The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The truths of religious documents come from the depths of wisdom. Many people will say, however: ‘You give us something complicated; we want the gospel to be simple and naive. Great truths should not be complicated.’ In a way they are right, but not only simple but also wisdom-filled thinking must be able to find the most sublime truths. The point of view from which we consider these things cannot be high enough. In future we must let go more and more of the desire for ease and enter into the most profound insights with great seriousness.

Today we want to gain understanding of the promised spirit of truth. These words concern a secret initiation.

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments,’ the Christ said. ‘Love’ here refers to the trust that exists between teacher and pupils in an esoteric relationship. The most profound secrets of the soul are passed from one individual to another, in a most intimate way. The words of the Bible we want to consider today are:

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled! You believe in god, you also believe in me. There are many rooms in my father's house ...’

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask this father and he will give you another counsellor to be with you in all eternity—the spirit of truth whom the world has not the power to receive; for it does not see him and does not recognize him. You, however, recognize him; for he remains with you and shall be in you.’

‘He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And someone who loves me shall be loved by my father, and I shall love him and make myself apparent to him. Judas, not Iscariot, said to him: Lord, what has happened, that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him: Someone who loves me will keep my word; and my father shall love him, and we shall go to him and make our abode with him.’¹⁰⁸

‘Father’—that is the inmost power of soul. It is to be revealed to the close disciples. Judas asked: ‘What has happened, that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?’ Judas thus said openly that something was to be revealed to the close disciples.

Jesus said: ‘We shall make our abode with the father.’ This was the most important part of the pouring out of the spirit that began with the words: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled!’ The Christ was going to prepare the abode for his close disciples: In my father's house there are many dwelling places.’

Let us gain insight into these words. The degree of conscious awareness which man has gained will never be lost again. One has to get out of the habit of any other idea. ‘Giving oneself up to the cosmic mind’ often means people wallowing in this, believing this to be redemption. There is no such cosmic mind and there never will be. The ability to say ‘I’ is now achieved by man. The the more he says ‘I’ and works out of the I to purify his three lower bodies—the astral body, ether body and physical body—the more strongly will he develop his I and develop into the future. A human being can thus become consciously selfless, because he wills it. The time will come when all human beings will have reached the summit of I-development. And yet they can selflessly take up the spirit of the community. We are sitting in this room together, and the common spirit in it is like a point from which everything radiates out together. But this common spirit may also radiate freely from every individual heart and move through this room. Let us remember how the godhead is reflected in the world. It has made the sacrifice and poured all its life into its mirror image. Let us now imagine that we, too, can pour our life into countless mirror images, so that each individual mirror image would say: I and my origin are one. That is how all human beings once came forth from the keeping of the godhead like mirror images of the godhead. They finally become empty ‘I’s, with astral body, ether body and physical body transformed, and they enter into the world of the spirit and utter the deepest secret of their being: ‘I and my father are one!’¹⁰⁹ The animal-humans of Lemurian times could never become spiritual by themselves, but only by taking up the divine droplets. At the end of their evolution, cleansed and purified, they will be able to say: ‘I and my father are one.’

We are gazing back into far distant times. There was still a great deal of volcanic activity on earth in Lemurian times. The creatures that lived then were very different. That was the time when man first received the element he was to develop as soul. Going back even further we see soul nature above and bodily nature below still as one nature. The two were united in god's keeping. Then the physical stream down below was left to itself and developed into the animal-man ofLemurian times. The upper developed in soul and spirit. The body had to be prepared first down below, so that it might receive the soul coming from above.

The spirit that prevailed in the common origin of both souls and bodies is the father spirit; that is the father.

The spirit that prevailed down below in the physical realm, whilst the spiritual went its separate ways up above, is the son spirit; that is the son.

And the spirit that prevailed up above in the soul sphere until it was able to descend into the physical realm, that is the holy spirit.

In Lemurian times, when the soul first incarnated, there was a pouring out of the spirit: ‘And god breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’¹¹⁰ That was the first outpouring of the spirit, an unconscious outpouring. Man was to live in a dream for a long time yet. It was only in the second half of the Atlantean period that he gained the ability to calculate, to think logically, and to observe the world outside correctly in its relationships. In the first half of the Atlantean period, a human being would see another human being as a coloured cloud. The cloud would be reddish brown if the other individual was not sympathetic, was an enemy. A violet reddish cloud indicated a sympathetic individual, a friend. Other things would also be perceived like this. If a golden yellow cloud rose like a kind of misty form between the astral and the physical, this indicated that a useful metal was to be found here. A dull, bluish red cloud with strange lines to delimit it, of the kind which only a mineral can have, indicated a useless metal. Human beings gradually separated out more and more; limiting their feelings by having a skin, and external, physical sensory perception developed. In earliest Atlantean times, human beings had perceptions like those a fish or a snail has today—not a turtle or a crocodile. The new sensory perception developed when man began to breathe with a lung. The production of blood and inner I-activity were also connected with this.

A residual effect of the I on the blood can still be seen today if we go pale with fear or red with shame. This still shows direct I-activity. It is something that has remained from a time when the I had a powerful influence on the blood. Today the inner power of the I only shows itself in gestures, in going red or turning pale. Today people can gesticulate with their hands in their enthusiasm; then the blood was able to create organs out of the body under the I-impulse. The fingers developed in this way, for example. By the end of the Atlantean period, the human beings of that time were beginning to be similar to the human beings of today.

Blood bonds were stronger in the past than they are now. The bond between blood relatives was much stronger. An example would be the following. Two modern authors have given an excellent picture of the rural population, but in different ways. Anzengruber's¹¹¹ figures are clear-cut, almost as if cut in stone. Rosegger¹¹² takes many individual outward traits and combines them in a whole. He would make notes as he observed people and use these in his writing. Rosegger was wondering how Anzengruber was able to write about country people, seeing that he had never lived among them and observed them. Anzengruber told him the very reason that he was able to present the people so well was that he did not know them. All his forebears had been farming people, and so the ways of fanners were in his blood. He wrote about farmers his forebears had known, and he did so out of the blood.¹¹³

In earlier times, humanity consisted of many small groups. Reading Tacitus' Germania.¹¹⁴ one finds numerous small tribes listed who were related by blood and to whom the blood relationship meant something special. In the days of the Old Testament patriarchs, marriage was always within the tribe, with the same blood in everyone's veins. The memory of the descendants would then go right back to the times of their ancestors. The descendant would remember his ancestors the way we remember our own childhood. 900 years after Adam his descendants still remembered the events of his life. This explains why people are said to have lived to such great ages in the Bible.¹¹⁵ For as far back as a person could then remember, the I that went through generations would be called ‘Adam’ for example. A common I lived in the tribe, and it lived in the blood. Because of this the shedding of blood called for blood revenge. And the whole tribe would revenge itself for the blood of a single member by means of blood revenge.

Close marriage gradually changed and finally became distant marriage. The tribes became international. The principle of pure humanity gained the upper hand.

The son principle was active in the physical realm, in the love among relations that was based on blood. But the soul became progressively more individual, so that the blood was moving in wider and wider groups, getting further away from the tribal community.

All the ancient systems of government were based on the principle of blood relationship. The ten commandments of the Jews are tribal laws. Something connected with the Jewish people was not yet connected with the whole of mankind. Then the son spirit came to earth in the Christ and his blood flowed. Blood which until then had only created close bonds was poured out. This brought it about that all close bonds flowed out into a brotherhood for all humanity. The narrowly limited feeling of self where it was not yet possible to say: ‘Anyone who does not leave father and mother, wife, children, brother and sister and also his personal life cannot be my disciple’—such self-seeking had to run out from the redeemer's wounds. The capacity for love was gained as the blood of the Christ flowed, overcoming blood-brotherhood, tribe and nation. If we had been able to collect drops of blood by the cross, we would in all truth and reality have had the substance that thus transforms human beings. The goal is for human beings to find their relationship to all human beings, with love not only between brother and sister, but between human being and human being. The physical blood that flowed from the wounds of the Christ is the embodiment of the redeemer principle. This blood is a significant redemption symbol.

Humanity is to find the spirit again, fully and wholly. They had it once, but only dimly so, in a nebulous way. Later it assumed the form in which human beings see the world today. But they only see this world, only one side of things. With this view, man is cut off from the life of the spirit as if by a veil. He now needs to be taken beyond individual conscious awareness, which has made him an I, and gain awareness of the whole world again. This is why the blood of Christ was scattered—from narrow tribe to the wide world. The cross made it possible to achieve this. From the cross, the blood flowed into the whole of humanity. At the same time, however, the cross made the I grow more and more narrow and individual. All this has come to us through Christianity.

But when people are thus left to their own resources, with no tribe to give them context and with self-awareness enhanced, egotism must also increase. Christ Jesus foresaw this. He saw the coming of materialism, and made Christianity a bulwark against it.

In antiquity, everything rested on blood-brotherhood. This is clear from ancestor worship. Many legends were based on the figure of an ancestral hero such as Theseus¹¹⁶ or Cadmus.¹¹⁷ The principle governed both laws and commandments. Then, however, external institutions began to determine the life of the community. This only developed with the spread of Christianity, however. What do people see in the international idea today? A principle that is more powerful than the power of the state. The great powers that rule the world today are international. They are called money, transport, industry, and so on. Nothing to do with the blood-brotherhood of old any more. The other side of the coin is materialism. Egotistical thinking lives in a machine. How different were the ways in which ancient Greeks saw their god Zeus, remembering that the father principle lay at the base of all. Where do we find anything divine in public life today? Machines, railways and so on all serve egotistical aims. This will come to play a special role in the future. In the war of all against all it will go to extremes.

The Christ did create the bond that will unite all humanity, but something else has to come together with this act of redemption. Inner responses from person to person live in people who feel drawn to the Christ. His deed is the great bond that can unite the spirit again with the physical. Today people still control the physical world to serve their egotism. One day they must use it to serve the spirit. The spirit must unite with the son so that the two, united, become one with the father.

The Christ said: ‘No one comes to the father except through me.’¹¹⁸ Each should say: ‘I am as the branch on the vine.’¹¹⁹ Then the Christ overcomes the egotism in human organisms. The father spirit, the spirit of common origin, must enter into our individual selves, and then the I works on the father principle. Every I then builds its own house, and yet they are all united in the Christ principle. ‘There are many rooms in my father's house’,¹⁰⁸ said the Christ. These are the dwellings which human I-natures build for themselves. The Christ must, however, prepare the place, the dwelling place. And for this it is necessary for the spirit to come that unites human beings—the spirit of truth.

It is the purpose of theosophy to teach human beings the things they have in common; it is to bring the higher wisdom, the spirit of truth. People differ in their opinions for as long as they do not yet have the highest knowledge. The gnostics called mysticism ‘mathesis’, for in mathematics none can say he differs from someone else in his opinions. Two scientists can never disagree over a mathematical axiom. There it is not a matter of human wishes. For the great wisdom we must first rid ourselves of our wishes. Only those who seek to study the spirit of truth, wholly free from personal wishes, will be ripe to receive it. The highest knowledge unites human beings, there is no opinion or notion. The spirit of truth must shine upon people. Then they may indeed be dispersed through different dwelling places, but the spirit of truth will unite them. The common spirit must govern the truth held by individual I-natures if the house which the I builds for itself is to fit in with the spiritual principle. The Christ promised his disciples the spirit of truth at Pentecost. Then the disciples spoke in different tongues, then all nations learned to understand one another. Egotism may indeed wax more and more, but every human I will have the spirit of community if it partakes in the spirit of truth. Those who wish to achieve this must live in the spirit of John's gospel. That is true theosophy. Just as all plants turn to the sun as they grow, wherever they may be, so all I-natures will turn to the sun of the spirit, the spiritual light of truth.

• 108. Bible quotes from John 14: 1-2, 15-17, 21-23.
• 109. John 10: 30.
• 110. Genesis 2: 7.
• 111. Anzengruber, Ludwig (1839–1889), Austrian playwright and novelist. Rudolf Steiner wrote an obituary on him, published in Steiner R. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur, 1884–1902. (GA 32) S. 16 ff..
• 112. Rosegger, Peter (1843–1918), Austrian poet and novelist
• 113. ‘Went for a walk with Anzengruber on another occasion ... We talked about writing and the subjects one had for writing. I said he must have lived in Upper Bavaria himself or at least had a great deal to do with the fanning people there. His figures were very reminiscent of this type of people. He put his pince-nez on his sharply curved nose and said: “Upper Bavaria? No, I have never really met those country people. At least not enough to know them.” Realizing that this surprised me: “I don't need that. Just need to see one of them from a distance, hear a few everyday words, observe perhaps one of his gestures—and I know that fellow inside out!”—“Strange!”—“My dear fellow,” he said, “you know it yourself. All outer occasions and situations are just the midwives. The writer must give birth himself. Farmers—ha! I'm a city man myself! But if as you say, I write better about country people than about city people, this is probably in the blood. Or in some bone or other, like inherited gout. My forefathers on my father's side were farmers in Upper Austria. And well, such things are still lurking about.”’ Gesammelte Werke von Peter Rosegger, Leipzig 1914–1916, 36. Band, Gute Kameraden—Persönliche Erinnerungen an berühmte und eigenartige Zeitgenossen, Seite 145 f
• 114. Tacitus, Cornelius (c. 55–166), greatest Roman historian. The second part of his work De origine et situ Germanorum, chapters 28-46, gives descriptions of the individual Germanic tribes.
• 115. E.g. Genesis, Chapter 5.
• 116. King ofThebes, hero who killed the Minotaur.
• 117. A Phoenician prince who killed a dragon and sowed its teeth. An army grew from them who fought one another until only five survived. Cadmus founded the city of Thebes with them.
• 118. John 14: 6.
• 119. John 15: 5 (variant).
• 108. Bible quotes from John 14: 1-2, 15-17, 21-23.

Our task here is to talk about some things that will lead to an understanding of our own era. We know that the development here on earth takes place in such a way that man can undergo new experiences and gain new insights in each of his embodiments on earth. Therefore, the events of our earthly development are arranged in such a way that man does not encounter the same conditions twice in two successive incarnations; that is to say, the earth changes in the epoch between the two incarnations. But external knowledge does not look at this in sufficient depth to see how everything changes fundamentally over long periods of time. But from this we can also conclude that we can only understand ourselves thoroughly if we know what the age of the development of the earth is in which we live, and if we can form a picture of the near future of the earth. We will have to take into account that man, as he faces us in life, having developed over infinitely long periods of time, is a very complicated being.

The human being as a waking being is fundamentally different from the human being in a state of sleep. We know that during sleep the four elements of his being are split into two groups, so that the physical and etheric bodies lie in the repository and the astral body and the I move out into the spiritual world to live according to the laws of that spiritual world. We have already learned that the physical and etheric bodies could not exist in their present form if they were completely abandoned by the astral body and the I, without something else being able to replace them. Without this possibility, the sleeping human being would be of no more value than a plant. A plant is indeed capable of life as a self-contained organism, but not the sleeping human being, because the latter has arranged his physical and etheric bodies in such a way that they must be permeated by his astral body and his ego. So while the human ego and the astral body leave the person, during this time another entity of the same value, a divine spiritual astral body and a matching ego, permeates the physical and etheric body at night. That which remains dormant in the human being is left to the external spiritual powers of the world. That which is in the physical world is thus incorporated into the great spiritual powers of the macrocosm, and all spiritual beings belonging to it work unimpaired by the human ego and astral body.

Today we want to get to know some of these forces of the great world that affect human beings. These conditions are intricately complicated in their interaction between the spiritual forces of the world and the human being. The latter is indeed a small world, and during sleep something flows from the great world into this small world like a mirror image. We can only understand all this if we penetrate into the deep secrets of the world.

In today's humanity, this or that truth is found by science, and one then believes that one possesses this truth as such securely. But the anthroposophist should also develop a feeling for the weight of this or that truth, whether one or the other is essential or inessential, whether it is a cheap, obvious truth or whether it leads us deep into the secrets of the world. This lack of understanding can be seen when undoubted truths are presented that are supposed to be decisive for important conclusions, for example, in the number of bones and muscles of humans in comparison to higher animals. Whether this truth is important or unimportant for the position of humans in relation to animals is not readily apparent from the fact itself. Another important truth, which we should actually come across directly every day, is that, in comparison to all other creatures on earth and in contrast to them, man can look freely into space with his face in the physical sense, to raise himself with his thoughts, his ideas, to what does not belong to the earth. The animals cannot rise from the earth, cannot free themselves from it. And no matter how much the similarity of the development of apes to that of man is emphasized, it is immediately apparent that the ape has not succeeded in straightening its posture when walking and standing. Therefore, we must regard this rising of man from the earth as a very important truth in a spiritual sense. Everything we find in man is a microcosmic imitation of the great world. Man's free elevation is expressed in the relationship of the head to the other limbs of the human being, as a relationship in a microcosm. But the same thing can be found outside in the great world, namely in the relationship between the sun and the earth. By letting this sink in, we get the feeling that the animal is already determined in its organization by the earth alone, but that the sun has determined man in his free outlook, in his feeling and thinking. This contrast cannot be understood at first go, so let us approach it slowly.

We feel our belonging to the universe when we know that it is the sun that sends certain forces to the earth so that man could develop into the organization he now has. From the forces of the sun, he is directed with his head upwards, while the earth pulls him downwards with his limbs. The limbs receive their orders from the head, just as the earth receives its guidance from the sun.

Today we want to highlight another contrast. In what has been said so far, all people are equal. There is no distinction between women and men. But the human organism does show the contrast between man and woman. In view of the analogies we have indicated, we ask: Is there in the great universe a contrast such as that between man and woman, just as there is between the head and the limbs? It must be particularly emphasized here that spiritual science has nothing to do with the representations that would like to extend the contrast between the masculine and the feminine to the whole great world. These are emanations of a schematic materialism of our time. Our present remarks are not meant that way; it is only a naughtiness of our present science. What is meant here is that the opposition between man and woman is only the lowest expression of an opposition in the macrocosm. In earthly existence, we must first point out that when we speak of the opposition between man and woman, we can only speak of the two outer covers, the physical and etheric bodies. For the astral body and I have nothing to do with this opposition, and therefore nothing to do with the following discussions.

Let us first note the fact established by clairvoyant insight, that basically only the head and limbs can give a true impression of a person. Since the spiritual is involved in everything physical, we must pay attention to the extent to which the physical can be an expression of the spiritual, and whether a true or false picture is given. Only the head and limbs give a true picture. Everything else does not correspond to the spiritual; this also applies to the male and female in man. Only the head and the limbs are recognized by the spiritual researcher as a true reflection of the spiritual; everything else is distorted. This is due to the fact that the separation into man and woman can be traced back to the Lemurian period, when a single form united within itself all that we now see as separate. This separation occurred in order to make it possible to connect an ever more material becoming with further development. Thus, man has increasingly materialized his form from an original spiritual form. For in the form of the neutral sex, he was still a form closer to the spirit. With the further development that then occurred in the direction of the feminine, this retained, as it were, an earlier form in which man was still more spiritual. The female form retained this more spiritual form and did not descend as deeply into the material as would have corresponded to the normal development. Thus woman has retained a more spiritual form from an earlier stage of development. She has thus preserved something that is actually untrue. She is also supposed to be the image of the spiritual, but she is distorted in the material sense. It is exactly the opposite with man. He has skipped the normal point of development, thus reaching beyond it, and forms an outer shape that is more material than the shadowy shape behind him, which corresponds to the normal mean.

Woman stands before this true mean; man has gone beyond it. Neither of them represents the true human being. Therefore, it is not the highest, most perfect thing we find in the human form. That is why people tried to add to it what is formed in the old priestly robes to make the human form, especially the male one, appear more true than it is by nature. They had a sense that nature can also record something. The female form leads us back to an earlier stage of existence on earth, to the old lunar age. The male form leads us beyond the earth's time into the Jupiter existence, but in a form that is not yet viable for it.

Now there is also an opposite in the macrocosm that corresponds to the opposite of the masculine and feminine, namely in what we see in the cometary and lunar, which shows itself as the opposite between the comets and the moon. The moon is a piece of the earth that separated from it later than when the sun broke away. What the earth could not use was eliminated, because otherwise the human form would have ossified and become woody in its development. The moon would have closed human development too quickly. It now represents, completely withered and frozen, that which will only be viable again later as a Jupiter being, but which is now as good as dead.

The comet represents something that protrudes from the old moon existence into our earth existence, something that is held back in its development and thus has not developed as far as the earth, something that remained at a higher, more spiritual level. The moon, on the other hand, emerged from our earth and went beyond it. The earth itself stands between the two. Thus, comets and moons, like female and male forms, are to be regarded as having remained behind and progressed beyond the normal process of development. In a certain sense, the comet behaves like the female nature in the human being. We can make ourselves still more clearly understood by comparing what the comet means for the development of the earth. If we realize that this follows the development of the moon and precedes the existence of Jupiter, we must be aware that the laws of nature on the old moon were different from those on the earth, and we can see this to some extent in the comets. Incidentally, it should be mentioned that the existence of comets is an example of how science later confirmed what I said in my lecture at the Theosophical Congress in Paris in June 1906: that comets preserve the earlier natural laws of the old moon. Among other things, certain carbon compounds, cyanic and prussic acid compounds, played a role on the old moon. It should therefore be possible to detect these cyanic and prussic acid compounds in the comet. And indeed, spectral analysis has since proved that there are prussic acid compounds in the comet. Thus the indications of spiritual science agree with the facts found by material science.

What does the cometary existence mean for the earth? What mission is associated with it? The answers to these questions should at least be given comparatively, and it should be pointed out that two different lives take place on earth in the contrast between man and woman. First, there is the course of everyday events in the family from morning to evening, with a regularity like summer and winter, like sunshine and storms and weather and hail. This can go on for a while. But then something happens that makes a significant and lasting change, and that is when a child is born. This interrupts the conventional course of things, and something new remains in the lives of the man and woman. We can compare this with the task that the comet has as a task for life on earth. It brings into our earthly life what comes from the female element of the cosmos. When the comet appears, it causes a jolt in the further development of humanity. Not so much in the actual progress itself, but in everything else that is instilled into humanity. We can observe this in Halley's Comet, in the spiritual forces behind it. Something new for the development of the Earth has always been associated with its appearance. At present it is about to reappear. With this, a new stage in the materialistic sense will be initiated and born. This can be seen from the last three appearances in the years 1682, 1759 and 1835. In 1759, the forces and spiritual powers that brought the spirit of materialistic enlightenment were at work. What had developed in this sense, at the suggestion of the spirits and powers behind Halley's comet, was what, for example, so annoyed Goethe about the “Système de la nature” by Baron von Holbach and the French encyclopedists. When Halley's Comet reappeared in 1835, materialism was quite conspicuously reflected in the views of Büchner and Moleschott, and these were then adopted in the materialism of the second half of the 19th century in the widest circles. In the present year, 1910, we are witnessing a new apparition of the old comet, and that means a year of crisis with regard to the view just discussed. All the forces are at work here to give birth to an even more superficial, worse sense in the human soul, a materialistic swamp of world view. Humanity is facing an enormous test, a trial in which it will be a matter of humanity proving that, in the face of the threat of the deepest fall, the impulse to ascend is also strongest in all respects. Otherwise it would not be possible for man to overcome the resistance that materialistic views place in his way. If man were not exposed to materialism, he could not overcome it by his own efforts. And now the opportunity arises to make a choice between the spiritual and the materialistic direction. The conditions for this year of crisis are being sent to us from the cosmos.

Spiritual science is something that is read from the great signs of heaven and brought into the world by those who know how to interpret these great signs, these mighty characters. So that humanity is warned against taking the materialistic path, which is outwardly recognizable in the appearance of Halley's Comet, a counter-impulse must be given by spiritual science. Thus, the forces for the upward path are also sent to us from the cosmos through other signs.

At the time of the event of Golgotha, the vernal point of the sun had been in the sign of Aries for some time. This point moves through all twelve constellations of the zodiac in the course of 25,920 years. The advance has now occurred in such a way that we have now entered the constellation of Pisces with the vernal point. By the middle of the twentieth century, we will have reached a certain point in this constellation. The constellation of Aries now marks the end of the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, which, according to Oriental philosophy, began in 3101 BC. At that time, the vernal point of the sun passed through the constellation of Taurus. This event was depicted in the Persian Mithras bull and the Egyptian Apis bull. We find depictions of the passage through the constellation of Aries in the legend of the Argonauts with the Golden Fleece, and then in Christ as the Lamb, as the first Christians usually depicted him at the foot of the cross.

The age of Kali Yuga came to an end in 1899. It lasted from 3101 BC to 1899 AD, for 5000 years, during which time people had to rely on their physical senses alone to observe what was happening on the physical plane, without the ability to use clairvoyance to help them. Now the abilities are beginning to prepare themselves, which will be able to lead human nature back to spiritual development. It was only in the Kali Yuga that the ego could and had to develop into the consciousness that is its own, in the only way possible during this time. From now on, a clairvoyant consciousness can join this sense of self, which will develop within the next 2500 years, whereby a spiritual grasp of the world will then be added to the physical-sensual one. To make this possible, the powers will be sent to us around the middle of the 20th century, so that people will then begin to see the etheric and astral bodies, and in such a way that this will already occur as a natural ability in some exceptional people. When a person then wants to carry out a preconceived plan, an intention of some kind, a kind of vision will appear to him, which is nothing other than a preview of the karmic fulfillment of the deed that has been done. In the meantime, humanity can plunge into the quagmire of materialistic worldviews and views of life. But then it will easily happen that the weak abilities of clairvoyance that show up during this time will be ignored as such, and people who already possess them will be regarded as fools and fantasists. For anyone who has never heard of spiritual science will not recognize these delicate abilities. But nevertheless these signs are true. However, if the spiritual world view triumphs, humanity will carefully cultivate the abilities hinted at, so that the persons endowed with them will be able to bring spiritual truths down from the spiritual world.

Under such circumstances, we can say: We are standing before an important point in the evolution of the world, which we must prepare, so that in its arising, our Earth will not be trampled to death with rough feet, when it wants to cover itself with a new faculty. What will then be seen as the spiritual world, with spiritual organs, as a spiritual atmosphere, is something that today only the initiated can recognize. But it will take a considerable time before the first tender abilities have developed to this degree or even to the height at which ancient humanity knew them in their ecstatic states, albeit only in their dream-like clairvoyance. But like a spiritual shell, this constantly developing ability will be spread around our earth. The Oriental scriptures, especially the Tibetan, speak much of a land which has disappeared, and they speak with sadness of Shamballa, a land which disappeared in the age of Kali Yuga. But it is rightly said that the initiates can withdraw to Shamballa to get from there what they need to further humanity in their development. All Bodhisattvas draw strength and wisdom from the land of Shamballa. For the average person, it has disappeared. But there are prophecies that this land of Shamballa will return to humanity. When the delicate powers of clairvoyance show themselves and become more and more intensified and widespread, and when these, as the good forces that come from the sun's existence, are received and allowed to work instead of the forces from Halley's Comet, then Shamballa will return. We are in the period of preparation for Humanity for this unfoldment of a new clairvoyance, which will take place during the next 2,500 years, a preparation which will steadily continue both in the time between birth and death and in the time between death and a new birth. What will then take place will be the subject of the next lecture.

In the last lecture we described the worlds through which the human being has to pass after death, when everything that binds him to his physical instrument has been laid aside in Kamaloca or—as we say in Rosicrucian Theosophy—in the Elemental world. We also spoke of “Rupa-Devachan,” or the region known as the Heaven world, the world of Inspiration. We heard that this region-the Spirit-Land proper-has a fourfold constitution, like the physical world. There is the Continental region, permeated by a flowing oceanic region which is more aptly to be compared with the blood circulation in the human organism. In the surrounding “air” of Devachan which is analogous to the atmosphere of our earth, is to be found all that pervades the souls of beings in the physical world in the way of joys, sufferings, sorrows, afflictions, only this air must be conceived in a much wider sense because this world is the dwelling-place of other, quite different Beings who are not incarnate in physical bodies. Finally we heard how in the fourth region of Devachan everything that is truly original, from the most trivial to the most lofty inspiration of the inventor or artist, exists as an archetype. In this world Lies the motive force of the progress of our earth. But in addition to these constituent realms of the spiritual world proper, we find that which links our earth with still higher worlds.

Up to now we have been considering things that have reference only to earth-evolution, not those that transcend this evolution. A man who attains Initiation acquires knowledge of what our earth was in the past and will be in the future, of what links the earth with worlds beyond our system.

Important above all in Devachan, in this “world of Reason”, is the Akasha Chronicle as we are accustomed to call it. The Akasha Chronicle is not actually brought into being in Devachan but in an even higher region; when, however, the seer has risen to the world of Devachan, he can begin to perceive what is known as the Akasha Chronicle.

What is the Akasha Chronicle? We can form the truest conception of it by realising that what comes to pass on our earth makes a lasting impression upon certain delicate essences, an impression which can be discovered by a seer who has attained Initiation. It is not an ordinary but a living Chronicle. Suppose a human being lived in the first century after Christ; what he thought, felt and willed in those days, what passed into deeds—this is not obliterated but preserved in this delicate essence. The seer can behold it-not as if it were recorded in a history book, but as it actually happened. How a man moved, what he did, a journey he took—it can all be seen in these spiritual pictures; the impulses of will, the feelings, the thoughts, can also be seen. But we must not imagine that these pictures are images of the physical personalities. That is not the case. To take a simple example.—When a man moves his hand, his will pervades the moving hand and it is this force of will that can be seen in the Akasha Chronicle. What is spiritually active in us and has flowed into the Physical, is there seen in the Spiritual. Suppose, for example, we look for Caesar. We can follow all his undertakings, but let us be quite clear that it is rather his thoughts that we see in the Akasha Chronicle; when he set out to do something we see the whole sequence of decisions of the will to the point where the deed was actually performed. To observe a specific event in the Akasha Chronicle is not easy. We must help ourselves by linking on to external knowledge. If the seer is trying to observe some action of Caesar and takes an historical date as a point of focus, the result will come more easily. Historical dates are, it is true, often unreliable, but they are sometimes of assistance. When the seer directs his gaze to Caesar, he actually sees the person of Caesar in action, phantom-like, as though he were standing before him, speaking with him. But when a man is looking into the past, various things may happen to him if, in spite of possessing some degree of seership, he has not entirely found his bearings in the higher worlds.

The Akasha Chronicle is to be found in Devachan, but it extends downwards into the astral world, with the result that in this lower world the pictures of the Akasha Chronicle may often be a mirage; they are often disconnected and unreliable and it is important to remember this when we set about investigating the past. Let me indicate the danger of these possible mistakes by an example.—If through the indications of the Akasha Chronicle we are led back to the epoch in the earth's evolution when Atlantis was still in existence, before the great Flood, we can follow the happenings and conditions of life in old Atlantis. These were repeated later on, but in a different form. In north Germany, in central Europe, eastwards of Atlantis, long before the Christian era and long before Christianity made its way thither from the south, happenings took place which were a repetition of conditions in Atlantis. Only afterwards, through the influences coming from the south, did the peoples begin to lead a life that was really their own. Here is an example of how easy it is to be exposed to error.—If someone is observing the astral pictures of the Akasha Chronicle, not the devachanic pictures, he may be confused in regard to these repetitions of Atlantean conditions. This was actually the case in the indications about Atlantis given by Scott-Elliot; they tally with the astral pictures but not with the devachanic pictures of the true Akasha Chronicle. The truth of this matter had sometime to be made known. The moment we know where the source of the errors lies, it is easy to assess the indications correctly.

Another source of error may arise when reliance is placed upon indications given by mediums. When mediums are possessed of the necessary faculties, they can see the Akasha Chronicle, although in most cases only its astral reflections. Now there is something singular about the Akasha Chronicle. If we discover some person there, he behaves like a living being. If we find Goethe, for example, he may not only answer in the words which he actually spoke in his life but he gives answer in the Goethean sense; it may even happen that he utters in his own style and trend, verses he never actually wrote. The Akasha picture is so alive that it is like a force working on in the mind of the human being. Hence the picture may be confused with the individuality himself. Mediums believe that they are in contact with the dead man whose life is continuing in the spirit, whereas in reality it is only his astral Akasha-picture. The spirit of Caesar may already have reincarnated on earth and it is his Akasha picture that gives the answers in seances. It is not the individuality of Caesar but only the enduring impression which the picture of Caesar has left behind in the Akasha Chronicle. This is the basis of errors in very many spiritualist seances. We must distinguish between what remains of the human being in his Akasha-picture and what continues to evolve as the true individuality. These are matters of extreme importance.

When the human being has passed out of Kamaloca, he has weaned himself from all the habits for which a physical instrument is necessary. He enters into the region described above. The period that now begins for him is exceedingly important and we must understand what it is that happens.

All the man's earlier experiences in his life of thought and feeling, all his passions, confront him in Devachan as his environment. Firstly, he sees his own physical body in its archetypal form. Just as on the earth we move among rocks, mountains and stones, in yonder world we move among the archetypes of all the structures that exist in the physical world. A man, therefore, moves over his own physical body. The fact that his own physical body is an object outside him is a pointer to him after death, for he recognises by this that he has left Kamaloca and has entered into Devachan. On the earth he says to his body: “I am that!” In Devachan he sees his body and says: “Thou art that!”

The Vedanta Philosophy teaches its pupils to meditate upon the “Thou art That!” in order that through such exercises they may understand what it means to say to the body: “Thou art That!”

In Devachan the human being sees around him what he experienced inwardly here on earth. If he has harboured revenge, antipathy and other evil feelings towards his fellow men on earth they confront him externally like a cloud and this teaches him what significance and effect all these things have in the world.

Let us be clear about what happens to the human being in Devachan. How have the organs, the eyes, for instance, of physical man on the earth been formed? There was a time when no eye was yet in existence. The eye has been formed out of the physical Organisation by light. Light is the progenitor of the eye. What is around us on the earth creates organs in physical bodies and substances; in Devachan, what is around us works upon our being of soul. So that everything a human being has developed here on earth in the way of good and reprehensible feelings is to be found, in yonder world, in his environment; it works upon his soul and so creates organs of the soul. If a man has lived a righteous life on earth, his good qualities live around him in the “air” of Devachan; they work in the Spiritual, creating organs. These organs serve as architects and moulders for the building of the physical body in a new incarnation. What was within the human being on earth is transferred to the outer world in Devachan, and prepares the forces which build up the human body for the next birth.

But let it not be imagined that the human being has nothing to do except to care for himself; as well as this he has very important work to do in Devachan. We can form an idea of this if we consider for a moment the evolution of the earth. How greatly certain regions have changed since a couple of thousand years ago! There were then quite different plants, different animal forms, even the climate was different. In respect of the products of nature the earth's surface is continually changing. In Greece, for example, there could never again arise what sprang forth from the soil in the days of ancient Greece. Evolution proceeds precisely through the fact that the face of the earth undergoes constant change.

When a human being dies, a very long period elapses before he is born again. When he appears again on the earth he does not find the same conditions as of yore; he has to have new experiences; he is not born a second time into the same configuration of the earth; he remains in the spiritual worlds until the earth has entirely new conditions to offer him. There is good purpose in this for thereby he learns something entirely new and his development goes forward quite differently. Think, for example, of a boy in ancient Rome. His life did not in the least resemble that of a modern schoolboy; and when we ourselves are born again we, in turn, shall find quite different conditions. Thus does evolution proceed from incarnation to incarnation. While the human being sojourns in the spiritual regions described, the face of the earth is perpetually changing.

What beings are active here? By what beings are the changes in the earth's physiognomy brought about? This leads at once to the answer to the question: What is the human being doing in the period between death and a new birth? He himself is working from out the spiritual worlds, under the guidance of higher Beings, at the transformation of the earth. It is human beings themselves, between death and rebirth, who carry out this work. When they are born again they find the face of the earth changed, changed into a form which they themselves have helped to fashion. All of us have been engaged in this work.

To the question: Where is Devachan, where is the spiritual world?—I answer: It is around us all the time. In very truth it is so. Around us too are all the souls of discarnate human beings; they are at work around us. While we are building cities and machines, human beings who are living between death and a new birth are around us, working out of the spiritual realms.

When, as seers, we seek for the Dead, we can find them within the light-if we perceive the light not merely in a material way. The light that surrounds us forms the “bodies” of the Dead; they have bodies woven out of light. The light that enfolds the earth is “substance” for the beings who are living in Devachan. A plant nourished by the sunlight receives into itself not the physical light alone but in very truth the activity of spiritual beings, among whom there are also these human souls. These souls themselves ray down upon the plants as light, weaving as spiritual beings around the plants. Looking at the plants with the eye of spirit, we can say: the plant rejoices at the influences coming from the Dead who are working and weaving around it in the light. When we observe how the vegetation on the face of the earth changes and ask how this comes about, the answer is: The souls of the Dead are working in the light which enfolds the earth; here is Devachan, in very truth. After the period of Kamaloca we pass into this realm of light. Only those who are able to point to where, in truth, the Dead are to be found have any knowledge of Devachan in the sense of Rosicrucian Theosophy.

When the faculties of the seer develop, he often makes a striking discovery. When he stands in the sunlight, his body holds up the light and casts a shadow; very often he will discover the spirit for the first time when he looks into this shadow. The body holds up the light but not the spirit; and in the shadow that is cast by the body the spirit can be discovered. That is why more primitive peoples who have always possessed some measure of clairvoyance, have also called the Soul, the shadow they say “shadow-less”—“soul-less.” A novel by Adalbert Chamisso is unconsciously based on this idea: the man who has lost his shadow has also lost his soul—hence his despair.

Such, then, is the work that is performed by human beings in Devachan between death and a new birth. They are by no means in a state of inactive repose; they work creatively from Devachan at the evolution of the earth. They are not, as is often said, in a state of blissful rest or dream. Life in Devachan is just as full of activity as life on the earth.

When the human being has reached the point where he has transformed into spiritual forces his activities in the last earthly life, when these experiences have come to him from the outer world of Devachan and have worked upon him, then he is ready to come down from Devachan to a new birth. The earth draws him once again to her sphere.

When the human being descends from Devachan, he passes, first, into the astral region, the “Elemental World.” Here he receives a new astral body... If iron filings are scattered on a piece of paper and a magnet is moved about underneath, the filings arrange themselves into forms and lines, following the forces of the magnet. In exactly the same way, the irregularly distributed astral substance is attracted and arranged according to the forces which are in the soul and correspond with what this soul has achieved in the previous life. Thus the human being himself gathers together his astral body. These human beings in the making, who to begin with have only an astral body, appear to the eye of the seer like bell forms opening downwards. They shoot and whirl through the astral world with tremendous speed-with a speed that can hardly be conceived.

These incipient human beings must now receive an etheric body and a physical body. What happened hitherto, up to the stage of the formation of the astral body, depended upon themselves, upon the forces they themselves had developed. But the forming of the etheric body does not, in the present phase of evolution, depend upon the human being alone; in respect of the forming of an etheric body, man is dependent upon beings external to himself. Consequently the human being always has a fitting astral body but there is not in every case perfect accordance between the astral body and the etheric and physical bodies; this is often the cause of maladjustment and lack of satisfaction in life. These incipient human beings whirl around space as they do because they are seeking for suitable parents, parents who will afford the best possible opportunity of receiving an etheric and a physical nature befitting the astral being.

The parents who can provide this can only be relatively the best and the most suitable. Co-operating in this search are Beings who member the etheric body to the astral body and whose rank is similar to that of the Folk-Spirits. The Folk-Spirit is not the intangible abstraction it is usually considered to be. A Folk-Spirit is as real to the eye of the seer as our soul that is incarnate in our body. A whole people, although it has not a common physical body, has a common astral body and the rudiments of a common etheric body. This lives within a kind of astral cloud and is the “body” of the Folk-Spirit. Of this nature are the Beings who guide the ether-formations around the human being who is thus no longer entirely under his own control.

Now comes a moment of extreme importance, equally as important as the moment after death when the whole of the past life is seen as a memory-picture. When the human being passes into his etheric body but has not yet acquired his physical body—it is a brief moment but of supreme importance—he has a pre-vision of his coming life, not in all its details but only as a survey over what his future life has in store for him. He can say to himself (but he forgets it when he actually incarnates) that he has a happy or an unhappy life in front of him. It may happen, if a human being has had many unfortunate experiences in a previous life, that he now gets a shock and is hesitant to enter into the physical body. The result of this may be that he does not come right down into the physical body and so the connection between the several bodies is not fully established. This produces idiocy in the coming life; it is not always the cause of idiocy, but frequently so. The soul rebels, as it were, against physical embodiment. Such a human being cannot make right use of his brain because he is not properly incarnate in it. He can only use his physical instrument aright when he allows himself to be born into it in the full and proper sense. Whereas in other circumstances the etheric body extends only slightly beyond the physical body, in the case of idiots portions of the etheric body are often to be seen as an etheric sheen extending far beyond the head. Here is a case where something that is left unexplained by physical observation of life, is explained through Spiritual Science.

[ 1 ] Professor v. Heck is of the opinion that the social conditions which I promise as the final success of my proposals would "solve the social question in a happy way", but that the implementation of my proposals would not have the hoped-for effects, indeed that this implementation, if at all possible, would "not promote but harm" the common good and especially the working class. - One can hardly pass a more devastating judgment on an endeavor that pursues such goals as mine, the threefolding of the social organism. For in comparison with these aims it is of course quite worthless to put forward the dream of a happy solution to the social question and then to make impracticable proposals for bringing about this solution. Pretty much all so-called "solutions to the social question" suffer from this flaw. The moment I was forced to admit that an assessment such as that of Prof. von Heck was right, I would easily consider my own ideas to be refuted. And I would certainly not consider it shameful to make this confession publicly. For the "social question" is, on the one hand, such a comprehensive and difficult one and, on the other, something so binding that the retraction of an unsuccessful attempt can have nothing shameful about it. Prof. von Heck can therefore believe that I can respond to his presentation quite objectively. However, he misunderstands me with regard to the point of view from which he views my endeavor. I am aware that I am not at all aiming to "solve" the social question "in a happy way". I do not believe that anyone who is familiar with the psychology of the individual and the masses can strive for such an "ultimate success". My assumptions are quite different. I believe that I recognize that humanity has currently reached a point in its historical development that demands the threefolding of the social organism out of the nature of today's human being. If this demand is met, it will be possible to master the elementary unrest that has gripped mankind. If it is not met, this unrest will lead to the self-destruction of our culture. It is not because I wish to fantasize about an ultimate goal that I speak of the threefold structure, but because I believe I recognize the causes that demand this threefold structure from the present state of humanity. That is why I have not invented "proposals" for a dreamed-up final goal; rather, for me these proposals are the result of observations that I believe I have made over decades of the social development of humanity. The way in which I have arrived at these observations is proof to me that my "proposals" have nothing utopian about them. But it also makes it understandable to me how so many people come to regard the threefold structure as unclear and impracticable. Such people think they are thinking practically. But they are entangled in theoretical assumptions that they consider to be practical. They have formed these theories according to what was considered practical for a while. If this "practical" then requires a transformation through its own development, they find the newly formed "impractical" because it contradicts their usual ideas. It is precisely among the supposed "practitioners" that one finds such theorists. It seems to me that the threefold structure of the social organism will only be judged correctly by those who not only think they know what has been practical "up to now", but who have a healthy instinct for what may prove practical in its "future" development.

[ 2 ] If Prof. von Heck already misjudges the premises of my "proposals", this misjudgement becomes more and more complete as he continues to pursue what I have presented, since he does not reproduce and oppose my views as such, but replaces them almost point by point with others and then "refutes" these others. I would like to say: he creates his own threefold structure, which has very little to do with mine. I must confess: I would fight this threefold structure no less if it confronted me than Professor von Heck fights it. In this judgment I am in complete agreement with him.

[ 3 ] But I ask: have I really given cause to understand the tripartite structure in such a way that three parliaments should replace the unified state parliament in the way Professor von Heck presents it? Have I ever said or had anything printed that is equivalent to the monster "three states on the same territory"? My idea of the threefold structure demands that the affairs of spiritual culture, on the one hand, and those of economic life, on the other, should not be organized by such a representation of the people as is equivalent to what has hitherto been regarded as a "parliament". The administration of spiritual culture should arise from the same foundations from which the life of the spirit itself unfolds. Those personalities should be in this administration who take an active part in spiritual life, who bring to bear in this administration the same impulses that are at work in spiritual production. And I believe I recognize that such an administration is only possible if the administrators do not sit within the state administration, or are appointed from the spiritual realm into the state realm; but that the spiritual life is placed on a basis independent of the "state". In the state, everything that arises through it must ultimately be the outflow of the sound judgment of every responsible person. For the state strives for democratic organization. In intellectual life, only expert judgment can decide. It seems impossible to me that with further democratization of the state this expert judgment can be found within its framework. I believe that only those who are inclined to take out of democracy what cannot thrive in it can honestly want democratization. I could imagine that a fruitful discussion could arise in this area if the question that comes into consideration were to boil down to the following: Can the administration of intellectual life (especially education) take on a form that merely corresponds to the demands of this life if the democratic state exercises rule in any aspect of this administration? My experience compels me to answer this question in the negative. I believe I know the reasons which lead to its affirmation. But they do not seem valid to me. If my opinion is justified, then the judgments that Professor von Heck puts forward from the point of view of the economic security of intellectual life and compulsory schooling would have to be placed on a completely different basis than his own. I believe I have pointed to this ground on page 88 ff. of my paper "Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage". If what I indicated there is properly put into practice, then institutions will emerge that secure the economic basis of intellectual life and also protect against the "temptation" of "not sending children to school, but using them to earn money." Despite everything that von Heck says, it seems unfathomable why, when considering these questions, it should play a role that "as a result of peace, we are approaching a time of impoverishment that no other nation has experienced". No one can doubt that this last sentence is as true as it can be. But why the school should not get what it can out of this poverty, if this is to happen in other ways than before, is surely not understandable.

[ 4 ] Professor von Heck's argument against the separation of economic life from the state proper is no less riddled with misunderstandings. He says: "The complete separation of legal questions and economic questions, which Steiner demands, is not possible at all." What makes it clear that I am "demanding" the "complete separation" spoken of here? What I see as necessary is this: all legal matters should be organized by the democratic parliament; and the economy should be managed by associations arising from the professions, from production, transport and consumption interests. Through this organization it will come about in economic life that its cycle will be governed solely by the decisions of the individuals experienced in individual branches of the economy and by the credit which economic men enjoy through their position in a branch of the economy. The "natural laws of economic life" will force us to replace democratic electoral intentions, which could at most play a role in the transitional period, with the democratic delegation of capable people in the sense of the two conditions of a healthy economy described above. Democracy and parliamentarism will be recognized in their damaging consequences for economic life when this life is no longer veiled in its peculiarity by the state legislation spread over it, but when it is placed in its self-government on an associative basis. Professor von Heck says: "The law determines the forms of the economy and can only be ordered by a power that oversees economic life." However, this sentence is only correct as long as economic life and legal life are merged. If economic life is left to its own devices, that is, if it exhausts itself in the administration of the production, circulation and consumption of goods (with import and export), then the legal relations of the economic agents remain unorganized by this economic cycle. And these are organized on the territory of the state, outside the economic cycle. Legal relations will then not be the expression of economic forms, but on the one hand their basis in the same way that natural conditions (geographical, climatic, etc.) are the basis of the economy. - Anyone who believes in the axiom that legal forms must be the expression of economic forms must find it difficult to accept the emancipation of law from the economy. But whoever realizes that this "axiom" contradicts the present consciousness of mankind will try to overcome his belief in it. Contemporary man cannot bear to live as a subject of law under the compulsion of economic forms. To close oneself off to this fact and to pay homage to the view that "the law determines the forms of the economy" means little more than declaring the work on an important link in the social question of the present to be a chimera. But one should only do so if the separation of legal life from economic life were to be supported by more weighty reasons than those put forward by Professor von Heck.

[ 5 ] One misunderstands the structure which the social organism is to receive through the threefold structure if, as Professor von Heck does, one expresses the following objection: "Steiner, too, if one looks more closely, leaves three economically very important questions to the legal parliament. He leaves to it the questions of taxation, the creation of workers' rights and the restriction of ownership of the means of production, which should last only for life." It is not correct that in a tripartite social organism taxation should be regulated solely by law. Read about this on page 53 of my "Key Points of the Social Question": "What the political state itself demands for its maintenance will be raised by the tax law. This will develop through a harmonization of the demands of legal consciousness with those of economic life." With regard to labor law, it is possible that it will not be left to legal life as an economic matter, but that it will be removed from the economic cycle, that is, stripped of the character of an economic matter. It is also quite inaccurate what Professor von Heck states as my view on the "restriction of ownership of the means of production". What is in question is not left to the "parliament of law", but is made a matter in the ordering of which the administrations of intellectual life and legal life are involved.

[ 6 ] The requirement concerning taxation can be fulfilled in practice by the fact that formally the constitutional state as a consumer organization stands opposite the economic cycle, just as within this cycle itself a consumer association stands opposite a production cooperative, for example. The regulation of general tax requirements and the use of taxes takes place within the legal system. On the other hand, the distribution of tax claims to the individual economic areas will be the responsibility of the associations resulting from the professions and from the interaction of production and consumption. Professor von Heck says appropriately: "The most difficult task that the future threatens us with is the distribution of the enormous, unheard-of tax burden that peace will impose on us ... These taxes cannot be raised without the most serious interventions in economic life. Therefore, even if Steiner's ideas were implemented, every economic group would have to secure representation in the legal parliament in order to defend itself against overburdening." However, this "most difficult task" can only be solved by separating legal life from economic life in such a way that the solution does not contradict the legal consciousness of individual groups of people. For if the interests of an economic group are represented in a parliament based on a democratic foundation, it will always be the case that the economically more powerful group will impose measures on the less powerful group. It will be able to do so through its own power or by entering into compromises. The formation of a parliamentary majority always makes it possible to assert and suppress interests in an unobjective manner. The situation is different if the administration of economic life is organically separated from that of legal life. In this case, no decisions can be taken on the legal ground that have effects in economic life that are detrimental to any group of people. Everything that happens in economic life will be based on negotiations between the designated associations. In these negotiations, the expertise of one association can be contrasted with that of the other; and the unobjective, merely democratic parliamentarization can be dispensed with. Someone might perhaps say that what we are striving for here could also be realized if the main negotiations in the "legal parliament" were transferred to the committees and experts from the individual economic areas were added to them. It seems to me that this would only be half a measure. What limited good it could do would have to show just how the desired effect could be achieved completely only by separating the economic administration from the legal organization. Professor von Heck does not emphasize strongly enough what it means in the practice of life when the competent representatives have to negotiate from branch to branch in such a way that through them the living conditions of one branch have to promote and limit those of the other, without the influence of unobjective majority decisions. Anyone who takes into account the practical effect of such an institution will not think of saying: "How should scientists and doctors have special expertise for ecclesiastical questions, and farmers, merchants and craftsmen for large-scale industry?" This seems to be the right question, but it does not argue against a self-reliant organization of economic life, but against the representation of economic and cultural interests in a parliament in which everyone has a say in matters about which they know nothing. The negotiations between the economic organizations through their representatives do not require any expertise outside the area that someone has to represent. For the outcome of the negotiations will be determined objectively by the factual significance of one area for the other. The basis for such objectivity is created by the fact that the administrative bodies will be organized around those personalities to whom a leading office is transferred in the manner described on page 86 of the "Key Points of the Social Question". The other members of this administrative body will emerge from the needs of economic management in such a way that the usual election will be replaced by a selection of suitable personalities, since ability will be revealed in the organization of work and the conviction will be established that one's own work will prosper best if the most knowledgeable leader is appointed. The members of higher administrative bodies and a central council will emerge in a similar way from the lower ones. Thus, despite the central council, the overall administration will be built on a federal basis.

[ 7 ] Such a structure of economic administration will only be tolerable to the democratic consciousness if everything that relates to the legal relations of the persons involved in economic life is separated from it and relegated to a democratic parliament. However, these legal relationships include everything that relates to the work that people do for each other.

[ 8 ] Whoever understands my proposals for the tripartite social organism in the way described here, and not in the completely misunderstood way in which they appear in Professor von Heck's rendering, will hardly demand a refutation of the objections listed in the last columns of my critic's article. For these objections stem only from the fact that Professor von Heck does not refer to my exposition, but creates his own threefold structure and then polemicizes against it.

[ 9 ] In the essay "My impression of Dr. Steiner and his theory of threefolding" by Alfred Mantz, it is said that my explanations could only represent something that could be realized "if people were different from what they are". One can only hold this opinion as long as one has not yet sufficiently realized in what sense and with what intention one can develop ideas about the institutions of the social organism. It is true that ideal social conditions are only possible with ideally inclined and developed human beings. But anyone who rejects thoughts about the organization of the social organism because of this one-sided truth is moving in a dubious circle of ideas. He will want to wait with desirable institutions until he has the people suitable for them; during this wait, however, he will only ever have people whom he finds unsuitable. If Mr. Mantz will examine my ideas more closely, he can see that I do not require any other people for the realization of these ideas than those who are available. And I find these people as mature, or as immature in general, as he himself. But I assume, as everyone who does not want to sink into fatalism must assume, that among the people of today there are those who can convince themselves of the necessity of reorganizing our social structure. In the tripartite social organism I see - as I explained in the discussion of Professor von Heck's essay - that which fulfills the demands to which mankind is pressing at the present stage of its development. It seems to me that if those people who can convince themselves of the necessity of the threefold structure succeed in doing what is necessary for its realization, conditions will be created which will give such efforts a basis that will make people different "from what they are". The assertion that I am sketching a picture "that must look very good in a vacuum, but in reality is utopia" is truly wrong, since I am not even touching the reality in which we live, but merely replacing the structure of this reality, insofar as it stems from intentions, inclinations, habits, judgments, etc., with a different one, which should also develop from similar human impulses.

[ 10 ] How little is true of what is written in the essay "Dr. Steiner and the Proletariat" can be seen completely in my book "The Key Points of the Social Question". Anyone who wants to refute the statements in this essay must not attempt to do so by claiming that "capital will never submit to their implementation". For he would first have to prove that he has a social structure in mind for the implementation of which "capital" is not needed. But then why should it be needed precisely for the realization of mine? As Mr. Seeger then goes on to say that through the institutions which I would like to see brought about, the worker could "never get rid of the feeling of having to work only for a single entrepreneur", it must be held against this that my efforts are directed precisely towards finding conditions through which the "physically working man" is given the feeling of being a free man in his work.

[ 1 ] As we have seen in the preceding chapters, an epistemological investigation must begin by rejecting existing knowledge. Knowledge is something brought into existence by man, something that has arisen through his activity. If a theory of knowledge is really to explain the whole sphere of knowledge, then it must start from something still quite untouched by the activity of thinking, and what is more, from something which lends to this activity its first impulse. This starting point must lie outside the act of cognition, it must not itself be knowledge. But it must be sought immediately prior to cognition, so that the very next step man takes beyond it is the activity of cognition. This absolute starting point must be determined in such a way that it admits nothing already derived from cognition.

[ 2 ] Only our directly given world-picture can offer such a starting point, i.e. that picture of the world which presents itself to man before he has subjected it to the processes of knowledge in any way, before he has asserted or decided anything at all about it by means of thinking. This “directly given” picture is what flits past us, disconnected, but still undifferentiated.¹ In it, nothing appears distinguished from, related to, or determined by, anything else. At this stage, so to speak, no object or event is yet more important or significant than any other. The most rudimentary organ of an animal, which, in the light of further knowledge may turn out to be quite unimportant for its development and life, appears before us with the same claims for our attention as the noblest and most essential part of the organism. Before our conceptual activity begins, the world-picture contains neither substance, quality nor cause and effect; distinctions between matter and spirit, body and soul, do not yet exist. Furthermore, any other predicate must also be excluded from the world-picture at this stage. The picture can be considered neither as reality nor as appearance, neither subjective nor objective, neither as chance nor as necessity; whether it is “thing-in-itself,” or mere representation, cannot be decided at this stage. For, as we have seen, knowledge of physics and physiology which leads to a classification of the “given” under one or the other of the above headings, cannot be a basis for a theory of knowledge.

[ 3 ] If a being with a fully developed human intelligence were suddenly created out of nothing and then confronted the world, the first impression made on his senses and his thinking would be something like what I have just characterized as the directly given world-picture. In practice, man never encounters this world-picture in this form at any time in his life; he never experiences a division between a purely passive awareness of the “directly-given” and a thinking recognition of it. This fact could lead to doubt about my description of the starting point for a theory of knowledge. Hartmann says for example:

“We are not concerned with the hypothetical content of consciousness in a child which is just becoming conscious or in an animal at the lowest level of life, since the philosophizing human being has no experience of this; if he tries to reconstruct the content of consciousness of beings on primitive biogenetic or ontogenetic levels, he must base his conclusions on the way he experiences his own consciousness. Our first task, therefore, is to establish the content of man's consciousness when he begins philosophical reflection.”²

The objection to this, however, is that the world-picture with which we begin philosophical reflection already contains predicates mediated through cognition. These cannot be accepted uncritically, but must be carefully removed from the world-picture so that it can be considered free of anything introduced through the process of knowledge. This division between the “given” and the “known” will not in fact, coincide with any stage of human development; the boundary must be drawn artificially. But this can be done at every level of development so long as we draw the dividing line correctly between what confronts us free of all conceptual definitions, and what cognition subsequently makes of it.

[ 4 ] It might be objected here that I have already made use of a number of conceptual definitions in order to extract from the world-picture as it appears when completed by man, that other world-picture which I described as the directly given. However, what we have extracted by means of thought does not characterize the directly given world-picture, nor define nor express anything about it; what it does is to guide our attention to the dividing line where the starting point for cognition is to be found. The question of truth or error, correctness or incorrectness, does not enter into this statement, which is concerned with the moment preceding the point where a theory of knowledge begins. It serves merely to guide us deliberately to this starting point. No one proceeding to consider epistemological questions could possibly be said to be standing at the starting point of cognition, for he already possesses a certain amount of knowledge. To remove from this all that has been contributed by cognition, and to establish a pre-cognitive starting point, can only be done conceptually. But such concepts are not of value as knowledge; they have the purely negative function of removing from sight all that belongs to knowledge and of leading us to the point where knowledge begins. These considerations act as signposts pointing to where the act of cognition first appears, but at this stage, do not themselves form part of the act of cognition. Whatever the epistemologist proposes in order to establish his starting point raises, to begin with, no question of truth or error, but only of its suitability for this task. From the starting point, too, all error is excluded, for error can only begin with cognition, and therefore cannot arise before cognition sets in.

[ 5 ] Only a theory of knowledge that starts from considerations of this kind can claim to observe this last principle. For if the starting point is some object (or subject) to which is attached any conceptual definition, then the possibility of error is already present in the starting point, namely in the definition itself. Justification of the definition will then depend upon the laws inherent in the act of cognition. But these laws can be discovered only in the course of the epistemological investigation itself. Error is wholly excluded only by saying: I eliminate from my world-picture all conceptual definitions arrived at through cognition and retain only what enters my field of observation without any activity on my part. When on principle I refrain from making any statement, I cannot make a mistake.

[ 6 ] Error, in relation to knowledge, i.e. epistemologically, can occur only within the act of cognition. Sense deceptions are not errors. That the moon upon rising appears larger than it does at its zenith is not an error but a fact governed by the laws of nature. A mistake in knowledge would occur only if, in using thinking to combine the given perceptions, we misinterpreted “larger” and “smaller.” But this interpretation is part of the act of cognition.

[ 7 ] To understand cognition exactly in all its details, its origin and starting point must first be grasped. It is clear, furthermore, that what precedes this primary starting point must not be included in an explanation of cognition, but must be presupposed. Investigation of the essence of what is here presupposed, is the task of the various branches of scientific knowledge. The present aim, however, is not to acquire specific knowledge of this or that element, but to investigate cognition itself. Until we have understood the act of knowledge, we cannot judge the significance of statements about the content of the world arrived at through the act of cognition.

[ 8 ] This is why the directly given is not defined as long as the relation of such a definition to what is defined is not known. Even the concept: “directly given” includes no statement about what precedes cognition. Its only purpose is to point to this given, to turn our attention to it. At the starting point of a theory of knowledge, the concept is only the first initial relation between cognition and world-content. This description even allows for the possibility that the total world-content would turn out to be only a figment of our own “I,” which would mean that extreme subjectivism would be true; subjectivism is not something that exists as given. It can only be a conclusion drawn from considerations based on cognition, i.e. it would have to be confirmed by the theory of knowledge; it could not be assumed as its basis.

[ 9 ] This directly given world-content includes everything that enters our experience in the widest sense: sensations. perceptions, opinions, feelings, deeds, pictures of dreams and imaginations, representations, concepts and ideas. [ 10 ] Illusions and hallucinations too, at this stage are equal to the rest of the world-content. For their relation to other perceptions can be revealed only through observation based on cognition.

[ 11 ] When epistemology starts from the assumption that all the elements just mentioned constitute the content of our consciousness, the following question immediately arises: How is it possible for us to go beyond our consciousness and recognize actual existence; where can the leap be made from our subjective experiences to what lies beyond them? When such an assumption is not made, the situation is different. Both consciousness and the representation of the “I” are, to begin with, only parts of the directly given and the relationship of the latter to the two former must be discovered by means of cognition. Cognition is not to be defined in terms of consciousness, but vice versa: both consciousness and the relation between subject and object in terms of cognition. Since the “given” is left without predicate, to begin with, the question arises as to how it is defined at all; how can any start be made with cognition? How does one part of the world-picture come to be designated as perception and the other as concept, one thing as existence, another as appearance, this as cause and that as effect; how is it that we can separate ourselves from what is objective and regard ourselves as “I” in contrast to the “not-I?”

[ 2 ] We must find the bridge from the world-picture as given, to that other world-picture which we build up by means of cognition. Here, however, we meet with the following difficulty: As long as we merely stare passively at the given we shall never find a point of attack where we can gain a foothold, and from where we can then proceed with cognition. Somewhere in the given we must find a place where we can set to work, where something exists which is akin to cognition. If everything were really only given, we could do no more than merely stare into the external world and stare indifferently into the inner world of our individuality. We would at most be able to describe things as something external to us; we should never be able to understand them. Our concepts would have a purely external relation to that to which they referred; they would not be inwardly related to it. For real cognition depends on finding a sphere somewhere in the given where our cognizing activity does not merely presuppose something given, but finds itself active in the very essence of the given. In other words: precisely through strict adherence to the given as merely given, it must become apparent that not everything is given. Insistence on the given alone must lead to the discovery of something which goes beyond the given. The reason for so insisting is not to establish some arbitrary starting point for a theory of knowledge, but to discover the true one. In this sense, the given also includes what according to its very nature is not-given. The latter would appear, to begin with, as formally a part of the given, but on closer scrutiny, would reveal its true nature of its own accord.

[ 13 ] The whole difficulty in understanding cognition comes from the fact that we ourselves do not create the content of the world. If we did this, cognition would not exist at all. I can only ask questions about something which is given to me. Something which I create myself, I also determine myself, so that I do not need to ask for an explanation for it.

[ 14 ] This is the second step in our theory of knowledge. It consists in the postulate: In the sphere of the given there must be something in relation to which our activity does not hover in emptiness, but where the content of the world itself enters this activity.

[ 15 ] The starting point for our theory of knowledge was placed so that it completely precedes the cognizing activity, and thus cannot prejudice cognition and obscure it; in the same way, the next step has been defined so that there can be no question of either error or incorrectness. For this step does not prejudge any issue, but merely shows what conditions are necessary if knowledge is to arise at all. It is essential to remember that it is we ourselves who postulate what characteristic feature that part of the world-content must possess with which our activity of cognition can make a start.

[ 16 ] This, in fact, is the only thing we can do. For the world-content as given is completely undefined. No part of it of its own accord can provide the occasion for setting it up as the starting point for bringing order into chaos. The activity of cognition must therefore issue a decree and declare what characteristics this starting point must manifest. Such a decree in no way infringes on the quality of the given. It does not introduce any arbitrary assertion into the science of epistemology. In fact, it asserts nothing, but claims only that if knowledge is to be made explainable, then we must look for some part of the given which can provide a starting point for cognition, as described above. If this exists, cognition can be explained, but not otherwise. Thus, while the given provides the general starting point for our theory of knowledge, it must now be narrowed down to some particular point of the given.

[ 17 ] Let us now take a closer look at this demand. Where, within the world-picture, do we find something that is not merely given, but only given insofar as it is being produced in the actual act of cognition?

[ 18 ] It is essential to realize that the activity of producing something in the act of cognition must present itself to us as something also directly given. It must not be necessary to draw conclusions before recognizing it. This at once indicates that sense impressions do not meet our requirements. For we cannot know directly but only indirectly that sense impressions do not occur without activity on our part; this we discover only by considering physical and physiological factors. But we do know absolutely directly that concepts and ideas appear only in the act of cognition and through this enter the sphere of the directly given. In this respect concepts and ideas do not deceive anyone. A hallucination may appear as something externally given, but one would never take one's own concepts to be something given without one's own thinking activity. A lunatic regards things and relations as real to which are applied the predicate “reality,” although in fact they are not real; but he would never say that his concepts and ideas entered the sphere of the given without his own activity. It is a characteristic feature of all the rest of our world-picture that it must be given if we are to experience it; the only case in which the opposite occurs is that of concepts and ideas: these we must produce if we are to experience them. Concepts and ideas alone are given us in a form that could be called intellectual seeing. Kant and the later philosophers who follow in his steps, completely deny this ability to man, because it is said that all thinking refers only to objects and does not itself produce anything. In intellectual seeing the content must be contained within the thought-form itself. But is this not precisely the case with pure concepts and ideas? (By concept, I mean a principle according to which the disconnected elements of perception become joined into a unity. Causality, for example, is a concept. An idea is a concept with a greater content. Organism, considered quite abstractly, is an idea.) However, they must be considered in the form which they possess while still quite free of any empirical content. If, for example, the pure idea of causality is to be grasped, then one must not choose a particular instance of causality or the sum total of all causality; it is essential to take hold of the pure concept, Causality. Cause and effect must be sought in the world, but before we can discover it in the world we ourselves must first produce causality as a thought-form. If one clings to the Kantian assertion that of themselves concepts are empty, it would be impossible to use concepts to determine anything about the given world. Suppose two elements of the world-content were given: a and b. If I am to find a relation between them, I must do so with the help of a principle which has a definite content; I can only produce this principle myself in the act of cognition; I cannot derive it from the objects, for the definition of the objects is only to be obtained by means of the principle. Thus a principle by means of which we define objects belongs entirely to the conceptual sphere alone.

[ 19 ] Before proceeding further, a possible objection must be considered. It might appear that this discussion is unconsciously introducing the representation of the “I,” of the “personal subject,” and using it without first justifying it. For example, in statements like “we produce concepts” or “we insist on this or that.” But, in fact, my explanation contains nothing which implies that such statements are more than turns of phrase. As shown earlier, the fact that the act of cognition depends upon and proceeds from an “I,” can be established only through considerations which themselves make use of cognition. Thus, to begin with, the discussion must be limited to the act of cognition alone, without considering the cognizing subject. All that has been established thus far is the fact that something “given” exists; and that somewhere in this “given” the above described postulate arises; and lastly, that this postulate corresponds to the sphere of concepts and ideas. This is not to deny that its source is the “I.” But these two initial steps in the theory of knowledge must first be defined in their pure form.

• 1. Differentiation of the given, indistinct, world picture into distinct entities is already an act of thought-activity.
• 2. Hartmann, Grundproblem

[ 1 ] According to everything we have seen, investigations at the beginning of a theory of knowing (epistemology), everything that already belongs to the arena of knowing must be excluded. Knowing itself is something that comes with the human condition, something arising through daily activity. If a theory of knowing is really to extend to illuminating the entire field of becoming familiar with, of knowing concepts and ideas (Erkennens), then it must take as its starting point something that has remained completely untouched by this activity, from which the latter itself receives its impetus. What to begin with lies outside of knowing cannot be knowing itself. Therefore, we must look for it immediately before the familiarity of knowing (cognition, Erkennens), so that the very next step that the human being takes from this precursor is an activity of knowing. The way in which this absolute first is to be determined must be such that nothing that already comes from knowing, from cognition, flows into it.

[ 2 ] But such a beginning can only be made with the immediately given picture of the world, the world picture that is available to man before he has subjected it in any way to the cognitive process, before he has made even the slightest statement about it, before he has made the slightest mental judgement about it. What passes before us, and what we pass by, which is a disconnected world view, not separated into individual components,⁶¹ in which nothing is separated, nor related to, or determined by anything else, that is what is immediately given. At this stage of existence-awareness (des Daseins), if we may use the expression, no object, no event is more important, more meaningful than any other. The rudimentary animal-organ, devoid of meaning for development and for life itself, has the right, perhaps for a later stage of recognition-illuminated existence-awareness, to be considered the noblest most essential part of the organism.

Before all cognitive activity, nothing presents itself in the world picture as substance, nothing as accident, nothing as cause or effect; the opposites matter-spirit, body-soul, have not yet been created. But we must also keep away any other predicate from the worldview held at this stage. It can be understood neither as reality nor as appearance, neither as subjective nor as objective, neither as accidental nor as necessary. Whether it is a “thing in itself” or a mere idea cannot be decided at this stage. We have already seen that the findings of physics and physiology, which lead to subsuming “the given” under one of the above categories, must not be placed at the forefront of epistemology.

[ 3 ] If a being with fully developed human intelligence were suddenly created from nothing and confronted the world, the first impression that the world would make on its senses and thinking would be something like what we call the immediately given world view. However, the same thing is not present to a person in this form at any moment of his life. There is nowhere in his development a boundary between pure, passive turning towards what is immediately given and the thinking recognition of it. This circumstance could raise concerns about our positing a beginning of epistemology. About this Hartmann says, “We do not ask what is the content of consciousness of the child who is awakening to consciousness, or of the animal standing at the lowest stage of living creatures, because the philosophizing person has no experience of this. He cannot infer or reconstruct the content of consciousness of primitive biologic organisms at any stage from fertilization to death, as such attempts must always be based on personal experience. We must therefore first determine what is the content of consciousness found by the philosophizing person at the beginning of philosophical reflections”.⁶² The objection to this, however, is that the world view that we have at the beginning of philosophical reflection already contains predicates that are only conveyed through cognition. These must not be accepted uncritically, but must be carefully peeled out of the world picture so that it appears completely pure of everything that has been added through the cognitive process. The boundary between what is given and what is known will not coincide with any moment of human development, but must be drawn artificially. But this can happen at any stage of development if we only correctly draw the line between what comes to us without mental determination, before recognition, and what is made from it through determination and recognition.

[ 4 ] Now one can accuse me of having already accumulated a whole series of mental characterizations, so that I may separate that supposedly immediate world view from the one that people have completed through cognitive processing. But the following must be said against this: the thoughts we have brought up should not characterize that world view, should not indicate any properties of it, should not say anything at all about it, but should only guide our consideration, in such a way that it is taken to the boundary where recognition is placed at its beginning. There can therefore be no talk of the truth or error, the accuracy or falsity of those statements, which in our opinion precede the moment in which we stand at the beginning of the theory of knowledge. They only have the task of leading appropriately to this beginning.

No one who is about to deal with epistemological problems is at the same time confronted with what is rightly called the beginning of knowing, for he has already developed knowledge to a certain extent. To remove from this everything that has been gained by cognition, and to establish a pre-cognitive beginning can only be done conceptually. But concepts have no cognitive value at this stage; they have the purely negative task of removing everything from the field of vision that belongs to knowledge and leading it to where knowing begins. These considerations are signposts pointing to the beginning of the act of knowing, but do not yet belong to it. In everything that the epistemologist puts forward before establishing the beginning, there is only expediency or inexpediency, not truth or error. But even in this starting point itself, all error is excluded, because the error can only begin with recognition, with knowing (Erkennen), and cannot therefore lie before it.

[ 5 ] The last sentence cannot be claimed by any epistemologist not proceeding from these considerations. Where the starting point is made by mentally evaluating an object (or subject), an error is possible at the very beginning, namely right at this evaluation. The justification of this depends on the laws on which the act of knowing is based. However, this can only emerge during epistemological investigations. Only if one says that I separate all mental determinations acquired through knowing from my picture of the world and only hold on to everything that comes into the horizon of my observation without my intervention, then all error is excluded. Since I fundamentally abstain from making any statements, I cannot make any mistakes. [ 6 ] Insofar as error comes into consideration epistemologically, it can only lie within the act of cognition. An illusion is not an error, so if the moon appears larger to us at its rising point than at its zenith, we are not dealing with an error, but with a fact well founded in the laws of nature. An error in knowing would only arise if we incorrectly interpreted “bigger” and “smaller” when combining given perceptions in thinking, but this interpretation lies within the act of knowing.

[ 7 ] If one really wants to understand cognition in its entire essence, then one must undoubtedly first grasp it where it begins, where it sits in the world. It is also clear that what lies before this beginning must not be included in the explanation of cognition, but rather must be assumed. Penetrating the essence of our assumptions is the task of scientific work (wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis) in its individual branches, where we do not want to gain special knowledge about this or that, but rather we want to examine knowing itself. Only when we have understood the act of cognition can we come to a judgment about the significance of statements about world-contents that are made with cognition.

[ 8 ] That is why we refrain from making any attribution, any characterization about what is immediately given, so long as we do not know how such an attribution relates to what is determined. Even with the concept of the “immediately given” we say nothing about what lies before cognition. Its only purpose is to point out the same thing, to focus attention on it. The conceptual formation is here, at the beginning of the theory of knowing, only the first connection in which knowing sits in relation to world-content. This designation itself provides for the eventuality that the entire content of the world is only a web of our own "I", and that exclusive subjectivism therefore rightly exists, because there can be no question of this first connection (dieser Tatsache) being “given”. It could only be the result of cognitive consideration. In other words, it could only turn out to be correct through epistemology, but could not serve as a prerequisite for it.

[ 9 ] Everything that can arise within the horizon of our experiences in the broadest sense is now included in this immediately given world content: sensations, perceptions, views, feelings, acts of will, dream and fantasy images, images, concepts, and ideas. [ 10 ] At this level, illusions and hallucinations are also on an equal footing with other parts of the world content. For what relationship these perceptions have to other perceptions can only be learned by cognitive observation. [ 11 ] If a theory of knowing starts from the assumption that everything just mentioned is the content of our consciousness, then the question immediately arises of how we get from mere consciousness to knowledge of being, to being aware of being. Where is the springboard that leads us from the subjective to the trans-subjective? For me, the matter is completely different. For me, consciousness and the "I" idea are initially only parts of the immediately given, and what relationship the former has to the latter is only a result of cognitive awareness. We do not want to determine cognition from consciousness, but vice versa; consciousness and the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity is determined by cognition. Since we initially isolate the given without any predicates, we must ask how we even arrive at a characterization of it. How is it possible to begin the activity of knowing? How can we designate one part of the worldview, for example, as perception, and another part as concept, one as being, the other as appearance, one as cause, another as effect. How can we separate ourselves from the objective, and regard ourselves as "I" compared to the "not-I"?

[ 12 ] We must find the bridge from the “given” worldview to the one we develop through our knowing. The difficulty is that so long as we just passively stare at what is given, we cannot find a fundamental starting point to build on, on which to continue to develop knowledge. We would have to find a place somewhere in the given where we can intervene, where there is something of the same nature (Homogenes) as cognition. If everything were entirely just given, then it would have to be a matter of simply staring out into the external world and a completely equivalent staring into the world of our individuality. We could then at most describe things as external, but never understand them. Our concepts only have a purely external connection to what they refer to, not an internal one. For true knowing, everything depends on us finding an area somewhere in the given where our knowing activity not only presupposes something given, but actively stands in the middle of the given. In other words, it must turn out, especially when we strictly adhere to what is merely given, that not everything is just given. Our prerequisite, through its strict adherence, must partially cancel itself out. We set it up so that we do not arbitrarily fix any beginning of the theory of knowing, but truly seek it out. Everything can be “the given” in this sense, even what is not given in its innermost nature. It then only appears to us formally as a given, but upon closer inspection it reveals itself to be what it really is.

[ 13 ] All the difficulty in understanding knowing lies in the fact that we do not produce the content of the world from within ourselves. If we did that, there would be no recognition at all. A question for me can only arise from a thing if it is “given” to me. Onto whatever I bring forth, I bestow characterizations myself, so I don't need to ask about their authentication. [ 14 ] This is the second point of my epistemology, namely the postulate that there must be something in the realm of the given where our activity does not float in the void, where the content of the world itself is the active agent.

[ 15 ] We determined the beginning of the theory of knowing in such a way that we placed it entirely before cognitive activity, so that no prejudice would cloud knowing itself. In the same way we determine the first step that we take in the development of our discourse, so that there can be no question of error or inaccuracy. For we do not make a judgment about anything, but only point out the requirement that must be fulfilled if knowing is to come about at all. It all depends on us being aware, with full consideration (Besonnenheit, basking in the Sun’s clarity), that we put forward as a postulate the characteristics which that part of the world's content must have on which we can use our cognitive skill.

[ 16 ] Anything else is quite unthinkable. The content of the world as given would be completely undermined. No part can give the impetus of itself to create order in such a chaos. Therefore, cognitive activity must make a power statement and say that certain parts must be such and such. Such a power statement in no way affects the quality of the given. It does not bring arbitrary assertions into the science of clear thinking. It doesn't claim anything at all, but just says that if knowledge is to be clarified at all, then one must search for an arena as described above. If such is present, then there is a clarification of knowing, otherwise not. While we began the theory of knowing with the "given" in general, we now limit the requirement to keeping a specific viewpoint in mind.

[ 17 ] We now should examine this stipulation more closely. Where do we find anything in the world picture that is not just a given, but is a given insofar as it is at the same time something produced, brought forth (Hervorgebrachtes) in the act of knowing?

[ 18 ] We must be completely clear that what is brought forth in the act of knowing must have been given fresh and unmodified. Conclusive inferences are not necessary to recognize this. This already shows that the sensory qualities do not satisfy our requirements, because we do not know directly that these do not arise without our activity, but only through physical and physiological considerations. But we do know directly that concepts and ideas always first enter the sphere of unmodified-given in and by the act of knowing. Therefore no one is mistaken about this characterization of concepts and ideas. One can certainly consider hallucinations to be something given from outside, but one will never believe that its concepts are given to us without our own work of thinking. A madman considers certain things and conditions to be real, and endows them with the label “reality”, even though there are no facts to back that up. A madman will never say, however, of his concepts and ideas, that they enter the world of the “given” without his own activity. Everything else in our worldview has such a character that it must be ‘given’ if we want to experience it, and only with concepts and ideas does the reverse hold true. We must produce Ideas and concepts if we want to experience them.

Only what we call concepts and ideas have been given to us in a form we call “the intellectual view”. Kant and the more recent philosophers who follow him completely deny that people have this ability, because all thinking is supposed to incorporate only objects standing in the vicinity (Gegenstände) and brings forth absolutely nothing out of itself. In the intellectual view, however, the content must be given along with the think-form (Denkform). But isn't this really the case with pure concepts and ideas? — By concept I mean a rule according to which the unconnected elements of perception are combined into a unity. Causality, for example, is a concept. Idea is just a concept with a larger content. Organism, taken completely abstractly, is an idea. — One only must look at concepts and ideas in the form in which they are still completely free of any empirical content. For example, if you want to grasp the pure concept of causality, you must not stick to any specific causality or to the sum of all causalities, but rather to the mere concept of it. We must look for causes and effects in the world (Ursachen und Wirkungen, primal circumstances and how they work themselves out), but we ourselves must produce causality as thought-form before we can find it in the world. But if one wanted to hold on to Kant's assertion that concepts without intuitions are empty, it would be unthinkable to demonstrate the possibility of characterizing the given world through concepts. Suppose two elements of the world's content are given, a and b. If I am to look for a relationship between them, I must do so with a rule that has a certain content, but I can only produce such a rule in the act of cognition itself. I cannot take the rule from the object, because any characterization of the object is done with the help of the rule. Such a rule for the determination of actuality, of being real (Bestimmung des Wirklichen) arises completely within a being capable of pure inner grasping, of pure inner understanding (der rein begrifflichen Entität).

[ 19 ] Before going any further, let's first eliminate a possible objection. It seems as if the idea of the “I”, the “personal subject”, plays a role unconsciously in our thought processes, and that we use this idea in the progress of our thought development without having demonstrated the justification for it. This is the case when we say, for example that we produce concepts, or when we make this or that demand. But nothing in our statements gives reason to see such sentences as more than stylistic twists. As we have already said, the fact that the act of knowing belongs to an “I” and proceeds from it can only be established by cognitive considerations. So, for the time being we should only speak of the act of knowing without even mentioning its bearer. For everything that has been established up to now is limited to the fact that there is something "given" and that the postulate stated above arises from one point of this "given", and finally that concepts and ideas are the in the arena that corresponds to this postulate. This is not to deny that the point from which the postulate arises is the “I”. But for now, we limit ourselves to presenting these two steps of epistemology in their purity.

• 61. Differentiation of the given, indistinct, world picture into distinct entities is already a mental activity (ein Akt gedanklicher Tätigkeit).
• 62. Hartmann, Grundproblem, S. 1.

A free spirit acts according to his impulses, i.e., intuitions, which his thought has selected out of the whole world of his ideas. For an unfree spirit, the reason why he singles out a particular intuition from his world of ideas, in order to make it the basis of an action, lies in the perceptual world which is given to him, i.e., in his past experiences. He recalls, before making a decision, what some one else has done, or recommended as proper, in an analogous case, or what God has commanded to be done in such a case, etc., and he acts on these recollections. A free spirit dispenses with these preliminaries. His decision is absolutely original. He cares as little what others have done in such a case as what commands they have laid down. He has purely ideal (logical) reasons which determine him to select a particular concept out of the sum of his concepts, and to realize it in action. But his action will belong to perceptible reality. Consequently, what he achieves will coincide with a definite content of perception. His concept will have to be realized in a concrete particular event. As a concept it will not contain this event as particular. It will refer to the event only in its generic character, just as, in general, a concept is related to a percept, e.g., the concept lion to a particular lion. The link between concept and percept is the idea (cp. pp. 68 ff.). To the unfree spirit this intermediate link is given from the outset. Motives exist in his consciousness from the first in the form of ideas. Whenever he intends to do anything he acts as he has seen others act, or he obeys the instructions he receives in each separate case. Hence authority is most effective in the form of examples, i.e., in the form of traditional patterns of particular actions handed down for the guidance of the unfree spirit. A Christian models his conduct less on the teaching than on the pattern of the Saviour. Rules have less value for telling men positively what to do than for telling them what to leave undone. Laws take on the form of universal concepts only when they forbid actions, not when they prescribe actions. Laws concerning what we ought to do must be given to the unfree spirit in wholly concrete form. Clean the street in front of your door! Pay your taxes to such and such an amount to the tax-collector! etc. Conceptual form belongs to laws which inhibit actions. Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not commit adultery! But these laws, too, influence the unfree spirit only by means of a concrete idea, e.g., the idea of the punishments attached by human authority, or of the pangs of conscience, or of eternal damnation, etc.

Even when the motive to an action exists in universal conceptual form (e.g., Thou shalt do good to thy fellow-men! Thou shalt live so that thou promotest best thy welfare!), there still remains to be found, in the particular case, the concrete idea of the action (the relation of the concept to a content of perception). For a free spirit who is not guided by any model nor by fear of punishment, etc., this translation of the concept into an idea is always necessary.

Concrete ideas are formed by us on the basis of our concepts by means of the imagination. Hence what the free spirit needs in order to realize his concepts, in order to assert himself in the world, is moral imagination. This is the source of the free spirit's action. Only those men, therefore, who are endowed with moral imagination are, properly speaking, morally productive. Those who merely preach morality, i.e., those who merely excogitate moral rules without being able to condense them into concrete ideas, are morally unproductive. They are like those critics who can explain very competently how a work of art ought to be made, but who are themselves incapable of the smallest artistic productions.

Moral imagination, in order to realize its ideas, must enter into a determinate sphere of percepts. Human action does not create percepts, but transforms already existing percepts and gives them a new character. In order to be able to transform a definite object of perception, or a sum of such objects, in accordance with a moral idea, it is necessary to understand the object's law (its mode of action which one intends to transform, or to which one wants to give a new direction). Further, it is necessary to discover the procedure by which it is possible to change the given law into the new one. This part of effective moral activity depends on knowledge of the particular world of phenomena with which one has got to deal. We shall, therefore, find it in some branch of scientific knowledge. Moral action, then, presupposes, in addition to the faculty of moral concepts¹ and of moral imagination, the ability to alter the world of percepts without violating the natural laws by which they are connected. This ability is moral technique. It may be learnt in the same sense in which science in general may be learnt. For, in general, men are better able to find concepts for the world as it is, than productively to originate out of their imaginations future, and as yet non-existing, actions. Hence, it is very well possible for men without moral imagination to receive moral ideas from others, and to embody these skilfully in the actual world. Vice versa, it may happen that men with moral imagination lack technical skill, and are dependent on the service of other men for the realization of their ideas.

In so far as we require for moral action knowledge of the objects upon which we are about to act, our action depends upon such knowledge. What we need to know here are the laws of nature. These belong to the Natural Sciences, not to Ethics.

Moral imagination and the faculty of moral concepts can become objects of theory only after they have first been employed by the individual. But, thus regarded, they no longer regulate life, but have already regulated it. They must now be treated as efficient causes, like all other causes (they are purposes only for the subject). The study of them is, as it were, the Natural Science of moral ideas.

Ethics as a Normative Science, over and above this science, is impossible.

Some would maintain the normative character of moral laws at least in the sense that Ethics is to be taken as a kind of dietetic which, from the conditions of the organism's life, deduces general rules, on the basis of which it hopes to give detailed directions to the body (Paulsen, System der Ethik). This comparison is mistaken, because our moral life cannot be compared with the life of the organism. The behaviour of the organism occurs without any volition on our part. Its laws are fixed data in our world; hence we can discover them and apply them when discovered. Moral laws, on the other hand, do not exist until we create them. We cannot apply them until we have created them. The error is due to the fact that moral laws are not at every moment new creations, but are handed down by tradition. Those which we take over from our ancestors appear to be given like the natural laws of the organism. But it does not follow that a later generation has the right to apply them in the same way as dietetic rules. For they apply to individuals, and not, like natural laws, to specimens of a genus. Considered as an organism, I am such a generic specimen, and I shall live in accordance with nature if I apply the laws of my genus to my particular case. As a moral agent I am an individual and have my own private laws.²

The view here upheld appears to contradict that fundamental doctrine of modern Natural Science which is known as the Theory of Evolution. But it only appears to do so. By evolution we mean the real development of the later out of the earlier in accordance with natural law. In the organic world, evolution means that the later (more perfect) organic forms are real descendants of the earlier imperfect forms, and have grown out of them in accordance with natural laws. The upholders of the theory of organic evolution believe that there was once a time on our earth, when we could have observed with our own eyes the gradual evolution of reptiles out of Proto-Amniotes, supposing that we could have been present as men, and had been endowed with a sufficiently long span of life. Similarly, Evolutionists suppose that man could have watched the development of the solar system out of the primordial nebula of the Kant-Laplace hypothesis, if he could have occupied a suitable spot in the world-ether during that infinitely long period. But no Evolutionist will dream of maintaining that he could from his concept of the primordial Amnion deduce that of the reptile with all its qualities, even if he had never seen a reptile. Just as little would it be possible to derive the solar system from the concept of the Kant-Laplace nebula, if this concept of an original nebula had been formed only from the percept of the nebula. In other words, if the Evolutionist is to think consistently, he is bound to maintain that out of earlier phases of evolution later ones really develop; that once the concept of the imperfect and that of the perfect have been given, we can understand the connection. But in no case will he admit that the concept formed from the earlier phases is, in itself, sufficient for deducing from it the later phases. From this it follows for Ethics that, whilst we can understand the connection of later moral concepts with earlier ones, it is not possible to deduce a single new moral idea from earlier ones. The individual, as a moral being, produces his own content. This content, thus produced, is for Ethics a datum, as much as reptiles are a datum for Natural Science. Reptiles have evolved out of the Proto-Amniotes, but the scientist cannot manufacture the concept of reptiles out of the concept of the Proto-Amniotes. Later moral ideas evolve out of the earlier ones, but Ethics cannot manufacture out of the moral principles of an earlier age those of a later one. The confusion is due to the fact that, as scientists, we start with the facts before us, and then make a theory about them, whereas in moral action we first produce the facts ourselves, and then theorize about them. In the evolution of the moral world-order we accomplish what, at a lower level, Nature accomplishes: we alter some part of the perceptual world. Hence the ethical norm cannot straightway be made an object of knowledge, like a law of nature, for it must first be created. Only when that has been done can the norm become an object of knowledge.

But is it not possible to make the old a measure for the new? Is not every man compelled to measure the deliverances of his moral imagination by the standard of traditional moral principles? If he would be truly productive in morality, such measuring is as much an absurdity as it would be an absurdity if one were to measure a new species in nature by an old one and say that reptiles, because they do not agree with the Proto-Amniotes, are an illegitimate (degenerate) species.

Ethical Individualism, then, so far from being in opposition to the theory of evolution, is a direct consequence of it. Haeckel's genealogical tree from protozoa up to man as an organic being, ought to be capable of being worked out without a breach of natural law, and without a gap in its uniform evolution, up to the individual as a being with a determinate moral nature. But, whilst it is quite true that the moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly grown out of those of his ancestors, it is also true that the individual is morally barren, unless he has moral ideas of his own.

The same Ethical Individualism which I have developed on the basis of the preceding principles, might be equally well developed on the basis of the theory of evolution. The final result would be the same; only the path by which it was reached would be different.

That absolutely new moral ideas should be developed by the moral imagination is for the theory of evolution no more inexplicable than the development of one animal species out of another, provided only that this theory, as a Monistic world-view, rejects, in morality as in science, every transcendent (metaphysical) influence. In doing so, it follows the same principle by which it is guided in seeking the causes of new organic forms in forms already existing, but not in the interference of an extra-mundane God, who produces every new species in accordance with a new creative idea through supernatural interference. Just as Monism has no use for supernatural creative ideas in explaining living organisms, so it is equally impossible for it to derive the moral world-order from causes which do not lie within the world. It cannot admit any continuous supernatural influence upon moral life (divine government of the world from the outside), nor an influence through a particular act of revelation at a particular moment in history (giving of the ten commandments), or through God's appearance on the earth (divinity of Christ). Moral processes are, for Monism, natural products like everything else that exists, and their causes must be looked for in nature, i.e., in man, because man is the bearer of morality.

Ethical Individualism, then, is the crown of the edifice that Darwin and Haeckel have erected for Natural Science. It is the theory of evolution applied to the moral life.

Anyone who restricts the concept of the natural from the outset to an artificially limited and narrowed sphere, is easily tempted not to allow any room within it for free individual action. The consistent Evolutionist does not easily fall a prey to such a narrow-minded view. He cannot let the process of evolution terminate with the ape, and acknowledge for man a supernatural origin. Again, he cannot stop short at the organic reactions of man and regard only these as natural. He has to treat also the life of moral self-determination as the continuation of organic life.

The Evolutionist, then, in accordance with his fundamental principles, can maintain only that moral action evolves out of the less perfect forms of natural processes. He must leave the characterization of action, i.e., its determination as free action, to the immediate observation of each agent. All that he maintains is only that men have developed out of monkeys. What the nature of men actually is must be determined by observation of men themselves. The results of this observation cannot possibly contradict the history of evolution. Only the assertion that the results are such as to exclude their being due to a natural world-order would contradict recent developments in the Natural Sciences.³

Ethical Individualism, then, has nothing to fear from a Natural Science which understands itself. Observation yields freedom as the characteristic quality of the perfect form of human action. The establishment of a conceptual connection between this fact of observation and other kinds of processes results in the theory of the natural origin of free actions.

What, then, from the standpoint of nature are we to say of the distinction, already mentioned above (p. 13), between the two statements, “To be free means to be able to do what you will,” and “To be able, as you please, to strive or not to strive is the real meaning of the dogma of free will”? Hamerling bases his theory of free will precisely on this distinction, by declaring the first statement to be correct but the second to be an absurd tautology. He says, “I can do what I will, but to say I can will what I will is an empty tautology.” Whether I am able to do, i.e., to make real, what I will, i.e., what I have set before myself as my idea of action, that depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill (cp. p. 118). To be free means to be able to determine by moral imagination out of oneself, those ideas (motives) which lie at the basis of action. Freedom is impossible if anything other than I myself (whether a mechanical process or God) determines my moral ideas. In other words, I am free only when I myself produce these ideas, but not when I am merely able to realize the ideas which another being has implanted in me. A free being is one who can will what he regards as right. Whoever does anything other than what he wills must be impelled to it by motives which do not lie in himself. Such a man is unfree in his action. Accordingly, to be able to will, as you please, what you consider right or wrong means to be free or unfree as you please. This is, of course, just as absurd as to identify freedom with the faculty of doing what one is compelled to will. But this is just what Hamerling maintains when he says, “It is perfectly true that the will is always determined by motives, but it is absurd to say that on this ground it is unfree; for a greater freedom can neither be desired nor conceived than the freedom to realize oneself in proportion to one's own power and strength of will.” On the contrary, it is well possible to desire a greater freedom and that a true freedom, viz., the freedom to determine for oneself the motives of one's volitions.

Under certain conditions a man may be induced to abandon the execution of his will; but to allow others to prescribe to him what he shall do—in other words, to will what another and not what he himself regards as right—to this a man will submit only when he does not feel free.

External powers may prevent me from doing what I will, but that is only to condemn me to do nothing. Not until they enslave my spirit, drive my motives out of my head, and put their own motives in the place of mine, do they really aim at making me unfree. That is the reason why the church attacks not only the mere doing, but especially the impure thoughts, i.e., motives of my action. And for the church all those motives are impure which she has not herself authorized. A church does not produce genuine slaves until her priests turn themselves into advisers of consciences, i.e., until the faithful depend upon the church, i.e., upon the confessional, for the motives of their actions.

• 1. Only a superficial critic will find in the use of the word “faculty,” in this and other passages, a relapse into the old-fashioned doctrine of faculties of the soul. The reference to what was said on page 62 defines exactly the meaning of the word.
• 2. When Paulsen, p. 15 of the book mentioned above, says: “Different natural endowments and different conditions of life demand both a different bodily and also a different mental and moral diet,” he is very close to the correct view, but yet he misses the decisive point. In so far as I am an individual, I need no diet. Dietetic means the art of bringing a particular specimen into harmony with the universal laws of the genus. But as an individual I am not a specimen of a genus.
• 3. We are entitled to speak of thoughts (ethical ideas) as objects of observation. For, although the products of thinking do not enter the field of observation, so long as the thinking goes on, they may well become objects of observation subsequently. In this way we have gained our characterization of action.

[ 1 ] The formations in the Soul-World and Spiritland cannot be the objects of external sense perception. The objects of sense perception are to be added to the two worlds already described, as a third world. Moreover, man lives during his bodily existence simultaneously in the three worlds. He perceives the things of the sensible world and works upon them. The formations of the soul-world work upon him through their forces of sympathy and antipathy; and his own soul causes waves in the soul-world by its inclinations and disinclinations, its desires and wishes. The spiritual essence of the things, on the other hand, mirrors itself in his thought-world: and he himself is, as thinking spirit-being, citizen of the “Spiritland” and companion of everything that lives in this region of the world. This makes it evident that the sensible world is only a part of what surrounds man. This part stands out from the general environment of man with a certain independence, because it can be perceived by senses which leave unregarded the soul and the spiritual, although these belong equally to this surrounding world. Just as a piece of floating ice consists of the same substance as the surrounding water, but stands out from it through particular qualities, so are the things of the senses the substance of the surrounding soul- and spirit-worlds from which they stand out through particular qualities which make them perceptible to the senses. They are, to speak half metaphorically, condensed spirit- and soul-formations; and the condensation makes it possible for the senses to acquire knowledge of them. In fact, as ice is only a form in which the water exists, so are the objects of the senses only a form in which soul- and spirit-beings exist. If we have grasped this, we can also understand that as the water can pass over into ice, so the spirit-world can pass over into the soul-world and the latter into that of the senses.

[ 2 ] Looked at from this point of view we see why man can form thoughts about the things of the senses. For there is a question which everyone who thinks must needs ask himself, namely, in what relation does the thought which a man has about a stone stand to that stone itself? This question rises in full clarity in the minds of those who look especially deeply into external nature. They feel the consonance of the human thought-world with the structure and order of Nature. The great astronomer Kepler, for example, speaks in a beautiful way about this harmony: “True it is that the divine call which bids man study astronomy is written in the world, not indeed in words and syllables, but in substance, in the very fact that human conceptions and senses are fitted to relationships of the heavenly bodies and their conditions.” Only because the things of the sensible world are nothing else than densified spirit-beings, is the man who raises himself through his thought to these spirit-beings able by thinking to understand the things. Sense-objects originate in the spirit-world, they are only another form of the spirit-beings; and when man forms thoughts about things his inner nature is merely directed away from the sensible form and out towards the spiritual archetypes of these things. To understand an object by means of thought is a process which can be likened to that by which a solid body is first liquefied by fire in order that the chemist may be able to examine it in its liquid form.

[ 3 ] The spiritual archetypes of the sensible world are to be found in the different regions of the “Spiritland.” In the fifth, sixth, and seventh regions these archetypes are still found as living germ-points; in the four lower regions they shape themselves into spiritual formations. The human spirit perceives a shadowy reflection of these spiritual formations when, by thinking, man tries to gain understanding of the things of the senses. How these formations have condensed until they form the sensible world, is a question for one who endeavours to acquire a spiritual understanding of the world around him.

For human sense perception this surrounding world is divided primarily into four distinctly separated stages: the mineral, the plant, the animal and the human. The mineral kingdom is perceived by the senses and comprehended by thought. Thus when we form a thought about a mineral body we have to do with two things: the sense object and the thought. Accordingly we must imagine that this sense object is a condensed thought-being. Now one mineral being works upon another in an external way. It impinges on it and moves it; it warms it, lights it up, dissolves it, etc. This external kind of action can be expressed through thoughts. Man forms thoughts as to the way in which mineral things work upon each other externally in accordance with law. By this means his separate thoughts expand to a thought-picture of the whole mineral world. And this thought-picture is a reflection of the archetype of the whole mineral world of the senses. It is to be found as a complete whole in the spirit-world.

In the plant kingdom there is added to the external action of one thing on another, the phenomena of growth and propagation. The plant grows and brings forth from itself beings like itself. Life is here added to what confronts man in the mineral kingdom. Simple reflection on this fact leads to a view that is enlightening in this connection. The plant has the power to create its living form, and to reproduce it in a being of its own kind. And between the formless nature of mineral matter, as we encounter it in gases, liquids, etc., and the living form of the plant world, stand the forms of the crystals. In the crystals we have to seek the transition from the formless mineral world to the plant kingdom which has the capacity for creating living forms. In this externally sensible formative process in the kingdoms both of the mineral and the plant, we see condensed to its sensible expression the purely spiritual process which takes place when the spiritual germs of the three higher regions of the “Spiritland” form themselves into the spirit-shapes of the lower regions. The transition from the formless spirit-germ to the shaped formation corresponds to the process of crystallisation as its archetype in the spiritual world. If this transition condenses so that the senses can perceive it in its outcome, it then shows itself in the world of the senses as the process of mineral crystallisation.

Now there is also in the plant life a formed spirit-germ. But here the living, formative capacity is still retained in the formed being. In the crystal the spirit-germ has lost its constructive power during the process of formation. It has exhausted its life in the form produced. The plant has form and in addition to that it has the capacity of producing form. The characteristic of the spirit-germ in the higher regions of the “Spiritland” has been preserved in the plant life. The plant is therefore form as is the crystal, and added to that, formative force. Besides the form which the Primal Beings have taken in the plant-form there works at the latter yet another form which bears the impress of the spirit-being of the higher regions. But only that which expends itself in the produced form of the plant is sensibly perceptible; the formative beings who give life to this form are present in the plant kingdom in a way not perceptible to the senses. The physical eye sees the lily small to-day, and after some time grown larger. The formative force which elaborates the latter out of the former is not seen by this eye. This formative force is that part of the plant world which is imperceptible to the senses. The spirit-germs have descended a stage in order to work in the kingdom of formative forces. In spiritual science, Elemental Kingdoms are spoken of. If one designates the Primal Forms which as yet have no form as the First Elemental Kingdom, then the sensibly invisible force-beings, who work as the craftsmen of plant growth, belong to the Second Elemental Kingdom.

In the animal world sensation and impulse are added to the capacities for growth and propagation. These are manifestations of the soul-world. A being endowed with these belongs to the soul-world, receives impressions from it and reacts on it. Now every sensation, every impulse which arises in the animal is brought forth from the foundations of the animal soul. The form is more enduring than the feeling or impulse. One may say that the life of sensation bears the same relation to the more enduring living form as the self-changing plant-form bears to the rigid crystal. The plant to a certain extent exhausts itself in the shape-forming force; during its life it goes on constantly adding new forms to itself. First it sends out the root, then the leaf-structure, then the flowers, and so on. The animal is enclosed in a shape complete in itself and develops within this the changeful life of feeling and impulse. And this life has its existence in the soul-world. Just as the plant is that which grows and propagates itself, the animal is that which feels, and unfolds its impulses. They constitute for the animal the formless which is always developing into new forms. They have their archetypal processes ultimately in the highest regions of “Spiritland.” But they carry out their activities in the soul-world. There are thus in the animal world, in addition to the force-beings who, invisible to the senses, direct growth and propagation, others who have descended a stage still deeper into the soul-world. In the animal kingdom, formless beings who clothe themselves in soul-sheaths, are present as the master-builders bringing about sensations and impulses. They are the real architects of the animal forms. In spiritual science, the region to which they belong may be called the Third Elemental Kingdom.

Man, in addition to having the capacities named as those of plants and animals, is equipped also with the power to work up his sensations into ideas and thoughts and to control his impulses by thinking. The archetypal thought, which appears in the plant as shape and in the animal as soul-force, makes its appearance in him in its own form as thought itself. The animal is soul; man is spirit. The spirit-being which in the animal is engaged in soul-development has now descended a stage deeper still. In the animal it is soul-forming. In man it has entered into the world of material substance itself. The spirit is present within the human sensible body. And because it appears in a sensible garment, it can appear only as that shadowy reflection which represents the thought of the spirit-being. The spirit manifests in man conditioned by the physical brain organism. But, at the same time, it has become the inner being of man. Thought is the form which the formless spirit-being assumes in man, just as it takes on shape in the plant and soul in the animal. Consequently man, in so far as he is a thinking being, has no Elemental Kingdom building him from without. His Elemental Kingdom works in his physical body. Only in so far as man is form and sentient-being do Elemental Beings of the same kind work upon him as work upon plants and animals. The thought-organism in man is worked out entirely from within his physical body. In the spirit-organism of man, in his nervous system which has developed into the perfected brain, we have sensibly visible before us that which works on plants and animals as supersensible force. This brings it about that the animal manifests feeling of self, but man consciousness of self. In the animal, spirit feels itself as soul, it does not yet grasp itself as spirit. In man the spirit recognises itself as spirit, although—owing to the physical conditions—merely as a shadowy reflection of the spirit, as thought.

Accordingly, the threefold world falls into the following divisions:

1. The kingdom of the archetypal formless beings (First Elemental Kingdom)
2. The kingdom of the form-creating beings (Second Elemental Kingdom)
3. The kingdom of the soul-beings (Third Elemental Kingdom)
4. The kingdom of the created forms (crystal forms)
5. The kingdom that is perceptible to the senses in forms, but in which the form-creating beings are also working (Plant Kingdom)
6. The kingdom which is sensibly perceptible in forms, upon which, however, there work in addition the form-creating beings, and also the beings that are active in soul (Animal Kingdom)
7. The kingdom in which the forms become sensibly perceptible, but upon which work not only the form-creating beings and the beings that expend their activities in soul-life, and in which the spirit itself takes shape in the form of thought within the world of the senses (Human Kingdom.)

[ 4 ] From this it can be seen how the basic constituents of the human being living in the body are connected with the spiritual world. The physical body, the ether-body, the sentient-soul-body, and the intellectual-soul, are to be regarded as archetypes of the “Spiritland” condensed in the sensible world. The physical body comes into existence through the fact that the archetype of man becomes densified to the point of sensible appearance. For this reason one can call this physical body also a being of the First Elemental Kingdom, densified to sensible perceptibility. The ether-body comes into existence by the form that has arisen in this way, having its mobility maintained by a being that extends its activity into the kingdom of the senses, but is not itself visible to the senses. If one wishes to characterise this being fully, one must say it has its primal origin as a spirit-germ in the highest regions of the “Spiritland” and then shapes itself in the second region into an archetype of life. It works in the sensible world as such an archetype of life. In a similar way, the being that builds up the sentient-soul-body has its origin in the highest regions of the “Spiritland,” forms itself in the third region of the same into the archetype of the soul-world and works as such in the sensible world. But the intellectual soul is formed by the spirit-being of man, who in the fourth region of the “Spiritland” shaped itself into the archetype of thought and, as such, acts directly as thinking human being in the world of the senses. Thus man stands within the world of the senses; in this way his spirit works on his physical body, on his ether-body and on his sentient-soul-body. Thus this spirit comes into manifestation in the intellectual soul. Archetypes, in the form of beings who in a certain sense are external to man, work upon the three lower members of his being; in his intellectual soul he himself becomes a conscious worker on himself. And the beings that work on his physical body are the same as those that form mineral nature. On his ether body work beings of the kind that live in the plant kingdom, on his sentient-soul-body work beings such as live in the animal kingdom; both are imperceptible to the senses but extend their activity into these kingdoms.

[ 5 ] Thus do the different worlds work together. The world in which man lives is the expression of this collaboration.

[ 6 ] When we have grasped the sensible world in this way, understanding arises for Beings of another kind than those that have their existence in the above-mentioned four kingdoms of Nature. One example of such Beings is what is called the Folk Spirit, or Nation Spirit. This Being does not manifest directly in a material form. He lives his life entirely in the sensations, feelings, tendencies, etc., which are to be observed as those common to a whole people. He is a Being who does not incarnate physically, but, as man so forms his body that it is physically visible, so does that Being form his body out of the substance of the soul-world. This soul-body of the Nation Spirit is like a cloud in which the members of a nation live, the effects of whose activity come into evidence in the souls of the human beings concerned, but they do not originate in these souls themselves. The Nation Spirit remains a shadowy conception of the mind without being or life, an empty abstraction, to those who do not picture it in this way. And the same may be said in reference to the Being known as the Spirit of the Age (Zeitgeist.) The spiritual gaze extends in this way over many other beings, both of a lower and higher order, who live in the environment of man without his being able to perceive them with his bodily senses. But those who have the faculty of spiritual sight perceive such beings and can describe them. To the lower kinds of such beings belong those that are described by observers of the spiritual world as salamanders, sylphs, undines, gnomes. It should not be necessary to say that such descriptions cannot be faithful reproductions of the reality that underlies them. If they were such, the world in question would be not a spiritual, but a grossly material one. They attempt to make clear a spiritual reality which can only be represented in this way: that is, by similes. It is quite comprehensible that anyone who admits the validity of physical vision alone will regard such beings as the offspring of wild hallucination and superstition. They can of course never become visible to the eye of sense, for they have no material bodies. The superstition does not consist in regarding such beings as real, but in believing that they appear in forms perceptible to the physical senses. Such Beings co-operate in the building of the world and we encounter them as soon as we enter the higher realms that are hidden from the bodily senses. It is not those who see in such descriptions pictures of spiritual realities who are superstitious but rather those who believe in the material existence of the pictures, as well as those who deny the spirit because they think they must deny the material picture.

Mention must also be made of those beings who do not descend to the soul-world, but whose sheath is composed of the formations of the “Spiritland” alone. Man perceives them and becomes their companion when he opens his spiritual eye and spiritual ear to them. Thereby much becomes intelligible to man, at which otherwise he could only gaze uncomprehendingly. Everything becomes light around him; he sees the Primal Causes of effects in the world of the senses. He comprehends what he either denies entirely when he has no spiritual eyes, or in reference to which he has to content himself by saying: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.” People with delicate spiritual feelings become uneasy when they begin to have a glimmering, when they become vaguely aware of a world other than the material one around them, one in which they have to grope around as the blind grope among visible objects. Nothing but the clear vision of these higher regions of existence and a thorough understanding and penetration of what takes place in them can really fortify a man and lead him to his true goal. Through insight into what is hidden from the senses the human being expands his nature in such a way that he feels his life prior to this expansion to be no more than “a dream about the world.”

[ 1 ] Much as the human form in those ancient times described in the preceding chapters differed from the form of present-day man, one comes to conditions still more dissimilar if one goes even further back in the history of mankind. For only in the course of time did the forms of man and woman develop from an older, basic form in which human beings were neither the one nor the other, but rather were both at once. He who wants to form an idea of these enormously distant periods of the past must however liberate himself completely from the habitual conceptions taken from what man sees around him.

The times into which we now look back lie somewhat before the middle of the epoch which in the preceding passages was designated as the Lemurian. At that time the human body still consisted of soft and malleable materials. The other forms of earth also were still soft and malleable. As opposed to its later hardened condition, earth was still in a welling, more fluid one. As the human soul at that time embodied itself in matter, it could adapt this matter to itself in a much greater degree than later. That the soul takes on a male or a female body is due to the fact that the development of external terrestrial nature forces the one or the other upon it. While the material substances had not yet become rigid, the soul could force these substances to obey its own laws. It made of the body an impression of its own nature. But when [it] became denser the soul had to submit to the laws impressed upon this matter by external terrestrial nature. As long as the soul could still control matter, it formed its body as neither male nor female, but, instead gave it qualities which embraced both at the same time. For the soul is simultaneously male and female. It carries these two natures in itself. Its male element is related to what is called will, its female element to what is called imagination.

The external formation of earth resulted in that the body assumed a one-sided form. The male body has taken a form which is conditioned by the element of will; the female body on the other hand, bears the stamp of imagination. Thus it comes about that the two-sexed, male-female soul inhabits a single-sexed, male or female body. In the course of development the body had taken a form determined by the external terrestrial forces, so that it was no longer possible for the soul to pour its whole inner energy into this body. The soul had to retain something of this energy within itself and could let only a part of it flow into the body.

[ 2 ] If one continues with the Akasha Chronicle, the following becomes apparent. In an ancient period, human forms appear before us which are soft, malleable and quite different from later ones. They still carry the nature of man and woman within themselves to an equal degree. In the course of time, the material substances become denser; the human body appears in two forms, one of which begins to resemble the subsequent shape of man, the other that of woman. When this difference had not yet appeared, every human being could produce another human being out of himself. Impregnation was not an external process, but was something which took, place inside the human body itself. By becoming male or female, the body lost this possibility of self-impregnation. It had to act together with another body in order to produce a new human being.

[ 3 ] The division into sexes takes place when the earth enters a certain stage of its densification. The density of matter inhibits a portion of the force of reproduction. That portion of this force which is still active needs an external complementation through the opposite force of another human being. The soul however must retain a portion of its earlier energy within itself, in man as well as in woman. It cannot use this portion in the physical external world.

This portion of energy is now directed toward the interior of man. It cannot emerge toward the exterior; therefore it is freed for inner organs.

Here an important point in the development of mankind appears. Previously that which is called spirit, the faculty of thought, could not find a place in man. For this faculty would have found no organs for exercising its functions. The soul had employed all its energy toward the exterior, in order to build up the body. But now the energy of the soul, which finds no external employment, can become associated with the spiritual energy, and through this association those organs are developed in the body which later make of man a thinking being. Thus man could use a portion of the energy which previously he employed for the production of beings like himself, in order to perfect his own nature. The force by which mankind forms a thinking brain for itself is the same by which man impregnated himself in ancient times. The price of thought is single-sexedness. By no longer impregnating themselves, but rather by impregnating each other, human beings can turn a part of their productive energy within, and so become thinking creatures. Thus the male and the female body each represent an imperfect external embodiment of the soul, but thereby they become more perfect inwardly.

[ 4 ] This transformation of man takes place very slowly and gradually. Little by little, the younger, single-sexed male or female forms appear beside the old double-sexed ones.

[ 5 ] It is again a kind of fertilization which takes place in man when he becomes a creature endowed with spirit. The inner organs which can be built up by the surplus soul energy are fructified by the spirit. In itself the soul is two-sided: male-female. In ancient times it also formed its body on this basis. Later it can form its body only in such a way that for the external it acts together with another body; thereby the soul itself receives the capacity to act together with the spirit. For the external, man is henceforward fertilized from the outside, for the internal, from the inside, through the spirit. One can say that the male body now has a female soul, the female body a male soul. This inner one-sidedness of man is compensated by fertilization through the spirit. The one-sidedness is abolished. Both the male soul in the female body and the female soul in the male body again become double-sexed through fructification by the spirit. Thus man and woman are different in their external form; internally their spiritual one-sidedness is rounded out to a harmonious whole. Internally, spirit and soul are fused into one unit. Upon the male soul in woman the action of the spirit is female, and thus renders it male-female; upon the female soul in man the action of the spirit is male, and thus renders it male-female also. The double-sexedness of man has retired from the external world where it existed in the pre-Lemurian period, into his interior.

[ 6 ] One can see that the higher inner essence of a human being has nothing to do with man or woman. The inner equality, however, does result from a male soul in woman, and correspondingly from a female soul in man. The union with the spirit finally brings about the equality; but the fact that before the establishment of this equality there exists a difference involves a secret of human nature. The understanding of this secret is of great significance for all mystery science. It is the key to important enigmas of life. For the present we are not permitted to lift the veil which is spread over this secret . . .

[ 7 ] Thus physical man has developed from double-sexedness to single-sexedness, to the separation into male and female. In this way man has become a spiritual being of the kind which he is now. But one must not suppose that no beings which possessed cognition had been in contact with the earth before then. When one follows the Akasha Chronicle it does indeed appear that in the first Lemurian period, later physical man, because of his double sex, was a totally different being from that which one today designates as man. He could not connect any sensory perceptions with thoughts; he did not think. His life was one of impulses. His soul expressed itself only in instincts, in appetites, in animal desires and so on. His consciousness was dreamlike; he lived in dullness.

But there were other beings among these men. These of course were also double-sexed. For at the stage of terrestrial development of that time no male or female human body could be produced. The external conditions did not yet exist for this. But there were other beings which could acquire knowledge and wisdom in spite of their double-sexedness. This was possible because they had gone through a quite different development in a still more remote past. It was possible for their soul to be fructified by the spirit without first awaiting the development of the inner organs of the physical body of man. By means of the physical brain, the soul of contemporary man can think only that which it receives from the outside through the physical senses. This is the condition to which the development of man's soul has led. The human soul had to wait until a brain existed which became the mediator with the spirit. Without this detour, this soul would have remained spiritless. It would have remained arrested at the stage of dreamlike consciousness. This was different among the superhuman beings mentioned above. In previous stages their soul had developed organs which needed nothing physical in order to enter into contact with the spirit. Their knowledge and wisdom were supersensibly acquired. Such knowledge is called intuitive. Contemporary man attains such intuition only at a later stage of his development; this intuition makes it possible for him to enter into contact with the spirit without sensory mediation. He must make a detour through the world of sensory substance. This detour is called the descent of the human soul into matter, or popularly, “the fall of man.”

Because of a different earlier development, the superhuman beings did not have to take part in this descent. Since their soul had already attained a higher stage, their consciousness was not dreamlike, but inwardly clear. Their acquisition of knowledge and wisdom was a clairvoyance which had no need of senses or of an organ of thought. The wisdom according to which the world is built shone into their soul directly. Therefore they could become the leaders of youthful humanity which was still sunk in dullness. They were the bearers of a “primeval wisdom,” toward the understanding of which mankind is only now struggling along the detour mentioned above. They differed from what one calls “man” through the fact that wisdom shone upon them as the sunlight does upon us, as a free gift “from above.” “Man” was in a different position. He had to acquire wisdom by the work of the senses and of the organ of thought. Originally it did not come to him as a free gift. He had to desire it. Only when the desire for wisdom lived in man, did he acquire it through his senses and his organ of thought. Thus a new impulse had to awaken in the soul: the desire, the longing for knowledge. In its earlier stages the human soul could not have had this longing. The impulses of the soul were directed only toward materialization in that which assumed form externally—in what took place in it as a dreamlike life—but not toward cognition of the external world, nor toward knowledge. It is with the division into sexes that the impulse toward knowledge first appears.

[ 8 ] The superhuman beings received wisdom by way of clairvoyance just because they did not have this desire for it. They waited until wisdom shone into them, as we wait for the sunlight, which we cannot produce at night, but which must come to us by itself in the morning.

The longing for knowledge is produced by the fact that the soul develops inner organs, the brain and so forth, by means of which it gains possession of knowledge. This is a consequence of the circumstance that a part of the energy of the soul is no longer directed toward the outside, but toward the inside. The superhuman beings however, which have not carried out this separation of their spiritual forces, direct all the energy of their soul toward the outside. Therefore that force is also available to them externally for fructification by the spirit, which “man” turns inward for the development of the organs of cognition.

Now that force by means of which one human being turns toward the outside in order to act together with another is love. The superhuman beings directed all their love outward in order to let universal wisdom flow into their soul. “Man” however can only direct a part of it outward. “Man” became sensual, and thereby his love became sensual. He draws away from the outside world that part of his nature which he directs toward his inner development. And thus that arises which one calls selfishness. When he became man or woman in the physical body, “man” could surrender himself with only a part of his being; with the other part he separated himself from the world around him. He became selfish. And his action toward the outside became selfish; his striving after inner development also became selfish. He loved because he desired, and likewise he thought because he desired wisdom.

The selfless, all-loving natures, the leaders, the superhuman beings, confronted man, who was still childishly selfish.

The soul, which among these beings does not reside in a male or female body, is itself male-female. It loves without desire. Thus the innocent soul of man loved before the division into sexes, but at that time it could not understand, because it was still at an inferior stage, that of dream consciousness. The soul of the superhuman beings also loves in this manner, however, with understanding because of its advanced development. “Man” must pass through selfishness in order to attain selflessness again at a higher stage, where, however, it will be combined with completely clear consciousness.

The task of the superhuman natures, of the great leaders, was that they impressed upon youthful man their own character, that of love. They could do this only for that part of the spiritual energy which was directed outward. Thus sensual love was produced. It is therefore a consequence of the activity of the soul in a male or female body. Sensual love became the force of physical human development. This love brings man and woman together insofar as they are physical beings. Upon this love rests the progress of physical humanity.

It was only over this love that the superhuman natures had power. That part of human soul energy which is directed inward and is to bring about cognition by the detour through the senses—that part is withdrawn from the power of those superhuman beings. However, they themselves had never descended to the development of corresponding inner organs. They could clothe the impulse toward the external in love, because love acting toward the external was part of their own nature. Because of this, a gulf opened between them and youthful mankind. Love, at first in sensual form, they could plant in man; knowledge they could not give, for their own knowledge had never made the detour through the inner organs which man was now developing. They could speak no language which a creature with a brain could have understood.

[ 9 ] The inner organs of man mentioned above first became ripe for a contact with the spirit only at that stage of terrestrial existence which lies in the middle of the Lemurian period; but they had already been formed incompletely, at a much earlier stage of development. For the soul had already gone through physical embodiments in preceding times. It had lived in dense substance, not on earth but on other celestial bodies. Details about this must be given later. At present we shall say only that the terrestrial beings previously lived on another planet, where, in accordance with the prevailing conditions, they developed up to the point at which they were when they arrived on earth. They put off the substances of this preceding planet like clothing and, at the level of development which they thus attained, became pure soul germs with the capacity to perceive, to feel and so forth—in short, to lead that dreamlike life which remained peculiar to them in the first stages of their terrestrial existence.

The superhuman entities previously mentioned, the leaders in the field of love, had already been so perfect on the preceding planet that they did not have to descend to develop the rudiments of those inner organs.

But there were other beings, not as far advanced as these leaders of love, who on the preceding planet were still numbered among “men,” but at that period were hurrying ahead of men. Thus, at the beginning of the formation of the earth, they were further advanced than men, but still were at the stage where knowledge must be acquired through inner organs. These beings were in a special position. They were too far advanced to pass through the physical human body, male or female, but on the other hand, were not so far advanced that they could act through full clairvoyance like the leaders of love. They could not yet be beings of love; they could no longer be “men.” Thus they could only continue their own development as half superhuman beings, in which they were aided by men. They could speak to creatures with a brain in a language which the latter could understand. Thereby the human soul energy which was turned inward was stimulated, and could connect itself with knowledge and wisdom. It was thus that wisdom of a human kind first appeared on earth. The “half superhuman beings” mentioned above could use this human wisdom in order to achieve for themselves that of perfection which they still lacked. In this manner they became the stimulators of human wisdom. One therefore calls them bringers of light (Lucifer). Youthful mankind thus had two kinds of leaders: beings of love and beings of wisdom. Human nature was balanced between love and wisdom when it assumed its present form on this earth. By the beings of love it was stimulated to physical development, by the beings of wisdom to the perfection of the inner nature. As a consequence of physical development, humanity advances from generation to generation, forms new tribes and races; through inner development individuals grow toward inner perfection, become knowing and wise men, artists, technicians etc. Physical mankind strides from race to race; each race hands down its sensorily perceptible qualities to the following one through physical development. Here the law of heredity holds sway. The children carry within themselves the physical characteristics of the fathers. Beyond this lies a process of spiritual-soul perfection which can only take place through the development of the soul itself.

With this we stand before the law of the development of the soul within terrestrial existence. This development is connected with the law and mystery of birth and death.

[ 1 ] It is certainly true that much in the intellectual life of the present makes it difficult for one who is seeking the truth to accept spiritual scientific (theosophical) insights. And what has been said in the essays on the Lebensfragen der theosophischen Bewegung (Vital Questions of the (Theosophical Movement) can be taken as an indication of the reasons which exist especially for the conscientious seeker of truth in this respect. Many statements of the scientist of the spirit must appear entirely fantastic to him who tests them against the certain conclusions which he feels obliged to draw from what he has encountered as the facts of the research of natural science. To this is added the fact that this research can point to the enormous blessings it has bestowed and continues to bestow on human progress. What an overwhelming effect is produced when a personality who wants to see a view of the world built exclusively on the results of this research, can utter the proud words: “For there lies an abyss between these two extreme conceptions of life: one for this world alone, the other for heaven. But up to the present day, traces of a paradise, of a life of the deceased, of a personal God, have nowhere been found by human science, by that inexorable science which probes into and dissects everything, which does not shrink back before any mystery, which explores heaven beyond the stars of the nebula, analyzes the infinitely small atoms of living cells as well as of chemical bodies, decomposes the substance of the sun, liquefies the air, which will soon telegraph by wireless transmission from one end of the earth to the other, and already today sees through opaque bodies, which introduces navigation under the water and in the air, and opens new horizons to us through radium and other discoveries; this science which, after having shown the true relationship of all living beings among themselves and their gradual changes in form, today draws the organ of the human soul, the brain, into the sphere of its penetrating research.” (Prof. August Forel, Leben und Tod (Life and Death) Munich, 1908, page 3). The certainty with which one thinks it possible to build on such a basis betrays itself in the words which Forel joins to the remarks quoted above: “In proceeding from a monistic conception of life, which alone takes all scientific facts into account, we leave the supernatural aside and turn to the book of nature.” Thus, the serious seeker after truth is confronted by two things which put considerable obstacles in the way of any inkling he may have of the truth of the communications of the science of the spirit. If a feeling for such communications lives in him, even if he also senses their inner well-founded-ness by means of a more delicate logic, he can be driven toward the suppression of such impulses when he has to tell himself two things. First of all, the authorities who know the cogency of positive facts consider that everything “supersensible” springs only from day-dreams and unscientific superstition. In the second place, by devoting myself to these transcendental matters, I run the risk of becoming an impractical person of no use in life. For everything which is accomplished in practical life must be firmly rooted in the “ground of reality.”

[ 2 ] Not all of those who find themselves in such a dilemma will find it easy to work their way through to a realization of how matters really stand with respect to the two points we have cited. If they could do it, with respect to the first point they would, for instance, see the following: The results of the science of the spirit are nowhere in conflict with the factual research of natural science. Everywhere that one looks at the relation of the two in an unprejudiced manner, there something quite different becomes apparent for our time. It turns out that this factual research is steering toward a goal which in a by no means distant future, will bring it into full harmony with what spiritual research ascertains in certain areas from its supersensible sources. From hundreds of cases which could be adduced as proof for this assertion, we shall cite a characteristic one here.

[ 3 ] In my lectures on the development of the earth and of mankind, it has been pointed out that the ancestors of the present-day civilized peoples lived in a land-area which at one time was situated in that part of the surface of the earth which today is occupied by a large portion of the Atlantic Ocean. In the essays, From the Akasha Chronicle, it is rather the soul-spiritual qualities of these Atlantean ancestors which have been indicated. In oral presentations also has often been described how the earth surface looked in the old Atlantean land. It was said that at that time the air was saturated with water mist vapors. Man lived in the water mist, which in certain regions never lifted to the point where the air was completely clear. Sun and moon could not be seen as they are today, but were surrounded by colored coronas. A distribution of rain and sunshine, such as occurs at present, did not exist at that time. One can clairvoyantly explore this old land; the phenomenon of the rainbow did not exist at that time. It only appeared in the post-Atlantean period. Our ancestors lived in a country of mist. These facts have been ascertained by purely supersensible observation, and it must even be said that the spiritual researcher does best to renounce all deductions based on his knowledge of natural science, for through such deductions his unprejudiced inner sense of spiritual research is easily misled. With such observations one should now compare certain ideas toward which some natural scientists feel themselves impelled at present. Today there are scientists who find themselves forced by facts to assume that at a certain period of its development the earth was enveloped in a cloud mass. They point out that at present also, clouded skies exceed the unclouded, so that life is still to a large extent under the influence of sunlight which is weakened by the formation of clouds, hence one cannot say that life could not have developed under the cloud cover of that Atlantean time. They further point out that those organisms which can be considered among the oldest of the plant world are of a kind which also develop without direct sunlight. Thus, among the forms of this older plant world those desert-type plants which need direct sunlight and dry air, are not present. And also with respect to the animal world, a scientist, Hilgard, has pointed out that the giant eyes of extinct animals, for instance, of the Ichthyosaurus, indicate that a dim illumination must have prevailed on the earth in their time. I do not mean to regard such views as not needing correction. They interest the spiritual researcher less through what they state than through the direction into which factual research finds itself forced. Even the periodical Kosmos, which has a more or less Haeckelian point of view, some time ago published an essay worthy of consideration which, because of certain facts of the plant and animal world, indicated the possibility of a former Atlantean Continent.

If one brought together a greater number of such matters one could easily show how true natural science is moving in a direction which in the future will cause it to join the stream which at present already carries the waters of the springs of spiritual research. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that spiritual research is nowhere in contradiction with the facts of natural science. Where its adversaries see such a contradiction, this does not relate to facts, but to the opinions which these adversaries have formed, and which they believe necessarily result from the facts. But in truth there is not the slightest connection between the opinion of Forel quoted above, for instance, and the facts of the stars of the nebulas, the nature of the cells, the liquefaction of the air, and so forth. This opinion represents nothing but a belief which many have formed out of a need for believing, which clings to the sensory-real, and which they place beside the facts. This belief is very dazzling for present-day man. It entices him to an inner intolerance of a quite special kind. Its adherents are blinded to the point where they consider their own opinion to be the only “scientific” one, and ascribe the views of others merely to prejudice and superstition. Thus it is really strange when one can read the following sentences in a newly-published book on the phenomena of the soul life [Hermann Ebbinghaus, Abriss der Psychologie (Outline of Psychology) ]: “As a help against the impenetrable darkness of the future and the insuperable might of inimical powers, the soul creates religion for itself. As in other experiences involving ignorance or incapacity, under the pressure of uncertainty and the terror of great dangers, ideas as to how help can be found here, are quite naturally forced upon man in the same way in which one thinks of water when in danger from fire, of the helpful comrade in the peril of combat.” “In the lower stages of civilization, where man still feels himself to be quite impotent and to be surrounded by sinister dangers at every step, the feeling of fear, and correspondingly, the belief in evil spirits and demons naturally entirely prevail. In higher stages on the other hand, where a more mature insight into the interconnection of things and a greater power over them produce a certain self-confidence and stronger hopes, a feeling of confidence in invisible powers comes to the fore and with it the belief in good and benevolent spirits. But on the whole, both fear and love, side by side, remain permanently characteristic of the feeling of man toward his gods, except that their relation to one another changes according to the circumstances.”—“These are the roots of religion . . . fear and need are its mothers, and although it is principally perpetuated by authority once it has come into existence, still it would have died out long since if it were not constantly being reborn out of these two.”

Everything in these assertions has been shifted and thrown into disorder, and this disorder is illuminated from the wrong points of view. Furthermore, he who maintains this opinion is firm in his conviction that his opinion must be a generally binding truth. First of all, the content of religious conceptions is confused with the nature of religious feelings. The content of religious conceptions is taken from the region of the supersensible worlds. The religious feeling, for example, fear and love of the supersensible entities, is made the creator of this content without further ado, and it is assumed without hesitation that nothing real corresponds to the religious conceptions. It is not even considered remotely possible that there could be a true experience of supersensible worlds, and that the feelings of fear and love then cling to the reality which is given by this experience, just as no one thinks of water when in danger from fire, of the helpful comrade in the peril of combat, if he has not known water and comrade previously. In this view, the science of the spirit is declared to be day-dreaming because one makes religious feeling the creator of entities which one simply regards as non-existent. This way of thinking totally lacks the consciousness that it is possible to experience the content of the supersensible world, just as it is possible for the external senses to experience the ordinary world of the senses.

The odd thing that often happens with such views is that they resort to the kind of deduction to support their belief which they represent as improper in their adversaries. For example, in the above-mentioned work of Forel the sentence appears, “Do we not live in a way a hundred times truer, warmer, and more interestingly when we base ourselves on the ego, and find ourselves again in the souls of our descendants, rather than in the cold and nebulous fata morgana of a hypothetical heaven among the equally hypothetical songs and trumpet soundings of supposed angels and archangels, which we cannot imagine, and which therefore mean nothing to us.” But what has that which “one” finds “warmer,” “more interesting,” to do with the truth? If it is true that one should not deduce a spiritual life from fear and hope, is it then right to deny this spiritual life because one finds it to be “cold” and “uninteresting”? With respect to those personalities who claim to stand on the “firm ground of scientific facts,” the spiritual researcher is in the following position. He says to them, Nothing of what you produce in the way of such facts from geology, paleontology, biology, physiology, and so forth is denied by me. It is true that many of your assertions are in need of correction through other facts. But such a correction will be brought about by natural science itself. Apart from that, I say “yes” to what you advance. It does not enter my mind to fight you when you advance facts. But your facts are only a part of reality. The other part are the spiritual facts, through which the occurrence of the sensory ones first becomes understandable. These facts are not hypotheses, not something which “one” cannot imagine, but something lived and experienced by spiritual research. What you advance beyond the facts you have observed is, without your realizing it, nothing other than the opinion that those spiritual facts cannot exist. As a matter of fact, you advance nothing as the proof of your assertion except that such spiritual facts are unknown to you. From this you deduce that they do not exist and that those who claim to know something of them are dreamers and visionaries. The spiritual researcher does not take even the smallest part of your world from you; he only adds his own to it. But you are not satisfied that he should act in this way; you say—although not always clearly—“‘One’ must not speak of anything except of that of which we speak; we demand not only that that be granted to us of which we know something, but we require that all that of which we know nothing be declared idle phantasms.” The person who wants to have anything to do with such “logic” cannot be helped for the time being. With this logic he may understand the sentence: “Our I has formerly lived directly in our human ancestors, and it will continue to live in our direct or indirect descendants.” (Forel, Leben und Tod (Life and Death), page 21.) Only he should not add, “Science proves it,” as is done in this work. For in this case science “proves” nothing, but a belief which is chained to the world of the senses sets up the dogma: That of which I can imagine nothing must be considered as delusion; and he who sins against my assertion offends against true science.

[ 4 ] The one who knows the development of the human soul finds it quite understandable that men's minds are dazzled for the moment by the enormous progress of natural science and that today they cannot find their way among the forms in which great truths are traditionally transmitted. The science of the spirit gives such forms back to mankind. It shows for example how the Days of Creation of the Bible represent things which are unveiled to the clairvoyant eye.¹ A mind chained to the world of the senses finds only that the Days of Creation contradict the results of geology and so forth. In understanding the deep truths of these Days of Creation, the science of the spirit is equally far removed from making them evaporate as a mere “poetry of myths,” and from employing any kind of allegorical or symbolical methods of explanation. How it proceeds is indeed quite unknown to those who still ramble on about the contradiction between these Days of Creation and science. Further, it must not be thought that spiritual research finds its knowledge in the Bible. It has its own methods, finds truths independently of all documents and then recognizes them in the latter. This way is necessary for many present-day seekers after truth. For they demand a spiritual research which bears within itself the same character as natural science. And only where the nature of this science of the spirit is not recognized does one become perplexed when it is a matter of protecting the facts of the supersensible world from opinions which appear to be founded on natural science. Such a state of mind was even anticipated by a man of warm soul, who however could not find the supersensible content of the science of the spirit. Almost eighty years ago this personality, Schleiermacher, wrote to the much younger Lücke: “When you consider the present state of natural science, how more and more it assumes the form of an encompassing account of the universe, what do you then feel the future will bring, I shall not even say for our theology, but for our evangelical Christianity? . . . I feel that we shall have to learn to do without much of what many are still accustomed to consider as being inseparably connected with the nature of Christianity. I shall not even speak of the Six Days' Work, but the concept of creation, as it is usually interpreted . . . How long will it be able to stand against the power of a world-outlook formed on the basis of scientific reasonings which nobody can ignore? . . . What is to happen, my dear friend? I shall not see this time, and can quietly lie down to sleep; but you, my friend, and your contemporaries, what do you intend to do?” (Theologische Studien und Kritiken von Ullmann und Umbreit (Theological Studies and Criticism by Ullmann and Umbreit), 1829, page 489). At the basis of this statement lies the opinion that the “scientific reasonings” are a necessary result of the facts. If this were so, then “nobody” could ignore them, and he whose feeling draws near the supersensible world can wish that he may be allowed “quietly to lie down to sleep” in the face of the assault of science against the supersensible world. The prediction of Schleiermacher has been realized, insofar as the “scientific reasonings” have established themselves in wide circles. But at the same time, today there exists a possibility of coming to know the supersensible world in just as “scientific” a manner as the interrelationships of sensory facts. The one who familiarizes himself with the science of the spirit in the way this is possible at present, will be preserved from many superstitions by it, and will become able to take the supersensible facts into his conceptual store, thereby divesting himself of the superstition that fear and need have created this supersensible world.

The one who is able to struggle through to this view will no longer be held back by the idea that he might be estranged from reality and practical life by occupying himself with the science of the spirit. He will then realize how the true science of the spirit does not make life poorer, but richer. It will certainly not mislead him into underestimating telephones, railroad technology, and aerial navigation; but in addition he will see many other practical things which remain neglected today, when one believes only in the world of the senses and therefore recognizes only a part of the truth rather than all of it.

• 1. Compare: Rudolf Steiner, Die Geheimnisse der biblischen Schopfungsgeschichte (The Secrets of the Biblical History of Creation), Freiburg i, Br., 1954.