The Rudolf Steiner Archive

social order: Dear attendees! I would like to talk today about the threefold social order in such a way that some light can be shed on what has been called the land question in modern times from the point of view of the economic facts that my remarks will deal with. It is a peculiarity of the idea of threefolding that through it we learn to see that certain discussions and agitations in the old style must cease if we are to make any fruitful progress at all — for these discussions and agitations have, after all, developed out of the conditions that led us into decline.

The land question is something that interests broad sections of society because the price, and also the availability and usability of land, is closely related to human destiny and to people's living conditions. Isn't it true that everyone is directly aware of how land prices are factored into what you have to pay for your apartment, and how they are factored into the price of food? One need only reflect a little and one will find that what originates from land has its effects on all other economic conditions. Depending on the land prices one has to pay for one's food, one has to be paid for any occupation one is in, and so on. But it is not only these vital questions, which directly affect people, that are connected with humanity's relationship to land and property, but also many more far-reaching cultural and civilizational conditions. We need only think about how the relationship between the countryside and the city is connected to land and property, and how what then is the difficulty or ease of living conditions in cities is connected to conditions in the countryside. From these, in turn, it will become clear what can develop in the city itself. Depending on how wealth or prosperity is distributed in a city due to a particular relationship between the countryside and the city, what we call our public intellectual life develops in the city — at least under our modern cultural conditions. Of course, you can also become a lonely mystic in the countryside; but in the context of modern science, technical operations, and the art business, you can basically only stand if you have some kind of relationship to city life. This is something that is immediately apparent from even a superficial observation of life. And many other things could be mentioned that would already show how the land question - and with it the question of the relationship between the city and the countryside - cuts deeply into our entire cultural situation. Therefore, the land question must also be connected in some way with what has driven us into the decline of these cultural conditions.

Now, the more recent treatment of the land question is particularly related to the fact that the injustice of the increases in the value or price of land has been noticed by a large number of people. It has simply been noticed how little it has to do with human labor whether one piece of land or another can increase in value over a certain period of time. I know how great an impression a very well-known land reformer repeatedly made when he presented the following to his audience in fundamental lectures: Imagine that someone owns a piece of land that he has bought with the intention of building a factory near it, or that the city will expand towards this piece of land, or that a railroad will be built past it, or something similar. He bought this piece of land with the knowledge that such circumstances would cause its value to increase quite considerably in the next few years. He bought the piece of land at the very moment when he had to live with the foresight that he would spend the next three years in prison. After buying the property, he goes to prison, stays there for three years, and when he comes out, his piece of land is worth five times as much as it was before. The man has done nothing to increase the value of his property by a factor of five except to serve three years in prison. These are things, ladies and gentlemen, which naturally have an extremely strong effect when one wants to make something clear with them. And one cannot even say that these things work unfairly. Here something works that is, quite rightly, easily understood, because it can be exactly so. And then – I would like to say – one can omit many things, then it follows from such insights that, of course, the whole [way of] integrating land value into our economic process is something that cannot continue like this, that it must be subject to reform in some way.

And now the most diverse reforms have been introduced, but they all point in the same direction: Henry George, Adolf Damaschke, and many others in between. What all these reforms have in common is the idea that land, to a greater or lesser extent (the exact form is not so important here), must be something that belongs to the community, so to speak. Not that all land reformers want direct nationalization of land, but they do want a very substantial percentage of the particularly large increases in value to be delivered to the community as a “value increase tax” – a percentage that perhaps almost brings the land back to its former value if it has increased in value without the owner's merit. One can also think of other forms in which the land is, to a certain extent, transferred into a kind of common property. But it is undoubtedly obvious that the person who has harmed his fellow human beings to such an extent that they felt compelled to lock him up in prison can, when he returns after three years, justifiably be required to hand over to the community the increased value of his land.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, Damaschke emphasizes that he is not thinking of extending the same fate that he inflicts on land in this way to any other means of production. He demonstrates how the other means of production increase their value in a completely different way within human property; he proves that increases in the value of the means of production take place in a completely different ratio, which cannot be compared at all with the increases in the value of land, which occur frequently. Now one can say that something like this is certainly plausible and cannot really be treated in any other way than by agreeing in a certain sense.

But, ladies and gentlemen, you have no doubt seen that there are nationalizations today, that is, the transfer of what would otherwise be produced purely by private enterprise and for which the equivalent value is received privately, into the administration of a certain collective. But one cannot say that the experience that humanity has had in such matters in recent years is one that is universally satisfactory. Because I believe – at least some of you will have noticed something about it – that not all people fared as well as they should have done in terms of rationing, that is, in a certain sense of communization, for example, of food and other things. I believe that some people have experienced a certain hoarding during these years, when a great deal was communized.

And the social impulse that is to be given with the threefold order is not at all willing to deceive itself and deceive others, but is willing to give such impulses that do not just remain on paper and serve a certain type of person, while others are able to avoid the things in question, and to do so in abundance. The impulse that is to be given by the threefold social order is meant to be a reality impulse that actually realizes what it intends. Only someone who knows life can truly understand what the impulse for threefolding seriously wants. Anyone who strives to understand life and truly understands life will have no doubt that there can also be hoarding of land value increases if land is communized in the way that land reformers want, who think out of the old ideas. It is quite possible, in both the Leninist and the Damaschkean system, to render ineffective through all kinds of back doors what enters the world as a law. The impulse for the threefolding of the social organism simply cannot, because it wants something real, close itself off from the fundamental insight that social reality truly cannot be made by those laws that arise when the old social and state ways of thinking and imagining are continued. It depends on the people and on that social organization, on that social organism, which alone ensures that people find no means of unfairly or immorally circumventing anything that lies within the scope of that social organism. We must come as close as possible to such a life-affirming approach.

We can look at what we call the threefold social order from a variety of perspectives. We can consider the points that I initially set out in the Key Points, so to speak, to provide a first impetus. One can also characterize the necessity for threefolding from other sides, as I and a few others have been doing for more than a year here in Stuttgart. One can, for example, also assert the following points of view; one can say: In the course of the development of modern humanity, we have come to the point where we simply can no longer bear certain institutions because of the way we think today, and our entire human state of mind demands other institutions. The fact that we have such chaos throughout the world arises precisely from the fact that certain conditions that have arisen from the development of humanity in recent centuries can no longer be tolerated by people of the present. One person feels vaguely that the conditions can no longer be borne; he hears Damaschke speak and hears that an enormous amount of injustice depends on the fact that a convict can quintuple his land ownership in three years without earning anything. Another is presented with Marxist theories and accepts them. A third is told: if we do not protect the old institutions and the old so-called nobility, then the whole world will descend into chaos, so we must protect it.

But basically, the reasons why people are dissatisfied with the current situation lie deep within the human being; and today it is already the case that what is developed as programs are basically only dreams, only illusions that people delude themselves with. They do not even come up with what they actually want. And so one person makes some theory or other out of their previous habits, which he calls logical. It is already the case today that basically it depends only on whether a person lives in the proletariat or was born in a Prussian Junker house, whether he is a Marxist out of the old habits of life or a conservative in the sense of Mr. von Heydebrand and the Lasa. These programs, which are made from left and right, actually have nothing to do with reality today. And one can say: If something like a Reichstag election takes place today, what is said on this occasion is about the same as if an evil world demon were dreaming and these dreams were transferred into the consciousness of people, party members and party leaders, and people were talking about something that basically has nothing to do with what is supposed to happen. Because humanity today is moving towards a very specific goal. It is just unclear about this goal.

First of all, humanity feels that things cannot go on as they have done so far with spiritual matters, with the order of spiritual matters. This is simply because, despite all materialism - which is very, very much in the style that I also discussed in yesterday's public lecture - filtered spirituality is present in the abstractions to which people devote themselves today, the proletariat, for example, most of all. Although this proletariat seems to be most concerned with “realities”, “production conditions” and the like, it surrenders to spiritual abstractions and can never arrive at any institutions that grasp reality. People feel that they must hold on to something spiritual, and the spiritual must also be there to intervene in social life, to form the social structure of the social organism that is, after all, inhabited by people. What, then, has basically been shaping the structure of our social organism to this day? The spirit? No, I think it is not the spirit. If, for example, I inherit a large country estate from my father, it is something other than spirit; it is a natural connection, it is blood. And blood is the thing that, together with all kinds of other circumstances that have become attached to it, can still bring a person into a certain position today. And the spiritual position of the person depends on this position. He can absorb certain educational content purely by being placed in a certain social position as a result of old circumstances, which in turn are largely based on blood ties. Basically, humanity initially feels this as something that can no longer be tolerated in the spiritual life. Instinctively, humanity feels that instead of everything being determined by blood, as it has been since time immemorial, the spirit must have a say in social institutions in the future. True, in order to be a companion of that which has developed [in this way in the past] and which can no longer be tolerated today, the Church has indeed submitted to that council decision, which was made at the eighth ecumenical council in the year 869 in Constantinople, where, as it were, the spirit was abolished, where it was decreed that the human soul may indeed have individual spiritual qualities, but that man consists only of body and soul, not of body, soul and spirit. Under this world view, which spread throughout the civilized world, the demands of the spirit were suppressed, and in the whole activity of spiritual life that which is not determined by the spirit could develop.

And today, from the bottom of their hearts, people want the spirit to have a say in determining the social structure. But this can only happen if the spiritual life no longer remains an appendage of the state that emerged from old blood conquests, but if the spiritual life is placed on its own, if the spiritual life works only according to the impulses that lie within it. Then we can assume that the leading figures in this spiritual life will do what is incumbent upon them — we will talk about some more of what is incumbent upon them in a moment; after all, the “Key Points” mention many things — namely, to guide people into the social structure according to their abilities, their diligence and so on, and that they will do so purely through the knowledge of natural conditions, without laws, purely through the knowledge of natural conditions. And one will have to say: In the field of spiritual life, which will stand on its own and work from its own impulses, it is the knowledge of the actual that will be the determining factor. Let us say, then, briefly: spiritual life, the spiritual part of the social organism, demands as its right knowledge [of the actual forces], but this knowledge must be the knowledge of the power of action.

Let us now turn to the second part of the social organism, the legal or state part. Here we come upon something that is not so subject to the external as is spiritual life. My dear audience, our entire social organism, insofar as the spiritual works in it, is bound to what appears with each new generation, yes, what leads new forces into the social organism from indeterminate depths with each new human being. Take the present moment. Are you in any way allowed, on the basis of the conditions of the present time, to set up any kind of organization that determines the way people live together in a very specific way? No, you are not allowed to do that! For with each individual human being, new forces are born out of unknown depths; we have to educate them, and we have to wait to see what they bring into life. We must not tyrannize what is brought into life through the spiritual gifts by existing laws or an existing organization; we must receive what is brought to us from spiritual worlds with an open mind, we must not tyrannize and dogmatize it with what is already there. Therefore, we need such a link in the social organism that works entirely out of freedom, out of the freedom of human potentialities that are constantly being reborn into humanity.

The second link in the social organism, the state-legal life, is already somewhat less dependent on what comes in from spiritual worlds. For, as we know, it is people who have come of age who are active in the field of the legal life, the life of the state. And, ladies and gentlemen, when we come of age, we have actually already been seized by a great deal of mediocrity. In a sense, the levelling of the philistines has hit us in the neck. And in so far as we are all equal as mature human beings, we are already - and this is not meant in a bad sense - in a sense a little caught up in the schoolbooks of philistinism. We are caught up in that which can be regulated by laws.

But you will say: Yes, we cannot make all intellectual life dependent on children; but there must also be intellectual ability and intellectual diligence beyond the age of majority. Not really, however paradoxical it may sound. For our abilities that go beyond the average, when we have passed our twenties, are based precisely on the fact that we have retained what we had in childhood as a disposition and so on. And the greatest genius is the person who carries the powers of childlikeness the most into their thirties, forties and fifties. One then only exercises these powers of childlikeness with the mature organism, the mature soul and the mature spirituality, but they are the powers of childlikeness. Unfortunately, our culture has the peculiarity of trying to kill these powers of childlikeness through education, so that in the smallest possible number of people, childish peculiarities remain into old age, and people become un-philistine. Because actually, all non-philistinism is based on the fact that the preserved childhood powers precisely un-philistinize, that they break through the later philistinism.

But because something is emerging that does not have to be continually renewed in relation to the present needs of humanity's consciousness, in modern times the conditions of legal and state life can only be regulated by laws on a democratic basis. Laws are not insights. With insights, we must always confront reality, and from reality we must receive the impulse for what we are to do through insights. This applies to education and to everything else, as I have shown in the “Key Points”, that it must proceed from the spiritual member of the social organism. But how is it with laws? Laws are given so that state-political life, legal life, can exist. But one must wait until someone needs to act in the sense of a law, only then must one concern oneself with this law. Or you have to wait to apply the law until someone breaks it. In short, there is always something there, the law, but only in the event of something possibly occurring. The essence of eventuality is always present, the casus eventualis. This is something that must always underlie the law. You have to wait until you can do something with the law. The law can be there; if it does not affect my sphere, then I am not interested in the law. There are many people today who believe that they are interested in the law in general, but it is as I have just indicated – if one is honest, one must admit this. So: the law is something that is there, but that must work towards eventuality. This is what must now underlie the legal, state and political aspects of the threefold organism.

With the economic aspect, we cannot get by with law alone, because it is not enough to merely issue laws about whether this or that should be supplied in a certain way from these or those circumstances. You cannot work for eventualities. A third element comes into play alongside knowledge and the law: it is the contract, the specific contract that is concluded between those who do business – the corporations and associations – which does not work towards the eventuality as the law does, but towards the very specific fulfillment. Just as knowledge must prevail in intellectual life and as the law must prevail in political and legal life, so must the contract prevail in economic life, in all its ramifications. The system of contracts, which is not based on contingency but on commitment, is what must bring about everything you find described in the “Key Points” as the third link in the social organism.

We can therefore say that we have three illustrative points of view from which we can understand what these three elements must be like in essence. Everything in life that is subject to knowledge must be administered in the free domain of the spiritual element. Everything in life that can be harnessed into laws belongs to the state. Everything that is subject to binding contracts must be incorporated into economic life.

Dear attendees, if people believe that what has been explained in the “key points” is a few crazy ideas, they are very much mistaken. What is expressed in the “key points” can be discussed from the most diverse points of view, because it is taken from life. And you can describe life as it is in a tree that you photograph: from one side you have this aspect, from a second side you have a different one, from a third, fourth side there is yet another image and so on. That is the peculiar thing: When something comes from life, when it is not just a complicated utopia or a complicated idea, but really comes from life, then you can always find new aspects, because life is manifoldly rich in its content. [Threefolding takes this diversity of life into account.] Basically, you can never stop learning to see the necessities of the threefolding of the social organism [everywhere in this diversity]. But it is not something vague and nebulous, but something that can be grasped in the sharpest terms, as I showed you today with reference to knowledge, law and contract.

Now the point is to say to oneself: one must work in the direction of threefolding, and one can work from the ordinary real conditions today in the direction that is given by finally breaking down this social organism into three interacting administrative sub-organisms. And we must finally recognize that all the answers we give ourselves, based on old conditions and which actually only lead to a reorganization of the old conditions, are outdated today. Therefore, when the land reformers say that those whose land ownership has increased in value without their merit, without their work, must deliver such and such a large portion to the state as a tax, they are counting on the old form of the state. They do not consider that this state, too, must be reformed. They do not consider that it can only be one link in the social organism. That is the strange thing, that even the most radical reformers of the present time cannot imagine that something must be newly created out of the depths of the social conditions of humanity. And they cannot conceive that everything that must be achieved today cannot be achieved if, on the other hand, what is at stake is forced into the old forms. The state remains, even if it puts into its coffers what it takes from the real estate speculators, and perhaps lets it flow back to them or to other people in ways that are still possible. But examine what follows from the idea of threefolding for the establishment of the social organism: if you seriously take up the idea of threefolding, if you seriously apply what threefolding is based on, then you will find that everything that is in that direction becomes impossible, that you just pour the old nonsense into a different form.

For what actually is land? You see, land is obviously a means of production. We produce with land. But it is a means of production of a different kind from the other means of production. We must first prepare the other means of production through human labor, and land, at least in the main, is there without being prepared by people first. Therefore, one can say: the means of production initially take the path of the commodity; then, when they are finished, when they are handed over for their task, they are no longer a commodity. We have emphasized this repeatedly – I myself have emphasized it from this platform on many occasions –: means of production may only be commodities in the economic circulation process until they are finished and handed over to the national economic life. What are they then afterwards? Then they are something that is subject to political or state life, to democracy, and that with reference to the work that people have to do through these means of production, in that they must get along with each other as responsible human beings. The means of production are something that is subject to state life, in that they pass from one person to another, so that it is always the person who needs the means of production who really has them. But they are also something that is subject to the institutions of spiritual work. For it is not out of old inheritance relationships, but out of the institutions of spiritual life that, through knowledge - as modern consciousness alone can bear it - it must now be determined how, when one no longer works with the means of production, it passes to those who, through their abilities and talents, can continue to use the means of production. Thus we can say: If threefolding underlies life, the means of production are commodities only as long as they are being produced. Then they cease to be commodities and are subject to laws and insights. Through laws and insights they fit into the social structure.

Land cannot be produced; it is therefore not a commodity from the outset. It is therefore never subject to the principle of the commodity, which is the subject of contracts. Land is therefore not at all concerned with what is contracted for. It must be gradually introduced into the social structure in such a way that, first of all, the distribution of land with a view to human cultivation is a democratic matter for the political state, and that the transition from one to the other is a matter for the intellectual link of the social organism. The living relationship in the democratic state decides who works on a piece of land for the benefit of the people. Land is never a commodity. From the very beginning, it is something that cannot be bought and sold.

What we must strive for first is not to buy and sell the land, but to ensure that what transforms the land into the sphere of human activity, legal and spiritual conditions, legal and spiritual impulses. Only someone who does not think clearly about these matters can think there is anything utopian about this. For basically it is only a change in the way something is done today: today we pay for land with money that comes from the sale of goods; that is not the truth, it is a social lie. Money used as an equivalent for land is, in the economic process, something different from money used as an equivalent for a commodity. And you see, that is something that is so difficult to see through in the present social chaos. Suppose you buy cherries, you give money for them. You buy any manor, you also give money for it. Now, when the two people who have received money, one for cherries – a sufficient amount of money, of course, it does not depend on whether it is possible in this direction – and the other for his manor, and when they mix up their money, you cannot distinguish which money was paid for the cherries and which for the manor. But precisely because one cannot distinguish between them, one is led into a pernicious and terrible illusion. Because, you see, if I draw crosses here and then small circles and were to mix them up, I would still be able to distinguish them.

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But if I had no sense of the difference between crosses and little rings, then I would no longer be able to distinguish what one is and what the other is. In other words, if I were to make the crosses and little rings in such a way that I turn the crosses into semicircles and the little rings into semicircles and draw both, then it would no longer be possible to distinguish between them. But what about in reality? You see, let's say I get the cherry money and the manor money. If I mix them up, I can no longer distinguish which money comes from the manor and which money comes from the cherries. You might think: money is money. But that is the terrible illusion. It is not true. In the economic process, the little rings that come from the manor house have a different effect on the whole of human life than the little crosses that come from the cherries. It is not the money that really matters, but the after-effect of where the money comes from. And a veil is simply drawn over this; it is no longer there for human observation. And so money is the living abstraction. Everything gets mixed up without differentiation. Man is no longer capable of being with what he belongs to, what he produces with, what he works on. Everything gets mixed up through money, just as everything flows together in the unclear mystics and becomes a few abstract concepts. And just as these abstract concepts [of the mystics] are useless in our process of knowledge, so too is what people imagine about money, because it is also just an abstraction, something beside reality, and thus nothing that can be used in life.

When you think about something like this, you realize the tremendous practical importance of land in people's lives. You realize that it should never depend on whether I am the owner of the land without any interest in it, or whether I only receive my pension from the land, but am indifferent to everything else. Anyone who has a proper grasp of the national economy knows what that means: I live off the land, but basically it makes no difference to me whether I live off the land or off the proceeds, let's say, from a CriCri or poker game; basically it's all the same to me, all that matters to me is acquiring a sum of money. The fact that one is indifferent as to how one acquires a sum of money is not so important when it comes to the fact that one really only earns this sum of money. But when you receive it from something that is connected with the weal and woe, with the fate of human beings, indeed with the whole cultural configuration, as land is, when you think about it, then it is not possible to transform this land into indifferent, abstract money. For it is precisely land that makes it necessary for the person who works it, who has something to do with it and who transfers what depends on the land into the economic process – that is not the money he brings in, but the fruit that thrives on it – that he is [really completely] involved in it.

Dear attendees, land within its territory cannot be administered according to the economic categories that have emerged in modern times. Just try to calculate when someone fertilizes his land with the manure that is produced by his cattle – try to figure out how to arrive at a value statement for this manure, how to determine the market value of the fertilizer, for example, what the fertilizer would be worth if it contaminated any of the markets in the cities. This is just a drastic example. If you follow the train of thought to its conclusion, you will find that there is a huge difference in the way in which what is produced on a property fits into the economic process. Compare the way in which a property functions that is subject to so-called self-management, that is, where the person who, on the property, whether it be a small or large property, actually considers the provision of the property from his abilities , and compare it with the way a community functions and must function that is organized only to maximize its monetary yield, to get as much as it can out of it. But as we stand in public life today, things must even out, that is, the one who is a self-manager cannot help but adapt to the one who leases the estate and only draws the rent from it. Thus, through adaptation, what emerges from the concrete – and in the case of land, how the individual products must relate to each other, how one must support the other; this is the self-management out of very different motives than if the things were only brought to the money market – so little by little what emerges from the concrete, the self-management, becomes dependent on what are quite abstract monetary conditions. This has already happened, which is why we have unnatural conditions today. Land that cannot be a commodity is being commodified; this introduces a real lie into life. It is not only what is said that is false, but also what happens. As soon as land is regarded as a commodity, that is, as soon as it can be bought and sold, one lies by one's actions.

If, however, you have the threefold social order, you cannot buy and sell land. The [legal] circumstances by which land passes from one person to another are subject to state laws, which have nothing to do with the buying and selling of goods. The question of how land is transferred from one person to another is subject to the spiritual aspect of the social organism, which has nothing to do with inheritance and blood relationship, but with such things as I have described in the “Key Points”. So you see, you only need to understand what threefolding is, and if you move in that direction, you are on the way to solving the social question.

What does Damaschke want? He takes the land question, he thinks about it, and the land question is to be solved through reflection. My dear audience, real things are not solved through reflection. I would just like to know how you intend to crush sugar, chop wood or the like, or how you intend to eat, through reflection. Just as you cannot crush sugar or eat out of contemplation, you cannot solve the land question out of contemplation. One can only say: land is today part of certain human circumstances. If we now consider what people do to the best of their ability in the social organism, incorporating the impulses of the threefold social order, then the facts that arise from devoting oneself to this threefold social order solve the land question not only in thought, but [in a practical way] just as the knife breaks the sugar, as the hoe chops the wood. Likewise, the threefold social order solves the land question by the fact that the land will simply be integrated into the threefold organism in such a way that it will no longer be treated as a commodity, as it is today. It will no longer continue in an unjustified way in consanguinity, but will be subject only to what man today feels to be the only tenable thing: that the transfer of land from one person to another occurs out of spiritual knowledge, that is, out of the impulse of the spiritual member of the social organism.

You see, the land question should be solved by threefolding not through programs, not through some abstract or utopian concepts, that is, not in a similar way to how Damaschke deals with the land question, but in such a way that one says: however tricky today's land conditions may be, devote yourselves to threefolding, introduce the facts of threefolding into social life, [take up] the things that lie in the direction of this threefolding; what then happens leads the land into conditions that are beneficial for people — as far as anything on earth can be beneficial at all. Threefolding does not want to solve the burning questions through ideas but through facts. People will place themselves in these facts if they devote themselves to such ideas that depend on themselves, and not to such ideas that continue to work with old traditions. It is one thing to say that one is trying to work in the direction of threefolding, and quite another to say that the state is a good person that can do everything and does everything right. Threefolding solves the land question by divesting the land of the character of a commodity, into which it has been swept; the state does not prevent [the unjust distribution of land], it It is he who appoints the officials who fill the housing vacancies, it is he who determines how much each person is allowed to have, it is he who prevents hoarding – this must no longer be the case!

You might say that it is all right if people think the way Morgenstern [in a poem] has suggested. Someone is run over by a car. He is taken home sick. Palmström – that's the man's name – wraps himself in wet cloths, he is suffering, but he does not give in to his pain because he is a good believer in the state. He consults the law books and finds: There, at the place where I was run over, no car is allowed to drive; so no car could have driven there, because that would contradict the laws, and since it contradicts the laws, I was not run over, because: what cannot be, must not have happened. You see, it is something like this when one wants to reform something rooted in reality by saying: if the value of land increases in an unspecified way, it will be handed over to the state, which will then know how to prevent hoarding – because hoarding does not occur when the state has spoken. It is forbidden, so it does not exist.

Now, dear attendees, from this example you can see how different the whole method is, the whole way of looking at life is, into which the threefold social order brings all social life. It is not a matter of merely thinking that external institutions can be changed by taking the money of those who have too much through an institution and giving it to the state. They find this very difficult, and they have no desire to do so. If you proceed from a sense of reality and from the principles set forth in The Essential Social Questions, you will see that the point is to base the associations everywhere are supported by those who are intimately connected with what they produce or consume – the latter will be less in evidence, but the former will be in evidence.

Now, you see, above all, all circumstances are obscured, veiled, by the fact that we live in the abstraction of the money economy, as I have indicated here today and also last time on such an evening. For example, one does not observe in a proper way what the relationship is between larger goods and smaller goods. Because today one wants to have everything conveniently, one will agitate against large goods or for small goods or vice versa. But everything is led into a certain monism of abstract thinking: either only large goods are good, or only small goods are good for the national economy. But that does not correspond to reality. What is important is that, in certain circumstances, it is precisely the interaction of small and large goods, of large economies with small economies, that is the right thing to do. However, this only comes about through the associative, which is characterized as the essential in economic life in the “key points”. Large economies work together with small ones and thereby achieve the best for the national economy. It is not a matter of treating everything the same, but of ensuring that large and small goods interact according to certain conditions. Do you think it is not in line with certain real conditions that the Prussian manors, with regard to beet alone, produced 54.8% of the total production – that is, over half of the production – while in relation to the small estates they produced less than half, under 50%, of all the other things? All this is based on real conditions. It can only have a fruitful effect on the real economic process if the people who are involved in the management of the goods establish associations based on these real conditions. Then it becomes clear how the one must support the other, because then one does not work from the abstract, but from reality. And then one can determine by contracts how to balance what is now an increase in production on one side with the other, and so on. That is why it was justified for me to say [at the beginning]: I want to speak to you about the conditions in the threefold order in such a way that they can shed light on the land question. I did not want to speak about the land question in the usual way, but rather I wanted to show how any question of social life must be approached when one is grounded in the threefold social order. And you can approach this question very concretely, while you can never approach this question in an orderly way from the old conditions.

You almost have to be like Pastor Planck when you think: social organism, threefold order — these are three triangles next to each other, and nothing goes from one into the other. No, the threefold social organism is really an organism, and one always plays into the other, so that in each of the three members there is something of the other two. In the human organism it is the same: not only the nervous-sensory system is at work in the head, but rhythm and digestion also take place in it. Thus, in economic life, public life also plays a role, it only has its own center of administration, and so in economic life the spiritual also plays a role, precisely in the transition of the means of production from one to the other.

But we see this interplay in much more everyday things. Take, for example, an aspect of public life where three things flow into one: that is, social intercourse. On the one hand, social intercourse is connected with land and property because it needs the street. But because the traffic area, streets and so on, cannot be privately owned, it can also not be a commodity, it can be seen that we have to get out of the commodity, that at least this part of land and soil cannot be considered a commodity. But our whole culture is also connected with the traffic system. Actually, all traffic is subject to three aspects. [We can ask:] What is subject to traffic? Firstly, goods; secondly, people; thirdly, messages. You can place everything that is subject to traffic in any of the three categories: messages, people, goods. You see, because goods are included in traffic, what relates to the movement of goods must be regulated according to contracts, according to the impulses of economic life. What relates to people is regulated by state life, these are the legal relationships. The movement of people must also be regulated according to legal relationships. Communication is subject to spiritual life; it is spiritual life in intercourse. And you will find how the three sides of the threefolded system of intercourse must be administered, something that the old institutions have not achieved. Calculate for yourself what an absurdity it is that in our country goods and messages are still handled in the same way by the same institution, that postal packages and messages are delivered, which do not belong together at all and for which there is no necessity in the external institutions. But the old state institutions were unable to separate the parcel service from the postal service, so that one interferes with the other. If you take a look at the postal rates, you will see what a waste of money it is that the postal service is used for both messages and goods.

Especially where life must begin to be practical, especially where life today has become too narrow for us because it is no longer practical – in every nook and cranny, impracticality sits – there threefolding is called upon to restore the practical. Only one thing belongs to this threefolding: a little courage. However, anyone who does not dare to take away the postal packages from the postal service and hand them over to the ordinary railway service, anyone who always raises objections and does not do the actual math to see what one or the other means, will never understand the threefold social order. For threefolding is based precisely not on holding on to old institutions, not on holding on to ideas of old human vignettes, of old state vignettes and so on, but this idea of threefolding is based precisely on the consideration of real conditions.

For, ladies and gentlemen, one cannot expect the threefold social order impulse to deal with reality and practice in such a way that it now indicates how a Privy Councillor or a government councilor will position himself in the threefold social order organism. Yes, that is more or less the kind of question that is asked. This is just one of the grotesque questions. One cannot say how a privy councillor and a government councillor will fit into it, but it is not necessary to state this. The spiritual, legal and economic relationships between people will be clearly regulated according to knowledge, law and contract, but within these three areas, some things that were previously highly valued will no longer exist. But, my dear audience, must we not admit that in the old regime, people sometimes paid more attention to whether someone was a privy councillor than to what he achieved and what he did for the social organism? But in reality, it is not important whether someone is a privy councillor or not, but what they achieve for the social organism. Therefore, the idea of threefolding must look beyond what still comes from the old days as a vignette, if we do not want to face the complete downfall of the Occident. It must look at what must arise in the new era as the fruit of the work that a person accomplishes in some form in the service of the threefolded, but entire social organism.

After Rudolf Steiner's speech, various personalities asked questions:

Walter Johannes Stein: Land is a finite totality. So there is only a certain amount of land. A certain number of people live on it. Therefore, one can calculate how much land there is for each individual. Now I would like to ask whether such a calculation has any real value, that is, whether it provides a measure that can be used for economic purposes. Or is it just idle statistics?

Hans Kaltenbach: Dr. Steiner has not presented all the findings of the

German land reformers; in his remarks he only mentioned the tax on the increase in the value of land. But this would only account for a small part of the proposed land reform. The introduction of a land rent tax is clear proof that the land reformers do not want laws in the sense of the old state system. What they have in mind is a contractual development that has nothing to do with old lawmaking. It is based on the idea that everyone must pay a land-rent tax for the use of the land, because the rent that he receives from the use of the land should be donated to the community. This procedure does not involve parliamentary laws or laws in the old sense at all, but many individual contracts.

A participant in the discussion: But in the end it is the state that collects the land rent tax.

Another participant in the discussion: No matter how you look at it, without land reform there can be no progress; it must be there as the basis for the further development of our society.

Walter Johannes Stein: Dr. Steiner has often described the threefold social order to us as a functional threefold order and not as a threefold order of areas. However, many people are mistaken; they think of each area separately and with a corporation at the top. This is therefore a misconception. I would like to ask what such a falsely structured social organism would actually look like.

Hermann Heisler: How does one come by a dwelling, and how does an exchange of dwellings take place? How is a house built? The land is a means of production; it is made available by the spiritual organism. When the house is finished, is it no longer a means of production? Most people would like to have a small garden. How is that to be done, since there is not so much land available? What role does the legal sphere play in the administration of land and property?

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! It is true that land and property are not made of rubber and cannot be expanded at will, and it is therefore also true that there must be a certain connection between a self-contained area of land and the people living on it. Now the thing that plays here as an ideal-real relationship is that, in fact, simply by being born, a person effectively, so to speak, occupies a piece of land – this corresponds to the total available land area, divided by the number of previous inhabitants of the land, plus one. In fact, at birth, each person ideally and actually claims the piece of land that falls to them, and a real relationship is simply formed between the available land area and what the newborn person claims in this way. That is a real relationship. But it is not true, in fact, in this social reality, not everything goes according to plan. The laws – I now mean natural laws, not state laws – are there, but they are only approximations. If, for example, different plants live in a certain area and one type of plant develops particularly strongly, it displaces the other type of plant; it can no longer grow. If it is essentially the case that this one piece of land, which I have been talking about, becomes much too small for a newborn human, then, so to speak, the valve is opened and emigration, colonization and so on occurs of its own accord. When the population increases in a particular area, it is possible to check whether more fruitfulness can be drawn from the soil than in earlier times. This has essentially been the case, for example, with the soil of former Germany.

So there is a relationship between the human being and a certain piece of land, as Dr. Stein indicated. We must be clear, however, that this relationship is an ideal-real one, which, however, when threefolding becomes reality, is always decided by contracts, insofar as goods are produced on the land. The land is administered by people, and the people who administer the land must enter into a relationship with each other simply because they do not all produce the same products. They must conclude contracts, and once they have concluded contracts, there must be something to ensure that they carry them out. So what happens in the mutual dealings of the people who cultivate the soil is subject to the legal, political and state relationships. But what happens when a single area of land passes from one person to another is subject to the spiritual law, which is formed in an independent, emancipated spiritual life and flows into the administration of the land. The legal relationships intervene in the interactions of the people who manage the land; these are relationships that can only be regulated by law. When the threefold social order intervenes in this way, it becomes really apparent whether the land is still sufficient or not, or whether colonization relationships are somehow being created — but not by mere instinct, but by an instinct guided by reason.

On the whole, however, it can be seen that something strange is happening. There is something in the most ordinary, everyday life that regulates itself beautifully, although, of course, only approximately. It regulates itself quite well, although people can do nothing about it through state laws or anything else: namely, the ratio of the number of women to the number of men on earth. It has not yet been possible – and it will not be possible in the way the Schencks dream – to regulate by any state laws or anything else that there are approximately as many men as women on earth. Imagine what it would be like if there were only 1/5 women and 4/5 men or vice versa.

It is better to leave it to the laws, which work together as harmoniously as the laws of nature. Once the threefold social order is really in operation, what arises will also adapt to the circumstances. For example, not all people will pursue scholarly occupations and see this as something special. Circumstances will now develop that will, for example, bring a suitable number of people to a certain area of land, so that the fertility of the area that ideally corresponds to the individual corresponds to the existence of that individual. Even if, in a figurative sense, five or a hundred such areas are managed by a single person who has the special ability to do so, what is cultivated on these areas still benefits the others.

Now, I did not understand the second question from Dr. Stein. It seems to me that he asked what would happen if the three areas of the social organism were wrongly structured.

I have already mentioned that today people take great pleasure in engaging in all kinds of “Traubism”. They accuse anthroposophically oriented spiritual science of borrowing from Gnosticism, of borrowing from Indianism, of borrowing from the Egyptian Isis mysteries. One writer has even discovered that a very old book, said to come from the Atlantic regions, contains what spiritual science copies and so on. This is gradually becoming a technique, so to speak, [to make such claims], although they are actually blatant untruths, and in many cases outright lies. Because it is of course quite simply like this: if I write a mathematics textbook today and it contains the Pythagorean theorem, and I am counting on readers who have not studied it, then I will write what they need to know. But if something is added after the Pythagorean theorem that Pythagoras did not have, the reader must not say that the whole thing is borrowed just because I was obliged to say what was already there. The point is always to tie in with the known and then add the unknown. It is dishonest when the Traubists then come and say that it is borrowed from Gnosticism and so on. One must know what a blatant untruthfulness is being practiced on this very page. You see, if you are an official representative of a modern confession, you are already very, very much inclined not to tell the truth. As a professor, you are also in a strange position in relation to the real truth. But if you are both and then write a book - I will not develop the idea any further.

But you see, the same story will also start with the threefold order. Since I am not claiming that I have discovered the number three, nor that the number three has not already been applied in the most diverse ways to any physical circumstances, for example to the human being, people can also come and say: Yes, in old Arabic books there is also a threefold structure of the human being, there one has already divided the human being into three parts. But what our threefold division is about, you will find in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Soul Mysteries), where I start from functional concepts. I do not say: the human being consists of three tracts. I say: there is a nervous-sensory area, there is an air and blood area, and there is a digestive area. But I say explicitly: digestion is in the whole human being; the three areas are in the whole human being. I distinguish according to the functions; there I speak of a nerve-sense activity, not of some area, and I distinguish from it the function of rhythmic activity and, thirdly, the function of metabolism. That is the human being, structured according to functions. You see how I have strictly characterized all of this as functions in the book “Von Seelenrätseln”.

Now someone discovers in an old book that in Arabia, the human being is divided into three parts, three tracts. He could then also say: There speaks someone of the threefold nature of the human organism; he has borrowed the important thing, the number three, from ancient traditions; that is not original. And furthermore, this old book is also divided according to analogies – this is something that I have just applied to a certain interpretation; read what the 'Key Points' say about analogies – in this book, the external state system is divided according to analogies; a distinction is made between areas, and at the head of each area is a prince. There are three princes at the top, so in this case too there is nothing but the number three. Well, princes – if that should ever come about, then you can take a stand on it yourselves. It does not depend on three princes; but the inner spirit is something quite different in the social threefold order, [there it depends on the functional aspect]. If one does not look at the functional aspect, the error would arise that one could have two or three parliaments side by side, as a Tübingen professor once wrote in the Tribüne. The point of the threefold order is precisely that there will not be three parliaments alongside each other, nor three princes, but only one parliament in the democratic state structure. For in spiritual life there will be no parliamentarization, but an appropriate administration will be active out of the matter, as well as in the economic sphere. So, one can allow people to have their fun looking up the threefold order in old books. But if we are to work fruitfully with the idea of threefolding, then we really must go back to the description in The Core Points.

Now to Pastor Heisler's questions: How do you get a flat? — and so on.

These kinds of questions are just too rigid. I'm not saying they're not important, they're extremely important. There is such a severe housing shortage in the world that people try to get housing in the most grotesque ways. It has even happened that someone has got married in order to find a flat so as not to be on the street. It is extremely important to know how to find a flat, but one should not color one's whole conception of threefolding with something that still thinks too much in the style of what must be overcome.

Imagine the threefold social order realized – one need not think abstractly, for when it is a question of how something should be thought, then one must look to this realization of the threefold order, however far away it may be; not everything can be answered merely in terms of goals. In the threefold organism, the human being will not only have a dwelling to look for, but will also do something else. He will be something or other, a factory director or a carpenter or something else. By being a factory director or a carpenter, one can live; for this one is remunerated. In the threefolded social organism, however, this bringing together of the human being with his work must gradually be transferred to the administration of the spiritual part of the organism: getting a home then belongs to the remuneration; that is combined. So you must not think: I am a human being and must get a place to live, but you must start from the assumption: I am not just a human being, but I also have something to do in a place, and among the things that I receive as remuneration for this — if normal social conditions prevail — is also a place to live. It is not just a matter of asking the abstract question: How do I get a place to live? but one must ask: What happens when the threefold social order is in place? - Then, at some place or other, a person, if they are a person - and that is usually the case unless they are an angel who is everywhere - receives their salary as well as a home, and that is subject to what comes from the organization of spiritual life. Or, if it is a matter of not being transferred to a new area but otherwise working in a different context, then it is subject to the state or the political sphere. But such questions cannot be posed in the abstract.

We will have to wait and see what conditions arise from the threefold order, or we will have to use our imagination to picture how conditions will develop. Then we will really be able to answer the question of how to negotiate when taking up a position somewhere, i.e. doing a job, so that we can also have a small garden and the like. These are really things that do not get to the nerve of threefolding. You can be sure that they will be regulated in such a way that you can truly have your little garden in front of the house, once the conditions are in place that are brought about by threefolding.

Likewise, the question of how houses are built needs to be addressed. What is it? It is connected with the land question. But if the land question is no longer a question of the commodity, but a question of the law and of the spiritual life, then the question of how houses are built is also a question that is connected with the whole cultural development of humanity. It is self-evident that houses are built out of the same impulses that lead a person to enter into their work. So the point is not to ask these questions in the abstract, not to ask them in such a way that the human being is torn out of their whole concreteness as an abstract being. In a living, threefold social organism, it is not the case that one is only confronted with the question of how to get a home, but one is confronted with the question in the whole concreteness of life, and there everything depends on treating these things realistically.

Mr. Kaltenbach has already said something correct [when he pointed out the importance of land rent]. Of course, I have only picked out one example, the capital gains tax. But I would have had to say exactly the same thing with regard to the taxation of land rent. But, ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to know whether the question that was raised has not already been answered? Because for me it was not important whether it was a land rent or an increase in value, but rather that in principle a tax is given to the state; Mr. Kaltenbach clearly said “tax,” and by that he means something that is given to the state. What kind of tax it is that is to be given to the state is not important. But what is important is that the state be restricted to a single link in the social organism, not the structure in which it is today. One cannot say that the land reformers do not want laws in the sense of the old state system. They do want that. They want to build something on the old state that they believe the old state could do. It never can. Of course I know what role it plays when someone has become immersed in an idea; they cannot let go of it. But I think that everything that has been said about the land tax is already answered by the spirit of what was said about capital gains.

One would like so much that the old does not reappear. One would not want just one person to come and say: I do not want the secret government councils to be just like the old secret government councils, but I want the threefold organism to produce new government councils. — [It comes out the same] whether one says this or whether one says: Yes, the land reformers do not want to give anything to the state. — But they do want to give taxes, and taxes can only be paid to the state in their present form. This gets you stuck in the question: Who should you pay tax to? And if we are talking about contracts, then, you see, no state allows itself to be bound by a contract about taxes. The situation between the state and the individual when taxes are to be paid is quite different; it is truly not a matter of contracts.

It is a matter of trying to take in a living way how the idea of the threefold social organism wants us to rethink. But this is precisely what stands in the way – even if one often admits with good will that one should and must rethink – that when one then tries to rethink, one sticks to the word, for example to the word “law”. Yes, I have already been asked the question: How should the state introduce the threefold order? That's it: we have to get out of our habitual ways of thinking and speaking. We have to come to sharply defined thoughts, otherwise the impulse of the threefold order of the social organism will not be understood.

It is easy to see how the conceptions of spiritual science that have been voiced for some years within our circle, and in the German section generally, are spreading more and more in the world, that understanding of them is beginning to find its way into the hearts and souls of our contemporaries. It is naturally not possible, although it might be a help to present day understanding, to speak casually of introducing the ideas, feelings, and knowledge of our spiritual movement into the modern world. Many of you might be glad to know how the spiritual nourishment you have received has affected other souls at the present time. It is only on certain occasions that we can speak of the spread of our spiritual ideas, but it may fill you with a certain satisfaction to know that we can see again and again how in different countries and in different hemispheres the spirit which inspires us is gaining a footing—more in one place, less in another. When I was in Triest a short time ago trying to arouse some comprehension of our point of view, I could see how the ideas we hold were gaining ground. And when from that southern city I passed northwards to Copenhagen, where, in a recent course of lectures, I tried to arouse some interest in the hearts of my hearers, it could be seen there also how the spirit we cherish under the symbol of the Rosy Cross is entering into them more and more. Taking together these separate facts one sees that a need and a longing for what we call “spiritual science” does exist at the present time.

That we should not carry on any agitation or propaganda is a fundamental principle of our spiritual movement; we should rather listen attentively to what of the great wisdom of the world the hearts and souls of the men of to-day required, so that they may have both the possibility and the certainty of life. We may therefore add to the thoughts put forward in a general lecture like this, one more—that we consider it a kind of duty at the present time to make of these spiritual. thoughts nourishment for other souls. This depends upon the whole manner in which we enter into the life of our time.

You have doubtless already accepted sufficient of the great law of Karma to know that it is not a matter of chance when an individual feels constrained at a certain point of time to assume a physical body and come down in the physical world. All the souls gathered here have felt a longing to assume a physical body at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, because they desired to experience in their own souls all that was being prepared and carried out in their physical environment at this time.

Let us now consider our own age as it appears spiritually to souls, which, like our own, are born in it. Things were very different in the spiritual world, as well as in the external world, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to what they were even fifty or sixty years earlier.

The person who is making progress—and you are all in this position—is trying to learn something of the spirit, and of the spiritual guidance of the world; of what fills surrounding space as the creatures of the different kingdoms of nature, and of what enters into our own souls. For the past half century souls longing for the spirit found extraordinarily little true spiritual nourishment where they hoped to find it. This longing for the spirit exists deep within the souls of all men, it is easily silenced for it does not speak loudly, but the longing is there, and each one whatever he is, or does in life, can receive true spiritual nourishment. Whatever department of science people take up to-day, they only learn from it external material facts which serve to further the progress of civilisation in a bright and clever way, but they learn nothing of what is revealed to man through the spirit. Whether he works as an artist or in some practical walk of life he finds little of what he has need, nothing that can enter his soul, his head, or his hands, to give him power and impulse for his work, and also assurance, solace, and power in life. At the beginning of the nineteenth century people had already come to the conclusion that in the near future little of this would be found. Many a one said to himself in the first half of the nineteenth century when some remnants of the old life still remained even if in another form:—“There seems to be something in the air; it is as if the ancient treasures of the spirit that have come down to us from olden times were disappearing. It is as if the expected advance in culture of the nineteenth century had entirely wiped out the spiritual communications that have been handed down to us from ancient times.” Many such voices were,heard,in the first half of the nineteenth century. To show what I mean I will mention but one example. There was a man living at that time who knew the old kind of Theosophy well; he knew also that this old form would completely disappear in the course of the nineteenth century, yet he was firmly convinced that a future was coming when the old Theosophy would surely return. The passage I am about to read was written in the year 1847, when the first half of the nineteenth century was drawing to a close. He who wrote it was a thinker such as is no longer met with to-day, for he was still conscious of the last echoes of those ancient communications which have long since been lost to us:—

What Theosophy really desires is often difficult to discover from the older theosophists, and this is even less clear to-day, because on its present path theosophy can attain to no scientific existence, and therefore cannot have any great results. It would be most premature to conclude from this that it is a passing phenomenon without scientific justification. History loudly proclaims the opposite. It tells how it can never get to the bottom of this mysterious phenomenon which breaks out unnoticed again and again, and whose changing forms are preserved by the links of a never-dying tradition. At all times there has really been little that has connected this vital, speculative need, with vital religious needs. It is only for these last that theosophy exists. The main thing is, if it might one day become really scientific, and produce clearly defined results, so that it would become popular and come to be accepted generally, and in this way bequeath these truths to others who are unable to travel the path on which alone they could discover them for themselves. But all this rests within the womb of the future which we have no wish to anticipate; for the present we are thankful for the beautiful writings of Oetinger, which can certainly reckon on a large circle of sympathisers.¹

From this we see how the theosophic spirit was regarded in 1847 by a man like Richard Rothe of Heidelberg.

What kind of spirit is the theosophic spirit really?

It is a spirit without which true culture would never have taken place. When we think of what is greatest in this, we think of the spirit without which there would have been no Homer, no Pindar, Raphael or Michelangelo, without which there would have been no deep religious feeling in man; neither spiritual life nor external culture. Everything a man creates must be created by the spirit; if he thinks he can produce anything without it, he is unaware that his whole spiritual endeavour would in that case fail for a certain time. The less spiritual the source from which anything comes the sooner it dies. Anything having enduring worth must have its source in spirit. The smallest creative act, even in everyday concerns, has an eternal value and connects us with what is eternal; for everything done by man is under the guidance of spiritual life. We know that theosophical life as cultivated by us is founded in Rosicrucianism, and it has often been explained that since the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Masters of Rosicrucian wisdom had been preparing what has come to pass since the end of the nineteenth century and will go on further into the twentieth. What was indicated by Rothe as a “future” he hoped and longed for, has already become “present” for us to-day, and will continue to become so more and more. This had long been in preparation by those who allowed this spiritual influence to pour, at first unconsciously, into mankind.

What in a special sense we have called the “Rosicrucian path” has been consciously accepted within our theosophical movement since the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and what the spirit has imprinted as science on the people of Europe, has since then flowed into our hearts.

Can we form an idea from what has taken place in our civilisation of how this spirit works?

I have said that since the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it has “worked” as the true Rosicrucian spirit, but it was always there, and has only assumed this last form since the dates mentioned. This spirit that is active at present as the Rosicrucian spirit goes back to very early ages of humanity. Its mysteries existed in Atlantis. The activity it has recently developed, becoming ever more and more conscious, streamed not so very long ago in an unconscious way into the hearts and souls of men. Let us try to form some idea of how this spirit entered man unconsciously.

We meet together here, and our studies show us how the human soul has developed in this or that, till it has gradually attained to a region where it understands spiritual life, where it may even perhaps see spiritual life. Many of you have striven for years to fill your souls with thoughts and ideas which can set the spiritual life before your eyes. You know the way we regard the secrets of the world. I have often explained the different stages of development the soul passes through, and how it rises to higher worlds. You know that we have to distinguish a higher from a lower part of the self; that man has come over from other planetary conditions and has experienced the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. During these his physical body, etheric body and astral body were formed; he then entered on his earthly development. You know that something dwells within us that passes through its training here so as to rise to higher conditions. You have heard that certain Beings remained behind on the Moon as Luciferic Beings, and these later approached the human astral body as tempters, giving to humanity in this way what they had to give. Then we have often spoken of how man has to overcome certain things in his lower self, that he has to conquer them before he can enter those spheres to which his higher self belongs—that in order to reach these higher regions he has to fulfil the saying of Goethe:—

Und so lang du das nicht hast
Dieses Stirb und Werde,
Bist du nur ein trüber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.

“So long as thou hast not experienced death and becoming, thou art a gloomy (sorry) Guest upon a dark earth.”

We have also said that the human evolution possible to-day, and that can give us power, certainty, and real content in our lives, is only to be attained when we learn, for instance, of the manifold natures of man, and that this man is not put together in any chaotic manner, but consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. This must not be accepted merely as words, but by describing different temperaments, by studying the education of man, we have presented clear conceptions of these things, showing how up to his seventh year he is concerned with the development of the physical body, up to his fourteenth year with that of the etheric body, and up to his twenty-first year with the astral body. And we learnt from our studies dealing with the mission of truth, of devotion, of anger and so on that what we describe as physical body, etheric body, and astral body, feeling-soul, rational-soul and consciousness-soul are no abstract ideas, but that they impart life to our whole mental outlook, making everything around as clear and full of meaning.²

It is possible by such ideas to gain understanding of the secrets of the world. And if there are many who consciously or unconsciously persist in their materialistic opinions, there is also a certain number of souls who feel it as a necessity of existence to listen to such statements as we are able to give. Many of you would not have shared in what has been practised herefor years if it were not a necessity of your life. Why are there souls present to-day who understand the views and ideas evolved here, and who conduct their lives in accordance with them? Because, as you have been born into the world with longings such as I have described, so your forefathers (which means many souls present here to-day) were born in past centuries into other surroundings and into another world than that of the nineteenth century. Let us look backwards to the sixth and seventh, or to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when many who are here now were incarnated, and let us see what these souls experienced at that time.

There was no theosophical society in those days where people discussed things as we do here, but souls then heard something quite different from the people about them. Let me try to call up before you what these souls heard. They did not travel from place to place in order to hear lectures on spiritual science, but they heard rhapsodists who passed from village to village, from place to place, declaring things concerning the spirit. What did these people say? Let us recall a single instance of this. People did not then say:—“We have a Theosophy, a teaching concerning the lower and higher ego, that deals with the different members of man's Being and so on,” but rhapsodists travelled through the land, men who were called by the spirit to declare somewhat as follows:—(I am now repeating some of the things that were spread abroad through Middle and Eastern Europe at that time).

There was once a king's son. He rode forth and came presently to a deep ditch, he heard moaning proceedi.ng from it. He followed the course of the ditch to discover the cause of the moaning, and there he found an old woman. He left his horse, descended into the ditch, and helped the old woman out. He then saw that she could not walk for she had injured her leg, so he asked her how this accident had come about. She then told him:—I am an old woman and I must rise early soon after midnight in order to go to the town to sell eggs. On the way I fell into this ditch.” The king's son said:—“Thou canst” not now reach thine own dwelling. I will set thee on my horse and take thee there.” This he did. The old woman said:—“Although of noble birth thou art a kind and good man, and because thou hast helped me, thou shalt receive a reward from me.” He now guessed that she was something more than an old woman. Then she said:—“Because of the kindness thou hast shown me thou shalt receive the reward that thy good soul deserves. Dost thou desire to marry the daughter of the Flower-Queen?” “Yes,” he said. Then, she continued:—“To do so thou hast need of what I can easily give thee.” And she gave him a little bell, saying:—“When this is rung once the king-eagle will come with his hosts to help thee, whatever the position in which thou mayst be, when thou ringest twice the king of the foxes with his pack will come to help thee, wherever thou art, and if thou ringest thrice the king of the fishes will come with his hosts and will help thee wherever thou art.”

The king's son took the little bell and returned home and said that he was going to seek the daughter of the flower-queen, and rode forth. He rode a long, long time and no one could tell him where the daughter of the flower-queen dwelt. His horse was by this time worn out and broken down, so that he had to pursue his wanderings on foot. He met an old man and asked him where the dwelling of the flower-queen's daughter was. “I cannot tell thee,” said the old man, “go on further and ever further, and thou wilt find my father, and he will perhaps tell thee.” So the king's son went on further, and at last found a very ancient primeval man of whom he asked if he could tell him where the flower-queen dwelt with her daughter. Then the old man said to him:—“The flower-queen dwells afar in a mountain that thou canst see in the distance from here. She is, however, watched over by a savage dragon. Thou canst not reach her, for the dragon never sleeps in these days; there is only a certain time in which he sleeps, and this is his waking time. But thou must go still further to another mountain, there lives the dragon's mother. Through her thou will reach thy goal.” Courageously he went on. He reached the first mountain, then the second mountain; there he found the dragon's mother, the archetype of all ugliness. But he knew it depended on her whether he would find the daughter of the flower-queen or not. He then saw near the first, seven other dragons who all desired to watch over the flower-queen and her daughter, who had long been held prisoners and who were to be liberated by a king's son. He said to the dragon's mother:—“O, I know that I must be thy bondsman if I am to find the flower-queen!” “Yes,” she answered, “thou must be my bondsman,” and thou must do me a service that is not easy. Here is a horse, thou must lead him out to pasture the first day, the second and the third day. If thou bringst him home safe then on the third day perhaps thou mayst attain thy desire. But if thou doest not bring him safe home the dragon will eat thee—we shall all eat thee.” The next morning he was given the horse. He tried to lead it to the pasture, but soon the horse escaped from him. He sought it but could not find it, and was most unhappy. He remembered the little bell the old woman had given him. He drew it forth and rang it once. Then many eagles appeared led by the king-eagle. They found the horse, and he was able to lead it back to the mother dragon. She said:—“Because thou hast brought it back I will give thee a mantle of copper; with it thou canst take part in the ball that is to be given tonight in the circles of the flower-queen and her daughter.”

On the second day he was again to take the horse to the meadow. It was given to him, but soon it escaped again, and nowhere could he find it So he drew forth the little bell again and rang it twice. Immediately the king of the foxes appeared with a large following. They found the horse, and he was able to restore it to the dragon's mother. She then said to him:—“To-day thou shalt receive a silver mantle with which thou canst again attend the ball that takes place tonight in the circle of the flower-queen and her daughter.” At the ball the flower-queen's daughter said to him:—“Demand on the third day a number of these horses, with them thou canst rescue us and we shall be united.” On the third day the horse was again handed over to him so that he could take it to the pastures. At once it escaped again, for it was very wild. He drew forth his little bell and rang it three times. The fish-king then appeared with his following. They found the horse and he took it back a third time. He had successfully performed his task. The dragon mother then gave him as recompense a mantle of gold as his third covering; with it he could take part on the third day at the ball at the flower-queen's dwelling. Besides this he was able to bring as a fitting present to her those horses that he had taken care of. With them he could carry the flower-queen and her daughter to their own fortress. And round this fortress which all the others wished to steal from her they allowed a thick hedge of bushes to grow so that the fortress could not be taken.

Then the flower-queen said to the king's son:—“Thou bast won my daughter, thou shalt have her by and by, but only on one condition. Thou shalt only have her for half the year, the other half she must withdraw from the surface of the earth so that she may be with me; only thus is it possible for thee to be united with her.”

In this way he won the daughter of the flower-queen and lived with her always for half the year; during the other half she was with her mother. This and other stories entered into very many souls. They listened to them, but did not interpret them allegorically after the manner of the strange theosophists of recent times; for these things have no value as symbolic or allegoric statements. No! people accepted them because they found pleasure and joy in them, they felt warm life flow through their souls when they listened to such tales.

There are many souls living now who heard such tales and accepted them with joy. And when received in this way they continued to live within these souls, they turned into thought-forms, into feelings and perceptions, thus they became something different than they were before. This produced results, it imparted powers to such souls, and these powers were changed, they were transformed into something else. Into what were they changed?

They were changed into that which lives in men's souls to-day as longing for a higher elucidation of these same secrets, a longing for theosophy. The rhapsodist did not tell of people who strove towards their higher self, and to attain it must conquer the lower self which held them down, but they told of a king's son who, as he rode forth through the world, found an old woman in distress, and did a good and kindly deed! To-day, we say:—People must do good deeds, deeds of love and sacrifice. At that time men spoke in images. To-day we say:—Men must feel within such sympathy for the spirit that they divine something of the spiritual world, something that connects them with it, and enables them to develop forces that can put them in touch with it. In earlier times men were told in parables of the old woman who gave the king's son a bell. To-day they are told:—Man has taken all the other kingdoms of nature into himself, what lives scattered in them is united harmoniously in him. But he must understand how something lives in him which lives in all surrounding nature, that he can only overcome his lower nature when this is brought into right relationship with himself so that it can help him.

We have often spoken of the evolution of man through the Saturn, Sun and Moon epochs, how he left the other kingdoms of nature behind him, retaining the best out of each, so that he might rise to something higher. By what means has he evolved? By means of that which Plato uses as a symbol—the horse; on this he rides forward from incarnation to incarnation. At that time the image of the bell was used; it was rung to summon the kingdoms of nature through their representatives—the Eagle-king, Fox-king, and Fish-king—so that he who was to become the ruler of these kingdoms might be brought into right relationship with them.

The soul of man is untamed, and only when love and wisdom control it is it brought into the right relationship. At one time this was brought to man's notice in pictures; his soul was guided so that he could understand what to-day is told us differently. At that time he was told:—When you ring the bell once the Eagle-king comes, when you ring it twice the Fox-king comes, and when you ring it three times the Fish-king; these brought back the horse. This means the storms which rage in the human soul must be recognised, and when we recognise them we can free it from the lower disturbances and bring it into order.

Man must learn to know how his own passions, anger and so on, are connected with his development from one seven years to another seven; he must learn to know the threefold nature of the human sheaths. In former days we were presented with a wonderful picture. Every time the king's son rang the bell (that is when by his own power he had subdued one of the kingdoms) he acquired a covering, a sheath.

To-day we say:—We study the nature of the physical body; at that time an image was used, the dragon-mother gave the man a mantle of copper. To-day we say:—We study the nature of our etheric body; then it was said:—The dragon-mother gave him a silver mantle. Again we say:—We learn to know our astral body with all its surging passions. At that time they said:—The dragon-mother gave him on the third day a golden mantle.

What we learn to-day concerning the threefold sheath-nature of man was brought to people at an earlier day through the image of the copper, silver, and golden mantles. And to the souls that then received the thought-form of the copper, silver, and golden mantles, we say to-day:—What brings you understanding of the dense physical body, is related to the other bodies as copper ore is to silver and gold. To-day we say:—Backward Luciferic Beings of seven different kinds remained behind on the moon and worked upon the human astral body. The rhapsodists said:—When the king's son came to the mountain where he was to be united with the flower-queen's daughter, he met seven dragons who would have devoured him if he had not accomplished his day's task. We know that if our evolution is not carried out aright it is owing to the power of the seven different kinds of Luciferic Beings. To-day we say:—In carrying out our spiritual development we find our higher self. Formerly, people were presented with a picture. The king's son they were told united himself with the flower-queen's daughter. We say:—The human soul must attain to a certain rhythm.

In one of the earlier lectures in this course I said:—When an idea rises in a man's soul he must allow it time to mature, he will then observe a certain rhythm. After seven days the idea has entered deeply into his soul; after fourteen days, the idea now being more mature, is able to lay hold of the outer astral substance, and to allow itself to be “baptised by the universal spirit”; after twenty-one days it has matured still further, and only after four times seven days does it reach the stage where he can give it to the world as his own personal gift. What I have described is an inner rhythm of the soul.

A man can only create successfully when he has no desire to impart hurriedly to the world what has chanced to come to him, but knows that the orderliness of the external universe must enter in his soul. We must live so that we repeat the macrocosm microscopically in ourselves.

These pictures which were told everywhere—and hundreds of them could be cited—stimulated the powers of the human soul by means of thought-forms, so that such souls are to-day ripe enough to listen to the other form of instruction, the form cultivated in spiritual science. But the longing for this had first to become very strong. All the conscious striving of men's souls had first to disappear from the physical plane. Then with the coming of the second half of the nineteenth century materialistic culture arose, and all was desolation as regards spiritual life. But the longing, on the other hand, grew ever greater and greater, the more the ideal of a future spiritual movement grew. There were but few remaining in the first half of the nineteenth century who felt, as in a faint memory, and experienced in silent martyrdom, how the ideas which were once perceived, discussed, and developed, still existed; but were in decline.

In 1803 a man was born in whose soul some echo of the wisdom of an earlier day still remained. Something dwelt in him that was closely related to our theosophical ideas. His soul was filled with longing to solve the secrets of spiritual science—his name was Julius Mosen. His life could only be preserved by spending the greater part of it in bed. His soul no longer suited his body, for owing to the way he had grasped these things, yet was unable spiritually to enter further into them, he had drawn his etheric body out of his physical body, and consequently he had become an invalid. He had, however, risen spiritually to considerable heights. In the year 1831 he wrote a remarkable book called “Ritter Wahn.” He knew of a wonderful legend in Italy about the Knight Wahn, and when studying it he said to himself:—Something of the spirit of the universe lives in this legend, this saga has arisen in the way it has, these pictures have been formed as they are, because those who formed them were filled with the living spiritual guidance of the world. What was the result? In 1831 he wrote a most wonderful dramatic work. It has naturally been forgotten—as everything is that originates in this way from greatness of spirit. Ritter Wahn sets out to conquer death. On the way he meets with three old men. It occurred to Julius Mosen strangely enough to translate the name of one of the old men, it Mondo, as Ird (earth), for he knew something special lay in translating it thus into German. The name of tile three old men whom Ritter Wahn met when he set out to conquer death were Ird, Zeit, and Raum—earth, time and space. The three could not help him for they were subject to death. Ird (earth) is that which is subject to the laws of the physical body, and therefore to death; Zeit (time), the etheric body, is transient; and the third, the lower astral body, which gives us the impression of space, is also subject to death. Our individuality passes from incarnation to incarnation, but that by which we are fixed within our three sheaths according to this Italian legend is Ird, Zeit and Raum (earth, time and space). What is the Ritter Wahn?—Illusion.

We have often spoken of what enters us as Maya. We ourselves are it; we who go on from incarnation to incarnation look out on the world, and are confronted with the great illusion. Each one of us is a “Ritter Wahn” and each one goes forth, if we live in the spirit, to conquer death. In this life we meet the three old men, our sheaths. They are very old. The physical body has existed since the age of Saturn, the etheric body since the Sun-age, the Astral body since the Moon-age, and that which dwells in man as the “I” has been united with him since the coming of the Earth-age. Julius Mosen represents this in such a way that the soul, by which Ritter Wahn would conquer death, first storms out into the world as a rider, thus employing the Platonic image which was prevalent all over Central Europe and far beyond it. So Ritter Wahn rides forth, and would conquer heaven with the aid of materialistic thoughts—as people do who trust to the senses—thereby remaining entangled in delusion and Maya.

But when at death they enter the spiritual world, what happens is beautifully described by Julius Mosen—life is not exhausted, souls long to return to earth to carry out their further development. Ritter Wahn comes down to earth again. And as he sees the beautiful Morgana, the soul as it is stirred by everything earthly—just as was the flower-queen's daughter—and revealing its union with everything that can only come to man through earthly schooling, there when united with the beautiful Morgana, when again united with the earth, death falls away from him. This means he passes through death in order to raise his own soul (represented by Morgana) ever higher, to purify and develop it further in each incarnation.

From images like these, which bear the stamp of many centuries, ideas enter into man and are aided by artists like Julius Mosen. They sprang in his case from a soul too great to live healthily in a body belonging to the age of materialism that was approaching, therefore, owing to the greatness of his glowing soul, he suffered a silent martyrdom. This was in the year 1831. All these thoughts lived in the soul of a man in the first half of the nineteenth century. They must rise again, but now so that they will kindle human powers, human forces. Yes, they will rise again This gives us some understanding of what is meant when we speak of a theosophical spirit, the spirit of Rosicrucianism which must enter into mankind.

We now divine that what is cherished in our movement has existed always. We fall into the illusion of Ritter Wahn if we imagine anything can prosper without active co-operation of this spirit.

Whence came the Rhapsodists of the seventh to the twelfth century; the men wandered through the world giving rise to thought-forms so that souls might comprehend things somewhat differently.

From what centre did they come? Where had they learnt how to present such pictures to the souls of men They learnt this in those temples, which we recognise as the schools of the Rosicrucians. The Rhapsodists were pupils of the Rosicrucians. Their teachers told them:—You cannot go forth to-day and speak to mankind in ideas as will be done later; to-day you must speak to them of the king's son, of the flower-queen, of the three mantles. By this means thought-forms are built up which will live in men's souls, and when these souls return they will understand what is necessary for them for their further progress.

Spiritual centres are continually sending their messengers out into the world, so that in every age that which lives in the depths of the spirit may be brought near to the souls of men.

It is a trivial point of view when people think they can construct such tales as I have been describing from fancy. Ancient legends which express the spiritual secrets of the world arise because the men who compose them have harkened to and been purified by those who impart these secrets; the whole form of the legends is constructed in accordance with these spiritual secrets. The spirit of all humanity—both of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm—lives in them.

The Rhapsodists were sent to spread their meaningful legends through the world from the same temples whence originates the special knowledge of to-day; knowledge that entering into men's hearts and souls makes the culture they demand possible. In this way the spirit that is deeply implanted in humanity passes on from epoch to epoch. And in this way the great Beings, who in pre-Christian times instructed individualities within the holy temples concerning the things they had brought over with them from earlier planetary conditions, strengthened this teaching by introducing into it the Christ so that their work might continue in accordance with this superlative Being—the Christ who had now become the great leader and guide of mankind!

When I tell you that the tales which have endured for so many centuries and called forth thought-forms in Western culture came from the same source, and expressed the same things—only in pictures—that we tell the world to-day concerning the Christ; you will realise how in the time following the Mystery of Golgotha the spiritual guides of humanity did in fact further arid support the teaching of Christ in their centres of learning. All spiritual guidance is connected with the Christ. When we are aware of this connection we catch a glimpse of the light we must have, and must make use of, more especially in respect of the things our souls longed for when they came into incarnation in the nineteenth century. If we allow those forms to affect us which can inform us regarding the longings of earlier days, we feel we can rely upon our souls and can say—those others waited so that we might accomplish what they longed for. What spirits like Julius Mosen had longed for, because they felt within them all that the messengers of the Holy Temples had related in countless pictures, so as to prepare souls for times to come; what these souls longed for is set forth in the words of Richard Rothe, who, when speaking of theosophy in 1847 at Heidelberg, says:—“Would that one day it might become really scientific, and produce clearly defined results, so that it might become popular and be generally accepted; for only in this way can it bequeath those truths to others who are unable to travel the path on which alone they could discover them for themselves.”

In those days Rothe felt this longing—not only for himself but for his contemporaries—he found resignation in saying:—“All this lies as yet within the womb of the future which we have no wish to anticipate!” Those who knew the secrets of the Rosicrucians did not speak in 1847 so that these could be perceived in an external way. But what rests within the womb of the future comes to life when a sufficient number of souls are found who realise that knowledge is a duty. We dare not give back our souls unevolved to the Spirit of the Universe, for in that case we would have deprived the Spirit of something He had implanted in us. When souls are found who realise what they owe to the Spirit of the Universe because of their strivings to solve the secrets of the world, they will have fulfilled the hopes cherished by the best men of an earlier age. These men looked to us who were to come after them and said:—“Once this knowledge becomes scientific it must become popular and lay hold of men's hearts.”

But such hearts must first exist, they must be there I This depends on those who have joined our spiritual society realising:—“I must gain spiritual illumination, I must learn the secrets of existence I” It depends on each separate soul within our society, whether the longing I have described is to be but a vain dream of those who hoped for the best from us, or a worthy dream that we can realise for them.

When we perceive the emptiness in modern science, in art, and in social life, we feel there is no need to be lost in this desert, we can get out of it. An age has once more come round in which the Holy Temples speak, not now merely in images and parables, but in truths, which, though still regarded by many as theoretical, will become ever more and more a source of life, and will pour living sap into the souls of men.

Each one can determine with the best powers of his soul to receive this living sap into himself.

These are the thoughts we would impress on your souls at the present time, being the sum of all we have received concerning the true meaning of the spiritual guidance of mankind. When we allow such thoughts to work within our souls we have a lively stimulus for future endeavour, and we see how much of constructive force they contain that is quite independent of the actual words with which these thoughts have been expressed.

However imperfect my words may be, it is the reality that matters, not the way the thoughts are expressed, and this reality can live in every soul. For the sum of all truth dwells in each separate soul like a seed which can blossom when this soul accepts it.

• 1. From the introduction by Richard Rothe to “The Principles of Theosophy according to Frederick Cristopher Oetinger,” Tubingen, 1847.
• 2. “Metamorphoses of the Soul Volume One,” and “Metamorphoses of the Soul Volume Two,” (see Book Catalogue).

We shall encounter again and again, in the course of our reflections, the difficulty of keeping in our mind's eye ever more exactly the exterior organism of man, in order that we may learn to know the transitory, the perishable. But we shall also see that this very road will lead us to a knowledge of the imperishable, the eternal in human nature. Also it will be necessary, in order to attain this goal, to sustain the effort of looking upon the exterior human organism in all reverence, as a revelation of the spiritual world.

When once we have permeated ourselves in some measure with spiritual-scientific concepts and feelings, we shall come quite easily to the thought that the human organism in its stupendous complexity must be the most significant expression, the greatest and most important manifestation, of those forces which live and weave as Spirit throughout the world. We shall, indeed, have to find our way upward ever more and more from the outer to the inner.

We have already seen that external observations, both from the point of view of the layman and from that of the scientific inquirer, must lead us to look upon man in a certain sense as a duality. We have characterised this duality of the human being—only hastily yesterday, to be sure, for we shall have to go into this still more accurately—as being enclosed within the protecting bony sheath of the skull and the spinal vertebrae. We have seen that, if we ascend beyond the exterior form of this part of man, we may gain a preliminary view of the connection between the life which we call our waking life of day, and that other life, in the first place very full of uncertainty for us, which we call the life of dreams. And we have seen that the external forms of that portion of human nature which we have described give us a kind of image, signify in a way a revelation, on the one hand of dream-life, the chaotic life of pictures; and on the other hand the waking day life, which is endowed with the capacity to observe in sharp outlines.

To-day we shall first cast a fleeting glance over that part of the human duality which may be found outside the region we had in mind yesterday. Even the most superficial glance over this second portion of the human being can teach us that this portion really presents a picture in a certain respect the opposite of the other one. In the brain and the spinal cord we have the bony formation as the outer circumference, the covering. If we consider the other portion of man's nature, we are surely obliged to say that here we have the bony formation disposed rather more within the organs. And yet this would be only a very superficial observation. We shall be carried deeper into the construction of this other portion of man's nature if, for the moment, we keep the most important systems of organs apart one from another, and compare them, first, outwardly, with what we learned yesterday.

The systems of organs, or systems of instruments, of the human organism to be considered first in this connection, must be the apparatus of nutrition and all that lies between this apparatus and that wonderful structure the heart, which we readily experience as a sort of central point of the whole human organism... And here even a superficial glance shows us at once that these systems of instruments, especially the apparatus of nutrition as we may call it in everyday speech, are intended to take in the substances of our external, earthly world and prepare them for further digestive work in the physical organism of man. We know that this apparatus of digestion begins by extending downward from the mouth, in the form of a tube, to the organ which everyone knows as the stomach. And a superficial observation teaches us that, from those articles of food which are conveyed through this canal into the stomach, the portions which are to a certain extent unassimilated are simply excreted, whereas other portions are carried over by the remaining digestive organs into the organism of the human body.

It is also well known that, adjoining the actual digestive apparatus in the narrower sense of the term, and for the purpose of taking over from it in a transformed condition the nutritive substances with which it has been supplied, is what we may call the lymph-system. I shall at this point speak merely in outline. We may repeat accordingly that, adjoining the apparatus of nutrition in so far as this is attached chiefly to the stomach, there is this system of organs called the lymph-system, consisting of a number of canals, which in their turn spread over the whole body; and that this system takes over, in a certain way, what has been worked over by the rest of the digestive apparatus, and delivers it into the blood.

And then we have the third of these systems of organs, the blood-vessel system itself, with its larger and smaller tubes extending throughout the entire human organism and having the heart as the central point of all its work. We know also that, going out from the heart, those blood-vessels or blood-filled vessels which are called arteries, convey the blood to all parts of our organism; that the blood goes through a certain process in the separate parts of the human organism, and then is carried back to the heart by means of other similar vessels which bring it back, however, in a transformed condition as so called “blue blood” in contrast to its red state. We know that this transformed blood, no longer useful for our life, is conducted from the heart into the lungs; that it there comes into contact with the oxygen taken up from the outer air; and that, by means of this, it is renewed in the lungs and conducted back again to the heart, to go its way afresh throughout the whole human organism.

If we are to consider these systems in their completeness, in order to have in our external method of observation a foundation for the occult method, let us begin by holding to that system which must, at the very outset, obviously be for everyone the central system of the entire human organism, namely, the blood-and-heart system. Let us, moreover, keep in mind that after the stale blood has been freshened in the lungs, transformed from blue blood into red blood, it returns once more to the heart and then goes out again from the heart as red blood, to be used in the organism. Notice, that everything which I intend to draw will be in mere outline, so that we shall be dealing only with sketches.

Let us now briefly recall that the human heart is an organ which, properly speaking, consists in the first place of four parts or chambers, so separated by interior walls that one can distinguish between the two larger spaces lying below and the two smaller ones lying above, the two lower ones being the ventricles, as they are generally called, and the two upper ones the auricles. I shall not speak about the “valves” to-day, but shall rather call attention, quite sketchily, to the course of the most important organic activities. And here, to begin with, one thing is clear: after the blood has streamed out of the left auricle into the left ventricle, it flows off through a large artery and from this point is conducted through the entire remainder of the organism. Now, let us bear in mind that this blood is first distributed to every separate organ of the whole organism; that it is then used up in this organism so that it is changed into the so-called blue blood, and as such returns to the right auricle of the heart; and that from there it flows into the right ventricle in order that it may go out again from this into the lungs, there again to be renewed and take a fresh course throughout the organism.

When we begin to visualise all this it is important, as a basis for an occult method of study, that we also add the fact that what we may call a subsidiary stream branches out from the aorta very near the heart; that this subsidiary stream leads to the brain, thus providing for the upper organs, and from there leads back again in the form of stale blood into the right auricle; and that it is there transformed, as blood which has passed through the brain, so to speak, in the same way as that blood is transformed which comes from the remaining members of the organism. Thus we have a smaller, subsidiary circuit of the blood, in which the brain is inserted, separate from the other main circuit which provides for the entire remaining organism. Now, it is of extraordinary importance for us to bear this fact in mind. For we can only arrive at an important conception, affording us a basis for everything that will enable us to ascend to occult heights, if at this point we first ask ourselves the following question: In the same way in which the upper organs are inserted in the smaller circuit, is there something similar inserted within the circuit of the blood which provides for the rest of the organism. Here we come, as a matter of fact, to a conclusion which even the external, superficial method of study can supply, that is, that there is inserted in the large circuit of the blood the organ we call the spleen; that further on is inserted the liver; and, still further on, the organ which contains the gall prepared by the liver.

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Now, when we ask about the functions of these organs, external science answers by saying that the liver prepares the gall; that the gall flows out into the digestive canal, and takes part in digesting the food in such a way that this may then be taken up by the lymph-system and conducted over into the blood. Much less, however, does external science tell us with regard to the spleen, the third of the organs here considered as inserted in the main circuit. When we reflect upon these organs, we must first give attention to the fact that they have to occupy themselves with the preparation of the nutritive matter for the human organism; but that, on the other hand, they are all three inserted as organs into the circulatory course of the blood. It is not without reason that they are thus inserted, for, in so far as nutritive matter is taken up into the blood, to be conveyed by means of the blood to the human organism in order to continuously supply this with substances for its up-building, these three organs take part in the whole process of working over this nutritive matter.

Now arises the question: Can we already draw some sort of conclusion, from an external aspect, as to just how these organs take part in the joint activity of the human organism? Let us first fix our attention on this one external fact, namely, that these organs are inserted into the lower circulatory course of the blood in the same way in which the brain is inserted into the upper course; and let us now see for a moment, while first actually holding to this external method of study, which must later be deepened, whether it is possible that these organs really have a task similar to that of the brain. At the same time, wherein may such a task consist?

Let us begin by considering the upper portions of the human organism. It is these that receive the sense-impressions through the organs of sense, and work over the material contained in our sense-perceptions. We may say, therefore, that what takes place in the human head, in the upper part of the organism, is a working over of those impressions which flow in from outside through the sense-organs; and that what we may describe as the cause of everything that takes place in these upper parts is to be found in its essence in the external impressions or imprints. And, since these external impressions send their influences, together with what results from these influences in the working over of the outer impressions, into the upper organs of the organism, they therefore change the blood, or contribute to its change, and in their own way send this blood back to the heart transformed, just as the blood is sent back to the heart transformed from the rest of the organism.

Is it not obvious that we should now ask ourselves this other question: Since this upper part of the human organism opens outward by means of the sense-organs, opens doors to the outside world in the form of sense- organs, is there not a certain sort of correspondence between the working-in of the external world through these sense-organs upon the upper part of the human organism and that which works out of the three interior organs, the spleen, the liver, and the gall-bladder? Whereas, accordingly, the upper part of the organism opens outward in order to receive the influences of the outside world; and whereas the blood flows upwards, so to speak, in order to capture these impressions of the outside world, it flows downwards in order to take up what comes from these three organs. Thus we may say that, when we look out upon the world round about us, this world exercises its influence through our senses upon our upper organisation. And what thus flows in from outside, through the world of sense, we may think of as pressed together, contracted, as if into one centre; so that what flows into our organism from all sides is seen to be the same thing as that which flows out from the liver, the gall-bladder and the spleen, namely, transformed outside world. If you go further into this matter you will see that it is not such a very strange reflection.

Imagine to yourselves the different sense-impressions that stream into us; imagine these contracted, thickened or condensed, formed into organs and placed inside us. Thus the blood presents itself inwardly to the liver, gallbladder and spleen, in the same way as the upper part of the human organism presents itself to the outside world. And so we have the outside world which surrounds our sense-organs above, condensed as it were into organs that are placed in the interior of man, so that we may say: At one moment the world is working from outside, streaming into us, coming into contact with our blood in the upper organs, acting upon our blood; and the next moment that which is in the macrocosm works mysteriously in those organs into which it has first contracted itself, and there, from the opposite direction, acts upon our blood, presenting itself again in the same way as it does in the upper organs.

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If we were to draw a sketch of this, we could do it by imagining the world on the one hand, acting from all directions upon our senses, and the blood exposing itself like a tablet to the impressions of this world; that would be our upper organism. And now let us imagine that we could contract this whole outer world into single organs, thus forming an extract of this world; that we could then transfer this extract into our interior in such a way that what is working from all directions now acts upon the blood from the other side of the tablet. We should then have formed in a most extraordinary way a pictorial scheme of the exterior and the interior of the human organism. And we might already to a certain extent be able to say that the brain actually corresponds to our inner organism, in so far as this latter occupies the breast and the abdominal cavity. The world has, as it were been placed in our inner man.

Even in this organisation, which we distinguish as a subordinate one, and which serves primarily for the carrying forward of the process of nutrition, we have something so mysterious as the fusion of the whole outer cosmos into a number of inner organs, inner instruments. And, if we now observe these organs more closely for a moment, the liver, the gall-bladder, and the spleen, we shall be able to say that the spleen is the first of these to offer itself to the blood-stream. This spleen is a strange organisation, embedded in plethoric tissue, and in this tissue there is a great number of tiny little granules—something which, in contrast to the rest of the mass of tissue, has the appearance of little white granules.

When we observe the relation between the blood and the spleen, the latter appears to us like a sieve through which the blood passes in order that it may offer itself to an organ of the kind which, in a certain sense, is a shrivelled-up portion of the macrocosm. Again, the spleen stands in connection with the liver. At the next stage we see how the blood offers itself to the liver, and how the liver in its turn, as a third step, secretes the gall, which then goes over into the nutritive substances, and from there comes with the transformed nutritive substances into the blood.

This offering of itself on the part of the blood to these three organs we cannot think of in any but the following way: The organ which first meets the blood is the spleen, the second is the liver, and the third is the gallbladder, which has really a very complicated relation to the entire blood system, in that the gall is given over to the food and takes part in its digestion. On such grounds, the occultists of all times have given certain names to these organs. Now, I beg of you most earnestly not to think of anything special for the time being in connection with these names, but rather to think of them only as names that were originally given to these organs and to disregard the fact that the names signify also something else in connection with these organs. Later on we shall see why just these names were chosen. Because the spleen is the first of the three organs to present itself to the blood—we can say this by way of a purely external comparison—it appeared to the occultists of old to be best designated by the name belonging to that star which, to these ancient occultists and their observations, was the first within our solar system to show itself in cosmic space. For this reason they called the spleen “saturnine,” or an inner Saturn in man; and, similarly, the liver they called an inner Jupiter; and the gallbladder, an inner Mars. Let us begin by thinking of nothing in connection with these names, except that we have chosen them because we have arrived at the concept, at first hypothetical, that the external worlds, which otherwise are accessible rather to our senses, have been contracted into these organs and that in these organs inner worlds, so to speak, come to meet us, just as outer worlds meet us in the planets. We may now be able to say that, just as the external worlds show themselves to our senses in that they press in upon us from outside, so do these inner worlds show themselves as acting upon the blood-system in that they influence that for which the blood-system is there.

We shall find, to be sure, a significant difference between what we spoke of yesterday as the peculiarities of the human brain and that which here appears to us as a sort of inner cosmic system. This difference lies simply in the fact that man, to begin with, knows nothing about what takes place within his lower organism: that is, he knows nothing about the impressions which the inner worlds, or planets, as we may call them, make upon him, whereas the very characteristic of the other experience is that the outer worlds do make their impressions upon his consciousness. In a certain respect, therefore, we may call these inner worlds the realm of the unconscious, in contrast to the conscious realm we have learned to know in the life of the brain.

Now, precisely that which lies in this “conscious” and this “unconscious” is more clearly explained when we employ something else to assist us. We all know that external science states that the organ of consciousness is the nerve-system, together with all that pertains to it. Now we must bear in mind, as a basis for our occult study, a certain relationship which the nerve-system has to the blood-system, that is, to what we have to-day considered in a sketchy way. We then see that our nerve-system everywhere enters in certain ways into relation with our blood-system, that the blood everywhere presses upon our nerve-system. Moreover, we must here first take notice of something which external science in this connection holds to be already established. This science looks upon it as a settled matter that in the nerve-system is to be found the sole and entire regulator of all activity of consciousness, of everything, that is, which we characterise as “soul-life.” We cannot here refrain from recalling, although at first only by way of allusion for the purpose of authenticating this later on, that for the occultist the nerve-system exists only as a sort of basis for consciousness. For precisely in the same way that the nerve-system is a part of our organism and comes into contact with the blood-system, or at least bears a certain relation to it, so do the ego and that which we call the astral body make themselves a part of the whole human being. And even an external observation, which has frequently been employed in my lectures, can show us that the nerve-system is in a certain way a manifestation of the astral body. Through such an observation we can see that, in the case of ordinary inanimate beings in nature, we can ascribe only a physical body to that part of their being which they present to us. When, however, we ascend from inanimate, inorganic natural bodies to animate natural bodies, to organisms, we are obliged to suppose that these organisms are permeated by the so-called ether-body, or life-body, which contains in itself the causes of the phenomena of life. We shall see later on that anthroposophy, or occultism, does not speak of the ether-body, or life-body, in the same way that people in the past spoke of “life-force.” Rather does anthroposophy, when it speaks of the ether-body, speak of some thing which the spiritual eye actually sees, that is, of something real underlying the external physical body. When we consider the plants we are obliged to attribute to them an ether-body. And, if we ascend from the plants to sentient beings, to the animals, we find that it is this element of sentiency, of inner life, or, better still, of inner experience, which primarily differentiates the animal externally from the plant. If mere life-activity, which cannot yet sense itself inwardly, cannot yet attain to the kindling of feeling, is to be able to kindle feeling, to sense life inwardly, the astral body must become a part of the animal's organism. And in the nerve-system, which the plants do not yet have, we must recognise the external instrument of the astral body, which in turn is the spiritual prototype of the nerve-system. As the archetype is related to its manifestation, to its image, so is the astral body related to the nerve-system.

Now when we come to man—and I said yesterday that in occultism our task is not as simple as it is for the external scientific method in which everything can, so to speak, be jumbled together—we must always, when we study the human organs, be aware of the fact that these organs, or systems of organs, are capable of being put to certain uses for which the corresponding systems of organs in the animal organism, even when these appear similar, cannot be used. At this point we shall merely affirm in advance what will appear later as having a still more profound basis, that, in the case of man, we must designate the blood as an external instrument for the ego, for all that we denote as our innermost soul-centre, the ego; so that in the nerve-system we have an external instrument of the astral body, and in our blood an external instrument of the ego. Just as the nerve-system in our organism enters into certain relations with the blood, so do those inner regions of the soul which we experience in ourselves as concepts, feelings or sensations, etc., enter into a certain relation with our ego.

The nerve-system is differentiated in the human organism in manifold ways the inner nerve-fibres for example, at the points where these develop into nerves of hearing, of seeing, etc., show us how diverse are its differentiations. Thus the nerve-system is something that reaches out everywhere through the organism in such a way as to comprise the most manifold inner diversities. When we observe the blood as it streams through the organism it shows us, even taking into account the transformation from red into blue blood, that it is, nevertheless, a unity in the whole organism. Having this character of unity, it comes into contact with the differentiated nerve-system, just as does the ego with the differentiated soul-life, for it also is made up of conceptions, sensations, will-impulses, feelings and the like. The further you pursue this comparison—and it is given meanwhile only as a comparison—the more clearly you will be shown that a far-reaching similarity exists in the relations of the two archetypes, the ego and the astral body, to their respective images, the blood-system and the nerve-system. Now, of course, one may say at this point that blood is surely everywhere blood. At the same time, it undergoes a change in flowing through the organism; and consequently we can draw a parallel between these changes that take place in the blood and what goes on in the ego. But our ego is a unity. As far back as we can remember in our life between birth and death we can say: “This ego was always present, in our fifth year just as in our sixth year, yesterday just as to-day. It is the same ego.” And yet, if we now look into what this ego contains, we shall discover this fact: This ego that lives in me is filled with a sum-total of conceptions, sensations, feelings, etc., which are to be attributed to the astral body and which comes into contact with the ego. A year ago this ego was filled with a different content, yesterday it contained still another, and to-day its content is again different. Thus the ego, we see, comes into contact with the entire soul-content, streams through this entire soul-content. And, just as the blood streams through the whole organism and comes everywhere into contact with the differentiated nerve-system, so does the ego come together with the differentiated life of the soul, in conceptions, feelings, will-impulses and the like. Already, therefore, this merely comparative method of study shows us that there is a certain justification in looking upon the blood system as an image of the ego, and the nerve system as an image of the astral body, as higher, super-sensible members of the nature of man.

It is necessary for us to remember that the blood streams throughout the organism in the manner already indicated; that on the one side it presents itself to the outer world like a tablet facing the impressions of the outer world; on the other side, it faces what we have called the inner world. And so indeed it is with our ego also. We first direct this ego of ours toward the outside world and receive impressions from it. There results from this a great variety of content within the ego; it is filled with these impressions coming from outside. There are also such moments when the ego retires within itself and is given up to its pain and suffering, pleasure and happiness, inner feelings and so forth, when it permits to arise in the memory what it is not receiving at this moment directly through contact with the external world, but what it carries within itself. Thus, in this connection also, we find a parallel between the blood and the ego; for the blood, like a tablet, presents itself at one time to the outside world and at another time to the inner world; and we could accordingly represent this ego by a simple sketch [see earlier drawing] exactly as we have represented the blood. We can bring the external impressions which the ego receives, when we think of them as concepts, as soul-pictures in general, into the same sort of relation to the ego as that which we have brought about between our blood and the real external occurrences coming to us through the senses. That is, exactly as we have done in the case of the physical bodily life and the blood, so could we bring what is related to the soul-life into connection with the ego.

Let us now observe from this standpoint the cooperation, the mutual interaction, between the blood and the nerves. If we consider the eye, we see that outer impressions act upon this organ. The impressions of colour and light act upon the optic nerve. So long as they affect the optic nerve, having for themselves an active instrument in the nerve-system, we are able to affirm that they have an effect upon the astral body. We may state that, at the moment when a connection takes place between the nerves and the blood, the parallel process which takes place in the soul is, that the manifold conceptions within the life of the soul come into connection with the ego. When, therefore, we consider this relationship between the nerves and the blood, we may represent by another sketch how that which streams in from outside through the nerves when we see an object, forms a certain connection with those courses of the blood which come into the neighbourhood of the optic nerve.

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This connection is something of extraordinary importance for us, if we wish to observe the human organism in such a way that our observation shall provide a basis for arriving at the occult foundations of human nature. In ordinary life the process that takes place is such that each influence transmitted by means of the nerves inscribes itself in the blood, as on a tablet, and in doing so records itself in the instrument of the ego. Let us suppose for a moment, however, that we should artificially interrupt the connection between the nerve and the circulation of the blood, that is, that we should artificially put a man in such a condition that the activity of the nerve should be severed from the circulation of the blood, so that they could no longer act upon each other. We can indicate this by a diagram in which the two parts are shown more widely separated, so that a reciprocal action between the nerves and the blood can no longer take place. In this case the condition may be such that no impression can be made upon the nerve. Something of this sort can be brought about if, for example, the nerve is cut. If, indeed, it should come to pass by some means that no impression is made upon the nerve, then it is also not strange if the man himself is unable to experience anything especial through this nerve. But let us suppose that in spite of the interrupting of the connection between the nerve and the blood a certain impression is made upon the nerve. This can be brought to pass through an external experiment by stimulating the nerve by means of an electric current. Such external influence on the nerve does not, however, concern us here. But there is still another way of affecting the nerve under conditions in which it cannot act upon the course of the blood normally connected with it.

It is possible to bring about such a condition of the human organism; and this is done in a particular way, by means of certain concepts, emotions and feelings which the human being has experienced and made a part of himself, and which, if this inner experiment is to be truly successful, ought, properly speaking, to be really lofty, moral or intellectual concepts. When a man practises a rigorous inner concentration of the soul on such imaginative concepts, forming these into symbols let us say, it then happens, if he does this in a state of waking consciousness, that he takes complete control of the nerve and, as a result of this inner concentration, draws it back to a certain extent from the course of the blood. For when man simply gives himself up to normal, external impressions, the natural connection between the nerve and the circulation is present; but if, in strict concentration upon his ego, he holds fast to what he obtains in a normal way, apart from all external impressions and apart from what the outside world brings about in the ego, he then has something in his soul which can have originated only in the consciousness and is the content of consciousness, and which makes a special demand upon the nerve and separates its activity then and there from its connection with the activity of the blood. The consequence of this is that, by means of such inner concentration, which actually breaks the connection between the nerve and the blood, that is, when it is so strong that the nerve is in a certain sense freed from its connection with the blood-system, the nerve is at the same time freed from that for which the blood is the external instrument, namely, from the ordinary experiences of the ego. And it is, indeed, a fact—this finds its complete experimental support through the inner experiences of that spiritual training designed to lead upward into the higher worlds—that as a result of such concentration the entire nerve-system is removed from the blood-system and from its ordinary tasks in connection with the ego. It then happens, as the particular consequence of this, that whereas the nerve-system had previously written its action upon the tablet of the blood, it now permits what it contains within itself as working power to return into itself, and does not permit it to reach the blood. It is, therefore, possible purely through processes of inner concentration, to separate the blood-system from the nerve-system, and thereby to cause that which, pictorially expressed, would otherwise have flowed into the ego, to course back again into the nerve-system.

Now, the peculiar thing is that once the human being actually brings this about through such inward exertion of the soul, he has then an entirely different sort of inner experience. He stands before a completely changed horizon of consciousness which may be described somewhat as follows: When the nerve and the blood have an appropriate connection with each other, as is the case in normal life, man brings into relation with the ego the impressions which come from within his inner being and those which come from the outer world. The ego then conserves those forces which reach out along the entire horizon of consciousness, and everything is related to the ego. But when, through inner concentration, he separates his nerve-system, lifts it, that is to say, through inner soul-forces out of his blood-system, he does not then live in his ordinary ego. He cannot then say “I” with respect to that which he calls his “Self,” in the same sense in which he had previously said “I” in his ordinary normal consciousness. It then seems to the man as if he had quite consciously lifted a portion of his real being out of himself, as if something which he does not ordinarily see, which is super-sensible and works in upon his nerves, does not now impress itself upon his blood-tablet or make any impression upon his ordinary ego. He feels himself lifted away from the entire blood-system, raised up, as it were, out of his organism; and he meets something different as a substitute for what he has experienced in the blood-system. Whereas the nerve-activity was previously imaged in the blood-system, it is now reflected back into itself. He is now living in something different; he feels himself in another ego, another Self, which before this could at best be merely divined. He feels a super-sensible world uplifted within him.

If once more we draw a sketch, showing the relation between the blood and the nerve, or the entire nerve-system, as this receives into itself the impressions from the outside world, this may be done in the following way.

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The normal impressions would then image themselves in the blood-system, and thus be within it. If, however, we have removed the nerve-system, nothing goes as far as the tablet of the blood, nothing goes into the blood-system; everything flows back again into the nerve-system; and thus a world has opened to us of which we had previously no intimation. It has opened as far as the terminations of our nerve-system, and we feel the recoil. To be sure, only he can feel this recoil who goes through the necessary soul-exercises. In the case of the normal consciousness, man feels that he takes into himself whatever sort of world happens to face him, so that everything is inscribed upon the blood-system as on a tablet, and he then lives in his ego with these impressions. In the other case, however, he goes with these impressions only to that point where the terminations of the nerves offer him an inner resistance. Here, at the nerve-terminals, he rebounds as it were, and experiences himself in the outside world. Thus, when we have a colour impression, which we receive through the eye, it passes into the optic nerve, images itself upon the tablet of the blood, and we feel what we express as a fact when we say: “I see red.” But now, after we have made ourselves capable of doing so, let us suppose that we do not go with our impressions as far as the blood, but only to the terminations of the nerves; that at this point we rebound into our inner life, rebound before we reach the blood. In that case we live, as a matter of fact, only as far as our eye, our optic nerve. We recoil before the bodily expression of our blood, we live outside our Self and are actually within the light-rays which penetrate our eyes. Thus we have actually come out of ourselves; indeed, we have accomplished this by reason of the fact that we do not penetrate as deep down into our Self as we ordinarily do, but rather go only as far as the nerve-terminals. The effect on a soul-life such as this, if we have brought it to the stage where we turn back at the terminations of the nerves into our inner being, so that we do not go as far as our blood, is that we have in this case disconnected the blood; whereas otherwise the normal consciousness of the inner man ordinarily goes down into the blood, and the soul-life identifies itself with the physical man, feels itself at one with him.

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As a result of these external observations we have to-day succeeded in disconnecting the entire blood-system, which we have thought of as a kind of tablet that presents itself on the one side to the external, on the other side to the internal impressions, from what we may call the higher man, the man we may become if we find release from our Selves and become free. Now, we shall best be able to study the whole inner nature of this blood-system if we do not make use of general phrases, but observe what exists as reality in man, namely, the super-sensible, invisible man to whom we can lift ourselves when we go only as far as the terminations of our nerves, and if we also observe man as he is when he goes all the way into the blood. For we can then advance further, to the thought that man can really live in the outside world, that he can pour himself out over the whole external world, can go forth into this world and view from the reverse standpoint, as it were, the inner man, or what is usually meant by that term. In short, we shall learn to know the functions of the blood, and of those organs which are inserted into the circulatory course of the blood, when we can answer the following questions: What does a more accurate knowledge show us, when that which comes from a higher world, to which man can raise himself, is portrayed upon the tablet of the blood? It shows us that everything connected with the life of the blood is the very central point of the human being, when, without coining phrases, but rather looking only at sensible as well as super-sensible realities, we consider carefully the relationship of this wonderful system to a higher world. For this is in truth to be our task: to learn to see clearly the whole visible physical Man as an image of that other “Man” who is rooted and lives in the spiritual world. We shall thereby come to find that the human organism is one of the truest images of that Spirit which lives in the universe, and we shall attain to a very special understanding of that Spirit.

In each of the Gospels light is thrown on the great Mystery of Golgotha from one particular aspect. I have drawn your attention to the fact that the secret of Golgotha, the secret of Christ Jesus, is presented by the Gospel of St. Mark from the aspect of the great Cosmological connections, while that of St. Matthew shows how this secret was developed out of one special people, the ancient Hebrews. We have seen how that people had to develop little by little, from generation to generation, from the time of Abraham, so as to bring forth later, as their flower, the Human Being in whom could be contained the individuality of Zarathustra or Zoroaster. We have seen how all the qualities peculiar to the Hebrew people—qualities which had to become more and more intensified in the course of their descent from one generation to the next—were based entirely on the principle of physical inheritance. We were thus able to describe how the character of the mission of the old Hebrew people differed from that of others in that it had to inherit certain qualities, which could only be attained by physical inheritance, and which had gained in intensity from the oldest generations of the time of Abraham down to Jesus. The Gospel of St. Matthew contains many other secrets, as indeed do all the Gospels. Although in the course of this Winter we shall open up a few aspects and perspective glimpses into the Gospels, these can at the most only stimulate the understanding. For in order to understand the Gospels completely a never-ending spiritual work is necessary. Light shall be thrown to-day from one particular side on the Gospel of St. Matthew and it will be shown how the lessons to be drawn there from can be usefully applied by those who now form part of the anthroposophical spiritual stream.

If we look back at much of what we have learnt as the years went by, we shall see that the development of humanity, as described by Spiritual Science, passes through various crises; it reaches an important point, then continues for a while along a more level road, then comes another important point, and so on. We have often emphasised that one such important point in the development of humanity on earth was reached when the Christ-Impulse was given at the beginning of our era, according to the modern reckoning of time. When we look back beyond the Atlantean into the Lemurian age, we come to that point in time when the first rudiment of the human ego was implanted in the human being. To understand such an event, the words must be taken very accurately. For instance, we must make a clear distinction between the statement that in the Lemurian epoch ‘the first rudiments of the ego were implanted in the human being,’ and that other, that at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha began the period, the age, in which humanity became conscious of this ego. ‘There is a great difference between having the ego only in rudiment, as something working in man, and the knowledge that one possesses it. A sharp distinction must be made between these things, for otherwise it is impossible to understand the true laws of evolution.

We know that the implanting of the ego in man is part of the collective development of the earth. The earth passed through the Saturn, Sun and Moon ages, and then only did it become the structure it is to-day. On Saturn the germ of the physical body was laid, on the Sun that of the etheric body, on the Moon that of the astral body, and the germ of the ego was added on the earth; this germ was placed in the development of the earth in the Lemurian epoch. Now something else also took place in the Lemurian epoch, something that we have always called the ‘luciferic influence’. During that epoch man was endowed with the germ of the ego, which in the course of the subsequent earth-periods was destined to attain greater and greater perfection, and at the same time his astral body was ‘inoculated’ with the luciferic influence. The whole nature of man was altered by this influence, even to the forces and elements in his etheric and physical bodies. Thus in the Lemurian epoch man became an entirely different being from what he would have been if there had been no luciferic influence. We see him altering in two respects: we see him becoming an ego-being—and we see him becoming a being in whom the luciferic principle is hidden. Even if the luciferic principle had not set in, the ego-influence would still have entered man.

Now what took place in the human being as a result of the luciferic influence having made itself felt in the Lemurian epoch?

When such a circumstance is described from one aspect or another, I beg you not to consider that as all that can be said on the subject; for this may well be only one point of view, selected for the moment. In the course of years a great deal has been said as to what the luciferic influence brought about in the evolution of man; it is all part of the same, but we cannot repeat it all now. To-day we will select one point of view only, that describes one aspect; that is, that as a result of the luciferic influence man reached a certain point in evolution earlier than was intended, earlier than the wise guidance of the world had predestined for him. The luciferic influence caused him to descend more deeply into the three principles which came over from the former embodiments of the earth, (the astral body, etheric body and physical body) and he has become more entangled in them than would have been the case if no such influence had prevailed. Man, with his ego, would have remained nearer to the spiritual worlds, he would have continued for a longer time to feel himself, through his ego, a member of the spiritual world, if the luciferic influence had not caused that ego to descend more deeply into the three principles. We may say that as a result of the luciferic influence, man descended more deeply on to the earth in the Lemurian epoch. We can indicate the time when he would have descended thus far to the earth or into physical matter had there been no luciferic influence; it would have been in the middle of the Atlantean epoch. If no luciferic influence had come about man would have been obliged to wait till then for his descent to earth; but that influence caused him to descend earlier. It enabled him to become a free being, able to act in accordance with his own impulses. He would otherwise have remained entirely dependent upon the spiritual world until the middle of the Atlantis epoch; neither would he have been able before then to distinguish between good and evil, nor act from his own impulses. He could only have acted from psychic influences, that is to say, from forces implanted in his soul by Divine Spiritual Beings. The luciferic beings made it possible for him to begin at an earlier stage to decide between good and evil; not simply to allow himself to be guided by the laws of the divine-spiritual world Order, but to decide for himself, creating a kind of law and order for himself. This fact is expressed in a very profound way in the description of ‘the Fall’ which represents in a wonderful imaginative picture, what I have just stated. The Old Testament describes this by saying that Divine Spiritual Beings implanted into man a living soul. ‘Now if this living soul had merely remained as it was, man would have had to wait until later on, until the Divine Spiritual Beings had brought the living soul, or, in other words, the yet undeveloped ego, to the degree of maturity able to make distinctions. But now there came the luciferic influences, represented in the Bible as ‘the Serpent.’ Through these, man himself became able to distinguish between good and evil, instead of merely instinctively following the inpourings of Jehovah or the Elohim. From a being who till that time had been guided and led by Divine Spiritual Beings, man thus became a being able to decide for himself. The Bible clearly shows that self-decision was brought to man by the Serpent, or in other words, by the luciferic beings. We then hear the words ring forth, words spoken from the side of the gods: ‘Man has become as one of us!’ Or, if we wish to put this into plainer words:—‘Man has acquired something through the luciferic influence which has till now been reserved only for the gods. It was given to the gods to decide between good and evil, the beings dependent upon them had no such decisions to make.’

As a result of the luciferic influence man now became a being capable of making distinctions; that is, he became a being who developed divine qualities within him prematurely. In this way and through this influence, something entered human nature which would otherwise have been withheld from his evolution till the middle of the Atlantean epoch. As you can well imagine, man would have been quite different if this descent into matter had not taken place till then; his soul would have been more mature for the descent. He would have descended into matter as a better, a riper, man. He would have brought quite different qualities into his physical, etheric and astral bodies and would have possessed a very different power of distinguishing between good and evil. Because man was already a being able to distinguish between good and evil from the Lemurian epoch to the middle of the Atlantean epoch, he made himself worse than he would otherwise have been; he entered a state of lesser perfection. He would otherwise have spent all the intervening time in a much more spiritual way; but as it was, he passed through it more materially. The effect of this was that if he had received in the middle of the Atlantean epoch what the gods had intended him to have, he would have fallen utterly and completely.

What was it that would have been given to man at the middle of the Atlantean epoch, if he had continued to be guided and directed till that time, instinctively, as it were, by Divine Spiritual Beings?

He would have then received that which, the luciferic influence having in the meanwhile intervened, was afterwards given to him through the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ-Impulse would have been given to man at the middle of the Atlantean epoch. Now, however, on account of the luciferic influence, man had to wait as long a time for the Christ-Impulse as had elapsed between the intervention of the luciferic influence and the middle of the Atlantean epoch. There was the same span of time between the entrance of Lucifer and the middle of the Atlantean epoch, as between that time and. the arrival of the Christ-Impulse. Thus, through man's having acquired a likeness to the gods before he was meant to do so, we have to describe a delay of the Christ-Impulse. For before that could come man had to go through the Earth-Karma due to him on account of the evil that had entered the earth through the luciferic impulse. He had to wait, not only till that influence had rendered him able to distinguish between good and evil, but until, in the course of the earth's development, all the consequences of the luciferic influence had come. He had to wait for these, for then only could the Christ-Impulse descend to the earth. In accordance with the wise guidance of the earth, man was not intended to escape for ever from what was to come to him through the luciferic influence, but it would not have come upon him till the middle of the Atlantean epoch. It must have come in any case; but it would certainly not have come in the same form. Not only did man acquire from Lucifer the power of free decision in everything connected with spiritual things, but also the capacity of enthusiasm for what is good and noble, wise and great. As human beings, we are not only able coldly to distinguish between good and evil, but also to feel a warm glow for the noble, good and wise. That is because something was carried into our astral body, which, if it had only reached man in the middle of the Atlantean epoch, would have been taken into the ego, that ego which is capable of judgment. All the feeling, the idealism and enthusiasm for what is good, for high ideals, we owe to the circumstance that something entered our astral body before we had acquired the likeness to God in our ego, before the acceptance of the Christ had taken place therein. The essential point is that this likeness to God, the possibility of finding the good within ourselves, had to come to man. If the luciferic influence had not come, this impulse would have come in the middle of the Atlantean period, but as things are it came in the age in which Christ Jesus Himself worked.

Thus through the Christ-Impulse the consciousness came to man that in his ego he had something of Divine substance and of Divine nature. The thought that man can take in the Divine in his Ego-being and that this Divine part can be active therein and distinguish between good and evil, underlies all the deeper sayings of the New Testament. We may therefore say that with the reception into the inner nature of man of the Christ-Impulse, it was made possible for man to say: ‘I must be my own guide for the knowledge of my existence and the distinction between good and evil.’

Now if we look back to the pre-Christian time, we must say that when the impulse enabling man to distinguish between good and evil was not yet present, such distinction, and the judgment of man as to the good, the beautiful and the true, was necessarily meagre; it did not actually proceed from his inner being. He could not, before the Christ-Impulse, have distinguished in his inner being between good and evil. In the pre-Christian time the decision as to the really Good, Beautiful and True could only be accomplished through certain beings—such as the Bodhisattvas—reaching up as time went on with a part of their being into the divine-spiritual worlds; the distinction between good and evil was therefore not made from out of man's inner being, but in the divine worlds. Through their companionship with divine spiritual beings these Guides acquired it and it flowed from them into the souls of men, as though by suggestion. Had it not been for those guides, men could only have made feeble distinctions between good and evil in those days. If these guides had depended on their own hearts alone, they could not have done this either; but because they descended into those depths of the soul which were not yet accessible to man and entered in their ego-being into the kingdoms of heaven, they received the impulse needed by man to help him to decide between good and evil at the time of his need, that the good might nevertheless be implanted in the earth by way of preparation. Thus, before the time of Christ, man was a being still insufficiently prepared to acquire the likeness to God. On this account, since the Lemurian epoch, everything done by man was done less well than would otherwise have been the case. This applies above all to what regards himself. His astral, etheric and physical bodies, which but for the luciferic influence would have remained more spiritual, were, through that influence, less well formed, made more material. That was the reason of all the evil which developed in the life of man as time went on. In the course of a very long time have these evils developed.

From the Lemurian epoch to the Mystery of Golgotha they developed in the physical, etheric and astral bodies. In the astral body a high degree of egotism was developed; in the etheric body the possibility of mistaken judgment and the possibility of lying. If man had remained under the influence of divine-spiritual beings, acting instinctively in accordance with their impulses, he would not to-day, when he desires knowledge of the world around him, be able to fall into error, nor could he be led into untruth. Thus did the tendency to lying and the danger of error find place in the development of man; and since the spiritual is always the origin of the physical, and because the luciferic influence and its consequences ate their way more and more deeply into the etheric body during incarnation after incarnation, the possibility of disease entered the physical body. Illness is the evil that entered the physical body through that development; but something of still greater significance has come. If man had not been subject to these influences, if he had not allowed them to work upon him, he would never have supposed that anything more than a change of life takes place when the physical body falls away from us; consciousness of death would not have come to him. If man had descended less deeply into matter and had kept hold of the threads uniting him with the divine-spiritual, he would have been aware that when the physical sheath is laid aside, a new form of existence begins; but he would never have looked upon that as a loss, as the end of an existence he had grown fond of. Everything in evolution would have taken on a different aspect.

Man descended more deeply into matter, he thus made himself more free and independent, but he also thereby made his own development more limited than it would have been.

Everything lacking in man will be made good by the Christ-Impulse; but one must not expect that to be done in a short time nor even in a comparatively short time. A very long time elapsed between the Lemurian epoch and the Mystery of Golgotha. Slowly and gradually, during incarnation after incarnation, came egotism, error and lying, disease and the realisation of death. Man is being led back into the spiritual world, so to speak, with the qualities he has acquired “from below.” The re-ascent will be a quicker progress than the descent; but it cannot be expected that in one or two incarnations man will be enabled, through what he can take in of the Christ-Impulse, to overcome selfishness and to heal his etheric body to such an extent that all danger of lying and error is at an end, still less can he be expected to be able to work healingly on his physical body. All this must go on slowly and gradually; but it is going on. Just as man has been led down into all those qualities by the luciferic impulse, so will he be led up out of them by the Christ-Impulse. Selfishness will be transmuted into selflessness, lying into truthfulness, the danger of error into absolute certainty and true judgment. Illness will become the foundation for more complete health; the illness we have overcome will be the germs of greater good-health; and when we have gradually learnt to understand death in such a way that the Death at Golgotha works as a prototype of death in our own soul, death will then have lost its sting. Man will then know why from time to time he must lay aside his physical covering, in order to rise higher and higher in the course of his embodiments. In particular, the Christ-Impulse brought with it the impulse to make good something connected with man's knowledge and observation, with his knowledge of the world.

We have said that man has become more entangled in matter, less perfect in his three bodies than he would have been if there had been no luciferic influence; this caused him to be possessed by an urge to sink more deeply into material existence, to soak himself more completely in mere matter. This refers more especially to his knowledge, but even that only came about slowly and gradually. Man did not, as soon as the luciferic influence made itself felt, immediately sink down so deeply as to close all the doors into the spiritual world behind him. He still remained, for a long time, in connection with the spiritual world from which he grew forth and with which he would have remained in connection with his whole being, if the luciferic influence had not come. He long remained a participator in it; for a long time he continued to feel that his finer, more spiritual instincts were guided by the threads from the divine-spiritual world. For a long time he still continued to feel that his impulse was not a merely human one, it was as though the Gods had been at work behind it. That was more particularly the case in more ancient times. Man was driven slowly into matter and he thus gradually lost the consciousness of the divine.

Those spiritual movements and world-conceptions of humanity which had knowledge of these things, have also hinted at this. They said: There was once upon a time an age in which man was driven some way into material existence by the luciferic influence—though not so far as to prevent the divine influence from still having a powerful effect upon him. In the early ages of man's development this was known as the ‘Golden Age.’ This is no fanciful conception: ‘Golden Age’ is simply the expression used by those men of olden times who still had an inkling that there had been something like a primeval age of humanity, such as has just been described. This Golden Age, known to Eastern philosophy as Krita-Yuga, lasted, comparatively speaking, much longer than the Ages we still have to describe. After the Golden Age came the so-called ‘Silver Age.’ Man was pushed further down into the physical world; but the process went on slowly and gradually. Even then the doors of the spiritual world were not yet completely closed. Man still had intense moments in which, in a dreamy sort of clairvoyance, he saw the Gods at work behind his instincts. Man could no longer be called a companion of the Gods in this Silver Age, but he could still perceive them standing behind him. Eastern philosophy calls this age, Treta-Yuga. Then came an Age which extends into our own Post-Atlantean period; its last stragglers extended into historical times when there still were people gifted with the old dream-like, twilight consciousness. The consciousness of a spiritual world from which man had come forth, still existed; though only as a kind of memory remaining over from former incarnations. It was just as when we now remember our own childhood, our youth, and our present age. In childhood we had direct experience of our childish happenings; in like manner man still experienced in Treta Yuga in a direct way, the impulse of a divine-spiritual world. In the Age following on that, known as the ‘Bronze Age,’ what man had was more like a memory. It might be compared with the way a grown man contemplates his childhood; for we say: ‘I experienced my childhood; it was not a dream!’ That was like the state of things in the Third Age. Men then knew: ‘In earlier ages we had experience of communion with the Gods; that is now nothing but a memory!’ I have explained at some length how in the Old-Indian period of civilisation the memory of the Atlantean epoch worked retrospectively, thus enabling the holy Rishis to reveal their great divine teachings. This Bronze Age is known in Eastern philosophy as Dvapara-Yuga. That is followed by an Age in which all memory of the divine-spiritual world is lost, when man, with his knowledge and perception, is entirely given up to the physical world. That age began about the year 3101 B.C. In Eastern philosophy it is known as Kali-Yuga, ‘the dark age’; because man had then lost all connection with the spiritual world and become completely one with the physical world. I wish expressly to note that I am now using these expressions for smaller divisions of time, but they can also be applied to larger spans. We are now speaking of the divisions of time corresponding to the smaller ages, and we make Kali-Yuga begin, as does Indian philosophy, with the year 3101 before our era. The Age was then being prepared in which men were taught only to see that which conceals the divine-spiritual world as by a veil, by a covering; when they only perceived the external physical. At the beginning of Kali-Yuga there were still many who could either see or recollect the divine-spiritual world, but for normal humanity the time set in when they could only see the physical world of nature.

That was the descent of man to Kali-Yuga. It was the time of deepest descent. Into that had to come the impulse for re-ascent. That is why this impulse, the Christ-Impulse, had to come during the Kali-Yuga, in the “dark” age.

This Christ-Impulse was prepared for by the religion of Jahve or Jehovah; for this religion taught man how little reliance could be placed on his former decisions. During the time which extended from the old Lemurian epoch to the Revelation on Mount Sinai, we have that age in which man was given the power to choose good or evil, while at the same time he became liable to err in judging between them, and became more and more likely to bring on earth that which is known as ‘Sin.’ Sin then ate its way into the life of the earth. Man became ‘like to the Gods,’ but in return for this he acquired qualities which were in nowise ripe for the likeness to God. What had to happen then? First of all man had to be shown what the Godhead expected from him if he was to become a self-conscious ego. This was shown to him by the announcement made on Mount Sinai in the ‘Ten Commandments.’ The people then heard proclaimed through Moses: ‘The good and evil thou hast already developed are not sufficient. I will show thee how these Commandments should sound if thou hadst not descended, and in return for thy defective qualities, received the power of judging between good and evil.’ The Decalogue, the law, given to man on Sinai, was given to man as he had then become; so that out of the spiritual worlds man heard sounding forth that which was right, in contrast to what he had insufficiently developed. The Ten Commandments stand forth as a law of iron, as a torch, showing man what he had not become. He had to submit himself to that law, with all he had become. Man could not at first have submitted to the Ten Commandments, because he had become lacking in decision, lacking in self-guidance. Therefore, they had to be given to him by one who was inspired,—by Moses—that is to say, they were given him from above by Divine administration. They were, however, given in such a way that they were intended for the ego. They told man how an ego must act, if it is to attain the goal of humanity.

In the lecture on The Ten Commandments of Moses (16th November, 1908) this is traced out in detail. Therein is first shown the right attitude of the ego to the spiritual worlds; this is contained in the first three Commandments. The next ones refer to man's conduct towards his fellow-men in act and deed, and the last Commandments refer to the control of his feelings and sensations. The Ten Commandments give instructions for the education of the ego. This was the preparation by means of which the ego was to learn in its most inward being how to give itself the impulse after having descended into Kali-Yuga, into the age of darkness. At first man was to be given the Law from above. The Law of one's own ego could however, only become what it was to be, when that ego takes into itself the great Prototype of Golgotha, saying: ‘If I take into my soul such thinking as was thought by the Being Who offered Himself in sacrifice on Golgotha,—if I take into myself such feelings as were felt by the Being Who offered Himself as sacrifice on Golgotha,—if I take into myself such willing as was willed by the Being Who offered Himself in sacrifice on Golgotha, then will my being come to a decision within itself to develop increasingly a likeness to God, it will then no longer have to follow the Outer Law, the Ten Commandments, but an inner impulse, its own Law.’

Thus Moses first put before mankind the Law, but Christ gave them the Prototype and the strength which the soul ought to take in, whereby to develop itself. Hence all the spiritual impulses were to be taken into the innermost of the soul, even into the ego itself; they were all to be deepened into inwardness through Christ Jesus. That could only take place if men thought as follows, and Christ Jesus radiated it forth as an impulse:—

Man has descended into the dark age, into Kali-Yuga. Before that dark age men saw into the spiritual world with a dim twilight consciousness. They were then able, not merely to make use of the instruments of the physical body, but when they observed the physical world through their eyes, ears and so on, they perceived the spiritual surrounding all things, flowers, plants, stones, etc. As regards this observation of the spiritual, men were rich in those days. In the older times the spirit was bestowed on them; whereas, in the dark age, as regards the spirit they were reduced to beggary; for the spirit was no longer bestowed upon them. They had become poor in spirit. Kali-Yuga came upon them more and more, that time when men had to say to themselves: In the old days things were different, the spirit was then bestowed on men; they were able to look up into a spiritual world, they were then rich in spirit; the kingdoms of heaven were then accessible to them. Now men are pressed down into the physical world. The gates of the spiritual world are closed to human senses, and no view of the kingdoms of heaven is open to the physical body. But Christ was able to say: ‘Lay hold of the ego, where it must now be apprehended! Then will the Kingdoms of Heaven draw near to you. They will arise within your own ego. Though the spiritual light may be concealed from your eyes behind the external light which is perceptible to the senses, though spiritual sound may be concealed from your ears behind physical sound; yet, when Christ Himself shall raise you, ye shall find the Kingdoms of Heaven within you! ‘Unhappy were those who had become poor in the dark age, who had become beggars as regard the spirit. They can now become blessed, the impulse having been given through which Christ is able, from the spiritual world, from the Kingdoms of Heaven, to penetrate into the very ego or ‘ I ’ of man. Therefore, with respect to man's poverty of spirit, the highest Christian proclamation is this: ‘From henceforward, blessed are they who are beggars in spirit, who no longer receive the spirit bestowed upon them according to the old conception. Henceforth, they can be blessed if they take in the Christ-Impulse; for, through the developing of their ego, the Kingdoms of Heaven will be within them.’

Let us pass on to the etheric body, which is the builder of the physical body. What has entered that? Illness only expresses itself in the physical body. The trouble itself is first in the etheric body; that then expresses itself in a subsequent incarnation as illness in the physical body. ‘Now, however, something has entered the world,’ so Christ Jesus had to say, ‘whereby an impulse may arise within gradually to clear away the auction from the etheric body. Blessed may those now be who have an affliction attached to their etheric bodies if they take up the Christ-Impulse; for they have something within them which lifts them above the suffering and teaches them to find inner comfort, the inner paraclete, the inner comforter!’

Now what had the astral body become through the luciferic influence? It had become less perfect than before. It had been given the possibility which we have described as a good quality: of being able to be aglow for what is great and good, to feel enthusiasm for the sublime treasures of the true, the beautiful and the good. On the other hand it has to purchase this at the price of feeling sympathy or antipathy for the treasures of the earth. But a man who takes up the Christ-Impulse learns to control the astral body, which stirs his physical body to opposition to the treasures of the earth, he learns to bring it under the power of the spirit; and in so doing he becomes happy or blessed. ‘Blessed will he be who makes his astral body indifferent to the things of earth; which will thereby fall to his share. For when he is all afire for the things of earth, feeling both emotion and sympathy or antipathy for them, he casts away that which they might become to him; but when the astral body is brought under the power of the spiritual and he grows indifferent to the things of earth, the Kingdom of Earth is added as a reward.’

Let us now ascend to that which works as sentient soul within the astral body. Herein we still possess in a dim sort of way, a ruling ego, an ego which has not yet wholly emerged and hence is still developing the most egotistical passions. As long as the ego is still really within the sentient soul, it develops the most selfish egoism. The wish that others should have the same as we have is lacking. Egoism dims the sense of justice, for the ego wants everything for itself. But if the ego transmutes itself in imitation of the Christ-Impulse, it will hunger and thirst after justice for all the beings around us. ‘Blessed will be those who hunger and thirst after the feeling of justice in their sentient-soul; for they shall be satisfied. ‘They will be able to bring about conditions all over the world corresponding to the proper new spirit of justice in the depths of the soul.

Let us further ascend to the intellectual or mind soul. This principle brings about to a still greater extent the consideration of one man for another, not merely as a feeling of justice such as is produced by the sentient soul, but as compassion, a true compassion for the sorrows of others and a sharing in their joy. One who takes in the Christ-Impulse grows to feel what others feel, not only what he feels himself; he immerses himself in the ego of others and in so doing feels bliss in his intellectual or mind soul. Blessed is he who develops fellow-feeling; for only by feeling himself within the soul of others, does he stimulate them to feel themselves in him. He will receive the sympathy of others when he himself radiates fellow-feeling for them. ‘Blessed are those who feel with others, for others shall feel with them.’

You will now see how, having gone a little further in our study of these connections, we are able to understand in a different way from the very depths of the nature and being of man, those words in St. Matthew's Gospel, generally known as the Sermon on the Mount. Each sentence of the Sermon on the Mount relates to one of the nine principles of man. In the next lectures we will go further into this. The Sermon on the Mount must become transparent to our spiritual eyes as that deed of Christ Jesus by means of which he turned what was contained in the Old Law of Moses into something quite inward, an inner impulse enabling man's ego to become active, as it must become in all the nine principles of man for if the ego takes up the Christ-Impulse, it affects all these.

Thus we see the profound truth of what I have already indicated here once before: that in Kali-Yuga Christ made the ego of man capable of discovering something in the physical world which can lead man up into the spiritual world, into the Kingdoms of Heaven. Christ has made the ego of man a participator in the spiritual world. On ancient Saturn the physical body was taken straight out of the spiritual world. It was still within that world, because the physical body was at that time much more spiritual and was not aware that it could separate from the spiritual worlds. The etheric body was added on the Sun and the astral body on the Moon, but only on the earth was it made possible—through the development of the ego—to set oneself free from the divine-spiritual. In consequence of this, as the ego must be led back again, God had to descend to the physical plane, and on that plane show man how to find the way back to the Kingdoms of Heaven.

A most important event was brought about through the Christ-Impulse. Now just ask yourselves this question: Did all those living at the time when Christ Jesus worked on earth know that such an important event was taking place? Just reflect that Tacitus—the great historian, mentions the Christians as an almost unknown sect. A hundred years after Christ he only mentions the Christians as a sect living in a side-street in Rome, whose teacher was a certain Jesus; they are simply mentioned as living there. For a long time after the Christ-Event many people in Rome believed Jesus was a contemporary of theirs, as though he had only just appeared. In short, important events can take place in the evolution of man, without contemporaries noticing that anything has happened. The most important things may come about and pass unobserved if people do not cultivate the understanding for them. They would then miss the experience, and as far as that was concerned they would be barren and dried up. ‘Change your hearts! The Kingdoms of Heaven have approached!’ That was the proclamation of John the Baptist and of Christ Jesus Himself. They hinted to those who had ears to hear that something most important was occurring. That nothing is known in the world of an important happening is no proof that it is not taking place. Those whose business it is to-day to point out the signs of the times, are aware of what is taking place to-day. They must point to an occurrence which, though not one of the most cogent, is yet important. True it is that just in our own time something of infinite significance is developing. Just as John pointed to Christ, and Christ Himself pointed to the approach of the Kingdoms of Heaven, to the ego; so must we to-day point to another important event.

Christ descended once to the earth in a body of flesh; He spent the first years of our era on earth, in the flesh. In accordance with the wise guidance of our world-evolution it is not ordained that men should again see Christ in the flesh, as a physically incarnated man; nor is it necessary that they should. For Christ will not return in the flesh. Why? Because what we call the dark age—the Kali-Yuga—was completed at the end of the nineteenth century, and because with the twentieth century began a new age, in which men must prepare to develop new capacities, those faculties which were lost in the dark age. Slowly and gradually these are being prepared. These faculties will develop so far that single individuals will be here who will possess them as natural tendencies. These faculties will be seen in a certain number of persons, particularly between the years of 1930 and 1940, and by means of these a number of people will enter into new relation with the Christ.

This indicates an important point in human development. Spiritual Science is here to open the understanding of men to these new faculties which will be developed in the world of men. Anthroposophy has not come into the world because a few people are in sympathy with it and would like to make it further known; it has come because it is wanted if people wish to understand what will take place in the first half of this century. For it is only by means of that which Spiritual Science can give mankind that it will become capable of understanding this. When people become capable of perceiving in the spirit that which will then occur, they will also be incapable of confusing that event with their mistaken representations. For as materialism spreads further, it will extend even to the spiritual conception of the world where it will have a particularly evil influence. In that realm it might tend to prevent men from understanding what should be spiritually comprehended. What should really be grasped in the spirit they will seek in the world of matter. Because we are to enter into a new relation to Christ in the course of the first half of our century, it must over and over again be emphasised during the next decades and until the event occurs, that false Messiahs, false Christs will arise who will knock at the doors of those who are only able to be materialists in the realms of Spiritual Science, and can only imagine a new relation to Christ if they see Him before them in the flesh. A number of false Messiahs will turn this to their own use, saying: ‘Christ has reappeared in the flesh!’

Anthroposophical wisdom has the duty of preparing the relation which can be attained during the first half of our century by purely human capacities. The responsibility of the Anthroposophical effort becomes ever greater and greater, for it has to prepare for a coming event which will only be understood if Anthroposophy makes its way into the souls of men and thus becomes fruitful for the further development of humanity. The alternative is that men will neglect to accept and make use of the instrument of Spiritual Science, through which this Event can be understood; in that case it will pass humanity by uncomprehended. For if men so entirely reject Spiritual Science that nothing of it should remain, they would not know that this event is there or would interpret it wrongly. The fruit of this event would then be lost to the future of humanity, and man would thus be thrust down into dreadful misery.

I have thus hinted at a new relation to the Christ which is germinating in the souls of men and which they will be able to evolve in a comparatively near future.

Yesterday we tried to characterise the path to Christ that can still be taken today, as it could especially in earlier times, by exoteric means. We will now touch briefly on the esoteric path—the path which leads to Christ in such a way that he can be found within the super-sensible worlds.

First of all we must note that this esoteric path to Christ Jesus was also the way of the Evangelists, of those who wrote the Gospels. For although the writer of the John Gospel had himself witnessed many of the events he describes—as you can see from the lecture-cycle on this Gospel—his chief object was not merely to relate what he remembered, for this applies only to those minute, exact details which surprise us in his Gospel. The great, majestic, crowning features of the work of redemption, of the Mystery of Golgotha, were drawn by the writer of this Gospel from his clairvoyant consciousness also. Consequently, although the Gospels are really revived Mystery rituals—this is shown in my Christianity as Mystical Fact—they are so because the writers of the Gospels, following their esoteric path, could procure for themselves out of the super-sensible world a picture of the events in Palestine which led to the Mystery of Golgotha. Ever since the Mystery of Golgotha up to our own times, a person who desired to come to a super-sensible experience of the Christ-Event had to go through the stages which you will find described in earlier lecture-cycles as the seven stages of our Christian Initiation: The Washing of the Feet; The Scourging; The Crowning with Thorns; The Mystic Death; The Burial; the Resurrection; the Ascension. Today we will make clear to ourselves what the pupil can attain by going through this Christian Initiation.

First of all, one essential point. As you can convince yourselves by reading the lectures on this subject, Christian Initiation is very different from the incorrect method of Initiation described in the first lecture of this course. In Christian Initiation certain feelings which belong to humanity in general are first invoked, and they lead to an Imagination of the Washing of the Feet. Thus the picture of this in the John Gospel is not the first thing to be imagined; the aspirant begins by trying to live for a long time with certain feelings and perceptions. I have often characterised this by saying that the person concerned should gaze upon the plant, which grows out of the mineral ground, takes into itself the materials of the mineral kingdom, and yet raises itself above this kingdom as a higher being than the mineral. If the plant could speak and feel, it would bow down to the mineral kingdom and say: ‘Certainly I was destined within the economy of the Cosmos to attain a higher stage than you, Mineral, but you give me the possibility of existence. In the order of beings you are certainly a lower being than myself, but I have to thank you for my existence, and I bow myself in humility before you.’ In the same way the animal would have to bow down to the plant, although the plant is a lower being than the animal, and say: ‘I thank you for my existence; I acknowledge it in humility, and I bow myself before you.’ And so would each being that climbs upwards have to bow down to the other standing below, and also he who has risen by way of a spiritual ladder to a higher level must bow down to the beings who alone have made this possible for him.

A person who permeates himself with the feeling of humility in regard to the lower, who thoroughly incorporates this feeling in his own being and lets it live there for months, perhaps even for years, will see that it spreads itself out in his organism, and so pervades him that he experiences a transformation of this feeling into an Imagination. And this Imagination corresponds exactly to the scene represented in the John Gospel as the Washing of the Feet, where Christ Jesus, who is the Head of the Twelve, stoops to those who stand here below Him in the order of the physical world, and in humility acknowledges that He thanks those who are below Him for the possibility of his higher ascent. He acknowledges before the Twelve: ‘As the animal thanks the plant, so do I thank you for what I was able to become in the physical world!’ A person who permeates himself with this feeling comes not only to an Imagination of the Washing of the Feet, but also to a quite pronounced feeling, as though water were washing over his feet. This can be felt for weeks: it shows how deeply imbued our human nature is with such universal human feelings, which nevertheless can raise man above himself.

Further, we have seen that we can go through the experience which leads to the Imagination of the Scourging when we place the following vividly before us: ‘Much suffering and pain will meet me in the world; yes, from all sides suffering and pain may come; no one escapes them. But I will so steel my will that suffering and pain, the scourgings that come from the world, may do their worst; I will stand upright and bear my fate resignedly, as it comes to pass. For had it not come to pass as it has done, as I have experienced it, I should not have been able to reach the height I have attained.’ When the person in question makes this a matter of his perception, and lives within it, he actually feels something like sharp pains and woundings, like strokes of a scourge against his own skin, and the Imagination arises as if he were outside himself, and was watching himself scourged according to the example of Christ Jesus. In line with this example one can experience the Crowning of Thorns, the Mystic Death, and so on. This has often been described.

What is attained by a man who thus seeks within himself to experience first the four stages, and then, when his karma is favourable, the others also, making in all seven stages of Christian Initiation? From the foregoing description you can gather that the whole scale of feelings we go through ought to strengthen us and give us power, and ought to make us into quite another nature, so that in the world we feel ourselves standing strong, powerful and free, and also capable of every act of devoted love. In Christian Initiation, this ought in a deep sense to become a second nature to us. For what has to happen?

Perhaps it has not yet occurred to all those of you who have read the earlier elementary cycles, and so have met with Christian Initiation in its seven stages, that owing to the intensity of the experiences which must be undergone, the effects go right into the physical body. For through the strength and power with which we go through these feelings, it really is at first as if water were washing over our feet, and then as if we were transfixed with wounds. We actually feel as if thorns were pressing into our head; we feel all the pain and suffering of the Crucifixion. We have to feel this before we can experience the Mystical Death, the Burial, and the Resurrection, as these also have been described. Even if we have not gone through these feelings with sufficient intensity, they will certainly have the effect that we become strong and full of love in the right sense of the word. But what we then incorporate can go only as far as the etheric body.

When, however, we begin to feel that our feet are as though washed with water, our body as if covered with wounds, then we have succeeded in driving these feelings so deeply into our nature that they have penetrated as far as the physical body. They do indeed penetrate the physical body, and then the stigmata, the marks of the bleeding wounds of Christ Jesus, may appear. We drive the feelings inwards into the physical body and know that they develop their strength in the physical body itself. We consciously feel ourselves more in the grip of our whole being than if the impressions were merely in the astral body and etheric body. The essential thing is that through a process of mystical feeling we work right into our physical body; and when we do this we are doing nothing less than making ourselves ready in our physical body to receive the Phantom that went forth from the grave on Golgotha. Hence we work into our physical body in order to make it so living that it feels a relationship with, an attractive force towards, the Phantom that rose out of the grave on Golgotha.

And here I would make an incidental remark. In Spiritual Science one must accustom oneself to becoming acquainted with cosmic secrets and cosmic truths gradually. Anyone who is not prepared to wait for the relevant truths will not make good progress. Of course people would like to have Spiritual Science all at once, preferably in one book or in one course of lectures. But that cannot be so, as you will see from an example. How long is it since in earlier lectures Christian Initiation was first described? You heard that such and such takes place, and that the individual, through the feelings which affect his soul, works right into his physical body. Everything said in those earlier lectures was intended to provide some elements for understanding the Mystery of Golgotha, and now for the first time it is possible to describe how an individual, through the requisite exercises of feeling in the course of Christian Initiation, makes himself ripe to receive the Phantom which rose from the grave of Golgotha. We had to wait until the union of the subjective with the objective could be found; and for this many preparatory lectures were necessary. Even today there are many things that can be indicated only as ‘half truths’. Anyone who has patience to continue with us—whether in this or in another incarnation, each according to his karma—will have seen how he could advance from the description of the mystical path in the Christian sense to the description of the objective fact, and so to the real meaning of this Christian Initiation, and he will see also that still higher truths will be brought to light from out of Spiritual Science in the course of the coming years or the next age. Thus we see the aim, the goal, of Christian Initiation.

Through what has been characterised as Rosicrucian Initiation, i.e. what an individual can have of it as Initiation today, the same thing in a certain sense is also attained, only by somewhat different means. A bond of attraction is formed between the individual, in so far as he is incorporated in a physical body, and that which arose as the real prototype of the physical body from the grave of Golgotha. Now we know from previous lectures that we are at the starting-point of a world-epoch in which we must expect an event that will not take place on the physical plane, as did the Event of Golgotha, but in the super-sensible world; an event which nevertheless stands in a close and true connection with the Event of Golgotha. The latter was designed to give back to man his real physical force-body, the Phantom which had degenerated from the beginning of the Earth-evolution, and for the giving back of it a series of events on the physical plane had to occur; but for that which is now to happen an event on the physical plane is not necessary. An incarnation of the Christ-Being in a human body of flesh could take place only once in the course of the Earth-evolution. When people announce a repetition of the incarnation of this Being, it simply means that the Christ-Being is not understood.

The event now to come, which can be observed only in a super-sensible world, has been characterised in the words: ‘Christ becomes for men the Lord of Karma.’ This means that in future the ordering of karmic transactions will come about through Christ. Ever more and more will men of the future feel: ‘I am going through the gate of death with my karmic account. On one side stand my good, clever, and beautiful deeds, my clever, beautiful, good, and intelligent thoughts; on the other side stands everything evil, wicked, stupid, foolish and loathsome. But He who in the future will have the office of Judge for the incarnations which will follow in human evolution, in order to bring order into this karmic account of men, is the Christ!’ And truly we have to picture this in the following way:

After we have gone through the gate of death, we shall be incarnated again in a later period. We shall then have to encounter events through which our karma can be balanced, for every man must reap what he has sown. Karma is a just law. But what the karmic law has to fulfill is not there only for individual men. Karma does not only balance the accounts of each Ego, but in every case the balancing must be arranged so as to be in the best possible accord with the concerns of the whole world. It must enable us to give all possible help to the advancement of mankind on earth. For this we need enlightenment, not merely the knowledge that the karmic fulfillment of our deed must come about. The fulfillment can take a form which will be either less or more useful for the general progress of humanity. Hence we must choose those thoughts, feelings or perceptions which will pay off our karma and at the same time serve the collective progress of mankind. In the future it will fall to Christ to bring the balance of our karma into line with the general Earth-karma and the general progress of humanity. And this happens principally in the time between death and a new birth. But it will also be prepared for in the epoch of time we are now approaching, before whose door we stand, because men will more and more acquire the capacity for a special experience. Very few are capable of it now, but from the middle of this century onwards, through the next 1,000 years, more and more people will have the following experience.

A person has done this or that. He will feel constrained to reflect on his action, and something like a dream-picture, arising in his mind, will make a quite remarkable impression on him. He will say to himself: ‘I cannot identify this as a recollection of something I have done, yet it feels like an experience of my own.’ Like a dream-picture it will stand there before him, closely concerned with him; but he cannot recall that he has experienced or done it in the past. If he is an anthroposophist he will understand the matter; otherwise he will have to wait until he comes to Anthroposophy and learns to understand it. The anthroposophist will know: ‘What you see as an apparent consequence of your actions is a picture that will be fulfilled in the future; the balancing of your actions is shown to you in advance.’ We are at the beginning of an epoch in which men, directly after they have committed a deed, will have a premonition, a feeling, perhaps even a significant picture, of how this deed will be karmically balanced.

Thus, in closest connection with human experience, enhanced capabilities for humanity will arise during the coming epoch. These capabilities will give a powerful stimulus to human morality, and this will signify something quite different from the voice of conscience, which has been a preparation for it. The individual will no longer believe: ‘What I have done will die with me.’ He will know quite exactly: ‘My action will not die when I die; it will have a consequence which will live on with me.’ And there is much else that the individual will know. The time during which the doors of the spiritual world have been closed to men is nearly over. Men must again climb up into the spiritual world. Their awakening capacities will enable them to participate in the spiritual world. Clairvoyance will always be different from this participation. Just as there was an ancient dreamlike clairvoyance, so will there be a future clairvoyance that is not dreamlike, the clairvoyance of people who know what they are doing and what it signifies.

Something else, too, will come about. The individual will know: ‘I am not alone. Everywhere there are spiritual beings who stand in a relationship to me.’ Men will learn to communicate with these beings and to live with them. And in the next three thousand years the truth that Christ is acting as Karmic Judge will become apparent to a sufficiently large number of people. Christ Himself will be experienced by men as an etheric Form. Like Paul before Damascus, they will know quite intimately that Christ lives, and is the Source for the reawakening of the physical prototype we received at the beginning of our evolution, and need if the Ego is to attain full development.

If through the Mystery of Golgotha something happened which gave the greatest impetus to human evolution, on the other hand it came at the time when the human mind, the human soul, were in their darkest condition. There were indeed ancient periods of evolution when men could know with certainty, because they had an ancestral memory, that the human individuality goes through repeated earth-lives. In the Gospels the teaching of repeated earth-lives is apparent only when we understand the Gospels and can discern traces of it there. That was the time when men were least fitted to comprehend this teaching. In the later times when men sought for Christ along the path indicated yesterday, everything had to take the form of a childlike preparation. Men could not then be made acquainted with experiences concerning reincarnation; they were not ripe for it and it would only have led them into error. Christianity had to develop for nearly 2,000 years without being able to indicate the teaching of reincarnation.

We have shown in these lectures how different it was in Buddhism, and how in Western consciousness the thought of repeated earth-lives arises as something self-evident. Certainly, many misunderstandings still prevail; but whether we take this idea from Lessing or from the psychologist Drossbach, we become aware that for the European consciousness the teaching of reincarnation concerns humanity at large, whereas in Buddhism the individual regards the question of how he goes from life to life, how he can free himself from the thirst for existence, as concerning only his personal inner life. The Oriental makes what is given to him as teaching about reincarnation into a path of individual redemption, whereas for Lessing the essential question was: ‘How can the whole of humanity move forward?’ According to Lessing, we must distinguish successive periods of time within the progressive development of humanity. Something new is given to humanity in each epoch. We see from history that new civilising actions keep on emerging in the course of human development. How could one speak of the evolution of the whole of humanity, says Lessing, if a soul lived in only one epoch? Whence could the fruits of civilisation come if human beings were not born again, if what they had learnt in one epoch were not carried over into the next, and its fruits into the following epoch and so on?

Thus for Lessing the idea of repeated earth-lives is not only a concern of the individual soul. It concerns the whole course of earthly civilisation. And in order that an advanced civilisation may arise, a soul which lives in the nineteenth century must carry over into its present existence whatever it had previously gained. For the sake of the earth and its civilisation, human beings must be born again. That is Lessing's thought. But in this thought of reincarnation as concerning all mankind the Christ-Impulse has been at work, woven into it. For the Christ-Impulse makes everything a man does or can do into an action of universal relevance, not something that touches him only as an individual. He only can be Christ's disciple who says: ‘I do it for the least of the brethren, because I know Thou feelest as though I had done it for Thee.’ As the whole of humanity is bound up with Christ, so does he who confesses Christ feel that he belongs to all mankind. This thought has worked into the thinking, feeling, and perception of the whole human race. And when the idea of reincarnation reappeared in the eighteenth century, it appeared as a Christian thought. And although Widenmann treated reincarnation clumsily, in an embryonic way, yet in his prize essay of 1851 his thought of reincarnation is permeated by the Christian impulse. He devotes a special chapter to showing the connection between Christianity and the teaching of reincarnation.

It was necessary in human evolution that souls should first accept the other Christian impulses, so that the thought of reincarnation might come to our consciousness in a ripe form. And indeed this thought of reincarnation will so connect itself with Christianity that it will be felt as something that leads a person on through successive incarnations. We shall understand how individuality, which is completely lost according to the Buddhist view—as we saw from the conversation of King Milinda with the sage Nagasena—first receives its true content by becoming permeated with Christ. We can now understand why the Buddhist view, about 500 years before the appearance of Christ, lost the human Ego, while retaining the teaching of successive incarnations. We have reached a time in which the human organism must understand, accept, permeate itself with the thought of reincarnation. For the progress of human evolution does not depend on what teachings are promulgated or find a new foothold. Other laws come into consideration, and they do not depend upon ourselves.

In the future human nature will develop certain powers which will have the effect that the individual, as soon as he has reached a certain age and has become properly conscious of himself, will have the feeling: ‘There is something in me which I must understand.’ This feeling will take hold of men more and more. In past times, even when human beings were fully aware of themselves, the consciousness which is now to come did not exist. It will express itself somewhat as follows: ‘I feel something within me which is connected with my personal ego. Strangely, it will not fit in with all that I have come to know since birth.’ One man will understand what is at work here; another will not. A man will understand it if he has carried the teachings of Spiritual Science into his life. Then he will know: ‘What I am now feeling is foreign to me, because it is the ego that has come over from earlier lives.’ This will oppress the heart, will cause fear and anxiety, in those who cannot explain it by repeated earth-lives. These feelings, which are not merely a theoretical uncertainty but a starving, a cramping, of life, will disappear through the perceptions given to us by Spiritual Science, which tell us: ‘You must think of your life as extended over earlier earth-lives.’ Then men will see what it means for them to experience the connection with the Christ-Impulse. For it is the Christ-Impulse which will give life to the whole retrospective view, the whole perspective of the past. A man will feel: ‘Here was this incarnation; there, that one.’ Then he will come to a time beyond which he will be unable to go without clearly understanding: ‘The Christ-Impulse was then on earth!’ Incarnations will be followed further back to a time when the Christ-Event was not yet there. This illumination of the retrospective view through the Christ-Impulse will be needed by men for their assurance in the future, as a necessity and a help which can flow into later incarnations.

This transformation of the human soul will derive from the Event which begins in the twentieth century and may be called the second Christ-Event, so that those persons in whom higher faculties have awakened will look upon the Lord of Karma. Some of you may say that when the Christ-Event of the twentieth century takes place, many of those now living will be with those who have fallen asleep, will be in the time between death and a new birth. But whether a person is living in a physical body, or in the time between death and a new birth, if he has prepared himself for the Christ-Event, he will experience it. The vision of the Christ-Event does not depend on whether we are incarnated in a physical body, but the preparation for the Christ-Event does so depend. Just as it was necessary that the first Christ-Event should take place on the physical plane in order that the salvation of man could be accomplished, so must the preparation be made here in the physical world, the preparation to look with full understanding, with full illumination, upon the Christ-Event of the twentieth century. For a person who looks upon it unprepared, when his powers have been awakened, will not be able to understand it. The Lord of Karma will then appear to him as a fearful judgment. In order to have an illuminated understanding of this Event, the individual must be prepared. The spreading abroad of the anthroposophical world-conception has taken place in our time for this purpose, so that men can be prepared on the physical plane to perceive the Christ-Event either on the physical plane or on the higher planes. Those who are not sufficiently prepared on the physical plane, and then go unprepared through the life between death and a new birth, will have to wait until, in the next incarnation, they can be further prepared through Anthroposophy for the understanding of Christ. During the next 3,000 years the opportunity will be given to men of going through this preparation, and the purpose of all anthroposophical development will be to render men more and more capable of participating in that which is to come.

Thus we understand how the past flows over into the future. When, for example, we recall how the Buddha permeated the astral body of the Nathan Jesus-child, we see how the activity of the Buddha forces continued after he himself no longer needed to incarnate again on earth. And when we remember how influences not directly connected with the Buddha worked on in the West, we see how the spiritual world penetrates the physical.

All this preparation is connected with the fact that men are always drawing nearer to an ideal which dawned in ancient Greece, an ideal formulated by Socrates: that when a man grasps the idea of the good, the moral, the ethical, he feels this idea as so magical an impulse that he becomes capable of living in accordance with it as an ideal. Today we are not so far advanced that this ideal can be realised; we are only so far on that in certain circumstances a man may very well form a concept of the good; he may be very clever and wise, and yet he need not be morally good. The direction of inner evolution, however, is such that the ideas we hold of the good will immediately become moral impulses. That is the intent of the evolution we shall experience in the approaching times. And the teachings given on earth will increasingly be such that in the course of future centuries and millennia human speech will come to have an effect unimaginably greater than it has now or ever had in the past. Today in the higher worlds anyone can see clearly the connection between intellect and morality; but as yet there is no human speech which works so magically that when a moral principle is stated, it sinks down into a man as a new idea, so that he perceives it as directly moral, and cannot do otherwise than act upon it as a moral impulse. After the next 3,000 years it will be possible to use a form of speech that could not now be entrusted to our heads. It will be such that everything intellectual will at the same time be moral, and this moral element will penetrate into the hearts of men. During the next 3,000 years the human race must become as though permeated with magical morality. Otherwise men would not be able to bear such an evolution; they would only misuse it.

For the special preparation of an evolution of this kind we must look at a much slandered individuality who lived about a century before our era. He is mentioned, though certainly in a distorted form, in Hebrew writings as Jeschu Ben Pandira—Jesus the son of Pandira. From lectures once given in Berne, some of you will know that this Jeschu Ben Pandira worked in preparation for the Christ-Event by training pupils, among whom was one who became the teacher of the writer of the Gospel of Matthew. Jeschu Ben Pandira, a noble Essene figure, preceded Jesus of Nazareth by a century. Jesus of Nazareth Himself only went among the Essenes, whereas Jeschu Ben Pandira was altogether an Essene.

Who was Jeschu Ben Pandira?

The successor of that Bodhisattva who in his final earthly incarnation had risen in his twenty-ninth year to be Gautama Buddha was incorporated in the physical body of Jeschu Ben Pandira. Every Bodhisattva who rises to the rank of a Buddha has a successor. This oriental tradition corresponds exactly with occult research. The Bodhisattva who worked at that time in preparation for the Christ-Event was re-embodied again and again. One of his re-embodiments is fixed for the twentieth century. It is impossible to speak here more exactly concerning the re-embodiment of this Bodhisattva; something, however, can be said about the way in which such a Bodhisattva may be recognised.

Through a law which will be demonstrated and explained in future lectures, it is a peculiarity of this Bodhisattva that when he reappears in a new embodiment—and he always reappears thus in the course of the centuries—he is quite dissimilar in his youth from what he comes to be in his later activities. At a quite definite point of time in the life of this Bodhisattva, something like a revolution, a great transformation, always takes place. To express it more in detail, in some place or other there is a more or less gifted child, in whom it is not noticeable that he has to do anything special in preparation for the future evolution of humanity. Occult research confirms that no one during his childhood and youth gives so little sign of what he really is as he who is to incorporate a Bodhisattva. For at a certain point of time in his life a great change comes over him. If an individuality from the remote past—Moses, for example—is incorporated, it is not the same with him as it was with the Christ individuality, to whom Jesus of Nazareth left the sheaths. In the case of a Bodhisattva there certainly will be something like an exchange, but the individuality remains in a certain sense, and the individuality who comes from the remote past—as patriarch or another—and is to bring new forces for the evolution of humanity, descends, and the human being who receives him experiences an immense transformation. This transformation occurs particularly between the thirtieth and thirty-third years. It can never be known beforehand that this body will be taken possession of by the Bodhisattva. The change never shows itself in youth. The distinctive feature is precisely that the later years are so unlike the youthful ones.

He who was incorporated in Jeschu Ben Pandira—the Bodhisattva who was repeatedly reincarnated, and who succeeded Gautama Buddha—has prepared himself for his Bodhisattva-incarnation so that he can reappear and rise to the Buddha dignity exactly 5,000 years after the illumination of Gautama Buddha under the bodhi-tree. Here again occult investigation fully agrees with oriental tradition. So, 3,000 years from now, this Bodhisattva, looking back on all that has happened in the new epoch, and looking back on the Christ-Impulse and all that is connected with it, will speak in such a way that his speech will make into a reality what has just been characterised: intellectuality will become directly moral. The future Bodhisattva, who will place all that he has at the service of the Christ-Impulse, will be a Bringer of the Good through the Word, through the Logos. He will speak in a language as yet possessed by no man, but a language which is so holy that he who speaks it can be called a Bringer of the Good. This also will not show itself in his youth, but approximately in his thirty-first year he will appear as a new man, and will yield himself up as the one who can be filled with a higher individuality. The experience of one single incarnation in the flesh holds good only for Christ Jesus. All Bodhisattvas go through various successive incarnations on the physical plane. This Bodhisattva, 3,000 years hence, will have advanced so far that he will be a Bringer of the Good, a Maitreya Buddha, who will place his Words of Goodness at the service of the Christ-Impulse, which a sufficient number of men will by then have made part of their lives. The perspective of the future development of man tells us this today.

What was necessary so that human beings could come gradually to this epoch of evolution? This we can make clear as follows.

If we wish to make a graphic picture of what happened in ancient Lemuria for the earth-evolution of man, we can say: That was the time when man descended from Divine Heights: it was ordained for him that he should develop further in a certain way, but through the Luciferic influence he was cast down more deeply into matter than he would have been without that influence. Thereby his path in evolution became different.

When man had gone downwards to the lowest stage, a powerful impetus in the upward direction was required. This impetus could come about only because in the higher worlds the Being whom we designate as the Christ-Being had formed a resolution which He would not have needed to take for His own evolution. For the Christ-Being would also have attained His evolution if He had taken a path far, far above the path that men were pursuing. He could have passed by, so to speak, far above the evolution of humanity. But if the upward impulse had not been given, human evolution would have been compelled to continue on its downward path. The Christ would have had an ascent, but humanity a downfall. Only because the Christ-Being had taken the resolution to unite Himself at the time of the Events of Palestine with a man, to embody Himself in a man and to make the upward path possible for humanity—only this could bring about the Redemption of humanity, as we may now call it: redemption from the impulse brought by the Luciferic forces and designated symbolically in the Bible as ‘original sin’, the Temptation by the Serpent and the original sin that was its consequence. Christ accomplished something that was not necessary for Himself.

What kind of Act was this?

It was an act of Divine Love. We must be quite clear that no human feeling is capable of realising the intensity of love that was needed for a God to make a decision—a decision He had no need to make—to work upon earth in a human body. Thereby, through an act of love, the most important event in human evolution was brought about. And when men grasp this act of love by a God, when they try to grasp it as a great ideal in contrast with which every human act of love can be but small, then, through this feeling of utter disproportion between human love and the Divine Love needed for the Mystery of Golgotha, they will draw near to the building up, to the giving birth within them, of those Imaginations which place before our spiritual gaze the momentous Event of Golgotha. Yes, verily, it is possible to attain to the Imagination of the mount on which the Cross was raised, that Cross on which hung a God in human body, a God who out of his own free will, out of Love, accomplished the act whereby the earth and humanity could reach their goal.

If the God who is designated by the name of the Father had not at one time permitted the Luciferic influences to come to man, man would not have developed the free Ego. With the Luciferic influence, the conditions for the free Ego were established. That had to be permitted by the Father-God. But just as the Ego, for the sake of freedom, had to become entangled in matter, so then, in order that the Ego might be freed from this entanglement, the entire love of the Son had to lead to the Act of Golgotha. Through this alone the freedom of man, the complete dignity of man, first became possible. For the fact that we can be free beings, we have to thank a Divine Act of Love. As men we may feel free beings, but we may never forget that for this freedom we have to thank this Act of Love. Then, in the midst of our feeling, the thought will arise: ‘You can attain to the value, the dignity, of a man; but one thing you may not forget, that for being what you are you have to thank Him who has brought back to you your human prototype through the Redemption on Golgotha.’ Men should not be able to lay hold of the thought of freedom without the thought of Redemption through Christ: only then is the thought of freedom justified. If we will to be free, we must bring the offering of thanks to Christ for our freedom. Then only can we really perceive it. And those who consider that their dignity as men is restricted when they thank Christ for it, should recognise that human opinions have no significance in face of cosmic facts, and that one day they will very willingly acknowledge that their freedom was won by Christ.

What we have been able to do in these lectures is not very much for gaining a closer understanding of the Christ-Impulse, and of the whole course of human evolution on earth, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. We can only bring together single building-stones. But if the effect upon our souls is something like a renewed stimulus to further effort, to further development along the path of knowledge, then these stones will have done their work for the great spiritual temple of humanity. And the best we can carry away from a spiritual-scientific study such as this is that once more we have learnt something towards a certain goal, that we have again somewhat enriched our knowledge. And our high goal is this: that we may know more exactly how much we still need to know. Then we shall be more and more permeated with the truth of the old Socratic saying: ‘The more a man learns, the more he knows how little he knows.’ But this conviction is good only when it is not a confession of passive, easy-going resignation, but testifies to a living will and effort towards an ever-extending knowledge. We ought not to acknowledge how little we know by saying, ‘Since we cannot know everything, we would rather learn nothing; so let us fold our hands in our lap.’ That would be a false result of spiritual-scientific study. The right result is to be more and more inspired to further striving; to regard every new thing learnt as a step towards the attainment of yet higher stages.

In these lectures we have perhaps had to say much about the Redemption-thought without often using the word. This Redemption-thought should be felt by a seeker after the spirit as it was felt by a great forerunner of our Spiritual Science: that it is related and entrusted to our souls only as a consequence of our striving after the highest goals of knowing, feeling and willing. And as this great forerunner connects the word ‘Redemption’ with the word ‘striving’ and has expressed it in the line, ‘Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen’—‘He who never gives up striving, he it is whom we can redeem’—so should the anthroposophist always feel. The true Redemption can be grasped and felt and willed in its own realm only by someone who never gives up.

May this lecture-cycle—which has been specially laid upon my heart, because so much has to be said in it concerning the Redemption-thought—be a stimulus to our further endeavours; may we find ourselves ever more and more united in our endeavours, during this incarnation and in later ones. May this be the fruit which comes from such studies. With this we will close, taking with us as a stimulus the thought that we must continually exert ourselves, in order that we may see what the Christ is, on the one hand, and on the other may draw nearer to Redemption, which is being set free not merely from the lower earth-path and earth-fate, but free also from everything that hinders man from attaining his dignity as man. But these things are written down truly only in the annals of the Spiritual. For the script that can be read in spiritual realms is the only true writing. Let us therefore strive to read the chapter concerning the dignity of man and the mission of man, in the script where these things stand written in the spiritual worlds.

after eurythmy-dramatic presentations of the “Dedication” and the “Prologue in Heaven”

In the last few weeks, we have spoken of the three great, highest ideals of humanity and have described these three ideals as they have been described for a long time: the ideal of wisdom, the ideal of beauty and the ideal of kindness.

Now, in more recent times, these three highest ideals of humanity have always been associated with the three human soul powers that we know and have considered in the most diverse ways. The ideal of wisdom has been associated with thinking or imagining, the ideal of beauty with feeling, and the ideal of kindness with willing.

Wisdom can only be acquired by man through clear perceptions, through clear thinking. That which is the object of art, the beautiful, cannot be grasped in this way. Feeling is the soul power that is primarily concerned with beauty, as psychologists have long since discovered. And that which is realized as good in the world is connected with the will. It seems that what the psychologists and soul experts have said about the relationship between the three great ideals of humanity and the various soul powers is quite plausible. In a sense, we can add a kind of supplement: that Kant wrote three critiques, one of which, the “Critique of Pure Reason”, is supposed to serve wisdom because it seeks to criticize the power of imagination. Kant called another critique the “Critique of Judgment,” and it is divided into two parts: the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” and the “Critique of Teleological Judgment.” Basically, when Kant speaks of judgment here, he means what is contained in the knowledge of feeling, through which one affirms that something is beautiful or ugly, useful or harmful. So we could say – as a subsection, precisely in this Kantian sense, and others have retained the terminology – that the power of judgment, whereby we are thinking not only of the imaginative judgment, but also of the fact that the judgment comes from the heart, is related to the perception of beauty. And a third of Kant's criticisms is the “critique of practical reason,” which refers to the will, to the pursuit of the good.

Now, we can find what I have just said in all psychologists, except for one psychologist who emerged in the second half of the 19th century and found that this whole division of the human soul does not work, does not correspond to the unbiased observation of the human soul. And the assignment of humanity's great ideals to the various powers of the soul – imagination, feeling and will – is just as wrong. Imagination is assigned wisdom as its highest ideal, feeling is assigned beauty, and will is assigned goodness. The psychologist I am referring to, Franz Brentano, thought that he would have to overturn the whole doctrine that I have now outlined and, one might say, fundamentally change the way the human soul is structured. He assigns imagination to beauty, let us assume. You see, while everyone else assigns feeling, or rather judgment, aesthetic judgment, or judgment in general, to beauty, Brentano assigns imagination to beauty. Brentano assigns judgment to wisdom, insofar as it is something that man acquires; he does not say imagination, but judgment. And curiously enough, he even blunts the will by not focusing on the development of the will, on the impulse of the will, but on what underlies the impulse of the will: sympathy and antipathy. — There is much to be said for looking at things this way. Language itself sometimes leads us to associate the volitional impulse with sympathy and antipathy. For example, when we say: to have repugnance for something! We do not want anything, but we have an antipathy for something. And so Brentano, as it were, blunts the will to sympathy and antipathy and assigns to the will this sympathy and antipathy to say yes or no to something. He does not go as far as the volitional impulse, but only to what underlies the will: saying yes or no to something, affirming or denying a thing.

Through imagining, Brentano argues, one never arrives at a true, that is, a wisdom-filled, view, but only at a view. He says that one imagines, for example, a winged horse. There is nothing wrong with imagining a winged horse. But it is not — we must bear in mind that Brentano is living in the age of materialism — it is not full of wisdom to imagine a winged horse, because a winged horse has no reality. Something must be added when we form an idea. But that is, the recognition or non-recognition of the idea by the power of judgment must be added, and only then does wisdom come out.

We may ask ourselves, what is it, so to speak, that underlies such a complete reversal of the powers of the soul? What has led Brentano to distribute the soul powers quite differently from the other psychologists, namely, into beauty, goodness, and wisdom? If we inquire into the reason why Brentano has arrived at this different grouping of the soul life, we can get no answer except by taking into account Brentano's own personal development. The other psychologists of modern times are people who have mostly emerged from the more recent development of world views. It is a peculiarity of modern philosophers, of all philosophers, that they know Greek philosophy relatively well - in their own way, of course - and then philosophy basically begins with Kant. And the modern philosophers do not know much of what lies between Greek philosophy and Kant. Kant himself knew little more about the period between Greek philosophy and himself than what he had read in Aume and Berkeley; he knew nothing of the development of medieval philosophy. Kant was completely ignorant of what is called the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. And those who, in their complacency, exaggerate everything in their own way, find just that much cause, because Kant knew nothing of scholasticism, to regard scholasticism as a bundle of pedantic follies and not to study it further. The fact that Kant knew nothing of scholasticism does not prevent him from also knowing nothing of Greek philosophy. Others knew more than he did in this area. Brentano, on the other hand, was a profound expert on scholasticism, a profound expert on medieval philosophy and, in addition, a profound expert on Aristotle. As for those who see the world of philosophy as beginning with Kant, they are not scholars, not genuine scholars of Aristotle, for Aristotle, the great Greek, was most grievously mistreated in the developmental history of the newer intellectual life. Brentano was a profound scholar of Aristotle and scholasticism, but not in the merely historical sense, not in the sense of someone who knew what Aristotle wrote and what the scholastics wrote, for with regard to such knowledge one can . make one's own thoughts when going through the history of philosophy! Brentano was a man who had become familiar with the philosophy of Aristotle and with scholastic philosophy, with the solitary thinking that went on for centuries in the cells of monasteries, with the thinking that worked with a thorough technique of the conceptual world, with that thorough technique of the conceptual world that has been completely lost to more recent thinking. Those who therefore heard psychology in the seventies and eighties from Brentano, basically heard a completely different tone of human thinking than has been or is heard from other philosophers of modern times. Something really did live in Brentano as an undertone of what spoke from the soul of the scholastics. And that is significant because he made this different classification out of this different thinking. So that we can say: there is the peculiar fact that all the newer thinkers, for whom scholasticism was and is merely a web of concepts, present the human soul and its relationship to wisdom, beauty and goodness in this way:

Wisdom: Imagining
Beauty: Feeling
Goodness: Wanting.

In Brentano, all the feelings and inner impulses that were in a scholastic heart lived, as far as something like that is possible in the present. He had to think in this way, had to structure the human soul differently in its powers and relate it to the great ideals of humanity. Where does that come from?

If you had been able to ask the angels on the stage – and in particular the three archangels – how they organize the soul and how they relate it to the great ideals, they would have answered you, albeit in a much more perfect way than Brentano could, with an answer similar to the one Brentano gave. Raphael, Gabriel and Michael would not understand this classification, but they would easily find their way into it, only to transform it more completely into the classification that Brentano gave. We are touching here on a significant fact in the spiritual development of mankind. However far we may be today from the thinking of the scholastic Middle Ages, there was something underlying this way of thinking that can be presented in the following way. The scholastic did not try to stop when speaking of the highest things, with what is happening directly on the physical plane, but the scholastic first tried to prepare his soul so that the spiritual entities of the higher world could speak out of it. In many respects this will be a stammering of the human soul, because it is self-evident that the human soul will only ever be able to imperfectly express the language of the higher spirits that are superior to man. But that is how the scholastics wanted to speak to a certain extent about the spiritual affairs of man, as a soul must speak that surrenders to what supersensible spirits have to say.

We are getting used to forming our agreement or disagreement with what makes an idea a valid one, a wise one, according to the external physical world, here on the physical plane, since the time of materialism is the actual time of humanity. We say that a winged horse is not a valid concept because we have never seen a winged horse. Materialism regards a concept as a wise concept if it agrees with what the external world dictates.

Brentano, so to speak, provided the last abstract imitation of the language of angels. Angels would say: That which is in accordance with the context of the messages of the beings that are beyond the threshold of the spiritual worlds is full of wisdom. It is not enough to form a concept; rather, this concept must be in harmony with what the spiritual beings reveal beyond the threshold. So mere imagining cannot serve wisdom beyond the threshold. What then can it serve? It can serve appearance, in which beauty lives. If one applies imagination to reality without further ado, then one does not arrive at the right imagination. But one may apply it to the appearance in which beauty lives and works. Brentano was quite right when he related imagination to beauty. For the angels, when they want to imagine, will always ask themselves: What kind of images may we form? Never ugly ones, but always beautiful images. But these images, which they form and which they form according to the ideal of beauty, will not correspond to reality if they do not correspond to the revelations of other entities that they encounter in the spiritual world. Imagining is really only to be assigned to beauty. Angels have the ideal of imagining in such a way that their entire world of imagination is permeated and illuminated by the ideal of beauty. And you need only read the chapter of my Theosophy that deals with the soul world, and there study the two forces in the form in which they are found beyond the threshold to the spiritual world, the two forces of sympathy and antipathy, and you will find that the relationship between sympathy and antipathy underlies the impulses of will. So that coincides again to a certain extent. But it must be related to the life of the soul, as this life, from the subconscious, still arises from the soul world in today's human soul. There you see how a modern philosopher, because he has, so to speak, atavistically preserved the scholasticism of the Middle Ages in his heart, tries to speak in the terminology of angels, albeit in the imperfect language of modern materialism. It is an extraordinarily interesting fact. Otherwise, one cannot understand how Brentano opposed the whole of modern psychology in such a way that he distinguished the powers of the soul quite differently from other psychologists and assigned them to the highest ideals of humanity in a different way.

But take what is said in this way in all its consequences. Note all the consequences. When we cross the threshold to the spiritual world, then we live in a world of beings, I said, insofar as we speak of the real. So we cannot form abstract concepts in the same sense as we do here in the physical world when we speak of the real. We have to have entities. So when we speak of the real, we have to say: It cannot be that wisdom, beauty and goodness have the same meaning in the spiritual world over there as they do here in the physical world. There they would be abstract concepts again, as we can apply them here in the physical world. There must be entities over there. — So, as soon as we speak in terms of wisdom itself, that is, seek a reality, entities must exist over there, not just what is designated in abstracto by wisdom, beauty, goodness. When one speaks of beauty in the spiritual world, one cannot say: Beauty is there as maya, as appearance in the spiritual world. Just as beauty and wisdom are imprinted in the physical world, for example, when we depict wisdom-filled beauty in drama or in other works of art, or when we depict goodness in beauty in drama or in other works of art, and how all this is interrelated, so wisdom, beauty and goodness are at work in the realm of beauty beyond the threshold. But we must not speak of them as concepts; we must not apply what is over there as we apply it here. So let us assume that someone wants to speak from over there, and he wants to speak from over there with the power of the soul, which corresponds to our imagination, so he should not say: wisdom, beauty, strength, because these are abstract ideas, he would have to cite entities. Wisdom would have to appear as an entity on the other side.

In the language of the ancient mysteries, what I am now explaining was well known, and therefore terms were introduced that could express this, that did not point to mere abstract ideas, but to entities. On the other side, beyond the threshold, there must be a Being, which here is Wisdom, a Being. If you reflect a little, you will easily find that a Being, which we call God-vision, the God-visionary, could be such a Being, corresponding to Wisdom on the other side: God-vision.

A being that corresponds to beauty, our abstract idea of beauty for the physical plane, would have to reveal itself. Beauty reveals itself, it is the appearance, the appearing, that which appears. At the moment one crosses the threshold, that which is much more alive than here on the physical plane emerges. When the beautiful is spoken of, the essentially beautiful, something so mute or merely living in human, physical hearing or speech abstractions, it is not spoken of as it is here on the physical plane. It is all revelation, living revelation. And if you combine what I am saying now with what I said earlier, you will understand that the ancient mysteries coined a word for what corresponds to it on the other side, beyond the threshold of Beauty, which can be described as the proclamation of God. God's Word, God-proclaimer, for example. You could also say the Word of God.

Likewise, there must be a being for the volition: the God-willing. Not the abstract, as we have it in our soul as volition, but a being must be on the other side of the threshold for the will. God-willer - if we may form the word. Why should we only form words that are already in use, since we are entering realms for which words have not been coined at all! God's volition, as it were. If we take God as a collective name for the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, then God has within Himself not only a volition, as we have in our souls, but a volitioner: this is essential. What in us are only the three soul powers: imagination, feeling, volition, are in God's being: the God-breather, the God-proclaimer, the God-willing. And if one takes the old Hebrew expressions, they correspond completely to the words that I have tried to coin here. Of course, you will not find the translation of these words in any Hebrew dictionary, but if you immerse yourself in what was meant, you would actually translate the old Hebrew words with these words today, and in such a way that Gottschauer means exactly the same in our language as Michael; Gottverkünder means exactly the same as Gabriel; Gottwoller means exactly the same as Raphael. While we work in the physical world through our three soul powers, the beings of the higher hierarchies work through their own entities. Just as we work through imagination, feeling and will, so a God works through Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. And that means the same for a God: I work through Michael, Gabriel, Raphael – which for our soul means: I work through thinking, feeling and willing. This translation: I work through thinking, feeling and willing - into: I work through Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, is simply the translation from the language of men into the language that should be spoken - if one speaks the real language that prevails there - beyond the threshold to the spiritual world. If you open yourself to some of the descriptions in the Bible, you will be able to feel everywhere – if you feel appropriately and not in a way that corresponds to today's interpretation of the Bible, which is a misinterpretation in many respects – you will be able to feel how this really must be intended for Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

Wisdom: power of judgment – Godshower; Michael
Revelation of Essence

Beauty: imagination – God-announcer: Gabriel
Power of Judgment

Goodness: sympathy, affirmation / antipathy, negation –
God-willing: Raphael

Now, bearing this in mind, think back to the way Gabriel, Michael and Raphael speak in Goethe's “Prologue to Heaven”. One can only say that one is deeply shaken by the instinctive certainty with which this “Prologue in Heaven” suggests how the willing essence of the Godhead, through Raphael, the seeing essence of the Godhead, through Michael, and the beautifully revealing essence of the Godhead, the revealing, proclaiming essence of the Godhead, through Gabriel, is manifested. The volition of the Godhead lies in the harmony of the spheres, in that which expresses itself in the great movements of the heavenly bodies and in that which happens while the heavenly bodies move:

The sun sounds in the ancient manner
In the singing contest of the spheres,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderclap.
The sight of it gives strength to the angels,

— one could also say: goodness, the strength of the super-moral life beyond the threshold. Therefore, some also refer to the three soul powers of wisdom, beauty, goodness as wisdom, beauty, strength.

When none can fathom them;

— you will bite your teeth out if you try to hold on to the Faust commentators on this line: “If no one can fathom it.” Most say: Oh yes, Goethe just meant, even though, or although, or although no one can fathom it. But that is not how a truly great poet speaks – I have often mentioned this to Goethe – that is not how a great poet speaks. Fathoming belongs to wisdom as it lives within the human physical world. Beyond the threshold, everything is a becoming acquainted with spiritual beings, whom one approaches as one approaches people here, who must also keep an inner being, who cannot be completely fathomed. This fathoming in the sense in which it occurs here on earth does not exist for the angels at all. They have the spiritual reality before them; they do not fathom; they look, because something of the power of Michael's vision has also been given to each one. Each has something of the other power, just as each soul power has something of the other, for example, imagining has something of wanting, because if we could not want when imagining, we would only dream and so on. So Raphael also has something of Michael and Gabriel in himself, of course.

The incomprehensibly high works

Are glorious as on the first day.

Try to feel these two lines with all the sensations that you can have from spiritual science!

The incomprehensibly high works

— which are described there

Are glorious as on the first day.

What does that mean? They are not glorious as on that day, glorious as on the first day. Just as they appeared glorious to the angels at that time, that is, expressing themselves, revealing themselves, they are still - luciferic. Because what has remained behind is, after all, luciferic. One must really apply the perceptions that one acquires through spiritual science. The stars shine as luciferically as on the first day. They have not progressed; they retain their original character – again a reason why the angels do not fathom them, but behold them. For angels, the luciferic is visible. It does not make the angels bad. I have often described the luciferic as a necessity in the evolution of the world. Here it is presented to you as something that the angels behold: Lucifer – not as he reigns for people – but as he gloriously maintains the indescribably high works as they were on the first day. And we are led to it in exalted language, so that we are shown how the Luciferic lives out in the universe, and the angels may look at it as on the first day. There it is justified. It should not descend into the physical world to man in the ordinary way, but live above in the world that is beyond the threshold. And the world that is pervaded and thundered through by the will of the world is first proclaimed on earth. Up there it should remain unfathomable, it should not be fathomed. Here on earth, with the powers that are given to man, it is there so that what is unfathomable for angels

be fathomed through human wisdom. But Gabriel, the proclaimer of God, the Word of God, can only hint at this as he sees it from outside the earth. Do you remember the profound Bible verse: “Before the mystery of the Incarnation they veiled their faces.” In this profound Bible verse lies the whole of the unfathomable for the angels of the worlds that are accessible to man through the wisdom that is developed on earth. And here angelic language is spoken in the 'Prologue to Heaven', which is why Gabriel, the proclaimer of God, characterizes from the outside that which reveals itself on earth as wisdom.

And fast and incomprehensibly fast
The earth's splendor revolves;
Paradise's brightness changes
With deep, shudder-filled night;

This is how it appears from the outside: the world in which we live here, which we try to unravel, and which affects us in the sphere of our senses. Out there it is the wonderful change of day and night.

The sea foams in broad rivers

Human weal and woe depend on it; out there it reveals itself only as that which, in its foaming, composes the spherical earth.

At the deep bottom of the rocks,
And rock and sea are torn away
In an eternally fast spherical course.

In which our whole earthly destiny, bound to our sensory life, is bound. The God-announcer draws it from outside the earth.

And how is the meaning of the earth revealed? By looking not only at that which is valid for the human sense realm, but also at that which sends its effect out into the universe. Gabriel describes the earth as it appears from the outside, but he describes what is significant for man in the sense realm. Michael, the God-shower, describes that which radiates out into the universe and also has its significance for the earth's surroundings, for the entire celestial sphere. Therefore, he begins with the surroundings, not below, where the sea flows, where the rivers flow, but with

the surroundings. He looks at the surroundings.

And storms roar in competition,

A deep word!

From sea to land, from land to sea,
And furiously form a chain
Of the deepest impact all around.

Just imagine, seen from the outside, let's say, the trade winds that blow out there in regular currents. Our limited natural science describes all this, what goes on in these atmospheric phenomena, but it is limited, this natural science. When one examines the regularities in atmospheric phenomena, one comes across a deep connection between these regular atmospheric phenomena and the phases of the moon, the phenomena of the moon, but not because the moon causes what happens in the atmosphere, but because, in the same measure, in parallel, the old lunar laws still govern the moon today, and the atmospheric phenomena also still remain from the old lunar laws. Not that the moon rules the atmospheric phenomena and the tides, but both are ruled by causes that go back much further, ruled in parallel. What happens in the atmosphere is therefore not only significant for that which affects people in the sphere of the senses, but it also has significance for that which happens out there in the universe. We look up at the lightning, we hear the thunder. But the Gods also see the lightning and hear the thunder from the other side. And for them it means something quite different - of which we can speak another time - than for us human beings here, who do not understand lightning and thunder. But the God-shower Michael understands from the earth precisely that which is lived out on the other side in lightning and thunder, which has been described here by me — remember the first lecture I gave here this summer — as the subterranean of the human soul, as the thunderstorms of the human soul, which I have described to you in terms of the character of Weininger, who died young. What corresponds to these thunderstorms in the human soul, in the atmosphere, has an effect. And just as the soul storms in us are harmonized and mitigated when we pour our higher soul forces over them, so for the world outside, what is stormy and thundering here in our atmosphere and is irregular in meteorology becomes regular and harmonious in the universe. Just as we, as we develop, do not remain in the storms, but progress to the harmony of the soul life. Down there, lightning and thunder

But your messengers,

- the angels -

Lord,
we honor the gentle walking of your day.

Everything falls into place, gently and harmoniously, as seen from the sphere of the angels outside.

The sight gives the angels strength,

- that is, it strengthens their volition

Since no one can fathom you,

– it is not a matter of fathoming, but of beholding!

And all your lofty works
Are glorious as on the first day.

That means: they are Luciferian, they are there for angels, they should only not have the same effect on people. Lucifer is the unjustified in the world of man, insofar as he transfers his justified sphere outside into the world of man for the spiritual world and applies the same laws there that he should only apply outside in the spiritual world.

And do you remember how I dealt with it in other lectures, based on Goethe's “Faust”, the ambiguity that still remained in Goethe when he wrote “Faust”. I told you at the time that Goethe did not yet properly distinguish between Lucifer and Ahriman. Mephistopheles is actually Ahriman, who has only been left behind in a different way than Lucifer. But this distinction is only given by the newer spiritual science. Goethe constantly confuses Lucifer and Ahriman, throws them together, so that his Mephistopheles is really a confused figure in this respect, has Luciferic and Ahrimanic traits. If Goethe had already had spiritual science, this terrible confusion with regard to the character of Mephistopheles would certainly not occur. I have already said at the time: I ask not to be accused of not sufficiently venerating Goethe or of criticizing him in a mean, philistine way because of what I say. By telling the truth, one's veneration of some genius is truly no less than if one merely praises it. I believe that no one can accuse me of having a low opinion of Goethe after what I have written and said about him. But I must always emphasize that his Mephistopheles is a confused spiritual character when I speak from the impulse of spiritual science. If Goethe had known exactly the right thing to say after the verse:

And all your lofty works
Are glorious as on the first day

first appeared Lucifer, the one who works through the appearance of the world of the spheres, through the beauty of the world of the spheres. Lucifer would stand there. And because Lucifer has as his companion Ahriman, Mephistopheles – which is the same as Ahriman – Mephistopheles would then step in, or Lucifer would step down and Mephistopheles would step up. That is what Goethe would have done if he had had spiritual science in its present form. We would have seen a red Lucifer first, and only then the gray-black Ahriman, the gray-black Mephistopheles. But Goethe did not get that far. Therefore, he only lets Mephistopheles appear, who in his own way also combines the retarded qualities that should work in the spiritual world and not work in a human way into human life. Goethe felt that, felt it correctly. That is why not everything about this Mephistopheles is quite right, although it is right. The feeling here seems much more certain than Goethe's intuition has already worked. Much of what Faust encounters as temptation really comes from Mephistopheles, but other things cannot properly be attributed to Mephistopheles. That Faust should be tempted by base passions cannot really come from Ahriman, it can only come from Lucifer. And when Ahriman-Mephistopheles says this, Goethe remembers, subconsciously, that it is not quite right. Mephistopheles should actually have Lucifer at his side. That is why Mephistopheles says: “Dust shall he eat,” that is, he shall live in lower passions, “like my aunt, the famous snake.” That is Lucifer. Then he reminds us of his aunt, the good Aunt Lucifer!' There you have the reminiscence of Lucifer, who is actually supposed to be there.

You see, there are tremendously deep secrets of the world in this “Prologue in Heaven”, by which I do not mean to say that Goethe wanted to present them as we feel them today in spiritual science. But instinctive wisdom is often much deeper than the apparent one. And in ancient times there was only instinctive wisdom, and that was truly a higher wisdom than that which is produced today by limited natural science.

Thus Mephistopheles-Ahriman entered the physical world, where he should not be. There is also a poor fit between what he has to say and the physical world and the intentions of the Deity in the physical world. He wants to rule in the world, but he finds everything “very bad”. He must be different from the others, from the genuine sons of the gods, for he is to be here in the physical world, where works are to be fathomed. Since Mephistopheles enters the physical world at all, the saying that he should not fathom the world does not apply to him; he must fathom it. He is only a half-nature on earth; as a spiritual being he does not really belong. He would have to fathom it, but cannot fathom it. That is why he finds everything “very bad”. We will talk about the extent to which he is here for creation tomorrow in connection with other teachings of spiritual science. Today we just want to say this.

So this Ahriman-Mephistopheles is different here in the physical world from the true sons of the gods. He really must be used for something else here. He must work on what is real in the physical world, unlike the true sons of the gods. They do not need to have the earthly real in their imaginations. They must delight in the “vividly rich beauty”, the beauty in their imaginations. There is a discrepancy between the angels, the true sons of the gods, and Ahriman, the Mephistopheles. For them, the angels cannot do it like Mephistopheles, they delight in the lively, rich beauty.

That which is becoming, that which is eternally working and living,
embraces you with the sweet barriers of love.

This is about as profound as the prologue gets. Remember what we said about the cosmos of wisdom and the cosmos of love? And remember the words: They veiled their faces from the mystery of the Incarnation. — Love does not live the same way for the Sons of God of Wisdom as it does for humans: they are beings within wisdom; there are limits for the true Sons of God. And by living in the great Maja, in the glory of the Luciferic world, they weave the “permanent thoughts” that are in turn beings, not abstract ideas, that are forces, not mere thoughts.

It is truly remarkable how this “Prologue in Heaven” was written in 1797, one might say, not in the language of men, but in the language of the gods, and how humanity will take a long time to fathom all the depths of this prologue. I think it is possible to get a sense of the feelings that lived in Goethe when, spurred on by Schiller, he set about continuing Faust in 1797, which he had started years ago. It began there: “Have now, alas, studied philosophy, law” and so on. Then the three parts are missing: “Dedication”, “Prelude to the Theater”, “Prologue in Heaven”. Then the whole Easter walk was missing. Some scenes were then written during the Italian journey in 1787, and under Schiller's encouragement, Goethe went back to it. He may well have thought back to the time when he had not taken Faust so deeply, when he had only taken it, albeit very deeply, as one who strives out of the world of physical reality, over the threshold, into the spiritual world, to the earth spirit and so on. But he could not take it then, he, the twenty-year-old Goethe, as he took it now at the end of the century, in 1797, when he himself felt that he really did not understand in an abstract way much of what he had to express in the “Prologue in Heaven”. For there the language of angels prevails. Those who heard the first songs of Faust would have had to develop with Goethe in the way that Goethe himself developed if they had wanted to understand what had become of the whole rich world of Faust in Goethe's soul by 1797. Something different had become of it. What he had created as a young man appeared to him in a higher sphere. He must have had some sense of the view from the spiritual sphere beyond the threshold down to the earthly world in which Faust also walked, who says: “Have now, alas, philosophy, jurisprudence...” and so on. “... studied with hot endeavor.” Goethe could say that he and his companions enjoyed something different back then than what has now become his. And he might have sensed something of how little he would be understood. For Goethe sensed already, from the end of the 1790s, that something must come like a spiritual science if what he instinctively sensed and felt as world-wisdom and world-beauty and world-strength was to be fully understood.

They will not hear the following songs,
The souls to whom I sang the first;
The friendly throng has been scattered,
Alas! the first echo has faded.

Echo from the souls to whom he read the first scenes of “Faust,” which he wrote when he was twenty years old: the first echo. But understanding at that time – for even that time is now already gone in the time of materialism – understanding, however, for crossing the threshold with a character like Faust, understanding for appealing to the earth spirit, which “weaves and lives in the tides of life, in the storm of deeds”. But a stopping at this understanding, an inability to ascend to what Goethe had to struggle to achieve. Therefore - now that the language of angels prevails and the whole is viewed from a different point of view - no longer the old resonance. Faded away, alas! - that old resonance! Scattered the souls for whom he sang the first songs. That suffering that everyone goes through who really wants to look at the spiritual world, Goethe knew it and knew that he was alone with this suffering in his time.

My suffering is heard by the unknown multitude.

This is not much different today, when one could be frightened by the applause that people give to “Faust”. For what do people today still hear of the deep wisdom that prevails in “Faust”, much more than external appearances!?

But Goethe might say, if he now felt that he had to lift up his song, the song of his suffering, into the realm of the spirit: What used to be reality to me floats far into the distance, and what used to disappear becomes reality — the silent, earnest spiritual kingdom, which one approaches with that awe that one feels when one has a presentiment of the completely different form that the world takes on the other side of the threshold and on this side of the threshold. This 'dedication' also arose from Goethe's deep sense of the possibilities of the future. If spiritual science could also deepen human hearts in such cases, so that they are really able to take what must be taken deeply, then spiritual science would fulfill one of its tasks. For the saying that I quoted here only recently is true, deeply true: “The world is deep, and deeper than the day conceived,” that is, than the day that shows us only the physical, sensual world. The world is deep as it is revealed to us by that night which, compared to physical day, is indeed night and darkness, but into which we carry that light which we kindle in our own soul as a lamp and which we then have to illuminate ourselves. The world is deep and must be fathomed by a light that we first kindle through our spiritual striving so that it may shine in the spiritual world. Then it will shine as the light does in the eternal becoming, which works and lives and in which the beings of the higher world have to dwell, so that it may be revealed to them what they need to fortify with lasting thoughts that which floats in fluctuating appearance.

From this point we will then continue our meditation tomorrow.

I would just like to ask our friends from Basel not to bring any children with them tomorrow. We have to make this exception because the presence of the personality from hell presented to you today makes this scene unsuitable for children's fantasies and dreams. So, as an exception, we ask that anyone under fifteen or sixteen years of age not be brought tomorrow.

Allow me to begin today's lecture with a personal recollection. As a quite young man, I once had a slight experience of the kind which seem unimportant and yet can yield pleasant memories again and again in later life.

I was attending a course of university lectures on the history of literature.⁴⁹ The lecturer began by considering the character of cultural life in the time of Lessing, with the intention of going on to discuss various literary developments during the later eighteenth century and part of the nineteenth. His opening words were deeply impressive. In order to characterise the chief innovation which appeared in the cultural life of Lessing's time, he said: “Artistic consciousness acquired an aesthetic conscience.” His lecture showed that what he meant by this statement—we need not now ask whether it was justified—was roughly as follows:

All the artistic considerations and intentions connected with the endeavours of Lessing and his contemporaries were imbued with a deeply earnest wish to make something more of art than a mere appendage to life or a mere pleasure among others. Art was to become a necessary element in every form of human existence worthy of the name. To raise art up to the level of a serious human concern, worthy to be heard in the concert of voices which speak of the great and fruitful activities of mankind—such was the aim of the pioneer thinkers of that period. That is what the lecturer wanted to say when he emphasised that an aesthetic conscience had found its way into the artistic and literary life of those times.

Why was this statement important for a soul seeking to grasp the riddles of existence, as reflected in one or another human mind? Because a conception of art was to be ennobled and given expression in a way that left no doubt as to its importance for the whole character and destiny of human life. The serious nature and significance of artistic work were intended to be placed beyond discussion, and it is indeed true that the experiences denoted by the word “conscience” are such that all the situations to which they apply are ennobled. In other words, when “conscience” is spoken of, the human soul recognises that the word refers to a most valuable element in its own life, and that to be without this element would indicate a serious deficiency.

How often has the significance of conscience been brought out by the words, no matter whether they are taken literally or metaphorically: “When conscience speaks in the human soul, it is the voice of God that speaks.” And one could scarcely find anyone, however unprepared to reflect on higher spiritual concerns, who has not formed some idea of what conscience is. Everyone feels vaguely that whatever conscience may be, it is experienced as a voice in the individual's breast which determines with irresistible power what is good and what is bad; what man must do in order to gain his own approval and what he must leave undone if he is not to despise himself. Hence we can say: Conscience appears to every individual as something holy in the human breast, and that to form some kind of opinion about it is relatively easy.

Things are different, however, if we glance briefly at man's history and his spiritual life. Anyone who is trying to look more deeply into a spiritual situation of this kind will surely wish to consult those in whom a knowledge of such matters may be presupposed—the philosophers. But in this case, as in so many others of wide human concern, he will find that the explanations of conscience given by various philosophers are very different, or so it seems, though a more or less obscure kernel is similar in all of them. But that is not the worst of it. If anyone were to take the trouble to inquire what the philosophers of ancient and modern times mean by conscience, he would be met with all sorts of very fine phrases and also by many that are hard to understand, but he would find nothing of which he could say beyond question that it reflected his feeling: that is conscience.

Of course it would lead us too far if I were to give you an anthology of the various explanations of conscience that have been given over the centuries by the philosophical leaders of mankind. But we may note that from about the first third of the Middle Ages and on through mediaeval philosophy, whenever conscience was spoken of, it was always said to be a power in the human soul which was capable of immediately declaring what a man should do and what he should leave undone. However, these mediaeval philosophers say also that underneath this power of the soul there is something else, something of finer quality than conscience itself. A personality often mentioned here, Meister Eckhart,⁵⁰ tells of a tiny spark that underlies conscience; an eternal element in the soul which, if it is heeded, declares with unmistakable power the laws of good and evil.

In modern times, we encounter once more the most varied accounts of conscience, including some which make a peculiar impression, for they clearly fail to recognise the serious nature of the divine inner voice that we call conscience. There are philosophers who say that conscience is something that a man acquires when, by extending continually his experience of life, he learns what is useful, harmful, satisfying and so on for himself. The sum of these experiences gives rise to a judgment which says: “Do this—don't do that.”

There are other philosophers who speak of conscience in terms of the highest praise. One of these is the great German philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who pointed above all to the human ego not the transient personal ego but the eternal essence in man—as the fundamental principle of all human thought and being. At the same time, he held that the highest experience for the human ego was the experience of conscience,⁵¹ when a man hears the inward judgment: “This you must do, for it would go against your conscience not to do it.” The majesty and nobility of this judgment, he believed, could not be surpassed. And if Fichte was the philosopher who laid the strongest emphasis on the power and significance of the human ego, it is characteristic of him that he ranked conscience as the ego's most significant impulse.

The further we move on into modern times, and the more materialistic thinking becomes, the more do we find conscience deprived of its majesty—not in the human heart, but in the thinking of philosophers who are more or less imbued with materialism. One example will be enough to illustrate this trend.

In the second half of the 19th century, there lived a philosopher who for nobility of soul, harmonious human feelings and generous breadth of mind must rank with the finest personalities. I mean Bartholomew Carnieri:⁵² he is seldom mentioned now. If you go through his writings, you find that in spite of his fine qualities, he was deeply imbued with the materialistic thinking of his time. What, he asks, are we to make of conscience? Fundamentally, he says, it is no more than the sum of habits and judgments instilled in us during early youth and strengthened by the experience of life. These influences, of which we are no longer fully conscious, are the source of the inner voice which says: “This you must do—this you must not do,”

Thus the origin of conscience is traced back to external influences and habits, and even these are confined to a very narrow range. Some even more materialistically-minded philosophers of the 19th century have gone further still. Paul Ree,⁵³ for example, who at one time had great influence on Nietzsche, wrote on the origin of conscience. His book is interesting as a symptom of the outlook of our times. His ideas—allowing for some inevitable distortion of details in any brief sketch of them—are roughly as follows. Man, says Paul Ree, has developed in respect of all his faculties, and therefore in respect of conscience. Originally he had no trace of what we call conscience. It is gross prejudice to hold that conscience is eternal. A voice telling us what to do and what not to do did not exist originally, according to Ree. But in human nature there was something else which did develop—something we can call an instinct for revenge. This was the most primitive of all impulses. If anyone suffered at the hands of another, the instinct for revenge drove him to pay back the injury in kind. By degrees, as social life became more complicated, the carrying out of vengeance was handed over to the ruling authorities. So people came to believe that any deed which injured another person had by necessity to be followed by something that had previously been called vengeance. Certain deeds which had bad results had to be requited by other deeds. In the course of time, this conviction gave rise to an association of certain feelings with particular actions, or even with the temptation to commit them. The original urge for revenge was forgotten, but a feeling became ingrained in the human soul that a harmful action must be paid for. So now, when a man believes he is hearing an “inner voice”, this is in fact nothing but the voice of vengeance, changed into an inward form. Here we have an extreme example of this kind of interpretation—extreme in the sense that conscience is portrayed as a complete illusion.

On the other hand, we must admit that it is going much too far to assert, as some people do, that conscience has existed as long as human beings have been living on the earth; in other words, that conscience is in some sense eternal. Since mistakes are made both by those who think more spiritually about it, and by those who regard conscience as a pure illusion, it is very difficult to reach any agreement on the subject, although it belongs to our everyday inner life, and indeed to a sacred part of it.

A glance over the philosophers will show that in earlier times even the best of them thought of conscience differently from the way in which we are bound to think of it today. For when we say that conscience is a voice speaking out of a divine impulse in the breast of the simplest man, saying, “This you must do—that you must leave undone” this is somewhat different from the teaching we find in Socrates⁵⁴ and in his successor, Plato.⁵⁵ They both insist that virtue can be learnt. Socrates, indeed, says that if a man forms clear ideas as to what he should and should not do, then gradually, through this knowledge of what virtue is, he can learn to act virtuously.

Now one could easily object, from a modern standpoint, that things would go badly if we had to wait until we had learnt what is right and what is wrong before we could act virtuously. Conscience speaks with elemental power in the human soul and is heard by the individual as saying “This you must do, and that you must leave alone”, long before we learn to form ideas concerning good and evil and thus begin to formulate moral precepts. Moreover, conscience brings a certain tranquillity to the soul on occasions when a man can say to himself: “You have done something you can approve of.” It would be bad—many people might say—if we had to learn a lot about the nature and character of virtue in order to arrive at an agreed estimation of our behaviour. Hence we can say that the philosopher to whom we look up as a martyr of philosophy, whose death crowned and ennobled his philosophical work—I mean Socrates—sets before us a concept of virtue which hardly tallies with our view of conscience today: and even with later Greek thinkers we always find the assertion that perfect virtue is something that can be learnt, a doctrine not in keeping with the primitive, elemental, power of conscience.

How is it, then, that so pre-eminent and powerful a person as Socrates is not aware of the idea of conscience that we have today, although we feel whenever we approach him, as Plato describes him, that the purest morality and the highest degree of virtue speak through his words? The reason is, that the ideas, concepts and inward experiences which feel today as though they were innate, were in fact acquired laboriously by the human soul in the course of time. When we trace the spiritual life of humanity back into the past, we find that our idea of conscience and our feeling for it were not present in the same way in ancient times, and therefore not among the Greeks. Conscience, in fact, was born. But nothing about the birth of conscience can be learnt by the easy methods of external experience and scholarship, as Paul Ree, for example, tried to do. We have to go more deeply into the matter if we are to gain enlightenment for the human soul.

Now our task in these lectures has been precisely to illuminate the constitution of the soul, with the aid of the light that comes from raising the soul to higher levels of knowledge. The whole life of the soul has been described, as it reveals itself to the inner eye of the seer: the eye which does not gain knowledge of the sense-world only, but looks behind the veil of the sense-world into the region where the primary sources, the spiritual foundations of the sense-world are to be found. And it has repeatedly been shown—for example in the lecture, “What is Mysticism?”—that the consciousness of the seer opens the way into deeper regions of the soul, over and above the soul-life we experience in everyday life. We believe that even in ordinary life we come to know something of this deeper level when we look into ourselves and encounter the experiences of thinking, feeling and willing. But it was pointed out also, that in ordinary waking consciousness the soul reveals only the outer aspect of the spiritual. Just as we have to penetrate behind the veil that is spread over the sense-world if we are to discover the underlying causes of these appearances as they are revealed behind everything we see and hear and our brain apprehends, so we must look behind our thinking, feeling and willing, and thus behind our ordinary inner life, if we are to get to know the spiritual background of our own lives.

From these starting-points, we set out to throw light on the life of the human soul in its many interwoven branches. We saw that it must be conceived as made up of three members which must be distinguished but not—please note—treated as quite separate from one another. We named these three members the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul, and we saw how the ego is the unifying point which holds the three members together, plays on them as though on the strings of an instrument, causing them to sound together in the most varied ways, harmonious or dissonant. This activity of the ego developed by gradual stages, and we shall understand how our present-day consciousness and soul-life have evolved from primeval times if we glance at what man can become in the future, or even today, if from within the consciousness soul he develops a higher, clairvoyant form of consciousness.

The consciousness soul in its ordinary condition enables us to grasp the external world perceived through our senses. If anyone wishes to penetrate behind the veil of the sense-world, he must raise his soul-life to a higher level. Then he makes the great discovery that something like an awakening of the soul can occur—something comparable to the outcome of a successful operation on a man blind from birth, when a hitherto unknown world of light and colour breaks in upon him. So it is with someone who by appropriate methods raises his soul to a higher level of development. A moment comes when those elements in our environment which we normally ignored, although they are swarming around us all the time, enter into our soul-life as a wealth of beings and activities because we have acquired a new organ of perception for them.

When someone achieves by training, a conscious seership of this kind, his ego is completely present throughout. This means that he moves among spiritual facts and beings, on which our sense-world is based, just as he finds his way among chairs and tables in the physical world: and he now takes up into a higher sphere of soul-life the ego which had led him through his experiences of sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul.

Let us now turn back from this clairvoyant consciousness, which is illuminated and set aglow by the ego, to the ordinary life of the soul. The ego is alive in the most varied ways in the three soul-members. If we have a man whose life is given over to the desires, passions and instinctive urges that arise from his sentient soul, we can say that his ego is hardly at all active; it is like a feeble flame in the midst of the surging waves of the sentient soul and has little power against them. In the intellectual soul the ego gains some freedom and independence.

Here man comes to himself and so to some awareness of his ego, for the intellectual soul can develop only in so far as man reflects upon and elaborates, in inner tranquillity, the experiences that have come to him through the sentient soul. The ego becomes more and more radiant and at last achieves full clarity in the consciousness soul. Then a man can say to himself: “I have grasped myself—I have attained real self-consciousness.” This degree of clarity can be activated by the ego only when it has reached the stage of working in the consciousness soul, after progressing from the sentient soul through the intellectual soul.

If, however, a human being can further rise in his ego to clairvoyant consciousness beyond the consciousness soul, comparable to yet higher soul-principles, we can well understand that the seer, looking back over the course of human evolution, should say to us: just as the ego rises in this way to higher states of soul, so did it enter the sentient soul from a subordinate condition. We have seen how the soul-members sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul—are related to the members of his bodily organisation—physical body, etheric and astral or sentient body. Hence you will find it understandable that as spiritual science indicates—the ego, before rising to the sentient soul, was active in the sentient body, and earlier still in the etheric and physical bodies. In those times the ego still guided man from outside. It held sway in the darkness of bodily life; man was not yet able to say “I” regarding himself, to find the central point of his own being within himself. What are we to think of this ego which held sway in the primeval past and built up man's exterior bodily organisation? Are we to regard it as less perfect, compared with the ego we bear within our souls today?

We look on our ego as the real inner focus of our being: it endows us with inner life, and is capable, through schooling, of endless progress in the future. We see in it the epitome of our human nature and the guarantor of our human dignity. Now when we were not yet aware of this ego, while it was working on us from out of the dark spiritual powers of the world, was it then less perfect, by comparison with what it is now? Only a quite abstract way of thinking could say so.

Consider our physical body; we look on it as having been formed out of the spiritual world in the primordial past as a dwelling for the human soul. Only a materialistic mind could believe that this human body had not been born originally from the spirit. Seen merely from an external point of view, the physical body must appear a miracle of perfection. What do all our intellectual ability and technical skill amount to, compared with the wisdom manifest in the structure of the human heart? Or take the engineering technique that goes into the building of bridges, and so forth—what is it compared with the construction of the human thigh-bone, with its wonderful crisscross of support members, as seen through the microscope. It would be sheer boundless arrogance for man to suppose that he has attained in the slightest degree to the wisdom inherent in the formation of the external physical body. And consider our soul-life, taking into account only our instincts, desires and passions—how do they function? Are we not doing all we can to undermine inwardly the wisdom-filled organisation of our body? Indeed, if we consider without prejudice the marvel of our physical organisation, we have to admit that our bodily structure is far wiser than anything we can show in our inner life, although we may hope that our inner life will advance from its present imperfection towards increasing perfection. We can hardly come to any other conclusion, even without clairvoyance, if we simply look impartially at the observable facts.

Is not this wise activity, which has built up the human body as a dwelling-place for the ego, bound to have something in common with the nature of the ego itself? Must we not think of this formative power as having the character of an immeasurably more advanced ego? We must say: Something related to our ego has worked during primordial times at building a structure which the ego could come to inhabit. Anyone who refuses to believe this may imagine something different, but then he must also suppose that an ordinary house, built for human habitation, has not been designed by a human mind but has been put together merely by the action of natural forces. One assumption is as true as the other. Thus we look back to a primordial past where a spiritual power endowed with an ego-nature of unlimited perfection worked upon our bodily sheaths. In those times our own ego was hidden in subconscious depths, thence it worked its way up to its present state of consciousness.

If we look at this evolution from the far-distant past, when the ego was hidden within its sheaths as though in the darkness of a mother's womb, we find that although the ego had no knowledge of itself, it was all the closer to those spiritual beings who worked on our bodily vehicles and were related to the human ego, but of incomparably greater perfection. Clairvoyant insight thus looks back to a far-distant past when man had not yet acquired ego-consciousness, for he was embedded in spiritual life itself, and when his soul-life, too, was different, for it was much closer to the soul-forces from which the ego has emerged. In those times, also, we find in man a primal clairvoyant consciousness which functioned dimly and dreamily, for it was not illumined by the light of an ego; and it was from this mode of consciousness that the ego first came forth. The faculty that man in the future will acquire with his ego was present in the primeval past without the ego. Clairvoyant consciousness entails that spiritual beings and spiritual facts are seen in the environment, and this applies to early man, although his clairvoyance was dreamlike and he beheld the spiritual world as though in a dream. Since he was not yet shone through by an ego, he was not obliged to remain within himself when he wished to behold the spiritual. He beheld the spiritual around him and looked on himself as part of the spiritual world; and whatever he did was imbued, for him, with a spiritual character. When he thought of something, he could not have said to himself, “I am thinking”, as a man might do today; his thought stood before his clairvoyant vision. And to experience a feeling he had no need to look into himself; his feeling radiated from him and united him with his whole spiritual environment.

Such was the soul-life of man in primordial times. From out of his dreamlike clairvoyant consciousness he had to develop inwardly in order to come to himself, and in himself to that centre of his being which today is still imperfect but will advance ever more nearly towards perfection in the future, when man with his ego will step forth into the spiritual world.

Now if light is thrown on those primordial times by means of clairvoyance in the way already described, what does the seer tell us concerning the human consciousness of those times when a man had, for example, committed an evil deed? His deed did not present itself to him as something he could inwardly assess. He beheld it, with all its harmfulness and shamefulness, as a ghostly vision confronting his soul. And when a feeling concerning his evil deed arose in his soul, the shamefulness of it came before him as a spiritual reality, so that he was as though surrounded by a vision of the evil he had wrought.

Then, in the course of time, this dreamlike clairvoyance faded and man's ego came increasingly to the fore. In so far as man found this central point of his being within himself, the old clairvoyance was extinguished and self-consciousness established itself more and more clearly. The vision he had previously had of his bad and good deeds was transposed into his inner life, and deeds once clairvoyantly beheld were mirrored in his soul.

Now what sort of forms were beheld in dreamy clairvoyance as the counterpart of man's evil deed? They were pictures whereby the spiritual powers around him showed how he had disturbed and disrupted the cosmic order, and they were intended to have a salutary effect. It was a counteraction by the Gods, who wished to raise him up and, by showing him the effect of his deed, to enable him to eliminate its harmful consequences. This was indeed a terrifying experience for him, but it was fundamentally beneficial, coming as it did from the cosmic background out of which man himself had emerged. When the time came for man to find in himself his ego-centre, the external vision was transferred to his soul in the form of a reflected picture. When the ego first makes its appearance in the sentient soul, it is weak and frail, and man first has to work slowly upon himself in order that his ego may gradually advance towards perfection. Now what would have happened if, when the external clairvoyant vision of the effects of his misdeeds had disappeared, it had not been replaced by an inward counterpart of its beneficial influence? With his still frail ego, he would have been torn to and fro in his sentient soul by his passions, as though in a surging boundless sea. What, then, was it that was transferred at this historic moment from the external world to the inner life of the soul? If it was the great cosmic Spirit that had brought the harmful effects of a man's deed before his clairvoyant consciousness as a healing influence, showing him what he had to make good, so, later on, it was the same cosmic Spirit that powerfully revealed itself in his inner life at a time when his ego was still weak. Having previously spoken to man through a clairvoyant vision, the cosmic Spirit withdrew into man's inner life and imparted to him what had to be said about correcting the distortion caused in the world-order. Man's ego is still weak, and the cosmic Spirit keeps a perpetual, unsleeping watch over it and passes judgment where the ego could not yet judge. Behind the weak ego stands something like a reflection of the powerful cosmic Spirit which had formerly shown to man through clairvoyant vision the consequences of his deeds. And this reflection is now experienced by him as conscience watching over him.

So we see how true it is when conscience is naively described as the voice of God in man. At the same time we see how spiritual science points to the moment when external vision became inward experience and conscience was born.

What I have now been saying can be drawn purely from the spiritual world. No external history is required; the facts I have described are seen by the inward eye. Anyone who can see them will experience them as incontestable truths, but a certain necessity of the times may lead us to ask: Could external history perhaps reveal something that would confirm, in this case, the facts seen by inner vision?

The findings of clairvoyant consciousness can always be tested by external evidence, and there is no need to fear that the evidence will contradict them. That could seem to happen only if the testing were inexact. But we will give one example that can show how external facts confirm the statements here derived from clairvoyant insight.

It is not so very long since the time when the birth of conscience can be seen to occur. If we look back to the fifth and sixth centuries BC, we encounter in ancient Greece the great dramatic poet Aeschylus,⁵⁶ and in his work we find a theme which is especially remarkable for the reason that the same subject was treated by a late Greek poet in a quite different way.

Aeschylus shows us how Agamemnon, on returning from Troy, is killed by his wife, Klytemnestra, when he arrives home. Agamemnon is avenged by his son Orestes, who, acting on the advice of the gods, kills his mother. What, then, is the consequence for Orestes of this deed? Aeschylus shows how the burden of matricide calls forth in Orestes a mode of seeing which was no longer normal in those times. The enormity of his crime caused the old clairvoyance to awake in him, like an inheritance from the past. Orestes could say: “Apollo, the god himself, told me it was a just act for me to avenge my father upon my mother. Everything I have done speaks in my favour. But the blood of my mother is working on!” And in the second part of the Orestean trilogy we are powerfully shown how the old clairvoyance awakens in Orestes and how the avenging goddesses, the Erinyes—or Furies, as they were later called by the Romans—approach.

Orestes sees before him, in dreamlike clairvoyance, the effect of his act of matricide in its external form. Apollo had approved the deed; but there is something higher. Aeschylus wished to indicate that a still higher cosmic ordinance obtains, and this he could do only by making Orestes become clairvoyant at that moment, for he had not yet gone far enough to dramatise what today we call an inner voice. If we study his work, we feel that he was at the stage when something like conscience ought to emerge from the whole content of the human soul, but he never quite reached that point. He confronts Orestes with dreamlike, clairvoyant pictures that have not yet been transformed into conscience. Yet we can see how he is on the verge of recognising conscience. Every word that he gives to Klytemnestra, for example, makes one feel unmistakably that he ought to indicate the idea of conscience in its present-day sense; but he never quite gets that far. In that century, the great poet could only show how bad deeds rose up before the human soul in earlier times.

Now we will pass over Sophocles and come to Euripides,⁵⁷ who described the same situation only a generation later. Scholars have rightly pointed out—though spiritual science alone can show this in its true light—that in Euripides the dream-pictures experienced by Orestes are no more than shadowy images of the inward promptings of conscience—somewhat as in Shakespeare. Here we have palpable evidence of the stages whereby the idea of conscience was taken hold of by the art of poetry. We see how Aeschylus, great poet as he was, cannot yet speak of conscience itself, while his successor, Euripides, does speak of it. With this development in mind, we can see why human thinking in general could work its way only slowly towards a true conception of conscience. The force now active in conscience was active also in ancient times; the pictures showing the effects of a man's deeds rose before his clairvoyant sight. The only difference is that this force became internalised; but before it could be inwardly experienced, the whole process of human development, which led gradually to the concept of conscience, had to take its course.

Thus we see in conscience a faculty which comes to the fore by degrees and has to be acquired by man's own endeavours. Where, then, should we look for this most intense activity of conscience? At that point where the human ego was beginning to make itself known and was still weak, that is something which can be shown in human development. In ancient Greece it had already advanced to the stage of the intellectual soul. But if we look further back to Egypt and Chaldea outer history knows nothing of this, but Plato and Aristotle were clairvoyantly aware of it—we find that even the highest culture of those times was achieved without the presence of an inwardly independent ego. The difference between the knowledge that was nurtured and put to use by the sanctuaries of Egypt and Chaldea and our modern science is that our science is grasped by the consciousness soul, whereas in pre-Hellenic times it all depended on inspirations from the sentient soul. In ancient Greece the ego progressed from the sentient soul into the intellectual soul. Today we are living in the epoch of the consciousness soul, which means that a real ego-consciousness arises for the first time. Anyone who studies the evolution of mankind, and in particular the transition from eastern to western culture, can see how human progress has been marked by ever-increasing feelings of freedom and independence. Whereas man had formerly felt himself entirely dependent on the Gods and the inspirations that came from them, in the West, culture first came to spring from the inner life.

This is especially evident, for example, in the way Aeschylus strives to bring about a consciousness of the ego in the human soul. We see him standing on the frontier between East and West, with one eye on the East and the other on the West, gathering from the human soul the elements that will come together to form the concept of conscience. He strives to give this new form of conscience a dramatic embodiment, but is not yet quite able to do so. Comparisons are apt to be confusing; we must not only compare, but also distinguish. The point is, that in the West everything was designed to raise the ego from the sentient soul to the consciousness soul. In the East the ego was veiled in obscurity and had no freedom. In the West, by contrast, the ego works its way up into the consciousness soul. If the old dreamlike clairvoyance is extinguished, everything else tends to awaken the ego and to evoke conscience as guardian of the ego as a divine inner voice. Aeschylus was the corner-stone between the worlds of East and West.

In the Eastern World men had retained a living awareness of their origin in the divine cosmic Spirit, and this made it possible for them to gain understanding of the event which took place a few hundred years after endeavours had been made by many—or Aeschylus for example—to find something that spoke as the voice of God within themselves. For this event brought to mankind the impulse which from all spiritual standpoints must be seen as the greatest impulse ever to enter into the evolution of the earth and man—the impulse we call the Christ-Impulse.

It was the Christ-impulse that first made it possible for humanity to realise that God, the Creator of things and of the external sheaths of man, can be recognised in our inward life. Only by understanding the divine humanity of Christ Jesus were men enabled to understand that the voice of God could be heard within the soul. In order that men should be able to find something of the divine nature in their own inner life, it was necessary for Christ to enter into the evolution of humanity as an external historical-event. If the Christ, a Divine Being, had not been present in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, if he had not shown once and for all that God can be discerned in our inner life, because he had once been present in a human body; if he had not appeared as the conqueror of death through the Mystery of Golgotha, men would never have been able to comprehend the indwelling of Divinity in the human soul.

If anyone claims that this indwelling could be discerned even if there had been no historical Christ Jesus, he could equally well say that we should have eyes even if there were no sun. As against this one-sided view of some philosophers that, since without eyes we could not see the light, the origin of light must be traced to the eyes, we must always set Goethe's aphorism: The eye is created by light for light.⁵⁸ If there were no sun to fill space with light, no eyes would ever have developed in the human organism. The eyes are created by light, and without the sun there would be no eyes. No eye is capable of perceiving the sun without having first received from the sun the power to do so. In the same way, there could be no power to grasp and recognise the Christ-nature if the Christ-Impulse had not entered into external history. What the sun out there in the cosmos does for human sight, so the historical Christ-Jesus makes possible what we call the entry of the divine nature into our inner life.

The elements necessary for understanding this were present in the stream of thought that came over from the East; they needed only to be raised to a higher level. It was in the West that souls were ripe to grasp and accept this impulse—the West, where experiences which had belonged to the outer world were transferred to the inner life most intensively, and in the form of conscience watched over a generally weak ego. In this way souls were strengthened, and prepared to hear the voice of conscience now saying within them: The Divinity who appeared in the East to those able to look clairvoyantly into the world—this Divinity now lives in us!

However, what was thus being prepared could not have become conscious experience if the inward Divinity had not spoken in advance in the dawning of conscience. So we see that external understanding for the Divinity of Christ Jesus was born in the East, and the emergence of conscience came to meet it from the West. For example, we find that conscience is more and more often spoken of in the Roman world, at the beginning of the Christian era, and the further westward we go, the clearer is the evidence for the recognised existence of conscience or for its presence in embryonic form.

Thus East and West played into each other's hands. We see the sun of the Christ-nature rising in the East, while in the West the development of conscience is preparing the way for understanding the Christ. Hence the victorious advance of Christianity is towards the West, not the East. In the East we see the spread of a religion which represents the final consequence—though on the highest level—of the eastern outlook: Buddhism takes hold of the eastern world. Christianity takes hold of the western world, because Christianity had first created the organ for receiving it. Here we see Christianity brought into relation with the deepened element in western culture: the concept of conscience embodied in Christianity.

Not through the study of external history, but only through an inward contemplation of the facts, shall we come to knowledge of these developments. What I am saying today will be met with disbelief by many people. But a demand of the times is that we should recognise the spirit in external phenomena. This, however, is possible only if we are at least able initially to discern the spirit where it speaks to us in the form of a clear message. Popular consciousness says: When conscience speaks, it is God speaking in the soul. The highest spiritual consciousness says that when conscience speaks, it is truly the cosmic Spirit speaking. And spiritual science brings out the connection between conscience and the greatest event in the evolution of mankind, the Christ-Event. Hence it is not surprising that conscience has thereby been ennobled and raised to a higher sphere. When we hear that something has been done for reasons of conscience, we feel that conscience is regarded as one of the most important possessions of mankind.

Thus we can see how natural and right it is for the human heart to speak of conscience as “God in man”. And when Goethe says that the highest experience for man is when “God-Nature reveals itself to him”, we must realise that God can reveal himself in the spirit to man only if Nature is seen in the light of its spiritual background. This has been provided for in human evolution, on the one hand by the light of Christ, shining from outside, and on the other by the divine light within us: the light of conscience. Hence a philosopher such as Fichte, who studies human character, is justified in saying that conscience is the highest voice in our inward life. On this account, also, we are aware that our dignity as human beings is inseparable from conscience. We are human beings because we have an ego-consciousness; and the conscience we have at our side is also at the side of our ego. Thus we look on conscience as a most sacred individual possession, inviolable by the external world, whose voice enables us to determine our direction and our goal. When conscience speaks, no other voice may intrude.

So it is that on one side conscience ensures our connection with the primordial power of the world and on the other guarantees the fact that in our inmost self we have something like a drop flowing from the Godhead. And man can know: When conscience speaks in him, it is a God speaking.

• 49. Held by his teacher and friend Karl Julius Schröer, 1825–1900. Cf. also Rudolf Steiner's remarks in the lecture of 29th October 1914 in Berlin, in: Aus schicksaltragender Zeit, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland. (GA 64)
• 50. See notes 14 and 13.
• 51. See J.G. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen, 1800, Book 3: Glaube.
• 52. Bartholomew Carnieri, 1821–1909. Cf. his characterisation of conscience in the introduction to Der moderne Mensch. Versuch einer Lebensführung, Stuttgart, 1904.
• 53. Paul Ree, 1849–1901. Die Entstehung des Gewissens, Berlin, 1885.
• 54. Socrates, 470–399 B.C.
• 55. Plato, 427–347 B.C.
• 56. Aeschylus, 525–456 B.C., in his Oresteia trilogy.
• 57. >Euripides, c. 480–406 B.C., deals with this subject in Electra and in Orestes.<
• 58. See note 4.

That Buddhism and the teaching of Buddha should frequently be discussed to-day, is a fact of special interest in the study of human evolution; for an understanding of the essential nature of Buddhism—or rather the longing for such an understanding—has only made itself felt comparatively recently in the spiritual life of the West. Think for a moment of Goethe, who so powerfully influenced Western culture at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When we examine Goethe's life and writings we find no trace of the influence of Buddhism; yet shortly afterwards there are distinct traces of Buddhist influence in one who was in a certain sense a disciple of Goethe—I refer to Schopenhauer. Since his time, interest in the spiritual life of the East has steadily increased, until in our age many people feel an inherent desire to understand what really entered human evolution through all that is connected with the name of the great Buddha.

It is true that most people connect Buddhism, among other things, with the idea of reincarnation. Yet with regard to its essentials one cannot do so—at all events in the form in which this truth is now often conceived. For to those who have deeper insight, this linking up of Buddhism with the teachings of repeated earthly lives is almost tantamount to saying that the deepest understanding of ancient works of art is to be found among those peoples who set about destroying them at the beginning of the Middle Ages! Grotesque as this may sound, it is nevertheless true, and its truth is brought home to us by the realisation that the whole mood of Buddhism is to undervalue earthly lives, indeed its aim is rather to reduce their number. Liberation from rebirth—this is the innermost nerve of Buddhist thought. To be freed from repeated earthly lives—reincarnation being of course an already recognised truth—is the essence of Buddhism.

Even a superficial study of the history of Western spiritual life should tell us that the idea of reincarnation is not really essential to the understanding of Buddhism—and vice versa. For within our Western culture we find that Lessing had a magnificent conception of the idea of reincarnation and yet was quite uninfluenced by Buddhistic thought. His most mature work The Education of the Human Race concludes with a confession of belief in repeated earthly lives. “Is not all Eternity mine?” he exclaims, feeling that man's sojourn on earth may become fruitful if earthly lives are repeated. We are not on this earth for nothing. We are active in earthly life and we may look forward to an ever fuller life wherein the fruits of past lives may ripen. The prospect of a rich and greater future, the consciousness of continuous activity—these are the essentials of Lessing's thought. On the other hand, the essence of Buddhism is that it urges man to strive for such knowledge and wisdom as will free him from all desire for rebirth. Only when in one such earthly life he can liberate himself from this necessity—only then will he enter the state that may be called “Eternity.”

I have endeavoured to show you in the course of these lectures that Spiritual Science has taken the idea of reincarnation neither from ancient tradition, nor from Buddhism, for the idea of reincarnation arises of necessity from an unprejudiced observation of life in the sense of Spiritual Science. It would therefore seem superficial to connect Buddhism directly with the idea of repeated earthly lives, for to understand the essence of Buddhism we must turn our gaze in quite another direction. Here I must again remind you of the law of human evolution which we considered in connection with the great Zarathustra. [See Anthroposophy, Easter, 1927.]

In the course of the ages the whole constitution of man's soul has passed through different stages and conditions. The events of which outer history and outer documents tell are really a comparatively late phase in the evolution of mankind, and when with the help of Spiritual Science we go back to prehistoric ages, we find that the nature of the soul and of man's consciousness in those early times was very different indeed from what it is to-day. Let me briefly recapitulate.

In normal human life to-day we examine objects with our senses and form chains of thought with our practical wisdom and science (in effect our essentially intellectual consciousness), which has developed from quite a different kind of consciousness. In the chaotic medley of the dream we have a last remnant—an atavistic heritage—of clairvoyant faculties that were normal in the soul of prehistoric man. In those early times the nature of the soul was such that in a condition midway between waking and sleeping, man gazed into all that lies hidden behind the world of sense. Our consciousness to-day alternates between the waking and sleeping states and we think of “intelligence” in connection with waking life only, but in more ancient days pictures continually arose and passed away before the soul of man. These pictures were not as void of meaning as are our dream pictures to-day but were related to super-sensible events. Out of the condition of consciousness arising from these flowing pictures, our present so-called intellectual consciousness gradually evolved. A kind of primeval clairvoyance preceded the gradual development of our modern consciousness. Prehistoric man, gazing into the super-sensible worlds with this dreamlike clairvoyance, not only acquired knowledge but experienced a deep inner satisfaction and bliss as he felt the connection of his soul with a spiritual world. In his intellectual consciousness to-day man knows with certainty that his blood is composed of substances which also exist externally in physical space, indeed that his whole organism is built up materially. With equal certainty, prehistoric man knew that, so far as his soul and Spirit were concerned, he had come forth from the spiritual world into which he gazed with his clairvoyant consciousness.

I have said before, that certain phenomena in human history, of which external facts also speak, can only be understood if this spiritual origin of man's earthly life is admitted. Even science is less inclined to agree with the assumption of materialistic anthropology, that in prehistoric ages the general condition of humanity was such as we find still existing among the most primitive peoples to-day. It is becoming more and more evident that sublime conceptions of a spiritual world were current among ancient peoples, though clothed in pictorial forms. Myths and legends are only intelligible if we trace them back to a primal wisdom which was altogether different in its nature from the intellectual science of to-day. True, there is not much sympathy as yet with the view that primitive peoples to-day are not typical of the original spirituality of man but represent the decadence of an earlier time. Neither is it generally admitted that originally all peoples possessed a lofty wisdom, derived from clairvoyant powers. But facts will in time compel thinking people to admit, hypothetically at all events, some of the truths investigated by Spiritual Science and fully corroborated by Natural Science. What Spiritual Science has to say about the future evolution of man will also one day be verified. Thus we must look back, not only to a kind of primeval wisdom, but also to primeval feelings and perceptions in man whose clairvoyant powers gave him knowledge of his connection with the spiritual world.

Now it is easy to understand the possibility of two streams arising in the gradual transition from this ancient clairvoyance of the human soul to our modern intellectual mode of observing the material world. The one stream can be traced among peoples in whom the memories and instincts were preserved, and who felt that through his clairvoyant perception, man was once united with the spiritual world but has descended into the world of the senses. This feeling gradually extended into a general attitude of soul, till it could be said: “We have entered the phenomenal world but this world is maya, illusion.” Only when he was linked with the spiritual world could man know his true being. And so among those peoples who had preserved this dim remembrance of ancient clairvoyant powers, there arose a sense of loss, and a certain indifference to their material environment and all that can be apprehended by the intellect.

On the other hand there is a second current, of which the religion of Zarathustra is typical.—“We must adapt ourselves to the new world which now enters our consciousness for the first time.” These men did not look back with regret to something that man had lost. On the contrary, they felt impelled to seek and acquire all the powers that would enable them to penetrate and understand the surrounding world of sense. The urge arose within them to unite themselves with the world, not to look back with regret, but to look forwards, to be warriors. “The same Divine-Spiritual essence of which we were once a part is also poured into the world immediately surrounding us. It is in this surrounding world that we must seek it. Ours [is] the task to unite with the good spiritual elements and so help forward the evolution of the world!” This conception is typical of the stream of thought which had its rise in Asiatic regions lying north of the lands where men looked back with sorrow to what man had once possessed.

In India arose a spiritual life which was the natural fruit of this backward-turning gaze to men's former union with the spiritual world. Consider the Sankhya philosophy or the Yoga system and discipline. It was the constant endeavour of the ancient Indian to rediscover his connection with the spiritual world whence he had come forth; he tried to disregard all that surrounded him in the world, to free himself from the links binding him to the world of the senses and by eliminating this world to find again the spiritual realms whence he had descended. Reunion with the world of Spirit, release from the world of sense—this is Yoga.

Only when we see these principles as the fundamental tendencies of Indian spiritual life can we understand the mighty impulse of the Buddha as it flamed up in a last gleam across the evening skies of Indian spiritual life a few centuries before the Christ Impulse was destined to dominate Western thought. We can only understand the figure of Buddha when we contemplate him in this setting. On the soil of India it was possible for a mode of thought and consciousness to arise which gazed at a world in the throes of decline, of a descent from Spirit into maya—the great “Illusion.” It is also natural that as the Indian looked at the external world with which human life is so closely interwoven, he should have evolved the idea that this descent from Spirit into the world of maya had proceeded stage by stage, as it were, passing from epoch to epoch. We can now understand the deeply devotional mood of Indian culture—albeit a culture representing the glow of sunset—and how the concept of Buddhahood there finds a natural place. The Indian looked back to an age when man was united with the spiritual world; he then descended to a certain level, rose once more and again sank, rose, sank—but in such a way that each descent was deeper than the last.

According to ancient Indian wisdom, a Buddha arises whenever an epoch of decline draws to its close. The last of the Buddhas—Gautama Buddha—was the Being who incarnated as the son of King Suddhodana. The Indian, therefore, looked back to former Buddhas, of whom five had already appeared during the time of man's gradual descent from the spiritual world, and who, coming again and again into the world of men could bring them something of that primordial wisdom whereby they could be sustained in earthly life and not utterly lost in maya. In his descending path of evolution man loses hold of this wisdom and when it is lost, a new Buddha appears. Of these, Gautama Buddha was the last.

In the course of many earthly lives such a being as a Buddha must previously have reached the level of a Bodhisattva before he can attain to Buddhahood. According to Eastern Wisdom, Gautama Buddha was first a Bodhisattva, and as such was born into the royal house of Suddhodana. By dint of inner effort he attained, in his twenty-ninth year, the illumination symbolically described as “sitting under the Bodhi tree.” The wisdom arising from this could then be revealed in the great Sermon of Benares. In his twenty-ninth year, this Bodhisattva rose to the dignity of Buddhahood and was then able, as Buddha, to bring again to mankind a last remnant of the Ancient Wisdom. And when in the following centuries man again sinks so low that the last remnant of the wisdom brought by Buddha disappears, another Bodhisattva, Maitreya Buddha, who, according to Eastern Wisdom, is expected to appear in the future, will rise to the dignity of Buddhahood.

Legends tell us of all that was enacted in the soul of the last Bodhisattva who was to become Gautama Buddha. Up to his twenty-ninth year he had known only the surroundings of his royal home. Human misery and suffering—all life's sorrows—were hidden from him. He grew up seeing only the joys of life. But the Bodhisattvic consciousness was ever present—a consciousness teeming with the inner wisdom of former earthly lives. The legend is well-known and we need only consider the main details. We read how Gautama left the royal Palace and saw something he had never seen before—a corpse. At the sight of the corpse he realised that death consumes life, that the element of death enters life with its fruitfulness and power of increase. He saw a sick man—disease eats its way into health. He saw an old man tottering wearily along his way—age creeps into the freshness of youth.

We must of course realise that he who was to become Buddha passed through all these experiences with Bodhisattvic consciousness. Thus he learned that the destructive element of existence has its place in the wisdom-filled process of “being and becoming,” but so deeply was his soul affected that he cried out—so the legend runs—“Life is full of suffering!” Let us try to enter into the soul of Gautama the Bodhisattva. He possessed mighty wisdom, although he was not as yet fully conscious of this wisdom. In his earlier years he had seen only the fruitfulness of life. Then his eyes fell on the image of destruction, of corruption, and within his soul the feeling arose that all attainment of knowledge and wisdom leads man to increasing life. His soul is then filled with the idea of “Becoming”—a process of perpetual fruitfulness. The idea of fruitful growth proceeds from wisdom. Gazing into the world, what do we behold? Forces of destruction, sickness, old age, death. Knowledge and wisdom cannot surely have brought old age, sickness and death into the world. Something else must have been their cause! And so the great Gautama felt—because he was not yet fully conscious of his Bodhisattvic wisdom—that man may be filled with wisdom and through this wisdom be filled with ever-fruitful forces of growth, but life reveals decay, sickness, death and many other destructive elements. Here was a mystery unfathomable even to the Bodhisattva. He had passed through many lives, through incarnation after incarnation had accumulated an ever-increasing store of wisdom, until he had reached a point whence he could survey life from the very heights of existence. Yet when he left the palace, and life in its grim realities stood before him, the meaning of it all did not wholly penetrate his consciousness. The accumulated knowledge and wisdom of earthly lives cannot, in effect, lead to the solution of the ultimate mysteries of existence, for these mysteries lie hidden beyond the region of the life that passes from incarnation to incarnation.

This conception, quickening in the soul of the great Gautama, led him finally to full illumination “under the Bodhi tree.” We may express the results of his wakened consciousness as follows: “We are living in a world of illusion. Life after life we live in this world of maya whither we have passed from a spiritual existence. In this life we may rise in Spirit to infinite merit—yet the wisdom of innumerable lives will never solve the great riddles of old age, of sickness, death.” He then realised that the doctrine of suffering was greater than the wisdom of a Bodhisattva. In his illumination he knew that all that is spread abroad in the world of illusion is not true wisdom, for even after countless births, outer existence gives us no understanding of suffering, nor can we release ourselves from pain. Outer existence contains something that is far removed from true wisdom. And so it came about that the Buddha saw an element void of wisdom as the cause of old age, sickness and death. The wisdom of this world could never bring liberation; liberation could only proceed from something this world cannot give. Man must withdraw from outer existence and from his repeated births.

From this moment onwards Buddha saw that the doctrine of suffering was the principle necessary for the further progress of humanity. Devoid of wisdom was the “thirst for existence,” which seemed to him the cause of the suffering that had entered into the world. Wisdom on the one hand, a meaningless thirst for existence on the other. And so he realised: “Only when Man is liberated from the wheel of births can he be led to true redemption, to true freedom, for of itself the highest earthly wisdom cannot save him from suffering.” Buddha then sought the means whereby man could be led away from the scene of his successive births to a world which we must learn to understand aright, for many fantastic and grotesque ideas have arisen as to the meaning of “Nirvana.” One who has reached a point in life where there is no more a thirst for existence and no desire for rebirth, passes into Nirvana. What is the nature of this world?

According to Buddhism, the world of redemption and bliss eludes all descriptions derived from the world sense and space man knows in earthly life. Nothing in the physical world of space points to liberation. All the words man uses to describe the world around him must be silenced; they do not and cannot apply to the world of bliss. It is absolutely impossible to form an idea of the realm entered by one who has been liberated from the necessity for re-birth, for since it has no resemblance to anything in the objective world, it can only be characterised by a negative term—Nirvana. A man enters Nirvana only when everything that connects him with earthly existence has been blotted out.

Yet for the Buddhist, Nirvana is no empty void. Rather is it a life of bliss no words can describe. Here we have the root-nerve of Buddhism and an expression of its pervading mood. From the Sermon of Benares where it was taught for the first time, this doctrine of the suffering of life, of suffering and its cause in the “thirst for existence” permeates all that we know of Buddhism. One thing alone can lead to human progress, and that is redemption from rebirth. And the first step is the following of a path of knowledge which leads beyond earthly wisdom. Treading this path a man will find the means gradually to reach and enter Nirvana. In other words, he may learn so to use his earthly incarnations that he is finally freed from their necessity.

Turning now from this somewhat abstract conception of Buddhism to its fundamentals, we find that such an attitude towards life tends to “isolate” man; it raises the question of the aims and destiny of his life as an individual personality in the world. How could it be otherwise in a conception of the world built upon such a foundation? It was believed that man had descended from spiritual heights to find himself in a world of maya from which the wisdom of a Buddha now and again can rescue him, as the last Buddha had taught. Such a conception of the goal of all human striving could be characterised in no other way than as an isolating of man from his whole environment, for his earthly embodiments followed a descending path in a descending earthly order. How did Buddha himself seek illumination? Unless we consider this, we shall never understand Buddha himself, or Buddhism. He sought illumination, as we know, in complete isolation. He went out from his father's palace into solitude. All knowledge gained from previous lives must be silenced in a life of solitude, where he must seek an inner illumination of the soul which shall reveal the mystery of the suffering world. In isolation the Buddha awaits the enlightenment which reveals: The cause of suffering inheres in the thirst for existence and rebirth which burns in every individual soul. The world too thirsts for existence and this is the cause of all the suffering and all the destructive elements in life.

Now we cannot understand the essential nature of Buddha's illumination and teaching unless we compare it with Christianity. Six hundred years after the appearance of the great Buddha, quite different conditions are present. Man's whole attitude to the world and to his environment has changed. How has it changed? Oriental thought contemplates one “Buddha-epoch” after another. “History” is not a process of descent from a higher to a lower level; rather is it an effort to attain a definite goal, a possibility of union with the whole world, with the past, and with the future. Such is the oriental conception of history. But the Buddhist stands there isolated and alone and is concerned only with his individual life. In his individual existence he strives for liberation from the thirst for existence and hence from the cycles of his births.

Six hundred years later, the Christian has quite a different attitude. Putting aside prejudices now widely spread in the world, we may describe the Christian conception as follows. In so far as the Christian conception is based on the Old Testament, it points to a primal humanity when man's relationship to the spiritual world was not at all the same as in later times. We read of this in the mighty pictures of the Book of Genesis. The attitude of the Christian to the world is very different from that of the Buddhist. The Christian says: “Wisdom lives within my soul and this wisdom arises from the very nature of the soul. Wisdom, knowledge and morality—all these arise within me as a result of the way in which I observe the world of sense and co-ordinate my impressions by means of my reasoning faculties.” But in an older age the constitution of the human soul was altogether different. Something happened then which cannot merely be called, in the Buddhistic sense, a descent from Divine-Spiritual heights into a world of maya, but must be spoken of as the “Fall of man.” The Fall is bound up with the whole of human existence. Man feels that there are forces within him which had their origin in a far-off past and were part of a process which caused the human being not merely to “descend” but to descend in such a way that his relationship to the world was completely changed. If the conditions obtaining before this event had prevailed, man would have been a different being to-day. The Fall was due to man's own sin, even though he sinned unconsciously.

Thus in Christianity we are concerned not merely with the direct descent of which the Buddhist thought but, with an altered state of things in which the factor of temptation plays an essential part. The Christian who pierces the surface of Christianity into its depths must say that because of an event which happened untold ages ago, the subconscious workings of his soul are different from what they were designed to be. The Buddhist says:—“From a state of union with the Divine-Spiritual world, I have been transported into this world of maya and illusion;” the Christian:—“I have descended into this world. If I had descended in the original state of my soul I should everywhere be able to look behind the illusion of physical ‘appearances’ into reality and find the truth. But since another factor has entered into the process of descent I myself have turned this world into illusion.” The two modes of thought are very different. The Buddhist asks why this world is illusion and is taught that illusion is its very nature. The Christian asks the same question but realises: “The fault is mine! My powers of cognition and the state of my soul no longer enable me to see the original reality. My actions are not fruitful. I myself have drawn a veil of illusion over the world.” The Buddhist says that the world is in itself the Great Illusion, therefore he must overcome the world, but the Christian feels himself in the world, and in the world he must seek his goal.

When the Christian realises that Spiritual Science can lead him to the knowledge of successive earthly lives, he can resolve to use them as a means whereby the goal of life may be attained. He knows the world to be full of sorrow and error, because man himself has wandered so far from his primal state that his vision and his actions have changed the world around him into maya. Yet he need not alienate himself from this world in order to enter into blessedness. Rather must he overcome the forces which make him see the world as illusion and thus be led back to his true original nature. There is a higher man. If this higher man could look upon the world, he would see it in its reality; he would not pass through an existence of sickness and death but a life of health, full of the freshness of youth. A veil has been drawn before this inner man because humanity took part in a certain event in the evolution of the world. Man is not an isolated entity, an individual, nor is thirst for existence responsible for his present state. He is indeed one with all humanity and shared in the original sin of the whole human race.

And so the Christian feels himself bound up with the whole historical course of humanity, realising as he gazes into the future that he must find once more that higher nature which man's process of descent has veiled. He says: “I must seek, not Nirvana, but the higher man within me. I must find the way back to my Self. Then will the surrounding world no longer be illusion but reality—a world in which I am able to overcome sorrow, sickness and death by my own efforts.” The Buddhist seeks liberation from the world and from rebirths by overcoming the thirst for existence. The Christian seeks liberation from the lower man, seeks to awaken the higher man within, whom he himself has veiled, in order that he may behold the world in its truth. How great a contrast lies here between the wisdom of Buddha and Paul's words: “Not I, but Christ in me!”—words which express a consciousness that places man in the world as an individuality! The Buddhist says: “Man has descended from spiritual heights because the world has urged him downwards; therefore a world that has implanted in him the thirst for existence must be overcome. He must leave this world!” But the Christian says: “It is not the fault of the world that I am as I am. Mine is the fault!” The Christian stands in the world acknowledging that beneath his ordinary consciousness a power is at work which once gave him a clairvoyant picture-consciousness. Man “sinned” and lost this spiritual vision. For this he must make amends if he would reach his goal. In later life a man does not feel it unjust that he should suffer from the faults of youthful actions committed in a different consciousness. Equally, he should not feel it an injustice that he should atone in his present state for an act arising out of an earlier consciousness. This former consciousness he no longer possesses, for his intellect and reason have usurped its place. Atonement is only possible when the will arises in man to press forwards with his present Ego-consciousness, to that higher state described in Paul's words: “Not I, but Christ in me!” The Christian should say: “I have descended into conditions other than those ordained for me from the beginning. I must re-ascend—not with the help of the Ego I now possess but through a power which can live within me and lead me beyond my human Ego. This I can only do if Christ works in me, leading me to behold the world in its reality and not in illusion. The forces which have brought illness and death into the world can be overcome by what Christ fulfils in me.”

The innermost heart of Buddhism only reveals itself when we compare it with Christianity. Then we realise the words of Lessing in his Education of the Human Race: “Is not all Eternity mine?” That is to say: If I use the opportunities of successive embodiments to bring the Christ Power to life within me, I shall reach at last the sphere of the Eternal. This has hitherto eluded me because I have covered myself with a veil.

Reincarnation shines with a new radiance in the sunlight of Christianity and will indeed in the future penetrate Christian culture more and more deeply as an occult truth. This however is not the point at issue. The point is that the essential attitude of Buddhism makes the world responsible for maya or illusion, while the Christian holds himself, as man, responsible—knowing that the path to “redemption” lies in his own innermost being. In the Christian sense, redemption is also a “resurrection” because the Ego is raised to a higher Ego whence it has descended. The Buddhist believes in the “original sin” of the world and seeks liberation from the world. The Christian's conception is an historical one, for human life is seen as linked both with an event of a prehistoric past and with a future event through which he may reach a point where his whole life will be illuminated by the Being of Christ.

Thus Christianity does not point to successive Buddhas, recapitulating more or less the same truths through the successive epochs, but to a unique event occurring in the course of human evolution. While the Buddhist pictures his Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree, rising to enlightenment as an isolated individual, the Christian looks to Jesus of Nazareth, into whom the Spirit of the Cosmos descended. The enlightenment of the Buddha under the Bodhi tree—the Baptism by John in Jordan—these two pictures stand clearly before us. Buddha sits under the Bodhi tree in the solitude of the soul. Jesus of Nazareth stands in the waters of Jordan and the very Spirit of the Cosmos descends into his inner being—the Spirit in the image of the Dove.

The Buddha deed contained for his followers the message: “Quench the thirst for existence; tear thyself away from earthly existence and follow Buddha to realms which no earthly words can describe!” The Christian realises that from the Deed of Christ flows redemption from the original sin of man, and he feels: If the influx of the spiritual world behind the physical grows as strong within me as it was in Christ Himself, I shall carry into my future incarnations a force that will enable me to cry with St. Paul, “Not I, but Christ in me!” And so I shall rise to the spiritual world whence I descended.

Deeply moving in this light are the words of Buddha to his intimate disciples: “Page after page I look back upon my former lives as upon an open book; I see how in life after life I built a material body wherein my Spirit dwelt as in a temple. Now I know that this body in which I have become Buddha, is the last.” And referring to Nirvana, whither he was to pass, he said: “The beams are breaking, the posts are giving way; the material body has been built for the last time and will now be wholly destroyed.” Compare these words with an utterance of the Christ recorded in the Gospel of St. John. Christ indicates that He is living in an outer body: “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will build it up again.” Here we have exactly the opposite conception, for it can be thus interpreted: “I shall accomplish a deed that will make fruitful and living all that from God—from primeval humanity—flows into this world and into us.” These words indicate that the Christian, through repeated earthly lives, comes to cry in truth, “Not I, but Christ in me!” We must however understand that the re-building of this Temple has an eternal significance in that it points to the in-pouring of the Christ Power into all who share in the collective evolution of mankind. There can be no repetition of the Christ Event in the course of evolution. The true Buddhist assumes a repetition of earthly epochs, a succession of Buddhas having each a fundamentally similar mission, but the Christian looks back to the Fall of Man and must point also to a further and unique event—the Mystery of Golgotha and man's redemption from the Fall.

There have been times in the past, and indeed in our own days, when men have looked for a renewal of the Christ Event; but such an expectation can only arise from a misunderstanding of the basic facts of man's historical progress. True history must take its start and pursue its course from a central point. Just as there must be one equilibrating point on a pair of scales, so in “history” there must be one event to which both the past and the future point. To imagine that the Christ Event could be repeated is as meaningless as to suppose there could be two focal points in a balance. Eastern wisdom speaks of a succession of similar individualities, the Buddhas, and herein lies the difference between the Eastern and the Western conceptions of the universe, for the Christ Impulse is a unique event and to deny this is to deny an historical progress in evolution—that is, to have a false idea of history.

The consciousness that the individual is indissolubly bound up with humanity as a whole, that not mere repetition but a great purpose rules throughout the course of evolution is Christian in the deepest sense and cannot be separated from Christianity. Human progress inheres in the fact that an older Eastern conception has evolved into a new one. Man has advanced from thinking that the wheels of world-events roll on in an endless repetition to the belief that there is meaning and an onward-flowing significance in the changing events of human existence.

Thus Christianity first gives reality to the doctrine of repeated earthly lives. For now we say that man passes through repeated lives on earth in order that the true meaning of human life may again and again be implanted in him, each time as a fresh experience. Not only the isolated individual strives upwards, for a yet deeper meaning lies in the striving of humanity as a whole, and we ourselves are bound up with this humanity. No longer feeling himself united with a Buddha who urges liberation from the world, man, gazing at the central spiritual Sun, at the Christ Impulse, grows conscious of his union with One Whose Deed has balanced the event symbolised in the “Fall.”

Buddhism can be best described as the sunset of a mode of thought that was nearing its decline but flamed into a mighty afterglow when Gautama Buddha appeared. This is not to honour the Buddha less; we revere him as the great Spirit who once brought to man a teaching pointing to the past, and the sense of union with a primeval wisdom. The Christ Impulse points with the hand of power to the future, and must live with ever increasing strength in the soul till man realises that not redemption but resurrection—the “transfiguration” of material existence can alone give meaning to man's earthly life.

Concepts or dogmas are not the only driving forces in life, though many may feel more drawn to Buddhism than to Christianity. Rather are the essentials such impulses, perceptions and feelings as give meaning to human evolution. There is indeed something of a Buddha-mood to-day in many souls, drawing them towards Buddhism. Goethe could not feel this mood, for through his recognition that the Spirit which is the source of the human Spirit permeates also all external things, he could greatly love life. During his first stay in Weimar, freeing himself from all narrowness and prejudice, he closely studied the outer world. He passed from plant to plant, from mineral to mineral, seeking behind all these that Spirit whence the Spirit of man descends, and with this all-pervading Spirit he sought to unite himself. Goethe once said to his pupil Schopenhauer: “All your splendid conceptions will be at war with themselves directly they pass into other minds.” Schopenhauer's motto can be expressed in his own words: “Life is full of perplexity. I try to make it easier by contemplation.” Trying to find an explanation of the origin of existence he turned naturally to Buddhism, and his ideas assumed a Buddhistic colouring.

In the course of the nineteenth century the different branches of culture yielded such great and mighty results that the human mind did not feel able to assimilate the mass of scientific achievements pouring in from external research. The sense of helplessness grew greater and greater before the overwhelming mass of scientific facts. True, this world of facts tallies in a wonderful way with Spiritual Science, but we see at the same time that thought in the nineteenth century was not equal to coping with it. Man began to realise that his faculties of knowledge could not assimilate all the facts nor could his mind gauge them. And so he began to seek a philosophy or a world-conception that did not attempt to wrestle with all the facts of the outer world. In contrast to this, Spiritual Science takes its start from the deepest principles and experiences of spiritual knowledge; it is able to compass and elaborate all the facts brought to light by outer science and to show how the Spirit lives in outer reality. Now many people do not like this, So far at least as knowledge is concerned, they draw back from the investigation of the world of facts and strive to reach a higher stage merely in the inner being, by a development of soul. This has led to an “unconscious Buddhism” which has been in existence for some time now. We can find traces of it in the philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When such people—and they are really unconscious Buddhists—come into contact with Buddhism, their longing for ease makes them feel more readily drawn to this mode of thought than to Spiritual Science. For Spiritual Science deals with the whole mass of facts, with the knowledge that Spirit manifests in them all.

It is really, therefore, an element of unbelief and paralysis of will, born of a feebleness of spiritual knowledge, that awakens the attraction to Buddhism to-day. Whereas the Christian conception of the universe—as it lived in Goethe, for instance—demands that man should not give way to his own weakness and speak of “boundaries of knowledge,” but rather feel that something within him can rise above all illusion and lead to truth and freedom. True, a certain amount of resignation is demanded here, but not the resignation which shrinks back before “boundaries of knowledge.” In the Kantian sense resignation means that man is altogether unable to penetrate the depths of the universe. This is a resignation born of weakness, but there is another kind whereby man can say with Goethe: “I have not yet reached the stage where the world can be known in its truth, yet I can evolve to it.” This resignation leads him to the stage where he can bring to birth the “higher man”—the Christ-man. He is resigned because he knows that for the moment he has not reached this highest level of human life. This indeed is a “heroic” resignation, for it says: “We pass from life to life with the feeling that we exist, and we know as we look towards the future that in the repetition of earthly existence all Eternity is ours.”

And so two great streams of thought can be seen in human evolution. The one is represented by Schopenhauer who says: “This world with all its suffering is such that we can only know man's real position through the works of great painters. They portray figures whose asceticism brought something like freedom from earthly existence, who are already lifted above terrestrial life.” According to Schopenhauer, the greatness of this liberated human being consists in the fact that he is able to look back upon his earthly existence and feel: This bodily covering is now nothing but an empty shell and has no significance for me. I strive upwards, in anticipation of the state I shall attain when earthly existence has been conquered and I have overcome all that is connected with it. Herein is the great liberation—when nothing remains to remind me in the future of my earthly existence. Such was Schopenhauer's conception, permeated as he was with the mood Buddhism had brought into the world. Goethe, stimulated by a purely Christian impulse, looks out upon the world as Faust looks out upon it. And if we in our time rise above external trivialities, though realising that our works will perish when the earth has become a corpse—we too can say with Goethe: We learn from our experiences on earth; what we build on earth must perish, but what we acquire in the school of life does not perish. Like Faust, we look not upon the permanency of our works but upon their fruits in the eternity of the soul, and gazing at horizons wider than those of Buddhism, we can say with Goethe: “Aeons cannot obliterate the traces of any man's days on earth.”—

“Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdentagen
Nicht in Aeonen untergehen!”

Before I move on to the actual topic, please allow me to just note that in today's lecture all sorts of things have to be said for which even the scientific justification cannot be presented today, for the reason that in the last lecture here weeks ago, the dispute between anthroposophy and science was attempted in such a way that the anthroposophy I mean here neither shies away from this dispute nor wants to oppose the scientific methods of the present day. But still, since I assume that a large part of the audience who were present at the time have already heard the things, I may refrain from repeating them today.

Now, when we speak of the great mysteries that confront the human soul when it looks to the spiritual world or wants to feel something, the questions that arise cannot, in principle, relate to the fact that at any given moment a person might doubt that he is dealing with spiritual beings in his own life. Indeed, one could almost say that questions about the nature of the spiritual world arise precisely because the human being knows that, by engaging with the world, he is dealing with the activity of that which is spirit in him. But on the other hand, he cannot get to grips with the question: What is the nature of this spiritual that he himself is dealing with? Actually, all questions relating to the spiritual world must ultimately come down to this: What is the nature of the spiritual that we know well? It is precisely the fate of that which we know well that is at stake in these riddle-like questions of existence. Even those who seriously, not merely out of coquetry, deny the spirit, they only deny that what they regard as spirit has an independent significance in relation to material existence. So their denial refers to the essence of the spiritual, not to the spiritual itself.

But why, since man does possess a spirit, does he encounter difficulties in this area? That is the question that actually arises more or less unconsciously in the human soul. Special people experience these questions consciously, the majority unconsciously, but one cannot say that they experience them any less meaningfully for the soul's mood and disposition. They also experience that these questions take place in the depths of the soul's life and play their way up into the daily state of mind through all kinds of states of happiness or suffering, so that one can indeed say that a person is more or less suitable or unsuitable for himself and the world, depending on how he comes to terms with such fundamental questions of existence.

Now, one could cite much that leads a person to ask these questions. From the whole abundance of that which torments, fills with doubt and the like in the human soul, I want to emphasize something that can illustrate how such riddle-questions, as they are meant here, present themselves to the human being.

We see every day, when we pass from the waking state into sleep, we see that which we carry within us in the waking state as our surging, fulfilling spiritual life, we see it sink down into the sphere of unconsciousness. And we feel, consciously or unconsciously, we feel in this descent of our conscious spiritual life into the unconscious the powerlessness of that which we actually consciously carry within us as our daily, cognizing spiritual life from waking to sleeping. And even if we only feel it, this feeling becomes the soul mood for what can be experienced when that which is most valuable in life, our conscious mental life, descends into the unconscious state. And we then ask ourselves: Does this spiritual life, for the sake of which we actually want to be human, also have to somehow descend into that fate, without it being connected with an inherent, supporting, sustaining, as we say, eternal existence?

That is one side of the question, which is so meaningful and powerful. But this question also exists in contrast. We wake up, perhaps through the transition of the dream life, which we must, however, see as illusory, compared to what we call reality in ordinary life. We grasp, so to speak, corporeality with our soul; we pass over into that state in which we make use of our body in every moment that develops our healthy bodily life. But even here there is something that seems mysterious to us, for we see that which we actually address as spirit sinking down into the body. We make use of the organs as they appear to us, of our body. But how the spiritual works through our arms and legs, how it works through our senses, how it makes use of the body, is something that initially eludes our ordinary consciousness. And one can say: While one becomes aware of the powerlessness of the spiritual through the moment of falling asleep, one can become aware upon waking up of how that which we call spiritual sinks into a kind of unknown world. We do not know how that which we would like to address as spiritual plunges into our physical organism. Fainting on the one hand, and sinking into darkness on the other, are the two poles that arise as such deeply heart-wrenching riddles of man, but which man cannot avoid.

And how does humanity as a whole stand today, in that it perceives these questions as the real riddles of existence? One might say that two things arise for the spiritual world, to which man seeks a relationship for the reasons already mentioned, two things arise precisely for the man of the present day. One is filled with illusions about the spiritual world, the other is filled with pains and torments whose origin remains unfathomable. One is superstition, the other is doubt. Those who have not yet familiarized themselves with the great results of the modern scientific world view, those who have not yet been touched by the conscientious method used by one part of the world, fall into superstition to a greater or lesser extent. They take what comes to them of their own accord or overcomes them from the anthroposophical world view and knowledge, they take that and fill their minds with what can arise in the human interior without it being justified in a faithful, honest way towards themselves. They fill the world, so to speak, with all kinds of thoughts and emotional constructs, and in doing so they feel satisfied in a certain way. But the moment they want to cope with the world, what they have absorbed in this way through superstition shows itself everywhere, coming up against all possible corners of the world. The events and things that confront us from the outside world do not correspond to what we draw from within as illusions. One ends up as a person who is disoriented in this world and unfit for action, because the powers on which he relies fail after all; they are just powers that are born out of his will and desire. This is the situation that the one, less scientifically minded part of humanity encounters in relation to these questions.

The other part of humanity, which has in turn immersed itself in the conscientious, scientific methods of the present day, so that it is able to recognize what significance science has for the overall culture of the present day, has often trained its thinking to seek out connections in the external world of the senses. It has felt how far one can go, which ideals still need to be resolved, for example in the field of natural science. But he has also learned, or at least believes he has learned, that when he engages his thinking with what is presented to him externally through the senses, for which he can find a certain kind of law through thinking, which then satisfies him for the sensory world, then this thinking is no longer sufficient to rise to a spiritual level. The very strength of spirit in modern science leads one too much to despair of the strength of this thinking when it comes to penetrating beyond the sensory realm into the spiritual realm through one's own human research. And so it is that the one who is still sincerely touched by science comes into doubt.

But—dear attendees—just as the superstitious person must become disoriented because their illusions do not prove to be forces for action, the honest person, who doubts with their heart, can no longer cope with themselves. For that which arises out of doubt penetrates deeply into the human mind with such strength that it moves in those ways, which today are still little understood in science, which lead from the human mind, from joy and suffering, of joy and pain, into the health of our nerves, of our entire organic system, that it puts itself into what we have in our minds, and that we, also physically, gradually become weak through doubt. I would like to say: The mental consumption that we have to acquire through doubt continues in the human physical fitness. And so, when doubt gnaws at us, we also become weak in life and, above all, we become shy and recoil from everything that, after all, should turn out to be a necessary relationship with the spiritual world, according to our assumptions or even our healthy sense. This is why a large proportion of those who have experienced these doubts seek a refuge in an area where anthroposophy will certainly not seek them, because it starts from a healthy soul life and seeks to develop higher powers of cognition in the human being through the further development of a healthy soul life, through which he can see into the spiritual world. But those who are often seized by doubt today do not turn to their own healthy nature, which above all needs to be developed; they turn to that which must be regarded as more or less pathological, to visions, to that which often arises in the waking consciousness like dream images. And we can say: all these phenomena are actually ultimately based on a detuning of the human organism.

There is no medium in whom the human organism as a whole is not tuned down, so that precisely because the human organism is not functioning properly, the abnormal spiritual phenomena that are admired in mediums come to light. Even extremely learned people cannot see that there must be an enormous insecurity when one allows oneself to be guided by paths that lead to the pathological for the sake of knowledge. Furthermore, one can also say: All of this must always be based on the fact that something in the human organism is not functioning in the normal way, so that there is always something present in all these ways that can only come before humanity if the human organism itself deviates from the healthy path.

This proves, in principle, how today's human beings will grasp at anything to come to the necessary knowledge of the spiritual world. Anthroposophy, as I mean it here, has to do with a path into the spiritual world — this should be particularly clear from my last lecture — that, above all, starts from a healthy human soul life and body life. Please read up on it. I cannot repeat all of that today, what I have indicated as soul exercises that are to be carried out, suitable for modern man and for the whole of culture, that are to be carried out so that the higher faculties of cognition and will develop from the ordinary soul forces, just as the higher faculties develop from the unconscious forces in the child. Read up on it, you will find all of this in the first preparatory part of my writings, in the part that refers to the fact that everything that is present in the soul and body life of a person in the way of restlessness, rashness, unconsciousness, and so on, and so on, must first be subjected to careful self-discipline. This first part of my books is often said, even by opponents of anthroposophy, to be taken into account, because it gives more or less moral instructions to the simple person who knows nothing about anthroposophy.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it cannot be denied that this is the case, but on the other hand, these efforts are aimed at developing powers of cognition in the healthy human soul, in the whole healthy human being, through which the spiritual world can become visible. And if, proceeding from these views and by means of such powers of knowledge, we look back into the course of human history, we find in this way the means of understanding what the modern soul requires in the sense of anthroposophy in relation to spiritual knowledge.

As I said, since people today often refuse to penetrate into the spiritual world on their own paths, they seek out among the paths already mentioned that which is there in the form of venerable traditions and religious creeds. They accept it, and even carefully select what they accept because it is there, because they were born into it, were raised in it. They accept it and then, to justify themselves a little to themselves, they say: Yes, these things must be based on faith, whereas real science is to be distinguished from faith, but it actually only refers to the external, the sensual. But if one looks not only with an external historical eye, but with the eye that is sharpened by higher, supersensible powers of knowledge — as described in my books and in my last lecture — if one investigates the historical in spiritual life, it presents itself differently than it is seen through today's science. Above all, we see where the world views that people are born into and educated in today actually come from.

Anyone who is able to research this area will find that everything we hold as traditional beliefs today, which has become convincing through its age, was acquired in older epochs of human development through the path of knowledge, not of faith, but through the path of knowledge as it was appropriate for older times. We live in the time that has educated itself to have concepts for what can be considered scientific. And we cannot help but take the view that we take into account what has been incorporated into human spiritual life through modern cultural development.

If we then look back at older spiritual cultures, we see that great and powerful things have emerged from them, but they have emerged through the path of human knowledge. Today, we only have the knowledge that is handed down to our will impulses. We accept them without looking for their sources. But these lie in older insights, and if we communicate with them, we will be able to gain clarity about what anthroposophy can do for today's, for modern man, through the relationship of the spiritual world.

Let us look, for example, at two examples of older knowledge, through the effect of which we can actually find the life into which we are born and educated today in terms of faith. I could pick out other examples from the abundance, but I would like to pick out two characteristic examples that have led people to the old knowledge. I would like to highlight a certain type of ancient, oriental, so-called yoga system, through which people in ancient times tried to strengthen their thought system in such a way that they could not only see the sensory world through the strengthened thought system, but that they could see the spiritual world through it. That is one side of the older insights. We can no longer go there, but by delving into them, one gains an understanding, so to speak, of what modern man needs in this area.

What did the yogi achieve when he did certain exercises that were supposed to lead him to a strengthened thinking? He shared with humanity in general that the inner life was much more soul-filled than our present life. One must only understand what actually lived in the souls of the older human race. They could not help it, but, by observing the outer nature, they added to what they heard in a tone, in their contemplation, what was born in their soul as a spiritual being, and what transformed the whole of nature for them into something that manifested itself spiritually and soulfully everywhere.

The one who lived as the yogi scholar over there in distant Asia was now also in the same situation as general humanity. He was in the same condition as general humanity that I have just described. The man of that time longed to get out if he wanted to gain knowledge, and he longed to get out by wanting to strengthen his thinking.

Now there is a certain method that is regarded by many who understand it as something particularly pernicious, but it goes back to what was quite appropriate for older times, and I would like to describe it in the oldest form in order to make it quite understandable.

The original scholar of yoga, in his quest for knowledge, developed exercises related to human breathing. He performed a breathing process through certain, more or less shorter or longer periods of time, which did not proceed in the same way as the ordinary one. For example, he chose different times for inhaling, holding his breath and exhaling. He thus entered into a completely different kind of breathing rhythm, lived in it and felt so transformed in his thinking powers that he now perceived thinking as a much stronger, much more powerful force than he had felt in everyday life. Through this, he looked into that other world into which he had longed to look. And if we ask ourselves what all this is based on, We can answer: Yes, in ordinary life the breathing process actually takes place in such a way that we do not pay attention to it, that it floats in the unconscious. At most, we become aware of it. Otherwise, it can only enter the human soul life in a semi-conscious or quarter-conscious state. But what lives as unconsciousness for the ordinary consciousness was raised into consciousness by the ancient yoga scholar in such a way that it was modified. He became aware of breathing.

A further consequence of this is that when we draw in our breath, it and its effect permeate our entire organism. What the breathing rhythm is, is thoroughly continued in the brain; what the brain performs is permeated by the breathing process. In our brain activity, we are always dealing with something that is permeated by the inner breathing process, we just do not notice it. Let us learn to look at the musical experience in a psychologically healthy way! I would like to say that the truth would become obvious to us that we are dealing with a thought process that is related to a continuous flow through the organs. The yogi brought to consciousness that which takes place inwardly, but which is a completely unconscious state. Through the different breathing that he practiced, thinking became something completely different for him.

He did not do it in his head, he did not do the thinking according to logical rules alone, but in such a way that it took on a musical character. But this also allows thinking to grasp something completely different than it can grasp with mere logical forms. The old Indian yoga teacher felt through this, his way, how he could enter into another world, which he sought, through such an energization of his bodily organism and thus of the soul-spiritual. But now, what is attained in this way leads one so much back to one's own being, it leads one away from the external, robust world that we as modern people are confronted with, that we as modern people not only must not go this way, but cannot go it either. It leads people so far back into themselves that they must come back to a spiritual hermitage. Such a method of knowledge comes from people who, after all, have separated themselves from the rest of human life. That was one way. We must not imitate them, because such hermits do not fit into our modern culture. We can only trust people who are able to fully immerse themselves in the life that is the task for all of humanity. This must be taken into account for the highest realms of knowledge, otherwise something will be lost that belongs to older times.

Now, that is one thing – esteemed attendees – that I would like to present to you. The other is what has been developed for those forms that are understood by the name of asceticism. Asceticism goes back to forms that were appropriate in the past. It is based on the fact that certain functions that would otherwise occur are now artificially toned down, so that the organism is not as energetically active as it would otherwise have to be when a person is involved in ordinary life. But in this way, the person has very specific experiences, and by getting to know these, what he recognizes on the other hand is complemented. And this asceticism, which is a lowering of the life of the body, is based on something that has been observed since ancient times, that it is a fact for the world that surrounds us here between birth and death. For this world, our organism is absolutely the means by which we can gain knowledge and energy in and for this world. We just have to realize that it is based on the fact that we have the other senses, we experience ourselves together with the rest of the world.

But this organism is, because it is active in the energetic sense for this physical-sensual world, therefore it is an obstacle to the knowledge of the spirit. If one subjects it to ascesis, then it does not function in such a way that we are fully immersed in the sensual world, then it becomes less and less an obstacle to penetrating into the spiritual world. That is why in the past people sought to place themselves in the spiritual background of the world by lowering the degrees of the obstacle. And, my dear audience, that too is not a path that we can follow today. Because by tuning down his organism in this way, man also makes himself unsuitable for the kind of life that is demanded of us today. But anyone who is familiar with the historical development of human spiritual life knows that today's human being, who is placed in this life with its demands of the outside world, has as a traditional creed that which was once found on these paths. Today, through faith, we take in much of what has been achieved in this way, as I have described. We are not aware that it has been achieved in this way; we do not know that it is based on an ancient form of knowledge, and we construct the concept of faith for that which is venerable today.

Anthroposophy now stands before modern spiritual life in such a way that it follows paths that are appropriate for today's people, that are thoroughly compatible with what we otherwise seek as science. While the yoga scholar strengthened his thought process by taking a detour through the breathing process, you will find in my writings “How to Know Higher Worlds” and “Occult Science” instructions that do not aim to do this. Instead, you will find descriptions of exercises that relate only to the life of the soul, that remain purely in the soul, just as we remain in the soul when we are working on a mathematical task. Through these exercises, thinking is now directly strengthened and one then notices, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those Well, in order to understand what I have to say about it, one must already ascend to these intimacies of the soul life.

I would like to start from something that is often the subject of our world view today. One seeks — Goethe did it on his way, modern people try it on their own paths, I myself tried it in my older writings — one seeks today to compare what, for example, the outer forms of living beings are. Let us say that today the modern human being seeks to understand the form of a higher animal, he gains an insight into the form of the higher animal. As a result, he has the higher animal in front of him as long as he is doing his research. Then he carries an inner view of this higher animal with him. He keeps in his soul a kind of mental counter-image of what he has experienced out there. But then the modern human being must look, for example, at the human form. He now also gains an insight into this human form, let us assume that he has achieved the same thing as he did with regard to the form of a higher animal. He then compares these two and draws up a kind of developmental theory. He does all this with the concepts into which we are simply born today, into which we are educated through our ordinary mental life. But now we ask ourselves about something very important, which, however, is little felt by modern people today. Let us imagine a modern person with a very precise inner concept of a higher mammal based on their current scientific education. Now ask: If you have this concept, can you grasp the life force from this thought through an inner, living transformation of the thought? Can you get from what nature presents to you to the transition into the living human form? Do your thoughts undergo the same metamorphosis as nature outside, from the idea of the animal to the idea of the human being?

Now, my dear audience, get an overview of the juxtaposed concepts and thoughts about animals and humans, and then compare these thoughts. You will come to something admirable, but it is not living thinking, not a living world of thoughts. Man stands there with his world of thoughts, which is his inner counter-image of what lives outside; but he turns to the higher animal form with abstract, lifeless thoughts.

But when the exercises I have indicated are carried out, these exercises are carried out, then something is indeed accomplished for the human soul life that can already be compared to when a corpse becomes a living being through some process. We actually come to say to ourselves: the animal, for example, has the salient feature that the direction of its head is horizontal; the human being differs in that it transitions from the horizontal to the vertical direction, and so on.

We look at the magnetic needle and align it with the different directions in space. Everywhere it behaves differently than when we place it in an axis that goes from the magnetic north pole to the south pole. We say to ourselves: This is a special direction that has something to do with the inner nature of the forces that live in the magnetic needle. The human being acquires such a view for an outer world, but he then also acquires it for the higher worlds. He acquires knowledge that consists in knowing that the animal has its main direction horizontally, while the human being has a different direction in the whole cosmic space, with its direction vertical. When he has it vertically, that the spinal cord is thereby in the vertical direction, one inwardly becomes acquainted with the living concept of how the outer world takes on a living concept through and through. Space ceases to be merely indeterminate, extending into the void; space is inwardly filled with directions and essences of force. And once one has recognized the animal form within oneself, one develops the possibility within oneself. One learns to experience how the mere thought of the animal form is transformed into the human form; one learns to recognize an inwardly moving thought life. But one learns to recognize it as a human being who does not come to a hermitage, as the old yoga scholar does, but who, precisely through this, can really enter into the present life, because we come to the living concepts that bring people more than anything else to connect with the innermost essences of the outer world.

But now, my dear audience, you may object: yes, there have always been philosophers who have come to certain living concepts, but who nevertheless give the impression of standing in something unfounded. One cannot have confidence that what takes place in the living thought shows itself in the same way out there in the real world.

Yes, if things remain as they were with Schelling or Oken, if they remain so, then one is not protected from simply grasping something fantastic in an unreal way. Rather, the thought can give a kind of inner voluptuousness, which one brings forth in a living way, like the flower structure of a plant grows out of the leaf structure. But in this path of knowledge, reality is attained through something else. The person who brings thinking to life in the right way begins to experience something from which, however, modern man often shrinks back. And because he shrinks back from this, he also shrinks back from the whole of anthroposophy, which seeks the real spiritual world through these paths of knowledge. The moment one enters into these particular areas of life through these exercises, it becomes clear that each such living concept does not work in the soul in the same way as the dead concept that we otherwise have, but rather each of the living concepts that we gradually acquire initially affects us in such a way that it pains us, causing us mental suffering that affects us no less than any physical ailment. This is where we have to go through and where the gates of the spiritual world should open, that every living concept, which in turn leads him a little deeper into the spiritual world, that every such living thought causes suffering and pain in the soul.

Why is that? For the reason, dear listeners, that we must not only develop a living thinking, but we must also experience reality in this living thinking. But we can only experience reality when an effect is exerted on ourselves.

Let us consider our senses, the eye. What goes on in the eye is, among other things, also purely chemical decomposition processes. If these processes were not so quiet, we would feel pain there as well, but for those of us who have already reached a certain stage of development, this is overcome. What once had to be felt in other phases of human development is now brought about by painless perception.

We have to experience this state of pain so that it appears to us as permeated by the soul and spirit itself, because the entire human being must become a comprehensive sense organ. One cannot see into the spiritual world until the human organism has become a spiritual and soul eye. We must go through that state of suffering, which transforms our whole human organism into a sense organ for the spiritual world. Our whole organism, by overcoming this suffering, becomes a sense organ for the spiritual world. Only then, when one experiences this, does one know that one is standing in a real spiritual world. Then you will say to yourself: I am very grateful to my fate for my joys, but what I have acquired as knowledge, I owe to what I have lived through painfully, and that is what actually led me first to the special essence of what knowledge is. That is what pushed me to pursue this essence further. Without going through the tragedy of life, but also overcoming it, the doors to the spiritual world do not open in reality.

But when they do open, then something completely different arises from the living thinking, then what really arises is that we look – just as we look with our eyes and ears at colors and sounds – we look at the concrete spiritual world to which we ourselves belong with the eternal part of our human life, that we are rooted in the spiritual world around us. And once we have managed to ascend from the individual animal form as described, we find that a further step arises: we now have a human being before us, and we can examine him differently than in the clinic or in the dissecting room, when the life has left him. We can fathom the essence of the human being differently. Just as one surrenders to the thought of the animal form that has now been brought to life, the inner form of growth of the animal, so one also sees in the person standing before one, not just the physical form; now, from a purely spiritual perspective, one can see something that can truly be regarded as a spiritual-soul aura of the person. And when one looks into this spiritual-soul aura – this seeing is a result of the living of thought – then one sees what the person standing before one is as a spiritual-soul being before the person was, before he descended from the spiritual-soul; one sees the person in relation to what lives in him from his pre-earthly existence. The living thought helps us to do this when we follow it in the physical world.

In this way, anthroposophy seeks to arrive at a true understanding of the spiritual-soul entity in the life that precedes this earthly life. And by looking at the human being in his essence, which can also exist without him already having a body, one then also gets to know more precisely what the essence of the spiritual-soul is; one sees in this spiritual vision how a completely different world stands before our spiritual vision during the time that preceded our birth.

Here on earth, as human beings, we cannot see into ourselves. What anatomy provides us with is an exterior. When, for example, a finger is moved only by the impulse of the will, what does the human being know about what is going on in his organism to make the finger move.

Modern anthroposophy recognizes the same scientific foundations as the other exact science in its field. And if we had fathomed all the laws of the starry heavens to their end, everything that shows clouds and sunbeams their way, we would have fathomed everything that is otherwise around us in earthly life, in here in man, who has been called the microcosm, there would still be a richer number of riddles for world views than there are out there in space. What is outside in space, man surveys in his life between birth and death. More wonderful than everything that makes up solar systems in the world is that which can be found in the microcosm.

In the world from which we descended before we united with our physical body, at that time when we lived as spiritual-soul entities in the spiritual-soul world itself, we looked at what we carry within us as human beings. Every attention, every thought is directed towards what the human being can experience in the time just before he descends: How do I connect with that which is connected to me in the line of inheritance? The child experiences the transformation of its brain, how this takes place in accordance with inner laws. We experience the incarnation before we descend to this incarnation. That is the one side that we achieve as our living thinking.

The other side is that we are now learning to look at what the human being does. We see how a person encounters another person in a particular year of life, we see how this encounter gives rise to something extraordinarily meaningful, which then gives their own existence in this physical life on earth a completely different direction. We see this and say to ourselves: this is a matter of chance.

But the one who is able to look in the right way, sees how a person, even before he enters this earthly life, already has certain likes and dislikes and how these consist of rejecting the one and accepting the other. If one denies this, then it is the same as the world of colors is for someone who is born blind and has an operation; he could also deny the colored world. So it appears as something fantastic when the one whose spiritual eye has been opened looks, as from childhood, the antipathy and sympathy pave the way for wisdom or also that which initially appears in life as un-wisdom. One only comes to know through living, suffering-overcoming thinking, this activity of man, interspersed with sympathy and antipathy, how brief the result of antipathy and sympathy itself is. Then one looks at fate and how it was earned in earlier earthly lives. One learns to look into repeated earthly lives.

Here the connecting element of humanity can be found in a spiritual and soulful way. It unites real, deep religious feeling, it unites that which seeks only the education of that which is present in our minds, it unites with that which is the demand of our deepest heart life. By engaging with this spiritual knowledge, the human being gains the possibility of also having knowledge of how to find those with whom he has formed a community here in the spiritual life.

Thus I have again shown a step of that — my dear audience — which leads out of the sensual-physical into the spiritual world through anthroposophy.

What is gained in this way are purely spiritual-soul processes that the ancient Indian yoga teacher found through his breathing process. We do not kill the human physical organism, but we approach the soul life, we let the soul life undergo an inner suffering, which at the same time, however, places the human being externally as an agent, a volition, in today's world and does not destine him to be a hermit. This is what needs to be reappropriated in modern culture: to openly confront the person who presents his research to humanity in this way, to confront him by agreeing with him.

He can do nothing but show again and again, by describing the methods and the results, how what he does is only a continuation of what man can find justified in ordinary life. And if it were said that this concerns only those who already look into the spiritual world, then it must be answered: It is not the case that man, by virtue of his organization, is not capable of error and doubt, but he is predisposed to truth. Therefore, anyone who is not a painter can stand in front of a picture that is painted in truth and beauty and feel it that way.

With this healthy human sense, a person can stand before what the anthroposophical spiritual researcher has to say and recognize the truth for themselves, even if they are not yet a researcher themselves. Those who are not can judge the truth through the healthy powers of humanity. But what Anthroposophy strives to accomplish, it believes, is not just a goal of individual hermits, but what modern man really needs.

What do we have in today's intellectual life? The ancient man had an inner soul life that he even carried into the outer worlds. We can see into the external worlds, but we have lost this inner spiritual life. We have abstract concepts, which are excellent for doing everything that does not require living inner powers of knowledge. But this admonishes us to emphasize again and again: with your thoughts, which are so magnificent,

you have nothing but something dead at bottom; you have thought-ideas from the mind, and although we certainly do not want to conjure up the old days in which spiritual knowledge was sought in such ways, in such old days a living spiritual view was found in a way that was appropriate at the time, the people of that time had achieved an inner soul life, something that realized the living spirit in the inner soul life.

If we turn again to that living thinking as anthroposophy understands it, then knowledge will not only provide us with vivid concepts, but knowledge will provide us with the living spirit that walks among us. In this way we will also experience physical plants and animals, and we will connect our own human feelings with these spiritual beings, the living spiritual world itself, which in turn is to be introduced into physical, sensory existence through that which is now a living knowledge in contrast to dead knowledge.

We must first make it quite clear to ourselves: we want knowledge that does not merely call our world in with thoughts, but that calls in the spirit itself. It is effective wherever the human being works out of the spirit. And particularly today, when social life is in such a terrible state, one feels that one needs something that must be present in social life as a spiritual element. One sees in particular in social life that it cannot continue without the spirit being involved. In short, anthroposophy would like to find understanding among those people who, so to speak, feel the pulse of contemporary culture. Anthroposophy wants us to enter the present day with the living spirit, instead of with mere thoughts and ideas of the spirit, because we have to realize that only with this living spirit will we be able to solve the tasks that are set for all of humanity. Only by solving them in a living way can we grow into a culture in the future that will sustain people at their spiritual and physical peak.

My dear Friends,

I would like today to say something of how explanations such as I was giving you yesterday, where we saw once more how the art of the forming of speech has to be learned from speech itself, how such explanations (or instructions, if you want to call them so) are to be received, how they are then to be taken over into your practical work.

Now it is a fact that the whole system of speech sounds—if I may designate it with such a pedantic term—the whole system of speech sounds with its manifold gradations in the various languages, expresses how the activities which take their start from the speech organs are related to the entire human organism. You have to picture it in the following way.

We may employ for the purpose a somewhat rough classification of the sounds of speech. Following the lines of yesterday's lecture, we can give our attention, to begin with, to the sounds that originate more or less in the region of the palate. If we consider all that takes place when a speech sound comes to birth in this region, and have the eye to follow it up as it takes its way right through man, then for the sounds that originate in the palate—for throat sounds, too, but more especially for palatal—we find that we can tell from a man's walk whether he utters these sounds resolutely or indolently, whether in fact, he enters fully or not into the speaking of them. This means that when we produce a speech sound by means of the palate, the speaking goes right through us down to our heels and toes; in other words, a palatal sound has connection with the entire human organism. As for the sounds in which the tongue participates, they are especially connected with that part of the human being which comprises first the head as far down as the upper lip (not including the lower lip) and then goes back and extends towards the spine—the region of the back, generally. And when we come to sounds that are uttered with the help of lips and teeth, we find that these are more connected with the breast and, generally speaking, the front parts of the body. So that really the whole man is contained in his speech. We can quite well call speech the creator of the form of man in these three directions.

This being so, it follows that if, for instance, you want to practise stage-walking, you cannot do better than associate it with the speaking of palatal sounds. For speech can help to give ‘form’ to the whole of your acting, even to your very way of walking on the stage.

Stage-walking, as you know very well, has to be different from our usual walking if it is to give the appearance of being true to life. If you were to walk on the stage as you do ordinarily, it could not possibly look like real life. Correct stage-walking is therefore again an end that can be attained best of all by means of speech. It is, however, not possible simply to lay down rules for it, you have to work it out for yourself in practice.

It will, I think, be clear from all this that when I describe the speech sounds as our teachers, you are not to infer that what we learn from them is of value for those particular sounds alone. I am not advising that you should practise merely the utterance of the individual sounds of the alphabet (they will of course all come in the exercises); my intention is to help you find your way altogether to a right and beautiful and smooth-flowing manner of speaking. What you learn, for instance, from the throat sounds will go over into the sounds made with lips or with tongue, and gradually as a result of practising the various exercises, the word will begin to flow in your soul.

There is thus no question of an actor having to watch for a d or a g or a k in order to speak them in a particular way. Rather do I mean that as you begin to do such exercises as I have given, speech becomes for you your teacher, your tutor in the art of acting. It will even render your body more supple. If the exercises are systematically carried out in the way I have explained, the plastic forms of your bodily organs will become more pliant, and your organs on this account be fitter instruments for your art.

This is why I come back again and again to the need of a school of training for dramatic art where exercises of this kind are taught and practised. And it is just through the practice of such exercises that the right mood of approach can be attained. You will remember I was telling you yesterday how all-important is this mood of approach; indeed, without it we can never have art on the stage.

For consider how it is with the spectator in the audience. What does he bring with him 9 He has never had explicitly present to his consciousness all that lives in the single sounds of speech. The meaning conveyed in what is spoken—that is all he is cognisant of. Of the significance of sounds he knows nothing; he knows only what the words hold in the way of ideas. When therefore the actor enters deeply into the feeling of the sounds, this means that an abyss opens between him and the audience. For the actor on his side of the abyss, the play is not merely what it is for the audience; it becomes for him a veritable sacrificial rite, and the sacrifice he offers up enables the spiritual to be carried into the world of the physical.

This will not, however, be so unless the actor has been able so completely to transform his mood of soul that it has come right away from looking merely at the ‘ideal’ significance of words, and vibrates instead in a delicate sensitiveness to all that is contained in their sounds. And it is possible for the actor gradually to progress so far with his experience of individual sounds that syllables also begin to be full of significance for him. I will give you an example to show you what I mean, for this is an important point—that syllables should carry their full significance for the actor.

Take the word betrüblich (distressing, most unfortunate). We use the word in the easy way words are used nowadays. We are faced with some situation in life and call it ‘betrüblich’, without having any particular experience of the word as such. We must not rest content with this. We must go further and experience the feelings and inner perceptions that are inherent in the sounds and that enter then into the syllables, and by way of the syllables into the word.

Let us begin with the last syllable -lich. We have here first of all the wave sound 1. We feel there a flowing, as of surging waves. And then we have ch. In ch we ‘form’ the flow of the waves, we arrest it in a form. The i signifies merely that we want to draw attention to the form that is arising there. Going through it sound by sound in this way, we come to feel that in lich we have the same as we generally experience in the word gleich.¹ In the words menschengleich (man-like) and löwengleich (lion-like) we have to use still the whole word gleich, since the language has here not reached the stage of changing the gleich into lich (for lich is of course merely a metamorphosis of gleich). If the word löwengleich, for example, had already been thoroughly absorbed into the stream of speech, if it had through constant use become an integral member of the language, it would today be no longer löwengleich but löwenlich. Similarly, menschengleich would by now have become menschenlich. For in lich we have simply the expression of the fact that the movement is here understood which is expressive of likeness.

Say, for example, you let the feeling of lich arise in you while you are stroking a velvet cushion. Your hand moves gently over the soft surface, feeling in this way the form of the cushion and receiving the impression into your very being. Then maybe you will say to yourself: I know someone whose character gives me the same experience as I have when I stroke this cushion.

Going on now to trüb (dull, cloudy), we do not perhaps at once sense trüb in betrüblich, and yet the word carries that meaning; the soul that finds a situation betrüblich is overcast, as though by a cloud. We must succeed in making contact with what is directly present in the sounds; that will help us very much to come to a better understanding of what we have to say or speak. That the trüb has an ü in it, we can well appreciate from the feeling that we associated with that sound when we were considering the circle of the vowels. But now what is the significance in general of an umlaut?

An umlaut always indicates dispersal. A single thing or a few become many. We say Bruder (brother). As long as there is only one brother under consideration, we can quite properly denote him as one; if there are more, our attention is diverted from the one and we speak of Brüder (brothers, brethren). Dialects retain the more original forms of language, and in them you will always find the umlaut for the plural, signifying that the application of the word is dispersed. We have therefore in trüb a syllable that can be felt; it suggests that dispersal of water, which gives rise to Trübe (mist) And when you go on to draw the comparison with the soul, and find that your word expresses also how the soul is like the mist, then you will be able to ‘taste’ the word in all its richness of meaning.

For the be- you have only to look round for some analogous words. Think of the word denken (to think) and put be- in front of it. Denken is thinking in general; but when you say you bedenken, you mean you are directing your thinking to a particular point or object.² And a turning of the thinking to something that makes the soul trüb is just what betrüblich expresses.

I have not taken you through this study of a word with the intention that you should proceed to analyse the whole text of some drama on the same plan. What I am concerned for is not that at all, but that during an actor's training considerable time should be devoted to intensive study of the inner substance of words, so that he may become familiar with them in all their concrete reality. If I say: Es ist betrüblich für mich, a suggestion is implied that a cloud is descending upon my soul. And if I am able, whilst saying Es ist betrüblich für mich, to let the feeling of this more concrete paraphrase of the words be present in my soul, then my words will receive the right tone, they will be spoken from the heart. I must warn you, however, that this will not be so if you determine in an arbitrary manner where you will give point or emphasis, but only if you take your guidance from the character of the speech itself.

For speech, my dear friends, in the full swing of its manifold movements, can truly be said to bring to expression in sound and in tone the whole scale of man's sensibilities. The speech organism in its entirety—what is it but man in all the fulness of feeling of his life of soul! You may even go further and call it a host of Divine Beings in all the fulness of feeling of their life of soul. And as we find our way into this deeper understanding of it, speech becomes increasingly objective for us, until at length we have it there before us like a kind of tableau—we can go up and look at it.

And this brings me to something I want particularly to say to you; it was actually the reason why I was anxious to extend this course for one more day. It sounds simple enough when I put it into words, but the recognition of it will help you to give a right orientation to your work.

Man's speaking proceeds from his throat and mouth. He knows not how or why; the mechanism for speech is situated in the mouth, and that is all. There is simply no understanding in modern times of all that has to come into consideration for the artistic forming of speech.

The same lack of perception can be remarked in an altogether different sphere of human activity. When I was a young man, some twenty-four or twenty-five years old, I had occasion to observe how eager people were at that time to take lessons from those who advertised themselves as teachers of handwriting. Hitherto, no special value had been attached to a distinctive handwriting—anyway not in commercial life. Suddenly all that changed. (This was before the days of typewriters; everything had to be written out by hand) The ambition to acquire a beautiful handwriting spread like an infectious complaint. And one became acquainted with those methods that set out to teach writing by conscious development of the mechanism of the hand. There were various methods, but all had for their aim the making supple of hand and arm; for it was accepted as a matter of course that one writes out of the mechanism of hand and arm. In reality it is not so at all, as anyone may prove to his own satisfaction if he will take the trouble to fix a pencil between his big toe and the next, and proceed to write with his foot. He will find he can manage to do it. For it is not the hand that writes; writing does not come about through the mechanism of the hand The mechanism of the hand is set going by the whole man. Try writing with your foot; it will cost you some effort, but you will succeed. And the best of it is, anyone who takes the trouble to write with his foot is rewarded with a wonderful experience. He begins to feel his whole body, and that is a tremendous gain for the soul.

Thus, behind all this instruction in writing that became so popular was, you see, the completely false notion that we should learn to write with our hand and arm, whereas the truth is we should learn to write with our eyes. In order to write well, we want to develop a sensitive perception for the forms of the letters—veritably beholding them in the spirit and then copying them; not constructing them with the mechanism of the hand, but seeing them there before us in spirit and then drawing them in imitation.

If we understand this, we shall perhaps be more ready to understand that whereas in the ordinary way, when he wants to speak, man simply makes use of his instrument of speech, the actor has first to acquire what I might call an intimate kind of hearing that does not hear, an ear that hears silent speech. He must be able to hold the word in his soul, in his spirit, holding it there in its sequence of sounds, hearing in silence whole passages, whole monologues, dialogues, and so forth. In effect, speech has to become for him so objective that when he speaks, his speaking proceeds from what he hears with his soul.

It is not enough for a poet to have in his head the meaning and purport of a poem; the whole of the artistically formed speech must be present to him. Most of the scenes in my Mystery Plays have been first heard and then written. I have not begun with an idea and looked for words to express it; I have simply listened and written down what I heard. And the speaking of the actor on the stage should really come about in the same way; he should first hear, and then let the speaking proceed from the hearing. This will mean that he comes naturally into a true feeling for sound and syllable, and above all is made sensible of the need to live in the words. Furthermore, his whole understanding of life will by this experience be lifted on to a spiritual level, and he will develop a quick and ready sense for what is genuine artistic creation.

We have here come again upon one of the truths concerning dramatic art which do not easily meet with acceptance all at once. An actor who has made such a deep study of speech that he has as it were a second self beside him to whom he is listening will find that the meaning and purport of the drama in which he is taking part lights up within him; he perceives it, instinctively. That is, if it is a good drama. For the good poet—and also the good translator—has a certain feeling all the time for how the words spoken by the different characters ought to sound to the hearers; if therefore the actor hears what he has to speak (we will imagine, for example, he is taking the part of Faust), if he has come to the point of hearing the part in his soul before speaking it, he will much more quickly grasp its inner meaning. And so for an actor who wants to have an artistic understanding of the play and of his own part in it, the advice is once again to take the formed speech for his starting-point.

I said an actor should have an artistic understanding of his part, an understanding, that is, that arises from ‘beholding’ the part. This is something very different from a conceptual understanding of it. One meets at times with grotesque instances of the disparity between the two. I was once present at a delightful social gathering, from which one could learn a great deal. You will remember, we were speaking the other day of Alexander Strakosch. I told you how with all his failings he was, in his own way, a good reciter; as stage reciter he had, in fact, considerable influence. He was not a good producer, and he was no actor; latterly he was too fond of mannerisms, especially on the stage. But in one thing Strakosch was really skilful. He was able, while forming his speech, to enter right into the inner experience of it. He was on the stage of the Burgtheater in Vienna; Laube knew well what he was worth to him. Strakosch would listen to his part and let the character build itself up before him as he listened.

On the occasion in question, several actors were present who had just been performing Hamlet; and what was particularly significant, there were present also university professors and other men of scholarship. The evening was devoted to a discussion on Shakespeare, and all these latter had no doubt made a profound study of his work. Strakosch was also there. We had all of us been at the performance and now we began to listen to the various interpretations of the play that were put forward by these scholarly gentlemen. The interpretations differed somewhat, but each speaker set out to prove the absolute validity of his own, and every one of them spoke at great length.

The actors kept silence, particularly the actor who had played Hamlet. He had nothing to say. He could not, he said, expound or elucidate Hamlet; he had played him

I was interested to see if we could not elicit at least one expression of opinion from the stage, and I said to Strakosch: ‘Tell us now, how do you understand Hamlet?’ ‘Very inwardly!’ That was all he would say. He had heard what Hamlet says, had formed his speaking quite wonderfully to correspond, but could say nothing about the part except that it was deep down within him—the fact being that he had hardly had time to get beyond the hearing of it, no time to develop a thought-out interpretation.

And it is quite true that only when there is this inner hearing of the soul can we know what it means to witness the creation of a part, to see it being created by the artist on the stage. That gives him the intuition that is needed for this.

The creation of a part implies nothing less than that the actor is able to place his whole human being right outside of himself, so that he can perceive it there beside him. And then this self of his that is outside him changes into the character of the role he is playing. For if the actor is an individuality, if he has a true inner instinct for his work, we shall always allow him to form his part in his own way, just as the pianist is after all allowed to play in his own way. We shall also find that the audience will be far more ready to follow with understanding what they see on the stage if the actor, instead of making an intellectual study of his part—poring over the content with deep concentration of thought—first forms it in his soul, lets it take shape there, and then having done so can hear just how he is to form it outwardly, by means of his own person on the stage.

Then we shall not be troubled any more with those precise rulings of how a part is to be played, that are so dear to the hearts of dry-as-dust scholars; instead, we shall have the possibility of many different interpretations of a part, for each one of which good grounds can be adduced. But where an interpretation is justified, the ground for its justification is that the actor hears how to form the part.

I would like at this point to give you a demonstration of what widely different ideas can exist concerning one and the same character in a play. I might show you, for instance, how some actor who has, let us say, a rather intellectual conception of Hamlet will play the part—emphasising the fundamental melancholy of Hamlet's character. As a matter of fact, for one who has genuine knowledge of the human soul it will be impossible to play the part as a thorough melancholic; for Hamlet himself draws attention to his melancholy, and a real melancholic does not do that! Admittedly, however, if we are considering Hamlet from an intellectual point of view, it is possible to regard him as a melancholic. The famous Robert, who was a superb classical actor, held this view. We can then play Hamlet walking across the stage engaged in deep contemplation. We shall, however, often come to moments in the play where we shall find it hard to understand Hamlet if we conceive of him in this way and are obliged to think of him as speaking always with a rather heavy, full-toned voice. There are undoubtedly passages where we can do this—and the German translations are for such passages almost as good as, and often better than, the English original!—but there are other passages where it is out of the question, passages where, if we are determined to be consistent and regard Hamlet all through the play as a profound melancholic, we shall find it impossible to speak the words so that they flow rightly for the listener. And whenever I call to mind performances where Robert took the part of Hamlet, I always find that whereas in certain of the monologues his really excellent speaking was notably in place, it was not so where Hamlet becomes ironical. These passages the actor really cannot speak as a melancholic. And I must admit that it used to come each time as a terrible shock to me when, after the famous monologues which were quite wonderfully rendered by Robert, one had to hear in the very same tone the words: ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’ That doesn't do at all. And there are many other traditional renderings of Hamlet that fall to the ground in a similar way. I would therefore like to suggest yet another possible approach, one where in order to let Hamlet reveal his character in his own way through his speaking, we try to understand him in the situation of the moment. I shall not ‘speak’ the passages, but merely recall them to you, pointing them purposely in a rather exaggerated way to make my meaning clear.

Let us take the moment when Hamlet has got ready the play that is to unmask the king. We have to think of him as full of expectation as to the effect the play will have; and it is really quite difficult to imagine that the Hamlet who has arranged all this should at that moment suddenly change into a profound philosopher. Why ever should he all at once, without rhyme or reason, turn philosopher! As I have said, I am not out to find fault with a particular interpretation of Hamlet, not at all. I want only to suggest that good grounds can also be found for an altogether different interpretation from the one that weighs down the famous monologue ‘To be or not to be’ with an overload of deep contemplation and melancholy. It is quite possible to picture the situation in the following way.

Hamlet comes on to the stage—entering from the direction determined by the producer. Whilst he is still walking, and without his making beforehand any of those slow gestures that denote deep thought, an idea suddenly strikes him.³

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.

And now at this point the Hamlet we know so well—the unstable, the wavering—begins to show himself. In the lines that I have read Hamlet was still speaking entirely out of the thought that had flashed into his mind Now he stands there in his true character, for all at once he remembers that sleep is not mere nothingness, it may involve something else.

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

Now he changes again, becomes more animated, even passionate—not contemplative.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns,

These last words show clearly that Hamlet cannot possibly be pondering deeply as he speaks them. For what would he certainly not say if he weighed his words? He would not say:

The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns.

Has not the elder Hamlet but just returned thence? We should be able to see that words like this can only proceed from that half-worked out idea that had flashed upon him and that speaks in terms of life's memories and is not the fruit of profound philosophising.

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. Soft you now!

And now he can go on to speak of the ‘fair Ophelia’ without the words jarring on us.

Let me say again, I have no intention to pull to pieces some other interpretation that has been rather generally accepted. I want only to point out that it will not do to be so fond of the picture of a deeply reflective Hamlet as to allow oneself to speak out of that mood a monologue that reveals disorder and perplexity in Hamlet's thinking, and that certainly does not spring from philosophical depths. We need, my dear friends, to provide ourselves with a rich and ample background if our acting is to come before the world as art.

I had occasion yesterday to call your attention to the lack of readiness on the part of our present-day critics to discern distinctions of this kind. The fact is, as soon as we begin to practise any art, a sense of shame comes over us if before we have judged it from outside; for we realise that one should only ever speak about an art when one can do something in it oneself. That is a right and true feeling. A person who has never handled a paint brush cannot possibly know why this or that is painted in such and such a way. No more can anyone who does not act himself judge of acting—unless he be able by means of spiritual initiation to transplant himself, as it were, into each individual in turn and then speak, not out of himself but out of these other human beings. The critic who is only a critic and has behind him no stage experience of his own is really no more than a caricature. We must have the courage to acknowledge that this is so.

The only kind of criticism that deserves to be respected is that which follows in the footsteps of Lessing and criticises positively, with intention to provide that when a work of art appears before the public it shall meet with understanding. When criticism has this end in view and does really help the general public to understand one or another work of art, it has its justification. But when the critic wants simply to lay it down that some work of art is good or bad, then his criticism can be justified only if he has himself had professional experience in that art and has moreover given signs of good ability in it. I find myself compelled to add this warning for the reason that the work of the stage will only be able to hold its own in the face of criticism if it can be stiff-necked and not allow itself to be swayed this way and that by the critics. For then we can hope to see developing on the stage a certain spirit of independence; and that will mean that the actor will at length be able to take his own right share in the mission for civilisation that the drama is called upon to fulfil.

I have tried, my dear friends, to give you in this course of lectures some indications of how necessary it is above all that first spirit, and then life, shall be restored to the drama of today. Naturally it has not been possible to give more than suggestions. But I have endeavoured to put these before you in such a way that if, for example, they are worked out in a dramatic school that is constituted on the lines I have described, then good results can follow. The establishment of such a school and the application of my suggestions in the work of the school as well as in rehearsals and so on, could achieve much even in our own time.

What I have tried to say has in very truth been spoken out of a deep reverence for the art. Dramatic art—and remember, it can only exist if man takes his place on the stage with real devotion, allowing his own being to merge in the being of his part—dramatic art has great tasks to perform; and if it cannot now work, as in times past, with something of the power of ritual, it can still even today have an uplifting influence, so that by its means man is carried up to spiritual heights.

If we are able to see how the whole being of man places himself in word and gesture at the service of this creation of the spirit—for that is what drama is, a creation of the spirit—if we can perceive this, then that is again a path along which we can find our way to the spirit. That much remains to be done before that ideal can be reached, is due to the fact that in these days of materialism when spiritual paths have been neglected by man, the art of the stage has fallen into a helpless condition and shown an increasing readiness to become a mere copy of real life—and as such it can never under any circumstances have an uplifting effect but always under all circumstances, the reverse.

Whilst true drama raises all that takes place on the stage, lifts it up to a higher level, and in so doing brings what is human nearer to the Divine, naturalism attains nothing but the imitation of what is human. And no imitation can ever be complete. Every imitation leaves out something the original still has, and must have in order to enable it to give a one-sided expression, a one-sided revelation of itself.

When we see plays of this nature we are often left with the impression that we have been witnessing an art that is not a human art at all, but an art of monkeys. For there is really something quite monkeyish about this kind of imitation, tending as it does to suggest comparison with all sorts of animals. Some actor, trying hard to be as naturalistic as possible, will behave on the stage as if he were a tiger or other wild beast, and many ladies as if they were cats—which is perhaps easier for them than for a man to be a tiger.

But now this means nothing else than that the mask of an earlier time has changed and become a soul mask. And that, dramatic art cannot tolerate—that the one-time animal mask which was there in order to provide the right setting for the gesture should turn into a mask of the soul. With the growing tendency, however, to a purely naturalistic imitation, we can see it happening.

It is my hope that the few indications I have been able to give in these lectures may form themselves for you into an impulse, leading you right away from naturalism into a genuine spiritual art of the stage. This, my dear friends, was indeed the aim I had in view for this course; and I shall only be able to consider its purpose fulfilled when, through the activity of those who have understood me, the results begin to show themselves to me from the stage.

With that I would like to conclude this course of lectures, of which I can truly say it has been a labour of love, the art of the stage having always been for me an object of love and reverence. I leave it with those of you who have been able to meet my words with understanding, and will take them to heart and work further with them.

At the close of the lecture, words of thanks were spoken to which Dr. Steiner responded, as follows:

Herr Haas-Berkow: In expressing heartfelt thanks for this course of lectures I am confident that I speak on behalf of all those who are here present and especially of those of us who are actors. We feel responsible to cherish in heart and mind what has been given to us here and to work on with it to the very utmost of our powers, that we may eventually become actors in the new understanding of the word. Speaking personally, I desire to place myself and all my work at Dr. Steiner's disposal.

Herr Albert Steffen: In the name of all who love the cosmic words—that is, of all who love poetry, who love art—I would like to thank you, Dr. Steiner, for these unforgettable days. I am, I know, giving expression to what is livingly present in the audience. For, from my seat here in front, I could see, as I listened to your words, the rapt attentiveness on the faces of your hearers; I could see how their eyes shone and how their hearts were set on fire. Many an old rule or habit of work perished in the flames, but out of its ashes rose up like a phoenix a marvellous new sense of freedom.

We artists live in the world of semblance. But we have here been enabled to see that this semblance, this glory, comes from a light that is at the very foundation of all being—comes from the Word. You have said that it is the Word that forms and creates man; surely then the speech sounds must be the apostles, and speech itself have power to form us through the instrumentality of yourself and your honoured collaborator Frau Dr. Steiner. Whenever I see eurhythmy, I always have to think: there is the new Parnassus, the assembly of the Gods, resurrected before our eyes.

All the lecture-courses to which we have been listening these last days form a unity. Not only have you given us the beautiful word; from the medical lectures the healing word made itself felt, and from the group of the priests there worked across to us—on sub-earthly and super-earthly paths—the holy word.⁴

So that the actor has really become now also priest and physician.

But what has been for me the most astounding of all is that Dr. Steiner has come forward himself as a poet—and a poet such as the earth has not seen before. I refer to those evening lectures where he has been expounding to us the destinies of men who have been with us here in real life,Weininger, Strind berg, Solovioff and many more; destinies that did not lead to any complete conquest of what is chaotic in life and dark and evil, but destinies which clearly showed the need for something new to enter the life of humanity. All of us here, had we not been gripped by this new thing, would have gone under. Dr. Steiner has saved us. And what is more, he would save the artist in us, he would make of us artists, poets, actors.

How can we thank you? Only by taking the Word for what it truly is—the sword of Michael—and then, sword in hand, fighting with all our strength for you, Dr. Steiner, and for the holy work you have begun.

Dr. Steiner: My dear friends, let us resolve—each one for himself in his own way—to look upon this course of lectures as a beginning. It will fulfil its purpose if we regard it as a first Act and try to find in work the following Acts that shall expound the matter further. If we work together in this direction, then in many and various spheres of life, above all in the domain of that art that is so dear to our hearts, a seed can be sown now that will, as it grows and develops, meet the needs of the civilisation of the future. There is abundant possibility to do this—in among all the inartistic developments that we see around us, to plant a new seed for the future.

In this sense, let us then regard our study here together as first steps on a path, and see whether these first steps may not point the way to further steps. I am thankful to perceive that you are all of you resolved to look upon these initial steps that we have taken here together as opening the way to further artistic work and development as we go forward on the path of life.

And so now, speaking out of this understanding of what our work here together should mean, I extend to you my heartfelt gratitude that you have shown yourselves ready and willing to take part with me in this quest.

• 1. The suffix -fish corresponds to our suffix -ly (as in manly); and the word and suffix gleich to our word and suffix like (as in warlike).
• 2. Compare our expression ‘to bethink oneself’.
• 3. The passages from Hamlet were read by Dr. Steiner from the German translation by Schlegel and Tieck.
• 4. . These words refer to two courses of lectures that Rudolf Steiner was giving at the same time with this course on Speech and Drama: one for doctors and the priests of the Christian Community on Pastoral Medicine, and the other for the priests on The Apocalypse. The long series of week-end evening lectures on Karma which was begun early in the year was also continued through these weeks, as well as the occasional morning lectures to the Workmen at the Goetheanum, on subjects of their own choosing. A very few days later, Dr. Steiner's lecturing activity came to an end.