The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Automated Translation

Esteemed attendees! Among the ideas that the theosophical movement is trying to bring to people's attention again, the two words “reincarnation” and “karma” are combined in the title of today's lecture as the solution to the human riddle. Our contemporaries have very different interpretations of these two words. Some are quick to declare Theosophy fantastic and nonsensical; they say, “How can anyone possibly know something like that?” For others, this knowledge is a kind of deliverance; the word to the riddle is the riddle's solution, which they have found; the nightmare under which they have been suffering has been lifted. The mystery of why some people are in deepest misery while others seem to walk in the highest happiness is solved when we consider that in times gone by the foundations were laid for both the abilities with which a person is born and his destiny in this life on earth.

Those, however, to whom this seems so fantastic, do not consider that their environment is not the only one on earth. There are many people who believe in repeated lives on earth, just as many as those for whom this idea has been pushed out of their field of vision. For the Asian peoples, re-embodiment is not a dry theory, but a truth of life from which they draw vitality. In earlier times, until the advent of Christianity, this view was widespread in Europe, even in the early days of Christianity. It was not just a view for visionaries; the best of the leaders professed this view. Plato, Giordano Bruno, who was executed for standing up for Copernicus, stood up for it. Their doctrine cannot be separated from the concept of repeated lives on earth. Lessing professes it in his “Education of the Human Race”. It is not just the fanciful spirits of some subordinate religious system that advocate this, but great minds such as Goethe and Jean Paul, because this is the only way they can explain life. One behaves remarkably against the great spiritual heroes such as Plato, Lessing and so on, whose names one mentions with more or less feigned reverence – there is even a tie named after Giordano Bruno – when one comes across their deepest conviction of repeated life on earth and then shrugs and says: That is one of the weaknesses of this great man. – Is there a greater immodesty than to judge like this? I ask anyone who speaks in this way where they learned the best things they know. It was probably from those whose names are associated with this teaching. Yet they claim to be their judges! They accept from them what suits them and discard what does not.

The theosophical movement seeks to bring the awareness of repeated earthly life to people in a modern way. Science still resists recognizing this teaching. If only they would accept it as a hypothesis, the time will soon come when they will see that without this teaching they cannot solve the mystery of man. Every human being carries within himself an imperishable core of being. What is born and dies with him is only the shell of this core of being. This was there before birth, will be there after death. This core of being has already repeatedly lived on earth and will be born again and again in the womb. The present life is only one among many.

This is not immediately apparent when considered superficially. On first glance, the teaching may seem improbable. The naturalistic way of thinking in the West makes it impossible for us to grasp the matter correctly. There is a certain higher spiritual teaching, as it was cultivated in the East. Many Westerners who have received this teaching have naturally come to separate their outer appearance from their inner core of being in their thoughts when they are alone or with those who have undergone the same schooling and know about this inner core of being.

They think or say: “It is not my actual core of being that is walking around the room, but my body. My body is hungry, my brain is thinking, and so on.

There are spiritual teachings that teach us that the physical body is only a tool for the spiritual essence, that all sense organs only serve to enable it to occupy itself on earth. The average person thinks of their body as “I”; the spiritually trained person has the sensation of a duality, a spiritual “I” that has nothing to do with the external one; more and more, they distinguish the imperishable core of their being from the physical body. What was there before birth has nothing to do with the physical body, but a lot to do with physical needs.

The idea that it is Mr. Smith or John Doe who returns is wrong. Only someone who can detach himself from the idea that he is his body can recognize what it is that reincarnates itself as Fritz Schulze or Johann Maier. Only when he is able to do this can he begin to understand what it is that reincarnates itself.

Now we must once again briefly consider what remains and returns to earthly existence and what passes away. Firstly, the physical body disintegrates at death because it consists of physical matter – it passes away.

Secondly, the etheric body, the life body: this is what enables the physical organs to perform their function; the moving, the invigorating in the body. The clock also moves, it consists of a wheel train; if I take out a wheel, it stops working; if I put the clock down and the wheel next to it, they can lie there for a long time, they do not change. But if I cut off a hand from the human body, it does not remain as it was; it withers away because it was connected with the body, of which I have separated it, in a living, organic way. This etheric body also disintegrates. It merges into the general ether.

The third body can be recognized when we consider what lives in the human being – not just the connection between skin and bones – but what he carries within him in terms of suffering and joy, desires and passions; these are things that live in him just as much as blood and heart; they are just as alive. This is the astral body.

Fourthly, there is the I, which distinguishes human beings from the creatures of the other realms. The physical body is shared with minerals, the etheric body with plants, and the astral body with animals.

The I works on the astral body. We must keep reminding ourselves of this. The example often given can make this clear to us. What Darwin experienced with a “savage” who eats his own kind: this “savage” also consists of the four basic parts of the human being mentioned; but his astral body still differs little from that of the animal. He still blindly follows his instincts. Darwin tried to make it clear to the “savage” how wrong it was for him to eat his brother. The “savage” said that Darwin could not possibly know whether it was bad or good before he had eaten it. — From this we can see that this “savage” had no concept of right and wrong at all; he could not yet make a distinction between good and evil. What he likes, what tastes good to him, is good for him; what tastes bad or displeases him is bad for him. His ego has not yet worked on his astral body; he has not yet ennobled it. Culture ennobles the instincts and makes them subservient to duty. The ideal of duty teaches man to distinguish between what attracts him and what he should avoid. In this way he recognizes right and wrong. When man has come so far that he is able to distinguish between what he may follow and what he may not follow, he has learned to control his astral body from the ego.

When we look at people today, we find that they have worked on one part of their astral body and not the other. We must make a strict distinction between these two parts of the astral body. One part is still like that of an animal, blindly following its inclinations and impulses. The other part is the part of the astral body that man has transformed from a purely natural state into something nobler. There is a sharp and important boundary between these two parts. The part that the human being has not yet worked on will be lost after a short time when he dies. The part of the astral body that we have not made our own is given back to nature. What we have purified and transformed from astral matter remains our imperishable property. The unrefined part of the instinct must fall away; what has been refined remains and is incorporated into the ego. Thus man works on the immortalization, on the making immortal of his astral body. It is obvious that this work cannot be completed in one life. Logically structured, the doctrine of repeated earth lives appears through this contemplation.

For anyone who, through personal insight, knows the inner life of man, re-embodiment is a fact as certain as the fact that there are so and so many people sitting here in this hall. He knows of this fact through higher vision; he has not arrived at it through logical speculation.

But this evening we want to make clear to ourselves the logic of the matter. — Let us compare the “savage” who has done very little work with, say, St. Francis of Assisi, who had almost nothing left in him that he had not ennobled. He had brought the remainder of the earth down to the smallest degree. To reach this level, he must have had completely different abilities and powers at his disposal than that “savage”. Would it not be just as nonsensical to assume that these abilities came out of nothing as it would be to assume that a lower animal could arise from the mud, or that a lion did not descend from a lion? If you wanted to claim that, you would consider it foolish in the physical realm. We are reluctant to assume miracles in the physical realm, but not such a much greater miracle in the higher realm! What is inherited in the animal, so that only lions descend from a lion, only tigers from a tiger, and so on, are generic characteristics. But in the individual human being, there can be no question of the genus. Every human being has individual characteristics; only someone who chooses to ignore them can fail to see this. For human beings, the individual is as important as the species is for animals. An animal repeats the species, a human being repeats the individual. The individual human being not only displays the characteristics of his parents, but is also something in itself.

This must be explained. In addition to what we have inherited from our parents, something spiritual lives in us; that is, something spiritual lives in each of us that can be traced back to a previous existence. Just as the physical person has acquired physical characteristics through heredity, so the spiritual person has acquired spiritual qualities. And he has acquired them in previous lives by learning to control his astral body. And he has brought this ability with him into this life. It is always only the core of his being that reappears on earth.

Some might well object: Yes, if that is so, then shouldn't a person remember their previous lives? The question is wrongly put. Imagine you have a four-year-old child in front of you and someone asks: Why can't people do arithmetic? Of course, the four-year-old child can't do arithmetic. Let him reach the age of ten and he will be able to do it. There comes a time for everyone when they will realize that the more they ascend, the more they will also come to understand their previous lives on earth. For the majority it is still quite impossible. One must first know what is embodied before one can recognize what happens to it. Man desires to remember, but that which he wants to remember has fallen away from him, that which has significance for him. Only when he can grasp himself as a spirit can there be any question of remembering.

Whoever needs external impressions to feel does not become aware of the immortal, cannot learn anything about it. It only shines forth in the one who conquers the spiritual core. Certain phenomena occur here and there where memory becomes clairvoyant; for example, in the face of mortal danger, the whole of life sometimes arises in memory.

We must be clear about this. If man, as he is now, is to remember, he must call upon the etheric body for help. Memory lies in the etheric body. The instincts are in the astral body. We could not have memories without the etheric body, but they are clouded and inadequate because they are hindered by the physical body and drowned out by the surging feelings of the astral body. During sleep, the etheric body remains connected to the physical body and causes dreams. Shortly after death, the astral and etheric bodies separate from the physical body; then the magnetic bond that tied them to the body is broken. In the short time between the lifting of the finer bodies and their separation from the physical body, the whole of life flashes before the soul as in a great painting. It is written in the etheric body; memories emerge of long, long times; there is a dead calm over the soul; it is blind and deaf to its surroundings; deep inside, it comes to life with a sublime content.

Thomas a Kempis, in his “Nachfolge Christi” (The Imitation of Christ), has much to say about this language of the soul. His book is almost on a par with the New Testament.

When this spiritual power arises deep within us, it gradually allows us to recognize our spiritual essence. It is a very specific experience, the inner realization of the self-generating thought. We can get some idea of the process if we become completely absorbed in a work of art, to the extent that we forget ourselves completely. If you want to know yourself, your innermost self, there must be perfect calm. Nothing, absolutely nothing of the personal ego must interfere. This requires a degree of living in the object that takes place in the chaste ether element. When a person has learned to let the divine thought live in him and is able to trace his life back to his birth, then an image appears before his soul. It is the image of what he saw at the hour of death in the previous life, the overview of the previous earthly life. He cannot remember the whole earthly life; that comes only later.

At first, this memory will be repeated until it becomes certain, before the memory goes back further and further. Anyone who knows what happens to a person will understand the context. Anyone who believes that a person receives everything from nature will find it strange. But to those who believe in the work that man has to do, it will be clear. What a person's character is, that person has created for himself: What you think today, you will be tomorrow. — Beautiful, pure thoughts, often, often cherished, duties faithfully fulfilled, will pass into character. Thought forms character.

On the other hand, it is obvious – and easy to notice – that a person's environment, their surroundings, their occupation, has a great influence on their character. On closer examination, we will find that the opportunities offered to people in life are related to their inclinations, desires and cravings. Compare a North American bank official with a botanist. The botanist draws very different things to himself than the bank official. This is quite natural and natural. They are the consequences of the innate dispositions that each person has acquired in their previous life. The actions are the counter-shock to the environment. An example: a carpenter has worked all day. The half-finished table that he finds in the morning causes him to continue working on this table. He does not work out of nothing. The half-finished table determines my fate for tomorrow, the carpenter can say. So the previous day is the karma for the next.

Those animals that crawled into a dark cave and could not find their way out again gradually lost their eyesight because they could not use it in the dark. Their offspring lacked the organs of sight altogether; in the dark they needed other organs. These animals prepared their own fate. Their migration into the dark cave was their karma. In the past they created their future. What I do changes the outside world. If I break off a twig, I have changed the course of the world. The tree does not continue to grow as it was in its nature to do. With every deed we change the course of events; it would have been different if I had not done that deed.

The same applies to the spiritual life. Through our feelings and thoughts, we change the world. Because all my actions have an influence on the world, my karma consists of the changes that I have brought about in the world through my actions. Thoughts form character; actions form counter-actions. They fall back on the doer in the next life.

Example: I have offended a person. By doing so, I have brought about a change; now I am obliged to restore the world to the state from which I disturbed it. I have made the world imperfect; it demands that I make it perfect again. I am bound by my obligation until I have restored the disturbed harmony. If the harmony is not restored in this life, the guilt remains until the next life on earth and must be compensated for.

This is how repeated lives on earth are connected. If I was born into hardship and misery in this life, it was because I had previously brought disharmony into the world. This is how world justice is administered. Man is answerable for his actions; there is no other forgiveness for these than the counter-action that is performed as atonement. This is the unpardonable sin against the spirit. What he does in the lower world must be made good by him in the lower world. Natural life brings about nature in him; if he errs there, it will be forgiven him. Man is answerable for what he has done himself. If he does evil, consciously goes against the cosmic order, it is a sin against the self, against the spirit. The self has been violated by the conscious act. Theosophy is not dogma, it does not form a sect. It is life, full life. Mere theory is of no use. Even if I knew everything perfectly and did not want to apply it in life, it would be of no use to me. You have to be convinced of the truth in a practical way.

How should we relate to this? We have to be thorough and look at the bottom of things. If we know the reason and the cause of the bad things in the world, it is depressing at first. Then I have to say to myself: I have prepared my destiny, my character myself. But on the other hand, consciousness also has an uplifting effect. We are the masters of the future. What I do now forms the basis for the future. If I work on improving my character today, I know that this work is not in vain. This gives a blessed consolation to those who are inwardly convinced of the matter. The deepest peace of mind sprouts from this teaching. Life becomes different, also in relation to our fellow human beings. We are only too easily inclined to judge when we see in others what we do not like. If we have gained an understanding of karma, how different it becomes. Then we say: 'You may be bad now, you may lie and cheat, but perhaps this is not the first time you have faced me, and who knows whether I am not perhaps to blame for the fact that you are so bad today.

If someone finds this ridiculous, it is a sign that they have not yet penetrated deeply into the law of karma. Once you have come to the realization of the higher self, you will no longer pass by your fellow human beings indifferently or criticize them; you will learn to understand the connection between person and person. He meets people on every street corner; he thinks, can I help you, maybe I can make you better if I did something wrong in a past life. This idea, which is possible today, applied to life, makes life clearer, more transparent. We learn to understand people better and to help them better.

It is nonsense to say: I should not help him, he has brought his evil karma upon himself. — The moment you are standing in front of him, his karma is that you help him. If you do not help him, he will be helped in some other way. But you have neglected your duty. If you help him, you can say to yourself: If I help him, his future life will be better. The doctrine of karma teaches us to help ourselves. Through my own practical life, the doctrine becomes ever clearer; those who live by it will find it to be true - and only in life. Through recurring experiences, it will be proven to you throughout your entire life.

Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, summarized this teaching in a confession. He spoke of the whole world as of the body of his Father, as every body of man is a dwelling place of the Father. Man is unconscious of the Father; he needs a guide to the Father. Only through the Son do we come to the Father; he wants to be our guide. After every life on earth, the soul returns to the Father's body. In every life on earth, the soul passes through a dwelling that is taken from the divine Father Body. Jesus Christ says: “In my Father's house are many mansions.”

Dear attendees,

As we look around at our fellow human beings and consider the spiritual striving with which they seek to satisfy their inner yearning for something higher, we find that a major change has taken place over the past century. For a long time, the prevailing tendency was to seek only in the material, the obvious, that which has value for them. For them, the spirit was the emanation of the material, just as the hand of the clock is the expression of what is happening inside the clock, namely the wheelwork. They sought to explain all forces in terms of the material. Anyone who still talked about the divine spirit, about the soul, was, in the opinion of those setting the tone, stuck in outdated views. All life should arise from the material.

In recent years, a major change has taken place in this respect. There is a deep yearning in the world for a spiritual deepening, for solving the mystery of what lives within form. Even today's natural scientists no longer shy away from speaking of soul and spirit.

From three sides, today's humanity is trying to penetrate into the depths of existence. The most comprehensive research is the theosophical worldview. It emerged thirty years ago as an association of philosophy, science, religion and morality. Theosophists are spiritual researchers who strive to explore the spiritual life with the highest powers of man. But Theosophical research is just as certain as science. It aims to recognize the truth and only accepts what has been found through the strictest research into the truth. This is a difficult path, and our aim is to make this path popular.

The second area in which man tries to approach the spiritual and soul is the area of hypnotism and suggestion. For some time now, abnormal phenomena have been observed that cannot be explained by the mechanism of the brain. However, it is becoming apparent that there are many things in the world that our conventional wisdom did not dream of until thirty years ago. Scholars have been forced to take note of some inexplicable phenomena.

When Wilhelm Preyer, who wrote The Life of Darwin, pointed out that there were phenomena that could not be explained by conventional theories, his colleagues shrugged off his claim. Yet the phenomena increased. The appearance of the Danish mesmerist Hansen caused a great sensation among laymen, as many will still remember. He sat a person on a chair and could then do whatever he wanted with him. He gave him a drink of vinegar-sour liquid, telling him it was delicious wine, whereupon the person drank with pleasure; and only when he awoke from the state into which Hansen had put him did he shake himself and spit out what he had drunk. Or he would give him a potato and tell him it was a beautiful pear, which he would then bite into with relish. Yes, he would make him crawl on all fours and bark like a dog.

Some naturalists shrugged their shoulders and smiled, saying that these were just abnormal phenomena; but they did not engage in any attempt at explanation. However, there were individual researchers who wanted to try to see if something could be explored in this way about the hidden aspects of a person's mental life.

The third field in which his followers are so keen is spiritualism. Those who are not spiritualists or spiritualists cannot understand how otherwise reasonable people can come to believe that they can summon any deceased person to learn all kinds of secrets about the afterlife. The fact that some people make an effort to gain knowledge in other ways does not impress the spiritualists at all. What such a person says is considered fantastic by them. They think that to get to the source, you just have to die. They often turn to those who had no special higher wisdom in them while they were alive, and believe that now that they are dead, they can explain the most difficult areas of existence.

These are the three areas in which people seek enlightenment about the supernatural life.

The first, the theosophical area, is nothing more than the popular proclamation of a mystery wisdom that has always existed. The mysteries always showed the development of man, including that of the spiritual world.

There stands before me the perfect animal; was it really made out of a clod of earth? No! It has developed from imperfection to perfection. Honest theorists have also recognized this and traced this development from undeveloped sea animals to apes. The same development that the physical form has undergone has also been experienced by the soul. The human soul has also developed upwards. We become aware of this when we compare a “savage” who blindly follows his instincts and desires and devours his fellow human beings, with a European man of culture who submits to the commandment when it says: “You must not do that.” The latter has gradually learned to let duties take the place of desires. From an average person, we look up to Schiller. How much higher he stands above the average person! He has already cast off his desires. From there we come to the higher human being who has raised himself through piety, like Francis of Assisi; from there we look up to the initiates like Plato and Pythagoras. Between these and the ordinary person, the difference is just as great as between a cartilaginous fish and a lion.

The theosophically minded person says to himself that this soul of Schiller — or even the soul of Buddha — may well have developed itself to this height, that it has gone through the same primitive foundation from ancient times as today's savage. Thus, he sees ever higher stages of development before him. He sees the possibility for every soul to swing itself up to ever higher knowledge, to an eternal goal in life. What has lived in the soul before birth and what will live on after death also lives in us today. Why can't we see this soul? Because we lack the organs to perceive it. Living and perceiving are two different things; there is a great difference between them. The blind person also lives, but he does not perceive. If a person does not perceive the soul within him and the souls around him, it is because he lacks the organs to perceive it. But in man these organs can be awakened. Just as the blind man sees when the cataract is removed, so can the higher organs of perception be awakened in man, and then he can perceive from his own vision, and then he can enter into the higher worlds.

At first, this happens during sleep, when the body is resting from the work done. Gradually, the brain then transmits to the mind what the spirit has perceived during sleep, and the mind also learns to find its way in the higher worlds. The world of the senses envelops us in darkness. No man can say, if he is reasonable, that the inner nature of man is dead; but he does not perceive it. But there is the possibility to make it perceptible. Just as a whole new world of light and colors opens up for the blind-born after the operation, so it is for the person to whom the spiritual eye and ear is opened through practice; the deep night that surrounds him gradually brightens and begins to perceive the spiritual things that surround him. When man's inner life is thus awakened, the whole of nature comes to life for him. He finds the soul of the forest, the soul of the plant, the whole world is ensouled for him.

Some will say: I know nothing of this. That may be so; but he is a poor critic who wants to judge something he knows nothing about. Only he who has seen for himself can judge it.

What world is this that man enters in this way? It is the same world that the ordinary person enters at death. The clairvoyant consciously enters the world that one otherwise only enters after death. For him, death is only a change in life. For those who cannot see, survival after death is a matter of faith; some deny the fact. For the one who can see, all doubt disappears; for him, death is only the laying aside of the physical garment; for the one who has the organ of perception, the soul is there just as before.

What is important, therefore, is that we create organs for ourselves and develop our own soul upwards to the spiritual world, to the disembodied souls. All will struggle through, all will become companions, citizens of the spiritual world; but it is a slow process. Therefore, the call goes out to everyone: Develop your soul! Today, admittedly, there are only a few who have grown beyond the average human being and who, from their own experience, bear witness to the higher worlds. But today, through the theosophical world view, this knowledge is to be brought to all people.

Listening to the stories of the soul's development is the first step towards developing one's own spiritual life. Becoming familiar with the theosophical teachings is quite different from scientific learning. There is a big difference between reading an ordinary book – once I have taken note of its content, it has given me what it is supposed to give – but when I read a theosophical book, it gives me spiritual nourishment in a special way; by awakening thought powers in me, it ignites a fire in my soul. And these powers of thought are life-giving, awakening the slumbering powers in the soul. And so reading a theosophical book or listening to a theosophical lecture is the first step towards one's own independent realization. And just as the first step on this first path to the realization of higher worlds takes place in full day-consciousness, so every step forward is taken in bright day-consciousness.

Even if a person initially has his experiences at night while sleeping, he still takes the perceptions into clear day-consciousness and is awake from morning till night. As he develops further into the higher worlds, he will also be able to see the spiritual light that always surrounds us during the day. In true, correct clairvoyance, the person must be firmly and securely conscious at the center. Only a very reasonable person can enter this path, because only such a person can rationally grasp and logically think through each step forward. This is the clairvoyance to which Theosophy wants to lead people.

You can also achieve a certain clairvoyance by tuning down your consciousness. Souls are constantly around us; for the clairvoyant in the above sense, the spiritual light is not extinguished by the lamplight or daylight. For a different degree of clairvoyance, it is necessary to dim the lamplight so that the weaker light can be recognized. Let us be clear about this. If we want to recognize a small light that is outshone by bright lamplight, we can achieve our purpose in two ways. Either we can dim the lamplight so that the weaker light can shine in the darkness, or we can fan the small light or fire so that it outshines the flame of the lamplight. The theosophically trained clairvoyant does the latter. In full day-consciousness, he can make the light shine, whether daylight or lamplight or darkness surrounds him. The situation is different with mediums, in whom clairvoyance of a different kind occurs, not in full day-consciousness, but in a trance. Thus in a state where day-consciousness is extinguished; there the soul is given the opportunity to see the intermediate light because the waking mind consciousness is immersed in darkness. With the clairvoyant, the world, which is otherwise darkness, becomes light. With the medium, this world begins to shine when the visible has become invisible to the medium. The other two areas do not deal with the waking consciousness; they appeal to the trance consciousness.

We now come to hypnosis. Through some influence or other, a person's consciousness is so subdued that he can no longer control his actions; to varying degrees, the bright consciousness of day is subdued. Suggestion has such an influence on people. The man to whom you say, “Here is a pear,” while a potato is put into his hand, has not lost the ability to see; he can hear and see, but he has lost the ability to control the perceptions through the ear and the eye. Consciousness is dulled to the extent that he is only receptive to what you tell him. As long as he is awake, he can say and do whatever he wants; then he can control his actions. Now that the waking daytime consciousness has faded away, the mental consciousness is still there. Through various means, one can put a person into such a state, for example, by looking at a shiny object. When consciousness is tuned down to a certain degree, the person is a suitable subject for suggestion. He then does things that he would not do if he were awake, for example, he will crawl on all fours like a dog and bark. He hears what is being said but cannot make sense of it. But suggestion can also be carried out without such means. This is called verbal suggestion or suggestive hypnosis, and many contemporary researchers believe that everything comes from such verbal suggestions. What seemed miraculous to us — the barking of the hypnotized person — no longer seems miraculous to us now that we have seen that when the physical-sensory consciousness is extinguished or dulled, the soul-spiritual rapport from soul to soul has been established.

If you go through life with an open mind, you can observe this soul-to-soul rapport in many aspects of daily life. Not only what we hear and see has an effect on us; souls have a direct effect on each other; this also explains the otherwise inexplicable sympathy and antipathy. However, much of it is based on suggestion. Anyone who observes the workings of the soul will also be able to explain the powerful influence that some speakers exert on the masses, even though they give no logical reasons for their convictions. These are subtle effects of suggestion. Interesting observations can be made in this area. The well-known theater director Laube had a subtle suggestive effect on the audience. He brought the great actor Sonnenthal and the actress Wolter to the top. At first the audience did not want to know anything about them; but Laube was sure of his cause. He said: “Not today, but they will eat them!” The Viennese laughed at first, then mocked, but finally they also recognized the greatness of the excellent actors. Through continued listening, the audience's opposition was lulled and they became receptive to the impression that the great actors made on them.

How does science view these phenomena of suggestion? Wilhelm Wundt, who is almost worshipped like a god by some scientists, could not deny the facts, but he did not seek or find a satisfactory explanation for them either. He realized that a part of the brain was switched off during hypnosis, but he could not give a scientific explanation for it and shrugged his shoulders because he did not believe in the existence of the soul. His students tried to track down the existence of the soul and its effects.

The ancients were well aware of the suggestive effects. [Kircher] proved them to his contemporaries as early as 1646 by means of a simple experiment. He took a chicken, put it on the table, hit it a few times on the head with his fist, then drew a straight chalk line on the table, and the chicken obediently walked along this line without thinking of flying away. — It is also known that farmers would draw a thick circle of chalk around geese that were not supposed to fly away; no goose dared to leave the circle.

The knowledge of suggestive effects was buried under the rubble for a long time until the half-quack Hansen uncovered it again. The scholars mostly behaved dismissively towards the phenomena that were new to them. However, there were also unprejudiced men, especially doctors, who took a closer look at the matter and soon realized that a whole new avenue was opening up for them in particular. While it was previously believed that the soul has nothing to do with the body, it was gradually realized that the errors of the soul can even have a harmful effect on the body. The sick bodies are built by errors of the soul, the healthy bodies are built by healthy souls.

All of you gathered here will not be able or willing to dispute spiritualism, the third area we want to turn to. So we don't need to dwell on the evidence for its real existence. If we look at the spiritists, we will notice something. Most of them are quite gullible when it comes to the spirits they want to see, and incredulous when it comes to the spirit that lives in man.

You spiritists want to see the spirit! Why not enrich yourselves by recognizing your own spirit! You really often do much wiser things in your ordinary life than sit down at the table to converse with departed spirits!

When nine people sit around a table, there are nine spirits present, and it seems to me much more useful for these nine spirits to converse with each other than to summon foreign spirits to converse with them. Because spiritualism is known, it is known that a lot of fraud is done in the process; but it is also known that many interesting phenomena occur.

For the theosophist, the question arises as to whether it is appropriate to approach the spiritual world in this way. For the clairvoyant, the disembodied souls are of course companions, and he advises people to develop their own soul so that they too can see. The spiritist says: Why should I become different from what I am? I can save myself that; I don't like developing my mind. – The spiritualist seeks to make the spirit manifest itself to him. The theosophist wants to develop himself up to the spirit, to experience the spirit through his own soul.

The spiritualists are materialists. They say: What do I care about the spiritual worlds? I want to see! - Spiritism originated as a reaction against materialism. People believed in the material, they longed for the spiritual. And so they also wanted to make the spirit materially visible. This did not prove useful for human culture. What was needed was this: to descend even deeper in order to learn to understand the world from within itself. By trying to draw the spirit down to themselves, spiritists lose all control over the spiritual world. One thing is clear: only those who retain their rational minds can judge correctly.

Spiritualist séances whet our curiosity, and curiosity is selfishness. It should not be ignored that many are driven by noble motives and that they mean well. But on the whole, the matter cannot have a moralizing effect, since it leads to the most blatant materialism, in that one even wants to materialize spirits. Fortunately, a large number of spiritualists have saved themselves by joining the theosophical movement.

In this science, every step forward is controlled by the logical mind. So what might happen in a seance? When a person dies, he discards his physical body; the corpse decays; the soul leaves him, and this dissolves soon after death. The human being then still has the astral body; much, much later he also discards this when he enters devachan. Then he leaves an astral corpse in Kamaloka. This has no intelligence, but it can still respond to questions in an automated way. It is these shadows that manifest themselves very often. It is nonsense to turn to the astral corpses. The phenomenon may be correct, but man is not able to judge it. In other cases, one is not dealing with human beings at all. Confusion also occurs frequently. It can be compared to using the telephone; you hear a voice but do not see the person speaking. Confusion of voices can also occur. You speak to a different person than you think. It is like that and much worse in the spiritual world. Everything is uncertain; nothing gives us sufficient guarantee. Everything is withdrawn from clear day-consciousness.

This is how Theosophy stands in relation to the other two fields. The first materialists claimed that no stone could fall from the sky. And now we find meteorites in every natural history museum.

When we look at hypnosis, we see that the scientific world was quite dismissive, even mocking and hostile towards it. But gradually the scientists have been tamed by hypnosis to register the phenomena, and hypnotism has gained respect.

The spiritualists, who long so much for certainty, often become fanatics; but a little bit of materialistic spiritualism has served to reveal the mystery of the invisible world.

Mysterious in broad daylight
Nature cannot be robbed of the veil,

says Goethe, and Goethe was a theosophist.

The scholars only engage in what they can register; only series of numbers and percentages count for them. They achieve a little, and many of the researchers deviate from it nevertheless. They examine the phenomena for their authenticity with the greatest accuracy. Whether they come across the spirit in this way: In the meantime, their scientific endeavors may be quite good until they learn to take the only right path to knowledge.

The theosophical worldview truly leads people to higher things. It wants to guide people with bright, clear clarity and bring them proof that all their yearning for clarity can be satisfied, as Goethe said from his own spiritual insight:

The spiritual world is not closed, your mind is closed; your heart is dead. Rise up, bathe, disciple, undaunted

The earthly breast at dawn!

Dear attendees! For many years now, I have had the honor of giving a lecture here almost every winter, as in various cities in Germany, on topics in the field that I dare to call spiritual science. In our fateful time, however, it will be appropriate to turn our attention to the events of which we are all participants and witnesses during this time. This seems all the more appropriate to me, esteemed attendees, as it is my conviction, flowing not from a dark feeling but from spiritual science itself, that precisely what spiritual scientific world knowledge is, is intimately connected with what the German people and the German soul have produced as the world picture of German idealism, which revealed itself most impressively and powerfully out of this German soul at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century, but which has continued to work and has worked into our days.

In the true sense of being a study of spiritual life, spiritual science wants to be a continuation of what the natural scientific world view has achieved for the outer world of the senses. But to mature the spirit for such an understanding of the spiritual foundations of the world, this world view of German Idealism seems to me – as I said, I say this from the knowledge of the spirit itself – but this world view of German Idealism seems to me to be the actual root and the actual source. Therefore, allow me this evening to present a kind of reflection on this world view of German idealism and its influence on the present, its effect on the whole of time formation and on the world-historical development of humanity.

Of course, this world view of German idealism is born, entirely born, as we shall see, out of the essence of German nationality, and in this respect one could deny it a certain comprehensive validity according to the saying often heard today: All knowledge, all science must actually assume an international character and becomes untrue to itself if it proves to be in any way shaded by the aspect of one nation.

As plausible as it may seem at first, I would like to say, as self-evident as such an assertion appears, one must still say that from a deeper world view point of view it is misleading. It seems self-evident because it is, I would say, the most extraordinary thing that can be said about science and penetration into world knowledge. When we speak of the internationality of knowledge and insight, we are actually saying no more than that the sun or the moon are the common thought of all people. That is what they are; but the way in which what people have to say about the sun and the moon speaks from the souls, from the hearts of people, this way, it is different according to the talents, according to the spiritual directions and dispositions of the different peoples. The most diverse talents are involved in order to make this knowledge fruitful for human spiritual culture in one direction or another. That is precisely what is at stake: the extent to which what can be known can penetrate into all human spiritual development in a healthy way. But in this the talents, the soul directions of the different peoples have their very distinct specificity. Otherwise, how could it be otherwise meaningful to understand that one of the most German minds, Goethe, when he had begun his journey through the world, in order to see not only what was offered to him in the contemplation of art, but also what nature could offer him. How else could it have been possible for him to write to his German friends from Italy: “After all the natural phenomena and facts I have seen in public, I would now most like to take a trip to India - so said Goethe - not to discover it, but to see what I have discovered in my own way.

The way in which we view what is given to everyone is what matters when we consider the actual impulses and driving forces for the progress of humanity as a whole.

Now it is precisely possible for spiritual science to look at the souls of nations in a truly cognitive way. To do so, however, one must start from a spiritual-scientific insight that - like so many insights today - may be regarded by some as paradoxical, perhaps even fantastic. But what I will say next about the souls of different peoples from a spiritual-scientific point of view is something that may still seem fantastic and paradoxical to the present day, but which human knowledge wants to incorporate, just as certain physical and certain scientific knowledge has incorporated.

If we consider the soul today in the light of current psychology, we see everything that swirls and lives in the soul in terms of impulses of will, feelings, perceptions, thoughts and ideas as a unity. Of course it is; but that does not lead to any real knowledge. Nor does one come to a real understanding of the soul itself, as one might come to a real understanding of light if one did not perceive its interaction with material existence, with material things that confront it, in such a way that one would believe that one would emerge from the light the different shades of colors: the reddish-yellow nuance on one side, the green nuance in the middle, the bluish-violet nuance on the other side - just as the physicist, in his interaction with material existence, must observe these color shades, structured from this one light , and how he cannot come to an understanding of the deeds of light, as Goethe says, in any other way, one cannot come to an understanding of what the human soul actually is if one does not, I would say, also divide it into three shades of its being. And so we call the first shade of the soul being - corresponding, as it were, to the red-yellow shades of light in the rainbow - [...] then the human sentient soul. The human sentient soul contains everything that often wells up unconsciously and subconsciously from the dark depths of the soul. Everything that lives in a person without them immediately having an intellectual grasp of it – their passions, their desires and so on, as well as what gives people this or that temperament – all this wells up in the sentient soul. But in this sentient soul is contained at the same time, in a certain way, if also, one might say, in a natural way, that which can be called the eternal powers of the human soul, which pass through births and deaths and can reappear in repeated earthly lives.

Let us distinguish – as it were, as a parallel phenomenon for the greenish shading of the light – let us distinguish the so-called intellectual or emotional soul. This is the part of the soul through which man acquires an overview, a rationally considered overview, a level-headed overview of that which would otherwise live indeterminately and unconsciously in his soul as affects, as inner tremors.

And as the third shade of life - corresponding to the color blue-violet in the light - we speak of the consciousness soul. It is that through which the human being is most connected, from his soul existence, with the surrounding physical world in which he finds himself; it is that which contains within itself the most temporal, the most transient, power of human being; it is also that through which the human being appears individually as a personality, through which he puts the world to use, through which he puts that which he deliberately lets flow out of the subconscious soul life into practical life.

And just as the one light, the one sunlight, lives in the different colors of the rainbow, so the one I, the one, self-aware being of man, lives in the totality of the shades of the soul. And just as the light appears as the unity of that red and green and blue, as the unity of everything, so the self appears, so the personality, the individuality of man, the actual I appears.

I cannot say more today in the way of an introduction to this scientifically well-founded fact, law of the soul, because it seems appropriate to me to apply this law of the soul to the different national souls, insofar as they are spread over European intellectual life.

We have to say that [...] what can be called the soul of a nation is just as much a reality for spiritual science, something alive in itself, not just an abstract concept that summarizes the characteristics of a nation, but something alive in itself. You will also find the necessary references for this in our spiritual science literature, especially in my Theosophy.

And here we must say that the individual nations differ so much that in one nation more of the shades of the sentient soul comes to the fore, in another nation more of a different shade of soul life. In this way the European peoples are structured according to their folk souls – not the individual people, but to the extent that these individual people belong to the folk soul – they bring to manifestation that which lives as the shade of the rainbow in the individual folk souls.

In this context, the approach that I would like to say is justified by spiritual science shows us that when we look to the south, to the Italian people – to some extent this also applies to the Spanish people – when we look to the Italian people, we see that the folk soul of the Italian people is expressed through the shades of the and everything that can be observed in the various expressions of this Italian national soul, in its good and bad aspects, is connected with the fact that the Italian national soul is dominated by the shades of the sentient soul, that everything springs from the sentient soul.

Today, we only want to emphasize the best qualities of the Italian people that come from their emotional soul; but it will be seen that the Italian people, insofar as they appear as a national soul – not as individual human beings, as I said – must have a certain one-sidedness because their expressions and revelations come from the emotional soul. Yes, if we take the greatest – I will refrain from the development of art, the actual visual arts, but they could very easily prove exactly what I have to say – if we take the greatest – Dante, Giordano Bruno – we learn, precisely when we immerse ourselves in them, that what they have achieved in a gloriously designed world view is created entirely from the sentient soul. One only has to read Giordano's work to see how he has become a great inspirer. When one delves into what he has brought, it is like an expression of feeling for the world view that man can create out of the abundance of the world's phenomena. Feeling lives in this one of the greatest [spirits of] Italians, in Giordano Bruno. I would just like to hint at this.

It is particularly important to look at the French national soul from the point of view that has been gained. This French national soul shows itself to the spiritual-scientific gaze in such a way that it actually sets the tone for the chiseling of the intellectual soul. Everything in the French spirit that appears great but also one-sided stems from the fact that the intellectual soul finds particular expression there. And today we shall mention only that which has influenced the development of an actual world view. The greatest Frenchman in this field, under whose influence French world-view life still stands today, was born at the end of the sixteenth century and lived into the seventeenth century, namely Descartes or Cartesius; but it is precisely in this Descartes or Cart esius, the man of world-view who emerged at the dawn of the newer development of world-view — one can see how in him in particular everything lives that can lead from the intellect to a world-picture. His saying, “I think, therefore I am,” has become famous. Thinking, that is, that which lives in the soul of the intellect, is now based on the being of the soul itself.

The human mind still has the peculiarity of building the world as if it were externally mechanical. It is indeed the peculiarity of the mind that it is unable to penetrate the inner vitality of the world, that it shrinks back, as it were, from the inner vitality, and that it wants to construct everything. But this is particularly evident in Descartes, in Cartesius. And now we will draw attention to one particular way in which this world view of Descartes came about: I would say that it is the one-sided expression of intellectual life. Descartes looks at the world; and after he has given himself over to doubting everything (and this doubt is also, in turn, an expression of the intellectual way of looking at the world), he comes to saying to himself how he can form a world picture that has sensuality. Indeed, this world view becomes such that everything mechanical only wants to be included in it. The world appears as a great mechanism. And it is characteristic of this – I would say genuinely French – world view that Descartes explicitly states: we can only perceive soul in ourselves, as humans. Animals are moving machines. Descartes denies that animals, or indeed all of nature except for human beings, have souls. Animals are automatons.

Thus, for Descartes, the whole of nature except for human beings is like a complicated machine, and animals are within this complicated machine. Indeed, it is precisely the rational mind that recoils from the living. And this intellectualism, it remained in its one-sidedness, and in the end it led to the fact that precisely from France and right up to our times the impetus has been given to establish the actual materialism of the world view, of mechanism, one might say, the world view,

Dear attendees, one could very easily reproach the one who describes the relationships of the folk souls in this way today: Yes, you are describing the feelings of the present time, because the war has brought about a situation in which what we ourselves regard as our world view, as the source of our national identity, is being vilified and even defamed from all sides in Europe. And so we are now trying – I would say – in this time to either justify or avenge ourselves.

Now, esteemed attendees, there are listeners here who know that what I am saying about the different national souls in these difficult times of European events is something I have said again and again for many years, long before this war, and not only to Germans but also to members of other European nations. I consider this to be a firm result of spiritual scientific knowledge about European conditions.

The mechanistic nature of this worldview has been so ingrained in French culture to this day that it has allowed what was French, materialistic or mechanistic world view to emerge. And today we may recall how Goethe, even as a young man, confronted the French mechanistic worldview from his German consciousness, which seeks to take account of the living soul and the vitality of the worldview. He said: They bring us this mechanical play, a mechanism only, a worldview as if the whole world were just a game, a real automaton! Yes, if only what one sees in the world of phenomena could at least be explained to one! These are moving atoms! But then, when he has explained how the atoms collide, he withdraws and leaves the whole world unexplained.

This is what repels Goethe, even as a young man, about the one-sidedness that arises from a purely intellectual development of a world view. And basically, to this day, we can see how this mechanistic world view affects what we seek in a worldview, a folk worldview. For only a few individuals have tried to work their way out of it, for example, the famous philosopher Bergson, I don't know whether one can still mention him today, after the beginning of the war, after the mood of the French, or whether the word Bergson is now taboo as his name in France, I don't know. It is precisely Bergson who, since the war broke out, one might say, has continually presented his French to his French in the most savage manner against the German essence, namely against the German world view, and has managed to that it is precisely the Germans – who were great in a certain way, especially during the period of German idealism – but who have now fallen so low in the present day, [the Germans] have become a nation that only trains itself mechanically and in a machine-like way. The Germans have become a nation that itself represents only a kind of machine!

Bergson probably thought – Bergson, who formed this view of the German people because the Germans opposed the French with cannons and rifles – he probably formed this view because he believed that the Germans will oppose the products of what he calls the “greatness, the great age” of the Germans to the French cannons and French rifles by reciting Novalis and Schiller and Goethe, because that is all they would rely on, right!

Well, this Bergson, he has in a sense worked his way out. But I showed in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” - which was not written during the outbreak of the war, but appeared at the very beginning of the war and was finished long before - that those of Bergson's thoughts that are reasonably plausible could be found long before that in much more intense and much more thorough form in the minds of German thinkers! But quite apart from that, Bergson always wants to be seen as the one who brought the French a world view that went far beyond the mechanistic and materialistic view of things.

Now, this world view, how did Bergson himself present it to the Germans in his lectures, to these Germans who are said to have come down so much since the time of their greatness? It is just a shame that it has been possible to prove, especially in recent times, that Bergson copied entire pages – not just repeating, but copying – from the German philosopher Schelling, the German philosopher Schopenhauer, and so on, and so on!

What the Frenchman is able to counter as a higher world view to the German, whom he defames, esteemed attendees, is something he himself has copied! It is necessary to bear these things in mind more often in the present if one wants to have an understanding of the mutual relationship between the European peoples and what is now being said about this relationship by the opponents of this German essence.

And, dearest attendees, when we turn our eye to the British national soul, we find that this British national soul bears the very shade of the consciousness soul. And in every detail of this British national soul, one can see how it expresses this consciousness soul, how the British, the Englishman in particular, has the intention of putting what wells up from his inner being into the service of practical life alone.

This is what English culture has in itself, without taking into account the development of the whole world view. Starting with Milton and Bacon, it can be seen everywhere that a world view was actually sought that was to be placed only at the service of the actually immediately tangible life. But I will refrain from that now, I will only point out that in the very last period, this English national character, insofar as it really arose from the British national character, has led to a very peculiar direction: truth, that is what a person who has a sense of truth regards as something that is intimately and genuinely connected to the soul as a reality. Ladies and gentlemen: The English – and in this case in harmony with the Americans – have developed a world view that they call pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? Well, this pragmatism, dear attendees, is characterized above all by the fact that it treats the truth, the concept, the idea of truth itself, in a highly peculiar way. Truth as something that connects the soul with reality, with spiritual reality, is something that this pragmatism, this primeval English product, does not recognize at all. Man perceives truth as an idea, as an idea - in the sense of pragmatism - purely for the purpose of dealing with the external world of the senses, with external tangible reality, in order to intervene in it. In the sense of this pragmatism, truth is a concept that proves useful for practical life. One could say that truth is a tool for usefulness in the very outermost sense, including scientific truth, when understood in this way. Truth has no independent significance, but only serves as a tool for finding one's way in the outer life – that is what this pragmatism has brought forth.

Do we not see this consciousness soul, which places everything that the human being produces in a spiritual way only at the service of the external life? Do we not see it at work in all the details - most honored attendees - that are found in the three peoples mentioned, that order and inner understanding will come into the matter when they are considered in terms of the guidelines that can only be briefly sketched here, but which can be fully substantiated from the insights of spiritual science?

And if we now turn our gaze to the center of Europe, let us turn our gaze to German spiritual life, insofar as it is rooted in its national character. Let us turn our gaze to that spiritual striving within the German people that is to lead to a world view, to such a world view that at least corresponds to the German being, the German national character, then we find confirmed in the most comprehensive way that spiritual science also shows in other respects that this German soul is shaded in such a way that it appears like light in three different color shades: in reddish-yellow, in greenish, and in bluish-violet. That the German soul is such that the I, the self-awareness, works through the three different soul nuances, the unity of the soul-living, working through all three soul nuances, this turns out to be the essence of the German national spirit, the German national soul, in a truly lively, penetrating observation.

And this can be said in a completely objective sense; it does not require any kind of one-sided nationalistic view, as we see it emerging from the Italian, French, and British national souls.

The German is in a position to be able to truly rely on what an insight into his nature, striven for in the soul, gives him, and [he is in a position] to understand his nature from this insight.

And if one wants historical proof that this I, this self, the whole living personality in German national character is really effective through the three soul nuances, then one can present precisely the three great world-view men who, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, so clearly emerged within German intellectual life and sought to reveal German national character at the highest spiritual level. Kant, who tried to educate himself from philosophy, was indeed ahead of them; but we do not want to look at him, although he provided the foundation for the others, so to speak.

But before our soul we want to place one of the most German men, one of those men who knew - even when they strove with their thoughts to the highest, to a world view - that they can only gain this world view in the right sense, in the living sense, within the German essence if this world view is the result of a conversation with the German national spirit itself. And so Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, knew that in the world view he created, German essence was most wonderfully revealed. How does he appear to us when we first consider his personality only in terms of appearance?

Allow me, esteemed attendees, to mention just a few essential traits of his life, so that we can see how this whole man, Fichte, attempts to obtain, from the unity of human life, from the self itself, that which illuminates the world in its deepest life and can bring it to knowledge for man.

The young Fichte, how does he appear to us? Two traits, wonderfully real in this sensitive beauty, we can hardly find them in any other mind: the six-year-old son of a simple, rural man is first of all a decent student; and because he is such a good student, he is given the book “Gehörnte Siegfried” by his father as a Christmas reward - he can already read. It soon becomes apparent that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is becoming somewhat inattentive in his studies; he is reproached for this. We see him one day standing by the stream that flows past his parents' house, throwing into it the “Gehörnte Siegfried”, which has become so dear to him, on which he has pinned his entire soul. And when his father comes along, the father realizes the reason for the boy's strange behavior: he could not tolerate, in the face of the iron concept of duty that was already living in him at the root of his soul, that what was dear to him as a human being, as a personality, should remain with him if he could violate his duty over it. Thus, even the boy Fichte, the six-year-old boy, feels trapped in a world that is, I would say, completely permeated by forces of duty.

Later, when Johann Gottlieb Fichte was nine years old, the village where his parents lived was visited by the estate neighbor. He actually wanted to hear the sermon on Sunday; but he came too late. What happened? Because the pastor had already delivered the sermon, they showed him the young boy, the nine-year-old boy in the blue farmer's coat, who at first behaved awkwardly, but then, when he saw what they wanted from him, came to life and now the whole sermon, which he had listened to as a nine-year-old boy, had listened to as a nine-year-old boy, and he now recites it word for word to the neighbor of the estate, so that everything he said comes from his soul – he had connected with the innermost view of his soul with what he had just heard, and so he could let it flow out again from the innermost. Thus he lived a spiritual life in the immediacy of his own being. Thus he was prepared to find in Fichte the world picture of German idealism, which was able to flow to him, I might say, admittedly from a certain one-sided point of view, but still from a genuinely German one.

Fichte's fundamental awareness of the fact that what lives in the human being, what is inside this I, how it contains the source forces of the world itself – that which pervades and permeates the world in a divine-spiritual way – how this can be found if only man plunges completely into the depths of his inner being, this is evident in all of Fichte's work. He was appointed to the professorship in Jena relatively early, which at that time was the center of German intellectual life. But the way in which Fichte as a teacher affected his listeners is really quite different from what one - I would say usually dreams of.

People who heard Fichte characterize him in the following way: When Fichte spoke, it was like rolling thunder that discharged in sparks of lightning; and when he spoke, he wanted to educate not only good, but great individuals. And one of those who had listened to some of those standing nearby said: What Fichte said revealed that he had not practical, but bold images, energetic images, that his imagination was not graceful in the proper sense but forceful and powerful, and that he speaks in the realm of thought, in the realm of ideas, not like one who merely makes grand words, but like one who is able to rule in this invisible, in this supersensible world.

When Fichte spoke to his listeners, he did not merely seek to communicate to them the content of what he had to say to them. He never spoke the same thing twice about a subject; he never spoke in such a way – I would say that he had only a certain content in his soul that he wanted to convey to his listeners, but rather he had in his own inner being an overall feeling of what he wanted to say, an overall feeling, and above all he sought to establish an inner bond between himself and each individual listener. He wanted that which lived in his soul to become active, not just as a word, but as a force in each individual listener, [but] that it resound in each individual listener himself. He wanted to pour a living fluid over his entire audience. He wanted the listeners, when they had heard his phrases, to leave with a different inner life than when they came. He wanted to awaken something in them. But that is how he worked, vividly, seizing the self.

And so Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, was able to completely negate, I would say, that which emerged from Descartes' rational world view. Striving to be in one's own self and to strive for the divine in the self, by starting from thinking, and because one thinks, one shows – Fichte could not approve of that either – so the self would have been something dead. For him, the ego was something that could never become dead, for the reason that it constantly creates itself. It cannot cease to be - because it constantly creates itself. That is to say: He saw the essence of the ego - Fichte - in the will. And by the fact that the ego wills itself, it places itself into the world through its own power.

But this also had to result in a world view for Fichte that saw in the will that pervades the world as the actual active force in the world. And the wonderful thing about Fichte is that he says: This external sense world, as it presents itself to us, is not the true, real one. Why is it there? It is there so that man can appear within this sensory world as a sensual being; so that in this human being the will that permeates the world and expresses itself as the divine duty that permeates the world, so that this will forms a material, in order to fulfill the duty, in order to fulfill the moral. Thus, for Fichte, the whole world is permeated by moral substance, by moral reality. For him, the whole world is a spiritual whole of duty, and that which exists as an individual is so that duty, so that the will, so that the divine that is alive in the will can live out itself.

Fichte calls the external sensual world matter, the sensualized material of duty. If one tries to hold together Fichte's placing in a divine-moral world order with the mechanistic materialism that emerged from a unified rational world view, as with Descartes —- Cartesius —, one tries to recognize how this Johann Gottlieb Fichte lived - I would like to say - a certain inner connection of the soul with what, as the divine, flows through and permeates the world, how he then tried to see this connection in the individual national spirits. But Fichte could only ascribe to the German national spirit the ability of a national spirit to grasp this living connection with the universal spirit in the ego. And so Fichte became quite aware that the German national spirit, in connection with the development of humanity, would be called upon to bring living knowledge in place of mechanistic, dead knowledge.

But what is true is that the “Addresses to the German Nation” are pulsating with an ethos, a world-historical sense of duty. Fichte delivered these magnificent addresses in Berlin, in the midst of the enemies who had invaded Berlin at that time, and during his Address to the German Nation, where he sought to show how the German national spirit is called upon to grasp, out of the living self, the connection of the human being with the spirit of the world, when he delivered these speeches, which can still have a wonderfully inspiring effect on the German mind today, the marching French regiments drummed outside. He could have been captured by the enemy at any moment. But he also stood firm as the German man, aware that he had to express the world-historical mission of the German national spirit.

One need not, honored attendees, take a one-sided view today that one should accept the philosophy, the worldview, of such a mind in terms of its content as dogma. Today we can go beyond that. We do not have to profess everything that Fichte said here or there, or what the others said, which we will discuss later; we can turn our attention to the way these people strive and how, in this striving, they show – which Fichte was also fully aware of – that they wanted to draw from the depths of the German national spirit.

Thus, we see Johann Gottlieb Fichte as one of those who, out of German Idealism, sought a world view. We want to look at this striving in him, and also in the others, not at what they said. One need not be a follower of anyone whom one finds to be a great and admirable personality, but one can continue to be inspired by the individual striving, even in those areas where one believes that one cannot go with him in terms of the content of a teaching. But it is not the doctrine that matters, it is the personality that matters, which, as it stands, can serve to characterize the German people themselves, because it must lie in the essence of the German people if, as I would say, with Fichte, such a thing can arise from this German essence with such awareness as Fichte brought forth from this German essence.

Then we see Fichte's succession from another, from Schelling. Schelling is also such a personality. I am convinced, dear attendees, that precisely these three figures, whom I am speaking of here, will be called upon again when the time, which is certainly a time of great hopes and activity that we are living through, but which is also a difficult time of trial, when this time will bear fruit.

We see Fichte's successor in Schelling. In him, too, we have a personality who wants to create a world picture directly from the depths of the ego, because he is clear that the divine-spiritual is at work in what man experiences in his innermost being, and that this divine-spiritual floods through all nature and all being and can be grasped in its activity in the world. If only man is able to experience his ego strongly enough within himself.

If for Fichte the divine essence is something that permeates the world – I would like to say – like a great weaving and working morality, then for Schelling the divine essence is first of all the great artist who, out of the artistic weaving of his own being, first confronts nature in order to see his own truth, his own being and working in the mirror of nature. For Schelling, God's work of art is nature. No natural science that is to be abstractly intellectual - a natural science that works in such a way that with every idea that is brought forth about nature, the human soul feels at the same time related to nature. But Schelling feels this nature in such a way that he says: Now man has emerged, now other animated beings have emerged in nature. But all of nature had preceded this, as it were, as the unconscious and subconscious, which had to be present beforehand like a skeleton. The whole spiritualized world view is nature; as the past and at the same time as the solid ground for the present; as the past in terms of material on which the spirit can stand, having prepared its existence in the existence of nature. And so, for Schelling, nature and spirit grow together, but they grow together in such a way that what lives out of Schelling as a world view of German idealism is again connected to the entire personality, not just one-sidedly with the sentient soul, one-sidedly with the consciousness soul, one-sidedly with the mind soul, but out of the fullness of the soul's being. One would like to say: This whole Schelling was there.

Those who knew him personally described how, even in old age, he spoke with his eyes sparkling, as if he wanted to pour out to his listeners through the shining gaze of his eyes what lived in his inner being as a spiritualized, ensouled nature, whereby he always felt that the soul of man was interwoven with all of nature. Schelling felt that this world view, which I would describe as having been woven out of the German mind, out of the soul of the emotions – as was the case with Fichte, out of the soul of the will – carried him to ever greater heights, to the point where he could ultimately be understood only to a limited extent. God as the artist, nature as a wonderful work of art, knowledge of nature through the senses, which Schelling believed was so interwoven with the human ego that he was carried away to say: To recognize nature is to create nature.

Of course, these spirits were one-sided; but they were as one-sided as all human beings are one-sided, who have the faults of their virtues, not the faults of their small characteristics. - To recognize nature is to create nature! He felt that whatever lives as a force in nature can be grasped by the soul if that soul only grasps itself in its own ego, that nature can be recreated.

And the third one is the much-maligned Hegel, who is, however, revered by some in the present day. If Fichte tried to revive in the will that can permeate everything, in the ego, if Schelling tried to create an idealistic world view in the world mind that comes to life in the ego and spiritualizes and ensouls everything, then Hegel tries to create a world view out of pure concepts, out of the idea. And with Hegel in particular it is obvious that he wanted to grasp a world picture in concepts, in ideas, to compare this Hegelian world picture with the mechanistic, with the intellectual one of Cartesius, of Descartes: there everything is intellectual! But what did Hegel want? Hegel did not want the concept, the idea, in such a way that his world picture was only an instrument, as it were, to recognize an external reality. Hegel wanted to have this world in such a way that the human soul, for its part, experiences the concepts themselves, that it lives with its I into the icy regions, but thereby also forms the experience of the pure concept. For Hegel had the inner experience - one may call it the inner experience - that when man grasps the ideas of the world in their purity, that he may then partake with the innermost part of his I-being in what, as divine thought itself, underlying all of the world, participating in the thought-work of the Godhead, because a thought in the soul is, so to speak, only an ideational representation of that which, as a divine thought, permeates the world - that is what Hegel wanted.

This world view is also one-sided, because it reduces the divine spiritual beings that underlie the world to mere logic, because the whole world is reduced to a mere skeleton of its reality. But it is significant that for once — I would like to say — there appeared a stage in the development of the German being, this inwardly living feeling and interweaving of a thought that permeates the world: I want to unite myself with the thought that is active in the world, and I am convinced that in so doing I have not only something in my soul that outwardly reflects the world, but that when thoughts flow through my soul, it is divine activity itself that allows its thoughts to appear in my soul — those thoughts according to which minerals, plants, animals and human beings are created. Outside, God creates the form and the facts according to the ideas; then, having stripped them of the material, he lets these ideas flow through the human soul, and man participates by surrendering to this flow in a mysticism that is not vague, not an emotional mysticism, but an idea-mysticism, crystal clear: Man participates in the efficacy of divine thoughts in the world!

Yes, esteemed attendees, with these three figures – who, much more than one might think, also in the period when they were rarely mentioned, in the second half of the nineteenth century and up to the present day, live on in the German essence – in these three figures, the world view of German idealism presents itself to us, that German idealism that was called upon – and we can see this directly and objectively in these minds, the spirits of this German idealism, - was called upon - I would say cognitively, I emphasize explicitly, not religiously, but cognitively - although the cognitive is a support of the religious, the religious emerges from another part - to conjure up the second great tidal wave in terms of a human world view from the depths of human existence.

Let us look across to Asia. Asia, especially India, still retains, I would say, an ancient world view in which the human being has also tried to come to that from the depths of his being, which as divine-spiritual flows through, works through and lives through the world. But how does the Asian and the descendant of this ancient Asian, the present-day Indian, attempt to make the divine-spiritual activity and flow in the world present in their own soul being? By attenuating and paralyzing the soul and paralyzing the I. The I must be extinguished so that the human being can give themselves over to the general flow of Brahman. This is the ancient striving for a world picture, I would say, the primeval striving for a world picture. Characteristic of this is that the ego is tuned down, paralyzed to the point of extinction, so that what the human being experiences in his ego does not stand in the way when he wants to revive in his soul that which flows through the world in a divine-spiritual way, giving it soul. To extinguish himself so that the Divine may work in him, that is the ideal of this Pan-Asiatic world picture.

This world picture was no longer possible when the greatest event in the world development of humanity had taken place. This world picture was no longer possible when the Christ Impulse had entered into humanity. From the religious side, humanity was given a deepening, of such magnitude that the Asian religion may never again emerge in its strength, for it could never again be adequate to this event, in which the Christ Impulse lives as the highest event. It was the destiny of the German national spirit to have created an understanding of earthly existence that is adequate to the Christ Impulse.

And these three spirits are like the three symptoms in which the striving for such a world view is expressed. As I said, how does one not seek such a world view by extinguishing the self! We have seen how these three spirits in particular – Fichte, Schelling and Hegel – want to fully live out the I, how they place it at the center of the three soul shades, not by extinguishing the I, but precisely by fully experiencing it, by elevating the I; how the divine-spiritual flows into this I, that is what was incumbent on the German national spirit. And it could do so because it was able to let the I shine through the three soul nuances, just as the unified light shines through the three rainbow nuances.

To place oneself in the more recent development of the world as those who now place everything that is recognized of the existence of nature and soul in the service of such an idealistic world view, that was the duty of the greatest German thinkers, who knew themselves to be one with what the truly German national spirit wants in the further development of humanity.

It seems appropriate to me to point this out to you today, esteemed attendees. What will become of the great external events will be decided by weapons and other circumstances. But it seems appropriate to me, especially in the present, to delve into the nature of the German national spirit itself, which is now being reviled and slandered from all sides, and which, precisely because it must work in the manner indicated, is so little understood by those who, out of their hatred, today all around us, not only misunderstand the German world view, but also want to misunderstand it. But they cannot understand it because they work in a one-sided way, in the one-sidedness of their particular shade of soul; whereas the German must work out of his nature, out of his whole being, towards a wholeness.

A kind of reverent mood is poured out over what the German spirit is meant to achieve in the world. This German national soul is particularly predisposed to acquiring knowledge through nature and the soul, and then enriching this knowledge in the soul so that this knowledge is like the soul's approach to the divine being.

If we do not see this – and I would like to read these words to you literally – if we do not see this beautifully when we look at those who always wanted to visualize from the depths of the German being, that which is the German folk spirit? Do we not see this striving - to know what the German can know, how to make it accessible to the divine-spiritual, to develop a devout mood in science as well? How beautiful and wonderful it is, for example, when a German — and that is precisely why he may perhaps be mentioned today — who appears in Austria as one of the greatest German-Austrians, delves into the German essence, even if he has not perhaps arrived at the concepts that have been developed today and presented to us, so as to feel the full expression of what has been developed in ideas today here: I am referring to Robert Hamerling, Austria's greatest German poet of modern times, who spoke the beautiful words, feeling like a German in Austria, spoke the beautiful words: Austria is my fatherland; but I feel it: Germany is my motherland - thus expressing the unity that has been so firmly forged today through Germany and Austria, through Central Europe. All these peculiarities of the German national soul, which I have been trying to develop today from the idealistic world view of the Germans - at the time when they believed they could turn back the tide, when the Germans came over from Asia, bringing with them the urge to grasp the Allgeist, which they would later express in their art, in their education, in their philosophy, in all their being and working in the world, by elevating the ego, not by dampening the ego. And there, as in a beautiful poet's dream in his “Germanenzug”, Robert Hamerling remembers - the old ancestors of the Germans are still sitting over there in Asia, while these old ancestors of the Germans are moving into Europe, into the West , Robert Hamerling describes beautifully how these Teutons are camped on the border of Asia and Europe, how the sun goes down - he beautifully describes the moon that rises, the whole landscape -, how the Teutons are camped. Only one is awake: the blond Teut, the youth. But in front of Teut, the future destinies of the Germans are written in the stars in wonderful signs. And the genius of the Germans, the spirit of the German people, speaks to the blond Teut, to the leader of the Germanic peoples to the German West. And Hamerling says beautifully:

"To whom does the word break out of the depths of the soul one day
Like your people, so rich, so tender, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the sounds of the strings
His innermost self? Who draws the senses so magnificently
Into the blue of heaven, granite hieroglyphics
of the soul's upsurge from the narrowness of life?
Who finally ties the strands
of the searching thought to the stars
so boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Who is led so high, so deep by his urge, his foreboding?
Who grasps the near and the far so faithfully?
Where are all the zones of earth and heaven
reflected as in your thinking, O Teuton?

Not from such a self-exalting consciousness, not from national immodesty, as we often find among our opponents today, but from a devout consideration of the nature of the German, of the spiritual nature that has prevailed throughout world history.

The poet speaks of duty, the Austrian poet, in complete harmony with those who have created a German world view, an imaginative world view of the Germans, out of the German world view.

That is why it is so profoundly true what the “Philosophus teutonicus” Jakob Böhme said about all research and reflection on that world view that has a right to exist, which, fundamentally, for the German national character - so Jakob Böhme believes - the search for knowledge, for science, must be a path to God, even if it does not encroach on religion. Jakob Böhme expresses this, thereby characterizing the guiding principle for the world view of German idealism, beautifully from the depths of the German mind. Jakob Böhme says:

“When you see the depths”

he means the depths of heaven

"When you look at the depths of heaven

This is the union of the most beautiful sense of the German national character with the highest striving for knowledge of that which, in a divine and spiritual sense, permeates, interweaves and suffuses the world. Thus, in order to elevate his ego, the German seeks to penetrate into the innermost nature of things, and this is indeed something that can be understood only to a limited extent.

One can see how little it can be understood! There is one of those who, shortly before the beginning of this war, used to move around in Germany as foreign spirits, talking about all kinds of friendships with the German essence, about all kinds of understanding that they claim to have acquired for the German essence: that is Emile Boutroux. Shortly before the war, he even lectured at German universities about how one should revere the depths of the German spirit. And now the true Frenchman [Boutroux] is telling his fellow Frenchmen – he wants to be funny, of course, the good [Boutroux] wants to be funny – he is telling them what a difference there is between the French, the English and the Germans; what we - though for the French, certainly in a joking way - have sought today from the depths of the German character, yes, Boutroux talked about that in a similar way to his French not too long ago. He said: Yes, when the French want to recognize a lion or a hyena – you don't get the news exactly, but that's roughly how he spoke – and in any case, what I am saying is essentially not inaccurate – when the French describe a lion or a hyena, they go to the menagerie and observe the lion or the hyena; when the English want to recognize a lion or a hyena, they travel around the world and observe the life of the lion or the hyena. But when the Germans want to recognize a lion or a hyena, they neither go to a menagerie nor travel around the world, but retreat to their study and design the image of the lion and the hyena from within, without looking at the outside!

It is certainly a witty saying, and we are accustomed to the French speaking wittily from their intellectual culture; it is just a shame that this joke is by Heinrich Heine, repeated by Boutroux, because it comes from Heine; and the Frenchman, who we are accustomed to making good jokes, made a German joke in this case, to make a witty comment about the English and the French! This is another illustration of how the opponents of Germanness try to ascribe to themselves something higher than what a German can live with!

However, this same man recently told his Parisians what a barbaric people the Germans actually are; one can already deduce this from the word. For example, he said: the Germans have no word for generosity; therefore they don't even have this quality, they lack it, only the French have it. On the other hand, the Germans have a word that the French don't have: that is the word 'Schadenfreude'; so only the Germans have the quality of Schadenfreude. The French don't have this ignoble quality. And similar things more are what indicates the spirit from which one today vilifies and degrades the German essence.

But one has not always looked at this German essence in this way! And it would be particularly interesting to see which minds have tried to find their way into this German essence, as one can also see from this just how little account is taken of the actual meaning of this German essence, this spirit. Take, for example, the writer of “The Life of Jesus” — Ernest Renan — he wrote in a corresponding way even during the Franco-Prussian War about German essence to David Friedrich Strauß, who wrote about German essence. Strangely, the Frenchman, Ernest Renan, wrote; he says that at a certain age he realized what this German essence actually means. And he makes an interesting comparison. He says that after he had absorbed the French character in his education, he approached the German character through Goethe and Herder, and it was as if he encountered realities instead of mere concepts, whereas before he had only seen a lot of faded paper flowers. And then he compares the height of German intellectual life, which has been revealed to him in this way, by saying that everything he got to know outside of this German essence seems to him, well, like elementary mathematics to differential and potential mathematics. We shall see in a moment how such a mind itself utilizes, in terms of feeling, what has come to it through contact with the German essence.

But first, let us see a little more of how this Central European, German essence is viewed in the East, in that East from which the European West, that is to say our West, is currently suffering so much for what is, after all, its sphere of influence, its work for freedom and democracy today, this European West. If we have to consider the Russian national soul, we have to say: in Russia's national soul, the direct driving force of the I, everything still lives as something external. The Russian receives his religion as a foreign one, the Greek-Christian religion, which he does not have within him in the form of rebirth, as the German has experienced it from his innermost being, but which he accepts as something like a cloud that hovers over him, that he has from outside. While the Italian works from the sentient soul, the Frenchman from the intellectual and mind soul, the Englishman, the Briton from the consciousness soul, the German from the actual self, the person who truly belongs to the Russian national soul, works from the subconscious of the ego, which still has the ego that the ego has not yet absorbed into itself, which the ego still wants to see in a mystical darkness. This Russian soul, this eastern Russian soul, works like the national soul that has not yet fully come to consciousness.

And this is why this still immature national soul has not only so misunderstood the German national soul, but also all the national souls of Western Europe, especially in the course of the nineteenth century and up to our own times, so infinitely misunderstood them.

People have not even noticed what the relationship is, let us say, between the nature of the German spirit and the Russian spirit. In selfless German modesty, one has naturally included the great Russians – Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. They are not to be disparaged here; they can be fully recognized; but one must become aware of the gulf that exists between the Russian and the German essence, and which, especially in the Russian essence, has come to such an immature outbreak and revelation in our own time.

In the course of the nineteenth century, we encounter the best Russian minds, which - I would like to say - philosophically and artistically express, as in a world view, what, in political terms, the “Testament of Peter the Great” – whether it is forged or not, that is not the point now – which, in political terms, aims to achieve the complete annihilation and replacement of Western and Central Europe, as it exists today, with Eastern Europe! [The “Testament of Peter the Great” is the only thing that should be considered sustainable.] But everything, I would like to say, even Russian literary-philosophical and artistic thought, is in the service of this “Testament of Peter the Great”. And this is what we encounter again and again in all of nineteenth-century Russian intellectual life.

Then we encounter the best minds in Russia, who turn their gaze to what minds like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel have achieved. I would say that Herzen is able to observe this in a single such spirit. He seeks to delve into what Western culture has brought forth; he finds that it has all grown old, has become decrepit, that it must all disappear, that it is all superficial, because he cannot comprehend how this world view of German Idealism is inwardly lived and interwoven; and so it becomes worthless to him. In his book From the Other Bank, Herzen expresses how all these ideals that have sprung up in Western Europe must be destroyed and how something else must take their place.

One of Herzen's opponents, also a Russian, wrote to Herzen: So you want to destroy everything that has emerged in Western Europe: Greater, more significant – as a Russian wrote to Herzen, one of his Russian opponents, to appeal to his conscience – Greater than all the ideals of Central Europe, is the Russian sheepskin coat to you? – the friend wrote to Herzen!

What does he mean by the “Russian sheep's clothing”? Well, Herzen said it: In what this European culture, this European spiritual life has brought forth, there cannot be anything redemptive, anything salvific for humanity; but that which is salvific for humanity is the Russian peasant; that is, the one who, in all his originality, contains within him that which must flood the whole of Western and Central Europe. And this appears to be so deeply ingrained in Russian souls, especially in the most Russian of Russians, for example in Dostoyevsky, the great artist – whom we want to acknowledge in terms of his skill – that it is increasingly apparent in his work, when we take a closer look at it, that he regards German culture in particular as decrepit and obsolete, and that he already sees Russia as destined to be the redeemer. Basically, the delusional rage that is now to be poured out over Europe is nothing more than the brutal expression of this tendency, which has even found expression in great Russian writers; however, care has been taken to ensure that the good Germans do not become too aware of this, which, I might say, has always lived and breathed between the lines of Russian intellectual life! And so it comes about that - and those who know me better know how much I appreciate Tolstoy - but what is in Tolstoy, especially in such older works as “Anna Karenina” and so on, that shows how he - Tolstoy - always aimed to depict the German character in such a way that it appears decrepit and inferior.

Why have the Germans paid so little attention to such things? Why are they now surprised at the fact that hatred is being heaped on them from all sides? Well, you only have to take the fact that, for example, the older translations of Tolstoy, namely those works by translators that people still read, up to the last translation in the middle of the nineteenth century by [Raphael Löwenfeld], which people no longer read, these translations all either left out the passages in question entirely or translated them differently, so that no one actually knows the real Tolstoy!

It will be necessary, dear honored attendees, to go a little deeper into the nuances that live in the expressions of souls, so that the German knows how to fulfill his mission in the world. And so it came about that even insightful Russian minds, such as the great philosopher Soloviev, rebelled against this generally Russian view, against the view of those who, according to a Russian world view, had grown old and died, and that Russianism should overthrow this European essence.

If I emphasize individual personalities, it is because I want to cite facts and show by individual characteristics how many there are.

There is, for example, one Danilewski, who attempts to address the question in broad terms, entirely in the spirit of the Russian essence I have just hinted at, how Russia must expand, how Europe's west and center are ripe to because the European West and the Center have fulfilled their task; and Danilewski once asks the question in a book that is so completely formed from the Russian point of view: Why does Europe not love us, why does Europe fear us? Now he seeks to answer this question from his own point of view, and Danilevsky writes for his Russians something like this: Europe does not love us because Europe instinctively senses that we are the ones who are actually the only ones still entitled to exist, and who are to replace what lives in the rest of Europe. But Soloviev takes up this question, and Soloviev is one of those who has drawn from this life himself. And the great philosopher Solowjow, who, unbiased by his own Russian nature, takes up this question: Why does Germany not love us? He does not answer this question in the way Danilewski and the spirits of the most diverse kinds of Russians speak, that Europe feared Russia, but Solowjow answers Danilewski's question: Why does Europe not love us? Why does Europe fear us?” and Danilevsky's answer to this: ‘Because Europe instinctively senses that the Russians are the only ones who are still entitled to exist and should replace what is still alive in the rest of Europe,’ Solowjow replies to these words of Danilevsky:

“And yet both the content of his book and his later admissions, as well as those of his like-minded friend”

referring to a certain Strachow

“point to a different answer: Europe looks at us with apprehension and fear”

Solovyov wrote his reply, and it is certainly necessary for anyone who wants to get to know the conditions in the Russian east to listen to these Russians. Solovyov himself says:

"Europe regards us with apprehension and mistrust because dark and obscure elemental forces live in the Russian people, because its spiritual and cultural forces are poor and inadequate, but because its demands are clearly and sharply defined. The calls for what the Russian people want as a nation resound powerfully out to Europe: that it wants to destroy Turkey and Austria, conquer Germany, and seize Constantinople and, if possible, India.

And when we are asked how we intend to replace what we have destroyed and failed to accomplish, how we plan to rejuvenate the world intellectually and culturally, we either have to remain silent or spout meaningless phrases. And if Danilevsky's bitter confession is true, that Russia is beginning to fall ill, then instead of dealing with the question “Why doesn't Europe love us,” we would have to deal with another, more important question that is closer to us: “Why and how did we become ill?” Physically, Russia is still quite strong, as it showed in the last Russian war; so our suffering is a moral one. We are burdened, according to the words of an old writer, by the sins hidden in the national character and not conscious to us - and so it is necessary above all to bring these into the light of clear consciousness. As long as we are spiritually bound and paralyzed, all our elementary instincts must only harm us. The essential, indeed the only essential question of true patriotism is not the question of power and vocation, but of the sins of Russia."

Thus the Russian Solowjow, from a spiritual insight into the Russian character, thus the great philosopher Solowjow about Russia itself. And it is interesting to see this in conclusion: how have others perceived this relationship between Russia and the West, even the further West – with whom they are now in league or who is in league with them, one does not quite know how to say – how have others perceived this relationship with their further West? Oh, there are also interesting facts here! For example, a book by the Russian writer Yushakov was published in 1885. In 1885, he wrote a book in which he speaks quite differently from how he was later spoken of regarding the views that he attributes to his Russian people. It is interesting to take a look at Yushakov's ideas.

This man looks across to Asia and says: Yes, over there in Asia, we have peoples who have brought a very old culture from ancient times into more recent times. These peoples, how they have been mistreated by the Europeans. Russia must look across to Asia, and must bring redemption to this sacred, venerable, but by the Europeans mistreated Asian culture, this spiritual culture of Asia. Nice words Jushakow speaks. He says that Russia alone is capable – because it cannot yet grasp the human interior in such a way that it has been made sick and aged by the ego as in the European West – Russia alone can feel related to this Asia, which is now lying prostrate, groaning under the rape of Europe. And an old myth brings Yushakov back to mind when he says: Over there in Asia, Iranian, Turanian peoples are fighting. He himself also includes the Indians, the Persians, and so on, among the Iranian peoples. And then Yushakov says: These have found a wonderful, ancient myth of Ormuzd and Ahriman for their destiny. But we always see Ahriman and Ormuzd at work over there in Asia forever. And there, in his book, Yushakov says – in 1885 – and he points this out in his memoirs, that the Iranians worshiped the good Ormuzd over there in Asia; the good Ormuzd gave the Iranians all the fruits and crops that the earth can produce; they took them for themselves. Then they joined forces with Ahriman. These Europeans have worked like Ahriman, like the evil Ahriman himself. But Russia, by working across into Asia, will liberate people from the evil Ahriman. What the Asians have received under the blessing of the good Ormuzd, the selfish Europeans have appropriated for themselves. Russia will cross over to Asia and help by founding an alliance, yes – Yushakov says it, I have to repeat it to you – an alliance that will be formed with the greatest ideals in the world, as the most spiritual alliance in the world – Yushakov says it all, I am only repeating it. It will be formed by Russian peasants and Cossacks, who will rush over to Asia, which is groaning under European rule, and will carry over what Russia will be able to bring. Then the peasantry and Cossacks will advance into Asia, and Russia will redeem Asia from Ahriman. 1885, think Sic, written by Jushakow. It is interesting to hear some of what Jushakow said at the time in the book, which is called: “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”. It says that the comrades of Ahriman, the evil god – from whom Russia must liberate Asia and bring order and harmony – are primarily the English.

The English – says Yushakov – have behaved in this Asia as if they believed that the Asian peoples existed only to clothe themselves in English fabrics, to fight each other with English weapons, to work with English tools, to eat from English vessels and to play with English baubles. And then he says:

“England exploits millions of Hindus, but her very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples inhabiting the rich peninsula.”

And so he continues, Yushakov:

“I do not wish anything similar for my homeland – I can only be pleased that it is sufficiently far removed from this state, which is as brilliant as it is sad.”

Apparently because these Russians were so keen to distance themselves from this Englishness, so that they could free Asia from this hideous England, they soon allied themselves with this England, not to free Asia, but to destroy Europe.

One must also look at world development from this intellectual perspective in the nineteenth century, and in this way delve into what actually constitutes the German character and how it stands now, this German character, which has to defend itself in a way against the ring that has been formed around it, yes, in a way that can be simply hinted at when numbers are spoken.

These people – who want to keep Germany and Austria locked up in a big fortress today – are taking a stand for freedom, for the rights of small nations, and for all sorts of things they believe in. You only have to look at the numbers: 777 million people in the so-called Entente around the Central European powers, against 150 million; 777 million are “fighting” - let's put that in quotation marks - “fighting” against 150 million, and fighting in such a way that to this day still want to strike at the very essence of their actual bravery, they also want to strike at the German spirit, which they believe they understand so well, that 777 million people are turning against 150 million, joining forces to starve them out, to defeat them with starvation, the better part of bravery.

Actually, they had no need to be envious of what the Central Europeans were taking away from them; for the Entente Powers possess 68 million square kilometers of the earth, compared to 6 million square kilometers of the Central European Powers. One need only let these numbers speak. These numbers speak to this day, and will also speak in world history, ladies and gentlemen, that after all, within these 150 million present-day Central Europeans and on these 6 million square kilometers of Central European soil, those people live who have the world-historical, spiritual mission that we were allowed to speak of, and which they ascribe to themselves not ascribe it to themselves out of national chauvinism, but out of their spiritual gifts, out of the spirit of their Germanness, to which they have not devoted themselves through their egoism, but to which they have to approach if they want to offer the best of their being on the altar of this their national spirit. And those who feel this German essence in Central Europe feel a close bond with it, especially the best in Austria and Germany – and I am allowed to speak about this since I have spent thirty years of my life in Austria:

Precisely the best Austrians, those who have grown up with Central European culture, like the excellent philosopher Carneri, know how to experience and fathom the relationship between their own people and the German national spirit and German essence not out of national chauvinism but out of a sure knowledge of the essence of their own people.

For example, Carneri, the most important Austrian philosopher, says of the English: “Carneri, a wonderful man who, out of the deepest suffering, has founded a spiritual world view that is so completely in line with our time, a conceptual world view from German-Austria. Carneri talks about how the English have really focused their attention on external practical culture and he says: It has become so practical, this culture, that the English had to learn from the Germans the fact that the great playwright and poet Shakespeare lived among them. For it is true that it is only through the Germans delving into Shakespeare that Shakespeare has been recognized at all. And if one day someone has to write the story of Shakespeare's greatness, it will not be an English chapter in intellectual history that they have to write, but a German one.

All this characterizes the nature of the German world view, which creates out of all intellectual inner life, in contrast to everything around it. And so we may well believe that this is what the German must strive for above all else: spiritual science, knowledge of the spirit, just as there is knowledge of nature. Knowledge of the spirit, which must be based above all on the sources, on the roots that lie in the world view of German idealism. This is, as I said, not a conviction born out of blind national sentiment, but a conviction born out of knowledge. It is that which humanity is to scientifically fathom in the future about the spirit, that this must grow out of German national culture – and above all out of the ideal world view of German national culture – as it has been attempted to describe today.

And how little understanding there is among other nations today – let me say this in conclusion – this war can show the German so clearly how little understanding there is on the part of other nations towards the world view of German idealism and the German spirit, and how he must first ensure and strive to ensure that what he is called upon to create out of the depths of the German being can become part of the world development of humanity. The French, how did they look at this world view of German idealism? Or the Russians, for example, how did they look at this world view that the Germans have formed, this world view? The Russians look at it as if it only existed to be destroyed by them, as something decrepit and worn out. While we must see roots and leaves in it, from which the blossoms and fruits must first ripen in the future! We want to commit ourselves to this view! But the Russians need a new delusion; because the ego does not yet live in their soul, they must dream of a new delusion. They need a new delusion.

What do the French need? What do the French need today if they want to characterize their relationship to the German essence? Well, perhaps one could refer to one of their youngest poets to avoid doing them an injustice. What do the French want? They have been so accustomed to their nature being everywhere in Europe, just as the Germans were accustomed to their nature living in the Germans themselves, just as the Germans were accustomed to the way they felt the power, the driving force of what, for example, also lived in this world view of German idealism, up to Lessing, until they had to free themselves, the Germans, [so] these French were so accustomed that their nature lived everywhere in Europe. And after that, they believed that nothing could actually be done without what they did and what they produced intellectually, that everything had to come from them, that they had to be the cause of everything. In a very interesting and witty poem, Rostand, one of their own poets, recently illustrated how the French – that is, his own – national character can be compared to the cock crowing in the morning; and when the cock crows, the sun rises. And because the sun rises when the cock crows, the Frenchman believes that with his crowing he makes the sun rise. So he says to himself: If I don't crow, the sun can't rise!

This is said by the French poet Rostand himself as a characteristic of the French nature. The Frenchman thinks: If he doesn't crow, nothing at all can happen in the world. And that is why it is so incredible that he no longer occupies the position he once did; for it is actually the case that the German character, as expressed by Ranke, for example, is to be defended against the delusion of the crowing of the French national spirit, as early as 1870, when the Germans had to face the French: “We are still fighting against Louis XV!”

The French need a new delusion. The Russians need a new mission. The English – well, one really doesn't want to do them an injustice. What should one say so as not to do them an injustice? They declaim to the world: for the sake of the violation of Belgium's neutrality, for the sake of justice and democracy, we must undertake this war to the point of destroying the German essence; for these Germans are disgraceful people. They preach the principle of might over right. It is likely that one only forgets, as a result of a particularly refined education, that the English minister who decreed this – only recently – that the phrase “might over right” comes from the English philosopher, English utilitarian philosopher Thomas Hobbes. But: “might over right” – and England has adhered to this phrase for centuries. [gap in the transcript] as a professor in England himself, where he said: freedom and democracy, that is something that cannot be united, which should be advocated after the last English history, but that Great Britain's expansion [gap in the transcript], he says, is also a truth, also a practical truth, as the English world view must strive for. Yes, what can you say? “Might is right” – since Thomas Hobbes this principle has been winding its way through English history, concealing the real reasons why England tramples underfoot the entire mission of the German people. Yes, one would not want to do such things an injustice, but one must say: the English need a new lie to drown out that which cannot be compensated for.

The Russians need a new delusion; the French need a new conceit; the English need a new lie. The Italians – yes, a very outstanding man told me even before the Italian war broke out: “Italy needs this war!” There are people, of course, who are not so naive as to have believed that Italy could not join the Entente in this war. Italy needs this war; we must have this war; the Italians have become lethargic, sluggish and lazy; they are actually on the road to the abyss - said this important political figure at the time - and need to have something that will shake them up again, that will awaken them to life, otherwise they will become completely rotten and sluggish! What do these Italians need? These Italians needed a new sensation in order to have something at the same time – just as the French needed imagination, the English needed a new lie, the Russians needed a new delusion, a new mission, so the Italians needed a new saint, something very special! – They truly have a saint, namely, holy egoism – sacro egoismo – which is preached everywhere and on whose altar people are sacrificed. And the apostle of modern Italian nationalism, the hierophant, is Gabriele d'Annunzio! Perhaps history will one day rank him among the buffoons of the mind – that can be said without any national chauvinism. But he will nevertheless stand without dignity as the one who also made sacrifices to this new egoism, the sacro egoismo, which Italy represents and to which they have dedicated themselves, this new saint!

When we see all this going on around us, we can truly say that, without the Germans needing to become as nationally egotistical as those who want to surround, encircle and contain them, we can truly say that, from the inner fertility and knowledge of the greatness of the German essence, to which we humbly bow, we cannot, in arrogance, say that we experience in the German essence: It is the germs, it is the roots, it is the leaves – and the blossoms and the fruits must develop from them. And we can look to the future with confidence and hope!

And finally, I would like to say that – as if in a unified thinking – those who understood the German essence in Central Europe always felt it. One of my teachers in Austria once spoke a beautiful word. I may perhaps read it to you at the end, a little poem. It is called “Austria and Germany”. Today, when Austria and Germany are welded together, I may perhaps read it, this little poem:

"Let Russia and England wisely deliberate,
Perhaps not even find it unwelcome
If we get into a little bit of a fight here,
If they take away our good right!

You, German brothers, will not - advise here,
The enemy's attack will only unite us
And all ambition will fade among us
Before: being one people in word and deed.

And if one among us has failed,
If discord has reigned in a German heart,
There is only one thing that now inspires us:
What we have in common, in joy and in sorrow!
So may we also have in common:
A German war, if not a German peace!

Thus spoke the German of Austria in 1859. Those who feel that they are part of the German national spirit, who recognize it without national chauvinism, are so united in their awareness that loyalty springs from the soul to this German essence. Then this Karl Julius Schröer, who has remained so unknown, but who felt German essence in Austria quite extraordinarily, then he said:

A spirit arises, a giant to behold
[Who does not yet long gather all his strength
The German spirit rises up, aflame with courage
Wherever you look in all German regions.
He has been called a master in many a field,
In art and knowledge, in the building system,
he is first to be seen
then he will be truly recognized by the world.

To see him as a whole, this also includes the symptom that so clearly shows how the immortal martial forces come from the German essence. Likewise, the idealistic world view of the German stems from the primal power of the German essence, which has borne its roots and its leaves, and - looking towards it - we may have faith in the future: it must struggle through to its blossoms and fruits in the future, undisturbed by the hatred of the opposition.

This awareness wells up in us as 150 million people facing 777 million, as standing on 6 million square kilometers against 68 million square kilometers; this wells up in us from the spiritual, from the soul, from the heart of the German spiritual being!

So let us speak out of the knowledge itself and out of the most justified feeling: Yes, by being aware of our essence, we may believe, we may hope that the blossoms and fruits to the roots and leaves of the German being will unfold in the future.

Therefore, we can confidently live into the future of this German national spirit, also from the depths of the German endeavor.

And so may it be, because it must be so!

Each one of you will doubtless be aware that the title of this lecture is taken from Goethe's Faust. You all know that in this poem we are shown how Faust, the representative of the highest human effort, enters into a pact with the evil powers, who on their side are represented in the poem by Mephistopheles, the emissary of hell. You will know, too, that Faust is to strike a bargain with Mephistopheles, the deed of which must be signed with his own blood. Faust, in the first instance, looks upon it as a jest. Mephistopheles, however, at this juncture utters the sentence which Goethe without doubt intended should be taken seriously: “Blood is a very special fluid.”

Now, with reference to this line in Goethe's Faust, we come to a curious trait in the so-called Goethe commentators. You are of course aware how vast is the literature dealing with Goethe's version of the Faust Legend. It is a literature of such stupendous dimensions that whole libraries might be stocked with it, and naturally I cannot make it my business to expatiate on the various comments made by these interpreters of Goethe concerning this particular passage. None of the interpretations throw much more light on the sentence than that given by one of the latest commentators, Professor Minor. He, like others, treats it in the light of an ironical remark made by Mephistopheles, and in this connection he makes the following really very curious observation, and one to which I would ask you to give your best attention; for there is little doubt that you will be surprised to hear what strange conclusions commentators on Goethe are capable of drawing.

Professor Minor remarks that “the devil is a foe to the blood”; and he points out that as the blood is that which sustains and preserves life, the devil, who is the enemy of the human race, must therefore also be the enemy of the blood. He then—and quite rightly—draws attention to the fact that even in the oldest versions of the Faust Legend—and indeed, in legends generally—blood always plays the same part.

In an old book on Faust it is circumstantially described to us how Faust makes a slight incision in his left hand with a small penknife, and how then, as he takes the pen to sign his name to the agreement, the blood flowing from the cut forms the words: “Oh man, escape!” All this is authentic enough; but now comes the remark that the devil is a foe to the blood, and that this is the reason for his demanding that the signature be written in blood. I should like to ask you whether you could imagine any person being desirous of possessing the very thing for which he has an antipathy? The only reasonable explanation that can be given—not only as to Goethe's meaning in this passage, but also as to that attaching to the main legend as well as to all the older Faust poems—is that to the devil blood was something special, and that it was not at all a matter of indifference to him whether the deed was signed in ordinary neutral ink, or in blood.

We can here suppose nothing else than that the representative of the powers of evil believes nay, is convinced that he will have Faust more especially in his power if he can only gain possession of at least one drop of his blood. This is self-evident, and no one can really understand the line otherwise. Faust is to inscribe his name in his own blood, not because the devil is inimical to it, but rather because he desires to gain power over it.

Now, there is a remarkable perception underlying this passage, namely, that he who gains power over a man's blood gains power over the man, and that blood is “a very special fluid” because it is that about which, so to speak, the real fight must be waged, when it comes to a struggle concerning the man between good and evil.

All those things which have come down to us in the legends and myths of various nations, and which touch upon human life, will in our day undergo a peculiar transformation with regard to the whole conception and interpretation of human nature. The age is past in which legends, fairy-tales, and myths were looked upon merely as expressions of the childlike fancy of a people. Indeed, the time has even gone by when, in a half-learned, half-childlike way, it was the fashion to allude to legends as the poetical expression of a nation's soul.

Now, this so-called “poetic soul” of a nation is nothing but the product of learned red tape; for this kind of red-tape exists just as much as the official variety. Anyone who has ever looked into the soul of a people is quite well aware that he is not dealing with imaginative fiction or anything of the kind, but with something very much more profound, and that as a matter of fact the legends and fairy-tales of the various peoples are expressive of wonderful powers and wonderful events.

If from the new standpoint of spiritual investigation we meditate upon the old legends and myths, allowing those grand and powerful pictures which have come down from primeval times to work upon our minds, we shall find, if we have been equipped for our task by the methods of occult science, that these legends and myths are the expressions of a most profound and ancient wisdom.

It is true we may at first be inclined to ask how it comes about that, in a primitive state of development and with primitive ideas, unsophisticated man was able to present the riddles of the universe to himself pictorially in these legends and fairy-tales; and how it is that, when we meditate on them now, we behold in them in pictorial form what the occult investigation of today is revealing to us with greater clearness.

This is a matter which at first is bound to excite surprise. And yet he who probes deeper and deeper into the ways and means by which these fairy-tales and myths have come into being, will find every trace of surprise vanish, every doubt pass away; indeed, he will find in these legends not only what is termed a naive and unsophisticated view of things, but the wondrously deep and wise expression of a primordial and true conception of the world.

Very much more may be learned by thoroughly examining the foundations of these myths and legends, than by absorbing the intellectual and experimental science of the present day. But for work of this kind the student must of course be familiar with those methods of investigation which belong to spiritual science. Now, all that is contained in these legends and ancient world-conceptions about the blood is wont to be of importance, since in those remote times there was a wisdom by means of which man understood the true and wide significance of blood, this “very special fluid” which is itself the flowing life of human beings.

We cannot today enter into the question as to whence came this wisdom of ancient times, although some indication of this will be given at the close of the lecture; the actual study of this subject must, however, stand over to be dealt with in future lectures. The blood itself, its import for man and the part it plays in the progress of human civilization, will today occupy our attention.

We shall consider it neither from the physiological nor from the purely scientific point of view, but shall rather take it from the standpoint of a spiritual conception of the universe. We shall best approach our subject if, to begin with, we understand the meaning of an ancient maxim, one which is intimately connected with the civilization of ancient Egypt, where the priestly wisdom of Hermes flourished. It is an axiom which forms the fundamental principle of all spiritual science, and which has become known as the Hermetic Axiom; it runs, “As above, so below.”

You will find that there are many dilettante interpretations of this sentence; the explanation, however, which is to occupy us today is the following:—It is plain to spiritual science that the world to which man has primary access by means of his five senses does not represent the entire world, that it is in fact only the expression of a deeper world hidden behind it, namely the spiritual world. Now, this spiritual world is called—according to the Hermetic Axiom—the higher world, the world “above”; and the world of the senses which is displayed around us, the existence of which we know through the medium of our senses, and which we are able to study by means of our intellect, is the lower one, the world “below,” the expression of that higher and spiritual world. Thus the occultist, looking upon this world of the senses, sees in it nothing final, but rather a kind of physiognomy which he recognizes as the expression of a world of soul and spirit; just as, when you gaze upon a human countenance, you must not stop at the form of the face and the gestures, paying attention only to them, but must pass, as a matter of course, from the physiognomy and the gestures to the spiritual element which is expressed in them.

What every person does instinctively when confronted by any being possessed of a soul, is what the occultist, or spiritual scientist, does in respect of the entire world; and “as above, so below” would, when referring to man, be thus explained: “Every impulse animating his soul is expressed in his face.” A hard and coarse countenance expresses coarseness of soul, a smile tells of inward joy, a tear betrays a suffering soul.

I will here apply the Hermetic Axiom to the question: What actually constitutes wisdom? Spiritual science has always maintained that human wisdom has something to do with experience, and that painful experience. He who is actually in the throes of suffering manifests in this suffering something that is an inward lack of harmony. He, however, who has overcome the pain and suffering and bears their fruits within him, will always tell you that through suffering he has gained some measure of wisdom. He says:—“the joys and pleasures of life, all that life can offer me in the way of satisfaction, all these things do I receive gratefully; yet were I far more loath to part with my pain and suffering than with those pleasant gifts of life, for ‘it is to my pain and suffering that I owe my wisdom.’ ”

And so it is that in wisdom occult science has ever recognized what may be called crystallized pain—pain that has been conquered and thus changed into its opposite.

It is interesting to note that the more materialistic modern research has of late arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Quite recently a book has been published on “The Mimicry of Thought,” a book well worth reading. It is not the work of a theosophist, but of a student of nature and of the human soul. The author endeavors to show how the inner life of man, his way of thinking, as it were, impresses itself upon his physiognomy. This student of human nature draws attention to the fact that there is always something in the expression on the face of a thinker which is suggestive of what one may describe as “absorbed pain.”

Thus you see that this principle comes to light again in the more materialistic view of our own day, a brilliant confirmation of that immemorial axiom of spiritual science. You will become more and more deeply sensible of this, and you will find that gradually, point for point, the ancient wisdom will reappear in the science of modern times.

Occult investigation shows decisively that all the things which surround us in this world—the mineral foundation, the vegetable covering, and the animal world—should be regarded as the physiognomical expression, or the “below,” of an “above” or spirit life lying behind them. From the point of view taken by occultism, the things presented to us in the sense world can only be rightly understood if our knowledge includes cognition of the “above,” the spiritual archetype, the original Spiritual Beings, whence all things manifest have proceeded. And for this reason we will today apply our minds to a study of that which lies concealed behind the phenomenon of the blood, that which shaped for itself in the blood its physiognomical expression in the world of sense. When once you understand this “spiritual background” of blood, you will be able to realize how the knowledge of such matters is bound to react upon our whole mental outlook on life.

Questions of great importance are pressing upon us these days; questions dealing with the education, not alone of the young, but of entire nations. And, furthermore, we are confronted by the momentous educational question which humanity will have to face in the future, and which cannot fail to be recognized by all who note the great social upheavals of our time, and the claims which are everywhere being advanced, be they the Labor Question, or the Question of Peace. All these things are pre-occupying our anxious minds.

But all such questions are illuminated as soon as we recognize the nature of the spiritual essence which lies at the back of our blood. Who can deny that this question is closely linked to that of race, which at the present time is once more coming markedly to the front? Yet this question of race is one that we can never understand until we understand the mysteries of the blood and of the results accruing from the mingling of the blood of different races. And finally, there is yet one other question, the importance of which is becoming more and more acute as we endeavor to extricate ourselves from the hitherto aimless methods of dealing with it, and seek to approach it in its more comprehensive bearings. This problem is that of colonization, which crops up wherever civilized races come into contact with the uncivilized: namely—To what extent are uncivilized peoples capable of becoming civilized? How can an utterly barbaric savage become civilized? And in what way ought we to deal with them? And here we have to consider not only the feelings due to a vague morality, but we are also confronted by great, serious, and vital problems of the very fact of existence itself.

Those who are not aware of the conditions governing a people—whether it be on the up- or down-grade of its evolution, and whether the one or the other is a matter conditioned by its blood—such people as these will, indeed, be unlikely to hit on the right mode of introducing civilization to an alien race. These are all matters which arise as soon as the Blood Question is touched upon.

What blood in itself is, you presumably all know from the current teachings of natural science, and you will be aware that, with regard to man and the higher animals, this blood is practically fluid life.

You are aware that it is by way of the blood that the “inner man” comes into contact with that which is exterior, and that in the course of this process man's blood absorbs oxygen, which constitutes the very breath of life. Through the absorption of this oxygen the blood undergoes renewal. The blood which is presented to the in-streaming oxygen is a kind of poison to the organism—a kind of destroyer and demolisher—but through the absorption of the oxygen the blue-red blood becomes transmuted by a process of combustion into red, life-giving fluid. This blood that finds its way to all parts of the body, depositing everywhere its particles of nourishment, has the task of directly assimilating the materials of the outer world, and of applying them, by the shortest method possible, to the nourishment of the body. It is necessary for man and the higher animals first to absorb the oxygen from the air into it, and to build up and maintain the body by means of it.

One gifted with a knowledge of souls has not without truth remarked: “The blood with its circulation is like a second being, and in relation to the man of bone, muscle, and nerve, acts like a kind of exterior world.” For, as a matter of fact, the entire human being is continually drawing his sustenance from the blood, and at the same time he discharges into it that for which he has no use. A man's blood is therefore a true double ever bearing him company, from which he draws new strength, and to which he gives all that he can no longer use. “Man's liquid life” is therefore a good name to have given the blood; for this constantly changing “special fluid” is assuredly as important to man as is cellulose to the lower organisms.

The distinguished scientist, Ernst Haeckel, who has probed deeply into the workings of nature, in several of his popular works has rightly drawn attention to the fact that blood is in reality the latest factor to originate in an organism. If we follow the development of the human embryo we find that the rudiments of bone and muscle are evolved long before the first tendency toward blood formation becomes apparent. The groundwork for the formation of blood, with all its attendant system of blood-vessels, appears very late in the development of the embryo, and from this natural science has rightly concluded that the formation of blood occurred late in the evolution of the universe; that other powers which were there had to be raised to the height of blood, so to speak, in order to bring about at that height what was to be accomplished inwardly in the human being. Not until the human embryo has repeated in itself all the earlier stages of human growth, thus attaining to the condition in which the world was before the formation of blood, is it ready to perform this crowning act of evolution—the transmuting and uplifting of all that had gone before into the “very special fluid” which we call Blood.

If we would study those mysterious laws of the spiritual universe which exist behind the blood, we must occupy ourselves a little with some of the most elementary concepts of Anthroposophy. These have often been set forth, and you will see that these elementary ideas of Anthroposophy are the “above,” and that this “above” is expressed in the important laws governing the blood—as well as the rest of life—as though in a physiognomy.

Those present who are already well acquainted with the primary laws of Anthroposophy will, I trust, here permit a short repetition of them for the benefit of others who are here for the first time. Indeed, such repetition may serve to render these laws more and more clear to the former, by hearing them thus applied to new and special cases. To those, of course, who know nothing about Anthroposophy, who have not yet familiarized themselves with these conceptions of life and of the universe, that which I am about to say may seem little else than so many words strung together, of which they can make nothing. But the fault does not always consist in the lack of an idea behind the words, when the latter convey nothing to a person. Indeed we may here adopt, with a slight alteration, a remark of the witty Lichtenberg, who said: “If a head and a book come into collision and the resulting sound is a hollow one, the fault need not necessarily be that of the book!”

And so it is with our contemporaries when they pass judgment on theosophical truths. If these truths should in the ears of many sound like mere words, words to which they cannot attach any meaning, the fault need not necessarily rest with Anthroposophy; those, however, who have found their way into these matters will know that behind all allusions to higher Beings, such Beings do actually exist, although they are not to be found in the world of the senses.

Our theosophical conception of the universe shows us that man, as far as he is revealed to our senses in the external world as far as his shape and form are concerned, is but a part of the complete Human being, and that, in fact, there are many other parts behind the physical body. Man possesses this physical body in common with all the so-called “lifeless” mineral objects that surround him. Over and above this, however, man possesses the etheric or vital body. (The term “etheric” is not here used in the same sense as when applied by physical science.) This etheric or vital body, as it is sometimes called, far from being any figment of the imagination, is as distinctly visible to the developed spiritual senses of the occultist as are externally perceptible colors to the physical eye. This etheric body can actually be seen by the clairvoyant. It is the principle which calls the inorganic materials into life, which, summoning them from their lifeless condition, weaves them into the thread of life's garment. Do not imagine that this body is to the occultist merely something which he adds in thought to what is lifeless. That is what the natural scientists try to do! They try to complete what they see with the microscope by inventing something which they call the life-principle.

Now, such a standpoint is not taken by theosophical research. This has a fixed principle. It does not say: “Here I stand as a seeker, just as I am. All that there is in the world must conform to my present point of view. What I am unable to perceive has no existence!” This sort of argument is about as sensible as if a blind man were to say that colors are simply matters of fancy. The man who knows nothing about a matter is not in the position to judge of it, but rather he into whose range of experience such matters have entered.

Now man is in a state of evolution, and for this reason Anthroposophy says: “If you remain as you are you will not see the etheric body, and may therefore indeed speak of the ‘boundaries of knowledge’ and ‘Ignorabimus’; but if you develop and acquire, the necessary faculties for the cognition of spiritual things, you will no longer speak of the ‘boundaries of knowledge,’ for these only exist as long as man has not developed his inner senses.” It is for this reason that agnosticism constitutes so heavy a drag upon our civilization; for it says: “Man is thus and thus, and being thus and thus he can know only this and that.” To such a doctrine we reply: “Though he be thus and thus today, he has to become different, and when different he will then know something else.”

So the second part of man is the etheric body, which he possesses in common with the vegetable kingdom.

The third part is the so-called astral body—a significant and beautiful name, the reason for which shall be explained later. Theosophists who are desirous of changing this name can have no idea of what is implied therein. To the astral body is assigned the task, both in man and in the animal, of lifting up the life-substance to the plane of feeling, so that in the life-substance may move not only fluids, but also that in it may be expressed all that is known as pain and pleasure, joy and grief. And here you have at once the essential difference between the plant and the animal; although there are certain states of transition between these two.

A recent school of naturalists is of opinion that feeling, in its literal sense, should also be ascribed to plants; this, however, is but playing with words; for, though it is obvious that certain plants are of so sensitive an organization that they “respond” to particular things that may be brought near to them, yet such a condition cannot be described as “feeling.” In order that “feeling” may exist, an image must be formed within the being as the reflex of that which produces the sensation. If, therefore, certain plants respond to external stimulus, this is no proof that the plant answers to the stimulus by a feeling, that is, that it experiences it inwardly. That which has inward experience has its seat in the astral body. And so we come to see that that which has attained to animal conditions consists of the physical body, the etheric or vital body, and the astral body.

Man, however, towers above the animal through the possession of something quite distinct, and thoughtful people have at all times been aware wherein this superiority consists. It is indicated in what Jean Paul says of himself in his autobiography. He relates that he could remember the day when he stood as a child in the courtyard of his parents' house, and the thought suddenly flashed across his mind that he was an ego, a being, capable of inwardly saying “I” to itself; and he tells us that this made a profound impression upon him.

All the so-called external science of the soul overlooks the most important point which is here involved. I will ask you; therefore, to follow me for a few moments in making a survey of what is a very subtle argument, yet one which will show you how the matter stands. In the whole of human speech there is one small word which differs in toto from all the rest. Each one of you can name the things around you; each one can call a table a table, and a chair a chair. But there is one word, one name, which you cannot apply anything save to that which owns it and this is the little word “I.” None can address another as “I.” This “I” has to sound forth from the innermost soul itself; it is the name which only the soul itself can apply to itself. Every other person is a “you” to me, and I am a “you” to him. All religions have recognized this “I” as the expression of that principle in the soul through which its innermost being, its divine nature, is enabled to speak. Here, then, begins that which can never penetrate through the exterior senses, which can never, in its real significance, be named from without, but which must sound forth from the innermost being. Here begins that monologue, that soliloquy of the soul, whereby the divine self makes known its presence when the path lies clear for the coming of the Spirit into the human soul.

In the religions of earlier civilizations, among the ancient Hebrews, for instance, this name was known as “the unutterable name of God,” and whatever interpretation modern philology may choose to place upon it, the ancient Jewish name of God has no other meaning than that which is expressed in our word “I.” A thrill passed through those assembled when the “Name of the Unknown God” was pronounced by the Initiates, when they dimly perceived what was meant by those words reverberating through the temple: “I am that I am.”

In this word is expressed the fourth principle of human nature, the one that man alone possesses while on earth; and this “I” in its turn encloses and develops within itself the germs of higher stages of humanity.

We can only take a passing glance at what in the future will be evolved through this fourth principle. We must point out that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the ego, or actual inner self; and that within this inner self are the rudiments of three further stages of development which will originate in the blood. These three are Manas, Buddhi, and Atma:

Manas, the Spirit-Self, as distinguished from the bodily self;

Buddhi, the Life-Spirit;

Atma, the actual and true Spirit-Man, a far-off ideal to the man of today; the rudimentary germ now latent within, but destined in future ages to reach perfection.

We have seven colors in the rainbow, seven tones in the (musical) scale, seven series of atomic weights [in the Periodic Table of the chemical elements], and seven grades in the scale of the human being; and these are again divided into four lower and three higher grades.

We will now attempt to get a clear insight into the way in which this upper spiritual triad secures a physiognomical expression in the lower quaternary, and how it appears to us in the world of the senses. Take, in the first place, that which has crystallized into form as man's physical body; this he possesses in common with the whole of what is called “lifeless” nature. When we talk theosophically of the physical body, we do not even mean that which the eye beholds, but rather that combination of forces which has constructed the physical body, that living Force which exists behind the visible form.

Let us now observe a plant. This is a being possessed of an etheric body, which raises physical substance to life; that is, it converts that substance into living sap. What is it that transforms the so-called lifeless forces into the living sap? We call it the etheric body, and the etheric body does precisely the same work in animals and men; it causes that which has a merely material existence to become a living configuration, a living form.

This etheric body is, in its turn, permeated by an astral body. And what does the astral body do? It causes the substance which has been set in motion to experience inwardly the circulation of those outwardly moving fluids, so that the external movement is reflected in inward experience.

We have now arrived at the point where we are able to comprehend man so far as concerns his place in the animal kingdom. All the substances of which man is composed, such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc., are to be found outside in inanimate nature also. If that which the etheric body has transformed into living substance is to have inner experiences, if it is to create inner reflections of that which takes place externally, then the etheric body must be permeated by what we have come to know as the astral body, for it is the astral body that gives rise to sensation. But at this stage the astral body calls forth sensation only in one particular way. The etheric body changes the inorganic substances into vital fluids, and the astral body in its turn transforms this vital substance into sentient substance; but—and this I ask you to specially notice—what is it that a being with no more than these three bodies is capable of feeling? It feels only itself, its own life-processes; it leads a life that is confined within itself.

Now, this is a most interesting fact, and one of extraordinary importance for us to bear in mind. If you look at one of the lower animals, what do you find it has accomplished? It has transformed inanimate substance into living substance, and living substance into sensitive substance: and sensitive substance can only be found where there exist, at all events, the rudiments of what at a later stage appears as a developed nervous system.

Thus we have inanimate substance, living substance, and substance permeated by nerves capable of sensation. If you look at a crystal you have to recognize it primarily as the expression of certain natural laws which prevail in the external world in the so-called lifeless kingdom. No crystal could be formed without the assistance of all surrounding nature. No single link can be severed from the chain of the cosmos and set apart by itself. And just as little can you separate from his environment man, who, if he were lifted to an altitude of even a few miles above the earth, must inevitably die. Just as man is only conceivable here in the place where he is, where the necessary forces are combined in him, so it is too with regard to the crystal; and therefore, whoever views a crystal rightly will see in it a picture of the whole of nature, indeed of the whole cosmos. What Cuvier said is actually the case, viz., that a competent anatomist will be able to tell to what sort of animal any given bone has belonged, every animal having its own particular kind of bone-formation.

Thus the whole cosmos lives in the form of a crystal. In the same way the whole cosmos is expressed in the living substance of a single being. The fluids coursing through a being are, at the same time, a little world, and a counterpart of the great world. And when substance has become capable of sensation, what then dwells in the sensations of the most elementary creatures? Such sensations mirror the cosmic laws, so that each separate living creature perceives within itself microcosmically the entire macrocosm. The sentient life of an elementary creature is thus an image of the life of the universe, just as the crystal is an image of its form. The consciousness of such living creatures is, of course, but dim. Yet this very vagueness of consciousness is counterbalanced by its far greater range, for the whole cosmos is felt in the dim consciousness of an elementary being. Now, in man there is only a more complicated structure of the same three bodies found in the simplest sensitive living creature.

Take man—without considering his blood—take him as being made up of the substance of the surrounding physical world, and containing, like the plant, certain juices which transform it into living substance, and in which a nervous system gradually becomes organized. This first nervous system is the so-called sympathetic system, and in the case of man it extends along the entire length of the spine, to which it is attached by small threads on either side. It has also at each side a series of nodes, from which threads branch off to different parts, such as the lungs, the digestive organs, and so on. This sympathetic nervous system gives rise, in the first place, to the life of sensation just described. But man's consciousness does not extend deep enough to enable him to follow the cosmic processes mirrored by these nerves. They are a medium of expression, and just as human life is formed from the surrounding cosmic world, so is this cosmic world reflected again in the sympathetic nervous system. These nerves live a dim inward life, and if man were but able to dip down into his “sympathetic” system, and to lull his higher nervous system to sleep, he would behold, as in a state of luminous life, the silent workings of the mighty cosmic laws.

In past times people were possessed of a clairvoyant faculty which is now superseded, but which may be experienced when, by special processes, the activity of the higher system of nerves is suspended, thus setting free the lower or subliminal consciousness. At such times man lives in that system of nerves which, in its own particular way, is a reflection of the surrounding world.

Certain lower animals indeed still retain this state of consciousness, and, dim and indistinct though it is, yet it is essentially more far-reaching than the consciousness of the man of the present day. A widely extending world is reflected as a dim inward life, not merely a small section such as is perceived by contemporary man. But in the case of man something else has taken place in addition. When evolution has proceeded so far that the sympathetic nervous system has been developed, so that the cosmos has been reflected in it, the evolving being again at this point opens itself outwards; to the sympathetic system is added the spinal cord. The system of brain and spinal cord then leads to those organs through which connection is set up with the outer world.

Man, having progressed thus far, is no longer called upon to act merely as a mirror for reflecting the primordial laws of cosmic evolution, but a relation is set up between the reflection itself and the external world. The junction of the sympathetic system and the higher nervous system is expressive of the change which has taken place beforehand in the astral body. The latter no longer merely lives the cosmic life in a state of dull consciousness, but it adds thereto its own special inward existence. The sympathetic system enables a being to sense what is taking place outside it; the higher system of nerves enables it to perceive that which happens within, and the highest form of the nervous system, such as is possessed by mankind in general at the present stage of evolution, takes from the more highly developed astral body material for the creation of pictures, or representations, of the outer world. Man has lost the power of perceiving the former dim primitive pictures of the external world, but, on the other hand, he is now conscious of his inner life, and out of this inner life he forms, at a higher stage, a new world of images in which, it is true, only a small portion of the outer world is reflected, but in a clearer and more perfect manner than before.

Hand in hand with this transformation another change takes place in higher stages of development. The transformation thus begun extends from the astral body to the etheric body. As the etheric body in the process of its transformation evolves the astral body, as to the sympathetic nervous system is added the system of the brain and spine, so, too, does that which—after receiving the lower circulation of fluids—has grown out of and become free from the etheric body now transmutes these lower fluids into what we know as blood.

Blood is, therefore, an expression of the individualized etheric body, just as the brain and spinal cord are the expression of the individualized astral body. And it is this individualizing which brings about that which lives as the ego or “I.”

Having followed man thus far in his evolution, we find that we have to do with a chain consisting of five links, affecting:—

1. The Physical Body;
2. The Etheric Body and
3. The Astral Body.

These links are:

1. The inorganic, neutral, physical forces;
2. The vital fluids, which are also found in plants;
3. The lower or sympathetic nervous system;
4. The higher astral body, which has been evolved from the lower one, and which finds its expression in the spinal cord and the brain;
5. The Principle that individualizes the etheric body.

Just as these two latter principles have been individualized, so will the first principle through which lifeless matter enters the human body, serving to build it up, also become individualized; but in our present-day humanity we find only the first rudiments of this transformation.

We have seen how the external formless substances enter the human body, and how the etheric body turns these materials into living forms; how, further, the astral body fashions pictures of the external world, how this reflection of the external world resolves itself into inner experiences, and how this inner life then reproduces from within itself pictures of the outer world.

Now, when this metamorphosis extends to the etheric body, blood is formed. The blood vessels, together with the heart, are the expression of the transformed etheric body, in the same way in which the spinal cord and the brain express the transformed astral body. Just as by means of the brain the external world is experienced inwardly, so also by means of the blood this inner world is transformed into an outer expression in the body of man. I shall have to speak in similes in order to describe to you the complicated processes which have now to be taken into account.

The blood absorbs those pictures of the outside world which the brain has formed within, transforms them into living constructive forces, and with them builds up the present human body. Blood is therefore the material that builds up the human body. We have before us a process in which the blood extracts from its cosmic environment the highest substance it can possibly obtain, viz., oxygen, which renews the blood and supplies it with fresh life. In this manner our blood is caused to open itself to the outer world.

We have thus followed the path from the exterior world to the interior one, and also back again from that inner world to the outer one. Two things are now possible. (1) We see that blood originates when man confronts the external world as an independent being, when out of the perceptions to which the external world has given rise, (2) he in his turn produces different shapes and pictures on his own account, thus himself becoming creative, and making it possible for the Ego, the individual Will, to come into life. A being in whom this process had not yet taken place would not be able to say “I.” In the blood lies the principle for the development of the ego. The “I” can only be expressed when a being is able to form within itself the pictures which it has obtained from the outer world. An “I-being” must be capable of taking the external world into itself, and of inwardly reproducing it.

Were man merely endowed with a brain, he would only be able to reproduce pictures of the outer world within himself, and to experience them within himself; he would then only be able to say: “The outer world is reflected in me as in a mirror.” If, however, he is able to build up a new form for this reflection of the external world, this form is no longer merely the external world reflected, it is “I” A creature possessed of a spinal cord and a brain perceives the reflection as its inner life. But when a creature possesses blood, it experiences its inner life as its own form. By means of the blood, assisted by the oxygen of the external world, the individual body is formed according to the pictures of the inner life. This formation is expressed as the perception of the “I.”

The ego turns in two directions, and the blood expresses this fact externally. The vision of the ego is directed inwards; its will is turned outwards. The forces of the blood are directed inwards; they build up the inner man, and again they are turned outwards to the oxygen of the external world. This is why, on going to sleep, man sinks into unconsciousness; he sinks into that which his consciousness can experience in the blood. When, however, he again opens his eyes to the outer world, his blood adds to its constructive forces the pictures produced by the brain and the senses. Thus the blood stands midway, as it were, between the inner world of pictures and the exterior living world of form. This role becomes clear to us when we study two phenomena, viz., ancestry—the relationship between conscious beings—and experience in the world of external events. Ancestry, or descent, places us where we stand in accordance with the law of blood relationship. A person is born of a connection, a race, a tribe, a line of ancestors, and what these ancestors have bequeathed to him is in his blood. In the blood is gathered together, as it were, all that the material past has constructed in man; and in the blood is also being formed all that is being prepared for the future.

When, therefore, man temporarily suppresses his higher consciousness, when he is in a hypnotic state, or one of somnambulism, or when he is atavistically clairvoyant, he descends to a far deeper consciousness, one wherein he becomes dreamily cognizant of the great cosmic laws, but nevertheless perceives them much more clearly than the most vivid dreams of ordinary sleep. At such times the activity of his brain is in abeyance and during states of the deepest somnambulism this applies also to the spinal cord. The man experiences the activities of his sympathetic nervous system; that is to say, in a dim and hazy fashion he senses the life of the entire cosmos. At such times the blood no longer expresses pictures of the inner life which are produced by means of the brain, but it presents those which the outer world has formed in it. Now, however, we must bear in mind that the forces of his ancestors have helped to make him what he is. Just as he inherits the shape of his nose from an ancestor, so does he inherit the form of his whole body. At such times of suppressed consciousness he senses the pictures of the outer world; that is to say, his forebears are active in his blood, and at such a time he dimly takes part in their remote life.

Everything in the world is in a state of evolution, human consciousness included. Man has not always had the consciousness he now possesses; when we go back to the times of our earliest ancestors, we find a consciousness of a very different kind. At the present time man in his waking-life perceives external things through the agency of his senses and forms ideas about them. These ideas about the external world work in his blood. Everything, therefore, of which he has been the recipient as the result of sense-experience, lives and is active in his blood; his memory is stored with these experiences of his senses. Yet, on the other hand, the man of today is no longer conscious of what he possesses in his inward bodily life by inheritance from his ancestors. He knows naught concerning the forms of his inner organs; but in earlier times this was otherwise. There then lived within the blood not only what the senses had received from the external world, but also that which is contained within the bodily form; and as that bodily form was inherited from his ancestors, man sensed their life within himself.

If we think of a heightened form of this consciousness, we shall have some idea of how this was also expressed in a corresponding form of memory. A person experiencing no more than what he perceives by his senses, remembers no more than the events connected with those outward sense-experiences. He can only be aware of such things as he may have experienced in this way since his childhood. But with prehistoric man the case was different. Such a man sensed what was within him, and as this inner experience was the result of heredity, he passed through the experiences of his ancestors by means of his inner faculty. He remembered not only his own childhood, but also the experiences of his ancestors. This life of his ancestors was, in fact, ever present in the pictures which his blood received, for, incredible as it may seem to the materialistic ideas of the present day, there was at one time a form of consciousness by means of which men considered not only their own sense-perceptions as their own experiences, but also the experiences of their forefathers. In those times, when they said, “I have experienced such and such a thing,” they alluded not only to what had happened to themselves personally, but also to the experiences of their ancestors, for they could remember these.

This earlier consciousness was, it is true, of a very dim kind, very hazy as compared to man's waking consciousness at the present day. It partook more of the nature of a vivid dream, but, on the other hand, it embraced far more than does our present consciousness. The son felt himself connected with his father and his grandfather as one “I,” because he felt their experiences as if they were his own. And because man was possessed of this consciousness, because he lived not only in his own personal world, but because within him there dwelt also the consciousness of preceding generations, in naming himself he included in that name all belonging to his ancestral line. Father, son, grandson, etc., designated by one name that which was common to them all, that which passed through them all; in short, a person felt himself to be merely a member of an entire line of descendants. This sensation was a true and actual one.

We must now inquire how it was that his form of consciousness was changed. It came about through a cause well known to occult history. If you go back into the past, you will find that there is one particular moment which stands out in the history of each nation. It is the moment at which a people enters on a new phase of civilization, the moment when it ceases to have old traditions, when it ceases to possess its ancient wisdom, the wisdom which was handed down through generations by means of the blood. The nation possesses, nevertheless, a consciousness of it, and this is expressed in its legends.

In earlier times tribes held aloof from each other, and the individual members of families intermarried. You will find this to have been the case with all races and with all peoples; and it was an important moment for humanity when this principle was broken through, when foreign blood was introduced, and when marriage between relations was replaced by marriage with strangers, when endogamy gave place to exogamy. Endogamy preserves the blood of the generation; it permits of the same blood flowing in the separate members as flows for generations through the entire tribe or the entire nation. Exogamy inoculates man with new blood, and this breaking-down of the tribal principle, this mixing of blood, which sooner or later takes place among all peoples, signifies the birth of the external understanding, the birth of the intellect.

The important thing to bear in mind here is that in olden times there was a hazy clairvoyance, from which the myths and legends originated. This clairvoyance could exist in the nearly related blood, just as our present-day consciousness comes about owing to the mingling of blood. The birth of logical thought, the birth of the intellect, was simultaneous with the advent of exogamy. Surprising, as this may seem, it is nevertheless true. It is a fact which will be substantiated more and more by external investigation; indeed, the initial steps along this line have already been taken.

But this mingling of blood which comes about through exogamy is also that which at the same time obliterates the clairvoyance of earlier days, in order that humanity may evolve to a higher stage of development; and just as the person who has passed through the stages of occult development regains this clairvoyance, and transmutes it into a new form, so has our waking consciousness of the present day been evolved out of that dim and hazy clairvoyance which [was] obtained in times of old.

At the present time everything in a man's environment is impressed upon his blood; hence the environment fashions the inner man in accordance with the outer world. In the case of primitive man it was that which was contained within the body that was more fully expressed in the blood. In those early times the recollection of ancestral experiences was inherited, and, along with this, good or evil tendencies. In the blood of the descendants were to be traced the effects of the ancestors' tendencies. Now, when the blood was mixed through exogamy, this close connection with ancestors was severed, and the man began to live his own personal life. Thus, in an unmixed blood is expressed the power of the ancestral life, and in a mixed blood the power of personal experience.

The myths and legends tell of these things. They say: “That which has power over thy blood, has power over thee.” This traditional power ceased when it could no longer work upon the blood, because the latter's capacity for responding to such power was extinguished by the admixture of foreign blood. This statement holds good to the widest extent. Whatever power it is that wishes to obtain the mastery over a man, that power must work upon him in such a way that the working is expressed in his blood. If, therefore, an evil power would influence a man, it must be able to influence his blood. This is the deep and spiritual meaning of the quotation from Faust. This is why the representative of the evil principle says: “Sign thy name to the pact with thy blood. If once I have thy name written in thy blood, then I can hold thee by that which above all sways a man; then shall I have drawn thee over to myself.” For whoever has mastery over the blood is master of the man himself, or of the man's ego.

When two groups of people come into contact, as is in the case of colonization, then those who are acquainted with the conditions of evolution are able to foretell whether or not an alien form of civilization can be assimilated by the others. Take, for example, a people that is the product of its environment, into whose blood this environment has built itself, and try to graft upon such a people a new form of civilization. The thing is impossible. This is why certain aboriginal peoples had to go under, as soon as colonists came to their particular parts of the world.

It is from this point of view that the question will have to be considered, and the idea that changes are capable of being forced upon all and sundry will in time cease to be upheld, for it is useless to demand from blood more than it can endure.

Modern science has discovered that if the blood of one animal is mixed with that of another not akin to it, the blood of the one is fatal to that of the other. This has been known to occultism for ages. If you mingle the blood of human beings with that of the lower apes, the result is destructive to the species, since the one is too far removed from the other. If, again, you mingle the blood of man with that of the higher apes, death does not ensue. Just as this mingling of the blood of different species of animals brings about actual death when the types are too remote, so, too, the ancient clairvoyance of undeveloped man was killed when his blood was mixed with the blood of others who did not belong to the same stock. The entire intellectual life of today is the outcome of the mingling of blood, and the time is not far distant when people will study the influence this had upon human life, and they will be able to trace it back in the history of humanity when investigations are once more conducted from this standpoint.

We have seen that blood united to blood in the case of but remotely connected species of animals, kills; blood united to blood in the case of more closely allied species of animals does not kill. The physical organism of man survives when strange blood comes in contact with strange blood, but clairvoyant power perishes under the influence of this mixing of blood, or exogamy.

Man is so constituted that when blood mingles with blood not too far removed in evolution, the intellect is born. By this means the original clairvoyance which belonged to the lower animal-man was destroyed, and a new form of consciousness took its place.

Thus in the higher stage of human development we find something similar to what happens at a lower stage in the animal kingdom. In the latter, strange blood kills strange blood. In the human kingdom strange blood kills that which is intimately bound up with kindred blood, viz., the dim, dreary clairvoyance. Our everyday objective consciousness is therefore the outcome of a destructive process. In the course of evolution the kind of mental life due to endogamy has been destroyed, but in its stead exogamy has given birth to the intellect, to the wide-awake consciousness of the present day.

That which is able to live in man's blood is that which lives in his ego. Just as the physical body is the expression of the physical principle, as the etheric body is the expression of the vital fluids and their systems, and the astral body of the nervous system, so is the blood the expression of the “I,” or ego. Physical principle, etheric body, and astral body are the “Above”; physical body, vital system, and nervous system are the “below.” Similarly, the ego is the “above,” and the blood is the “below.” Whoever, therefore, would master a man, must first master that man's blood. This must be borne in mind if any advance is to be made in practical life. For example, the individuality of a people may be destroyed if, when colonizing, you demand from its blood more than it can bear, for in the blood the ego is expressed. Beauty and truth possess a man only when they possess his blood.

Mephistopheles obtains possession of Faust's blood because he desires to rule his ego. Hence we may say that the sentence which has formed the theme of the present lecture was drawn from the profound depths of knowledge; for truly—

“Blood is a Very Special Fluid.”

On this occasion let me once more call attention to the fact that as the German Section of the Theosophical¹ Society we find ourselves in an epoch of importance. What has been said in different lectures with regard to the cycles which run in sevens is no mere figure of speech, but is in harmony with the laws of existence. And having now completed a 7-years' cycle in the life of the German Section we may do well to pause and look into our whole work and endeavour. This work is only possible if the spiritual Movement, in its development, contains in its inner ordering something of the laws of the great cosmic system. The cosmic system runs its course in cycles which can be reckoned according to the number 7; for we reckon 7 planetary conditions and so on.

In a Movement like our own, the number 7 also has a certain part to play, and after 7 years our striving in a sense turns back again to the beginning, for it has in the meantime incorporated in itself what has been achieved; our striving turns back again to its beginning, but at a higher stage. It is only possible to arrive at this by considering how the whole rests upon an inner law.

If you look back a little at the work we have done in these 7 years, you will be able to notice one thing: there has been a certain order and regularity about this work. Of course you cannot take what I have said as being correct to a day, but if you take it in its essentials, you will see that it is true.

In the first years of our work in the German Section we so to speak laid the foundations. What we did in the first four years was to acquire some knowledge of the paths-which lead to the higher worlds, of the great cosmic connections, and of the examination and testing of what is found in the Akashic Record with regard to the secrets of the cosmos. Those members who joined later have found it necessary—and will always do so—to acquire knowledge afterwards of this foundation of our work. This is indispensable for everybody; for it is not sufficient to assimilate only what has happened in the last three years and has enabled the Movement to progress in the right way. If you look back you will see that the last three years have brought about the development of those truths and facts which have been put before you of late, perhaps in a somewhat astonishing form. If you try to establish the connection with what was done in the first four years of our work in the four-fold foundation, as it were, of the whole, you will see that even those great and all-embracing truths which have been impressing you so deeply, have a very close connection with what happened in the first four years. You will be able to convince yourselves of this if you ponder it well. The younger members must bear written upon their hearts the absolute necessity of acquiring for themselves a firm and sure foundation. Wherever the work is being carried on, we are making it more and more possible for those who join later to pick up for themselves what has been accomplished here in the early days. It is really impossible for them to co-operate without this recapitulation; and the Theosophical Movement must be taken seriously in the deepest sense. In this connection we may perhaps speak to-day on a subject that concerns the theosophical attitude of mind and the whole manner of theosophical thought; and we will relate it to the significant time through which we are passing. I mean the question: “What is the right attitude for the theosophist to take with regard to Theosophy itself?”

What is here meant will be clearer if I put the question in another way: “Why is Theosophy taught to-day at all as it is taught? Why is information given about the higher worlds, information that is the result of spiritual research and clairvoyant consciousness? Could one not perhaps proceed in quite a different way?” Let us suppose, e.g., that we were to begin by giving each person certain instructions as to how he can develop those inner faculties which at present are dormant within his soul, so that by means of these instructions it would be possible for him gradually to penetrate into the spiritual worlds himself, without having first been given any of the facts of the higher worlds, as is done to-day.

This was indeed the custom formerly, to a certain extent: it was so before the Theosophical Movement in the modern sense came into being. For a long time it had been said: It is really not of much use for anyone to stand before the world and communicate the results of spiritual investigation. Such communications were accordingly withheld as far as possible, and only certain maxims were given to people as to how they should develop the faculties dormant within their own souls; as a rule people were not told any more than they had gradually come to see for themselves in the higher worlds. The question might now arise: Why is this path not taken to-day? Why are the results of spiritual investigation communicated to men?

This step has not been taken out of any personal preference or from any personal decision: there are good reasons for it. We shall understand it better if we constantly remind ourselves of what it is that Spiritual Science really tells us. It tells us of facts and truths from the realm of the higher super-sensible worlds; it tells us of that which clairvoyant consciousness can discover in these higher worlds.

Now it is of course true that one who hears of such things and is not himself clairvoyant cannot convince himself of the facts as such through his own immediate vision; it is quite true that he receives them and cannot prove them by clairvoyant evidence. That is true; but it would be quite wrong to imagine that the man who is not clairvoyant cannot in any way prove or have insight into the facts which are now being presented. And it would be wrong to assert that one must merely take in faith and on authority what is given out of clairvoyant consciousness. These communications would be in the highest degree imperfect, would lack something essential, if they appealed only to authority and faith. What is being given out in the right way—this has often been emphasised—can be discovered only by clairvoyant consciousness but when it has once been discovered—if only by one person—when it has once been seen and communicated, everyone can understand it by means of unprejudiced reason, that is to say by those faculties which are accessible to him on the physical plane. And it may well be said: Even if no one of those here present ever has the opportunity of proving everything immediately in the most comprehensive sense, everyone could at any rate make this possible if he had the time and the necessary mental faculties (I mean, faculties of the physical plane). Let us even consider such difficult matters as were treated of here in recent lectures, with regard to the incarnations of Zarathustra, such difficulties as, e.g. that Zarathustra's etheric body passed over into Moses²—let us even imagine that such difficult, far-reaching and significant subjects are being dealt with, even then let no one assert that he who knows these things as the result of spiritual research appeals for blind credulity! That is by no means the case. But suppose someone were to come and say: “I for my part am no clairvoyant. But here is someone asserting these things about Zarathustra and his incarnations. I will now lay hold of everything that is at my disposal on the physical plane, everything that history hands down to us, everything that is contained in the stone monuments, or in ancient religious documents, and I will test all these most carefully.” And suppose he were to say further: “Assuming that what is being said is correct, does it tally with the facts that can be externally corroborated?”—Such a person would then investigate thoroughly what can be confirmed by external means, and he would see that the more closely he investigated the more he would find corroboration for what the clairvoyant has set forth. If the word “fear” had any meaning at all in this connection, then one could say that the research of Spiritual Science might perhaps really feel fear of an inexact examination; but it could never fear those who are ready to follow fully and accurately the paths of material investigation. For such people will see that the more closely they pursue their investigations the more corroboration they will find for the facts which the clairvoyant communicates. But for the things that are not so remote or difficult, things which are connected with karma and reincarnation, and the life between death and a new birth—for these one only needs to observe, in an open-minded way, what ordinary life has to offer. And the more this is done, the more will confirmation be found for the facts communicated by the clairvoyant; that is to say, there are possibilities enough of convincing oneself that what is acquired from super-sensible worlds can be confirmed by the outer physical world. This is something which should not be taken lightly, but which we should look upon as an essential fact. We must in our own lives put to the test the facts that only a few can really investigate, we should not. always be repeating the phrase: That must be taken on trust! Accept as little as possible on trust; examine, test and prove all the time! Only be sure that you do it in an open-minded, unprejudiced way. This, then, is the first thing upon which stress must be laid.

But now you will find that a testing of this kind requires great effort, it demands thought and work. It means that one must really set out to find confirmations in the physical world for what is stated out of clairvoyant research. And here we come to a matter of which we shall do well to speak, a matter that is closely connected with our main question. Is it not necessary, is it not even good, for the man of to-day, besides striving (as he certainly should strive) to penetrate into the spiritual world, also to occupy himself at the same time with an energetic cultivation of the ordinary means of knowledge and the ordinary methods of thought? In other words: Does the theosophist not do well to overcome the indolence that is certainly prevalent in the world to-day, and to develop his world of thought in all earnestness, to lay hold of the means by which man can be comprehended even only on the physical plane, and to turn these to his use? Is it not right that he should learn a great deal, and especially learn how to think?

It is indeed very difficult to make clear to the consciousness of the present day what is meant by this. It once happened that someone who wanted to make progress in theosophical knowledge and at the same time to learn how to think the thoughts with greater exactitude, came and asked me to recommend him what to read. I recommended him to study Spinoza's Ethics, so that he would be able to formulate in clear-cut outlines the thoughts that were being given him. Not many weeks afterwards he wrote to me that he could not see why he should study this book; it was rather voluminous and the whole object was simply to prove the existence of God, which he had never doubted; therefore he saw no need to wade through long trains of thought in order to prove the existence of God!

This is an example of just that kind of indolence with which men approach Theosophy or Spiritual Science to-day. They are very soon satisfied when they have come to some belief or other, and they fight shy of the trouble of building it up for themselves, bit by bit, into conceptions which are, admittedly, troublesome to acquire. But for such persons the only possible result is blind faith, whereas you will find that it ceases to be blind faith if you will really school your thinking and not simply want, out of curiosity, to develop those powers which lead to an elementary stage of clairvoyance. I do not, of course, say that this could not run parallel, but we need to train at the same time the physical powers of thought, those faculties of knowledge that have been given to us here on the physical plane; these must be trained too, even if it is irksome, in order that we may be in a position to form clearly defined ideas and clearly defined concepts of what is communicated to us from out of the higher worlds. It is very easy to imagine that it is better to have clairvoyance in the very smallest degree than it is to understand through the reasoning mind ever so many of the facts of the higher worlds. It might easily be said: “I really do not know why I am a member of this Society; we are always being told things about the higher worlds; all that is quite nice, but I would much prefer it if I could catch the merest glimpse of them myself by means of clairvoyant vision.”—I know a very learned theosophist who had an intense longing to get beyond mere learning to direct vision, and he expressed this longing as follows: “If only I could once be able to see even the tip of the tail of one of these elemental beings!” Such a remark is quite understandable. This particular theosophist would never have been ready to give up his knowledge of theosophical truth in exchange; but there might well be someone ready to do so, if he could gain only a small degree of clairvoyant vision. Such a feeling would, however be wrong from every point of view. For we must consider the age in which we live. It is the age which, in the whole evolution of man, is the epoch when conscious thought must be developed, just as in the ancient Indian period a quite different kind of consciousness was evolved, a consciousness that was reminiscent of a dim, shadowy clairvoyance; the powers of the present day have gradually been developing ever since that time. It is only we in this age, who in conjunction with the development of the Spiritual Soul have brought human thinking into the sphere of earth-evolution. For this reason Theosophy must now, at this time, be brought down out of the super-sensible world and must make its appeal to the reasoned thinking of men.

We need to distinguish clearly between two conditions. Firstly: a man may not be much of a thinker, his thinking may indeed be quite primitive and yet he may at the same time be comparatively far advanced as regards vision on the astral plane, and even, up to a certain point, on the devachanic plane; he may be quite advanced in this respect and able to see a great deal. Or again, the other case is possible: A man who knows a great deal about the theosophical truths may yet be able to see nothing at all for himself, may not be in the position, as we were saying, to see even “the tip of the tail” of an elemental being! This is also quite possible. Now let us ask ourselves: What is really the inner connection between these different faculties of the human soul?

Here it must be emphasised that to have something, and to be conscious of what we have, are two distinct things. It is extraordinarily important to grasp this point. You will understand it rightly if the question is put somewhat differently. You were all once clairvoyant, in primeval times everyone was clairvoyant, and there was a time too when men were able to look back into the far, far past. And now you may ask: But how is it that we do not remember our former incarnations if we were once able to look back through the ages? Then you may ask: If we become clairvoyant now, will that help us in the next incarnation to look back?

This fact you must have clearly before you, that the old clairvoyance is of no use for looking back to-day. You once had this clairvoyance. How is it, then, that the majority of people to-day do not remember their former incarnations? This question is of the greatest importance. People do not remember their former incarnations—although in earlier epochs they were clairvoyant to a greater or less degree—because in those times they had not developed the faculties which are the faculties of the self, of the ego. For the development of clairvoyant faculties in the general sense is not the essential point.

Let me make this clear to you by a comparison. Imagine that when you woke up in the morning you could remember nothing about your experiences of the day before.—Now however clairvoyant people may have been in former times, if they did not pay attention to the development of the faculties of the ego, namely, the faculty of thinking, the power of discrimination, which are the special faculties of the human ego on this earth, then the ego was not actively present in the former incarnations, the self-hood was not there! What, then, is there for people to remember? A self-contained ego must be there in the previous incarnation. That is the whole point! So that to-day it is only those people who in their earlier incarnations have worked through the medium of thought, of logic, of discrimination, who can remember those incarnations. Thus however advanced a man is in clairvoyance, if he has not in former incarnations worked through the power of discrimination, of logical thinking, he cannot remember a former incarnation. For he had not at that time set up the signpost as it were, to which his recollection has to go back. So you will see that when one understands Spiritual Science, one cannot too quickly set to work to acquire just these very faculties of genuine thought.

Now perhaps you will say: But when I am clairvoyant I shall already have mastered the faculty of logical thinking. That is not so! Why have the Gods allowed human beings to exist at all? Because it was only in human beings that they could cause faculties to develop which otherwise could not have been developed at all. The power to think, to picture something in thoughts in which there is the quality of discrimination—this faculty can be developed only on this our earth; formerly it did not exist, it could only come about through the fact of the existence of human beings. We might take the following comparison.—Suppose you have a grain of corn—of wheat, let us say. However long you look at it, no wheat will grow out of it. You must put it in the soil and let it grow, you must let the growth-forces work upon it. That which the divine-spiritual Beings had before the formation of man may be compared to the grain of wheat. If this “grain of wheat” was to come to life in the form of thoughts, it had first to be cultivated by human beings on the physical plane. The only possible means of cultivating thoughts on the earth from the higher world is through human incarnations. So that the thoughts of men on the physical plane have a character which is entirely their own and must lead up to what is possible in the higher worlds. It was necessary for the Gods that there should be men on the earth. The Gods allowed men to come into being in order to preserve through them in the form of thought what they had had in the higher worlds. Thus what comes down from the higher worlds would never have taken form in thought, if man had not been able to give it this form. And he who will not think, on the earth, deprives the Gods of what they have reckoned upon, and he cannot accomplish what is his real human task and destiny upon earth. For he can only attain this in an incarnation wherein he really labours at the development of his powers of thought. If this is realised, all the rest follows from it.

That which brings revelations, real facts about the spiritual world, can enter the human soul in manifold ways. It is certainly possible for men to come to clairvoyant vision without being clear thinkers, and indeed this is very frequently the case to-day. The majority of those who become clairvoyant are not clear thinkers. But those who are clear thinkers and those who are not will have very different experiences in the spiritual world. The difference might be expressed thus: What is revealed from out of the higher worlds impresses itself most clearly into those forms of mental perception which we bring to the higher worlds as thoughts. Thoughts are the best vehicle for the revelations.

But if we are not thinkers, the revelations must seek other forms, e.g. a picture. The most usual way for one who is not a thinker to receive revelations is in the form of a sense-image. And you may often hear those who are visionary clairvoyants without being thinkers, describe in sense-images what they have seen. These may have beauty; but we must at the same time be aware that a thinker has a different. subjective experience from a non-thinker. If you have revelations as a non-thinker, the sense-image is there; this or that figure stands before you. It reveals itself out of the spiritual world. Let us say, you see the figure of an angel, or some symbolic form—perhaps a cross, a monstrance, a chalice. This is present in the super-sensible realm and you see it as a finished picture. You say to yourselves that it is reality—but actually it is a picture. New experiences of the spiritual world will present themselves to the subjective consciousness of the thinker in a rather different way. It will not be the same as for the non-thinker. For the thinker, the things will not suddenly be there before him as though they had been shot out of a pistol; they will appear in a different way. Take a non-thinking, visionary clairvoyant and a thinking, visionary clairvoyant. They may both receive the same revelations. Let us take some particular case. The non-thinking clairvoyant sees this or that phenomenon of the spiritual world. The thinking clairvoyant does not see it yet, but only later; and the very moment he sees it, it is taken hold of by his own thought and he can at once discriminate and know whether it is or is not truth. He sees it somewhat later, but when he does see it, it comes to him in such a form that he has already penetrated it with his thoughts, and can tell whether it is illusion or reality; so that in a sense he possesses something before he actually sees it. The revelation comes to him at the same moment as to the non-thinking clairvoyant, but he sees it later. When he sees it, however, it is already penetrated with judgment and thought, and he knows exactly whether it is an hallucination, i.e. whether his own desires are being objectivised, or whether it is objective reality. That is the difference in the subjective experiences of the two clairvoyants. The non-thinking clairvoyant sees the phenomenon at once, the thinking clairvoyant, later. In the ease of the former the picture will remain as it was; all he can do is to describe it. But the thinking clairvoyant will be able to link it up and bring it completely into line with what is present in the ordinary physical world; for the physical world, no less than the phenomenon which he has seen, is a revelation from out of the spiritual world.

From this you will see that if you approach the spiritual world equipped with the instrument of thought, you will be able to bring reliable judgment to bear upon what is presented to you.

But now something else follows. A person might dispute the value of communications from the spiritual world if he has not seen the phenomena for himself. Let us imagine a third person as well as the two mentioned. This third person is not clairvoyant at all but is informed of the results of spiritual investigation in so far as they have been acquired by clairvoyance combined with clear thinking. He looks upon them as reasonable. Yes, they are facts from the spiritual world. The thinking clairvoyant has acquired them, and anyone who has grasped them with his reason possesses them, even if he is not conscious of it. You do not need to be at all clairvoyant, yet you have the full value in yourself of what has been communicated to you.. There is a difference between having something and being conscious that one has it. The relation of a non-clairvoyant theosophist to a clairvoyant theosophist can become clear by thinking of the following.—Imagine that you had been given a legacy, but had not yet heard about it. If this were the case, the legacy would nevertheless have its value for you. Even if you do not hear about it until later, yet you possess it all the same. So it is with whoever learns of the facts of the spiritual world through Spiritual Science. They are his, if he has grasped them in an understanding way; he possesses them and need only wait for the time when he will become conscious of them. The becoming conscious of them, however, is not of equal significance with their possession. This is particularly noticeable after death. Which is of more use—if we may put it thus trivially, to make the meaning clear—which is of more use to man after death: to see something in a visionary way, without thought, or to receive purely theosophical communications without seeing things in a visionary way?

One could easily imagine that visionary sight would be a better preparation for death than merely to hear of the facts of the spiritual world. And yet the truth is that after death, what a man has simply seen in a visionary way is of very little use to him, while on the other hand an actual reality is immediately present, as soon as he becomes conscious of what he has received in spiritual communications, if he has grasped these with his understanding. It is what has been understood that is of value after death, whether it has been seen or not.

Consider the deepest Initiate. Through his clairvoyance he can behold the whole spiritual world! But this will not enhance his significance after death, if he is not able to express these facts in human concepts. All that will help him after death is what he has possessed here on earth in the form of clear concepts of thought. There are the seeds for the life after death. Of course anyone who is a thinker as well as a visionary clairvoyant can turn his visions to good account. But two non-thinking persons, of whom one is clairvoyant and the other merely listens to the results of the clairvoyance—these two will be in exactly the same position after death. There is no difference between them, for what we take into the life after death is what we acquire for ourselves here by means of clear thinking. This springs up like a seed; but not so, what we have merely already seen on earth of the worlds we now enter. What we receive here from the higher worlds is not given to us as a free gift so as to make it easier for us when we leave the physical plane, but in order that we may translate it into the current coin of the earth. What we have thus translated, just so much helps us after death. That is the essential thing.

Thus it is in regard to the life after death. But here on the physical plane too, the case of the visionary clairvoyant is different from that of the thinking clairvoyant. It is interesting and beautiful to see into the spiritual worlds, but none the less there is a difference when the spiritual worlds are beheld merely in a visionary way. Apart from the fact that it is impossible to be secure from illusions—and the only way to avoid illusions is to apply clear thinking to what has been seen—apart from this, let us suppose that a visionary clairvoyant has perceived this or that; then the form in which he perceives it, and which you can discover from his own account of it, is penetrated by elements of the physical plane. Has anyone ever described to you an angel that was not permeated by elements of the physical plane? He had wings. So have the birds. He had a human-shaped body. So has every human being on the physical plane. The things the visionary clairvoyant describes are, it is true, put together in a fashion that is not to be found on the physical plane, but the pictures are nevertheless composed of elements of the physical plane. This is not without justification; but you will see that such a picture has within it something that belongs to the earth. The forms and pictures in your vision that are taken from the physical plane do not belong to the spiritual world, they only give a picture of the spiritual world in the domain of the senses. This I have set forth clearly in my Occult Science, which has now been completed. I have there shown that present-day clairvoyance must indeed be of a pictorial character in its early stages, but that it must not remain there, it must develop to the point where the last remnant of what is earthly in the visions is cast aside. There is of course a certain danger for the clairvoyant when he thus strips off the last remnant of earth. For example, when he sees the angel and then strips off all that is earthly, he is faced with the danger of seeing nothing at all! What is it that can prevent one from losing the vision altogether on entering actually into the spiritual world? The seed that can spring up out of thinking! Thoughts afford the substance whereby what is in the spiritual world may be comprehended. We acquire the power really to live in the spiritual world by comprehending, in our world of the senses, what is no longer permeated by sense-elements and yet is on the physical plane. Thoughts alone fulfil this condition. The only thing we may bring into the spiritual world is thoughts. With regard to a circle, for example, nothing of the chalk drawing of it, but simply and solely our thoughts about a circle. With these thoughts you can ascend into the spiritual worlds. You must bring nothing of the picture with you.

And now I can describe the above-mentioned subjective process more exactly. Let us suppose, for example, that something is seen in the field of spiritual vision, let us say, a monstrance. I will now characterise the two clairvoyants, the merely visionary and the thinking clairvoyant, by supposing that the one sees the monstrance here (a) and the other, the thinking clairvoyant, only sees it here (b)

It is only from this point onwards that he becomes conscious of it. He receives it, however, immediately with thoughts, he penetrates it with thought. But at the moment when the thinking clairvoyant fills his image with thoughts, it becomes indistinct for the visionary clairvoyant. It becomes black and indistinct here at this point (b) and reappears only after some time. Just at the point where thought can unite with the image, it becomes indistinct for the visionary clairvoyant; he is really never in a position to unite thought with it, therefore he never has the experience: ‘I was there with my ego’. This experience can never come to the merely visionary clairvoyant.

All this takes us more intimately into the whole question, and it is exceedingly important to reflect upon it. It leads us to consider the necessity of developing our thinking, and of overcoming the disinclination to acquire an understanding knowledge for ourselves. It is a thousand times better to have grasped the ideas of Spiritual Science with thought first of all, and then—sooner or later, each according to his karma—to be able oneself to ascend into the spiritual worlds; a thousand times better than to have ‘seen’ straight-away and not to have grasped with thought the knowledge that is imparted in the Movement known as the Theosophical. A thousand times better it is indeed, to know Theosophy and to see nothing as yet, than to see something and not be able to penetrate it with thought, for that is how unreliability is introduced.

You can express the matter even more exactly, as follows.—You say: There are at the present time very clear thinkers who can understand the theosophical view of the world in an intellectual way. How is it that it is sometimes just these people who have such difficulty in reaching clairvoyance?—Those who are not clear thinkers find it comparatively easy to become clairvoyant, and they are then apt to feel themselves superior to the thinkers, whilst the latter find it difficult to become clairvoyant at all. Here is the point—distant by a hair's breadth only—where a certain arrogance in disguise begins to assert itself. There is indeed hardly anything that breeds and fosters pride so much as a clairvoyance which has not been illumined with thought, and that is why it is so dangerous, because the clairvoyant does not as a rule consider himself proud at all, but very humble. He has no notion of the pride that consists in undervaluing the activity of thought and laying the chief emphasis on inspirations. It is a terrible form of pride, a masked pride.

The question is really as follows: How is it that for many a thinker—as experience teaches us—it is so exceedingly difficult to come to the point of being clairvoyant? This is connected with an important fact. What we call power of discrimination, power of judgment in man, in other words the logical thinking of the thinker, brings about a definite change in the whole structure of the human brain. Clear thinking causes a change in the physical instrument of the brain. Scientific research knows little of this, but it is a fact that a physical brain that has been used by a thinker has a different appearance from the brain which belongs to a non-thinker. The fact of being clairvoyant does not change it much. The brain of a non-thinker has very complicated convolutions, but that of a clear thinker is comparatively simple, without any special complications. Thinking actually expresses itself in the simplification of the convolutions of the brain. Present-day research knows nothing of this. Clear thinking is thinking that can survey wide vistas, not the thinking that occupies itself with analysis. Hence the greater simplicity of the brain-convolutions of a clear thinker. Whenever scientific research does condescend in any way to test clear thinking in its connection with material conditions, then it very soon appears that scientific research corroborates the statements of Spiritual Science. The examination of the brain of Mendeleeff to whom science owes the exposition of the periodic system of the elements confirms what Spiritual Science says. His brain-convolutions were simpler than usual. Within certain limits he had the power of comprehensive thinking, and physical examination bore out absolutely the truth of what I have said.—I do not mention this as being of any very special value but only by the way.—Thus, as I have said, a change comes about in the instrument, and this change must be brought about by the activity of thought itself. No one is born with all the faculties he will possess later; he may have tendencies in certain directions, but the faculties themselves he must first develop. So it is a fact that changes take place in the brain in the course of a man's life. After a life of thought the instrument of thinking is different from what it was before.

Now the fact is that our etheric body, which for clairvoyant consciousness must be loosened from the physical brain, becomes more closely bound to the brain through the activity of thought. Thinking chains the etheric body firmly to the brain. If through his karma anyone has not yet the forces necessary to loosen it again at the right time, it may be that he cannot get far in clairvoyance in this incarnation; this depends on his karma. Supposing that in a former incarnation his karma had ordained him to be a clear thinker, then at the present time his thinking will not bind his etheric body so strongly to the brain; he will be able to set free his etheric body comparatively easily, and for the very reason that the elements of thought are the best preparation for ascending into the higher worlds—for this very reason he can investigate the secrets of the higher worlds in the most intimate way. Of course he must first set free again the etheric body from the brain. But if with what one may call the fine chiseling of thought the etheric body has become so caught in the physical brain that it is exhausted, then his karma may perhaps make him wait a long time before he can set it free again. When, however, the etheric body does become free, it will mean that he has passed the point of logical thought. Then what he has acquired can never be lost; no one can take it away from him. That is an essential and important fact, because otherwise clairvoyance can often be lost again after it has been acquired. Let me remind you once again that you were all clairvoyant in earlier times. Why is it that you no longer possess the faculty of clairvoyance? It is because in former times you were not bound to the earth's existence, because you were remote, in spiritual worlds; you did not bring the spiritual world down into your faculties; your visionary clairvoyance was based upon the condition of being remote from the physical world.

This must be clear to us. We must inscribe these fine shades of thought upon our minds and souls; we must be clear that the task of a real occult science to-day is to impart those results of spiritual investigation which are permeated with a thinking content, so that one can always clothe the results of spiritual research in such a way as to be comprehensible through thinking to the man who is not clairvoyant. To this end they must first be combined with thought. This is why there is such difficulty with old books which speak of phenomena of the higher worlds. If you take up old books of this kind and approach them with the attitude of modern Spiritual Science, you will find something lacking in them all. These old books may impart wonderful knowledge, but they are not of much use to the man of to-day unless he is himself clairvoyant and knows how to place the knowledge rightly. In the case of modern Spiritual Science, however, anyone who takes pains is able to make something of what it presents, because he can permeate it with the element of thought he acquires on the physical plane. For the same concepts are used to grasp what is in the spiritual world and what is in the physical world. Present-day Natural Science speaks of evolution; so does Spiritual Science. If you have grasped the concept of evolution you can understand what is set forth in Spiritual Science. You can create a concept of karma, because you can create a picture of it in thought. Of course if you simply say, as many theosophists do: “Every spiritual cause has a spiritual effect and this is karma”, you have then no conception of karma. You can see the law of cause and effect in a billiard ball, but that would be no right comparison for karma. But now take an iron ball and throw it into a vessel of water. If the ball is cold the water will remain as it is. But if you make the ball hot and then throw it in, the water will get warm as a result of what has been done to the ball. Here we have something which may be compared with karma; here we have a later event that is the result of an earlier.

It must be quite clear to us that one who permeates the facts of the spiritual world with thought can also impart them in such a way that everyone who has thoughts acquired here on the physical plane can apply these same thoughts to what is imparted from the spiritual worlds. If he does this he can understand it. Everyone ought to keep this in mind. Everyone ought to understand that the important thing is, not the fact that we receive knowledge from the higher worlds, but how we receive it—that we receive it in a way that is suited to our present earthly conditions. We must see to it that we do not receive knowledge from the higher worlds in any other way. It is tempting just to believe what is told us but this is very wrong. If someone is willing just to believe, it is as though he wanted merely to be told that there is a light; whereas he needs the light to light up his room! He must have the light; mere belief is no use. Thus it is important first of all to understand the nature of thorough, conscientious thinking, so that the knowledge of the spiritual world may be received through this channel. The knowledge can only be discovered if one has the power of clairvoyance; but when it has been discovered and investigated, it can be understood by everyone who receives it in the right way.

If one thinks in this way, then all the dangers which are otherwise bound up with what is called the Theosophical Movement, will be, in the main, averted. These very dangers will however immediately arise if people develop clairvoyant powers and do not see to it that their thinking, and more especially their perception and discernment, are enriched at the same time through their own thinking. Many people have the desire just to seize hold of something out of the spiritual world instead of carefully bringing their perceptive thought to bear upon what has after all to be acquired on the physical plane. Even a God cannot comprehend the world in terms of thought unless he incarnates on this physical earth. He can comprehend the world in other forms and ways, but to comprehend it in this form he must incarnate upon the earth. If you reflect upon this it will be clear to you that there are certain dangers connected with the development of faculties within oneself which are then wrongly used. He who develops a certain visionary clairvoyance and uses it wrongly by cutting off all possibility of convincing the world with it, he who remains on the astral plane alone and does not bring his experiences down on to the physical plane, is laying himself open to the danger that an abyss will open between his visions and the physical plane. Let us suppose that someone has had visions of real significance which belong to the astral plane. They may be true visions of reality—for this may happen even with the non-thinking, visionary clairvoyant. But now between him and the real foundations of the physical plane there opens out an abyss. Imagine for a moment that this cloth were the physical plane. The visionary clairvoyant is standing in front of it; he sees his vision. But behind the physical plane is the real spiritual world; the physical plane is Maya. The visionary clairvoyant does not strip away the physical plane; this can be done only by one who makes use of the means of thought. Then only do you penetrate behind the physical plane; only with thinking clairvoyance can you ever understand it. The physical plane is there, but you do not see the spiritual world, the real spiritual world. The abyss opens before you, and the physical plane remains as Maya. And the impossibility of penetrating through the physical plane rests upon the fact that the brain is not capable of eliminating itself. If you have learnt to think rightly, you do not directly use your brain in thinking. Thinking works on the brain, but the activity of thinking does not directly need the brain; it is nonsense to assert that the brain itself thinks.

About 35 years ago I was once walking along the street with a young student who was then well on the way to becoming an out-and-out materialist. He said “When a man thinks, the brain atoms are vibrating; every definite thought has a definite form”—and then he continued to speak of how it is really nonsense to presuppose anything like a soul which can think, for it is the brain which does the thinking.—I said to him: “Yes, but now tell me, why do you tell such fibs? If this is true you cannot say: I think! You must say: my brain thinks, And you must also say: My brain eats, my brain sees the sun! You would then be speaking the truth.” He would soon see then what nonsense he had been carrying about in his head.

So it is not the brain that thinks. It needs no very serious consideration, to get this point clear, unless one is a thorough-going modern materialist. Unless you are a ‘Monist’ in the modern sense of the word, you can easily be clear on this point. The activity of thinking is not primarily dependent on having the brain as its instrument. When thinking becomes pure, the brain is not involved. It only plays a part when a sense-picture is made. If you have a picture of a chalk circle in your mind, then this picture has been formed by the brain, but when you think of a pure circle apart from all sense-qualities, then the circle is itself the active element that gives form to the brain. Now when a man has visionary clairvoyance he remains in his etheric body and does not reach the physical brain. But the abyss can never be bridged by this method. What is there seen clairvoyantly is connected with what is behind the physical plane. He who scorns the path of thought develops powers which, so to speak, do not attain their object, do not really penetrate into the spiritual world. And the consequence is that there is a false relationship between what is continually being developed in his etheric body, and what he really is as man. The relationship is entirely false; his brain is not developed to the level of his clairvoyant faculties. The brain is crude, for the man has made no effort to ennoble it through thinking. It is crude, it has built up a barrier which it cannot penetrate and which hinders him from reaching spiritual reality in his visions. He goes away from reality, instead of coming nearer to it. And every possibility of making a judgment about the spiritual world is taken away. Such a man may certainly be able to see a great deal; but there is never any guarantee that what he sees will correspond with the reality. He alone is capable of judging who can distinguish between mere vision and reality. It is only the power of discrimination that can discriminate, and if this is lacking, mere vision can never be distinguished from reality. But this power of discrimination can be acquired only by effort on the physical plane. Thus one will be for ever hovering about without firm foundations if one scorns the activity of thinking—hard and troublesome as it is.

This is what we must have clearly in our minds. Then it will be impossible for conditions to arise which otherwise arise so easily and may recur again and again, when by developing visionary clairvoyance men build up a dam against the world of reality and live in their dreams—which comes to the same thing as losing one's bearings in the physical world, as being not quite in one's right mind. Mere visionary clairvoyance easily leads to this. One can acquire the power of thoughtful discrimination. by working in the only sphere where this can be developed, namely in the sphere of thinking, on the physical plane. If you despise the acquisition of this thoughtful discrimination, you will stray far from the path of truth. Discrimination is what we need, otherwise we shall bring about all the ills that are necessarily connected with what is called the Theosophical Movement. He who gives himself up to blind belief, who merely accepts without reasoned thought all the communications from the higher worlds on the authority of another, will be doing something that is pleasant and easy, but in itself is fraught with danger. Instead of working the things out for himself and reflecting upon them, he accepts the knowledge of another, he assimilates the things that another person has seen, and refuses to test by means of his own thought what has been communicated. This is the cause of the ills to which the Theosophical Movement is liable—but of course this should not frighten anyone from attaching themselves to it. It may happen that a person, who has blind belief of this kind loses his bearings altogether and can no longer discriminate between what is true and what is untrue. Nothing can breed untruthfulness as effectively as a certain kind of visionary clairvoyance which is not supported and controlled by thought. And on the other hand, such clairvoyance breeds another quality, namely, a certain haughtiness and superiority which can even lead to megalomania. This is all the more dangerous because it is often not noticed. There is very serious danger of coming to think oneself superior because one sees something that another person does not see. And usually there is no idea of how deeply embedded in the soul this self-importance that borders on megalomania can be. It conceals itself in a certain way, especially when the (clairvoyant swears by his own visions with absolute certainty and suffers no one to take exception to them. So we sometimes find people believing the most ridiculous rubbish, just because it has been communicated to them “from the astral plane”. They would never dream of believing such things if they had been told them as matters belonging to the physical plane; but if they are told them “from the astral plane” they believe them with the most slavish credulity. Whoever has freed himself from this habit will not be led astray by this or that swindle or humbug. But people will fall into the trap unless they develop within themselves the impulse to prove and test, instead of accepting and believing without effort or exertion. We must not make it easy for ourselves; we must consider it one of the most sacred tasks of man to reach a right conviction. If we think of it in this light, we shall spare no effort of real work, and we shall not merely listen to sensational communications from the spiritual world. Of communications from the spiritual world we have, so to speak, enough. It is necessary that we should have them, but it is also necessary to acquire the right attitude and the right kind of thinking to receive these things worthily.

This is what I wanted to say to you to-day. I did not want to say it merely as an admonition or a sermon. I wanted to show the whole basis and for this reason it may have been rather difficult to keep pace with it in your thought; but in the methods I use I always try to adhere to what may be rightly looked for in the Theosophical Society. Many people like pious exhortations. I dislike them! I try to present things in such a way that they can clothe themselves in true forms of thought. When things of the physical plane are expounded, as has been done to-day, it does of course often entail hard thinking; for such things are neither as sensational nor as attractive as communications from the higher worlds. They are nevertheless of extraordinary importance. And you will not undervalue their importance if you say to yourselves: If that is really to come to pass which ought to come to pass, namely, that in the course of ensuing incarnations a sufficiently large number of people have a memory of this present incarnation, then provision for this must be made beforehand. Develop, therefore, your power of judgment; then you are candidates for the memory, in your next incarnation, of the present one. See to it that you are able to follow the world with your thoughts. For however much you can see m a visionary way, it will give you no help in remembering back to the present incarnation. And it is the mission of Spiritual Science to prepare the way for what must needs come—namely, that there may be a sufficiently large number of people who out of their own knowledge can look back to this present incarnation. How many come to the point in this incarnation of accompanying their knowledge of Spiritual Science with clairvoyant powers depends on the karma of each individual. There are certainly many sitting here whose karma will not allow them to see the world clairvoyantly in this incarnation. But all those who acquire what is given in true Spiritual Science, clothed as it is in the forms of thought, will reap the fruits of it in the next incarnation; for in this one they will have laid the right foundation. A man may, so to speak, be a clairvoyant without knowing it; and one who studies Spiritual Science in the right way has the insight and can wait until his karma also allows him actually to behold the things for himself.

• 1. In connection with the use of the words ‘Theosophy’, ‘theosophical’, in this text, it will be remembered that from the beginning of the century until the years 1911 or 1912, Dr. Steiner had been able to work as an independent teacher within the framework of the Theosophical Society and was the General Secretary of the German Section. His teaching of the unique nature and position of the Christ was at variance with the tendencies which had come to prevail in that Society and the statements on this subject made by its leaders, and Dr. Steiner's association with it inevitably came to an end. In 1912 the Anthroposophical Society was provisionally founded and its Headquarters established at Dornach in 1913.
• 2. cp. The Alpha and the Omega. Lecture given in Berlin, 25.V.O9; also lectures 4 and 5 of the Course on The Gospel of St. Luke.

In connection with the public lectures and public gatherings, it always affords me a satisfaction also to be able to address this Group here in The Hague, and I shall try this evening to say some things that may be to you a more intimate continuation, a supplement, of what I was able to express in the public lectures. (Lectures given in The Hague, Rotterdam, and Delft, Holland, from October 31 to November 6, 1922)

In order to have knowledge of the spiritual world and for the acquirement of an inner life with the spiritual world, it is necessary most of all to see in the right light that which one might call the concealed aspects of human existence. Indeed, the concealed aspects of human existence are the more important aspects for the comprehensive judging and evaluation of human life. This may not be admitted willingly by people who merely think superficially and materially, but it is none the less true. No one can become acquainted with human existence, unless he is able to enter into its concealed aspects.

One could, perhaps, if I may thus express myself, demur against the Gods and say that they have put the most precious thing for man into the concealed aspects of his life; that they have not afforded him what is most precious in the visible aspect of life. If this had been done, man would in a higher sense remain impotent. We acquire spirit-soul strength, which then can permeate our whole being, through the very fact that we must first achieve our genuine human dignity and our human nature, that we must first do something in the realm of our soul and spirit in order to become man at all in the right sense of the word. And in this victory, in this necessity of having first to accomplish something to become man, in this lies that which can fill us with strength, which can permeate with forces the innermost depth of our being.

In order, therefore, to explain more definitely this leading theme which I have introduced today, I will speak to you again from a certain viewpoint about that concealed aspect of human existence which is enveloped in the unconsciousness of sleep. And then I will bring to your attention something of that which lies enveloped in states of existence that remain unconscious during earth life: those states of existence in pre-earthly life and the life after death.

The sleep life takes place in such a way for man that, after the transition through dreams—which have, however, but a very dubious existence and a very dubious significance for human life, if one simply accepts them as they present themselves—he falls into the unconsciousness of sleep, out of which he emerges only on awakening, when he immerses himself with his ego and his astral body in the ether body and physical body; that is, when he makes use of both these principles as a tool in order to perceive his physical environment and then to work within this physical environment through his will. But that which lies beyond birth and death is enveloped in that very part of man's being which becomes unconscious when he falls asleep... And the conditions which the human being experiences there I will describe to you as though they were conscious. They can become conscious only to the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive consciousness. But the difference between this and what every man experiences in the night is only a difference in knowledge. The individual who, as a modern initiate, looks into the sleep life knows how it is, but this does not make the life of sleep into something different for him from what it is for every man, even for the one who passes through it quite unconsciously. Thus our description can be in conformity with reality when we describe that which remains unconscious as though the human being experienced it consciously. And this is what I shall now do.

After the transition through dreams—as I intimated before—man passes, as regards the normal consciousness, into unconsciousness. But the reality of this unconscious state, as it manifests itself to the higher, supersensible knowledge, is that, directly after falling asleep, man enters into a sort of contourless existence. If he should realize his condition consciously, he would feel himself poured out into an etheric realm. He would feel himself outside of his body, not limited, however, but widely diffused; he would sense or observe his body as some object outside of himself. If this condition should become conscious, it would be filled, as regards man's soul nature, with a certain inner anxiety or uneasiness. He feels that he has lost the firm support of the body, as though he stood before an abyss.

What is called the Threshold of the Spiritual World has to exist for the reason that the human being must first prepare himself to have this feeling, the feeling of having lost that support which the physical body affords, and to bear that anxiety in the soul which is caused by his facing something entirely unknown, something indeterminate.

As I stated, this feeling of anxiety does not exist for the ordinary sleeper; it is not in his consciousness, but he does pass through it, nevertheless. That which constitutes anxiety, for instance, in every-day physical existence is expressed in certain processes, even though they be subtle processes of the physical body: when man senses anxiety, certain vascular activities in the physical body are different from what they are when he feels no anxiety. Something occurs objectively besides what the human being feels as anxiety, restlessness, etc., in his consciousness. This objective element of a soul-spirit anxiety man experiences while he enters through the portal of sleep into the sleep state. But with the feeling of anxiety something else is connected: a feeling of deep longing for a Divine-Spiritual Reality that streams and weaves through the cosmos.

If man should experience in full consciousness the first moments after falling asleep—or even hours, perhaps, in the case of many persons—he would be in this state of anxiety and of longing for the Divine. The fact that we feel religiously inclined at all during the waking life depends first of all upon the fact that this feeling of anxiety and this longing for the Divine which we experience in the night have their after-effects upon the mood of the day. Spiritual experiences projected, so to speak, into physical life fill us with the after-effect of that anxiety which impels us to crave to know the Real in the world; they fill us with the after-effect of the longing we bear while asleep, and they express themselves as religious feelings during the waking hours of the day.

But such is the case only during the first stages of sleep. If sleep continues, something peculiar occurs; the soul exists as though split, as though split up into many souls. If the human being should experience this condition consciously—which only the modern initiate can completely behold—he would have the sensation of being many souls and consequently think that he had lost himself. Every one of these soul beings, which really are merely shadowy images of souls, represents something in which he has lost himself. In this state of sleep the human being has a different appearance according as we observe him before or after the Mystery of Golgotha. Namely, the human being requires cosmic aid from without in regard to this condition, if I may so express it, of being split into many soul reflections.

In olden times, preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, the initiates, the old initiates, gave to the people indirectly through their pupils, through the teachers whom they sent out into the world for mankind, certain religious instructions which evoked feelings during their waking life. And these instructions, which were expressed by the people in ritual acts, strengthened their souls so that the human being carried, in turn, a sort of after-effect of this religious mood over into his sleep life.

You can see the reciprocal action between being asleep and being awake! On the one hand the human being, in his longing for the Divine during the first stage of sleep, experiences that which induces him to develop religion during waking life. If this religion is developed during the waking life—and it was developed through the influence of the initiates—it has its effect again upon the second stage of sleep: through the after-effect of this religious mood the soul has then sufficient strength to bear the sensation of being split—at least to exist at all amidst this plurality.

This truly is the difficulty that irreligious people have: they have no such aid during the night in regard to this being split into many souls and thus they carry these experiences over into the waking life without the strength that religion affords. For every experience we have during the night has its aftereffect in the waking life. It has not yet been a very long time since irreligion and non-religiousness began to play so large a, part among mankind as it did during the last century, the 19th century. People still experienced the aftereffect of the influence of what earlier, more sincere, religious times meant to the human being. But, since the irreligious times continue, the ultimate result will be significant: people will carry the after-effect of this splitting of their souls from their sleep state over into their waking life, and this will principally contribute to the fact that they will not have the forces of coherence in their organism to distribute properly the nourishing effect of the food in their organism. And mankind will be afflicted with significant diseases in the near future as a consequence of this irreligion.

We must, indeed, not think that the spirit-soul part of our being has no bearing upon the physical! Its relation is not such that irreligious development will be immediately punished with disease by some kind of demoniacal gods—life does not run its course in such a superficial manner—but there does exist, nevertheless, an intimate relation between our experience in the realm of soul and spirit and our physical constitution. In order to possess health during the waking hours of the day, it is essential that we carry into our sleep life the feeling of our unity with the divine-spiritual Beings, in whose realm of activity we immerse the eternal kernel of our own being. And it is only by a right existence within a spirit-soul world between falling asleep and awakening that we can produce the right and health-bringing forces of a spirit-soul element, so necessary for our waking life.

During this second stage of sleep the human being acquires, not a cosmic consciousness, but a cosmic experience in lieu of the ordinary physical consciousness. As stated before, only the initiate goes through this cosmic experience consciously, but everyone has this experience in the night between falling asleep and waking up. And in this second stage of sleep the human being is in such a state of life that his inner nature carries out imitations of the planetary movements of our solar system. During the days we experience ourselves in our physical body. When we speak of ourselves as physical human beings, we say that inside of us are our lungs, our heart, our stomach, our brain, etc. ... this constitutes our physical inner nature. In the second stage of sleep the movement of Venus, of Mercury, of the sun, and of the moon constitute our inner spirit-soul nature. This whole reciprocal action of the planetary movements of our solar system, we do not bear it directly within us, not the planetary movements themselves; but facsimiles, astral facsimiles of them then constitute our inner organism. To be sure, we are not spread out into the entire planetary cosmos, but we are of extraordinary size, compared with our physical size in the daytime. We do not bear within us the real Venus each time that we are in the state of sleep, but a facsimile of its movement. In the second stage of sleep, between falling asleep and awakening, that which occurs in the spirit-soul part of our being consists of these circulations of the planetary movements in astral substance, just as our blood circulates through our physical organism during the day, stimulated by the movement of breathing. Thus through the night we have circulating within us as our inner life, so to speak, a facsimile of our cosmos.

Before we can experience this circulation of the planetary after-effects we must first experience the splitting of the soul. As I said before, the people of olden times, previous to the Mystery of Golgotha, received instructions from their initiates, in order that they might be able to bear this splitting of the soul and that the soul should find its way within these movements which now constituted its inner life. Since the Mystery of Golgotha something else has taken the place of this old teaching. Namely, something has occurred which the human being can now appropriate inwardly to himself as a feeling, a sentiment, a soul life, and a soul mood, when he really feels himself one with the deed which was accomplished for mankind by the Christ Being through the Mystery of Golgotha here on earth. The individual who truly feels his unity with the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha to the degree that in him are fulfilled the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but the Christ in me”, he has, through this unity with the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, developed something in his feeling which has its after-effect in sleep, so that he now has the strength to overcome the splitting of his soul and the power to find his way in the labyrinth of the planetary orbits which now constitute his inner self. For we must find our way, even though we are not conscious in our inner being of that which constitutes for the soul the planetary circulation in place of the blood circulation during the day, which now continues in the physical body we have abandoned.

After this experience, we enter the third stage of sleep. In this third stage we have an additional experience—of course, the experiences of the preceding stage always remain and the experiences of the next stage are added thereto—in the third stage is included, what I should like to call the experience of the fixed stars. After experiencing the circulation of the planetary facsimiles we actually experience the formations of the fixed stars, that which in former times, for instance, was called the images of the Zodiac. And this experience is essential to the soul aspect of the human being, because he has to carry the after-effect of this experience with the fixed stars into his waking life in order to have the strength at all to control and vitalize his physical organism at all times through his soul.

It is a fact that, during the night, every human being first experiences an etheric preliminary state of cosmic anxiety and longing for the Divine, then a planetary state, as he feels the facsimiles of the planetary movements in his astral body, and he has the experience of the fixed stars in that he feels—or would feel if he were conscious—that he experiences his own soul-spiritual inner self as a facsimile of the heavens, of the fixed stars.

Now, my dear friends, for the one who has insight into these different stages of sleep, a significant question arises, I might say, every night. The human soul, the astral organism, and the ego being, leave the physical body, their inner self is filled with facsimiles of the planetary movements and of the constellations of the fixed stars. The question arising now is this: “How is it that every morning, after each sleep, the human being returns to his physical body again?”

And it is here where the science of initiation discovers that the human being would actually not return if, on entering the planetary movements and the constellations of the fixed stars, he did not also live his way into the forces of the moon while expanding outward into the facsimiles of cosmic existence. He lives his way into the spiritual forces of the moon, into those cosmic forces which are reflected in the physical moon and in the moon-phases.

While all other planetary and fixed star forces actually draw the human being out of his physical body, it is the lunar forces which again and again return him, when he wakes, to his physical body. The moon is connected in general with all that brings the human being from his spiritual life into the physical life. It, therefore, makes no difference—the physical constellation is not the thing to be considered, although a certain significance attaches thereto—whether we have to do with new moon, full moon, the first or last quarter of the moon; in the spiritual world the moon is always present. It is the lunar forces which lead the human being back into the physical world, into his physical body.

You can see, my dear friends, that, as I briefly describe to you the experience the human being has between falling asleep and awakening, I am, upon the whole, giving you something of a general description of his sojourn in the spiritual world. And this is the state of the matter. Fundamentally, we experience every night a reflection of the life between death and a new birth. If we look into pre-earthly life with the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive consciousness, we see ourselves first of all as spirit-soul human beings in a very early state of pre-earthly existence. We see ourselves possessed of a cosmic consciousness. Our life there is not a reflection of the cosmos, as is our sleep life, but we are actually diffused through the real cosmos. About the middle of our life between death and a new birth we feel ourselves as spirit-soul beings, fully conscious—in fact with a much clearer and more intensive consciousness than we could possibly have anywhere upon the earth—surrounded by divine-spiritual Beings, by the divine-spiritual Hierarchies. And, just as we work with nature's forces here on earth, just as we use external objects of nature as tools, so in the same way does work take place between us and the Beings of the higher spiritual Hierarchies.

And what manner of work is this? This work consists in the fact that the spirit-soul human being, conjointly with an enormous number of sublime spiritual Beings of the cosmos, is weaving the cosmic spirit-germ of his physical human body in the spiritual realm. However peculiar this may seem to you—to weave the physical human body as spiritual germ out of the whole cosmos—it is the greatest, the most significant piece of work conceivable in the cosmos. And not only does the human soul in the state described work at this, but the human soul works at it conjointly with whole hosts of divine-spiritual Beings. For, if you visualize the most complicated thing that can be formed here on earth, you find it primitive and simple in contrast with that mighty fabric of cosmic vastness and grandeur which is woven there and which, compressed and condensed through conception and through birth, becomes permeated with physical earth matter and then becomes the human physical body.

When we refer to a germ here on earth, we think of it as a small germ which afterwards becomes relatively large. But, when we refer to the cosmic spirit-germ in relation to the human body as a product of the spiritual, this germ is of gigantic size. And from that moment on, which I have pointed out to you, when the soul is coming towards its birth, the soul-spiritually magnificent human germ is gradually diminishing. The human being continues to work at it with the aim constantly in view that this will be woven together, pressed together, condensed into the physical human body.

It was really not without reason that the older initiates—through a kind of clairvoyance which, to be sure, is no longer suitable to us, although the more recent science of initiation shows the same fact—that the older initiates called the human body the Temple of the Gods. It is the Temple of the Gods, for it is woven out of the cosmos by the human soul conjointly with divine Beings each time between death and a new birth. Later on—in a manner still to be described—the human being is given his physical form. While the human being is weaving the spirit-germ of his physical body at the stage indicated, he is, as regards his soul being, in a condition, in a mood, that can only be compared with what the modern initiates call intuition. The human being lives with his soul within the activity of Gods. He is wholly diffused in cosmic-divine existence. In this state halfway between death and a new birth he is participating in the life of the Gods.

But then, as the human being proceeds on his way, as he comes closer to conception or birth, a change takes place. In a certain way, his consciousness is then impressed with the fact that the divine-spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies are withdrawing from him. And there appears to him only something like a revelation, like a reflection, as if the Gods had withdrawn and only their nebulous images were still standing before the human soul, and as if a kind of veil were being woven as a nebulous imitation of that which in reality had been woven before. The intuitive consciousness he formerly possessed now changes to a cosmic inspired consciousness. The human being lives no more with the divine-spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; he lives with their manifestation. But in place of this an inner ego develops more and more within the soul consciousness. During the climax, I might say, of life between death and a new birth, the human being lives entirely with the divine-spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; the ego has no inner strength; it becomes conscious again of its inner self only when the Gods withdraw and only their manifestation remains. The glory of the Gods, their radiation, enters a kind of inspired consciousness; but, as a recompense, the human being feels himself as a self-existent being. And that which now awakens first in him is, I might say, an eager desire, a kind of craving.

Midway between death and a new birth, the human being works at the spirit-germ of his physical body, so to speak, out of a deep inner satisfaction. Although he realizes that the ultimate goal will be his physical body in his next earthly life, he is not permeated with an eager desire, but only—we might say—with admiration for this physical human body, considered from a universal standpoint. At the moment when the human beings is living no more in divine worlds, but only in the manifestations of divine worlds, the eager desire arises in him to reincarnate upon the earth. Just while the ego consciousness is becoming continually stronger does this eager desire awaken. We withdraw, so to speak, from the divine worlds and come closer to what we shall become as earthly human beings. This eager desire becomes continually stronger, and what we see around us is also undergoing a change. Prior to this, we were living in nothing but Beings, in the divine-spiritual Hierarchies; we knew ourselves to be one with them. When we spoke of our inner self we were really speaking of the cosmos—but the cosmos itself consisted of Beings, Beings in sublime stages of consciousness with whom we were living. Now an outer glory is to be seen, and in this outer glory the first images gradually appear of that which, ultimately, are the physical reflections of the divine-spiritual Beings. This glory emanates from the Being which man knew there beyond as the Sublime Solar Being, and in this glory appears, so to speak, the sun as seen from without, or as seen from the world. Here on earth we look up to the sun. There, while descending to the earth, we at first see the sun from the other side. But the sun emerges, the fixed stars emerge, and behind the fixed stars the planetary movements emerge. And with the emergence of the planetary movements a quite definite kind of forces emerges: the spiritual forces of the moon; they now take control of us. It is these lunar forces which, little by little, carry us back into the earthly life.

Such is actually the aspect of things which the human being beholds on his descent from cosmic worlds to earthly existence: that, after an experience of divine-spiritual Hierarchies, he proceeds to images of them. But these images of Beings gradually become star-images, and the human being enters into something which, I might say, he first sees from behind: he enters that which is manifest from the earth as the cosmos. The details of what the human being there consummates can be discerned, and the modern science of initiation can penetrate quite deeply into what man there experiences.

Just through details in this domain do we begin to become acquainted with life. For no one knows life who is able to see the human being in connection with earthly existence alone. What great value does our connection with the earthly existence have for us then? During the enormously long stretches of time between death and a new birth the earth, at first, really means nothing to us, and that which gleams towards us, as the external, so to speak, is transmuted into entire worlds of Gods, in which we live during these long stretches of time and which appear externally to us again as stars only when we are nearing the earth for another earthly existence.

What the human being at first wove, as the spirit-germ of his physical body, he knows, for the time being, to be one with the whole universe, with the spiritual universe. Later, when he sees only the manifestation of the divine-spiritual worlds, this germ gradually becomes his body, which is now also a facsimile of the cosmos. And out of this—his body—arises the eager desire for an earthly existence, for an ego consciousness in his body.

This body now still contains much which is untouched by the earthly existence, for it is a spirit body. As regards this body, the fact still remains entirely undetermined at a certain stage whether, for instance, the human being will be a male or a female personality in his next earthly existence. For, during this whole time between death and a new birth, up to a very late stage, before we are born upon the earth, there is no meaning in the question of man or woman. The conditions there differ entirely from those that are reflected on earth as man and woman. There are also conditions which occur in the spiritual existence and are reflected on the earth; but that which appears on earth as man and woman acquires significance only relatively late, prior to our descent to earth. When the human being, according to certain former karmic connections, thinks it best to experience his next incarnation on earth as a woman, we can trace in detail how, on his descent to the earth in order to unite with the physical embryo, he chooses that time which is known here on earth as the time of full moon.

We can say, therefore, when we are looking from any region here on earth at the full moon, that we then have the time which the beings choose for their descent to the earth who desire to become women, for then only is this decision made. And the time of new moon is the time which beings choose who wish to become men.

Thus, you see, the human being enters his earthly existence through the portal of the moon. But the force which the male requires in order to enter life on earth is then flowing out into the cosmos; we move toward it as we come in from the cosmos, and this force is radiated by the moon when it is known as new moon for the earth. The force which the female requires is radiated from the moon when it is the full moon; then its illuminated side is turned toward the earth, and its unilluminated side is toward the cosmos—and this force, which the moon can send out into the cosmos from its unilluminated side, the human being requires if he wishes to become a woman.

What I have now been describing to you shows that the ancient concept of astrology, which nowadays has been brought to a complete decadence by the ordinary astrologers, was well grounded. Only, we must be able to achieve an inner view of the connection of things. We must not look merely at the physical constellation in a calculating manner, but must see into the corresponding spiritual element. There it is really possible to enter into details.

As you know, the human being descends from the cosmos in a definite state. From the spiritual cosmos he enters the etheric cosmos. Now I am still speaking of the etheric cosmos alone; the physical aspect of the stars is, in this connections, taken less into consideration, as is, likewise, the physical aspect of the moon. The essential moment when the human being decides to descend to the earth depends, as I have stated, upon the phase of the moon during this descent, and thus it may happen that he exposes himself to a decisive new moon in order to become a man, or to a decisive full moon to become a woman. But then—since the descent is not made so very rapidly, but he remains exposed for some time—if he is descending through the new moon as a man, he may still, for one reason or another, decide to expose himself to the coming full moon. Thus he has made the decision to descend as a male; he has made use to this end of the forces of the new moon; but, during his descent, he still has at his disposal the remainder of the moon's cycle, the phase of the full moon. He then fills himself with lunar forces in such a way that they do not affect his condition as man or woman, but rather the organization of his head, and what is connected with the organization of his head from without, from the cosmos, if that constellation occurs of which I have just spoken. Thus, after the human being has made the decision; “I shall become a man through the time of the new moon”, and continues living in the cosmos, so that he has not passed completely through the lunar influence but is still exposed to the next full moon, then, through the influence of the lunar forces in this condition he will, for instance, have brown eyes and black hair. Thus we may say that the manner in which the human being passes the moon determines not only his sex, but also the color of his eyes and hair. If, for instance, the human being has passed the full moon as a woman and is later exposed to a new moon, the result may be a woman with blue eyes and blond hair.

Grotesque as this may seem, we are absolutely predestined by the manner of our experience through the cosmos, as to the way in which our soul-spirit organism works its way into our physical and our etheric organism. Prior to this time there has been no decision made as to our becoming a blond or a brunette; this is determined only by the lunar forces as we pass them, on our descent from the cosmos into earthly existence.

And just as we pass by the moon, which really guides us into earthly existence, so do we pass by the other planets. It is not immaterial, for example, whether we pass Saturn in one or another way. We may pass by Saturn, for instance, when the constellation is such that the force of Saturn and the force of Leo in the Zodiac co-operate. Because of our passing the region of Saturn just as its force is being increased through Leo in the Zodiac, our soul will—conditioned, of course, by our preceding karma—acquire the strength to meet intelligently the outer contingencies of life so that they do not defeat us over and over again. If, however, Saturn is being dominated more by Capricorn, we shall become weak human beings that do succumb to the outer contingencies of life.

All these experiences we bear within us as we prepare from the cosmos our earthly existence. Of course, we can overcome this through an appropriate training, but not by voicing the opinion of the materialists that all this is nonsense, that we need not pay any attention to it at all. On the contrary, it can be overcome by the fact that we develop these forces, really develop them. And in the future mankind will learn again, not only to insure that a child shall have good milk to drink and good food to eat—although no objection is to be made to this—but mankind will learn again to observe whether this or that person has within him forces of Saturn or Jupiter active under this or that influence.

Let us suppose that we find that a human being has within him, through his karma, forces of Saturn under the most unfavorable influence—of Capricorn or of Aquarius, for instance—so that he is exposed to all life's difficulties. Then, in order to strengthen him we shall search most carefully for other forces within him. For instance, we shall ask ourselves whether he has experienced the passage through the sphere of Jupiter, of Mars, or through any other sphere. And we shall always be able to correct and annul one condition by means of the other.

We shall simply have to learn to think of the human being not only in relation to what he begins to eat and drink in the earthly existence, but we shall have to consider him in relation to what he becomes, because of his having passed through the cosmic worlds between death and a new birth.

When the human being is close to his earthly course of life, then he experiences a sort of loss of his being. You know from my description that he was connected with what he has woven as the spirit-germ of his physical body. Into this spirit-germ he has woven, besides, the experiences during the descent through fixed stars and planets. At a definite stage, actually quite close to conception and birth, this spirit-germ is no longer there. It has, in the meanwhile, descended with its forces as a system of forces to the earth. It has fallen from the human being. It has united itself on the earth independently with the physical substance of heredity which the ancestors, father and mother, afford. What is being woven there in the organism descends to the earth sooner than the human being himself as a spirit-soul being. And then, when the human being realizes that he has actually surrendered to the parents that which he himself had woven in the cosmos, he is able, in the last stage prior to his earthly existence, to take to himself from the etheric world what is essential for his own etheric organism—since there is no longer a necessity to do any more weaving on his physical body, which is essentially complete and has been surrendered to and been made a part of the flow of heredity. Now he draws together his etheric organism; and, together with this latter, he unites with that which he himself has prepared through his parents. He takes possession of his physical body, in which all this cosmic fabric of the spirit-germ is drawn together, and which is interwoven with what the human being himself united with it as he descended through this or that stellar region. It is, indeed, not arbitrarily that he passes through new moon or full moon and causes himself to become man or woman, or to have black or blond hair or blue or brown eyes, but all this is intimately connected with the results of his preceding karma.

This shows you that, whereas the human being in the sleep state experiences as his inner nature merely facsimiles of the planetary world, the world of the fixed stars, he now passes through these worlds in their reality between death and a new birth. He passes through these worlds; they become his inner nature. And it is always the lunar forces which bring us back to the earth. They differ essentially from all other stellar forces in this respect, in that they bring us back to the earth. In the sleep state they bring us back to the earth; they bring us back also after we have experienced all that I have briefly described, in order to enter once more a life course on the earth.

But let us consider once again that which is there outside of the physical body, in the form of astral body and ego organization, between falling asleep and awakening. It is not fabricated from physical bones and physical blood; it is a spirit-soul entity. But our whole moral intrinsic quality is woven into it. Just as we consist, when awake, of bones, blood, and nerves, so does that which leaves us during sleep and returns on awakening consist of the actualized judgments of our moral deeds. If I have accomplished a good deed during the day, its effect is reflected in my sleep body within the spirit-soul substance that leaves me during sleep. My moral quality lives within this. And, when the human being passes through the Portal of Death, he takes with him his whole actualized moral evaluation. It is a fact that, between birth and death in the earthly life, the human being creates within himself a second being. This second human being, who leaves the body every night, is the result of our moral or immoral life, and we take it with us through the Portal of Death. This result, which is merged with our eternal essential being, is not the only element we possess within the spirit-soul substance which passes out of us during the night. Just after death, however, when we are first in the ether body and then in the astral body, we hardly see anything in ourselves but this moral entity of our being. Whether we were good or bad, this is what we behold; we are this. Just as here on earth we are a, human being in whom the skin forces, or the nerve forces, or the blood forces, or the bone forces predominate, so, after death, we are, to our own perception, what we were, morally or immorally.

And now after death we proceed on our way, first through the sphere of the moon, then through the sphere of the fixed stars... until the time arrives when we can begin to work with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies on the spirit-germ of our future physical body. But, if we were to take this moral element up into the highest worlds, where we are to weave our future physical organism in its spirit-germ, this physical organism would turn out to be a monstrosity. For a certain length of time between death and a new birth, the human being must be separated from what constitutes his moral quality. Indeed, he leaves his moral quality behind in the moon sphere.

It is an actual fact that, when leaving the moon sphere, we leave our moral and immoral human being in the moon sphere and enter into the pure sphere of the Gods, where we can weave our physical body.

I must now revert again to the difference between the times prior to the Mystery of Golgotha and those following it, including the present. The older initiates made very clear to their pupils—and through them to all mankind of the civilization of that time—that, in order to be able to find the transition from the world which I called in my book Theosophy the soul-world, and which we really experience in its entirety while still in the moon sphere, into the world which I called the spirit-land, the human being must develop on earth the feelings that enable him to be led upward by the spiritual Sun Being, after having left behind the whole bundle of his moral after-effects in the moon sphere.

All that history relates to us in regard to the first three Christian centuries, and even the fourth century, is fundamentally a falsification; for in those centuries Christianity was quite different from the thing described. It was something quite different for the reason that within it there held sway the conception which came from understanding the ancient science of initiation. From this wisdom of initiation it was known that, in the life after death, the sublime Sun Being led the human being out of the moon sphere, after he had left behind his moral bundle, and, on his return, led him back again into the moon sphere. This gave the human being the strength—which he could not have had through himself—to make this moral being a part of himself, at a certain time before his birth, in order to fulfill his destiny on earth within his soul, and to prevent it from entering his body. For otherwise, the human being would be born a monstrosity and be utterly diseased in his body. This moral bundle had to be taken over again in the moon sphere, during the descent, in order that it should not enter into the body.

Those initiates who were living at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and even in the three or four centuries following thereafter, said to their pupils: Previously the sublime Sun Being was only above in the spiritual worlds. But, as mankind progressed, the ego consciousness has become so bright upon the earth that it becomes all the more obscured in the spiritual world. In other words, the brighter our ego consciousness is by means of the physical body only, here below on the earth, the darker is it above. The human being would no longer come into contact with the Sun Being, he would not find through his own power the transition after death from the moon sphere to the higher spheres, had the Christ not descended and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. The Being whom the human being met formerly after death only in the spiritual world has now descended; He has lived here upon earth ever since the Mystery of Golgotha; and now the human being can establish a relation to Him according to the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but the Christ in me”. In this way the human being takes strength from the earth with him, strength given to him by the Christ here on this earth, which enables him to leave behind in the moon sphere his moral being which he creates within himself and to proceed to higher spheres, there to work on the spirit-germ of his physical body. It also gives him the strength on his descent through the moon sphere to take up his karma again of his own free will, take up the after-effects of his good and evil deeds. In the course of historical evolution, we have become free human beings. But the reason we have become such is that the Christ force we have acquired has enabled us through free inner strength to take over our karma on our descent through the moon sphere. No matter whether we like this or do not like it here on earth, we do this at the stage I have described, if we have become true Christians on earth.

I have been endeavoring, my dear friends, to show you a little of the way in which the modern science of initiation can see into worlds which we might call the concealed aspects of human existence, to show you how really everything pertaining to the human being can be elucidated only as we are able to see into these concealed aspects. And at the same time I tried to show you in connection therewith what the Christ Impulse means to mankind of the present time; for we will have constantly to revert to it. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, we cannot be a whole human being, unless we find the way to this Christ Impulse. Therefore it is necessary that Anthroposophical spiritual science shed light more and more upon the Christ Impulse in the right way. For the manner in which light was shed on the Christ Impulse in the past, when man's consciousness was obscured, would, if continued, deprive a large part of mankind—just think of the Orientals, think of the inhabitants of other continents—of the possibility of embracing Christianity. But that Christianity which is rooted deeply in Anthroposophical spiritual science will actually—if once the essence of spiritual science, as it is here intended, is understood thoroughly—be eagerly grasped particularly by the Orientals, who are endowed with an ancient spirituality, even though it is in decadence.

In this way only can that peace prevail on earth which must proceed from the soul and spirit of men, and which is so indispensable to the earth, as every impartial person feels today. We shall have to be much more convinced of the fact that all present-day thinking concerning outer institutions is really worthless, and that it is very necessary on the other hand, to appeal directly to human souls. But we can appeal to the souls only if we are able to say something to them about the true home of the soul, about the experiences of the human being that lie beyond his physical existence, in those states of consciousness I have been describing to you today. Even if those states of consciousness do not exist during the earth life, their effects do exist. Oh, my dear friends, the one who has insight into life sees in the countenance of every human being a reflection of cosmic destinies which the individual has experienced between death and a new birth!

I have described to you today how destiny—whether one has become a man or a woman—can be understood by means of the cosmos, even how the color of the eyes and hair can be understood only when we can look into cosmic existence. Nothing in this world is comprehensible unless it can be understood by means of the cosmos. The human being will feel himself to be truly a human being only when we can inform him through true spiritual knowledge of his relation with that which is back of the sensuous-physical existence. Even though the human beings on earth are not yet aware of it, mankind unconsciously thirsts for such a knowledge. What is developing convulsively today in all domains, be it the domain of the spiritual, the externally juridical, or the economic life, all is ultimately a result of the spiritual. Only as the human being learns again to know of his relation with extra-physical existence, can all this be transformed from forces of decadence into upward moving forces. For physical existence is meaningless unless seen in connection with super-physical existence. The physical human body becomes significant only then when we can see it, so to speak, as the confluence of all those sovereign forces that are woven between death and a new birth. This is the tragic character of materialistic knowledge of the world that, in the final analysis, it does not know matter itself. We lay the human body upon the dissecting table; we examine it most carefully as to its tissues and its individual physical component parts. This is done in order to acquire a knowledge of matter. But we do not learn to know it in this way, for it is the product of spirit, and only as we are able to trace it back to those stages where it is woven out of spirit do we know it. Human beings will comprehend precisely this physical-material existence only when their souls are led cosmically into the realm of soul and spirit.

If we permeate ourselves with the consciousness that we should comprehend more and more our connection with the spirit-soul realm of the cosmos, we then become true Anthroposophists. And you, my dear friends, will surely not ridicule me when I say that the world is in need today of true Anthroposophists who will bring about an ascent for humanity through that consciousness which results from experiencing the spiritual, even though at first we should only grasp it as a reflection and not ourselves have attained to clairvoyant knowledge. We need not be clairvoyant in order to work beneficently after we possess spiritual knowledge. Just as little as a person needs to know what constitutes meat when he is eating it and it nourishes him, just as little does a person need to be clairvoyant in order to be efficacious through his work and through his whole association with the life of the higher worlds. If we accept spiritual science before we are clairvoyant, it is as though we were consuming it. Fundamentally, clairvoyance adds nothing to what we can become for the world through spiritual knowledge. It satisfies merely our knowledge. This knowledge must, indeed, exist. Of course, there have to be people who examine the composition of meat, but this knowledge is not required in order to eat. Likewise there must be clairvoyant persons today who can investigate the nature of man's connection with the spiritual world; but, in order to bring about that which is essential to mankind, it is necessary that we be healthy human souls. If they are informed of the science of the spirit, they will sense the digestive power of the soul nature; they will appropriate this spiritual science, digest it, and assimilate it into their work. And this is what we need today throughout the civilized world: external human work which is spiritualized through and through in the right and true sense.

Appendix

In connection with this lecture that Rudolf Steiner gave on November 5, 1922, in The Hague, he addressed the members of the Anthroposophical Society in the following words:

“And now, my dear friends, after these explanations permit me to add some remarks to today's lecture which are, to a certain degree, connected with the lecture itself. Pardon me for speaking of my own anxieties. These anxieties of my own, to be brief, have to do with the possibility of being able to go on with the building of the Goetheanum, in Dornach.

My dear friends, the fact is that since the building of the Goetheanum has been begun, and it is in large part completed, it must be continued to completion. What if this could not be done? This is bound up with the very fact that this Goetheanum is a symbol today for that spiritual movement which is to be born into the world through Anthroposophy. If there had never been a circle of friends through whom the beginning of the building of the Goetheanum could be brought to realization, then Anthroposophy would have had to find some other avenue of expression. Today the building of the Goetheanum cannot simply be discontinued without damage. And it is this, my dear friends, that weighs heavily on my soul; for, if the results of what I have said in this regard remain the same as they have thus far, it will not be months, but only weeks for the moment to arrive when we shall come to a complete stoppage in Dornach.

Naturally, I cannot make such a statement without remembering with heartfelt gratitude that in this very country individual friends have made sacrifices in a most devoted manner for what has been accomplished thus far in building the Goetheanum. My thanks for this are profound and heartfelt, and I know that many of our friends have done their utmost in this matter. This I must, naturally, presuppose. But, on the other hand, I cannot do otherwise than to emphasize the fact—without wishing to criticize anything—that the worry weighs heavily on my soul over the fact that we shall not be able to continue with the building of the Goetheanum unless we receive abundant help on the part of a greater number of our friends, and that this Anthroposophical Movement, which has been active these last years at all possible points of the periphery, will tie without a center.

Therefore, my dear friends, I cannot but tell you what is at stake. Anthroposophy as such has spread very much in the world; and I assure you that, even here in Holland, the dear friends present today are only a very small part of the people who are in touch with Anthroposophy. We can judge this by the sale of our literature and we can see how, in many ways, Anthroposophy has become important to many persons.

On the other hand, something different can be observed—we can voice this without malice, even though we may create an impression of malice—we know that, on the other hand, the enemies of truth have made their appearance. And these, my dear friends, are well organized. Among them exist strong international ties. The enemies of Anthroposophical work are as well organized as our Anthroposophical Movement—pardon me for saying this—is badly organized! This is something we have yet to realize.

How is it that we have to say today that, in a few weeks, the Goetheanum may be without any means for its progress toward completion? You may have everything possible on the periphery—Waldorf Schools, etc.—all this is naturally void of power if there is no center. But for this center the right heart is lacking among the membership!

Let it be understood that I am not saying that this or that person is not giving all he has or, perhaps, does not have; it is not in the least my intention to go into such details. But, if our souls possessed the same enthusiasm for Anthroposophy which our opponents of all shades have today for anti-Anthroposophy, we should be very differently established. Then it would not be so difficult to collect the pennies, trivial in comparison with the wealth of the world—in spite of the impoverished world of today—to finish the Goetheanum. But the right heart for this is really lacking, my dear friends; yet we cannot do otherwise than to save this symbol in Dornach from failure. It can be saved from ruin if we can combine a strong enthusiasm with all our longing for Anthroposophical knowledge.

In these remarks I am not referring to any individuals. But, on the whole, the prevalent spirit within our circles is to start things with great apparent enthusiasm. The building of the Goetheanum was begun with enthusiasm. This enthusiasm has vanished, particularly in those who in the beginning displayed great enthusiasm. And these very persons have left this problem of going on to me alone. It has in many instances become characteristic, my dear friends, that people cannot remain enthusiastic; that something flares up—and those who shared in this sudden blaze leave the fire and do not keep feeding it. The warmth of heart dies out. And then come those worries. And, in view of the seriousness of the matter, my dear friends—why should I not call attention in this intimate circle to such a thing? The seriousness of the cause demands it. On the other hand there really exists the necessity to extend spiritual science as such. Be assured, a heavy responsibility rests on the one who is able to state at all that it depends on the conditions of the cosmos, in one way or another, whether a human being becomes a man or a woman, whether he has blue eyes and blond hair or brown eyes and black hair. I mention this only as an example. A statement like this cannot he made carelessly. It requires years of research before one arrives at the point of making such a statement, for one who does this without being conscious of his responsibility will usher disaster into the world. But it is necessary today, on the one hand, to extend this spiritual science; on the other hand, my dear friends, new cares spring up because of the developments in the periphery, when the enthusiasm does not persist, through the very fact that these things are there. New establishments are founded, and they have to be cared for. The worries have to be borne. These two things do not coincide unless the Society, as bearer of the Anthroposophical Movement, is a reality built on firm inner ground. Societies, that are realities built on firm ground, can surely accomplish great things! But it is imperative to observe that along with the need to deepen spiritual science more and more, there moved along, at the same time, an increasingly badly organized Society, a will displaying less and less enthusiasm for making the Society itself an instrument.

And the first thing for which I repeatedly beg our friends, since we are confronted by urgent necessity, is that they shall make the Society into a living, active being in the world.

This is highly essential, my dear friends. It is greatly to be desired that the center in Dornach shall not crumble, but that friends shall be found who will give us help.

There is, for instance, the wonderful possibility of gradually achieving significant results in the field of medicine, of therapeutics through the discoveries of remedies, based on spiritual science. But all this depends on the existence of the center in Dornach. The moment the Dornach center breaks down everything breaks down, and it is this that I want our friends to be conscious of, for it has in many instances disappeared from their consciousness. And I must say, it has really become an extremely heavy burden for me, a crushing burden.

I am saying this for the reason, my dear friends, that you may find the opportunity to think with me about these things in your good heart; for these things have to be thought out.”

Wie Kann die Erforschung der Uebersinnlichen Wesenheit des Menschen Bewirkt Werden? (The Supersensible Being of Man. Lecture given at Basel, Switzerland, January 12, 1916)

Of all the problems related to the soul life of the human being and that have constantly to be faced by each individual, those concerning free will and immortality are among the most important. I have planned today's lecture so that these two questions can be discussed in conjunction with each other. I have not united these two fundamental problems of human soul life arbitrarily, but I hope to be able to show how intimately they belong together and how it is hardly possible to make a thorough study of the one without the other.

Anyone dealing with these two problems who has any grasp of what we are concerned with in human and spiritual history will immediately be aware of two facts. Apart from approaching such problems through faith, about which I intend to make neither positive nor negative comment here, people have tried to come to grips with them purely on the basis of thinking, scientifically and philosophically. Entirely on this basis of thinking attempts have been made to gain the most shrewd, penetrating and profound knowledge about the two problems. Anyone who tackles them cannot fail to note how individual scientists have disputed and acted in quite contradictory ways when dealing with free will and immortality.

There must be some reason why humanity finds it so difficult to get anywhere with questions which lie so close to the efforts of the human soul, and which arise out of the deepest needs of the soul. The human soul incessantly tells itself that within the human being is hidden something that exists beyond birth and death, and which one should be able to investigate scientifically. It also tells itself that there must be something like free decision at the root of human action, a not being bound to natural necessity as a falling stone is. But when on the basis of its thinking, the soul then tries to investigate the things that are so important to it, it can set out with the greatest hopes of achieving something, but soon other considerations show that it is possible to say as much against it as for it.

The approach I have represented for many years now—and also in these lectures here—seeks to clarify these questions from its own viewpoint and it thinks it recognizes not only the path that has to be followed to arrive at a conception of the two problems that is humanly satisfying, but it believes it also recognizes why it is that there is so much of a contradictory and unsatisfactory nature in other approaches to the problems. As is usual in these lectures given from the viewpoint of the science of spirit, in dealing with such problems I am obliged to take a quite different course from that taken by ordinary science. Science takes the facts, makes pronouncements about its findings, and then reaches its conclusions on the basis of these findings. The scientist of spirit normally has to proceed differently, especially when dealing with such subjects as these today.

The scientist of spirit first must give an idea as to how he arrives at his results. He has constantly to describe the path upon which the source of his findings is revealed to him. For naturally he is dealing with things that cannot be reached by means of the ordinary senses, and which are far removed from the usual processes of knowledge. He therefore has to give an idea of the path upon which he reaches a point where his findings appear set out before the eye of the spirit.

Such questions as we have before us today are of particular concern to the human being himself, for they are pre-eminently questions of human self-knowledge.

It is quite possible to say—as I have already done here many times—that the science of spirit is definitely an admirer of the magnificent and tremendous progress which humanity has enjoyed as a result of scientific work in recent times. But it is precisely because it realizes how to value the findings of natural science, as far as they can be valued, that it also knows how far these scientific methods can go, and where they can obtain no information.

We have to admit that for such questions as we are considering today, questions that concern human self-knowledge above all, the magnificent and admirable work of scientific thinking and particularly its method of thinking are more of a hindrance than a help. Therefore by way of introduction let me give you an example.

Serious and well-intentioned scientists have constantly directed their particular way of thinking to what goes on within the human being himself, to what surges to and fro in his soul life. We can take an example to show how the scientist is bound to miss the way that would lead to a solution, not because of any mistake he makes, but because of his method. A good scientist, Waldstein, has published among his works, which are very good in parts and which deal with the border-area embracing the nervous system and the soul, a dissertation on the unconscious ego. He speaks about all sorts of things that go on in the human soul, and which are of significance to the soul but of which our ordinary consciousness is not aware. He says, for instance—and anyone can think of hundreds of thousands of similar examples—supposing I stand in front of a window of a bookshop and look into it. My eye falls on the most varied collection of books. It is a scientific bookshop. Nothing but serious books are there. Because of my profession I am attracted by one particular book that is in the window: Concerning Mollusks.—And the moment I see this book, Concerning Mollusks, I cannot help beginning to laugh quietly. Now I am, after all, a serious scientist and there is no apparent reason why I should begin to laugh when I see this book, Concerning Mollusks. What has caused me to laugh when looking at the title of a book about mollusks? I close my eyes—the scientist continues—in order to find out what has caused me to laugh. And, lo and behold!—now that my eyes are no longer drawn toward the book I can hear dimly in the distance amid many other noises and hardly audible, for it is a long way off, the sound of a barrel organ, and this barrel organ is playing the very tune to which I first learned to dance decades before as a very young man. At that time I attempted to learn the steps of the quadrille to this tune. I did not give much attention to the tune then, for I was very much occupied, first, in learning the steps and then in giving attention to my partner in the proper way. So even at that time I only noted the tune in a half-dreaming state. But now, although I have not concerned myself with this tune in any way more recently, the moment I see the book about mollusks, this tune strikes up in the distance, and I have to laugh quietly. Had I not closed my eyes—for when I looked at the book I knew nothing about a barrel organ playing, it simply beat on my ear unnoticed—I would not have discovered why I had to laugh when I saw the book. This shows me how remarkable are the things that go on inside us, that move and work in the subconscious, and how this subconscious nature pursues its ways in the human being.

Such examples he describes in great numbers, and others have cited similar ones. But in following such learned dissertations one very quickly notices that although the people certainly know that they are dealing with something that belongs to a knowledge of what works and lives in the human being, their scientific thinking cannot achieve anything that leads to a furtherance of a real knowledge of what lives in man as his true being. For this we have to advance a stage further. And this is what I must deal with first—the path that leads us to self-knowledge. But I want, first of all, to place the two questions before you so that you see how they have to be dealt with in order to be felt and understood absolutely clearly.

In choosing where we begin with this, we should not take the hardly perceptible impressions in the human self, such as those of the barrel organ, for then we only arrive at what it is that affects the self, and not what lies behind it. To put the question satisfactorily, we have to ignore this continual movement into which all sorts of things are incorporated, such as the sound of the barrel organ, and turn to something that has a different relationship to human life. In our soul life there is a continual movement of mental images which are gained through our normal way of perception, and also feelings and will impulses—all these play a role when we hear something like a barrel organ. But basically, the whole of our ordinary everyday soul life is more or less similar to the case of the barrel organ. It is true that we are fully conscious of at least part of what lives in our ordinary consciousness, but there is also an immeasurable amount, the origin of which we do not know. Science quite rightly looks for causes of what plays into our soul life in this way in the physical body, the part of us that passes away with death. We are completely taken up with this interplay of our mental images. But there is one thing where we have to admit that it has a quite different character from this continual movement of our feelings and sensations. This is the realization,—which brings with it a certain power of judgment,—that we cannot simply allow our mental images to come and go as they please. On the contrary, we have to take ourselves in hand and say: Some ideas and images are right, others are wrong.—We begin to develop logic in our thinking,—logic that is designed to enable us to have the right relationship to reality.

Can it be the normal interplay of our mental images that is at work when we say that something is right or wrong? No, it cannot be the normal interplay, for now right and wrong ideas or images appear. All now depends on our being able to judge according to something that rejects wrong ideas—which arise out of bodily necessities, just as much as good ones do—and accepts good ideas. Something therefore of a quite different nature from what can otherwise be found by normal scientific self-observation, plays into our soul life. That is why the philosophical approach has constantly entered in at this point.

Whenever the attempt has been made to save the human being from being simply the outcome of his physical functions, it has always been pointed out how something plays into the soul life that cannot come from the body. Sometimes it is the right thing, sometimes the wrong; both appear in the same way. But it is just on this point that we can see that this kind of approach cannot pursue the matter to a conclusion, that it is really impossible to find out anything in this way. For we get no further than establishing the facts, while the fundamental causes and real nature of the case are sought in vain.—That is the one point.

On the other hand, there is the fact that among all the other things that take place in our soul life we are also able to say Yes or No to a particular action, to decide to do it or to leave it undone. But this contradicts every kind of scientific observation. For this action can only take place on the basis of our bodily nature, our human nature, and this means that we have to seek this basis in our human nature according to laws which function according to necessity. Human freedom does not come into it.—This is the other boundary. We have to start with these two points.

Twenty-five years ago in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I attempted to make these two boundaries or limits my starting point, and purely on the basis of observation sought to establish what lives in the human soul, what really happens in the human soul when an action is performed where a person feels he is employing his freedom.

At that time I did this in such a way as to remain within purely philosophical considerations. Today I will try to offer a solution, as far as is humanly possible, on the basis of the findings of the science of spirit. In order to do this, however, it is necessary to approach these two points that I have just characterized as the border points of genuine self-knowledge, in a way that only the science of spirit can approach them.

One of the characteristic things about the science of spirit is that we do not allow the soul to investigate in its everyday condition. Our ordinary consciousness does this, as does science too, but in the science of spirit we evolve the soul beyond the point it attains if simply left to its own natural development. We ourselves must take the soul in hand, and it has to develop into something different. For it has to be able to see and perceive something different from what can be perceived with the ordinary means of acquiring knowledge. It has, if I may indicate this right at the outset, to be able to grasp with its spiritual eye the spirit that lives in man.

Most people maintain that this is a subject for belief only, but this is really simply because they do not wish to make any effort to consider such things as the human spirit, that they say this. The actual method and practice of the scientist of spirit proves that it is not just a belief that is acquired, but knowledge as certain in its sphere as is scientific knowledge in the natural sphere. We must, of course, be quite clear that by undertaking certain exercises and functions, the soul has to attain a quite different constitution from the one it has in normal life and ordinary science. It has to acquire a different kind of perception. In my writings, where more detailed information about these matters can be found, I have called the first stage that the soul reaches in investigating the spiritual world, imaginative knowledge.

How do we acquire this imaginative knowledge? Mainly by applying our thinking, our minds in a different direction from the one usual in everyday life. To take the example already cited, we have to try to introduce something into our thinking that is as remote as possible from the barrel organ. For the barrel organ introduced a kind of unknown quantity into the soul life, which was not even noticeable. Precisely the opposite must be the case if we wish to train our souls, to prepare ourselves for spiritual investigation. Nothing must enter our soul unless the soul itself admits it. This can only be done if we succeed—naturally only for the purposes of our investigations—in eliminating the past we have lived through, and the future we look forward to, and in concentrating in our souls solely on the present, as far as possible in one comprehensible mental image, a mental image that we have put together ourselves so that we know what is in it. And we have to do this again and again.

What is characteristic about this is that such activity should be completely removed from any kind of dream life in the soul. No one can become a scientist of spirit in the right way who is fond of giving himself over to self-indulgence and dreaming. No one who willingly indulges in a false mystical way, in something indefinite, can ever become a scientist of spirit. For such indulgence does not lead to the science of spirit. We can only take up the science of spirit if we experience something in our souls that we ourselves have put there with every conceivable effort of our own consciousness, and then constantly concentrate upon it and devote ourselves to it. In my writings I have called this meditating, and by this I mean meditating in the proper sense that we are directed toward our own consciousness, our own soul activity.

There is a further point I would like to mention. Not only must this meditating be far removed from any kind of dream state or false mysticism, it must also be removed from everything that produces hypnotic and suggestive conditions in the soul. Staring at shining objects, for example, by means of which hypnotists produce a hypnotic state is the very opposite of the first condition of a spiritually scientific training. All the various kinds of exercises that dull the consciousness are the very opposite of spiritually scientific training.

What we are concerned with is placing ideas, feelings and will impulses, of which we have a clear picture, into the center of our soul life with full consciousness, so that we are as clear as we are when using the full powers of our thinking. In fact, this absolutely clear thinking, carried out with our full consciousness, must be our example and pattern. We have to be careful not to stop at this, however, for then we achieve nothing, but this should be a pattern for all the activity the soul undertakes in exercises directed toward finding the path into the spiritual world.

It may perhaps take years of trying, but the passing years stand us in good stead, for the fact that we get older as we do the exercises is a great help in enabling something to happen. Constant attempts to concentrate our soul life upon our self-directed mental images by means of meditation, results in the development of our imaginative life. This means that we no longer need only to use pictures and mental images that we ourselves put together, but that such pictures, such imaginations, themselves appear as objective entities in the soul, and in fact, we can live in such imaginations. It is only when we have prepared ourselves in the way I have described, that these imaginations no longer arise out of the body, but out of the life of the soul.

But we also become conscious of gradually following an inner necessity. In living in this world of pictures—for it is the imaginative world that we first experience—we gradually cease to believe that we can arrange the pictures as we please, but that we are bound to certain laws, just as we are bound to laws in the outer world.

You can set a chair upon the table; it stays there. If you put it somewhere in the air, it falls down. If in looking at the outer world you wish to remain within reality, you find yourself bound to certain laws. As you develop your soul in the right way you will gradually see that you are similarly bound to laws in your inner world that are just as objective as, for instance, the law that a chair can only stand on something that supports it. On the one hand, we feel that with our consciousness we are part of the world in which the pictures exist; on the other hand, we feel bound to the underlying order which may be compared to the kind of order that exists in the physical world.

In two particular respects we have to be able to differentiate carefully what we experience. We should not confuse the latter with what people experience under the influence of ordinary visions, for these ordinary visions come from the body. They are not induced by ourselves, and do not take the place in the soul. Imaginations, on the other hand, are processes which take place in the soul. Whoever has not learned to differentiate between imaginations and visions can, it is true, become a visionary who allows all sorts of vague clouds to arise out of his body, but he can never become a scientist of spirit. We are simply not consciously present when visions arise, and this is a most important point. It is in fact just as important and actual as the cautionary rules we adopt when pursuing chemical, physical and physiological methods.

I would like to cite a critic of the spiritual scientific approach who has a high opinion of his own book wisdom. I have no wish to speak about all the rubbish he has said concerning my science of spirit, but I shall quote something from a book of this so-called learned gentleman. This book has attracted considerable notice and has already gone into a second edition after quite a short time. The author relates what happens to him sometimes when lecturing. For a time he speaks in such a way that he thinks over everything he says, but then sometimes he has observed that he does not think any longer, or at least thinks about something else, but yet he continues to speak.

Well, first I promise never to impose myself upon you by ambling on when I have ceased to think! On the other hand, it must be emphasized that whoever believes it is possible to approach the mysteries of the soul when acting this way, is from the start much too stupid to be able to grasp anything about the fundamentals of what the true science of spirit is. He is also much too stupid to make any remotely correct statements about the science of spirit. With this one statement he proves how far he is from what is meant here. For the most essential thing is that the science of spirit must emphasize that consciousness must be present wherever the spiritual is sought. All visions and every kind of undirected dreaming, even if it is impressive enough to captivate a public without thinking as to the means by which it is captivated,—all this is quite out of the question, not only when we speak, but also in connection with what goes on inside us in our souls, if we are on the path to the spirit indicated by the science of spirit.

The other thing that has to be differentiated from what I have called imagination, is our ordinary fantasy. Our higher imaginative life is not simply an act of our fantasy any more than it is a visionary or undirected mystical experience. With our fantasy, it is true, the pictures have a certain law and order, but they are arranged inwardly in quite a free way.—With our fantasy we are not so bound to the objective course of the pictures as we are in our ordinary perception or in the life of imagination where we know that the chair cannot stand in the air.

If, therefore, in our inner training of the soul we reach the point of having before us what we cannot have before us in our ordinary consciousness, in our ordinary everyday life, we do not simply experience a world of pictures that arises out of the soul, the origin of which the soul itself has experienced bit by bit. We now experience a new world, a world of pictures, a world that otherwise we do not have around us. This is the first thing that anyone has to struggle for who wishes to penetrate into the real spiritual world.

But now something specially important happens on this path toward spiritual investigation. The visionary is satisfied with this world of pictures. He says that that is what he has sought. The dreamer is also satisfied.—But the person who achieves imaginative knowledge is by no means satisfied with this world of pictures. He regards it only as a means for proceeding further. For the experience of this world of pictures is accompanied by a strengthening of our means of experience. We have to find quite different inner forces in our soul life if we want to hold on to these pictures, or be really consciously present when they come into existence. These forces are quite different from those we must use when ordinary pictures arise, when speaking in the ordinary way, or when writing books. This strengthening of our consciousness is the important factor, for by these means the soul becomes stronger than it is otherwise in life, or needs to be. There is nothing to be gained by this world of pictures other than a strengthening of our soul life. We should say to ourselves: This whole world of pictures is only a preparation for the spiritual world.

Then, having experienced ourselves—and I say “experienced ourselves” intentionally—we realize that there is not really any objective world in these pictures, but that we have the means to penetrate into this objective world. We have, as it were, in this world of pictures a spiritual eye and a spiritual ear, but they are not yet transparent. Imagine that you have eyes in your eye sockets, but that they are not made of a transparent glasslike substance, but are darkened and opaque. This is the nature of this world of pictures within us, which is more likely to cut us off from the spiritual world, but which can be strengthened by taking into our souls the first available means to penetrate into the spiritual world. We have to acquire a further power. And this is acquired by feeling the power that we experience in these pictures. In experiencing them to the full, we acquire a second power. You can find more detailed information in my books.

The second power consists in making the pictures transparent and transaudient, then doing away with them, just feeling ourselves in the pictures, having only strengthened our own self, but making the whole world of pictures transparent. We have to be in it, but we no longer have to see it. This is a condition that the visionary does not want at any cost, for he is immensely satisfied to feel himself in the pictures, to have, as he thinks, “the whole spiritual world” before him. He has no wish to make the pictures transparent. The scientist of spirit utilizes what he experiences with the pictures only to strengthen his ego that thereby becomes stronger than the ordinary ego, and can now maintain itself. When the ego maintains itself, it also maintains the world of pictures for itself, but by means of this inner strength it no longer directs its gaze to the perception of the world of pictures. The latter is overcome, so that although we live in this world of pictures we no longer perceive it and no longer look at it as something coming to us as a reality from outside.

Further energetic practice of the exercises having made the imaginations transparent, the second thing necessary in order to enter the spiritual world comes about. This is what I call inspired knowledge. In using this word I would ask you to take it only in the sense that I have explained here, and not to confuse it with all sorts of superstitious notions. It is what appears in the soul when the latter has been strengthened in the world of pictures and then has eliminated. The world of pictures becomes transparent, and the outer objective spiritual world makes itself known in spiritual hearing, spiritual perception. It is not that then we have only the strengthened self before us, for our experience now gives us the possibility of knowing that there is a spiritual world around us, just as there is a physical world around us which we perceive with our physical eyes and ears. In fact, anyone who is of the opinion that proper investigation is not necessary in order to enter the spiritual world, or that talk about the spiritual world is only a lot of meaningless words, is quite wrong. And likewise wrong is the person who maintains that the scientist of spirit is a kind of visionary whose task is easy compared with the serious work which goes into the discoveries made in the laboratory and observatory. However difficult it may be for us to adopt the methods of ordinary science, it is even more difficult to master all the preparation necessary for the soul to get beyond the stage of imagination and enter the spiritual world as I have described. Irresponsible statements about such matters can come only from those who have never bothered to get a true idea of what the science of spirit is.

Having now penetrated into the spiritual world when it is revealed to us in a way similar to our experience of color and sound in the physical world, something happens which we feel in a remarkable way. By continuing to apply ourselves to inspiration we continue to experience it and what happens then is what can be called a reversal of going to sleep. It is most important to grasp this. We know that by means of imaginative and inspired knowledge we have gone through all the various conditions that we normally only experience when we go to sleep. This making ourselves free of the physical body in imagination and inspiration is the same as when, in going to sleep, the physical body follows only its own laws, which have nothing to do with what happens in the soul. Notice what happens when we go to sleep: our normal perceptions become unclear and sink away, then we become unconscious. This sinking away of our physical perceptions does not happen because the physical body is tired, but because something else takes the place of our perceptions—namely, imaginations. It is not that we develop a lower form of soul activity, but a higher. This is even more the case with inspiration.

If we proceed even further it is as if we were to wake up in the middle of sleep and see our bodies lying there apart from our souls. This is a real experience. We see that when we have experienced inspiration we are outside our bodies. We are not unconscious, however, but within the spiritual world. We now enter into what made itself known in inspiration, we enter into it, coming to know its beings and processes, step by step. In my writings I have called this third stage of spiritual knowledge, intuition.

We penetrate into the spiritual world by imagination, inspiration and intuition. This is how we immerse ourselves in the spiritual world by the transformation of the soul. It cannot be attained by empty phrases or meaningless mystical talk about losing oneself in this or the other, but only by really earnest work on the soul.—Having reached this stage—and we do not have to call it a higher stage than our ordinary life, but only a different kind of knowledge—we then have quite a different relationship to the outer world than we have without this knowledge.

Although it is well known to many of you after all the lectures I have given here, I would nevertheless like to mention in passing that it is not that a scientist of spirit is a scientist of spirit from the moment he wakes up until he goes to sleep as, say, a chemist is a chemist even when not in his laboratory. For the times when the scientist of spirit is not actually immersed in the spiritual world he is an ordinary human being like anyone else. He naturally lives according to what the outside world demands of him. It is a great mistake to imagine that the scientist of spirit becomes a different person. Many misunderstandings arise in the outside world about various kinds of societies because their members constantly suggest that they are a higher kind of human being. This is quite irresponsible and is certainly not meant here. What is meant is that in certain states of life we train the soul to enter the spiritual world, and that during these states, in this condition of soul, the soul has a different relationship to the outer world than usual, even regarding the more subtle distinctions in life.

It may well seem odd to you, but it is nevertheless true, that it means a great deal to those who look at life in a one-sided way, whether one is a materialist or a spiritualist—spiritualist not in the sense of Spiritualism, but of German philosophy. It is really all the same to a scientist of spirit whether a person is a materialist or spiritualist. But this is not the point. For the materialist who approaches the outer material world with his deepened self, however material the phenomena are that he investigates, proceeds from matter to spirit, because spirit lies at the roof of all matter. If you start with matter and do not stop halfway, however rabid a materialist you may be, but are willing to apply your thinking to the investigation, you will then be on the right track. Neither should a spiritualist stop halfway, for then he only speaks eternally about spirit, and perhaps even despises matter. The important thing is not to talk about spirit, but to find the way from spirit to matter, to immerse oneself in matter, and to take the spirit with one into it. It is a fact that the spiritualists, who always chatter about spirit and have no idea of how to apply this spirit to our more immediate and useful life, are perhaps even more harmful than the materialists.

Whether we start from matter or from spirit is not important. What is important is that we continue our investigations to a conclusion. But in a certain respect this does not happen in the case of the methods pursued by modern science. Although modern physiology and biology deal almost exclusively with the material aspect, even when studying the human being, their methods—that is, their method of thinking, not the facts they discover—cannot get behind the real mysteries of, say, human evolution. And for the questions we are now considering it is just this that is so important.

You are well aware that the idea of evolution is one of the special achievements of modern science. But evolution has become a pretty threadbare word. The whole of science, including the human being, has come within the orbit of the idea of evolution, and this has led to the discovery of much useful and significant material. However, despite this, science has really only discovered half of what is necessary to make the human being understandable. For the human being is not as simple as all that, and cannot simply be understood on the basis of this single line of evolution.

Man is a complicated being. If we are to apply the idea of evolution to the human being and really penetrate the real mysteries of his nature, we must apply the idea of evolution to the human organism, as the latter appears to our everyday senses, quite differently from the somewhat oversimplified approach attempted by science until now. For in dealing with the human being we have to differentiate between different parts—the head with the senses and the nervous system (for simplicity's sake I call it the head organism), the more central organism connected with the breast and abdominal regions, and the third, consisting of what takes place at the periphery of man's body. Anyone who has seen a human skeleton will know that what is expressed so differently from animals in the formation of man's extremities, his arms and hands, his legs and feet, is not only different in its outward expression, but this differentiation is also continued on a more inner level.

Everything we experience outwardly concerning the human being is in the first instance, material. We come to know the real mysteries of this when we are in the position of being able to immerse ourselves in this material manifestation. Then in applying the idea of evolution as held by modern science we find that it only explains the middle of the three parts, the breast region. The human being considered from the aspect of his head organism cannot be explained by this idea of evolution. Why should this be?—Because the head of man not only undergoes a forward evolution, but within this forward evolution it also evolves in the opposite direction, a retrogressive evolution. The head, instead of building up, reduces, takes something away from the straightforward course of evolution, does not stop when the impetus of evolution comes to an end, but then ossifies more than the rest of the organism. We can see in this peculiar ossification of the head a trivial outer expression of the fact that anatomically the brain is strangely undifferentiated, a fact that the findings of modern science also point to—modern science and the science of spirit point to the same fact. Looking at the human being as a head organism, we are not concerned with one straight line of evolution, but with a development that at one time moves forward, then stops and becomes retrogressive.

In becoming familiar with imagination, inspiration and intuition, our inner experience enables us to penetrate further into the structure of the material world than—however odd it may appear—those who always want only to experience the spirit. This experience of the spirit presupposes that we can penetrate into the material sphere. We then experience what our minds, which really make us human beings, really are. What happens in the unconscious when our minds are active? This is very odd—in using our minds, our heads become hungry. The head loses substance. Every idea that is permeated by our thinking is a partial condition of hunger. Ascetics, who have set about it in the wrong way, have then tried to let the whole body starve in order to call up certain ideas. This is wrong. In fact, the right thing comes about simply by establishing a certain unstable equilibrium. In our organism we have only a proper equilibrium and are properly nourished insofar as our middle organism is concerned, and respecting our head, only in sleep. All the time we are awake the head must suffer from undernourishment. This is the retrogressive evolution. It is derived from the withdrawal of evolution, from reducing substance.

And lo and behold, we come upon something that is tremendously important, that provides the bridge from natural to scientific knowledge.

We ask: How do our minds function? Is it due to a forward, germinal kind of evolution? No, it is due to evolution becoming retrogressive, where evolution stops and crumbles, thus making room for soul experience. If we believe that evolution simply continues in a straight line as it does in our purely animal, middle organisms, we never arrive at a concept of the independence of our minds, of our experience of thinking. This only happens when we know that evolution has to withdraw, as does everything that induces growth and life, in order that room is made within the head for the soul. Only in knowing how the head is the foundation of our soul life do we come to appreciate the independence of our experience. In penetrating to imagination, inspiration and intuition we see, therefore, how our thinking, whether right or wrong, affects our soul life. The body has to suspend its functions in order that the soul life can be present.

We can then proceed further. The thinking part of us that takes up an independent position in the organism can be perceived, and we can see what it is and how it enters the human being when we say that one thing is right and another wrong, how it emerges out of our organism. And we have learned to recognize what sort of experience we have in imagination, inspiration and intuition. But now, in what way do we experience our thinking? We find that as it exists in everyday life, providing it is a real kind of thinking, it does not simply follow the haphazard way of our mental images, but evolves logically, rightly or wrongly, and that it is an unconscious form of inspiration to the human being. This is the great discovery that we make.

The science of spirit leads us consciously into the sphere of inspiration. This can come about only by recognizing the fact that something flows into us that tells us to reject one thing and accept another. This is an unconscious form of inspiration.—Where does it come from? We discover this through the science of spirit in our experience of imagination, inspiration and intuition. If, having attained to imagination we do not rest there but immerse ourselves in inspiration, we come to see what it is that inspires us. This turns out to be the life that we lived before entering the body given to us by our mother and father, at birth or at conception. We now realize that this physical life is a continuation of a spiritual life that we have lived. Now through the thinking itself we learn that the human being descends from out of a spiritual world and enters into an existence where the mother and father provide him with a bodily vehicle which comes into being at birth or conception. In recognizing our thinking as unconscious inspiration and in perceiving intuitions, that is, in speaking of an intuitive thinking, of intuition living in our thinking, we are really speaking about the spirit-soul existence of man which he has before birth, or rather, before conception.

In future the problem of immortality will be expanded considerably. Thus far, people have only interested themselves egoistically in what happens after death. But the life that we live here in a physical body is the continuation of a spiritual life. The science of spirit opens up the possibility of looking at our life here in conjunction with the immortal soul as it was before it entered into the physical body at birth or conception.

Let us observe the human being from another aspect of his evolution. Here I shall have to say something very paradoxical. But I also know that the paradox I am going to speak about, which perhaps people will regard as somewhat perverse, will in fact be a solid possession of the science of the future.

Let us look at the organism belonging to our extremities, that is, everything connected with the formation of our arms and hands, feet and legs, and see how these are continued on the inward plane. Here we have quite a different picture of evolution. With the head organism we saw how evolution has to be retrogressive. In the limb organism we have the odd situation that it is a shade ahead of what is normal in the middle organism; our extremities, our limbs, are really over evolved. Here the human being progresses beyond the norm established in the evolution of the head. Even the form—the time is unfortunately too short to go into all the details—and the whole life of our limb organism provides proof that we are here concerned with over-evolution, for it tends toward something for which the human being has no need for the preservation of his body. Our evolution goes beyond this, whereas our heads have evolved retrogressively. What is the consequence of this?—Because of this over evolution something is brought to life unconsciously in us that we only recognize when we have attained a grasp of the imaginative life and when this has then been deepened through inspiration and intuition.

When the spiritual eye of the scientist of spirit perceives the limb organism, he sees how something is added to the organism. This something is, in fact, an imagination which arises as a matter of course in its own right. The extremities overdo evolution, thereby allowing something to be taken into the soul that cannot be seen with our normal eyes, but which appears immediately when we attain to imaginative life. Through the medium-ship of our limbs an imagination is produced, having nothing to do with our life here in the body. What have we here that is integrated into our limbs, and that can only be grasped as an imagination? It is nothing other than what later goes through the gate of death, that provides the foundation for the continuation of life after death.

On the one hand, what exists before birth, before conception, unfolds its life in our heads, that have undergone retrogressive evolution to allow inspiration to work in our thinking, on the other, what bears our soul life in a kind of vehicle into the spiritual world after death, is integrated into our limb organism. Thus on the one hand we are endowed with unconscious inspiration in our heads, while on the other we are endowed with unconscious imagination in our limbs, whereby the part of us that goes through the gate of death lives unconsciously in us, bearing us into immortality after death. We therefore come to know life before birth and life after death in two different ways, the former as unconscious inspiration, the latter as unconscious imagination.

It is possible to study biologically and physiologically the connection between the limb organism and the rest of the human organism. We then have only to see how in their structure the primary sexual organs are connected with the feet, and the secondary sexual organs, that is, the breasts only, are connected with the arms. Thus we have before us the physical basis for producing a new life, which then separates off, that has been integrated into the human being through the limb organization. This physical basis is complete when the human being reaches puberty, though he continues his life beyond this.

What we have here as our physical organization has its counterpart. The physical organism, insofar as it is connected with the sexual organization, is the basis for producing further physical life. The spirit-soul nature, which is the basis of the organism of our extremities is, on the other hand, necessary in order to produce what is sent beyond the gate of death and brings about the next life on earth.

We have here a starting point for a rigorous scientific investigation of the problem of immortality. And when more than twenty-five years ago I pointed out in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity that it is necessary to observe correctly if we wish to approach freedom, I also indicated that on the other hand we have to progress toward purely intuitive thinking. Today I would add: This intuitive thinking is to be perceived before birth or conception. This was already written in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity when I called the one element of the human will, intuitive thinking. The other element that arises as imaginative life I called, for the purposes of discussing freedom, moral fantasy, in order to make the book possible for those who consider the science of spirit a lot of nonsense. It is described there from a philosophical viewpoint. The scientist of spirit adds that what is described there as moral fantasy is a part of what lives in the human organization as unconscious imagination and which then emerges in moral action.

I said at that time that the interaction of moral fantasy and intuitive thinking is responsible for action on the part of the human being based on free will. Today I would add: What is the thinking? It is our inspiration here, that belongs to the sphere of pre-earthly existence. When does it become manifest?—It becomes manifest when we are able to work out an action that is so dear to us that it has nothing to do with our instincts and inclinations, that it is as dear to us as a person whom we really love because we have come to recognize and respect his inmost being. When we perform an action out of love—that is, not out of egoism, nor on the basis of our fluctuating mental images or ideas, but out of insight into the inner necessity of the action—then we give ourselves over to intuitive actions, we are then inspired by the life before birth.

But where does the power to do this come from?—It is the power that takes us into the spiritual world after death. This goes on in us subconsciously. As moral action freely unfolds, there lights up what lies before birth or conception. This unites with what enters into the spiritual world after death. During our life between birth and death we already carry out actions where what lies before birth plays a part in us in our intuitive thinking, that flows as inspiration into our lives. What lies beyond death is really not connected with us at all, but is nevertheless carried out by us. It is characterized by being performed out of love: this is the truly free action. We therefore have to say that what enters us as inspiration by way of our intuitive thinking, has no connection with our body. And what works imaginatively has no significance for the moment, but only after death. These two factors, having nothing to do with the body, are the real forces that work in the true, free act of will in the human being. The profound mystery is that when we investigate the free will we find that nothing mortal in the human being carries out the actions, but we find that free actions are carried out by the immortal part of man.

The problems of free will and of immortality are intimately connected because the only truly free actions are those in which the super-sensible plays a part, which is not yet bound to the body, which the human being has evolved in the spiritual world before he bears a body, and in which this super-sensible is joined to what results from over evolution, which has as yet no significance for our present development, but which will have significance after death, and which shines into those actions that are carried out apart from us. This is why I said in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity that one cannot put the question: Is the human being free or unfree?—For this always leads to the wrong answers. It is not a question of “either—or,” but of “both—and.”

The human being performs many actions arising out of the needs of his body, out of the interplay of mental images rising up out of the body as a result of the impulses of the body. But he always has the ideal of performing actions where he can say: What is to happen here is so free that I do not come into it; it is as free of me as the human being whom I love; it only happens because I realize that it should happen. Our whole human thinking is set in this direction, and it gradually seeks to infiltrate into our unfree action. The human being extricates himself from unfree actions by evolving increasingly toward his true self, especially in what he does and wills, where the spheres of before birth and after death shine into his willing. He evolves toward freedom within the sphere of unfreedom; he is on the way to becoming increasingly free. This is not a question of “either—or” but of action. Those who put the question in this way cannot possibly find an answer to the problem of freedom. On the contrary, it is a question of “both—and.” The human being is free in his actions inasmuch as the immortal soul is revealed to him underlying the life of the physical body. What he does is released by his thoughts, flowing by way of love into deeds, and his freedom will be measured by the extent to which this happens.

In conclusion today I would simply like to show how the problems of immortality and free will illumine each other, and how they are so closely connected with each other. Free will can only be the possession of an immortal being. No one can be an adherent of free will without recognizing man's immortality at the same time. And those who do recognize man's immortality know that the human being is on the path of evolution toward freedom.

The kind of considerations we have discussed today, in which the science of spirit enables us to approach the most important questions that then point to the necessity of selfless self-knowledge, are normally fraught with prejudices. For they indeed make great demands upon us. We have to take ourselves rigorously in hand if we are to succeed in persevering with the whole power of our souls in what I have called imaginative ideas. It is something we have yet to learn. It would be much more comfortable if we could answer the most profound questions and mysteries of human life without all this.

What leads people today to regard the science of spirit as nonsensical and irrelevant? It is because they are unconsciously afraid of the powers that have to be developed in order to grasp the spirit in a completely free kind of experience of the spirit. For courage is necessary for such investigation, courage to believe that we do not immediately fall into an abyss of nothingness when we are dependent upon our own powers for producing a particular kind of experience which we ourselves place before our souls. It is certainly easier to want to penetrate the mysteries of life with outer means than to be told that the soul needs an inner strengthening far beyond anything found in ordinary life. It is therefore largely a matter of comfort and fear that leads to opposition to the science of spirit. Such things, however, will gradually be overcome by a humanity that is increasingly thirsting for truth.

I would like to close today's lecture by quoting, in a somewhat modified form, the words of a German thinker. The science of spirit is slandered by many people today because it is not properly understood and recognized, because people do not see how necessary it is for human life. But if we really contemplate the course of human evolution, we are bound to say that however overbearing the opposition, the misunderstandings, the slanders that oppose the truth, the truth will find its own way through the narrowest cracks in the rocks of human evolution, however great the pressure from the rocks may be. The truth we have been talking about today—that on the one hand we recognize the needs of present day humanity, existing in the subconscious, and that on the other we look into the spiritual world and see how it reveals itself to us on the path from imagination to intuition—this is the kind of truth that must be seen by the scientist of spirit as the kind that will find its way through, however great the weight of opposition and slander that rests upon it. For the truth winds its way against obstacles through the tiniest cracks in the rock of human evolution, and is bound to triumph in the end.

Yesterday I endeavored to show how the material to be presented here regarding Goethe's most intimate opinions and views on the development of the human soul is not arbitrarily worked into his works, and in particular into the material with which we are particularly concerned, his fairy tale of the green snake and the Beautiful Lily, but I have tried to show how the whole basis on which to build, the explanation of this fairy tale and Goethe's more intimate worldview, can be gained from a historical consideration of Goethe's life, from a historical tracing of the most important impulses of Goethe's ideas. I may say that an attempt has been made to establish the foundations for what is to be given today in a more freely developed form on the subject. If we allow the fairy tale we spoke about yesterday to arise before our soul, it appears to be completely immersed in mystery. And one would like to say that either one must assume that Goethe wanted to put a lot of mystery into this fairy tale, as he put a lot of mystery into the second part of his “Faust,” according to his own sayings, or that we could regard this fairy tale — which is quite impossible — as a mere play of the imagination. If the latter were not already excluded by Goethe's whole way of thinking, one would have to say that such an assumption is particularly prohibited by the fact that Goethe placed this fairy tale at the end of his story “Conversations of German Emigrants”. For it is basically the same idea that we found characteristic of Goethe's entire life yesterday, and which also lives in these “Conversations of German Emigrants,” which were written in the last decade of the eighteenth century. And from what immediately precedes the “fairy tale,” we can once again discern the theme of this fairy tale.

We are presented with the conversations of people who have been forced to emigrate due to events in their French homeland, who look back in the most diverse ways on what they have experienced in terms of sadness. We see how the entire story comes to a head to show what people who are, in a sense, uprooted from their circumstances and surroundings can go through in the solitude of their souls; what people in such a situation can gain by reflecting on their emotional experiences, by self-observation. We need only highlight a few examples to show how Goethe brings everything to a head, how a soul that becomes a fighter within itself, that often asks itself through various prompts: What kind of guilt have I accumulated, how have I hindered the soul's development? How such a soul tries to find out about itself. First we meet an Italian singer who is to reveal her fate to us in this story because her destiny can serve to illustrate a human soul that, in a certain respect, must remain on the surface of world observation. A human soul that, although it attentively follows what is going on around it because it is forced to by its circumstances, is not yet mature enough to distinguish between what, in a sense, may be called an accident and the spiritual necessity of things. It does not yet know how the phenomena of life must be connected so that we can assume the presence of spirit and spiritual laws in our environment. This Italian singer behaved in such a way towards a man that he became seriously ill as a result of her repulsive behavior, and that he is actually dying because of her behavior. So she is summoned to his deathbed. She refuses to come to his deathbed. He must die without having seen her. Now, in the time following his death, many things happen that give a soul, which would have to be characterized in the same way as that of the Italian singer, something to think about; so much to think about that she does not really know what to make of what is going on, which could still be seen as connected with my whole behavior, with the whole way in which I behaved towards the dead man in relation to his fate. After death, something very strange happens. She hears all kinds of noises in her rooms, the furniture dances, and she is even slapped in the face by an unknown, invisible hand, so that she is really frightened by the strangeness and horror of these events. Is the dead person somehow there, wanting to assert himself because of the way I behaved towards him?

A cupboard's top breaks open, and it is strangely revealed that at the very moment that cupboard's top broke open in this room, a cupboard in France, made by the same carpenter, burst into flames in its rooms. Mind you, my friends, it would never occur to me to try to explain these things in the light of a spiritual worldview, nor to suggest that Goethe wanted to express that there was something in such events that could give cause, for all I care, to assume all sorts of hidden spirits or the rumbling of the dead.

Goethe merely wanted to show that there are certain souls that are so little enlightened that they do not know what to do with such strange events, that are not enlightened enough not to say: these things are nothing; but they are also not superstitious enough to say: the dead man is certainly stirring, but rather those who, because they are not developed, can only have an indefinite feeling about such things. We see how the soul fares in the external world, depending on its stage of development, which Goethe already demonstrates by steering the stories in “The Sorrows of German Emigrants” in the direction of “fairytales”. He shows us how a person is put in the position of having to heal a lady of her sensuality, her passion. He suggests the path of having her fast, of guiding her through asceticism, so to speak, in order to dampen the ardent passion in this way. This is another indication of what a soul can go through in order to experience development. Continue – and now notice how Goethe does indeed lead the matter upwards in stages. First, he shows a soul that is really digging around in the vague in the Italian singer; he shows an already more real thing in the lady that I just mentioned: It is indeed the case that many people come to a purification of their passions, to an upward development of their soul through fasting. Here we are moving from the indefinite into the definite, into reality, and this is fully the case when we ascend into the reality of human soul development in the physical world, as we see in the third story related by Goethe. He shows how a person is initially somewhat unscrupulous, and thus stands at a subordinate level of soul development, to the point where he says: What belongs to my father also belongs to me. The practical result of this is that he commits theft at his father's checkout. He grows, so to speak, precisely through this act. His soul ascends, and he becomes, precisely by doing this wrong deed, a kind of moral center for all the humanity that then groups around him. Thus, already in his stories, which lead up to the “fairy tale,” Goethe shows us how he wants to depict soul development, the soul's ascent from certain subordinate stages to higher stages of knowledge and world view.

Now, as we saw yesterday, we are dealing with soul forces that are represented by the figures, the beings of the “fairytale”, and with the play of soul forces, which is to gradually purify itself into harmony, even into a symphony of soul forces, as the soul rises higher in the deeds performed by the figures and persons of the “fairytale”. In what happens in the 'Märchens', we are dealing with will-o'-the-wisps that want to be ferried across from the other side of the river to this side by the ferryman. They are initially filled with gold, but the ferryman does not want their gold as a reward because the river would be thrown into wild turmoil if gold pieces were to fall into it. Rather, he must demand fruits of the earth: three onions, three artichokes, and three cabbages. The will-o'-the-wisps have the ability to shake gold around them, and we have seen how they encounter the snake, which they call their aunt from the horizontal line, while they themselves are beings from the vertical line. By sprinkling gold, they give the snake something that becomes fruitful and beneficial within it, because the snake, by connecting the pieces of gold with its own substance, becomes inwardly radiant. That which it could not see before and which has something to do with the secrets of soul development, that it can illuminate that within itself.

When I tried for more than twenty years to gain access to this fairy tale in every possible way, it was above all a liberating thought in the confusion of questions that arise from the “fairy tale” when it became clear that above all I had to pursue the gold. Gold plays a role of the most diverse kind in this fairy tale. First in the will-o'-the-wisp. The will-o'-the-wisp scatter it around; there it shows itself in a certain way as something that we may address as not beneficial in certain respects. In the snake, the gold becomes beneficial. Then again in the golden king, who is made entirely of gold, then we find it again on the walls of the hut where the old man with the lamp lives, and there the will-o'-the-wisp lick it down and make themselves thicker and more substantial by licking the gold down from the walls. So the gold comes up several times, and one time we are pointed to the fact that this gold has something to do with the power of the human soul, by being pointed to the temple, which is first below and then above ground, that the golden king represents the bringer of wisdom. It is something that we do not need to interpret or explain, but where we can say: Here Goethe himself says: the golden king refers to the giver, the bringer of wisdom. So the gold must have something to do with wisdom. It is the gold, by filling the being of the golden king, that makes him a wise being, that leads him to bestow the gift of knowledge

Know the Highest!

— this is transferred from the golden king to the youth, and the youth is thereby quickened. Gold is therefore something that the Giver of Wisdom is able to instill in man. The will-o'-the-wisps, if they represent a soul-power, must represent the soul-power that is able to receive wisdom, for they have the gold within them, the soul-power that can also cast wisdom aside. We learn how this wisdom can be stored by the fact that on the walls of this symbol of wisdom, gold, was stored for a long, long time before the will-o'-the-wisps licked it. We cannot help but say, since we know how well founded it is to see soul forces in the individual forms, that the will-o'-the wisp represent the abstract intelligence, the pure power of the intellect, which is capable of acquiring a certain amount of wisdom through what is usually called external science, what is called speculation, external experience. And now we also understand why gold, wisdom, plays such a role in the pure intellect of the will-o'-the-wisps: the person who absorbs what knowledge, science and wisdom is with the pure intellect absorbs it above all in order to have something personal with it, in order to be able to use it personally. We can look into Goethe's soul and recognize the way he related to something when we become aware of how he often congratulated himself, so to speak, for never having been in a position to officially represent as a teacher the science to which he so devotedly dedicated his time , that he was only able to give the world some of his wisdom when he was inwardly impelled to do so, was not called upon to cast wisdom aside as one casts aside clothing when one is destined to become a teacher or an abstract bearer of wisdom.

In this way, Goethe presents human wisdom in the Irrlichtern that has developed one-sided intelligence and power of reason, and it is a peculiarity that – however much it may be denied – abstract knowledge, mere intelligence, especially when it increasingly moves into wisdom – and abstract intelligence can absorb vast amounts of wisdom – that this leads to vanity, to wanting to be able to deal with concepts everywhere. We are speaking entirely in Goethe's spirit when we realize why we still contrive such wise thoughts and think so cleverly: abstract concepts and ideas that are not drawn from the depths, from the richness of life, are unsuitable for ultimately leading us into true communion with the eternal riddles of existence. Where we need something that goes straight to our hearts from the eternal riddles of existence, we need something other than abstract ideas and concepts, as products of mere intelligence. When we stand before the boundary that separates the two realms, the realm of the sensually physical world, into which we feel transported, and the realm of spirituality, the realm of the supersensible, when we feel ourselves at this boundary, we are we are repelled by all abstract concepts and ideas. Indeed, these abstract concepts and ideas are not even capable of making comprehensible to us what is closest to us, for they alienate us from what is closest to us. How far removed the abstract thing is from grasping even the most everyday things that surround it; so it is incapable of giving in its concepts and ideas to that stream to which we are drawn when we want to cross over into the supersensible world. For concepts and ideas are not good for that. If you want to get to the very source of life, then it rears up and does not let us get close. Therefore, the river has no use for the gold that the will-o'-the-wisps are able to give, and we are told that none of them have ever confessed or served time. They are from the vertical line, while the old crone is from the horizontal line. This indicates how man removes himself from the ground through abstract concepts and ideas and cannot reach the ground of everyday life, which he is supposed to understand. We see how plastic these abstract figures of the will-o'-the-wisp are. But are ideas and concepts, are philosophical explanations under all circumstances that which separates us from the true source of existence? No, they are not, if man has the capacity to live in such a way that he combines his own life forces with things. Not to go out into the realm of abstract concepts and ideas, but to move correctly within things, to become a spirit, as Faust became one when he said:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature for a kingdom,
the power to feel and enjoy it. Not
You only allow coldly amazed visitors, granting me to look into their deep chests as into the bosom of a friend. You lead the line of the living before me, and teach me my brothers in the silent bush, in air and water.

Where man truly enters into an inner communion with the beings of nature, where he does not sever himself with all the powers of his soul from the beings of nature, there the same concepts that alienate him from the world when they become abstract serve him to penetrate ever deeper and deeper into existence. We must not, so to speak, turn things around and say: because abstract concepts and ideas alienate the abstract being from the true essence of things, concepts and ideas are worthless in general. No, on the contrary, where they fall into the soul power that rises, lives in and with things in a certain community, in such a soul power they are full of light at the same time. Therefore, gold, which in a certain sense is without blessing in the will-o'-the-wisps, becomes such a blessing, the light in the snake that lives in the clefts and has the horizontal line, clings to the earth. If man clings to the earth, if he loves all things, if he immerses himself in things, if he, to use the much-maligned word, “mystically” immerses himself in things, then clear ideas serve to guide him through things. Therefore, you can also see – I don't know how many of you have had such an experience, but it can be had – that sometimes scholastically presented philosophies seem cold and sober, but that the same ideas, when they come to us from simple primitive people who live outside as herb gatherers, root gatherers or the like – and who are usually very interested in the secrets of existence – to what lofty ideas such people, mystically united with nature, sometimes come. We shall see how, in the case of primitive people who are in communion with nature, ideas become luminous that are worthless, sober, frosty in the case of abstract people. Thus we are led away from the will-o'-the wisp that abstract intelligence presents to us, to that soul power that is deeply rooted in us and that has the mystical urge to plunge into things, as it were. This is vividly and vividly depicted to us, as the snake moves through the crevices: Man, in fact, even if he does not enlighten himself with concepts, does not live in abstract ideas, comes close to the heart of things, like the snake to an underground temple, where, because it cannot shine, it first perceives only through touching certain forms that it only later examines in the light. Man, when he has only an appreciation of the mysterious workings of the forces of nature, comes to the heart of nature and can experience something of what lives in the things around us. We experience this with the snake, which shows us how it is a representative of those soul forces in man that can live without ideas under certain circumstances, only then not illuminated by the light of knowledge, but which nevertheless lovingly delve into things and come to a certain understanding of the riddles of the world. When the balance is restored by the fact that ideas and concepts are absorbed into these mystical powers of our soul, then the time comes when a person who is lovingly inclined towards things also finds that which he previously only sensed from the sources of existence; that he can also illuminate it through his own inner light. Yes, he is only led deeper into it.

You may recall a significant saying of Goethe's, where he says:

If the eye were not solar,
How could we behold the light?
If the power of God does not live in us,
How can we be enraptured by the divine?

Where Goethe immediately points out how we must respond to the eye of the light, which is intended to illuminate the secrets of nature, if it is to shine back again, reflecting the secrets of nature within it, as it were. Therefore, we must absorb the preparation for knowledge within us, as the snake absorbs gold, then we penetrate into what otherwise remains dark, as man, when he inwardly preserves the sense, the open heart, for the spiritual, sees the insights more clearly, how he can only then also see the spiritual in his environment.

And so the snake enters the underground temple. Here Goethe indicates to us in a wonderful way that there are subterranean places for the life of the human soul. One can only characterize such things as Goethe presents here if one enters somewhat more intimately into the strange workings of the human soul in its development. It can then be felt how our soul, before it is able to explain the things of the world outside and to prove the divine life and weaving of the spirit in all things, has to be inwardly certain that there is such a divine source, that there is a supersensible behind all that is sensible. She can experience the certainty of this supersensory within herself and yet be unable to see this supersensory shining throughout the universe. Oh, it is a lofty goal to behold the spirit in its form, as it is the creative source of all that surrounds us in the great world, as all that surrounds us in the great world wells up from the spirit. To do this, man must first develop the highest powers of the soul within himself.

The supersensible, which sleeps hidden in the normal human consciousness as a higher self, must first be evoked by man in order to ascend to the higher level of his spirit's development. One can sense that something like this exists. But then one also comes to another realization: if one has any sense of reality, of true existence, one must say to oneself: I can only reach my ultimate goal if I see how everything lives and is permeated by the spirit, how spirit is in all things. But I myself, as I stand in the world with my sensual body, so I am, as it were, crystallized out, born out of the spirit — out of which I am born, without my being involved, which I can ultimately achieve again through the highest knowledge. In a mysterious way, unconscious to myself, I have come from this land of the supersensible, into which I want to penetrate again through my knowledge. There we have the other shore, of which the “fairytale” speaks, the land beyond the river, where the beautiful lily dwells, which represents the highest world and life view, which represents the soul power to which man can develop. From there comes the mysterious being, the ferryman, who brings the will-o'-the-wisps over from the other side. Through real powers, man is transported into this world, where he stands as if surrounded by darkness – hence the mysterious words spoken by the ferryman, who brings us from the transcendental world to the land on this side of the river, who may only bring the beings across, but no one over. In no way can man return to where he came from except through birth. Other paths must be taken.

Then the will-o'-the-wisps ask how they can enter the realm of the beautiful lily, that is, how a single soul power can merge into the harmony of soul powers in such a way that it ascends to the highest. The snake then suggests two means: One is that which can be given by itself, when it allows itself to be transported by the Serpent at midday, when the sun is at its highest point. The will-o'-the-wisps say: 'That is a time when we do not like to travel. Yes, why? It is simply quite beyond the grasp of the Abstract-Lover, who wants to live only in abstract ideas and concepts, who wants to achieve everything only through combinations and conclusions, to make the transition as represented by the snake, through mystical devotion to things, through seeking mystical communion with things. This mystical communion cannot always be attained either. I recall that a great mystic of the Alexandrian school confessed in his old age that he had only experienced that great moment a few times in his life, when the soul feels ripe to delve so deeply that the spirit of the infinite awakens and that mystical moment occurs in which the God in the breast is experienced by the human being himself. These are moments at noon, when the sun of life is at its highest, when something like this can be experienced, and for those who always want to be ready with their abstract ideas, they say: anyone who ever has real thoughts must reach the highest level, for them such midday hours of life, which must be seen as a grace of earthly life, are no time to travel. For such abstract thinkers, there must always be a moment to solve the riddles of the world. Then the snake points out another way they can get across, namely through the shadow of the giant, that strange being that can do nothing for itself, cannot carry the slightest weight, not even a bundle of rice on its shoulder. At dusk, when half-light spreads, when the giant lets the shadow fall over the river that separates the sensual from the supersensual, then people can also cross over. What kind of a strange being is this giant? If we want to understand this giant, we must bear in mind that Goethe was well aware of those powers of the soul that lie, so to speak, below the threshold of consciousness. In the case of normal people, these powers only emerge during dreams. However, if we speak in a spiritual scientific sense, they belong to the subordinate clairvoyant powers that not attained through the development of the soul, but which occur particularly in primitive souls in the form of presentiments, second sight, and all that is connected with a soul that has not yet progressed very far, from which a certain uncontrollable and uncontrolled clairvoyance wells up.

Through such clairvoyant powers, there is no denying that a person can get some ideas about the supernatural world, and many people today still prefer to come to the supernatural world through such ideas or through spiritualistic images than through development, through the real upliftment of the soul into the land of the supernatural. What belongs to the realm of the subconscious, to the realm of the soul, that is not illuminated by what one can call clear mind, what one can call the light of insight, what one can call self-control, what is also like dream-like knowledge in life, is represented to us in this giant. In fact, one cannot truly recognize anything through this subconscious, because it is very weak compared to real knowledge, something that cannot be controlled anywhere, something that cannot be relied upon, so to speak.

If you wanted to personify this subconscious, you couldn't do better than a human being who is unable to carry the slightest weight. Through such subconscious knowledge, man — if he wants to develop it alone — is not able to recognize in a controlled way the slightest thing that stands on a sure basis, that has weight for our world view. But the shadow of this subconscious plays a great role in the whole of cultural life. Oh, that shows through everything — and only one word needs to be spoken to [characterize] the shadow, which for many human souls actually leads satisfactorily into the realm of the supersensible: the word 'superstition'. If countless people did not have superstition, which is the shadow of the subconscious, which prefers to operate not in the light of clear ideas but in the twilight, they would have no idea of the supersensible world, and for countless people today superstition is still the shadow of the subconscious, which leads them in the twilight hours of the soul life into the realm of the supersensible. One need not even enumerate the various manifestations of superstition in the history of civilization; one need only consider how people come to Theosophy, to spiritual science, which seeks to convey something to us from the supersensible world, something that only those people can comprehend who are willing to make great efforts to lift their soul higher. We want to ascend to the higher beings. But many make themselves comfortable, they want the spirits to descend to us instead of us rising to them. They are happy when a medium is found somewhere who, from the realm of the subconscious, testifies to the existence of the supersensible world. Not only inferior minds pay homage to what flourishes so abundantly as “spiritualism,” but even scholars who do not want to admit that the soul can be raised to the heights of the spirit through its own development. It is not said that the things that happen are not true, but distinguishing between truth and error is extremely difficult, and only for the initiated is it possible to exercise scientific control.

Goethe wants to point out this shadow of the subconscious, this whole vast realm that eludes wise self-knowledge and self-control, this power of the soul. But he does not point it out like a polemicist – Goethe was never a polemicist – he is aware that every power of the soul, at its level, even if it has to be suppressed at another level, has its importance, so he does not say: Beware of the giant, but he even finds it useful here to have the snake give the advice to the erring ones that they should have themselves translated by the giant's shadow at dusk. Strangely enough, this advice is repeated today when scholars do not want to bite into theosophy. Then well-meaning people come and say: let a spiritualist session convince you of a supersensible world, then you will be introduced to it in a plausible way. But superstition plays a great role in attracting attention, in directing the human mind to the supersensible world, and it must be clearly understood that Goethe, who wanted to present the entire field of soul forces as in a symphonic harmony, really believed, as this superstition, when it does not degenerate into wild superstition, has its good reason in the soul forces, which do not all come with sober, clear concepts, but first say to themselves: We can penetrate deeply, deeply into the secrets of things - but we would rather first hold it with intuitions of their secrets. First sense these secrets, do not immediately find our way into sharp contours! This intuitive restraint in relation to things is very important, since it should play a part in the entire life and weaving of our soul development.

Goethe wanted to show that what was expressed so clearly in outer nature was expressed in a higher way in the forces of the soul. I do not want to point out how Goethe, if he had not written a poem, a drama, a Wilhelm Meister, a Werther, would have been a shining personality for all time through his scientific discoveries. That in addition to his better-known scientific discoveries, he found a certain law that was not thought up or speculated by him, but which we will see is deeply rooted in the things themselves, like a leitmotif in all of nature's work, and which could be called the law of balance, in all external natural things as well. That nature has a certain measure of development for every being, can alter it on one side or the other, and can allow multiplicity and diversity to emerge from it. Look at the giraffe! Nature has used a certain measure of forces for the giraffe's activity, using more strength for the development of the front body, the neck, which is why the hindquarters are stunted! Look at the mole! Here nature devotes all its forces to the body, which is why the little feet remain stunted. Goethe showed how one can understand the difference in form between a dromedary and a lion and how different organs result from applying uniform measures in one direction one time and in the other direction another time. We see how a typical structure expresses itself in its diversity: in one case, the lower jaw develops teeth; in another, the lower jaw remains toothless and horns develop. When Goethe enunciated this law, it was naturally thought to be the saying of a poet who understood nothing of natural science, who was a layman, a dilettante. But in 1830, in the French Chamber, during his dispute with Cuvier, a French naturalist drew attention to this law under the name “balancement des organes”. The future will have much to say about this “balancement des organes” because it leads deep into the formal properties of the various entities. Goethe also applied this law to spiritual life. He recognized that there is also such a thing in the soul that expresses the individual at a higher level in the individual soul forces, so that he says: There are human beings who develop the special quality that is represented by the will-o'-the-wisps. They represent will-o'-the-wisps in life itself, false prophets who can do no other than communicate what they have learned to others and pour out their gold. Other people who can place a mystical light in nature, like the snakes that submerge themselves in nature. In short, Goethe wanted to show how, in general, normal life in the outer world, souls present themselves in such a way that they develop one-sided powers. How man can reach the higher level of knowledge by inwardly representing the type of the human soul, a balance, a right interaction of all soul forces, linked to the most sober soul force, the sense of foreboding. Not as superstition does, which loses itself in foreboding and lets the power of intelligence be enslaved by the foreboding of the nature of things.

On the one hand, Goethe shows how man can become one-sided, but he also shows how, if he wants to attain higher knowledge, he must strive towards that summit, which is symbolized by the beautiful lily, the inner harmonious balance and the interaction of the individual soul forces.

Now we know that the serpent, having received, so to speak, the inner radiance within, comes into the subterranean temple. Now it can distinguish between those spiritual worlds that approach man, that must inspire man, that can give strength, and those that the human soul must properly have within it if it is to ascend to a higher existence. There are certain powers in the human soul that it must have if it is to ascend to a higher level. But if a person wants to attain this higher level without having found the right path at the right time through the inspiration of these world powers, if he wants to grasp the highest that can be achieved in knowledge and world view prematurely, then this world view is something that can kill, confuse and paralyze him in his soul. Therefore, the youth who wants to unite with the lily before he is ripe, he will first be paralyzed, yes, killed. That is, Goethe has vividly expressed what he once expressed in a short saying:

Everything that frees our minds without giving us mastery over ourselves is corrupting.

There is a high level of human development through which the human soul can grow together with the fruits of all knowledge. It stands before us like a distant prospect. Our striving must be directed towards maturing, towards shaping ourselves in such a way that we are in the right mood, in the right inner state, and do not receive the highest in an immature way. So the youth is killed first and is to be led first through the endowment of soul powers, represented by the kings. Before he can connect with the beautiful lily, the snake leads him to the three kings. Meaningful conversations surround these kings like secrets. The golden king is the supersensible power that can be kindled in our soul, which gives the right wisdom so that the power of wisdom harmonizes with the other soul forces. The silver king represents piety. And for Goethe, piety means something quite different than in the ordinary sense.

Those who know Goethe also know that for him, the cult of beauty and art were intimately connected with religious feeling; therefore, beauty is what always makes him feel pious, so that for him the king of wisdom is represented by gold. The king who is endowed with the soul power that generates religion through beauty is the silver one. But that which is to permeate our impulses of will, that which wants to penetrate us in the ordered life of the soul as the power of the will, is represented by the brazen king.

Our soul forces must be under our complete control, so that we can distinguish them, so that we see the world in the right way, full of wisdom, and our feelings do not play tricks on us. That the life of feeling is not overcome by the life of wisdom and the life of wisdom in its turn by the life of the will and vice versa, but that the three soul powers arise separately, specified in the higher soul life. As for the fourth king, it may be said that every human being has wisdom, piety and willpower within him, but that they are mixed together in a chaotic way, like gold, silver and ore. Then a higher age of development begins for the soul when this chaotic mixing of soul powers ceases, and man is not even pushed by an impulse of will, at one time his feelings run away with him, at another time he is led by wisdom alone. No, when the non-chaotic, as it happens through the fourth king, is mixed, when man clearly separates within himself the realm of soul power, that of wisdom, that of the feeling of beauty, that of the religious mood, that that is imbued with the good will to do good, so that he rules over this realm and is not driven by it, then he will come to that point in time when one can say: It is time, I must undertake something else. A soul that is led unprepared before the realm of wisdom, beauty and power would hardly see anything of these things.

The man with the lamp represents a soul force that, in a certain sense, prepares people for wisdom, beauty and strength. It is the peculiarity of this lamp that it can only shine where there is already another light. What kind of light comes from the lamp of the old man? The same light, the light of religious world view, which must precede the actual wisdom knowledge, radiates from our hearts, even if we have not yet penetrated into things. It is a light that can only shine where other light is already present. Religions can only produce faith where they arise through this or that preparation, or where they are adapted to what people feel under the climate, certain cultural epochs and so on. There, therefore, the serpent, which wants to penetrate through mere inner mystical soul power to wisdom, piety, power, must encounter the kings, the soul forces, with the light of faith, which leads the soul to higher knowledge, which prepares the soul. Thus Goethe shows how the right time must approach. How it must first be guided by the light of faith and how it can then, when the soul has prepared itself, guided by the light of faith, ascend to an age where it has experienced many things. How it can come to the direct grasp of the soul power in its separateness as well as in its harmonious interaction. It is shown how man can prepare himself here on the physical plane on this side of the river. How on the other side, if man connects himself prematurely with the heights of human emotional life, he suffers damage in his soul, so to speak, perishes.

And now the strange figure of the old man's wife with the lamp. This woman, who is described to us as all too human, who is chosen by the will-o'-the-wisps to pay with fruits of the earth — she represents primitive human nature, which cannot rise to knowledge, but when connected to the man with the lamp, with the light, she can believe. What is the light of faith capable of? It can transform stones into gold, wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones. This is all characterized by the fact that the lamp-black pug that has eaten the gold that the will-o'-the-wisps have shaken off is transformed into precious stones by the old man's lamp. This shows the power of faith, this completely wonderful power of faith, this advancement of higher knowledge. Or how it is able to show us all things in such a way that they really present their divine aspects in a certain way. That they show what is in them even before they have reached the supersensible in them through knowledge. The dead stones show: what is endowed with wisdom is transformed into gold by the light of this lamp. This means that faith is able to already sense in things what wisdom later recognizes in full light, and how all things are not as they appear to us in the sensory world, but that they have a deeper side. This is symbolically indicated by how the light of faith in the old man's lamp transforms all things. Man, if he remains in his healthy nature, cannot attain to science, to knowledge, then he actually has something in him that is much more connected with the mysterious forces that stand at the border of the supersensible. Compared to the person who has come to abstract science and easily becomes a doubter and skeptic. How he loses his footing, becomes insecure, nervous about all knowledge. How secure some original primitive nature is, as represented by this old woman, who is so in touch with nature, who can give what the will-o'-the-wisps cannot give. Such people have an original feeling through which they are aware of the connections with the infinite, the divine, which lives and weaves in all nature as the supernatural. That is why, when learned people with their doubts come to some original people, there comes that compassionate smile that says: No matter how clever you are, no matter how much you know about nature with your learning, we know what you do not know; certain knowledge brings us together with that from which we ourselves originate. The woman can pay, which the will-o'-the-wisps cannot.

The human being must attain not only emotional certainty. He is connected with a supersensible realm, as is represented by the rule of the temple with the kings, where there is not only an inner, mystical sense of security, but the human being must ascend so that he is truly introduced to the realm of the supersensible, sees the spiritual life and activity. The temple must be transported from the underground into the overground. The temple of knowledge itself must rise above the boundary line, above the river between the supersensible and the sensual world. And it is conceivable that a soul which has worked on itself in this way, has gone up the stages of development, has those holy midday moments of life in a certain way in hand, can pass through them into the spiritual and over into the sensual world. That it can draw attention to how the Divine-Spiritual reigns when an event of external nature is shown and can point again to the pure Divine-Spiritual that is in the supersensible realm, so that it is achieved that not only exquisite, particularly favored spirits can cross the river. This is to be achieved through spiritual science in modern culture. Goethe is a prophet of theosophy in his “Fairy Tale,” in that he shows that not only the favored mystical natures, who have innate mysticism, have midday moments of life when they can cross over the river and find the realm of the supersensible in the bright sunshine of life, but that there is a soul development that everyone can undergo. Every soul, naturally, even though it is laborious and full of renunciation, can all wander over and across, from and to the transcendental realm, when what the mystery of faith is has occurred.

“How many secrets do you know?” – “Three,” replied the old man. “Which is the most important?” asked the silver king. “The revealed,” replied the old man.

This saying [of the revealed secret] often occurs in Goethe because Goethe, like all true mystics, was of the opinion that there is nothing spiritual that does not experience itself externally, materially, somehow, that one can find connections between the material and the spiritual everywhere. It is only a matter of finding the right point, the right place in the universe where the spiritual expresses itself externally, physiognomically. The secret, apparently! Not so much how to seek the spiritual in a roundabout way, but to connect with things, like the snake. And one also finds a way into the spiritual through communion with the material world. The revealed secret is the one that can be found everywhere and to which only a certain maturity of the soul belongs. The three secrets are none other than how wisdom, beauty and piety and virtue should live in us, not separately. Characteristically, a fourth is necessary, which the old man cannot know. But he can know that it is time to say it! What does the snake whisper in the old man's ear? That she is willing to sacrifice herself, that she is willing to sacrifice her own body, just to build a bridge over the river out of what arises from her.

The great secret of the sacrifice of the lower soul forces, which should only be the path to the higher self: I want to sacrifice all that which is connected with the lower entities of nature, which I have sought, obedient to the laws of the world. Those who do not have this dying and becoming remain only a gloomy guest on the dark earth.

First, man must go through all that leads him to the events and facts of nature, in order to then offer up what he has gained and experienced with his lower self as a sensual being, and ascend.

Jakob Böhme expressed this mystery beautifully:

He who does not die before he dies
will perish when he dies.

He who enters the supersensible world through the gate of death without having killed the lower powers of the soul, without having died to the lower self before passing through the physical gate of death, would not prepare himself in this embodiment to see the true spiritual being before death!

The soul saves itself from ruin in the lower self when it becomes like the snake, which does not merely remain in the clefts, but sacrifices itself. This means that there is a power of the soul in us that can connect with all nature beings. This power must first be sacrificed, however, for the sake of higher knowledge, so that what must first be sacrificed is all that is lower egoism, all that base selfishness, in order to attain higher freedom. Thus that which first led us into the realm of this world itself becomes the path to the beyond. We ascend into the supersensible world only over that which we have sacrificed ourselves. The will-o'-the-wisps are only able to unlock the gate. They have the keys. Science has the keys, as Mephistopheles has the keys to the realm of the mothers; he can unlock, but not lead into, the real secrets. We can recognize the value of the sciences, appreciate the intelligent and abstract in human life, for it leads us to the gate. But then the higher soul forces must begin if we want to be admitted into the temple. Thus we see how these will-o'-the-wisp actually play out their role to the end, and how Goethe, in the development of his fairy tale poetry, captures the meaning of the soul forces down to the last details. The “fairytale” is such that with this kind of explanation, every word, every sentence is proof that a deeper meaning is being introduced into the fairy tale. Through the effect of the lamp, the old man's house is lined with gold. What remains of religion, of the different religions? Tradition!

Let us try to imagine the whole thing in concrete terms in our cultural process. Let us go to our libraries and search in the historical works on this and that religion. How much of the gold is stored there, how much is illuminated by the light of the lamp, how the abstractions come in, licking up the gold, gleaning the history of religions from the books and making new ones out of old books. Even where wisdom becomes history, stored up in libraries, the will-o'-the-wisps can nourish themselves on it; they even walk around full of erudition with what comes first from these sources. It agrees less with the pug, the natural creature, the unlearned one, who dies from this wisdom and must first be revived. First, through the light of the lamp, he is transformed into precious stones and can be transformed from precious stone through contact with the lily. The lily can enliven everything that has gone through death, that has undergone this – what does not have this dying and becoming – a bright guest must have become this on this earth. He who wishes to endure the touch of the lily must have passed through the death of the lower self.

Thus the young man only becomes ready to come into contact with the beautiful lily after he has been killed. He can only enter the Temple of Wisdom after the snake has sacrificed itself. When all this has happened, the young man can then be led to the temple. When the sacrifice has been made, the soul is led upwards from its subterranean existence to the realization that everything is permeated and interwoven by the spirit. Then the temple is led from below upwards, and the human being is endowed with that which the individual soul powers can give him. Wisdom gives him that which is expressed in the sentence of the golden king:

Recognize the Highest.

The symbol is the oak wreath. The silver king gives him the sceptre and says:

Feed the sheep

as a sign of his endowment with the power of piety. The king of brass hands him the sword and shield and tells him:

Keep your sword at your left side, and your right hand free.

Right-hand virtue is not aggressive in its approach, but it stands strong and firm on its feet, and when it is a matter of human dignity and human destiny, it is ready to defend these and to work in the world in human love and beneficial human action. Now the young man unites with the beautiful lily. The individual powers of the soul are illuminated by true love. But the soul can only feel this when it has risen above ordinary love, when it is absorbed in love for the spiritual. Wisdom, beauty, piety, virtue, they develop and promote the soul's development. Love not only has to grow, it invigorates, shapes and harmonizes everything. It lifts the soul up a step. There we then see how the human being, when he ascends, when he finds himself in that temple where he can experience knowledge, how he comes to see, but now in holy awe, how the small temple in the large temple sees the highest, the secret of secrets, the human being himself, how he passes over as a spiritual being from the spiritual world to the hut of the , where man is placed as a small world, as a small temple in the larger temple, showing so beautifully when the soul moves up to the steps of higher knowledge, then he attains the secrets of the world through wisdom, piety, and virtue. What Goethe so beautifully felt as the Spinozian love of God, the development of the highest powers of the soul, comes to the riddles, the secrets of the world, but as the highest of the secrets, which we only see again as a small temple in the great, the secret of man himself and his connection with the divine being. The giant comes last, also groping around, and then becomes the hour hand of time. Our knowledge becomes spiritual, it dissipates when we ascend in our soul life, and what is external materialism is the consciousness of those laws that work mechanically. The giant basically stands for the subconscious, for everything that comes from the forces of the soul that also work in the subconscious. This may only remain in one when we look up at what is the utmost for our inwardness, how the times follow one another, what the outer rhythm of time is. This has its ultimate justification, and mere mechanical knowledge has a justification there. One would like to say: Goethe may have had in mind when he came up with this idea of the giant, who finally becomes the hour hand of the world, what superstition has been done with the art of numbers, the various structures in space, what is only a superstitious shadow of a greater knowledge that has remained from the old days of the old worldviews. But one thing remains as justified: to use what has been recognized to form a kind of chronometer for the processes that surround people.

Thus, in a certain respect, we find everything that Goethe felt was necessary for the development of the soul's powers translated into vivid images. If you want to ascend to the highest, then you must develop the soul's powers in such a way that it can only be expressed symbolically in rich, meaningful images. Then you will come close to what Goethe wanted to say when you try to gain an insight into these images from the whole of Goethe's world view. But you must be aware that what is contained in the fairy tale is infinitely richer than I have said, and that all of this is actually only a suggestion of the kind in which Goethe's fairy tale should be sought and felt. But perhaps it is possible to get a sense of the inner wealth and greatness from which Goethe created with such immeasurable productive power. How right he is when he says that the true, the beautiful, the truly artistic can only be an expression of the general truth that permeates the world and that people can recognize. And this was also what lived in Goethe as a conviction, what led him from step to step in restless pursuit; this is what draws us to Goethe, so to speak. Goethe is one of those minds that work like only the very greatest.

You read a work by Goethe once in your life. You think you have understood it. After five years you read it again and realize: I didn't understand it then, but only now. Then again after five years, and you realize how much you have discovered that you couldn't see before because you weren't mature enough. Only now, after you have experienced so much yourself, only now can you understand the work. Five years later you read it again, and then perhaps you are so happy that you say to yourself: At the time you did not understand it; you must, you can wait until you become more mature and more mature, to be completely satisfied as you grow into it more and more. This feeling is only experienced by the most exquisite minds in the development of humanity. In such people we see the leaders of human culture. One gets an inkling of the infinity of the soul's content by being able to penetrate ever deeper into it. Then one counts him among those spirits about whom, summarizing today's reflection, we can say:

Like stars shining
in the sky of eternal being
are the spirits sent by God.
May all human souls in the realm of becoming on earth
succeed in seeing their flames of light!

Dear attendees! The subject of today's reflection will somewhat cross the boundaries that have usually been drawn here in such spiritual scientific reflections. Nevertheless, it seems useful to me to consider human spiritual life in a broader sense in relation to what the human soul can feel about the results of this spiritual science. Moreover, if we consider contemporary history, this evening's reflection, perhaps, as a kind of spiritual-scientific challenge, places itself directly into this spiritual life of the present, for the consideration of Raphael, if we consider it in the way it is usually done, presents people with many puzzles, really great spiritual-cultural-scientific puzzles.

And perhaps we may be confronted with the necessity of extending our spiritual-scientific considerations to such areas in particular, especially if we allow the fate of a significant contemporary art researcher in relation to Raphael to have some effect on our souls – an art historian who, I believe, is so not only in the scholarly, in the usual scientific sense, but who is so above all because the nineteenth century beat in his heart as directly as in few personalities: Herman Grimm. He is one of those art historians who were always not only with reason and intellect, not only with the usual scientific sense, but with the whole soul in their subject. And anyone who is familiar with Herman Grimm's art and cultural writings knows how much of what is directly moving the present intellectually pulsates within him, how his riddles about many subjects of intellectual life are the riddles of our era. And if spiritual science is to prove more and more fruitful, then it will have to seek contact with the way in which the entire spiritual cultural life seeks to approach such riddle-questions.

Herman Grimm – he was the son of Wilhelm Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm, the great linguist – was truly a nineteenth-century spirit. This great expert on Goethe and this significant spirit, who wrote the wonderful book about Michelangelo, died at the turn of the twentieth century.

Now it is, in a sense, characteristic that Herman Grimm also wrote a “Life of Raphael”. However, he felt differently about this “Life of Raphael” than he did about the Life of Michelangelo or even the Life of Goethe. Herman Grimm himself confessed that he had repeatedly tried to solve the riddle of Raphael and that at certain times he had indeed sought a kind of conclusion with his Life of Raphael; but every time he approached the riddle of Raphael again, he knew how imperfectly he had dealt with Raphael in his own soul. Again and again he made a new approach; and so we have a wonderful essay that he wrote shortly before his death, which is only the introduction to a book that should have been more extensive, in which he once again attempts, shortly before his death, to place the image of Raphael before his own soul, to solve the riddle of Raphael for himself in a certain way, insofar as such riddles can be solved by human souls at all.

Thus we see on the one hand a struggling spirit who, in accordance with his entire disposition, is immersed in artistic life and in the contemplation of artistic life, who creates a wonderfully rounded image of Michelangelo, we see how he is aware that he has really to have brought this image to a kind of conclusion; we see how this struggling soul fights throughout his entire life to present the enigma of Raphael, and does not finish it, so that he makes a new attempt immediately before his death, which again is not finished. Why is that? Yes, a mere scholar would have been finished in some sense, but not a mind like that, which immersed itself in its task with all its soul and wanted to resurrect the image of Raphael. The closer Herman Grimm approached Raphael, the more he wanted to resurrect the image of Raphael in his soul, the more it revealed itself to him as emerging in an enigmatic way from the entire human development; it presented itself to him in such a way that, the more closely one looks at it, one is led to delve into the deepest mysteries of the human soul itself and to gain an understanding of what such a human soul is, which grows out of the entire picture of human development as a great mystery. And when one follows the other side of Herman Grimm's work, one has the feeling that a mind such as his, which has grown so intimately together with the spiritual culture of the nineteenth century, is making attempts everywhere to find the way – yes, which way? The path that the spiritual researcher knows as his own. I can only gently hint here at the wonderfully intimate way in which Herman Grimm presents a death, a dying, at the end of his significant book 'Unüberwindliche Mächte' (Insurmountable Powers), and in this dying the detachment of what has been presented here more often than the detachment of the etheric body from the physical body. We see Herman Grimm's soul wrestling tenderly and intimately, but no less urgently, to find the paths that spiritual science in particular wants to unlock.

Thus, when one contemplates this remarkable art historian, one can really get the idea: something lives in him that is a question of our age in particular. And because the pulse of our time lived in him, this question lived with particular vibrancy in his soul - the spiritual-scientific question that we wanted to approach in all the considerations that have been employed here. But it is precisely in such a struggle as Herman Grimm's with Raphael's image that one sees that if one gets stuck in the nineteenth-century way of looking at things, one will not be able to cope with the greatest riddles, if one sincerely and without hypocrisy tries to solve such riddles with the awareness of having to delve into ever deeper depths. From the contemplation of spiritual science, the answer will emerge more and more, which I can only hint at, why Herman Grimm could not finish his contemplation of Raphael. However grotesque it may sound to some, the reason for this is that he was able to approach the gate of spiritual science everywhere, but could not unlock this gate anywhere according to the spirit of his century, according to the conditions of the whole becoming of the nineteenth century. So let the attempt be made to approach Raphael, not from some spiritual-scientific dogma or law, but with that which, as the whole mood of the soul, is able to penetrate into our minds when we face Raphael's painting. In spiritual scientific research it is much more important – and this is ultimately what impresses itself on our souls – that we look at the things of the world in a certain mood, than to apply all possible laws that may arise from spiritual research in a stereotypically abstract way. That is certainly not what the human soul should do in spiritual science.

How did Raphael appear to Herman Grimm, this nineteenth-century spirit? This man speaks strange words. I will quote them to you verbatim so that we can, so to speak, fully immerse ourselves in the way this man seeks to gain a personal relationship to his subject through his research. Thus Raphael appears to him as a spirit, to understand which he needs to draw on the most intimate depths of human development. Not on the basis of an epoch, but as if born out of the whole development of humanity – great and powerful on the background of human development, that is how he appears to him; and for those who can feel, words such as those written by Herman Grimm in the last fragmentary pages about Raphael, which he wrote as if born out of a final attempt to understand Raphael, have a profound effect. There Herman Grimm says:

Raphael is a citizen of world history. He is like one of the four rivers that, according to the beliefs of the ancient world, came from paradise.

No matter what scholars may think about it, someone who can open his soul to something very special will experience something special in his soul when he looks at a person like Herman Grimm, who has immersed himself in an object throughout his life and in whose feeling something lives that makes him speak about Raphael in such a way that he elevates him to a citizen of world history, to a being that stands out from the entire development of humanity. And Herman Grimm, too, may appear differently to others, if one wishes to do him justice from a certain emotional point of view. Herman Grimm said:

If Michelangelo were called away from the dead by a miracle to live among us again, and if I met him, I would respectfully step aside so that he could pass by; but if Raphael came my way, I would walk behind him to see if I could catch a few words on his lips. With Leonardo and Michelangelo, one can limit oneself to recounting what they once were in their day. With Raphael, one must start from what he is today. A soft haze has settled over the others, but not over Raphael. He is one of those whose growth is far from over. Generations of people living in the future can always conceive of new enigmas that Raphael will pose for them [...].

And so the question is raised: What riddles can Raphael's appearance pose to someone who has penetrated his soul through what comes from the spiritual-scientific contemplation of the world? Well, spiritual science speaks of development in time in a dual sense; this dual sense has been touched on here several times. First of all, spiritual science speaks of how humanity progresses from epoch to epoch in its earthly development, so that one recognizes that spirit and meaning are in this development, that spiritual laws can therefore be found. In terms of these spiritual laws, we can see how humanity in prehistoric times was led in a different way in its development across the earth than it was later; we can see how other, [new] impulses and impacts worked in accordance with these spiritual laws into our time. In the spiritual-scientific sense we distinguish precisely between the individual epochs, and therefore one cannot be satisfied with the trivial statement that natural development never makes a leap. This statement can certainly be quite correct if it is interpreted in a certain way; but just try to observe nature: you will see how such a saying, which is so easily spoken in a trivial way, has only a very limited meaning. Nature makes leaps: plants make a giant leap in their development between the root and the green leaf, then another giant leap between the green leaf and the blossom, and yet another between the blossom and the fruit. Nature leaps everywhere, and it is no different in the history of mankind. The individual epochs do not, as a comfortable worldview would have it, simply and successively merge into one another, but rather they are sharply distinguished from one another in character. And anyone who takes a close look at these human epochs will find that the human soul is capable of recognizing something special in each epoch, of experiencing something special. Even if one finds the word pedantic that Lessing used: that world history is an education of the entire human race - in a certain sense this word is justified. Just as the individual, starting from a primitive stage of his spiritual life, rises to ever new impulses, which he then experiences in the outer world and in his own inner being, so it is also the case for all of humanity throughout the earth. This is one way in which spiritual science views the development of humanity across the earth.

The other way of looking at it relates to the human soul's participation in this ongoing education. And here spiritual science - as has been explained so often and also the day before yesterday here - states as a result: the human being goes through this earth development in repeated earth lives, so that the human soul participates in the successive epochs that we, looking back, can ask ourselves how our own souls in earlier epochs of the development of the earth, in earlier lives on earth, participated in what the development of the earth could give the human soul each time. Again and again our souls were embodied on earth in bodies to absorb that which then became impulses for later epochs. Thus, in its successive lives, the human soul participates in everything that can flow into it from the impulses of the entire human development on earth.

There are, let us say, compassionate minds who forgive Lessing for speaking from such a point of view at the height of his life in his significant work “The Education of the Human Race” about repeated lives on earth, because only through this - [through this idea of repeated lives on earth] - did it become clear to him which forces actually carry the whole evolution of humanity through history: only through the fact that the human souls themselves carry over what they absorb in one epoch into other epochs, and the human soul does not belong to only one epoch in isolation, but recurring again and again to the successive epochs, so that it is a citizen of all of history. If we can start from this point of view, that in a very peculiar way, what each human soul has absorbed as impulses in earlier epochs, then it comes to us before the soul, as in particular an outstanding mind [like Raphael] can be found in the outcome of all that his soul has gone through in earlier lives on earth in any epoch.

We will not search pedantically and abstractly for cause and effect, but we will acquire a feeling for how a soul can become immersed in an epoch, and we feel in this soul, basically, in a very special way, the entire previous life on earth that such a soul - and every human soul - has lived through in its own unique way. If we now look at a relatively short period of time in terms of the development of the earth, but one that is close at hand for the present study of humanity, namely the historical millennia, and compare it with the millennia that preceded the historical ones , then something arises for spiritual scientific research that has been mentioned here often: the human soul itself has undergone transformations so that it was very different in ancient times than in later times or than in the present. It must be pointed out that our ordinary present intellectual thinking, which has achieved its triumph in science, is a product of development that has only gradually emerged. Spiritual science must take the word 'development' very seriously and see this development not only in the succession of external forms, but above all in the work of the human soul. Only in spiritual science does this development of the human soul present itself differently than in external science.

Spiritual science turns its gaze back to ancient times, to times even earlier than the historical ones, and finds that the human soul was endowed with a kind of primitive clairvoyance. Today I can only hint at these things; they are explained in more detail in other lectures. What our intellectual thinking is today, through which we come to self-awareness and recognize ourselves inwardly as human beings, had to develop first. In ancient times, the whole imaginative life of man was such that he had certain intermediate states between waking and sleeping, like dream images. These were not mere dream images, but they were symbolic expressions of the reality that surrounded him. He perceived in a kind of ancient clairvoyance. Then humanity developed further, and our present understanding, our imagination and other things, as they are peculiar to present humanity, were incorporated as an element of a new impulse.

Now we find a significant break in the great period of human development that precedes us, which presents itself to us through a very wonderful epoch of this human development. That is the time of Greek culture. For those who look at human development with the trained eye of a spiritual researcher, Greek culture appears as a kind of middle ground between two separate lines of development in human history. If we look at Greek culture, then, because our present consideration is to culminate in the view of an artist, the artistic aspect is the most important for us. This artistic aspect was, however, in full harmony with the whole Greek spirit, and this Greek spirit only appears to him who, shortsightedly, regards the development of humanity — as today's spirit does — in such a way that human souls were actually about the same as they are today. For those who look closely at the characteristic features of human development, the picture is quite different.

I would like to start with a specific example: when an artist approaches his art today, let us say sculpture, it is quite natural and self-evident for our present time, because it lies in the character of our time, now, let us say it dryly, that he works from a model, that he has the model of nature before him, that he imitates nature. This corresponds to our current view, our current environment, which artistically suggests the soul's contemplation that confronts nature and seeks the truth by conjuring up images of things in the soul. This is what modern science does, and in a certain way this is also what modern art does. [But this is only right and proper for our time, for this is what the intellectual contemplation of the world wants; it wants man to gain the true or the false image of nature through contemplation and to create images of nature in his imagination, which he then confronts as a self-aware human being. This was not yet the case in Greek times, and those who believe that the Greek artist did it the same way as the modern artist are wrong. The modern artist has to do it this way because the human soul has become more and more internalized; because in our time the human soul is no longer able to form that intimate bond with nature by immersing itself in the objects themselves. It presents itself as distinct from the things, it imitates them. This is how today's man acquires his power of judgment, but it is also how he acquires his full self-confidence in the world.

It was different in the Greek world. In the Greek world, the soul was still intimately connected with all that is physical, corporeal; and because it was more intimately connected with all this, it was also intimately connected with what the physical, corporeal is connected with, with the surrounding nature. What lives and moves in nature, experienced this in the human soul as it really is in nature. The human soul did not stand opposed to nature, it was in nature, living with the foundations of nature. If a Greek artist wanted to create any old statue in sculpture, spiritual research shows us that it would have been quite unnatural for him to imitate something externally. If he wanted to depict a statue, say of Mars or Zeus — figures that he all humanized —, it was his primary concern to feel what the soul of Mars or Zeus experienced. And because the soul impulses and feelings poured directly and objectively into the soul, the artist felt in every gesture, in every movement, in every posture, in every look, what the soul experienced. He was actually inwardly Mars, Zeus, and therefore knew what a hand, what a muscle looked like. He created his immediate inner experience. He did not create according to nature because the soul did not merely experience the soul, but also experienced what was bodily in the environment. This separation [of the soul's co-experience from nature] – that has only come about.

In ancient Greece, the soul was still part of natural existence. But if we go back even further than ancient Greece, we come closer and closer to the times when there was still a kind of clairvoyance, when man went beyond the physical and felt the spiritual that lay behind it – and was connected to the spirit that hovers behind the sensual world. From the innermost depths of the world, from the laws that do not resemble the external, the soul created those forms that now correspond all the more to the laws of the external world. Even in philosophers such as Plato, Pythagoras and Socrates, we find human souls that still reach down below the surface. In Greek thought, the soul is not yet internalized in the human personality; it is still rooted in the world of the senses. Modern man has freed himself; he can only confront nature and imitate it. But in this way the soul, having become stronger, attains inner stability and a firm footing within itself. Thus the human soul of primeval times was unfree and dependent on the all-pervading spirit; thus the Greek soul was directly within nature, not yet separating spirit and nature; and thus the modern soul is set apart from its surroundings, grasping itself in its inwardness.

Now there is no period of time for art that shows us as clearly as in a leap in the characterized sense how this art, on the one hand, still demands the greatness and significance of experiencing nature and, on the other hand, has to reckon with the deepened inwardness of the human soul - [it is the time in which great artists like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael created their works]. It is characteristic that the event falls into the time of Greek culture, which gave the human soul internalization above all else and which, through its impulses, contributes to the education of the human soul: the emergence and establishment of Christianity. And it seems mighty and wondrous to us when we look at the development of humanity from the most comprehensive interdenominational point of view, regardless of any narrow-denominational point of view, and see how, from the time of the emergence of Christianity, what we can call the internalization of the human soul arises in a lawful manner, and which I am now trying to characterize.

You can particularly see this when you try to look at a mind from the first Christian centuries, a mind like Augustine's. Just delve into something like the “Confessions” of Augustine – worth reading for anyone who wants to delve into the spirit of the times, in the best sense of the word. And one thus gains a sense of the infinite inwardness of human soul experience, which breaks into human development and shows itself in a soul like that of Augustine. And compare the whole life, the whole inward nature of Augustine's soul life with what [all of] Greek art, even the harrowing tragedies of an Aeschylus, of a Sophocles, could give. In the great Aeschylus and the great Sophocles we find the connection between man and his environment everywhere. However ingenious the characterizations may appear to us, the people everywhere do not stand out in such a way that we can speak of an internalization of the soul life to the same degree as in the powerful and forceful way in which this inwardness of the human spirit appears to us in Augustine.

We will only be able to see the whole spiritual course of human development when we recognize this impulse of internalization as an historical law, even if we do not want to tie in with the Christ impulse in any conventional way. For these things are present, as surely as the sun is present in space. They can be grasped spiritually as the effects of the sun on the planets in space. [This development has particularly led to a certain inartistic way of looking at things in the so-called Renaissance, the golden age of human-spiritual development.] But art will never be able to disappear from human development; it will only seek for itself that which is possible for it in the lawful general character of an age. And so we see in the epoch at the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, in which Raphael's life also falls, how there is a struggle, firstly, to make art possible and, secondly, to take into account in art what has also occurred in the development of art in a lawful manner with the internalization of the human soul.

In this mighty transitional epoch, Raphael's spirit matured. And how does he appear to us? In a wonderful way he appears to us! Raphael was born in Urbino in 1483, the son of a goldsmith who was also a painter and from whom he received his first painting lessons. Orphaned at an early age, Raphael was apprenticed to the most important painter in Italy at the time, Pietro Perugino in Perugia. From Perugino, we see Raphael receiving, so to speak, the first stimulus for what would then rise to such tremendous greatness. But when you consider Raphael's environment, first in Urbino, then in Perugia, and then again Raphael's soul itself, this consideration becomes a mystery wherever you look; for this Raphael soul stands within its environment like something that does not grow out of this environment itself, but that places itself within this environment as if coming from completely different home climes. And only those who are short-sighted with regard to these things can still strive to explain Raphael in terms of what surrounded him.

Raphael grew up in Perugia, where he learned from the most important painter in Italy at the time. If we first look at the master himself, we see a thoroughly Christian man, counting on the Christian moment of the soul's interiorization. If we let the overall impression of his pictures sink in, we find this justified everywhere. Yes, out of the traditions of his time, this master of Raphael painted the Christian figures, the inner soul of man seeking the paths of eternity. He painted the figures of the holy legend in such a way that the struggling, searching human soul, in need of eternity, finds satisfaction in these figures. But in every stroke of these paintings by Perugino, we also see that he was not present with the innermost fibers of his soul in what he painted from tradition. You can see this clearly when you look at the still existing pictures, at the mild, but still quite understandable face of Perugino from his time: This soul, living in these features, has sought to internalize the art from what he has conjured up on the canvas, from tradition; but the soul was not completely there. This not fully internalized tradition, that was the essential thing that Raphael had of his master.

If we consider the surroundings of Perugia, we see wonderful nature that awakens in every sentient human soul a feeling for the riddles of natural existence, for the eternal values that lie in earthly existence. But what took place in this environment? Struggle after struggle within a passionate people. And it must be assumed that the place where Raphael grew up learning was characterized by struggles, by terrible struggles, which the individual families and clans fought among themselves in the struggle for supremacy in the city. Entire families moved out and then besieged those left behind in the city. Raphael was surrounded by all this. Try to imagine someone who grew up in Perugia and compare him to Raphael. You would see how the former would have lived with all of this and absorbed the life around him – you can almost touch it.

There is a promising tale told by a chronicler, a historian who was just such a person, who was there; he tells how, among these warring factions, one of the heroes of such a faction rode into the city like a sort of St. George or Mars, riding into the city on horseback, powerfully fighting for his followers, and how he rode down everything that opposed him with his horse - a picture from Perugia at that time! We see this scene, as described by the chronicler, depicted in a painting by Raphael - elevated to the spiritual and soul realm, in which everything that has a direct effect on the observer of this scene is swept away. We see how a life confronts us here that only a soul can experience, which hovers above the whole and only captures what is inwardly, spiritually presented in such a scene, and then later conjures it onto the canvas. This is how Raphael appears to us: at home in worlds that do not belong to this sensual world, at home in spiritual realms with which his soul is completely interwoven in its inwardness. And the immediate environment in which he is placed gave him nothing else than that he was allowed to look at it. A spirit, as if from completely different homelands, who can never be explained by his environment for clear thinking and clear observation, who brings something with him, adds something that is not in the environment.

And what did Raphael learn from his master? It is precisely that which makes Raphael the wonderful phenomenon of artistic and human development that he did not learn from his master. For we feel with Raphael that the main feature of the newer period, the internalization of the human soul - the self-evident internalization that is connected with everything he creates - is precisely what is missing in Perugino, but that it is present in every fiber of Raphael and pours directly into what he lives out in his forms, in his art. We feel how a piece of Raphael's deepest inwardness lives on the canvas everywhere when we immerse ourselves in his paintings. This was something that Raphael took from the heights of heaven and not from Perugino, something that he brought in like a messenger from completely different worlds. Whoever tries to grasp this internalization not only in dogmas and doctrines, in external laws that can be grasped in concepts, but with the whole soul, will feel it flowing out of every creation of Raphael, so that in Raphael's greatest creations we have precisely that which we can say: It is now something quite different from what lies in Greek art. There lived that which man has directly experienced in soul and body and at the same time shaped in forms. In Raphael, we see the inner soul of man as poured out and confronting us in forms, the soul that has separated itself from natural existence, pouring out and confronting us as a new world, as a creation of the most inwardly human soul - not in a certain way in nature, but like a new creation - the interior of the human soul striving outwards again and artistically embodying itself there.

Those who call only those a Christian who believe in Christian dogmas, we want to leave to themselves for today's reflection. Those who recognize the Christian trait in the inwardness of the human soul, who see this Christian impulse at work, who see how the human soul breaks away from the outer world and turns inwards to reflect, how it seeks the Christ impulse within - because the human being, having separated from nature, needs such a point of support - will understand why this impulse was given precisely at this time. Those who are able to recognize and feel this more than dogma-less Christianity, this Christianity that is no longer regarded as Christian by some, will understand when the spiritual scientist researcher feels how in Raphael's soul, even before his birth, the basic trait of Christianity was alive, how in all that Raphael felt and experienced, a Christian soul was born, a soul that entered the whole environment as a Christianized soul, a soul with which the Christian way of life was born at the same time, a soul that was Christian through everything that lived in it. And this Christianity in Raphael's soul cannot be explained by anything in the environment. When it is put this way, it looks like an assertion, and it cannot be proven with mathematical certainty; such things arise through intimate immersion in the essence of such a soul. You can see in Raphael, when you let his soul pass before you, how it stands out and differs from another soul that only during its life entered into the internalization of Christianity. By contrasting Raphael with another figure, we can see the difference between a soul that is born a Christian and therefore incorporates the Christian message into every line of its creations, and a soul that only gradually embraces Christian impulses.

Let us continue to observe Raphael in relation to his immediate surroundings. When he was transferred to Florence in 1504, he came into an environment where the after-effects of Savonarola were still vividly felt and where the atmosphere was still strongly influenced by what Savonarola had brought to Florence. The spirit of Savonarola himself was still perceptible in the followers and opponents of Savonarola in Florence, for example in Fra Bartolommeo, who was one of Raphael's friends. When you place a soul like Savonarola's side by side with Raphael's, so to speak, as a contemporary soul, you notice a difference. How naturally the Christianized, the way of the whole Christianized soul, comes to us in Raphael; this soul of Raphael does not first have to become Christian, it does not fanatically represent Christianity; it never does that. Raphael's soul does not need to indulge in Christian dogmas either; this soul draws such lines, applies such colors, as correspond to Christian interiorization; it lives Christian from birth. How different is the soul of Savonarola! He assimilates Christianity in such a way that he fights for the heroic, the great, the significant, and the moral of Christianity bit by bit. He is kindled bit by bit during his development by what one can feel as an impression of Christianity. She is a soul who is only becoming familiar with Christianity, who is fanatical about Christianity, and we can see how she is gradually drawn to Christianity and lives so close to Christianity that the internalized Christian soul must pour out again - powerfully, and therefore one-sidedly and fanatically. There is an enormous difference.

If you do not dogmatize, but consider how, in the moment when one ascends to spiritual-scientific contemplation, everything becomes infinitely versatile, where the evidence does not arise as in the field of mathematics, where everything has sharp contours, then it becomes clear to him who is not merely acquainted with scientific dogmas and laws but has imbued himself with the impulses of spiritual science that this, which has just been attempted to be developed, is illuminated with infinite clarity by the two souls. When spiritual science shows us how Raphael's soul - I only want to hint at these things gently, not roughly, as it must be done in spiritual science when one comes across individual concrete facts - when spiritual science illuminates for us how a soul like Raphael's was already in an earlier life , how it absorbed the power of Christianity and passed through life between death and a new birth with this power of Christianity, then one can also understand the transformation by which he can now live out in a serene form in soul-spiritual powers that which he once experienced with strength. The only way to make sense of the riddle is to say to oneself: Yes, that which has direct Christian impact, right down to the dogmatic, has not been experienced by a soul like Savonarola in the past, but was only in that life at the time of Raphael that it was able to gradually live its way into Christianity from other forms of life, into a stage that the Raphael soul had already passed through in an earlier life.

Of course, I too find it natural that a large part of humanity today still finds what has just been said absurd and ridiculous. I will never be surprised - together with all those who know the fundamentals of spiritual science - when something like this is found to be absurd and ridiculous. But the time will come when people will realize how deeply rooted is what can be said about human souls through the spirit, which has just been used to explain the very different nature of the soul of Savonarola compared to that of Raphael. The doctrine of repeated earthly lives will prove fruitful.

And yet another trait comes to light when we study Raphael's soul. If we probe his soul in this way, we find that it is so thoroughly Christian that Raphael was not at all disturbed by the unchristian environment of the popes when he came to Rome. Indeed, a soul in which Christianity lived so naturally could more easily cope with the environment, not taking offense at Julius II, the pope of whom Machiavelli, who was certainly not particularly moral himself, said that he was a devilish soul, a man who would have liked to bare his teeth at anyone who crossed him. And of the following popes, with whom Raphael lived, there is not much of a Christian tale to tell either. A soul like Savonarola's clashes with such popes. He confronts them as the Baptist once confronted people in his apt words, but not the soul of Raphael, who has already gone through this in some previous life, which we will not talk about here. Raphael's soul remains untouched in its Christian self-evidence.

But artistically, his soul must be active. Artistry must be a continuation of what appeared as art in the Greek world. He must seek what he does not have within himself, and he must seek it in his surroundings. We see him, for example, walking around among the excavated ruins and ancient tombs in Rome, taking in everything, really absorbing from the outside that which is peculiar to Greek art, which he must marry with that which is self-evident to him, with Christian inwardness. It is as if Raphael's soul in a previous life had had the opportunity to be so close to Christianity that Christianity was born as a matter of course with this soul in the existence of Raphael, but that in a previous life it had been far removed from Greek culture and now had to absorb this Greek culture from the outside in order to marry it with the Christianity that he brings with him as a matter of course from a previous life. It is as if what appears out of the spiritual as a necessary result of a previous existence on earth grows together with what this soul must now take in from the outside - in contrast to the Savonarola soul. Thus the two kinds of forces that confront us in this Raphael soul grow together. And it will no longer be absurd and ridiculous to look for Raphael in an earlier life somewhere in a Christian environment that was far removed from Greek culture, which at that time poured powerful impulses into this soul, which remained dormant until this soul life had been transformed - until the next birth, of course, now without any fanaticism and without many other things that are only remotely similar to fanaticism. When this soul was reborn, it sought, because it had been far removed from Greek culture, to find it where it could, in order to absorb this Greek culture into itself.

If we can recognize the spiritual currents that came together in Raphael from a spiritual scientific perspective, can we grasp them, then we learn to understand how both had such a significant effect on this soul: [on the one hand] the natural Christian internalization through his individuality and [on the other hand] the Greek element, through the environment into which the soul was drawn because it lacked that which was an important, a great point of passage through all epochs of human development. We see how Raphael, through the merging of these two things, one individual and one rooted in the general development of humanity and not received from Raphael's earlier incarnation, rises on the great tableau of general human development as if to a [special] summit. Then we understand that what arises in his soul, so infinitely internalized, is what now confronts us from his creations. If Raphael is a typically Christian soul and in it the Christian principle and the general human element of Greek culture are combined in a lawful manner, if Raphael thus absorbs the great currents of the present cycle of human development, then we may assume that something lives in his soul itself that is like an image of the lawfulness of human progress.

And so that my explanations do not seem too “mystical” to you and the “fantasy” does not seem too grotesque to you, I would now like to show you how a soul takes in something like an image of the great currents of world development , how it presents, as it were, small epochs within itself like images of great human epochs – for it is in such epochs that the development of humanity takes place – I would like to show, not with my words, but again with the struggling Herman Grimm, who says something very remarkable. In his last work, Herman Grimm wants to depict the most important highlights of Raphael's work, but how strangely he speaks of this creative, creating soul of Raphael, how curiously. For Herman Grimm, the development of Raphael's creations becomes a law of the whole world – he regards seven works as the greatest in Raphael's development. And of these seven works he says:

At twenty-one years of age he painted the Marriage of the Virgin, four years later the Entombment; four years after that the Camera della Segnatura was completed, four years after that the cartoons for the tapestries were painted and soon after that the two Madonnas. The “Transfiguration” stood at the foot of the deathbed.

A spirit that appears to the unprejudiced observer as if it were to incorporate the epochs of human development, such a spirit appears to the art observer, who looks for the characteristic, in his development in such a way that he ascends from year to year to higher and ever higher peaks; and because the last four years are not complete, the last work is also not finished.

It is often said that man is a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm; an epochal spirit like Raphael appears to us here as a microcosm of human and spiritual development itself. And how does he embody this? We need only turn our gaze to the two large and powerful, if now, one might say, poorly overpainted and poorly preserved, two rooms in the Vatican in the Camera della Segnatura, one of which - whether rightly or wrongly, it remains to be seen - is called “The School of Athens” and the other “The Disputa”. The whole of human development is depicted in these two pictures, which are placed opposite each other and touch the human soul so deeply. In one of the pictures, Greek culture is represented by the ennobled figures on the left and right, as it were expressing itself in the question: [Where has humanity come to, to what point has it progressed in the entire age of Greek culture,] where man still lived with the immediate surroundings of the outside world? Everything, down to the architecture, reflects the spirit of this development in this single image.

It is wrong to comment on it or interpret it in a pedantic, philistine way; it is right to try to summarize in a feeling what humanity has received on its way to Greek culture, where life in the external world has been replaced by the internalization of the human soul of the human soul, if one summarizes the entire life of humanity in an elapsed time with everything for which the human soul has longed, what it has striven for, has achieved, in one feeling: It flows towards us, it lives in this image that which this feeling fulfills with content. It is not necessary to paint the individual figures. I consider it a bad thing when travelers stand in front of a painting with a “Baedeker” in their hands and read: This is such and such - Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Pythagoras. What do we care about all the names, what do all the comments and explanations give us? The artistic breath that comes down from this picture is also what streams out of the Greek work of art – the breath that is there from the development of humanity itself, when we look at it with a sensitive, artistic heart. Then the epoch of interiorization on the opposite wall: above, the symbols of the supernatural; below, representing people, how the supersensible flows into their souls in order to interiorize them. The whole mighty contrast of an ancient time and the time of internalization, and again the breath of the new internalization itself, they flow towards us from what is called - again rightly or wrongly - “Disputa”.

From what Raphael's soul had grown, he conjured it into these scenes. And one feels it so clearly, if one can feel truthfully what lies in the souls in these two different cycles of human development, the pre-Christian and the post-Christian times. If one abstains from all intellectual judgment, all inartistic commenting – that nonsense of subjective interpretation that has become so widespread, especially in theosophical circles – and abandons oneself to direct sensation, if one artistically immerses oneself in the things one feels drawn to Raphael, to a human soul that has married interiorization in artistic creation with kinship with all spiritual things in nature, as it was present in earlier epochs.

Again – when you cross over from Florence to Bologna and have the picture in front of you: in the middle the female figure, looking upwards in a visionary manner – I don't need to mention the name, you may assume, for my sake, that this is the “Saint Cecilia” - so expressed that in every gesture, in every line, in every color scheme, the soul's detachment from the physical is shown. She looks up, so that both from the central figure, as from the four surrounding ones, it is clear: The earthly instruments fall to the ground directly from the feeling; but the soul, which is directed upwards – we feel that its tones have fallen silent – listens to what is born as if from the supersensible, what sounds through the world, warming it like the music of the spheres, in the presence of which earthly music fades away. Only a soul that feels so inwardly as the Raphael soul could conjure this on the canvas, on the wall. And only a soul that was like the Raphael soul could create the highest that the human soul can feel, straight from the depths of the human soul. If spiritual science in its universality wants to elevate the human soul to the origin of human existence, then it comes to what has been explained here many times: that we may be surrounded by many things on earth, that we may look at many things, but that precisely that which presents itself to us in strict spiritual scientific contemplation as the innermost part of our nature, that is of extra-terrestrial origin – it lives, as I said the day before yesterday, in the spiritual and soul that surrounds us, just as the Earth's atmosphere physically surrounds us; and we feel that this, which is the most human of all, is born out of the spirit.

If we want to have a representation of that, of the most human of the human, if we want to feel and experience in our soul what spiritual science is able to stimulate in the soul, then we feel the earth with everything that belongs to the earth, we disappear and the most human of the human floats by, our soul is absorbed in the extra-terrestrial worlds. It turns its gaze outwards to seek in these extra-terrestrial worlds that which is the origin of man; and it transports itself outwards, seeking to sensualize the supersensible in the cloud-forming regions. From the cloud-forming regions, we find the image of the most human of humanity pressing towards the earth, as Raphael lets this mysterious union of mother and son float in, born out of the stylized clouds. Our soul rises from the feeling that flashes in us in the figure of the so-called “Saint Cecilia” to the delicately tangible supersensible feeling of the mystery of man originating from extraterrestrial worlds.

And when we allow this feeling, which awakens an infinite warmth in our soul, to be just feeling – it is the one feeling into which the currents of spiritual scientific contemplation ultimately converge – when we allow this feeling to prevail within us and seek a satisfactory representation – seek something that meets the feeling from the outside – then we imagine the “Sistine Madonna” from Dresden. The spiritual feeling grows together with what Raphael has depicted in this picture. Line and color, hand movement and gesture present to us what is meant: the encounter of spiritual ideals with the highest artistic ideals, with the religious feelings in us, the encounter of that feeling which, in all that is pictorial, is able to flame, the encounter of this feeling with what flows towards us from Raphael's creation, the encounter of the feeling with the creature of the imagination, which itself has grown out of such a feeling.

One may gladly fall silent when one has reached the description of the feelings that ultimately lead to the grasp of the supersensible. Raphael, however, appears to us as a riddle that is the task of spiritual science. And deep down we can understand why someone like Herman Grimm, who everywhere penetrates to spiritual science and longs to find in Raphael's figures something that corresponds to spiritual science, but because he cannot find it, leaves his observation unfinished. Such an example shows quite clearly what has had to be said so often: the legacy of the nineteenth century consists in the fact that the external science of that century, the external observation and the external recreation of nature, was destined to reach a peak that cannot be admired enough. But it has left behind riddles, so that in our age this external science must lead to spiritual science.

One is enriched and stimulated to occupy oneself with Raphael spiritually when one considers the peculiar struggle of Herman Grimm. And then one can feel how peculiar it must have been in the soul of Herman Grimm, and one comes to say the same thing that has been attempted here with all too inadequate means. It is strange that in the introduction to his consideration of Raphael we find a peculiar thought sprouting up in Herman Grimm's soul – just as thoughts sometimes arise from the deep, subconscious regions of the soul – a peculiar thought that makes one wonder: why precisely this thought when considering Raphael's soul?

I see developments of humanity that I will be denied the opportunity to participate in...

- he doubts that the soul will truly live again in later incarnations.

... but which seem to me so gloriously beautiful that for their sake it would be well worth while to begin human existence all over again.

It is strange, one might say, grotesquely dryly: precisely where Herman Grimm cannot approach Raphael's life because he cannot view it from the point of view of repeated earthly lives, the idea of repeated earthly lives occurs to him. When one looks at Raphael, he says, one is drawn to the thought of starting life all over again.

We need not comment further on such a thought, but merely let it hint, as it does from the subconscious in Herman Grimm, who will one day be the solution to the Raphael riddle. And if we must see the solution to many of the riddles that live in every human soul - the smallest as well as the greatest - in the fact of repeated lives on earth, then the great riddles of human development will also become particularly understandable to us at their peak if we are able to draw on the doctrine of repeated lives on earth. Then an infinitely deep meaning flows into the developmental history of humanity.

And when we are imbued with the feeling that souls like Raphael's themselves put the forces of humanity into them, in order to apply them in a new life in new forms, then we feel vividly towards Raphael what Herman Grimm once concluded and at the same time began his reflection on Raphael with, and with what we also want to conclude what should be explained by today's reflections on Raphael. Particularly when one sees, in the sense of spiritual-scientific observation, how deeply Raphael's soul is rooted in the whole sense of human development, then one really feels what Herman Grimm suggests at the beginning of his consideration of Raphael. And here too spiritual science shows us, not in abstract forms, what the inner life of the soul is, but it kindles devotion to everything that is full of spirit, full of strength and fruitful in human development. What Herman Grimm was able to say from the depths of his soul can only emerge from such a contemplation as we have given today. Yes, with such a feeling we may look up to Raphael, and so we can say:

Everyone wants to know about the life's work of such a person. Raphael has become one of the elements on which the higher education of the human spirit is based. We want to approach him because we need him for our well-being.

Yes, and the development of humanity is intertwined with such a power, which flows into its sphere because it will, must live in ever new aspects in this soul, and this power will in turn flow out into other souls. So spiritual research can also express the same words that Herman Grimm said:

People will always want to know about Raphael. About the young, beautiful painter who surpassed all the others. Who had to die young. Whose death was mourned by all of Rome. Even if Raphael's works are lost, his name will remain ingrained in people's minds.

And spiritual science can add: The power that was in his soul will live on and on, in ever new and new forms, in ever more creative development of humanity!