The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eight days ago, I tried to explain Goethe's world view through his “Faust”. We saw that Goethe presents the great struggle of the universe, the spiritual universe, between good and evil, as it unfolds in man and around man, in the way it is in the sense of mysticism or what we call theosophy. We have seen that where Goethe points people to worlds beyond the sensual, he does so in such a way that we can clearly see from his expressions his intimate knowledge of what we in Theosophy hold as our conviction. We have seen this in “Prologue in Heaven” and in the way he lets the Earth Spirit speak, but also in what we can see as a reference to the spiritual world and as a juxtaposition of the lower and higher self. We have taken a closer look at the address to the Earth Spirit and seen how Goethe introduces his Faust to the world, which we have called the world of higher knowledge, by showing how the human being is composed of the physical, the soul and the spiritual. We have been able to show this by the descent of Faust to the “Mothers”, by the characteristic properties of the homunculus, which cannot be made plausible in any other way, and then by the re-humanization of Helena in the “Classical Walpurgis Night”. We have seen how he ascends to knowledge, ascends to the heights of a spiritual Montserrat, to the heights of knowledge and mystical experience, concludes with the words that he has the Chorus mysticus say, and in doing so suggests the sense in which he wants Faust to be understood.

What Goethe expressed here is not a figment of his imagination, nor is it meant in a merely poetic sense, because Goethe has always seen the expression of secret natural laws in art, which he expressed at another time as follows: Art should be based on the deepest foundations of knowledge. There is no doubt that if we follow Goethe to the height of his life, if we look up and look up to the spiritual worlds, then we will be able to demonstrate a continuous increase to truly mystical heights in Goethe himself. Last time, I already pointed out that the direction of Goethe's gaze to the spiritual was not only in his nature, but was already present when he had already established a world view for himself, when he tried to make clear to himself when he entered Weimar, how things in nature are connected, when he sought a spiritual essence that underlies all nature. Last time I already spoke about the “Nature” hymn that he wrote in Weimar. In it, he addresses nature directly, but in such a way that it becomes a direct expression of a spiritual essence for him. You can see from every word in this prose hymn that he addresses nature as a being of a spiritual nature. In the book “On Natural Science” in General, he says about nature:

Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by it, unable to step out of it or to get deeper into it. Uninvited and unwarned, she takes us into the cycle of her dance and carries us away with her until we are tired and fall out of her arms [...] She has thought and is constantly pondering; but not as a human being, but as nature[...] She has no language or speech, but she creates tongues and hearts through which she feels and speaks [...] I did not speak of her. No, what is true and what is false, she has spoken it all. Everything is her fault, everything is her merit.

Thus he places himself in this nature, which he has conceived entirely spiritually, and speaks of nature as the external expression of a spiritual essence. Since Goethe addressed nature in this way, he was bound to ascend. For this is how he presents the physical incarnation: He imagines that the soul is above nature. It is true that it belongs to the great whole of the world, and he therefore also speaks of a higher nature. But by speaking of the lower nature, of the various changes, of the metamorphoses of nature, he builds the world view in the sense of the mystical. To give an example, I mention Paracelsus. Without him, Goethe is inconceivable. Through Paracelsus, Goethe is more understandable. I do not want to claim that Paracelsus' teachings can be adopted wholesale. Do not think that I want to speak in favor of those who today want to speak again as Paracelsus spoke. But we could still learn an infinite amount from such a highly chosen spirit. Goethe also learned an infinite amount from him. Just one word to show how Goethe strove in the spirit of Paracelsus: Paracelsus places himself before the true essence of man, soul and spirit, embodying himself in the archetypes of nature, in the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom, where it is expressed in a one-sided way, in order to finally express itself in the most versatile way in man. In the various minerals, plants and animals, letters have been created with which the great All-Spirit has ultimately written the human being. This shows the depth of Paracelsus' insight into the human being. When Goethe sets out to study the development of the world's creatures from the imperfect to the perfect, he expresses himself in a similar way to Paracelsus. Every day, Frau von Stein received answers to questions about how his thoughts were maturing. Once, when he thought he was on the trail of a particularly important discovery, he said to her, “My spelling has helped me.” He meant that he had tried to get to know the plants and animals, which, like Paracelsus, were letters for him in solving the great mystery that man represents for man. In this way, Goethe wanted to proceed from the beginning of his study of nature, in order to seek the great spiritual connection in all beings. So, from the outset, he sought what he called the “primordial plant”, which was said to live in all plants and which, in essence, is the spirit of plant existence. Then he rose to the “primordial animal” and sought to prove the “primordial animal” in the animals. Metamorphosis of Plants and Metamorphosis of Animals – you only need to read them to have the most beautiful theosophical treatise on plants and animals you could ever find. It was precisely this attitude that led Goethe, soon after his arrival in Weimar, to an important scientific discovery. Until the time when Goethe became involved in the study of nature, the fact that humans are superior to animals had to be found in the existence of special individual organs. That humans differ in their physical constitution from the higher animals, however, was already addressed by Herder in his “History of Humanity”. Herder was Goethe's teacher to a significant extent. It was said at that time: All higher animals have the upper incisors in a special intermaxillary bone. Only humans do not have such an intermaxillary bone. Goethe said: The difference between humans and other beings is of a spiritual-mental nature. But the difference cannot be found in such a detail, which is why humans must also have an intermaxillary bone. Researchers have long resisted recognizing this discovery by Goethe. But today it is taken for granted that the discovery is based on a full fact. So even then, Goethe made this great scientific discovery out of his own convictions. In Italy, he studied the plant and animal world with the aim of finding ways and means of gaining an overview of these beings. In his Metamorphosis of Plants and Animals, he produced a masterpiece in this regard. The idea that Goethe carried out is an idea that can already be found on a large scale in Giordano Bruno. Giordano Bruno, for example, as is to be expected of anyone who truly sees into the depths of nature and the universe, is one of those who assumes that humans go through various incarnations, who assumes that humans have often been here before and will often return. The body of man, as we see it before us, shows us how soul and spirit expand in space. And when man dies, soul and spirit contract, they become, as it were, punctual, in order to expand again and then contract again. Thus existence alternates between expansion and contraction. Man ascends by becoming more and more perfect with each new expansion, only to contract again and pass through the purely spiritual realm. These thoughts were conceived by Giordano Bruno and were extended by Goethe to include plant and animal life. The whole metamorphosis shows us that the plant consists of the flower and the root in contraction and unfolding. This can also be found in Swedenborg's books, where he noted down the fundamental discoveries he made, which then bore fruit in Goethe and come to us again through him. Now some scholars from the Nordic academies have joined forces to publish Swedenborg's writings, and it remains to be seen how much science in all fields of natural science can be found in Swedenborg. Goethe studied Swedenborg, and there is an interesting doctoral dissertation from the University of Berlin by Hans Schlieper, in which the connection between the writings of Goethe and Swedenborg is demonstrated. If you want to gain insight into how Swedenborg developed these ideas, then you need only read Emerson's “The Representatives of the Human Race” and look up the article on Swedenborg. There you will find the ideas that bore such extraordinary fruit in Goethe. But you will also find that the various kingdoms of nature must ultimately find their culmination in the human being, that ultimately it must be shown how the soul emerges from the small world in order to find its unity in the larger world, in the cosmos. Schiller also expressed this in a magnificent way. In his correspondence with Goethe, Schiller writes on August 23, 1794:

For a long time now, although from a considerable distance, I have been observing the course of your mind and have noted the path you have set out on with ever-renewed admiration. You seek what is necessary in nature, but you seek it by the most difficult route, which any weaker force would do well to avoid. You take all of nature together to get light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the explanation for the individual. From the simple organization, you ascend, step by step, to the more complicated ones, to finally build the most complicated of all, the human being, genetically from the materials of the entire structure of nature. By recreating it, as it were, you seek to penetrate its hidden technology. A great and truly heroic idea that amply demonstrates how your mind holds the rich totality of its ideas together in a beautiful unity. You could never have hoped that your life would be enough for such a goal, but even just embarking on such a path is worth more than any other ending – and you have chosen, like Achilles in the Iliad between Pythia and immortality.

I could read on, and you would find that every single word of Schiller is aptly applied to Goethe. Goethe himself spoke beautifully about the relationship between man as a microcosm and the rest of nature, showing with tremendous power of words how not a single detail but the whole spirit of nature lives in man, how this whole spirit comes to the realization of itself. Whoever remembers the beautiful words spoken by the German mystics will know, among others, the saying: “The Godhead lives in man, and in man God has created an organ to behold Himself.” In his book on Winckelmann, Goethe says, where he speaks of antiquity:

When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole, when the harmonious comfort gives him a pure, free delight - then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as if it had reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.

What does Goethe say here that is different from what he presents in his “Faust” as the transition of all realms through nature? Goethe was never satisfied with the materialistic view of nature. And when Holbach had created a particularly crass expression in this regard, he opposed him as a young man. Goethe says about it, he [had] found nothing in it but a barren speculation, but not a real explanation of nature. Furthermore, matter was supposed to have existed from eternity, and from eternity it was supposed to have been in motion, and through this motion it was supposed to have produced the phenomena of existence. Thus Goethe dismissed materialism. Goethe always strove to find harmony between what he calls spiritual nature and what the incorporation of spiritual nature represents. Therefore, he was a follower of the doctrine that sees the embodiment of the spirit in our physicality, in the outer forms of nature. Goethe held this point of view throughout his life and elevated this point of view to ever clearer forms. Now, however, this point of view requires something else. It requires that we recognize that the human being is not complete. The realms of perfection must continue beyond the human being. This is the theosophical worldview. Thus, as Theosophists, we do not take the view that the human being is somehow complete. But just as there are also more imperfect beings, we also recognize that we have more perfect and more imperfect human brothers, and that there are some who have progressed far beyond the measure of other people. These are the great teachers who endeavor to lead people up to ever higher and higher worlds. This is a realm from the lowest beings to the gods. We recognize that man will one day rise to divinity, and we already recognize an order today that begins with the lower spirits and does not end until physical existence is exhausted and we look up to heights and beings that fill the gap between human beings and beings that humans only have an inkling of. In this sense, that he looked up to higher spiritual entities, Goethe spoke his poem from the first Weimar period, the well-known poem “The Divine”:

Noble be man,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all beings
We know.
Hail to the unknown Higher beings We intuit! Man shall be like them! His example teach us Those believe.

This is the poem in which Goethe spoke of the stages of ascent to higher beings. Those who have heard the theosophical lectures here before will know that in theosophy we recognize an unbroken succession of beings, from today's average human being to the higher beings, that we know that among us there are brothers who have reached high levels, who are our teachers, but who have withdrawn from the hustle and bustle of people because they need to have freedom. Only a number of disciples are able to see them. Those who rise to the fervor of deep truths, to a corresponding realization, which must be a free one, can hear these elevated human individualities. Goethe then speaks of these higher individualities. I only need to quote the poem “Symbolum”. In it, he speaks of the holy awe that must permeate us in the face of the truth and the spiritual world. Goethe is therefore speaking here of the voices of the spirits and the masters. This will show you the profound agreement between Goethe and what we call the theosophical world view. Now I would also like to show you that such an agreement really goes very far in Goethe. You know that in the theosophical world view we speak of the fact that human beings do not only have a physical body. This physical body is a subordinate body of the human being. Then we have the etheric double body. This can be seen by those whose psychic organs are open. It can be seen when the physical body is subtracted. Then the same space that the human being occupies is filled by the etheric body. It looks like the color of a peach blossom. Then comes the astral body, the expression of feelings, instincts, desires and passions. The Theosophical worldview calls this body “kama-rupa.” These three superimposed bodies are spoken of today. It is said that there is a parallel in our physical nature. The so-called occultist says that the physical body has an external parallel in what we call solid bodies, that what we call the etheric body has a similarity to the liquid, and that the astral body has a sensual parallel in everything that appears gaseous and airy. Everything that takes shape in the life of the senses and the life of the instincts is referred to as an image of the astral body. In mystical form, we speak of a deity that creates these formations. This is nothing other than 'Kama'. When studying cloud formations, Goethe spoke, entirely in line with this world view, of the fact that for him, too, the expression of the formation of water reveals an image of the soul, a KamaRupa:

When the deity Camarupa, high and holy,

Gathers the folds of the veil, disperses them,
Delights in the changing forms,
Now freezes, then vanishes like a dream,
we marvel and hardly believe our eyes;

With the exception of the term “Camarupa”, you can rediscover Goethe's theosophical worldview. The question now is: How is Goethe connected to what we really call the theosophical movement and how it was not created only by the Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Society merely popularizes the old theosophical teachings that have always been present. Before 1875, the principle was strictly adhered to that the theosophical teachings must be secret, that only those who profess very specific prerequisites and conditions can learn them. In my magazine Luzifer-Gnosis, you will find something discussed that can lead you to higher things. In earlier times, the theosophical teachings were only practiced in the narrowest of circles, in the so-called secret schools. Only those who had attained certain degrees could receive certain teachings. A certain degree of secrets was only imparted to a person when he had attained certain degrees. The most important society was that of the Rosicrucians, a top secret society. Whatever you find about it in books, you can call a hoax, as far as I'm concerned. What can be found in literature and what is accessible to scholarship is not Rosicrucianism. The brothers only knew each other. At the top were twelve initiates. Only the thirteenth was the leader. The outer symbol was the cross with roses. The society had, despite being a secret society, a great influence on the course of intellectual development. In the time when materialism did not yet dominate the major circles, a very great intellectual influence could still be exercised. The Rosicrucian Society is the one whose tradition and inner significance Goethe also knew. He became acquainted with it at an early stage. During the time when he was staying in Frankfurt after a very serious illness during his studies in Leipzig, he was initiated into the secrets of the Rosicrucians by a certain personage. More and more, this mysticism became absorbed in Goethe. Now he wanted to express what he had to say in this regard in a very profound poem. At the time he wrote this poem, he proved himself to be a practical mystic in that he understood life as practical mysticism. Only under certain conditions was he taught the most intimate things. Mrs. von Stein was one of his intimates. He could not imagine this connection any differently, as if he had already belonged to her in a previous life. That is the important thing. Not the dogma of reincarnation; the main thing is to understand life from this point of view. So Goethe once said, to make clear to himself his deep connection, his relationship with Mrs. von Stein: In times gone by, you were surely once my sister or my wife. That is the way he interprets reincarnation here and in other ways. Of course, Goethe regards this as his secret. He speaks of it only to his intimates. That is why you can quote some things from Goethe that seem to contradict him. You can also find this with other mystics. We know that this is the case. Now Goethe has expressed something of an ascent, of a spiritual order in the Rosicrucians in the aforementioned poem. This poem has become so dear to Mrs. von Stein that it is called “The Secrets”. It was never finished. The greatness of the poem should have been much more extensive. He might have been able to express himself if it had had as many verses as there are days in a year. But he did express the following clearly: firstly, this basic idea and, secondly, the view that a kernel of truth can be found in all religions, that all great religions contain a basic teaching, the so-called wisdom religion, and that the various wisdom religions are embodied in individual great initiates who are connected to one another in a brotherhood, that they differ according to their inclinations, the nature of the country and so on. Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, the teachings of Hermes, Judaism, Christianity; they all contain a common core of truth. They are different because those who truly grasp the human being in his spiritual essence know that it is not a matter of implementing an abstract dogma, but that one must speak to each person in his own way. You only have to possess the core of truth, then you can clothe it in the customs of every country. You will find that our theosophical teachings have rebuilt the ancient teachings of the rishis within the Hindu religion, just as they have in Europe. Even in a form that will again be able to withstand science. So we can speak to every people in their own language. But a common core of truth lives in all these languages. This was also the view of the Rosicrucians, as expressed by Goethe in the poem “The Mysteries”. You will see how much mysticism and theosophy lives in Goethe when we consider his secret revelations in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. But now let us look at this Rosicrucian coloring in his poem, which has remained a fragment. Goethe knows that there will not be many who will be able to understand this poem “The Mysteries”. He also knows that this poem contains so much that no one should dare to believe that they can fully understand it. But he expresses it clearly that he allows us to see into his deepest soul:

A wondrous song is prepared for you;
Listen gladly, and summon everyone!
The path is laid through mountains and valleys;
Here the view is restricted, there it is free again,
And when the path gently slips into the bushes,
do not think that it is a mistake;
We want, when we have climbed enough,
to reach our goal at the right time.

Then he shows how Brother Mark walks to a lonely monastery. In this live twelve hermits, the initiates, led by the thirteenth, whom Goethe calls Humanus, who encompasses all of them. In each of these twelve, one of the great world religions is embodied. Depending on the diversity of countries and times, the different religions are different, and in each of the initiates, each of the religions is different. In a college, however, they work for all of humanity. The leader Humanus is called that because he is such a late incarnation that the highest truth and knowledge is expressed in him in a peculiar way. Those people who are in relatively early incarnations, who have not yet undergone many embodiments, receive the lessons of life and ascend to such an extent that they carry the deepest core of truth within them as a matter of course. Then they do not need to study in the new incarnation, then they are such — through certain signs of their birth this is symbolically foretold — that they, as must be said of the great initiated of humanity, radiate the wisdom of the world. One such incarnation is Humanus. After he has spread the spirit around him in his environment, he ascends to higher spheres. Brother Markus is another such incarnation. When he appeared, Goethe said of him that he gave the impression, for higher reasons, that a higher wisdom must come into the world. Brother Markus appears to be simple. But he is a late iteration of human existence. At the same moment, as Goethe says, Brother Markus is led into the brother lodge, where the twelve are united, when Humanus is allowed to leave the twelve, where only his spirit remains in them, where the spirit ascends to the higher spheres. Brother Markus takes his place. This is the government of humanity that Goethe wanted to depict here.

He sees the emblem gloriously erected,
Which stands for the consolation and hope of the world,
To which many thousands of minds are bound,
To which many thousands of hearts have fervently prayed,
Which destroys the power of bitter death,
Which waves over so many victorious banners:
A fountain of refreshment permeates the weary limbs, He sees the cross and lowers his eyes.

From the very beginning, this poem shows us how Goethe has the spiritual guidance of humanity carried out by the twelve. Thirty years later, a number of students approached him with the request that he provide some explanations. He also tried to say something about this poem. I will only mention a few things to you. He spoke entirely in the theosophical sense:

In order to confess the further intention, indeed the plan in general and thus also the purpose of the poem, I reveal that the reader should be guided through a kind of ideal Montserrat and, after taking his way through the different regions of the mountain, rock and cliff heights, occasionally return to wide and happy plains. Each of the knightly monks would have been visited in his home and, through the climatic and national differences, it would have been learned that the most excellent men from all corners of the earth might gather here, where each of them would quietly worship God in his own way.

Now he shows us how Brother Mark is led into the forecourt. Goethe did not live to depict the actual interior. But then we are shown who Brother Humanus is:

And if you ask me what is the name of the one chosen,
Whom the eye of caution chose?
Whom I often praise, but never enough,
On whom so many incredible things happened?
Humanus is the name of the saint, the wise man,
The best man I have seen with my own eyes:
And his gender, as the princes call it,
You should also know along with his ancestors.

He also shows here how such a leader has risen to such heights. The lower self must have sacrificed itself. We will see this in the sacrifice of the serpent when we speak of the “fairytale”. But here we see how the leader of the twelve chosen ones saves his higher self, his soul. How he has gone through this dying and becoming, and has not remained a dull guest on the dark earth, but has awakened the God-man in himself. He tells us clearly and distinctly that he sees this higher self as a feminine. To save it, the lower self must be killed. In the beautiful symbolism of the poem “The Secrets”, Goethe describes the upward development of a being like the thirteenth. He expresses it like this:

As the third man, I tell more and more freely,
How a spirit of the mother promised him early on,
And how a star at his baptism celebration
shone more brilliantly in the evening sky,
and how a vulture with outstretched wings
settled in the courtyard among the doves;
not striking fiercely and, as usual, doing harm,
he seemed to gently invite them to unity.
Then he modestly kept from telling us
how, as a child, he overcame the adders
Which he found entwined around his sister's arm,
Tightly wound around the sleeping girl.
The nurse fled, leaving the infant lying;
He strangled the snake with a sure hand:
The mother came and saw with joyful trembling
Her son's deeds and her daughter's life.

The sister is the innermost part of the soul, the same as the eternal feminine that draws us in. The adder is what must be shed. He adds the following explanation to the symbolum:

When nature has elevated a person,
It is no wonder that he succeeds in many things;
We must praise the power of the Creator in him,
Who brings weak clay to such honor:
But when a man, when a man, in the hardest test of life,
Conquers himself;
Then we can show him to others with joy
And say: 'That is he, that is his own!'

When the God-man is born in the soul, then all power rushes forward into the distance:

For all power rushes forward into the distance,
To live and work here and there;
On the other hand, from every side, the stream
Of the world narrows and hinders and sweeps us along:
In this inner storm and outer strife,
The spirit hears a word that is hard to understand:
'From the power that binds all beings, Man frees himself who overcomes himself.'

Many readers of Goethe's Faust will feel something very significant for every human soul and heart when they hear the poet's words resound, which depict how Faust, this representative of humanity's highest aspirations, how this Faust, after having gone through everything that can be our science of the most diverse branches can achieve, stands at a loss, struggling for a knowledge that means more than the satisfaction of the theoretical needs of the mind, that encompasses everything that is most needed by man in his darkest hours, for consolation and for uplifting of life, for strength of existence and for creativity in reality. And when we are pointed by the poet's words to a possibility of soaring beyond mere intellectual theory into the realm of the spiritual world, when we are pointed to the fact that there is something higher to be gained than theory and wisdom of the mind, it may well may well urge us, if we are interested in what is to be incorporated under the name of theosophy into modern spiritual paths, to look at what has flowed into German cultural life through Goethe from this particular angle. We may be urged to look into what actually lies behind that expression of Goethe's when, as Faust, he beholds the sign of the macrocosm before his eyes, he says that he now knows what the wise man means by the words:

The spiritual world is not closed,
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead!
Rise up, bathe, disciple, undaunted
The earthly breast in the morning dawn!

This is, in a sense, an invitation from Goethe's work itself to be viewed from the standpoint of spiritual science. Such a consideration of the work of great personalities who have had a profound effect on cultural life is very much in the realm of spiritual science, for this science can never fall into the error of other currents in claiming that everything that is truly valuable in terms of human knowledge has been created only through them. Mankind could then have little trust in a realization that would arise with the saying: “Like a shot from a pistol, it has only just been created.” Since human thinking and striving has existed, people have searched for truth. Should all those who preceded the truth researchers in question have searched in vain, only to be caught up in error?

How can we behave in a manner befitting a worthy attitude if we keep saying how we have come so gloriously far precisely with our wisdom? Theosophy does not make such demands. It seeks only to have the ancient wisdom that has always flowed into the hearts of those who have striven for truth and wisdom put into a special form and shape; this shall be given a new form that corresponds to the present life. Therefore, it is part of the task of Theosophy to inquire of the great minds of the past how their striving relates to what we are exploring today through our spiritual science.

We choose one who has achieved something so significant, Goethe, and if we place next to him someone who is unknown today and has been so for a long time, not unknown by name but by what he has wanted and commanded, Hegel, , then today's reflections may show us how, precisely, theosophical life makes it possible for us to appreciate some of the unrecognized, because theosophy is an instrument for finding and recognizing depths that would not be revealed in any other way. If we first immerse ourselves in Goethe, it is truly not difficult for us to find in his nature that basic trait of spiritual-scientific will and knowledge, which is characterized by seeing the invisible of the spiritual world in everything visible.

In everything visible we see the outer physiognomy of a spiritual, the outer expression of something supersensible, just as we see in the human countenance the expression of what lives in the spirit, in the soul. But we must not look at Goethe as some sycophants do, saying that Goethe had in his mind's eye what all mankind longs for, but was unwilling to express in clear words, unable to express it in quite definite forms of words, and that he sought to express it here in more obscure, nebulous feelings. The Swabian Vischer, the author of “Auch Einer”, has already raged about the fact that one wants to find Goethe's creed in the fact that Faust speaks to Gretchen:

Feeling is everything;
name is sound and smoke,
fogging up heavenly glow.

As true as that was in conversation with Gretchen, it is just as untrue in all other respects, for not everyone who has a sincere aspiration wants a Gretchen wisdom, although in many cases it is only striven for as a Gretchen wisdom. But in Goethe, something quite different had been alive from his youth, from his boyhood on. If we follow him back to his childhood, we do not find any kind of spiritual-scientific knowledge, but we do find the same emotional formation of the soul, the whole attitude of a theosophically thinking person. We see the seven-year-old boy unsatisfied by all kinds of emotional experiences from all the external religious forms that flow to him from his surroundings; but he can vaguely sense and feel a higher spiritual reality. He searches his father's botanical collection for all kinds of plants, selects all kinds of mineral objects and places them on a music stand, which is his altar. And already in his boyhood, in his yearning child's soul, he wants to make a sacrifice to the great God of nature, as he later calls him in clear words, who is conjured up by what happens in the world, he wants to bring him so mysteriously before his soul. He takes a small incense stick, places it on top and, by focusing the first rays of the morning sun, ignites the candle. In this way, he performs his sacrifice with a candle lit by the forces of nature itself. Even as a boy, he thinks of what is hidden and enchanted behind the physiognomy of nature. And that remained in his soul throughout his life. It sounds wonderful to us when we hear his prose hymn, which he speaks to a writer as an expression of what nature means to him, soon after his arrival in Weimar. It is the hymn “Nature”:

Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by it – unable to step out of it, and unable to get deeper into it. Uninvited and unwarned, she takes us into the cycle of her dance and carries on with us until we are tired and fall out of her arms.

Or when we think of the great words: everything is nature. She invented death in order to have much life. And so it goes on. Goethe himself later confessed that the poem was based on the idea that a spirit dwells in all natural processes, just as a spirit also underlies everything that is personal. He seeks the physiognomy of spiritual life; through this we see him driven to observe nature in its interrelationships. We cannot go into detail about him as a naturalist here, but we may point out that he goes beyond what was to become his specialized field of study in every respect. We see in him everywhere the endeavor, which can already be seen during his student years, that the individual natural object should provide him with information about the interrelationships in life. To this end, he later studied in Weimar; he attended Loder's lectures on bone structure, comparative anatomy and so on. He did not want to consider only the fragmented parts of nature; we see from this that on his Italian journey he wrote: “After all that I have seen here of plants and animals, I would like to make a journey to India, not to explore new things, but to look at the old in my own way.” His way of looking at things, however, is to see writing in everything, which mysteriously expresses the spiritual life behind it. That Goethe has this in mind becomes particularly clear to us when we see how he brings all life under one point of view, under one perspective. In Italy, he gains an initial idea of what Greek art can mean to his great mind. Before that, he had discussed many things with Herder. He educated himself through Spinoza's thinking to the idea of a divine-creative essence behind the phenomena; but he was not satisfied with this. He wanted to recognize a divine-spiritual essence in man himself. He writes to his friends from Italy, as he stands before the work of art that has given him the secret of Greek art: There is necessity, there is God. I have the feeling that the Greeks proceeded according to the same laws by which nature works, and I am on their trail.

Thus, art is the continuation of nature's creative process. The artist should immerse himself in the laws of the world and then continue nature's work; what nature allows to pass from the supersensible to the sensual at a lower level, the artist should do at a higher level. In his book on Winckelmann, he says:

When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole, when harmonious comfort gives him pure, free delight - then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as if it had reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.

Thus, for Goethe, the human spirit is that which already lives in the strict nature, in rocks and plants, what develops there through the animal, becomes conscious for Goethe in the innermost human being, and when man pours his spirit into forms, then he himself creates as higher nature beyond himself. But this was something he was born with, to see the spirit in everything he saw, it was natural for him, so natural that the momentous conversation between Goethe and Schiller after a lecture by Batsch in Jena could take place. Schiller remarked afterwards that there was always something bleak about looking at nature only in detail and never as a whole. Goethe replied that one could also proceed differently, one could also go from the whole to the parts and base one's actual observation on the spiritual. He then drew the symbolic picture of a plant and said of it that it was the original plant and contained all others within itself; with it, one could form and invent new plants in any way, from the lowest to the highest plants. Schiller, who at that time could not rise to such heights, soon worked his way to this view himself. But now he replied to Goethe that what he had sketched was not an experience, but an idea. Goethe did not understand this at all, but rather thought that if it was an idea, then he saw his idea with his eyes. Here two worldviews stand starkly opposed to each other. Schiller believed that he could only grasp the spiritual through abstraction; Goethe through the beholding of the idea with spiritual eyes. Goethe was clear about the fact that the spirit lives in everything, that creative spirits prevail under the sensual, and Goethe not only developed this world view in a theoretical way, but he also embedded this world view in his works, in everything he did in a poetic way. This is particularly evident when we try to grasp the depth of the second part of Faust.

At that time, this world view was by no means limited to Goethe or found only in a few people; rather, it was an intellectual atmosphere in which Germany's best minds lived at the time, and Hegel also grew out of this intellectual philosophy. Of course, for many who have only heard a little about Hegel, he is a dismissed philosopher, one of the great bearers of error of the past. When people approach great minds, they behave very strangely. There is a beautiful writing by a Russian scholar, Chwolson: Hegel, Haeckel and the Twelfth Commandment. In it, a good characterization is given in a certain way. The author is an excellent physicist; he is good at drawing the conclusions that can rightly be drawn from our present-day world view. His twelfth commandment is actually very self-evident; but it is not understood by many. It reads: “You shall never write anything about which you know nothing!” Those who are well-versed in intellectual life know that Chwolson does not understand Hegel; so he is a perfect example of his commandment. It is easy to ridicule when something is taken out of context. One must know the whole context. Hegel is a mind that was ripe, very ripe, but was only coming into its own for the first time with its own ideas. Born in Stuttgart as early as 1770, he published his first work, which for those who are superficial in spiritual matters is perhaps in many ways quite incomprehensible today, only in his old age. But this work should be deeply significant for anyone who wants to scale heights in spiritual life. It is the “Phenomenology of Spirit”. It must appear to us as if it springs from spiritual life through its outward genesis.

He shows that he was able to disregard the things of the external world in the utmost concentration. It took tremendous intensity of spiritual power to write these subtle things; the last pages were written while the cannons thundered in the Battle of Jena. There this work was completed, which was to introduce us to the spiritual world. And he always took his time; almost a decade later his “Logic” was published, and we also have an encyclopedia and a work on jurisprudence by him. The majority of his works emerged from his lectures through his students. It is difficult to give just one picture of the meaning and spirit of Hegel's teaching in a few words, but it is perhaps possible to give a broad outline. There has been much ridicule because Hegel wanted to construct the whole world, all objective being out of the spirit, out of the idea, because he first builds up nothing but concepts, nothing but a world of ideas that can only be followed through the human intellect; therefore, it is said that he did not research experience, but wanted to get everything out of the spirit, which one can only experience in this way by examining nature. This is where the greatest error in judging Hegel lies; it is quite wrong to say that Hegel wanted to spin the whole world a priori out of his head. He was quite clear that reality was spread out in space, but he also knew that behind this objective reality there are spiritual connections that man grasps in the images of ideas. What could he do about seeing the idea in things? He explored the world empirically, but he just saw more than the others. Nature also gave him the ideas beyond the gross material, just as it was with Goethe. Could Goethe and Hegel help it that the others could not find these ideas? Those who can't find them then believe that Hegel spun them out of his head. Lichtenberg, the great German humorist, once spoke of a book and a human being and said: When a book and a human head collide and it sounds hollow, it is not always the fault of the book. And when the human head and nature collide and the head remains empty because it cannot find any ideas, it is truly not nature's fault. Hegel made it his task to erect that which expands in space into the mighty structure of ideas that he calls his logic. That fabric of ideas, of which he figuratively says that it is the god that he was before the creation of nature. That was more than a figure to him. From abstract being to absolute being, one has something before oneself like a creation. He says: The diamond web of concepts and ideas is something in which the things of nature are woven. This web became a mirror image for him, from which nature apparently comes to meet him again. He follows nature through all its stages to show how it is the idea, the creative thought, that lives in everything. He considers the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, then the human being; he shows how the human spirit gradually becomes more and more perfect until it stands out through understanding and reason to the contemplation of the spirit in the external world. It is a gigantic edifice that rises before us, even if it is flawed in detail. It is a building that anyone can construct, and at the same time it is a good training, since one concept necessarily arises from the other, and every conceptual mass must fit into what is created in ideas. At most, we only find a similar necessity where the human mind delves into the connections provided by mathematics. There will come a time when we will again ascend to this significant schooling of the spirit.

When we try to sense how spirit and nature are combined in Goethe and Hegel, do we not feel the spirit of theosophical perception? Yes, we do feel it. Only one thing will be missing for the spiritual scientist in Hegel, which he finds in Goethe in the words of “Faust”, which Goethe calls “Chorus mysticus”:

All that is transient
Is but a parable;
The inadequate
Here it becomes an event;
The indescribable
Here it is done;
The eternal feminine
Draws us on.

Let us take the first three lines. We see nature as it arises and passes away in its individual parts; everything that has to go through birth and death is a parable for the eternal, the transcendental, for everything that stands behind it. Here, Hegel is a kindred spirit to Goethe; he, the philosopher, expresses the same thing intellectually: “All that is transitory in nature is a parable of the eternal world of ideas.” Then follows something that the poet could aspire to, but that was lost to the philosopher:

The inadequate,
here it becomes an event;
the indescribable,
here it is done.

If we feel these words correctly, we notice here where Hegel's purely logical explanation of the world is lacking. We can also apply the tighter discipline in this ascent to this network of concepts and ideas that lies behind the transitory. But there is something in this web of ideas that is inadequate, but which cannot become an event through intellectual contemplation alone. Hegel means: In this logical structure I have before me the God before He has entered into His appearance. But we must feel: Yes, you have something of the God who could have appeared to you as the great plan of the world, into which everything is fitted. But this web of ideas lacks life, and Hegel felt that.

The philosopher, the mere logician, cannot penetrate to the supersensible life. Here his mind, which was set up mainly for logic, could not penetrate. All idea is inadequate when it comes to letting the content flow out. From the realm of shadows, reality radiates when life comes to the structure of ideas. This life can only be found if man does not just stop at what is presented to his intellect, but must take the path to the stages of higher knowledge. Man must begin to let the spirit live in himself. For this, one needs a kind of knowledge that does not live only in sharply contoured concepts, but in what we have often mentioned here: in the realm of images and imagination, which represent a kind of knowledge that strives beyond all conceptualization. Behind all ideas lies a world of creative principles that is richer than all ideas. This is the inadequacy that can never enter into the idea, that must and can be experienced if one goes beyond the idea to the image that the poet has, or to the supersensible reality, to the spiritual. That is why the poet Goethe was able to approach what was missing for Hegel.

In the second part of Faust, Goethe comes as close as possible to what we today call a theosophical world view. He strives for nothing less than to include in the content of the highest spiritual human culture that which connects human beings to the great spiritual realm, which they sensed as children, sought as adults, and expressed in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. He really wants to place these secrets before his soul, secrets about the spiritual and sensual-physical aspects of the human being. He also seeks to do the same in the second part of Faust, but we must approach it with different eyes than those usually used by scholars. We must take something on board that will strike some of today's interpreters of Faust as something quite crazy; but we will find confirmed what Goethe says to Eckermann: “I have worked in such a way that those who only want something for their own external curiosity will get their money's worth, but for esotericists I have included many a secret.

First, Faust is led through the small world. After he has gone through sensual happiness and sensual misery, we see how he is to be accepted into a circle of ideas where the greatest secrets of the nature of the world are to become clear to him. He is introduced to the great world. Faust wishes to unite with the Greek Helen, who has long since died. She is to unite with Faust as a physical woman. For Faust and Goethe, Helena means something quite different than for most people. For them, she is the representative of the people and creativity that Goethe admired in the Greeks, of whom he said that they had come to the bottom of the secret of all natural creativity and hinted at it in their works of art.

But only if we are well prepared can we experience the mystery that the eternal, the immortal in man can come to us in a new embodiment; nothing less than the riddle of embodiment confronts us here. Faust strives for Helena – he touches her, but at first there is an explosion because he is not yet inwardly purified, and he must first grasp the secrets of the incarnation, which are shown to Faust step by step. For Goethe, the human being also consists of the physical human being, who represents the outer physicality of the human being, that which he has in common with all the surrounding minerals. Then there is also a second link in Goethe's view: the soul, the astral body, the carrier of desires and so on. For Goethe too, the spirit is supreme, for it is the true eternal essence that hurries from embodiment to embodiment, undergoing incarnation after incarnation. And Faust is to experience how spirit, soul and body come together to form this sensual world. He must first recognize where the eternal is when it is not physically embodied on earth. The eternal is in a purely spiritual realm. Therefore Faust must be led down into the spiritual realm, into that kingdom where the “Mothers” are, the primeval mothers of all spiritual beings. Mephistopheles stands by Faust's side with the key to the kingdom of the Mothers, which he hands over to Faust. That is what Mephistopheles can do; he can describe the outer realm, but he cannot enter into it. He is the representative of the purely intellectual human being; he even describes the realm as nothingness. Therefore, he is the representative of realism, of monism. One should reach the threshold of spiritual life; the strictest science has the key, but it only opens the door. Those who have only sensual experience still clearly speak the words of Mephisto that there is nothing in the spiritual realm. But Faust replies what should be replied even today:

In your nothingness I hope to find the All.

And Faust descends into the realm of the mothers and brings up the living eternal spirit of Helen, that which moves from embodiment to embodiment. Whoever follows and understands the description of the “realm of the mothers” will recognize the knower in Goethe in every word.

Sink then! I could also say: Rise!

In this realm, this is the same — our concepts of space are no longer sufficient. The Mothers sit on a glowing tripod. This is the symbolic suggestion for what is actually eternal in man, which is divided into: Manas, Budhi, Atma or spirit self, life spirit and spirit man. This symbol of the tripod, surrounded by the eternally creative mothers, expresses enough in such a meaningful place. The spirit that Faust brings must be enveloped in the astral and physical sheaths, and that is what happens. Goethe presents what stands between the spirit and the physical body in the middle of it, the astral world, in Homunculus. That which has nothing to do with anything in the physical world, which is created separately from the spirit of Helena, but which is later to connect with it, that is the astral in man, that which dwells in the physical body in man. Goethe does everything to point out that in Homunculus we have the astral in man. If the astral could be separated from the physical, then it would have to be clairvoyant – it would have to see clairvoyantly into the astral world. It is no longer clairvoyant in the physical body. And Goethe presents the homunculus as clairvoyant. As soon as he appears, he sees what Faust dreams; he sees the whole world of ideas of Faust. And if we go further – are we not clearly told:

He does not lack spiritual qualities,
but he is all too lacking in the tangible and practical.

– after all, he lacks the physical. Homunculus is a soul that wants to embody itself. In every word that is spoken, one can recognize Goethe's opinion in the indicated direction. But Goethe's words must also be understood in the right sense.

It will! The masses are stirring more clearly
The conviction of the true, the true.

We find this even in commentaries on Faust: in Wagner, the conviction of the true is stirring. But what is meant is that the astral nature begets in a way that is above human procreation. It is a conviction—like Übermensch. It is difficult for people to understand Goethe where he is esoteric. Even during his lifetime, he had to hear people always pointing out what he had poured into it from the abundance of his youthful nature and his poetic feeling, for which one does not need much to understand it. He dealt with such people nicely. A note was found in his estate:

They praise Faust
And what else
In my works
In their favor.
The old Mick and Mack
Is very pleased;
The pack of ragamuffins thinks
It's no longer them!

They also believe the spiritual researcher. Goethe points out in everything that he wants to characterize in Homunculus this second link of the human being, that this soul, before it can take up the spirit, must unite with all that is in the lower kingdoms of nature. We see how the astral passes through all the kingdoms of nature up to the human being. With Faust, Mephisto and Homunculus, he therefore leads us to the classical Walpurgis Night. This is an important chapter that tells us what Homunculus actually wants. There are the creative forces in nature, and Homunculus wants to learn the secret of how to structure the physical shell around himself as an astral being, how to start from the mineral kingdom in the lowest realm and put shell after shell around himself — up to the human realm you have time. In the transition from the mineral to the vegetable, Goethe finds the beautiful expression: “It grunelt so” (it grunts). It is then shown how he progresses further up to where he is ready to create a physical shell from the elements. That is when Eros appears, love. When a person wants to step out of the spiritual into the sensual, then, according to the great secrets, spirit, soul and body must combine. When the three unite, then the human being can appear before us in a sensual and spiritual way. Helena is docile, the eternal spirit has come up from the realm of the mothers. Homunculus has surrounded himself with sensual matter, united with the spirit, and Helena stands before us. The poet could not have portrayed the embodiment any differently. In the third act, the secret of becoming is presented.

The inadequate, here it becomes an event,

he says in summary, what he wants to express after this examination. There, where we ascend the higher path of knowledge to higher forms, there the spirit shows itself as creating, alive, there it is placed before our soul in a living form. And we see what the spirit must also have if it is not to be a mere specter of eternal ideas – it must have will. He suggests that it must not only have thoughts and concepts. The indescribable, that must be done, that is the will. He confronts us as a capacity for knowledge, where we feel the innermost source of the highest knowledge flowing in us. When we turn away from all sensual and physical things. Man can reach this level, and Faust has reached it. Goethe shows us this symbolically by making Faust go blind at the highest level, so that he cannot see the physical.

But within, a bright light shines.

We find ourselves in the deeds of the spiritual world:

The indescribable, here it is done,

that which cannot be described with words from the world of the senses. We see how the living, logical, willing spirit can flow into us. And this fertilizes what is considered feminine in the highest sense, the soul. Thus we understand what Goethe means by the last words of “Faust” when we know that the soul is always represented as something feminine that needs to be fertilized and that draws us towards everything that becomes action. This is what Goethe wants to show us.

I have only been able to give a few rough strokes. What has been said about Hegel will show you that Hegel was on the path of theosophy. He went as far as he could. With tremendous energy, he researched nature, sought and found the connections. Goethe, the poet, went even further. In his poetic images, he sought to expand the rigid contours of conceptual images, that which is to become wisdom and science in life, by capturing the living spirit. Thus, through his Faust, Goethe truly affirmed that it was a deep truth to him, which he emphasized at the starting point of his scientific writings, that we see the external things of the physical world because our senses are created for external sensual things. The external image presents itself as our eyes are:

If the eye were not solar,
It could never behold the sun;
If not in us the God-own power,
How could we divine delight!

Just as the physical sun is seen through the physical eye, so is the spirit the creator of the spiritual eye in man, and is seen through the spiritual eye in its effectiveness. These words are the result of his world view. This is how he understands the spirit that permeates the world, and this is how he has struggled in his strength to a realization that only a few find. He says to one of his friends at the very end of his life: “The most important thing I have written is not for the great world, but for a few who can seek the same on spiritual paths.

What he has achieved for a few must become common property for many. It must not remain a theoretical world-view but must take hold of mind and will. And so, precisely those who approach Goethe's and Hegel's world-views from a spiritual-scientific point of view must come to the conviction of how much Theosophy can be found in both of them. This conviction is summarized in the words of the wise man:

The spiritual world is not closed,
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead!
Rise up, bathe, disciple, undaunted
The earthly breast at dawn!

In the last lecture I spoke of how the forces of karma take shape, and today I want to lay the foundations for acquiring an understanding of karma through studying examples of individual destinies. Such destinies can only be illustrations, but if we take our start from particular examples we shall begin to perceive how karma works in human life. It works, of course, in as many different ways as there are human beings on the earth, for the configuration of karma is entirely individual. And so whenever we turn our attention to a particular case, it must be regarded merely as an example.

Today I shall bring forward examples I have myself investigated and where the course of karma has become clear to me. It is of course a hazardous undertaking to speak of individual karmic connections, no matter how remote the examples may be, for in referring to karma it has become customary to use expressions of everyday language such as: “This is caused by so-and-so; this or that blow of destiny must be due to such and such a cause, how the man came to deserve it” ... and so forth. But karma is by no means as simple as that, and a great deal of utterly trivial talk goes on, particularly on this subject!

Today we will consider certain examples of the working of karma, remote though they may be from our immediate life. We will embark upon the hazardous undertaking of speaking about the karma of individuals—as far as my investigations make this possible. I am therefore giving you examples which are to be taken as such.

I want to speak, first, of a well-known aestheticist and philosopher, Friedrich Theodor Vischer. I have often alluded to him in lectures, but today I will bring into relief certain characteristic features of his life and personality which can provide the basis for a study of his karma.

Friedrich Theodor Vischer received his education at the time when German idealistic philosophy—particularly Hegelian thought—was in its heyday. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, a young man pursuing his studies among people whose minds were steeped in the Hegelian mode of thinking, adopted it himself. The absorption in transcendental thoughts that is characteristic of Hegel strongly appealed to Vischer. It was clear to him that, as Hegel asserts, thought is the Divine Essence of the universe, and that when we, as human beings, think, when we live in thoughts, we are living in the Divine Substance.

Friedrich Theodor Vischer was steeped in Hegelian philosophy. But he was a person who displayed in a very marked way the traits and characteristics of the folk from which he sprang. He had all the traits of a typical Swabian: he was obstinate, dogmatic, disputatious, exceedingly independent; his manner was abrupt, off-hand. He also had very striking personal peculiarities. To take his outward appearance first, he had beautiful blue eyes and a reddish-brown beard, which in spite of its scrubbiness he wore with a certain aesthetic enthusiasm! I say “aesthetic enthusiasm” because in his writings he minces no words about men who wear no beards, calling them “beardless monkey-faces”! As you see, his language is anything but restrained; all his remarks come out with the abrupt, off-handed assurance of a typical Swabian.

He was a man of medium height, not stout, in fact rather slight in build, but he walked the streets holding his arms as if he were forcing a way for himself with his elbows—which is an exact picture of what he did in a spiritual sense! So much for his outward appearance.

He had a passionately independent nature and would say just what he pleased, without any restraint whatever. It happened one day that he had been slandered by “friends” in the Stuttgart Council—such things are not unusual among friends!—and he was severely reprimanded by the Council. It chanced that on the very same day a little son was born to him—the Robert Vischer who also made a name for himself as an aestheticist—and the father announced the event in the lecture-hall with the words: “Gentlemen, today I have been given a big Wischer (wigging) and a little Vischer!”

It was characteristic of him to speak very radically about things as he found them. For example, he wrote an amusing article entitled: “On the Foot Pest in Trains.” It enraged him to see people sitting in a railway carriage with their feet up on the opposite seat. He simply could not endure it and his article on the subject is really enchanting.

What he wrote in his book on fashions, [Mode und Zynismus. Stuttgart, 1878.] about the ill-breeding and lack of adequate clothing at dances and other entertainments, had better not be mentioned here. To put it briefly, he was a very original and forceful personality!

A friend of mine once paid him a visit, knocking politely at the door. I do not know whether it is a custom in Swabia, but Vischer did not say “Come in,” or what is usually said on such occasions. He yelled out “Glei”—meaning that he would be ready immediately.

While still comparatively young, Vischer embarked on a weighty task, namely that of writing a work on aesthetics according to the principles of Hegelian philosophy. These five volumes are a truly remarkable achievement. You will find in them the strict division into paragraphs which was habitual with Hegel, and the characteristic definitions. If I were to read a passage to you, you would all yawn, for it is written in the anything but popular style of Hegel, all in abrupt definitions, such as: The Beautiful is the appearance of the Idea in material form. The Sublime is the appearance of the Idea in material form, but the Idea predominates over the material form. The Comic is the appearance of the Idea in material form, but the material form predominates over the Idea ... and so on and so forth. These statements are certainly not without interest, but the book goes a great deal further. As well as the abrupt definitions, you have what is called the “small print,” and most people when they are reading the book leave out the large print and read only the small—which as a matter of fact contains some of the very cleverest writing on aesthetics that is anywhere to be found.

There is no pedantry, no Hegelian dialectic here; it is Vischer, the true Swabian, with all his meticulousness and at the same time his fine and delicate feeling for the beautiful, the great and the sublime. Here, too, you find Nature and her processes described in a way that defies comparison, with an exemplary freedom of style. Vischer worked at the book for many years, bringing it to its end with unfaltering consistency.

At the time when this work appeared,. Hegelianism was still in vogue and appreciation was widespread. Needless to say, there were opponents, too, but on the whole the book was widely admired. In course of time, however, a vigorous opponent appeared on the scenes, a ruthless critic who pulled the book to pieces until not a shred of good was left; everything was criticised in a really masterly style. And this critic was none other than Friedrich Theodor Vischer himself in his later years! There is an extraordinary charm about this critique of himself in his Kritische Gangen (Paths of Criticism).

As aestheticist, philosopher and man of letters, Vischer published a wealth of material in Kritische Gangen, and subsequently in the fine collection of essays entitled Altes und Neues (Old and New). While still a student he wrote lyrics in an ironic vein. In spite of the great admiration I have always had for Vischer, I could never help being of opinion that the productions of his student days were not even student-like, but sheer philistinism. And this trait came out in him again in his seventies, when he wrote a collection of poems under the pseudonym “Schartenmayer.” Here there is philistinism par excellence!

He was an out-and-out philistine in regard to Goethe's Faust. Part One ... well, he admitted there was something good in it, but as for Part Two—he considered it a product of senility, so many fragments patched together. He maintained that it ought to have been quite different, and not only did he write his Faust, der Tragodie dritter Teil, in which he satirises Goethe's Part Two, but he actually drew up a plan of just how Goethe ought to have written Faust. That is philistinism and no mistake! It is almost on a par with what du Bois-Reymond, the eminent scientist, said in his lecture “Goethe, nothing but Goethe.” He said: “Faust is a failure. It would have been all right if Faust had not engaged in such tomfoolery as the invocation of spirits or the calling up of the Earth-Spirit, but had simply and straightforwardly invented an electrical machine or an air pump and restored to Gretchen her good name ... ” And there is exactly the same kind of philistinism in what Vischer says about Faust.

Perhaps it would not be put like this in Wurttemburg, but in my homeland in Austria we should say that he gave Goethe's Faust a good “Swabian thrashing”! Such expressions differ slightly in meaning, of course, according to the districts where they are used.

It is these traits that are significant in Vischer. They really make up his personality. One might also, of course, give details of his life, but I do not propose to do that. My aim has been to give you a picture of his personality and with this as a foundation we can proceed to a study of his karma. Today I wanted simply to give you the material for this study.

A second personality of whose karma I want to speak, is Franz Schubert, the composer. As I said, it is a daring venture to give particular examples in this way, but it is right that they should be given and today I shall lay the foundations.

Here too, I shall select the features that will be needed when we come to speak of Schubert's karma. Practically all his life he was poor. Some time after his death, however, many persons claiming to have been not only his acquaintances but his “friends” were to be found in Vienna! A whole crowd of people, according to themselves, had wanted to lend him money, spoke of him affectionately as “little Franz” and the like. But during his lifetime it had been a very different story!

Schubert had, however, found one real friend. This friend, Baron von Spaun, was an extraordinarily nobleminded man. He had cared for Schubert with great tenderness from the latter's earliest youth, when they were schoolfellows, and he continued to do so in later years. In regard to karma it seems to me particularly significant—as we shall find when we come to consider the working of karma—that Spaun was in a profession quite alien to his character. He was a highly cultured man, a lover of art in every form, and a close friend not only of Schubert but also of Moritz von Schwind. He was deeply sensitive to everything in the way of art. Many strange things happen in Austria—as you know, Grillparzer was a clerk in the fiscal service—and Spaun too, who had not the slightest taste for it, spent his whole life in Treasury offices. He was an official engaged in administering finance, dealing with figures all the time. When he reached a certain age he was appointed Director of Lotteries! He had charge of lotteries in Austria—a task that was most distasteful to him. But now just think what it is that a Director of Lotteries has to control. He has, so to speak, to deal at a high level with the passions, the hopes, the blighted expectations, the disappointments, the dreams and superstitions of countless human beings. Just think of what has to be taken into account by a Director of Lotteries—a Chief Director at that. True, you may go into his office and come out again without noticing anything very striking. But the reality is there nevertheless, and those who take the world and its affairs in earnest must certainly reckon with such things.

This man, who had no part whatever in the superstitions, the disappointments, the longings, the hopes, with which he had to deal—this man was the intimate friend of Schubert, deeply and intensely concerned for his material as well as his spiritual well-being. One can often be astounded, outwardly speaking, at what is possible in the world! There is a biography of Schubert in which it is said that he looked rather like a negro. There is not a grain of truth in it. He actually had a pleasing, attractive face. What is true, however, is that he was poor. More often than not, even his supper, which he was in the habit of taking in Spaun's company, was paid for with infinite tact by the latter. Schubert had not enough money even to hire a piano for his own use. In outward demeanour—Spaun gives a very faithful picture here—Schubert was grave and reserved, almost phlegmatic. But an inner, volcanic fire could at times burst from him in a most surprising way.

A very interesting fact is that the most beautiful motifs in Schubert's music were generally written down in the early morning; as soon as he had wakened from sleep he would sit down and commit his most beautiful motifs to paper. At such times Spaun was often with him, for as is customary among the intellectuals of Vienna, both Schubert and Spaun liked a good drink of an evening, and the hour was apt to get so late that Schubert, who lived some distance away, could not be allowed to go home but would spend the night on some makeshift bed at his friend's house. On such occasions Spaun was often an actual witness of how Schubert, on rising in the morning, would write down his beautiful motifs, as though they came straight out of sleep.

The rather calm and peaceful exterior did not betray the presence of the volcanic fire lying hidden in the depths of the soul. But it was there, and it is precisely this aspect of Schubert's personality that I must describe to you as a basis for the study of his karma.

Let me tell you what happened on one occasion. Schubert had been to the Opera. He heard Gluck's Iphigenia and was enraptured by it. He expressed his enthusiasm to his friend Spaun during and after the performance in impassioned words, but at the same time with restraint. His emotions were delicate and tender, not violent. (I am selecting the particular traits we shall need for our study.) The moment Schubert heard Gluck's Iphigenia, he recognised it as a masterpiece of musical art. He was enchanted with the singer Milder; and Vogl's singing so enraptured him that he said his one wish was to be introduced to him in order that he might pay homage at his feet. When the performance was over, Schubert and Spaun went to the so-called Bargerstubi (Civic Club Room) in Vienna. I think they were accompanied by a third person whose name I have not in mind at the moment. They sat there quietly, although every now and again they spoke enthusiastically about their experience at the Opera. Sitting with others at a neighbouring table was a University professor well known in this circle. As he listened to the expressions of enthusiasm his face began to flush and became redder and redder. Then he began to mutter to himself, and when the muttering had gone on for a time without being commented on by the others, he fell into a rage and shouted across the table: “Iphigenia!—it isn't real music at all; it's trash. As for Milder, she hasn't an idea of how to sing, let alone bring off runs or trills! And Vogl—why he lumbers about the stage like an elephant!”

And now Schubert was simply not to be restrained! At any minute there was danger of a serious hand-to-hand scuffle. Schubert, who at other times was calm and composed, let loose his volcanic nature in full force and it was as much as the others could do to quiet him.

It is important for the life we are studying that here we have a man whose closest friend is a Treasury official, actually a Director of Lotteries, and that the two are led together by karma. Schubert's poverty is important in connection with his karma, because in these circumstances there was little opportunity for his anger to be roused in this way. Poverty restricted his social intercourse, and it was by no means often that he could have such a neighbour at table, or give vent to his volcanic nature.

If we can picture what was really happening on that occasion, and if we remember the characteristics of the people from whom Schubert sprang, we can ask ourselves the following question. (Negative supposition is of course meaningless in the long run, but it does sometimes help to make things clear.) We can ask ourselves: If the conditions had been different (of course they couldn't have been, only, as I say, the question can make for clarification)—if the conditions had been different, if Schubert had had no opportunity of giving expression to the musical talent within him, if he had not found a devoted friend in Spaun, might he not have become a mere brawler in some lower station in life? What expressed itself like a volcano that evening in the club room, was it not a fundamental trait in Schubert's character? Human life defies explanation until we can answer the question: How does the metamorphosis come about whereby in a certain life a man does not, so to say, live out his pugnacity but becomes an exquisite musician, the pugnacity being transformed into subtle and delicate musical phantasy?

It sounds paradoxical and grotesque, but for all that it is a question which, if we consider life in its wider range, must needs be asked, for it is only when we study such things that the deeper problems of karma really come into view.

The third personality of whom I want to speak is Eugen Dühring, a man much hated, but also—by a small circle—greatly loved. My investigations into karma have led me to occupy myself with this individual, too, and as before I will give you, first of all, the biographical material.

Eugen Dühring was a man of extraordinary gifts. In his youth he studied a whole number of subjects, particularly from the aspect of mathematics, including branches of knowledge such as political economy, philosophy, mechanics, physics and so on.

He gained his doctorate with an interesting treatise, and then in a book, long since out of print, followed up the same theme with great clarity and forcefulness. I will tell you a little about it. The subject is almost as difficult as the Theory of Relativity, but, after all, people have been talking about the Theory of Relativity for a long time now and, without understanding a single word, have considered, and still do consider it, quite wonderful. Difficult as the subject is, I want to tell you, in a way that will perhaps be comprehensible, something about the thoughts contained in this earliest work of Dühring.

The theme is as follows.—People generally picture to themselves: Out there is space, and it is infinite. Space is filled with matter. Matter is composed of minute particles, infinite in number. An infinite number of tiny particles have conglomerated into a ball in universal space, have in some way crystallised together, and the like. Then there is time, infinite time. The world has never had a beginning; neither can one say that it will have an end.

These vague, indefinite concepts of infinity were repellent to the young Dühring and he spoke with great perspicacity when he said that all this talk about infinity is devoid of real meaning, that even if one has to speak of myriads and myriads of world-atoms, or world-molecules, there must nevertheless be a definite, calculable number. However vast universal space is conceived to be, its magnitude must be capable of computation; so too, the stretch of universal time. Dühring expounded this theme with great clarity.

There is something psychological behind this. Dühring's one aim was clarity of thought, and there is no clear thinking at all in these notions of infinity. He went on to apply his argument in other domains, for example to the so-called “negative quantities.” Positive quantities (e.g. when something is possessed) are distinguished from negative quantities by writing a minus sign before the latter. Thus here you have 0 (zero), in one direction plus 1, and in the other direction minus 1, and so on.

Dühring maintains that all this talk about minus quantities is absolute nonsense. What does a “negative quantity,” a “minus number” mean? He says: If I have 5 and take away 1, then I have 4; if I have 5 and take away 2, then I have 3; if I have 5 and take away 4, then I have 1; and if I have 5 and take away 5, then I have 0. The advocates of negative quantities say: If I have 5 and take away 6, then I have minus 1; if I have 5 and take away 7, then I have minus 2.

Dühring maintains that there is no clarity of thinking here. What does “minus 1” mean? It means: I am supposed to take 6 from 5; but then I have I too little. What does “minus 2” mean? I am supposed to take 7 from 5; but then I have 2 too little. What does “minus 3” mean? I am supposed to take 8 from 5; but then I have 3 too little. There is no difference between the negative numbers, as numbers, and the positive numbers. The negative numbers mean only that when I have to subtract, I have too little by a particular amount. And Dühring went on to apply the same principle to mathematical concepts of many kinds.

I know how deeply I was impressed by this as a young man, for Dühring brought real clarity of thought to bear upon these things.

He displayed the same astute discernment in the fields of national economy and the history of philosophy, and became a lecturer at the University of Berlin. His audiences were very large and he lectured on a variety of subjects: national economy, philosophy, mathematics.

It so happened that a prize was offered by the Academy of Science at Göttingen for the best book on the history of mechanics. It is usual in such competitions for the essays to be sent in anonymously. The competitor chooses a motto, his name is contained inside a closed envelope with the motto written outside, so that the adjudicators are unaware of the author's identity.

The Göttingen Academy of Science awarded the prize to Eugen Dühring's History of Mechanics and wrote him a most appreciative letter. Therefore Dühring was not only recognised by his own circle of listeners as an excellent lecturer, but now gained the recognition of a most eminently learned body.

Along with all the talents which will be evident to you from what I have been saying, this same Dühring had a really malicious tongue—one cannot call it anything else. There was something of the malicious critic about him in regard to everything in the world. As time went on he exercised less and less restraint in this respect; and when such an eminently learned body as the Göttingen Academy of Science awarded him the prize, it acted like a sting upon him. It was quite in the natural course of things, but nevertheless it stung. And then we see two qualities beginning to be combined in him: an intensely strong sense of justice—which he undoubtedly possessed—and on the other hand an extraordinary propensity for abuse.

Just at the time when he was stung into abuse and sarcasm, Dühring had the misfortune to lose his sight. In spite of total blindness, however, he continued to lecture in Berlin. He went on with his work as an author, and was always able, up to a point, of course, to look after his affairs himself. About this time a truly tragic destiny in the academic world during the 19th century came to his knowledge—the destiny of Julius Robert Mayer, who was actually the discoverer of the heat-equivalent in mechanics and who, as can be stated with all certainty, had been shut up in an asylum through no fault of his own, put into a strait-jacket and treated shamefully by his family, his colleagues and his “friends.” It was at this time that Dühring wrote his book, Julius Robert Mayer, the Galileo of the 19th Century. And it was in truth a kind of Galileo-destiny that befell Julius Robert Mayer.

Dühring wrote with an extraordinarily good knowledge of the facts and with a really penetrating sense of justice, but he lashed out as with a rail in regard to the injuries that had been inflicted. His tongue simply ran away with him—as, for example, when he heard and, read about the erection of the well-known statue of Mayer at Heilbronn, and of the unveiling ceremony. “This puppet standing in the market square at Heilbronn is a final insult offered to the Galileo of the 19th century. The great man sits there with his legs crossed. But to portray him truly, in the frame of mind in which he would most probably be, he would have to be looking at the orator and at all the good friends below who erected this memorial, not sitting with his legs crossed but beating his breast in horror.”

Having suffered much at the hands of newspapers, Dühring also became a violent anti-Semite. Here too he was ruthlessly consistent. For example, he wrote the pamphlet entitled Die Ueberschätzung Lessings und dessen Anwaltschaft für die Juden, in which murderous abuse is hurled at Lessing. It is this trait in Dühring that is responsible for his particular way of expounding literature.

If you want one day to give yourselves the treat of reading something about German literature that you will find nowhere else, that is totally different from other treatises on the subject, then take Dühring's two volumes entitled Literaturgrössen (Great Men of Letters). There you will find his strictly mathematical way of thinking and his astute perspicacity, applied to literature. In order, presumably, to make it plain how his way of thinking differs from that of others, he sees fit to rechristen the great figures of the German spiritual life. He speaks, in one chapter, of “Kothe” and “Schillerer,” meaning Goethe and Schiller. Duhring writes “Kothe” and “Schillerer” and adheres to this throughout. The nomenclature he invents is often grotesque. “Intellectuaille” (connected with “canaille”) is how he always refers to people we call intellectualistic. The “Intellectuaille”—the Intellectuals. He uses similar expressions all the time. But let me assure you of this: a great deal in Dühring's writings is extraordinarily interesting.

I once had the following experience. When I was still on friendly terms with Frau Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche and was working on unpublished writings of Nietzsche, there came into my hands the material dealing with the “Eternal Recurrence”, now long since printed. [Thus Spake Zarathustra, Part III.] Nietzsche's manuscripts are not very easy reading, but I came across a passage where I said to myself: This “Eternal Recurrence” has some definite source. And so I went over from the Archives, where Nietzsche's note-books were kept, to the Library, and looked up Dühring's Wirklichkeitsphilosophie (Philosophy of Reality), where, as I thought, I was quickly able to find this idea of “Eternal Recurrence”. I took the book from the shelves of the Library and found the passage—I knew it and found it at once—where Dühring argues that it is impossible for anyone with genuine knowledge of the material facts of the world to speak of a return of things, a return of constellations which once were there.

Dühring tried to disprove any such possibility. At the side of the passage in question was a word frequently written by Nietzsche in the margin of a book when he was using it to formulate a counter-idea. It was the word: “Ass”!

The familiar epithet was written in the margin of this particular page. In point of fact we can find in Dühring's writings a great deal that passed over, ingeniously, into Nietzsche's ideas. In saying this I hold nothing against Nietzsche. I am simply stating the facts as they are.

In respect of karma, the most striking thing about Dühring is that he was really able to think only mathematically. In philosophy, in political economy, in mathematics itself, he thinks mathematically, with mathematical precision and clarity. In natural science, too, he thinks with clarity but, again, in terms of mathematics. He is not a materialist, he is a mechanistic thinker. He conceives the world as mechanism. And moreover he had the courage to carry sincere convictions to their ultimate conclusions. For truth to tell, anyone who thinks as he did cannot write about Goethe and Schiller in any other way—leaving aside the abuse and taking only the essential substance of what is said.

So much for the fundamental trend of Dühring's thought. Add to this the blindness while he was still young, and the fact that he suffered no little personal injustice. He lost his post as lecturer at the University of Berlin. Well ... there were reasons! For example, in the second edition of his History of Mechanics he cast all restraint aside. The first edition had been quite tame in its treatment of the great figures in the field of mechanics, so tame that someone said he had written in a way which he thought would make it possible for a learned body to award him a prize. But in the second edition he no longer held himself in check; he let himself go and fairly filled in the gaps! Someone remarked—and Dühring often repeated it—that the Göttingen Academy had awarded a prize to the claws without recognising the lion behind the claws! But when the second edition appeared the lion had certainly come into the open!

In this second edition there were in truth some astounding passages, for example in connection with Julius Robert Mayer and his Galileo-destiny in the 19th century. On one occasion when Dühring was in a towering rage about this, he called a man he considered to be a plagiarist of Mayer—namely Hermann Helmholtz—so much “academic scaffolding,” “wooden scaffolding.” Later on he enlarged upon this theme. He edited a periodical Der Personalist, where everything had a strongly personal colouring. Here, for example, Dühring enlarges upon the reference to Helmholtz. He no longer speaks about wooden scaffolding, but when the postmortem examination had revealed the presence of water in Helmholtz's brain, Dühring said that the empty-headedness had been quite obvious while the man was still alive and that there was no need to wait for confirmation until after his death! Refinement was certainly not one of Dühring's qualities. One cannot exactly say that he raged like a washerwoman. His way of abusing was not commonplace; neither was there real genius in it. It was something quite unique.

And now take all these factors together: the blindness, the mechanistic bent of mind, the persecution he certainly suffered—for the dismissal from the University was not altogether free from injustice, and indeed countless injustices were done to him during his life ... All these things are connections of destiny which become really interesting only when we study them in the light of karma.

I have now given you a picture of these three personalities: Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the composer Schubert, and Eugen Dühring. Having outlined the biographical material today, I will speak tomorrow of the karmic connections.

The three lectures of today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow will be interconnected. Today I want to look at some things that will lay the groundwork for certain perspectives on man's relation to the cosmos and to all of life.

Consider the development of the human soul as we can observe it here between birth and death, living in the physical body. Among other things, we might notice that two properties, or complexes of energy, are necessary to the soul if it is to lead a fulfilling earthly life between birth and death—we have frequently directed our attention to such things.

What needs to be acquired, on the one hand, is memory. Just imagine that memory was not among our earthly possessions! You only need to consider how different our soul life would be if we could not look back to days past, all the way back to a certain moment after our birth, and could not retrieve what we have experienced from these more or less unplumbed depths. Our consciousness of our I, as we now possess it, is dependent on the way our experiences connect. I have drawn your attention to this frequently. Now, you all know that memory only begins to appear at a certain point in our earthly life. It is not present before then, and so all our experiences prior to that first remembered point in time are wrapped in forgetfulness. Therefore we can say: From a certain point in our earthly life onward, our soul life is related to our body in such a way that, in greater or lesser detail, our experiences can always be called up in us as memories—we can remember them.

This faculty of memory can only be developed under the influence of our earthly life, and developing a memory is one of the tasks of our earthly life. During that long period of our development when we were beings of the Moon, we did not have a faculty comparable to our earthly memory. In order for our organism to be able to develop memory, we have had to become a part of the organism of the earth, with all its forces deriving from the mineral realm. Memory develops as a result of the interaction between the human soul and the earthly, physical body. It is only during the Earth period of evolution that memory, in the form in which we develop it in our physical, earthly body, becomes necessary to the spiritual world. It only became necessary with the arrival of the Earth period because until then there were other things that took the place of memory. During the Moon period, for example, man's powers of dreamlike clairvoyance took the place of memory. Just imagine that every time you experienced something the experience would be written down in some particular place to which you always had access—as they occurred, all your experiences would be written down there, one after the other. Then all you would have to do to find an experience would be to look in that place where everything had been written down. And this is in fact the kind of experience undergone by man on Old Moon. Everything he experienced in his old, dreamlike, clairvoyant consciousness was, so to speak, engraved in a subtle etheric substance. Everything that man was able to experience through his dreamlike, clairvoyant consciousness was written into the substance of the world. And whenever a human soul needed something comparable to our memory of today, it simply had to direct its dreamlike, clairvoyant awareness toward what was engraved in the fine etheric substance of the world. Man on Old Moon looked at the traces left behind by his own experiences in the way people of today look at the objects of the external world. All one had to do to see something one had experienced was simply to observe the world substance. There, written into the substance of the world, one found the previous contents of that old, dreamlike, imaginative consciousness.

This way of living in the world was therefore very different from today's. Just imagine that you could re-think everything you ever thought, because it was following you about like the tail of a comet—that is a translation of the actual experience of Old Moon into the terms of present-day thinking. This condition had to end because mankind needed to become individualised. Man had to learn to present himself as an individuality. He can only do this if his experiences remain his own property rather than being immediately engraved into the world substance. His experience must be engraved only into his own fine etheric individuality, his own fine etheric substance. So long as man lives on Earth, whatever is developed in his waking consciousness is accompanied by movements of his etheric body. The shape of the physical body marks the boundary of these accompanying movements. To a certain extent they are unable to pass beyond the limits of the skin. Thus, for the whole of life between birth and death, the fine etheric substance, whose movements accompany experiences of thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences of will, is rolled up within the physical body. We have often described how it all unrolls and is received by the world substance when the physical body is laid aside in death. Then, after death, we can begin to look back on everything that has been engraved into our etheric individuality and watch it be absorbed into the substance of the cosmic ether.

I have briefly mentioned how things stand with memory, which develops in response to the physical body's forces of resistance. The situation is similar with respect to something else that is important for our life on earth and which we rightfully acquire for ourselves there.

In addition to memory, our life on Earth also requires us to develop habits. Habits are another thing that we did not yet possess on Old Moon in the form that we have them on Earth. On Old Moon we possessed neither memory nor the ability to form habits—not in the earthly form they have today. If you observe human development from childhood onwards, you will see how habits gradually begin to develop as certain actions are repeated again and again. As we are educated, we receive guidance which establishes certain actions as habits. At first these have to be learned, but once they have become habits our souls perform them more mechanically.

During the Earth period, if the I is to unfold properly, habits must be developed in the right way. What took the place of habits during Old Moon? During that period, every time we needed to accomplish something or whenever something was supposed to happen through us, we were directly influenced by one or the other being from the higher spiritual world. Our deeds were always held in check by the impulses we received from the beings of a higher world. At that time we were much more a member of the whole organism of the hierarchies than is the case now, in the Earth period.

If we had remained in this state, we should never have developed the power to be free, for every detail of our actions would depend on the impulses of higher beings. They would have to exercise their power whenever we acted. We can only receive into ourselves the gift of freedom by being released from the sphere of the beings of the higher hierarchies and by entering into a condition in which repeatedly[,] acts can become habits. In this manner it is possible for actions to originate in us. And so, acquiring the capacity to form habits is also intimately connected with the way humanity achieves inner freedom.

Even during the Earth period, the state we leave behind when we enter through birth into physical existence resembles our previous state on Old Moon. Up there in the spiritual world, before we are born and step down into earthly existence, we are powerfully influenced by higher spiritual impulses. There in the spiritual world it is always higher spiritual beings who guide us to what we need to do; they help us prepare an earthly existence that will proceed in accordance with our karma. When we enter the physical body we are torn from this world in which habits do not exist—this world which is subject only to the uninterrupted impulses of higher spiritual beings. To a degree we still possess an echo of our condition in the spiritual world when we enter physical existence. This expresses itself in the way we behave as children up to the age of seven. As children we follow habits less and are more under the influence of imitation. At first we begin to do things under the direct influence of what is happening around us: we imitate the examples that are shown to us. This is an echo of the way we had to act in the spiritual world. There it was necessary for us to receive an impulse for every single thing we did. That is why children imitate to begin with, directly following the impulses that come to them. Independence, the capacity of the soul to act independently, only emerges in the course of time, just like the capacity to live in accordance with habits.

Both memory and habits are important ingredients of our soul life. Both these significant elements of our soul life are metamorphoses. They are transformations of quite other conditions in the spiritual world. Memory is a transformation of the way imaginative dream experiences leave their traces behind them in the spiritual world; habit arises when one is torn free from the impulses of higher spiritual beings.

Looking at these matters in the way we have just done enables one to arrive at a concept of how differently constituted from the world on this side of the threshold is the world on the other side of the threshold. We need to be able to think in this way. Again and again it must be emphasised: On the other side of the threshold everything is different. We go to the trouble to characterise the spiritual world by using words that apply to the physical world, it is true. But again and again it must be made clear that we have to gradually accustom ourselves to shaping these pictures in a manner that is as different as possible from that in which we picture the physical world. Only in this way can we ever arrive at adequate and correct pictures of the spiritual world.

At the same time, considerations such as the preceding ones give us a glimpse of what is important and essential to our earthly existence. It is utter nonsense to believe that earthly existence should be valued lightly. I have already drawn your attention to this mistake, from various points of view. Like all the other phases of human development, earthly, physical existence has its purpose. We reap permanent, eternal gains from what our soul experiences by having a physical body and by way of what we experience under the influence of memory and habit, which are gifts of the physical body. Gradually, in the course of repeated Earth lives, we acquire these gains. Again and again, therefore, we have to more or less give up the power of memory and return to the state to which we were accustomed during Old Moon; we have to give back to the substance of the cosmos what has been engraved in us during our life on Earth. And this is what does happen as soon as we die. We have to submit ourselves to the impulses of the higher spiritual beings once more in order that the ability to follow their impulses can be translated into habit when we have returned to an earthly body.

At this point I should also to draw your attention to something I have already mentioned frequently in the past, for it is very, very important and cannot be repeated often enough. We acquire memory and habits during our life on Earth. For a start, let us look at memory. Considering it as we just have done, memory seems to be a natural gift of the Earth. And, as you know, a person can always develop the power and ability to remember, no matter how weak his memory seems at the time. Suppose that, as memory developed, nothing were to happen except what is entirely natural—nothing but what is precisely in accordance with the way in which it would develop under the influence of the mineral forces at work in the physical organism of the Earth. In that case we would not develop a memory such as the one to which we are accustomed. Normally we do much more than this—you all know that we do much more toward developing a memory. Perhaps it would be better to say, more is done to us. We learn things by heart. After a certain age we are required to learn things by heart, to memorise them. It makes a difference whether our memory is acquired by simply allowing it to develop more or less of itself, or whether we are required to do more than would just happen automatically. Eventually we retain a poem if we read it often enough or if it is recited to us frequently. But this is not sufficient for education these days; in addition we are required to memorise poems. Why, we are even punished if we have not memorised the poem assigned to us. This is how things are in the present cycle of human development.

I ask you, please, do understand what I am now saying. No one should go about saying that today I was thundering on about memorising, saying it should be done away with. That is not what I am saying! In our time it really is necessary for us to memorise certain things, for our cycle of development requires that our memory be trained in a quite particular way.

What, then, happens in our souls when memorising is brought in to help our natural inclination to acquire a memory? In this case, we summon Lucifer. And it is right that luciferic forces be called in to help build memory. Once more I want to emphasise that you are not to say: Oh, one must protect oneself from Lucifer; let us cease requiring our children to memorise anything! This is a bad habit that some have acquired. Again and again they express the belief that one must protect oneself from Lucifer and Ahriman by doing everything possible to prevent them from having access to us. The person who tries to protect himself from them is the one to whom they really do have thorough access! Luciferic and ahrimanic powers must be reckoned with in world development. They must retain their place in it; what matters is that this happen in the right way.

Let us look at a special case: Why is it necessary to call upon luciferic powers to help us to develop memory? The people of today are no longer aware of it but, in the past, in times not so long ago in the development of humanity, memory was of a different strength than is the memory of today. We need a relatively long time to memorise a longer poem. The ancient Greeks did not need so much time. Many of the ancient Greeks knew the Homeric poems from beginning to end. But they did not learn them in the fashion in which we memorise things today, for then the power of memory was constituted differently. How were things memorised during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch? What happened in those days was a kind of repetition of what had happened to an even greater degree in the Atlantean period itself, and which I have described in my writings about development in the time of Atlantis. On Old Moon there were powers which made it possible to draw behind one the contents of dreamlike imaginative experiences, like the tail of a comet. These powers from Old Moon were carried over and were transformed from a more outward power, which involved interaction with the world, into a more inward power. As it was transformed into an inward power, memory began to awaken in Atlantean humanity and the world seemed to bestow it on them automatically. And in Atlantis man did not have to exert himself very much to develop his memory, for it was like a power which he encountered in his dealings with the external world and which flowed into him from there. This state of affairs was repeated during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Then what had previously happened to him in his interactions with the world without his needing to do anything further about it, was to a certain extent repeated within the human being.

Now that man has entered the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, he finds it increasingly necessary to exert himself in order to acquire the power of memory. What came to him automatically during the time of Atlantis, and again during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, must now be made his own so that it can contribute to his individualisation and freedom. Whenever something is required that really corresponds to a previous ability—as when powers that were once natural are summoned to help build memory—we are dealing with a manifestation of Lucifer. Whenever we artificially call upon something in our age that was natural in the age of Greece, something like the effortless acquisition of memory, it becomes luciferic. But in order to summon up a strong impression of this luciferic element in your souls be aware of the role that Lucifer has played in the development of humanity. You must be aware of this as we describe these things. During the Greco-Roman times Lucifer was more or less kept within bounds. He was still in his rightful place. But he is no longer kept in his rightful place in the same way. Now, in order for man to be able to further develop his memory, it is necessary for him to enter into an agreement with Lucifer. Now it has become necessary for man to do something actively for his memory; during the Greco-Roman epoch memory came of itself without his needing to do anything further about it. Thereby what merely happened to the human being during the Greco-Roman epoch today has become a luciferic deed.

In the same moment that luciferic activity appears, however, the other side of the balance becomes active: the ahrimanic side. And, on the one hand, at the same time that humanity has been memorising things and thus calling on the assistance of Lucifer to build their memory it has, on the other hand, also been developing an ahrimanic support for memory by writing things down. On frequent occasions I have indicated that the people of the Middle Ages were not mistaken in feeling that printing was a particularly ‘black art.’

But everything that aids memory externally is to some degree ahrimanic. Again, I am not saying that it is right to flee from everything that is ahrimanic, although perhaps it is precisely in our circles that too much is done to call up Ahriman. One loves him far too much!

Herein lies the task of mankind—to establish a position of balance, and not believe that Lucifer and Ahriman are to be escaped without more ado! It is rather to confess, boldly, courageously and energetically, that these two kinds of beings are necessary to world development and that the powers coming from the ahrimanic and luciferic sides are there for man to put to use in his own activities and development. These are there for man to use, but it also is necessary for him to establish a balance between Lucifer and Ahriman in the most varied spheres. Lucifer and Ahriman must balance each other. So we must pursue our activities in such a way that they are able to balance one another. This is the reason why it was necessary for the luciferic and ahrimanic elements to intervene in Earth evolution. And from our previous studies we know that the description that stands at the beginning of the Old Testament is an important symbol for the intervention of the luciferic element. There it is described how woman tempts man and how the luciferic element intervenes—indirectly, through woman—in the development of the Earth. This is how the intervention of the luciferic element, which we locate in the Lemurian period, is symbolised in the Bible.

The intervention of the ahrimanic element followed after that, during the Atlantean period. And, just as a knowledge of the human being was required in the fourth post-Atlantean period in order to understand the biblical symbol of Lucifer, so today the fifth post-Atlantean period needs this knowledge in order to begin to understand the counter-symbol and be able to present it to the human soul in an adequately sketched, if incomplete, fashion. (I have mentioned this earlier.) Just as Lucifer stands at the side of Eve, so Ahriman stands at the side of Faust; and just as Lucifer approaches woman directly, so does Ahriman directly approach man. Just as man is tempted indirectly through woman, Gretchen is indirectly lied to through Faust. Since Ahriman is the one who is at work, lies are the means by which Gretchen is tempted. Ahriman is the spirit of deception whom we can picture as standing opposite Lucifer, the spirit of temptation. This is one way we can name them: Lucifer, the tempter, and Ahriman, the deceiver.

There is much in the world that is there purely for the purpose of protecting mankind from luciferic temptation. There are rules, teachings, descriptions of moral impulses, and institutions established in the course of human development—all these are there to protect mankind from luciferic temptations. Today, the right means for protecting oneself from the ahrimanic fall, the fall into untruth, are much less developed.

All the luciferic parts of the human being are related to the passions and emotions. Where falsehood and deception play a role, however, one can feel Ahriman at work in man's development. In our time it is not only necessary for people to arm themselves against luciferic challenges. They must also prepare themselves against the challenges of Ahriman, now that he has entered the field.

Some of this is contained in the Faust poems, which show how man can fall to Ahriman, even in such a matter as the misunderstanding of words. In his Faust, Goethe gives us a fine picture of how Faust passes through various ahrimanic dangers. There are various confusions between Lucifer and Ahriman, to be sure, but for reasons mentioned today and previously, Goethe was right to use Ahriman rather than Lucifer in his own Faust. There is much in both the first and second parts that is ahrimanic, right into such details as the role of misunderstood words. At the end of the second part there is a conversation. Faust believes the talk is about some diggings; but a grave is what is actually meant! ‘Graben’ (to dig, en-grave)—and ‘Grab’ (grave) are the words! Ahriman's impulse resounds here, right into the misunderstanding of ambiguous words. Goethe had an extraordinarily fine sense for representing ahrimanic impulses. In a manner more instinctive than conscious he wove untruth and distortion into those places in Faust where ahrimanic impulses are at work. It is very important to understand this.

Just as memory and habit are to a certain degree metamorphoses and transformations of modes of activity in the spiritual world, so also are there further capacities which we develop in the spiritual world which are transformations of what we have acquired here in the physical world and what has been revealed here. We have been characterising memory and habit as the results of transformations, as metamorphoses of spiritual experiences of an earlier time. But some things, for example, such as the relationship of our ideas to external objects, only appear for the first time in the physical world. Objects surround us. We picture them in our thoughts. What we call physical truth is the agreement of our ideas with the objects; this is truth on the physical level of existence. If we express an idea for which the physical plane does not provide a proper model, then it is not true. Whenever we speak of physical truths this always refers to an agreement between what we are thinking and the physical facts. In order to relate to the truth in this manner it is necessary for us to live in a physical body and be able to use it to look at external things. It would be nonsense to imagine that such a relation to the truth could already have existed on Old Moon. That is an accomplishment of life on Earth. Only when we acquire a physical body is something like this agreement between ideas and external objects possible. This, however, provides Ahriman with his field of action. And how does this provide him with it?

Matters such as those we have just been talking about give one a feeling for the interconnections between the spiritual world and the physical world. Ahriman has a proper task in the spiritual world and he should also exercise a certain influence on the physical world. But he should not actually enter the physical world! He should not be admitted to matters involving the agreement between external objects and the ideas we acquire through our physical bodies. He carried out certain activities on Old Moon. If he is allowed to carry out those same activities here on Earth he distorts the connection between our ideas and external objects. Wherever man is engaged in bringing his ideas into agreement with external objects and external facts Ahriman is supposed to keep his fingers off—if I may express myself symbolically. But he does not keep them off, not Ahriman—truly not! If he kept his fingers off there would be no lying in the world!

Now I am not sure whether it is necessary to prove that there is still lying in the world. But, if there is lying in the world, then it is proof that Ahriman is at work there in a manner in which it is not proper for him to work. This activity of Ahriman in the physical world is one of the things that humanity must overcome. You might say, though: There is much beauty in the world, but in some respects it really is a bungled job; if God the Father were entirely perfect He would have created human beings in such a way that they could not stoop to lying. Such a Father God would have told Ahriman that he is to have nothing to do with the physical world! And, as we have again heard today, Ahriman is not the only one who takes a certain pleasure in discovering what is wrong with the world. There are also philosophers of Pessimism about, philosophers who derive their views from the negative qualities of humanity. The nineteenth century produced not only some pessimistic philosophers, but also some who went beyond Pessimism to become representatives of ‘Miserable-ism.’ Among the other views of the world, that one also emphatically exists! Julius Bahnsen²⁹ was not only a pessimist, he was a ‘miserablist’.

Why, then, is Ahriman allowed into the physical world? In the last lecture I gave you an example of how strongly he is permitted to work in the world. As you will recall, I described how an event was arranged so that it would go according to an exact plan. This event was observed, not by the usual kind of audience, but by thirty young lawyers and students of jurisprudence—in other words, by men who were preparing themselves to become judges of human deeds. The event had been planned beforehand so that what was going to happen was known in detail. What the experiment demonstrated about establishing a correct relationship between how people think about happenings in the external world and what actually goes on is shown by what occurred after the event. The thirty were asked to describe what had happened. Twenty-six of them gave a false description; only four could give a true description and even their descriptions were only approximations of the truth. Thirty people witness an event that follows a carefully prepared plan and it is possible for twenty-six of them to give thoroughly false descriptions of it! That shows you how effective Ahriman is! There you can see how actively present he is! But what would happen if he were not there? Then we certainly would be some kind of lambs. We would feel the impulse to think of things exactly in accordance with the facts before us, and we would consistently allow ourselves to speak only about the facts we observe. But we would have to do this! There could be no talk of freedom! We would have to act in this way; we never could act otherwise; and we never could become free beings. If we are to be able to speak the truth as free beings it must be possible for us to lie, and we are therefore obliged to develop within ourselves the power to conquer Ahriman every time we speak. He has to be there, ‘provocative and active, doing his devil's work’. Those words should give you a picture of Ahriman's presence and of how error only occurs when we follow him directly instead of remembering that he is the one to be overcome as, provocative and active, he goes about his devil's work. Some speak about flight. They say, pulling long faces: ‘But is this not perhaps something ahrimanic? Oh, I must not have anything to do with this!’ In many cases, the only thing all this signifies is that the person in question is moving toward the comforts of Lucifer and leaving freedom behind.

What would help would be to acquaint oneself with the impulses that need to be overcome. To a certain extent we need Ahriman on one side and Lucifer on the other in order to bring about a balance between them.

These are the preliminary considerations I wanted to share with you today. They provide the necessary foundations for the spiritual-scientific vistas on life and the cosmos that will open out before us tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

• 29. Julius Bahnsen (1830 – 1881).

I would like to begin with some observations I made in the last lecture. Memory, in the form in which it appears in the present period, the Earth period, is a metamorphosis of other capacities of soul which mankind possessed on Old Moon. As I said, during this period of dreamlike imaginative vision, mankind did not possess a memory of the kind we have today. It was unnecessary because everything that was experienced in dreamlike imaginations was engraved objectively in the world and followed behind a human being like the tail of a comet. This mode of experience disappears with the arrival of the Earth period. And now there is something further one must keep in mind if one is to understand this matter fully: Conscious experiences cannot be engraved in the world substance in this fashion unless they have already been, in a certain sense, experienced beforehand; they are not experienced for the first time when the being in question, in this case, the human being, experiences them—they must, somehow, already have been experienced before. You can see, therefore, that everything mankind experienced through its Moon consciousness consisted in re-experiencing what had been thought for it by the beings of the higher hierarchies. On Old Moon the dreams men dreamed consisted of thoughts that had already been thought by the higher hierarchies. Human thoughts followed in the wake of these—if we can refer to the experiences of this dreamlike imaginative consciousness as thinking.

Other conditions obtain on Earth. Here, human life proceeds in such a way that a person's thoughts do not consist in a repetition of something that has already been thought and which then remain visible. Rather, as we heard yesterday, when a person thinks, his thoughts are preserved only within himself, due to the forces of resistance in his physical body. They are engraved in his own etheric substance and are only given over to the universal substance of the world when he dies. Only then is it possible to look back on everything one has consciously experienced in the manner in which one was formerly able to look back on it; during the time between death and a new birth it is possible to look back consciously on everything one has experienced. What someone has engraved in his own etheric body and then carried through the gates of death out into the universal world-ether is destined, however, to undergo gradual changes. These changes are accomplished in the course of successive Earth incarnations, as the person experiences the whole of Earth existence. Just consider how much is contained in what a person thinks! Would it not be the most horrible thing imaginable if all men's thoughts were objectively engraved in the substance of the world and had to remain there eternally? But that is what would happen if, in the course of repeated lives on Earth, humanity were not in the position to be able to make good the thoughts that should not remain—to either improve them, or eradicate them and replace them with something entirely different, and so on. That is one of the things established by an evolution through successive lives on Earth. It gives mankind the opportunity to improve on what it carries with it through the gates of death into the substance of the world, so that a person can strive for a final Earth incarnation which only leaves behind in the ether substance of the world that which really can remain.

Thus, you can see that the process involved here is different from what took place with the dreamlike imaginative consciousness of Old Moon. During the Moon period, thoughts had been thought beforehand by the beings of the higher hierarchies and, to some extent, by the elemental beings. Then they were thought by the human beings. This caused them to become visible and to remain visible. Whatever thoughts were repeated in human thoughts remained visible. In the Earth period, however, everything that a normally-developed person thinks—this includes all the feelings and impulses of will about which he thinks—is engraved in his own etheric body, in his own ether substance. It only becomes part of the world's ether substance when he passes through the gates of death, and it would have to remain there if, in the course of successive incarnations, he did not rectify the things that need putting right.

This is completely valid for the normal soul life during its development on Earth and thus applies to the usual kind of waking consciousness we develop between birth and death. But it does not apply to the consciousness that is related to waking consciousness and that we develop between death and a new birth. As you know, we often have spoken about what, from now on, needs to begin to enter the consciousness of humanity as spiritual science and why it is urgently necessary that it begin to do so. And what needs to enter as spiritual science so that humanity will be able to achieve its goals on Earth does not derive from the same sources as normal waking consciousness. As you know, this spiritual science must be born on Earth; we have often emphasised the fact that it cannot be developed during the time between death and a new birth. You know that the spiritual knowledge developed here during a life on Earth can only be developed here, and that its effects reach into the world occupied by the dead in the time between death and a new birth.

Spiritual science, therefore, can neither be developed through ordinary daytime consciousness, nor can it be brought back directly into this world through the gates of birth—not in the form in which it must appear. Rather it must develop out of a different way of seeing things. Yesterday and today we have characterised two different kinds of conscious life: the consciousness of Old Moon, with the form of memory we described, and the form of consciousness that belongs to life on Earth—which could be called ‘object-consciousness’—with its own kind of memory, which has also been described.

Now the consciousness which originally gives one access to the contents of spiritual science is of a special kind. You know how I have often emphasised that spiritual science can be understood with the help of normal, healthy human reason, and that one can form a living connection with spiritual science without having to direct one's gaze out into the spiritual world. But to obtain spiritual science from the spiritual world in the first place is another matter and requires a particular mode of consciousness. Furthermore, if one understands it, this special mode of consciousness will also allow mankind to shape the future of the Earth in the way in which it must be shaped, if humanity is not to fall into decadence. Mankind is already clearly standing on the threshold of decadence. If men are not to fall victim to it, they must develop an understanding for how the truths of spiritual science can flow from the spiritual world into our physical world.

If spiritual science is to fulfil its task for the future of mankind, it is necessary to achieve certain attitudes toward its truths. These attitudes are based in an obvious way on the path by which the spiritual-scientific truths pass from the spiritual world into the physical. As I have often explained—even in public lectures—while one is making discoveries in the spiritual world, the naturally-functioning memory that typifies our usual daytime consciousness is in a certain sense suspended. As you know, memory must be, in a way, overcome before one can discover the secrets from the other side of the threshold. But something new must also enter in. Obviously, what is consciously experienced should not just pass away. Something new occurs—and I ask you to keep this particularly in mind!—when a conception, or expression, characterises something that is spiritual in the sense of spiritual science and thus has real spiritual content. In such a case it does not remain in the personal etheric body until death, but is carried directly from consciousness into the spiritual-etheric world. Thus a truly spiritual conception-I mean one that really touches on the spirit-is carried directly into the substance of the ether. In the case of Moon consciousness, what was thought became visible because it had already been thought before. The previously-thought content became visible on Moon through being thought by man. In the case of our usual waking consciousness on Earth, a conception is first embedded in the person's own etheric body and remains connected with him until he can correct it. Thus it is possible for unwarranted thoughts to be corrected in the course of karma. But a conception that really touches on matters of the spirit is carried into the general etheric substance. This must come to pass; it is necessarily so. It is necessary for the evolutionary process of the world that the contents of spiritual science now be inscribed upon the world.

You might say—well, perhaps you might not say it, but someone else might—‘Yes, I prefer to leave everything that has to do with spiritual science to rest in peace; then I will not have to worry so much about my thoughts being directly engraved in the substance of the ether!’ The most recent time during which it would have been possible to speak in this way would have been during the Greco-Roman epoch, but it is no longer possible to do this. For what I said earlier about a person being able to correct what has been written into himself is true in so far as certain contents are concerned. But this ceases to apply in the matters I described yesterday—the matters that depend on Lucifer and Ahriman. In the future it will only be possible to conquer these two by establishing a balance between them. That, also, has been described. Even in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch it must be said that everything produced by a person out of himself can be corrected later. But if you do not learn to be on guard against Lucifer and Ahriman, the things that you think and do under their influence—such things as I have often described—will be engraved into the substance of the world. Where only the results of spiritual science would otherwise be engraved, these events will also be written down in the same manner.

We must learn to draw a fine distinction: On the one hand there is what we cause to be engraved only in ourselves and what is engraved in the universal ether-substance of the world because of its spiritual scientific content. On the other hand, there is what is engraved in the universal world-substance through the agency of Lucifer, the Tempter or Seducer, or by the agency of Ahriman, the Spirit of Falsehood.

Naturally, the phrases one often hears mouthed—for example, that one must be sure not to fall into the clutches of Lucifer or Ahriman—are worthless. But, if we understand, firstly, the necessity of spiritual science and, secondly, its tasks, we must nevertheless ask ourselves in all earnestness: ‘What role, then, does the contents of spiritual science have to play for a person who can behold the necessities facing humanity?’ It is important to know that we are involved in the transition to an age when our thoughts will once more be inscribed directly into the universal world-substance. This is being prepared. But this time it will be the thoughts that we ourselves think, not thoughts that have been thought beforehand. If one takes this into account, then a sense of responsibility for what we think can flow from it—responsibility for everything we do in the world of our thoughts. It is so easy to believe that our thoughts have no objective significance—indeed, as we said, until recent times this view was also essentially correct. But in our times it has already started to become a stark reality that a real lie, or untruths of the kind we described yesterday, are appropriated by Ahriman and engraved into the universal substance of the world. This fact determines the attitude that mankind must gradually learn to adopt towards thinking.

If one does not come to terms with what I have just been describing, it will be easy to develop anxieties. But if one weighs everything quietly, objectively and calmly, there will be no need to become anxious. Indeed, it will not be possible to be anxious if one says to oneself. ‘Yes, I must feel a terrifying responsibility towards what I think.’ In the approaching age and for many thousands of years hence, it will be crucial that we human beings acquire a feeling of responsibility towards the thoughts we take hold of. If one so desires, it is possible, broadly speaking, to understand thinking as developing to the stage at which it is translated into speech and can thus be communicated. Until it has reached the stage where it is, at any rate, suitable for being communicated there is not much that Ahriman can do with our thinking. But Ahriman is on the alert once thinking has been taken to the point where it is ripe for communication, that is to say, the point where we are, about to communicate it. He is there, waiting for an opportunity to take the thought and implant it into the universal world substance. Along with the wakefulness that enables us to see that our thoughts ultimately take their rightful shape and are thoughts for which we can take responsibility, we need to learn to view all thinking as a kind of search. At present, our consciousness is much too influenced by the feeling that every thought must be formulated immediately. But the purpose of our ability to think is not to help us immediately complete each thought! It is there so that we can seek out matters, pursuing the facts, putting them together and looking at them from all sides. But people today like to formulate their thoughts quickly—do they not—in order to get them from their lips or down on paper as quickly as possible. But we are not given the ability to think in order to formulate thoughts with undue haste but, rather, so that we can search. Thinking is to be seen as a process that can remain for a long time at the stage of searching for a form. One should postpone formulating thoughts until responsibility has been taken for the facts—until the facts have been turned and revolved and looked at from all sides—so that they have ceased to be the kind of fact I described earlier, facts about which twenty-six people can speak falsely and only four are able to speak the approximate truth. For thirty sat there and witnessed what happened!

An enormous amount depends on whether there are some people who understand the need for this very thing I have been describing. These days it is not even possible to calculate how deeply one sins against the maxim of using thinking as a method of seeking, and of suspending completed thoughts for as long as possible. That is why the phantoms of untruth buzz about our world, and why lying is becoming more and more habitual. But the more humanity leans towards lying and the more it is gripped by the tendency to lie, the more decadent it becomes. A constant oscillation between Lucifer and Ahriman begins to establish itself, on the one side, untruths are spoken, whether directly out of ill-will, or just out of thoughtlessness. And in placing together ‘ill-will’ and ‘thoughtlessness’ we have already indicated that Lucifer is in league with the Spirit of Lies! Lucifer is connected with the Spirit of Lies, for thus he obtains easy access, since, in their turn, lies generate passions. And we, meanwhile, are losing the power to establish a balance between what we think and what we feel and will. It is urgent that mankind become strongly enough aware of an immensely widespread, subconscious tendency, because this subconscious tendency opposes that step we have said is necessary for the future. It opposes the tendency to establish a tough-minded responsibility for whatever one formulates as a truth. Especially in the last few years, it has been dreadful to see how this sense of responsibility is disappearing. But the important thing is that we pay heed to these things. For, in the upper layers of their consciousness, men are not aware of the strength of the impulse to say what is false.

Something can only really become a truth after it has been placed, so to speak, in all kinds of positions and has had light cast on it from various directions—only if one has really suspended judgement for as long as possible. No over-hastily expressed point of view, no over-hastily expressed opinion, no report of an event that is delivered in too great a haste, can be the truth—but they can have the effect of bringing mankind more and more into decadence. This matter can even be the subject of experiments. We would probably agree that most people are not straightforward out-and-out liars. Some are, of course. But the worst thing of all is the unconscious and subconscious lying that is the result of Luciferic seduction—lying that contains a quarter or an eighth or a sixteenth of the truth. It might even be ninety-eight percent true, but the dynamic impetus of the remaining two per cent corrupts the whole thing and carries it all into corruption.

There is a further matter that must also be taken into consideration. Today, people have an insatiable appetite for putting things into words. Immediately, without delay, one must describe everything, one must know everything. People never use their thinking to search out the facts or to reflect upon them. And, especially in these times, it really does not require much talent to notice that so much lying is going on. People do notice—of course they do. But the generalisation that, in the present day, there is much lying going on, also requires our thinking to traverse a certain path. For this truth, in turn, also needs to be illuminated from many sides, since a truth can become exactly the opposite of the truth when it is formulated too quickly and not measured against reality. Recently I read an article about all the huge lies of the present day. Even though it does not require much talent to describe all the lies that are buzzing about our heads, this article was itself the most false thing of all! In spite of the fact that what it said was, of course, true in a way, the entire article was smothered in a sauce of lies; the whole article was a sauce of lies. Such articles are not worthy of criticism. What matters is for mankind to become aware that hasty words are undesirable and that one needs to immerse oneself in things and to illuminate them from all sides.

For you see, in the spiritual world it is especially important to have developed this feeling for the truth of what has been experienced in the physical world. A right and true understanding of the impulses of spiritual science requires this attitude towards the spiritual world, but it is also necessary in the world one experiences after passing through the gates of death. It is necessary to take into account the fact that we will not be able to understand the world which surrounds us in the time between death and a new birth unless we bring with us this fundamental attitude towards the truth. In order to understand anything about what one needs to accomplish in the spiritual world, this responsibility towards the truth is necessary.

At present there are many shocking circumstances which show us the downward path; we must seek the ascending path that corresponds to it. Through spiritual science future humanity must have developed a somewhat different attitude towards the truth. For there is much that must be generated in our own soul life and then embedded in the substance of the Earth and engraved in it as we pass through the remainder of the Earth period and then through the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan periods. This leads me to something I want to say about the metamorphosis of memory.

I also have some things to say about metamorphosis in the sphere of habit. When we look back to the humanity of Old Moon to see from out of what our present-day habits have developed, we observe that the human beings of that time simply received their impulses from the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies. They did not develop habits. Human habits are one characteristic of the Earth period and are concerned with principles that apply to it. Now that we have passed beyond the midpoint of the Earth period, we must prepare what is required for our subsequent development. Habit tears us away from the beings who send down their impulses to us from the spiritual world. And habit establishes the foundations for our freedom.

But we must once more come into a relationship with the beings of the higher hierarchies, into a new relationship. During Old Moon and also during the first part of the Earth period, we were unconsciously, or subconsciously, dependent on them without being able to do anything about it. Spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, and even some elemental beings directed their impulses into our consciousness. Now we are freeing ourselves from this. The period of imitation in early childhood remains as a kind of residue, a remnant.

But we must again develop beyond a life of habit, both in the outer circumstances of our lives and in our moral behaviour. I will simply refer you to the chapter in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity which deals with moral tact. There you can read how our freedom is established on the basis of the habits we develop. We must be aware of what is really being developed in our life of habits! We still possess remnants of a connection with the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, but these are not fully apparent to our usual Earth consciousness. That world is unknown. We leave this unknown world behind when we pass through the gates of the senses into the world in which we live. But we originate in the world that is beyond the senses. Spiritual science enables us to lift the veil of the senses and rediscover it. And we do actually bear a remnant of this world within us. It is simply not apparent to our usual Earth consciousness. Up to the end of the Moon period, and on into Earth times, we still lived with the beings of the higher hierarchies in that spiritual world over yonder. In passing through the gates of the senses, we have left it behind. But not everything that our souls developed when we felt ourselves in the company of the beings of the higher hierarchies has been lost to us. We still carry an unconscious remnant with us. Among many other things, this unconscious remnant is also the basis of conscience. This is another way of viewing conscience. The whole of conscience is still inherited from the spiritual world. Only gradually, as we learn to understand the world once more and as we learn how to grasp it spiritually, will we discover a body of moral principles that will shed light on the more instinctive morality that is based on conscience. A morality that is increasingly filled with light will emerge—but, as goes without saying, only if humanity searches for it!

This is why there is so much talk about abstract ideals today—such as the great abstract ideals of Truth, Beauty, Goodness. But remember what I said eight days ago. Remember that there are beings in the spiritual world who correspond to the abstract ideals of beauty, truth and goodness we encounter on Earth. It is toward these beings of the higher hierarchies—not merely toward the abstract ideals—that the human soul is once more moving as we pursue more or less abstract ideals in our deeds and activities. In order to raise ourselves up, even as far as Idealism, we must develop sufficiently to rediscover our connections with a living spiritual world whence must stream the impulses for what is done here on Earth. Spiritual science must step forward in order to provide humanity with the impulses for what needs to happen in the physical world. And, I should like to say, these are things you can lay your hands on—I am speaking symbolically: these are, spiritually speaking, things you can really lay your hands on.

Consider what our present-day, materialistic culture of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch has to say about the future of humanity and about what mankind should accomplish! Much of it is certainly beautiful. I do not want to criticise what is said, nor to reprimand anyone. But all this is really a search for abstractions! All these moral ideals and ideals about national economy, and all the many other kinds of ideals—these are all abstractions. Just compare these abstract pictures of the human impulses needed for the future with the living impulses that can come from spiritual science, impulses alive with the knowledge of what has to happen in this world to prepare for the future! Just think what is understood through knowing that one will be able to fulfil certain tasks by entering into a particular relationship with the hierarchy of the Angels, and that the shape of the world will be altered in certain specific ways, and so on. Try putting together all that you can find in the various lecture cycles about the development of humanity in the future and the positive actions that need to be taken. The difference between having something that is just abstract and dead, and having something that is alive, will be apparent if you compare this with the abstract moral idealism that is otherwise put forward. This aliveness and this awareness that the world is not just purely and simply there, is going to be needed: the minerals, plants, animals and the human beings are not simply there so that man can dictate the shape of the world by constructing all kinds of ideals which are nothing but abstractions. No, there is a living chain that reaches up, through mineral, plant, animal, and human being to the Angels, Archangels, and beyond. And as this living connection is re-established, the life that needs to flow into the development of humanity begins to flow again. Until people come to a more complete understanding of this fact through spiritual science they will continue to formulate abstract ideals—just thoughts—as though there could be something creative in thoughts that are not the thoughts of the Angels, Archangels, and so on! This ability to stand in a living connection with the sense and goal of the world will develop. The truth will become more moral, because one will feel a moral responsibility towards the truth. And morality will take on more the aspect of a wisdom-filled knowledge because one will know which beings are being served as one carries out this or that task.

The correct understanding of the Christ principle for our times is also contained in what I have just been saying. What has been obtained from the Christ principle up to now has not been enough to stem the manifold tide of decline that has swept, and will sweep, over our times. But, as I have often said before, Christ did not come with the message, ‘Here I am. Quickly write down everything you can say about me so that humanity can believe in it until the last days of the Earth!’ That is what is taught by the short-sighted, narrow-minded theology of today. What it very often teaches implies that the Christ said, ‘Certain things have I done. Quickly write them down, for that is what is to be taught until the last days of the Earth, and nothing shall be added to it.’

This assertion sits falsely. It is so false that people hesitate to utter it at all. I refer to those who consistently act in accordance with this assumption without ever once stating it. But the assumption on which they act sits falsely, very falsely. For the Christ said, ‘I will be with you to the last days of the Earth.’ And this implies that it is always possible to receive Christ's revelation! In the early days of Christianity it was the Gospels that came from this source; today it is spiritual science.

Those who wrote down what could be written down in those days did not say, ‘We have written this down, and there is nothing else in addition to what we have written that can be written.’ They said, rather, ‘And there are also many other things which Jesus did, that which, if they should be written down, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.’ As regards understanding the Christ, spiritual science lays bare a nerve that nothing else in our time is able to reveal. It is truly essential in our times to draw attention to the attitude mankind needs to achieve toward its own thoughts and—toward the impulses on which it acts. So much is said about this—at any rate, much is written down—but most of it is unfounded, because people want to go in the other direction. They do not want thinking to be a path that must be traversed for a long, long time before one arrives at the goal and obtains something in which one can believe; they want to get the thinking over with as quickly as possible. But we can only arrive at the goal after we have established a relationship with truth. And even when we have arrived at something that is wholly correct—even though we have considered the matter from all sides to obtain a wholly correct manner of expressing it—we should never cease to look at it anew, considering it from yet other sides.

This is the most earnest challenge that spiritual science has to establish in our souls. And this building that is coming into being here is here to make us aware of this task of spiritual science. It shall stand here as a small, vulnerable point of departure from which what has been said can enter the hearts and souls of mankind. For this to happen, it is of course necessary that everything be done that can be done, for at present there is so much opposition.

Today we want to listen to a recitation from the poetry of Friedrich Lienhard and Wilhelm Jordan. Then I will add something of an anthroposophical literary consideration to it about the present time and its tasks. This will conclude our evening, but first I would like to say a few words by way of introduction.

Friedrich Lienhard is one of those poets of the present time of whom we are able to say that as far as his own striving in a certain connection, he comes near to the striving of spiritual science. On October 4, 1915, he celebrated his 50th birthday and we at Dornach joined others from all sides in sending our congraulations to this spirit-filled poet. We can look in a certain way into the actual artistic content of the poetical nature of Friedrich Lienhard who in a certain sense has been very friendly to our movement. He himself, says that he originated from the French Alsace Lorraine region where he had to pass through many difficulties in order to attain what he calls his world conception. He tried to develop out of the European German nature so as to bring to effectiveness the actual beating in of the waves of this Central European German being. We can say how there lives within him above all that which I have just attempted to characterize, an element that can perhaps only be evaluated correctly when we realize its worth as we approach it from the spiritual artistic point of view which is fostered in the science of the spirit. In Lienhard's poetry we have, above all, the wonderful description of nature, lyric nature, but put in a very special way when he attempts to bring human beings into speech with nature. Also there is something of the nature of the human being which actually proceeds directly out of the natural way and shows its spirit in nature existence. Now, what does all this come from?

It comes from something that one can perhaps only correctly notice with Friedrich Lienhard when one attempts to evaluate art today which one should always do—so as to realize that there is something which has been completely extinguished from the consciousness of mankind: people no longer are able to evaluate artistic representations. Today they focus completely upon the content of the art, on its representation characteristics and allow that to work on them, but they fail to realize that the important thing is the formal element, the artistic formal element of what is being attempted, not the content so much but how the ideas and the feeling come together, how they undulate in waves and then dissipate. It is very important to see how the poetic language comes into existence in the actual undulation of the waves. In Lienhard you can see quite readily how in the poetical expression of his experiences there is a swaying of the ruling of elemental spirituality, a sort of participation of the poetic soul with that which we would characterize as something which lives in an elementary way in the ether world behind the pure sense existence when the etheric element is brought to manifestation in a natural way as, for example, in the expression of the soul life of young children. If you follow the words of Friedrich Lienhard in a literal way, it appears as if the elementary spirits want to move on further through these words, they sort of ripple through, warm through, weave through all this natural phenomena and this rippling, this warming, this living, this weaving through of elementary beings in relationship to nature continues itself with such a poet who understands how to really live with the spirit of nature.

A further element of Friedrich Lienhard is that precisely through his ability to grasp the great connections of mankind and of the world, with which, I might say, he with his feelings is inwardly connected without anything of the narrow chauvenistic nationalistic spirit entering into these feelings, you can find in him the driving, working forces and beings of the folk life; and again the folk life not out of the details of the accidental individuals, but from the whole weaving and swaying of the priciple of the Folk Soul itself and being able to grasp all that and to place the single personalities into the great spiritual connections in which they are able to stand within the life of the folk. Through that fact Freiedrich Lienhard is in a position of being able to represent such a figure as that of the priest Oberlin of the Alsace Steinthal who was spiritualized by a kind of atavistic clairvoyance. He was able on the one hand to present Oberlin in a real plastic three dimentional way and on the other hand to grasp him in an extraordinarily intimate soul way. Out of these impulses, Lienhard was able to call forth into the present time the divine figures of antiquity, not in the way of these ancient hero sagas, but he took not only the content of it but also attempted in present day speech to find the possibility of again reawakening that which as a beating in of the waves lived through this ancient time and to be able to realize it can still beat into our present age. Lienhard was able to awaken all this and therefore we can say in a certain sense, as it were, that Friedrich Lienhard is one of the most superior poets of the present age, because other poets of this age have attempted to transpose themselves more into the naturalistic, the realistic aspect also rejecting the real artistic spiritual and in that way wanted to create something new. However, the real poet, when he wants to create something new, does not try to use these naturalistic whimsies of our present age, but creates something new by being able to grasp in a new way the stream of the eternal beauty; he grasps that which is eternal in a new way so that art remains art. And real art can never remain real art without being permeated by the spirit. Through this aspect it was possible for Friedrich Lienhard to approach much nearer to that which he called: The Way Toward Weimer. Acutally in his free time he had produced this periodical for a long time which he called Ways Toward Weimer in which he attempted to turn to the ideas and artistic impulses of that great period which began towards the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, and to recognize that which is in these, precisely much of real worth which existed in that particular period which had been forgotten and had faded away. For that reason, in his later artistic period he attempted again to deepen, to make it more inward, I might say, so that ultimately it was possible for such inward poems to come out as those who relate to personalities such as Odelia and the like. He knew how to unite himself with all that in a true sense with the Christian impulses which weave and undulates through mankind. And it is very noticeable that he, not by the external content of his poetic creation but through the way in which they carry the elementary nature right into the details, that he was able to approach the alliteration aspect of the artistic element which appeared as if it was being lost from the whole of German literature. This allilteration and that which is related to the German nature, has with it the whole central European German Folk substance. Because of Lienhard's ability to do that, that brought him close to Wilhelm Jordan, another peot who partly through his own fault and partly through the fault of our age has been little understood by our present time. We shall attempt to bring Wilhelm Jordan to you later on through recitation.

Precisely through alliteration, Wilhelm Jordan attempted again to renew, as he called it, a way of speaking which belonged to times gone by. He could do nothing else than bring this formal element of the ancient poetry, again into the present time. He attempted to lift it up to great moving impulses out of the smallness of everyday things. One must say that it is literally a calamity, although it is not quite without Jordan's own fault that such a poem as “The Damier” which attempted to bring the world moving spiritual principles into connection with mankind upon the earth, that such a creation as “The Danier” should be passed over without effect in our present time. This is partly his fault, because he allowed himself to be damaged by the natural scientific way of looking at things. Much of this damaged his poem “The Niebelungen”, whereas instead of having the deeper principles which should have been applied in this poem, he allows the naturalistic principle of heredity to dominate it; he allowed the substance transition of the forces of inheritance from one generation to another to dominate instead of the soul aspect dominating. There is too much domination of the blood aspect in a certain sense through that. You can say that Wilhelm Jordan paid his tribute to the natural scientific grasping of the present age. However, on the other hand he has taken away from his poems what perhaps already in an earlier time would have been able to give the great spiritual impulses to the artistic striving of mankind, so that not everything would have had to sink into the inartistic barbarism, which in many cases in the later period appeared in the place of the earlier spiritual principles. We can indeed see how today people want to scoff about that which Wilhelm Jordan wanted to do. But I might say that as far as we are concerned, it is our job to be able, in a certain sense, to allow these great impulses to work upon our soul wherever they might appear, because nevertheless there will come a time when these inpulses will have to fulfill a certain mission in mankind's development.

Certainly the poet, Friedrich Lienhard, will be recognized in wide circles. However, in our circles we should attempt to discover that which perhaps can be found precisely in him, because that will be, above all, what I believe will be able to carry his artistic strivings together upon the waves of the spiritual scientific strivings into the future.

Having said that now we will listen to the poems of Friedrich Lienhard and then to some extracts from the poem “Niebelungen” by Wilhelm Jordan. (The following are the poems recited by Frau Dr. Steiner: “Faith”; “The Morning Wind”; “A Greeting to the Forest”; “TheCreative Light”; “The Lonely Stone”; “Have You Also Experienced?”; “All The Tender FLower Cups”; “Soul Wandering”; “The Dance of the Elves”; “The Summer Night”. “The Songs of Odelian”; “Autumn On the Mount of Odelian”; “St. Odelia” then a recitation from the Niebelungen Song by Wilhelm Jordan.)

It is also good to allow this type of poetic art to work upon us. We have in Friedrich Lienhard a poet who really attempts in the present time to carry in spiritual idealistic soul experiences which are strong enough to unite themselves with nature experiences; and with such things one can detect something which is more appropriate to the ‘how’ in art than to the ‘what’ in art. How wonderful is that which draws itself to the magic in the district around the Mount of Odelian and how beautiful it is, how directly lyrical is the perception which streams out of this protective patroness, Odelia, of the Cloister of Mount Odelian. The fact that Odelia was once persecuted by her horrible father, that she was blinded and precisely through the loss of her eye sight, she achieved the mystical capacity of healing the blind, making them see, this is the saga around which all the rest gathers itself. All that which in truth gathers itself around this saga in deep mysticism is lyrically united with the nature which is around the Alsacian Mount of Odelian and it finds itself precisely within these poems by Friedrich Lienhard which have been recited to you. You can find in these poems that he gives the real opportunity for, I might say, the swinging in of an elemental nature which weaves itself in the form of his poems much of which reminds you of the forgotten Wilhelm Jordan. From this small sample which we have been able to hear today you will be able on the one hand to realize how very much this poet attempted to place these figures from the great spiritual weaving of life before us to create them out of this spiritual weaving of life and to allow us to realize that the weaving of the spiritual world works in the external world. You can experience precisely through Wilhelm Jordan, I believe, how the poetic soul can unite itself with a world historical streaming so that in that which confronts us in a poetic artistic form, there actually lives the striving of a spiritual stream which works through the development of the world.

When we were together last Tuesday, I had to ask the question: What would be the outcome of the development of mankind on earth if it were not possible for a spiritual beating-in to find its way into that which exists in the pure external physical existence. Not only in the external realm of scientific knowledge, of the social life and so on, but also in the realm of art, the fact that confronts us and comes to meet us very strongly is that we live in a very critical age, an age which is filled with crises, because if that which is living in spiritual science is not able to take hold of human soul life, then art itself would gradually disappear from mankind, because it cannot exist without the spirit. This art is trying to disappear from such figures as Wilhelm Jordan. However such figures as Friedrich Lienhard have attempted to hold fast to that which tried to disappear—the spiritual aspect—from Wilhelm Jordan. Today people do not see much of the threatening danger of the artistic decay, because in many connections, intoxication also dominates in this realm of dream life of which I spoke Tuesday, of which one can really only perceive if one has an organ to grasp it. I can only wish that more and more people were actually able to realize from a spiritual scientific perception what it means for the ... is an indication of what is going to come into art if this rejection of all spirtual life, of spiritual perception, still continues. One of the great tragedies of the modern times is that such a large nunber of people are able to consider art as all that which is represented by Rheinhard. When one receives a real artistic perception from Spiritual Science, then one will be able to see clearly the so-called rubbish involved in Rheinhard, because that which in modern life appears in the artistic domain is nothing other than a distorted world. When one really attempts to grasp the life of the present time, one can, I might say, indicate the actual places where a life which has been eaten up by materialism affects the art of our age and causes it to fall into a morass. You can see how everything of what art really is is forgotten. In order for a real artistic sense to continue itself into the development of mankind, it is necessary that that which comes to us from earlier times, which, for example, lives also in Lienhard's poetry and which in a certain way is a kind of nature pantheism and a kind of spirit pantheism can develop from that into something more concrete, so that human beings are able to learn to understand the manifoldness of life so that they can see the etheric, astral and the spiritual by the side of the physical sense aspect. Without seeing these things mankind remains blind, blind precisely in relationship to the artistic. As far as the artistic perceptions is concerned, the world as it is today is predisposed to only take in the quite solid external sense aspect, to look on it exactly as it is and to describe it as it is; and that is not art.

One can also experience this nonsensical unclear staggering and wabbling, this frenzy we find with reference to the phenomena of life as it is regarded by people who are called fine psychologists. It often makes your heart sad to see that so few people are strongly adapted enough to perceive what is happening in this realm, to see it in such a way as to be able to rebel against it. Contemplate human beings as they confront us. The artist must indeed look upon them in so far as he is able to place them into the deeper life of the world. If one looks upon people with that particular soul organ which the evolutionary development of mankind has already brought into existence, then we need the possibility of saying the following. There is a person; he is configured in such and such a way. He has experienced this or that thing. We know that this person is more inserted into his physical life, another is more inserted into his ego, another more into his astral body. We must have a living feeling for the fact that the characteristics of mankind can divide themselves in so far as they are taken hold of more by the physical in one case, another more by the etheric, another more by the astral and another more by the ego aspect; and if one is not able to do this in our present time and still wants to describe people artistically in poetry, etc, then one gets the sort of staggering which today is regarded as art.

You must, I might say, take hold of the significant phenomena of our age in order to obtain a real understanding of what is actually happening. For example, one can meet four people who, shall we say, have been brought together by karma. Then one can understand how they are brought together in certain connections through karma when we see them together, how the stream of karma also flows in the progress of the world and how these human beings precisely in a certain way, through their karma, wanted to insert themselves into the world. One will never be able to understand things from the standpoint which is possible today if one is not able to see such karmic connections. Let us take the four brothers, Dimitri, Ivan, Alyosha and Smerdyakov in Dostoevski's novel The Brothers Karamazov. When you are really able to see them with the eye of the soul, you actually see in these four brothers four types which you can only understand through the way they are carried by karma. Thus one knows the following. The four brothers carry a stream of karma into the world in such a way that they must be the sons of a typical scoundral of the present age who has these four brothers as his sons. They are carried in in so far as they have selected it through this karma. They are placed one by the side of the other so that one sees how they differ from each other, and this can only be understood when one knows the following. In Dimitri Karamazov there is an overpowering by the “I”; in Aloysha Karamazov there is an overpowering by the astral body; in Ivan Karamazov there is an overpowering by the etheric body and in Smerdyakov there is a complete overpowering by the physical body. A light of understanding falls upon these four brothers when one is able to consider them from this standpoint.

Now, just think how a poet with Wilhelm Jordan's gift and with a spiritual grasping of the world as it must be in accordance with our modern age, how such a person would place these four brothers side by side, how he would grasp their spiritual and fundamental conditioning. How would Wilhelm Jordan do it?

Let us consider Dostoevski; how does he grasp the situation? He grasps it in no other way than that he places these four brothers as the sons of a quite typical drunken man in a certain stagnated society of the present age. Let us take the first son, Dimitri, the son of a half adventurous, half hysterical woman who after she first elopes with the drunken sop, Fyador Karamazov, beats him and finally cannot endure him anymore and leaves him with his son, Dimitri, the eldest son. Everything is now placed only an inheritance, it is so placed that one has the impression that here the poet describes something like a modern psychiatrist who only focuses upon the coarsest principle of heredity and has no inkling of the spiritual connections, and wants to bring before us the sin of heredity. Now we have the next two sons, Ivan and Aloysha. They come fron the second wife. Naturally the sin of heredity will work differently with these two sons. They come from the so-called screaming Liza, who, because she is not half hysterical but completely hysterical has spasms of screaming. Whereas the first wife soundly thrashed the old drunkard, now the old drunkard thrashes the screaming Liza. Now we have the fourth son, who, I might say, is overpowered by everything which is in the physical body have Smerdyakov, a kind of mixture of a wise, thoughtful and idiotic man, someone who is quite imbecilic and also a partly clever man. He is also the son of the old drunkard and has been begotten with a deaf person who was regarded as the village idiot, namely, the stinking Lizaveta who is seduced by the old drunkard. She dies in childbirth and it is obvious that he does not know that Smerdyakov is his son. Smerdyakov then remains in the house and now all the scenes which occur between these personalities are played out.

As far as Dimitri is concerned it is understandable that he is influenced by his heredity. He is a man in whom the quite unconscious ego flows and pushes him further in life so that he acts out of the unconscious, but of the thoughtlessness and he is so delineated to us that, in the main, you realize that you are not dealing here with a healthy spiritual person, but with someone of a more hysterical nature. Therefore you will find the effect of all that from the nature evolution of the present, that present which will not permit itself to be influenced by that which comes from the spiritual world conception. All the unclear instincts which can actually just as well develop themselves into the best sort of mysticism as well as the most external criminality, in all that you can find the transition from the unconscious, all that Dostoevski deliniates in Dimitri Karamazov. He wants to depict as Russian, because he always tries to describe the true Russianness.

Ivan, the other son, is a Westerner, they call him the Wesler because he wants to familiarize himself with the culture of the West; whereas Dimitri knows very little of the culture of the West but prefers to function out of the Russian instincts. Ivan was in Paris. He studied all sorts of things. He has taken up the Western world conception; he argues with people; he is completely filled with the materialistic world conception of the West modified however by the brooding of the Russian. He argues with all types of people using all sorts of thoughts about how the modern spiritual culture can enter into the midst of the instincts: Should a person be an athiest? Should a person not be an athiest? Can you assume that there is a God? Can you say that there is no God? Can you arrive at an assumption of God? Yes, I accept God, but I do not accept the world. That is the sort of discussion that goes on and on. This is how it is with Ivan.

Now, the third son, Aloysha, becomes a monk early. He is the one in whom the astral body has the superior powers but it also shows that all sorts of instincts work in him, the same instincts as his older brother had developed in him developed through mysticism. Dimitri, who comes from another mother, actually is predisposed to criminality which manifests itself as with other people, but in the case of Aloysha it manifests itself differently, he becomes a mystic. You can say that criminality is only a special development of the same instinct which on the other hand prays for self-emulation—the belief in divine love which goes through the world. Both of them come out of the lower instinctive nature of men, but they develop themselves in different ways. We are not objecting to having these personalities in art, because anything which is real can be the object of art. The important part is not so much the content but how it is presented—is there a weaving of the spiritual in it?—that is the important point.

In Russian culture you have a certain spirituality which is a further development of natural relationships which I have described in my previous lectures as a contrast of spiritual relationships. From the very beginning Dostoevski was a hater of Germany. He had his task of instinctively letting none of West European culture flow into his soul. Because of his being a true Russian, Dostoevski did not come out of the real soul aspect, but that which comes from his subconscious nature arose, all the brooding in the inner human being, that sort of worked itself out and developed itself in the art with the exclusion of all spirtual aspects.

Now we have in Dostoevski's Brothers Karamazov that remarkable episode of the great inquisitor in front of whom the reincarnated Christ appears. And being a true orthodox Christian of his time, this priest knows that he has to put Jesus Christ in prison. That is the first thing that he does. Then he gets the inquisition to give him a hearing. The great inquisitor who develops religion in the sense of the Christianity of our age says to himself: “Ah, yes, Christ has come back. You are indeed the Christ. However, you cannot enter into Christianity as it is now with our priests of the holy order, because you do not understand these things. Take what you yourself have performed. Has it done anything to make people happy? We had to put right what was impractical in your approach. If Christianity as you know it came among people, it would not have the sort of salvation which we have brought to the people, because when you really want to bring salvation to people, you have to bring them a teaching which actually works upon human beings. Now, you believe the teaching also must be the truth. However, you cannot begin to confront human beings with such things. Above all, human beings have to believe the teachings we have given to them; they have to be forced to accept those teachings. We have done better than you. We have established authority. Therefore the only thing that can be done is to take this reincarnated Christ over to the inquisition.” In the case of Dostoevski you see that there is nothing at all spiritual; you see Christ appearing externally in the physical body and then His being broken up by the-great inquisitor.

It is very necessary that we understand the characteristics of our present age where you get books entitled: Jesus, A Psychopathical study; another entitled: Jesus Christ Considered from the Psychiatric Standpoint. Here you have the standpoint of modern evolution which is the pathological situation of Jesus Christ. A well known psychiatrist—people run after this—writes epoch making works about psychiatry; he gives talks to students and colleagues not only about Goethe, Schiller, Nietzsche, all sorts of people, then he also talks about Jesus Christ.

Now if we just sit down and listen to Anthroposophy with a sort of lust for sensation or some mystical sensation, we cannot move forward; that is not good enough. This Spiritual Science must become living, it must become living impulses within us. We are not anthroposophists because every week we learn about the elementary spirits, about the hierarchies, and so on. No, we really become spiritual scientists if we are able to carry our ideas into all the single details of life and Anthroposophy gives us the sort of mood which will enable us to actually feel a disgust for many things that are going on at the present time. But let us not be fooled by the sort of standpoint which the Theosophists think they are duty bound to follow, the idea of universal human love. Because we believe in universal human love, we avoid all the disgusting things that are happening all around us, we avoid giving them the right names because we are filled with universal love. People today are not inclined to keep their eyes open. Now this is not the guilt of a single people; it is the guilt of the whole spiritual life of the present. Before we come to any judgements about anything, it is necessary that we make sure that we know all that we need to know so that a judgement can be formed. Let us consider Tolstoy, for example. Now everyone who has listened to me for any length of time knows how I see the greatness which is in Tolstoy; nevertheless we must not forget the other aspects of his personality. Here we have a great spirit of the East filled with bitter hatred for what comes fron Germanism. People did not know about that, because the translators of Tolstoy into German left out these very reprehensible passages. Therefore they presented literature with a false Tolstoy. The so-called critics of our age consider Goethe and Schiller and then they put Dostoevski side by side with them without realizing the vast difference. Whereas Goethe and Schiller had some spiritual motivation in them, Dostoevski was thoroughly absorbed by our modern culture; he reflected it. Now, these things must be brought out in order that one can get a perception of the significance of our anthroposophical striving.

I wanted to add this sort of anthroposophical literary consideration to the recitation which you heard today.

In order to make the transition from yesterday's cultural-historical consideration to the perspectives I will be moving on to tomorrow, today I will insert a kind of episode that may seem a little far-fetched to you, but which must be included, even if it is a rather difficult consideration.

Two forces intervene in human life that appear mysterious within that life and demand to be understood, for they actually fall outside the usual course of life. One is the fact that man is capable of illusion, that man can indulge in illusions. The other is that man can fall prey to evil. The effect of illusion and the effect of evil in life are certainly among the greatest riddles of this life.

Now, on various occasions, I have already taken the opportunity to point out the mystery that exists in relation to these two facts of life. The mystery that exists here is only such that one's thinking falls out of the usual channels. And all that one has to think about in relation to illusion and in relation to evil in life is related to the problem, to the riddle of illness and death, which, after all, are actually only not felt by man - like all these riddles - in their full depth because man has become accustomed to having illusions, evil, illness and death in life. But these things should be found incomprehensible by anyone who assumes a materialistic view of life. In particular, the materialistically minded person should ask himself again and again: How is it possible to reconcile that deviation from the usual course of natural laws in life, that deviation that appears in illness and death? For the laws of nature, which are supposed to work through the organisms, undoubtedly express themselves in the normal, healthy course of life. But illness and death intervene abnormally in the course of life.

In order to develop health in the whole world-view of civilized humanity, which has become sick, one will gradually have to realize that illness and death, evil and illusion, can only be understood from the point of view of a spiritual world-view. Man, as he stands as an expression of the facts of the world as he knows them, must be clear about the fact that his development is not possible if only those natural facts that he can immediately grasp play a role in this development, if he has no part in anything other than what today's science is talking about. For just consider the following from the point of view of common sense. Imagine: the vital, the life forces in you become more alive than they are in the so-called normal state, more alive, for example, in fever, more alive than you are able to control them. In all these cases, in which you do not come up, do not gain the upper hand over the natural forces at work in you, consciousness ceases, or at least consciousness enters into an abnormal state.

Anyone who looks at life impartially must say to themselves: having life and having consciousness are two entirely different things. Having consciousness depends on one's having sovereignty over life. When life becomes overgrown, when life becomes feverish and one loses control over this life, then it is impossible to continue to have consciousness in the right way. But it follows directly from this that what arouses life in the organism and what are the life forces in the organism cannot be the forces of consciousness at the same time. If we survey the development of humanity as it has taken place in the cosmos, you know that this earth consciousness, which we usually have in mind when we speak of human consciousness, and which we also want to consider first today, only arose in the course of time; that this earth consciousness was preceded by other, less bright states of consciousness. I have often pointed out to you how this, our earthly planet, was preceded by a planetary embodiment, which we call the lunar embodiment of the earth. In those days, when the human being was connected with this planetary moon condition, man had only a kind of dream consciousness. But he was also - you only need to read about it in my “Occult Science in Outline” - much, much more than today permeated by vital forces.

And if we go further back to even earlier planetary embodiments of our Earth, we find more and more life processes in the human being. The human being lives the life of the whole cosmos. But we find no consciousness behind the consciousness of the moon other than that of our dreamless sleep, that is, from an earthly point of view, no consciousness at all.

Through these states, in which man was, as it were, more alive, but in which he could not have earthly consciousness because of this liveliness, he developed through to this earthly consciousness. And we have already spoken about what this earthly consciousness depends on. It depends on the fact that, as today's physiology does not yet sufficiently take into account, in our head, in our mind, processes take place that, if they extended over the whole body, would have to bring us death continuously, every moment. Our nerve-sense processes are processes that are entirely equivalent to what happens in our organism when it is a corpse. Only as long as we are alive is this continuous dying of our nervous-sensory organism paralyzed, compensated for by the other life processes in our organism. We have to be awakened to life from our trunk and limb organism at every moment, so to speak. For if our organization were to follow only the forces of our head, we would continually die or be suited to dying.

You see, it is necessary that the process of dying, the process of destruction, plays a part in human life. Without this process of destruction playing a part in the human organization, the human being would not be able to develop towards brightness of consciousness. These things must be recognized as necessities of cosmic evolution. And basically it is foolish for people to think: God is almighty, He could have arranged things differently. — That would be more or less the same as saying: God is almighty, He can also make a triangle with four corners. What is at issue here is a law of absolute necessity. The development of consciousness is not possible without the integration of the principle of death into the human organization. But now, insofar as we live in the earthly organization, insofar as we are earthly beings, we are completely integrated into this earthly organization, into this earthly existence. In a sense, the laws of earthly existence permeate our organism. Here it is necessary to distinguish between those cosmic laws that are the actual laws of the earth and those cosmic laws that cannot be regarded as earthly laws in the true sense. It is a rather difficult subject that is touched upon here. Let us imagine, schematically, that we are dealing with the earth, the sun, and many other things in the so-called universe; everything that lives and works in it is connected with everything else. But something has to be left out if it is to be possible to say that everything that lives and works in it is connected with everything else. We have to leave out everything for which our moon is the center.

We actually live cosmically in two spheres of the world, which do indeed interact with each other, but which are essentially different from each other. What belongs to the sun and the earth in terms of the active forces is connected, and everything that belongs to the active forces of the moon has, so to speak, been inserted into that. I should actually have to draw it like this: Earth (E), Sun (S), and many other things.

I draw the apparent movement of the earth and the sun (1). I would then have to draw the moon. If this is the sphere of the moon (2) and this is the sphere of the sun (1), I would now have to push the two into each other (3), so that they coincide spatially but are two entities in terms of their inner forces, not directly united with each other.

And we humans live in this duality. Everything that belongs to the moon is a remnant, a relic - you can read more about this in my “Geheimwissenschaft” - of the old lunar state, does not belong to what the earth has become in its normal progress. This piece, which belongs to the moon, has remained behind like a foreign body, has embedded itself, and we partake of both.

For anyone who truly wants to understand the nature of the world, it is essential to be aware of the independence of the earth-sun and moon. Because something extraordinarily important is connected with this, something so important that not only does present-day science have no idea about it, but it most likely considers it the greatest folly when it hears about it.

Every human being, as he undergoes embryonic development, does not undergo this development merely by following the forces that are unleashed in the mother's body through fertilization. If you want to be made to believe something like that, it's the same as saying: Here I have a magnetic needle that points in a certain direction, so it has the forces within itself. — That wouldn't occur to any physicist. Every physicist says: the earth is also a large magnet, and it attracts one end of the compass needle, and the other end attracts the other point. It is quite possible to talk about the fact that what is closed in itself is dependent in its activity, in its effectiveness, in its position on the larger whole. Only when the human being develops in the mother's womb, one would like to throw everything into this mother's womb that is organizing, while the cosmic forces are at work, from the cosmos, the forces shape the human being. And so it is that the human head organization, everything that is connected with his nerve-sense apparatus, is connected with the lunar forces, and the rest of the organization with the solar forces. And so we human beings become a contradictory being in life. We become a lunar being as a head human being, and a solar being as the rest of the human being. But here the matter becomes quite complicated. If you do not look closely here, you will immediately introduce a tangle of misunderstandings into the matter.

In so far as man is a being with a head, he is a being with a moon, that is to say, the forces of the moon are organized into his head. In so far as he is the rest of the organization, he is a being with a sun, that is to say, the forces of the sun are organized into the rest of his being.

But this means that the head, when the human being is awake and facing the world, is particularly receptive to everything that comes from the sun. The human being absorbs sunlight through the eye when it falls on objects. The head, the nerve-sense apparatus, is a moon creation; but what it receives is precisely the solar element. And in the rest of his organization, the human being is a solar being, that is, he is organized as a solar being. But what, in so far as he develops on earth, has an effect on him, is all lunar.

So you can say: Man, as a being with a head, is a moon vessel that absorbs the currents of the sun. Man, as the rest of the organization, is a sun being that absorbs the currents of the moon forces.

You see from this: if you do not look closely, if you do not grasp things exactly, but seek convenient concepts, then you will not get by. For someone may come and say: Man is a lunar being as a head being, as a being of the head. — The other says: That is not true, he is a solar being, because the solar processes take place in him. Both are correct. One must only become acquainted with the way in which these things interact. I have often said that reality is not so easy for us to grasp that a few pinned-down concepts would suffice to grasp this reality; rather, it is the case that one must make a little effort to form only those concepts that approximately correspond to this reality. In man himself, the lunar and solar natures interact in two ways. And all that takes place as life processes cannot be understood if man is not understood in this ambivalent connection with the cosmos.

One of the most important matters of the present should be for today - if she feels right - tormented humanity the realization: How did we lose the old, known in the atavistic clairvoyance of humanity concepts, and how are we only at the beginning of Copernicanism, of Galileism! - The ancient Egyptians, so man should say, he knew the man as a member of the whole cosmos. But for this Egyptian, this cosmos was much more highly organized than man himself. Today, man looks out into the cosmos and sees a great machine that he calculates with his mathematical formulas. For him, the planets move around the fixed stars just as if one wanted to calculate that the arms and legs of a human being move according to mathematical laws! In all that is in the cosmos and in which man is included, in all that lives organization - soul and spirit. And without considering the soul and spirituality of the cosmos, one cannot understand anything about human life, which is included in this soul and this spirituality of the cosmos.

So, I would say, we live in the lunar sphere. But with us in this lunar sphere lives everything that is Luciferic. And in a roundabout way, through our head organization, it is precisely the Luciferic that enables us to make this head organization suitable for the solar aspect of our earthly existence. And the Luciferic permeates our head organization. But it is as foreign to the earthly as the moon itself with its sphere. Just as little as our nervous-sensory apparatus is organized out of the same forces as our heart, lungs and stomach are organized out of, just as little is it organized out of our earthly-spiritual-soul what our Luciferic forces are. These are poured into us with the moonlight.

Few people know much about the influence of the moon on earthly life, except what poets sing of moonlit nights of magic and love. We know of the affinity of those flights of fancy with the moonlight that plays into the love life, when it is the higher love life, the romantic love life. But this is only the most shadowy part of what comes from the moon. Not only the imaginative element that plays out between lovers on moonlit, magical nights plays into our ordinary existence from this lunar sphere, but deeper forces play in from this sphere, forces that detach themselves from everyday life, from that which binds people to the earth, just as lovemaking in the moonlit nights of enchantment usually detaches itself from philistine everyday life. And the extreme, the way it plays out, as if coming from this completely alien sphere to the earthly, is the power of illusion that man can develop. If this sphere of the moon's power would not come into us, we would not be capable of illusion as human beings.

But then we would also not be able to detach ourselves from the vital, from the organizational life of our organism, and we would not be able to ascend to that brightness of consciousness that is necessary for us as human beings. In order to ascend to this brightness of consciousness, it is necessary that we are able to live in images that are completely detached from the everyday organism. But then we ourselves must hold them together with the everyday organism. Then it is within our power to hold together what plays through our head with this everyday organism, not to let the illusions tear themselves away from reality, but to relate them to reality in the right way. In order for us to be able to develop concepts that are free of sensuality in the world at all, we must also be capable of illusion. It is simply a necessity that the human being be capable of illusion. And this ability to illusion is also connected with the possibility for man not to be in a feverish or unconscious state all the time, that is, to ascend to clear consciousness. If he lets go the reins, if he does not remain master of the illusion but the illusion becomes master over him, then this is only a necessary accompaniment to the fact that we must be able to illusion.

Thus I have first shown you the capacity for illusion in man from the cosmic-humanistic point of view, according to its origin, and have pointed you to a point in the world view where that which we call natural necessity and that which we call inner human activity converge, while both fall apart for the mechanistic view commonly held today.

But now the other sphere. You may have noticed that I have made a small retouch, and since you are probably extremely attentive, you will have mentally reproached me for making a kind of retouch. I said first: the earth-sun sphere and the moon sphere are interwoven. — Afterwards I spoke of the sun sphere. I was also right in a certain sense. For that which has an effect on the nerve-sense organization, also from the earth, is always a solar effect. Even the illuminated surfaces of objects are only sunlight reflected back. And so everything that plays into our lives, even if it comes from the earth, insofar as it plays into our conscious lives, is a solar effect. But not everything. I could only omit it so far. It is correct that everything you process in your consciousness at first is connected with the sun. But the fact that you have a weight when you stand on the scales is an effect of the earth. But in truth, the solar sphere, that is, what I have so far been allowed to describe as a unified sphere, is in turn differentiated within itself. The earth is a certain inclusion in this earth-sun sphere. And this earth, by being a kind of inclusion in the earth-sun sphere, has an effect on what comes to us from the sun. It does not allow us to be pure sun beings. Again, as far as this point is concerned, one must not see the cosmos merely as a mechanism, but must consider it in its soulfulness and spiritualization.

Man, being part of the terrestrial solar sphere, follows in his subconscious forces more the actual forces of the earth. In his conscious activities, he follows what the sun sends to the earth. But when we examine what is heavy, that which is connected with everything that gives us a certain heaviness when we stand on the scales, it is not just the gravitation that Newton described, but at the same time it is everything that we experience as playing into our moral life. With the sun, it is really as the poet says: It shines on the good and the bad alike. It is indifferent to it. But if we examine the earth from a spiritual scientific point of view, we find that it is not indifferent. The earth is the expression of certain forces that want to stand out from our entire planetary system. Like the moon, which has crept in, the earth wants to 'slip away'. It wants out; it wants to become independent. We human beings would lack something very definite if we did not live under the influence of these earth forces that want to become independent: we would not have the sense of independence. If you were able to rush with the elements without being pulled down by the heaviness of the earth, you would never come to independence. Only by being constantly drawn to the earth – if I may use this expression, but as the expression of a fact, not a theory – does independence develop. And that is what this enclosure in the earth-sun sphere is for, to give us independence.

You may now object again, as you probably already have in your mind: Isn't it the same with animals? No, it is not the same. For the animal's head is attached to a horizontal backbone; the human head, with its full weight, is attached to the rest of the organism. That makes the difference. That is why man has this sense of independence, why man is harnessed in a completely different way into the forces of the earth and the sun than the animal.

We can only approach questions such as the ones we are dealing with here by asking, in effect, the alternative: What would become of us humans if we were left only to the influence of the earth, to the influence of the moon? What would become of us humans if we were left only to the influence of the sun? If we were left only to the influence of the sun, we would be a kind of angel, but stupid. Not that I want to say that angels are stupid. Angels are clever enough; but we would be a kind of angel, but not clever like angels, but stupid. Because we lack a sense of independence. We would only be links in the organization of the cosmos. That we are independent, we owe to our earthly existence. But if we were only under the influence of the earth, if the sun did not affect us, what would we be? Beasts, predators, beings that develop the wildest instincts.

Here you have one of the points where you can really look deeply into the constitution of the universe, because you have to say to yourself: that which is at work in the universe cannot be effective from just one side. For if it were effective from just one side, it would have to be at one radical extreme. If we were only under the influence of the earth, this earthly influence would develop the wildest instincts in us. The flames of our wild instincts would flare up. But if the influence of the earth did not work, we would never become independent beings. It must be there, otherwise we would never become independent beings. We must have the possibility of being wild animals in order to become independent beings. But so that we do not become wild animals, the influence of the earth must be counteracted by the influence of the sun, must paralyze it. That is what happens. And as this is happening, you can see the origin of evil. It simply arises from the fact that we are harnessed into earthly existence. So that on the one hand we are indeed exposed to a radical extreme, the earthly extreme, which, if it were the only influence acting on us, would make us evil beings, would fill us only with illusions.

The solar principle works from the cosmos into both. The solar principle makes it possible for us to develop in such a way that we do not fall prey to illusion. And the solar principle makes it possible for us to develop in such a way that we do not fall prey to evil. Under the illusion lies the possibility of becoming intelligent human beings. If it were not for that which makes us capable of illusion, we would never become intelligent human beings. Expressed cosmically: If we were not creatures of the moon, we would not be capable of illusion on the one hand, nor of intelligence on the other. If we were not subject to the earth and its forces, we would not be exposed to the possibility of evil on the one hand; but at the same time we would be condemned not to develop independence in life.

You see how man must have the possibility, in order to be intelligent, to have illusions. He had illusions for a long time. Then his will came, which was only born into his soul's constitution over time, and he could make the illusion the expression of his own being, he could become a liar. For the lie, objectively speaking, apart from man, is the same as the illusion. Only that which does not correspond to reality is arbitrarily set in opposition to reality by man in the case of the lie.

Thus, that which works into man from the lunar sphere is at the same time the creator, the creator being of his intelligence, and at the same time the creator being of his mendacity. In ancient times, people understood this and formed proverbs out of truths. We Germans, when we see the moon like this, say that it can be added to to make a - the moon waxes. If we see the moon like this, we say that it can be added to a – the moon is waxing. – If we go back to French, which is the legacy of the Romance languages, we have to say of the waning moon: La lune décroît, from décroître. Here the moon does not say what it is doing; it says the opposite. This moon has only just begun to tell the truth for the Germans. Hence the Latin saying: The moon is a liar. But this saying also has its esoteric side; for the forces that come from the moon are at the same time the forces of the human lying nature, and the saying: The moon is a liar has a very, very deep background, as you have now seen. It was only when civilization arose in the 15th century that the moon began to tell the truth in terms of its appearance for certain languages, just as materialism generally tells the truth in terms of its appearance. But in terms of its inner being, the moon is now truly a liar.

I am telling you this merely for mnemonic purposes, so that you remember this profound, cosmic-human truth. And you see, the best thing we humans have, our independence, is inwardly connected with evil. The best thing we humans have, our intelligence, is inwardly connected with the ability to create illusions, with the possibility of error. And we humans must also be capable of development. We must have the opportunity not to stand still. We could not be capable of development if we were not called upon to create something new on the basis of what has been destroyed. This means that we must carry within us illness and the possibility of death so that we can develop within us the forces for further development.

These extraordinarily important truths have been completely covered up, completely buried, by the worldviews of recent centuries. For today, when science extends to anything other than mathematics and mechanics, it is only called that which takes place on earth. From outside the earth, only mathematically and mechanically tangible laws have an effect. Humanity will first have to understand again that completely different forces are at work in this universe, in which the moon goes its way, in which the stars go their way, than mere mechanically and mathematically calculable impulses. And when you consider that the most mundane thing in us is an effect of the cosmos, that the most mundane thing cannot be understood without man considering himself as an effect of the cosmos, how then do you want to pour fruitful thoughts into that which is to permeate human life as a world view? Today man is isolated from the world. He has no inkling of his connection with the world. And he would like to found a social existence and does not even know with whom, because he has no idea what he is.

Yes, until the questions enter into the human soul: How little we know about the world under the influence of the last few centuries, how much we need to know! — no salvation will come into all social endeavors. Wherever it is possible to say mechanical-mathematical somewhere, people of the present still dare to construct connections. They know that all kinds of things are associated with the periods of sunspots, such as plagues and the like on Earth. There are some places where people want to link earthly existence to cosmic events. That everything that takes place in earthly existence is a result of the cosmos, people today would like to deny that, they would not want to think about that. The things that take place on earth among people can never be understood if they are not understood cosmically. And man can never find effective ideas for his work on earth if he does not imbue these effective ideas with the consciousness of his belonging to the cosmos.

Today, one has a bitter feeling when one only looks at what is actually happening historically. If you have a wall here and see all kinds of shadowy figures scurrying across it, you will investigate where these shadowy figures come from. If you see the events of the last five to six years passing over the earth's surface, you do not investigate, even though these are also only the projections, the shadows, of what is happening in the cosmos as a whole. And the big questions that are playing out today between the different areas of the earth can only be understood if the understanding is imbued with cosmic ideality.

Today I read an article in which it is hoped that the British government will find the right impetus to create order between what is happening in Russia and what is happening in the Western countries. They want to develop something in the middle, in the devastated Germany. These hopes will not be fulfilled, for everything that speaks out of such a spirit, that waits for the insights of those who create out of the old, leads to nothing.

The only thing that is fruitful for the future today is that which creates out of something completely new. Only when humanity wakes up to see this will it be the beginning of the salvation of much damage in the development of humanity.

Today, I would like to precede the reflections of these three days with an introduction that will initially provide orientation from a certain point of view regarding the relationship between the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science movement and older spiritual research movements. You have noticed, and I have often mentioned and characterized, how it has become necessary due to the conditions of our time to treat the knowledge and cognition of supersensible things, which we speak of within our spiritual scientific movement, differently than the knowledge and cognition that was brought to people in the old mysteries. You are also aware that the comparison of this spiritual-scientific knowledge of the present with the initiatory knowledge of the ancient mysteries is justified, despite the differences between the two. It is true that the ancient mystery teaching imparted knowledge that was based on an atavistic, one might say half-dream-like state of consciousness of the person seeking knowledge. The modern spiritual knowledge we are speaking of here is such that everything in it, down to the smallest detail, must be attained with full consciousness, with a consciousness that is completely equal to the consciousness we have, for example, when we absorb and process geometrically or mathematically comprehensible truths. Thus, the fully awakened spiritual experience is attained through this modern spiritual movement in a soul life that must be completely illuminated with the same light that also illuminates our waking day life when we are truly awake. But this knowledge, like the instinctive, half-dreamlike knowledge of the ancient mysteries, is meant to lead to the higher supersensible forms of existence.

We have often spoken of the special character of this ancient mystery knowledge. We have pointed out that it goes back to an original knowledge, to an original wisdom of humanity. It is only obscured by the prejudices of the modern materialistic-Darwinian view that humanity did not start its development from animal-like conditions, but from conditions for which there is no analogue at all in the present-day physical world, but which so encompassed the life of the soul that knowledge of the spiritual was instinctively acquired and was present throughout the inhabited earth of that time. We must, however, bear in mind when considering this fact of supersensible original knowledge that in that primeval time mankind had a more naive, more elementary, one might say more innocent, view of life. In a sense, those impulses which the divine-spiritual beings themselves laid into the souls were in that primeval mankind. So that one can say: In the sphere which we might today call the moral, the beings of primitive times were simply the instruments for the deeds of the divine spiritual beings, so that one cannot speak of any personal responsibility of these human beings, of the possibility of personally sinning, for that time, nor of an actual straying from the will of that Divine-Spiritual from which, after all, the human soul-life has emerged. But this also includes the reason why it was possible in those older times to spread the means in humanity, to keep spread in humanity a knowledge of supersensible things. This knowledge, if it is true knowledge, even in its atavistic state of primeval times, is in reality connected with the control of certain forces of material existence. Today we are proud of the fact that we have formed our technology out of our few scientific ideas, that in this sense we control nature to a certain extent through our knowledge of nature. In a completely different way, however, prehistoric man was able to control the various natural forces of material existence by virtue of the knowledge that was his in his innocent state of mind. This state of mind prevented him from using the supersensible knowledge given to him by the gods to harm humanity.

From my descriptions you know that this early humanity was not as dense as the later humanity and that in some respects it was much less material. This also meant that the impulses of divine-spiritual existence could express themselves in a much more direct way than was later the case. What gradually occurred in the development of humanity is, of course, the connection of the spiritual-soul-like with the physical-material. In a sense, man descended deeper and deeper into matter. But with this descent into matter, there also arose what might be called the possibility of sinning, the possibility of deviating from the paths that came from the impulses of the divine-spiritual beings themselves, thus the possibility of doing evil, and therefore also the possibility of applying supersensible knowledge in an evil sense. This possibility only arose at a certain point in human evolution. At this point, however, something very special occurred. It was only then that the most important mystery being actually concentrated in the oracle sites, in the mysteries, in the true sense of the word. You know this from the description of the Atlantean world that I gave in my book “Occult Science”. There, so to speak, the knowledge of the supersensible worlds was withdrawn from the broad masses of humanity, and this knowledge became the property of those initiated into the mysteries. So that the development goes so that actually more and more the supersensible knowledge fades from the great mass of people and is preserved in its actual form in the mysteries. But these mysteries, as you know, still contained a great deal of ancient wisdom and preserved it until almost Christian times, some of them until much later. But various mysteries with the very deepest knowledge, such as one, or rather two, in the area of present-day France, were wiped out by the Romans in the century before the emergence of Christianity, as I recently hinted to you, wiped out root and branch, even in a terribly bloody way. And in these places, which must be pointed out, a wonderful, penetrating knowledge still flowed within Europe in the last pre-Christian centuries, which has since completely disappeared for Europe. This also happened in other places in Europe.

Then, only in very narrow circles could the wisdom of the ancient world be preserved. In these circles, where one very rarely found people who could penetrate into the supersensible worlds from their own experience, it was also the case that knowledge of the supersensible worlds was then applied in the worst , in the national-socialistic sense, which even today comes to light in the cases that I have been characterizing here for years, namely as the work of certain secret societies of the English-speaking population.

Now, there is a certain way in which those people who actually think entirely in the spirit of ancient times about the knowledge of supersensible worlds still present the reasons why the mystery knowledge was so carefully withheld from the masses by the bearers of the mysteries. The obedient representatives of secret societies, who preserve this knowledge with greater or lesser justification, in a better or also in a very questionable way, still speak today of the fact that a certain kind of knowledge, the highest kind of knowledge about the supersensible, cannot be delivered to the masses, because today the masses are absolutely not ripe for certain contents of this knowledge. These things are said, and the way it is substantiated from certain quarters is always significant. It is necessary that we talk about this a little today in the introduction, because I have all sorts of important things to talk to you about tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. We have to do this because the principle is being followed from here, with regard to the dissemination of knowledge of the supersensible worlds, to put it bluntly, from the point of view of the democratic being.

You know that I have not held back, at least to a certain extent, even from the broadest public, certain supersensible insights. And insights of the kind that I present today in public lectures, although they are little understood, are considered by very worthy representatives of today's mystery teachings to be insights that should not be communicated to the public in this way. One cannot go as far as certain peaks of knowledge, but these insights must be presented to the public at a certain level, if only for the reason that, as I have often emphasized, they must be incorporated into the social impulses that are most urgently needed by present-day humanity and humanity in the near future. And so it has come about that I have continued with the communication of such insights, which, as I said, are unfortunately very little understood. The most important things, which are already being incorporated into public lectures and which one would often think have a deeply moving effect, are actually received in such a way that one can see that the souls that receive them are actually sleeping a very healthy sleep as these things resonate in their ears. But nevertheless, these things must be communicated to the public today, and in a certain form I have repeatedly tried to bring them forward to an even higher level within the Anthroposophical Society, although not the best experiences have been made in the process.

Everyone will see it as ridiculous to hand over higher geometry to someone who does not know elementary geometry. The comparison is misleading, like all comparisons, because what is given as a certain higher knowledge in the field of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is not quite the same as elementary geometry, although it only appears to be so. The fact is this: if you do not know elementary geometry, you will reject higher geometry when it is presented to you because you are aware that you do not understand it. But if you present the higher knowledge of anthroposophy to someone who does not yet have the elementary knowledge of anthroposophy, they will accept it. He understands them just as little as the other person understands higher geometry, but since the insights have to be clothed in popular words that can be understood, he believes he understands them, scoffs at them or talks about them like Pastor Kully, and then we have the impossible situation of the higher insights being brought to humanity in a completely distorted form, in a dishonest form. But to bring true knowledge to people in a false form means to contribute to the destruction of humanity. Therefore, it would be necessary to assume an understanding of such things, to assume that this higher knowledge should be preserved from those who do not already have the lower knowledge. But for decades now, quite bad experiences have been made within the Anthroposophical Society, which could actually urge one to stop the whole proclamation of the supersensible world system, if, for example, one had the old ideas about secrecy regarding supersensible knowledge. For, what one does experience! The gossip, the inner and outer gossip, has indeed been no small thing over the decades; and even in recent times we have had to experience it, when we were obliged, to our great regret, to protect our writings from a possible false understanding of certain facts, that from a certain side a naive and foolish revolt has arisen. It is of no use to leave these things unspoken because there is no complete and thorough understanding of them, especially of their sacredness. If there were an awareness of the place of supersensible knowledge in the whole social life of man, it would never have been possible for those things which belong to the most sacred matters of humanity to have been carried out into the world in such a distorted, lying form, where they have been stripped bare in such a way. But despite all this, even if a large number of people treat what should be treated with the utmost seriousness as a light-hearted game, it is still necessary, urgently necessary, that these things be brought to humanity today. The duty towards the spiritual world, the duty towards the spiritual guiding powers of humanity, must be considered higher today than that which can be observed from the outside in the manner just described. The time has come when a certain sum of supersensible knowledge must be handed down to the world.

As a rule, supersensible knowledge remains harmless when it is expressed in abstract terms about spiritual things; but seriousness is immediately called for – if seriousness is called for at all – when it is a matter of supersensible knowledge of the older initiates. Such things are indeed completely comprehensible only to him who can now in turn find the wisdom of the old initiates through his own researches. The old initiate said: If one imparts occult truths only in groups of three, then as a rule one can indeed cause all kinds of social harm; one can stultify people, one can lull people to sleep, one can befuddle them, and so on; but when one imparts all sevenfold forms of the secrets of the supersensible worlds, then one imparts to people something that, if they are maliciously inclined, must lead to evil. The initiate says: To impart the supersensible knowledge in a threefold form may possibly only cause external social harm; to impart it in a sevenfold form means danger at the moment when people who are capable of evil in some direction approach these sacred secrets. What does that mean?

You see, there is a kind of harmless mysticism. Such harmless mysticism is practised when people sit together in small circles in a sectarian way and make all kinds of statements to a number, let us say seven, eight or a hundred people, about the etheric body, the astral body, about re-embodiment, about karma and so on, in short, when one speaks in abstract sentences about these things in much the same way as one speaks about the things of ordinary life, without being in a different state of mind than in ordinary life, at most in a mystical devotion of a nebulous kind and the like. Of course, what stands out as bad is that ultimately the people who sit down together in this way do, let's say, steal a little from the dear Lord, when it would be much wiser if they would sew or knit or cook or wash or do something similar in the same hour in which they make such mystical communications to others. In fact, such abstract dabbling in supersensory truths is basically no better than the other activities that are now being organized through numerous channels with so-called world views. But you know: we, on our anthroposophical ground, have never got involved with such abstract stuff where it was taken seriously. We have, of course, always emphasized that one must have certain substantial insights into the human being, into the nature of the universe, and so on, if one really wants to form ideas about the supersensible. The aim of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has always been to bring spiritual-scientific knowledge into real life, into medical life, into social life, into the life of scientific experiment and other areas where, above all, it is necessary to bring in supersensible knowledge before one can think of achieving a social recovery from our catastrophic conditions. But if, let us say, we apply supersensible knowledge to medicine, then we immediately enter the field of which the true initiates know that it can cause evil in the hands of evil people. For when we exert our soul powers, thinking, feeling, and willing, as we initially carry them in their abstractness in our soul, then these soul powers are very, very strong mere images, applied to ordinary consciousness mere images, very shadowed images. There is only a very low intensity of reality in it (triangle). What people can think is, I would say, an image of an image; what they can feel even more so; and they do not descend into their will at all, they only see it in images of external events that take place on the physical plane as a result of this will. Since what a person experiences is so little connected with reality, not much harm can be done. One does indeed enter into the realm of abstract concepts. One can speak very beautifully about Atma, Buddhi, Manas and so on, but one is actually speaking of abstract words, of words that are far removed from really drilling into reality.

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With our instincts, that is, with all that underlies our being, we say our temperament, and with what else underlies our instinctive being, we are already more in reality. With what, for example, our hunger is, what becomes of our hunger as a result of our will instincts, we are very much in our reality; and if it were not for hunger and the will instincts connected with hunger, which are often perverted today, there would be no Russian Bolshevism and the like. Reality is more closely connected with this life (square), out of which thinking, feeling and willing (triangle) rises only like a shadow, with this life of our instincts, our drives, our temperaments. This reality is just as threefold as our soul life is threefold; this reality is also fourfold and has always been represented as such by the initiates. And if we look at the human being as a whole, we see a sevenfold being. But the lower members, those in which the human being repeats the animal in a certain way, are present with a much more intense reality than the shadowy, distilled abstraction of thinking, feeling and willing.

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But now, when we grasp the supersensible worlds, if only in the abstract, our knowledge does reach into our instinctual life, into our temperament, into our life of drives, and with that it reaches into the world of real facts, into reality. One would like to say: If one draws this world of the soul, as it exists today in the human being, very thinly, one would like to draw the world of the instinctive, the impulsive, the temperamental, very thickly and realistically, and supersensible knowledge plays into this world (see drawing). But this world must only be ennobled, otherwise it becomes an evil world. Therefore supersensible knowledge can only have an ennobling effect on this world, so that at the moment when one approaches realities with supersensible knowledge, when one plunges into material things, it depends entirely on whether it is done in a pure, ethical, free spirit or whether it is done in an impure, immoral, unfree, that is, emotional, instinctive, animalistic spirit.

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These things have been seen through by the keepers of the original human world wisdom, who have locked away the higher knowledge in the mysteries for those prepared for it. But this secrecy is not something that can be asserted today as an absolute necessity, and those people who today, for example, belong to secret societies and in the abstract sense want to assert the necessity of secrecy about the higher knowledge are completely wrong. They are wrong because such people do not understand the signs of the times at all. They preserve old traditions, they still say today what the great teachers of mystery wisdom said thousands of years ago. It is interesting, for example, that in the books of Aelena Petrovna Blavatsky, precisely where Blavatsky speaks most ingeniously about occult things, you will find attitudes towards the concealment of occult knowledge occult knowledge, opinions that are no longer valid today, which Blavatsky held because she had learned them from those who had no idea of the actual necessities of the present time. And so Blavatsky behaved like a personality who might just as well have lived thousands of years ago; she had no idea of the necessities of present-day life, talked about the necessary concealment of certain mystery truths, just as the mystery priests talked thousands of years ago. As a result, even if one does not want to, one becomes untruthful to one's fellow human beings in the present. And certain supersensible currents become untruthful to their fellow human beings in the present in the most eminent sense precisely from this point of view, because the times in which we live today speak a clear and distinct language, and this language proclaims an extraordinary aberration in the spiritual and soul realms among people.

Only recently I called your attention to a literary phenomenon of the most significant kind, namely, to the book The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler. I told you that this book has a profound influence on young people, especially on the student youth of Central Europe, and that when I recently had to speak to the students of the Stuttgart Technical University about the significance and nature of of spiritual-scientific-anthroposophical research, I went into this lecture with the impression that Spengler's ideas about the decline of the Occident make on today's youth, especially on academic youth. You will perhaps have noticed how justified it is to speak today of the profound impact of Spengler's ideas, because far beyond the borders of Central Europe, everywhere where literary phenomena are observed today, Spengler's book is taken into account. The Times has even repeatedly published detailed reviews of the book.

What is the strange theory that comes to light in this Spengler book? We find it set forth in a thick volume by a man who, as I have already mentioned, has a genius for mastering any of a dozen or fifteen sciences, and who presents his arguments in the manner in which arguments are presented in science today. The fact that Benedetto Croce, who has since attained great eminence, has said foolish things about this book, although he has otherwise said sensible things, need not mislead us. that it is shown how the whole of the Western world, with its American offspring, is growing old and becoming senile, how death at the beginning of the third millennium is imminent for Western culture, how barbarism must break in, how, roughly around the year 2200, what is now Western civilization must be replaced by barbarism. We find this, as I said, substantiated with all the tools of today's science, and we have to recognize that only spiritual scientific deepening can arise against such a terrible view, terrible above all because of the scientific tools with which it appears, that only spiritual scientific deepening is capable of showing the point where in the human soul itself arises that which must replace what is today Western civilization, and that only spiritual scientific deepening is capable of showing how this must happen, approximately around the year 2200. can only arise from spiritual-scientific deepening, and that only spiritual-scientific deepening is capable of showing the point where, in the human soul itself, that which the West in turn drives out of ruin wells up. If the Occident only retained what is now being taught at universities, grammar schools, secondary schools, and primary schools, and what is being taught through our newspaper literature and our popular scientific literature, Spengler's calculation that barbarism would sweep over this Occident in 2200 would be justified. Only an appeal to the will of the human soul, as can be made by spiritual science, because it ignites spiritual forces in this human soul, because it opposes the external forces that are everywhere pushing towards decline today with the force that man must oppose out of his will, only spiritual science has the right to rebel today against such scientific armament as presented by Oswald Spengler. Ordinary, profane refutations of Spengler's book are a mockery.

But what do we learn from Spengler's book in particular? From the way it is conceived as a whole, from the way the research is processed in it, we see that Spengler's thinking has emerged entirely from the thinking of the broad masses of today's educated humanity, only that Spengler is immensely more clever and ingenious than the average person today. Therefore, he says the opposite of what the average person of today says about many things, but what he says is only a straightforward continuation of what the average person of today thinks, what the average person of today considers to be right. But how does this book strike us, which makes a harrowing impression on thousands and thousands of souls today, when we look at it with the unbiased gaze that comes from the wisdom of initiation? It throws almost complete light on the innermost structure of the traditional world-view of today, on the current current thinking. The remarkable thing about Spengler's book is that one can be ingenious — Spengler is ingenious, extraordinarily ingenious — and yet say the greatest follies; for his book also contains the greatest follies, but follies that only an ingenious person can actually find today. Other people are not capable of finding such great follies as Spengler has found. Now imagine the confusion that a book must cause in the mind, where on every page one can admire both genius and folly at the same time!

Today, extremes collide in a way that one might not have dreamed of a hundred or a hundred and twenty years ago. And if today's philistines reproach me for calling someone both a genius and a fool, I have to say that I reserve the right to do so today. Perhaps I shall make the mistake of calling Oswald Spengler a genius and a fool at the same time, because he is both at once. But that is what one is when one outgrows the strange configuration of today's literature. One must be as clever as Spengler, as fundamentally clever, to think up such idiotic nonsense as Spengler has thought up. A person of little intelligence would not arrive at Spengler's fascinating and dazzling assertions, for example, that the right, the true socialism is Prussianism, and that Western civilization, which will decline and fall by the year 2200, has no other way out than to become completely Prussian, that is, completely socialist in Spengler's sense. And a brochure that is considered a supplement to the book “The Decline of the West,” “Prussianism and Socialism,” is full on every page of the most ingenious insights that can be gained into individual details of the intellectual and social essence of today. What Spengler says, for example, about Russianity sometimes reminds me – although I must always take into account everything I have just said about Oswald Spengler – of many things I myself said many years ago about Russianity, about the future of Russianity and about the nature of the Russian people. And since Spengler declares that he will expand on what he says about Russianness, especially in terms of its scientific justification, in his second volume of “The Decline of the West,” I have to say: I look forward to that “brilliant cabbage” that will be said about the future of Europe under the influence of the further development of Russianness in this second volume.

You see, today you have to be paradoxical if you want to describe truthfully what is actually around us, and you can't get by without describing in such a paradoxical way what is beneath us. A third thing that can also be found in Oswald Spengler: he describes pessimism all the way. For it is pessimistic to say that in the year 2200 all Western civilization will have been replaced by barbarism. And it is particularly pessimistic when you prove this with twelve to fifteen sciences as rigorously as Spengler does. But Spengler worships this pessimism in a certain way, with religious humility. He indulges in this pessimism, I might say he glorifies this pessimism, this socialism or this Prussianism, which will take hold of the whole world, because only through organization and saturation of society in the Prussian spirit can the necessary downfall be postponed until the year 2200. That is pessimism, isn't it? But the whole thing that Oswald Spengler has before him as this socially Prussianized world, this Western world that will still be alive until the year 2200 and then dying, is still glorified by him, so to speak. He describes it with inner fire, but it is not a lasting fire, it is a theatrical fire, if you watch closely.

I don't like to talk abstractly, I prefer to talk in facts. And if you were to ask why: why does a brilliant man, just because he has a keen eye for certain details of contemporary civilization, have to be so foolish at the same time? Why does such a fundamentally clever man have to claim such stupid things at the same time? Why must such a man, who paints pessimism, paint this pessimism with a theatrical fire that makes this pessimism, if one can forget that it leads to destruction, appear like a grandiose optimism, like an invitation to admire this catastrophic downfall? Why is that all?

I would like to answer with a very specific sentence: Oswald Spengler, while thinking entirely in terms of natural science, demands psychology for the 20th century, but he has not the slightest idea about the human soul. Why? Because the moment he utters the words “theosophy” or “occultism” – he seems to be unaware of anthroposophy – he turns red and becomes quite angry. This is why his brilliant approach can only be devoted to the shell, not to the inwardness through which the soul must be sought. Therefore, his fire cannot be that which arises from the elemental primal forces of man, but is basically only a theatrical fire. Oswald Spengler turns red when he mentions the words “theosophy” and “occultism,” and it seems that he can hardly find any other purpose for occultism and theosophy than to use them to foster Bolshevism and Spartacism into a kind of parlor socialism. This is again the grandiose stupidity of a man whose genius is born of the intellectual substance of the present. But at the same time it testifies that where there is no idea, but only a red head in the face of intellectual deepening, that is precisely where the most confusing cultural phenomena of the present must come to light, even if they appear in a genial way.

That is what I wanted to say today by way of an introduction to the important considerations that I will present to you tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

If we make a survey of what takes place in the civilized world today, of what is present in it, we actually find—indeed, we may say this after the many explanations which have already been given—that civilization is increasingly falling into ruin. If we understand what spiritual science can tell us about the secrets of the universe, we must realize quite clearly that everything that takes place outside in the physical world has its source in the spiritual world. The causes for what takes place at any time in the historical development of mankind also lie in the spiritual world. Another truth, which cannot be called to mind too frequently, is that in the present moment of time, humanity's condition requires each individual to contribute something toward the reconstruction of culture from his own inner being. We no longer live in an age in which it suffices to believe that the gods will help. In the present time, the gods do not count on human beings recognizing them and their intentions, and much that a short time ago was not yet left to mankind is left to men's decisions today.

Such a truth must be grasped in all its gravity, and basically by each one individually. To do this it will be necessary, above all, to understand a number of things that we have outgrown. Gradually, in the course of the materialistic age, one might say that the human being has reached the point of grasping everything from a certain absolute standpoint, a standpoint, moreover, that differs according to the human being's age. When a person is twenty-five years old today, he feels called upon to judge everything. He believes that it is possible to have a final opinion about everything without undergoing any kind of development. Perhaps when he reaches the age of fifty, he may Look down with a certain sense of superiority upon his faculty of judgment twenty-five years ago. At age twenty-five, however, he will in no way feel drawn as a result of his upbringing to seek and reckon with the more mature judgment of a man of fifty.

Among the causes underlying our present chaos, the one just outlined is by no means the least important; instead, it is one of the most significant, though admittedly one that had to exercise its influence upon the whole evolution of mankind. Only by man's feeling completely emancipated in a certain sense from the whole world context; by adopting an absolute standpoint not only personally in the life between birth and death, but at any given moment of this life; by assuming the standpoint that he is able to judge everything in a sovereign manner; only because this illusion was added to the many other illusions of life—and in the merely physical world everything is in a sense illusion—the course of human development will gradually lead the single human being toward freedom.

We should bear in mind, however, the great difference between our present epoch, which sets out from this standpoint, and the past epochs in which entirely different life impulses lay at the foundation of human existence. We must pay heed to the life impulses of former times, which in turn are intended to become those of the future, to which all efforts in the present should be directed again. Indeed, such earlier life impulses must be observed. They only disappeared slowly and gradually in the course of human evolution, and we underestimate the whole tempo of modern spiritual development if we do not perceive the speed with which, in a few centuries, materialistic impulses have melted away a tremendous amount of the spirituality that once existed.

In order to gain some starting points for a real study of the present, which we shall pursue tomorrow, let's turn our minds back to, say, the best period of ancient Egyptian life. Naturally, in the life of ancient Egypt or ancient Chaldea, there certainly existed social institutions in the outer world as well. These social structures were inaugurated and implemented by certain human beings. However, these individuals did not make judgments by pursuing thoughts in their wise heads on how to come up with the best social arrangements, or by following their opinions on what might be right for the communal life of people. Instead, they turned to the initiation centers. In actual fact, the sage who was initiated into the mysteries of the universe in these centers was the actual leading advisor of the highest social rulers, who, depending on their rank and maturity, were in large part themselves initiates into the cosmic secrets. When one was supposed to make provisions concerning the affairs of the social order, one did not consult the clever human brain—in the literal sense of the word—but one consulted those who were capable of interpreting the heavenly signs. For one knew that when a stone falls to the ground this is connected with the forces of the earth; when it rains that has to do with the forces of the air—the atmosphere. If, on the other hand, human destinies should be fulfilled that are supposed to interact with each other, this has nothing to do with any natural laws that can be figured out in the above manner. It has to do with those laws that could be traced in the cosmos by means of what makes the course of the stars evident. So, the course of the stars was read in the same way we read the time of day from a clock. We do not say, “One hand of my clock is down here on the right, the other is on the left.” Rather, we say, “We know that this position indicates that the sun has set so many hours ago, and so forth.” Likewise, these individuals who could read the course of the stars said to themselves, “This or that constellation of the stars signifies to us one or the other intention on the part of those divine spiritual beings who guide and direct everything we may call human destiny.” One beheld the intentions of those accompanying spiritual beings of the cosmos by looking up to the course of the stars. One was clearly aware that not everything that man has to know reveals itself here on earth; indeed, the most important things he has to be aware of, the forces that work in his social life, reveal themselves in manifestations observable in the cosmos outside the earthly sphere. One knew that the concerns of humanity here on earth cannot be managed unless one investigates the intentions of the gods in the realm outside earth. Therefore, everything that was to be accomplished here within the social order was connected with the sphere outside the earth.

Where do we find any inclination today to investigate these great signs visible in the cosmos outside the earth, when here or there the belief arises again that some reform movement should be introduced? A far more important symptom than materialism, than anything which has arisen in the form of natural scientific materialism, is the fact that man no longer consults the cosmos outside the earth in regard to his earthly concerns. One does not become spiritual by setting up theories concerning the human being or anything in the universe; one will only become spiritual if one understands how to connect humanity's earthly concerns with the cosmos outside the earth.

In that case, however, one has to be convinced, above all, that the affairs of this world do not allow themselves to be arranged according to the judgments acquired by mere natural scientific education. Then, one has to be able to introduce into the whole civilizing education the capacity to connect the sphere transcending the earth with earthly concerns once more. Then, it was necessary, above all, to discern more clearly how this capacity was lost in the course of human evolution, and how we gradually arrived at the point of wanting to judge everything only from an earthly standpoint. Let us consider something that is now prevalent in the world, a component of social agitation.

You have all heard of the effort appearing everywhere to introduce compulsory labor—to require a person to work by means of some social order based on the legal decrees of this social order—no longer to appeal merely to what obliges man to work, namely, hunger and other motivations, but in fact to establish compulsory labor legally.

We see how, on one side, this compulsory labor is demanded by socialistic agitation. We note how, in Soviet Russia, this compulsory labor has already led to a downright rigid form, with human life taking on the aspect of life in the barracks. We also find that radical socialists enthusiastically uphold compulsory labor. We see also how the sleeping souls of the present receive news such as this, how government officials here or there have even determined to introduce compulsory labor. One reads this like any other news item, and does not pay it much attention. One rises in the morning as one usually does, eats breakfast, has lunch, goes into the country for the summer holidays, returns again and, in spite of the fact that the most important and fundamental events are taking place in the world, one behaves as one has always been accustomed to behave. Yet, mankind should not insist on clinging to old habits. Mankind should take seriously what it is that matters today, namely, having to relearn about all conditions of life. Even when we see that the demand for compulsory labor is being opposed, what are the viewpoints from which these matters are attacked? We have to admit that the opponents are as a rule not much brighter than those who advance these demands. For the most part, they will ask, “Well, can a person still find joy in his work?”—or something like that. All the reasons cited for and against the above are worth more or less the same, because they arise from the same judgments that are limited only to what takes place here between birth and death; they do not originate from a sufficient insight into life. When the spiritual scientist comes and says, “Go ahead and introduce compulsory labor, but in ten years you will have terrible results, for suicides will increase at an alarming rate,” people will view such a statement as fantasy. They will not recognize that this conclusion is derived from an inner knowledge of the relationships existing in the universe. They will not be willing to study spiritual science and to discover the basis from which one can find such a judgment justified. Instead, people will go on living as usual—some getting up in the morning, breakfasting and lunching, traveling into the country for the summer and more of the same, others sleeping away their time in some other manner, refusing to take these questions seriously. Still others will found clubs, social associations, women's associations, and so forth—things that are admittedly quite nice—but when such efforts are not connected to the actual cosmic order, they lead nowhere. Our age is much too conceited to abandon absolute standpoints which assume that, at any age, one definitely has a conclusive judgment about all things.

During these days and in the last few weeks I explained the way in which the various branches of the threefold social organism have originated in the different territories of earth evolution. I said that, fundamentally speaking, all our spiritual life is only a transformation of what originated a long time ago in the orient. But when we look into what was described on numerous occasions in the past few weeks from one aspect, and investigate it in regard to the standpoints which I have indicated just now, we find that, insofar as it referred to human destiny, all this knowledge of the Orient was deciphered from the course of the stars, from what exists outside the earth, and the Greek concept of destiny was the last ramification of such extraterrestrial wisdom.

Then came the knowledge arising from the Middle region. As we indicated, this was a more juristic knowledge; it was something that man drew more out of his own being. It was not linked with observations of the cosmos outside the earth. I told you that the higher-world outlook of the Occident has been permeated with a juristic element, how the events that run their course in humanity's development were placed under juristic concepts. Punishment is meted out by a cosmic judge just as the human judge hands down a penalty for some external misdeed. It was a juristic view, a juristic manner of conception, that permeated the entirely different form of the Oriental conceptions concerning the spiritual world.

This view of the spiritual world was connected with the fact that in the initiation centers those who were found to be sufficiently mature were initiated into the nature of that which was sent down to earth from invisible realms by what was revealed in the visible. Then, the events that were to take place on earth were guided according to the intentions of initiation. Naturally, in the case of such a knowledge it is necessary to take into consideration more than the singular standpoint of any given age, by which one believes oneself able to make an absolute judgment on all sorts of matters. From the viewpoint of initiation, the whole evolution of man must be considered, also what the human being brings into earthly existence through birth, and what can reveal itself to him when, in earthly life, he beholds a revelation of the super-sensible existence.

In recent times, something that was basically a science of the heavens has become permeated with a juristic element. This celestial science itself and its fate must be considered a little now. The sacred knowledge of the Orient was something that was cultivated in its purest form in the initiation centers perhaps 10,000 years ago in the Orient. Later on, although no longer in such pure form, it was cultivated in Egypt in a still relatively pure manner. Having become popularized in a certain sense, it was used by swindlers and conjurers on the streets of the later imperial Rome, although transformed into visible magic tricks. This is, after all, the course of world events; something that is sacred in one epoch can turn into the most unholy thing in a later age. While the highest Oriental knowledge belonged to the streets in the later imperial Roman time, juristic thinking was developing out of Romanism itself on the basis of the Tate Egyptianism, and subsequently dominated the world. In the ages that followed, but only slowly and gradually, what had once been brought down from the stars as human wisdom in the Orient grew dim and finally died out. For, even in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas⁹¹ still said, “Human destiny, all of destiny occurring in the sublunar world, is guided by the Intelligences of the stars. It is, however, by no means something inevitable for man.” So this Catholic-Christian church father of the thirteenth century does not refer to stars, to planets, merely as physical planets; instead, he speaks of the Intelligences that dwell in these planets who are the actual rulers of what should be called human destiny. What had once arisen in the Orient was really still present in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth centuries, although in its last ramifications, as an aspect of the Christian Catholic Church. It is simply a terrible misrepresentation of the present Catholic Church to withhold these matters from the faithful, so that the church can declare it a heresy, for example, to assume that the individual stars and planets are ensouled and permeated with spirit. By doing this, the Church not only denies Christianity; it even denies its last teachers who still had a more direct connection with the sources of the spiritual life than does the present age in any sense. Therefore, one must point out that it was not so very long ago that the conception was completely abandoned which still pictured the world as permeated with spirit. If people would teach the truth today concerning what still held sway in the spiritual life of the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; if, following preconceived opinions, they would not distort what prevailed in those times, then even this would still have a fructifying effect for a spiritualization of the present world-view. The materialism, the natural scientific materialism, or the materialism of the mystics or theosophists, particularly the materialism of the Catholic Church, could not exist. For what is contained in the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church originated from the purest spiritual science; and this pure spiritual science beheld the spirit everywhere in the universe.

All that was beheld as spirit in the universe by the eye of the soul has been discarded. The universe became pervaded with materialism. For that reason, naturally, nothing remains except words of faith. For example, behind the Trinity, the doctrine of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, stand the most profound mysteries. On the other hand, there is nothing contained any longer in what is taught today as the dogma of the Trinity. On one side, there is the doctrine, the belief of the religious denominations, on the other side, natural science devoid of spirit. Neither can save humanity from the misery into which it has fallen. In order to render rescue possible, it is necessary that a sufficiently large number of people rouse themselves inwardly. For, particularly in the present epoch, the possibility exists in man's inner being to pick up those threads of a soul-spiritual kind which, if their power is inwardly experienced in the proper way, lead to an understanding of what can be gathered from spiritual science for an illumination of the life of nature as well as the social life. One should not wish to retain at all costs the bad habits of one's inner life, however they have developed during the past few centuries. These bad habits are based on the opinion that if one can keep quiet and be passive, the gods will eventually enter into one, reveal everything within, and mystical depth will be illuminated by an inner light, and so forth. The present age is not suited for that. It demands an inner activity of soul and spirit from the human being; it demands that man turn and look at what is trying to reveal itself within. Then, he will find under all circumstances what wishes to reveal itself within, but he must be willing to unfold such inner spiritual activity. One must not believe, however, that much can be gained by some inner pseudomystical doings; above all else, one has to trace the spirit in the external things of the world.

I have called your attention to what happened, for example, in the East, in Asia. Once upon a time, so I told you, conditions in Asia were of a kind that the human being felt his heart expand, felt his soul grow warm, when, guided by the thought of the sacred Brahman, he directed his glance to the mighty external symbol of the swastika, the hooked cross. It made his inner life unfold. This inner mood of soul meant a great deal to him. Today, when an Oriental receives an ordinary Russian 2,000 ruble note—which is not worth much, for small change will no longer do for buying anything, only thousand ruble notes—he sees on it the beautifully printed swastika. Those thousand-year-old feelings that once upon a time inwardly beheld the sacred Brahman when the eye was directed to the swastika are certainly stirring. Today, the same emotional qualities arise on seeing the 2,000 ruble note.

Do you believe that one has a spiritual view of the world if one does not look at something like that and say to oneself, “Those are the Ahrimanic powers who are at work here; herein lies a super-earthly intelligence, even though it is an Ahrimanic intelligence?” Do you believe that it suffices merely to say, “Oh, that is the external material world! We direct our glance heavenward to spiritual things; we don't pay any attention to things for which people only have words?” If you seek for the spirit, you must look for it even where it turns up in the mighty aberrations of external world evolution itself, for there you can find the starting point for other aspects.

It is the tragedy of modern civilization that people believe that only human forces are at work everywhere, forces which arise between birth and death. Actually, our world is permeated all over by super-sensible forces, spiritual powers which manifest themselves in the various events that take place. If one wishes to do something, if one tries to realize intentions so that this or that result may come about, one needs to look to those benign spiritual powers capable of working against other spiritual powers; and the spiritual powers that can oppose the others have to be born in man through his own inner activity.

In regard to all this, however, one actually does need to look up into the spiritual world. This is something that is most inconvenient to many people. This is why the great majority of people in the world find even talk of initiation science unpleasant. For there is one thing that initiation science must make clear, under all circumstances, to the human being. Man is organized, in the first place, in the direction of his intellect. Certainly, there are other aspects to his organization such as digestion, metabolism, heartbeat, breathing, and physiological processes. He bears instincts within, hence, soul entities, and so forth. In addition, he bears within him what is termed intelligence, and the present age is especially proud of this intelligence. But where does our intelligence come from? Materialism believes that our intelligence is derived from those processes that occur below in the liver, in the heart; they then become more refined and turn into the processes within the brain. These processes in the brain are just a little different from those that take place in the liver or the stomach, but these same processes produce thinking. We know that this is not so. Those processes that run their course in the brain just as those in the liver or the stomach would cause no thinking at all. Up in the brain something takes place; out of the constructive processes destructive ones are constantly developed.

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Here, not only upbuilding, but disintegrating processes are at work; matter is forever falling out into nothingness. Thus, we are not dealing with an upbuilding in the brain. Any constructive process only serves to nourish the brain, not to produce thinking. If you wish to focus on those brain processes that have something to do with thinking, and you wish to compare them to the remaining organism, you must not compare them to the constructive processes, the processes of growth, but to the processes of elimination. The brain is constantly involved in elimination, and, as I said, the processes of destruction, of disintegration, of death, are the accompanying phenomena of intelligence. If our brain were incapable of elimination, we would be unable to think. If our brain would only contain upbuilding processes, we would exist in a dull, instinctive condition; at most, we could attain to quite dir dreams. We arrive at clear thinking precisely because the brain secretes and eliminates substances. Thinking only functions parallel to processes of elimination. It is only because the human organization eliminates what is useless to it that thinking establishes itself out of the spiritual world.

Now take the thinking that has developed especially since the middle of the fifteenth century, the thinking of which modern man is so proud. It comes into being because we destroy our brain, because we bring about in it processes of disintegration, of elimination. Suppose that you are Trotsky or Lenin, traveling to Russia—transported there on orders of Ludendorff⁹² in a sealed railway carriage and escorted by Dr. Helphand⁹³ (it was such a train, going from Switzerland through Central Europe, which brought Lenin accompanied by people like Dr. Helphand to Russia under Ludendorff's protection)—suppose you are such a person and you believe that out of the processes representing intelligence—the only processes from which natural scientific thinking of the past few centuries has emerged—the social order could be developed. What kind of a social order will that turn out to be? It will be a reproduction of what takes place within the brain during the thinking processes. Do not think that what we develop without is different from what we develop within, if the only processes employed are thinking processes! If you try to establish a social order with them, it will be something destructive, just as thinking processes in the brain cause destruction—exactly the same thing. Thinking, applied to reality, destroys. One can gain insight into such matters only when one Looks into the deeper secrets of the being of man and the whole world. This is why humanity needs to pay attention to these things if any sort of valid judgment concerning public affairs is to be rendered. It does no good at all today to base discussions about any social concerns on the suppositions of the past few centuries, for they no longer hold water. It is important here to realize that completely different processes must come to pass in the human spiritual life; again, the science of initiation must step in and draw from spiritual resources what can never be gleaned from mere sources of human intelligence. A social science of the present can only emerge as a consequence of spiritual science. This can and must be grasped from its very foundation.

This is what is in fact important for modern man, namely, that he does not attain a relationship with spiritual science merely in some superficial manner, but that he learns to recognize how completely spiritual science is linked to human destiny for the future.

In order that a person can gauge something like this, a feeling must develop in the human being for what is asserting itself with profound earnestness out of the spiritual resources. For such a feeling to come about, however, much must be eliminated, above all else the generally prevailing frivolity. Recently, in a lecture that I gave for local teachers, I indicated a Symptom in which such frivolity appears today. One of our friends in London made efforts to arrange a gathering of a number of artists here in August. It was for the purpose of their becoming acquainted with our building and forming a sort of center from which the impulse could go out that is now so necessary if the building is ever to be completed. An English journalist was informed, not one from an ordinary daily paper but from a magazine that calls itself “Architect,” in other words, a publication that wishes to be taken more seriously. The journalist was even given a description in writing of what was intended. This fellow was so flippant and frivolous, however, that he wrote, “A visit to Dornach is anticipated by such and such persons. Dr. Steiner himself has promised to acquaint the visitors with what is going on there, and it is believed that ten days will suffice for this excursion. Of this time, four days will be spent on travel, and during the remaining six days, the visitors will be able to recuperate from the shock they will have experienced following their first impression of Dornach.” So, this frivolous character has no idea what he is supposed to write about, and for his penny-a-line, is only capable of making a stupid joke so that his readers can accordingly continue to maintain a frivolous mood.

Things have gone so far that the general mood of people is spoiled from the very outset, spoiled by this kind of journalist; there is no longer any question of anything being accomplished. The only thing such journalists can do is seize the opportunity to make some stupid, frivolous joke. No progress will be made if the earnestness with which such matters should be discussed is not understood. One will get no further if such matters are considered to be insignificant; if, from a certain jaded standpoint, one says, for example, “Oh, one cannot take such a journalist so seriously!” From a certain point of view, one certainly need not give much credit to such penny-a-lining, but it must be evaluated according to what effect is has in the world.

These matters are indeed serious and of such a nature that they induce us again and again to say, “This building here is intended to be a Landmark for what should take place for the sake of mankind's ascent!” To be sure, from certain quarters, no effort has been spared to make the building what it is now. Destiny, too, contributed its necessary share. It is, alter all, true that at the outset this building was erected here chiefly as the result of efforts made by the Central European countries. But when Central Europe's financial resources began to touch rock bottom, the neutral countries were ready in a most significant, commendable manner to do something for this building. Those from Central Europe who were able to do something for the building spared no effort throughout the time of the war psychosis, stirred up by hate and opposition, to maintain this site in such a manner that people from every part of the world, from all nationalities, could gather together here. This building was saved and maintained throughout all the years of chauvinism; nobody was denied the opportunity here to encounter others in a spirit of friendship, no matter what part of the world he came from. All this, however, demonstrates the impossibility of completing this building by relying on the earlier resources; it shows the necessity for efforts by those countries that are in a financially favorable position, for they are at the beginning of a period where they are not encumbered by financial disaster and are certainly in a position to do something for the building. One would hope that a message like the following will not one day spread through the world: A landmark for the dawning spiritual life was to be erected. Those people who were swept away by the cataclysmic world events and then perished left behind as a last legacy as much as they could accomplish. Those, on the other hand, who were not swept away, who could have begun the new life, did not realize what those who were doomed left for them.

• 91 . Thomas Aquinas: 1226–1274; compare Rudolf Steiner: The Redemption of Thinking, GA 74 (Spring Valley, Anthroposophie Press, 1983).
• 92 . Erich Ludendorff: 1865–1937, German general.
• 93 . Alexander Helphand, died in 1924, Russian socialist, for a time a political refugee in Germany. He played an important role in bringing about the Bolshevic revolution as well as the peace of Brest-Litovsk (1918).

The fifteenth century ushered in an era for the civilized humanity of the Northern Hemisphere, in which the human individuality began to develop more and more in full I-consciousness. The forces which elaborate this I-consciousness will grow increasingly stronger and all the phenomena of life—of life in the broadest sense—will take place in the sign of this development of the individuality. This, however, means that what comes from the spiritual world and plays into our physical world will take such a course that, in humanity as a whole, the individual element of the human being will take on greater importance. For it is not simply a matter of individual human beings thinking in an egotistical way, 'we are individuals': it is rather a matter of the whole development of humanity taking such a course that the individual human element can work into it.

Every age, every epoch, that we can trace in the course of human evolution developed some particular quality, just as now it is that of individuality. These characteristics are impressed into human evolution through the particular action of spiritual powers working into the physical life of humanity on earth. But precisely because of the separateness that we see in the individual human being today when the individuality is developing—when I-consciousness is developing fully, when the consciousness-soul is, as it were, giving itself contour, becoming integrated in itself—the special characteristics of this epoch are not directed from the spiritual world as they were in earlier epochs, and very exceptional things are making their appearance within humanity's evolution. And the human being who, through the development of his individuality is being increasingly educated for freedom, must also take up a conscious stand more and more to what results from this. Above all it is essential that a social life take shape, but a social life which, from our point of view, must have deep inner foundations. This must take shape despite the fact that the strong egoistical forces of the consciousness-soul, which are opposed to a social life, are emerging ever more strongly from the depths of existence. On the one side we have the strong egoistical forces of the consciousness-soul and, on the other, the all-the-greater necessity of founding a social life consciously. And we must take a conscious stand towards everything that can foster this social living together. We have shown in the past,¹ and from the most varied points of view, how differently the human beings of the West, the European Centre, and of the East are placed in the whole course of human evolution. We have pointed to different things that are peculiar to the human beings of the East, Central Europe and the West. And we want now to turn to a phenomenon that can already show us externally how these differentes within humanity express themselves in the civilized world.

We know that, under the influence of our modern scientific way of thinking about social life, a certain view of life has been developed. This comes to expression particularly strongly in the broad masses of the proletariat which has come into being in our technological age, our intellectual age. I have presented all this, insofar as it touches the social question, in the first part of my Towards Social Renewal (Kernpunkt der sociale Frage). Today I want only to indicate the diversity of views among the broad masses of humanity concerning the social question. We have, clearly differentiated, the social views of, let us say, the proletariat, which then, however, colour other strata of the population. We have, distinct from that of other peoples, the conception of life held in die West, especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries. In these countries, under the influence of the modern technology and industry, there has also developed among the broad masses that materialistic concept of life which has often been characterized here. This arose side by side with materialism or was directly produced through the materialism of other classes. This socialist conception of life, however, developed in such a way that it stands entirely under the aegis of economic strife, for it is permeated by economic concepts, thoughts and struggles that are little penetrated by the struggle for a philosophy of life (Lebensanschauungskämpfen). This is the characteristic stamp of what is going on in the socialist world of the Anglo-Saxon West. And because the actual character of modern public life as a whole has hitherto been the economic life, it was from the economic conditions of the Anglo-Saxon proletariat that the impulses of socialism arose.

The impulses coming to expression in the Great Strike movement are significant precisely as a characteristic of what is taking shape in this respect in the West. Even if it seems that the discrepancies which are there could be settled, it only seems so, for such settlements would not be real; very significant effects will issue from the deeper forces playing in these conflicts. And although, by virtue of the whole make-up of the West, no genuine philosophies or concepts of life (Lebensauffassung), develop from these impulses, we can nevertheless dearly perceive how the views of life which do develop, and which have developed in recent times, have taken their incentive from the impulses present there [in the West].

In fact, Karl Marx,² who was born in Central Europe and was nurtured in the Central European stream of thought, had to go to England in order to absorb the practical impulses (Lebensimpulse) which had developed there. He, however, transformed them into a theory, into a conception of life. And Marxism as a theory of life has found little external expression in the West. Where it has come to external expression, however, is in Central Europe. In the aims of the social democracy there, it has taken on fully the nature of a philosophy. What in the West are economic impulses leading to economic conflict, were diverted and fixed into legal-political concepts which lived then in Central Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth century as Marxist ideology and took hold of the broad masses of the population. It also found its way into the areas stretching towards the East, to those parts of Europe which begin to take on the character of the East. But here again it expressed itself in another form. Economic in the West; political in the Centre; and in the East it assumes a distinctly religious character. A distortion exists, which occurred with the inundation of the East through Peter the Great³ —,and now Lenin⁴ and Trotsky.⁵ This arises because the Bolshevism making itself felt there is in fact a foreign import. If it were not for that distinction it would be far more evident that, even now, Bolshevism has a strong religious element which, however, is completely materialistic. It works through earlier religious impulses and will continue to do so. And it is precisely in this that its terrible aspect will show itself throughout all Asia, because it works with all the fervour of a religious impulse. The social impulse in the West is economic, in Central Europe is political, and works with a religious fervour eastwards from Russia over into Asia. Over and against these impulses which move through the development of humanity there is a great deal that is utterly unimportant. And anyone who does not see, in the most intense sense, something of symptomatic importance in such things as the present [1920] strike of the British miners simply has no understanding at all of the foment of deeper forces in the whole of our present development.

All this, however, which can be described externally in this way, has deeper causes—causes which lie ultimately in the spiritual world. The more recent life of humanity can only be understood if one understands this differentiation—a differentiation into the Western economic element, the Central European political-legal one, and the religious element—the spiritual element in the East which takes on a religious character but is actually the momentum of a decadent spirituality that still finds expression in the East. This shows itself so strongly that one must say: It is natural for the West—and this is carried out thoroughly by it—to have everything of an economic nature; purely economic aspirations can have no success in the Centre because all economic aims there assume a political character. The great outer failure in Eastern Europe has come about because, through the tradition of Peter the Great, what arises out of a spiritual-religious impulse, i.e. Pan-slavism or Slavophilism, has taken on a political character. Behind this political character, which has produced all the dreadful things that have developed in the European East and has set its characteristic stamp on all the aspirations of the East since Peter the Great, there is, fundamentally, always the spiritual tendency of Byzantium, that is spiritual Byzantine religiosity, and so on. The individual phenomena of history become comprehensible only if they can be seen in this light. One can say: To a certain extent, everything that is still in Europe—also towards the West, even into France—can be reckoned as belonging to the European Centre, for what is characteristic of the West is actually Anglo-Saxon. And, in its basic instincts, this 'Anglo-Saxondom' moves completely with the impulses that have arisen naturally within human development in the last three or four centuries. It was thus precisely in the West that these impulses could best bring about the development of all that was then forced upon the social life through the modern scientific way of thinking and all its achievements. This way of thinking and its achievements, together with the inherent nature of Anglo-Saxondom, was the foundation for the world dominion of the Anglo-Saxon. The brilliant rise of commerce, trade and industry which has come out of modern science, everything which led to the great colonizations, has arisen, in fact, through the confluence of the natural-scientific mode of thought and the character of Anglo-Saxondom. And this was sensed deep down in the instincts of die West.

One can actually point to a significant moment of modern historical development, to the year 1651, when the ingenious Cromwell with his Navigation Act⁶ brought about that configuration in English navigation and in all English trade which was the foundation for everything in the West which later arose. One can also point to how, for outwardly inexplicable reasons, French merchant shipping suffered its greatest decline just as Napoleon's star was in the ascendant. What takes place in the West takes place out of the forces lying in the actual direction of humanity's development. It takes place out of a completely economic way of thinking, out of the impulses of economic ideas. This is why everything which comes from Central Europe and is conceived not out of economic points of view, but out of political-legal-militaristic ones must succumb to them. We have a crude example of how, based an a political-military standpoint, Napoleon, with his 'Continental System',⁷ tried to counteract from the European continent everything that had resulted from Cromwell's Navigation Act. This Navigation Act was conceived and created entirely out of economic instincts. Napoleon's 'Continental System' at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a political conception. But a political conception is something that projects from earlier times into the modern age—it is antiquated, is actually an anachronism. This is why this political conception could be no match for the modern conception from which the Navigation Act arose. On the other hand, in the West where thinking follows the lines of economics in the sense of the new age, political affairs, even if they take an unfavourable course, do not fundamentally.

Consider the fact that from Europe France colonized North America. She lost these colonies to England. The colonies freed themselves again. The first, the French colonization in the eighteenth century, was a political act and bore no fruit. The English colonization in North America was entirely out of economic impulses. The political element could be destroyed—North America freed itself and the political connection no longer existed. But the economic connections remained intact.

Thus are things linked in human evolution. And we can safely say that history also shows that when two do the same thing it is in fact not the same. When Cromwell, at the right time and out of economic impulses, created his Navigation Act—which, for the other powers, was extraordinarily tyrannical and even, one could say, brutal—this arose nevertheless from an economic thinking. When, in modern times, Tirpitz⁸ created the German navy and merchant fleet it was conceived politically, purely politically and without any economic impulse—in fact, against all economic instincts. Today it has been wiped off the face of the earth because it was planned and conceived contrary to the course of human evolution. And thus it could be shown, with regard to all individual phenomena, how this, let us say historical threefoldness, really does exist; in the East, but in a decadent form today, something which points back to ancient times of Eastern evolution and has a spiritual character; in the Centre something which today is also antiquated and always, to a greater or lesser extent, takes an the form of the political-legal-militaristic; in the West the State is really only a decoration, the political has no real significance—what preponderates here is economic thinking. Whereas Germany has gone to pieces because the State has absorbed the economy, because industry and commerce have submerged and bowed down under the power of the State, we see in the West how the State is sucked up by the economic life and everything is flooded by the economic life. This, viewed externally, is the differentiation covering the modern civilized world.

But what one can view in this way externally is, after all, basically brought to the visible surface only from the underlying depths of the spiritual world. Everything in the spiritual development of modern times is designed towards setting up the individuality—the individuality in the West in a Western way, in an economic way; the individuality of the Centre in the already antiquated political-militaristic way; the individuality of the East in an antiquated way, in accordance with the ancient spirituality that is now completely decadent. This has to be borne by the spiritual world, and it is borne by the fact that both in the West and the East—we shall consider only these two regions for the time being—a peculiar and deeply significant phenomenon is appearing. And it is this: very many people—at least relatively many—are being born who do not follow the regular course of reincarnation.

You see, this is why it is so difficult to speak about such a problem as reincarnation, because one cannot speak about it in the abstract sense that is so popular nowadays. For it is a problem pointing indeed to something that is a significant reality in the evolution of humanity, but it can have exceptions. And we see how both in the East and the West—we shall have to speak of the Centre in later lectures—people are born whom we cannot regard in such a way that we can say: There lives in this person, in the completely usual way, an individuality that was there in an earlier life, and then again in a subsequent earlier life, and which will be there in a later life and again in a still later life. Such reincarnations form the regular course of human evolution, but there are exceptions. What confronts us as a human being in human form does not always have to be as it outwardly appears. The outer appearance can, in fact, be just appearance. It is possible for us to confront human beings in human form who only appear to be human beings of the kind that are subject to repeated lives on earth. In reality these are human bodies with a physical, etheric and astral body—but there are other beings incarnated here, beings who use these people in order to work through them. There are in fact a large number of people, for example in the West, who are not simply reincarnated human beings but are the bearers of beings who have taken an extremely premature path of development and who should only appear in the form of humanity at a later stage of their evolution. Now these beings do not make use of the whole human organism but use chiefly the metabolic system of these Western human beings. Of the three members of the human nature they use the metabolic system and do so in such a way that, through these human beings, they work into the physical world. For one who can observe life with a certain accuracy, people of this kind even show outwardly that this is how it is with them. Thus, for example, a large number of those individuals who belong to Anglo-Saxon secret societies and who have great influence—we have spoken on a number of occasions in past years of the roll of these secret societies⁹ —are actually the bearers of premature existences of this kind which, through the metabolic system of certain people, work into the world and seek out a field of action through human bodies and do not live in normal regular incarnations. The leading personalities of certain sects are of this nature, and the overwhelming majority of a very widespread sect that has a great following in the West is made up of individuals of this kind. In this way a completely different spirituality is working into present-day human beings and it will be an essential task to be able to take up a stand towards life from this point of view.

One should not think in an abstract way that everywhere and without exception human beings are subject to repeated lives on earth. This would mean that we do not attribute to external semblance the quality of semblance. To face the truth means even in cases like these, to seek truth; to seek reality where outer appearance is so deceptive that beings other than human beings are incorporated in human form, in a part of the human being, namely in the metabolic system. But they also work in the trunk, in the rhythmic system and in the sensory-nervous system. There are in fact three kinds of beings of this nature who incarnate in this way through the metabolic system of different people of the West.

The first kind of beings are beings that have a particular attraction to what, in a sense, are the elemental forces of the earth; that have an inclination towards, a feeling for the elemental forces of the earth and are thus able to sense how, in any particular place, colonization could be carried out in accordance with the conditions of the climate and any other conditions of the earth, or how a trading connection can be established there, and so on.

The second kind of spirits of this nature are those that set themselves the task within their sphere of action of suppressing consciousness of self, of preventing full consciousness of the consciousness-soul from emerging, and thus produce in other people around them, amongst whom something like this spreads like an epidemic, a certain desire not to call themselves to account concerning the real motives behind their actions. One could say that such an utterly untrue report, or such an utterly untrue document, as the one by the Oxford professors that has been published in the last few days¹⁰—such an utterly, even absurdly, untruthful document—must be accounted to the pupilship of this untruthful element which does not wish to look into the real impulses, but glosses over them; uses beautiful words, and all the while there is beneath it nothing, basically, but untruthful impulses. I am not suggesting here that these Oxford professors—who are probably perfectly upright men in themselves (I do not impute strong Ahrimanic impulses to them)—are themselves bearers of such premature beings; but the pupilship to such beings lies within them. These [second kind of] beings, therefore, incarnate through the rhythmic system of certain people in the West.

The third kind of beings that work in the West are those which make it their task to cause the individual abilities in the human being to be forgotten—those abilities which we bring with us from the spiritual worlds when, through conception and birth, we come into physical existence—and to turn human beings more or less into a stereotyped replica of their nation. This is what this third kind of being gives itself as its special task: to prevent the human being from coming to individual spirituality.

So, while the first kind of beings had an affinity with the elemental nature of the ground of the earth, of the climate and so on, the second kind has a particular tendency to breed a certain superficial, untruthful element, and the third type of being the tendency to root out individual abilities and to turn people more or less into a stereotype, a copy of their nation, their race. This last class of beings incarnates in the West through the head system, through the sensory-nervous system. Thus we have here, observed from different angles, the characteristic of the Western world. We have characterized it, if I may put it so, by getting to know a fairly large number of people who are scattered in secret societies, in sects and the like, but whose humanity is constituted in the fact that it is not simply a matter of repeated incarnations, but the incarnation, in a way, of beings who in their development are prematurely here an the earth and who, therefore, attract particular followers or radiate like an epidemic their own exceptional qualities onto other human beings. These three different types of beings do indeed work through human beings and we understand human character only if we know what I have just related—if we know that what lives in public life cannot be simply explained superficially but has to be explained in terms of the intrusion of spiritual forces of this kind.

The appearance in Western human beings of these three kinds of forces, of beings at this particular stage of development, is encouraged by the fact that it is given to the West to develop a specifically economic way of thinking. The economic life is, as it were, the ground and soil from which something like this can spring up. And what then, in total, is the task these beings have set themselves?

They have set themselves the task of keeping life as a whole restricted to the mere life of economics. They seek gradually to root out everything else—everything of the spiritual life which even where it is most active, has shrunk into the abstractness of Puritanism—to root out spiritual life, to chip away the political life and to absorb everything into the life of economics. In the West the people who come into the world in this way are the real enemies and opponents of the threefold impulse. The beings of the first type prevent die emergence of an economic life that stands as an independent entity alongside the political-legal and spiritual facets of the social organism. The beings of the second type, who make superficiality, phrase-mongering and untruthfulness their task, seek to prevent the establishing, alongside the economic life, of an independent democratic life of the State. And the third kind of being those that suppress the individual abilities of the human being and do not want the human being to be anything other than a kind of stereotype of his race, his nation—work against the emancipation and independence of the spiritual life.

Thus in the West there are such forces which work in this way against the impulse of the threefold social organism. And anyone who, in a deeper sense, wishes to work for the spread of this threefold impulse must be aware that he has also to take into account spiritual factors like these that are present in human evolution. Indeed the powers on which one must call when one wants to bring something new into the development of humanity are faced not only with the things that any hard-headed philistine notices but also with things that are only laid open to a spiritual knowledge. What use is it when people of today regard this as superstition and do not want to hear that such spiritual beings intrude through human beings? They are nevertheless there, these spiritual beings! And anyone who does not merely want to go through life with a sleeping soul, but with a fully awake soul, can observe the influences of these beings everywhere. If only, from the presence of the effects, people would allow themselves to be convinced a little of the existence of the causes!

This is the characteristic we find when looking towards the West. The West takes on this form because it lives completely in the most fundamental expression of the present epoch—in economic concepts, economic thinking.

The East had once a grand and lofty life of spirit. All spirituality—with the exception of what is striven for in Anthroposophy and is trying to give itself new form—all spirituality of the civilized world is, in actual fact, a legacy of the East. But the real glory of this religious-spiritual life was present in the East only in ancient times. And today the Eastern human being, even in Russia, finds himself in a strange disharmony because on the one hand he still lives in the ancient spiritual element of his heritage and, on the other, there is also working in him that which comes out of the present epoch of human development; namely the training towards becoming an individuality. This brings about a situation such that, in the East, there is a strong decadence in humanity; that, in a sense, the human being cannot become a full human being; that hard on the heels of this Eastern human being, as far west as Russia, is the spiritual heritage of ancient times. And this has the effect that when today the consciousness of this Eastern human being is lowered, when he is in a condition of sleep or dreaming, or in some kind of mediumistic trance state which is so very frequent in the East, he is then, indeed, not entirely impregnated by another being as in the West, but this being works into his soul nature; these beings, as it were, appear to him. Whereas in the West it is premature beings of three kinds that are at work (which I have ennumerated), in the East it is retarded beings, beings that have remained behind from an earlier evolutionary stage of perfection and who now appear to human beings of the East in a mediumistic state, in dreams, or simply during sleep, so that the human being in a waking state then bears within him the inspirations of such beings; is inspired during the day by the after-effects of beings of this kind who come over him during the night.

And here again there are three types of beings working in the East who likewise have a great influence. Whereas in the West one has to draw attention to individual human beings through whom these beings incarnate, in the East one must point to a kind of hierarchy that can appear to the most varied people. Again it is three types of beings; not, however, beings that incarnate through people but beings that appear to people and also inspire them during sleep at night.

The first type of these beings prevents the human being from taking full possession of his physical body, hinders him from finding a connection with the economic element, with the public conditions of the present-day in general. These are the beings who seek in the East to hold back the economic life as it is needed in the threefold social order.

The second type of beings are those that produce over-individualization—a kind of, if I may put it so paradoxically, unegoistic egoism. This is all the more subtle in the way it is so frequently found in people, particularly of the East, who fancifully attribute to themselves all possible selflessness—a selflessness which, however, is in fact a particularly subtle form of self-seeking, a particulary subtle egoism. They want to be absolutely good, they want to be as good as it is ever possible to be. This, too, is an egoistic sentiment. This is something that can be called, paradoxically, an unegoistic egoism, an egoism arising from an imagined selflessness.

The third type of being that appears, in the way described, to human beings of the East are those beings that hold back the spiritual life from the earth; that spread, as it were, a dull mystical atmosphere over human beings, as can be found so frequently today, particularly in the East. And again, these three types of spiritual beings, which work down from the spiritual world and do not incarnate into human beings, are the enemies of the threefold social organism. In this way the threefold impulse is hemmed in from the spiritual side in the East and from the human side, as described, in the West. Thus we see here the spiritual foundations underlying the differen-tiation.

We still have to add to this what is hostile to the threefolding in the European Centre so that, from a spiritual point of view, we gradually gain an idea of how one must equip oneself in order that the opposing powers—whether from the spiritual world, as in the East, or from human beings, as in the West, or from the Centre of Europe, in a way which I shall relate tomorrow—can be met by the threefold idea with an impulse that is of the greatest conceivable importance for humanity's evolution. And in order to know how one must act with regard to these things one must be equipped with an armour of thoughts.

• 1 . See Die soziale Grundforderung unserer Zeit—In geänderter Zeitlage, twelve lectures, Dornach and Bern 1918, (GA 186).
• 2 . Karl Marx (1818–1883), founder of scientific capitalism.
• 3 . Peter the Great (1672–1725), Tsar of Russia.
• 4 . Lenin, actually Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924).
• 5 . Trotsky, actually Leib Bronstein (1879–1940).
• 6 . Cromwell's Magna Charta Maritima strengthened the position of the English fleet by decreeing that foreign goods could be imported only on English ships or ships of the country of origin. This measure struck a blow primarily at the Dutch hegemony in international carrying trade.
• 7 . Napoleon's decree from Berlin on 21 November 1806 imposed the strictest blockade of the British Isles by closing the entire Continent to trade and commerce with England.
• 8 . Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930), German Admiral of the the Fleet and statesman, creator of the German naval fleet.
• 9 . See, et al., the lectures from 20 to 22 January 1917, Das Geheimnis des Lebens nach dem Tode in Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen. Das Karma der Unwahrhaftigkeit, Zweiter Teil, twelve lectures, Dornach 1917, (GA 174); Individuelle Geistwesen und ihr Wirken in der Seek des Menschen, nine lectures in different cities, 1917, (GA 178); and Die okkulte Bewegung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert and ihre Beziehung zur Welikultur, thirteen lectures, Dornach 1915, (GA 254).
• 10. In October 1920, professors and doctors of Oxford University sent an appeal to the professors of art and science in Germany and Austria, in order, as it says there, '...to remove the bitter enmity that has arisen under the influence of patriotism...' and to find a reconciliation through the 'brotherly feelings of study'—article entitled Die Völkeruersühnung (The Reconciliation of Peoples) in the Basel Nationalzeitung of 20 October 1920.