no question at all – that is, in the period up to the 10th century – of there being any such undifferentiated perception of the Father and the Son. But today, what do people think of all this when they discuss whether or not the Son should be of the same essence as the Father? The real original concepts, the elementary concepts, they no longer seem to be there in Western or Central European civilization today. Read the philosophy...¹ there you have a sphere in which people have stopped at the point of Scotus Eriugena, there is still a differentiation there. But if you take the standpoint that you do not need differentiation, then, I want to say now, you can be a good Protestant, but not a Christian. I would like to discuss this in another context.

A participant: I think father and son are one?

Rudolf Steiner: You can indeed say that quite well about the relationship between yourself and your father, with relationship, let us say, to the whole family. If it is a matter of something being common in relation to the wider circle of your family, then you can say: I and my father are one, and what I do or what I bring to bear, my father also does. Therefore you cannot claim that you can lump together the two individualities, you and your father.

A participant: That is not meant substantially?

Rudolf Steiner: No, no.

A participant: I wanted to ask: What is the difference between a special experience of Christ and an experience of the Father? Because it seems to me that we can only experience Christ in the Mass; but how do we experience God the Father again?

Rudolf Steiner: This is something that should be mentioned in connection with sacramentalism. It is already contained in what I have said, but I will deal with it in context, because, as I said, the two, Father and Son, must exist specifically as two non-numerically identical perceptions. The perception of the Father must not be numerically identical to the perception of the Son.

Yes, then there would be the question of the woman's participation, but I would also ask to be allowed to answer that in the next few days, because, as I have already said personally, this question is really connected with a great many other individual questions, above all with the question: How does the woman participate? We must not only ask whether the woman participates, but how the woman participates best. And how do we get beyond the calamity that has occurred in the so-called women's issue when it comes to something as serious as this: the participation of women in male professions?

In the nineties, I had a discussion in Weimar with Gabriele Reuter that was along these lines, but for a completely different area than theology. I had to say that from a certain point of view, the whole approach to the women's issue is wrong, because women have not actually brought that into civilization and culture that they can bring in on their own, but have adopted the culture of men. They have become physicians, as medicine was established by men; they have become philologists, as philology was established by men. So women have not contributed what they can contribute in women's clothing, but they have put on trousers and thus carried out this emancipation. This is something that naturally belongs to a completely different area. We have to answer this in a broader sense; we have to be absolutely clear that women's participation must happen in such a way that women do not simply put on trousers, but that women really — you will of course understand that this is only an image — bring what can be brought in dresses, not in trousers. But I will also address this question; it is again a very profound question.

• 1. The stenographer's transcript has a gap here. In the reproduction of the Christian Community, the name “Solowjew” was inserted.

If you were in the Cologne Cathedral last night you could have seen there in illuminated lettering: C.M.B. As is well known, these letters represent the names of the so-called Three Holy Kings, who, according to the tradition of the Christian Church, were called: Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar. For Cologne these names awaken quite special memories. An old legend tells us that the Three Holy Kings had become bishops, and some time after they had died their bones had been brought to Cologne. Related to this is another legend which tells 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 had remained. There before him stood the three gifts he had retained from his dream.

In this legend there is profound meaning. It is hinted to us that the king in his dream rose to a certain insight into the spiritual world by which he learnt the symbolic meaning of the three kings, of these three Magi of the Orient, who brought offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh at the birth of Christ Jesus. From his 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-devoutness, that is the devoutness of the innermost self, or self-surrender, in the frankincense; and self-perfection and self-development, or the preservation of the eternal in the self, in the myrrh.

How was it possible for the king to receive these three virtues as gifts from another world? He received this possibility because he had endeavoured to penetrate with his whole soul into the profound symbolism lying concealed in the three kings who brought their offerings to Christ Jesus.

There are many, many features in this Christ legend that lead us deeply into the most diverse meanings of the Christ principle and what it is supposed to do in the world. Among the profoundest features of the Christ legend are the adoration and the sacrifice by the three Magi, the three oriental kings, and we must not approach this fundamental symbolism of Christian tradition without a deeper understanding. Later the view developed that the first king was the representative of the Asiatic peoples; the second, the representative of the European peoples; and the third king, the representative of the African peoples. Wherever Christianity was to be understood as the religion of earthly harmony, the three kings and their homage were more often seen as a convergence of the different currents and religious trends in the world into a single principle, the Christ principle.

When this legend was given such a form, those who had penetrated into the mystery principles of esoteric Christianity saw in the Christ principle not only a force that had intervened in the course of human development, but they saw in the being that embodied itself in Jesus of Nazareth a cosmic world-force—a force far transcending the humanness that merely prevails in our present time. They saw in the Christ principle a force that indeed represents for man a human ideal that lies in a distant future development, but one, which can only be approached by man when he grasps the whole world more and more in the spirit. Initially they saw in man a small being, a small world, a microcosm, which for them was an image of the macrocosm, the great all-embracing world which contains everything 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 including the perceptions of the lowest and also of the most clairvoyant spirit.

This was how the world appeared to the esoteric Christian in ancient times. All he saw occur in the firmament and 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 moonset—all this was a gesture to him, something like mimicry, an external expression of inner spiritual processes.

The esoteric Christian views the world structure as he views the human body. When he looks at the human body, he sees it as consisting of different limbs: head, arms, hands, and so on. When he looks at the human body he sees hand movements, eye movements, movements of the facial muscles, but the individual limbs and their movements are for him the expression of inner spiritual and soul experiences. And just as he looked at the human limbs and their movements and perceived through them that which is the eternal, the soul in man, the esoteric Christian saw in the movements of the celestial bodies, in the light that streams down from the celestial bodies to humanity, the rising and setting of the Sun, the rising and setting of the Moon—in all of this he saw the external expression of divine-spiritual beings pervading space. All these natural phenomena were to him deeds of the Gods, gestures of the Gods, mimicry of those divine-spiritual beings. As was also everything that occurs among mankind, when people establish social communities, when they submit to moral rules and regulate their actions among themselves by laws, when from the forces of nature they create tools for themselves—although they make these tools with the help of the forces of nature, but in a form in which they have not been directly provided by nature. For the esoteric Christian, everything that man did more or less unconsciously was the external expression of inner divine spiritual workings.

But the esoteric Christian did not confine himself to such general forms. Instead he pointed to very specific individual gestures, single parts of the physiognomy of the universe, of the mimicry of the universe, in order to see in these individual parts very definite expressions of the spiritual. He pointed to the Sun and said: The Sun is not merely an external, physical body. This external, physical solar body is the body of a soul-spiritual being who rules over those soul-spiritual beings who are the governors, the leaders of all earthly fate, the leaders of all external natural occurrences on Earth, but also of all that happens in human social life, in the lawful conduct of men among each other. — When the esoteric Christian looked up to the Sun, then he revered in the Sun the external revelation of his Christos. In the first place the Christos was for him the Sun's soul, and the esoteric Christian said: From the beginning the Sun was the body of the Christos, but human beings on Earth and the Earth itself were not yet mature enough to receive the spiritual light, the Christ-light, which streams from the Sun. Humanity, therefore, had to be prepared for the Christ-light.

And now the esoteric Christian looked up at the Moon and saw that the Moon reflects the light of the Sun, but is more feeble than the Sun's light itself; and he said to himself: If I look at the sun with my physical eyes, I am dazzled by its radiant light; if I look into the Moon I am not dazzled; it reflects to a lesser degree the radiant light of the Sun. In this weakened sunlight, in this moonlight pouring down upon the Earth, the esoteric Christian saw the physiognomic expression of the old Jehovah principle, the expression for 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 prepare the way by sending this light of Righteousness, toned down in the Law to the Earth.

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 like the confessors 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. In the Moon they saw the expression of the reflected Christ light, which by its very nature would blind man. In the Earth itself the esoteric Christian saw, like the confessors of the ancient Mysteries, that which at times disguised and veiled for him the blinding sunlight of the spirit. The Earth was for him just as much the physical expression of a spirit, as was every other body an expression of something spiritual. He imagined that when the Sun could be seen shining 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 maintained the external up-shooting life, the physical life. In the plants, springing from the soil, in the animals that could unfold their fertility in these seasons, the esoteric Christian saw the same principle in an external physical form that he saw in the beings for which the Sun is the external expression. 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 to the same degree as the Sun's physical power is withdrawn from the Earth, its spiritual power increases and flows to the Earth most strongly when the shortest days come, with the long nights, in the times that later were 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. The esoteric Christian was still conscious of the fundamental conviction and fundamental knowledge of the Mystery-pupils from the most ancient times to the more recent time.

In those nights, now fixed by the Christmas festival, the mystery pupils were prepared for the experience of inner spiritual vision, so that they could see inwardly, spiritually that which at this time most withdraws its physical power from the Earth. In the long Christmas winter night, the mystery pupil was made to advance so far that he could have a vision at midnight. Then the Earth no longer shrouded the Sun,¹ 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 represents a profound experience of the mystery pupils, was captured in the expression ‘to see the Sun at midnight’.

There are areas where the churches, otherwise open all day, are closed at noon. This is a fact which connects Christianity with the traditions of ancient religious confessions. In ancient religious creeds the mystery students, on the strength of their experience, said: At noon, when the Sun stands highest, when it unfolds the strongest physical power, the Gods are asleep, and they sleep most deeply in summer, when the Sun unfolds its strongest physical power. But they are widest awake on Christmas night, when the external physical power of the Sun is at its weakest.

We see that all beings, who desire to unfold their external physical strength look up to the Sun when the Sun rises in spring, and strive to receive the external physical power of the Sun. But when, at a summer noon, the Sun's physical power flows most lavishly from the Sun to the Earth, the Sun’s 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 by immersing himself in Christian esotericism he approached more and more that power of inner vision through which he could completely fulfil his feeling, thinking and his will-impulses when gazing into this spiritual sun. Then the mystery student was led to a vision of most real significance: As long as the Earth is opaque, the individual parts appear to be inhabited by people who develop separate creeds 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 to the extent that human beings begin to look through the Earth into the Sun by their inner power of vision, to the extent that the “Star” appears to them through the Earth, their confessions will reconcile to form one great united human brotherhood. And those who guided the great individual human masses in the truth of the higher planes towards initiation into the higher worlds, were introduced as the Magi. There were three Magi, while in the different parts of the Earth the most diverse powers are expressed. Humanity therefore had to be guided 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 make offerings to the physical embodiment of the solar Star, which had appeared as the Star of Peace. The cosmic-human religion of peace, of harmony, of universal peace, of human brotherhood, was thus brought into connection with the ancient Magi, who laid down the best gifts they had for humanity at the cradle of the incarnate Son of Man.

The legend has retained this beautifully, by saying that the Danish king rose to an understanding of the Wise Magi, of the three Kings, and because he had risen to it they bestowed on him their three gifts: firstly, the gift of wisdom in self-knowledge; secondly, the gift of devoted piousness in self-giving; and, thirdly, the gift of the victory of life over death in the strength and fostering of the eternal in the self.

All those who understood Christianity in this way, saw in it the profound spiritual-scientific idea of the unification of religions. For they were of the view, yes, they had the firm conviction that whoever understands Christianity thus, can rise to the highest grade of human development.

One of the last Germans to understand Christianity esoterically in this way is Goethe. 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. Although it has remained a fragment² it shows us in a deeply meaningful way the inner spiritual development of one who is imbued with and convinced by the feelings and ideas that were just hinted at.

We first learn how Goethe points us to the pilgrim-path of such a man and indicates that this pilgrim-path may lead us far astray. That it is not easy for man 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 into which we are placed. We are shown a pilgrim who, if we were to ask him, would not be able to tell us rationally what we have just explained to be the esoteric Christian idea—but a pilgrim, in whose heart and soul these ideas live transformed into feelings. It is not easy to discover everything that has been secreted into this poem called The Mysteries. Goethe has clearly indicated: a process occurring within a person in whom the highest ideas, thoughts and conceptions are transformed into feelings and sensations. What causes this transformation to take place?

We live through many embodiments, from one incarnation to another incarnation. In each one we learn things of many kinds; each one is full of opportunities for gathering new experiences. It is impossible to carry over everything in every detail from one incarnation to another. When man is born again, it is not necessary for everything that he has once learnt to come to life again in every detail. But if someone has learnt a lot in one incarnation, dies and is born again, although there is no need for all his ideas to be revived, but he will return to life with the fruits of his former life, with the fruits of his learning. His sensations, his feelings correspond to the realisations of his earlier incarnations.

In this poem of Goethe we find expressed something wonderful: we encounter a man who, in the simplest words—as a child might speak, not in particularly intellectual or abstract terms—shows us the highest wisdom as a fruit of former knowledge. He has transformed this knowledge into feeling and sensation and is thereby qualified to guide others who may have learnt more in the form of concepts. Such a pilgrim with a mature soul that has transformed much of the knowledge it has gathered in earlier incarnations into direct feeling and sensation, such a pilgrim we have before us in Brother Mark. As a member of a secret brotherhood he is sent on an important mission to another secret brotherhood.

He wanders through many different areas, and when he is tired, he comes to a mountain. He finally climbs up the path to the summit. Every step in this poem has a deep significance. When he has climbed the mountain, he sees a monastery in a nearby valley. This monastery is the dwelling of the brotherhood to which he has been sent. Above the gate of the monastery he sees something extraordinary. He sees the cross, but in a special guise; the cross is entwined with roses! And at this point he utters a significant word that only he can understand who knows how very often this password has been spoken in secret brotherhoods, “Who added roses to the cross?” And from the middle of the cross he sees three rays radiating out as if from the Sun. There is no need for him to place before his soul conceptually the meaning of this profound symbol. The perception of it and feeling for it already live in his soul, in his mature soul. His mature soul that knows everything that lies within it.

What is the meaning of the cross? He knows that the cross is a symbol for many things; among many others also for the threefold lower nature of man: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. In it the ‘I’ 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 I. Why roses for the I? Esoteric Christianity added roses to the cross because it saw in the Christ principle a summons to raise the I from the state in which it is born in the three bodies to an ever higher and higher I. In the Christ principle it saw the power to carry this I higher and higher.

The cross is the symbol of death in a quite particular sense. This, too, Goethe expresses in another beautiful passage³ 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 become—overcome what you have first been given in the three lower bodies. Deaden it, but not out of a desire for death, but to purify what is in these three bodies so as to attain in the I the power to receive an ever-greater perfection. By deadening, what is given to you in the three lower bodies, the power of perfection will enter into the I. Into the I, the Christian should take into him the power of perfection in the Christ principle, right down to the blood. This power must work right into the blood.

Blood is the expression of the I. In the red roses the esoteric Christian saw that which in the blood, purified and cleansed by the power of the Christ principle, and in the I, which in turn was cleansed by this blood, leads 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 the Spirit Man. Thus, we encounter in the Rose-Cross connected with the triple beam a profound symbol of the Christ principle. The pilgrim Brother Mark, who arrives here, knows: 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 can be found within this dwelling is expressed in the cross entwined by roses. And as the pilgrim now enters, he is actually received in this spirit. As he enters, he becomes aware that in this house not this or that religion holds sway—but that the higher Oneness of the world’s religions is at work here. In the house he tells an older member of the brotherhood who lives there, at whose behest and on what mission he has come. He is made welcome and hears that in this house lives in perfect seclusion a brotherhood of twelve brothers. These twelve brothers are representatives of diverse groups of people from all over the Earth; every one of the brothers is the representative of a religious creed. None is to be found here, who is accepted while still young in years and immature. One will only be accepted when one has explored the world, when one has struggled with the joys and sorrows of the world, when one has worked and been active in the world and has wrestled with oneself upwards to gain a free survey over one’s narrowly confined domain. Only then is one placed and accepted into the circle of the Twelve. And these Twelve, of whom each one represents one of the world religious creeds, 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 this Thirteenth is the representative of true esotericism, the carrier of the Rosicrucian confession? Goethe indicates this by one of the brothers saying: He was among us. Now we are plunged into the deepest sorrow because he is about to leave us, he wishes to part from us. But he feels it is right to part from us now. He desires to rise to higher regions, where he no longer needs to reveal himself in an earthly body.

He may ascend, for he has risen to a point that Goethe describes as follows: In every creed lies the possibility of coming closer to the highest unity. When each of the twelve religions is matured to establish harmony, then the Thirteenth, who has before brought about this harmony externally, can rise up. And we are beautifully told how we can achieve this perfection of the Self. First, the life-story of the Thirteenth is related. But the Brother who has admitted the pilgrim Mark knows many more details, which the great leader of the Twelve could not say himself. Several traits of profound esoteric significance are now told by this brother to the pilgrim Mark. It is told, that when the Thirteenth was born a star appeared to herald his earthly existence. This is a direct link to the star that guided the Three Holy Kings and to its meaning. This star has an enduring significance; it indicates the way to self-knowledge, self-giving, and self-perfection. It is the star that opens the understanding of the gifts that the Danish king received through the vision that appeared to him in his dream. The star that appears at the birth of everyone mature enough to receive the Christ principle within oneself.

And other things also became apparent. It became clear that he had developed to that height of religious harmony, which brings peace and harmony of the soul. Profoundly symbolical in this sense is the vulture which swoops down when the Thirteenth entered into this world, but instead of having a devastating effect, it spreads peace around it among the doves.

We are told still more. As his little sister is lying in the cradle a viper winds itself around her. The Thirteenth, still a child, kills the viper. Hereby is wonderfully indicated how a mature soul—for only a mature soul can achieve such a thing after many incarnations—kills the viper already in early childhood; this means he overcame the lower astral nature. The viper is the symbol for the lower astral nature. The sister is his own etheric body, around which the astral body winds itself. He kills the viper for his sister.

Then we are told how he obediently submitted to what at first the family demanded of him. He obeyed his harsh father. The soul transforms its realisations, ideas, and thoughts. Then healing powers develop in the soul, through which healing can be brought about in the world. Miraculous powers develop; they find expression in his use of his sword to lure a spring out of the rock. Intentionally, we are here shown how his soul follows in the footsteps of the Scripture.

Thus gradually there matures the superior, the representative of humanity, the Chosen One, who works as the Thirteenth here in the community of the Twelve—the great secret order that, under the symbol of the Rose-Cross, has taken on the mission for all mankind to harmonise the creeds scattered throughout the world. This is how we are first made acquainted in a profound manner with the soul-state of the one who has until now led the Brotherhood of our Twelve.

At last he knocks. The myriad stars above him
Look down with shining eyes as they appear.
The portal opens, 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 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 it no more can bind.

Thus this man, who had overcome himself, that is, who had overcome the “I” that at first is allotted to man, became the Superior of the chosen Brotherhood just characterised. And so he leads the Twelve. He has led them to a point where they are mature enough for him to be allowed to leave them.

Our Brother Mark is then conducted further into the rooms where the Twelve work. How did they work? Their activity is of an unusual kind, and we are made aware that it is an activity in the spiritual world. A man whose eyes observe only the physical plane, whose senses only see the physical and what is done by people in the physical world, cannot easily imagine that there is still other work. Work that may in some circumstances even be far more essential and important than work that is done externally on the physical plane. Work from the higher planes is far more important for mankind. Mind you, whoever wishes to work on the higher planes must fulfill the condition that he has first completed his tasks on the physical plane. These Twelve had done so. For this reason, their combined activity signifies something of high importance for the service to mankind.

Our Brother Mark is led into the hall where the Twelve were accustomed to assemble. There he encounters in a profound symbolism the nature of their combined activity. The individual contribution that each of the Brothers has to make to this joint activity, in accordance with his particular character, is expressed by a special symbol above the seat of each of the Twelve. Symbols of many kinds are to be seen there, expressing meaningfully and in very different ways what each one has to contribute to the common work. This work consists of spiritual activity, so that these streams flow together here into a current of spiritual life that floods the world and has a strengthening effect on the rest of humanity. There are such brotherhoods, such centres from where such flows emanate and impact on the rest of mankind.

Above the seat of the Thirteenth, Brother Mark again sees the sign: the cross entwined with roses. This sign is at the same time a symbol for the four-fold nature of man, and in the red roses it is the symbol for the purified blood- or I-principle, the principle of the higher man. Then we see that which is to be overcome by this sign of the Rose-Cross installed as a special symbol to the left and right 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 be devoted to the three lower bodies. If it succumbs to them, then it is dominated by the lower life of the threefold bodily nature within it. This is expressed in the astral perception by the dragon. This is no mere symbol but a very real sign. In the dragon is expressed what must first be conquered. In the passions, in these forces of astral fire—which are part of man's physical nature—in this dragon Christian esotericism saw that which mankind has received from the torrid zone, from the South. This poem was written in the spirit of Christian esotericism, which spread throughout Europe. From the South stems that part of man which mankind acquired as hot passion tending more towards the lower sensory nature. As a first impulse to fight and overcome this, one sensed what flowed down from the influences of the cooler North. The influence of the colder North, the descent of the I into the threefold bodily nature, is expressed according to an old symbol taken from the constellation of the Bear, which shows a hand thrust into the maw of a bear. The lower bodily nature expressed by the fiery dragon will be overcome. What has been preserved in the higher animal species was represented by the bear. And the I, which has developed beyond the dragon nature, was represented with profound appropriateness by the thrusting of a human hand into the bear's maw. On both sides of the Rose-Cross there appears what must be overcome by it. It is the Rose-Cross that calls on man to purify and raise himself up higher and higher.

In this way, the poem really presents us with the principle of esoteric Christianity in the deepest way, and illustrates to us above all what should be before our soul, especially at a festival like the one we are celebrating today.

The eldest of the Brothers belonging to the Brotherhood, who lives here, explicitly tells the pilgrim Mark that their combined activity is happening in the spirit, that it is spiritual life. This work for mankind on the spiritual plane means something special. The Brothers have experienced life's joys and sorrows, they have endured external conflicts; they have performed work in the world outside. Now they are here, but here also work is done continuously to further the development of mankind. The pilgrim Mark is told: You have now seen as much as can be shown to a novice to whom the first portal is opened. You have been shown in profound symbols how man's ascent should be. But the second portal harbours greater mysteries—how from the higher worlds work is done 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 dagger,
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.

Wherever he now turns and gazes in amazement,⁴
The more he marvels at the art and splendours
Abundant wealth seems wasted here on purpose
Has everything just made itself?—he wonders.
Should he have doubts about the work’s fulfilment?
Who so conceived the plan? ― he ponders.
It seems to him, with heavenly delight,
He’s only just beginning to live each moment 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 rest, our Brother Mark learns to divine at least something of the inner mysteries. In powerful symbols he has let the ascent of the human Self work upon his soul. When he is woken from his brief rest by a sign, he comes to a portal, only to find it is locked. He hears a strange triad: three beats 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 to indicate in a profound way what awaits man when he approaches the spiritual worlds, when he is so far purified and perfected by his endeavours to work on his Self that he passed through the astral world and then approaches the higher worlds—those worlds in which the spiritual archetypes of things here on Earth can be found. When he approaches what is called the ‘world of heaven’ in esoteric Christianity, he first approaches it through a world flooded with colours. Then 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 precisely Goethe who clearly expressed the higher experience of a world of spiritual sound in his Faust, when he lets him be raptured to heaven, and the world of heaven reveals itself to him through sound.⁵

“The sun-orb sings, in emulation
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round...”

The physical Sun does not sound, but the spiritual Sun does. Goethe retains this image when, after long wanderings, Faust is transported up into the spiritual worlds:

“Sounding loud to spirit-hearing,⁶
see the new-born day appearing.”
“Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes
—eye is blinded, ear amazes:
The Unheard can no one hear!”

As man evolves higher through the symbolic colour world of the astral, he approaches the world of the harmony of the spheres, the Devachan domain, that which is spiritual music. Only softly, softly going outside does our Brother Mark hear―after he has passed through the first portal, the astral portal—the chiming sound of the inner world behind our external world; of that inner world which transforms the lower astral world into this higher world through which the triad flows. And by ascending to the higher world a human being’s lower nature is transformed into the higher trinity: our astral body changes into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life Spirit, the physical body into the Spirit Man.

Brother Marcus first senses the triad of the higher nature in the music of the spheres, and by becoming one with this music of the spheres, he has a first inkling of the rejuvenation of someone who enters into contact with the spiritual worlds. He sees, as in a dream, rejuvenated mankind floating through the garden in the form of the three youths carrying three torches. This is the moment when Mark's soul woke up in the morning from darkness, and where some darkness has still remained as the light has not yet penetrated it. But precisely at such a time the soul can look into the spiritual world. It can look into the spiritual worlds, just as it can look into them when the summer noon has passed, when the Sun gradually gets weaker and winter has arrived, and then at midnight the Christ-principle shines through the Earth in the Holy Night of Christmas.

Through the Christ-principle man is elevated to the higher Trinity, illustrated for Brother Mark by the three youths who represent the rejuvenated humanity. 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 must remind those who understand esoteric Christianity that what happens in the external world is mimicry, are the gestures of inner spiritual processes. The external power of the Sun runs free in the spring and summer sunshine. In the Holy Scripture this external power of the Sun—which is only the proclamation of the inner, spiritual power of the Sun—is expressed in John the Baptist, whereas the inner, spiritual power is expressed in Christ. And while the physical power of the Sun continuously abates, the spiritual power rises and grows more and more in strength until it reaches its zenith at Christmas time. This is the meaning underlying the words in the Gospel of St. John, “I must decrease, but He must increase”.⁷ And He increases and increases until He appears where the sun-force has again attained the outer physical power.

So that man may henceforth be able to revere and worship the spiritual power of the Sun in this external physical power, he must learn to recognise the meaning of the Christmas festival. For those who do not recognise this meaning, the new power of the Sun is nothing other than the old physical power anew. But one who has familiarised himself 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 radiates through the Earth, which vitalises and fertilises it, so that the Earth itself becomes the bearer of the Christ power, of the Earth-Spirit. Hence, what is born to us every Christmas night is born anew each time. Christ will allow us to inwardly perceive the microcosm within the macrocosm, and this perception will lead us higher and higher.

The festivals, which have long ago become something external to man, will again appear in their deep significance for man, if he is led by this profound esotericism to the knowledge that the external events of nature―such as thunder and lightning, sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset―are the gestures and physiognomy of spiritual existence. And at the significant points, marked by our festivals, man should realise that then also in the spiritual world important things are happening. Then he will be led to the rejuvenating spiritual power, represented by the three youths, which the I can only win by devoting itself to the outer world, and not by egotistically shutting itself away from it. But there is no devotion to the outer world if this outer world is not permeated by spirit. That this spirit should appear anew each year as a light in the darkness for all human beings, even for the weakest, must be written afresh each year into the heart and soul of humanity.

This is what Goethe wished to express in this poem, The Mysteries. It is at once a Christmas poem and an Easter poem. It aims to hint at profound secrets of esoteric Christianity. If we allow what he wished to indicate of the deep mysteries of Rosicrucian Christianity to work upon us, if we absorb its power even in part, then we will become missionaries for at least a few of those in our surroundings. We shall succeed in shaping these festivals in such a way that they are 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.

• 1. A correction after the transcript by Walter Vegelahn. In the first Edition this sentence was due to a different transcript recorded in error as “then the Earth was no longer the hull”.
• 2. Goethe himself wrote an essay about this fragment in the year 1816, “The Mysteries, a fragment by Goethe”, in Essays on Literature, Contributions to the Morning paper for the educated classes, 1807-1816. Sophien Edition, Volume 41/1.
• 3. “And until thou truly hast” is the final verse of the poem by Goethe “Blessed Longings”, of the collection West Eastern Divan.
• 4. The verse “Wherever he now turns and gazes in amazement”, is missing from most Goethe Editions, but according to an original handwritten Goethe script it had been intended for The Mysteries. Refer Goethe’s works, Weimar Edition, Volume 16, Page 436.
• 5. “The Sun-orb sings, in emulation...”, Goethe, Faust Part I, Prologue in Heaven, Verse 243 et seq.
• 6. “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing..”, Faust Part II, Act 1, Ariel Scene, Verse 4666 et seq.
• 7. “I must decrease, but he must increase”. The literal translation would be “I must sink, but he has to rise”. John-3-30.

Dear Attendees!

Spiritual research, as it is meant in the lectures that I have been holding here for years now, has, as is well known, basically not only opponents and antagonisms from those sides from which other worldviews their nature have opponents and opposition – materialism has opponents in spiritualism, spiritualism in materialism, idealism in realism and so on – and in a certain sense it can still be said today that spiritual science is fought against by all possible ideological directions. And so the question must arise: What is the essential reason why spiritual science in particular is so strongly rejected by the current zeitgeist as a whole?

I have already repeatedly drawn attention to what is important in relation to this question. The peculiar thing about this spiritual science is that the opposition does not arise from the fact that one gets to know this spiritual science more closely, that one studies it in order to be unable to agree with it, but rather that the opposition is mainly based on the fact that there is little inclination on either side to get involved in the actual essentials, in the meaningfulness of this spiritual scientific direction.

Instead, people invent all kinds of characteristics that this spiritual science must have according to their own ideas, without any knowledge of it. They think something like this: From what I know and from what I have heard said offhand from this quarter or that, this spiritual science wants this or that. Or rather, one thinks even differently, one thinks: it must want this or that. So in this or that sense it is naturally reprehensible.

And then the peculiarity emerges – and precisely this peculiarity can be observed if one delves deeper into the relationship between spiritual science and other currents of world view. The peculiarity then emerges that many people assert this or that against spiritual science on the assumption that it can affect spiritual science, while in truth the fact is that, as regards what these people assert, one is in complete agreement as a spiritual scientist in the sense in which spiritual science is meant here, that one has nothing at all against what these people say, that they only believe that, because one is precisely on the point of view of spiritual science, one must object to this or that.

So the peculiar thing is, dear attendees, that spiritual science is very often fought by those with whom it actually agrees entirely in all the positive things it demands.

One particular area that must be illuminated by the light that has just been mentioned is the subject of today's reflection: “Healthy mental life and spiritual research”. For it will be seen time and again that the very ways and methods of spiritual scientific research, the paths taken by spiritual science, are presented by those who, under the influence of today's habits of thought, believe they have built their views on the foundation of pure natural science. beliefs on the foundation of pure natural science. It will be found time and again that these methods and procedures are treated as something unhealthy, as something diseased, or at least lumped together with something diseased. And in this case, ladies and gentlemen, one cannot even say that the cause of such misunderstandings lies solely with those who develop misunderstandings from this side, but the causes lie in completely different circumstances, which will also be considered in the second part of today's reflection.

But first I would like to develop some essentials with regard to the types of spiritual science procedure, in order to show, by means of the actual method of spiritual research, how little justification there is for pointing to this method as something that could even remotely be connected with a somehow pathological soul life. In doing so, I shall today refrain from what I have often allowed myself to present here over the years; I shall refrain from a more detailed description of what the human soul has to accomplish in order to enter upon the path of spiritual research and to follow this path. A detailed description of the soul's inner processes can be found in the books already mentioned here: in the second part of my “Outline of Esoteric Science”, also at the end of my “Theosophy” and in detail in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Much will be derived from these writings with regard to the methods. Today, however, I would like to describe the effect of the spiritual research path on the human soul, not so much what the spiritual researcher has to do, but rather how his soul is affected by what he has to accomplish.

One of the essential things that the spiritual researcher has to accomplish in order to move into the spiritual world is, as has often been emphasized, a certain transformation, a development of thinking, of human thinking. After all, we also distinguish the three human soul powers: thinking, feeling and willing. All three soul forces undergo a certain transformation under the influence of the spiritual scientific path, a certain inner development in the life of the soul.

One such direction of development now relates to thinking. What happens, we might ask, to what a person calls their thinking when they want to become a spiritual scientist? In a certain way, an impulse is given to thinking – an impulse given out of the arbitrariness of the soul – so that this thinking becomes something other than it is in ordinary life. In ordinary life, thinking develops thoughts. These thoughts are there to depict some external reality. It is said that one has a true thought in that this true thought refers to a reality that it depicts. Such an aim of thinking is perfectly healthy for everyday thinking and also for thinking in the ordinary sense of the word scientific.

For the spiritual researcher, however, this thinking, which is justified in everyday life and must be applied unconditionally in ordinary science, is only the starting point of his path of research. The spiritual researcher must devote himself to such inner activities that he does not turn his attention so much to the content of the thoughts within the thought process - this, as I said, is important for other things, not primarily for the spiritual research path. So the attention is not turned to the content of the thoughts, but - is, after all, a specific activity, an inner accomplishment. The attention is diverted - this is essentially the culture of this thinking that is meant here - the attention is diverted from the content of the thinking and is directed entirely to the inner activity of thinking that is being done.

The thinker captures himself in the act of thinking, focusing so strongly on this thinking, on what is actually going on inside him, that this attention is completely diverted from any thought content - yes, that it to such an extent that the content of thought is completely expelled from consciousness, and the person ultimately comes to do this himself in an inner process of activity that is thinking, but which is not filled by certain thoughts relating to anything.

But as a result, one experiences the peculiarity in the thought process of bringing something to consciousness that, in ordinary life and in ordinary science, must not be brought to consciousness in this thought process, because otherwise the judgment about external, sensually real things is clouded.

A volitional process is hidden at the basis of our thought process. This, which is the will to think, which is actually an unconscious volitional process in the thought process, is detached from what thinking otherwise is in life, and the soul holds consciousness solely and exclusively on this inner volitional reality of thinking. In this way, through an inner, spiritual-soul process, which is absolutely real, something is detached from the thinking of ordinary life, in the same sense, only spiritually-soul-like, not physically, something is — as in the chemical process that separates hydrogen from oxygen, just as hydrogen is released from water, just as hydrogen is released from water, in exactly the same sense — only transferred to the soul-spiritual. So it becomes a scientific method that is well recognized in the outer life, and it is simply transferred to the soul-spiritual.

What one arrives at can only be experienced, dear attendees, of course only be experienced. And what is experienced is that one has now detached a process of the will from the thought process, and one now knows that by living in it, one no longer lives in the physical body. At first this sounds fantastic to anyone who is not familiar with these things. It also sounds fantastic to many who believe that their habitual thinking is based on solid scientific ground, and therefore view something like what has just been said as fantastic from the outset.

Nevertheless, the more one continues to pursue the development of thinking described above with perseverance and iron energy in one's soul, the more one becomes aware of how, in the end, one really lives in an element that only experiences the will present in the thinking process in the soul; but experienced in such a way that the experience is free from the body.

You experience this freedom from the body in two ways, through two things. The first is that you can have the – and it is not too strong a word to use – harrowing experience of realizing that, when you have come as far as just described, one's own corporeality, and one's physical experiences, which one otherwise experiences as belonging to oneself, that one has these outside oneself, as one otherwise has mountains, tables and chairs [– just external facts –] in front of oneself in physical perception. Being outside of the physical body is experienced by no longer having the physical body within one's subjective experience, but rather having it as an external object. This is one thing.

The second thing, however, is that a very definite transformation of thinking takes place through the processes that have just been described. Ordinary thinking, which a person must develop in everyday life and in ordinary science, has the peculiarity - and must have the peculiarity - that the thoughts it develops can be remembered. For a healthy life of soul within the physical body, it is a necessity that the thoughts that are developed about external things or about the inner processes of the soul should, if we may use the rough expression, stick to them as they live and can later be brought up again from this life of soul. This possibility of recalling the thoughts we have experienced, this ability to remember, must be connected with the healthy life of the soul in our everyday life and ordinary scientific work.

I have often mentioned here how this healthy soul life would be disturbed if such an ability to remember did not exist back to the point in time when we can become aware of our self in childhood, in our first childhood. A soul life that has an interruption in the continuous ability to remember, that could not recognize that its experiences belong to its self, that would be a sick soul life.

Such illnesses of the soul do exist. There are people who experience a condition in which they are completely rational and can carry out intelligent actions, but they forget how they have seen this or that happen in their inner life or how this or that has developed in their inner life. Because their I is interrupted in them, this I that is so intimately connected with the ability to remember, such people can nevertheless appear to have a sick soul life in their ability to remember, despite the fact that they carry out intelligent actions.

So, dear ones, the ability to remember is connected with the nurturing of thoughts in thinking.

It is quite different with the inner soul activity that one enters into when one carries out in the soul what has just been described. Then one has the opportunity to really weave in an initially indeterminate experience. You know full well that you are immersed in a new reality, one that is essentially different from the external sensory reality and also from the reality that can be grasped by the mind.

But what one experiences, which initially shows itself in images, so-called imaginations, weaving through the reality of the will - you will find this explained in the books mentioned - shows itself in such a way that it cannot pass into the ability to remember as it is immediately. And that is an essential part of this higher thinking. Because there is no other term for it, it should be called: This higher thinking, which is developed out of thinking, cannot be remembered so directly. It belongs to a world in which one now lives and moves, a world that is in constant becoming, a world that flits by. It could initially be compared to fleeting dreams that do not imprint themselves on memory, where these dreams are different from the ordinary dreams of everyday life.

If you take this immediate psychic experience that has just been described, then you can say: you experience a certain content of the soul; it is not immediately imprinted on the memory as it is, [in such a way that you could later say, “What did I experience back then?”] and that you would not need to relive the experience, but could simply remember it. That is not the case! If you want to have what you have experienced spiritually back again, then it must be experienced again in the same way. And you can recognize from this that you are really in the spiritual world, that no memory remains of what you remember in the spiritual world. You can recognize it precisely from this!

And you can tell something else too: you can tell that everything that, like ordinary, everyday thinking, leaves memory traces, that this is dependent in its process on the physical body of the person as its tool. And it is precisely the spiritual researcher who, in this respect, can fully agree with certain directions of modern science. It is precisely the spiritual researcher who realizes that this ordinary thinking cannot take place without the physical organism, the nervous system and that which is connected with the nervous system in the rest of the physical organism being set in motion. And through the - again, roughly speaking - imprinting of the life of thought in the bodily life, the remnants of memory remain.

In this way, one can learn to distinguish between what has really been experienced in the spiritual [from what] is only conceived and bound to the physical. And precisely by recognizing the spiritual experience of the kind described, by realizing that it is basically only there in the experience itself, in its process itself, one learns to recognize it, [learns to] distinguish it from everything that is bound to physical corporeality. Because in the moment when any remnant remains in the physical human being, the bodily life is also involved.

However, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to penetrate into spiritual science, you have to make more precise distinctions. You might now ask: So is there no way for the spiritual researcher to remember what he has once experienced in the realm of the spirit in the way described?

To speak correctly, I have always used a word that I would like to draw attention to. I have used the word: “The spiritual experience does not immediately imprint itself on the memory.” Not “immediately”; but when it has been experienced, when this spiritual experience has been made, then it can be allowed to flow over into the ordinary presentation. It can be converted into an ordinary thought, and this ordinary thought can then be remembered in exactly the same way as one can remember an external life process. One has formed an idea of it. The idea is retained, but the life process is not carried along in life. If one wants to have it again, then one must relive it, exactly as with an outer life process, which also does not itself live on in memory, but only in the idea that one has formed of it.

Exactly as it is with the external life process, so it is in the spiritual experience. Not the spiritual experience as such passes over into memory, but only that which has arisen when one has first allowed the spiritual experience itself to flow into the ordinary life of thought through the exercise of the will.

The process of detaching the spiritual and soul life from the bodily life takes place as I have just described. But this side must not remain the only one. And so all the inner soul processes that are intended to point the way to the spiritual world are described in the books mentioned. They are designed in such a way that this development of the soul life, as it has just been characterized, is paralleled by another development. And just as the one development directs thinking in a certain direction through an inner impulse, so the other development directs the will life of the person, the will, to a certain development, which in turn is not present in ordinary life and of which ordinary science, including ordinary spiritual science, can know nothing.

As I said, today we are not here to repeat things that have often been discussed here, but to describe the effects. We can cultivate the will of the human being by looking at this will, as one would otherwise only look at external objects. In ordinary life, one has will. You have volitional impulses that arise from opinions, from external concerns and the like. But if you want, what is wanting flows so closely with what is carried out as an action and the like, or it remains contained in the sensation of desire, that the actual volitional process is not looked at. Even the self-observation that is often referred to as mystical, which so easily believes it can achieve certain [goals] that it sets itself, this self-observation also knows nothing of a real observation of the will.

This real observation of the will must in turn be achieved through long, energetic and persistent soul work. In this way, the human being comes to give the striving a certain form: to become a spectator of his own will. But then something very strange happens. By striving to become a spectator of one's own will, by striving, so to speak, to look at one's own will as one otherwise looks at external mineral or plant or other entities, one gradually loses oneself completely as a matter of course, one ceases to be a spectator, so to speak.

So the strange thing happens that what one must energetically strive for – to be a spectator of one's will – is that in the process of developing this spectator role, one's will is extinguished like itself! You really do extinguish yourself by trying to look more and more at your will, you extinguish yourself!

On the other hand, the will that one gazes upon will bear less and less the character of the will, the character of wanting. What one has previously experienced as volition will appear to one as a superficial configuration of the inner soul existence. And from this surface, as it were, something emerges from the underground through this surface, through something that one knew nothing about before, one learns to recognize that something is hidden beneath the surface of the will.

What I am going to tell you now is not just an image, not a metaphor or an illusion, but a full reality, a reality that is even more real than any external, tangible event! That which springs forth out of the will, which always remains unconscious in everyday life, is, yes, it is consciousness itself. One experiences that one carries within oneself during one's whole life an inner, invisible, unconscious spectator of one's whole volition.

This other person in the person is quite real. It is present in every human soul, and it can only be seen by directing one's gaze to the volition. And in that, as it were, one's own consciousness is extinguished, [through the surface of the will another, higher consciousness emerges] that takes the place of the ordinary consciousness, it is the reality of the will that is brought out of thinking through spiritual development in the way indicated above. So it is a different consciousness from the everyday consciousness that is now released from the activity of the will.

And now, instead of merely looking at the world with our ordinary consciousness, we learn to look at a [new] world with this consciousness that we ourselves have born out of the surging and driving of our will.

But that which has developed out of the will, that which one gets to know as a power of the will and soul, must connect with that which develops out of thinking. This consciousness that has broken out of the will must, I would say, connect spiritually and chemically with that reality of the will that has broken out of thinking. Then the inner spiritual man is present - who now knows himself as the spiritual man completely free from the bodily and at the same time knows himself in a spiritual reality, just as the sensual man with his eyes and ears knows himself in the physical-sensual reality.

If one were to develop only that which can be brought out of thinking, one would enter into an ever more anxious, one might even say fearful, state of mind, into a feeling of inner loneliness. By detaching from thinking that which can be detached from it, one actually only finds oneself, oneself weaving and existing in spiritual becoming - in a spiritual process of becoming. The one-sided experience of this could be compared to the ability to stretch out one's hands everywhere, to make grasping movements everywhere, but not being able to grasp anything. One would experience one's own spiritual-soul reality, but not a spiritual-soul reality outside of oneself. This spiritual-soul reality outside of one is experienced by the fact that the consciousness, which has been hinted at, is raised out of the will-being. And in and through this consciousness, in this and through this consciousness, one now experiences a spiritual external world, as one experiences an external physical world through the senses.

You see, dear attendees, that in all striving for spiritual research, it is important to develop something within the soul that makes that soul completely independent of all physicality. And the processes that really develop the soul are solely soul-spiritual processes. Everything that happens for the further development of the soul, all these are intimate, inner soul processes in which the body cannot participate; because they consist precisely in their essence, that the spiritual-soul is drawn out of the physical. From this it follows that the physical body as such cannot have any part in the development of real methods of spiritual research, because their essential nature consists precisely in making oneself independent of everything physical.

At the moment one believes that through some physical process, which must be stripped away to such an extent that even memory is immediately excluded, one can enter into the spiritual world through some physical process, one is completely mistaken.

And now, dear attendees, ask yourselves: how can it be possible to somehow bring about an unhealthy human experience through methods that lead people to experience something that is completely free from their physicality? How can physicality be ruined, how can it be affected by something that is precisely what it is because it makes itself independent of all physicality? It will admittedly take a while before it is recognized in wider circles of those people who have a scientific mind, that true spiritual scientific methods - and these are only those that really lead into the spiritual world - make man independent of all corporeality, so that it is absurd to speak of an ill soul life in any connection with the spiritual research methods! For it is precisely spiritual research – when it is based on such premises as those just briefly characterized – that must agree with true natural science regarding everything that modern science has to say about the dependence of soul life on physical experience.

Even ordinary memory, which is thus an entirely soul power that is part of healthy soul life, even ordinary memory knows: spiritual research is linked to the tools of the body, because thinking must work in such a way that the fabric of thought sends its waves into the physical realm and thus gives the physical realm its due by developing thoughts that are capable of being remembered.

Spiritual research has come to a deep insight with regard to the share of bodily life in the life of the soul. And it is only a delusion and a misconception when some scientific school claims that true spiritual research wants to deny the dependence of ordinary thought or will life on the body. It is precisely through this spiritual research that it becomes clear that what is to be independent, soul-spiritual life must first be released from ordinary soul life.

But the ordinary life of the soul is such – and it is precisely from the point of view of the liberated life of the soul that one experiences it – the ordinary life of the soul is such that it is everywhere submerged in the ordinary life of the body and thus dependent to a certain extent on this life of the body.

And further, in the spiritual scientist's research, it is shown how other expressions of the soul, other experiences of the soul, which are rightly counted among the pathological experiences of the soul, are also bound to the life of the body. When the natural scientist comes and says: We know visions, we know hallucinations, we know illusions - we must, even if we have not researched all the details, definitely take the view that an illusory, a hallucinatory soul life is at the root of this, that the bodily tool that has to be used by the soul life is not functioning in the right way. When the natural scientist says this, he will find that the true spiritual researcher is in complete agreement with him. This is because the combination of visions, hallucinations and illusions with that which has just been described as developing in true spiritual research means combining things that are as different as day and night.

The development of soul powers, which spiritual research requires, lies in the exact opposite direction to the processes in the soul that lead to hallucinations, visions or illusions. And anyone who is in the process of developing spiritual research abilities knows that they should not devote themselves to that part of the soul which can lead to visions, illusions or hallucinations, but that he should devote himself to those forces in the soul which alone are fruitful for him, which alone lead him to something that is suitable for dispelling, combating and dispelling hallucinations, illusions and visions. The development of spiritual research into the life of the soul lies in an intensification of this, in something that makes visions, hallucinations or illusions healthy. Because hallucinations, visions and illusions make the human being dependent on the life of the body in a much greater degree than the ordinary life of the soul, which he develops in everyday life, this healthy ordinary life of the soul, makes it appear dependent on the body.

This does, of course, touch on a sensitive issue, in that spiritual researchers are perhaps misunderstood not so much by natural science as by a school of thought that also claims to be spiritual research. And here we touch on the area where some people claim that true spiritual research - which is difficult - should not be difficult. Understanding a watch is difficult; but you get involved with it if you want to understand it; but the deep secrets of the world and the secrets of the soul should not be difficult to understand!

But those who shy away from the difficulty of spiritual research find an easy way to look into the spiritual world, precisely by resorting to a visionary, hallucinatory life – even if this hallucinatory world appears in all kinds of guises. And the evil is that spiritual research is all too easily lumped together by those who do not like to get involved with the differences with all the amateurish goings-on that claim visions, hallucinations instead of true spiritual insight.

The spiritual researcher takes the following stand on these matters, and stands by it so firmly that what he has to advocate becomes spiritual research practice. He takes this standpoint: the ordinary mental life that makes us familiar with the physical environment in a healthy way, and with much of what can be grasped about the physical environment through the mind that is tied to the brain, this mental life is bound to the whole human body in its thinking, feeling and willing. The normally organized human body is the tool for this outwardly healthy spiritual life. If true enlightenment is to occur, so that one really looks into a spiritual world, then the human being must rise above this normal, ordinary looking at things, which is bound to the body, to a healthy body. He must make his looking more comprehensive. And above all, he must make it more suitable, more subject to the will. He must do it in such a way that, while a large part of what takes place in ordinary mental life remains unconscious precisely because the body serves as an instrument, in spiritual contemplation man cannot be as passive as he is in ordinary contemplation, but must be active in everything he contemplates; he must develop will, inner activity. In short, in true clairvoyance, the human being's experience becomes broader than that which is bound to the body.

But what is seen in hallucinatory, visionary, illusionary soul life is more bound to the body. Because it is usually not the whole body that is seen, but only a part of the body – so that another part of the body is even paralyzed – it is more bound to the body than the ordinary spiritual life that is unfolded in everyday life.

So that one does not, through visions, hallucinations or illusions, gain access to a spiritual world that can give one more insights than the outer world of the senses. On the contrary, one does not gain access to a supersensible world, but to a subsensible world. One uses a smaller part of one's body as a tool than in ordinary life, in which one uses one's whole body as a tool.

But this is also why hallucinations, visions, illusions are less subject to arbitrariness, less subject to acts of the will than the perceptions of ordinary life; while true clairvoyance is a more active process, that is, it is more subject to the will than this perception of ordinary life. And the images that arise in hallucinations, visions and illusions are much more bound to the body than the images of ordinary memory. And if man were clever, he would value the occurrence of the images of ordinary memory more highly than all the fantasies that live in visions and hallucinations and illusions, insofar as they are bound to the body in the way described. He would realize that it is only his need for sensation that leads him to appreciate not what he sees in everyday life, but to appreciate more what is rare, what one produces through some rare process - to appreciate this more for the exploration of the secrets of life than the everyday observation. And in this unfortunate, psychic sensationalism lies a multitude of aberrations that consist in an amateurish spiritual worldview.

It is gratifying to be able to point out that one has this or that medium. The spiritual researcher, who says yes to everything from his consciousness; you don't have to believe that. He says yes just as in everyday life everything comes from his consciousness. You can't be sure. You don't have to believe it. But if you have a medium, you can be sure, because the will plays no role in it, everything happens in natural processes. Real, will-free science is present!

The true spiritual researcher knows that the field of vision into the world is narrower for the medium – although nothing should be said against some research methods involving mediumship, I have already spoken about this here – but the true spiritual researcher sees that the field of vision into the world is narrower for the medium, not wider, but narrower than for ordinary observation in everyday life. In ordinary observation, in ordinary science, which simply come about with healthy senses and with a healthy mind, one experiences many more of the secrets of existence than through any kind of mediumship, through which one can only experience something strange - something strange because under abnormal conditions a smaller field of vision is overlooked. (Interjections: “That's wrong!”; “Oh oh!”).

But that is precisely what it is about, that for true clairvoyance this field of vision must be expanded, that this field of vision must be expanded precisely by the fact that what one otherwise experiences in terms of world secrets in ordinary life undergoes an addition, in order to experience what is now being experienced, completely independently of all physical activity!

It is therefore, esteemed audience, that a number of people are gradually coming to recognize, precisely from the genuine, true conditions of natural science, how all development in clairvoyance to the opposite side, from which, wherever the human soul develops, when it falls into hallucinations, mediumship and the like due to a downgrading of healthy life.

I have already indicated, dear attendees, that it will take quite a while before the recognition of such a spiritual path can be achieved on the basis of genuine science. Because the people who still call what is presented as the essence of spiritual research wrong will still be around for a long time! These people belong in the same category as those who initially rebelled when the Copernican worldview was introduced into human history; these people belong among those who are not counted on when it comes to the further development of because they are naturally subject to the law that everything that enters world development may initially appear to be wrong, or at least to be something dreamy, crazy, fantastic. [...]

But this, esteemed attendees, already indicates how, basically, I would say, the balance between spiritual science and natural science is slowly coming. Little by little, natural science will realize that the true spiritual researcher is indeed on their ground.

But today there is still a danger that must be faced directly, and it comes from another side. This danger is not to be sought among those who, perhaps because of well-founded habits of thought, are opponents of spiritual science because they are scientists, true, honest scientists; but the danger lies with those who often believe themselves to be true followers of spiritual science; for spiritual science has to shake off much of its coat-tails, if I may use the rough expression, that clings to it. And above all, it has to draw a clear dividing line between the paths it takes and that have been characterized, and those that lead into the hallucinatory, visionary and so on, into the media, and that do not broaden the field of vision in relation to everyday life, but narrow it.

Someone who has become established in any field of natural science, let us say – because this must be of particular interest to us for our topic today – let us say in the scientifically based psychiatry of today, who has become established in such a field today, who has experience through faithful and faithfully meant scientific research , what the seriousness of the methods of procedure in natural science means, who is familiar with the efforts in the genuine sense of truth, which prevails in the field of natural science today, where it appears truthfully and honestly, must, in a certain way, be given attention if he is still unable to approach spiritual science simply because of his habitual way of thinking. And if it happens to him, which can easily happen, that he does not immediately get to know spiritual science where it is represented by its serious methods - by methods that are just as serious as the scientific methods - if he does not get to know this spiritual science in these sources, but gets to know it through all kinds of followers and if he then throws this following together with what true spiritual research is, there is a danger.

I do not want to talk about appearances, dear attendees, I do not want to talk about the fact that today there are still people who see an essential thing in how one feeds oneself in order to get on the path of a certain spiritual research! Whether one is a vegetarian or not is a matter of taste; it depends on other things. There may be certain advantages and benefits; but with regard to the intimate development of the soul, which generates the forces that have been mentioned and leads to the spiritual world, what one eats or does not eat has nothing to do with it, directly. It can make the physical life, which goes hand in hand with it, more comfortable; but it has nothing to do with it directly. You cannot eat your way up into the spiritual world by not eating certain things, for example. And anyone who believes that you can eat your way up into the spiritual world through such external materialistic processes or not eat – let's say starve – is just as much on the wrong track as someone who, out of his materialism, what de La Mettrie, whom I quoted the day before yesterday as the father of modern materialism, saw as the influence of the food of a meal, the substances ingested, on the actual life of a person. These things are indeed plausible.

It is plausible, for example, much more plausible than anything that the spiritual researcher has to bring forward in further development, it is much more plausible when de La Mettrie says: What power joy has over us. Joy awakens in a sad heart; it passes over to the souls of the fellow diners and is expressed in those charming songs in which the French excel. And then de La Mettrie points out – draws attention to the fact, which is certainly true – that Erasmus of Rotterdam and Fontenelle, for example, would not have become the geniuses they were if just a small cog in their brain had developed differently than it did.

The truths that come from this side are characterized above all by the fact that they are self-evident, so self-evident as to be trivial, but they do not touch on the subject of true spiritual science. Because a statement like that – de La Mettrie makes it in relation to Fontenelle and Erasmus – can even be taken further. If you think of it as even more exaggerated, you can say: Well, if Erasmus' mother had been murdered by some bandit before Erasmus was born, then the whole of Erasmus would not have come into being. There you can see the dependence of the spiritual life on the physical.

Yes, esteemed attendees, that is the essential point: the opponent of spiritual science does not even suspect from this side how true spiritual research basically agrees with his trivialities. I do not want to speak of other external appearances either, but unfortunately a spiritual research world view is often judged by those external appearances, which, for example, express themselves - if it were not discussed, there would be no need to comment on it - in the fact that certain ladies who consider themselves to be spiritual researchers wear their hair short - if they are men, they wear their hair long - that they wear certain clothes and so on. Well, of course, all such frippery can be lumped together. But there is a much more serious area - the one that is most certainly likely to give rise to the worst attacks and opposition to spiritual science in the near future, and in the more distant future.

With true natural science, for example, and with true psychiatry, spiritual science will be able to fully agree. The spiritual researcher will readily concede to the psychiatrist that there is, for example, a certain pathological mystical disposition, and that simply due to some characteristic of the human body, a person shows a certain urge for inner brooding; that he then comes up with the idea of wanting to find the solution to great world riddles in a certain chaotic inner emotional life. That such drives are connected with the life of the body, that is what the psychiatrist of today will have to assert. In this the spiritual researcher will be in complete agreement with him! And he can do so because that which he, as a soul-spiritual being, must develop in order to enter the spiritual world must be made independent of the bodily, and must therefore also remain independent of a possibly diseased bodily.

Anyone who adopts the perspective that spiritual research must take must look at precisely such a process of a strengthened soul life, even in the case of a pathological, mystical disposition of the soul. And so, if you yourself had a mystical disposition, this morbid mystical disposition could be viewed like an object from the outside. And you would come to a healthy judgment about your own work if you strove for a true, healthy spiritual-scientific point of view.

In this area, it will depend on distinctions. The spiritual researcher would have to show, with regard to certain spiritual phenomena, how spiritual realities around him are experienced in such a way that the experiences can only be expressed in colorful images. You will find such colorful images described in my Theosophy and in Occult Science in Outline. When such colored pictures, such auric pictures, arise out of true spiritual research, one must be clear about the fact that they are developed with the inner will for that which is really spiritually experienced, and that such a description of a spiritual experience of color is not made in a passive letting-upon-oneself of some color impression (which, however, can also be a hallucination).

With regard to hallucinations in this area, the spiritual researcher is in complete agreement with the psychiatrist, who is grounded in natural science. The spiritual researcher knows that such perceptions can naturally arise out of the sick soul life. There are people who simply experience very definite inner color experiences when they read certain words, when certain letters affect them; there are people who, when something unpleasant is said to them, hear it only in the left ear; when something pleasant is said to them, in the right ear, and so on. These things belong entirely to the sphere with which bodily life is connected - more intimately connected with soul life than in the case of ordinary, everyday views of the world.

But the spiritual researcher stands on the same ground as the natural scientist with regard to these things. And more precisely than the natural scientist, he can see how such involuntary hallucinatory vision arises from the body's predestined devotion to its own processes, while in true clairvoyance, free, independent activity of the will, independent of the body, is involved in every detail that one experiences in relation to the spiritual world. When a person succumbs, let us say, to delusions or obsessions, the spiritual researcher will perhaps stand even more firmly on the ground occupied today by the scientifically trained psychiatrist, with regard to these areas in particular, and be clear about the fact that certain ideas that arise and exert a compulsion on the person that he cannot resist are conditioned by the fact that the life of the body has been pathologically altered. But with his spiritual life freed from the life of the body, he will be able to look more closely at this bondage of all involuntary, abnormal ideas to the body and its functions as a natural scientist himself. If only one would realize ever more deeply that true spiritual science need not be in disharmony with what natural science asserts as a justified demand.

But, dear assembled guests, although it is true that the spiritual researcher arrives at something that is outside of him, even if it is his own self, and fundamentally cannot even change his body if he does not , although this is absolutely correct, there will nevertheless be more and more people who believe that they recognize in a certain development that is bound to the body that which also leads to real insights into a completely different world than the ordinary one. And there will be confusion among them; and these are often precisely those who lean on all kinds of spiritual-scientific, even real spiritual-scientific worldviews, and these spiritual-scientific worldviews are often judged by them.

There are people, let us say, who from the outset are afflicted with some kind of predisposition to abnormal mental life. If they had remained outside of a spiritual-scientific current, then, of course, they would have come to madness themselves in the course of a certain time. Now, due to some circumstances, they have come close to a spiritual-scientific worldview. Instead of giving themselves up to all kinds of crazy ideas outside, they then give themselves up to their crazy ideas within this school of thought. Because then, if one does not distinguish, one can of course very truly say: Well, the school of thought has driven the person concerned crazy! - But in the end, what are such statements worth?

They remind you again and again, dear attendees, of that old woman who looked after the great anatomist Hyrtl in his last days; and when he died, she went out into the street and said: Yes, now Hyrtl has died! That's what happens when you spend so much time studying! Then a stroke strikes him down! Hyrtl lived to be eighty-four years old!

This should be considered proof that, in this case at least, studying was less harmful than drinking wine and beer is for some people, and that a stroke can strike at a much earlier age.

Equally clever are those judgments that are often made when someone, afflicted with some kind of mental illness, has spiritual scientific views and after some time shows himself to be crazy - when it is said: If he had not come to this spiritual science, he would not have gone crazy!

The truth is this: one can, of course, just as well as through cleverness, come to spiritual science through madness and just as well through one's weak abilities come to madness there, or through some other kind of abnormal abilities come to madness, if one is unsatisfied by this or that in life. One goes here or there to find satisfaction, and then, of course, believes that one can feel comfortable in what initially seems difficult, by indulging in strange, unclear ideas that one has no desire to clarify, one believes that one can free oneself from some of life's pressures. The amount of spiritual research attributed to this side, which must therefore be characterized, cannot be exhaustively stated!

This, however, demands, demands more and more that it be pointed out that by its very nature, all spiritual research methods cannot, under any circumstances, be related to any kind of pathological mental life, because they are built precisely on freeing oneself from everything that can cause pathological mental life.

But just as I was able to point out certain dangers and adversities that are asserted against spiritual science in detail, so it can be said that with regard to its representation in social life, in human life in general, it is all too easily lumped together with all sorts of amateurish, even fraudulent, charlatan-like paths. And because these things, dear attendees, are now being discussed in more materialistic circles of world outlook, the spiritual researcher must necessarily point out how he draws a strict dividing line between what he, in an honest striving for truth, pursues only as a goal of truth, and all the various things that are asserting themselves in a field where one can so easily rely on superstition and on the credulity and for all kinds of impure goals, people try to spread alleged spiritual science or - as it is also called - occultism, so that people are confused by all kinds of secretions of what occult knowledge is supposed to be, and when they have been confused, they have a certain power over them - even if in our time it is said over and over again: it is the time when we have finally freed ourselves from the old belief in authority and when people profess “free judgment”.

Well, the truth of what this claim is based on is not so far away. It is true that people boast about it very much, saying that in earlier times people believed in the dogmas of the church fathers. Yes, for those people the church fathers were called Tertullian, Gregory of Nazianz, Irenaeus and so on; for modern people, who in their opinion - and that they have the opinion is perhaps even more harmful than it was for the old people that they did not have it. For modern people, who believe that they do not look to any authorities, the “church fathers” today are called: Helmholtz, Haeckel, Darwin, Dubois-Reymond and so on - they are only secular church fathers. They are spoken of more as a principle; but the dependencies on them are quite the same. We must not believe that credulity and superstition have particularly diminished in our time. They have only taken on a different form.

And so the true spiritual researcher is necessary so that he is not confused, especially in the present fateful time, with what, under the guise of an alleged occult science, pursues all sorts of dishonest and corrupting goals. So that he cannot be lumped together with it, for this is happening more and more every day: everything, even the most crass and foolish superstition, is lumped together with that spiritual science which, in fact, has a brighter, clearer, more illuminated thinking than even ordinary science, as can be sufficiently proven.

And here attention must be drawn to an apparent phenomenon, because otherwise errors could all too easily arise in this field if it were not known what the spiritual researcher wants to discard; it is positively a duty to draw attention to certain things that are also connected with our present momentous world-historical events. The following is mentioned only, as already stated, to set forth spiritual science in its purity and to draw a line against dishonesty. Only individual facts are singled out, and only for the reason that they are discussed in newspapers hostile to spiritual science.

For example, a personality who lives in the western part of Europe, in a capital city of the western part of Europe, published a kind of “almanac”, a yearbook, every year for years. Such a yearbook for 1913 has already been published in 1912. In this yearbook for 1913, which appeared in 1912, the words were written, esteemed attendees, with reference to the development of Austria - the words were: the one who believes that he will govern will not govern; on the other hand, another young man, who is believed to not yet govern, will govern. And in the almanac that was printed in 1913 for 1914, these things were repeated.

The credulity of our time, the foolish superstition, can of course easily believe in all sorts of prophecies. And how many will have believed in prophecy in this area!

Perhaps people will believe less in prophecy when they know that almost simultaneously with the appearance of this passage in the said almanac, the following sentences appeared in a very ordinary Parisian newspaper, “Paris-Midi”: “It is said that it is wished that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria be assassinated at the right time.

The personality who wrote such things in her almanac is probably connected with certain circles that pursue this or that goal through all kinds of underground channels. And anyone who is serious about spiritual research must also show that they agree with serious, scientific thinking in this area, even if it initially comes from the field of materialism, and not with the fraud that, under the guise of prophecy, pursues all kinds of charlatanistic or dishonest goals. The same personality who published this almanac and supposedly knew how to predict what would happen as a prophecy of the future, went from Paris to Rome in the first days of August 1914 to influence certain people there in their way to do certain things, which then contributed to the well-known interest in current events, or at least was supposed to contribute something.

The personality who wrote such things in her almanac is probably connected with certain circles that pursue this or that goal through all kinds of underground channels. And anyone who is truly sincere in their spiritual research must also show that they agree with serious, scientific thinking in this area, even if it initially comes from the field of materialism, and not with the fraud that pursues all kinds of charlatanistic or dishonest goals under the guise of prophecy. The same personality who published this almanac and supposedly knew how to predict what would happen like a prophecy of the future, went from Paris to Rome in the first days of August 1914 to influence certain people there in their way to certain things, which then contributed at least something to the well-known interest in current events, or at least should contribute something.

Because, as already mentioned, these things are publicly discussed, the spiritual researcher must point out that all unhealthy response of the human soul to this or that “revelation” based on such foundations must be rooted out by true spiritual research! True spiritual research will not work towards the unhealthy, but towards the healthy. For true spiritual research is not capable of obscuring thinking or making man stupid in regard to the outer real processes of life. Everything that paralyzes spiritual life and leads it astray, as has been described, also clouds thinking and makes it dull to the sober realities of life. Everything that broadens, these spiritual explorations that expand one's view beyond ordinary life, also enlightens one's healthy judgment of this ordinary life. This does not force people to be deceived under the influence of superstition, but it does lead to a clearer and brighter understanding of life's circumstances.

In this area, spiritual science still has much to offer and much strength to give. For today, esteemed attendees, one does not notice how, I might say, dull the weapon of thought has become, how much thoughtlessness always prevails!

In conclusion, let me give you another example of this, which will show you where unhealthy thinking lies and that this unhealthy thinking does not lie in spiritual science.

I would like to say: chance has just brought it home to me, which I now have to explain in relation to the following. Some time ago, dear attendees, I gave a lecture in a city in Austria. There I developed thoughts that I had also developed here in Munich, partly in the lecture that I gave here months ago, about the world view of German idealism, partly in the lecture that I gave here the day before yesterday about the individual national souls.

I think that all healthy thinking will be able to at least recognize this – however one may critically view it – at least recognize that when one truly looks into the spirits of the people, into the individual national souls, certain characteristics present themselves, so that the individual national soul differs from the other in a certain way.

I also presented this in that city in Austria. Not only did a confused mind in a newspaper at the time go on about this truth, which he did not understand at all; he also said: I would have taken the opportunity, because the military power relations in the east and West and Central Europe happened to have brought about antagonism, to now also construct a spiritual antagonism. Well, that was a confusion that one can absolutely conceive in a “daily paper”. But that was not enough; rather, a reprint of what was in that “daily paper” at the time appeared in a German magazine. And in a German magazine, a man writes - according to him, he is an Austrian German - the following words, really the following words:

"The critic's accusation that Steiner has constructed opposing cultures from the current constellation of powers is justified. With the best will in the world, I am unable to perceive any essential difference between Central European and Western and Eastern European culture, as Steiner does. In my opinion, European culture is essentially completely the same.

Consider the light of thought that such a claim casts! Consider it, honored attendees! Yet the same man even finds the opportunity to say:

“Intellectual life has also developed in this direction and is absorbed in this pursuit. The wild greed of the European man of culture for the possession of earthly goods would degenerate into a predatory struggle of all against all if individuals were not constrained by iron state structures.”

Now I ask you: Did the “human individuals” today declare war, or did those at the heads of the states?

So with a complete slap in the face of what is accessible to the simplest thought, people are beguiled! Such things exist in the world of that thinking, which one does not want to recognize as unhealthy today because one has become too indifferent to it. Instead, one finds, the less one is aware of it in particular, in what is contained in true spiritual science, that which is intended to mislead people, that which is intended to create confused ideas in people.

Truly, the spiritual researcher could, if he found it somehow compatible with his otherwise sound character, could fall into a certain complacency when he sees the confusion of ideas prevailing today as a result of a very common-place thinking - but which in truth turns out to be quite unhealthy compared to the healthy thinking life of spiritual research.

It is possible – one must, I would say, as with Hamlet's words: “Writing table here!”, so that one can write it down – it is possible that a person exists who is able to tie something like this to humanity! And it is possible that a magazine exists that prints something like this! The person who publishes the magazine is called: Dr. Friedrich Maier and lives in Tübingen. And attention must be drawn to such things so that one can see where unhealthy thinking and spiritual life exist.

In this case, dear attendees, if one or the other might be surprised that I say such things with apparent zeal – as one might always believe in such a case – perhaps out of wounded, personal vanity, I can in this case provide the counter proof, I can adduce the counterproof from the journal itself – although anyone who knows me and is familiar with how I represent spiritual science will trust me when I say that whether what I do and say is praised or criticized by someone else is of as little personal concern to me as possible! Truly, whether someone praises or criticizes what I do and say is of as little personal concern to me as possible. But when it is a matter of pointing out where there is public mental illness or health, then I feel called upon to have my say, precisely from the point of view of pure spiritual science.

As I said, I can prove that I am not dealing with vanity here; for I have published a brochure - “Thoughts during the Time of War. For Germans and those who do not believe they have to hate – Berlin 1915). These are – admittedly with somewhat different examples, but essentially – exactly the same thoughts that I expressed at the time in Linz an der Donau and in other lectures, which I – as I have explained here – on the diversity of the European national souls. The thoughts are contained in it, of which the magazine I have just mentioned has spoken in such a way, as it has been suggested, has spoken in such a really nonsensical way. The next issue of this magazine contains the continuation of the article. In any case, it continues in the same vein. And at the end of the same issue there is a section in which the brochure 'Thoughts During the Time of War' is discussed. And there this book is particularly praised. Part of the article was written in August 1915, the rest in [October] 1915. So in this [...] article, alongside the article in which the foolishness in question is mentioned, there is also a laudatory review of the book that says exactly the same thing! So here we have a case, ladies and gentlemen, which I just wanted to highlight, that should really be seen, and from which it can be seen how true spiritual science is often placed in the overall spiritual life of humanity. I have often pointed out how the spiritual and cultural conditions of the present demand that from now on and into the future, spiritual science must be incorporated into the development of humanity.

Of course there will be people for a long time to come who will denounce, defame and fight spiritual science. But spiritual science, firmly rooted in the ground it has managed to gain through the foundations it has laid today and in the past, will always and forever have to be aware that the truth, if it is the truth – and if it is the truth is the truth, it will always and always have to be aware that the truth, if it is the truth, will find its way through the narrowest cracks, no matter how large the masses of rocks of prejudice and slander and opposition that arise, which only leave the small cracks for the truth to pass through.

Therefore, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, allow me to conclude these reflections of today, which only sought to hint at a truly healthy soul life in connection with spiritual research, with what lives in the spiritual researcher who carries the fundamental nerve of his science within him as the source that gives him convincing power and certainty of action and will.

To this spiritual researcher - to put it figuratively - the human soul appears as a sister of truth. And by cherishing this thought, he says to himself: One can fight the truth, but it will always and again assert itself through the truth power within it, even if the fight should make its existence difficult in a certain period of time. One can even suppress the truth with force, suppress it for a certain period of time; not suppress it for the entire developmental history of humanity.

The suppressed truth will emerge again and again, because the human soul and the truth are siblings. And even if, as is otherwise the case with siblings, they live in a kind of disharmony and alienation in certain periods of time, There will always be periods of time when truth and the human soul will come together in their brotherly relationship and remember their origin, their common origin, their paternal source in the world. And this common paternal source in the world for truth and the human soul, which is at the same time the source for all true soul-searching, is what spiritual science, in healthy endeavor, seeks to find. This is the world spirit itself, interweaving and permeating from eternity to eternity, into which, starting from the point of origin of matter, to penetrate is the task and goal of all true and healthy spiritual research.

Those who represent spiritual science in the truly scientific sense, as it is meant here, cannot be surprised at the numerous biased judgments and rejections that it still encounters from all sides today. For they are able to see the scope and scope of the scientific results of the present and the recent past, which many people assume contradict this spiritual-scientific world view. On the part of those who believe that they stand on firm ground in the results of present-day research and can form a world picture for themselves that does not take into account the ideas of spiritual science, it is understandable that they do not yet engage in a real examination of what spiritual science has to say about its results. And so it turns out that it can be shown that spiritual science not only harmonizes with all the justified scientific results of the present day, but that these scientific results, when looked at closely, confirm what spiritual science has to say; and yet, one must find opponents, which becomes even more understandable when one considers the methods of scientific research in more concrete, specific things.

Not so long ago, Professor Dewar gave a lecture at the Royal Institution in which he attempted to speak about a future end state of earthly existence based on the view he has gained from the scientific results of the present. Let us consider for a moment what ideas this physicist, whose physical research has my full and unstinting approval, has about a final state of earthly existence, a state in which the human inhabitants of the earth, who now walk this earth, can no longer exist. Professor Dewar tries to utilize the physical ideas that are available to him today and finds, with a certain one-sided justification, that one must assume, according to the processes that can be observed by the physicist, that the earth is cooling down. And he calculates an end state in which the earth will have cooled down to, say, minus 200 degrees Celsius. He suggests that the Earth is evolving towards this final state. He is clear about the fact that everything that is now water in the oceans will of course have long since solidified; that the air that makes up our atmosphere today will be liquid, and that at a height of ten meters the Earth will be covered by this liquid air, in the form of a sea. The cold that will then prevail, he believes, will make much of what is on the earth today appear different. Of course, not only the temperature will change and with it the aggregate states of the individual bodies, but also many other things in the appearance of what will then be found on earth. Thus Professor Dewar, again quite correctly starting from physical ideas, finds that milk, which of course will then be solid, will glow in blue light. I don't know how this solid milk will be produced, but according to physical ideas it will shine in blue light. And there's more: egg white will be so luminous that you can read a newspaper by this light, which you can produce by painting the walls of the room with this egg white. I don't know who will read newspapers then, since I suspect that people will have long since frozen to death, but Dewar still uses this argument to form an idea of the former state of our Earth according to his world view, and many other things. On the liquefied air, which will then be the sea, there will only be very gaseous light bodies, hydrogen, helium, neon, krypton. He describes very nicely how one will feel quite differently then, because of course the resistance of these light gases will not be as strong as the resistance of the air for the present organism.

One can, by following the ideas of today's physics, paint this final state of the earth in great detail, and such a lecture is of course in our present time by the “non-authoritarian” people - one must say that out of courtesy, because today, of course, no one believes in authority - be said, because today, of course, no one believes in authority — is accepted as something extraordinarily significant, which finally shows how the “exact physicist” has to think about a valid world view.

If you recall what I said about the most important conditions necessary for spiritual scientific research, it was that through the inner exercises that the soul has to go through, it gradually comes to what I have called, using Goethe's words, the beholding through the eyes of the soul; that it has to undergo, in particular, a life in conceptions that are modeled on outer moral thinking. Not that it is to be confused with this, but the whole soul mood that the spiritual researcher has to develop within himself must be such that his own self relates to the ideas saturated with reality, which he must strive for, in the same way that a person relates externally to things that he considers morally good and to things that he considers morally bad. Here one is not satisfied with the fact that certain things can be designated as morally good and others as morally bad, but one knows that when one's affect speaks of the good, one must follow the good impulses, and when one's affect speaks of evil, one must suppress it. And when a person's soul is fully developed, he will act accordingly in his outer life. In this way, the relationship between the spiritual researcher and his own conceptual world must become a living one, not just a logical one. And in the life of the idea, of the concept, it happens that one cherishes certain concepts because they are capable of penetrating into reality. While other ideas announce themselves in such a way that they can be compared to what is to be avoided in the realm of moral life; they must, as it were, be pushed away from the horizon of consciousness. In this inner life of the soul, the ascent of the spiritual worlds is revealed, which can then be contemplated.

People like Professor Dewar are led away from such a striving for reality-imbued ideas precisely by their prejudices or, better, “prejudices”. For the spiritual researcher, it then becomes clear where the error actually lies in the structure of such a world view. In the style of this world picture, one could draw a comparison with regard to the final state of the earth if someone, on the basis of quite correct physical, chemical and physiological premises, calculates the development of, let us say, certain metabolic phenomena in man. One could interpret certain metabolic phenomena in the human body and calculate future conditions on the assumption that this metabolic process occurs in time at a constant rate, let us say, between the 30th and 40th year of the person's life. One observes individual processes and then calculates how these must take shape in 150 years according to the very correct assumptions of science. The only objection is that after 150 years people will no longer be alive, that the state will have already been reached where the soul has left the body and the body no longer follows the laws that are imposed on it by being filled with a soul, but instead follows external physical and chemical laws of the earth's environment.

If you say something like that today, you may be accused of saying something quite grotesque, something quite foolish. Nevertheless, anyone who does not thoughtlessly follow the scientific research of the present day, but who engages with the way in which certain assumptions are used to draw conclusions, knows that what I have just mentioned as a comparison is deeply justified. For it is absolutely true that after the time when milk would shine so beautifully in a blue light, when you could paint the walls with egg white so that you could read newspapers while doing so, the earth would be just as absent as the human body is after 150 years.

Today, the opinion is widespread that spiritual science forms lightly-dressed ideas out of thin air. And because of this assumption, the comparison of spiritual science and natural science naturally turns out in such a way that one says: on the one hand there is natural science, which reaches its results in an exact, thorough way; and on the other hand there is spiritual research, which indeed claims to be in full agreement with natural science, but which obtains its concepts through some kind of fantasy! Prejudices of this kind must first be overcome if spiritual science is to be further recognized. And spiritual scientific results are not to be had for nothing. One can study the difficulties that stand in the way of real results in spiritual research by considering people of knowledge who dedicate their lives to the struggle for real knowledge, who do not merely repeat what the course of external research is today, but who, being familiar with all the details of modern research, also strive for knowledge of the spiritual conditions of the world.

Recently, we were reminded of such a personality of knowledge, as the psychologist of the soul, whom I mentioned here recently in a different context, Franz Brentano, died a few days ago. The honored audience, who are here often, know that I rarely speak about myself. But today I would like to make one comment: that I really followed Franz Brentano's, the soul researcher, research path from its beginnings to his later struggles. And with him in particular, one could see very clearly how, for someone striving for knowledge of the spiritual world, it is difficult in the present day to achieve full strength, insofar as this is possible in everyone, even in today's age, due to opposing prejudices. Many obstacles stood in the way of Franz Brentano, which arose precisely from the fact that he did not live in the scientific age, which would have been his good fortune, but in the prejudices of the scientific age. And so it came about that Brentano, after writing some brilliant, profound works on Aristotle, then published a “psychology” in 1874. It was intended as the first volume of a multi-volume work in which he sought to ascend to an understanding of the actual life of the mind and soul. He never got beyond the first volume, and only in smaller writings did Brentano go on to add, I would say, a few splinters of what he had to say.

To be sure, Brentano's outer life was full of changes; and if one regards things only superficially, one could perhaps say that this changing outer life prevented Franz Brentano from finding the composure necessary to complete his “Psychology.” But that is not the case; rather, it turned out that Brentano failed because of the riddles of the life of the soul itself. He began to present them in the first volume of his “Psychology” in such a way that the path would have led him precisely to the point where the spiritual science that is meant here stands. But he could not get through because of his adherence to scientific prejudices. And since he did not want to develop mere concepts, but concepts containing reality, he left the whole matter alone.

Now, even at the time when he wrote his Psychology, Brentano started from the principle that the inner mental life can admittedly be perceived but not observed. It is a saying that seems as well-founded as possible for the simple reason that we ourselves are the mental life that we develop. So one can say: When any representation arises, we must have it; we cannot confront it and observe it. When we observe it, it has already passed, and so it must first be brought up again from memory. These and other difficulties are present. Therefore Brentano thinks that one can perceive the mental life, but not observe it. But he has not seen that if one could observe as he means, namely that this observation would be completely in line with the model of natural science, then one would never arrive at a science of the mental. If one could observe in this way, that is, if one's soul life were at a standstill, one would perceive nothing in this soul life but mirror images, mirror images of a reality. From these mirror images, just as little could be found out about reality as one can grasp the images of a mirror or the like. One cannot observe the soul life at all if one only wants to observe it in the immediate present. That is why I had to say here a few weeks ago: What matters when observing the soul and spirit is not that you, so to speak, place yourself in opposition to this soul and spirit and then observe it like a scientific object, but what matters is that you bring about such inner processes as, for example, this is: one gives oneself, as one says, to a very specific idea in a meditative state, again and again, but one then also observes how this idea works without being present; one hands over, so to speak – there is no need to decide on this from the outset – what one imagines to the objective course of the world. Whether it is pushed down into the so-called subconscious or handed over to some other sphere of the world's existence will become apparent in the further course of the performance. One lets what one has called into consciousness take effect without being present. And if one has then performed the other amplifications of consciousness described in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then one does indeed find that one cannot observe this soul-spiritual that reigns in oneself as Brentano wanted, but that one must observe it by considering it in its workings in time. The soul reveals itself only when we observe it in the course of a person's life; not by confronting it in the present, but by seeing how this soul works between birth and death. And this observation of the soul takes place with the same exactitude as external scientific research.

As I said, if I may add a personal note, I may perhaps say that in the last two lectures here I spoke about the relationship of the soul to the nervous human being, to the breathing human being, to the metabolic human being, and I tried, in full harmony with science, to show a result that I believe can be of tremendous importance for understanding the interrelation of the world. I have not formulated what I said in the last two lectures in this way before, but it is now exactly thirty-five years since I, as a very young man in Vienna, began the research that could ultimately lead to expressing what I have in the last two lectures. And I have been unremitting in this research. I have tried to pursue this research as I have also described recently: by handing over the ideas to objectivity, to see what becomes of the ideas themselves when they work spiritually without one being present. One will just realize that spiritual research is just as exact as external scientific research. This may be necessary if the circle of those who see in this spiritual science what is necessary for the future development of humanity is to become larger. It turns out, however, that in the path of this spiritual research, the ideas in the soul do not proceed as abstractly as they do when one does external scientific research, or when one reflects in the way one is accustomed to with regard to the external life. Rather, I would say that on the other side, when we are no longer personally present, the images that are pursued in their own course connect with the spiritual life, with the spiritual events, through their own inner essence, in a way that is different from the way they connect with the external world of the senses. Only in full swing, when one participates, can the spiritual world be observed.

An observation, as I now want to cite it, will, if undertaken without the prerequisite of an inner schooling of spiritual research activity, lead to nothing right, just as when working in a chemical laboratory, for those who cannot handle things, they lead to nothing; only after one has created the inner experimental things does the matter show up in the right light. What appears in its true form is what some thinkers have suspected, although they have hardly progressed beyond mere suspicion. All the soul life that we develop by coming into contact with the outside world, whether inanimate or animate, all this soul life, which usually lies within our consciousness, is accompanied by another soul life. And anyone who has created the inner conditions to observe such things correctly inwardly can become aware of how the soul — Eduard von Hartmann would call it: in the unconscious, but this unconscious, which I mean here, differs from Hartmann's precisely in that it can become conscious — is constantly working in this unconscious. Alongside the currents of the conscious soul life, there is another that constantly flows along, which - if one can direct the soul's gaze at it - is not subject to the laws that govern the external soul life, and which naturally correspond to the course of natural events. This soul life is also subject to laws, but they do not correspond to the laws that prevail in the ordinary conscious soul life. For the spiritual researcher, this subconscious soul life comes to the surface. For ordinary life, it also comes to the surface, but one does not know that it is coming to the surface. For example, one often believes that one has formed a particular idea or thought, and assumes that the whole process lies in the ordinary conscious soul life. It does not, but emerges from the subconscious soul life. The spiritual researcher can now observe how these two currents of soul life work together. And basically, when one speaks of clairvoyance not in a superstitious or theoretically mystical sense, but in an exact sense, this clairvoyance is nothing other than the ability to truly raise this parallel soul life and to be able to convince oneself that it is indeed subject to its laws, but that these laws are different from those of the conscious soul life. He who rises in a healthy way to such observations, as described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, will not be driven into any kind of morbid or pathological states. On the contrary, what I indicated in the last lecture will happen here: he will make his soul life healthier and healthier if he proceeds correctly. But such a spiritual researcher will acquire a certain ability of the subconscious soul life to interact with the ordinary soul life. And while in ordinary life, for example when one listens when someone reads something to one, one believes that one is now completely absorbed in what is being read to one, as a truly trained spiritual researcher one no longer thinks so. One knows that the subconscious soul life runs away and often goes completely different ways than the ways of the ideas that are being read. And if one has sufficient skill not to become inattentive while listening, then between two words that one hears, things arise from the subconscious that are just as much the product of the soul as the things of the conscious soul life, but that run parallel to the stream of the conscious soul life; things of a completely different soul life. Certain thinkers have sensed this, for example by pointing out that a person not only dreams while sleeping, but that the dream life actually continues throughout the day while awake, only to be overshadowed by the ordinary conscious mental life. This is also true – and yet, again, it is not true. It is only something similar to the dream life. The dream life is only a chaotic shadow of what is going on. In the subconscious, there is a parallel current that is as fleeting for today's ordinary soul life as dreams are, and can therefore be compared to dreams, but which arises from a spiritual reality.

By observing these two currents — the soul-spiritual and the soul bound to external nature — in their interaction, one gradually learns to ascend to a conception that cannot be substantiated in this one lecture in its details, but which is to be presented according to its result. One learns to recognize that the ordinary life of the soul, as it is rightly described by the physiological psychologists of the present day, by the type of Theodor Ziehen, for example, whom I recently quoted, has as its necessary condition the outer physical life of the body. If we now pursue this outer physical life with the means of spiritual research, we find that this outer physical life and with it the soul experiences of ordinary consciousness bound up with it are connected with those effects that take place between Earth and Sun. These effects are only of a refined nature, but they are similar to the effects of the sun's surroundings, say, on the plant world and the like. We learn to recognize the real connection between the tools of our ordinary conscious soul life and the earth and sun, I could also say: of our whole world system, as astronomy or astrophysics speaks of this world system. But we also learn to recognize that the course of the other currents is fundamentally different from the laws that are implanted in the physical and thus also in the soul of the human being through the sun-earth life. In its own laws it is not connected with the laws of the processes of which the human being is conscious in body and soul. On the contrary, it often contradicts them. Whereas in the outer life of the soul the psychologist speaks of association, of the bringing together of ideas, here the inner subconscious life of the soul carries out a separation, and vice versa.

These are only hints at the far-reaching differences between external and internal experience. And if we recognize the connection between the soul and the body to a much greater extent, and again the connection between the human body and the whole solar-earthly existence, then we also get ideas about a final state of the earthly existence itself; ideas whose formation is difficult to describe even in today's language. I can only say: Everyone knows how the astronomer can calculate a future star constellation from a present one, how one can calculate future solar and lunar eclipses. What happens here through calculation happens when one finds the right relationship to what one learns about the two currents that I have indicated, in their relation to the final state of the earth. What is calculated there is seen inwardly here. We are not dealing with vague analogies in the sense intended by Fechner, but with a real inner vision of the final state of the earth. For one learns to recognize that something, which of course cannot be expounded in its details in a lecture, turns out to be a necessary result. I will lead up to this result by way of a comparison.

It is true that the way in which man as a physical being goes through the world is only possible because the soul — I do not want to say permeates him, lest one believe that I am making some kind of hypothesis — proves effective in him. If it can no longer prove itself effective, then this body follows different laws than those it follows between birth and death. It then follows the laws that it must follow because of its relationship to the external physical environment of the earth. It merges completely with its own laws into the surrounding laws of the earth. I would like to compare this with the result that emerges with regard to the life of our earth. Our Earth is progressing in its evolution, but in doing so it is undergoing inner transformations. These transformations cannot be known unless one is aware that the one real factor in the process of our Earth is what all spiritual beings perceive in their subconscious and develop in the manner indicated. Just as one cannot comprehend the development of a plant if one cannot form an idea of how the plant germ of the next year is prepared in the plant of this year in all its growth laws, if one does not see in all the shooting up of the leaves and so on the development of the fruit germ of the next plant, so one cannot comprehend our earth if one only applies the physical laws to it, as the geologist does. For what we experience in our subconscious manifests itself as something germinal in our earthly existence. If I may use an expression that is not quite correct, we will understand each other: it works and lives with us, but it is something that is not at all connected with the relationships of earth and sun. And so it turns out: just as a point in time occurs for the physical human being when his soul experience is separated from the physical, and the physical passes into the outer earthly environment, so a point in time occurs for the earth when the earth-sun effects cease. Just as the soul effects in the body cease from within, so the sun effects on the earth cease from without. Just as the body and soul, when separated, cannot be mixed, but dissolve, so from a certain point in time the Earth will become an impossible body in the universe. And just as the human body merges into its earthly environment, into its physical and chemical laws, so from a certain point in time the Earth will merge into the laws that we now follow in the indicated current.

As you can see, the reverse is the case with the earth and with man. The body of man passes over into the earthly environment. That which is earthly-solar in the earth passes over into the spiritual. Then, when this moment occurs, the lawfulness that we can perceive in the parallel current, which does not at all agree with the external laws of nature, prevails in this earthly body, which will then have died in the way I have described. And here the peculiarity comes to light, which today still looks like a crazy paradox: that the laws that we call natural laws today, are only valid until the end of the earth. And if someone tries, like Professor Dewar, to apply these laws beyond the end of the earth, he makes the same mistake as someone who calculates the laws of metabolism beyond physical death, for 150 years. The Earth will no longer exist at the point in time calculated by Professor Dewar because it will have been transformed into spiritual substance. And all spiritual and soul substance that can be observed in the second current, as I have described it, is absorbed into the spiritual and soul substance of the Earth, and lives within it, towards other formations of the world, towards future formations of the world that cannot be described at this time. But we are looking forward to a future final state of our earth, in which this earth will have gone through its death in such a way that it will have merged with a spiritual realm. Not even solidified milk will glow bluish, and egg white will serve as a candle, but everything that is now on earth under the law of the earth and sun, under what we today call natural laws, will one day live under completely different laws, under spiritual and soul laws, which will arise in the way I have described, from our own inner life. For we are already connected today, in a germinal way, with that which the earth is to become, through which the earth is immortal. Therefore, what lives down there in the soul life seems like a dream. It is precisely the germ of future worlds, and we are immortal because we live with this immortality of the general spirit.

In this way, one comes to a much more concrete view of the spiritual world than if one uses the abstract buzzwords of “mystical pantheism” and so on, which so many people still use so much today. In the spiritual science meant here, one should not seek a vague, nebulous pantheism, but concrete results based on exact spiritual and psychological observation.

The general thinking of our time is still averse to such reality-saturated conceptions, to which the spiritual researcher must advance in order to arrive at a world picture that encompasses all reality that we can attain, not just the outer physical. Anyone who has consciously followed the course of education in recent decades has been able to see how people basically do not love to immerse themselves in reality with their concepts. To grasp the living spiritual life by wanting to come to ideas that themselves live in a spiritual world - without being personally present, but only observing the inner life - is something that people in recent decades have not taken the time to do at all. Hence these numerous people, whom I would like to mention, the 'button counters' of spiritual science. I would like to call them button counters for the following reason: if you have consciously grown up with what many people have been concerned with as important concepts in recent decades, you can certainly understand that it has happened that way, but you also have to grasp it. For several centuries, certain people have repeatedly reflected on the social coexistence of people. Some have come to more individualistic concepts, others to more social concepts. Individualism and socialism have played a role in the most diverse variations in recent times when considering human coexistence, which must be thought of as imbued with the spirit. To those accustomed to concepts saturated with reality, this splashing about among all the socialists and individualists of recent times and down to our days, when one follows the lines of thought by which one became an individualist or a socialist, really does not appear to be based on deeper spiritual grounds, but rather as if one were counting at the buttons: Individualist-Socialist, Individualist-Socialist, and would have counted which button it stops at; only that it is not so noticeable when this button counting happens in thoughts. You splash around in such concepts that are not at all suitable for reaching into true reality, like these conceptual shadows that have been so idolized as individualism and socialism in recent decades.

But there is a very serious background to this, and it is connected with much that is already extraordinarily important for certain conditions in the present. For man does not always need to know how the general world picture, which arises from his ideas, feelings and will impulses, is connected with ordinary daily life, with social life. But he will cause tremendous harm if he, in particular, stands at an important point and proceeds from ideas and feelings that are not steeped in reality. When he theorizes about mere scientific concepts of a world view, as Professor Dewar does, these concepts appear to spiritual science as delusions, which he imposes on his listeners. It is one thing to view a world view from a scientific point of view, but if someone with the same spirit is involved in social work and transfers the same kind of spiritual to this external aspect, then it has a highly destructive effect, and often in life we look for what is actually missing in completely different places than where it should be sought. Because everything that happens on earth is connected. And just as a doctor sometimes has to diagnose an illness as something completely different from what one would initially believe after a superficial examination, so too does the person who has an overview of the situation sometimes have to look for the origins of some illnesses and some devastating effects in completely different places than what appears to be the case after a superficial examination. I would like to give an example of this, but how should I do it in this day and age, when, precisely with regard to this example, I could be seen to be allowing myself to be influenced in my judgment by the events of the times that affect us all so painfully? But precisely with regard to this example, I have a way of avoiding this appearance. In 1913, in Helsingfors, that is before the war, I gave a series of lectures on a completely different subject, but in the course of which, to mention just one example, I had to make an allusion to Wilson, and I will read out what I said about Wilson at the time in a different context. You will also see from what I said at the time that I certainly did not fail to recognize a certain significance, and also a certain spirit, that can be attributed to Wilson, but you will also see that it was not necessary, in order to form an opinion about this man, to first let the events of the last few years or weeks sink in – perhaps even – as was necessary with some people. I said at the time:

“There are some very remarkable essays that have appeared recently by the President of the United States of North America, Woodrow Wilson. There is an essay on the laws of human progress.”

Of course, Woodrow Wilson was already talking about the laws of true human progress back then.

"In it, he explains quite nicely and even ingeniously how people are actually influenced by the prevailing thinking of their age. And he explains very ingeniously how, in the age of Newton, when everything was full of thoughts about gravity, one felt the Newtonian theories, which in reality only applied to the heavenly bodies, to have an effect on social and even state concepts. One feels the after-effects of thoughts about gravity in particular in everything. This is really very ingenious, because one only needs to read up on Newtonism and one will see that words like attraction and repulsion, etc. are used everywhere. Wilson emphasizes this very ingeniously. He says how inadequate it is to apply purely mechanical concepts to human life, to apply concepts of celestial mechanics to human affairs, by showing how human life at that time was virtually embedded in these concepts, how these concepts influenced state and social life everywhere. Wilson rightly criticizes this application of purely mechanical laws in the age in which, so to speak, Newtonism has brought the whole of thought under its yoke. You have to think differently, says Wilson, and now constructs his concept of the state in such a way that, after he has demonstrated this from the age of Newtonism, Darwinism now peeps out everywhere.

What I wanted to say at the time was that Wilson now sees, by looking at a previous age: Newton was included in the concepts of the state, and people now followed that. What does he do? He now includes Darwinism because it is a comrade of the age of Darwin, just as people were contemporaries of Newton at the time. He is doing exactly the same thing, but he is naive enough not to notice it.

If all sorts of people have played with the concepts of individualism and socialism, and they have remained playing, well, that may be so; but if, with such defective thinking, as I wanted to say at the time, an important position is managed, then that has a completely different meaning. If you want to get to know our age, then you will have to get to know how to work with concepts that are divorced from reality, that are only shadows of something, where these concepts are justified, as in Wilson's case these social concepts, how to work with such shadowy, unrealistic concepts. One may still be quite far from such insight; but one will not understand reality and come to no conception of the world that corresponds to this reality, if one is not able to see through what kind of conceptual shells are used today in science and in the social fields. That is why people are least able to gain an insight when it comes to entering the real spiritual world and gaining a world view from it or through it. There are people who, whether through their own inner development or through external circumstances, are seized by the longing to know the spiritual. But where do they often look for it? They cannot bring themselves, because of a certain inner laziness of thought, to seek the spirit where it can really be found: on the path of the spirit itself. This is difficult, although, even if things have taken 35 years, it is entirely possible, when the results come to light, to find them immediately plausible. Above all, it requires that the inner soul be brought into such a mood and state that it is often not appreciated by exact researchers of the present day. This can be seen most clearly when an exact researcher who rightly has a reputation in the field of external natural science delves into the spiritual world.

Among the books that have caused the greatest sensation in the English-speaking world in recent months, apart from war literature, is the one that the naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge has written as his latest book. This book has a special reason. The reason for this is that the son of the naturalist Lodge, Raymond Lodge, was killed on the Western Front in August 1915. Now, Oliver Lodge always had a certain inclination towards the spiritual world. The death of his son added to his desire to penetrate into the spiritual world. And so it came about - I can only tell these things briefly, so some things will be inexplicable, but I still want to tell the case to confirm what is connected with the attracted train of thought - it came about like this: Even before the son fell, Sir Oliver Lodge had been made aware from America that something had happened to this son. When you read what was written to the Lodge family from America, indirectly through a medium – as these personalities are called – then a scientifically minded person – and Oliver Lodge is that, too – or let us say, a spiritually minded person , the impression is: Yes, what has been written to him could mean anything; at best, it can be interpreted to mean that Frederick Myers, the editor of a work on the scientific study of the soul's life, who died long ago, would take care of Sir Oliver Lodge's son. But the matter could be interpreted in one way or another. If Raymond Lodge had not fallen, it could be interpreted that Myers would protect him from death in battle; after death, it could be interpreted that he would be his helper and guide in the hereafter. I do not want to go into what is behind such things; they are not as harmless as one might think. Now Raymond Lodge fell. And Sir Oliver Lodge - who would completely refuse to intrude on the ways into the spiritual world to get to the immortal soul, which is represented in the spiritual science meant here - he came into contact with mediums that were, in his opinion, beyond reproach , and then it soon turned out for him that through these mediums the soul of Raymond Lodge communicated through the mediums, telling all kinds of things: how she was now living, what her wishes were with regard to the father, the family and so on. I would not mention this matter if I only wanted to relate what ordinary spiritualists report, because they lack objectivity; even where Lombroso and Richet are involved, objectivity still prevails. But Oliver Lodge is really a person who knows the exact methods, and who therefore also proceeds exactly in such a matter, so that also someone who has enjoyed an education in the methods of natural science in his scientific thinking and research, and who has learned to to develop real conscientiousness in natural science, which basically the spiritual researcher should also have, could have a certain respect for the exactness with which Oliver Lodge proceeds in describing the things he shares in his thick book. And while in the case of ordinary reports, it is of course always immediately apparent, if one is somehow even a little familiar with the things, where the observers have not seen anything, where the messages are missing about the arrangements and so on, with Sir Oliver Lodge one sees that a person is reporting who really knows how to handle and describe scientific methods.

Now, one thing that Sir Oliver Lodge states has made a particularly great and deep impression. I will not tell the other things, because they are, despite being stated exactly, according to the pattern of other sessions. But the one that made a particularly great impression is this: Sir Oliver Lodge relates that through the impeccable mediums – I can tell all this because you know I do not represent this direction – it has come out that Raymond Lodge had himself photographed with comrades before he was killed on the Western Front. And now Raymond Lodge's soul describes the picture through the medium, and in three photographs, as they are taken one after the other by the photographer, where, when one group is photographed, the same group sits, and only sometimes one, while in one shot he put his hands on his knees, then puts them on the chair or on the shoulder of the neighbor. With great accuracy, this medium describes, let us say, these photographs. While one – Oliver Lodge also admits this – could find some connections in the other things, so that some kind of quiet suggestion, as it usually is with such things, took place, or some other process that every spiritual researcher knows to transfer to the medium, what memories, reminiscences, especially subconscious reminiscences of the deceased Raymond Lodge came to life – while it went with everything else that was there, it did not go with this incident, because nobody could know about these photographs. These photographs were taken in the very last days before Raymond Lodge died, and had not yet arrived in England. Nobody knew anything about them, neither any of the family nor the medium. And indeed, a fortnight or three weeks later, the three photographs arrived, exactly as described by the medium. Now this naturally became an experimentum crucis for him, a proof of the cross, because here it was directly demonstrable: Nobody could know anything about it, it came from a world that is not the world in which Raymond Lodge used to live before he went through the gate of death.

This has not only had a great effect on Sir Oliver Lodge, who had a great affinity for such things, but it has made a great impression on the whole audience interested in such things. Oliver Lodge was indeed completely convinced and was also able to convince his family members who had previously been skeptical; the circle then expanded more and more. It is now strange how satisfying it is, especially today, not to have to face discomfort in order to penetrate into reality, how one can easily form ideas about the spiritual world in a light-hearted way.

The spiritual researcher knows that if something comes out in this way, it is certainly not a manifestation of a truly spiritual world. That is why in the last lecture I called what comes to light in this way the most soulless of all, the thing from which the spirit has been driven out completely, although it can sometimes imitate the spirit. When something comes out in this way, it is related to the spirit as the dead shell of a mussel is to the living oyster, when the oyster is outside. The shell comes out, the most material, the most sensual, the most sensual remnant, which sometimes reproduces the spiritual in its forms. For the spirit must be sought in a spiritual way. But how could Oliver Lodge, one may say this if one is familiar with real spiritual research, how could he yield to such dilettantism? Simply because he lacks the reality-saturated concepts to judge such things. If he had read just a little of the abundant German literature on these matters, which of course is also little considered today, but which is there, especially from the first half of the nineteenth century, is there in great numbers, then he would have known that, admittedly, he is not dealing with anything other than what was relegated to the field of deuteroscopy in German intellectual life in the first half of the nineteenth century. There have been reports of phenomena such as the often-cited case of someone who, through a particular state of mind — even Schopenhauer mentioned it — in a kind of dream consciousness, comes to the conclusion: Then and then you will have an accident here and here. Some somnambulists describe such accidents in the not-too-distant future so precisely that, for example, if they fall off a horse, they describe the scene in great detail. We are not dealing here with something that could expand human insight into the real spiritual world, but with a mere expansion of perception that relates to sensory reality. We are dealing with the transgression of the ordinary perception of space and time, which is entirely possible within certain limits. Now, in the case of Raymond Lodge, there was obviously nothing different than what happens in such cases. What did the medium tell Oliver Lodge? Nothing more than what happened afterwards. Although the photographs had not yet arrived at the time the medium described them, they did come later. Oliver Lodge and his family were waiting for them. There was an event that occurred; just as a somnambulist dreams, in a fortnight he will fall off a horse. So it is not something that would show someone who is truly a spiritual researcher the way into a real spiritual world, but rather something that relates to the real spiritual world as the oyster shell relates to the oyster. It reproduces it. But in what comes to light, can one suspect something, when one takes the things seriously? But because it is more comfortable than the actual entering into the spiritual world, many a person will love to investigate something of the spiritual world in this way. But one has to do with something much more belonging to materiality in a spiritualistic phantom than one has to do with the real bodily human being. This is precisely the peculiar thing about the way in which real spiritual research must become part of people's educational lives, that this spiritual research will deduce from the aberrations to which even great thinkers are exposed, people who are quite familiar with the exact methods of external research into nature.

Now, just as one must say that the laws of nature, as we abstract them from natural phenomena and apply them to the world, are not applicable in the characterized way for the final state of the earth, since the earth will change with all human soul and spiritual life as it has been described, so one can also say that for the initial state. There one must indeed learn how memory - that is, the life of representations that already live in our soul by themselves, so that we are no longer present - actually relates to the bodily life. And if one studies this in the same way as I have indicated for the soul life that one needs for the final state on earth, then one finds that an initial state of the earth cannot be calculated in the same way as current geologists do, who simply take the physical laws and then calculate what the earth might have looked like according to these physical laws so many millions of years ago. You could also take the laws of digestion and calculate what a seven-year-old child might have looked like as a physical being forty years ago. In this case, one would use exactly the same method as the geologist uses when calculating the state of the earth millions of years ago. It is really the case that the calculation is completely correct, and that the physical methods are also correctly applied, when one calculates from the metabolism of a seven-year-old child what that child might have looked like forty years ago – only it was not yet alive at that time. And so it is just not right that for the point in time for which the geologist gives such beautiful things – as I mentioned earlier, that Professor Dewar gives for the final state of the earth – the earth was not yet there. It had not yet emerged from its different life in the sun, it had not yet emerged, it had not yet lifted itself out. And for the initial state of the earth – I can only give a brief description of this – the situation is as follows: As we have to do with the final state of the earth, with the rising of the material earth in the sun-earth-law into a spiritual-soul state, so that we carry our own immortal-supernatural with us through future world cycles, so at the beginning of the earth's development we have to do with a descent - if one wants to use the expression, which is not very beautiful, of a spiritual-soul-like one; but in such a way that it does not become more spiritual, but is taken up, as it were, by what comes from the solar, so that within the material the spiritual-soul-like comes to realization, one can already say: is embodied. Here we have to do with the reverse process: with the origin of a spiritual from a spiritual that surrounds itself, envelops — “wraps,” one might say, in contrast to “develops” — in a material from the world of space, from the world of time. And here again we notice that for the beginning of the evolution of the earth the laws hold good which I have already mentioned for the parallel currents of the subconscious, and that the ordinary laws of mathematics come to an end there. However grotesque it may sound, it is nevertheless true. And I would like to say: Kant grasped a quarter-truth about this, in that he showed in his antinomies how it can be conceived that for certain initial and final conditions, it is possible to think in such and such a way; but just because he found a quarter-truth, the whole thing had more of a paralyzing effect on the world picture of reality than that it could have been beneficial. For Kant would not only have had to believe that space and time are tied to the human faculty of perception, but he would have been able to recognize, if he had penetrated to the real spiritual research, how that which lives in man as spiritual-soul is closely connected with the spiritual spiritual-soul happenings of the entire outer existence, first of all of the earthly existence, and how a thorough study of the spiritual-soul life yields a truly spiritual-scientific picture of the world, so that one can say: our world of space and time is bound to man's intercourse with the earth. Therefore, what we can discern through them is only valid from the beginning of the earth to the end of the earth. And one must get to know the other laws that are in the other current if one wants to talk about the beginning and end of the earth in such a way that a true, real picture of the world emerges. Then one recognizes that the human soul is older than the earth; that the human soul was already present in that spiritual, which has wrapped itself up, involved itself in that law of the earth, which comes about in the intercourse of the earth with the life of the sun.

Spiritual science thus goes beyond the world view that I recently mentioned, which made such a repulsive impression on Herman Grimm, who of course did not know these connections. I have already shared Herman Grimm's words at the time, I have shared them many times before, but they are so interesting that one can always let them affect one's soul again. For in them we have words that prove how a healthy, sensitive soul must relate to such worldviews, as Professor Dewar has presented them to the world in the manner described, and how they are so firmly entrenched in the education of the present that one is naturally still considered a real crank today if one agrees with such words as Herman Grimm has expressed. Herman Grimm was forgiven for that. They would say: oh, he is an art historian, he is – well, he is not generally familiar with the rules of exact natural science and its results; it is of no consequence. That is a good reason. But the serious spiritual scientist will not be forgiven if he cites Grimm's words, which he said in connection with Goethe's world view:

How could the children not believe it, how could they not indulge in this scientific fantasy! It's so easy to show. One need only pose as a teacher, take a 'droplet' formed from a certain substance, take a piece of card and slide it into the equatorial plane of the droplet, stick a needle in at the top, place it on the water; then turn it and show how the little droplets are formed, how the little world systems are formed. How could anything be more conclusive than this, that the great cosmic structure also came into being according to the Kant-Laplace theory? Unfortunately, sometimes it is good to forget oneself, but in this case, when one is conducting scientific experiments, one must not forget oneself – namely, the teacher forgot himself. Because if he had not turned, then none of the world system would have come about. If he wanted to describe this process correctly, he would have to think of a giant professor standing in space.

In short, the fact that today, despite being generally accepted by the scientific community, Herman Grimm can say:

Thus spiritual science provides a different picture of the world, one that can incorporate the spiritual and soul into the beginning and end state of the earth in such a way that this incorporation is truly supported, like any other scientific fact. The only difference is that these things must be investigated from the spiritual-mental side, and cannot be worked out on the basis of what applies only to the material processes of the earth, as long as the earth is this material body that it is.

People today are not even aware of the conceptual shadows in which they actually live. Only sometimes does one think a little more sharply; he then does not come away from these conceptual shadows, but he thinks a little more sharply and sometimes comes to very strange assertions. For example, Eduard von Hartmann, who could not get away from physical ideas, but who could think. Hartmann came to think about physical ideas as well. He thought in terms of these physical ideas and had the courage to express what arose from them. Take a very nice saying:

“That there is a real nature, and that the laws established by physics apply in this real nature, is itself only a hypothesis.”

What is actually behind this? That is to say: physics establishes laws; if you really think about it, the whole of nature is only a hypothesis. It is really only a hypothesis, because with the physical concepts you cannot grasp reality. And if those who form a world picture out of physical concepts do not – thank God – see the real nature illuminated by the sun, it would remain a hypothesis for them. Only external reality counts for them.

In the spiritual realm, one must achieve reality by being fully active in penetrating it. This is not so comfortable. It does not present itself automatically, like external nature. But a saying such as Eduard von Hartmann's shows quite clearly that the concepts prevailing in the physical field are also powerless to reach real nature. For he who can really think, who knows that nature is out there, but what the physicist wants to absorb from it, that only gives a hypothetical nature.

It is a momentous thought that Hartmann expresses, although it is, of course, a completely insane thought. It will come about that spiritual science enters into the educational life of humanity because the conditions for it are present. But some things will have to be understood again that are no longer understood today, that are only taken in by the sound of the words.

I have often referred to the first step of the view that one can arrive at when observing this second current of human soul life, which can become conscious, as imaginative presentation. One must penetrate to this imaginative presentation, which is not a form of self-conceit but a life in spiritual reality, in order to grasp reality at all. We shall have to understand such ideas that can inwardly quicken this penetration into spiritual reality. We shall have to understand not merely the sound of the words, but their deeper inner value, such as can be found by the hundred in the fragments, thrown down just so, of a great spiritual man who died only young: Novalis. And from what has been said today about life, death and immortality in the universe, one will get an idea of the depth that lies, for example, in such a word of Novalis: “We will only become physicists when we make imaginative substances and forces the measure of natural substances and forces.” That is to say, when we can also recognize from the imaginative, when we approach external nature.

Of course, people's attention had to be diverted from the spiritual for a time so that great progress could be made in the external, natural sciences. But man must not cut himself off from the spiritual world. The connection to real spiritual research must be found again.

Now, one should not think that one must break with all reason, with all that is sound, if one does not give in to the ideas that arise from a false interpretation of physics, as given by a man like Professor Dewar. However, the matter also has a moral aspect in a sense. And with regard to much, a different scientific attitude will have to prevail than the one that often dominates scientific people today if one wants to approach the study of the spiritual worlds in the right way in order to find that inner peace of mind that makes it possible to experience the spiritual world in such a way that the spiritual world becomes objective, that the spiritual world is really there before the soul's eye, not as a vague pantheism or mysticism. One will also have to develop certain things with regard to the inner eye of the soul, above all a certain composure and humility with regard to inner experience. I do not mean it in the sentimental sense, as some who call themselves mystics do, because I think nothing of all these stereotyped labels. But one will have to acquire a certain mood. For the tendency of the times has also become similar to those concepts, which only cling to the surface, and people believe that they are developing particular idealism when they use the usual shadow concepts to do a little abstraction from external sensual reality. We shall have to develop a different attitude, for even the attitude of science has surrendered to mere clinging to the outer life, an attitude which I will now summarize in a few words at the end. Not my words, but the words that a sensible German personality used when she translated a spiritual-scientific book — the sensible Matthias Claudius. Let me conclude with his words, in which I would like to show, so to speak, the soul power that must enter into the inner mood as a soul attitude if one is to go beyond such scientific delusions, as I have also characterized them today. Matthias Claudius said on this occasion, when he translated a book from the field of spiritual science - as was appropriate for the time, not as it would be for the present time - he said in his preface:

“... whether a man is vain and foolish about a moustache or about metaphysics and Henriade, or hates and envies a man because of a larger pumpkin” — he means the head “or because of the invention of differential and integral calculus, in short, whether one lets oneself be held and hindered by one's five yoke oxen” – he means the five senses – ‘or by one's polyhistorey’ – that is, by one's external erudition – ‘on the rope, seems basically the same and not different.’

And since inner soul life is really very closely connected with the soul's attitude, it will be necessary to pour out a yearning for an exploration of the spiritual world, as expressed in these beautiful words of Matthias Claudius. For when a person has realized within himself what is implied in these words, then he really does have a relationship with the spiritual world through his feelings. And that is a preparation for clearing away all the mists that arise, especially in the spiritual world, when one allows all the different kinds of arrogance and pride to take effect, which are particularly present in the present state of spiritual development.