The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday I pointed out how the longing of the young today is permeated by something Janus-headed. Certainly, this appears to be permeated by enthusiasm which comes from opposition. But however strongly, at the beginning of the century, this feeling breathed of the present, whoever has now had experience of it no longer finds the opposition in its full measure. Many do not yet admit this impartially, particularly among the young themselves. Yet it indicates something very significant. The generation which at the beginning of the twentieth century confronted world-evolution in such a way that “facing Nothingness” was a most profound experience—this generation was quite new upon the scene in human evolution. But this feeling must reckon with many disappointments prepared out of its own depths.

The full spread of the sails as it was some twenty years ago is no longer there. Not only the terrible event of World War I has deflated these sails, but certain experiences working outward from within have arisen in young people and modified their original feeling. One such experience became evident, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the feelings of those who had grown older in years but were not inwardly old. It was not clearly expressed in words, but in other than the literal words there was in the young something which pointed to a responsive tiredness.

Here I am placing before you an idea difficult to describe accurately, because what I really mean is only fully intelligible to those who have experienced the youth movement with a certain awakeness, whereas a great part of humanity has been asleep to this youth movement. When one speaks to people in the way I have during the past days, it is as if one were talking of something quite foreign to them, something they have slept through and towards which even today they adopt an extraordinarily sleepy attitude.

Responsive tiredness, I called it. In ordinary life organic existence requires not only activity but also after accomplished work the accompanying state of tiredness. We must not only be able to get tired, we must also from time to time be able to carry tiredness around within us. To pass our days in such a way that we go to sleep at night simply because it is customary to do so, is not healthy; it is certainly less healthy than to have the due amount of tiredness in the evening and for this to lead in the normal way into sleep. So too, the capacity to become tired-out by the phenomena meeting us in life is something that must be.

When education, for example, has been discussed, I have often heard it said that there must be an education which makes learning a game for children; school must be all joy for the child. Yes, those who speak like this should just try how they can make school all joy for the children, so that the children laugh all the time, so that learning is play and at the same time they are learning something. This is the very best possible educational principle for ensuring that nothing at all is learnt.

The right thing is for teachers to be able to handle what does not give the child joy, but perhaps a good deal of toil and woe, in such a way that the child as a matter of course submits to it. It is very easy to say what should be given to the child. But childhood can be injured through learning being made into a game. For it is essential that we should also in our life of soul be made tired by certain things—that is to say, things should create a responsive tiredness. One must express it thus, though it sounds pedantic. Tiredness existed among the young in earlier times, too, when they had to strive towards something living, a certain science, a certain kind of knowledge. I mean times when those possessing a certain amount of knowledge were still able to stand before the young, who wanted to acquire it, as an embodied ideal. Tiredness certainly existed even then.

My dear friends, there may be some here who take the above statement with mild scepticism. There are many people today who would take it with scepticism, for when it is claimed that those who knew something stood as a kind of ideal for those anxious to learn, this idea appears to many as unrealizable. For, at the present time, it is almost incredible that anybody should be regarded as a kind of embodied knowledge, embodied science, that is striven for as we strive for a personal ideal.

Yet, leaving out ancient times, this feeling was still present in a high degree even in the later Middle Ages. Those wonderful and inspiring feelings of reverence, permeating life with real recreative forces for the soul in the later Middle Ages, have to a great extent been lost. And because the urge that once existed was no longer there, the young could no longer get tired from what they were destined to experience. To give this concrete expression I should have to say: Science—I mean science as it was actually pursued, not what frequently goes by the name of science—could be stored up, something that is not in the heads of human beings but in the libraries. Science gradually was not really wanted any more. Hence it did not make people tired. There was no feeling of being overcome by an urge for it; it no longer made one tired. There was no longer any possibility of getting tired from a knowledge that was acquired with difficulty.

And from this, what permeated the young, at the turn of the nineteenth century, derived a quite special character—the character of the life-force in a human being who goes to bed at night before he is tired and keeps turning and twisting about without knowing why. I do not want to imply anything derogatory, for I am not of the opinion that these forces, which are there at night in the human being when he turns and twists about in bed because he is not tired, are unhealthy forces. I am not calling them unhealthy. They are quite healthy life-forces, but they are not in their proper place; and so it was, with those forces which worked in the young at the turn of the nineteenth century. They were thoroughly healthy forces, but there was nothing to give them direction. The young had no longer the urge to tire these forces by what was told them by their elders. But forces cannot be present in the world without being active, and so, at the time referred to, innumerable forces yearned for activity and had no guiding line.

And these forces appeared, for example, in the academic youth. And then one noticed things which I have indicated during these lectures, but which must receive more careful consideration if we want to understand ourselves.

Since the first third of the fifteenth century, all man's striving for knowledge has, out of intellectuality, taken on a character pre-eminently adapted to science, which hardly touches the human being at all. People no longer feel how the human element holds sway in writings of the twelfth or thirteenth century, for instance. This does not imply that we have to return to the twelfth or thirteenth century, to implicit belief in all we find there. We shall certainly not comply with the demands of certain churches in this direction.

But because of the indifference with which people study nowadays what is to be found in a chapter of modern biology—or of some other subject—it is impossible to understand what Albertus Magnus wrote. In that way we do not get to know what he wrote at all. We must take the book and sit down to it as if we were sitting down in front of another human being, because what he says cannot be taken with indifference, or objectively as one says; the inner being, the life of soul, is engaged, it rises and fails, and is quickened to movement. The life of soul is at work when we read even the driest chapter written at that time, by an Albertus Magnus, for instance. Quite apart from the fact that in these writings there is still the power of pictorial expression for what appear abstract things, there is always something in the general ideas which gives us a feeling of movement that we might be working with spade and shovel—from the point of view of our life of soul, that is—everything is brought into splendid human activity; through the pictures we are given we sense that the one who possesses this knowledge has full confidence in what he is imparting.

For such people it was not a matter of indifference if they discovered something of which they thought that in the eyes of God it could be either pleasing or displeasing. What a difference there is between the picture given, let us say, by Albertus Magnus, as the great scholar of the Middle Ages, and one of the eminent minds of the nineteenth century, as, for example, Herbart—one could name others but Herbart had a great influence on education up to the last third of the nineteenth century—whoever realizes what a difference there is must see it like this: Albertus Magnus seems to come before us as a kind of fiery luminous cloud. What he does when he devotes himself to knowledge is something that lights up in him or becomes dim. We feel him as it were in a fiery, luminous cloud, and gradually we enter this fire, because if one possesses the faculty of getting inside such a soul, even if for the modern soul it is antiquated, in steeping oneself in what is moral, writing about it, speaking about it, or only studying it, it is not a matter of indifference whether in the eyes of a divine-spiritual Being one is sympathetic or antipathetic. This feeling of sympathy or antipathy is always present.

On the other hand, if according to the objective scientific method, Herbart discusses the five moral ideas: good-will, perfection, equity, rights, retribution—well, here we have not a cloud which encircles us with warmth or cold but something that gradually freezes us to death, that is objective to the point of iciness. And that is the mood that has crept into the whole nature of knowledge and reached its climax at the end of the nineteenth century.

And so knowledge gradually became something to which people devoted themselves in a way that even outwardly was quite remarkable. It was only at the lecture-desk that one got to know those represented as men of knowledge. I do not know if others as old as myself have had similar experiences. But in the nineties of last century I was always having cause for annoyance. At that time I used to be mixing in all kinds of learned circles, and there I had much reason to rejoice, and was eager to discuss many questions. One could look forward to such conversations and say to oneself: Now we shall be able to discuss, let us say, “the difference between epigenesis and evolution”—and so on.

Yes, one might begin like that but very soon one heard: No, there is to be no “talking shop.” Anything that savored of talking shop was taboo. The man who knew his subject was only heard from the platform and when he left it he was no longer the same person. He took the line of speaking about everything under the sun except his own special subject. In short, life in science became so objective that those with a special subject treated this too very objectively, and wanted to be ordinary men when not obliged to deal with their subject.

Other experiences of a similar kind could be related. I have said this just for the sake of elucidation. But I will tell you the real point in another way. We may find that the teacher hands on to the young things he has only half learnt. We find here or there, for example, those who teach standing before their class with a note-book, or even a printed book by someone else—for all I know, the note-book too may contain things written by other people, but I will not assume that—and boldly setting to work to give his lesson out of this book. By such a procedure he is presupposing that there is no super-sensible world at all. How is it that people give their lessons from a note-book or some other book, thus presupposing that no super-sensible world exists?

Here too Nietzsche had one of his many interesting flashes of insight. He called attention to the fact that within every human being another is hidden. This is taken to be a poetic way of speaking, but it is no such thing. In every human being another is hidden! This hidden being is often much cleverer than the one to be seen. In the child, for example, this hidden being is infinitely wiser. He is a super-sensible reality. He is there within the human being, and if we sit in front of a class of say, thirty pupils, and teach with the help of a book or a notebook, we may perhaps be able to train these thirty pupils to regard this, in their visible selves, as something natural, but—of this we can be quite certain—all the thirty invisible human beings sitting there are judging differently. They say: “He is wanting to teach me something that he has first to read. I should like to know why I am expected to know what he is reading. There is no reason for me to know what he is only now reading for himself. He doesn't know it himself, otherwise he wouldn't be so uncertain. I am still very young and am expected to learn what he, who is so much older, doesn't know even yet and reads to me out of a book!”

These things must be taken concretely. To speak of a super-sensible world does not mean merely to lose oneself in phantastic mysticism and to talk of things which—I say this in inverted commas—are “hidden” from one; to speak of super-sensible worlds means in the face of life itself to speak about actual realities. We are speaking of actual realities when we speak as the thirty invisible children about the teacher of the thirty visible ones who perhaps on account of discipline were too timid to say this aloud. If we think it through, it does not seem so stupid; the statements of these thirty invisible, super-sensible beings are, in fact, quite reasonable.

Thus, we must realize that in the young individuality sitting at the feet of someone who is to teach or educate, much goes on that is entirely hidden from outer perception. And that was how there arose deep aversion to what came in this way. For naturally one could not have a great deal of confidence in a man who faced the hidden being in one in such a way that this job of his had become as objective as the approach to knowledge generally at the end of the nineteenth century. So a deep antipathy was felt; one simply did not try to take in hand what should have carried one through life, and consequently could not get tired from it. There was no desire to have what would have made one tired. And nobody knew what to do with the forces which could have led to the tiredness.

Now one could also meet on other ground those who were in the youth movement at the turn of the nineteenth century. Often they were not young physically—mostly very old. They were to be met in movements like the theosophical movement. Many were no longer young, yet had a feeling towards what contemporary knowledge gave them similar to the young. They did not want this knowledge, for it could no longer make them tired. Whereas the young, as the result of this incapacity to get tired, raged,—forgive the expression—many theosophists were looking in their theosophy for a kind of opiate. For what is contained in theosophical literature is to a great extent a sleeping draught for the soul. People were actually lulling themselves to sleep. They kept the spirit busy—but look at the way in which they did so. By inventing the maddest allegories! It was enough to drive a sensitive soul out of its body to listen to the explanations given to old myths and sagas. And oh! what allegories, what symbols! Looked at from the biology of the life of soul, it was sheer narcotics! It would really be quite good to draw a parallel between the turning and twisting in bed after spending a day that has not been tiring and the taking of a sleeping draught in order to cripple the real activity of the Spirit.

What I describe are not theories but moods of the age, and it is imperative to become familiar with these moods by looking from every angle at what was there. This incapacity to get tired at the turn of the nineteenth century is extraordinarily significant. Yes, but this led to the impossibility of finding anything right, for human evolution had arrived at a point where people said with great enthusiasm: “We shall allow nothing to come to us from outside; we want to develop everything from within our own being. We want to wander through the world and wait until there comes out of our own inner being what neither parents, nor teachers, nor even the old traditions can give us any longer. We want to wait for the New to approach us.”

My dear friends, ask those who have spoken in such a way whether this new thing has come to them, whether ready-prepared it has dropped into the laps of those who have had this great longing. Indeed the intoxication of those times is beginning in some degree to be followed by the “morning after” headache. My only aim is to characterize, not to criticize. The first thing that arose was a great rejection, a rejection of something which was there, which man could not use for his innermost being. And behind this great rejection there was hidden the positive—the genuine longing for something new.

But this genuine longing for what is new can be fulfilled in no other way than by man permeating himself with something not of this earth. Not of this earth in the sense that when man only lets soul and body function as they do, nothing can come with the power really to satisfy. The human being unwilling to take in anything is like a lung which finds no air to breathe. Certainly a lung which finds no air to breathe may first, before it dies, even if only for a moment, experience the greatest thirst for air. But the lung cannot out of itself quench this thirst for air; it has to allow for the air to come to it. In reality the young who honestly feel the thirst of which we have been speaking, cannot but long for something with which to be in harmony, that does not come only out of himself like the science that has grown old and is no longer wholesome for the soul to breathe in.

That was felt in the first place but far too little that a new young science must be there, a new spiritual life, able once again to unite with the soul.

Now what belongs to present and future ages must link itself with older phenomena of human evolution. The difference consists in these old phenomena of human evolution arising from a life of soul that was full of pictures and dream-like, whereas the life of soul we bear within us and towards which we are still striving, must become fully conscious. But we must in many respects go back to older contents of the soul.

Now I should like to turn your mind's eye to a constitution of the Spirit prevailing in old Brahmanism in the ancient East. The old Brahmin schools spoke of four means to knowledge on the path of life. And these four means for gaining knowledge are—well, it is difficult to give ancient thoughts in a suitable form considering we are living not only centuries but thousands of years later—but, in order to get somewhere near the mark, I will depict these four means to knowledge in the following way. First, there was that which hovered, as it were, midway between tradition and remembrance, something connected with the Sanscrit root smrti (s-mr-ti—Tradition, Remembrance.) which at present man only has as idea. But it can be described. Everyone knows what remembrance, personal remembrance is. These people did not connect certain concepts with personal remembrance in the rigid way we do, where the idea I have here in mind was concerned. What they remembered out of their own childhood became one with what their fathers and grandfathers had told them. They did not distinguish between what they themselves remembered and what they received through tradition. If you were to practise a more subtle psychology, you would notice that actually these things flow together in what lives in the soul of the child, because the child takes in a great deal that is based on tradition. The modern human being sees only that he acquired it as a child. The ancient Indian did not see this. He paid much more heed to its content, which did not lead him into his own childhood but to his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. Thus tradition and personal remembrance flowed into each other indistinguishably. That was the first means of acquiring knowledge.

The second means for acquiring knowledge was what we might describe as “being represented”, (not a “representation” as the word is applied in ordinary intercourse today, but literally—an “appearing before the eyes”)—what we call “perception.”

The third means to knowledge was what we might call thinking that aims at synthesis.

Thus we could say: remembrance with tradition, observation, and the thinking that aims at synthesis.

But a fourth means for acquiring knowledge was also taught with all clarity in ancient Brahmanism. This can be described by saying: Having something communicated by other human beings.

So I ask you to notice that in ancient Brahmanism tradition was not identified with having something communicated by other human beings. This was a fourth means for the attainment of knowledge. Perhaps this will be clearer if we link it up with what is tradition and at the same time of the nature of remembrance. Where tradition is concerned, the human being did not become conscious of the way in which it came to him, he was conscious only of the content. But in man's remembrance he had in mind that it had been communicated to him by someone else. The fact of having received something from others was an awakening force in knowledge itself.

Today many of those who are true sons of the nineteenth century are shaking their heads, if we count this “what is told us by others” as one of the means of acquiring knowledge. A philosopher who dabbled in thinking that aimed at synthesis and regarded what he was told by others as a means to knowledge would never get through with his thesis nor be accepted as a university lecturer. At most he might become a theologian, for theology is judged in a different way. What is at the bottom of all this? In olden times men understood the experience of having something kindled within them in mutual intercourse with another human being. They counted somebody else telling them what they themselves did not know among the things needed for life. It was reckoned so emphatically as one of the factors necessary for life that it was considered equal to perception through eyes and ears.

Today people will naturally have a different feeling—that it is splendid for a human being to tell another what the other does not know, and the world calls for this. But it has nothing to do with the essence of things. What is essential is for observations and experiments to be made and for the results to be clearly expressed. The other has nothing to do with the essential nature of knowledge. Today it will be natural to feel this. But from the human standpoint it is not correct. It is part of life that man should be permeated in soul and spirit by what I described yesterday as a necessary factor of the social life, namely, by confidence. In this particular domain, confidence consists in what one human being tells another, thus becoming for the other a source of experience for soul and spirit.

Confidence must above all things be evoked in the young. Out of confidence there must be found that for which the young are thirsting. Our whole modern spiritual development has moved in the opposite direction. Even in theoretical pedagogics no value is attached any longer to the fact that a human being might have something he would like to tell another which the latter did not know. Theoretical pedagogics was thought out in such a way that as far as possible there was only presented to the young what could be proved in front of them. But that could not be a comprehensive proof. In this regard people have remained at a very infantile stage. Pedagogy envisaged: How can I give the children something under the assumption that they do not believe me? How can I introduce a method which perceptibly proves? No wonder that there came the corresponding echo and that it was henceforth demanded of teachers: Yes, now prove that for me! And now what I am going to say may sound antiquated, my dear friends. But I do not feel it at all antiquated; I feel it as something really young, even as part of the youth movement.

Today when someone stands there before a number of young people who are to be taught, it is as if there sounds towards him out of the young souls even before he is in their presence: “Prove that for me, prove that for me; you have no right to ask us to believe you!” I feel it as tragic—and this is no criticism—that the young should suffer from having been educated by the old so that they have no longer the ability to receive what is necessary for life. And so there arises a tremendous question, which we shall be considering in the next few days. I should like to give you a graphic description of it.

Let us imagine the youth movement progressing and taking hold of younger and younger human beings—finally mere infants. We should then get an infant youth movement, and just as the later youth movement rejects the knowledge that can be given to it, so will the infants who ought still to be at their mothers' breasts, say: “We refuse it, we refuse to receive anything from outside. We don't want our mothers' milk any longer; we want to get everything out of ourselves!”

What I have here presented as a picture is a burning question for the youth movement. For the young are really asking: “Where are we to obtain spiritual nourishment?” And the way in which they have asked hitherto has been very suggestive of this picture of the infants. And so in the coming days we shall consider the question of “the source of life”, after which Faust was striving. The question I have put before you as a picture is intended to stimulate us to contribute towards a Solution, but a solution which may mean something for your perception, for your feeling, even for your whole life.

Let us recall what I have been telling you about man's experiences between death and a new birth. The various descriptions have enabled us to realize that this life—above all in its main period, about the middle of the time between death and rebirth—is such that man lives in communion with the Beings referred to in the book Occult Science as the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. This life of man in communion with those higher Beings is comparable with the life he has here, when in the physical body, in communion with the beings of the three kingdoms of Nature. Basically speaking, everything in his earthly environment belongs to one of the three kingdoms of Nature—to the mineral or the plant or the animal kingdom, or indeed the physical human kingdom, which in this particular connection can be taken as belonging to the animal kingdom.

Man has his senses, and through his sense-impressions he lives in communion with the beings of the three kingdoms of Nature. What unfolds in his life of feeling between birth and death, in so far as it is the outcome of experiences arising from his environment, is also related to these three kingdoms of Nature. The same applies to what comes from the will, namely, human action. Thus between birth and death man is interwoven with what his senses convey to him from the three kingdoms of Nature.

In like manner between death and a new birth, in the time indicated above, man lives within the higher realms, among the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. This life together with the Beings of the Hierarchies is, in reality, all action, perpetual activity. We have heard how the spirit-seed of the physical body is produced in cooperation with these higher Beings. Here on Earth, when we perceive or connect ourselves with the entities belonging to the three kingdoms of Nature, we feel outside them. But there is a condition between death and a new birth when we find ourselves wholly within the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; we are entirely given up to them. That is one of the conditions in which we then live.—Let us picture it clearly.—Here on the Earth, when, for example, we pick a flower, the fact is correctly described by saying, ‘I pick the flower.’ But if this way of speaking were applied to our life together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, the facts would not then be correctly expressed. When we do something in connection with these Beings, we must say: the other Being acts in us. Thus we are in a condition which compels us all the time not to call the activity—in which of course we ourselves partake—our own activity, but the activity of the Beings of the Hierarchies in us. We have in very truth a cosmic consciousness. Just as here we feel heart, lungs and so on, to be within us, so do we then feel the world to be within us, but it is the world of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Everything that takes place is the outcome of an activity in which we, too, are involved; but to describe the facts correctly we should have to say: such and such a Being of the Higher Hierarchies is acting in us.

Now the condition thus described is only one of the conditions obtaining between death and a new birth. We could not be men in the true sense if we lived in this one condition only. In the spiritual world between death and rebirth we should no more be able to bear this condition only, than here on Earth we could bear inbreathing without exhaling. The condition I have just described must alternate with another, which consists in our obliterating through our cosmic consciousness all thinking and feeling about the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, obliterating too all will that works in this way in us from the Beings of the Hierarchies.

Thus we may say that there are times during the life between death and a new birth when we find ourselves filled through and through with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies and their radiance. We feel them within ourselves. But there is another condition, in which we have first suppressed and then obliterated altogether, this consciousness of the Higher Beings manifesting in us. Then—to use earthly terms—we are ‘out of our body’—the condition is of course entirely spiritual but let us put it in this way: we are out of our body. In this condition we know nothing of the world that lives within us, but we have as it were ‘come to ourselves.’ We no longer live in the other Beings of the Hierarchies but we live wholly in ourselves. Between death and a new birth, we should never have consciousness of ourselves if we lived only in the one condition. Just as here on Earth, inbreathing must alternate with out-breathing, or sleeping with waking life, so between death and a new birth there must be rhythmic alternation between the inner experience of the whole world of the Hierarchies within us, and a condition in which we have come to ourselves.

Now in a certain sense all earthly life is an outcome of what we have experienced in pre-earthly existence between death and a new birth. As you will remember, I have told you how even such faculties in man's earthly life as walking, speaking, and thinking are transformations of certain activities in pre-earthly existence. Today we will turn our attention more specifically to the life of soul.

What we experience in pre-earthly existence in working together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies leaves in us a heritage for our earthly life, a faint shadow of this communion with the Hierarchies. If between death and a new birth we had no such community of life with the Beings of the Hierarchies, we could not unfold, here on Earth, the power of love. The power of love we unfold here on Earth is of course only a faint reflection, a shadow of our communion with the Spirit-Beings of the Higher Hierarchies between death and a new birth, but it is a reflection of that communion. That here on the Earth we are able to unfold human love, sympathetic understanding for another human being, is due to the fact that between death and a new birth we are able to live in communion with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies.

Spiritual-scientific vision enables us to perceive what happens to those who in previous earthly lives acquired little aptitude—we shall presently speak of how it is acquired—for living together during the appropriate period after death with the Beings of the Hierarchies, in certain states entirely given up to them. Such men here on Earth are incapable of unfolding love in which there is real strength, incapable of unfolding that all-embracing love which comes to expression in the power to understand other men. We may say with truth: it is among the Gods, in pre-earthly existence, that we acquire the gift for observing our fellow-man, to perceive how he thinks and how he feels, to understand him with inner sympathy. If we were deprived of this intercourse with the Gods—for so indeed it may be called—we should never be capable of unfolding here on Earth that insight into other human beings which alone makes earthly life a reality. When in this connection I speak of love, and especially of all-embracing human love, you must think of love as having this real and concrete meaning; you must think of it as signifying a genuine, intimate understanding of the other man. If to the all-embracing love of humanity, this understanding of one's fellow-man is added, we have everything that constitutes human morality. For human morality on Earth—if it is not merely expressed in empty phrases or fine talk or in resolutions not afterwards carried out—depends upon the interest one man takes in another, upon the capability to see into the other man. Those who have the gift of understanding other human beings will receive from this understanding the impulses for a social life imbued with true morality.

So we may also say: everything that constitutes moral life in earthly existence has been acquired by man in pre-earthly existence; from his communion with the Gods there has remained in him the urge to unfold, in the soul at any rate, community on Earth as well. And it is the development of a life where the one man together with the other fulfils the tasks and the mission of the Earth—it is this alone that in reality leads to the moral life on Earth. Thus we see that love, and the outcome of love—morality—are in very truth a consequence of what man has experienced spiritually in pre-earthly existence.

Now let us think of the other condition in the life between death and rebirth, when man's consciousness of communion with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies has been dimmed, when, as in earthly sleep, the impressions from the environment are silenced, when deliberate communion with the higher Beings ceases and man ‘comes to himself.’ This condition too has a consequence, an echo, a heritage, here in earthly life—and this heritage is the faculty of Memory.

The possibility for us to have experiences at a definite moment and then after a lapse of time to draw forth from the depth of our being something that brings pictures of these experiences into our consciousness—this faculty of memory that is so necessary in our earthly life, is a faint reflection, a shadow, of our independent state of life in the spiritual world. Here on Earth we should only be able to live in the passing moment instead of in our whole past life as far back as a few years after birth, if between death and a new birth we were not able to emerge, as it were, from universal life and be entirely alone, alone in ourselves.

While we are asleep here on Earth, our physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed; our astral body and our Ego are outside the physical and the etheric bodies and are then in a position to experience—unconsciously, it is true—the environment of soul and spirit. Man is unconscious between going to sleep and waking. Nevertheless, as I have already said, he does indeed have experiences during sleep, some of which I have also described. But they do not enter the field of consciousness, and in earthly life this is a necessary state of things. What is the reason for it?

If from the time of going to sleep to that of waking we were to experience what we do in fact experience in our Ego and in our astral body, so strongly and intensely as to be able to bring it into consciousness, then every time on waking we should want to impress into the physical and etheric bodies too, what we experienced in sleep; we should want to make our physical and our etheric bodies into something different from what they are. One who has knowledge of what is experienced between going to sleep and waking, must accustom himself to an act of renunciation. He must be able to say to himself: ‘I will refrain from the desire to press what I experience with my Ego and my astral body during sleep into the physical and etheric bodies, for in earthly life these bodies could not stand it.’

It is quite possible to speak in a grotesque way about these things—indeed they can be made to seem almost comical, although what is said is meant very seriously. During sleep man does in fact experience images of the Cosmos. Because of this he is continually being tempted, as an outcome of his sleep, to give himself, for example, a different countenance. If that which does not, in fact, come to his consciousness were to do so, he would always be wanting to change his face, for the face he actually has would be reminding him all the time of former earthly lives, of sins in former earthly lives. In the morning, before waking, there is actually a strong urge in man to do to the physical body something that is like dressing it in clothes. One who has knowledge of this must consciously refrain from giving way to the urge; otherwise he would fall into a completely disorganized condition; he would perpetually be trying to change his whole organism, especially if in one respect or another it happens to be not quite healthy, or something is wrong with it.

But during life between death and a new birth we experience so consciously that this consciousness leads to the forming and shaping of our next physical body. If this were left to ourselves alone, we should not shape the physical body in accordance with our karma. In reality, however, we form it together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, the Beings who watch over our karma. And so we get the eyes, the nose, and so forth, which in all probability we should not, if it were left to us, have given to ourselves. For there are certain times between death and a new birth when we are intensely egoistic—precisely at those times when the consciousness of our connection with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies has been dimmed. Our experiences are then so strong and intense that out of the forces they contain the physical body can be formed; and we do in fact form it.

This is an experience of such intensity that it has in it the seed of actual creation. Then, through the very fact that it is much weakened in earthly life, it takes effect partly as earthly love and partly as the faculty of remembrance, as memory.

Here on Earth, the fact that we feel ourselves within an Ego, depends upon memory. If we lived only in the present and had no memories, our Ego would have no inner coherence. In fact, as I have often said, we should not be able to feel ourselves in a strongly marked Ego at all. You can understand how memory as an earthly, shadowlike faculty comes into being. It comes into being through the fact that in pre-earthly existence in the spiritual world, a faculty of tremendous power is present—the faculty whereby in those periods when we ‘come to ourselves’ we prepare our body according to the instructions received from the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, when, in the other state of existence, we live in union with them.

This faculty is at work, to begin with as a formative force, in our body. In the child, as long as it has no consciousness leading to memory—i.e. in the earliest period of childhood—this stronger creative force still enters into and works with the forces of growth. Then something that is finer, more rarefied, is as it were separated out from these stronger forces—and this is the human faculty of memory.

The fact that here on Earth too, man lives primarily in himself, is again connected with this faculty of memory. Memory is also very much connected with human egoism on the one side and, on the other, with human freedom. Freedom will become a reality in a human being in whose life on Earth there is a true echo of what is experienced in pre-earthly existence as a kind of rhythm: namely, feeling oneself united with the Beings of the Hierarchies, freeing oneself, entering into union again, and so on. Here on Earth the experiences come to expression, not as a rhythm, but as two co-existing human faculties: the faculty of love and the faculty of memory. But a certain heritage from this rhythm in pre-earthly existence can remain with man. If this is so, then in earthly life too, the true relationship will be established in him between memory and love. He will be able on the one side to develop understanding, loving understanding of other men. And on the other side, from his experience of the world together with other human beings, his own re-collective thinking will contribute to his own development, to the strengthening of his own nature.

A true relationship of this kind can remain as a legacy of the rhythm that is an essential in pre-earthly existence. But the true relationship may also be upset. It may, for instance, be that a man is willing to be guided only by what he himself has experienced. This trait is greatly accentuated when a man has little interest in what others experience, little faculty of looking into the hearts and minds of others, when his interest is confined almost entirely to what gradually accumulates in his own store of memories. This again is intimately connected with his Ego, and so egoism is intensified.

Such a man gets ‘out of gear’ with himself, because the true relationship existing between death and rebirth is lacking in him; a certain rhythm is not there. And at the same time, when a man takes interest only in what piles up in his own soul, when he is concerned all the time with himself alone, then he becomes increasingly unfit—if I may put it so—for the experiences between death and a new birth. By being interested only in himself, a man shuts himself off in a certain respect from communion with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies.

A man in whom love and memory are rightly interrelated evolves the feeling of true human freedom instead of egoistic introspection. For in another respect this feeling of human freedom too is an echo of the emergence from communion with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies between death and a new birth. The feeling of freedom is the healthy aftermath of that emergence; egoism is the morbid aftermath. And as the life together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies between death and a new birth is the basis of man's morality on Earth, so the necessary emergence from life in communion with them is at the same time the basis on Earth for the immorality of men, for their severance from one another, for actions on the part of the one that cut across the actions of the other, and so forth. For this is at the root of all immorality. So you see it is necessary for man to be mindful that what can appear here on the Earth as something injurious, has a definite significance for the higher worlds. On the Earth too it is the case that the air we inhale is healthy, while the air we exhale is unhealthy, capable of begetting illness, for in effect we exhale carbonic acid. So too, that which underlies immorality here on the Earth is something that is necessary for our experience in the spiritual world.

These connections must be studied because, in effect, morality and immorality cannot really be explained in the light of earthly conditions. Anyone who attempts such explanations will inevitably be on the wrong track. For through the fact that man is moral or the reverse, he relates himself, in his life of soul, to a supersensible world. And we may say: By directing men's minds to the study of this relationship to a spiritual world, anthroposophical Spiritual Science has made it possible, for the first time, to acquire a basis for understanding the moral. To a view of the world that will only acknowledge the validity of science dealing with the world of Nature, the moral can only consist in illusions arising from processes of Nature which are supposed to take their course in man as well.

Assume for a moment that the cosmic nebula of Kant and Laplace, with its mechanical forces and mechanical laws, did actually constitute the beginning of Earth-existence; assume that from these whirling nebulae, through the working of neutral laws of Nature, the kingdoms of earthly existence had come into being, and finally Man. If that were so, man's moral impulses would be mere dreams. For everything he calls moral would pass away when, again in accordance with mechanical laws, the Earth had reached her end. No vindication of the reality of the moral life can ever arise from such a world-view if followed honestly to its conclusions. Vindication of the moral can only result when, as in anthroposophical Spiritual Science, those realms of existence are revealed where the moral is as much a reality as the world of Nature is a reality here in the life between birth and death. As plants grow and blossom here, between death and a new birth certain activities unfold when man is among the Gods. These activities are the moral element in its reality, the reality of the moral element. In that realm the moral has reality, whereas on the Earth there is only a reflection of that reality. But man, we must remember, belongs to both worlds. Hence for him, if he can perceive these facts in the light of Spiritual Science, the moral world has reality—but knowledge of this reality can never be derived from physical existence.

Here you have one reason why it is necessary for man to acquire understanding of Spiritual Science. Without Spiritual Science he could not really be honest with his knowledge. He could not honestly ascribe reality to the moral world, because he is not willing to investigate the realm where that reality lies. It is of tremendous importance to understand such a sentence as this in the right way. But there is still another respect in which I want to emphasize how necessary the knowledge attainable through Spiritual Science is to man. Here again we shall have to turn to the realities of another world.

Already when we achieve Imaginative Knowledge—the knowledge that enables us to live in the etheric world instead of in the physical world, so that instead of physical things we perceive the activities (for activities they are) in the ether—already when this is achieved, three-dimensional Space as it is on Earth falls away from our field of experience. To speak of a three-dimensional space has no meaning, for we are then living in Time. Hence from from other standpoints I have spoken of the etheric body as a Time-organism. I have said, for example, that here, in the spatial organism, we have the head and, let us say, the leg; and if we sting or cut our leg the head will feel it. Spatially, in this spatial body, one organ is connected with the others. So in the time-body which consists in processes—processes in which everything lying in the deeper foundations of our human nature between birth and death are involved—every detail is connected with every other.

You will remember that in lectures on Education I have said that if at a certain age in childhood we have learnt to have reverence, this power of reverence is transformed in later years into a power of gentleness and blessing which can be conveyed to other men. On the other hand, those who in childhood were never able to revere in the true way cannot unfold this power to bless in later life. As in the spatial organism the foot or the leg is connected with the head, so youth is connected with old age, and old age with youth. It is only for external physical vision that the world flows in the one direction, from the past into the future. For higher vision there is also the reverse stream, from the future into the past. It is into this stream, as I have described, that we enter after death, journeying backwards.

In the time-organism everything is interconnected. If the spatial organism as a whole is to be in order, you cannot remove essential organs from it. You cannot, for instance, remove any considerable part of your face without ruining the whole organism. Similarly you cannot remove anything belonging to man that takes its course in time. Imagine that in the spatial organism, at the place where your eyes are situated there were some quite different growth—instead of eyes, some kind of tumor. Then you could not see. As the eyes are situated at a definite place in the spatial organism, so in the time-organism—and I now mean not only the time-organism between birth and death but the time-organism in man that reaches beyond all births and deaths—in this time-organism is incorporated everything that exists between birth and death and in this life develops through concepts, ideas, mental pictures, of a spiritual world. And what thus develops are the eyes for beholding supersensible existence. If between birth and death no knowledge of the supersensible world is developed, this will mean blindness in the life in the supersensible world between death and a new birth, just as the absence of eyes means blindness in the spatial organism. Man passes through death even if on Earth he acquires no knowledge of the supersensible world; but he enters then into a world where he sees nothing, where he can only grope his way about.

This is the agonizing experience that is the natural corollary of the materialistic age for one who has true insight into Initiation-Science today. He sees how men on Earth lapse into materialism; but he also knows what this lapse means for the spiritual life. He knows that it means eradication of the eyes, that in the existence awaiting them after death, men will only be able to grope their way about. In olden times, when there was instinctive knowledge of the supersensible world, men passed through the gate of death able to see. That old, instinctive supersensible knowledge is now extinct. Today, spiritual knowledge must be consciously acquired—spiritual knowledge, I say, not clairvoyance. As I have always emphasized, clairvoyance too can be attained, but that is not the essential here. The essential thing is that what is discovered through clairvoyant research shall be understood—as it can be understood—by ordinary human reason, healthy human reason. Clairvoyance is needed to investigate these things, but it is not needed for acquiring the faculty of sight in the supersensible world after death. And anyone who declares that ordinary knowledge acquired through healthy human reason does not give him eyes for supersensible existence but that for this he needs clairvoyance—anyone who speaks like this might just as well declare that man cannot think unless his eyes do the thinking. As little as in physical life the eyes need think, as little does knowledge of the supersensible worlds need clairvoyance for the purposes I have indicated today.

Naturally, there would be no supersensible knowledge on Earth if there were no clairvoyance; but even the seer must make intelligible in the ordinary way what he sees in the supersensible. However powerful a man's clairvoyant faculty might be in earthly life, however clear his vision of the spiritual world, if he were too easy-going to bring into the form of logical, intelligible ideas what he sees in the spiritual world, he would still be blinded in the spiritual world after death.

What constitutes the great suffering for one who has insight into modern Initiation-Science is that he must admit: materialism makes men blind when they pass through the gate of death. And here again is something showing that it is of significance for the whole of cosmic existence whether man today inclines to supersensible knowledge or not. The time when it is essential for him to do so has arrived; the very progress of humanity depends upon man acquiring supersensible knowledge.

This lecture is the 10th of 12 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach, Switzerland, during January of 1923. The title these lectures were published under is: A Living Knowledge of Nature, the Fall of the Intellect into Sin, the Spiritual Resurrection.

In my last lectures, I spoke of man's fall into sin and of an ascent from sin. I spoke of this ascent as something that must arise in the present age from human consciousness in general, as a kind of ideal for man's striving and willing. I have pointed out the more formal aspect of the fall of man, as it appears in the present time, by showing how the fall of man influences intellectual life. What people say concerning the limitations of our knowledge of Nature, really arises from the view that man has no inner strength enabling him to reach the spiritual, and that he must therefore renounce all efforts that might lift him above earthly contemplation. I said that when people speak to-day of the limits of knowledge, this is only the modern intellectual interpretation of how man was cast down into sin; this was felt in older times and particularly during the Middle Ages. To-day I should like to speak more from a material aspect, in order to show that modern humanity cannot reach the goal of the evolution of the earth, if the views acquired in a more recent age—especially in the course of an intellectual development—do not change. Through the consciousness of sin, the general consciousness of to-day has, to a certain extent, suffered this very fall of man. Modern intellectualism already bears the marks of this fall and decay; indeed, the decay is so strong that, unless the intellectual civilisation of the present time changes, there is no hope of attaining mankind's goal in the evolution of the earth. To-day it is necessary to know that in the depths of the human soul forces are living that are, as it were, better than the present state of the consciousness of our civilisation. It is necessary to contemplate quite clearly the nature of the consciousness of our civilisation.

The consciousness of our civilisation arose, on the one hand, from a particular conception of the thinking human being, and, on the other hand, from a particular conception of the willing human being. To-day man uses his thinking chiefly in order to know as much as possible of the outer kingdoms of Nature, and to grasp human life with the methods of thinking gained through the usual way of looking at Nature. To-day natural science teaches us to think, and we consider social life, too, in the light of this thinking, acquired through the natural sciences as they are known to-day.

Many people believe that this conception of the thinking human being, of man who observes Nature and thinks, is an unprejudiced conception. All kinds of things are mentioned that science is unprejudiced, and so on. But I have shown repeatedly that these arguments are not of much value. For, everything that a thinker applies when he is bent on his scientific investigations (according to which other people then arrange their life) has evolved from earlier ways of thinking. Modern thinking is the direct outcome of mediaeval thinking. I have pointed out already that even the arguments of the opponents of mediaeval thinking are thought out with the methods of thinking that have evolved from mediaeval thinking. An essential trait of mediaeval thinking which entered modern thinking is that the activity of thought is contemplated only in the form in which it is applied in the observation of the outer phenomena of Nature. The process of thinking is ignored altogether and there is no philosophy leading to the contemplation of thinking itself. No notice at all is taken of the process of thought and of its inner living force.

The reason for this lies in the considerations that I have already set forth. Once I said that a modern man's thoughts on Nature are really corpses, all our thoughts on the kingdoms of Nature are dead thoughts. The life of these thought corpses lies in man's pre-earthly existence. The thoughts that we form to-day on the kingdoms of Nature and on the life of man are dead while we are thinking them; they were endowed with life in our pre-earthly existence.

The abstract, lifeless thoughts that we form here on earth in accordance with modern habits of thinking were alive, were living elementary beings during our pre-earthly existence, before we descended to a physical incarnation on earth. Then, we lived in these thoughts as living beings, just as to-day we live in our blood. During our life on earth, these thoughts are dead and for this reason they are abstract. But our thinking is dead only as long as we apply it to Nature outside: as soon as we look into our own selves it appears to us as something living, for it continues working there, within us, in a way which remains concealed from the usual consciousness of to-day. There it continues to elaborate what existed during our pre-earthly life. The forces that seize our organism when we incarnate on earth, are the forces of these living thoughts. The force of these living, pre-earthly thoughts makes us grow and forms our organs. Thus, when the philosophers of a theory of knowledge speak of thinking, they speak of a lifeless thinking. Were they to speak of the true nature of thinking; not of its corpse, they would realise the necessity of considering man's inner life. There they would discover that the force of thinking, which becomes active when a human being is born or conceived, is not complete in itself and independent, because this inner activity of thought is the continuation of the living force of a pre-earthly thinking.

Even when we observe the tiny child (I will not now consider the embryo in the mother's body) and it's dreamy, slumbering life on earth, we can see the living force of pre-earthly thinking in its growth and even in its fretful tempers, provided we have eyes to see. Then we shall understand why the child slumbers dreamily and only begins to think later on. This is so, because in the, beginning of its life, when the child does nothing but sleep and dream, thoughts take hold of its entire organism. When the organism gradually grows firmer and harder, the thoughts, no longer seize the earthly and watery elements in the organism, but only the air element and the fire or warmth element. Thus we may say that in the tiny child thought takes possession of all four elements. The later development of a child consists in this, that thought takes hold only of the elements of air and fire. When an adult thinks, his force of thinking is contained only in the continuation of the breathing process and of the process which spreads warmth throughout his body.

Thus the force of thinking abandons the firmer parts of the physical organism for the air-like, evanescent, imponderable parts of the body. Thus thinking became the independent element that it now is, and bears us through the life between birth and death. The continuation of the pre-earthly force of thinking asserts itself only when we are asleep, i.e. when the weaker force of thinking acquired on earth no longer works in the warmth and air of the body. Thus we may say that modern man will understand something of the true nature of thinking only if he really advances towards an inner contemplation of man, of himself. Any other theory of knowledge is quite abstract.

If we bear this in mind rightly we must say that whenever we contemplate the activity that forms thoughts and ideas, our gaze opens out into pre-earthly existence.

Mediaeval thinking, still possessing a certain amount of strength, was not allowed to enter pre-earthly existence. Man's pre-existence was declared dogmatically as a heresy. Something that is forced upon mankind for centuries gradually becomes a habit. Think of the more recent evolution of humanity—take, for instance, the year 1413; people habitually refrained from allowing their thoughts to follow lines that might lead them to a pre-earthly existence, because they were not allowed to think of pre-earthly existence. People entirely lost the habit of directing their thoughts to a pre-earthly existence. If men had been allowed to think of pre-earthly life (they were forbidden this, up to 1413), evolution would have taken quite another direction. In this case we should very probably have seen this is a paradox, but it is true indeed we may say that undoubtedly we should have seen that when Darwinism arose in 1858, with its exterior theories on Nature's evolution, the thought of pre-earthly existence would have flashed up from all the kingdoms of Nature, as the result of a habit of thinking that took into consideration a pre-earthly existence. In the light of the knowledge of human pre-existence, another kind of natural science would have arisen. But men were no longer accustomed to consider pre-earthly life, and a science of Nature arose which considered man—as I have often set forth—as the last link in the chain of animal evolution. It could not reach a pre-earthly, individual life, because the animal has no pre-earthly, individual life.

Therefore we can say: When the intellectual age began to dawn, the old conception of the fall of mankind was responsible for the veto on all thoughts concerning pre-existence. Then science arose as the immediate offspring of this misunderstood fall of man. Our science is sinful, it is the direct outcome of the misunderstanding relating to the fall of man. This implies that the earth cannot reach the goal of its evolution as long as the natural sciences remain as they are; man would develop a consciousness that is not born of his union with a divine-spiritual origin, but of his separation from this divine-spiritual origin.

Hence present-day talk of the limitations of knowledge is not only a theoretical fact, for what is developing under the influence of intellectualism positively shows something that is pushing mankind below its level. Speaking in mediaeval terms, we should say that the natural sciences have gone to the devil.

Indeed, history speaks in a very peculiar way. When the natural sciences and their brilliant results arose (I do not mean to contest them to-day), those who still possessed some feeling for the true nature of man were afraid that natural science might lead them to the devil. The fear of that time—a last remnant of which can be seen in Faust, when he says farewell to the Bible and turns to Nature—consisted in this, that man might approach a knowledge of Nature under the sign of man's fall and not under the sign of an ascent from sin. The root of the matter really lies far deeper than one generally thinks. Whereas in the early Middle Ages there were all kinds of traditions consisting in the fear that the devilish poodle might stick to the heels of the scientist, mankind has now become sleepy, and does not even think of these matters.

This is the material aspect of the question. The view that there are limits to a knowledge of Nature is not only a theory; the fall and decay of mankind, due to its fall in the intellectual-empirical sphere, indeed exists to-day.

If this were not so, we should not have our modern theory of evolution. Normal methods of research would show, reality would show the following: There are, let us say, fish, lower mammals, higher mammals, man. To-day, this represents more or less the straight line of evolution. But the facts do not show this at all. You will find, along this whole line of evolution, that the facts do not coincide.

Marvels are revealed by a real scientific investigation of Nature; what scientists say about Nature is not true. For, if we consider the facts without any prejudice we obtain the following: Man, higher mammals, lower mammals, fish. (Of course, I am omitting details.) Thus we descend from man to the higher mammals, the lower mammals, etc. until we reach the source of origin of all, where everything is spiritual, and in the further evolution of man we can see that his origin is in the spirit. Gradually man assumed a higher spirituality. The lower beings, also, have their origin in the spirit, but they have not assumed a higher spirituality. Facts show us this.

Man
Higher Mammals
Lower Mammals
Fish.

Correct views of these facts could have been gained if human habits of thinking had not obeyed the veto on belief in pre-existence or pre-earthly life. Then, for instance, a mind like Darwin could not possibly have reached the conclusions set forth above; he would have reached other conclusions deriving from habits of thought, not from necessities dictated by scientific investigation.

Goethe's theory of metamorphosis could thus have been continued in a straight line. I have always pointed out to you that Goethe was unable to develop his theory of metamorphosis. If you observe with an unprejudiced mind how matters stood with Goethe, you will find that he was unable to continue. He observed the plant in its development and found the primordial plant (Urpflanze). Then he approached the human being and tried to study the metamorphosis of the human bones. But he came to a standstill and could not go on.

If you peruse Goethe's writings on the morphology of the human bony system you will see that, on the one hand, his ideas are full of genius. The cleft skull of a sheep which he found on the Lido in Venice, showed him that the skull-bones are transformed vertebrae, but he could not develop his idea further than this.

I have drawn your attention to some notes that I found in the Goethe-Archives when I was staying at Weimar. In these notes Goethe says that the entire human brain is a transformed spinal ganglion. Again, he left it at this point. These notes are jotted down in pencil in a note-book and the last pencil-marks plainly show Goethe's discontent and his wish to go further. But scientific research was not advanced enough for this. To-day it is advanced enough and has reached long ago the point of facing this problem. When we contemplate the human being, even in his earliest embryonic stages, we find that the form of the present skull-bones cannot possibly have evolved from the vertebrae of the spine. This is quite out of the question. Anyone who knows something of modern embryology argues as follows: what we see in man to-day, does not justify the statement that the skull-bones are transformed vertebrae. For this reason we can indeed say that when Gegenbauer investigated this matter once more at a later date, results proved that as far as the skull-bones and especially the facial bones were concerned, matters stood quite differently from what Goethe had assumed.

But if we know that the present shape of the skull-bones leads us back to the bones of the body of the preceding incarnation, we can understand this metamorphosis. Exterior morphology itself then leads us into the teaching of repeated lives on earth. This lies in a straight line with Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. But the stream of evolution that finally led to Darwin and still rules official science, cannot advance as far as truth. For the misunderstood fall of man has ruined thinking and has caused its decay. The question is far more serious than one is inclined to imagine to-day.

We must realise that the consciousness of mankind has changed in the course of time. For instance, we may describe something as beautiful. But if we ask a philosopher of today to explain what beauty is (for he should know something about these things, should he not?), we shall receive the most incredibly abstract explanation. “Beautiful” is a word which we sometimes use rightly, instinctively, out of our feeling. But modern man has not the slightest notion of what, for instance, a Greek imagined when he spoke of the beautiful, in his meaning of the word. We do not even know what the Greek meant by “Cosmos.” For him it was something quite concrete. Take our word “Universe.” What a confused jumble of thoughts it contains! When the Greek spoke of the Cosmos, this word held within it something beautiful, decorative, adorning, artistic. The Greek knew that when he spoke of the whole universe he could not do otherwise than characterise it with the idea of beauty. Cosmos does not only mean Universe—it means Nature's order of laws which has become universal beauty. This lies in the word “Cosmos.”

When the Greek saw before him a beautiful work of art, or when he wished to mould the form of a human being, how did he set to work? By forming it in beauty. Even in Plato's definitions we can feel what the Greek meant when he wished to form the human being artistically. The expression that Plato used means more or less the following: “Here on earth man is not at all what he should be. He comes from heaven and I have so portrayed his form that men may see in it his heavenly origin.” The Greek imagined man in his beauty, as if he had just descended from heaven, where of course, his exterior form does not resemble that of ordinary human beings. Here on earth human beings do not look as if they had just descended from heaven. Their form shows everywhere the Cain-mark, the mark of man's fall. This is the Greek conception. In our age, when we have forgotten man's connection with a pre-earthly, heavenly existence, we may not even think of such a thing.

Thus we may say that “beautiful” meant for the Greek that which reveals its heavenly meaning. In this way the idea of beauty becomes concrete. For us today it is abstract. In fact, there has been an interesting dispute between two authorities on aesthetics—the so-called “V” Vischer (because he spelt his name with a “V”), the Swabian Vischer, a very clever man, who wrote an important book on aesthetics (important, in the meaning of our age), and the formalist Robert Zimmermann, who wrote another book on aesthetics. The former, V-Vischer defines beauty as the manifestation of the idea in sensible form. Zimmermann defines beauty as the concordance of the parts within the whole. He defines it therefore more according to form, Vischer more according to content.

These definitions are really all like the famous personage who drew himself up into the air by his own forelock. What is the meaning of the expression “the appearance of the idea in sensible form?” First we must know what is meant by “the idea.” If the thought-corpse that humanity possesses as “idea” were to appear in physical shape, nothing would appear. But when we ask in the Greek sense: what is a beautiful human being? this does indeed signify something. A beautiful human being is one whose human shape is idealised to such an extent that it resembles a god. This is a beautiful man, in the Greek sense. The Greek definition has a meaning and gives us something concrete.

What really matters is that we should become aware of the change in the content of man's consciousness and in his soul-disposition in the course of time. Modern man believes that the Greek thought just as he thinks now. When people write the history of Greek philosophy—Zeller, for instance, who wrote an excellent history of Greek philosophy (excellent, in the meaning of our present age)—they write of Plato as if he had taught in the 19th century at the Berlin University, like Zeller himself, and not at the Platonic Academy. When we have really grasped this concretely, we see how impossible it is, for obviously Plato could not have taught at the Berlin University in the 19th century. Yet all that tradition relates of Plato is changed into conceptions of the 19th century, and people do not realise that they must transport their whole disposition of soul into an entirely different age, if they really wish to understand Plato.

If we acquire for ourselves a consciousness of the development of man's soul-disposition, we shall no longer think it an absurdity to say: In reality, human beings have fallen completely into sin, as far as their thoughts about external Nature and man himself are concerned.

Here we must remember something which people today never bear in mind—indeed, something which they may even look upon as a distorted idea. We must remember that the theoretical knowledge of to-day, which has become popular and which rules in every head even in the farthest corner of the world and in the remotest villages, contains something that can only be redeemed through the Christ. Christianity must first be understood in this sphere.

If we were to approach a modern scientist, expecting him to understand that his thinking must be saved by the Christ, he would probably put his hands to his head and say: “The deed of Christ may have an influence on a great many things in the world, but we cannot admit that it took place in order to redeem man from the fall into sin on the part of natural science.” Even when theologians write scientific books (there are numerous examples in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, one on ants, another on the brain, etc., and in most cases these books are excellent, better than those of the scientists, because the style is more readable), these books also breathe out, even more strongly, the need of taking a true Christology seriously. This means that particularly in the intellectual sphere we need a true ascent from sin, which must work against man's fall.

Thus we see that intellectualism has been contaminated by what has arisen out of the misunderstandings relating to the consciousness of sin—not out of the Fall as such, but from the misunderstandings with regard to the consciousness of sin. This consciousness of sin, which can be misunderstood so easily, must place the Christ in the centre of the evolution of the earth, as a higher Being, and from this point it must find the way out from the Fall. This requires a deeper and more detailed study of human evolution, also in the spiritual sphere.

You see, if we study mediaeval scholasticism as it is usually studied to-day, let us say as far back as Augustine, we shall achieve nothing. Nothing can result, because nothing is seen except that the modern scientific consciousness continues to evolve. The higher things, extending beyond this, are ignored.

In this hall I once tried to give an account of mediaeval scholasticism, showing all the connections. I gave a short course of lectures on Thomism and all that is connected with it. But it is a painful fact, and one that is of little help to our anthroposophical movement, that such ideas are not taken up. The relationship between the brilliant scientific conditions of to-day and the new impulse which must enter science is not sought. If this is not sought, then our scientific laboratories, which have cost so much real sacrifice, will remain unfruitful.

For these, progress would best be achieved by taking up such ideas and by avoiding futile discussions on atomism. In all spheres of fact, modern science has reached a point where it strives to cast aside the mass of sterile thoughts contained in modern scientific literature. Enough is known of the human being, anatomically and physiologically, to reach, by the right methods of thoughts, even such a bold conclusion as that of the metamorphosis of the form of the head from the bodily form of the preceding life. Naturally, if we cling to the material aspect, we shall not reach this point. Then we shall argue, very intelligently, that the bones must in this case remain physical matter, in order that they may undergo a gradual material metamorphosis in the grave! It is important to bear in mind that the material form is an external form and that it is the formative forces that undergo a metamorphosis.

On the one hand thinking has been fettered, because darkness has been thrown over pre-existence. On the other hand, we are concerned with post-existence, or the life after death. Life after death can be understood only with the aid of super-sensible knowledge. If super-sensible knowledge is rejected, life after death remains an article of faith, accepted purely on the ground of authority. A real understanding of the process of thinking leads to a pre-existent life, provided such thoughts are not forbidden. A knowledge of post-existent life can, however, only be acquired through super-sensible knowledge. Here the method described in my “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds” must be introduced. But this method is rejected by the consciousness of our times.

Thus two influences are at work: on the one hand, the continued effects of the decree prohibiting thought on man's pre-existence; on the other hand, the rejection of super-sensible knowledge. If both continue to work, the super-sensible world will remain an unexplored region, inaccessible to knowledge, i.e. it will remain an article of faith, and Christianity, too, will remain a matter of faith, not of knowledge. And Science, that claims the name of “science,” will not allow itself to have anything to do with the Christ. Thus we have our present-day conditions.

At the beginning of to-day's considerations, I said, with regard to the consciousness that is filled to-day with intellectualism, that humanity has slipped entirely into the consequences of the Fall. If this persists, humanity will be unable to raise itself. This means that it will not reach the goal of the evolution of the Earth. Modern science makes it impossible to reach the goal of the evolution of the Earth. Nevertheless, the depths of the human soul are still untouched: If man appeals to these soul-depths and develops super-sensible knowledge in the spirit of the Christ-impulse he will attain redemption once more, even in the intellectual sphere redemption from the intellectual forces, that have fallen—if I may express it in this way—into sin.

Consequently, the first thing which is needed is to realise that intellectual and empirical scientific research must become permeated with spirituality. But this spirituality cannot reach man as long as the content of space is investigated merely according to its spatial relationships, and the events taking place in the course of time are investigated merely in their chronological sequence.

If you study the shape of the human head, especially with regard to its bony structure, and compare it with the remainder of the skeleton (skull-bones compared to cylindrical bones, vertebrae and ribs) you will obtain no result whatever. You must go beyond time and space, to conceptions formed in spiritual science, for these grasp the human being as he passes from one earthly life to another. Then you will realise that to-day we may look upon the human skull-bones as transformed vertebrae. But the vertebrae of the present skeleton of a human being can never change into skull-bones in the sphere of earthly existence. They must first decay and become spiritual, in order to change into skull-bones in the next life on earth.

An instinctively intuitive mind like Goethe's sees in the skull-bones the metamorphosis of vertebrae. But spiritual science is needed in order to pursue this intuitive vision as far as the domain of facts. Goethe's theory of metamorphosis acquires significance only in the light of spiritual science. For this reason it could not satisfy even Goethe. This is why a knowledge gained through anthroposophical science is the only one that can bring man into a right relationship to the Fall and the re-ascent from sin. For this reason too, anthroposophical ideas are to-day something which seeks to enter into human evolution not only in the form of thoughts but as the content of life.

My dear friends, brothers and sisters! For those who are here today for the first time it must be said once again that it is not possible in every instance, when new members enter the school, to give the introduction which deals with the nature of obligation inherent in the school, and that I must require of those members who have been here before, and who will give the mantric verses to those who have newly entered, that they will convey what is the essential content of this introduction.

And so, we begin again today in this Michael School with those words which contain the basic demand, the fundamental demand to the human being, which resound to him from all realms of nature and from all the hierarchies of the spirit, if he has a sense and a receptivity for them, and which demand that he seeks his own being, but which also demand of him to come to know the world in its spirit-sustained form and structure by penetrating through his own being. They resound out of all that lives and moves in the depths of earth, in water and air, in warmth and light, in all that lives in mountains and springs, in rocks, in all that lives in plants, in animals, in physical human form, in human souls, in human spirits, in all that lives in the dwellers in the stars, in the hierarchies of the spirit. They sound as follows.

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

My dear brothers and sisters! The description of the spiritual path that should lead out of our sun-drenched world, in which we live on earth, which is bright in comparison to what initially appears to us on the other side of the yawning abyss of existence as gloomy night-bedecked darkness, on this path leading us forth when we seek our intrinsic being we become aware that in all that upon the earth lives in the depths, moves in the air, that creeps and flies, but also in all that our senses perceive in the majestic shining of the stars, in the mighty depths of world spaces, in the immeasurable reaches of time moving on, that all this does not contain our existence, the actual source of our human essence. This all becomes dark when we look about us in search of our human essence. The description of this path has led us to the point where it shows us that we must find the way over to the Guardian of the Threshold, who has said so much to us about the significance of the spiritual path, over into what is still night-bedecked, black darkness, in order that it becomes bright and that within this brightness light appears to us that illuminates our own existence, and thereby illuminates existence and being and interweaving of the world, illuminating it for the eyes of our soul.

Yet we must be clear that in the moment, and please note we are still in the description, in the moment in which we are to cross over the abyss of existence, over to the Guardian of the Threshold, that in this moment with the person, therefore with our self, a significant change is taking place.

Let us look, my dear brothers and sisters, at our human existence as it is between birth and death in physical earth-life. We measure the world by thinking, we grasp the world by feeling, we affect the world by willing. But thinking, feeling and willing are profoundly interwoven together in our human existence. When we wish to carry out an action momentarily, first we think it, and whatever we carry out is already present as a seed in our thought. We see it shoot out into impulses of will. We feel that something has value for us. We feel love for this or that being springing up within us. Therefore, in that we are feeling, we make a thought of the being for ourselves. Or else we go about bringing love of this being to fruition. we let love inspire us, stimulate us, which then passes over into willing. But all this, thinking, feeling, willing hangs closely connected in our human nature, in so far as this human being progresses between birth and death here in the physical world. We are a unity in thinking, feeling, and willing.

And it is true, that we are only really awake in our thoughts. They are bright and clear, despite the fact that the Guardian of the Threshold has revealed them as appearance only. They are bright and clear; we are awake in them.

Feeling lives in us darker and less clear. We are nearer to existence in feeling, but the content we feel is like a dream, so that we can only speak from bright awake thinking and therefore only while awake can we speak of dreaming feeling.

Willing, however, as it liberates itself from the nature of our humanity, initially for ordinary consciousness remains fully unclear. The human being has the thought that he wants to do this or that, the thought shoots down and lays hold on the organism, the organism bestirs itself, carries out the thought, and the person sees again with a thought what he has done. But willing itself rests in its own nature as that aspect of our soul that between falling asleep and waking is in deep sleep.

But he who beholds these things as an initiate, sees thoughts in their aliveness, as they were before the human being descended from supersensible worlds into the sensory. He beholds radiant essential being in thoughts. This radiant essential being, however, does not rest in him as do the sheen of thoughts that he has in customary thinking.

We stand beside the Guardian of the Threshold. The abyss of being is there before us. Beyond the abyss, beyond the threshold lies black, night-bedecked darkness, but brightening and gathering itself out of the darkness a formation stirs, a living formation. We say, in that we are catching the scent of, sensing our thoughts, as they were in us as physical human beings, which we have left behind, we say to ourselves that that is our moving, living thinking, that belongs now not to us, that belongs to the world. Light on light the thought casts itself loose from the black darkness. We know that the thought, the thought of all our thinking, is there in the black darkness as the first clarity we come upon.

And then we gaze somewhat further down. We have the feeling, and the Guardian of the Threshold shows us with his admonishing gesture as we look yet further down, how the glow of firelight appears under the darkness. Fire, dark fire, yet fire that we can sense, that we feel with clair-sentience spreads out below us. Across the abyss of being there comes toward us what we know to be our willing. For the initiate gradually learns to recognize how it actually is when thinking passes over into willing. When thinking passes over into willing there the thought becomes willed, is gathered up, but then this thought streams over into the bodily organism, in clair-sentience one observes this, streaming in as beneficent fire. It is warmth that the will brings there into conscious existence. It is warmth, fire as which our intrinsic will encounters us out of the darkness.

And in between this warmth that our will streams out, confronting us – for our will that goes forth from us as man is only the reflex of our intrinsic will as cosmic man that confronts us now streaming beyond the abyss of existence – in between this warm dark minimally bluish-violet out-stream below and the bright gathering thought-lights above, in between the two undulates and weaves warmth rising up and light descending. Light-drenched warmth rising up, warmth-entrenched light streaming down, that is our feeling.

This is a mighty picture which the Guardian of the Threshold shows us. And now we know, that if we pass over from the world of the senses, from the world of physical reality, in which we are between birth and death, into the world of spirit, then in thinking, feeling, and willing we no longer have the unity which we have here. There we are three. In the world-all we are three. Our thinking goes to the light as we cross the threshold, our willing goes to fire, and our feeling goes to light-borne light-interwoven fire.

And we must have the courage to expand, to intensify this self, this “I,” so that it holds the three together when we cross over. We can do this if we correctly infuse ourselves with what otherwise could be for us merely picture-substantiality, if we correctly infuse ourselves with the notion that our head is the wellspring of all our sensory life, of all our life of thought, that although all sense-life and thought-life most certainly spreads throughout the body, but is particularly expressed in the head, that our head in its roundness with its downward opening is formed in accordance with the world-gestalt. If we could say to ourselves earnestly, with inner intensity that our head, within and without, emulates the world-gestalt, we could then feel, by being willing to look at the head to a certain extent as within, how this perspective broadens itself to the world-all, which is infused all-together in our head only for our earthly perspective.

If we could feel then with full intensity how our heart, the physical expression of our soul, does not merely beat through what is in our body, in the skin-confined human being. We breathe in the air, which is the motivator of heart-beating. We breathe it out again. The world in its greatness, in its majesty participates in our heart beating. It is the world beating which will be felt in our heart, not merely what we carry within us.

When we think how our limbs work, running freely in the will, then what gives us this force in willing is not simply what resides in us personally. Just think how the forces of heredity are built into us when we are born, how the forces of karma which we have acquired through many, many lives on earth, how these live in our willing. Think about all that, and feel how we may think, that in our limbs, if we will, world forces live, not merely human forces.

Now think, my dear brothers and sisters, still on this side, hard beside the Guardian of the Threshold, who points across to light gleaming, world living, world weaving thoughts, to what surges up as warmth, light bearing, to what surges down as light, warmth imprinted, warmth permeated, streams down like warm wind over us on this side from over yonder streams toward us, spiritedly streaming as fire of the world-all, that is the primal force of willing.

So, as we stand here, there comes to us, resounding, what the Guardian of the Threshold has to say to us in this situation.

O show the three

—thinking, feeling, willing; the human being is split, has become a trinity—

O show the three
They are the one
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

Experience the head’s world-gestalt

The Guardian makes this sign △ so that we halt, so that we feel the head’s world-gestalt in this upwardly-directed triangle. Concentrate on this. [It was drawn on the blackboard.]

Feel the heart’s world-beat

The Guardian makes this sign, ⧖ that we feel in this sign the undulating beat of the world, which crosses itself in the heart.[It was drawn on the blackboard.]

Think the limb’s world-strength

The Guardian of the Threshold makes another sign, ▽ [It was drawn on the blackboard.]

on which we should concentrate along with this line of the mantra, so that we feel the force of the line, the whole mantric force of the whole speech. Then the Guardian of the Threshold reinforces this once again.

These are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

This is the verse through which the Guardian announces how we should prepare ourselves, through strong courage, through enthusiastic striving for awareness, to feel over there how one becomes three. We are a unity in the physical. The three step forth in the imaginative picture, for in the spiritual world we are three. [The mantra and heading were now written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian admonishes:

O show the three
They are the one
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

[Next to the first sign on the board was written:]

Experience the head’s world-gestalt

The world-gestalt can be experienced in the head. [Next to the second sign on the board was written:]

Feel the heart’s world-beat

The world's beat can be felt in the heart. [Next to the third sign on the board was written:]

Think the limb’s world-strength

The world's force can be thought inwardly in the movement of the limbs. The intensification is: [The following six words were underlined:] experience, feel, think, gestalt, beat, force. The three lines must be strengthened by concentrating on these figures. [Writing continued:]

These are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

My dear friends, when we stand there in earth consciousness, and we are certainly still standing there, we are only in preparation for crossing over into the spiritual world. When we stand there in earth consciousness, then we ascribe to our head, inasmuch as it contains the thoughts, we ascribe our spirit to it. We certainly have this spirit initially as mere appearance. The thought, however, the thoughts are just the appearance of the spirit. We ascribe thoughts to our head, which means to the spirit, as the spirit lives just in the form of thoughts in earth consciousness.

But we can also do something else, and this we must do, due to the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold in this situation, where we are preparing to cross over the abyss of existence, we must make the effort, concerning the force we otherwise bring forth when we move one of our limbs, when we walk or stand, when we send the will through our person, we must make the effort to concentrate so fully on this willing that we actually will each individual thought, as if we were pounding it out. We must feel that the thought is pounded out much as we would stretch out our arm. Reality goes through the will into the thought. Then all that lives in our senses, while it previously sent us merely colorful images and tones, for us the entire multi-formed sensory sheen will be presently-streaming cosmic willing.

My dear brothers and sisters, learn to stretch thoughts out into the world just as you learn to stick your hands out by means of the will. Just as you come up against fixed things of the world when you exert your will, and have resistance, so also the spirits resist when you stretch out thoughts, if you send the will through them. If we do this, then we really move in wisdom. Accordingly, the Guardian exhorts us to do it. The ultimate admonition of the Guardian infuses into us. [The first verse was written on the board; the title as well as the words “head” and “will”, were underlined.]

The Guardian's final admonition:

The head’s spirit
You can will it;

Otherwise, we only think it, but now we will it, and if we do this, then willing becomes something else.

And willing

the willing of the thoughts

becomes for you
Sensing’s many-formed heavenly weaving:
You weave in wisdom.

The next instruction of the Guardian of the Threshold concerns our heart, our heart in which is concentrated all that we are as rhythmic human beings. Into the heart we can carry nothing other than feeling, feeling as it is here in the sense world between birth and death. But we must also meet feeling and its content with the heart when we are in the spiritual world.

If we could merely feel the heart with empathy, as if the world is felt in our heart, for we are certainly in the world, then our feeling becomes something else. Just as willing becomes the sensing’s multi-varied heavenly weaving, so will feeling be¬come for us something which yet must be grappled, so we may say see that thinking, therefore the head’s spirit turned to willing, but that feeling remains feeling, but it rays out on one hand toward thinking and on the other hand toward willing, for it is both at once. Therefore, we must accustom ourselves at this point to think a line in which we interweave one into the other, radiating upward and downward.

This line must so sound, “And feeling becomes for you thinking's willing, willing's thinking, seed-awakening world living.” Then one lives in the brilliance. This is no longer an apparent radiance which fades away, but rather the revelation of the world in beauty, which one can therefore call radiance, which can be stated as glory. For brilliance here has the meaning of glory.

The second, therefore, about which the Guardian admonishes, is

The heart’s soul
You can feel it;
And willing becomes for you
Thinking’s willing, willing's thinking germinal waking world living:
You live in glory.

[This second verse was now written on the blackboard, and “heart” and “feel” were underlined.]

The heart’s soul
You can feel it;
And feeling becomes for you

Thinking's seed-awakening world living
Willing's seed-awakening world living:

You live in glory.

You must try, my dear brothers and sisters, as you practice this, to be able to think simultaneously that it interweaves thinking's willing, willing's thinking together, that it passes one-into-another into one, just as it stands there before the world.

The third, about which the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us, is the force of our limbs. In this we want something else. The Guardian of the Threshold now wishes for us, if we would step out of ourselves and rest peacefully, that we should think our limb’s force, that we should think the spirit of our limbs, by what we do now not feeling the exertion of our force, but rather by looking at it from afar, as if we were standing next to ourselves. Then thinking of willing, the thinking that we deploy here, becomes willing's goal-directed human striving. And we now recognize virtue, in the sense of the human capacity, as what humankind can will in world evolution. The Guardian of the Threshold so admonishes us. [The third verse was now written on the board and “limbs” was underlined.]

The limb’s strength,
You can think it;
And thinking becomes for you
Willing's goal-directed human striving.
You strive in virtue.

The progression is [The following three words were underlined.] weaving, living, striving. The other progression is wisdom, glory, virtue. Now I shall read the lines as they first appear to us, as the Guardian speaks them to us:

The head’s spirit,
You can will it;
And willing becomes for you
Sensing’s many-formed heavenly weaving:
You weave in wisdom.

The heart’s soul,
You can feel it;
And feeling becomes for you
Thinking's willing’s, willing’s thinking’s
seed-awakening world living:
You live in glory

of think-willing.

The limb’s strength
You can think it;
And thinking becomes for you
Willing's goal-directed human striving:
You strive in virtue.

This is the final admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

That is the decisive point, which may be indicated by the word, the word most certainly expressed here as the word that Michael himself speaks, as this esoteric school is founded and sustained by Michael and his force. Now the instruction stands at that important point where we have taken everything into ourselves, which, if it will be thoroughly practiced gives us the wings to cross over the yawning deep abyss of existence.

Everything which has been spoken in this Michael School should once again be accompanied by Michael’s Sign and Seal. For everything will be given in such a way that Michael is present while it resounds through the room of this school, which may be confirmed by his sign, [The Michael sign was drawn on the blackboard.] and which may be confirmed by his seal, that he has impressed on the threefold Rosicrucian maxim, Ex Deo Nascimur, In Christo Morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

The seal is such, that we feel the first part of the maxim in this gesture, [The lower seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard], the second part of the maxim in this gesture, [The middle seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], the third part of the maxim in this gesture, [The upper seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], and know that the first gesture implies [beside the lower seal gesture was written]

I honor the Father,

which we feel as we say Ex Deo Nascimur, and confirm it with the gesture that is Michael’s Seal.

The second gesture implies [beside the middle seal gesture was written]

I love the Son,

which we feel it as we say In Christo Morimur, impressing the feeling by what lies in Michael’s Seal.

The third gesture implies, [beside the upper seal gesture was written]

I unite with the Spirit,

which accompanies as a feeling Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus. It is the gesture which is Michael's Seal upon the third part of the Rosicrucian maxim.

In this way Michael's Sign and Seal may marshal the broader way, which here in this school for spiritual development will be undergone. [The Michael sign was made and the three seal gestures were made as the Rosea et Crucis was spoken.] Ex Deo Nascimur, In Christo Morimur Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

Then the moment is present in which the word of the Guardian of the Threshold sounds decisively, the word of the Guardian of the Threshold, sounding as if it came from Michael himself, as if it came from world's far reaches. After the Guardian has told us how we have to prepare ourselves, and we should feel that such preparation must occur, then will his word resound, as if from Michael, as if from world’s reaches.

Enter
The door is opened
You will become
A true human being

We must interweave ourselves in the feeling that we do not speak it ourselves, but rather, as we speak it, it should become objective, so that we hear it as if it were spoken from another place. [The following is written on the blackboard in red diagonally to the mantra “O show the three”:]

Enter
The door is opened
You will become
A true human being

What will subsequently take place in the following lessons, the next which will as usual be on Saturday at half past eight, what will take place in the following lessons shall reflect what resounds over there on the other side of the Threshold.

But now let us consider once again, for all true development leads ever again back to its starting point, how from all beings of the world the challenge sounds to us, which we currently have to experience from the mouth of the Guardian:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

Once more – confirming all this, confirming Michael's presence – the sign and seal of Michael: [the Michael sign was made and with the three seal gestures was spoken:]

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

The mantric maxims which are given here to be practiced, and which carry the force to experience in oneself what is here described, may only be possessed by the rightful members of this class, by no one else. He who belongs to this school and cannot be present at a lesson, when he could have received the corresponding verse, can receive it from another member who was present. But for each such handing on of a verse special permission must be obtained either from Frau Dr. Wegman or from me personally. He who wishes to receive the verse, however, may not request permission, but only the one who is to pass on the verse.

When once one has received permission to give the verse to someone, this continues to hold good for that particular person. For every other person the same permission must be obtained either from Frau Dr. Wegman or from me. It is useless to ask permission if one wishes the verses for oneself, for one may ask only in order to hand them on. One must turn therefore, if one wishes to receive the verses, to someone who rightfully possesses them. The rightful possessor must then ask permission, for each person to whom they are to be given.

Also, if someone writes something down as we go along, he or she only has the right to keep it for eight days. Then it must be burned. Except for the maxims, anything else which has been written down here must be burned. For we must, for once, keep to the occult rules. There is an occult rule in everything which I have now said and to which I hold. We must adhere to the occult rule. So, it is not a matter of an arbitrary administrative procedure; rather, if something esoteric comes into the wrong hands, then, my dear brothers and sisters, for those who possess it rightfully, the mantra concerned loses its effective power. This is simply a matter which is founded in occult law.

Tomorrow at 12 noon, the speech-formation course will be given, at 10:45 the course for theologians, at 5 o'clock, the pastoral medicine course, and at 8 o'clock the members' cycle.

The Guardian admonishes:

O show the three
They are the one
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

△ Experience the head’s world-gestalt
⧖ Feel the heart’s world-beat
▽ Think the limb’s world-strength

These are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

The Guardian's final admonition:

The head’s spirit
You can will it;
And willing becomes for you
Sensing’s many-formed heavenly weaving:
You weave in wisdom.

The soul of the heart
You can feel it;
And feeling becomes for you
seed-awakening¹ world living:
You live in glory.

The strength of the limbs
You can think it;
And thinking becomes for you
Willing's goal-directed human striving:
You strive in virtue.

Enter!
The door is opened!
You shall become
A true human being.

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus
I honor the Father
I love the Son
I unite with the Spirit

• 1. for one's thinking and willing

My dear friends,

Quite a large number of new members of this School are present, and I am therefore obliged to again say a few words about its principles.

First if all, this School represents the impulse of the anthroposophical movement which was renewed here during the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum. Previously there were several esoteric circles. All these esoteric circles must be gradually absorbed into this School, because with the Christmas Conference a new spirit was introduced into the anthroposophical movement insofar as it streams through the Anthroposophical Society.

I have repeatedly spoken - also outside [Dornach] - about what the difference is between the anthroposophical movement before the Christmas Conference and the one we now have since Christmas. Previously the Anthroposophical Society was a kind of administrative body for anthroposophical teaching and content. Within the Anthroposophical Society, Anthroposophy was, so to speak, cultivated. Since Christmas anthroposophy is not only cultivated, it is also carried out; meaning that everything which passes through the Anthroposophical Society as activity, as thought, is anthroposophy itself.

The renewal which has taken place must be clearly grasped, my dear friends, and above all it must be grasped with deep earnestness. For a distinction exists between the Anthroposophical Society in general and this Esoteric School within the Anthroposophical Society. The Anthroposophical Society will, as a matter of course and according to the principle of openness, not be able to demand anything more from the members than that they honestly recognize what anthroposophy is and that they are in a certain sense listeners to what anthroposophy says; and that they receive from it what their hearts, their souls can make of it.

It is different as far as the School is concerned. Those who become members of this School declare that they want to be true representatives of the anthroposophical movement. In this Esoteric School, which will gradually be expanded to include three classes, the same freedom must of course apply as it does to every member of the Anthroposophical Society; but freedom must also apply for the Executive Council at the Goetheanum which is responsible for this School. In this case, it means that only those who are recognized by the School as true members can be recipients of what the School teaches.

Therefore, whatever a member of the School does should have the effect of reflecting on anthroposophy in the world; and it must belong to the competence of the Executive Council to remove a member if it considers that he cannot be a representative of the anthroposophical movement. The relationship must be mutual.

Therefore, more and more a serious, in a certain sense strict spirit will have to be utilized in the management of the School. Otherwise the anthroposophical movement cannot advance if we do not feel that the School is like building a rock to support anthroposophy. It is going to be very difficult and the members of this School must know that they must adapt to those difficulties. They are not merely anthroposophists, they are members of an Esoteric School.

And it must be an inner obligation to consider the Executive Committee, as it is presently constituted, as an esoteric entity. This is not generally understood. So something must be done to bring it to the members' attention. It is saying much that an Executive Committee has been esoterically formed.

Furthermore, all those who consider themselves to be legitimate members of this School see the School as not having been founded by men, but in fact by the will of the world's presently reigning spiritual powers; something which has been instituted from the spiritual world and which intends to act accordingly; which feels responsible to the spiritual world alone. Therefore, anything which indicates that a member is not taking the School seriously must lead to the cancellation of that person's membership.

It is a fact that negligence has entered into the Anthroposophical Society to a marked degree in recent years. That it ceases is one of the tasks for the members of this School. We want to feel responsible even for the words we speak. Above all we should feel responsible that every word we speak is tested to the extent that we know it is true. For untruthfulness, even when derived from what is called good intentions, is destructive in an occult movement. There must be no illusions about this; it must be completely clear. It is not a question of good intentions, which are often taken very lightly, but of objective truth. Among the first duties of an esoteric student is that he does not merely feel obliged to say what he thinks is true, but that he feels obliged to determine that what he says is really objectively true. For only when we serve the divine-spiritual powers - whose forces stream through this School - in the sense of objective truth, will we be able to steer through all the difficulties which will assail anthroposophy.

What I will now say is within the circle of the School, and what is said within the circle of the School remains within the circle of the School. We may not forget that many people are saying something like the following. Certain influential persons are saying: Those who represent the principles of the Roman Church will do everything in their power to make the individual states of the former German Empire independent and out of them - I am only reporting - with the exception of the predominance of Prussia, to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire, which of course, when it is established by such prominence, will spread its power over the neighboring regions. Then - they say - we will need to completely destroy from the roots up the most dangerous, the worst movements. And, they add, if the reestablishment of the Holy Roman Empire is not successful, and it will be successful, but if not, we will find other means to completely destroy from the roots up the most resisting, the most dangerous movements of the present, and they are the anthroposophical movement and the movement for Religious Renewal [Christian Community].

I quote almost verbatim. And you can see that the difficulties are not less, but every week greater, that what I say is well founded. I wish today to speak from the heart to those who consider their membership in this School with heartfelt seriousness. Only by such earnestness as members of the School can we construct the necessary foundation for navigating through the future difficulties.

You can see from this that anthroposophy - the movement for religious renewal is only a branch of it - is taken more seriously by the opposition than by many of the members. Because when one can learn that the Holy Roman Empire, which fell in 1806, is to be reinstated in order to eliminate such a movement, that means that it is taken very seriously indeed. What is important is whether a movement is founded from the spirit and not, my dear friends, how many members it has, but which force is instilled in it directly from the spiritual world. The opponents see that it contains a strong inner force; therefore, they choose sharp, strong rather than weak means [to combat it].

*

The considerations of these Class lessons, my dear friends, have been primarily concerned with what can be told about the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold, the encounter which is the first experience towards the attainment of real and true supersensible knowledge. Today I would like to add something to what has already been considered.

It is not possible to claim that the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold has been successful until one has experienced what it means to be outside the physical body with the human I and the astral body. Because when the human being is enclosed within the physical body, the only things he can perceive in his surroundings are those which he perceives with the instruments of his physical body. And through the instruments of the physical body only the sensible world can be perceived - which is a reflection of a spiritual world, one which does not, however, reveal to the senses what it is a reflection of.

Generally speaking, it is not difficult for a person to leave the physical body. He does so every time he falls asleep. He is then outside the physical body. But when he is asleep outside the physical body his consciousness is suppressed to the point of being unconscious. Only illusory - or perhaps even not illusory - dreams rise up from this unconsciousness. But through the attainment of higher knowledge leaving the physical body takes place in fully conscious deliberateness, so that when outside the physical body the person perceives his surroundings exactly as he perceives the physical world with his senses when within the physical body. He perceives the spiritual world while outside the physical body.

But the human being is at first unconsciously asleep. Under normal circumstances he is not aware of what he could see when outside the physical body. And the reason for this is that he is protected from approaching the spiritual world unprepared.

If he is sufficiently prepared, what happens then? When he is at the abyss between the sensory world and the spiritual world, the Guardian of the Threshold extracts his true human essence - assuming he is prepared as described in the previous lessons - which can then fly over the abyss with the means indicated in the mantric verses. And then from beyond the threshold he can behold his own sensory physical being.

That is the first powerful impression of true knowledge, my dear friends, when the Guardian of the Threshold can say to the human being: See, that is how you are over there, as you appear in the physical world; here with me you are as your inner being really is.

And now meaningful words sound out again from the Guardian of the Threshold - that the person is called upon, now that he is on the other side of the abyss, how differently he sees himself on the other, physical side. He sees himself differently. He sees himself as a tripartite being. He sees himself as a tripartite being which expresses itself psychically in thinking, feeling and willing. In reality they are three humans: the thinking one, the feeling one, the willing one, which exist in every person and are only held together in one by the physical body in the physical world. And what the person sees there resounds from the lips of the Guardian of the Threshold in the following way:

O see the three
They are the one,
When you in earthly life
the human form have got.

Or also “human imprint”; one must translate the words from the occult language.

O see the three
They are the one,
When you in earthly life
the human imprint bear.

Experience the head's cosmic form
Feel the heart's cosmic pulse
Think the limbs' cosmic force

They are the three
The three, which as the one
In earthly being live.

[The mantra is written on the blackboard:]

O see the three
They are the one,
When you in earthly life
the human imprint bear.

Experience the head's cosmic form
Feel the heart's cosmic pulse
Think the limbs' cosmic force

They are the three
The three, which as the one
In earthly being live.

The Guardian of the Threshold is indicating here how the Three - which separate from each other once the person leaves the physical body - how the Three look in relation to the physical body. Thevision is directed to the physical body, to the head, heart and limbs, and the Guardian of the Threshold says: If you observe the human head in its true cosmic significance, it is a mirror image of the heavenly universe. You must look into the distance, where the universe seems to reach its boundary. (In reality it is bounded by the spirit, not as it naively appears physically to be.) In looking up you must recall that your round head is a true image of the heavenly universe. And we add here, being conscious of the mantric words:

“Experience the head's cosmic form”

The sign is added here [in front of the above line]:

which encourages us to pause at this line of the mantric verse in order to envision the upward direction to the cosmic vastness, and of course that direction is always upward from anywhere on the earth.

“Feel the heart's cosmic pulse”

Through this cosmic-heavenly place the cosmic rhythm resounds as cosmic music. When we hear the human heart beating it seems as if this human heart were only beating as a result of the human organism's interior processes. In reality what beats in the heart is the counterpoint of the cosmic rhythm which has circulated not only for thousands but for millions of years. Therefore, pause again - the Guardian of the Threshold says - at the words “Feel the heart's cosmic pulse”, and feel what works in the heart upward as well as downward.

[The corresponding sign is drawn:]

The triangle pointing downward combines with the one pointing upward.

“Think the limbs' cosmic force”

This cosmic force is the one concentrated from below by gravity and other earthly forces. In our thinking - which as earthly thinking is only capable of understanding the earthly - we must look downward to grasp what streams out from the earth to work in man. Now we pause again at “Think the limbs' cosmic force” in the triangle pointing downward:

And we will feel the Guardian's words as they should affect the human heart, the human soul today if one activates this mantric verse in the appropriate way.

Experience the head's cosmic form.

The verse is spoken while making the sign before the head:

Feel the heart's cosmic pulse

One speaks the verse while making the sign before the breast:

Think the limbs' cosmic force

One speaks the verse while making the sign pointing downward:

And you should then try, after letting these mantric verses work on the soul, to make the senses subdued, close the eyes, hear nothing with the ears, perceive nothing and have darkness around you for a while, so that you are living totally in the atmosphere through which these words pass. And in this way you will transport yourself to the sphere in initiation which in all reality can be realized during the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold. This is one of the ways by which one can take the first step beyond the threshold.

But we must let the Guardian's next words work upon us with great earnestness. These words indicate that once we have crossed the threshold everything is different from the sensory world. In the sensory world we think that the site of thinking and mental images is the human head. And so it is, for the sensory world. But this thinking in the head is always mixed a little bit with willing, something which is also perceptible for normal consciousness. Because when we move from one thought to another we must use the will just as we use it when moving an arm or a leg, or when willing in general. But it is a fine, delicate willing which transfers one thought to another. When we are in the sensory world the whole extent of thinking and a small amount of willing are bound together in the head. As soon as we cross over the Threshold and encounter the Guardian it is the reverse: a small amount of thinking and much widespread willing is bound to the head. And in this willing, which otherwise sleeps in man, we sense the spirit which forms the head from out of the cosmos, the heavens, as it's spherically-shaped mirror image in all its details.

Therefore, once we have crossed beyond the threshold, the Guardian calls out the following words:

[The new mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The head's spirit,
You can will it

And now we see that willing is something quite different from what it previously was. Previously the senses were the transmitters of sense-impressions, and one was not aware that the will goes through the the eyes, through the ears, that the will goes through the sense of warmth, and through every other sense as well. Now we see that everything the eye experiences as multiple colors, what the ear hears as multiple sounds, what man perceives as warmth and cold, as rough and smooth, smells and tastes etc., is all will in the spiritual world.

[writing continues:]

And willing provides you with
The senses' multiple heaven-weaving

If on seeing the head from the other side of the threshold one recognizes how will goes through the head and how the senses represent will, then he will realize how the heart contains the soul and how one can feel the soul within the heart just as he can will the head's spirit when observing the head. And now we know that when thinking is not considered as a function of the head, but as a function of the heart, of the soul, we realize that thinking does not belong to an individual, but to the world; then one experiences cosmic-life, the music of the spheres.

[The second verse is written on the blackboard.]

The heart's soul,
You can feel it;
And feeling provides you with
Thinking's germinal-waking cosmic-life.
You live in the shining.

not in the unsubstantial shining, but the shining where the essence of the world appears.

The head's spirit,
You're able to will it;
And willing provides you with
The senses' manifold heavenly weave.

summing up in the line:

You weave in wisdom.

Summing up what pertains to the heart's soul and feeling in the line:

You live in the shining.

Just as you recognize the senses as will, you also recognize thinking as feeling in respect to cosmic being, when you consider the Three, which only in the sensory world are One.

And thirdly the Guardian of the Threshold adds:

[The third verse is written on the blackboard.]

The limbs' strength,
You can think it.

Now we have a complete reversal. Whereas normally we consider thinking to be concentrated in the head, here [in the first verse] it is the will, as I previously explained, that is concentrated in the head. Feeling stays in the heart, where it is also felt to be in the sensory world; for the inner force of the heart goes over to the spiritual world.

The limbs' strength,

You can think it.

Now thinking is brought directly into connection with the limbs, the opposite of the sensory world.

[Writing continues.]

And thinking gives you
Human striving's goal oriented will;

thus, willing becomes thinking,

You strive in virtue.

Thus, we have the complete reversal in the spiritual world as revealed to us by the Guardian of the Threshold. Whereas we normally differentiate willing, feeling, thinking from below upward in man, on the other side [of the threshold] we differentiate man as a Three: will above in the head, feeling in the middle, thinking below at the limbs.

We realize then how willing, concentrated in the head, is the weaving cosmic wisdom in which we live; how feeling is the cosmic shining in which all the spirit-beings glow; and how thinking, observed in the limbs, is human striving, which can be lived as human virtue. And the Three appear before spiritual vision thus:

The mantric verse is built thus. And we must be aware of this inner congruence, and also aware that if we let this mantric verse work on us the following will penetrate our being:

[These three lines are underlined in yellow.]

These then are the Guardian of the Threshold's words which accompany our spiritual vision of the Three, which derive from the One, when we cross over into the world beyond the threshold:

These are the sensations which must flow through the soul if real knowledge is to be obtained; these are the admonitions which the Guardian of the Threshold lets resound at the moment when he also tells us:

[Written on the blackboard:]

Those are the words which for thousands and thousands of years have resounded at all the gates to the spiritual world, admonishing and yet encouraging:

Just imagine, my sisters and brothers, that you say to yourselves for the first time: I want to take the Guardian of the Threshold's words seriously; I recognize that I was not yet a human being; I recognize that I will become one through insight into the spiritual world.

Imagine, my dear sisters and brothers, you say the second time: Oh, I didn't take the words seriously enough the first time; I must admit that I need not one, but two of the stages from where I am now in order to become a true human being.

And imagine you say the third time: I recognize that I need three of the stages from the point where I now stand, at which I am not a true human, in order to become a true human being.

The first admonition, which you give to yourself, is earnest. The second admonition is more earnest. But the third admonition must bear the most earnest impression of all. And if you can awaken this threefold admonition of earnestness from the depths of your souls, then you will have an inkling of what it means to become a true human being through knowledge. And then you will return to the first admonition - as we will also do now - as a transforming verse in our souls.

Thus, my sisters and brothers, has it resounded in the hearts of all who have striven for knowledge ever since there have been human beings on the earth.

There has been a pause in the striving since the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. According to the will of the divine-spiritual entities who guide humanity, the pause has come to an end. Now it is up to you to make human hearts open again in a worthy way to what the wise guides of humanity raise up to the vision of what works in the world as spirit, what as spirit works in the world in humanity, as the crown of existence.

One who looks around a little in Germany today, and not at externals but with the eye of the soul; one who sees not only what offers itself to the casual visitor, who seldom learns the true conditions during his visit; one who does not cling to the fact that a few chimneys are smoking again and the trains are running on time; one who can to some degree see into the spiritual situation; such a person sees a picture which is symptomatic not only for this territory but for the whole decay of our world-culture in the present cycle. I would like today to point out to you, in an introductory way, a psycho-spiritual symptom which is far more significant than many sleeping souls even in Germany allow themselves to dream.

In old Germany decay and decline rule today, and the external things which I have mentioned cannot deceive us about this. But this is not what I want to point to now, for in the course of world-history we often see decay set in and then out of the decay there again spring upward impulses. But if we judge externally, basing our opinion on mere custom and routine and saying that here again everything will be just as it has been before, then we do not see certain deeper-lying symptoms. One such symptom (but only one of many), a psycho-spiritual symptom which I want to bring before you, is the remarkable impression made by Oswald Spengler's book The Decline of the West, which is already symptomatic in having been able to appear in our time. It is a thick book and widely read, a book which has made an extraordinarily deep impression on the younger generation in Germany today. And the remarkable thing is that the author expressly states that he conceived the basic idea of this book, not during the war or after the war, but already some years before the catastrophe of 1914.

As I have said, this book makes a particularly strong impression on the younger generation. And if you try to sense the imponderables of life, the things which are between the lines, then you will be particularly struck by such a thing. In Stuttgart I recently had to give a lecture to the students of the technical college, and I went to this lecture entirely under the impression made by Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West. It is a thick book. Thick books are very costly now in Germany, yet it is much read. You will realize their costliness when I tell you that a pamphlet which cost five cents in 1914 now costs thirty-five cents. Of course, books have not risen in the same proportion as beer, which now costs ten times as much as in 1914. Books must always be handled more modestly, even under the present impossible economic conditions. Still the price increase on books shows what has happened to the economic system in the last few years.

The contents of this book may be easily characterized. It demonstrates how the culture of the Occident has now reached a point which, at a certain period, was also reached by the declining cultures of the old Orient, of Greece, and of Rome. Spengler calculates in a strictly historical way that the complete collapse of the culture of the Occident must be accomplished by the year 2200. In my public lecture in Stuttgart I treated Spengler's book very seriously, and I also combatted it strenuously. But today the contents of such a thing are not so important. More important than the contents or the psycho-spiritual qualities of a book is whether the author (no matter what view of life he may adopt) has spiritual qualities, whether he is a personality who may be taken earnestly, or even highly esteemed, in a spiritual way. The author of this book is, beyond any doubt, such a personality. He has completely mastered ten or fifteen sciences. He has a penetrating judgment on the whole historical process, as far as history reaches. And he also has something which men of today almost never have, a sound eye for the phenomena of decline in the civilizations of the present day. There is a fundamental difference between Spengler and those who do not grasp the nature of the impulses of decline and who try all kinds of arrangements for extracting from the decayed ideas some appearance of upward motion. Were it not heart-rending it might be humorous to see how people with traditional ideas all riddled with decay meet today in conferences and believe that out of decay they can create progress by means of programs. Such a man as Oswald Spengler, who really knows something, does not yield to such a deception. He calculates like a precise mathematician the rapidity of our decline and comes out with the prediction (which is more than a vague prophecy) that by the year 2200 this Occidental culture will have fallen into complete barbarism.

This combination of universal outward decline, especially in the psycho-spiritual field, with the revelation by a serious thinker that such decline is necessary in accordance with the laws of history—this combination is something remarkable, and it is this which has made such a strong impression on the younger generation. We have today not only signs of decay, we have theories which describe this decay as necessary in a demonstrable scientific way. In other words, we have not only decay but a theory of decay, and a very formidable theory too. One may well ask where we shall find the forces, the inner will-forces, to spur men to work upward again, if our best people, after surveying ten or fifteen sciences, have reached the point of saying that this decay is not only present but can be proved like a phenomenon in physics. This means that the time has begun when belief in decay is not represented by the worst people. We must stress again and again how really serious the times are, and what a mistake it is to sleep away this seriousness of the times.

If one grasps the entire urgency of the situation, one is driven to the question: How can we orient thinking so that pessimism toward western civilization will not appear to be natural and obvious while faith in a new ascent seems a delusion? We must ask if there is anything that can still lead us out of this pessimism. Just the way in which Spengler comes to his results is extremely interesting for the spiritual-scientist. Spengler does not consider the single cultures to be as sharply demarcated as we do when, for example, within the post-Atlantean time we distinguish the Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Latin, and present-day cultures. He is not familiar with spiritual science, but in a certain way, he too considers such cultures. He looks at them with the eye of the scientific researcher. He examines them with the methods which in the last three or four centuries have grown up in occidental civilization and been adopted by all who are not prejudiced by narrow traditional faith, Catholic, Protestant, Monadistic, etc. Oswald Spengler is a man who is completely permeated by materialistic modern science. And he observes the rise and fall of cultures—oriental, Indian, Persian, Greek, Roman, modern occidental—as he would observe an organism which goes through a certain infancy, a time of maturity, and a time of aging, and then, when it has grown old, dies. Thus Spengler regards the single cultures; they go through their childhood, their maturity, and their old age, and then they die. And the death-day of our present Occidental civilization is to be the year 2200.

Only the first volume of the book is now available. One who lets this first volume work upon him finds a strict theoretical vindication and proof of the decline, and nowhere a spark of light pointing to a rise, nothing which gives any hint of a rise. And one cannot say that this is an erroneous method of thought for a scientist. For if you consider the life of today and do not yield to the delusion that fruit for the future can grow out of bodiless programs, then you see that an upward movement nowhere appears in what the majority of men recognize in the outer world. If you regard rising and declining cultures as organisms, and then look at our culture, our entire Occidental civilization, as an organism, then you can only say that the Occident is perishing, declining into barbarism. You find no indication where an upward movement could appear, where another center of the world could form itself.

The Decline of the West is a book with spiritual qualities, based on keen observation, and written out of a real permeation with modern science. Only our habitual frivolity can ignore such things.

When a phenomenon like this appears, there springs up in the world-observer that historical concern of which I have so often spoken and which I can briefly characterize in the following words: One who today makes himself really acquainted with the inner nature of what is working in social, political, and spiritual life, one who sees how all that is so working strives toward decline—such a person, if he knows spiritual science as it is here meant, must say that there can only be a recovery if what we call the wisdom of initiation flows into human evolution. For if this wisdom of initiation were entirely ignored by men, if it were suppressed, if it could play no role in the further development of mankind—what would be the necessary consequence? You see, if we look at the old Indian culture, it is like an organism in having infancy, maturity, aging, decay, and death; then it continues itself. Then we have the Persian, Egyptian, Chaldean, Greco-Latin, and our own time, but always we have something which Oswald Spengler did not take into account. He has been reproached for this by several of his opponents. For a good deal has already been written against Spengler's book, most of it cleverer than Benedetto Croce's extraordinarily simple article. Croce, who has always written cleverly apart from this, suddenly became a simpleton with Spengler's book. But it has been pointed out to Spengler that the cultures do not always have only infancy, maturity, aging, and death, they continue themselves and will do so in this case also; when our culture dies in the year 2200, it will continue itself again. The singular thing here is that Spengler is a good observer and therefore he finds no moment of continuation and cannot speak of a seed somewhere in our culture, but only of the signs of decay which are evident to him as a scientific observer. And those who speak of cultures continuing themselves have not known how to say anything particularly clever about this book. One very young man has brought forward a rather confused mysticism in which he speaks of world-rhythm; but that creates nothing which can transform a documented pessimism into optimism. And so it follows from Spengler's book that the decline will come, but no upward movement can follow.

What Spengler does is to observe scientifically the infancy of the organism which is a culture or civilization, its maturity, decline, aging, death. He observes these in the different epochs in the only way in which, fundamentally, one can observe scientifically. But one who can look a little deeper into things knows that in the old Indian life, apart from the external civilization, there lived the initiation-wisdom of primeval times. And this initiation-wisdom of primeval times, which was still mighty in India, inserted a new seed into the Persian culture. The Persian mysteries were already weaker, but they could still insert the seed into the Egypto-Chaldean time. The seed could also be carried over into the Greco-Latin period. And then the stream of culture continued itself as it were by the law of inertia into our own time. And there it dries up.

One must feel this, and those who belong to our spiritual science could have felt it for twenty years. For one of my first remarks at the time of founding our movement was that, if you want a comparison for what the cultural life of mankind brings forth externally, you may compare it with the trunk, leaves, blossoms, and so forth, of a tree. But what we want to insert into this continuous stream can only be compared with the pith of the tree; it must be compared with the activating growth-forces of the pith. I wanted thereby to point out that through spiritual science we must seek again what has died out with the old atavistic primeval wisdom.

The consciousness of being thus placed into the world should be gained by all those who count themselves a part of the anthroposophical movement. But I have made another remark, especially here in recent years but also in other places. I have said that, if you take all that can be drawn out of modern science and form therefrom a method of contemplation which you then apply to social or, better still, to historical life, you will be able to grasp thereby only phenomena of degeneration. If you examine history with the methods of observation taught by science, you will see only what is declining, if you apply this method to social life, you will create only the phenomena of degeneration.

What I have thus said over the course of years could really find no better illustration than Spengler's book. A genuinely scientific thinker appears, writes history, and discovers through this writing of history that the civilization of the Occident will die in the year 2200. He really could not have discovered anything else. For in the first place, with the scientific method of contemplation you can find or create only phenomena of degeneration; while in the second place the whole Occident in its spiritual, political, and social life is saturated with scientific impulses, hence is in the midst of a period of decline. The important thing is that what formerly drew one culture out of another has now dried up, and in the third millennium no new civilization will spring out of our collapsing Occidental civilization.

You may bring up ever so many social questions, or questions on women's suffrage, and so forth, and you may hold ever so many meetings; but if you form your programs out of the traditions of the past, you will be making something which is only seemingly creative and to which the ideas of Oswald Spengler are thoroughly applicable. The concern of which I have spoken must be spoken of because it is now necessary that a wholly new initiation-wisdom should begin out of the human will and human freedom. If we resign ourselves to the outer world and to what is mere tradition, we shall perish in the Occident, fall into barbarism; while we can move upward again only out of the will, out of the creative spirit. The initiation-wisdom which must begin in our time must, like the old initiation wisdom (which only gradually succumbed to egoism, selfishness, and prejudice), proceed from objectivity, impartiality, and selflessness. From this base it must permeate everything.

We can see this as a necessity. We must grasp it as a necessity if we look deeper into the present unhappy trend of Occidental civilization. But then you also notice something else; you notice that when a justified appeal is made it is distorted into a caricature. And it is especially necessary that we should see through this. Now in our time no appeal is more justifiable than that for democracy; yet this is distorted into a caricature as long as democracy is not recognized as a necessary impulse only for the life of politics and rights and the state, from which the economic life and the cultural life must be dissociated. It is distorted into a caricature when today, instead of objectivity, impartiality, and selflessness, we find personal whims and self-interest made into cultural factors. Everything is being drawn into the political field. But if this happens, then gradually objectivity and impartiality will disappear; for the cultural life cannot thrive if it takes its directions from the political life. It is always entangled in prejudice thereby. And selflessness cannot thrive if the economic life creeps into the political life, because then self-interest is necessarily introduced. If the associative life, which can produce selflessness in the economic field, is spoiled, then everything will tend to leave men to wander in prejudice and self-interest. And the result of this will be to reject what must be based on objectivity and selflessness—the science of initiation. In external life everything possible is done today to reject this science of initiation, although it alone can lead us beyond the year 2200.

This is the great anxiety as regards our culture, which can come over you if you look with a clear eye at the events of the present. On this basis, I regard Spengler's book as only a symptom, but can anyone possibly say today: “Ah yes, but Spengler is wrong. Cultures have risen and fallen; ours will fall, but another will arise out of it.”? No, there can be no such refutation of Spengler's views. It is falsely reasoned, because trust in an upward movement cannot today be based on a faith that out of the Occidental culture another will develop. No, if we rely on such a faith nothing will develop. There is simply nothing in the world at present which can be the seed to carry us over the beginning of the third millennium. Just because we are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, we must first create a seed.

You cannot say to people—Believe in the Gods, believe in this, believe in that, and then all will be well. You must confess that those who speak of, and even demonstrate, the phenomena of degeneration are right with regard to what lives in the outer world. But we, every individual human being must take care that they shall not remain right. For the upward movement does not come out of anything objective, it comes out of the subjective will. Each person must will, each person must will to take up the spirit anew, and from the newly received spirit of the declining civilization each person must himself give a new thrust; otherwise it will perish. You cannot appeal today to any objective law, you can appeal only to the human will, to the good-will of men. Here in Switzerland, where things have unrolled themselves differently, there is little to be seen of the real course of events (although it is also present here); but if you step over the border into Middle Europe you are immediately struck, in all that you observe with the eye of the soul, by what I have just described to you. There comes before your soul the sharp and painful contrast between the need for adopting initiation-wisdom into our spiritual, legal, and economic life and the perverted instincts which reject everything which comes from this quarter. One who feels this contrast must search hard for the right way to describe it, and one who does not choose words haphazardly often has trouble in finding the right expression for it. In Stuttgart I spoke on Spengler's book and I used this expression, “perverted instincts of the present.” I have used it again today because I find it is the only adequate one. As I left the stand that day I was accosted by one of those who best understand the word “perverted” in a technical sense, a physician. He was shocked that I had used just this word, but out of curious reasons. It is no longer commonly supposed that one who speaks on a foundation of facts, out of reality, chooses his words with pain; rather is it supposed that everyone forms his words as they are usually formed out of the superficial consciousness of the times. I had a talk with this physician, told him this and that, and then he said he was glad that I had not meant this word “perverted” in any elegant literary sense. I could only reply that this was certainly not the case, because I was not in the habit of meaning things in an elegant literary way. The point is that the man in the street today never assumes that there is such a thing as a creation out of the spirit; he simply believes, if you say something like “perverted instincts,” that you are speaking on the same basis as the last litterateur. That tone dominates our minds today; our minds educate themselves by it. Just in such an episode you can see the contrast between what is so necessary to mankind today—a real deepening, which must even go back as far as the basis of initiation-wisdom—and that which, through the caricature of democracy, comes before us today as spiritual life. People are much too lazy to draw something up from the hidden forces of consciousness within themselves; they prefer to dabble at tea-parties, in beer-gardens, at political meetings, or in parliaments. It is the easiest thing in the world now to say witty things, for we live in a dying culture where wit comes easily to people. But the wit that we need, the wit of initiation-wisdom, we must fetch up from the will; and we will not find it unless the power of this initiation-wisdom flows into our souls. Hence, we cannot say that we have refuted such a book as Spengler's. Naturally, we can describe it. It is born out of the scientific spirit. But the same is true of what others bring to birth out of the scientific spirit. Thus he is right if there does not enter into the wills of men that which will make him wrong. We can no longer have the comfort of proving that his demonstration of decline is wrong; we must, through the force of our wills, make wrong what seems to be right.

You see, this must be said in sentences which seem paradoxical. But we live in a time when the old prejudices must be demolished and when it must be recognized that we can never create a new world out of the old prejudices. Is it not understandable that people should encounter spiritual science and say they do not understand it? It is the most understandable thing in the world. For what they understand is what they have learned, and what they have learned, is decay or leading to decay. It is a question, not of assimilating something which can easily be understood out of the phenomena of decline, but of assimilating something to understand which one must first enhance his powers. Such is the nature of initiation-wisdom. But how can we expect that those who now aspire to be the teachers or leaders of the people should discern that what gives man a capacity for judgment must first be fetched out of the subconscious depths of soul-life and is not sitting up there in the head all ready-made. What really sits up there in the head is the destructive element.

Such is the nature of the things which you encounter wherever the consequences have already been drawn, where you have only to look at this seeming success. It is comprehensible that in the decline of occidental civilization our consciousness cannot easily enter into this field. Hence, we stand today entirely under the influence of this contrast which has been described to you; on the one side the need for a new impulse to enter into our civilization, and on the other side a rejection of this impulse. Things simply cannot improve if a sufficiently large number of people do not grasp the need for this impulse from initiation-wisdom. If you lay weight on temporary improvement you will not notice the great lines of decline, you will delude yourself about it, and you will march just so much more surely toward decline because you fail to grasp the only means there is to kindle a new spirit out of the will of men. But this spirit must lay hold of everything. Above all, this spirit must not linger over any theoretical philosophical problems. It would be a terrible delusion if a great number of people—perhaps just those who were somewhat pleased by the new initiation-wisdom and derived therefrom a somewhat voluptuous soul-feeling—should believe it would suffice to pursue this initiation-wisdom as something which was merely comfortable and good for the soul. For just through this the remainder of our real external life would more and more fall into barbarism, and the little bit of mysticism that could be pursued by those whose souls had an inclination in that direction would right soon vanish in the face of universal barbarism. Everywhere, and in an earnest way, initiation-wisdom must penetrate into the various branches of science and teaching, and above all into practical life, especially practical will. Fundamentally everything is lost time today that is not willed out of the impulses of initiation-wisdom. For all strength which we apply to other kinds of willing retards matters. Instead of wasting our time and strength in this way, we should apply whatever time and strength we have to bringing the impulse of initiation-wisdom into the different branches of life and knowledge.

If something is rolling along with the ancient impulses, no one will stop it in its rolling; and we should have an eye to how many younger people (especially in the conquered countries) are still filled with old catch-words, old chauvinism. These young people do not come into consideration. But those young people do come into consideration on whom rests the whole pain of the decline. And there are such. They are the ones whose wills can be broken by such theories as those of Spengler's book. Therefore, in Stuttgart I called this book of Oswald Spengler's a clever but fearful book, which contains the most fearful dangers, for it is so clever that it actually conjures up a sort of fog in front of people, especially young people.

The refutations must come out of an entirely different tone than that to which we are accustomed in such things, and it will never be a faith in this or that which will save us. People recommend one happily nowadays to such a faith, saying that if we only have faith in the good forces of men the new culture will come like a new youth. No, today it cannot be a question of faith, today it is a question of will; and spiritual science speaks to the will. Hence it is not understood by anyone who tries to grasp it through faith or as a theory. Only he understands it who knows how it appeals to the will, to the will in the deepest recesses of the heart when a man is alone with himself, and to the will when a man stands in the battle of daily life and in such battle, must assert himself as a man. Only when such a will is striven for can spiritual science be understood. I have said to you that for anyone who reads my Occult Science as he would read a novel, passively giving himself to it, it is really only a thicket of words—and so are my other books. Only one who knows that in every moment of reading he must, out of the depths of his own soul, and through his most intimate willing, create something for which the books should be only a stimulus—only such a one can regard these books as musical scores out of which he can gain the experience in his own soul of the true piece of music.

We need this active experiencing within our own souls.

Today I shall again insert a kind of episode into our reflections, which will serve to further the actual theme tomorrow. I shall be obliged to use a somewhat more aphoristic mode of presentation today in order to discuss certain things with you. We have, of course, taken the most diverse symptoms and phenomena from current events in order to recognize how these events are leading humanity to a grasp of spiritual realities. And it was my endeavor to make clear that this taking hold of spiritual realities cannot be merely a matter of man's continuing to take hold of the spiritual world in the future, so to speak, in order to have something from it, I might say, for his Sunday hours. That was precisely the pernicious thing in the civilization that has developed in recent centuries, that spiritual life has gradually become something so detached and abstract. In answer to the question that I posed in a public lecture in Basel some time ago: What connects the world view, the view of the spiritual or the unspiritual, that someone has as a civil servant, lawyer, factory owner, or merchant, with what one does every day? One could say: The thoughts that he has as a worldview have no influence on his professional and everyday affairs, or rather, on how he conducts them. On the one hand, one is a person of external practical life, and on the other, one has a purely abstract worldview, whether it is more or less religious or more or less scientifically colored. This has become common practice in the course of the last few centuries and has reached a climax in our so ominous time. And what underlies this is expressed in another, even more fatal circumstance, that people who have the good will to acquire a spiritual worldview are virtually absorbed in the content of this spiritual worldview, that this spiritual worldview has nothing to do with their practical life. Because practical life is the real thing, it is what one devotes oneself to externally; one has spirituality for Sundays, it is set apart from life, and life is not worthy of absorbing this spirituality. I have always endeavored to make it clear that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here, while seeking to ascend to the highest heights of spiritual life, should then cultivate in man, through this ascent into the spiritual worlds, a way of thinking, a way of imagining, that makes him suitable, adept, and practical in every aspect of everyday life. One should have something for one's business, for daily practical life, from what one also works for spiritually in the higher worlds.

This work for the spiritual world should not tempt one to say: This spiritual world is the other world, it must not be touched by the coarse everyday life; the coarse everyday life is separate, it is despised, the spiritual world is the high, the exalted. I have often pointed these things out very sharply in earlier years and have said that, over the years, many a person has come to me and said: Oh, I have such a prosaic profession, I want to leave this prosaic profession and devote myself to more ideal things. That is the worst maxim one can have in life. I have often said that anyone who, by fate or karma, is a postal worker, and a decent postal worker at that, certainly serves the world more by properly fulfilling their profession than someone who is a bad poet or even a bad journalist or the like, which one sometimes craves. The point is, when one approaches the spiritual, to take this spirituality into one's mind in such a way that it does not make one unskillful, but skillful for the outer life.

Because this maxim has disappeared from life since the 15th century and, to a certain extent, life has split into these two currents, into the outer practical life despised by idealists and mystics, and into the mystical, religious, idealistic life regarded by practical people as somewhat dreamy and starry-eyed, we now find ourselves in the deadlock of life described to you yesterday. That is the deeper reason why we are stuck in this impasse. As a result, on the one hand, in practical life, each individual stands in a small circle, as I said yesterday, working without an overview and also without a warm interest in the whole, and on the other hand, if one is idealistic enough to devote oneself to a spiritual world-view, one then wants to have this spiritual world-view in such a way that one is not educated in this spiritual world-view, for example, in practical leadership, let us say, of a proper ledger or a proper journal. There are people who consider it an advantage if someone does not understand and cannot grasp how to keep a journal or a cash book. This is the great damage that has gradually become more and more widespread over the past few centuries.

It is not an advantage to have no idea of how to keep ledgers and cash books, and it is not a blessing for humanity when there are as many people as possible who want to be idealists by not understanding anything practical and only wanting to devote themselves to spiritual contemplation. The only healthy thing in life is when these two maxims in life go so far together that one supports the other. But what has gradually emerged more and more as a life-damage in the smallest circles over the past few centuries is also expressed in the great affairs of life, in that no one, really, one can say, no one except a few people who have done it quite impractically, has actually worried about it: How can something really healthy arise from the structures that are outdated – I characterized them for you yesterday in terms of how they look on the map – that were used before the war, until 1914, to describe the states of the world? – Yes, even after the trials of the last four to five years, unfortunately we have not yet come far enough to think about these things in a healthy way. Take just one thing. When we have a cool head to consider the more distant causes of the terrible catastrophe of the last four and a half or five years, we will find that these causes lie in the industrial and commercial conditions between Central Europe and the western regions, including America, in those industrial and commercial conditions that have long since come into conflict with national borders. The state structures, which have developed out of quite different conditions and which are a relic of medieval conditions, have been used artificially as a framework for what are only commercial and industrial interests. They were not suited for that purpose at all, but they could be used for it. And today one notices that so little that a social-democratic movement, which is hopeless for longer periods of time but extremely disruptive for shorter periods, does not do it any differently. We are experiencing today that socialist theories are emerging everywhere, even in the Asian world, and they are becoming particularly radical. These socialist theories want to create something practical. Before the war they wanted to use the framework of the old states, now they want to use the framework of what has emerged from the catastrophe of war, that is to say, we say Russia, as it has emerged from the war, should be used as a framework for Bolshevik theories. If you can think according to reality, you cannot think of anything more nonsensical than this attempt. There is no greater nonsense than this construct, which initially arose out of purely medieval forces, combined then with the unnatural results that arose more and more in the war that had come to Versailles, that is, to an unpeaceful state. That this structure in the east of Europe should now take up the fantasies of Lenin and Trotsky is nonsense in the long term, and in the short term it is a tumult that must enormously delay the healthy development of Europe's humanity. This is the result if one has a sense of reality.

But this sense of reality is lacking today, one might say, in the whole of humanity's public judgment. The whole of humanity's public judgment is not formed out of a sense of reality, but actually out of abstractions, out of abstract theories. And when something arises that is not based on abstract theories, such as threefolding, something that is taken from life and, because one cannot write thirty volumes about it, which people would not read anyway, one has to summarize it briefly, then people do not recognize the spirit of reality in it, but, because they are completely filled with theories today, they consider it to be a theory all the more. One no longer has any sense of what is taken from reality, because one has become completely estranged from reality.

It must happen that people today can become practical in the most eminent sense and yet still look up to the spiritual world. For only in this way will the human mind develop healthily into the future, that these two elements in the human mind can go side by side. When the time comes that he who says: Over in the East live souls who, due to the special historical circumstances of Asia, have developed in such a way that today they have little sense for the outer world and could easily become the prey of the Europeans, who are attached to the mere material world, but that they have been able to preserve their gaze into the spiritual world. Then one will see that in the Orient we have such souls. I have often mentioned Rabindranath Tagore as an especially important representative. But this Rabindranath Tagore, who is not even an initiate but merely an Asian intellectual, has within him, I might say, the whole spirit of Asia, and you can learn much about this striving Asian spirit from his collection of lectures, 'Nationalism'.

But the souls that are over there lack any inner relationship to what has been achieved in Europe and America in relation to the outer life. Let me remind you once again of something that I have already said before you. It is only in the last few centuries that we have developed what can be called a purely mechanistic culture. Even today you will find in geography books that the entire earth is populated by about fifteen hundred million people. But that is not true if you take into account the work that is done on the earth. If, let us say, a Martian were to come down to Earth and assess the Earth's population in the following way, first asking: How much does a person work on Earth, taking into account the amount of labor they can apply? – and then asking: How much work is done altogether? — let us take the figures that existed before the war, the current figures cannot be used for this, they are not yet available either, then if we were to note how much work is done by people on earth, not fifteen hundred million would come out, but two thousand million or even two thousand two hundred million people as the earth's population. Why? Because the work done by machines on earth is actually so great that it is the equivalent of about seven hundred million human workers. If the machines did not work and if what the machines do were to be done by human labor, there would have to be seven hundred million more people on earth. I have calculated this from the amount of coal used on earth, based on an eight-hour working day. What I have said applies approximately to the coal consumption at the beginning of the 20th century and to an eight-hour working day, so that one can say: judging by what is being done on the earth, there are actually two thousand two hundred million people on the earth. But what is achieved by purely mechanical instruments of labor is more or less done entirely in Europe and America; not much of it is done in Asia today. It has begun there, but it is still in its early stages, because the Asian has no sense of this mechanization of the world. He completely lacks the sense for what has been absorbed in the Occident since the last century or even since the middle of the 15th century. But we must not just think about the fact that mechanical work is being done; we must also think about the fact that people's entire way of thinking is turning to this mechanization of the world. Today, someone can say: So-and-so many workers were needed to build the Gotthard tunnel. But today you can't build a Gotthard tunnel without knowing differential and integral calculus, and that comes from Leibniz, the English say from Newton; we won't argue about that. So the Gotthard tunnel or the Hauenstein tunnel near here could not have been built if Leibniz had not discovered differential and integral calculus in his study one day. All of European thought since Copernicus and Galileo is directed towards this mechanization of the world. Read up on Rabindranath Tagore and how much he hates this mechanization of the world.

But what will this have to lead to? In the mirror of the spiritual world view, it can be said: All those souls that are embodied today in the East, in what we call the East, will seek their next embodiment in the West. Western people will seek their next embodiment more in the East. The middle will have to form a mediation. But if you say something like a cultural-historical demand, that the whole education system and the like should be designed so that this intersecting wave of souls passes over the earth, you say something like that to the very clever people of the present, let us take the cleverest, those who are chosen by the nations to come into parliaments, then you will hear that you are a fool, that this is quite mad! But the recognition of these truths must also move people as much as what is now called anthropological truths moved people in earlier times; the mixing of races, the mutual distribution of races and so on. We must begin to look at everything from a spiritual point of view, instead of regarding it merely from an external physiological point of view, as we have done in the past. There are, of course, good Theosophists who, in moments of solemnity in their lives, think that man lives in repeated lives on earth; it is a creed for them. But that is not enough. If one merely believes in reincarnation and karma as an article of faith, it is no more valuable than making a laundry list. These things only take on value when they are integrated into the whole way of thinking about the world and also into the way of acting and behaving in the world. These things only have value when they are considered in terms of cultural history. And if you do not see these things as something you only devote yourself to in the festive moments of life, but as something you permeate with life, and if you really have such thoughts in earnest - theosophically you can of course play with these thoughts a lot with these thoughts, then one will also have a sense for the proper keeping of a cash book or a ledger, for the shaping of a proper workbench; one will also not disdain it if one is put in the position of having to do cobbling work oneself. For only in the case of someone who is able to engage practically in life, who can be dexterous in circumstances where it comes down to taking hold everywhere, in the case of such a person the whole human organism is so imbued with inner skill that this inner skill also finds expression in truly viable thoughts.

This is what should penetrate our minds. It will permeate our culture if we familiarize ourselves with what people today fear most.

One could say that there are two things today that point to two states of fear in contemporary humanity – I do not think that you, if you look at the situation with an inner sense of truthfulness, can refute me. The first is that, throughout the civilized world, there is a terrible fear of getting to the real causes of war. They do not want to look into it, or even stick their nose into it, at most with the opponent, but certainly not at home! With a few exceptions, people avoid dealing with the actual causes of the terrible human catastrophe of recent years, they are terribly afraid of it. During the war, this was even idealized. There were people who took the view: From this war will emerge a new human life, a new fertilization of the ideals of humanity and so on. - One will be able to study the events of recent times a lot to get behind the real cause of this horror catastrophe. But then nothing positive will arise as the content of this war, but it will arise that the old forms of culture and civilization have become rotten, that they have led themselves ad absurdum in this war catastrophe, that this war means nothing more than the leading ad absurdum of civilization as it was until this war. That is one thing that people are terribly afraid of, afraid of an external event. They are so afraid that today they have generally given up even thinking in terms of tomorrow. Because no reasonable person, from either side, could believe that what is called the Treaty of Versailles could ever give birth to reality. And yet, because people think only for today, not for tomorrow, this strange instrument has come into being. That is an external event.

But there is something else, and that is the fear people have of advancing into ever greater and greater awareness of the soul life. If it seems to people somehow justified to flee from consciousness into the unconscious, then they are glad. When a world view such as this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science comes along, which strives for a complete development of consciousness and wants to arrive at its truths from this complete development of consciousness, then people do not want to approach it. It is too difficult for them. It requires activity, it requires that one really engages in flexible spiritual life. That is too difficult.

But people strive for revelation in their lower states of consciousness: first, of what spiritual life is, and second, of what lives within the human being. How many people, much more than you think, do not want to engage with spiritual truths grasped with a healthy soul sense today. But if something from the spiritual worlds is proclaimed to them by a medium, then they fall for it. One does not need to make an effort to understand it. It comes about unconsciously, and one wants to believe the unconscious. The other thing that follows directly from this is the blatant spread of psychoanalysis. It is hard to believe how this psychoanalysis has taken root in people's minds with breakneck speed. What does it consist of? It consists of the fact that all kinds of medical people are opening up today and – it's hard to say in a nutshell, I've often analyzed psychoanalysis here – setting up something that brings what is subconscious in the human psyche up into consciousness. People are made to tell their dreams, and they explore earlier experiences of disappointment, of unfulfilled desires and so on, which have then been forgotten and formed islands in the soul and so on. In this way, they try to get a clear picture of what actually lives in the human being. Particularly clever people have found out that a great deal lives in the human soul, which takes root in the soul during early childhood in the form of unnatural feelings and sensations, which are then pushed down into the subconscious; but they continue to live in the human being, the human being is their slave. These people trace the Oedipus myth back to the unnatural feelings that every child is supposed to have towards its mother and so on. These people are clear in their view that every little girl is actually jealous of her mother because she loves her father, and every little boy is jealous of his father because he loves his mother. From this arises a complex of feelings, which, transformed into myth, appears in the Oedipus myth and the like. People do not want to believe that spiritual things play a role, but spiritual things that must be permeated with the light of consciousness, people are afraid of that. They are afraid of bringing these things into the light of consciousness. They would prefer to keep everything shrouded in a nebulous darkness. I have already pointed out to you a splendid example, which keeps cropping up time and again when psychoanalysis is discussed: a lady is invited to an evening entertainment at a house where the lady of the house is ailing and the farewell party is being celebrated because she has to travel to a spa. The master of the house stays at home, the lady of the house has to go to the spa. The evening entertainment is over. The lady of the house has already been sent to the train station, the evening party is leaving and is on its way home. A cab, not a car, is driving around the corner, and the evening party is moving out of the way to the left and right. But the one lady I am actually eyeing does not move to the left or to the right, but remains in the middle of the street and runs in front of the horses. The coachman naturally makes a terrible din, but the lady runs and runs, and the coachman has the greatest difficulty in holding the horses back, because he could run over the lady. They come to a bridge. The lady, quite an object for the psychoanalysts, throws herself into the stream, and of course the evening party follows suit to save her. What do you do with her? Well, of course, take her back to the host's house, that's the next step.

The psychoanalyst now has this lady in front of him. He lets her tell him everything she went through in her youth, and he now also happily comes to the conclusion that when she was a very little girl, she was crossing the street and a horse came around the corner; she was very frightened. That has sunk down into the subconscious. It is down there. Since then she has been so afraid of horses that she ran away from them on the street, not dodging to the right or to the left. That is the isolated province of the soul that she has, the fear of horses, which dwells in the subconscious.

There is something in this subconscious, but one must penetrate this subconscious with the light of spiritual research. Then one comes to the conclusion that this subconscious is very clever under certain pathological conditions, that under the ordinary individual human consciousness, however, it is not exactly the foundations of the Oedipus myth, not exactly the fear of the horse that once crossed one's path, but rather a certain sophistication. Because the lady who was invited to that evening party naturally wanted nothing more than to spend the night in that house after the lady of the house had been sent off to the bath, and the best way for the subconscious to arrange things was to seize the next best opportunity – had it not been the steed, had it been something else – that the evening party would have to bring her back to the house. That is how she had achieved her goal. Of course, according to her upbringing, according to what she had absorbed, she would never have violated her morality to such an extent as to do something like that. In the superconscious, she is not that clever; but in the subconscious, there are many sophisticated impulses that can be very clever.

This whole spreading psychoanalysis, which takes on such blatant forms today, in which, more than you think, today in particular the more hopeful intellectuals believe - I say this not in a derogatory sense, but even with the tone of truth -, in which even today theologians would like to base religion, this psychoanalysis is the other fear product of the present. People are afraid of consciousness. They do not want things to be seen in the clear light of consciousness, but they want the most important thing to dwell down there in the subconscious, and for man to be dominated in regard to his most important things, especially in regard to his religious feelings. Read about this in William James, the American. Because whether it is called psychoanalysis in some areas of Europe or whether it is called it as William James, the American, expresses these things, it is all the same. There is a fear of the conscious. One does not want the most important thing that lives in man to be in his consciousness. After all, man would have to think more if he were to direct himself with his conscious will. It is important that the human being has justified that he thinks less.

Our eurythmy is worked out entirely from the consciousness. It is the opposite of everything dreamy. People are afraid that it is less artistic because they associate the artistic with the dreamy. But that is nonsense. In the artistic, it does not matter whether it comes from this or that region, but that it is artistic in its forms and in its development. This eurythmy, which is based entirely on the superconscious, on the opposite of the subconscious, was recently appraised by a gentleman, as I was told, who is now also a doctor: He noticed a lot of unconsciousness in it. — Of course, this is proof that the gentleman did not understand eurythmy at all. Precisely that which is the lifeblood of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has been noticed very little. And it will only be fully noticed when one can really undergo such an inner education of thinking, feeling and will through this spiritual science that it makes one more skillful for life, not less. I do not want to claim that today all those who have made anthroposophy their creed are skilled in life. A creed does not mean much in this respect. I really dare not claim that all anthroposophists are skilled in life. But you see, what is expressed in the real movement of the Anthroposophical Society is often what is brought into it from outside. And only then will anthroposophically oriented spiritual science be able to be what it should be for the world, not only when mystical tendencies, unworldliness, false idealism, and a kind of spiritualism — I could also say “uncleism”; no, I mean similar things — are brought into it , but when what can be gained in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is carried out: a stimulation of the soul life that passes into the limbs, that takes hold of the whole human being - not just the creed - and thereby enables people to intervene in the affairs of the world. That is what it is mainly about. In this one should seek the whole seriousness of life.

We shall now have to describe how the individual anthroposophist can come to experience his karma through the simple fact that he has placed himself into the Anthroposophical Society, or at any rate into the Anthroposophical Movement, through all the previous conditions of which we have already spoken. To this end it will be necessary for me to add a few explanations to what I set forth last Monday. I told you of the deeply important super-sensible School at the beginning of the 15th century. To characterise it we can say: Michael himself was the great Teacher in that School. Numbers of souls, human souls who were then in the life between death and a new birth, and numbers too of spiritual beings who do not have to enter earthly incarnation, but spend the aeons, during which we live, in an ethereal or other higher form of higher existence,—all these human, super-human and sub-human beings, belonged at that time to the all-embracing School of the Michael Power. They were, so to speak, disciples of Michael. And you will remember, last Monday I told you a little of the content of the teaching given at that time.

Today we will begin by emphasising this one point: the previous Michael dominion, having lasted three centuries and finding its culmination in the Alexandrian epoch of pre-Christian time, was withdrawn from the earth, and the dominions of the other Archangeloi followed. At the time when on earth, within the earthly realm, the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the Michael community were united in the Spirit, with all the spiritual and human-spiritual beings who belonged to them. How did they feel and perceive the Mystery of Golgotha? Christ at that time was taking His departure from their realm—the realm of the Sun. Such was their experience; while the human beings who were then living upon earth had to experience the Mystery of Golgotha quite differently. For Christ was coming down to them to the earth.

Now this is an immense, far-reaching and gigantic contrast in experience, as between the one kind of human soul and the other,—a contrast which we need to penetrate and understand with all our heart and mind.

Then there began the time when the Cosmic Intelligence, that is to say, the essence of Intelligence that is spread out over the great universe, which had been subject to the unlimited rulership of Michael until the end of the Alexandrian epoch, gradually passed into the possession of man on earth and fell, so to speak, out of the hands of Michael.

You must realise, my dear friends: the evolution of mankind with respect to these things took place as follows. Till the end of the Alexandrian time, nay even afterwards,—and for certain groups of human beings long, long afterwards,—when a man was intelligent there was always the consciousness, not that he had evolved the Intelligence within him, but that he was gifted with it from the spiritual worlds. If a man thought a clever thought, the cleverness of it was ascribed to the inspiration of spiritual Beings. It is indeed of fairly recent date that man ascribes his cleverness, his intelligence, to himself. This is due to the fact that the rulership of Intelligence has passed from the hands of Michael into the hands of men. When Michael at the end of the eighteen-seventies again assumed his regency in the guidance of earthly destinies, he found the Cosmic Intelligence, which had fallen away from him entirely since the 8th or 9th century A.D.,—he found it again in the realm of mankind below.

Thus it was in the last third of the 19th century, when the Gabriel dominion was over and the Michael dominion began to spread. It was as though Michael, coming to the intelligent human beings, arrived at a point where he could say: Here do I find again that which has fallen away from me, which I administered in times long past.

Now in the Middle Ages there was a great conflict between the leading men of the Dominican Order and those who, in a continuation of Asiatic Alexandrianism, had found their way over into Spain,—Averroes, for example. What was the substance of this conflict? Averroes and those on his side—the Mohammedan followers of Aristotelian learning—said: “Intelligence is universal, common to all.” They only spoke of a pan-Intelligence, not of an individual human Intelligence. To Averroes the individual human Intelligence was but a kind of mirrored reflection in the single human head. In its reality it had only a general, universal existence.

I will draw a mirror, thus (drawing on the blackboard). I might equally well have drawn a mirror not with nine parts only, but with hundreds, thousands and millions. Over against it is an object which will be reflected. So it was for Averroes, who was attacked so vigorously by Thomas Aquinas. For Averroes—in the tradition of the old Michael epoch—Intelligence was pan-Intelligence, one Intelligence and one only, which the several human heads reflected. As soon as the human head ceases to work, the individual Intelligence is no more. Now was this really true?

The fact is this. That which Averroes conceived had been true till the end of the Alexandrian age. It was simply a cosmic and human fact until the end of that age. But Averroes held fast to it while the Dominicans received into themselves the evolution of mankind. They said, “It is not so.” They might of course have said, “It was so once, but it is not so today.” But they did not say this. They simply took the actual and true condition at that time (the 13th century) which became even more so in the 14th and 15th centuries. They said: “Now everyone has his own intellect, his own intelligence.”

This was what really happened, and to bring these matters to full clearness of understanding was the very task of the super-sensible School of which I spoke last Monday. It was repeated in that School again and again in many metamorphoses, inasmuch as the character of the ancient Mysteries was again and again described. Wonderfully clearly and visibly, not in super-sensible Imaginations, (these only came at the beginning of the 19th century) but in super-sensible Inspirations, there was described what I have often been able to give here in a reflected radiance—the essence of the ancient Mysteries.

Then too they pointed to the future, to what was to become the new life of the Mysteries. They pointed to all that was to come, though not in the way of the old Mysteries which had come to human beings who did not yet possess Intelligence on earth, and who, accordingly, still had a dream-like experience of super-sensible worlds. They pointed to that new life of the Mysteries which we must now begin to understand in the realm of Anthroposophy, and which is absolutely compatible with the full Intelligence of man—the clear, light-filled Intelligence.

Let us now enter a little into the more intimate details of the teachings of that super-sensible School. For they led to a knowledge of something, of which only a kind of shadowy reflection has existed in the world-conceptions of men upon the earth since the old Hebrew time and in the Christian era. It exists, to this day (when a far deeper insight ought already to prevail) in the large majority of men only as a dim reflection out of old traditions. I mean the teaching about Sin, about the sinful human being, the teaching about man, who at the beginning of human evolution was predestined not to descend so deeply into the material realm as he has actually descended.

We can still find a good version of this teaching in St. Martin, the ‘Unknown Philosopher.’ He still did teach his pupils that originally, before human evolution on the earth began, man stood upon a certain height from which he then sank down through a primeval Sin which St. Martin describes as the Cosmic Adultery. By a primeval Sin man descended to that estate in which he finds himself today.

St. Martin here points to something that was inherently contained in the doctrine of Sin during the whole of human evolution, I mean, the idea that man does not stand at that high level at which he could be standing. All teachings about inherited Sin were justly connected with this idea, that man has descended from the height which originally was his.

Now by following this idea to its conclusion, a world-conception of a very definite shade or colouring had gradually been evolved. This kind of world-conception said in effect: Man has become sinful (and to become sinful means to fall from one's original height). And since man has in fact become sinful, he cannot see the world as he would have been able to see it in his sinless condition before the Fall. Man, therefore, sees the world darkly and dimly. He sees it not in its true form. He sees it with many illusions and false fantasies. Above all, he sees what he sees in outer Nature, not as it really is or with its true spiritual background. He sees it in a material form which is not there in reality at all. Such was the meaning of the saying: Man is sinful. Such was its meaning in ancient time and—in the traditions—frequently even to this day. Thus upon earth too, those who had kept the tradition of the Mysteries continued to teach: Man cannot perceive the world, he cannot feel in the world, he cannot act in the world as he would think and feel and act if he had not become sinful,—if he had not descended from the height for which his Gods originally predestined him.

Now we may turn our gaze to all the leading Spirits in the kingdom of Archangeloi who follow one another in earthly rule, so that this earthly dominion is exercised by the several Archangeloi in turn through successive periods of three to three-and-a-half centuries. In the last three or four centuries it has been the dominion of Gabriel. Now it will be that of Michael, for three hundred years to come. Let us turn our gaze therefore to the whole series of these Archangel Beings: Gabriel, Raphael, Zachariel, Anael, Oriphiel, Samael, Michael. As we look to all these Beings, we can characterise the relation that exists between them and the loftier Spirits of the Hierarchies, somewhat as follows.

I beg you not to take these words lightly or easily. We have but human words to express these sublime realities. Simple as the words may sound, they are not lightly meant. Of all these Angels, the number of whom is seven, six have to a very considerable extent (not entirely—Gabriel most of all—but even he not altogether)—six, as I said, have to a very considerable extent resigned themselves to the fact that man is faced with Maya, with the great illusion, because, in his quality which no longer accords with his original pre-destination, he has in fact descended from his first stature. Michael alone, Michael is the only one (I say again, I am forced to use banal expressions) Michael is the only one who would not give in. Michael, and with him those who are the Michael spirits even among men, continues to take this stand: I am the Ruler of the Intelligence. And the Intelligence must be so ruled that there shall not enter into it any illusion nor false fantasy, nor anything that would restrict the human being to a dark and vague and cloudy vision of the world.

My dear friends: to see how Michael stands there as the greatest opponent in the ranks of the Archangels, is an unspeakably uplifting sight,—overpowering, magnificent. And every time a Michael Age returned, it happened upon earth too that Intelligence as a means to knowledge became not only cosmopolitan as I have already said, but became such that men were filled through and through with the consciousness: We can after all ascend to the Divinity.

This consciousness: “We can after all ascend to the Divine,” played an immense part at the end of the last Michael Age, the Michael Age before our own. Starting from ancient Greece, the places of the ancient Mysteries everywhere were in a state of discouragement; an atmosphere of discouragement had come over them all. Discouraged were those who lived on in Southern Italy and Sicily. The successors of the ancient Pythagorean School of the sixth pre-Christian century had been well-nigh extinguished. They were filled with discouragement.

Once again, those who were initiated in the Pythagorean Mysteries saw how much illusion, illusion of materialism, was spreading over the whole world.

Discouraged too were those who were the daughters and sons of ancient Egyptian Mysteries. Oh, these Egyptian Mysteries! It was only like the slag from wonderful old veins of precious metal, when they still handed down the deep old teachings, such as were expressed in the legend of Osiris, or in the worship of Serapis. And where were those mighty and courageous ascents to the spiritual world that had taken their start, for example, from the Mysteries of Diana at Ephesus? Even the Samothracian Mysteries, the wisdom of the Kabiri, could now only be deciphered by individuals who bore deep within them the impulse of greatness to soar upward with might and main. By such souls alone could the clouds of smoke that ascended from Axieros, etc., from the Kabiri, be deciphered.

Discouragement everywhere! Everywhere a feeling of what they sought to overcome in the ancient Mysteries as they turned to the secret of the Sun Mystery, which is in truth the secret of Michael. Everywhere a feeling: Man cannot, he is unable.

This Michael Age was an age of great trial and probation. Plato, after all, was but a kind of watery extract of the ancient Mysteries. The most intellectual element of this extract was then extracted again in Aristotelianism, and Alexander took it on his shoulders.

This was the word of Michael at that time: Man must reach the Pan-Intelligence, he must take hold of the Divine upon earth in sinless form. From the centre of Alexandria the best that has been achieved must be spread far and wide in all directions, through all the places of the Mysteries, discouraged as they are. This was the impulse of Michael. This is indeed the relation of Michael to the other Archangeloi. He has protested most strongly against the Fall of man.

This too was the most important content of his teaching, the teaching with which he instructed his own in the super-sensible School of which I spoke last Monday. It was as follows: Now that the Intelligence will be down among men upon the earth, having fallen from the lap of Michael and from his hosts,—now in this new Age of Michael, men will have to become aware of the way of their salvation. They must not allow their Intelligence to be overcome by sinfulness; rather must they use this age of Intelligence to ascend to the spiritual life in purity of Intelligence, free from all illusion.

Such is the mood and feeling on the side of Michael as against the side of Ahriman. On Monday last I characterised this great contrast. Already the very strongest efforts are being made by Ahriman, and more still will be made in the future—the strongest efforts to acquire the Intelligence that has come into the hands of men. For if men once became possessed by Ahriman, Ahriman himself, in human heads, would be possessing the Intelligence.

My dear friends, we must learn to know this Ahriman, these hosts of Ahriman. It is not enough to find the name of Ahriman contemptible or to give the name of Ahriman to so many beings whom one despises. That is of no avail. The point is that in Ahriman there stands before us a cosmic Being of the highest imaginable Intelligence, a cosmic Being who has already taken the Intelligence entirely into the individual, personal element. In every conceivable direction Ahriman is in the highest degree intelligent, over-intelligent. He has at his command a dazzling Intelligence, proceeding from the whole human being, with the single exception of the part of the human being which in the human forehead takes on a human form.

To reproduce Ahriman in human Imaginations we should have to give him a receding forehead, a frivolously cynical expression, for in him everything comes out of the lower forces, and yet from these lower forces the highest Intelligence proceeds. If ever we let ourselves in for a discussion with Ahriman, we should inevitably be shattered by the logical conclusiveness, the magnificent certainty of aim with which he manipulates his arguments. The really decisive question for the world of men, in the opinion of Ahriman, is this: Will cleverness or stupidity prevail? And Ahriman calls stupidity everything that does not contain Intelligence within it in full personal individuality. Every Ahriman-being is over-endowed with personal Intelligence in the way I have now described; critical to a degree in the repudiation of all things unlogical; scornful and contemptuous in thought.

When we have Ahriman before us in this way, then too we shall feel the great contrast between Ahriman and Michael. For Michael is not in the least concerned with the personal quality of Intelligence. It is only for man that the temptation is ever-present to make his Intelligence personal after the pattern of Ahriman. Truth to tell, Ahriman has a most contemptuous judgment of Michael. He thinks Michael foolish and stupid,—stupid, needless to say, in relation to himself. For Michael does not wish to seize the Intelligence and make it personally his own. Michael only wills, and has willed through the thousands of years, nay through the aeons, to administer the Pan-Intelligence. And now once more, now that men have the Intelligence, it should again be administered by Michael as something belonging to all mankind—as the common and universal Intelligence that benefits all men alike.

We human beings shall indeed do rightly, my dear friends, if we say to ourselves: the idea that we can have cleverness for ourselves alone is foolish. Certainly we cannot be clever for ourselves alone. For if we want to prove anything to another person logically, the first thing we must presume is that the same logic holds good for him as for ourselves. And for a third party again it is the same logic. If anyone were able to have a logic of his own it would be absurd for us to want to prove anything to him by our logic. This after all is easy to realise; but it is essential in the present age of Michael for this realisation also to enter into our deepest feelings.

Thus behind the scenes of existence is raging the battle of Michael against all that is of Ahriman. And this, as I said last Monday, is among the tasks of the anthroposophist. ... He must have a feeling for the fact that these things are so at the present time. He must feel that the cosmos is as it were in the very midst of the battle.

You see, this battle was already there in the cosmos, but it became significant above all since the 8th or 9th century, when the Cosmic Intelligence gradually fell away from Michael and his hosts and came down to men on earth. It only became acute when the Spiritual Soul began to unfold in humanity, at the point of time which I have so often indicated, at the beginning of the 15th century. In individual spirits who lived on earth at that time, we see, even upon earth, some sort of reflection of what was taking place in the great super-sensible School of which I spoke last Monday. We see something of it reflected in individual men on the earth.

In recent lectures we have said much of heavenly reflections in earthly schools and institutions. We have spoken of the great School of Chartres, and others. But we can speak of this in relation to individual human beings too. Thus at the very time when the Spiritual Soul began to evolve in civilised mankind—when Rosicrucianism, genuine Rosicrucianism, was nurturing the early beginnings of the impulse to the Spiritual Soul,—something of the impulse which was at work above the earth struck down like lightning upon a spirit living in that age. I mean Raymond of Sabunda. What he taught at the beginning of the 15th century is almost like an earthly reflection of the great super-sensible doctrine of Michael which I have characterised.

He said: men have fallen from the vantage-point that was given to them originally by their Gods. If they had remained upon that point, they would have seen around them all that lives in the wondrous crystal shapes of the mineral kingdom, in the amorphous mineral kingdom, in the hundred-and-thousand fold forms of the plant kingdom, in the forms of the animal, all that lives and moves in water and air, in warmth and in the earthly realm. All this they would have seen as it really is, in its true nature.

Raymond of Sabunda called to mind, how the Tree of Sephiroth, or the Aristotelian categories (those generalised concepts that look so strange to one who cannot understand them) contain what is meant to guide us through Intelligence, up into the universe. How dry, how appallingly dry do these categories seem as they are taught in the textbooks of Logic. Being, having, becoming, here, there—ten of these categories, ten abstract concepts, and people say: it is too dreadful, it is appalling to have to learn such abstractions. Why should anyone grow warm with enthusiasm for ten generalised concepts—being, having, becoming and so forth?

But it is just as though someone were to say: here is Goethe's Faust. Why do people make so much fuss of it? It only consists of A, B, C, D, E, F, ... to Z. Nothing else is there in the book, only A, B, C, D ... Z in various combinations and permutations. Certainly one who cannot read, and takes Goethe's Faust in hand, will not perceive the greatness that is contained in it. He will only see A, B, C, D ... to Z. One who does not know how the A, B, C, D, are to be combined, who does not know how they are related to one another, cannot read Goethe's Faust.

So it is, in relation to the reading of words, with the Aristotelian categories. There are ten of them, not so many as the letters of the alphabet, but they are indeed the spiritual letters. And anyone who knows how to manipulate ‘being,’ ‘having,’ ‘becoming,’ etc., in the right way,—just as we must know how to treat the several letters so that they produce the Faust of Goethe,—anyone who knows how to do this, may still be able to divine what Aristotle for example said of these things in his instruction of Alexander.

Raymond of Sabunda was one who still drew attention to such things. He had knowledge of them. He said: Look for instance at what is still contained in Aristotelianism. There we find something that has still remained of that old standpoint from which man fell at the beginning of human evolution on earth. Originally, men still preserved some memory of it. It was the reading in the Book of Nature. But men have fallen; they can no longer truly read in the Book of Nature. Hence God in His Compassion has given them in the Bible, the Book of Revelation, in order that they may not entirely depart from the Divine and Spiritual. Thus Raymond of Sabunda still taught, even in the 15th century, that the Book of Revelation exists for sinful man because he is no longer able to read in the Book of Nature. And in the way he taught these things, we can already perceive his idea that man must find once more the power to read in the great Book of Nature.

This is the impulse of Michael. Now that the Intelligence administered by him has come down to men, it is his impulse to lead men again to the point where they will read once more in the Book of Nature. The great Book of Nature will be opened again. Men will read once more in the Book of Nature.

In reality, everyone who is in the Anthroposophical Movement should feel that he can only understand his karma when he knows that he personally is called to read once more, spiritually, in the Book of Nature—to find the spiritual background of Nature, God having given His Revelation for the intervening time.

Read the inner meaning that is contained in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Spiritual Life (Modern Mysticism).¹ On the last page you will see (in the form, of course, in which I could and had to write it at that time), you will see that the whole point was to guide the Anthroposophical Movement in this direction—to awaken once more the faculty to read not only in the Book of Revelation, in which I said that Jacob Boehme was still reading, but in the Book of Nature. The blundering, inadequate, and frequently repulsive attempts of modern natural science must be transmuted by a spiritual world-conception, till there arise from them a true reading of the Book of Nature. I think even this expression, ‘the Book of Nature,’ is to be found at the end of my book Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Spiritual Life. From the very beginning, the Anthroposophical Movement had this ‘Shibboleth.’ From the very beginning it was an appeal to those who should now listen to the voice of their own karma, and hear more or less dimly and subconsciously the call: ‘Behold, my karma is somehow moved and taken hold of by this Michael message which is sounding forth into the world. I, through my own karma, have to do with this.’

There are the human beings after all, who have been always there. They are always there. They have come, and they will come ever and again. There are those who are prepared in some sense to depart from the world and come together in this which is now called the Anthroposophical Society. As to the sense in which this ‘departure from the world’ is to be conceived—whether it be more or less real, or outwardly formal or the like—that is another matter. For the individual souls it is a kind of departure—a going away from the world and into something different from the world in which they have grown up. All manner of karmic experiences come to the individual, each in his own way. The one will have this or that to undergo through the fact that he must tear himself loose from old connections and unite with those who are seeking to cultivate the message of Michael. There are some who feel this union with the mission of Michael as a kind of salvation. There are others who feel it in a different way, finding themselves in this position: ‘I am drawn to Michael on the one hand and to Ahrimanism on the other. I cannot choose. Through my life I stand in the midst of these things.’ There are some whose inner courage tears them away, albeit they still preserve the outward connections. There are some who still find the outer connections easily. And this perhaps is best for the present condition of the Anthroposophical Society. But in every case, those human beings who are within the Anthroposophical Movement stand face to face with others who are not in it, including some with whom they are deeply, karmically connected from former earthly lives. Here we can look into the strangest of karmic threads.

My dear friends, we shall only be able to understand these karmic threads if we remember all the preceding conditions that we have now set forth. We shall only understand them when we have really seen how the souls who today, out of their unconscious Being, feel impelled to the Anthroposophical Movement, have undergone experiences together. For they have undergone much together in former lives on earth. Moreover the great majority of them belonged to the hosts who heard the Michael message in the super-sensible in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and who took part at the beginning of the 19th century in the great Imaginative ceremony of which I have here spoken. Thus we behold a mighty Cosmic and Tellurian call, addressed to the deep karmic relationship of the members of the Anthroposophical Society. We heard last Monday, how this call will continue throughout the 20th century, and how the culmination will come at the end of this century. Of these things, my dear friends, I will speak again next Sunday.

• 1. Mysticism and Modern Thought. Anthroposophical Publishing Co.

Good morning, gentlemen. Today we will add to what we have heard on previous occasions so that we will be better able to understand the full dignity of the human being.

I have explained roughly how nutrition and breathing work in human beings. We also talked about how closely connected nutrition is with our life and that it is essentially a process of taking in substances that are then lifeless in our intestines. These substances are then re-enlivened by the lymph vessels, and in the process they are transmitted into the blood. There this living nourishment encounters the oxygen of the air. We take in air. The blood changes. This process occurs in the chest, and it is this process that gives us our feelings.

Thus, life actually originates between the processes in the intestines and those in the blood. In turn, in the blood processes, that is, between the activities of the blood and the air, our feelings come about. Now we have to deal with the human mind as well and try to understand how it developed.

You see, understanding the external aspect of the mind has become possible only in the last sixty years. Last year, in 1921, we could have celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of this possibility. We did not, because in our time people are not very interested in celebrating purely scientific anniversaries. The discovery made in 1861 we could have celebrated sixty years later, was an important scientific discovery. It is only in the last fifty or sixty years that this matter can really be talked about. I remember it because it is just as old as I am. The discovery I am speaking of is the following.

I told you the other day how we can observe human beings. We do not need to experiment; all we need to do is pay attention to how nature experiments with people whenever they have any kind of illness. If we know how to look at what happens to the physical body when a person becomes ill in any way, we discover that nature herself arranged such an experiment for us and that we can gain insights from it.

Well, in 1861, when Broca dissected brains of deceased people who had speech impairments, he discovered that they had had an injury in the third convolution on the left side of the brain.

You know, don't you, that when we remove the top of the skull, we can see the brain? This brain has convolutions. We call one of them the temple convolution because it is located near the temple. Well now, in every person suffering from speech impediments or. muteness, there is some damage in this left convolution of the brain. This injury happens when someone has a so-called brain stroke. What happens in that case? The blood, which normally flows only through the vessels, is forced out through their walls and enters the tissue surrounding the vessels, where it should not be. Such a hemorrhage produces the stroke, the paralysis. In other words, whenever blood flows into the wrong place, into this convolution of the brain, it ultimately disables this temple convolution completely and prevents the person from speaking.

This is an interesting connection: Human beings can speak because they have a healthy left convolution of the brain. We must now understand what it means when a person has a healthy left convolution of the brain. But in order to grasp this, we need to look at something else first.

When we examine this same area of the brain in small children who have passed away, we find that this portion constitutes a fairly uniform, mushlike substance, especially at the time before the child has learned to speak. As the infant gradually learns to speak, more and more small whorls develop here. They continue to form in an artful way. In other words, the left cerebral convolutions in the child who has learned to speak or in a fully grown adult are artfully structured.

Clearly, this means that something happened to the brain while the child learned to speak. And we should not think about this any differently than we think in ordinary life. You see, if I move a table from there to here, nobody would say the table moved itself this way. It would be just as wrong for me to say that the brain has formed these convolutions by itself. Instead, I must think about what has actually taken place and what caused it. In other words, I must ask why the left temple convolution developed this way.

You see, when children learn to speak, they move their body. In particular, they move their speech organs. Before that, when they could not yet talk, they were merely fidgety, cried, and so forth. As long as the child is only able to cry, its left convolution of the brain is still a “mush,” as I described it. The more the child learns not merely to cry but also to turn this crying into individual sounds, the more this convolution receives definite shape. As long as the infant simply cries, there is only brain mush in this area. When the child begins to utter sounds, this uniform mush is transformed into the artfully structured left portion of the brain we can see in healthy adults.

Now, gentlemen, the matter stands like this: When children cry, the sounds they utter are mainly vowels such as A (as in “father”) or E (as in “gate”). When they merely cry like this, they do not need a developed left cerebral convolution; the children utter these sounds out of themselves, without having anything artful developed in the brain. If we pay some attention, we will discover that children initially make A sounds; later on they add those of U (as in “shoe”) and I (“bee”). Gradually, as you know, they also learn to utter consonants. First they form the sound A; then they add M or W and say MA or WA. In other words, out of their crying children gradually manage to form words by adding consonants to the vowels.

And how do they form these consonants? All you need to do is to pay attention to how you pronounce, for example, an M. You'll see that you must move your lips. When you were a child, you had to learn this through imitation. If you say L, you must move your tongue. Thus, you must always move some organs. From mere fidgeting the child must progress to regular movements, carried out by the speech organs in imitation. The more the child moves beyond the vowels formed in mere crying and utters consonants such as L, M; N, R, the more the left cerebral convolution is structured in an artful way.

Now we could ask how children initially learn to speak. They learn to speak only through imitation. They learn to speak, to move their lips, by imitating out of their feelings the way other people move their lips. All of this is imitation. This means that children take in, see, perceive what happens around them. And this perceiving, this mental activity, forms the brain. Just as a carver shapes a piece of wood or a sculptor works on marble and bronze, so the child's movements “sculpt” the brain. The organs the child moves carry their movements right into the brain.

If I want to pronounce L, I have to use my tongue. The tongue is connected with the brain through nerves and through other organs. This L penetrates into my left cerebral convolution and produces a structure there. In other words, the L produces forms in which one section joins the next, resembling the intestines. The M produces spherical convolutions. So you see, these sounds work on the brain.

The movements of the organs the child activates through observation are at work here in the brain. It is very interesting that since it became known that a brain stroke damages the left cerebral convolution, thus destroying the ability to speak, it became possible to know that the formation of vowels and consonants by the child continuously works on this convolution. This in turn is based on the fact that the eyes and other sense organs perceive what takes place in the world around us.

And what happens in the world around us? Well, you see, whenever we speak we are also breathing. We breathe continuously. And in this process, every breath first enters the human body, moves up the spinal column and enters the brain. This means that even while the child is crying—though as yet unable to pronounce consonants—this breath moves up and enters the brain.

What is actually entering the brain in this process? Well, blood, of course. As I explained to you in the last few days, blood flows everywhere. Through our breathing, blood is constantly being pushed into the brain. This activity begins the very moment we are born and even before, except then it occurs in a different manner. Anyhow, when we are born, we begin to breathe. This intake of air begins, which then pushes blood into the brain.

Thus we can say that as long as the baby's breathing merely pushes blood into the brain, it can only cry. Children begin to speak when not only blood is forced into the brain, but when they also perceive something through their eyes or any other organ, especially the ears. In other words, whenever they see another person move, children inwardly repeat this movement. At this moment not only the bloodstream goes up to the head, but another stream goes there as well, for instance, from the ears—the stream of the nerves.

In the left cerebral convolution, like everywhere else in the human body, blood vessels and nerve fibers meet. The latter are affected by what we observe and perceive. The child's movements in uttering consonants reach the left convolution, that of speech, via the nerves. This area is structured by the combined effect of the breathing, which is carried there by the blood, and of whatever activity comes in through the ears and the eyes. In other words, blood and nerves together structure this brain mush beautifully. Thus we see that, at least in this particular region (and it will later be found to be the same way in others), our brain is actually structured through the combined activity of perception (via the nerves) and of the constant intake of breath, which pushes the blood into the brain.

At this point, we need to understand also that this is how the child learns to speak, that is, by developing the left cerebral convolution. But, gentlemen, when you dissect a corpse, you will find that the right convolution of the brain, though symmetrically placed, shows relatively little structuring. On the one hand, we have the left convolution, which is beautifully formed, as I said before. On the other, we have the right one, which throughout life usually remains the way it was in the young child, that is, unstructured. I could say, if we had only the right convolution, we would only be able to cry. It is only because we so artfully structure the left convolution that we are able to speak.

You see, it is only when a person is left-handed and habitually tends to do most of his work with the left hand that, strangely enough, he will not lose his capacity for speech even when his left side is affected by a stroke. Dissection will reveal that in the case of this left-handed person, the right convolution of the brain was structured in the same way as the left convolution of right-handed people normally is. Movements of arms and hands, then, have a strong bearing on the formation of the brain.

Why is that so? You see, this comes about because when a person is used to doing a lot of things with his right hand, he does not merely do them with this hand, but he also gets into the habit of breathing a bit more strongly on the right side, of exerting more of an effort there. He also gets into the habit of hearing more clearly on the right side, and so forth. All of this merely points to the fact that the person in the habit of using his right hand develops the tendency to be more active on that side than on the left.

When a person is right-handed, the left convolution of the brain is structured; when he is left-handed, the right convolution is structured. What is the reason for this? Well, gentlemen, when you look at the right arm and hand and the head and the left cerebral convolution and then examine where the nerves are, you will find that there are nerves everywhere in the human body. If you did not have nerves everywhere, you could not feel warm or cold. These sensations have to do with the nerves. You have nerves everywhere in your body.

They go up the spine and reach right into the brain. But the remarkable thing is that the nerves coming from the right hand lead into the left portion of the brain, and the ones in the other hand are connected with the right side of the brain. This is because the nerves cross. Yes, the nerves cross in the brain. For instance, if I do a gymnastics exercise or a eurythmic movement with my right hand or the right arm, I sense the activity through this nerve, but I become aware of it in the left half of the brain because the nerves cross.

Let us now imagine that a child prefers to do everything with the right hand. Then the child will also breathe a bit more strongly on the right side and will also hear and see a bit better on that side. The person will make greater efforts on that side and through his movements develop something that reaches into the left side of the brain. Now you only need to imagine that we have the habit of making certain gestures while speaking, such as Ah! (corresponding gesture); or if we reject something: Eh! These gestures are perceived by our nerves. Now, the movements we make with the right hand while speaking are experienced by the left side of the brain.

By the same token, those of us who are right-handed have the tendency of pronouncing vowels and consonants more strongly with the right half of the larynx. Again these activities are taken in more vividly with the left side of the brain. This is why the brain, originally more like mush, is now a lot more structured. In contrast, we use the left side of our body much less, and that is why the right half of the brain is less developed and remains mush. However, when someone is left-handed, the opposite process takes place.

These facts lead to important conclusions for education. Just think, when you have left-handed children (you will have a few of them), you must tell yourself that whereas all the others have a very artfully developed left convolution of the brain, in the left-handed children the right convolution is structured. When I teach writing, I use my right hand. In this activity, the right-handed children will merely reinforce what they have begun to develop in their left brain convolution when they began learning to speak. However, if I now force the left-handed children to write with their right hand, I will destroy the development that learning to speak has produced in their right cerebral convolution. Yes, this development will be destroyed.

Since left-handed children are not supposed to write with their left hand, my task is now to gradually direct everything previously carried out by the left hand to the right one. This way they will initially learn to do simple things with the right hand and get into writing much more slowly than the other children. But it does not matter if they learn to write a bit later. If I simply were to make left-handed children write as fast as the right-handed ones, I would make them less intelligent because I would ruin the development that has taken place in the right side of the brain. Therefore, I must make sure to treat left-handed children differently from right-handed ones when I teach them to write. This approach will not make them less intelligent in later life, but more so, because I gradually transform their left-handedness into right-handedness, instead of merely getting their entire brain confused through making them write with the right hand immediately. If you want to affect the entire human being through writing and force this change to the right hand, pedagogically speaking, you would achieve the very opposite of what you are striving for.

Nowadays we find a widespread tendency of teaching people to do everything with both hands. This is how we really get their brains mixed up. This tendency of making people do the same thing both with the right and the left hand merely proves how little we know. Mind you, we can strive for such an ideal, but before we could realize it, we would have to change something. Gentlemen, we would first have to change the entire human being! We would slowly have to shift activities from the left side to the right and then gradually reduce them on the right. What would happen then? You see, what would happen is that, below the surface, the left cerebral convolution would be more artfully formed; but on the outside, it would remain mush. The same would happen to the right convolution. Instead of distributing two activities between the left and the right sides, we would develop each convolution into an outer and an inner half.

The inner portion would be more suitable for speech; the outer one would exist merely in order to add the vowels and consonants in crying. However, speech is a combination of what happens in crying and in articulating. This remains the same throughout life.

You see, we cannot just tinker with human beings and their development. In education, even in the lower grades, we need an understanding of the entire human being. For with everything we do we change the human being. The really criminal thing is that nowadays people monkey around considering only superficial things and ignore the inner effects of what they do.

Actually, very few people have both sides of the brain fully developed. Usually the right convolution contains more blood vessels, whereas the left one has fewer and instead is more permeated with nerves. This holds true for the human brain generally; the right side carries more blood, and the left is more used for perceiving.

Once we realize that the brain is shaped under external influences, we can appreciate how important these influences from the outside are. We see that they are tremendously significant once we understand that they affect everything that takes place in the brain. Also, out of the understanding of what occurs in the brain when we speak, we can get an idea of how the human brain works.

You see, when we examine it further, we discover that there are always more blood vessels on the outside wall of the brain than inside it. Thus we can say that the exterior part of the brain contains more blood and the interior more nerves.

Let us now consider a child learning to speak in the ordinary way, a right-handed child. How is the brain of such a child being formed? First of all, the brain of a young child is surrounded by a layer or coat, so to speak, of blood vessels. Then nerve tracts begin to form. Because of this, gentlemen, because of these nerve tracts in there, the inner brain substance appears whitish when you take it out and look at it. However, when you take out the brain matter surrounding it, it looks reddish-grey because it contains so many blood vessels.

Now what happens in this region when the child learns to speak and consequently the left cerebral convolution is structured accordingly? What takes place, you see, is that the nerve bundles, as it were, gradually extend more toward the inside and less in the area where the blood system expands. In other words, in children who develop normally the inner part of the brain shifts more to the left and the remaining portion follows. The brain thus moves to the left side, where it turns ever more whitish. It shifts that way. All of human development is based on such artful details.

Now let us talk some more about speech. You see, there are languages that have many consonants and others that contain many vowels such as A, E, I and so forth. In some languages people squeeze out the sounds, like S, W, so that one barely hears the vowels. What lies behind all this?

We know that languages differ in different regions of the earth. What does it mean when someone lives in a certain area where people focus more on the consonants? It means that he or she experiences the outer world more, for the consonants are formed in the experience of the surroundings. Therefore, in people living more in the physical world the white portion of the brain shifts more to the left. In people experiencing life more inwardly, people living in a region where things are experienced more inwardly, the white brain matter does not move quite so far to the left. These people will tend to utter melodious vowels. This varies with the regions of the earth.

Let us now assume the following, gentlemen: Let's imagine the earth and people standing at various points on the earth. And one person, let us say, is given a language rich in vowels and another one a language rich in consonants. What must have happened in their respective regions? A lot may have happened, quite a lot, but I want to focus on one thing that may have taken place. Imagine that we have high mountains and a level area, a plain. Picture then steep mountains on one side and a plain on the other. Now, wherever there are flat regions, we perceive that the language people speak there is richer in vowels. Wherever there are steep mountains, the local language tends to be richer in consonants.

But you see, this matter is not so simple after all, because we must ask how the mountains and the plains came about. This is the way it is: We have the earth, and the sun shines upon it. At one time our entire earth was unformed mush. The mountains first had to be pulled out of this mush. All right then, the earth was basically mush and the mountains were pulled up out of this mush.

Well, gentlemen, what was it that pulled the mountains up? The cosmic forces that work out there did. We can say that there are certain forces of a cosmic nature that pulled up these mountains. In some places the forces were strong and developed mountains; in other places there were weaker forces coming in out of the universe that did not produce mountains. In this latter area the earth crust was not pulled up so strongly in primeval times. And the people born on those parts of the earth crust less affected by these cosmic forces use more vowels. Persons born in areas more strongly influenced by the cosmic forces use more consonants. We see now that the differences between languages are connected with the forces of the entire universe.

Now how can we support such a claim? Well, gentlemen, what we have claimed here must be considered in the same way we look at clocks to check the time. We look at the clock to see if we must start working or if it is time to leave. But we never say, “Now this is too much! This awful minute hand is a terrible fellow who whips me on to work.” We wouldn't dream of saying that. All the clock does is tell us when we have to go to work, and so we cannot blame it for having to work, can we? In this case, the clock is completely innocent.

Similarly, we can look up to the sun and say that when we stand here at a certain moment, the sun is between us and the constellation of Aries. That is the direction where these strong cosmic forces work from. It is not Aries itself, of course. This constellation merely indicates the direction where the strong forces come from. If a person is standing in a different place at that same time, he or she is affected as follows: When the sun has moved to that place, it is in Virgo, let us say. The forces coming from this direction are weaker. Instead of going through the entire process now, I can therefore say that when someone is born in an area where at a certain time, let's say at his birth, the sun is in Aries, that person will tend to use more consonants. However, when someone is born with the sun in Virgo, he will tend to use more vowels.

You see, I can read the entire zodiac like a clock from which I can see what happens on earth. But I must always keep in mind that it is not the constellations that cause these events; they are only indicators. From this you can see that the zodiac can tell us a lot, even about the reasons why the languages on earth differ.

Now, let us look at the earth and imagine that we put a chair out there into space and look back at the earth. Of course, this is only possible in our imagination and not in reality. When we look from our chair in space at the various languages on earth, as in a sort of language map, then we get a certain picture. When we then turn the chair around and look out into the universe, we get a picture of the stars. And the two pictures match.

If we study the Southern Hemisphere and the languages there and then turn the chair around and examine the southern firmament, our experience is entirely different from the one we would have if we did the same thing in the Northern Hemisphere. This means that we could draw a map of the starry skies above us, and from our study of the connection between the stars and language we would then be able to tell which language is spoken under a particular constellation.

You see now that as soon as we begin to observe human spiritual life, for example, the formation of our minds through speech, we must look up to the stars in order to understand anything. The earth alone does not give us an answer; you can think about why languages are different as long as you like, but based on the earth alone you won't find an explanation.

If you want to know what takes place in your stomach, you must examine the earth, the soil below. If a region grows mainly cabbages, you will understand that people there must constantly re-enliven in their metabolism the heads of cabbage pulled out of the soil. In other words, if you want to know what people in a certain area eat, you must examine the soil. If you are interested in how people breathe in a particular region, you have to study the atmosphere. And if you want to know what happens inside the skull, in this brain of ours, you must look at the position of the stars. You always have to see the human being as an integrated part of the entire universe.

You see now that it is indeed mere superstition to say, “Whenever the sun is in Aries, such and such takes place.” This kind of statement is not worth anything. However, if you understand the full context, the matter ceases to be superstition and becomes science instead. And that will lead us from understanding the transformation of substances to an understanding of what is really happening and its connection to the vast universe out there.

It is, after all, something that should be taken into account that a meeting was convened some time ago by the opponents of the things presented at the Vienna Anthroposophical Congress, at which a wide variety of speakers spoke out of the materialistic sense of the present and that at the end a particularly materialistically minded physician summarized the various speeches in a slogan that was intended to represent a kind of motto for the opponents of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science: the battle against the spirit. — It is simply the case that today there are people who see the battle against the spirit as a real motto.

When such a word is uttered, one is reminded again and again of how many people, well-meaning people, there are in the present day who, in the face of what is prevailing in the civilized world, are actually caught in a kind of sleep state, who do not want to hear where things are heading. They consider things of the greatest importance to be insignificant phenomena of the times, the opinion of one person or another, whereas it is in fact the case that today a striving that is present in the real progress of human development is clearly asserting itself. And actually all those who can muster an understanding for such a cause should also be most intensely involved with it in their hearts in order to truly muster it.

I have now tried to show, by taking two personalities as examples, how deeper natures in particular were placed in the newer currents of thought. I have contrasted these two personalities, Franz Brentano and Nietzsche, to show how, from the most diverse sides, people who are initially oriented towards the spiritual are, as it were, submerged in the contemporary scientific way of thinking. If we consider personalities who have shared the fate I have outlined, we may perhaps be more deeply moved than if such things are presented only in the form of an abstract description.

In the case of Brentano, I wanted to illustrate how a personality who grew up in an education shaped entirely by Catholicism retained for life, on the one hand, what Catholic Christianity had implanted in its soul in terms of an affinity for the spiritual world. In Franz Brentano, who was born in 1838 and thus lived during the time when the scientific way of thinking of the nineteenth century flooded all human research and spiritual striving, we see what lives on from very old currents of world view.

If we look at young Brentano, who studied in Catholic seminaries in the 1850s and 1860s, we find that his soul was filled with two things that guided him in a certain way. One is the Catholic doctrine of revelation, to which he stood in a position that theologians of the Catholic Church have held since the Middle Ages. The Catholic revelation about everything spiritual is traditionally received. One finds oneself in a kind of knowledge of the supersensible worlds that has come to man through grace. For Brentano, the other element was connected with this, through which he first wanted to understand what he had received through the Catholic doctrine of revelation. That was Aristotelian philosophy, the philosophy that was still developed in ancient Greece. And until the mid-sixties, perhaps even a little longer, Brentano's soul lived in a way that was entirely in keeping with the spirit of a medieval scholastic: one must accept what man is meant to know of transcendental worlds as revealed by the Church, and one can apply one's thinking to the study of nature and life according to the instructions of the greatest teacher for this research, according to the instructions of the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

These two things, Aristotelianism and Catholic revelation, were indeed connected in the spiritual life of the medieval scholastics, who regarded them as compatible. This continued in Franz Brentano. He was only shaken in such a view by what then confronted him as the scientific method, so strongly shaken that when he took up his post as a private lecturer in Würzburg, he established as a main thesis the proposition that in all philosophy it must be done as in natural science. And then he wanted to found a psychology, a doctrine of the soul, in which the life of the soul would be considered in the same way that natural science considers external natural phenomena.

It is therefore fair to say that this man underwent a very radical change. He wanted to combine knowledge gained through revelation with knowledge gained through reason, which is limited only to earthly things. He thus demanded that science can only be what is formed according to the pattern of scientific methodology. One should really stop and think about what such a radical change really means.

What I would like to draw your attention to first is that, up until this change, medieval scholastic thinking still seems to be present in an extraordinary personality. This continues to have an effect, as it does today in many contemporaries who are honestly Catholic, as it basically exists, albeit in a slightly different form, in many honest confessors of the Protestant faiths. If I quoted Nietzsche, it was because, although Nietzsche did not have a survival of medieval scholasticism in his soul, something else lived on in his soul, namely, what emerged during the Renaissance as a kind of reaction to scholasticism. Nietzsche had a kind of Greek wisdom of art that formed the basis for his entire world view. He had it in the same way that the men of the Renaissance had it. But these men of the Renaissance by no means already had the urge and the inclination not to recognize the spiritual in its reality. They sensed, they still felt the reality of the spiritual. So that something from ancient times also survived in Nietzsche's soul. And he, too, as I told you yesterday, had to immerse himself in the scientific view of the 19th century and completely lost what connected his soul to a spiritual world.

The implications of this point to some tremendously significant riddles for the true seeker of truth in the present day. Let us take the two streams of spiritual thought that penetrated the life of the soul, as they lie in medieval scholasticism. Let us visualize what is actually present. I would like to do it in the following way. Within medieval scholasticism, we have a number of, let us say, doctrines about the supersensible world, for example about the Trinity of the original spiritual being, about the incarnation of Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. series of doctrines that must be said to relate not to the sensual but to the supersensible world, which in very ancient times were once found by people who were then initiates, initiates. For one must not imagine, of course, that something like the doctrine of the Trinity or the Incarnation was simply invented by someone to deceive people. These doctrines are rather the results of the experiences of former initiates. That they were regarded as a supernatural revelation is only a later conception. Such doctrines were originally found by way of initiation. Later on, however, it was no longer admitted that one could undergo such an initiation and arrive at the conception of the Trinity oneself, for example.

There were such conclusions, which the medieval scholastic admitted to the knowledge of reason, which touched the supernatural; only the view of the supernatural was not admitted. But reason was admitted, through which one could not understand the real knowledge of revelation, but through which one could approach something like the existence of God or the beginning of the existence of the world. These truths, which could be found through reason, were called preambula fidei, and could then form a basis for penetrating to that which could not be explored by reason, but which was said to be the content of revelation.

Now, having juxtaposed these two currents of thought, of knowledge, let us place ourselves in the mind of a person who juxtaposed them in his own soul. During the period in which scholasticism flourished, what lived in a scholastic was by no means the evil that uninformed people tell of today, but at a certain time in medieval development it was simply what was required by the development of humanity. One could not have had any other view at that particular time. Today, of course, things have changed. Today, we have to find different ways to knowledge and to human soul activity than those that were at home in scholasticism. But that is why one should still try to penetrate this scholasticism with understanding. And you can only do that if you now ask yourself: How did the knowledge of revelation stand in the soul of an honest scholastic, alongside the knowledge of reason that was directed towards natural phenomena and towards one-sided conclusions of reason from natural phenomena? How did these two things stand side by side?

What did such a scholastic want, and with him all his believers, all who were honestly Catholic, when he put himself in the frame of mind that was in line with revelation, when he said: What the dogmas give must not be looked at, looking at it is not possible; one must accept it as a revelation? The scholastic attempted to evoke a certain mood of soul in relation to the supersensible world. He was completely imbued with the fact that this supersensible world exists and stands in an intimate relationship to that which lives in man as soul. But he did not seek a path of knowledge in man in order to come directly through his own personality to that which stands as the supersensible world in an intimate relationship to man.

Imagine this mood. It was the mood towards, I would say, a known unknown, towards an unknown acquaintance, towards someone you should worship and revere, but to whom you should still be shy, so that you do not, so to speak, open your eyes to him.

Next to it stood the knowledge of reason. Scholastic reason was an extraordinarily astute one, something that has not been achieved again later. One would wish – I have also said it here several times – that people who do natural science or science in general today would only learn to think as sharply as the scholastics were able to think. It was a rational knowledge that only denied itself the right to go beyond certain limits: knowledge by revelation on the one hand, rational knowledge on the other. But if we now compare the knowledge by revelation and the rational knowledge of the scholastics with similar structures of today, then a great difference becomes apparent.

The scholastic said to himself: You dare not intrude with your knowledge into the realm from which you are only supposed to have revelations. You dare not intrude into a vision of the Trinity, into a vision of the Incarnation. But in the revelation that he received through his church, ideas of the Trinity and ideas of the Incarnation were given. They were described. People said to themselves: knowledge does not penetrate to these things, but one can think about them if one reflects on these things in the sense of what has been revealed. You cannot say of the medieval scholastics that they had a mere dark mystical feeling of the supernatural. It was not that. It was a thinking that was already trained in plastic ideas and that grasped the content of Revelation. They thought about the Trinity, they thought about the Incarnation. But they did not think as one thinks when one arrives at a conclusion oneself, but as one thinks thoughts that are revealed to one.

You see, that too still corresponds to a certain fact of higher knowledge. There are still people today who have certain atavistic clairvoyant views, as you might call them, who have dream-like imaginations. There are people who, for example, can rise in such atavistic clairvoyant imaginations to the point of visualizing the events of Atlantis. That still exists today. Don't think that there are no thoughts in what such people have as clairvoyant imaginations. Such seers often have much more plastic thoughts than our strange logicians, who learn to think from today's schooling. Sometimes one would like to despair of the logic of those who learn to think from today's schooling, while one need not despair of the logic that simply reveals itself atavistically and clairvoyantly; for this is often very strictly developed.

Thus, even today it can be shown that thinking is already present in that which is truly revealed supersensibly for human observation. This was also the case in medieval scholasticism. It is only in recent times that thought has been eradicated from the content of revelation, so that today faith seeks to distil not only knowledge but also thinking out of its content. The medieval scholastics did not do that. They did extract the knowledge, but not the thinking. Therefore, if you take the dogmatics of medieval scholasticism, you will find a very highly developed system of thinking.

This lived on in a man like Franz Brentano. That is why he could think. He could grasp thoughts. This can be seen even in the rudiments of his psychology, in which he only got as far as the first volume. There you can still see that he has a certain inner plasticity of thought formation, even though he constantly steps on his own feet in a terrible way and thus does not make any progress. As soon as he has any thought about a psychological construct - and he has such - he immediately forbids himself to think about the things. This prohibition is something extraordinary today. I have told you how an extraordinarily brilliant man, who wrote the important book 'The Whole of Philosophy and its End', told me in Vienna himself recently: 'I have my thoughts about what stands behind mere events as the primal factors.' But scientifically he forbids himself to have these thoughts. One could easily imagine, hypothetically of course, that a scientifically trained person today would suddenly become clairvoyant through a miracle, and that he would fight against this clairvoyance in the worst possible way. One could easily imagine this hypothetically because the authority of knowledge that clings to the external is enormous. So that was one thing that lived in the soul of the medieval scholastic: a specifically formulated content of revelation. On the other hand, there was a rational knowledge that was based on nature, but it was not yet the same as our present-day knowledge of nature. To substantiate this, just open a book of natural history, for example by Albertus Magnus; you will probably find descriptions of natural objects as they are described today – but they are described differently than they are today – but alongside that, you will still find all kinds of elemental and spiritual beings. Spirit still lives in nature, and it is not the case that only the completely dry sensual evidence is described as natural history and natural science. These two things live side by side, a content of revelation, in the face of which one prohibits oneself from knowing, but which one nevertheless thinks, so that the human spirit still attains it in its thoughts, and a content of rational knowledge, which still has spirit, but which also still has something that one must look at if one wants to have it before oneself in its reality.

Knowledge of nature has developed out of medieval scholasticism. One branch of scholasticism, knowledge by reason, has developed further and become the modern view of nature. But what has happened as a result? Imagine the thoughts of a scholasticist regarding knowledge of nature quite vividly. There is still spiritual content in them. What do these spiritual contents protect the medieval scholastic natural scientist from?

Perhaps I can illustrate this schematically. Suppose this here was such a medieval scholastic with his longing for revelational knowledge at the top and his longing for knowledge of nature at the bottom. But in the knowledge of nature, he has the spiritual. I'll let some red pass. He has thinking in the knowledge of revelation. I'll let some yellow pass. Where does this rational knowledge actually want to go? It wants to go out to the objects, to the things around us. The thoughts you have want to snap into place with the objects. You don't want to recognize just any plant, you want to form a concept of the plant, without you counting on it: the concept snaps in there, it wants to snap in. But with the scholastic, the spiritual content, which still permeates his rational knowledge, prevents him from really snapping in down there. It doesn't snap completely, it is, as it were, thrown back a little. What does it not snap into? When today's intellectualistic rational knowledge snaps into external nature, when it snaps fully into it, it actually snaps fully into the Ahrimanic. What then does the spirituality of the medieval scholastic mean in relation to his rational knowledge? That basically, he wants to approach nature with this rational knowledge as if it were something that burns a little. But he feels the burning and shrinks back again and again: nature is sin! He guards himself against Ahriman! But further development has brought this: in the nineteenth century it has thrown out of all spiritual rational knowledge, and with that rational knowledge snapped into the Ahrimanic.

And what does rational knowledge, which has snapped into the outer Ahrimanic, say? It says: the world consists of atoms, atomic movement is the basis of all scientific knowledge. It explains warmth and light as atomic movements, it explains everything in the external world as atomic movements, because that satisfies our need for causality.

In 1872, Da Bois-Reymond gave his famous lecture in Leipzig on the limits of knowledge of nature. It is the lecture in which the rational knowledge of scholasticism has advanced so far that all spirituality has been thrown out; and with the motto “Ignorabimus” the spirit of man should snap into the Ahrimanic. And Du Bois-Reymond describes very vividly how a human mind that now has an overview of everything that swirls as atoms in the universe no longer sees green and blue, but only perceives atomic movements everywhere. It feels no warmth, but wherever there is warmth, it feels that movement of which I spoke to you here eight days ago. He suppresses everything in his mind that has to do with colors, temperatures, sounds, etc. He fills his head with an understanding of the world that consists only of atoms. Imagine: the whole world as imagined by someone who thinks in terms of atoms. He has it all figured out in his head: the moment Caesar crossed the Rubicon, there was a certain constellation of atoms in our cosmos. Now he only needs to be able to set up the differential equation, and so, by continuing the calculation, he finds the next constellation, and the next, and so on. He can calculate the most distant future. Du Bois-Reymond called this the Laplacean mind because it was also an ideal of Laplace. So there we have, in 1872, a description of an intellect that comprehends the world universally, that comprehends everything as atomic motion, and all you need to do is know the differential equations and then integrate them, and you get the world formula.

But what has actually been achieved as a result? What has been achieved is that one has learned to think as Ahriman can think, what the Ahrimanic ideal of thinking is. One can only recognize the full significance of what is happening in our time when one knows what it actually is. The Ignorabimus speech will go down in the history of the development of the modern spirit, but its true significance will only be recognized when we are in a position to show that here the one branch of the scholastic school of thought has actually snapped into the Ahrimanic. You see, the scholastic, so to speak, kept his knowledge in suspense. It did not quite reach what is out there. He always withdrew with his knowledge before Ahriman. That is why he had such a need to develop truly ingenious concepts; because ingenious concepts still have to be developed through human effort. When it comes to conducting experiments, well, then you only need human endeavor to put the apparatus together and so on, but the kind of astute thinking that scholasticism had is not needed.

This meant a very important turning point when one was once snapped into the Ahrimanic. Because what you see outside as the sensual phenomena of the world, as your sensual environment, that is only there as long as the earth is there. It perishes with our planet. What lives on are the thoughts that snap in outside. When something is conceived that is in line with Laplacean thinking, or what Du Bois-Reymond presented as an ideal of natural scientific thinking, it means not only that it is conceived, but that these are real thoughts that snap into place outside. And when everything we see with our senses on earth has perished, these thoughts can live on, if they are not eradicated beforehand. Therefore, there is a real danger that, if such a way of thinking becomes general, our earth will change into a planet corresponding to the materialists' conceptions. Materialism is only a mere doctrine as long as it does not become reality. But the Ahrimanic powers strive to make the thoughts of materialism so strong and widespread that the only thing left of the earth are atoms.

If we say today that we have to explain everything in terms of atoms, that is an error. But if all people start to think that everything has to be explained in terms of atoms, if all people put on Laplacian minds, then the earth will really consist of atoms. It is not true from primeval times that the earth consists of atoms and their components, but humanity can bring this about. That is the essential thing. Man is not merely predisposed to have wrong views, but wrong thoughts create wrong realities; when wrong thoughts become general, realities arise.

This danger from Ahriman has already manifested itself today. The other danger in the knowledge of revelation was sought to be avoided by the medieval scholastic, who still had the knowledge of revelation clothed in thoughts. It was concrete thoughts that grasped the content of the revelation. The dogmas were gradually thought through so little that people came to drop them altogether in general. One should indeed drop what is not understood. This is fully justified on the one hand, and if people can no longer follow the dogmas to the point of seeing them, it is natural that they drop them. But then what do they come to? Then they arrive at the most abstract of thoughts of dependence on some quite indefinite eternal or infinite. Then thoughts are no longer vividly formed that carry the content of the Revelation within them, but only some kind of dependence on some kind of infinite is felt in dark mysticism. Then the content of the thought disappears. This path has also been taken in recent times. It is the path that leads to the Luciferic. And just as surely as the path of knowledge through reason in modern times has led to the Ahrimanic, just as surely the other path can lead to the Luciferic.

And now look again at a mind like Franz Brentano's in the sense I have described. Franz Brentano approaches nature with this attitude: Just don't touch Ahriman! - and to the supersensible world: Just don't touch Lucifer! — So just don't become atomistic, just don't become a mystic. With this attitude he approaches natural science, which is such a powerful authority that he submits to it. He describes the phenomena of the soul in terms of the scientific method. If he had approached the subject from a more superficial point of view, as many of today's psychologists do, he would have written a doctrine of the soul inspired by Ahriman, a kind of psychology, a 'doctrine of the soul without a soul'. He could not do that. Therefore, he abandoned the attempt after the first volume, and did not write the following volumes – there should have been four – because something in him did not allow him to grasp the idea of rushing headlong into the purely Ahrimanic.

And take Nietzsche. Nietzsche was likewise seized by natural science. But how did he take up natural science? He did not really care much about the individual methods, but only looked at the natural scientific way of thinking in general. He said to himself: All that is spiritual is based in the physiological, is a “human, all too human” thing. What should actually be divine-spiritual ideals are an expression, a manifestation of the human, of the all-too-human. He rejected the very kind of knowledge that can be found in Brentano: knowledge through reason. He allowed the will to become active in him. And, as I said yesterday, he wore down the ideals, he wore down the spiritual. This is the other phenomenon where a personality, as it were, approaches the Ahrimanic, but strikes against it. Instead of snapping, he strikes. He also wants to develop atomism, but he strikes against a wall.

And so we see how such minds develop their particular soul mood in the 19th century because they come so very close to what plays into our knowledge as Ahrimanic powers. That is the fate of such minds in the 19th century: they come so incredibly close to Ahriman. And then they either end up in a situation like Brentano's, where they shyly retreat at the very boundary and do not advance at all with their knowledge, or they start lashing out like Nietzsche. But it is the Ahrimanic power that brought its waves to knowledge in the 19th century, which then had an effect on the 20th century. And one should understand that. And the original spirits who personally experienced this still half-masked encounter with Ahriman in the 19th century had a tragic fate behind them. But the students now received the prepared thoughts. These thoughts live in them. The Ahrimanic power has already formed the thoughts. The first original spirits recoiled; the pupils received the incomplete ahrimanic thoughts. These are now at work in them: 'Fight against the spirit', against the spirit that just does not want to surrender the earth to the ahrimanic powers, hatred of the spirit, fight against the spirit!

Today we must see this as a real connection. It lives today as a mood of the times, as a state of mind. We must understand it in order to truly grasp how necessary it is to assert a truly spiritual world view in all the different cultural forms in which such a world view must be lived.