The Rudolf Steiner Archive

May main concern yesterday was to show that the human soul is an active being, that she permeates the human organism with creative activity. When contemplating the soul one must always keep in mind that, provided one grasps the human organism in its totality as it appears to external sight, it reveals itself as an expression of the soul. And insofar as the organism is mobile and in constant transformation, it must also be seen as the soul's creation. However, this is only one side of soul life; today we shall begin to investigate the other side.

Let us look for a moment at man in relation to his environment, bearing in mind what was said in the first lecture of this course. The first thing that one notices in this relationship is that man's life of soul is separate, is external to the beings and objects which surround him. It cannot be said that we are within the chair on which we sit or within the table at which we stand. We see the outside of these things, and we are outside of them even with our soul life. In fact, we are just as much outside part of our own organism.

To fully realize this, you need only think through what has often been mentioned in regard to our will impulses: the fact that we first have the thought, the mental picture that we want to lift an arm, then after the thought has disappeared somewhere into the organism, we have the phenomenon of the lifted arm. But what goes on in the organism after we first had the thought, up to the moment when the arm movement is seen—we cannot even say after the thought has worked, for the effect of the thought does not enter our consciousness—lies outside the awareness of the human soul

to begin with. It is, in fact, as much outside the soul as the table or chair. Just as I do not penetrate the chair so do I not penetrate into what takes place within me when a will impulse is carried out. However, as soon as man attains higher, supersensible cognition he becomes aware of what actually takes place. For ordinary consciousness the situation is that man, through his senses, perceives the outside of things: color, sound, warmth and so on. This aspect of things then continues within him; i.e., he forms mental pictures of them. That is the situation when man's attention is directed towards the external world.

When man looks within himself he becomes aware first of all that he retains mental pictures of the things he has observed. These can be called up again, or at least that is how it appears; we have seen that the situation is somewhat different, but for ordinary consciousness that is how it appears. The mental pictures are saturated with feelings which, dream-like, well up from our human nature. In short, we also see a world when we turn our attention inwards; this world presses towards us from within as much as do color and sound from without. In a certain sense we are as much outside of what meets us there as we are outside the things that meet us in the external world.

However, this situation changes both in regard to the external as well as the internal world when we ascend to higher knowledge in the way that has often been described in lectures and in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. The first to be attained is imaginative cognition, then inspired cognition. This may be well known to you. When this happens then the situation that can be called “the-standing-outside-of-things” becomes different.

Through imaginative cognition of the external world we first attain pictures. When these are dealt with appropriately they become pictures of what surrounds us as an external spiritual world. Already at this point inspired cognition must step in. Through inspired cognition we attain insight into an external spiritual world which surrounds us, just as the sense world of color, sound, warmth and so on, surrounds us. When we stand before this whole world, which is now an external spiritual world, we must constantly be aware that it is something which is apart from ourselves. In this spiritual world we discover elemental beings and also beings of the higher hierarchies. All this is something other than what we are ourselves. We do learn to know ourselves ever more as spiritual beings, but we also learn to distinguish ourselves from all other beings.

While we carry out exercises which lead us to knowledge of the external spiritual world, we also make progress in the inward direction. What we first discover is that, from the viewpoint of the soul, we come to value our head with its knowledge rather less. By contrast, we become very aware of that knowledge which is more concentrated in the heart, not so much in the physical heart as in the etheric and astral heart. At this point something of the greatest significance becomes crystal-clear knowledge.

Let me make a drawing of what it is that man discovers when he progresses in the inward direction: Imagine this to be the heart (see drawing, red lines) and above the heart all that which man prizes so highly on the physical plane—his thoughts. This web of thoughts man feels to be located in his head and when without higher knowledge he contemplates his being as a whole, he feels the thoughts to be—what shall I say—the more aristocratic part of human nature. But thoughts themselves do not care particularly about the person as such. Let us say we think of a triangle; we have to devote ourselves to the thoughts concerned with the triangle. His lordship, the thought, does not care whether I have a headache or a stomachache. To him it makes not a scrap of difference what condition I am in. Nor does he care whether I am sad or cheerful, whether something is painful or enjoyable. Within the consciousness of my head the thought of triangle rules supreme with a certain nonchalance, not caring about my subjective well-being. This is the reason why people, whose main concern is their subjective wellbeing, fall asleep when one mentions thoughts that have no concern for their subjective state.

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Well, the life of thought is, in a certain sense, a distinguished world, unconcerned about subjective states. However, when man sends his subjectivity into this distinguished realm, thus making it feel closer to his human nature, then his feelings pass through his heart. Rays from the head shoot, as it were, down into the lower part of man and from there well up again (see drawing, arrows). But what is it that wells up?

From below there arise feelings, instincts, urges, passions; everything active in man's nature bursts forth (red arrows). Within all this subjectivity, which is part of man, wells up also the effect of everything that seethes in the organism itself. The effects of whatever processes that are taking place in the stomach or intestines or in any other bodily function burst forth and come up to meet him together with the instincts and passions, so that one can indeed say that there, above, a distinguished world exists. Distinguished it may be but, as it has no concern for subjectivity, it contains no soul life. Thoughts in themselves are not subjective; for them it is quite immaterial whether Smith thinks of a lion or a triangle or whether Jones thinks of them. Thoughts are not concerned about subjects. The soul aspect only becomes evident when out of man's inner being there well up feelings or instincts which saturate the thoughts. Subjectivity only enters when, for example, Smith, being a hero, thinks of a lion and there well up within him feelings of a kind that make him unafraid of a lion; whereas when Jones, being a coward, thinks of a lion, he immediately wants to flee. The thought “lion” is universal; it contains no soul element, it is spiritual. Soul comes into it when it meets the instinctive element within man. That is what imbues the thought “lion” with a soul content which in Smith's case makes him think of some instrument with which to attack the lion and defend himself, come what may; or in Jones' case makes him think of how fast he can run, and so on. In ordinary life thoughts are imbued with soul because in one way or another the soul element always rays into the spiritual.

However, when the ascent has been made first to imaginative cognition, and then to inspired cognition, things become different. At first there is a great struggle to beat back the instincts and desires which are now all the more in evidence for being undisguised. They must not be allowed expression; they must be vanquished completely. However, something else rises towards the heart, which has now become a wonderful sense organ—a great etheric sense organ as large as the whole blood system. Towards this heart there now rise, not what lives in instincts and passions but another kind of thought complex (white arrows). These thoughts come up to meet the thoughts which have their origin in the external world and have made the head their abode in such an aristocratic manner. But the thoughts now rising through the heart to meet them are mighty pictures which do not in any way express what otherwise rises up within the organism. They express what man was before birth.

Man learns to know himself in his existence within the spiritual world before he was born (or conceived) on earth. That is what comes up to meet him. He is transported into his existence in the spiritual world before he descended into physical embodiment. This occurs, not through what lives in his passions and desires, but through what meets him when he has attained imaginative and inspired cognition. As he learns to know his own being within the spiritual world, he also learns to distinguish himself from what, to imaginative and inspired cognition, otherwise surrounds us as an external spiritual world. In that world we learn to know elemental beings, angels, archangels and so on. Out of the wisdom itself we learn to know our own being, now widened beyond earth existence.

This also leads to a significant insight into the working of the soul. We gradually come to recognize that the soul is completely poured out within the head. It has shaped the head in its own image (see drawing, blue) and organized it for the external world, so that the latter can imprint itself and become mental pictures which we retain in memory, whereas within the rest of the organism, as I indicated yesterday, the soul life does not unite so intensely with the physical; it remains more separate. Therefore, when the heart becomes sense organ we can look down into the flaming, scorching, burning emotions, desires and passions on the one hand, but also into that which lives alongside them, yet never unites with them: our eternal being.

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It now becomes clear that as far as the head is concerned our soul is buried within it; there the soul rests. The head is essentially an external organ, organized for reflecting the physical environment; in the head we grasp the external physical world. We grasp ourselves when we look through the heart into the depth of our being. For ordinary consciousness the waves of emotions are all that are thrust up from that depth. When we gain more insight through higher knowledge then our eternal being comes up to meet us. Then our soul learns to unite itself with that spiritual being which is ourself. We are not part of the spiritual environment which we see outside. We are that which we behold through our heart when it has become sense organ. The path which otherwise led only to the experience of our soul's external side, its urges and desires, now leads us into the eternal soul within us, which is saturated with spirit. The eternal soul is as spiritual as the spiritual environment. We have come into a sphere where soul and spirit are one.

No matter how much you seek within the brain, only what is physical is to be found there; in the head you are yourself physical. Yet the brain is the main field of research for modern psychology. It is said that psychology investigates the soul, but only the brain is investigated. This can be done because the brain is an expression of the soul which lies entombed within it. The soul rests like a corpse within the brain and this corpse is the subject of modern psychology. The soul itself is beneath the heart where it is united with the spirit. Only its external aspect unites with the instincts and desires; the soul's inner being does not.

Now we discover something else. Let us look once more at a sense organ, at the eye; to begin with you look around you with physical sight. Let us for the moment disregard the fact that we usually come together under artificial light. It can easily be proved, in a roundabout way, that that, too, has something to do with sunlight; but for the moment we will disregard this kind of light. Let us imagine a lecture given on a beautiful morning in an open field, where instead of this dreadful light we should have sunshine. Something like that is, after all, a common enough experience. There we would have the sun everywhere, for the sun is more than just the disc or sphere up there, for it radiates everywhere. When its rays fall on a flower they are reflected back to us. The sun penetrates our eyes, and it is thanks to the sun that we see the flower and form a mental picture of it. Everywhere we see objects because of the sun. It is easy enough to recognize that insofar as we see objects illumined it is the sun which, via the eyes and brain, is the mediator of the external physical knowledge we gain of these objects. However, it is not only through our eyes that the sun mediates knowledge of the external world. There is a deep element of truth in the words heard in “Faust target=_blank>Faust”: “The sun-orb sings in emulation mid brother spheres his ancient round.”*¹ This cosmic harmony is indeed present and insofar as it manifests in our atmosphere it is also ultimately a reflection of the sun. Thus, sound, too, comes in a certain roundabout way from the sun. Everything that is perceptible in the external physical world comes from the sun: warmth, sound, everything, only not as directly as light.

And now I must say something which no doubt sounds surprising when first heard. It may, to begin with, be difficult to understand, but not after it has once been thought through as we are accustomed to do in Anthroposophy: We are, in reality, within the sun. We are within the external physical-etheric aspect of the sun in all that which we externally perceive because of the sun's presence, and our senses' inner connection with what the sun enables us to perceive.

However, when we attain imaginative and inspired cognition—that is, when through the heart we penetrate further into our own being—then we experience the sun differently. At a certain point, when inspired cognition begins and we are within a world of pictures which at the same time are realities, we become aware, as if through a sudden jolt of soul and spirit, that we have arrived within the sun.

This is an experience of immense significance. On earth the sun shines on us; as human beings we perceive things around us because they reflect the sunlight. But the moment we ascend to inspired cognition, when for us the heart becomes a sense organ, we suddenly experience ourselves within the sun. We no longer look up and see the sun move in its orbit—I am taking into account only the sun's apparent movement—rather do we feel that with our heart we are within the sun and moving with it. For us the heart is in the sun and the sun becomes our eye with which we behold what begins to appear around us. The sun now becomes our eye and our ear and our organ of warmth. We no longer feel that we are outside the sun; rather do we feel transported into the sun and existing within the light. Formerly we were always outside the light, but now that we have plunged with our being into the heart we have the feeling that our relation to the world is such that we are within the light, that our being is light. Within the undulating, weaving light we touch the spiritual beings with the organs of light which we now possess. We are now, in our soul being, akin not to the world outside the sun, but to the world within it. And I want to emphasize that our being becomes linear, so much so, that we feel we are within the sun's linear path. When we advance just a little further in higher cognition we feel ourselves to be not only within the sun but also to a certain extent beyond it (see drawing). Formerly we were tiny human beings there below and we looked up at the sun. But now that we have come into the sun we feel we are, with our soul being, within the sun and the world which was formerly around us is now within us (see drawing, green).

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Only when this insight has been reached do we begin to understand that this is where our soul being goes when in ordinary life we sleep. We are then where, in order to perceive, we must look through the sun. The reason we see nothing is because we go as souls into a world that can only become understandable to us when it reflects the sun. We have to get further out beyond the realm of the sun sphere; this can be achieved only through inspiration and intuition. Not until we are beyond the sun sphere do we perceive anything; this is because we, as human earth beings, press through all kinds of objects belonging to the earth when we go out of our physical and etheric bodies. We do this from falling asleep till waking. At first, we do not see ourselves. When we have attained spiritual sight, we perceive other beings. We can only perceive ourselves when through schooling we come out into the realm where we were between death and a new birth.

What is it that separates us from the realm in which we live between death and rebirth? There is only one answer: the sun. As human beings we are born into the physical world. Before conception—that is, before we came down—we had no connection with the external physical sun, only with the spiritual behind the sun. We then descended into the physical world, where the sun shines everywhere. And here we take into our thoughts—that is we form mental pictures of—what the sun makes physically visible. The physical sun prevents us from seeing the spiritual. And when, after falling asleep, we are out there among the physical objects which the sun made visible, then we are too weak to see beyond the sun's domain. And we see nothing within its domain because during earthly life we are adapted to our physical body but not to beholding the beings that surround us in the external world—elemental beings and spirits of the higher hierarchies.

So you see from this aspect, too, it is clear that the soul as such can be known only to a consciousness higher than the ordinary one. It also makes it clear that the soul has a deep inner kinship with all that makes up the world. It is intimately bound up with the whole world evolution. When we inhabit our body, then it is the sun that makes the external world visible, audible and so on; but it also prevents us from beholding the spiritual world. When we ascend to the spiritual world we come, in a certain sense, to the other side of the sun. In physical life we are this side of the sun's being, and when we advance to the spiritual world we come to the other side. Our consciousness, in the transition from this side of sun life to the other side, is as I have just described it: We feel ourselves to be within the sun, making with it the passage through the cosmos. Thus, we cannot learn to know the soul without relating it intimately to the whole being and evolution of the world.

Our physical body places us alone, isolated, as it were, at a particular spot on earth. The physical body is adapted to the external sun and prevents us from uniting our soul with the cosmos. Our isolation is due to our organism. In reality, man lives within the sun's radiance. Viewed purely externally we know that sunlight mingles with moonlight. Externally, the sun illumines the moon; on moonlit nights the moon reflects the sunlight. The sun's light then comes to us from the moon. When the sun's light comes from the moon there is a kind of shadowing or dimming of light. This has an effect on everything coming into the world under the influence of the moon.

From the moon comes more than the silvery light which, when reflected by objects, gives them such hazy outlines compared with their sharp contours in daylight. More than reflected sunlight reaches us from the moon; its influence is active in all the beings on earth who are capable of propagation. The moon is active in all reproductive and hereditary forces.

If man were under the influence of the sun only, he could still be man on earth, but he could not bring forth another human being. If sunlight alone were always present the earth would be in a state of permanence, of duration. No being would perish, no new one arise. Neither heredity nor propagation would exist. One can say that the sun is the primordial physical force on earth. It expels soul life from the head and makes everything into pictures. In the ordinary life of soul, we become real human individuals only through our instincts and emotions. In our higher soul life, we attain reality when through the heart we behold the spirit, and when we come outside the sun's domain. In order to prevent the primordial sun force from being all powerful and enduring, and in order to prevent plants, animals and also man from permanence, but enabling them to die away after bringing forth new life, there is intermingled, in the course of world evolution, the moon element with that of the sun. Thus, the moon element, too, is incorporated into man.

When a new human being enters the world, moon forces are always active. The sun forces then do not merely reach the surface but enter right into man's inner being and exclude him from a certain sphere. Thus, we have, on the one hand, the mighty sun power and, on the other, excluded from it, a certain aspect of our external evolution because there the moon element enters.

To illustrate this, I must draw man's being as a diagram with the moon element inserted (drawing, orange). In this part the sun influence is excluded insofar as it is active in man's being as a whole. There the moon influence asserts itself. So, you see that in the external physical world something is taken away from the primordial sun influence. Therefore, what in propagation is under the influence of the moon cannot develop in the external world. That in which the moon forces are most active is withdrawn from the external world—except in the lowest animals, where a part of the process takes place externally in that their eggs are laid in the sun to be hatched.

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However, this moon influence is counter-balanced: what on the one hand is taken away from the sun, to enable earthly propagation and heredity to occur through the moon's influence, is given back to the sun on the other. And in that this is given back the sun is not just the physical entity of which external science speaks. To the sun belongs a spiritual sun, a kind of higher sun (see drawing, orange). This higher sun acts as much on man as does the moon, which is a kind of lower sun. In our age not much that makes sense is known about the moon's influence in earth evolution; but nothing whatever is known about the higher sun. While the moon has a powerful influence on man's physical nature, the higher sun has a powerful influence on his soul nature.

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This was known in earlier times through instinctive clairvoyance. It was known that not only can man physically extend his being, as it were, by bringing forth another human being; he can also extend his being on the spiritual side of his nature. This was indicated in the case of especially spiritual people, people gifted with receptivity for true spirituality, in that they were depicted with halos. This was to indicate that they were under the influence of the spiritual sun, that they were therefore more than the result of the influence coming from sun and moon. Just as man in his ability to bring forth his kind extends, on the physical side, beyond the limits of his physical body, so does his being extend also on the spiritual side. Through the higher sun he extends beyond that part of his soul that is bound up with the body. He towers into the spirit and he therefore, in the view of people in earlier times, wore a halo. In later times when halos were indicated they were invariably depicted as caps set on the head, because there was no longer any knowledge of the true connections with man's being. A halo is not a cap, it is something that man attains through the higher sun. It is a widening into the spirit of his own soul to the extent that it becomes visible in the etheric.

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When we learn through Anthroposophy to understand why ancient atavistic clairvoyance depicted the halo we not only gain a deep insight into man's soul and spirit, but also into what could be known through the dreamlike clairvoyance. It gave access to true reality, and modern man is very foolish when he suggests that halos were given certain people merely out of fantasy. That was not the case; they were to indicate that those who wore them were predominantly influenced by the higher sun, the soul-spiritual aspect of the sun. So you see that, on the one hand, man is excluded from the physical aspect of his being where the moon exerts its influence in propagation and heredity. On the other hand, the sun regains in the higher sun what it lost for the earth through the moon; and insofar as man partakes of the higher sun he already, in his etheric body, reaches into the spiritual.

These things must be presented to indicate how intimately the soul of man is connected with the evolution of the world. One simply cannot speak about man's soul without speaking also about world evolution. The moment insight is gained into the true nature of the human soul, insight is also gained into the nature of the sun. Man has an impulse towards physical evolution through his inherent hereditary characteristics; this connects him strongly with matter. On the other hand, through permeating his corpse-like, lifeless head-spirituality with the forces of the higher sun, thus ensouling it, he is connected with the spiritual world. Man's soul nature continually projects into his mental pictures. We saw that in the case of Smith, in whom, because he was a brave fellow, courageous feelings arose into his mental picture of a lion; whereas in Jones, who was cowardly, there arose feelings urging flight. We see here how thoughts become ensouled by what arises out of man's organism; for, in the last resort, what thus projects into man's thought life, arises from the processes going on in his organism. But equally, there streams in from the other side, from the spiritual sun, not urges and passions, but the World Soul.

This is a point on which we must be quite clear: There streams into man's life of thought the outcome of his instinctive animal life. This ensouls the thoughts and mental pictures, which would otherwise remain cold and prosaic (see drawing, red lines). But, equally, what streams into his life of thought from the spiritual aspect of the sun also ensouls his thoughts (yellow lines). It is simply prejudice to maintain that someone who does not live merely in emotion, but is able to receive into his thoughts what streams in from the higher sun, is as dry and prosaic as someone who lives merely in abstract thoughts.

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People are afraid of the spiritual in its pure cosmic aspect. They feel that as far as their thought life is concerned they are already sufficiently cold and arid. They are afraid that if they also take in universal thoughts they will become quite stiff. But the very opposite is the case. One becomes just as inwardly warm; one is filled with just as much enthusiasm—albeit pure, spiritual warmth and enthusiasm—as one does from what rises into the life of thought through instincts and cravings harbored in the animal organism.

In my book, Goethe's World Conception, I have drawn attention to the fact that it is possible to bring warmth into the life of thought by other means than through instinctive life. Certainly passions and cravings make thoughts warm with animal warmth. However, another kind of warmth exists which comes from the world, from the higher sun. It makes one glow, not with animal warmth, but with warmth of the higher hierarchies above man. This I could at least indicate in Goethe's World Conception when I spoke about how wrong it is to regard someone as a dry stick who is filled with thoughts and ideas permeated with a purer warmth, and even be afraid of becoming a dry stick oneself by entertaining such thoughts. This fear stems from the fact that it happens all too often to those who occupy themselves with the arid ideas so prevalent today.

I have tried to describe the nature of the soul in connection with world evolution. Tomorrow we shall look at some special aspects of the life of soul.

• 1. Bayard Taylor's translation. “Sun-orb sings ...,” “Faust I,” Prologue.

We are trying to penetrate the theosophical life and knowledge bit by bit, but often during this penetration we have a heartfelt need to ask ourselves: why do we want and seek theosophy in the spiritual life of the present? We need not strain our minds or hearts too hard when such a question arises, and a word will come into our soul that will immediately have an enlightening and even more enlightening effect on our feelings: the word responsibility. Responsibility! This word should give us something that should exclude from the outset in our soul, in our hearts, that we are pursuing Theosophy out of some personal longing. If we observe what may befall us, perhaps without our being properly aware of it, when we hear the word responsibility in relation to the spiritual life that we call theosophical, then we will increasingly come to realize that we owe it to present-day humanity and to the best in us, which can serve this present humanity, to concern ourselves with 'theosophy'. We must not practise Theosophy just for our own pleasure, to satisfy ourselves somehow because we have this or that personal yearning, but we must feel that Theosophy is something that present humanity needs if the process of human development is to continue at all. We need only realize that without Theosophy, or whatever one might call it, without that spiritual life which we mean, humanity on earth would have to face a bleak future, truly a bleak future. This is so for the simple reason that all the spiritual impulses of the past, all that could be given to man in the past in the way of spiritual impulses, has been exhausted. It is gradually living itself out and can bring nothing new into the evolution of humanity. What would have to come if only the old impulses were to continue to work would be something that is perhaps still undreamt of today: not only an overwhelming, externally overwhelming, but numbing domination of mere outward technique, but also a perishing because all religious, scientific, philosophical, artistic and also, in the higher sense, ethical interest is moving out of the human soul. People would become a kind of living automaton if new spiritual impulses did not come. This is how we must feel when we think of Theosophy, as those whom their karma has brought to know that humanity needs new impulses.

We may well ask ourselves: What can we, each one of us, do according to our particular qualities and abilities, in the face of this general sense of responsibility? The way in which Theosophy has come into the world in recent times, and how it has developed over the last few decades into our days, is instructive for answering this question of the heart and soul, perhaps especially for you, my dear friends. We must never forget that the way the word Theosophy has entered the world in modern times is something of a spiritual miracle of civilization. This spiritual miracle of civilization is linked to a personality who, as a personality, is indeed close to you, my dear friends, since she drew her spiritual roots from your national heritage in a certain way. I am talking about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. And for Western Europeans it is undeniable, in every respect undeniable, that the body in which the individuality, who in this incarnation was called Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, was enclosed, could only have come from the environment of Eastern Europe, from Russia. For she had all the Russian characteristics. But Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was taken from you by very special circumstances; Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was transferred to the West by the special karmic conditions of the present time. Now, let us consider what a strange cultural miracle actually took place.

Take this personality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She was a personality who, basically, remained a child throughout her entire life in many, many ways, a real child; a personality who, throughout her entire life, did not learn to think logically; a personality who, throughout her entire life, has not learned to control her passions, urges and desires to any extent, and was always able to fall into extremes; a personality who basically had very little scientific education. Through this personality, it is revealed to the world, one might say, as it could not be otherwise, through the medium of such a personality, in a chaotic, mixed-up, colorful way, a sum of the very greatest eternal wisdom of mankind. And anyone who is well-versed in these matters will find in Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's works wisdom, truths, and insights of humanity that could not have been understood by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's intellect and soul, not even remotely. There is nothing clearer, if one only approaches all the facts impartially, than that for everything that was in the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the outer soul, the outer intellectuality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was only a detour, only a means by which significant, great spiritual powers could communicate with humanity. And there is nothing clearer than that in the way it was to happen at the beginning of the last third of the 19th century, it could not have happened to anyone in Western Europe. It took the very special, on the one hand selfless, almost des-ensouled, and on the other hand again radically selfish, egoistic nature of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, to allow what happened to happen through higher spiritual powers. The selfless nature for the reason that every Western European mind would have brought into its own forms of thinking, into its own intellect, what had been revealed. And it needed the completely selfish, egotistical kind, because in the coarse, materialistic way of life in Western Europe at that time, there was no possibility of doing otherwise than to make, one might say, iron fists out of such a radical state of mind, out of such delicate hands, which had to cultivate and care for the occultism of modern times. It is a peculiar phenomenon. But, my dear friends, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky went to the West, went to that cultural center which, in all its idiosyncrasy, in its entire structure and configuration in all fields, except America, is the most materialistic cultural area of our time, a cultural area that lives in its language, in its thinking, absolutely in materialistic thoughts and in materialistic feelings. It would be going too far here to discuss the power that led Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to England in particular. And so we see that the sum of occultism, which expresses itself in a culturally idiosyncratic way in a medium – I do not mean this in a spiritualistic sense – initially strives for the western part of Europe.

Within this European West, the fate of this occultism was initially sealed in a certain direction, because there was no way around the fulfillment of a significant karma in this materialistic European West with the founding of the Theosophical Society. This karma was also fulfilled. This Western Europe has a heavy karmic debt; it cannot penetrate the secrets of existence without this karmic debt asserting itself in a certain way. When occultism is involved somewhere, karma immediately deepens, and forces are brought to the surface that would otherwise remain hidden. And not to criticize anything in particular, but to characterize, it is said what is to be said: The European West, in carrying out something that is historically necessary, has perpetrated countless injustices against the bearer of ancient spiritual culture, against the bearer of ancient occult secrets, in whose life, although spiritual things have become rigid and no longer exist for the present, they live at the bottom of the soul. — For that is the truth in India, in South Asia. The moment occult impulses came to Western Europe, a reaction immediately set in against the spiritual forces at work in the depths of Indian culture, and it became impossible – it was already impossible in the time of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – to retain what was indeed intended by certain spiritual powers as the actual spiritual movement necessary in our present time. It was impossible to hold on to that. The intention was to give humanity a body of occult teachings that could fit all people, all hearts, that everyone could go along with. But because of certain necessities, the impulse was transplanted to Western Europe, and an egoistic reaction asserted itself. Those spiritual powers that wanted to give the world a new impulse without distinction of any human differences were pushed back, and India, once suppressed in its occultism, took revenge karmically by infiltrating its own national egoistic occultism at the first opportunity when occultism appeared in the West. And that happened in the days of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. This was already happening when Helena Petrovna Blavatsky summarized the great truths and wisdoms of her “The Secret Doctrine”. Her first work, “Isis Unveiled”, shows only the very chaotic and illogical and passionate and confused nature of her being, but shows everywhere that behind her there are watching powers that want to guide her towards the general human. In the “Secret Doctrine,” alongside the self-evident greatest good, there is everywhere a human special interest, such an interest that emanates from certain occult centers that do not have the general human interest in mind today, but a partial, a special interest. Tibetan, Indian, and also Egyptian initiations today everywhere have only a partial human interest in mind, and want only to avenge the suppressed Eastern occultism in the Western world, to avenge the fact that the Western world has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors. It has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors; it has triumphed in so far as Christianity has been adopted into the actual progressive culture of human development, into the progressive life of human development. Christianity has not gone east of Asia, nor south of Asia; Christianity has gone west.

Now you might say, my dear theosophical friends: So it is good. Then the West accepted Christianity, and since Christianity is a stage in the onward progress of humanity, it is natural that the West should have triumphed over the East. — Yes, if that were so! If it were so, it would be self-evident. But it is not so. Christianity, which was prepared for centuries and millennia and which came into the world, has not yet triumphed anywhere on earth. And anyone today who would believe that they could truly and genuinely represent the Christ principle and the Christ impulse in the present would have fallen prey to an indescribable arrogance. What has happened so far? Nothing more than that the Western nations have adopted certain externalities of Christianity, have occupied the name of Christ and have clothed their old cultures, which had been established in Europe before Christianity, with the name of Christianity. Does the Christ reign within Christian Europe? No follower of occult movements will ever admit that the Christ reigns within Christian Europe, but will say: You speak of the “Christ”, but you still mean the same as the ancient Central European peoples meant when they spoke of their god Saxnot. — The symbolum of the Crucifixus stands over the European peoples. In a certain respect, however, the traditions of the god Saxnot prevail, whose symbol is the former short Saxon sword, which was there for the expansion of only material interests, because that was the occupation of the European peoples. Therefore, this occupation has also produced the noblest flower of materialistic culture, an appearance that is noble in the realm of materialistic culture: chivalry. Where in any culture can we find anything similar to the knighthood of Western culture? It does not exist anywhere else. No one would think of comparing the heroes of the Trojan War with the medieval knights. The Christ still lives little in people. People only speak of the Christ. When Westerners speak of Christ, Eastern peoples feel that they, the Eastern peoples, are far, far ahead in terms of their spiritual understanding of the world, in terms of what these peoples know of the secrets of existence. These Eastern peoples know this.

Even ordinary people can explain to you that, in a certain way, Eastern peoples can already appreciate their spiritual advantages. What do the Western peoples still do today in their masses, in their majority, when the secrets of existence are revealed? Well, we still sit together in quite small groups when we speak, we speak of something like what was spoken about last night, of the ruling spiritual powers and secrets that surround us everywhere. To the average Western European, this is folly or madness, for he still cannot understand Paul's words: “What wisdom is with God is often folly with men, and what is folly with men is wisdom with God.” And only those who have been infected by Westerners in the East would dare to question even the slightest of the profound truths about the spiritual secrets of the cosmos, as we try to reveal them when they hear them, because such things, as they were said yesterday, for example, are taken for granted by those who are immersed in the Eastern spiritual life. Therefore, let us not be surprised that it often seemed to these eastern peoples as if the Europeans had attacked them, as it seems to a group of people when a herd of wild animals approaches them, against which they defend themselves, which they do not resent for what they do, but which they regard as something inferior. We Westerners are, for the reasons indicated – whether this is justified today or not is not the point here – and according to the traditions of the East, naturally regarded as inferior by every member of the Brahmanical caste, for example.

And if we disregard Brahmanism and look, for example, at the cultures of Central Asia, at Tibetan or Chinese culture, which in the near future will gain in importance for the world in a way that people today would never dream of Nevertheless, we are only a short time away from this, when we see and become aware of how the souls of many Zarathustra disciples are still embodied in these cultures, then we will be tempted to take these things very seriously. We will also be able to understand that the Indian, Tibetan and Egyptian occultists could have been tempted to channel their own wisdom out of her soul into that which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was able to give, but that which is her own belongs to a past human development process. And we must recognize the character of the past of these oriental wisdom teachings, which are contained in the Blavatsky teachings. We do not need to misjudge the value of such a matter, we do not need to misjudge that when Chinese culture, which one might say has broken its fetters, now floods over the Western world, then a spirituality comes with it that is truly the successor, in many respects still the unadulterated successor, of the old Atlantean culture. It will have the effect of something bursting open that has been held together, and which can spread to all the world; so it will pour out – on a small scale, ancient Indian culture has poured out at the first opportunity.

Therefore, my dear Theosophical friends, it was possible that from that time on, everything that was referred to in all occultism came to pass, and that from then on, the Theosophical movement was no longer a suitable instrument for the advancement of European culture. Every occultist is well aware of the saying that goes: the guiding powers of occultism or those who are in any way occultly active must never allow any special interest to prevail over the general interest of humanity. There is no possibility of working occult favorably when a special interest outweighs the general human interest. The moment a special interest takes precedence over the general human interest in occultism, the possibilities for real error are given. That is why every possible error has been able to enter the theosophical movement since that time. Due to the way in which England is connected to India karmically in the world context, there was simply the possibility that those exalted powers, which are at the starting point of the theosophical movement, were falsified. For it is a common occurrence in occultism for powers that want to pursue their special interest to take on the form of those who have given the actual impulses before. From a certain point in the theosophical movement, there was no longer any possibility of simply accepting everything that lay within this theosophical movement, and karma has willed that this has become less and less possible. And so, when the call came to us to unite with this Theosophical movement, nothing else could be done but to go back to the original sources, to those sources which, in contrast to the specific ones, we can call the general human ones. And so you have perhaps seen in Central Europe that we are trying to get at the occult sources in such a way that you will not notice in all that you are encountering that some special interest is connected with it. You may try to compare everything that can be found in Central Europe in the way of special interests with the kind of Theosophy that is practiced among us: The two things really cannot be brought together. You can take this Theosophy and probably find nothing German in it, except that, because it has to be written in a language, the books by myself are written in German. You will find nothing German in Theosophy, nothing that is somehow connected with the external traditions of Central Europe. And wherever a tendency to connect Theosophy with a special interest arises, it is immediately recognized as an impossibility.

This has now been the special task of Central Europe, to free Theosophy from the special peculiarities that it has acquired in Western Europe. It was our mission to purify Theosophy, to completely detach it from all special interests. And the more you go into the matter, the more you will find that I myself was able to detach everything that I was allowed to bring theosophically from any special interest. This is a symbolic indication, my dear Theosophical friends, but symbolically speaking – I only needed to be guided by what was present as an immediate impulse in the present incarnation, do not misunderstand, it only reflects a fact – those who were the external bearers, for example, of the blood from which I descend, they came from German areas of Austria; I could not be born there. I myself was born in a Slavic region, in a region that was completely foreign to the whole milieu and the whole idiosyncrasy from which my ancestors came. Thus it was that at the starting point of my present incarnation, I was symbolically impelled to detach myself from all special interests, so that in Central Europe, Theosophy really stands before us in Central Europe as a goddess, as something divinely detached from all humanity, that has as much to do with the person who lives there as with the person who lives there, and that will always have to remain.

The ideal we have, my dear Theosophical friends, as simple as it is expressed, will always have to stand before us because it is harder to fulfill than to express. It will have to stand before us as our ideal, the truth and sincerity, the unadulterated divine truth. Perhaps just when we strive for it, we will find the way, not for us, but for what was impersonal in Central Europe after the whole mission of Europe, for this divine theosophy to the East. And there, if I may now describe the way in which Theosophy has taken hold in the West, is passing through Europe and is to come to the East, I would again like to emphasize the word here: the word 'responsibility'. The cultures of the world develop in such a way that, as it were, one culture develops with another in a spiritual shell. One culture connects to another. The fact that Theosophy had to be so impersonal in Central Europe has given it a certain character of spirituality, of spirituality detached from all interests. This Theosophy has, my dear Theosophical friends, something brittle about it; it has the brittleness that comes from being untouched by special interests; it will therefore not appeal to those who cannot open their hearts to that which does not serve any particular interest.

But the spiritual content, this theosophy, can be found by the soul that thirsts for this spiritual content, that longs for this spiritual content. And here I must say, my dear theosophical friends, that I myself have met a soul from the spiritual world that longs for the spirit that expresses itself through theosophy. I have met this soul in the purely spiritual world. If we go up in the order of the hierarchies to the individual spirits of nations and speak within the individual spirits of nations of the national souls, then we also come across the Russian national soul, which is still young, so to speak, and which still has to develop further, as every being must develop. I know that this Russian national soul longs for the spirit that is expressed in Theosophy. It longs with all the strength it can develop. I speak of the sense of responsibility because you, my dear Theosophical friends, are children of this Russian national soul. It rules and works in you and you have a responsibility to it. The responsibility is to understand it! Don't be offended; this Russian national soul could often tell me many, many things. Most tragically, what this Russian national soul could tell me became clear to me around the year 1900. It became most tragically apparent at that time because one could notice something that I myself could only interpret in the right way long afterwards, because one could notice how little this Russian national soul is actually understood today. We in Western Europe have become acquainted with much, much from Russia, and much, much from Russia has made a great, powerful impression on us. We have become acquainted with the great impulses of Tolstoy, we have become acquainted with the psychology of Dostoyevsky, which has so deeply moved Western Europe, and finally we have become acquainted with a mind like Solovyov's, a mind that, when you let it take effect on you, makes the impression everywhere: that is how he is, as he has written. And what he has written only becomes truly clear when you stand behind him and feel the Russian national soul. And this Russian national soul has much more to say than even Solowjow knows how to say, because there is still much too much that comes from Western Europe before our hearts. Think, my dear friends, of the word sense of responsibility, think of the fact that you have this task of showing yourselves worthy of the Russian national soul, and that you should get to know the longing of the Russian national soul for impersonal theosophy. When you get to know Theosophy in terms of its innermost impulse, then, my dear friends, you will have all kinds of questions that can only come from a Russian soul: questions of the soul about the spiritual issues of Theosophy. I have found that so much noble, glorious, beautiful feeling has come to me from Eastern Europe: so much genuine, true human love and kindness, human compassion, overflowing feeling, subtle, intimate observation of what is in the world, and intense personal connection to the powers of existence. And from such loving, beautiful and noble feelings, many, many questions have been put to me by members of the Russian people, many questions – questions that must be asked one day because they are questions that humanity will not be able to live with in the future without answering. Questions that can only come from the east of Europe; so far only the Russian national soul has put them to me, the Russian national soul on the higher planes. I have often thought that the children of this national soul still have a long way to go to understand their national soul, to understand what this national soul actually longs for and how much still separates them, these children of the national soul, from the national soul itself. Therefore, do not be afraid to seek the path you can find, if you want, to your national soul. From your national soul you will find the questions without whose answers the humanity of the future will not be able to exist. But do not be afraid to go beyond personal interest, for be mindful of the great sense of responsibility that you should have towards the Russian national soul, be mindful of this feeling, for in the future the national souls will need their children, the people, to achieve their goals. And do not forget one thing. That which can carry you the highest, which can take you to the most beautiful, most luminous heights in the world, is most exposed to the danger of falling into error. You, my dear Theosophical friends, are to infuse the soul into the spiritual. You are to find the soul to the spirit. You can do it because the Russian national soul has immeasurable depths and possibilities for the future. But it is necessary that you are aware that the soul, which can rise to the spirit, has to inspire the spirit itself, and that you face the great danger of losing yourselves and getting stuck in the personal, in the individually personal, losing yourselves in the personal as such. Then the personal becomes strong when it comes from the soul.

You will not experience the obstacles that so many people in Western and Central Europe face. You are less born to skepticism; skepticism can only come to you from the West through indoctrination. You will learn to distinguish truth from untruth and dishonesty through a certain feeling in the field of occultism, where charlatanry and truth stand so close together. Not skepticism, but cynicism will be your danger. Your danger will be that the soul-spiritual, the powerful of your personalities, can spread clouds around you, astral clouds through which you then cannot penetrate to the objective-spiritual. Powerful of your personalities can spread clouds around you, astral clouds, through which you then cannot get through to the objective spiritual. Your fire, your warmth, they can spread around you like a cloudy aura, not letting the spiritual through, because you think you are enthusiastic about the spirit, but because of your enthusiasm you prevent the spirit from finding its way to you. So try to realize that you have a great advantage – now in the ideal spiritual sense – of being able to have a special interest because you are predestined, that is, your national soul, to receive the special interest of the Russian people to receive theosophy, which in Central Europe still had to be taken entirely as a divine power exalted above all human things, as something that you can receive as your own, as something that you can cherish and cultivate as your very own. For by your predestination you are endowed to breathe soul into the spirit. This has often been said in our ranks, but it is up to you to seize the opportunity as soon as possible, not to miss it, not just to develop feeling and will, but above all to develop energy and perseverance, less - if a word is to be said about the practical — to speak a word with regard to the practical side — talk about the way in which Theosophy must be in the West and in Russia and so on, and what is good for the one and the other, but first take in Theosophy, take it in, unite with the soul, with the heart. The rest will follow; it will follow for sure.

This, my dear friends, is something I wanted to talk to you about, wanted to talk about because wherever I am to speak directly to people, I have to face the sense of responsibility that we have towards people of the present day with regard to Theosophy. In the West, people should feel that they are sinning against humanity if they can have something of Theosophy and do not want it, reject it – sin against humanity! Sometimes it is quite difficult to grasp, because one must have an almost transcendental sense of duty, my dear friends, if one is to have such an obligation, such a sense of responsibility towards humanity. Your national soul tells you that it, this national soul itself, is indebted to you. The national soul has already assumed this obligation to humanity for you. You need only find this national soul. You need only let it speak through your thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, and when you feel the responsibility to the national soul, you will at the same time fulfill the duty to humanity. Therefore, you are also placed in a geographical position between the European West, which must have Theosophy, but for which it cannot become a personal matter to the same extent as for you, and the Asian East, which has had occultism and spiritual culture since time immemorial. You are placed in the middle. You would perhaps never manage to fulfill your task towards the spiritual culture of humanity in this geographically difficult situation, I would say, if you only had to think of your obligation to humanity. Because the temptations will be tremendously great when, on the one hand, not only the European West is at work, which has basically made many of the children of your national soul unfaithful to itself. In the face of a great deal of what is written by Russians and brought to us in the West, we have the feeling that it has nothing to do with the Russian national soul, but is a reflection of all kinds of Western things. The second temptation will come from the East, when the power of spiritual culture arises. There it will be our duty to know that, however great the spiritual culture of the East may be, the man of the present must say to himself: It is not the past that we have to carry into the future, but new impulses. It is not just any old spiritual impulse from the East that we have to take up, but to cultivate what the West can bring forth from its own spiritual sources. Then the time will come when Europe, if you also fulfill your duties towards your national soul, will begin to understand a little of what the Christ impulse actually is in the spiritual development of humanity. Seek, my dear friends, to understand everything that I have tried to express with and in these words, and above all seek in these words that which can become an impulse within you, not just to feel and sense that Theosophy is something something significant and great, but above all seek to take Theosophy into your soul and to organize your life and your deeds out of it.

We are trying to penetrate the theosophical life and knowledge bit by bit, but often during this penetration we have a heartfelt need to ask ourselves: why do we want and seek theosophy in the spiritual life of the present? We need not strain our minds or hearts too hard when such a question arises, and a word will come into our soul that will immediately have an enlightening and even more enlightening effect on our feelings: the word responsibility. Responsibility! This word should give us something that should exclude from the outset in our soul, in our hearts, that we are pursuing Theosophy out of some personal longing. If we observe what may befall us, perhaps without our being properly aware of it, when we hear the word responsibility in relation to the spiritual life that we call theosophical, then we will increasingly come to realize that we owe it to present-day humanity and to the best in us, which can serve this present humanity, to concern ourselves with 'theosophy'. We must not practise Theosophy just for our own pleasure, to satisfy ourselves somehow because we have this or that personal yearning, but we must feel that Theosophy is something that present humanity needs if the process of human development is to continue at all. We need only realize that without Theosophy, or whatever one might call it, without that spiritual life which we mean, humanity on earth would have to face a bleak future, truly a bleak future. This is so for the simple reason that all the spiritual impulses of the past, all that could be given to man in the past in the way of spiritual impulses, has been exhausted. It is gradually living itself out and can bring nothing new into the evolution of humanity. What would have to come if only the old impulses were to continue to work would be something that is perhaps still undreamt of today: not only an overwhelming, externally overwhelming, but numbing domination of mere outward technique, but also a perishing because all religious, scientific, philosophical, artistic and also, in the higher sense, ethical interest is moving out of the human soul. People would become a kind of living automaton if new spiritual impulses did not come. This is how we must feel when we think of Theosophy, as those whom their karma has brought to know that humanity needs new impulses.

We may well ask ourselves: What can we, each one of us, do according to our particular qualities and abilities, in the face of this general sense of responsibility? The way in which Theosophy has come into the world in recent times, and how it has developed over the last few decades into our days, is instructive for answering this question of the heart and soul, perhaps especially for you, my dear friends. We must never forget that the way the word Theosophy has entered the world in modern times is something of a spiritual miracle of civilization. This spiritual miracle of civilization is linked to a personality who, as a personality, is indeed close to you, my dear friends, since she drew her spiritual roots from your national heritage in a certain way. I am talking about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. And for Western Europeans it is undeniable, in every respect undeniable, that the body in which the individuality, who in this incarnation was called Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, was enclosed, could only have come from the environment of Eastern Europe, from Russia. For she had all the Russian characteristics. But Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was taken from you by very special circumstances; Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was transferred to the West by the special karmic conditions of the present time. Now, let us consider what a strange cultural miracle actually took place.

Take this personality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She was a personality who, basically, remained a child throughout her entire life in many, many ways, a real child; a personality who, throughout her entire life, did not learn to think logically; a personality who, throughout her entire life, has not learned to control her passions, urges and desires to any extent, and was always able to fall into extremes; a personality who basically had very little scientific education. Through this personality, it is revealed to the world, one might say, as it could not be otherwise, through the medium of such a personality, in a chaotic, mixed-up, colorful way, a sum of the very greatest eternal wisdom of mankind. And anyone who is well-versed in these matters will find in Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's works wisdom, truths, and insights of humanity that could not have been understood by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's intellect and soul, not even remotely. There is nothing clearer, if one only approaches all the facts impartially, than that for everything that was in the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the outer soul, the outer intellectuality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was only a detour, only a means by which significant, great spiritual powers could communicate with humanity. And there is nothing clearer than that in the way it was to happen at the beginning of the last third of the 19th century, it could not have happened to anyone in Western Europe. It took the very special, on the one hand selfless, almost des-ensouled, and on the other hand again radically selfish, egoistic nature of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, to allow what happened to happen through higher spiritual powers. The selfless nature for the reason that every Western European mind would have brought into its own forms of thinking, into its own intellect, what had been revealed. And it needed the completely selfish, egotistical kind, because in the coarse, materialistic way of life in Western Europe at that time, there was no possibility of doing otherwise than to make, one might say, iron fists out of such a radical state of mind, out of such delicate hands, which had to cultivate and care for the occultism of modern times. It is a peculiar phenomenon. But, my dear friends, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky went to the West, went to that cultural center which, in all its idiosyncrasy, in its entire structure and configuration in all fields, except America, is the most materialistic cultural area of our time, a cultural area that lives in its language, in its thinking, absolutely in materialistic thoughts and in materialistic feelings. It would be going too far here to discuss the power that led Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to England in particular. And so we see that the sum of occultism, which expresses itself in a culturally idiosyncratic way in a medium – I do not mean this in a spiritualistic sense – initially strives for the western part of Europe.

Within this European West, the fate of this occultism was initially sealed in a certain direction, because there was no way around the fulfillment of a significant karma in this materialistic European West with the founding of the Theosophical Society. This karma was also fulfilled. This Western Europe has a heavy karmic debt; it cannot penetrate the secrets of existence without this karmic debt asserting itself in a certain way. When occultism is involved somewhere, karma immediately deepens, and forces are brought to the surface that would otherwise remain hidden. And not to criticize anything in particular, but to characterize, it is said what is to be said: The European West, in carrying out something that is historically necessary, has perpetrated countless injustices against the bearer of ancient spiritual culture, against the bearer of ancient occult secrets, in whose life, although spiritual things have become rigid and no longer exist for the present, they live at the bottom of the soul. — For that is the truth in India, in South Asia. The moment occult impulses came to Western Europe, a reaction immediately set in against the spiritual forces at work in the depths of Indian culture, and it became impossible – it was already impossible in the time of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – to retain what was indeed intended by certain spiritual powers as the actual spiritual movement necessary in our present time. It was impossible to hold on to that. The intention was to give humanity a body of occult teachings that could fit all people, all hearts, that everyone could go along with. But because of certain necessities, the impulse was transplanted to Western Europe, and an egoistic reaction asserted itself. Those spiritual powers that wanted to give the world a new impulse without distinction of any human differences were pushed back, and India, once suppressed in its occultism, took revenge karmically by infiltrating its own national egoistic occultism at the first opportunity when occultism appeared in the West. And that happened in the days of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. This was already happening when Helena Petrovna Blavatsky summarized the great truths and wisdoms of her “The Secret Doctrine”. Her first work, “Isis Unveiled”, shows only the very chaotic and illogical and passionate and confused nature of her being, but shows everywhere that behind her there are watching powers that want to guide her towards the general human. In the “Secret Doctrine,” alongside the self-evident greatest good, there is everywhere a human special interest, such an interest that emanates from certain occult centers that do not have the general human interest in mind today, but a partial, a special interest. Tibetan, Indian, and also Egyptian initiations today everywhere have only a partial human interest in mind, and want only to avenge the suppressed Eastern occultism in the Western world, to avenge the fact that the Western world has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors. It has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors; it has triumphed in so far as Christianity has been adopted into the actual progressive culture of human development, into the progressive life of human development. Christianity has not gone east of Asia, nor south of Asia; Christianity has gone west.

Now you might say, my dear theosophical friends: So it is good. Then the West accepted Christianity, and since Christianity is a stage in the onward progress of humanity, it is natural that the West should have triumphed over the East. — Yes, if that were so! If it were so, it would be self-evident. But it is not so. Christianity, which was prepared for centuries and millennia and which came into the world, has not yet triumphed anywhere on earth. And anyone today who would believe that they could truly and genuinely represent the Christ principle and the Christ impulse in the present would have fallen prey to an indescribable arrogance. What has happened so far? Nothing more than that the Western nations have adopted certain externalities of Christianity, have occupied the name of Christ and have clothed their old cultures, which had been established in Europe before Christianity, with the name of Christianity. Does the Christ reign within Christian Europe? No follower of occult movements will ever admit that the Christ reigns within Christian Europe, but will say: You speak of the “Christ”, but you still mean the same as the ancient Central European peoples meant when they spoke of their god Saxnot. — The symbolum of the Crucifixus stands over the European peoples. In a certain respect, however, the traditions of the god Saxnot prevail, whose symbol is the former short Saxon sword, which was there for the expansion of only material interests, because that was the occupation of the European peoples. Therefore, this occupation has also produced the noblest flower of materialistic culture, an appearance that is noble in the realm of materialistic culture: chivalry. Where in any culture can we find anything similar to the knighthood of Western culture? It does not exist anywhere else. No one would think of comparing the heroes of the Trojan War with the medieval knights. The Christ still lives little in people. People only speak of the Christ. When Westerners speak of Christ, Eastern peoples feel that they, the Eastern peoples, are far, far ahead in terms of their spiritual understanding of the world, in terms of what these peoples know of the secrets of existence. These Eastern peoples know this.

Even ordinary people can explain to you that, in a certain way, Eastern peoples can already appreciate their spiritual advantages. What do the Western peoples still do today in their masses, in their majority, when the secrets of existence are revealed? Well, we still sit together in quite small groups when we speak, we speak of something like what was spoken about last night, of the ruling spiritual powers and secrets that surround us everywhere. To the average Western European, this is folly or madness, for he still cannot understand Paul's words: “What wisdom is with God is often folly with men, and what is folly with men is wisdom with God.” And only those who have been infected by Westerners in the East would dare to question even the slightest of the profound truths about the spiritual secrets of the cosmos, as we try to reveal them when they hear them, because such things, as they were said yesterday, for example, are taken for granted by those who are immersed in the Eastern spiritual life. Therefore, let us not be surprised that it often seemed to these eastern peoples as if the Europeans had attacked them, as it seems to a group of people when a herd of wild animals approaches them, against which they defend themselves, which they do not resent for what they do, but which they regard as something inferior. We Westerners are, for the reasons indicated – whether this is justified today or not is not the point here – and according to the traditions of the East, naturally regarded as inferior by every member of the Brahmanical caste, for example.

And if we disregard Brahmanism and look, for example, at the cultures of Central Asia, at Tibetan or Chinese culture, which in the near future will gain in importance for the world in a way that people today would never dream of Nevertheless, we are only a short time away from this, when we see and become aware of how the souls of many Zarathustra disciples are still embodied in these cultures, then we will be tempted to take these things very seriously. We will also be able to understand that the Indian, Tibetan and Egyptian occultists could have been tempted to channel their own wisdom out of her soul into that which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was able to give, but that which is her own belongs to a past human development process. And we must recognize the character of the past of these oriental wisdom teachings, which are contained in the Blavatsky teachings. We do not need to misjudge the value of such a matter, we do not need to misjudge that when Chinese culture, which one might say has broken its fetters, now floods over the Western world, then a spirituality comes with it that is truly the successor, in many respects still the unadulterated successor, of the old Atlantean culture. It will have the effect of something bursting open that has been held together, and which can spread to all the world; so it will pour out – on a small scale, ancient Indian culture has poured out at the first opportunity.

Therefore, my dear Theosophical friends, it was possible that from that time on, everything that was referred to in all occultism came to pass, and that from then on, the Theosophical movement was no longer a suitable instrument for the advancement of European culture. Every occultist is well aware of the saying that goes: the guiding powers of occultism or those who are in any way occultly active must never allow any special interest to prevail over the general interest of humanity. There is no possibility of working occult favorably when a special interest outweighs the general human interest. The moment a special interest takes precedence over the general human interest in occultism, the possibilities for real error are given. That is why every possible error has been able to enter the theosophical movement since that time. Due to the way in which England is connected to India karmically in the world context, there was simply the possibility that those exalted powers, which are at the starting point of the theosophical movement, were falsified. For it is a common occurrence in occultism for powers that want to pursue their special interest to take on the form of those who have given the actual impulses before. From a certain point in the theosophical movement, there was no longer any possibility of simply accepting everything that lay within this theosophical movement, and karma has willed that this has become less and less possible. And so, when the call came to us to unite with this Theosophical movement, nothing else could be done but to go back to the original sources, to those sources which, in contrast to the specific ones, we can call the general human ones. And so you have perhaps seen in Central Europe that we are trying to get at the occult sources in such a way that you will not notice in all that you are encountering that some special interest is connected with it. You may try to compare everything that can be found in Central Europe in the way of special interests with the kind of Theosophy that is practiced among us: The two things really cannot be brought together. You can take this Theosophy and probably find nothing German in it, except that, because it has to be written in a language, the books by myself are written in German. You will find nothing German in Theosophy, nothing that is somehow connected with the external traditions of Central Europe. And wherever a tendency to connect Theosophy with a special interest arises, it is immediately recognized as an impossibility.

This has now been the special task of Central Europe, to free Theosophy from the special peculiarities that it has acquired in Western Europe. It was our mission to purify Theosophy, to completely detach it from all special interests. And the more you go into the matter, the more you will find that I myself was able to detach everything that I was allowed to bring theosophically from any special interest. This is a symbolic indication, my dear Theosophical friends, but symbolically speaking – I only needed to be guided by what was present as an immediate impulse in the present incarnation, do not misunderstand, it only reflects a fact – those who were the external bearers, for example, of the blood from which I descend, they came from German areas of Austria; I could not be born there. I myself was born in a Slavic region, in a region that was completely foreign to the whole milieu and the whole idiosyncrasy from which my ancestors came. Thus it was that at the starting point of my present incarnation, I was symbolically impelled to detach myself from all special interests, so that in Central Europe, Theosophy really stands before us in Central Europe as a goddess, as something divinely detached from all humanity, that has as much to do with the person who lives there as with the person who lives there, and that will always have to remain.

The ideal we have, my dear Theosophical friends, as simple as it is expressed, will always have to stand before us because it is harder to fulfill than to express. It will have to stand before us as our ideal, the truth and sincerity, the unadulterated divine truth. Perhaps just when we strive for it, we will find the way, not for us, but for what was impersonal in Central Europe after the whole mission of Europe, for this divine theosophy to the East. And there, if I may now describe the way in which Theosophy has taken hold in the West, is passing through Europe and is to come to the East, I would again like to emphasize the word here: the word 'responsibility'. The cultures of the world develop in such a way that, as it were, one culture develops with another in a spiritual shell. One culture connects to another. The fact that Theosophy had to be so impersonal in Central Europe has given it a certain character of spirituality, of spirituality detached from all interests. This Theosophy has, my dear Theosophical friends, something brittle about it; it has the brittleness that comes from being untouched by special interests; it will therefore not appeal to those who cannot open their hearts to that which does not serve any particular interest.

But the spiritual content, this theosophy, can be found by the soul that thirsts for this spiritual content, that longs for this spiritual content. And here I must say, my dear theosophical friends, that I myself have met a soul from the spiritual world that longs for the spirit that expresses itself through theosophy. I have met this soul in the purely spiritual world. If we go up in the order of the hierarchies to the individual spirits of nations and speak within the individual spirits of nations of the national souls, then we also come across the Russian national soul, which is still young, so to speak, and which still has to develop further, as every being must develop. I know that this Russian national soul longs for the spirit that is expressed in Theosophy. It longs with all the strength it can develop. I speak of the sense of responsibility because you, my dear Theosophical friends, are children of this Russian national soul. It rules and works in you and you have a responsibility to it. The responsibility is to understand it! Don't be offended; this Russian national soul could often tell me many, many things. Most tragically, what this Russian national soul could tell me became clear to me around the year 1900. It became most tragically apparent at that time because one could notice something that I myself could only interpret in the right way long afterwards, because one could notice how little this Russian national soul is actually understood today. We in Western Europe have become acquainted with much, much from Russia, and much, much from Russia has made a great, powerful impression on us. We have become acquainted with the great impulses of Tolstoy, we have become acquainted with the psychology of Dostoyevsky, which has so deeply moved Western Europe, and finally we have become acquainted with a mind like Solovyov's, a mind that, when you let it take effect on you, makes the impression everywhere: that is how he is, as he has written. And what he has written only becomes truly clear when you stand behind him and feel the Russian national soul. And this Russian national soul has much more to say than even Solowjow knows how to say, because there is still much too much that comes from Western Europe before our hearts. Think, my dear friends, of the word sense of responsibility, think of the fact that you have this task of showing yourselves worthy of the Russian national soul, and that you should get to know the longing of the Russian national soul for impersonal theosophy. When you get to know Theosophy in terms of its innermost impulse, then, my dear friends, you will have all kinds of questions that can only come from a Russian soul: questions of the soul about the spiritual issues of Theosophy. I have found that so much noble, glorious, beautiful feeling has come to me from Eastern Europe: so much genuine, true human love and kindness, human compassion, overflowing feeling, subtle, intimate observation of what is in the world, and intense personal connection to the powers of existence. And from such loving, beautiful and noble feelings, many, many questions have been put to me by members of the Russian people, many questions – questions that must be asked one day because they are questions that humanity will not be able to live with in the future without answering. Questions that can only come from the east of Europe; so far only the Russian national soul has put them to me, the Russian national soul on the higher planes. I have often thought that the children of this national soul still have a long way to go to understand their national soul, to understand what this national soul actually longs for and how much still separates them, these children of the national soul, from the national soul itself. Therefore, do not be afraid to seek the path you can find, if you want, to your national soul. From your national soul you will find the questions without whose answers the humanity of the future will not be able to exist. But do not be afraid to go beyond personal interest, for be mindful of the great sense of responsibility that you should have towards the Russian national soul, be mindful of this feeling, for in the future the national souls will need their children, the people, to achieve their goals. And do not forget one thing. That which can carry you the highest, which can take you to the most beautiful, most luminous heights in the world, is most exposed to the danger of falling into error. You, my dear Theosophical friends, are to infuse the soul into the spiritual. You are to find the soul to the spirit. You can do it because the Russian national soul has immeasurable depths and possibilities for the future. But it is necessary that you are aware that the soul, which can rise to the spirit, has to inspire the spirit itself, and that you face the great danger of losing yourselves and getting stuck in the personal, in the individually personal, losing yourselves in the personal as such. Then the personal becomes strong when it comes from the soul.

You will not experience the obstacles that so many people in Western and Central Europe face. You are less born to skepticism; skepticism can only come to you from the West through indoctrination. You will learn to distinguish truth from untruth and dishonesty through a certain feeling in the field of occultism, where charlatanry and truth stand so close together. Not skepticism, but cynicism will be your danger. Your danger will be that the soul-spiritual, the powerful of your personalities, can spread clouds around you, astral clouds through which you then cannot penetrate to the objective-spiritual. Powerful of your personalities can spread clouds around you, astral clouds, through which you then cannot get through to the objective spiritual. Your fire, your warmth, they can spread around you like a cloudy aura, not letting the spiritual through, because you think you are enthusiastic about the spirit, but because of your enthusiasm you prevent the spirit from finding its way to you. So try to realize that you have a great advantage – now in the ideal spiritual sense – of being able to have a special interest because you are predestined, that is, your national soul, to receive the special interest of the Russian people to receive theosophy, which in Central Europe still had to be taken entirely as a divine power exalted above all human things, as something that you can receive as your own, as something that you can cherish and cultivate as your very own. For by your predestination you are endowed to breathe soul into the spirit. This has often been said in our ranks, but it is up to you to seize the opportunity as soon as possible, not to miss it, not just to develop feeling and will, but above all to develop energy and perseverance, less - if a word is to be said about the practical — to speak a word with regard to the practical side — talk about the way in which Theosophy must be in the West and in Russia and so on, and what is good for the one and the other, but first take in Theosophy, take it in, unite with the soul, with the heart. The rest will follow; it will follow for sure.

This, my dear friends, is something I wanted to talk to you about, wanted to talk about because wherever I am to speak directly to people, I have to face the sense of responsibility that we have towards people of the present day with regard to Theosophy. In the West, people should feel that they are sinning against humanity if they can have something of Theosophy and do not want it, reject it – sin against humanity! Sometimes it is quite difficult to grasp, because one must have an almost transcendental sense of duty, my dear friends, if one is to have such an obligation, such a sense of responsibility towards humanity. Your national soul tells you that it, this national soul itself, is indebted to you. The national soul has already assumed this obligation to humanity for you. You need only find this national soul. You need only let it speak through your thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, and when you feel the responsibility to the national soul, you will at the same time fulfill the duty to humanity. Therefore, you are also placed in a geographical position between the European West, which must have Theosophy, but for which it cannot become a personal matter to the same extent as for you, and the Asian East, which has had occultism and spiritual culture since time immemorial. You are placed in the middle. You would perhaps never manage to fulfill your task towards the spiritual culture of humanity in this geographically difficult situation, I would say, if you only had to think of your obligation to humanity. Because the temptations will be tremendously great when, on the one hand, not only the European West is at work, which has basically made many of the children of your national soul unfaithful to itself. In the face of a great deal of what is written by Russians and brought to us in the West, we have the feeling that it has nothing to do with the Russian national soul, but is a reflection of all kinds of Western things. The second temptation will come from the East, when the power of spiritual culture arises. There it will be our duty to know that, however great the spiritual culture of the East may be, the man of the present must say to himself: It is not the past that we have to carry into the future, but new impulses. It is not just any old spiritual impulse from the East that we have to take up, but to cultivate what the West can bring forth from its own spiritual sources. Then the time will come when Europe, if you also fulfill your duties towards your national soul, will begin to understand a little of what the Christ impulse actually is in the spiritual development of humanity. Seek, my dear friends, to understand everything that I have tried to express with and in these words, and above all seek in these words that which can become an impulse within you, not just to feel and sense that Theosophy is something something significant and great, but above all seek to take Theosophy into your soul and to organize your life and your deeds out of it.

By the time students reach their mid-teens, they have already entered puberty. Teachers need to keep this very much in mind well before it actually manifests. We simply need to open our eyes to what happens in growing children, both before and during the process of sexual maturity, to appreciate how important it is to be prepared for this challenge.

We have seen in our studies that until the change of teeth children are imitators and that, while there is still no clear differentiation between organic functions and soul activities, children are inwardly given over to the soul and spiritual forces flowing down from the head, which continue work organically and permeate the whole organism. The most characteristic feature of this stage is the way those soul-spiritual forces work together with the bodily forces.

I will need to use the insights of clairvoyant consciousness to give you a clear description of what happens in young children at this stage of life—not because I think we need to form our ideas in a particular way, but it just may be the best way to understand what has been said so far.

When young children sleep, the soul and spiritual members leave the physical sheaths (just as in any adult) and re-enter at the moment of awaking. In children, however, there is still no significant difference between conscious experiences while awake and unconscious experiences during sleep. Normally, if no memories of daytime events enter the world of sleep (and this rarely happens in childhood), the sleeping life of children moves within realms far beyond the earthly sphere. From these higher worlds, active forces are drawn that then work during the waking state, from the brain down into a child’s whole organism.

During the second dentition, certain soul and spiritual forces in children are released from working entirely in the organic sphere. They begin to assume an independent, soul-spiritual quality. Between the change of teeth and puberty, thinking, feeling, and willing in children begin to work more freely. Children are no longer imitators but, through a natural feeling for authority, they develop the consciousness they need to connect with the world. This faith in adult authority is essential, because outer conditions are not enough to ensure that children connect sufficiently with the world. The way adults confront one another, whether verbally or by other means, is very different from the way children encounter adults. Children need the additional support that a sense of authority provides. Consequently, experiences while awake will enter their soulspiritual life during sleep. So, teachers have the possibility of reaching children through education between the change of teeth and puberty to the same extent that earthly experiences enter children’s sleep and replace those of the spiritual world.

With the onset of puberty, an entirely new situation begins, and emerging adolescents are essentially different from what they were prior to sexual maturity. To describe this, it may be helpful to refer back to what was said at the end of yesterday’s lecture. Until the change of teeth, it is normal for children to live entirely within the physical body. However, if this state is extended beyond its natural time, when it would no longer be normal, it results in a very melancholic temperament. During childhood it is natural to have a relationship between the soulspiritual and physical organization that characterizes an adult melancholic. Bear in mind that what is right and good for one stage of life becomes abnormal in another.

During the second dentition, certain soul-spiritual forces are liberated from previous organic activities, and they flow into what I call the body of formative forces, or ether body. This member of the human being is linked entirely to the outer world, and it is appropriate for children to live in it between the change of teeth and puberty. If, even before the change of teeth, these ether forces were excessive—that is, if the child has lived too much in the etheric sheath before the second dentition—the result is a decidedly phlegmatic temperament. However, children can have a normal and balanced relationship with the ether body, and this is absolutely essential between the seventh and the fourteenth years, between the change of teeth and puberty. Again, if this condition is carried too far into later life, a decidedly phlegmatic temperament develops in the adult.

The true birthplace of the sanguine temperament is the next member of the human being that, under normal circumstances, becomes independent during puberty. Yesterday, I called this the astral body—the member of the human being that lives beyond space and time. If, between the change of teeth and puberty, children draw too much from what should come into its own only with sexual maturity, a sanguine temperament arises. Growing human beings become inwardly mature for sanguinity only with the arrival of puberty. Thus everything in life has a normal period of time. Various abnormalities arise when something that is normal for one period of life is pushed into another. If you survey life from this point of view, you begin to understand the human being more deeply.

What really happens as children mature sexually? During the past few days we have already illuminated this somewhat. We have seen how children continue, after the change of teeth, to work inwardly with forces that have to a certain degree become liberated soul-spiritual forces. During the following stages, children incarnate via the system of breathing and blood circulation, and the tendons and the muscles grow more firmly onto the bones. They incarnate from within out, toward the human periphery, and at the time of sexual maturity young adolescents break through into the outer world. Only then do they stand fully in the world.

This dramatic development makes it imperative for teachers to approach adolescents, who have passed through sexual maturity, quite differently from the way they dealt with the children before. Basically, the previous processes, before puberty, involved emancipated soul-spiritual forces that still had nothing to do with sex in its own realm. True, boys or girls show definite predispositions toward their own sexes, but this cannot be considered sexuality as such. Sexuality develops only after the breakthrough into the external world, when a new relationship with the outer world is established. But then, at this time, something happens in the realm of an adolescent’s soul and bodily nature, and this is not unlike what occurred previously during the second dentition. During the change of teeth, forces were liberated to become active in a child’s forces of thinking, feeling, and willing, which were then directed more toward the memory. The powers of memory were then released. Now, at puberty, something else becomes available for free activity in the soul realm. These are powers that previously entered the rhythms of breathing and, subsequently, strived to introduce rhythmic qualities into the musculature and even the skeleton. This rhythmic element is now transformed into an adolescent receptiveness to the realm of creative ideas and fantasy. Fundamentally, true powers of fantasy are not born until puberty, because they come into their own only after the astral body is born. The astral body exists beyond time and space and links together past, present, and future according to its own principles, as we experience it in our dreams.

What is it that adolescents bring with them when they break through into the outer world via the skeletal system? It is what they originally brought with them from pre-earthly existence; it was gradually interwoven with their whole inner being. And now, with the onset of sexual maturity, adolescents are, as it were, cast out of the spiritual world. Without exaggerating, we can express it that strongly, because it represents the facts; with the coming of puberty, young people are cast out of the living world of spirit and thrown into the outer world, which they perceive only through the physical and ether bodies. Although adolescents are not aware of what is happening inside them, subconsciously this plays a very important role. Subconsciously, or semi-consciously, it makes adolescents compare the world they have now entered with the one they formerly held within themselves. Previously, they had not experienced the spiritual world consciously, but they nevertheless found it possible to live in harmony with it. Their inner being felt attuned to it and prepared to cooperate freely with the soul-spiritual realm. But now, conditions have changed, and the external world no longer offers such possibilities. It presents all sorts of hindrances that, in themselves, create a desire to overcome them. This, in turn, leads to a tumultuous relationship between adolescents and the surrounding world, which lasts from fourteen or fifteen until the early twenties.

This inner upheaval is bound to come, and teachers do well to be aware of it before it arrives. There may be overly sensitive people who believe that it would be better to save teenagers from this inner turmoil, only to find that they have become their greatest enemy. It would be quite incorrect to try to spare them this tempestuous time of life. It is far better to plan ahead in your educational goals, so that what you do before they reach puberty comes to help and support adolescents in their struggles of soul and spirit.

Teachers must be clear that, with the arrival of puberty, a completely different being emerges, born out of a new relationship with the world. It is no good appealing to students’ previous sense of authority; now they will demand reasons for all that is expected of them. Teachers must get into the habit of approaching a young man or woman rationally. For example, think of an adolescent boy whom the spiritual world has led into this earthly world and who now becomes rebellious because it is so different from what he expected. The adult must try to show him (and without any pedantry) that everything he meets in this world has “prehistory.” The adult must get this adolescent to see that present conditions are the consequences of what went before. You must act the part of an expert who really understands why things have come to be as they are.

From now on, you will accomplish nothing by way of authority. You have to convince adolescents through the sheer weight of your indisputable knowledge and expertise and provide waterproof reasons for everything you do or expect of them. If, at this stage, students cannot see sound reasons in the material you give them, if conditions in the world seem to make no sense to them, they begin to doubt the rightness of their earlier life. They feel they are in opposition to what they experienced during those years that, seemingly, merely led to the present, unacceptable conditions. And if, during this inner turmoil, they cannot find contact with someone who can reassure them, to some extent at least, that there are good reasons for what is happening in the world, then the inner stress may become so intolerable that they might break down altogether. This newly emerged astral body is not of this world, and these young people have been cast out of the astral world. They willingly enter this earthly world only if they can be convinced of its right to exist.

It would be a complete misunderstanding of what I have been describing to think that adolescents are the least bit aware of what is happening in them. During ordinary consciousness, this struggle arises in dim feelings from the unconscious. It surges up through blunted will impulses. It lives in the disappointment of seemingly unattainable ideals, in frustrated desires, and perhaps in a certain inner numbness to what manifests in the unreasonable events of the world.

If education is to be effective at all during this stage (which it must be for any young person willing to learn), then your teaching must be communicated in the appropriate form. It must be a preparation for the years to come—up to the early twenties and even later in life. Having suffered the wounds of life and having retaliated in their various ways, young people from fifteen to the early twenties must eventually find their way back into the world from which they were evicted during puberty. The duration of this period varies, especially during our chaotic times, which tend to prolong it even longer into adult life. Young people must feel they are accepted again and be able to renew contact with the spiritual world, for without it, life is impossible. However, should they feel any coercion from those in authority, this new link loses all meaning and value for life. If we are aware of these difficulties well before the arrival of puberty, we can make good use of the inborn longing for authority in children, bringing them to the point at which there is no longer any need for an authoritarian approach. And this stage should coincide with the coming of sexual maturity. By then, however, educators must be ready to give convincing reasons for everything they ask of their students.

Seen from a broader, spiritual perspective, we can observe the grand metamorphosis taking place in a young person during the period of sexual maturity. It is very important to realize that the whole question of sex becomes a reality only during puberty, when adolescents enter the external world as I have described it. Naturally, since everything in life is relative, this, too, must be taken as a relative truth. Nevertheless, you should realize that, until sexual maturity, children live more as generic human beings; it is not until the onset of puberty that they experience the world differently, according to whether they are men or women. This realization (which in our generally intellectual and naturalistic civilization cannot be assumed) allows real insight into the relationship between the sexes for those who work with open minds toward knowledge of the human being. It also helps them understand the problem of women’s position in society, not just during our time but also in the future.

Once you appreciate the tremendous transformation that occurs in the male organism during the change of voice (to use one example), you will be able to understand the statement that, until the age of sexual maturity, a child retains a more general human nature, one still undivided into the sexes. Similar processes occur in the female organism, but in a different area. The human voice, with its ability to moderate and form sounds and tones, is a manifestation of our general human nature. It is born from the soul-spiritual substance that works on children until puberty. Changes of pitch and register, on the other hand, which occur during this mutation, are the result of outer influences. They are forced on adolescents from outside, so to speak, and they are the ways that a boy places himself into the outer world with his innermost being. It is not just a case of the softer parts in the larynx relating more strongly to the bones, but a slight ossification of the larynx itself takes place that amounts, essentially, to a withdrawal of the larynx from the purely human inner nature toward a more earthly existence.

This act of stepping out into the world should really be seen in a much wider context than is generally the case. Usually, people think that the capacity to love, which awakens at this time, is linked directly to sexual attraction, but this is not really the whole story. The power to love, born during sexual maturity, embraces everything within an adolescent’s entire sphere. Love between the sexes is only one specific, limited aspect of love in the world. Only when we see human love in this light can we understand it correctly, and then we can also understand its task in the world.

What really happens in human beings during the process of sexual maturity? Prior to this, as children, their relationship to the world was one in which they first imitated their surroundings and then came under the power of authority. Outer influences worked on them, because at that time their inner being mainly represented what they brought with them from preearthly life. Humanity as a whole had to work on them externally, first through the principle of imitation and then through authority. Now, at puberty, having found their own way into the human race and no longer depending on outer support as a younger child does, a new feeling arises in them, along with a whole new appraisal of humankind as a whole. And this new experience of humankind represents a spiritual counterpart to the physical capacity to reproduce. Physically, they gain the ability to procreate; spiritually, they gain the ability to experience humankind as a whole.

During this new stage, the polarity between man and woman becomes quite obvious. Any realization of human potential on earth is possible only through a real understanding of the other sex by means of social interaction; and this applies to the realm of soul and spirit as well. Both men and women fully represent humankind, but in different ways. A woman sees humanity as a gift of the metaphysical worlds. Fundamentally, she sees humanity as the result of divine abundance. Unconsciously, in the depths of her soul, she holds a picture of humankind as her standard of values, and she evaluates and assesses human beings according to this standard. If these remarks are not generally accepted today, it is because our current civilization bears all the signs of a male-dominated society.

For a long time, the most powerful influences in our civilization have displayed a decidedly masculine nature. An example of this (however grotesque it may sound) may be found in Freemasonry. It is symbolic of our times that men, if they wish to keep certain matters to themselves, isolate themselves in the lodges of Freemasonry. There are also lodges in which both men and women congregate, but Freemasonry has already become blunted in these, and they no longer bear its original stamp. The constitution of Freemasonry is a specific example, but it nevertheless expresses the male-dominated character of our society. Women, too, have absorbed a great deal of the masculine element from our civilization, and because of this they actually prevent the specifically feminine element from coming into its own. This is why we so often get the impression that, in terms of inner substance and outer form, there is very little difference between the ideals and programs of the various women’s movements and those of men—even in the tone of the speeches they deliver. Obviously, these movements differ insofar as, on the one side, there are demands to safeguard women’s interests, while, on the other, the demands are on behalf of men. But, in terms of their inner substance, they are barely distinguishable.

When you take a good look at modern medicine in all its materialistic aspects, you can see how it fails to understand human nature, especially in terms of its physical elements, so that it depends on experimentation. If you observe modern medicine, you find the product of a distinctly masculine attitude, however strange this may sound to you. In fact, one could hardly find a better illustration of male thinking than in what modern medicine so blatantly reveals to us. For a man, in his innermost being, experiences humanity as something of an enigma. To him it appears unfathomable and poses endless questions whose solutions seem to lie beyond his powers. This typically masculine characteristic is expressed in all the mysterious ceremony and the dry and manly atmosphere of freemasonry. This same male tendency has permeated our culture to such an extent that, although women suffer under it, they nevertheless wish to emulate it and to make it part of their own lives.

If we speak the truth today, people tend to think that we do so merely to present contrary statements to the world. Yet the reality is often unorthodox. Therefore, if we want to speak the truth, we must put up with seeming contrary, however inconvenient this might be.

Women live more in the images they create of humanity, while men experience humanity in more wishful and enigmatic ways. To understand this, we need to be clear about a symptom that is especially significant for the art of teaching today. When people speak of love today, they seldom differentiate between the various types of love. Naturally, we can generalize the concept of love, just as one can speak about condiments in a general way. But when people speculate abstractly about certain matters and then hold forth about them, it always strikes me as if they were talking about salt, sugar, or pepper merely in terms of condiments. We only need to apply such abstractions to practical life by putting salt instead of sugar in our coffee—they are both condiments, after all—to realize such foolishness. Anyone who indulges in general speculation instead of entering the concrete realities of life commits the same folly.

The love of a woman is very different from that of a man. Her love originates in the realm of imagination and constantly makes pictures. A woman does not love a man just as he is, standing there before her in ordinary, humdrum life (forgive me, but men, after all, are not exactly the sort that a healthy imagination could fall in love with). Rather, she weaves into her love the ideal she received as a gift from heaven. A man’s love, on the other hand, is tinged with desire; it has a wishful nature. This difference needs to be noted, regardless of whether it is expressed more in an idealistic or a realistic way. Ideal love may inspire longings of an ideal quality. The instinctive and sensuous kind may be a mere product of fancy. But this fundamental difference between love as it lives in a man and as it lives in a woman is a reality. A woman’s love is steeped in imagination, and in a man’s love there is an element of desire. And because these two kinds of love are complementary, they can become harmonized in life.

Educators need to bear this in mind when faced with sexually mature students. They must realize that one can no longer bring them certain things that belong to the preadolescent stage, and that they have missed the opportunity for doing so. Therefore, to prevent a onesided attitude in later life, we must try to give to prepubescent children enough of the right material to last them through the following stages. Fortunately, coeducation, in both primary and secondary education, is increasingly accepted today, so that boys and girls work side by side and learn to cooperate later on as men and women in society. Consequently, it is especially important to heed what was just said. Through this, a contemporary phenomenon such as the women’s movement will have a truly sound and healthy basis.

If we expand these considerations by taking a worldwide perspective, we are led to the fundamental differences that exist between East and West, with Asia on one side and Europe and America on the other. This difference between East and West is far greater than any other differences we may find when comparing, say, Europe and America. Throughout Asia, there are still traces of ancient, wise civilizations. Externally, they appear completely decadent, but their wisdom nevertheless lives on like a memory. It is revered as a sacred memory, to the extent that, fundamentally, an Asian cannot really understand a European, and vice versa. Those who are under illusions about this fact will delude themselves about the world’s greatest historical secret in our time. It is a secret of special significance not only for today, but very much so for the future.

Despite its manifold complexities, life in the West has a more uniform character than life in the East. The main concern of Western people is life in this earthly civilization, a civilization that draws its ideas mostly from what happens between birth and death. The people of the East (at least in their inner religious lives) do not limit their view to the earthly time between birth and death, or life in the outer mechanical civilization. People of the West, however, do live for this earthly time, even in their religious feelings. The people of the East, on the other hand, ask themselves searching questions, such as, Why was I born into this world? Why did I enter this senseperceptible world at all? Westerners take life in the physical world more or less for granted, even if they end it by suicide. Western people take earthly life for granted, and they have developed an inner receptivity for life after death only because it would be unsatisfying and a disappointment if earthly existence were entirely wiped out.

There is a fundamental difference between these two views. Again, however, we cannot get to the bottom of this merely through abstract descriptions instead of entering life fully. The farther we move from East to West, the more we find that the Western woman, despite her outer consciousness, cherishes a longing for the spirituality of the East. The man of the West, however, presents a totally different picture. He, too, has his secret longings, but not for anything vague and misty. His longings spring from what he experiences inwardly. From cradle to grave, he is enmeshed in the activities and pressures of his civilization, but something in him longs to get away from it all. We can perceive this mood of soul in all the civilized countries around us, from the River Vistula in Eastern Europe through Germany, France, and Britain, and right across the American continent to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. In all these lands, we find this attribute in common. Educators who deal with adolescents also experience this, perhaps to their despair and without recognizing the underlying causes. Only a teacher wearing blinders could possible overlook this.

During our previous meetings I mentioned that we really ought to throw away every school textbook, because only a direct and personal relationship between teachers and students should affect children. When it comes to teaching adolescents, however, every available textbook and, for that matter, almost our whole outer civilization become great sources of pain. I know that there are many who are unaware of this, because they do not go into real life with their eyes open wide enough. Here, again, in our outer civilization we find a notably lopsided masculine quality. Any book on history—whether a history of civilization or anthropology—will confirm this trend. As representatives of Western civilization, people long to escape the physical world in which they are caught up, but they lack the necessary courage to do so. People cannot find the bridge from the sensory world into the spiritual world. And so, everywhere in our civilization we find a yearning to get away from it all, and yet an inability to act accordingly.

It is hard enough to establish the right environment for teaching prepubescent children. But those who have to teach adolescents could almost feel helpless, because the means available for meeting their needs are so inadequate. This alone should kindle a real longing in such teachers for a deeper understanding of the human being. Of course, this longing may already be there in the teachers of younger children, but it is a prerequisite for anyone of sound pedagogical sense who teaches adolescents.

A woman’s nostalgia for the ways of the East and a man’s wish to be free of the bondage of Western life represent fundamental features of our time. This difference between the sexes is less apparent in preadolescent children, who still bear more general human features. Yet, as soon as we are confronted by adolescents, we meet many difficulties that arise quite concretely.

Imagine, for example, that a German literature teacher wants to recommend to her adolescent student a book that presents a German perspective of Goethe. She would really find herself in a quandary, since there are no suitable books available. If she chooses an available one, her scholar would not get the right picture of Goethe. If she chooses a biography of Goethe written by, say, Lewes, her German scholar would learn the more outward features of Goethe better than from any of the German books on the subject, but again he would not become familiar with the specifically German characteristics of Goethe. This is the situation today, for we simply do not have adequate literature for teaching adolescents. To remedy this, everything depends on women taking their proper place in culture. They should be allowed to contribute their specifically feminine qualities, but they must at the same time be careful not to introduce anything they have adopted from our maledominated civilization.

During the 1890s, I had a conversation with a German feminist. She expressed her views in radical terms, but I could not help feeling that, instead of enriching society with what only womanhood offers, she was trying to force her way into our onesidedly masculine culture by employing masculine tactics. My meaning must not be taken in a crude or biased way. I felt that I had to say to this free and uncompromising lady, “Your movement does not yet offer what the world really needs. The world does not need women who ‘wear the pants’ [forgive me, I believe in England that such a remark is unforgivably rude]. Rather, both masculine and feminine qualities make specific contributions toward the general enhancement of our society.”

As teachers, whenever we approach growing human beings, we must note the striking contrast between the prepuberty and post-puberty years. Let us take a concrete example: There is Milton’s Paradise Lost, which would be good to use in our lessons. The question is, when? Those of you who have thought through what has been said so far and have understood my remarks about the right time to introduce narrative and descriptive elements will find that this work by Milton (or epic poetry in general) would be suitable material after the tenth year. Also, Homer will be appreciated best when taught between the tenth and the fourteenth years. On the other hand, it would be premature to use Shakespeare as study material at this stage, since, in order to be ready for dramatic poetry, students must at least have entered puberty. To absorb the dramatic element at an earlier age, students would have to drive something out of themselves prematurely, which, later on, they would definitely miss.

What I tried to describe just now can be experienced vividly when, for example, you have to give history lessons to boys and girls after they enter puberty. Both masculine and feminine forces work during historical events, though in a different form than they do today. Yet all of the historical accounts available for teaching adolescents bear a decidedly masculine quality, as though they had been compiled by Epimetheus. Girls who have reached sexual maturity show little inclination toward such an approach. Boys may find it somewhat boring, but in their case it is not impossible to use this Epimethean way, which judges and holds onto what can be ascertained and established. But there is also a Promethean way of looking at history, which not only records events that occurred, but also shows their transformation into the ideas of the present time. This approach to history shows how the impulses that led the past have become the current thinking of today, and how impulses, in turn, continue to lead present time further. A Promethean way of looking at history, in particular, appeals strongly to the feminine element.

However, it would be very one-sided to teach history in the Promethean style at a girls’ school, or in an Epimethean style at a boys’ school. The minds of the young men would simply flow back into the past and become even more rigid than they are already. If the Promethean way of teaching history were to be only one applied in a girls’ school, the students would be tempted to fly off into futuristic speculations. They would always be attracted to the impulses that they happened to like naturally. We can achieve a more balanced society only if we add a historical view that bears the prophetic marks of Prometheus to the more predominant Epimethean way, which until now has been just about the only one available. Then, if both attitudes are alive in our lessons, we will at last achieve the right approach to history for students who have reached the age of sexual maturity.

Arithmetic and geometry, indeed all mathematics, occupy a unique position in education. Education can only be filled with the necessary vitality and give rise to a real interplay between the soul of the teacher and the soul of the child, if the teacher fully realizes the consequences of his actions and methods. He must know exactly what effect is made on the child by the treatment he receives in school, or anywhere else.

Man is a being of body, soul and spirit; his bodily nature is formed and moulded by the spirit. The teacher, then, must always be aware of what is taking place in the soul and spirit when any change occurs in the body, and again, what effect is produced in the body when influences are brought to bear on the life of spirit or soul.

Anything that works upon the child's conceptual and imaginative faculties, anything that is to say of the nature of painting or drawing which is then led over into writing, or again, botany taught in the way indicated yesterday, all this has a definite effect. And here, above all, we must consider a higher member of man's being, a member to which I have already referred as the etheric body, or body of formative forces. The human being has, in the first place, his physical body. It is revealed to ordinary physical sense-perception. Besides this physical body, however, he has an inner organization, perceptible only to Imaginative Cognition, a super-sensible, etheric body. Again he has an organization perceptible only to Inspiration, the next stage of super-sensible knowledge. (These expressions need not confuse us; they are merely terms.) Inspiration gives insight into the so-called astral body and into the real Ego, the Self of the human being.

From birth till death, this etheric body, this body of formative forces which is the first super-sensible member of man's being never separates from the physical body. Only at death does this occur. During sleep, the etheric organization remains with the physical body lying there in bed. When man sleeps, the astral body and Ego-organization leave the physical and etheric bodies and enter them again at the moment of waking.

Now it is the physical and etheric bodies which are affected when the child is taught arithmetic or geometry, or when we lead him on to writing from the basis of drawing and painting. All this remains in the etheric body and its vibrations persist during sleep. On the other hand, history and such a study of the animal kingdom as I spoke of in yesterday's lecture work only upon the astral body and Ego-organization. What results from these studies passes out of the physical and etheric bodies into the spiritual world during sleep.

If, therefore, we are teaching the child plant-lore or writing, the effects are preserved by the physical and etheric bodies during sleep, whereas the results of history lessons or lessons on the nature of man are different, for they are carried out into the spiritual world by the Ego and astral body. This points to an essential difference between the effects produced by the different lessons.

We must realize that all impressions of an imaginative or pictorial nature made on the child have the tendency to become more and more perfect during sleep. On the other hand, everything we tell the child on the subject of history or the being of man works on his organization of soul and spirit and tends to be forgotten, to fade away and grow dim during sleep. In teaching therefore, we have necessarily to consider whether the subject-matter works upon the etheric and physical bodies or upon the astral body and Ego-organization.

Thus on the one hand, the study of the plant kingdom, the rudiments of writing and reading of which I spoke yesterday affect the physical and etheric bodies. (I shall speak about the teaching of history later on.) On the other hand, all that is learnt of man's relation to the animal kingdom affects the astral body and Ego-organization, those higher members which pass out of the physical and etheric bodies during sleep. But the remarkable thing is that arithmetic and geometry work upon both the physical-etheric and the astral and Ego. As regards their role in education arithmetic and geometry are really like a chameleon; by their very nature they are allied to every part of man's being. Whereas lessons on the plant and animal kingdoms should be given at a definite age, arithmetic and geometry must be taught throughout the whole period of childhood, though naturally in a form suited to the changing characteristics of the different life-periods.

It is all-important to remember that the body of formative forces, the etheric body, begins to function independently when it is abandoned by the Ego and astral body. By virtue of its own inherent forces, it has ever the tendency to bring to perfection and develop what has been brought to it. So far as our astral body and Ego are concerned, we are—stupid, shall I say? For instead of perfecting what has been conveyed to these members of our being, we make it less perfect. During sleep, however, our body of formative forces continues to calculate, continues all that it has received as arithmetic and the like. We ourselves are then no longer within the physical and etheric bodies; but supersensibly, they continue to calculate or to draw geometrical figures and perfect them. If we are aware of this fact and plan our teaching accordingly, great vitality can be generated in the being of the child. We must, however, make it possible for the body of formative forces to perfect and develop what it has previously received.

In geometry, therefore, we must not take as our starting point the abstractions and intellectual formulae that are usually considered the right groundwork. We must begin with inner, not outer perception, by stimulating in the child a strong sense of symmetry for instance.

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Even in the case of the very youngest children we can begin to do this. For example: we draw some figure on the blackboard and indicate the beginning of the symmetrical line. Then we try to make the child realize that the figure is not complete; he himself must find out how to complete it. In this way we awaken an inner, active urge in the child to complete something as yet unfinished. This helps him to express an absolutely right conception of something that is a reality. The teacher, of course, must have inventive talent but that is always a very good thing. Above all else the teacher must have mobile, inventive thought.

When he has given these exercises for a certain time, he will proceed to others. For instance, he may draw some such figure as this (left) on the blackboard, and then he tries to awaken in the child an inner conception of its spatial proportions. The outer line is then varied and the child gradually learns to draw an inner form corresponding to the outer (right). In the one the curves are absolutely straightforward and simple. In the other, the lines curve outwards at various points. Then we should explain to the child that for the sake of inner symmetry

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he must make in the inner figure an inward curve at the place where the lines curve outwards in the outer figure. In the first diagram a simple line corresponds to another simple line, whereas in the second, an inward curve corresponds to an outward curve.

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Or again we draw something of this kind, where the figures together form a harmonious whole. We vary this by leaving the forms incomplete, so that the lines flow away from each other to infinity. It is as if the lines were running away and one would like to go with them. This leads to the idea that they should be bent inwards to regulate and complete the figure, and so on. I can only indicate the principle of the thing. Briefly, by working in this way, we give the child an idea of “a-symmetrical symmetries” and so prepare the body of formative forces in his waking life that during sleep it elaborates and perfects what has been absorbed during the day. Then the child will wake in an etheric body, and a physical body also, inwardly and organically vibrant. He will be full of life and vitality. This can, of course, only be achieved when the teacher has some knowledge of the working of the etheric body; if there is no such knowledge, all efforts in this direction will be mechanical and superficial.

A true teacher is not only concerned with the waking life but also with what takes place during sleep. In this connection it is important to understand certain things that happen to us all now and again. For instance, we may have pondered over some problem in the evening without finding a solution. In the morning we have solved the problem. Why? Because the etheric body, the body of formative forces, has continued its independent activity during the night.

In many respects waking life is not a perfecting but a disturbing process. It is necessary for us to leave our physical and etheric bodies to themselves for a time and not limit them by the activity of the astral body and Ego. This is proved by many things in life; for instance by the example already given of someone who is puzzling over a problem in the evening. When he wakes up in the morning he may feel slightly restless but suddenly finds that the solution has come to him unconsciously during the night. These things are not fables; they actually happen and have been proved as conclusively as many another experiment. What has happened in this particular case? The work of the etheric body has continued through the night and the human being has been asleep the whole time. You will say: “Yes, but that is not a normal occurrence, one cannot work on such a principle.” Be that as it may, it is possible to assist the continued activity of the etheric body during sleep, if, instead of beginning geometry with triangles and the like, where the intellectual element is already in evidence, we begin by conveying a concrete conception of space. In arithmetic, too, we must proceed in the same way. I will speak of this next.

A pamphlet on physics and mathematics written by Dr. von Baravalle (a teacher at the Waldorf School) will give you an excellent idea of how to bring concreteness into arithmetic and geometry. This whole mode of thought is extended in the pamphlet to the realm of physics as well, though it deals chiefly with higher mathematics. If we penetrate to its underlying essence, it is a splendid guide for teaching mathematics in a way that corresponds to the organic needs of the child's being. A starting-point has indeed been found for a reform in the method of teaching mathematics and physics from earliest childhood up to the highest stages of instruction. And we can apply to the domain of arithmetic what is said in this pamphlet about concrete conceptions of space.

Now the point is that everything conveyed in an external way to the child by arithmetic or even by counting deadens something in the human organism. To start from the single thing and add to it piece by piece is simply to deaden the organism of man. But if we first awaken a conception of the whole, starting from the whole and then proceeding to its parts, the organism is vitalised. This must be borne in mind even when the child is learning to count. As a rule we learn to count by being made to observe purely external things—things of material, physical life.

First we have the 1—we call this Unity. Then 2, 3, 4, and so forth, are added, unit by unit, and we have no idea whatever why the one follows the other, nor of what happens in the end. We are taught to count by being shown an arbitrary juxtaposition of units. I am well aware that there are many different methods of teaching children to count, but very little attention is paid nowadays to the principle of starting from the whole and then proceeding to the parts. Unity it is which first of all must be grasped as the whole and by the child as well. Anything whatever can be this Unity. Here we are obliged to illustrate it in a drawing. We must therefore draw a line; but we could use an apple just as well to show what I shall now show with a line.

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This then is 1. And now we go on from the whole to the parts, or members. Here then we have made of the 1 a 2, but the 1 still remains. The unit has been divided into two. Thus we arrive at the 2. And now we go on. By a further partition the 3 comes into being, but the unit always remains as the all-embracing whole. Then we go on through the 4, 5, and so on. Moreover, at the same time and by other means we can give an idea of the extent to which it is possible to hold together in the mind the things that relate to number and we shall discover how really limited man is in his power of mental presentation where number is concerned.

In certain nations to-day the concept of number that is clearly held in the mind's eye only goes up to 10. Here in this country money is reckoned up to 12. But that really represents the maximum of what is mentally visualised for in reality we then begin over again and in fact count what has been counted. We first count up to 10, then we begin counting the tens, 2 times 10=20, 3 times 10=30. Here we are no longer considering the things themselves. We begin to calculate by using number itself, whereas the more elementary concept requires the things themselves to be clearly present in the mind.

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We are very proud of the fact that we are far advanced in our methods of counting compared with primitive peoples who depend on their ten fingers. But there is little foundation for this pride. We count up to 10 because we sense our hands as members. We feel our two hands symmetrically with their 10 fingers. This feeling also arises and is inwardly experienced by the child, and we must call forth the sense of number by a transition from the whole to the parts. Then we shall easily find the other transition which leads us to the counting in which one is added to another. Eventually, of course, we can pass on to the ordinary 1, 2, 3, etc. But this mere adding of one or more units must only be introduced as a second stage, for it has significance only here in physical space, whereas to divide a unity into its members has an inner significance such that it can continue to vibrate in the etheric body even though quite beneath our consciousness. It is important to know these things.

Having taught the child to count in this way, the following will also be important. We must not pass on to addition in a lifeless, mechanical way merely adding one item to another in series. Life comes into the thing when we take our start not from the parts of the addition sum but from the sum total itself. We take a number of objects; for example, a number of little balls. We have now got far enough in counting to be able to say: Here are 14 balls. Now we divide them, extending this concept of a part still further. Here we have 5, here 4, here 5 again. Thus we have separated the sum into 5 and 4 and 5. That is, we go from the sum to the items composing it, from the whole to the parts. The method we should use with the child is first to set down the sum before him and then let the child himself perceive how the given sum can be divided into several items.

This is exceedingly important. Just as to drive a horse we do not harness him tail foremost, so in the teaching of arithmetic we must have the right direction. We must start from a whole which is always actually present, from a reality, from what is present as a whole and then pass on to the separate parts; later, we find our way to the ordinary addition sum.

Continuing thus, from the living whole to the separate parts, one touches the reality underlying all arithmetical calculations: i.e., the setting in vibration of the body of formative forces. This body needs a living stimulus for its formative activity and once energised it will continually perfect the vibrations without the need of drawing upon the astral body and Ego-organization with their disturbing elements.

Your teaching work will also be essentially enhanced and vivified if you similarly reverse the other simple forms of calculation. To-day, one might say, they are standing on their heads and must be reversed. Try, for instance, to bring the child to say: “If I have 7, how much must I take away to get 3,” instead of “What remains over if I take 4 from 7?” That we have 7 is the real thing and that 3 remains is also real; how much must we take away from 7 to get 3? Beginning with this form of thought we stand in the midst of life, whereas with the opposite form we are dealing with abstractions. Proceeding in this way, we can easily find our way further. Thus, once more, in multiplication and division we should not ask what will result when we divide 10 into two parts, but how must we divide 10 to get the number 5. The real aspect is given; moreover in life we want eventually to get at something which has real significance. Here are two children, 10 apples are to be divided among them. Each of them is to get 5. These are the realities. What we have to deal with is the abstract part that comes in the middle. Done in this way, things are always immediately adapted to life and should we succeed in this, the result will be that what is the usual, purely external way of adding, by counting up one thing after another with a deadening effect upon the arithmetic lessons, will become a vivifying force, of especial importance in this branch of our educational work. And it is evident that precisely by this method we take into account the sub-conscious in man, that is, the part which works on during sleep and which also works subconsciously during the waking hours. For one is aware of a small part only of the soul's experience; nevertheless the rest is continually active. Let us make it possible for the physical and etheric bodies of the child to work in a healthy way, realizing that we can only do so if we bring an intense life, an awakened interest and attention, especially into our teaching of arithmetic and geometry.

The question has arisen during this Conference as to whether it is really a good thing to continue the different lessons for certain periods of time as we do in the Waldorf School. Now a right division of the lessons into periods is fruitful in the very highest degree. “Period” teaching means that one lesson shall not perpetually encroach upon another. Instead of having timetables setting forth definite hours:—8 – 9, arithmetic, 9 – 10, history, religion, or whatever it may be, we give one main lesson on the same subject for two hours every morning for a period of three, four, or five weeks. Then for perhaps five or six weeks we pass on to another subject, but one which in my view should develop out of the other, and which is always the same during the two hours. The child thus concentrates upon a definite subject for some weeks.

The question was asked whether too much would not be forgotten, whether in this way the children would not lose what they had been taught. If the lessons have been rightly given, however, the previous subject will go on working in the subconscious regions while another is being taken. In “period” lessons we must always reckon with the subconscious processes in the child. There is nothing more fruitful than to allow the results of the teaching given during a period of three or four weeks to rest within the soul and so work on in the human being without interference.

It will soon be apparent that when a subject has been rightly taught and the time comes round for taking it up again for a further period it emerges in a different form from what it does when it has not been well taught. To make the objection that because the subjects will be forgotten it cannot be right to teach in this way, is to ignore the factors that are at work. We must naturally reckon on being able to forget, for just think of all we should have to carry about in our heads if we could not forget and then remember again! The part played by the fact of forgetting therefore as well as the actual instruction must be reckoned with in true education.

This does not mean that it should be a matter for rejoicing whenever children forget. That may safely be left to them! Everything depends on what has so passed down into the subconscious regions, that it can be duly recalled. The unconscious belongs to the being of man as well as the conscious. In regard to all these matters we must realize that it is the task of education to appeal not only to the whole human being, but also to his different parts and members. Here again it is essential to start from the whole; there must first be comprehension of the whole and then of the parts. But to this end it is also necessary to take one's start from the whole. First we must grasp the whole and then the parts. If in counting we simply place one thing beside another, and add, and add, and add, we are leaving out the human being as a whole. But we do appeal to the whole human being when we lay hold of Unity and go from that to Numbers, when we lay hold of the sum, the minuend, the product and thence pass on to the parts.

The teaching of history is very open to the danger of our losing sight of the human being. We have seen that in really fruitful education everything must be given its right place. The plants must be studied in their connection with the earth and the different animal species in their connection with man. Whatever the subject-matter, the concrete human element must be retained; everything must be related in some way to man.

But when we begin to teach the child history, we must understand that at the age when it is quite possible for him to realize the connection of plant-life with the earth and the earth itself as an organism, when he can see in the human being a living synthesis of the whole animal kingdom, he is still unable to form any idea of so-called causal connections in history. We may teach history very skilfully in the ordinary sense, describing one epoch after another and showing how the first is the cause of the second; we may describe how in the history of art, Michelangelo followed Leonardo da Vinci, for instance, in a natural sequence of cause and effect. But before the age of twelve, the child has no understanding for the working of cause and effect, a principle which has become conventional in more advanced studies. To deduce the later from the earlier seems to him like so much unmusical strumming on a piano, and it is only by dint of coercion that he will take it in at all. It has the same effect on his soul as a piece of stone that is swallowed and passes into the stomach. Just as we would never dream of giving the stomach a stone instead of bread, so we must make sure that we nourish the soul not with stones but with food that it can assimilate. And so history too, must be brought into connection with Man and to that end our first care must be to awaken a conception of the historical sequence of time in connection with the human being.

Let us take three history books, the first dealing with antiquity, the second with the Middle Ages, and the third with our modern age. As a rule, little attention is paid to the conception of time in itself. But suppose I begin by saying to the child: “You are now ten years old, so you were alive in the year 1913. Your father is much older than you and he was alive in the year 1890; his father, again, was alive in 1850. Now imagine that you are standing here and stretching your arm back to someone who represents your father; he stretches his arm back to his father (your grandfather), now you have reached the year 1850.” The child then begins to realize that approximately one century is represented by three or four generations. The line of generations running backwards from the twentieth century brings him finally to his very early ancestors. Thus the sixtieth generation back leads into the epoch of the birth of Christ. In a large room it will be possible to arrange some sixty children standing in a line, stretching an arm backwards to each other. Space is, as it were, changed into time.

If the teacher has a fertile, inventive mind, he can find other ways and means of expressing the same thing—I am merely indicating a principle. In this way the child begins to realize that he himself is part of history; figures like Alfred the Great, Cromwell and others are made to appear as if they themselves were ancestors. The whole of history thus becomes an actual part of life at school when it is presented to the child in the form of a living conception of time.

History must never be separated from the human being. The child must not think of it as so much book-lore. Many people seem to think that history is something contained in books, although of course it is not always quite as bad as that. At all events, we must try by every possible means to awaken a realization that history is a living process and that man himself stands within its stream.

When a true conception of time has been awakened, we can begin to imbue history with inner life and soul, just as we did in the case of arithmetic and geometry, by unfolding not a dead but a living perception. There is a great deal of quibbling to-day about the nature of perception, but the whole point is that we must unfold living and not dead perception. In the symmetry-exercises of which I spoke, the soul actually lives in the act of perception. That is living perception. Just as our aim is to awaken a living perception of space, so must all healthy teaching of history given to a child between the ages of nine and twelve be filled with an element proceeding in this case not from the qualities of space, but from the qualities of heart and soul.

The history lessons must be permeated through and through with a quality proceeding from the heart. And so we must present it as far as possible in the form of pictures. Figures, real forms must stand there and they must never be described in a cold, prosaic way. Without falling into the error of using them as examples for moral or religious admonition, our descriptions must nevertheless be coloured with both morality and religion. History must above all lay hold of the child's life of feeling and will. He must be able to enter into a personal relationship with historic figures and with the modes of life prevailing in the various historical epochs. Nor need we confine ourselves merely to descriptions of human beings. We may, for instance, describe the life of some town in the twelfth century, but everything we say must enter the domains of feeling and will in the child. He must himself be able to live in the events, to form his own sympathies and antipathies. His life of feeling and will must be stimulated.

This will show you that the element of art must everywhere enter into the teaching of history. The element of art comes into play when, as I often describe it, a true economy is exercised in teaching. This economy can be exercised if the teacher has thoroughly mastered his subject-matter before he goes into the classroom; if it is no longer necessary for him to ponder over anything because if rightly prepared it is there plastically before his soul. He must be so well prepared that the only thing still to be done is the artistic moulding of his lesson. The problem of teaching is thus not merely a question of the pupil's interest and diligence, but first and foremost of the teacher's interest, diligence and sincerity.

No lesson should be given that has not previously been a matter of deep experience on the part of the teacher. Obviously, therefore, the organization of the body of teachers must be such that every teacher is given ample time to make himself completely master of the lessons he has to give.

It is a dreadful thing to see a teacher walking round the desks with a book in his hands, still wrestling with the subject-matter. Those who do not realize how contrary such a thing is to all true principles of education do not know what is going on unconsciously in the souls of the children, nor do they realize the terrible effect of this unconscious experience. If we give history lessons in school from note-books, the child comes to a certain definite conclusion, not consciously, but unconsciously. It is an unconscious, intellectual conclusion, but it is deeply rooted in his organism: “Why should I learn all these things? The teacher himself doesn't know them, for he has to read from notes. I can do that too, later on, so there is no need for me to learn them first.” The child does not of course come to this conclusion consciously, but as a matter of fact when judgments are rooted in the unconscious life of heart and mind, they have all the greater force. The lessons must pulsate with inner vitality and freshness proceeding from the teacher's own being. When he is describing historical figures for instance the teacher should not first of all have to verify dates. I have already spoken of the way in which we should convey a conception of time by a picture of successive generations. Another element too must pervade the teaching of history. It must flow forth from the teacher himself. Nothing must be abstract; the teacher himself as a human being must be the vital factor.

It has been said many times that education should work upon the being of man as a whole and not merely on one part of his nature. Important as it is to consider what the child ought to learn and whether we are primarily concerned with his intellect or his will, the question of the teacher's influence is equally important. Since it is a matter of educating the whole nature and being of man, the teacher must himself be “man” in the full sense of the word, that is to say, not one who teaches and works on the basis of mechanical memory or mechanical knowledge, but who teaches out of his own being, his full manhood. That is the essential thing.

In the last lecture¹ I drew your attention to the necessity, as a point of departure in teaching, for a certain artistic shaping, to engage the whole being, above all, the “will-life.” From the discussions which we have pursued you will see at once why it is important, and you will see, further, that teaching must be managed so as always to take into account that man contains a dead, a dying element, which must be transmuted into something living. When we approach nature and other realms of the world in a merely contemplative attitude, by mental pictures, we are in the line of death; but when we approach nature and other world-beings with our will, we take part in a process of vivification. As educators, then, we shall have the task of continually vivifying dead substance, to protect from total expiration that quality in man which gravitates towards death; even, in a sense, to fertilize it with what vivifying element the will can give rise to. For this reason we must not be afraid of beginning our work with the child with a certain artistic form of teaching.

Now everything which approaches man artistically falls into two streams—the stream of the plastically formative and the stream of the musically poetical. These two domains of art, that of the plastically formative and the musically poetical, are really poles apart, although precisely through their polar antithesis they are well able to be reconciled in a higher synthesis, in a higher unity. You will be familiar, of course, with the fact that this duality of the artistic element comes to light even in racial terms during the course of the evolution of the universe. You need but remember certain writings by Heinrich Heine for this duality to be evident—he showed that what proceeded from the Greek people, or was related to them, that is what grew racially from their inner nature, is pre-eminently disposed towards the plastically formative shaping of the world, whereas all that sprang from the Jewish element is especially disposed to the really musical element in the world. You find, then, these two streams racially distributed, and anyone who is sensitive to these things will very easily be able to trace them in the history of art. Naturally there are continually arising aspirations, justified aspirations, to unite the musical with the plastically formative. But they can only really be completely united in a perfectly developed Eurhythmy, where the musical and the visible can become one—naturally not yet, for we are only at the beginning, but in the aims and ultimate achievement of Eurhythmy. It must, therefore, be remembered that the whole harmonious nature of man contains a plastically formative element towards which the will-impulse in man inclines. How, then, can we properly describe this human talent for becoming plastically creative?

Were we to be purely intellectual beings, were we only to observe the world through conceptions, we should gradually become walking corpses. We should, in actual fact, make the impression here on earth of dying beings. Only through the urge we feel within us to animate plastically-creatively with the imagination what is dying in concepts, do we save ourselves from this dying. You must beware of wanting to reduce everything to unity in an abstract way, if you wish to be true educators. Now you must not say: “We are not to cultivate the death-giving element in man, we are to avoid cultivating the conceptual, the thought-world in the human being.” In the psychic spiritual realm that would result in the same error as if doctors, turning into great pedagogues, were to contemplate the course of civilization and to say: “The bones represent the side of death in man; let us, then, protect man from this dying element, let us try to keep his bones alive, soft.” The opinion of such doctors would end in giving everyone rickets. It always implies a false principle to proceed to say, as many theosophists and anthroposophists like to do, if there is any talk of Ahriman and Lucifer² and their influences on human evolution; they say these things harm human nature, therefore we must beware of them. But that would be equivalent to excluding man from all the elements which should form his constitution. In the same way, we cannot prevent the cultivation of the conceptual element; we must cultivate it, but at the same time we must not neglect to approach human nature with the plastically formative. In this way there results the desired unity. It does not result from the extinction of the one element, but from the cultivation of both, side by side. In this respect people to-day cannot think in terms of unity. For this reason, too, they do not understand the Threefold State.³ In social life the only right solution is for the spiritual life, economic life, and the life of rights, to stand side by side and for their union to take place of itself, creatively, and not through human abstract organization. Only imagine what it would mean if people were to say: “As the head is a unity, and the rest of the body, too, the human body is really an anomaly; we ought to evolve the head from the rest of the body and allow it to move freely in the world!” We only act in accordance with nature when we allow the whole to grow out of one-sided aspects.

The question, then, is to develop the one isolated aspect, conceptual education. Then the other isolated aspect, the plastically formative, animates what is developed in the mere concept. The question here is to elevate these things into consciousness without losing our naivety, for this age always annihilates consciousness. There is no need to sacrifice our naivety if we fashion things concretely, not abstractedly. For instance, it would be a very good thing from all points of view to start as early as possible with the plastically formative, by letting the child live in the world of colour, by saturating oneself as a teacher with the instructions given by Goethe in the didactic part of his “Theory of Colour” (Farbenlehre). What is the basis of the didactic part of Goethe's Farbenlehre?⁴ The secret is that Goethe always imbues each separate colour with a feeling-shade. He emphasizes, for instance, the rousing quality of red, he emphasizes not only what the eye sees, but what the soul experiences in red. In the same way he lays stress upon the tranquillity, the self-absorption, experienced by the soul in blue. It is possible, without jarring on the child's naivety, to introduce him into the world of colour so that the feeling-shades of the world of colour issue forth in living experiences. (If, incidentally, the child gets itself at first thoroughly grubby it will be a good step in his education if he is trained to get himself less grubby.)

Begin as early as possible to bring the child in touch with colours, and in so doing it is a good idea to apply different colours to a coloured background from those you apply to a white surface; and try to awaken such experiences in the child as can only arise from a spiritual scientific understanding of the world of colour.⁵ If you work as I have done with a few friends at the smaller cupola of the Dornach building,⁶ you acquire a living relation to colour. You then discover if, for instance, you are painting with blue, that the blue colour itself possesses the power to portray inwardness. We can say, then, that in painting an angel impelled by his own inwardness you will feel the spontaneous urge to keep to blue, because the shading of blue, the light and dark of blue, produces in the soul the feeling of movement pertaining to the nature of the soul. A yellow-reddish colour produces in the soul the experience of lustre, giving a manifestation towards the external. If, then, the impression is aggressive, if we are encountered by a warning apparition, if the angel has something to say to us, if he desires to speak to us from his background, we express this by shades of yellow and red. In an elementary fashion we can invite children to understand this living inwardness of colours.

Then we ourselves must be very profoundly convinced that mere drawing is something untrue. The truest thing is the experience of colour; less true is the experience of light and shade, and the least true is drawing. Drawing as such already approaches that abstract element present in nature as a process of dying. We ought really only to draw with the consciousness that we are essentially drawing dead substance. With colours we should paint with the consciousness that we are evoking the living element from what is dead. What, after all, is the horizontal line? When we simply take a pencil and draw a horizontal line, we do an abstract, a dead thing, something untrue to nature, which always has two streams: the dead and the living. We extract the one trend and affirm that it is nature. But if I say: “I see green and I see blue, which are different from each other,” the horizontal line emerges from the contiguity of the colours and I express a truth. In this way you will gradually realize that the form of nature really arises from colour, that therefore the function of drawing is abstraction. We ought to produce already in the growing child a proper feeling for these things, because they vivify his whole soul's being and bring it into a right relation with the outside world. Our civilization is notoriously sick for lack of a right relation to the outside world. There is absolutely no need, I wish to remind you, to return to one-sided-ness again in teaching. For instance, it will be quite wise gradually to pass from the purely abstract art which people produce in their delight in beauty, to concrete art, to the arts and crafts, for humanity to-day sorely needs truly artistic productions in the general conditions of civilization. We have in actual fact reduced ourselves in the course of the nineteenth century to making furniture to please the eye, for example to making a chair for the eye, whereas its inherent character should be to be felt when it is sat on. To that end it should be fashioned; we should feel the chair; it must not only be beautiful; its nature must be to be sat on. The whole fusion of the sense of feeling with the chair, and even the cultivated sense of feeling—with the way in which the arms are formed on the chair, etc.—should be expressed in the chair, in our desire to find support in the chair. If, therefore, we were to introduce into school-life teaching in handiwork and manual skill with a decided technical-industrial bias, we should render the school a great service. For just imagine what a great cultural problem the individual who means well to humanity is faced with to-day, when he sees how, for instance, abstractions are on the point of inundating modern civilization: there will no longer be even a residue of beauty in civilization; this will be exclusively utilitarian! And even if people dream of beauty, they will have no sense of the compulsion we are under to emphasize more emphatically than ever the necessity for beauty, because of the socializing of life towards which we gravitate. This has to be realized.

There must, therefore, be no reservations with the plastically formative in teaching. But just as little must there be reservations in the true experience of that dynamic element which is expressed in architecture. It is very easy here to fall into the error of introducing the child too early to this experience. But, in a sense, even this must happen; I had addressed a few words to the children of Münich who were on holiday at Dornach, eighty of them, and who had had twelve lessons in Eurhythmy from Frau Kisseleff,⁷ and who were able to demonstrate what they had learnt to a group of their staff and Dornach anthroposophists. The children had their hearts in their work, and at the end of the complete Eurhythmy performance, which also included demonstrations by our Dornach Eurhythmists, the children came up and said: “Did you like our performance too?” They had the real urge to perform as well. It was a beautiful thing. Now at the request of the people who had arranged the whole entertainment, I had to say a few words to the children. It was the evening before the children were to be taken back again to Münich and district. I expressly said: “I am saying something to you now which you do not understand yet. You will only understand it later. But notice if you hear the word ‘Soul’ in future, for you cannot understand it yet!” This drawing of the child's attention to something which he does not yet understand, which must first mature, is extraordinarily important. And the principle is false which is so much to the fore in these days: We are only to impart to the child what he can at the moment understand—this principle makes education a dead thing and takes away its living element. For education is only living when what has been assimilated is cherished for a time deep in the soul, and then, after a while, is recalled to the surface. This is very important in education from seven to fifteen years of age; in these years a great deal can be introduced tenderly into the child's soul which can only be understood later. I beg you to feel no scruple at teaching beyond the child's age and appealing to something which he can only understand later. The contrary principle has introduced a deadening element into our pedagogy. But the child must know that he has to wait. It is one of the feelings we can promote within the child that he must be ready to wait for a perfect understanding until much later. For this reason it was not at all a bad idea in olden times to make the children simply learn 1 × 1 = 1, 2 × 2 = 4, 3 × 3 = 9, etc., instead of their learning it, as they do to-day, from the calculating machine. This principle of forcing back the child's comprehension must be overthrown. It can naturally only be done with tact, for we must not depart too far from what the child can love, but he can absorb a great deal of material, purely on the teacher's authority, for which understanding only dawns later.

If you introduce the plastically formative element to the child in this way you will see that you can vivify much of what is sapping away life.

The musical element, which lives in the human being from birth onwards, and which—as I have already said—expresses itself particularly in the child's third and fourth years in a gift for dancing, is essentially an element of will, potent with life. But, extraordinary as it may sound, it is true that it contains as it plays its part in the child, an excessive life, a benumbing life, a life directed against consciousness. The child's development is very easily brought by a profoundly musical experience into a certain degree of reduced consciousness. One must say, therefore: “The educational value of music must consist in a constant inter-harmonizing of the Dionysian element springing up in the human being, with the Apollonian. While the death-giving element must be vivified by the plastically formative element, a supremely living power in music must be partially subdued and toned down so that it does not affect the human being too profoundly.” This is the feeling with which we should introduce music to children.

Now this is the position: Karma develops human nature with a bias towards one side or the other. This is particularly noticeable in music. But I want to point out that here it is over-emphasized. We should not insist too much: This is a musical child; this one is not musical. Certainly the fact is there, but to draw from it the conclusion that the unmusical child must be kept apart from all music and only the musical children must be given a musical education, is thoroughly false; even the most unmusical children should be included in any musical activity. It is right without a doubt, from the point of view of producing music more and more, only to encourage the really musical children to appear in public. But even the unmusical children should be there, developing sensitiveness, for you will notice that even in the unmusical child there is a trace of the musical disposition which is only very deep down and which loving assistance brings to the surface. That should never be neglected, for it is far truer than we imagine that, in Shakespeare's words

The man that hath no music in himself
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; ...
Let no such man be trusted.

The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene I.

That is a very fundamental truth. Nothing should therefore be left undone to bring in touch with music the children considered at first to be unmusical.

But of the greatest importance, particularly socially, will be the cultivation of music in an elementary way, so that, without any paralysing theory, the children are taught from the elementary facts of music. The children should get a clear idea of the elements of music, of harmonies and melodies, etc., from the application of the most elementary facts, from aural analysis of melodies and harmonies, so that in music we proceed to build up the structure of the artistic element as a whole in just the same elementary way as we do with the plastically formative element, where we begin with the isolated detail. This will help to mitigate the persistent intrusion into music of dilettantism; although it, must not for a moment be denied that even musical dilettantism has a certain utility in the social life of the community. Without it we should not with ease be able to get very far, but it should confine itself to the listeners. Precisely if this were done it would be possible to give due prominence within our social life to those who can really produce music. For it should not be forgotten that all plastically formative art tends to individualize people: all the art of music and poetry, on the other hand, furthers social intercourse. People come together and unite in music and poetry; but they become more individual through plastic and formative art. The individuality is better preserved by the plastically formative; social life is better maintained in common enjoyment and experience of music and poetry. Poetry is created in the solitude of the soul—there alone; but it is understood through its general reception. With no intention of inventing an abstraction we can say that man discloses his innermost soul in the creation of poetry, and that his inner soul finds response again in the innermost soul of other people who absorb his creation. That is why pleasure, above all things, in, and yearning for, music and poetry, should be cultivated in the growing child. In poetry the child should early become familiar with real poetry. The individual to-day grows up into a social order in which he is tyrannized over by the prose of language. There are to-day innumerable reciters who tyrannize over people with prose, and place in the foreground of the poem nothing but the prose-content. And when the poem is so recited that the emphasis is laid on the thought content, we consider it nowadays the perfect recitation. But a really perfect recitation is one which particularly emphasizes the musical element. In the few words with which I sometimes introduce our Eurhythmy demonstrations, I have often drawn attention to the way in which in a poet like Schiller a poem arises from the depth of his soul. In many of his poems he first feels the lilt of an undefined melody, and only later into this undefined melody does he sink, as it were, the content, the words. The undefined melody is the element in which the content is suspended, and the poetical activity lives in the fashioning of the language, not in the content, but in the measure, in the rhythm, in the preservation of the rhyme, that is in the music which underlies poetry. I said that the present mode of recitation is to tyrannize over people, because it is always tyranny to attach the greatest value to the prose, to the content of a poem, to its abstract treatment. Spiritual-scientifically we can only escape the tyranny by presenting a subject, as I always try to do, from the most different angles, so that comprehension of it is kept fluid and artistic. I felt particular pleasure when one of our artistically gifted friends said that certain cycles of my lectures, purely in virtue of their inner structure, could be transformed into a symphony. Something of this kind actually does underlie the structure of certain cycles. Take, for instance, the cycle given in Vienna⁸ on the life between death and a new birth, and you will see that you could make a symphony out of it. That is possible because an anthroposophical lecture should not make a tyrannical impression, but should arouse people's will. When, however, people come to a subject like the “Threefold State,” they say that they cannot understand it. In reality it is not difficult to understand; only they are not used to the mode of expression.

It is consequently of extreme importance to draw the child's attention in every poem to the music underlying it. For this reason the division of teaching should be arranged so that the lessons of recitation should come as near as possible to those of music. The teacher of music should be in close contact with the teacher of recitation, so that when the one lesson follows the other a living connection between the two is achieved. It would be especially useful if the teacher of music were still present during the recitation lesson and vice versa, so that each could continually indicate the connections with the other lesson. This would completely exclude what is at present so very prominent in our school-life, and what is really horrible—the abstract explanation of poems. This detailed explanation of poems, verging perilously on grammar, is the death of all that should influence the child. This “interpretation” of poems is a quite appalling thing.

Now you will object: But the interpreting is necessary to understand the poem! The answer to that must be: Teaching must be arranged to form a whole. This must be discussed in the weekly Staff-meeting. This and that poem come up for recitation. Then there must flow in from the rest of the teaching what is necessary for the understanding of the poem. Care must be taken that the child brings ready with him to the recitation lesson what he needs to understand the poem. You can quite well—for instance, take Schiller's Spaziergang—explain the cultural-historical aspect, the psychological aspect of the poem, not taking one line after the other with the poem in your hand, but so as to familiarize the child with the substance. In the recitation lesson stress must be laid solely on the artistic communication of art.

If we were to guide the artistic element like this, in its two streams, to harmonize human nature through and through, we should have very important results. We must simply consider that when a human being sings it is an infinitely valuable achievement of companionship with the world. Singing, you see, is itself an echo of the world. When the human being sings he expresses the meaningful wisdom from which the world is built. But we must not forget that when he sings he combines the cosmic melody with the human word. That is why something unnatural enters into song. This can easily be felt in the incompatibility of the sound of a poem with its content. It would mean a certain progress if one were to pursue the attempt already begun, to maintain sheer recitative in the lines, and only to animate the rhyme with melody, so that the lines would pass in a flow of recitative and the rhyme be sung like an aria.⁹ This would result in a clean severance of the music of a poem from its words, which, of course, disturb the actually musical person.

And again, when the musical ear of the individual is cultivated he himself becomes more disposed to a living experience of the musical essence of the world. This is of the supremest value for the evolution of the individual. We must not forget: In the plastically formative we contemplate beauty, we live it; in music we ourselves become beauty. This is extraordinarily significant. The further back you go into olden times the less you find what we really call music. You have the distinct impression that music is only in process of creation, in spite of the fact that many musical forms are already dying out again. This arises from a very significant cosmic fact. In all plastic or formative art man was the imitator of the old celestial order. The highest imitation of a world-heaven order is the plastic formative imitation of the world. But in music man himself is creative. Here he does not create out of a given material, but lays the very foundations for what will only come to fulfilment in the future. It is, of course, possible to create music of a kind by imitating musically, for instance, the rushing of water or the song of the nightingale. But true music and true poetry are a creation of something new, and from this creation of the new will arise one day the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions.¹⁰ In linking up with music we retrieve, in a sense, what is still to be; we retrieve it for reality out of the present nullity of its existence.

Only in linking up in this way with the great facts of the world do we acquire a right understanding of teaching. Only this can confer on it the right consecration, and in receiving this consecration it is really transformed into a kind of divine service.

I have set up more or less an ideal. But surely our concrete practice can be ranged in the realm of the ideal. There is one thing we ought not to neglect, for instance, when we go with the children we are teaching—as we shall, of course—into the mountains and the fields, when, that is, we take them out to nature. In introducing these children like this to nature we should always remember that natural science teaching itself only belongs to the school building. Let us suppose that we are just coming into the country with the children, and we draw their attention to a stone or a flower. In so doing we should scrupulously avoid allowing so much as an echo of what we teach in the school-room to be heard outside in nature. Out in the open we should refer the children to nature in quite a different way from what we do in the class-room. We ought never to neglect the opportunity of drawing their attention to the fact that we are bringing them out into the open to feel the beauty of nature and we are taking the products of nature back into the school-room, so that there we can study and analyse nature with them. We should, therefore, never mention to the children, while we are outside, what we explain to them in school, for instance, about plants. We ought to lay stress on the difference between studying dead nature in the class-room—and contemplating nature in its beauty out of doors. We should compare these two experiences side by side. Whoever takes the children out into nature to exemplify to them out of doors from some object of nature what he is teaching in the class room is not doing right. Even in children we should evoke a kind of feeling that it is sad to have to analyse nature when we return to the class-room. Only the children should feel the necessity of it, because, of course, the disturbance of what is natural is essential even in the building up of the human being. We should on no account suppose that we do well to expound a beetle scientifically out of doors. The scientific explanation of the beetle belongs to the class-room. What we should do when we take the children out into the open is to excite pleasure in the beetle, delight in the way he runs, in his amusing ways, in his relation to the rest of nature. And in the same way we should not neglect to awaken the distinct sense in the child's soul that music is a creative element, an element that goes beyond nature, and that man himself becomes a fellow-creator of nature when he creates music. This sense will naturally have to be formed in a very rudimentary manner as an experience, but the first experience to be felt from the will-like element of music is that man should feel himself part of the cosmos.

• 1. Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik, third lecture (the accompanying course. See Preface).
• 2. R. Steiner, Outlines of Occult Science, Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press of the Goetheanum, Dornach, also the Four Mystery Plays.
• 3. R. Steiner, The Threefold State.
• 4. See the Introduction to Goethe's works on Natural Science, edited by Rudolf Steiner.
• 5. R. Steiner's Theory of Colour.
• 6. Wege zu einem neuen Baustil (“Ways to a New Style in Architecture”) five lectures by Rudolf Steiner, with 104 illustrations. The Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press of the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.
• 7. Eurhythmy teacher at the Goetheanum, 1913–27.
• 8. Inneres Wesen des deuschen und Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Gebrut, 1914.
• 9. Paul Baumann, Songs of the Free Waldorf School.
• 10. R. Steiner, Outlines of Occult Science.

We must emphasize again and again that the anthroposophical world-conception fosters a consciousness of the common source of art, religion and science. During ancient periods of evolution these three were not separated; they existed in unity. The Mysteries which fostered that unity were a kind of combination art institute, church and school. For what they offered was not a one-sided sole dependence upon language. The words uttered by the initiate as both cognition and spiritual revelation were supported and illustrated by sacred rituals unfolding, before listening spectators, in mighty pictures.

Thus alongside the enunciation of earthly knowledge, religious rituals imaged forth what could be divined and perceived as events and facts of the super-sensible worlds. Religion and cognition were one. Moreover, the beautiful, the artistic, had its place within the Mysteries; ritual and image, acting together, produced a high art. In other terms, the religiously-oriented rituals which fired man's will and the knowledge-bearing words which illumined him inwardly had, both, a strong ally in the beautiful, the artistic. Thus consciousness of the brotherly unity of religion, science and art must today be ever-present in anthroposophical world-research; an interlinkage brought about not artificially, but in a self-evident, natural way.

Modern intellectualistic-materialistic science tries to grasp the world in thoughts. As a result, certain ideas give conceptual form to the phenomena of nature and its creatures. We translate natural laws into thoughts. During the recent materialistic age it was characteristic of those preoccupied with cognition that they gradually lost artistic sensibility. Acceptance of modern science means yielding to dead thoughts and looking for them in nature. Natural history, that proud achievement of our science, consists of dead thoughts, corpses of what constituted our soul before we descended from super-sensible into sensory existence.

Anyone looking at the corpse of a human being can see by his form that he could not have achieved this state through any mere laws of nature as we know them; he had first to die. A living person became a corpse by dying. Similarly anyone with real cognition knows that his thoughts are corpses of that vital soul-being within which he lived before incarnation. Our earth-thoughts are actually corpses of our pre-earthly soul-life. And they are abstract precisely because they are corpses. As people during the last few centuries became more and more enamored of abstractions, of these thoughts which insinuated themselves into practical life, they came more and more to resemble them in their higher soul-life. Especially people with a scientific education. This estranged them from art. The more one surrenders to purely abstract thoughts, dead thoughts, the more one becomes a stranger to art. For art desires and is centered on the living.

A soul seriously occupied with anthroposophical cognition enters the opposite state. Whereas intellectuality approaches everything from the standpoint of logic, and tries to explain even the arts according to logical rules, in anthroposophical thinking there arises at a certain moment a great longing for art. For this different type of cognition leads to a realization that thoughts are not the whole living reality; something else is needed. Since the entire soul life now remains living instead of being killed by dead thoughts, one comes to need to experience the world artistically. For if one lives in abstract dead thoughts, art is only a luxury formed out of man's dreams and illusions; an addition to life. But—to repeat—the anthroposophical method of knowledge brings one to a realization that thoughts are not the living reality; they are dead gestures which merely point to that reality; and at a certain stage one feels that, to attain reality, one must begin to create; must pass over to art. Ideas alone simply cannot present the world in its rich full content. Thus Anthroposophy prepares the soul for artistic feeling and creating.

Abstract thoughts deaden artistic phantasy. Becoming more and more logical, one takes to writing commentaries on works of art. This is a terrible product of a materialistic age: scholars write commentaries on art. But these academic explanations, Faust commentaries, Hamlet commentaries, learned descriptions of the art of Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, are coffins in which genuine artistic feeling, living art, lie buried. If one picks up a Faust or Hamlet commentary, it is like touching a corpse. Abstract thoughts have murdered the work of art.

Anthroposophy, on the other hand, tries to approach art out of the living spirit—as I did in speaking of Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. I did not write a commentary, I let the living lead me into the living. During an inartistic age there appear many scholarly treatises on art, works on aesthetics. They are non-art, counter-art. Savants may reply: To take hold of the world artistically is to move away from reality; it is not scientific; if reality is to be seized, phantasy has to be suppressed, imagination eliminated; one must confine oneself to the logical. This may be demanded. But consider: If reality, if nature herself were an artist, then it would be of no avail to demand that everything be grasped solely through logic; something vital in it would elude logical understanding. And nature is indeed an artist; a truth discovered by anthroposophical cognition at a certain point in its development. Therefore, in order to grasp nature, especially the highest in nature, man's physical form, one must cease to live exclusively in ideas and begin to “think” in pictures. No anatomy, no physiology, can ever grasp the physical human being in his forms. Understanding is achieved only by living cognition that has been given wings by artistic feeling.

Thus it was inevitable that the idea to build a Goetheanum flowed over into artistic creation. Anthroposophical ideas flowered into artistic forms. The same ideas manifested in a different manner. This is the way true art always develops in the world. Goethe who was able to feel artistically has coined the following beautiful words: “Art a manifestation of secret laws of nature which, without it, would remain forever hidden.” He felt what anthroposophists must feel. If one has attained to a cognitional comprehension of the world, there arises a vital need not just to continue forming ideas but to create artistically in sculpture, painting, music, poetry.

But then an unfortunate thing may happen. If one tries, as I tried in my four Mystery dramas, to present what cannot be expressed in ideas concerning the essential nature of man, there spring up sympathetic but not fully comprehending people who try to explain everything in ideas, who write commentaries. This—I repeat—is an appalling thing. It happens because the deadening element of abstract thought is often carried even into the anthroposophical movement. Actually, within this movement there should be a continual quickening of abstract thoughts. What can no longer be experienced intellectually can be enjoyed through living dramatic characters as they move before and confront us. Beholding them we let them act upon us as real figures instead of trying to explain them abstractly. Genuine Anthroposophy leads, inevitably, at a certain point, into art because, far from thought-killing, it inspires us; permits the artistic spring in the human soul to gush forth.

Then one is not tempted to form ideas symbolically or allegorically, but to let all ideas flow to a certain point and to follow the purely artistic form. Thus the Goetheanum architecture rose completely idea-less (if I may use that odd expression) as a result of feeling the forms out of the spirit. It should be seen, not explained. When I had the honor of conducting guests through the Goetheanum, I usually made introductory remarks something like this: “You naturally expect me to explain the building, but this is uncongenial. During the next half hour, while guiding you, I must do something I very much dislike, for the Goetheanum is here to be seen, not explained.” This I emphasized over and over, for the edifice standing there should live as image, not in abstract deadening thoughts. Explanations being unavoidable, I tried to make mine not abstract but imbued with the feelings embodied in the building's own forms, pictures, colors. One can be spiritual in forms, colors, tones, as well as words. Indeed, only then does one experience the really artistic. For here in our sense world art is always an influx of the super-sensible. We can perceive this truth in any work of art which presents itself in forms having their origin in human nature.

Take the art of architecture which, to a large degree, today serves utilitarian purposes. To understand architectural forms, one must feel the human form itself artistically. This is necessarily accompanied by a feeling that man has foresaken the spiritual worlds to which he rightfully belongs. A bear in its fur or a dog in its pelt shows itself well cared for by the universe; one senses a totality. If, on the other hand, one looks artistically at man, one realizes that, seen merely from the viewpoint of the senses, he lacks something. He has not received from the universe what the well-coated bear and dog received. In sense appearance he stands, as it were, naked to the world. The need is to see, by means of a purely artistic approach, man's physical body clothed by an imaginative-spiritual sheath.

Today, in architecture, this reality does not manifest clearly. But take the pinnacle reached by architecture when it created protective covers for the dead. As noted earlier, the monuments erected above graves at the starting point of architecture had great meaning. Primeval instinctive clairvoyance perceived that, after forsaking its physical body, its earthly prison, the naked soul shrinks from being released into cosmic space without first being enveloped by those forms by which it wants to be received. People held that the soul must not simply be turned loose into the chaotically interacting weather currents; they would tear it apart. The soul desires to expand into the universe through regular spatial forms. For this reason it must be surrounded by tomb-architecture. It cannot find its bearings in the storms of weather and wind which rush toward it; only in the artistic forms of the monument above the grave. Here paths into the cosmic reaches are formed. An enveloping sheath such as man, unlike plants and animals, never receives through sensory-natural elements, is given the soul out of the super-sensible.

Thus one can say: Originally architecture expressed the manner in which man wants to be received by the cosmos, In a house the forms should be similarly artistic. The planes, the lines: why are they there? Because the soul wishes to look out into space in those directions, and to be protected from inrushing light. If one considers the relation of the soul to the spatial universe, if one recognizes how that universe welcomes the soul of man, one arrives at the right architectural forms.

Fine architecture has a counterpart. When man leaves his physical body at death, his soul spreads into spatial forms. Architecture strives to reveal this relation of man to visible cosmic space. At birth he possesses an unconscious memory of his own pre-earthly existence. Modern man's consciousness retains nothing of this. But in unconscious feeling, especially when naively artistic, the down-plunging soul knows that previously it was quite different. And now it does not wish to be as it finds itself on dipping down into the body. It longs to be as it was before.

This desire shows up in primitive people. Because they feel artistically how they would prefer to live in their body, they first decorate and then clothe themselves, the colors of their garments displaying how they would—while in the body—present their souls. Corporeality does not suffice them, through color they would place themselves in the world in a way that harmonizes with what they feel themselves as souls. Whoever views with artistic sense the colorful clothes of primitive people sees a manifestation of the soul in space; and in like manner, in architectural forms, the disappearing of the soul into space. Here we have the impulses at work in two arts: architecture and costuming.

This art of costuming merges with the other arts. It is not without meaning that in ages with more artistic feeling than ours, say the Italian Renaissance, painters gave Mary Magdalene a color of gown different from that of Mary. Compare the yellow so often used in the robes of Mary Magdalene with the blue and red in those of Mary, and you see the soul-difference perceived by a painter living wholly in his medium.

We who love to dress grey in grey simply show the world the deceased image of our soul. In our age we not only think abstractly, we dress abstractly. And (this is said parenthetically) if we do not dress abstractly, then we show in the way we combine colors how little we retain the living thinking of the realms through which we passed before descending to earth. If we do not dress abstractly, we dress without taste. In our civilization it is precisely the artistic element that needs improvement. Man must again place himself vitally-artistically into the world: must perceive the whole cosmic being and life artistically. It will not suffice to use the well-known apparatus of research institutes for determining the angle of a face and measuring abstractly racial peculiarities; we must recognize the form through a sensitive qualitative immersion in the human being.

Then in a marvelous way we shall recognize in the human head, in its arching of forehead and crown, a copy—not just as allegory but inward reality—of the heavenly dome dynamically overarching us. An image of the universe is shaped by forehead and upper head. Similarly, an image of our experience in circling the sun, in turning round it with our planet in a horizontal circling, this participation in cosmic movement is felt artistically in the formation of nose and eyes. Imagine: the repose of the fixed stars shows in the tranquil vault of brow and upper head; planetary circling in the mobile gaze of the eye, and in what is inwardly experienced through nose and smell. As for the mouth and chin of man, we have here an image of what leads deeply into his inner nature. The mouth with the chin represents the whole human being as he lives with his soul in his body. To repeat, the human head mirrors the universe artistically. In forehead and the arching crown of the head we see the still vault of the heavens; in eye, nose and upper lip, planetary movement; in mouth and chin, a resting within oneself.

If all this is beheld as living image, it does not remain in the head as abstraction. If we really feel what I have just described, then a certain sensation arises and we say to ourselves: you were quite a clever man who had pretty ideas, but now, suddenly, your head becomes empty; you cannot think at all; you feel the true significance of forehead, crown, eye, nose, upper lip, mouth, lower lip, even while thoughts forsake you. Now the rest of man becomes active. Arms and fingers begin to act as tools of thinking. But thoughts live in forms. It is thus that a sculptor comes into being.

If a person would become a sculptor, his head must cease to think. It is the most dreadful thing for a sculptor to think with his head. It is nonsense; impossible. The head must be able to rest, to remain empty; arms and hands must begin to shape the world in images. Especially if the human image is to be recreated, the form must stream out of the fingers. Then one begins to understand why the Greeks with their splendid artistry formed the upper part of Athene's head by raising a helmet which is actually part of that head. Her helmet gives expression to the shaping force of the reposing universe. And one understands how, in the extraordinary shaping of the nose, in the way the nose joins the forehead in Greek profiles, in the whole structure, the Greeks expressed a participation in circling cosmic motion.

Oh, it is glorious to feel, in the artistic presentation of a Greek head, how the Greeks became sculptors. It is thus a spiritual sensing and beholding of the world, rather than cerebral thinking, which leads to art, and which receives an impulse from Anthroposophy. For the latter says to itself: There is something in the world which cannot be tackled by thought; to enter it at all you must start to become an artist. Then materialistic-intellectualistic scholarship appears like a man who walks around things externally and describes them logically, but still only skirts them from outside, whereas the anthroposophical way of thinking demands that he immerse himself in the not-himself, and recreate, with living formative force, what the cosmos created first.

Thus gradually one realizes the following: If as anthroposophist you acquire a real understanding of the physical body which falls away from cosmic space-forms to become a corpse, if you acquire an understanding of the way the soul wishes to be received by spatial forms after death, you become an architect. If you understand the soul's intention of placing itself into space with the unconscious memories of pre-earthly life, then you become an artist of costuming: the other pole from the architectural.

One becomes a sculptor if one feels one's way livingly into the human form as it is shaped by and emerges from the cosmos. If one understands the physical body in all its aspects one becomes, artistically, an architect. If one really grasps the etheric or formative-force body (as it is called in Anthroposophy) in its inner vitality, in its living and weaving, in the way it arches the forehead, models the nose, lets the mouth recede, one becomes a sculptor. The sculptor does nothing more nor less than imitate the form of the etheric body.

If now one looks at soul-life in all its weaving and living, then the manifold world of color becomes a universe; then one gradually acquaints oneself with an “astral” experience of the world. What manifests in color becomes a revelation of the realm of soul.

Let us look at the greenness of plants. We cannot consider this color a subjective experience, cannot think of vibrations as causing the colors, the way a physicist does, for if we do so we lose the plant. These are abstractions. In truth we cannot imagine the plants in a living way without the green. The plant produces the green out of itself. But how? Embedded in it are dead earth-substances thoroughly enlivened. In the plant are iron, carbon, silicic acid, all kinds of earth-substances found, also, in minerals. But in the plant they are woven through and through with life. In observing how life works its way through dead particles to create thereby the plant image, we recognize green as the dead image of life. Everywhere that we look into green surroundings we perceive, not life itself, but its image. In other words, we perceive plants through the fact that they contain dead substances; this is why they are green. That color is the dead image of life ruling on earth. Green is thus a kind of cosmic word proclaiming how life weaves and has its being in plants.

Now look at man. The color which comes closest to a healthy human flesh color is that of fresh peach blossoms in spring. No other color in nature so resembles this skin color, this flush. The inner health of man comes to expression in this peach-blossom-like color; and in it we can learn to apprehend the vital health of man when properly endowed by soul. If the flesh color tends toward green, he is sickly; his soul cannot find right access to his physical body. On the other hand, if the soul in egotistical fashion takes hold of the physical body too strongly, as in the case of a miser, the human being becomes pallid, whitish; also if the soul experiences fear. Between whitish and greenish tones lies the healthy vital peach-blossom flesh-tint. And just as we sense in green the dead image of life, so we can feel in the peach-blossom color of the healthy human being the living image of the soul.

Now the world of color comes to life. The living, through the dead, creates the picture green. The soul forms its own image on the human skin in the peach-blossom-like shade.

Let us look further. The sun appears whitish, and we feel that this whitish color is closely related to light. If we wake in pitch darkness, we know that this is not an environment in which we can fully experience our ego. For that we need light between us and objects; need light between us and the wall, for instance, to allow the wall to act on us from the distance. Then our sense of self is kindled. To repeat: if we wake in light, in what has a relation to white, we feel our ego; if we wake in darkness, in what is related to black, we feel strange in the world. Though I say “light,” I could just as well take another sense impression. You may find a certain contradiction because those born blind never see light. But the important matter is not whether or not we see light directly; it is how we are organized. Even if born blind, man is organized for the light, and the hindrance to ego energy present in the blind is so through absence of light. White is akin to light. If we experience light-resembling white in such a way that we feel how it kindles the ego in space by endowing it with inner strength, then we may express living, not abstract, thought by saying: White is the soul-appearance of spirit.

Now let us take black. When our spirit encounters darkness on waking, we feel paralyzed, deadened. Black is felt as the spiritual image of death.

Imagine living in colors. You experience the world as color and light if you experience green as the dead image of life; peach-blossom color, human flesh-color, as the living image of the soul; white as the soul-image of spirit; black as the spiritual image of death. In saying this I describe a circle. For just note what I said: Green, dead image of the living—it stops at “living.” Peach-blossom color, flesh-color, living image of the soul—it stops at “soul.” White, soul-image of the spirit—having started with soul I rise to the spirit. Black, spiritual image of death—I start with spirit and rise to death; but have at the same time returned, since green was the dead image of life. Returning to what is dead I close the circle. If I drew it on a blackboard you would see that this living weaving in color (in the next lecture I shall speak of blue) becomes a real artistic experience of the astral element in the world.

If one has this artistic experience, if death, life, soul and spirit show forth, as it were, in the wheel of life as one passes from the dead back to the dead through life, soul, spirit; if death, life, soul and spirit appear through light and color as described, then one realizes that one cannot remain in three-dimensional space, one must adopt the plane surface; solve the riddle of space on the plane; lose the space concept.

Just, as sculptors, we abandoned head thinking, so now we lose the concept of space. When everything wants to change into light and color we become painters. The very source of painting opens up. With great inner joy we lay one color alongside another. Colors become revelations of life, death, soul, spirit. By overcoming dead thought we attain to the point where we no longer feel impelled to speak in words, no longer to think in ideas, no longer to mould in forms, but use color and light to represent life and death, spirit and soul, as they have their being in the universe.

In this way Anthroposophy stimulates creation; instead of weaning us away from life as does abstract, idealistic-empirical cognition, it gives us back to life.

But so far we have remained outside man, considering his surface: his healthy peach-blossom tones, his pale-whitish color when his spirit plunges too deeply into the physical body, and his greenish shade when, because of sickness, his soul cannot fill that body. We have remained on the surface.

If we now enter man's inner nature, we find something set against the external world-configuration: a marvelous harmony between the breath rhythm and blood rhythm. The rhythm of breathing—a normal human being breathes eighteen times per minute—is transferred to man's nerves, becomes motion. Physiology knows very little about this process. The rhythm of breathing is contained, in a delicate psycho-spiritual manner, in the nerve system.

As for the blood rhythm, it originates in the metabolic system. In a normal adult, four pulse beats correspond to one breath rhythm; seventy-two pulse beats per minute. What lives in the blood, that is, the ego, the sunlike nature in man, plays upon the breathing system and, through it, upon the nervous system. If one looks into the human eye, one finds there some extremely fine ramifications of blood vessels. Here the blood pulsation meets the currents of the visual nerve spread through the eye. A marvelously artistic process takes place when the blood circulation plays upon a visual nerve that moves four times more slowly.

Now look at the spinal cord, its nerves extending in all directions, observe the blood vessels, and become aware of an inward playing of the whole sun-implanted blood system upon the earth-given nervous system. The Greeks with their artistic natures were aware of this interrelation. They saw the sun-like in man, the playing of the blood system upon the nervous system, as the God Apollo; and the spinal cord with its wonderful ramification of strings, upon which the sun principle plays, as Apollo's lyre.

Just as we meet architecture, sculpture, the art of costuming and painting when we approach man from the external world, so we meet music, rhythm, beat, when we approach the inner man and trace the marvelous artistic forming and stirring which take place between blood and nerve system.

Compared to external music, that performed between blood and nerve system in the human organism is of far greater sublimity. And when it is metamorphosed into poetry, one can feel how, in the word, this inward music is again released outward. Take the Greek hexameter with its initial three long syllables followed by a caesura, and how the blood places the four syllable lengths into the breath. To scan the first half of an hexameter line properly is to indicate how our blood meets, impinges on, the nervous system.

In relation to declamation and recitation, we must try to solve the riddle of the divine artist in man. I shall consider this more explicitly in the next lecture. But, having studied man's nature from without through architecture, sculpture and painting, we now penetrate into his inner nature and arrive at the arts of music and poetry; a living comprehension of world and man passes over into artistic feeling and the stimulus to artistic creation.

If at this point man feels that here on earth he does not fulfil what lies in his archetype, with its abode in the heavens, then there arises in him an artistic longing for some outer image of that archetype. Whereupon he can gain the power to become an instrument for bringing to expression the true relation of man to the world by becoming a eurythmist. The eurythmist says: All the movements which I ordinarily carry out here on earth do less then justice to the mobile archetype of man. To present the ideal human archetype I must begin by finding a way to insert myself into its motions. These motions, through which man endeavors to imitate in space the movements of his heavenly archetype, constitute eurythmy. Therefore it is not just mimicry, nor mere dancing, but stands midway between. Mimic art is chiefly a support for the spoken word. If the need is to express something for which words do not suffice, man supplements word with gesture; thus arises mimic art. It expresses the insufficiency of the words standing alone. Mimic art is indicative gesture.

The art of dancing arises when language is forgotten altogether, when the will manifests so strongly it forces the soul to surrender and follow the movement-suggesting body. The art of the dance is sweeping ecstatic gesture.

We may say: mimic art is indicative gesture; art of dance, sweeping ecstatic gesture. Between the two stands the visible speech of eurythmy which is neither indicative nor sweeping but expressive gesture, just as the word itself is expressive gesture. For a word is really a gesture in air. When we form a word, our mouth presses the air into a certain invisible gesture, imbued with thought, which, by causing vibrations, bejcomes audible. Whoever is able with sensory-supersensory vision to observe what is formed by the speaking mouth sees, in air, the invisible gestures being made there as words. If one imitates these gestures with the whole body, one has eurythmy, an expressive visible gesture. Eurythmy is the transformation of an air gesture into a visible expressive gesture of the limbs.

I shall touch on all this in my coming lecture on Anthroposophy and poetry. Today I wished chiefly to indicate how anthroposophical, in contrast to intellectualistic-materialistic, knowledge does not kill with its thoughts; does not turn a person into a commentator on art who thereby buries it, but, rather, causes an artistic spring, a fountain of phantasy, to well up. Turns him into an enjoyer or creator of art; verifies what must be emphasized over and over again, namely, that art, religion and science are sisters who once upon a time became estranged, but who must again enter into a sisterly relationship if man is to function as a complete human being. Thus scholars will cease haughtily to acknowledge a work of art only if they can write a commentary on it and otherwise reject it, but will say: What I interpret as thought engenders a need to fashion it artistically by means of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry.

Goethe's saying that art is a kind of knowledge is true, because all other forms of knowledge, taken together, do not constitute a complete world knowledge. Art—creativity—must be added to what is known abstractly if we are to attain to world knowledge. This union of art and science will produce a religious mood. Because our Dornach building strove for this balance, friends of nationalities other than German petitioned to call it the “Goetheanum,” for it was Goethe who said:

Who possesses science and art
Possesses religion as well;
Who possesses the first two not,
O grant him religion.

For if true art and true science flow together livingly, the result is a religious life. Conversely religion, far from denying science or art, must strive toward both with all possible energy and vitality.

Question: Should the dilution be continued arithmetically?

Answer: In this respect, no doubt, certain things will yet have to he discussed. Probably, with an increasing area you will need more water and proportionately fewer cow-horns. You will be able to manure large areas with comparatively few cow-horns. In Dornach we had twenty-five cow-horns; to begin with we had a fairly Large garden to treat. First we took one horn to half a bucketful. Then we began again, taking a whole bucketful and two cow-horns. Afterwards we had to manure a relatively larger area. We took seven cow-horns and seven bucketfuls.

Question: Could one use a mechanical stirrer to stir up the manure for larger areas, or would this not be permissible?

Answer: This is a thing you can either take quite strictly, or else you can make up your mind to slide into substitute methods. There can be no doubt, stirring by hand has quite another significance than mechanical stirring. A mechanist, of course, will not admit it. But you should consider well what a great difference it makes, whether you really stir with your hand or in a mere mechanical fashion. When you stir manually, all the delicate movements of your hand will come into the stirring. Even the feelings you have may then come into it.
Of course the people of to-day will not believe that it makes any difference; but you can tell the difference even in medical mattes. Believe me, it is not a matter of indifference whether a medicament is prepared more manually or mechanically. When a man works at a thing himself, he gives something to it which it retains. To mention one example, this is notably the case with the Ritter remedies, with which some of you are no doubt familiar. You must not smile at such things. I have often been asked what I think of the Ritter remedies. You are perhaps aware that there are some who sing hymns of praise on their behalf, while others spread the tale that they have no particular effect.

Undoubtedly they have an effect. But I am firmly convinced that if these remedies were brought on to the market in the usual way they would very largely lose their influence. With these remedies especially, it makes a great difference if the doctor himself possesses the remedy and gives it to his patient directly. When the doctor gives such a thing to his patient, when it is all taking place in a comparatively small circle, he brings a certain enthusiasm with him. You may say the enthusiasm as such weighs nothing; you cannot weigh it. Nevertheless it enters into the vibrations if the doctors are enthusiastic. Light has a strong effect on the remedies; why not enthusiasm? Enthusiasm mediates; it can have a great effect. Enthusiastic doctors of to-day can achieve great results. Precisely in this way, the Ritter remedies can have a far-reaching influence.

With enthusiasm, great effects can be called forth. But if you begin to do it in an indifferent and mechanical fashion, the effects will soon evaporate. It makes a difference whether you do the thing with all that proceeds from the human hand—believe me, very much can issue from the hand—or whether you do it with a machine. By and by, however, it might prove to be great fun—this stirring; and you would no longer dream of a mechanical stirrer even when many cow-horns were needed. Eventually, I can imagine, you will do it on Sundays as an after-dinner entertainment. Simply by having many guests invited and doing it on Sundays, you will get the best results without machines!

Question: No doubt there will be a little technical difficulty in distributing half a bucketful of water over one-fifth of an acre. But when you increase the number of cow-horns the difficulty will rapidly increase—quite out of proportion to the number. Can the given quantity of water be diluted still more, or is it essential to preserve the proportion of half a bucketful? Must you take about half a bucketful to one-fifth of an acre?

Answer: No doubt it will be possible as you suggest. But I think the method of stirring would then have to be changed. You might do it in this way. Stir up a cow-hornful completely in half a bucket of water, and then dilute it to a bucketful; but you will then have to stir it again.

On the whole, I think it would be best to stir only half a bucketful at a time. Reckon up, in the given instance, how much less of the stuff you need, even if it should be less than the contents of a cowhorn. It all depends on your bringing about a thoroughly intimate permeation. You are far from achieving a true permeation when you merely tip the stuff into water and stir it up a little. You must bring about a very intimate permeation. If you merely shake in the more or less condensed substance, or if you fall to stir it vigorously, you will not have a thorough mixture. Therefore I think it will be easier to stir several half-bucketfuls with small amounts of substance than to dilute the water again and stir it up a second time.

Question: Some solid matter will remain over, no doubt, even then. May the liquid afterwards be strained so that it can be distributed with a mechanical spray?

Answer: I do not think it will be necessary. For if you stir it quickly, you will obtain a fairly cloudy liquid, and you need not trouble whether any foreign bodies are left in it. You will not find it difficult to distribute the manure; pure cow-manure is best for the purpose, but even if there are foreign bodies in it, I do not think you need go to the trouble of cleansing it. If there are foreign bodies, they might even have a beneficial effect and do no harm. As a result of the concentration and subsequent dilution, it is only the radiant effect that works; it is no longer the substances as such, but the dynamic radiant activity. Thus there would be no danger, for example, of your getting potato plants with long shoots und nothing else upon them at the place where your foreign bodies happened to fall. I do not think there would be any such danger.

Question: I only had in mind the mechanical spray.

Answer: Certainly you can strain the liquid; it will do it no harm. It might be simplest to have your mechanical spray fitted with a sieve from the outset.

Question: You did not say whether the stuff from the horn should be weighed out, so as to get a definite proportion. Speaking of half a bucketful, did you refer to a Swiss bucket, or a precise measure of litres?

Answer: I took a Swiss bucket, the ordinary bucket they use for milking in Switzerland. The whole thing was tested practically, in the direct perception of it. You should now reduce it to the proper weights and measures.

Question: Can the cow-horns be used repeatedly, or must they always be taken from freshly slaughtered beasts?

Answer: We have not tested it, but from my general knowledge I think you should be able to use the cow-horns three or four times running. After that they will no longer work so well. There might even be this possibility: Use the cow-horns for three or four years in succession; then keep them in the cow-stable for a time, and use them again another year. This too might be possible. But I have no idea how many cow-horns an agricultural area can normally have at its disposal; whether or not it is necessary to be very economical in this respect. That is a question I cannot decide at the moment.

Question: Where can you get the cow-horns? Must they be taken from Eastern-European or Mid-European districts?

Answer: It makes no difference where you get them from—only not from the refuse yard. They must be as fresh as possible. However, strange as it may sound, it is a fact that Western life—life in the Western hemisphere—is quite a different thing from life in the Eastern hemisphere. Life in Africa, Asia or Europe has quite another significance than life in America Possibly, therefore, horns from American cattle would have to be more effective in a rather different way. Thus it might prove necessary to tighten the manure rather more in these horns—to make it denser, hammer it more tightly.

It is best to take horns from your own district. There is an exceedingly strong kinship between the forces in the cow-horns of a certain district and the forces generally prevailing in that district. The forces of horns from abroad might come into conflict with what is there in the earth of your own country. You must also remember, it will frequently happen that the cows from which you get the horns in your own district are not really native to the district. But you can get over this difficulty. When the cows have been living and feeding on a particular soil for three or four years, they belong to the soil (unless they happen to be Western cattle).

Question: How old may the horns be? Should they be taken from an old or a young cow?

Answer: All these things must be tested. From the essence of the matter, I should imagine that cattle of medium age would be best.

Question: How big should they be?

Answer: Dr. Steiner draws on the board the actual size of the horn—about 12 to 16 inches long (Diagram 9), i.e. the normal size of horn of “Allgäu” cattle, for example.

Question: Is it not also essential whether the horn is taken from a castrated ox, or from a male or female animal?

Answer: In all probability the horn of the ox would be quite ineffective, and the horn of the bull comparatively weak. Therefore I speak of cow-horns; cows as a rule are female. I mean the female animal.

Question: What is the best time to plant cereals?

Answer: The exact answer will be given when I come to sowing in the main lectures. It is very important, needless to say, and it makes a great difference whether you do it more or less near to the winter months. If near to the winter months, you will bring about a strong reproductive power in your cereals; if farther from the winter months, a strong nutritive power.

Question: Could the cow-horn manure also be distributed with sand? Is rain of any importance in this connection?

Answer: As to the sand you may do so; we have not tested it, but there is nothing to be said against it. The effect of rain would also have to be tested. Presumably it would bring about no change; it might even tend to establish the thing more firmly. On the other hand, we are dealing with a very high concentration of forces, and possibly the minute impact of the falling raindrops might scatter the effect too much. It is a very delicate process; everything must be taken into account. There is nothing to be said against spreading sand with the cow-manure.

Question: In storing the cow-horns and their contents, how should one prevent any harmful influences from gaining access?

Answer: In these matters it is generally true to say that you do more harm by removing the harmful influences, so-called, than by leaving them alone. Nowadays, as you know, people are always wanting to “disinfect” things. Undoubtedly they go too far in this. With our medicaments, for example, we found that if we wished absolutely to prevent the possibility of mould, we had to use methods which interfere with the real virtue of the medicament.

I for my part have no great respect for these “harmful influences.” They do not do nearly so much harm. The best thing is, not to go out of our way in devising methods of purification, but to let well alone.
(We only put pig's bladder over the top to prevent the soil from falling in.)

To try to clean the horns by any special methods is not at all to be recommended. We must familiarise ourselves with the fact that “dirt” is not always dirt. If, for example, you cover your face with a thin layer of gold, it is “dirt” and yet, gold is not dirt. Dirt is not always dirt. Sometimes it is the very thing that acts as a preservative.

Question: Should the extreme “chaoticizing” of the seed, of which you spoke, be supported or enhanced by any special methods?

Answer: You could do so, but it would be superfluous. If the seed-forming process occurs at all, the maximum of chaos will come of its own accord. There is no need to support it. It is in manuring that the support is needed. In the seed-forming process, I do not think it will be necessary to enhance the chaos any more. If there is fertilising seed at all, the chaos is complete. You could do it, of course, by making the soil more silicious. It is through silica that the essential cosmic forces work.

Whatever cosmic forces are caught up by the earth, work through the silica. You could do it in this way, but I do not believe it is necessary.

Question: How Large should the experimental plots be? Will it not also be necessary to do something for the cosmic forces that should be preserved until the new plant is formed?

Answer: You might experiment as follows. It is comparatively easy to give general guiding lines; but the most suitable scale on which to work is a thing you must test for yourselves. It will not, however, be difficult to make experiments on this question. Set out your plants in two separate beds, side by side—a bed of wheat, say, and a bed of sainfoin. Then you will find this possibility. In the one plant—wheat—which of its own accord tends easily to lasting seed-formation, you will retard the seed-forming process by the use of silica. Meanwhile, with the sainfoin, you will find the seed-forming process quite suppressed or very much retarded.

To investigate these things, you can always take this as a basis of comparison: Study the properties of cereals—wheat, for example—and then compare them with the analogous properties of sainfoin, or leguminosae generally. You will thus have the most interesting experiments on seed-formation.

Question: Does it matter when the diluted stuff is brought on to the fields?

Answer: Undoubtedly it does. You can generally leave the cow-horns in the earth until you need them. They will not deteriorate, even if after hibernating they are left for a while during the summer. If, however, you do need to keep them elsewhere, having taken them out of the earth, you should make a box, upholster it well with a cushion of peat-moss on all sides, and put the cow-horns inside. Then the strong inner concentration will be preserved. In any case. it is inadvisable to keep the watery fluid after dilution. You must do the stirring not too long before you use the liquid.

Question: If we want to treat the winter corn, must we use the cow-horns a whole quarter after taking them out of the earth?

Answer: It does not matter essentially, but it will always be better to leave them in the earth until you need them. If you are going to use them in the early autumn, leave them in the earth until you need them. It will in no way harm the manure.

Question: With the fine spraying of the liquid due to the spraying machine, will not the etheric and astral forces be wasted?

Answer: Certainly not; they are intensely bound. Altogether, when you are dealing with spiritual things—unless you drive them away yourself from the outset—you need not fear that they will run away from you nearly as much as with material things.

Question: How should one treat the cow-horns with mineral content, after they have spent the summer in the earth?

Answer: It will not hurt to take them out and keep them anywhere you like; you can throw them in a heap anywhere. It will not hurt the stuff, when it has once spent the summer in the earth. Let the sun shine on them; it will not hurt, it will even do them good.

Question: Must the horns be buried at the same place—on the same field which you will afterwards be wanting to manure, or can they he buried all together at any place you choose?

Answer: It makes so little difference that you need not worry about it. In practice, it will he best to look for a place where the soil is comparatively good. I mean, where the earth is not too highly mineral, but contains plenty of humus. Then you can bury all the cow-horns you need in one place.

Question: What about using machines on the farm? Is it not said that machines should not be used at all?

Answer: That cannot really be answered purely as a farming question. Within the social life of to-day, it is hardly a practical, hardly a topical question to ask whether machines are allowable. You can hardly be a farmer nowadays without using machines. Needless to say, not all operations are so nearly akin to the most intimate processes of Nature as the stirring of which we were speaking just now. Just as we did not want to mix up such an intimate process of Nature with purely mechanical elements, so it is with regard to the other things of which you are thinking. Nature herself, in any case, sees to it that where machines are out of place you can do very little with them. A machine will not help in the seed-forming process, for example; Nature does it for herself.

Really I think the question is not very practical. How can you do without machines nowadays? On the other hand, I may remark that as a farmer you need not just be crazy on machines. If one has a particular craze for machines, he will undoubtedly do worse as a farmer, even if his new machine is an improvement, than if he goes an using his old machine until it is worn out. However, in the strict sense of the word these are no longer purely farming questions.

Question: Could the given quantity of cow-horn manure, diluted with water, be used on half the area you indicated?

Answer: Then you would get rampant growths; you would get the result I hinted at just now in another connection. If, for example, you did this in potato-growing or the like, you would get rampant plants with highly ramified stems; what you are really wanting would not develop properly. Apply the stuff in excess and you will get what are generally known as rank patches.

Question; What about a fodder plant, which you want to grow rampant—spinach for instance?

Answer: There, too, I think we shall only use the half-bucketful with the one cow-horn. That is what we did in Dornach with a patch that was mainly vegetable garden. For plants that are grown over larger areas, you will need far less in proportion. It is already the optimum amount.

Question: Does it matter what kind of manure you use—cow- or horse- or sheep-manure?

Answer: Undoubtedly cow-manure is best for this procedure. Still, it might also be well to investigate whether or no horse-manure could be used. lf you want to treat horse-manure in this way, you will probably find that you need to wrap the horn up to some extent in horse-hair taken from the horse's mane. You will thus make effective the forces which in the horse—as it has no horns—are situated in the mane.

Question: Should it be done before or after sowing the seed?

Answer: The proper thing is to do it before. We shall see how it works; this year we began rather late, and some things will be done after sowing. We shall see whether it makes any difference. However, as a normal matter of course, you should do it before sowing, so as to influence the soil itself beforehand.

Question: Can the same cow-horns that have been used for manure be used for the mineral substance too?

Answer: Yes, but here too you cannot use them more than three or four times. After that they lose their forces.

Question: Does it matter who does the work? Can anyone you choose do the work, or should it be an anthroposophist?

Answer: That is the question. If you raise such a question at all nowadays, you will be laughed at, no doubt, by many people. Yet I need only remind you that there are people whose flowers, grown in the window-box, thrive wonderfully, while with others they do not thrive at all but fade and wither. These are simple facts.

These things that take place through human influence, though they cannot be outwardly explained, are inwardly quite clear and transparent. Moreover, such things will come about simply as a result of the human being practising meditation; preparing himself by meditative life, as I described it in yesterday's lecture. For when you meditate you live quite differently with the nitrogen which contains the Imaginations. You thereby put yourself in a position which will enable all these things to be effective; you put yourself in this position over against the whole world of plant-growth.

However, these things are no longer as clear to-day as they used to be in olden times, when they were universally accepted. For there were times when people knew that by certain definite practices they could make themselves fitted to tend the growth of plants. Nowadays, when such things are not observed, the presence of other people disturbs them. These delicate and subtle influences are lost when you are constantly living and moving among men and women who take no notice of such things. Hence, if you try to apply them, it is very easy to prove them fallacious. And I am loth to speak openly as yet about these things in a large company of people. The conditions of life nowadays are such that it is only too easy to refute them.

A very ticklish question was raised, for example, by our friend Stegemann in the discussion in the Hall the other day, namely, whether parasites could be combated by such means—by means of concentration or the like. There can be no question about it that you can, provided you did it in the right way. Notably you would want to choose the proper season—from the middle of January to the middle of February—when the earth unfolds the greatest forces, the forces that are most concentrated in the earth itself. Establish a kind of festival time, and practise certain concentrations during the season, and the effects might well be evident.

As I said, it is a ticklish question, but it can be answered positively along these lines. The only condition is that it must be done in harmony with Nature as a whole. You should be well aware that it makes all the difference whether you do an exercise of concentration in the winter-time or at midsummer. How much is contained in many of the old folk-proverbs! Even the people of to-day might still derive many a valuable hint from these.

I could have mentioned it in yesterday's lecture: Among the many things I should have done in this present incarnation, but did not find it possible to do, was this. When I was a young man I had the idea to write a kind of “peasant's philosophy,” setting down the conceptual life of the peasants in all the things that touch their lives. It might have been very beautiful. The statement of the Count, that peasants are stupid, would have been refuted. A subtle wisdom would have emerged—a philosophy dilating upon the intimacies of Nature's life—a philosophy contained in the very formation of the words. One marvels to see how much the peasant knows of what is going on in Nature.

To-day, however, it would no longer be possible to write a peasant's philosophy. These things have been almost entirely lost. It is no longer as it was fifty or forty years ago. Yet it was wonderfully significant; you could learn far more from the peasants than in the University. That was an altogether different time. You lived with the peasants in the country, and when those people came along with their broad-brimmed hats, introducing the Socialist Movement of to-day, they were only the eccentricities of life. To-day the whole world is changed. The younger ladies and gentlemen here present have no idea how the world has changed in the last thirty or forty years. How much has been lost of the true peasants' philosophy, of the real beauty of the folk-dialects! It was a kind of cultural philosophy.

Even the peasants' calendars contained what they no longer contain to-day. Moreover, they looked quite different—there was something homely about them. I, in my time, knew peasants' calendars printed on very poor paper, it is true; inside, however, the planetary signs were painted in colours, while on the cover, as the first thing to meet the eye, there was a tiny sweet which you might tick whenever you use the book. In this way too it was made tasty; and of course the people used it one after another.

Question: When larger areas are to be manured, must the number of cow-horns be determined purely by feeling?

Answer: No, I should not advise it. In such a case, I think, we really must be sensible. This, therefore, is my advice. Begin by testing it thoroughly according to your feeling. When you have done all you can to get the most favourable results in this way, then set to work and translate your results into figures for the sake of the world as it is to-day. So you will get the proper tables which others can use after you.

If anyone is inclined to do it out of pure feeling, by all means let him do so. But in his attitude to others he should not behave as though he did not value the tables. The whole thing should be translated into calculable figures and amounts for the sake of others; it is necessary nowadays. You need cows' horns to do it with, but you do not exactly need to grow bulls' horns in representing it! These are the things that lead so easily to opposition. I should advise you as far as possible to compromise in this respect, and bear in mind the judgments of the world at large.

Question: Is the quick-lime treatment of the compost-heap, in the percentages as given nowadays, to be recommended?

Answer: The old method will undoubtedly prove beneficial, only you must treat it specifically, according to the nature of your soil—whether it be more sandy or marshy. For a sandy soil you will need rather less quicklime. A marshy ground will need rather more quicklime on account of the formation of oxygen.

Question: How about digging up and turning over the compost heap?

Answer: That is not bad for it. When you have dug it up and turned it, you should, however, provide for its proper protection by putting a layer of earth all around it. Cover it over with earth; peat-earth or granulated peat is very good for the purpose.

Question: What kind of potash did you mean, when you said it might be used if necessary in the transition stage?

Answer: Kali magnesia.

Question: What is the best way of using the rest of the manure after the cow-horns have been filled? Should it be brought on to the fields in autumn, so as to undergo the winter experience? or should it be set aside until the spring?

Answer You must remember that the cow-horn manuring is not intended as a complete Substitute for ordinary manuring. You should go on manuring as before. The new method should be regarded as a kind of extra, largely enhancing the effect of the manuring hitherto applied. The latter should continue as before.

Good morning, gentlemen! So, you probably have another question?

Mr. Müller asks what might cause a change in the pupils?

Dr. Steiner: That is a very personal question! You would have to come down to the Clinical Therapeutic Institute; when I go down again, I will tell you so that you can come then. That is a medical matter.

Another question: what does the vertical stripe on the sides of the fish mean?

Another question: a man who drank an awful lot of alcohol died eight weeks ago. In the last few days before he died, he ate chocolate and sugar, which he had never done in his life. Why do you think that was?

Dr. Steiner: Now, regarding the question of the longitudinal stripe in fish, you must be clear about the following. When you look at any being, be it of the plant or animal world, you have to ask yourself how these beings relate to the outside world. You see, plants have their green color, first of all, in their leaves. This green color in the leaves comes from the fact that the plant has a very specific relationship to light and warmth. The plant absorbs what comes from the light on the one hand and gives back something else, which it does not absorb. And that is where the green color of the plant comes from.

Likewise, you may ask yourself: what is the reason for one or the other in the case of fish? Now I would just like to point out that you will see that fish that live more in cloudy water have a much darker color than those that live in bright water. Those fish that seek out the darkness are bluish, even black. Those fish that live in lighter places are lighter in color themselves. So you can see how the external influence of light and warmth affects the fish.

And consider other animals that live in areas where there is a lot of snow, for example polar bears. They themselves take on a white color. Everything that lives is somehow exposed to the environment.

Now, in the case of fish, there is a very clear relationship between their own being and their environment. And these stripes on the edge are there to make the fish finely sensitive to light and warmth in their environment. So the fish become particularly sensitive as a result. This is not so useful for them - I have spoken of this before - for the way they move, but it is useful for the way they process light and warmth internally, so that this is a kind of nerve organ.

As for your other question about the man who drank alcohol all his life and now, before his end, began to become very pious and ate the pious chocolate and sugar – you say: the last days before his death – well, this phenomenon can easily be understood when compared to numerous others that occur throughout life. I have met many people who have grown old. As they grew old, for example, they saw their handwriting become more and more shaky. The handwriting became shaky; they could no longer write properly, and it was precisely in their handwriting that they had grown old. They might have had a handwriting in which they wrote, let's say, Lehfeld (clear, distinct), and then they wrote: Lehfeld (shaky). But then, in the last days before their death, it turned out that they could write in a certain clear handwriting again; they could suddenly write well again. I have met many people who had regained their former ability to write clearly before their death. It has also been observed in numerous cases – I am not just sharing my own observations in this area, but well-attested observations that have been made – that people who have learned some language as a child – as a child they may have been in some foreign country, learned a language and forgot it again; that does happen; let us assume that as a forty- or fifty-year-old man, they had absolutely no opportunity to communicate with anyone else in this language – suddenly, a few days before their death, they begin to speak this language quite understandably again. It came out again! Yes, you see, these are very significant phenomena. What is actually going on here? This is what happens: when a person dies, his physical body, that is, one part of his being, remains on earth; it dissolves into the earth, is destroyed by the earth. I have already told you that the next part of the human being, the etheric body, gradually dissolves into the general cosmic ether a few days after death. And then, the astral body and the real self remain for the human being to pass through the spiritual world. They then pass through the spiritual world.

There is a complete separation of the individual members of the human being. And anyone who has an eye for it can observe in someone whose death is near how the various members, physical body, etheric body, astral body, separate from one another. Now, what does it mean when someone changes his writing a few days before his death? Yes, gentlemen, we do not write with our physical body! What do we actually write with? We write with the I! We use the physical body only as a tool of the I when we write. And our I does not grow old! With your I, you are as young today as you were when you were born. The I does not grow old. The astral body does not age to the same extent as the physical body. But it is the physical body that one has to use as a tool if one wants to write, so the physical body has to grasp the pen with its hand. Now, as a person grows older, he becomes weaker and weaker and can no longer properly access his physical body. But not only that, but all kinds of things are deposited in the physical body itself. And the result of this is that the person can no longer use his fingers properly. He becomes clumsy, trembles, instead of making firm strokes when he writes. When a person is close to death, the etheric body begins to separate from the physical body. There is a loosening. Sometimes this can happen a few days before death; sometimes it happens at the last moment. It cannot be said that one should no longer try to heal a person whom one has observed for days before his death, that he could also die; on the other hand, what has become loose can be joined together again. One must always, as long as a person is alive, try to heal him under all circumstances. But the fact is that in many people the etheric body loosens for days before death.

Now, when the etheric body loosens, the person becomes stronger. That a person becomes stronger when his etheric body loosens, you can also see from something else. There is a kind of madman who develops tremendous strength, quite extraordinary strength. You might often be amazed at what such a madman can achieve in terms of strength. Not only are the beatings he gives out much more severe than those of others, but furniture that no one would think of lifting can sometimes be lifted with ease by a madman. So you see, something strange happens that distinguishes such a person from a normal person. What happens in the case of the insane person? Well, in the case of the insane person, the etheric body is always somewhat loose, or the astral body is loosened. Now, the human being is not exactly strong through the physical body, but weak. He must serve the physical body through the etheric or astral body. It is quite correct to say in the vernacular: “Something is loose in him” - something is loosened. The people sometimes speak very correctly because an instinct for the supersensible is present in the people, and in such old folk sayings one should not see something contemptible, but something that is absolutely true. When the etheric or astral body of a madman has become loosened and thus strong, then, as a madman, he is in the same position as someone whose etheric body has already become loosened because he is dying in a few days. And when he becomes stronger in the etheric body, he can write better again. When he becomes stronger in the astral body – because everything that one has forgotten is in there – then he draws out of the astral body what he has forgotten and can again speak the language he used to speak.

But now take your case. You see, I didn't know the man and therefore don't know how he lived. Perhaps you knew him? Then you can answer certain questions. Did you know him well? Well, you see, with a person like that, it is very important to consider whether he had a woman or someone else in his life. Perhaps it could have been you who constantly told him how harmful it is to drink so much alcohol? (This is confirmed.) Now, there we have something that will lead us on the trail. He had people around him who always admonished him not to drink so much because it is not good for him. With this man, as they say, it went in one ear and out the other. This is another popular saying that is not without foundation. It is true that man is so constituted that certain things go in at one ear and out at the other. Why? Well, because the astral body does not hear them. The ear is only the instrument of hearing. The astral body does not hear.

But now it happens that the astral body hears the matter, but the physical body does not participate because the person in question is too weak. Now think about this. The man heard from Mr. Erbsmehl himself on my account: You are a completely crazy guy – I'm saying it quite radically now, aren't I – because you get drunk every other moment! That's not on, it's inhuman! and so on, and the man swallowed it all. That's what happened, it happens in life that people swallow the matter and then move on again. But his astral body has kept something of it. Perhaps you said it so strongly and so often that the astral body and the etheric body could not get away without keeping it. As long as they were stuck inside the physical body without any hindrance, they did not hear anything. At the moment when the physical body became so relaxed that the etheric and astral bodies were loosened, yes, then suddenly the thought came into the person through the etheric and astral bodies: Mr. Erbsmehl might have been right after all! Maybe it is completely crazy that I have drunk so much throughout my life. Now I want to do penance, now that things have been loosened up, as you can imagine. The astral body and the ether body say: Aha, now he is not drinking alcohol, now he is drinking chocolate and sugar water! Perhaps he would have drunk lemonade too, if there had been any. The fact that something like this can happen proves, especially to the person who looks at things sensibly, that all kinds of things can get into a person that do not come out. I also told you the opposite case once. The opposite case was where the story did not remain in the astral and etheric bodies, but entered the physical body too strongly, where, so to speak, one listened far too much to the matter. The opposite case is this: a former acquaintance of mine — he was a very learned gentleman — it happened one day that his consciousness and memory left him. He no longer knew who he once was, what he had done; he no longer knew anything of his entire erudition. He had forgotten everything. He didn't even know that he was himself, that he was he. But nevertheless, his mind was clear. His mind was working clearly. He went to the train station, bought a train ticket and traveled far. He had also taken money with him, what little he had left. He could travel far. When he arrived at the station for which the ticket was valid, he bought a new ticket. And he did that several times, not knowing anything about what he was doing. But the mind is so separate from the actual person that everything happened quite rationally, as animals act rationally - as I have often shown you in many a good example - without having an ego. Now that he found himself again, his memory came back. He knew who he was, and his learning also came back to his mind. But he found himself in Berlin in a shelter for the homeless! That's where he ended up last. He left from Stuttgart. It was later established that he left from there. He was unconscious in Budapest and so on. He was able to make the journey from Berlin to Stuttgart again. Then someone from his family, who was terribly worried, picked him up. He was able to do that again. He then ended it by committing suicide. One time it was due to unconsciousness, the other time it was suicide.

But what is going on in such a case? Yes, you see, I actually have this man I've been telling you about in front of me, so that I could actually paint him anytime. The man had eyes that made you think they wanted to go deeper and deeper into his head. He had something here at the front, as if his nose had dug into – all very subtly suggested, of course – the physical body. He spoke to you in a very strange way. He spoke to you in such a way that he was completely convinced of his words in a different way than another person. You had the feeling that he always tasted his own words on his tongue and swallowed them, he liked them so much. He likes it so much when he speaks, he swallows it all in. And if you contradicted him in any way, he would get quite angry. But he didn't show much of this anger on the outside, but his face distorted. If a car rattled somewhere on the street, he would jump terribly; if you told him any kind of news, he would jump just as much, whether it was happy or sad.

You see, this person had listened too much, and everything expressed itself immediately in his physical body. And so he had the habit of always burying his astral body very deep in his physical body; he didn't keep anything to himself, like your alcoholic, but everything was buried in the physical body until the physical body was ready to also move his own self for a while.

There you have the opposite case. In the case of this alcoholic, the admonitions remained in the astral body and came out when it loosened. In the case of the other person I told you about, the astral body became so deeply embedded in the physical body that the physical body also left on its own.

So you see, there are indications everywhere in the human being that these higher limbs, these supersensible limbs, are intimately connected with his physical body and with his etheric body. All this shows you, however, that you can really only get to know life by looking at such life contexts, which directly reveal to you: There is a physical body in a person, there is an etheric body in a person, there is an astral body, there is an I.

You can also see from the case where the person suddenly develops a completely different appetite under the moral pressure of what he has left in the astral body in life, how other phenomena can also occur. There is the following example. I will tell you an interesting story now. There was once a woman who dealt in vegetables and similar things. It is still the time that lies far behind us. The woman went from house to house with her vegetable basket. Now, she was always seen as a woman who saw life from a greengrocer's point of view. She laughed when someone said something funny; otherwise she was indifferent to life. She carried her vegetables into the houses, took her money and spent her life that way. Once she came to an apartment and wanted to sell vegetables. There was no one else there but the master of the house, who opened the door for her. And this master of the house had a very special look. He looked at people very sternly and had often noticed that when he looked at people with his special look, people would talk about things they would otherwise remain silent about. Now the following came to light; this is a very well-attested fact. This vegetable woman came to the man; he looked at her. She was frightened. He said nothing at all, just looked at her. He saw that she was frightened, didn't say a word, but kept looking at her. Now she was not only frightened, but said, “Don't look at me like that! Please don't look at me like that, I'll tell you everything!” He said nothing, but kept looking at her. So the woman said, ‘Yes, but I only did it out of fear.’ He said nothing again, he just kept looking at her. ‘Don't look at me like that, I really wouldn't have done it if I hadn't done it out of fear!’ He said nothing again, just kept looking at her. “Yes, I want to tell you everything, but don't look at me like that!” He looked at her. ‘I want to tell you everything! Yes, you see, I wouldn't have murdered it if I hadn't, if I hadn't done it out of fear!’ He continued to look at her. “Yes, I was so afraid of people, the child would have said something very bad about me, and so I did it out of fear. I wasn't even properly conscious!” And you see, this woman told him about a child murder she had committed from A to Z! What happened there?

The thing is this: this man had a certain keen eye. When a person has normal eyes, well, he talks to others, he doesn't particularly pierce them. When someone has an eye that can easily fixate, which then becomes penetrating, then magnetizes, one could say, the etheric body of the person. And the conscience is located in the etheric body. If the etheric body is properly connected to the physical body, well, no, when something stirs in it, the person will immediately push it down. But if the etheric body is magnetized by such a look, then this etheric body loosens. And if a person has something on his conscience, then it loosens and comes up and disturbs the astral body and the ego. And the consequence of this is that through this loosening of the conscience that has happened to the etheric body, the person makes confessions that he would not otherwise make.

These are the things that show, in turn, how the etheric body, when it is artificially loosened from the physical body, works independently and how the physical body actually hides much in the person that the person carries within himself. And that comes out when the etheric body loosens, possibly - not always, but possibly - before death.

There has also been a lot of abuse in these matters. If you were a bit of a life observer before the war, you could find the same thing over and over again in every hotel or wherever people pick up letters that are piled up where letters are usually piled up: something with the label of an American company. The same thing was everywhere. What had happened back then? Well, an American company had been founded that had branches. There was one in Berlin, in Frankfurt, in most of the larger cities. So business must have been good! It was announced that anyone who wanted to gain power over humanity would receive little books from this American company. All he has to do is send in a certain amount of money and he gets little books, and these little books contain instructions on how to gain power over humanity. Well, all the traveling salesmen, all the agents, they thought to themselves: “That's a nice thing, gaining power over people. Gosh, we'll sell a lot of those, no one will be able to resist us!” These little books immediately started to contain instructions on how the person concerned should adjust his eyes so that he does not look the other in the eye, but at the point between the eyes, he should stare fixedly; then the other person is magnetized and comes under his influence and does what he wants. Well, you know, the wine travelers and the other travelers have had all this sent to them. And you could see that, especially in hotels where such agents had stayed, these letters and things were always sent in bulk. Most of them didn't do better business because of that, but American society did do good business. It was of no use to most of them, but it might have been of use to a few; and they did something that no one should do under any circumstances, because it is a sin against human freedom. No person may aspire to get power over another person in such a way! And if nature gives it to him, as it did to that person of whom I told you, then it can indeed become bad enough under certain circumstances, but then it is nature that gives something like a special look; it is much less abused than with the person who wants to learn the matter. Now, during the war these follies have decreased and now they actually no longer exist. But one can say that one can learn from these things, on the one hand, how people themselves exploit the spiritual, and how the worst materialists – because they were mostly materialists, who allowed these things to come to them – also turn to the spiritual when it is a matter of making a profit with the spiritual. They do not believe in him, but they turn to the spirit when it is a matter of making a profit with the spirit! So I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that these things can be terribly abused.

But there are many other things to be considered. What people consciously strive for in this little book is, after all, practiced, albeit to a lesser extent, by some people who also achieve something with it for themselves. Perhaps you have occasionally attended meetings where speakers have spoken. Now, you will admit that the conviction that emanates from the speaker does not always play the only role, but that a tremendous amount of what emanates from the speaker as an influence also plays a role. And that is the case; the most popular popular speakers are sometimes those people who gain influence over crowds of people or other masses in an improper way. One does indeed have very special experiences in this time.

For example, I am currently writing essays about my own life at the Goetheanum. These essays, which some of you may have read, strive with a certain intention to tell the story as simply as possible, without embellishment, in the most straightforward way, with no particular emphasis. Now a critic has already been found who particularly criticizes this, who says, I do not bring poetry and truth like Goethe, but truth with all sobriety. Yes, that is precisely what I am striving for! And I do not strive at all to achieve what is demanded of such a critic. In the case of such a critic today, there is precisely that which, in contrast to a sober style, is a 'drunken' style. And, isn't it true, this drunken style is almost everywhere today. It is no longer important to people to somehow make an impact with what they say, but they need words that overwhelm others. That is where the wrong influence begins. If you write in the way I try to write, you have an effect on the ego, which has free will. But if you write in a drunken style, you have an effect on the astral body, which is not so free but is in fact unfree. You can influence the astral body especially when you talk to people in a way you know they like to hear.

Those people who do not want to convince in this way but to persuade usually use as sentences and words what pleases others, while the one who wants to tell the truth cannot always say what pleases others. For in our time it is even so that as a rule people do not like the truth. So just from the way a person writes his sentences, one can see: If a person writes his sentences in such a way that they are logical, that one sentence follows from the other, then he will have an effect on the ego of the other person, which is free. If a person writes his sentences in such a way that they are not logical, but rather are intended above all to please the other person, to stir up the other person's desires, urges, instincts, passions, then he will act on the other person's astral body, which is not free. And that is a characteristic of our time, that freedom is so often talked about, and that the greatest sin against freedom actually comes from public speaking and writing today. Actually, public speaking and writing is misused everywhere.

So you will understand the ordinary conditions of life better if you can distinguish between the I and the astral body in such a way that you can see how you can have an effect on one or the other. You will also be able to understand better such a phenomenon as when, before dying, a person starts to write again, or speaks a language again that he has forgotten, or, under a moral influence that he has ignored all his life, eats things that he would otherwise never have eaten. There you can see how the I is embedded in the physical body and loosens up.

Another question: last time, Dr. spoke about arsenic. Today, the opium question has become topical in Switzerland. Some time ago, an article by Dr. Usteri was published in the “Goetheanum” about the poppy plant in connection with opium. Would it be possible to hear something about opium?

Another question: About two years ago, the Einstein theory was introduced to the public. Today, we hear little more about it. Has this theory actually been proven, or has it also been neglected?

Dr. Steiner: Well, I would have to talk about Einstein's theory at length, because it is difficult to discuss Einstein's theory briefly. If you want to understand it properly, you need mathematical knowledge. But the strange thing about Einstein's theory was that everyone talked about it without understanding it, but only on authority, because, as I said, you need some mathematical knowledge. But insofar as one can understand something without mathematical knowledge – there is no time for that today – I would like to explain something so that you can see how it is based on truth on the one hand, and a great error on the other. People are still talking about it today. The general public is such that it takes to something when it is spread through the newspapers; but it does not remember anything. The public has forgotten it today, but the relevant university professors are now Einsteinians. So among the actual scholars, Einstein's theory is much more widespread today than it was years ago. I will discuss some of this next time, as far as one can do it in a very popular way. I just need more time than we have today. — Does anyone else have a question?

Question: I would particularly like to know the difference between alcohol and opium. According to Dr. Usteri's article, we can assume that poppy juice has an upward effect, while alcohol has a downward effect.

Dr. Steiner: You see, gentlemen, here we must ask ourselves: when a person drinks alcohol, what part of his being is influenced? The I. And this has the blood circulation as its tool in the physical body. The influence of alcohol on the I reveals itself physically in the blood circulation. So that the human being is very strongly influenced by alcohol in that which actually constitutes his life, in the blood circulation.

With opium, it is the case that it has a particularly strong effect on the astral body, and it affects it in such a way that the person draws it out of the physical body. You see, it is the case that he then perceives this drawing out of the astral body from the physical body as a very great sense of well-being. He is rid of his physical body for a while, and he perceives that as a sense of well-being.

People easily say, as you have probably heard, that sleep is sweet. But when we are asleep, we cannot really feel the sweetness of sleep because we are asleep! We cannot feel the sweetness of sleep; we can only experience it in retrospect. And because we experience it in retrospect, it may happen that people say that sleep is sweet. But when a person takes poppy juice or opium, he feels this sweetness, because in his body he is actually as if asleep and yet awake at the same time. This allows him to enjoy the sweetness, and he feels this sweetness and feels tremendously well in it. It is as if his whole body is permeated with sugar, with a very special sugar, with sweetness through and through. But at the same time his astral body is free from the physical body, and so he perceives, even if not clearly, all kinds of things. He does not have ordinary dreams, but perceives the spiritual world. He makes great journeys through the spiritual world. He likes that. It lifts him up, as you say, into the spiritual world. When he drinks alcohol, on the other hand, his physical body is completely taken up, right down to his blood. His astral body is not freed. Everything is taken up even more by the physical body. Therefore, when a person drinks alcohol, his physical body takes up much more of him than usual. That is precisely the difference. With opium, the soul and spirit are freed, firstly enjoying the physical body in its sweetness, but secondly it goes on journeys, whereby it enters the spiritual world, albeit somewhat disorderly, but nevertheless into the spiritual world. And the Orientals have much of what they describe in the wrong way, but still from the spiritual world, from opium, hashish and the like.

These are the things that show you, in turn, how one cannot understand such things in any other way than by taking into account the higher members of human nature.

We will continue the discussion next Saturday at nine o'clock.