The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Pitfalls await those on the path of spiritual knowledge. Dr. Steiner's poignant depiction of self-love can be especially helpful. This love rises like a force of nature in one who follows a spiritual path. He also explores the encounter with the double, the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, the role of fear, and the polar tendencies toward phenomenology and mysticism.

Lecture 12 of 14 from the volume: Results of Spiritual Investigation The volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner containing the original text of the this lecture, among eight others, is entitled: Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung, (No. 62 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961).

Just as it is of great significance in every realm of human endeavor and investigation to know not only the path of truth but also the sources of error, so it is especially the case in the realm dealt with by our lectures here, the realm of spiritual science, of spiritual investigation. In this realm one has to do not only with sources of error that can be eliminated to a certain extent through judgment and reasoning but with sources of error that accompany every step of the spiritual investigation of truth. One has to do with errors that must be not only refuted but overcome, conquered. Only by knowing them in such a way that one keeps, as it were, a spiritual eye on these experiences in their character as error will it be possible to guard oneself against them. It is not possible in relation to this realm to speak of individual truths or errors, but it is necessary to be clear through which activity of the soul, through which confusion of the soul, man can fall into untruth on the path of spiritual investigation.

It is easy to grasp that one wishing to penetrate to the super-sensible world first needs a healthy organ of perception, just as healthy sense organs are needed for outer sense observation. The second thing one needs, in addition to the organ of perception, is a corresponding development of clarity of consciousness, which can clearly oversee and judge the observations. Even in ordinary sense observation of life it is necessary that we have not only healthy senses but also a healthy consciousness, that is, a consciousness not befogged or confused, not paralyzed in a certain way. Both these qualities of the soul life in a higher stage come to be of even greater significance in the realm of spiritual investigation. A comparison from ordinary sense observation will help us to understand this. Suppose someone has an abnormally developed eye, for example. He will not be in a position to observe objects in as accurate and unprejudiced a way as they should be seen. From hundreds of possible examples let us consider just this one. A very significant natural scientist of our day, who is not in the least inclined to submit willingly to any delusion, had a certain eye condition, and he described in his biographical sketch how this eye condition misled him, particularly at dusk, causing him to see things unclearly and, through this unclear seeing, to arrive at false judgments. He described, for example, how he often walked through darkness and, due to his eye condition, would see a figure that he took to be real but that was nothing other than something called forth by his abnormal eye. He then related how he once went around the corner in a strange city and, because he believed the city to be unsafe, his eye induced him to see someone approaching and wishing to assault him; he even pulled out a weapon to defend himself. He therefore was not in a condition, despite complete knowledge of his organ impairment, to judge the situation correctly, to recognize that what his eye called forth was not there at all. Errors can occur in this way in all our sense organs. I bring this up only as a comparison.

In the recent lectures it was described how the human being, through a certain inner cultivation, evolution, of his soul, can develop into a real spiritual investigator, how he brings into use real organs of spirit through which he can look into the super-sensible world. These spiritual organs must be developed in the right way to make it possible to behold—in an analogy with sense perception—not caricature and untruth but the truth, the reality, of higher spiritual worlds. As we have seen, this development of the higher spiritual organs, which can be brought about by a rightly applied concentration, contemplation, and meditation, depends upon the starting point in ordinary, everyday life. Every human being who wishes to evolve upward to a view of the spiritual world must, and this is quite natural and proper, take his starting point from ordinary soul development, from what is right and normal for everyday life and also for ordinary science. Only from this starting point, by taking into the soul those mental processes (Vorstellungsarten) that we have presented as meditations and as other exercises, can the soul ascend again to an observation of the spiritual world.

The problem now is that at the starting point, that is, before the beginning of a spiritual training, the future spiritual investigator must be in possession of a sound power of judgment, a capacity for judgment proceeding from true conditions. Every starting point that does not result from a sound power of judgment, that surrenders itself to the object, leads to unsound organs of spiritual observation, which can be compared to abnormally developed sense organs. Here we are again at the point that we have often mentioned in previous lectures: the significance of what one can designate as the soul life of the spiritual investigator before he begins his development as a spiritual investigator, his training for spiritual investigation. An unsound power of judgment, lacking ability to observe objects in their reality, leads man to see facts and beings of the spiritual world as distorted or, as we shall see today, in many false ways. This is, as it were, the first important point in all development toward spiritual investigation. Spiritual scientific training makes it necessary to take as one's starting point a sound power of judgment, an interest in the true relationships of existence, even before the path to the super-sensible worlds is embarked upon. Everything that readily surrenders itself to illusion in the soul, that readily judges in an arbitrary way, that represents in the soul a certain unsound logic, leads also to the development of unsound spiritual organs.

The other starting point that is of essential significance is the moral mood of soul. The moral ability, the moral force, is as important as sound logic and intelligence, for if unsound logic, if unsound intelligence, lead to faulty spiritual organs, so will a cowardly (schwachmuetig) or immoral mood at the beginning of the spiritual training lead one ascending into the spiritual world to a certain fogginess, a “stupor”, we could call it. One thus faces the higher world in a state of what one must designate as a kind of paralysis, even a loss of consciousness (Ohnmacht). It must be noted, however, that in the stage of soul development referred to here, that which is called losing consciousness, a stupor, cannot be compared with the loss of consciousness, the paralysis, of ordinary, everyday consciousness. In ordinary consciousness, losing consciousness occurs in relation to the areas of everyday life. Losing consciousness in the spiritual world means a stupor, a fogging; it means the saturation of consciousness with all that can stem from the ordinary sense world or from the ordinary experience of the day. The spiritual investigator who is in error cannot be befogged or unconscious to the same degree as in ordinary consciousness, but he can be unconscious in relation to the spiritual world by being filled in the spiritual field of consciousness with that which has justification only through its properties and way of appearing in ordinary sense and intellectual consciousness.

By taking such elements along into the spiritual world, the spiritual investigator dims his higher consciousness. The matter can be presented in the following way. Dimming of consciousness, impairment of the ordinary behavior of soul in everyday life, is like a penetration of sleep or of the dreams into the clear, everyday consciousness. A stupor, a fogging of the higher, super-sensible consciousness, however, is like a penetration of ordinary, everyday consciousness—the consciousness that we carry around with us in the ordinary world—into that consciousness in which it no longer belongs, into the consciousness that should oversee and judge the facts of the higher, super-sensible worlds purely and clearly. Any kind of immoral or weak moral mood, any kind of moral untruthfulness, leads to such a fogging of super-sensible consciousness. Among the essential and most significant aspects of preparing for a spiritual scientific training, therefore, is a corresponding moral development, and, if you go through my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, you will find special practices for the soul through which this appropriate moral mood can be established. Of particular damage in this striving is everything that overcomes man in ordinary life in the way of vanity, ambition, the ordinary sense of self, and a particular sympathy for this or that experience. Inner tranquility, impartiality, a loving penetration of things and worlds, an attentive interest in everything life offers, but especially a certain moral courage, a standing up for what one recognizes as true, are proper starting points for a spiritual scientific training.

From what has been said in preceding lectures, it should be clear that all spiritual training consists of an awakening of certain spiritual forces that exist in the soul but that slumber in ordinary life and must be developed. The spiritual organs and the super-sensible consciousness can be developed only when forces lying peacefully in the depths of the soul, forces that are weak or not at all developed in ordinary life, are really brought into consciousness.

The following can be seen from what has been said. Two things appear when man, through appropriate meditation, through concentrating his whole life of soul on individual mental images called into consciousness by his free will, tries to draw forth these forces resting in the depths of his soul. First, a quality that is always present in the soul but that in ordinary life can be kept relatively in check will be intensified, along with the other slumbering qualities in the depths of the soul; spiritual development cannot take place in any other way than by the whole soul life becoming in a certain respect inwardly more active, more infused with energy. This quality that is intensified at the same time as the others that one is trying directly to intensify one can call human self-love, sense of self. One could say that one begins to know this human self-love, this sense of self, only when one goes through a spiritual scientific training; only then does one begin to know how deep within the human soul this self-love slumbers. As has been pointed out already, he who engages in the exercises described in past lectures, thus intensifying his soul forces, notices at a certain moment in his development that another world enters his soul life. He must be able to notice, to have the knowledge to recognize, that the first form (Gestalt) in which the new, super-sensible world appears is nothing other than a projection, a shadow image, of his own inner soul life. These forces that he has developed in his soul life appear to him first in a mirror image. This is the reason that the materialistic thinker easily mistakes what appears in the soul life of the spiritual investigator for what can appear in the unhealthy soul life as illusions, visions, hallucinations, and the like. That objections from this side rest on ignorance of the facts has often been pointed out; this distinction, however, must be alluded to again and again. The unhealthy soul life, which beholds its own essence as in a mirror image, takes its own reflections for a real world and is not in a position to eliminate these reflections through inner choice. By comparison, in a true spiritual training it must be maintained that the spiritual investigator recognizes the first phenomena that appear as reflections of his own being; not only does he recognize them as such, but he is able to eliminate them, to extinguish them from his field of consciousness.

Just as the spiritual investigator is able through his exercises to intensify his soul forces so that a new world is conjured before him, so he must be able to extinguish this whole world in its first form; he must not only recognize it as a reflection of his own being but be able to extinguish it again. If he could not extinguish it, he would be in a situation comparable to something that occurs in sense observation and that would be unbearable, impossible in an actual development of the human soul. Imagine in ordinary sense observation that a person directed his eyes to an object and became so attracted to it that he could not avert his gaze. The person would not be able to look around freely but would be tied to the object. This would be an unbearable situation in relation to the outer world. With a spiritual development, it would mean exactly the same in relation to the super-sensible world if a person were not in the position to turn from his spiritual observation and extinguish what presents itself as image to his spiritual observation. He must pass the test expressed in the words, “You are able to extinguish your image,” overcoming himself in this extinguishing; if the image returns, so that he can know his reality in a corresponding way, then only does he face reality and not his own imaginings (Einbildung). The spiritual investigator therefore must be able not only to create his own spiritual phenomena and to approach them but also to extinguish them again.

What does this mean, however? It means nothing less than the need for an immensely strong force to overcome the sense of self, self-love. Why does the abnormal soul life, which arrives at visions, hallucinations, and crazy notions, see these creations as realities and not as emanations from its own being? Because the human being feels himself so connected, so bound, to what he himself brings forth that he would believe himself destroyed if he could not look at what he himself brings forth as a reality. If a human being leaves the ordinary world with an abnormal soul life, his self-love becomes so intensified that it works like a force of nature. Within the ordinary soul life we can distinguish very clearly between so-called fantasy and what is reality, for within the ordinary soul life we have a certain power over our mental images. Any person is aware of this power whose soul has been capable of eliminating certain mental images when it recognizes their error. We are in a different situation in relation to the outer world when we are confronted with forces of nature; when lightning flashes, when thunder rolls, we have to let the phenomena take their course; we cannot tell the lightning not to flash or the thunder not to roll.

With the same inner force, however, the sense of self appears in us when we leave the ordinary soul life; as little as we can forbid lightning to flash so little can we forbid self-love from appearing, developed into a force of nature, if it is only a reflection of one's own being, that which the soul presents as an image of its own being, perceived as a real outer world. From this one can see, therefore, that the self-education of the spiritual investigator must consist chiefly of overcoming piece by piece self-love, the sense of self. Only if this is accomplished at every stage of spiritual development through a strict self-observation will one come to be able at last to erase a spiritual world when it appears as described. This means to be in the position of allowing that which one has striven for with all one's might to fall into oblivion. Something must be developed through spiritual training (one can find this presented more precisely in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds) that actually does not exist at all in man's free will in ordinary life. If man in ordinary life undertakes to do something, he wants to do it if he neglects to do something, he doesn't want to do it. One must say that in ordinary life man is in the position of applying his will impulses. To extinguish, in the way I described, the spiritual world that appears, the will must not only have the described faculties but must be able, after the spiritual world appears, slowly to weaken itself bit by bit, to the point of utter will-lessness, even to the point of extinguishing itself. Such a cultivation of the will is accomplished only when the exercises for the soul, described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, are followed systematically. When we awaken the slumbering forces in our soul, self-love, the sense of self, are intensified. This intensification leads us under certain circumstances to consider as an outer reality that which we actually are ourselves, that which lies only within us.

Another thing that is necessary when the soul undergoes appropriate exercises for a spiritual training is for man, at a certain level of this development, actually to forsake everything in his consciousness, everything that in his life up to now gave him in outer, everyday life and in ordinary science the content of truth, security in truth, everything that gave him the possibility of considering something as reality. As indicated already in previous lectures, all supports that we have for our judgments in ordinary life, all basic reference points given us by the sense world, which teaches us how we must think about reality, must be forsaken. After all, we want through the spiritual training to enter a higher world. The spiritual investigator at an appropriate stage of his development now sees, “You can no longer have a support in the world that you want to enter; you can no longer have the support of outer sense perception, of the intellectual judgment you have acquired, which otherwise guided you correctly through life”; when he has seen this, then comes the all-important, serious moment in the life of the spiritual investigator when he feels as if the ground is gone from under his feet, as if the support that he has had in ordinary life is gone, as if all security that has carried him up to now is gone and that he approaches an abyss into which with every further step he will surely fall. This must in a certain way become an experience in the spiritual training. That this experience not be accompanied by every possible danger is the primary concern of a true spiritual training today.

An attempt has been made to explain this more fully in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. If one undergoes the exercises offered there, one comes step by step to a point at which one feels what has just been described; one feels oneself as if over an abyss. One has already become so tranquil in one's soul, however, that one beholds the situation with a newly acquired, special faculty of judgment; therefore the fear, terror, and horror that otherwise needs must overtake the human soul in a dangerous way—not an ordinary, everyday fear—do not appear. One learns to know the basis of the fear, terror, and horror, but one has already progressed so as to achieve a mood in which one can endure it without fear.

Here we are again at a point at which it becomes necessary for the soul to recognize the truth and not fall into error, because the support that one has in ordinary life has disappeared, and the soul feels itself as if placed over an abyss. This must occur in order that, out of the emptiness, that which is fully spiritual in the world can approach the soul.

What in ordinary life is called anxiety, fear, will be intensified through such a training, expanded, just as self-love and the sense of self are intensified and expanded, growing into a kind of force of nature. Something must be said here that perhaps sounds paradoxical. In ordinary life if we have not struggled through to a certain courage, if we are cowards, we are frightened by this or that event if we have courage, however, we can endure it. In the region of the soul life we have described, fear, terror, and horror will approach us, but we must be in the position, as it were, not to be afraid of the fear, not to be horrified by the horror, not to become anxious with the anxiety that confronts us. This is the paradox, but it corresponds exactly with an actual soul experience that appears in this realm.

Everything that the human being experiences on entering the spiritual world is designated ordinarily as the experience with the Guardian of the Threshold. I tried to describe something concrete about this experience in my Mystery Drama, The Guardian of the Threshold. Here it only need be mentioned that at a certain stage of spiritual development, man learns to know his inner being as it can love itself with the force of an event of nature, as it can be frightened and horrified on entering the spiritual world. This experience of our own self, of the intensified self of that inner being that otherwise never would come before our soul, is the soul-shaking event called the Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold. Only by having this meeting will one acquire the faculty to differentiate truth from error in the spiritual world.

Why this experience is called the Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold is easily comprehensible. It is clear that the spiritual world that man enters is always around us and that man is unaware of it in ordinary life only because he does not have the appropriate organs to perceive it. The spiritual world surrounds us always and is always behind that which the senses perceive. Before man can enter this world, however, he must strengthen his ego, his I. With the strengthening of the ego, however, the aforementioned qualities also appear. He therefore must learn above all else to know himself, so that when he is able to confront a spiritual outer world in the same way as he confronts an objective being he can distinguish himself from what is truth. If he does not learn to delimit himself in this way, he will always confuse that which is only within him, that which is only his subjective experience, with the spiritual world picture; he can never arrive at a real grasp of spiritual reality.

To what extent fear plays a certain role on entering the spiritual world can be observed particularly in the people who deny the existence of such a world. Among such people are also many who have different reasons for denying this spiritual world, but a great portion of those people who are theoretical materialists or materialistically tinged monists have a definite reason for denying this spiritual world, a reason that is clearly visible for one who knows the soul. We must now emphasize that the soul life of the human being is, as it were, twofold. In the soul not only does there exist what man ordinarily knows, but in the depths of the soul life things are happening that cast their shadows—or their lights—into ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness, however, does not reach down to this level. We can find in the hidden depths of soul hatred and love, joy and fear and excitement, without our carrying these effects into conscious soul life. It is therefore entirely correct to say that a phenomenon of hatred directed from one person to another, taking place within consciousness, actually can be rooted, in the depths of soul, in love. There can be a sympathy, a deep sympathy, of one person for another in the depths of the soul, but since this person at the same time has reasons—reasons about which he perhaps knows nothing—he is confused about this love, about the sympathy, deceiving himself with hatred and antipathy. This is something that holds sway in the depths of the soul, so that these depths look quite different from what we call our everyday consciousness. There can be conditions of fear, of anxiety, in the depths of the soul of which one has no conscious idea. Man can have that fear in the depths of his soul, that anxiety in face of the spiritual world—because he must cross the abyss that has been described before entering—and yet be aware of nothing consciously. Actually, all human beings who have not yet entered the spiritual world, but who have acquired an understanding of entering, have to a degree this fear, this terror in face of the spiritual world. Whatever one may think concerning this fear and anxiety that are within the depths of the soul, they are there, though they appear stronger with one person, weaker with another. Because the soul might be injured, man is protected by the wisdom-filled nature of his being from being able to look further into the spiritual world, from being able to have the experience of meeting the Guardian of the Threshold until he is ready for it. Before that he is protected. Therefore one speaks of the experience of the Guardian of the Threshold.

We can note that a materialistically or monistically minded person, although knowing nothing of this experience, does have this fear in face of the spiritual world in the depths of his soul. There lives in such a person a certain antipathy to confronting the abyss that must be crossed; and to help him get past this fear, this anxiety in the soul in face of the spiritual world, the monist or materialist thinks out his theories and denies the spiritual world; this denial is nothing other than a self-induced anesthesia in face of his fear. This is the real explanation for materialism. As unsympathetic as it may sound, for one who knows the soul it is evident that in a meeting of materialistic monists, or those who deny soul and spirit, there prevails only the fear in the face of the spiritual world. One could say mockingly that fear-mongering is the basis of materialism, and although it is mocking it is nevertheless true. In materialistic literature, in the materialistic world conception, the spiritual investigator recognizes everywhere between the lines fear and anxiety in face of the spiritual world. What in ordinary life appears as materialism, however, as the soul condition present when a person is a materialist or a materialistically tinged monist, can also be present when a person arrives through definite measures at a certain spiritual vision. One can go through certain exercises in the soul and develop thereby from a more-or-less unhealthy soul condition to a more-or-less spiritual comprehension, yet one need not come by this means to a real understanding of the nature of the spiritual world. In a certain way one can carry up into the spiritual something of this fear about which one knows nothing, which has already been characterized and which underlies the materialistically minded person in the ordinary world.

If one does not grasp this connection, one can carry up into the spiritual world something that is terribly widespread in ordinary life: the love of ease of thinking, the love of ease of feeling. Fear is closely akin to love of ease, to clinging to habit. Why is man afraid of changing his situation? Because he loves his ease and comfort. This love of ease is closely related to fear. We have already described the basis for hatred; in the same way one can also say that lassitude, love of ease, are closely related to fear. One can, however, carry this love of ease up into the spiritual world. No one ought to object that human beings show no evidence of fear or love of ease, for this is again characteristic; it is characteristic that the ordinary mood of soul knows nothing of these things rooted in the subconscious. If man carries fear into the spiritual world, already having developed to the point of acknowledging the spiritual world, then an error arises in a spiritual region, an error that is extraordinarily important to consider the leaning toward phenomenalism.

People who become subject to this leaning become, rather than spiritual investigators, “specterseers” (to express it crassly), those who see ghosts (Gespensterschauer); they become possessed by a leaning toward phenomenalism. This means that they want to see the spiritual world in the same way as the sense world is to be seen; they do not want to perceive spiritual facts, spiritual beings, but something similar to the beings that the sensory eye can behold. In short, instead of spirits they want to behold specters, ghosts. The error of spiritualism (this is not to say that all spiritualism is unjustified) consists of this leaning toward phenomenalism. Just as the ordinary, everyday materialist wants to see only matter everywhere and not the spirit behind matter, so does he who brings to the spiritual world the same soul condition that actually exists in materialism want to see everywhere only ghostlike, condensed spirits.

This is one dangerous extreme of error that can emerge. One must say that this tendency to carry the ordinary field of consciousness up into the super-sensible field of consciousness exists in the widest circles, even among those who fully recognize a “spiritual world” and want “proof” of a spiritual world. The error here, however, lies in considering a proof valid only if it takes place in the realm of phenomenalism; it lies in considering that everything should be like condensed ghosts. Here something arises that was called in the beginning of our study a stupor, losing consciousness in relation to the spiritual world. While losing consciousness in ordinary life is the penetration of a sleeping or dreaming condition into consciousness, losing consciousness regarding the spiritual world means wanting to give worth only to that which appears in the same way as things in the ordinary world, so that one is unconscious in relation to the spiritual world; it is demanded that proof be supplied that can be taken in the way appropriate only in the ordinary world. Just as one brings sleep into the ordinary world if one falls unconscious, so one falls unconscious in relation to the beings and processes of the spiritual world if one takes into the super-sensible world that which is only an extract of sense reality (das Sinnliche). The true spiritual investigator also knows those realms of the spiritual world that condense into the ghostlike, but he knows that everything arriving at such a condensation is merely the dying, the withering in the spiritual world. When, for example, with the help of a medium, something is brought to life as the thoughts of a deceased person, we are confronted only with what remains behind, as it were, of the deceased. We are not dealing with that which goes through the portal of death, which passes through the spiritual world and appears again in a new earthly life. We are concerned in such a case not with what is present in the individuality of the dead person but with the sheath that is cast off, the wooden part of the tree, or the shell of a shellfish, or the skin of the snake that is cast off. In the same way, such sheaths, such useless remnants, are continuously being cast off from the being of the spiritual world and then, by way of a medium, they can be made perceptible—although as visible unreality. The spiritual investigator knows, to be sure, that he is not confronting an unreality. He does not surrender himself to the error, however, that in encountering the described phenomenon he is confronted with something fertile, with something sprouting and budding; rather he knows it as something dying, withering. At the same time it must be emphasized that in the sense world, when one confronts error, one is dealing with something that must be ignored, that must be eliminated as soon as it is recognized as error, whereas in the spiritual world one cannot cope with error in the same way. There, an error corresponds to the dying, the withering, and the error consists of mistaking the dying and withering in the spiritual world for something fruitful or full of significance. Even in the life of the ordinary human being, error is something one casts off; in the spiritual world error arises when the dead, the dying, is taken for something fruitful, sprouting; one mistakes the dead remnants that have been cast off for immortality.

How deeply the best individuals of our time have been entangled in this kind of phenomenalism, considering only such proof as valid, we can see in an individual who wrote so many excellent things about the world and now has written a book about these phenomena, about these different phenomena of spiritual investigation. I am referring to Maurice Maeterlinck and his book, About Death. We read there that he acknowledges a spiritual world but as proof acknowledges only what appears in phenomenalism. He does not notice that he tries to find in phenomenalism that which can never be found in phenomenalism. Then he criticizes the “phenomena” very acutely, very effectively. He does notice, however, that all this actually has no particular meaning and that the human soul after death does not exhibit a very intense vitality, that it behaves rather awkwardly, as though groping in the dark. Since he wants to admit only this kind of proof, he generally does not acknowledge spiritual investigation but remains stuck.

We see how the possibility of error opens itself to someone who would gladly recognize the spiritual world but is unable to do so, because he does not demand spiritual investigation but rather “specter investigation” and does not make use of what reality can give. His newest book is extraordinarily interesting from this point of view.

In the leaning toward phenomenalism we thus have the one extreme among the possibilities for error in spiritual investigation. The other extreme among the possibilities for error is ecstasy, and between phenomenalism and ecstasy, in knowing both, lies the truth, or at least truth can be reached if one knows both. The path of error, however, lies as much on the side of phenomenalism as on the side of ecstasy. We have seen what soul condition leads into the wish to acknowledge only phenomenalism. It is fear, horror, which man does not admit, which he tries to conceal. Because he is afraid to abandon all sense reality and to make the leap over the abyss, he accepts sense reality, demands the specters, and arrives thereby only at the dying, at that which destroys itself: This is one source of error. The other force of the soul, intensified through the exercises often described here is self-love, sense of self; self-love has as its polarity—one would like to say—the “getting out of oneself.” This “enjoying oneself in oneself” (pardon the expression; it is a radical choice but points exactly to what we are concerned with here) is only one side; the other side consists of “losing oneself in the world,” the surrender and dissolving and self-enjoyment in the other and the corresponding intensification of this self-seeking coming-out-of-one's self is ecstasy in its extreme. It is the cause of a condition in which man in a certain respect can say to himself that he has gotten free of himself. He has become free of himself, however, only by feeling the comfort of his own self in the being outside himself. If the one who knows the soul looks at the evolution of mysticism in the world, he finds that a large part of mysticism consists of the phenomena just characterized. As great, as powerful in soul experiences, as deep and significant as mysticism can be, the possibilities of error in ecstasy are actually rooted in a false cultivation of the mystical faculty of the human being. When man strives always to enter more and more into himself, when he strives through this for what is called the deepening of his soul life, strives, as he says, to find “God in himself” this God that man finds in his inner being is usually nothing other than his own I or ego made into God. With many mystics we find, when they speak of the “God within,” nothing other than the God imprinted with their own egos. Mystical immersion in God is at times nothing but immersing oneself into one's own dear ego, especially into the parts of the ego into which one does not penetrate with full consciousness, so that one surrenders one's self, loses one's self, comes out of one's self, and yet remains only within one's self. Much that confronts us as mysticism shows that with false mystics love of God is often only disguised self-love.

The real spiritual investigator must guard himself on the one hand against carrying the outer sense world into the higher world; he must guard on the other hand against the opposite extreme, against false mysticism, the coming-out-of-oneself. He must never confuse “love for the spiritual being of the world” with self-love. In the moment that he confuses these, the following occurs, as the true spiritual investigator, who has developed himself correctly, can verify. Just as one who is compelled by phenomenalism beholds only the remnants, the dying of the spiritual world, so he who surrenders himself to the other extreme sees only individual parts of the spiritual world, not spiritual facts and beings. In the spiritual world he does not do what one who contemplates the flowers in a meadow does; rather, he does what the one does who takes what grows in the field, chops it up and eats it. This comparison is peculiar but absolutely to the point. Through ecstasy the spiritual facts are not grasped in their wholeness, their totality, but only in that which pleases and benefits one's own soul, that which the soul can consume spiritually. It is actually a consumption of spiritual substance that is cultivated in the human being through ecstasy. Just as little as one learns to know things of this sense world by eating them, so little does one learn to know the forces and beings of the spiritual world through giving oneself to ecstasy in order to warm one's own self with what feels good. One thereby comes to a definite knowledge only of one's own self in relation to the spiritual world. One lives only in a heightened sense of self, a heightened self-love, and because one takes in from the spiritual world only that which can be consumed spiritually, which can be eaten spiritually, one deprives oneself of that which cannot be handled in this way, of that which stands apart from the nourishment gained through ecstasy. What one deprives oneself of, however, is by far the greatest part of the spiritual world, and the mystic who clings to ecstasy is deprived more and more. We find with mystics who ascend to the spiritual world through ecstasy that it is exactly as if they were always indulging themselves through repeating feelings and sensations. Many presentations of such mystics appear not as objective presentations of the conditions of the spiritual world but as though the one who gives the presentation were indulging in what he presents. Many mystics are actually nothing but spiritual gourmets, and the rest of the spiritual world, which does not taste good to them, does not even exist for them.

We see again how concepts change when we ascend from the ordinary world into the higher world. If in the ordinary world we occupy ourselves only with our own concepts, we become poorer and poorer, our logic becomes ever poorer. Finally we find that we can no longer find our orientation, and anyone who knows the facts can set us straight. In the ordinary world we correct this meagerness by widening our concepts. In the spiritual world, that which corresponds to ecstasy leads to something else. By taking into us realities, and not something unreal—but taking in only isolated parts, after picking out what suits us—we receive a view of the spiritual world that is only suited to ourselves. We carry ourselves into the spiritual world just as in the other extreme, in phenomenalism, we carry the sense world into the spiritual world. It can always be shown in the case of one who arrives at a false picture of the world through ecstasy that he began from an unsound force of judgment, from an incomplete factual logic.

We thus see how the spiritual investigator always must avoid the two extremes that bring him to every possible source of error: phenomenalism on the one hand and ecstasy on the other. In order to avoid the sources of error, nothing will be more helpful than for the spiritual investigator to cultivate one particular mood of soul, through which he is in a position, when he places himself in the spiritual world, to exist in the spiritual world, to be able to observe calmly in that world. One cannot always remain in the spiritual world, however, so long as one is in the physical body; one must also live with the physical world; therefore this mood of soul that the spiritual investigator must cultivate allows him in the physical world to strive as much as possible to grasp the facts of life with common sense, without sentimentality and untruthfulness. It is necessary for the spiritual investigator, to a much higher degree than is ordinarily the case, to have a healthy sense for facts, a genuine feeling for truthfulness. All fanaticism, all inaccuracy, which make it so easy to skirt what is really there, are harmful for the spiritual investigator. One can see already in ordinary life, and it becomes clear immediately in the realm of spiritual training, that lie who lets himself indulge only the least bit in inaccuracy will notice that it is only a tiny step from inaccuracy to lies and untruthfulness. The spiritual investigator, therefore, must strive to feel himself obliged to hold firmly to the truth, to mix nothing with the unconditional truth that exists in ordinary life, for in the spiritual world such a mixing leads from error to error. In those circles wishing to have anything to do with spiritual investigation, the justified opinion should be spread that an outer, distinguishing characteristic of the true spiritual investigator must be his truthfulness; the moment the spiritual investigator demonstrates that he feels little obligation to test what he says, speaking rather of things he cannot know about the physical world, he becomes flawed as a spiritual investigator and no longer can merit a full trust. This is connected with the conditions for spiritual investigation itself.

It must be brought to our attention again and again that, when the realms of spiritual investigation and spiritual science are spoken of today, it is unjustified to claim that only the spiritual investigator can see into the spiritual world and that one who is not yet a spiritual investigator is unable to know and understand and grasp it. You can learn from the descriptions in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and from my presentation in An Outline of Occult Science that in our era to a certain degree every person, if only he makes the necessary effort, can become a spiritual investigator, no matter what his position in life is otherwise. Nevertheless, it is also possible for a person to understand the descriptions of the spiritual world without being a spiritual investigator. It is necessary to be a spiritual investigator not in order to understand the communications from the spiritual world but in order to discover them, to investigate what is present in the spiritual world. One must be a painter in order to paint a picture, but one need not be a painter to understand a picture; it is the same with understanding communications from the spiritual world with the sound human intellect. It is in order to investigate the spiritual world that the human being is endowed with the higher organs of observation. If what is investigated, however, is brought into the concepts of the ordinary world, as is often attempted here, the sound human intellect can, if only it is sufficiently unprejudiced and does not create obstructions for itself, grasp what is brought to light through spiritual investigation.

One could say that with spiritual investigation it is the same as it is with what grows under the earth and is found only when one digs into the earth like a miner. Whatever one finds there can originate only as it exists within the earth, developing in those layers of the earth that are covered by layers above it. What is in the depths of the earth cannot develop on the surface of the earth, which is illuminated by the sun during the day. If we then make an opening in the earth, however, and let the sunlight shine in, illuminating what is underneath, everything can appear in the light of the sun. It is the same with what can be gained through spiritual scientific investigation: it can be brought to light only if the soul has transformed itself into an organ of perception for the spiritual world. If it is brought into the concepts and mental images of ordinary life, however, then the human intellect, if only it is sufficiently sound, can understand and illuminate everything as if with spiritual sunlight. All of spiritual science, therefore, can be grasped by the sound human intellect. Just as a painting is not made merely for the painter himself, so the communications about the spiritual world are not only for the spiritual scientific investigator. Nevertheless, paintings are able to originate only through the painter, and the spiritual world can be explored only by the spiritual investigator.

He who believes that what comes from the communications of the spiritual investigator cannot be grasped by means of the ordinary intellect does not perceive at all correctly the nature and essence of the human capacity for thinking. In the human capacity for thinking reside faculties that stand in direct connection with the nature of the higher world. Because man is accustomed to approach only the ordinary sense objects with his concepts, he believes that the ordinary faculty of judgment vanishes in him if super-sensible facts are presented to him. He who develops his capacity for thinking, however, can cultivate this capacity in such a way that it can grasp what is brought to light through spiritual investigation. One must not have some notion beforehand, however, of how one can grasp such matters. This should result from the study itself. If one has a definite notion of how one should grasp these things, one surrenders oneself again to a serious error in relation to spiritual investigation. This is the second aspect that is especially noticeable in Maurice Maeterlinck's new book. He is an individual who wishes to direct his gaze to the spiritual world, who has made some fine observations about various things, and who has also tried to present the mysteries of the spiritual world dramatically; it is especially telling that this individual, in the moment in which he should approach the real science of the spirit, proves himself so inadequate. He demands a certain kind of understanding—not the kind given by the things themselves but the kind he imagines (ertraeumt), which he believes must appear to provide verification. In this way the greatest peculiarity arises: Maeterlinck takes to be merely a belief that which anthroposophy or spiritual science has to say when it speaks today about “repeated earthly lives”—when it speaks with a certain outer justification (not with a merely inner conviction, which would be akin to a certain primitive belief of humanity). He calls it a belief, because he cannot perceive that what we are concerned with here does not have to do with belief but with knowledge. He thus finds that the existence of that which develops further in man, moving from life to life, cannot be proved, because he has a definite idea of what constitutes proof. Maeterlinck can be compared in this realm to certain other people. Until recently, there existed a kind of belief, a certain mathematical-geometrical belief that is summarized in the words, the “squaring of the circle”; that is, one would seek by means of a mathematical-analytical, constructive thinking for that square which equaled the area or the circumference of the circle. This task of transforming the circle into a square was an ideal, as it were, toward which one always strove: the transforming of the circle into a square. Now, no one doubted that there could be a square exactly as large as a circle. In reality, of course, it is entirely possible for such a thing to exist, but it is impossible to show with mathematical constructions or with analytical methods just what the diameter of a circle would have to be to equal a particular square. This means that mathematical thinking does not suffice to prove something that is real, that is physical. There have been countless people who have worked on the solution of squaring the circle, until recent mathematicians proved that it is impossible to solve the problem in this way. Today anyone still trying to solve the problem of squaring the circle is considered not to know mathematics in this realm. Maeterlinck is equivalent to those people trying to square the circle in regard to what he is trying to prove. One can understand the spiritual world, can grasp that what is brought to light through spiritual investigation is real; one cannot prove the existence of this spiritual world, however, if one demands out of prejudice a particular kind of proof; one can prove it in this way as little as one can prove the squaring of a circle mathematically.

One would have to reply to Maeterlinck, therefore, that he tries to square the circle in the spiritual realm, or he would have to be shown how the concepts by which he would like to prove the existence of the spiritual world disappear when man passes through the portal of death. How is one supposed to prove the existence of the spiritual world with concepts such as those taken from the sense world? This, however, is what Maeterlinck is trying to do, and it is extraordinarily interesting that when he gives in to his healthy feeling, he has no choice but to acknowledge repeated lives on earth. It is very interesting how he expresses himself about a knowledge that he calls a belief, and I would like to read to you his own words: ‘Never was there a belief more beautiful, more just, more pure, more morally fruitful, more comforting, and in a certain sense more probable than this. With its teaching of gradual redemption and purification of all bodily and spiritual inequities, of all social injustice, all terrible’ injustices of destiny, it alone gives meaning to life. The goodness of a belief, however, is no proof of its truthfulness. Although six hundred million human beings devote themselves to this religion, although it is closest to the origins that are shrouded in darkness, although it is the only one without hatred, it should have done what the others have not done: bring us indisputable evidence. What it has given us up to now is only the first shadow of the beginning of a proof.” In other words, Maeterlinck is trying in this realm to square the circle.

We see especially clearly in this example how someone who can think that the benefit of spiritual science lies only in an extreme, in phenomenalism (all his writings show this), is totally unable to keep in view the significance and the real nature of spiritual scientific investigation. From such an example as Maeterlinck, we can learn a lot, namely that truth, which must be introduced into the world evolution of humanity, is really, when it first appears, in the position once characterized by Schopenhauer with the words, “In all centuries poor truth had to blush over being paradoxical.” To Maeterlinck, truth appears not just paradoxical but unbelievable, yet it is not the fault of truth. Truth cannot take on the form of the universally reigning error. Thus she looks sighing to her patron god, Time, which promises her victory and glory, but whose vast wings beat so slowly that she dies in the meantime. So it goes with the course of the spiritual evolution of humanity. It is most interesting and instructive that the best individuals today, those human beings who long to have their soul life connected with a spiritual world, are not capable of grasping the core of the actual science of the spirit. Instead, where it involves distinguishing the true path from the two possibilities for error, they stumble, because they do not dare leap over the abyss; they wish either to make use of their dependence on the ordinary world, in phenomenalism, or, if they do not do this, they seek an intensification of the sense of self in ecstasy. We cannot concern ourselves only with recognizing the character of the separate possibilities for error; we must concern ourselves with that which humanity must avoid if one is to recognize and close up the source of spiritual scientific error. From the way in which today's study has been undertaken, one conclusion can be drawn: spiritual investigation must know the sources of error. The temptation is always present in the soul to err in the direction of phenomenalism, and therefore to stand as though spiritually unconscious in relation to the spiritual world, or to err in the direction of ecstasy, which means wanting to enter the spiritual world with inadequate organs of spirit and thus receiving only isolated pieces and not related facts.

The path goes between the two extremes. One must know the possibilities for error. Because they can appear with every step in spiritual life one must not only know them but overcome them. The revelations of spiritual investigation are not only results of investigation but also victories over error, victory by means of a way of looking that has been gained previously, victory over the sense of self and more. He who penetrates more deeply into what we have tried to describe only sketchily today will become aware that—even if everywhere where we embark on the investigation of spiritual life the possibilities for error can lurk frighteningly—we nevertheless must conquer error again and again. He will become aware that spiritual investigation not only satisfies an indomitable yearning for that which man needs for certainty in his life but that its goal must appear, to one who regards this movement with comprehension, as attainable to a sound human sense. To conclude what today's lecture was to offer on the level of feeling, I would like to say that in spite of all obstacles, in spite of all things that can stand in a hostile way on the path of spiritual investigation, those who penetrate with a sound sense into the results of spiritual scientific. investigation feel and sense that these results penetrate—through difficult hindrances of soul, through bewildering darknesses of spirit—to a solemn clarity, to a luminous truth.

The point I tried yesterday particularly to emphasize was that in the spiritual development of the West, which found its expression ultimately in the Schoolmen, not only is a part played by what we can grasp in abstract concepts, and what happened, as it were, in abstract concepts, and in a development of abstract thoughts, but rather that behind it all, there stands a real development of the impulses of Western mankind. What I mean is this: we can first of all, as happens mostly in the history of philosophy, direct our eyes on to what we find in each philosopher; we can follow how the ideas, which we find in a philosopher of the sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth century are further developed by philosophers of the tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and from such a review we can get the impression that one thinker has taken over the ideas from another, and that we are in the presence of a certain evolution of ideas. This is an historical review of spiritual life which had gradually to be abandoned. For what takes place there, what so to speak is revealed by the individual human souls, is merely a symptom of something deeper which lies behind the scenes of the outer events; and this something which was going on already a few centuries before Christianity was founded, and continued in the first centuries a.d. up to the time of the Schoolmen, is an entirely organic process in the development of Western humanity. And unless we take this organic process into account, it is as impossible to get an explanation of it, as we could of the period of human development between the ages of twelve to twenty, if we do not consider the important influence of those forces which are connected with adolescence, and which at this time rise to the surface from the deeps of human nature. In the same way out of the depth of the whole great organism of European humanity there surges up something which can be defined—there are other ways of definition,—but which I will define by saying: Those ancient poets spoke honestly and sincerely, who, like Homer, for instance, began their epic poems: “Sing to me, Goddess, of the wrath of Achilles,” or “Sing to me, O Muse, of the much-travelled man.” These people did not wish to make a phrase, they found as an inner fact of their consciousness, that it was not a single, individual Ego that wanted to express itself, but what in fact they felt to be a higher spiritual-psychic force which plays a part in the ordinary conscious condition of man. And again—I mentioned it yesterday—Klopstock was right and saw this fact to a certain extent, even if only unconsciously, when he began his “Messiah Poem” not “Sing, O Muse,” or “Sing, O Goddess, of man's redemption,” but when he said “Sing, immortal Soul. ...” In other words, “Sing, thou individual being, that livest in each man as an individuality.” When Klopstock wrote his “Messiah,” this feeling of individuality in each soul was, it is true, fairly widespread. But this inner urge, to bring out the individuality, to shape an individual life, grew up most pronouncedly in the age between the foundation of Christianity and the higher Scholasticism. We can see only the merest surface-reflection in the thoughts of the philosophers of what was taking place in the depths of all human beings—the individualization of the consciousness of European people. And an important thing in the spread of Christianity throughout these centuries is the fact that the leaders of its propagation had to address themselves to a humanity which strove more and more, from the depth of its being, towards an inner feeling of human individuality.

We can understand the separate events that occurred in this epoch only by keeping this point of view before us. And only thus can we understand what battles took place in the souls of such people who, in the profundity of the human soul, wanted to dispute with Christianity on the one side and philosophy on the other, like Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. The authors of the usual histories of philosophy to-day have understood so little of the true form of these soul-battles which had their culmination in Albertus and Thomas, that this epoch is only approximately clearly depicted in their histories. There are many things to consider in the soul-life of Albertus and Thomas.

Superficially it looks as if Albertus Magnus, who lived from the twelfth into the thirteenth century, and Thomas, who lived in the thirteenth, had wished only to harmonize dialectically Augustinism, of which we spoke yesterday, on the one hand, and Aristotelianism on the other. One was the bearer of the church ideas, the other of the modified philosophical ideas. The attempt to find assonance between them runs, it is true, like a thread through everything either wrote. But there was in everything which thus became fixed in thoughts as in a flowering of Western feeling and will, a great deal which did not survive into the period which stretches from the fifteenth century into our own day, a period from which we have drawn our customary ideas for all sciences and for the whole of our daily life.

The man of to-day finds it really paradoxical when he hears what we heard yesterday of Augustine's beliefs; that Augustine actually believed that a part of mankind was from the beginning destined to receive God's grace without earning it—for really after original sin all must perish—to receive God's grace and be spiritually saved; and that another part of mankind must be spiritually lost—no matter what it does. To a modern man this paradox appears perhaps meaningless. But if you can get the feeling of that age in which Augustine lived, in which he absorbed all those ideas and influences I described yesterday, you will think differently. You will feel that it is possible to understand that Augustine wanted to hold on to the thoughts which, as contained in the ancient philosophies, did not take the individual man into consideration; for they, under the influence of such ideas as those of Plotinus, which I outlined yesterday, had in their minds nothing but the idea of universal mankind. And you must remember that Augustine was a man who stood in the midst of the battle between the thought which regarded mankind as a unity, and the thought which was trying to crystallize the individuality of man out of this unified mankind. But in Augustine's soul there also surged the impulse towards individuality. For this reason, these ideas take on such significant aspects—significant of soul and heart; for this reason they are so full of human experience, and Augustine becomes the intensely sympathetic figure which makes so great an impression if we turn our eyes back to the centuries which preceded Scholasticism.

After Augustine, therefore, there survived for many—but only in his ideas—those links which held together the individual man as Christian with his Church. But these ideas, as I explained them to you yesterday, could not be accepted by those Western people who rejected the idea of taking the whole of humanity as one unity, and feeling themselves as it were only a member in it, moreover a member which belongs to that part of humanity whose lot is destruction and annihilation.

And so the Church saw itself compelled to snatch at a way out. Augustine still conducted his gigantic fight against Pelagius, the man who was already filled with the individuality-impulse of the West. This was the person in whom, as a contemporary of Augustine, we can see how the sense of individuality such as later centuries had it, appears in advance. So he can only say: There is no question but that man must remain entirely without participation in his destiny in the material-spiritual world. The power by which the soul finds the connection with that which raises it from the entanglements of the flesh to the serene spiritual regions, where it can find its release and return to freedom and immortality—this power must be born of man's individuality itself. This was the point which Augustine's opponents stressed, that each man must find for himself the power to overcome inherited sin. The Church stood half-way between the two opponents, and sought a solution. There was much discussion concerning this solution—all the pros and cons, as it were—and then they took the middle way—and I can leave it to you to judge if in this case it was the golden or the copper mean—at any rate they took the middle way: semi-Pelagianism. A formula was found which was really neither black nor white, to this effect: It is as Augustine has said, but not quite as Augustine has said; nor is it quite as Pelagius has said, though in a certain sense, it is as he has said. And so one might say, that it is not through a wise divine judgment, that some are condemned to sin and others to grace, but that the matter is this, that it is a case not of a divine pre-judgment, but of a divine prescience. The divine being knows beforehand if one man is to be a sinner or the other filled with grace. At the same time no further attention was paid, when this dogma was agreed, to the fact that at bottom it is in no way a question of prescience but rather a question of taking a definite stand, whether individual man is able to join with those powers in his individual soul-life which raise him up out of his separation from the divine-spiritual being of the world and which can lead him back to it.

In this way the question really remains unsolved. And I might say that, compelled on one side to recognize the dogmas of the Church but on the other filled from deepest sensibility with profound respect for the greatness of Augustine, Albertus and Thomas stood face to face with what came to be the Western development of the spirit within the Christian movement. And yet several things from earlier times left their influence. One can see them, for instance, when one looks carefully at the souls of Albertus and of Thomas, but one realizes also that they themselves were not quite conscious of it; that they enter into their thoughts, but that they themselves cannot bring them to a precise expression. We must consider this, ladies and gentlemen, more in respect of this time of the high Scholasticism of Albertus and Thomas, we must consider it more than we would have to consider a similar phenomenon, for instance, in our day. I have permitted myself to stress the “Why?” in my Welt-und Lebensanschauung des 19 Jahrhundert,—and it was further developed in my book Die Rätzee der Philosophie, where the proposition was put in another way so that the particular passage was not repeated, if I may be allowed to say so. This means—and it will occupy us in detail tomorrow, I will only mention it now—this means that from this upward-striving of individuality among the thinkers who studied philosophically that in these thinkers we get the highest flowering of logical judgment; we might say the highest flowering of logical technique.

Ladies and gentlemen, one can quarrel as one will about this or that party-standpoint on the question of Scholasticism—all this quarrelling is as a rule grounded on very little real understanding of the matter. For whoever has a sense of the manner quite apart from the subjective content in which the accuracy of the thought is revealed in the course of a scientific explanation—or anything else; whoever has a sense of appreciating how things that hang together are thought out together, which must be thought out together if life is to have any meaning; whoever has a sense of all this, and of several other things, realizes that thought was never so exact, so logically scientific, either before or afterwards as in the age of high Scholasticism. This is just the important thing, that pure thought so runs with mathematical certainty from idea to idea, from judgment to judgment, from conclusion to conclusion, that these thinkers account to themselves for the smallest, even the tiniest, step. We have only to remember in what surroundings this thinking took place. It was not a thinking that took place as it now takes place in the noisy world; rather its place was in the quiet cloister cell or otherwise far from the busy world. It was a thinking that absorbed a thought-life, and which could also, through other circumstances, formulate a pure thought-technique. It is to-day as a matter of fact difficult to do this; for scarcely do we seek to give publicity to such a thought-activity which has no other object than to array thought upon thought according to their content, than the stupid people come, and the illogical people raise all sorts of questions, interject their violent partisanship, and, seeing that one is after all a human being among human beings, we have to make the best of these things which are, in fact, no other than brutal interruptions, which often have nothing whatever to do with the subject in question. In these circumstances that inner quiet is very soon lost to which the thinkers of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries could devote themselves, who did not have to yield so much to the opposition of the uneducated in their social life.

This and other things called forth in this epoch that wonderfully plastic but also finely-outlined thought-activity which distinguishes Scholasticism and for which people like Augustine and Thomas consciously strove.

But now think of this: on the one side are demands of life which appear as if one had to do with dogmas that have not been made clear, which in a great number of cases resembled the semi-Pelagianism already described; and as if one fought in order to uphold what one believed ought to be upheld, because the Church justifiably had set it up; and as if one wanted to maintain this with the most subtle thought. Just imagine what it means to light up with the most subtle thought something of the nature of what I have described to you as Augustinism. One must look closely into the inside of scholastic effort and not only attempt to characterize this continuity from the Patristic age to the age of the Schoolmen from the threads of concepts which one has picked up. These spirits of High Scholasticism did a great deal half unconsciously and we can really only understand it, if we consider, looking beyond what I already described yesterday, such a figure as that which entered half mysteriously from the sixth century into European spiritual life and which became known under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. To-day, because time is too short I cannot enter into all the disputes on the question of whether there is any truth in the view that these writings were first made in the sixth century, or whether the other view is right which ascribes at any rate the traditional element of these writings to a much earlier time. All that is after all not important, but the important thing is, that the philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite was available for the thinkers of the seventh and eighth centuries right up to the time of Thomas Aquinas, and that these writings throughout have a Christian tinge and contain in a special form that which I yesterday defined as Plotinism, as the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. And it had become particularly important for the Christian thinkers of the outgoing old world and the beginning of the Middle Ages up to the time of High Scholasticism, what attitude the author of the Dionysius writings took to the uprising of the human soul till it achieved a view of the divine. This Dionysius is generally described as if he had two paths to the divine; and as a matter of fact there are two. One path requires the following: if man wishes to raise himself from the external things which surround him in the world to the divine, he must attempt to extract from all those things their perfections, their nature; he must attempt to go back to absolute perfection, and must be able to give a name to absolute perfection in such a way that he has a content for this divine perfection which in its turn can reveal itself and can bring forth the separate things of the world by means of individualization and differentiation. So I would say, for Dionysius divinity is that being which must be given names to the greatest extent, which must be labelled with the most superlative terms which one can possibly find amongst all the perfections of the world; take all those, give them names and then apply them to the divinity and then you reach some idea of the divinity. That is one path which Dionysius recommends.

The other path is different. Here he says: you will never attain the divinity if you give it only a single name, for the whole soul-process which you employ to find perfections in things and to seek their essences, to combine them in order to apply the whole to divinity, all this never leads to what one can call knowledge of a divinity. You must reach a state in which you are free from all that you have known of things. You must purify your consciousness completely of all that you have experienced through things. You must no longer know anything of what the world says to you. You must forget all the names which you are accustomed to give to things and translate yourself into a condition of soul in which you know nothing of the whole world. If you can experience this in your soul-condition, then you experience the nameless which is immediately misunderstood if one attaches any name to it. Then you will know God, the Super-God in His super-beauty. But the names Super-God and super-beauty are already disturbing. They can only serve to point towards something which you must experience as nameless, and how can one deal with a character who gives us not one theology but two theologies, one positive, one negative, one rationalistic and one mystic? A man who can put himself into the spirituality of the time out of which Christianity was born can understand it quite well. If one pictures the course of human evolution even in the first Christian centuries as the materialists of to-day do, anything like the writings of the Areopagite appears more or less foolishness or madness. In this case they are usually simply rejected. If, however, one can put oneself into the experience and feeling of that time, then one realizes what a man like the Areopagite really wanted—at bottom only to express what countless people were striving for. Because for them the divinity was an unknowable being if one took only one path to it. For him the divinity was a being which had to be approached by a rational path through the finding and giving of names. But if one takes this one way one loses the path. One loses oneself in what is as it were universal space void of God. And then one does not attain to God. But one must take this way, for otherwise one can also not reach God. Moreover, one must take yet another way, namely, the one that strives towards the nameless one. By either road alone the divinity cannot be found, but by taking both one finds the divinity at the point where they cross. It is not enough to dispute which of the roads is the right one. Both are right, but each taken alone leads to nothing. Both roads when the human soul finds itself at the crossing lead to the goal. I can understand how some people of to-day who are accustomed to what is called polemics recoil from what is here advanced concerning the Areopagite. But what I am advancing here was alive in those men who were the leading spiritual personalities in the first Christian centuries, and continued traditionally in the Christian-philosophical movement of the West to the time of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. For instance, it was kept alive through that individual whose name I mentioned yesterday, Scotus Erigena, who lived at the court of Charles the Bald. This Scotus Erigena reminds one forcibly of what I said yesterday. I told you: I have never known such a meek man as Vincenz Knauer, the historian of philosophy. Vincenz Knauer was always meek, but he began to lose his temper when there was mention of Plotinus or anything connected with him; and Franz Brentano, the able philosopher, who was always conventional became quite unconventional and abusive in his book Philosophies that Create a Stir—referring to Plotinus. Those who, with all their discernment and ability, lean more or less towards rationalism, will be angry when they are faced with what so to speak poured forth from the Areopagite to find a final significant revelation in this Scotus Erigena. In the last years of his life he was a Benedictine Prior, but his own monks, as the legend goes—I do not say it is literally true, but it is near enough—tortured him with pins till he died, because he introduced Plotinism even in the ninth century. But his ideas survived him and they were at the same time the continuation of the ideas of the Areopagite. His writings more or less disappeared till later days; then ultimately they reappeared. In the twelfth century Scotus Erigena was declared a heretic. But that did not mean as much then as it did later or does to-day. All the same, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas were deeply influenced by the ideas of Scotus Erigena. That is the one thing which we must recognize as a heritage from former times when we wish to speak of the essence of Thomism.

But there is another thing. In Plotinism, which I tried to describe to you yesterday with regard to its Cosmology, there is a very important presentation of human nature which is derived from a material/super-material view. One really regains respect for these things if one discovers them again on a background of spiritual science. Then one admits at once the following: one says, if one reads something like Plotinus or what has come down to us of him, unprepared, it looks rather chaotic and intricate. But if one discovers the corresponding truths oneself, his views take on a quite special appearance, even if the method of their expression in those times was different from what it would have to be to-day. Thus, one can find in Plotinus a general view which I should describe as follows:

Plotinus considers human nature with its physical and psychic and spiritual characteristics. Then he considers it from two points of view, first from that of the soul's work on the body. If I spoke in modern terms, I should have to say: Plotinus says first of all to himself; if one considers a child that grows up in the world, one sees how that which is formed as human body out of the spiritual-psychic attains maturity. For Plotinus everything material in man is, if I may use an expression to which I trust you will not object, a “sweating out” of the spiritual-physic, a “crustation” as it were of the spiritual-psychic. But then, when a human being has grown to a certain point, the spiritual-psychic forces cease to have any influence on the body. We could, therefore, say: at first we are concerned with such a spiritual-psychic activity that the bodily form is created or organized out of it. The human organization is the product of the spiritual-psychic. When a certain condition of maturity has been reached by some part of the organic activity, let us say, for example, the activity on which the forces are employed which later appear as the forces of the memory, then these forces which formerly have worked on the body, make their appearance in a spiritual-psychic metamorphosis. In other words, that part of the spiritual-psychic element which had functioned materially, now liberates itself, when its work is finished, and appears as an independent entity: a mirror of the soul, one would have to call it if one were to speak in Plotinus' sense. It is extraordinarily difficult with our modern conceptions to describe these things. You get near it, if you think as follows: you realize that a human being, after his memory has attained a certain stage of maturity, has the power of remembering. As a small child he has not. Where is this power of remembering? First it is at work in the organism, and forms it. After that it is liberated as purely spiritual-psychic power, and continues still, though always spiritual-psychically, to work on the organism. Then inside this soul-mirror inhabits the real vessel, the Ego. In characteristics, in an idea-content which is extraordinarily pictorial, these views are worked out from that which is spiritually active, and from that which then remains over, and becomes, as it were, passive towards the outer world—so that it takes up, like the memory, the impressions of the outer world and retains them. This two-fold work of the soul, this division of the soul into an active part, which practically builds up the body, and a passive part, derived from an older stratum of human growth and human attitude to the world, which found in Plotinus its best expression and then was taken up by Augustine and his successors, was described in an extraordinarily pictorial manner.

We find this view in Aristotelianism, but rationalized and translated into more physical conceptions. And Aristotle had it in his turn from Plato and again from the same sources as Plato. But when we read Aristotle we must say: Aristotle strives to put into abstract conceptions what he found in the old philosophies. And so we see in the Aristotelian system which continued to flourish, and which was the rationalistic form of what Plotinus had said in the other form, we see in this Aristotelianism which continued as far as Albertus and Thomas a rationalized mysticism, as it were, a rationalized description of the spiritual secret of the human being. And Albertus and Thomas are conscious of the fact that Aristotle has brought down to abstract conceptions something which the others had had in visions. And therefore they do not stand in the same relation to Aristotle as the present day philosopher-philologists, who have developed strange controversies over two conceptions which originate with Aristotle; but as the writings of Aristotle have not survived complete, we find both these conceptions in them without having their connection—which is after all a fact which affords ground for different opinions in many learned disputes. We find two ideas in Aristotle. Aristotle sees in human nature something which brings together into a unity the vegetative principle, the animal principle, the lower human principle, then the higher human principle, that Aristotle calls the nous, and the Scholiasts call the intellect. But Aristotle differentiates between the nous poieticos, and the nous patheticos, between the active and the passive spirit of man. The expressions are no longer as descriptive as the Greek; but one can say that Aristotle differentiates between the active understanding, the active spirit of man, and the passive. What does he mean? We do not understand what he means unless we revert to the origin of these concepts. Just like the other forces of the soul the two points of understanding are active in another metamorphosis in building up the human soul:—the understanding, in so far as it is actively engaged in building up the man, but still the understanding, not like the memory which comes to an end at a certain point and then liberates itself as memory—but working throughout life as understanding. That is the nous poieticos; the factor which in Aristotle's sense, becoming individualized out of the universe, builds up the body. It is no other than the active, bodybuilding soul of Plotinus. On the other hand, that which liberates itself, existing only in order to receive the outer world, and to form the impressions of the outer world dialectically, is the nous patheticos—the passive intellect—the intellectus possibilis. These things, presented to us in Scholasticism in keen dialectics and in precise logic, refer back to the old heritage. And we cannot properly understand the working of the Schoolmen's souls without taking into consideration this intermixture of age-old traditions.

Because all this had such an influence on the souls of the Scholiasts, they were faced with the great question which one usually feels to be the real problem of Scholasticism. At a time when men still had a vision which produced such a thing as Platonism or a rationalized version of it such as Aristotelianism, at a time when the sense of individuality had not yet reached its highest, these problems could not have existed; for what we to-day call understanding, what we call intellect, which had its origin in the terminology of Scholasticism, is the product of the individual man. If we all think alike, it is only because we are all individually constituted alike, and because the understanding is bound up with the individual which is constituted alike in all men. It is true that in so far as we are different beings we think differently; but that is a shade of difference with which logic as such is not concerned. Logical and dialectical thought is the product of the general human, but individually differentiated organization.

So man, feeling that he is an individual says to himself: in man arise the thoughts through which the outer world is inwardly represented; and here the thoughts are put together which in turn are to give a picture of the world; there, inside man, emerge on the one hand representations which are connected with individual things, with a particular book, let us say, or a particular man, for instance, Augustine. But then man arrives at the inner experiences, such as dreams, for which he cannot straightway find such an objective representation. The next step is the experience of pure chimaeras, which he creates for himself, just as here the centaur and similar things were chimaeras for Scholasticism. But, on the other hand, are the concepts and ideas which as a matter of fact reflect on to both sides: humanity, the lion-type, the wolf-type, etc.; these are general concepts which the Schoolmen according to ancient usage called the universals. Yes, as the situation for mankind was such as I described to you yesterday, as one rose, as it were, to these universals and perceived them to be the lowest border of the spiritual world which was being revealed through vision to mankind, these universals, humanity, animality, lion-hood, etc., were simply the means whereby the spiritual world, the intelligible world, revealed itself, and simply the soul's experience of an emanation from the supernatural world.

In order to have this experience it was essential not to have acquired that feeling of individuality which afterward developed in the centuries I have named. This sense of individuality led one to say: we rise from the things of the senses up to that border where are the more or less abstract things, which are, however, still within our experience—the universals such as humanity, lion-hood, etc. “Scholasticism” realized perfectly that one cannot simply say: these are pure conceptions, pure comprehensions of the external world:—rather, it became a problem for Scholasticism, with which it grappled. We have to create such general and universal conceptions out of our individuality. But when we look out upon the world, we do not have “humanity,” we have individual man, not “wolf-hood” but individual wolves. But, on the other hand, we cannot only see what we formulate as “wolf-hood” and “lamb-hood” as it were in such a way as if at one time we have formulated the matter as “agnine” and at another as “lupine,” and as if “lamb-hood” and “wolf-hood” were only a kind of composition and the material which is in these connected ideas were the only reality: we cannot simply assume this; for if we did we should have to assume this also:—If we caged a wolf and saw to it that for a certain period he ate nothing but lambs he is filled with nothing but lamb-matter; but he doesn't become a lamb; the matter doesn't affect it, he remains a wolf. “Wolf-hood” therefore is after all not something which is thus merely brought into contact with the material, for materially the whole wolf is lamb, but he remains a wolf.

There is to-day everywhere a problem which people do not take seriously enough. It was a problem with which the soul in its greatest development grappled with all its fibre. And this problem stood in direct connection with the Church's interests. How this was we can picture to ourselves if we consider the following:—

Before Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas appeared with their special exposition of philosophy, there had already been people, like Roscelin, for example, who had put forward the theory, and believed it implicitly, that these general concepts, these universals are really nothing else but the comprehension of external individual objects; they are really only words and names. And a Nominalism grew up which saw only words in general things, in universals. But Roscelin took Nominalism with dogmatic earnestness and applied it to the Trinity, saying: if something which is an association of ideas is only a word, then the Trinity is only a word, and the individuals are the sole reality—the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; then only the human understanding grasps these Three through a name. Mediaeval Churchmen stretched such points to the ultimate conclusions; the Church was compelled, at the Synod of Soissons, to declare this view of Roscelin partial polytheism and its teaching heretical. Thus one was in a certain difficult position towards Nominalism; it was a dogmatic interest which was linked with a philosophic one.

To-day we no longer take, of course, such a situation as something vital. But in those days it was regarded as most vital, and Thomas and Albertus grappled with just this question of the relationship of the universals to individual things; for them it was the supreme problem. Fundamentally, everything else is only a consequence, that is, a consequence in so far as everything else has taken its colour from the attitude they adopted towards this problem. But this attitude was influenced by all the forces which I have described to you, all the forces which remained as tradition from the Areopagite, which remained from Plotinus, which had passed through the soul of Augustine, through Scotus Erigena and many others—all this influenced the manner of thought which was now first revealed in Albertus and then, on a wide-reaching philosophic basis, in Thomas. And one knew also that there were people then who looked up beyond concepts to the spiritual world, to the intellectual world, to that world of which Thomism speaks as of a reality, in which he sees the immaterial intellectual beings which he calls angels. These are not just abstractions, they are real beings, but without bodies. It is these beings which Thomas puts in the tenth sphere. He looks upon the earth as encircled by the sphere of the Moon, of Mercury, of Venus, of the Sun, and so on, and so comes through the eighth and ninth spheres to the tenth, which was the Empyreum. He imagines all this pervaded by intelligences and the intelligences nearest are those which, as it were, let their lowest margins shine down upon the earth so that the human soul can get into touch with them.

But in this form in which I have just now expressed it, a form more inclined to Plotinism, this idea is not the result of pure individual feeling to which Scholasticism had just fought its way, but for Albertus and Thomas a belief remained that above abstract concepts there was up there a revelation of those abstract concepts. And the question faced them: What reality have, then, these abstract concepts? Now Albertus as well as Thomas had an idea of the influence of the psychic-spiritual on the physical body and the subsequent self-reflection of the psychic-spiritual when its work on the physical body was sufficiently performed: they had an idea of all this. Also they had an idea of what man becomes in his own individual life, how he develops from year to year, from decade to decade precisely through the impressions he receives and digests from the external world. Thus the thought came that though, of course, we have the external world all round us, this world is a revelation of something super-worldly, something spiritual. And while we look at the world and turn our attention to the separate minerals, plants, and animals, we surmise all the same that there lies behind them a revelation from higher spiritual worlds. And if we look at the natural world with logical analysis, with everything of which our soul makes us capable, with all the power of thought we possess, we arrive at those things which the spiritual world has implanted in the natural world. But then we must get clear on this point: we turn our eyes and all the other senses on to this world, and so are in definite relationship with the world. We then go away from it and retain, as it were, as a memory what we have absorbed from it. We look back once more into memory; and then there first appears to us really the universal, the generality of things, such as humanity, and so on; that appears to us first in the inner conceptual form. So that Albertus and Thomas say: if you look back, and if your soul reflects its experiences of the external world, then you have the universals preserved in it. Then you have universals. From all the human beings whom you have met, you form the concept of humanity. If you remembered only individual things you could, in any case, live only in earthly names. But as you do not live only in earthly names, you must experience the universals. There you have the universalia post res—the universals which live in the soul after the things have been experienced. While a man's soul concentrates on things, its contents are not the same as afterwards when it remembers them, when they are, as it were, reflected from inside, but rather he stands in a real relationship to the things. He experiences true spirituality of the things and translates them only into the form of universals post rem.

Albertus and Thomas assume that at the moment when man through his power of thought stands in real relationship with his surroundings, that is, not only with what is “wolf” because the eye sees and the ear hears it, but because he can meditate on it and formulate the type “wolf,” at this moment he experiences something which, though invisible, in the objects, is comprehended in thought independently of the senses. He experiences the universalia in rebus—the universals in things.

Now the difference is not quite easy to define, because we usually think that what we have in the soul as a reflection is the same in the things. But it is not the same in the sense of Thomas Aquinas. That which man experiences as an idea in his soul and explains with his understanding, is the same thing with which he experiences the real, and the universal. So that according to their form, the universals in the things are different from those after them, which remain then in the soul: but inwardly they are the same. There you have one of the scholastic concepts which one does not generally put to the soul in all its subtlety. The universals in things and the universals after things are, as far as content is concerned the same, and differ only in form. But then we must not forget that that which is distributed and individualized in things points in its turn to what I described yesterday as being inherent in Plotinism, and called the actually intelligible world: there again the same contents which are in things and in the human soul after things are, as far as content goes, alike, but different in form; they are contained in another form, but of similar content. These are the universalia ante res, before things. These are the universals as contained in the divine mind, and in the mind of the divine servants—the angelic beings. Thus what was for a former age a direct spiritual-sensory/super-sensory vision becomes a vision which was represented only in sense-images, because what one sees with the super-senses cannot, according to the Areopagite, be even given a name, if one wished to deal with it in its true form: one can only point to it and say: it is not anything such as external things are. Thus what was for the ancient's vision and appeared as a reality of the spiritual world, became for Scholasticism something to be decided by all that acuteness of thought, all that suppleness and nice logic of which I have spoken to you to-day. The problem which formerly was solved by vision, is brought down into the sphere of thought and of reason. That is the essence of Thomism, the essence of Albertinism, the essence of Scholasticism. It realized, above all, that in its epoch, the sense of human individuality has reached its culmination. It sees, above all, all problems in their rational and logical form, in the form, in fact, in which the thinker must comprehend them. Scholasticism grapples chiefly with this form of world-problems, this form of thinking, and thus stands in the midst of the life of the Church, which I illumined for you yesterday and to-day in many ways, if only with a few rays of light. There is the belief of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries; it is to be attained with thinking, with the most subtle logic; on the other side, are the traditional Church dogmas, the content of Faith.

Let us take an example of how a thinker like Thomas Aquinas stands to both. Thomas Aquinas asks: Can one prove the existence of God by logic? Yes, one can. He gives a whole series of proofs. One, for instance, is when he says: We can at first gain knowledge only by approaching the universalia in rebus, by looking into things. We cannot—it is the personal experience of this age—we cannot enter into the spiritual world through vision. We can only enter the spiritual world by using our human powers if we saturate ourselves in things, and get out of them what we can call the universalia in rebus. Then we can draw our conclusions concerning the universalia ante res. So he says: We see the world in movement; one thing always gives motion to another, because it is itself in motion. So we go from one thing in motion to another, and from this to a third thing in motion. This cannot be continued indefinitely, for we must get to a prime mover. But if this were itself in motion, we should have to proceed to another mover. We must, therefore, in the end reach a stationary mover.

And here Thomas—and Albertus comes after all to the same conclusion—reaches the Aristotelian stationary mover, the First Cause. It is inherent in logical thinking to recognize God as a necessary First Being, as a necessary first stationary mover. For the Trinity there is no such path of thought which leads to it. It is handed down. With human thought we can only reach the point of testing if the Trinity is contrary to sense. We find it is not, but we cannot prove it, we must believe it, we must accept it as a content, to which the unaided human intellect cannot rise.

This is the attitude of Scholasticism to the question which was then so important: How far can the unaided human intellect go? And in the course of time it became involved in quite a special way with this deep problem. For, you see, other thinkers had gone before. They had assumed something apparently quite absurd, they had said: it is possible for something to be true theologically and false philosophically. One could say straight out: it is possible for things to be handed down as dogma, as, for instance, the Trinity; yet if one ponders over the same question, one arrives at a contrary result. It is certainly possible for the reason to lead to other consequences than those to which the faith-content leads. And that was so, that was the other thing which faced Scholasticism—the doctrine of the double truth, and it is on this that the two thinkers Albertus and Thomas laid special stress, to bring faith and reason into harmony, to seek no contradiction between rational thought—at any rate, up to a certain point—and faith. In those days that was radicalism, for the majority of the leading Church authorities clung to the doctrine of the double truth, namely, that man must on one side think rationally, the content of his thought must be in one form, and faith could give it him in another form, and these two forms he had to keep.

I believe we can get a feeling of historical development if we consider the fact that people of so few centuries ago, as these are of whom we speak to-day, are wrapped up in such problems with their whole soul. For these things still reverberate in our time. We still live with these problems. How we do it, we shall discuss tomorrow. To-day I wanted to describe the essence of Thomism as it was in those days.

So it was, you perceive, that the main problem in front of Albertus and Thomas was this: What is the relation of the content of human reason to that of human faith? How can that which the Church ordains for belief be, first, understood, and secondly, upheld against what contradicts it? With this, people like Albertus and Thomas had much to do, for the movement I have described was not the only one in Europe; there were all sorts of others. With the spread of Islam and the Arabs other creeds made themselves felt in Europe, and something of that creed which I yesterday called the Manichaean had remained all over the continent. But there was also, for instance, what we know as “Representation” through the doctrine of Averroës from the twelfth century, who said: The product of a man's pure intellect belongs, not specially to him, but to all humanity. Averroës says: We have not each a mind; we each have a body, but not each a mind. A has his own body, but his mind is the same as B has and C has. We might say: Averroës sees mankind as with a single intellect, a single mind; all individuals are merged in it. There they live, as it were, with the head. When they die, the body is withdrawn from this universal mind. There is no immortality in the sense of individual continuation after death. What continues, is the universal mind, that which is common to all men.

For Thomas the problem was that he had to reckon with the universality of mind, but he had to take the point of view that the universal mind is not so closely united with the universal memory in separate beings, but rather during life with the active forces of the bodily organization; and so united, forming such a unity, that everything working in man as the formative vegetable, and animal powers, as the power of memory, is attracted, as it were, during life by the universal mind and disposition. Thus Thomas imagines it, that man attracts the individual through the universal, and then draws into the spiritual world what his universal had attracted; so that he takes it there with him. You perceive, there can be no pre-existence for Albertus Magnus and Thomas, though there can be an after-existence. This was, after all, the same for Aristotle, and in this respect Aristotelianism is also continued in these thinkers.

In this way the great logical questions of the universals join up with the questions which concern the world-destiny of each individual. And even if I were to describe to you the Cosmology of Thomas Aquinas and the natural history of Albertus, which is extraordinarily wide-reaching, over almost all provinces and in countless volumes, you would see everywhere the influence of what I called the general logical nature of Albertinism and Thomism. And this logical nature consisted in this: with our reason—what was then called the Intellect—we cannot attain all heights; up to a certain point we can reach everything through logical acumen and dialectic, but then we have to enter into the region of faith. Thus as I have described it, these two things stand face to face, without contradicting each other: What we understand with our reason, and what is revealed through faith can exist side by side.

What does this really entail? I believe we can tackle this question from very different sides. What have we here before us historically as the essence of Albertinism and of Thomism? It is really characteristic of Thomas, and important, that while he is straining reason to prove the existence of God, he has to add at the same time that one arrives at a picture of God as it was rightly represented in the Old Testament as Jahve. That is, when Thomas departs from the paths of reason open to the individual human soul, he arrives at that unified God whom the Old Testament calls the Jahve-God. If one wants to arrive at the Christ, one has to pass over to faith; the individual spiritual experience of the human soul is not sufficient to attain to Him.

Now in the arguments which Scholasticism had to face (the spirit of the age demanded it), in these theories of the double truth—that a thing could be theologically true and philosophically false—there still lay something deeper; something which perhaps could not be seen in an age in which everywhere rationalism and logic were the pursuit of mankind. And it was the following: that those who spoke of this double truth were not of the opinion that what is theologically revealed and what is to be reached by reason are ultimately two things, but for the time being they are two truths, and that man arrives at these two truths because he has to the innermost part of his soul, shared in the faith. In the background of the soul up to the time of Albertus and Thomas flows, as it were, this question: Have we not assumed original sin in our thought, in what we see as reason in ourselves? Is it not just because reason has fallen from its spirituality that it deceives us with counterfeit truth for the real truth? If Christ enters our reason, or something else which it transforms and develops further, then only is it brought into harmony with that truth which is the content of faith.

The sinfulness of the reason was, in a way, responsible for the thinkers before Albertus and Thomas speaking of two truths. They wanted to take the doctrine of original sin and redemption through Christ seriously. But they had not the thinking power and the logic for it, though they were serious about it. They put the question to themselves: How does Christ redeem in us the truth of the reason which contradicts revealed spiritual truth? How do we become Christians through and through? For our reason is already vitiated through original sin, and therefore it contradicts the pure truth of faith.

And now appeared Albertus and Thomas, and to them it appeared first of all wrong that if we steep ourselves purely logically in the universalia in rebus, and if we take to ourselves the reality in things, we should launch forth in sinfulness over the world. It is impossible that the ordinary reason should be sinful. In this scholastic question lies really the question of Christology. And the question Scholasticism could not answer was: How does Christ enter into human thought? How is human thought permeated with Christ? How does Christ lead human thought up into those spheres where it can coalesce with spiritual faith-content? These things were the real driving force in the souls of the Schoolmen. Therefore, it is before all things important, although Scholasticism possessed the most perfect logical technique not to take the results, but to look through the answer to the question; that we ignore the achievements of the men of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and look at the large problems which were then propounded. They were not yet far enough to be able to apply the redemption of man from original sin to human thought. Therefore, Albertus and Thomas had to deny reason the right to mount the steps which would have enabled them to enter into the spiritual world itself. And Scholasticism left behind it the question: How can human thought develop itself upward to a view of the spiritual world? The most important outcome of Scholasticism is even a question, and is not its existing content. It is the question: How does one carry Christology into thought? How is thought made Christ-like? At the moment when Thomas Aquinas died in 1274 this question, historically speaking, confronted the world. Up to that moment he had been able to get only as far as this question. What is to become of it, one can for the time being only indicate by saying: man penetrates up to a certain point into the spiritual nature of things, but after that point comes faith. And the two must not contradict each other; they must be in harmony. But the ordinary reason cannot of its own accord comprehend the content of the highest things, as, for example, the Trinity, the incarnation of the Christ in the man Jesus, etc. Reason can comprehend only as much as to say: the world could have been created in Time, but it could also have existed from eternity. But revelation says it has been created in Time, and if you ask Reason again you find the grounds for thinking that the creation in Time is the rational and the wiser answer.

Thus the Scholiast takes his place for all the ages. More than one thinks, there survives to-day in Science, in the whole public life of the present what Scholasticism has left to us, although it is in a particular form. How alive Scholasticism really is still in our souls, and what attitude man to-day must adopt towards it, of this we shall speak tomorrow.

Had I not spoken to you yesterday, I could not give you to-day's lecture in the form in which I intend to give it. This is not only because this lecture is to be a continuation of yesterday's lecture, but because the facts concerning man's true being which are accessible to anthroposophical research at first appear so paradoxical that it is necessary to know the sure foundation upon which such truths are based. I think that I explained to you sufficiently clearly that both in the direction of a critical attitude and in that of a conscientious form of investigation, Anthroposophy is well able to compete with everything which modern people are accustomed to consider as a scientific method and a scientific mentality.

The subject of to-day's lecture is man's true being which, lying at the foundation of his external physical being, forms and guides it. Spiritual science above all can show that man's physical being belongs more than one generally thinks to the development of the world as such, and this connection with the whole evolution of the world will form the subject of my next lecture. Earnest-minded people, and also earnest scientists have now a different view of man's true being than a few decades ago, at the height of materialism.

But the anthroposophical facts which will now be set forth will perhaps be rejected most strongly of all by those who seek to approach the element of soul and spirit in man by adhering, as it were, to the more materialistic aspect of science.

We can see that people now begin to take an interest in the causes which produce certain abnormal soul-conditions in man which subject him to hallucinations and delusions, to suggestion and auto-suggestion. People are now specially interested in these abnormal psychic phenomena, because they can be investigated in the same way in which physical experiments are carried on, without the unfolding of the soul's dormant forces, concerning which I spoke in my last lecture. People with an abnormal spiritual life are simply approached experimentally, and the phenomena are investigated in the same way in which one makes experiments in a laboratory.

Such people, and many who are not a prey of abnormal soul-conditions, frequently believe that unusual psychic conditions, visions or hallucinations, constitute some means of penetrating more deeply into man's true being; they even think that in these abnormal conditions a kind of revelation from the real spiritual worlds can be received.

Now that man's true being can be investigated in the light of Anthroposophy, it is possible to throw light upon the real meaning of these abnormal psychic conditions. Yesterday's critical examination of certain facts may have convinced you from the very outset that anthroposophical spiritual research can confront even such abnormal phenomena with a strictly critical attitude.

Another kind of phenomenon confronts us when it is possible to perceive certain thoughts of certain people under conditions of time and of space which must undoubtedly be designated as abnormal. These cases are now being discussed quite seriously by modern scientists. Telepathy is a phenomenon of this kind. During certain psychic conditions, thoughts can be perceived through telepathy without the ordinary instrument of the senses; indeed these thoughts can even be perceived at a distance. One also speaks of telekinesis, or of certain forces proceeding from the human being which manifest themselves simply through influences at a distance, without the physical intermediary of the human being, so that it appears as if it were possible to unfold will-power and to transmit it into space without the medium of the body. In scientific circles experiments have already been made with the application of scientific methods, experiments falling under the category of teleplastic, in which phantoms and apparently physical forms appear in connection with a person, or in his close proximity. It is clearly evident that these forms consist of a fine substance, of an etheric substance, and' that plastically they are permeated by something rooted as plastic force in human thinking, by something existing inhuman thought.

We therefore speak of telepathy, telekinesis and teleplastic. When anthroposophical spiritual science confronts these phenomena, it must again raise the critical question: Do these phenomena proceed from that part of the human being which, as explained yesterday, abandons the physical and the etheric body of man, at the moment of falling asleep, that sentient and volitional being which remains outside the body from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up? Are the phenomena known as telepathy, telekinesis and teleplastic an activity of man's eternal soul-spiritual essence, of that part which we learned to know as his feeling and volitional being, or are they perhaps simply an activity of that part which remains behind on the bed during sleep, consisting solely of the physical and of the etheric body, or the body of formative forces?

If these phenomena are merely activities of the latter, they belong to that part which vanishes when we die, no matter how wonderful and extraordinary they may appear to us. For when we die, the part which remains behind on the bed during sleep, vanishes. What constitutes man's immortal, eternal being, that which abandons the physical and etheric body during sleep, as a rule also abandons the physical body when we are under some hypnotic influence, in the phenomena of telepathy, telekinesis and teleplastic. We must therefore say: These so-called wonderful phenomena cannot point to anything connected with man's eternal being; no matter how abnormal they are, they are connected with that part of his being which separates from him when he dies and which connects itself with the element of the earth. In that case they are only able to indicate a world which vanishes when the human being passes through the portal of death.

The spiritual science of Anthroposophy must therefore raise this critical objection in regard to certain phenomena which are widely recognised to-day, in the same way in which such objections had to be raised in regard to the phenomena described yesterday. It will be essential to know what Anthroposophy has to say concerning such phenomena, on the foundation of its investigations connected with man's true immortal essence.

Perhaps I may once more draw attention to the fact that through the exercises of meditation, through the exercises of thought and of the will mentioned yesterday and in other lectures which were given here, a condition can be created, particularly in regard to man's feeling and volitional part, which resembles the sleeping state, although it is radically different from sleep.

Yesterday I described to you how the sentient and volitional being in man, which is ordinarily unconscious and as it were lifeless, can be filled with inner life, with light and power, so that it is possible to create a condition in which man's feeling and volitional parts are outside the physical body as is the case during sleep, and in which these independent soul-spiritual parts can be used for anthroposophical research. In that case we no longer live in a dark world which renders us unconscious, but we are instead surrounded by a spiritual world, where the first object upon which we can look back is our physical body and our body of formative forces. This body of formative forces supplies to the inner soul-spiritual being, which has abandoned the physical and etheric body, a mirrored reflection of the world, in the form of thoughts which are now perceived as forces. Our thought-world, which was formerly connected with us, is now thrown back to us as mirrored reflections by the physical body which we left behind, so that we obtain an image of the world not because we obtain pictures of the external world through our sensory organs, for instance through the eye, which transmits us conscious experiences of the physical world, but because we now gain an image of the world's spiritual foundation through the fact that the human organism becomes as it were a sensory organ, which is now outside the human being, like any other object.

Through gradual progress in anthroposophical research, and by growing inwardly stronger and stronger, we can learn to know this being which is outside. I already explained to you that this condition in which an anthroposophical investigator lives, differs from everything which people experience in a visionary form, through hallucinations or through other psychic conditions. A spiritual investigator is always able to maintain a controlled, sound state of consciousness while investigating the higher world. He is in a condition which can really be designated as swinging to and fro from the perception of the spiritual world to that of the physical world. In other words, he can alternately live outside his physical body and his sensory perceptions, as already described, and return to his full consciousness, to his ordinary capacity of thinking, feeling and willing, so that he can judge his super-sensible experiences with his everyday thinking, feeling and willing, with his normal, cool-headed common sense, with the capacities with which he ordinarily judges life in general. The results of spiritual-scientific investigations can therefore be judged quite critically; a strictly critical attitude can be adopted towards the higher experiences which confront the soul of a spiritual-scientific investigator.

In abnormal soul-conditions we do not have this alternating from one state of consciousness to another. People who have visions or hallucinations cannot return at will, when they consider it best, to their ordinary, calm state of mind, through an effort of the will; that is to say, they cannot return at will into their physical body. They are led into such abnormal conditions by an involuntary sub-conscious element which produces hallucinations and visions, and the total absence of criticism in regard to their abnormal conditions is a fact which must be indicated over and over again, whenever the results of anthroposophical, spiritual-scientific research are brought into connection with things which have a visionary or hallucinatory character.

By swinging to and fro from a higher state of consciousness to the ordinary way of seeing things and to ordinary consciousness, we more and more attain the capacity to look back upon our physical and etheric bodies, which now exist objectively outside our soul-spiritual kernel; we look back upon the physical and etheric bodies with forces developed in the sentient and volitional part of our being. By ascending to the imaginative state of consciousness, we now really learn to know what we have before us as a picture of another world. The important point to be borne in mind is that through the imaginative and inspirational knowledge described in my last lectures, we really learn to form a judgment upon the physical body and the body of formative forces, which we now see from outside.

To use a comparison, it is as if we first had before us a picture and were to learn the corresponding reality which it represents by gaining a knowledge of the laws of perspective. But the reality which we gather from an ordinary picture is, after all, only an inner soul-experience, whereas the larger perspective in which we objectively look upon the physical body and the body of formative forces, is a real experience of facts. For we learn to know that the physical body and the body of formative forces contain, in an image, what we ourselves were, before descending into the physical world through birth or conception.

In this perspective, something frees itself from what we thus see before us and leads us back into the spiritual world through which we passed before we united ourselves through birth or conception with the physical substance given to us by our parents and ancestors, and transmitted by the physical stream of heredity here on earth. We can survey the soul-spiritual world which surrounds us before we came down into an earthly existence; it is the world which contains the forces that became united with our physical form, transmitted by our parents and forefathers.

We now learn to know ourselves in our pre-existence, in our pre-natal condition, and the characteristic fact which rises up before us is that in this picture representing man's pre-existent being we actually see the world reversed, in comparison with a physical perspective. In a physical perspective we see the nearest objects most clearly of all, and the further off they lie, the more they grow indistinct; this characterises the perspective of the spatial world.

But matters appear reversed in the perspective which now rises up out of the human being that remained behind. The things most closely related with our physical life on earth are those which are most familiar to our present experience; in reality we do not know our own inner being during our physical life on earth. Our physical life on earth is something which darkens our eternal being, our innermost kernel. But when we look into the pre-existent world, the things which we perceive spiritually first of all are not those which are most familiar to us in earthly life, not the closest, nearest things, but we first perceive the more distant things. If we have ascended through the three stages which can be developed through exercises as higher stages of knowledge, in accordance with descriptions contained in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, then Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition really enable us to obtain a complete soul-spiritual picture of the universe, leading us back to a past life on earth.

Even as a physical perspective is limited in the distance, so the image which we obtain of a world in which we lived in a pre-existent condition is limited by a past earthly life which opens out to us through intuition. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy does not speak of anything fantastic nor of some logical inference when it speaks of the repeated lives on earth, for this knowledge is gained through cognition, it is a fact which presents itself to the real spiritual vision. But this spiritual vision, this spiritual perception, must first be drawn out of the depths of the soul. We then obtain a positive knowledge of the fact that man's physical body, man's etheric body or the body of formative forces, plastically contain those essential forces which lived in the human being during the time between death and a new birth.

This also explains that we have developed out of a spiritual world into the physical world. Within the physical body, which man carries not merely as a covering but as a kind of instrument, and within the etheric body, containing the living forces which lie at the foundation of the organs, of metabolism and growth, within these bodies which appear objectively before us in spiritual vision, lives the soul's inner kernel, which is plastically moulded into them, the soul's essential being, as it has developed in a soul-spiritual world since the last death until the last birth. When we abandon the physical and etheric body with our sentient-volitional being, we learn to know what we thus leave behind us, as the last thing, as it were, to which we longingly turned on growing old, so to speak, in the spiritual world; the last thing to which we turned in our existence between death and a new birth before “dying” in the spiritual world. Even as we perceive that our physical body begins to fade at a certain age, on approaching death through old age, so we perceive that our soul-spiritual being begins to fade in the spiritual world in which we then live.

This fading away of our soul-spiritual being reveals itself in our longing for the physical world, for a corporeal physical incarnation. Consequently that part which lives in our physical and etheric body constitutes, as it were, the last phase of our existence above in the spiritual world. During our sleep, when we go out of our physical body as sentient-volitional beings, we leave behind our past.

What do we then take with us? If we realise the fact that we leave behind our past, we can also realise the fact that what is ordinarily an unconscious experience from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, is that part of man's being which passes through the portal of death and re-enters a soul-spiritual world. That part of man's being which could not dive down into the physical and etheric body, which remained behind, as it were, that part goes out every night when we fall asleep, and it also passes again as a being of feeling and will, through the portal of death. Thus eternity becomes guaranteed to man through this real perception.

And if we now look back to what is striven for without any understanding by a certain modern scientific direction which clings to external, superficial facts in order to investigate phenomena such as telepathy, teleplastic and telekinesis, we see that these phenomena are really connected with man's past, with the part which perishes when he dies, with something which cannot constitute anything pertaining to the real super-sensible world, but only to forces which are connected with the human being in the physical realm of the earth.

If we vividly imagine that part of our pre-existent being which descends into a physical embodiment through conception and birth, we can understand that in its development it absorbs the forces and substances transmitted by the hereditary stream; it also takes in forces during the course of earthly existence which are absorbed through the process of nutrition and breathing and through everything which the human being receives from the external world. The human being only exists as a full reality in that being that descends into physical embodiment from a pre-existent, pre-natal life. Within the mother's body it already enters into and envelops itself with physical matter and later on draws in substance through breathing, nutrition, and so forth.

Only when the human being is awake, only during this normal condition of life, the part which man thus incorporates into himself enters into connection with his true being, with his sentient and volitional being, through the physical and etheric bodies. When the human being is awake, there exists a normal connection between his sentient-volitional being and his thinking capacity, which is bound up, as we already have seen, with the etheric body and with the physical body.

Let us now suppose that in a hypnotic condition man's sentient and volitional being is drawn out of the physical and the etheric body. The hypnotised man whom we then have before us, consists merely of the body of formative forces and of the physical body, with all the physical substances and forces which he has absorbed from the external physical world. There are many reciprocal relationships between these substances and forces and the environing world, and all this enters the human being. When the sentient, volitional part of man is outside the physical and etheric body, it is possible to observe the influence of these physical substances. Through anthroposophical investigation, we discover that this does not pertain to man's immortal essence, to man's inner kernel, but that it is something which pertains to the external world and which unites with his immortal part, something which became incorporated into it in the past.

The same thing can appear if the person succumbs to some kind of illness. In a normal condition, a diseased organ can be felt through pain, sickness, and so forth. This is the case when the volitional-sentient being is rightly connected with the physical and etheric body. But if the physical or even the etheric body is somehow deformed by illness, then through the disease of some organ, some inner member of the soul and spirit, the sentient-volitional being in man dives down more deeply into his animal-physical nature than is the case in a normal state of consciousness, when the memories are only thrown back like mirrored reflections. When the physical organs are sound, the human being dives down into his physical body only to a certain degree; but if the organs are diseased, if only one organ is diseased, the soul-spiritual being not only dives down as far as the point where pain arises in the normal course of an illness, but it dives down deeper still. The soul-spiritual being unites with the physical organism. Whereas in the ordinary course of life man's sentient-volitional being is normally connected only with the sensory and with the nervous system, it now becomes connected with the lower animalic organs and with the vegetative organs, so that the involuntary conditions of hallucination and of visionary experience arise. One sees that hallucinations and visionary experiences, as well as other similar conditions, are entirely united with man's physical and etheric bodies, and that therefore, they can only be experiences which vanish when the human being dies and can throw no light whatever upon the super-sensible world in which we live between death and a new birth. There is, however, one phenomenon attested by sound scientific research, namely that in a mediumistic condition it is possible to perceive thoughts of a certain importance, and sometimes one can be amazed at the very clever thoughts voiced by a medium in trance, i.e. by a person who is in a kind of hypnotic state, thoughts which would not be possible to him in a normal state of consciousness.

Does this fact contradict the explanations given above? It does not contradict them, because not only the physical body, but also the etheric body can exercise an influence in space, without the medium of the physical body. Even quite normal people, particularly those who have a spark of genius in them, may produce thoughts and phantasies which are not limited to the body of formative forces, and because these transcend normal life and even the human being himself, they go out, as it were, into the universal cosmic ether, which we shall learn to know in our next lecture.

We can really say that the artistic thoughts which transcend normal life continue to swing in the universal cosmic ether, thoughts which appear—if I may use this expression—in superhuman artistic creations and experiences. These thoughts whirr about in the cosmic ether.

People who prepare themselves through exercises of the will and meditation described yesterday, know that man does not only produce things physically, by physical deeds. They know that thoughts which are not required for the maintenance of individual life (individual life requires thinking forces which change into forces of growth) are imparted to the universal cosmic ether. When the etheric body is in some pathological condition, when it is deformed or when it becomes mediumistic through trance, then the thoughts which whirr about in the cosmic ether and which do not enter our normal consciousness, can penetrate into a person deprived of his soul-spiritual part and manifesting as a medium. And when, for instance, the thoughts of a dead person imparted to the universal ether manifest themselves through a medium, it is possible to believe that one is really perceiving the thoughts, the present thoughts of the departed soul, whereas in reality one only perceives the echo of thoughts rayed out before death, when that person was still living on the earth.

This is what should always be borne in mind, through a sound, critical, spiritual-scientific attitude. We should be aware whether we merely confront thought-echoes, or whether the development of super-sensible forces really enables us to penetrate into the super-sensible world to which we belong after death and before birth. Telepathy is merely an etheric transmission of thoughts with the exclusion of the senses. In telekinesis certain forces producing changes in the physical body through nutrition or through other physical substances, are stimulated to action in space without a physical intermediary. The human being only consists of about 10 per cent of solid substance; he is a liquid column in regard to the remaining 90 per cent. But he also consists of finer materials, extending to the etheric. In a pathological condition, when an organ is diseased, so that the soul-spiritual part dives down too deeply into the animalic part, it is possible to impart thoughts with the aid of these finer substances which are rayed out in a certain way. Teleplastic also arises in this way. In teleplastic the fine substantiality which is rayed out can be given form, and these forms moulded by thought may even be filled with light and radiance. Plastic forms arise, such as those described in the books of Schrenk-Notzing and of others. These works are always on a scientific level, and preclude any idea of swindle or fraud.

But in all these cases we simply have to do with activities proceeding from that part of man's being which perishes when he dies. They do not supply us with anything which can lead us into the real super-sensible world.

We penetrate into the real super-sensible world when we are able to observe things outside the body with the aid of our sentient-volitional being, through a systematic training and intensification of our normal soul-capacities and by maintaining our normal state of consciousness. In that case we can survey the past which appears in the physical and in the etheric body, the past which we rayed out from a spiritual world and which plastically moulded our physical and etheric substances.

And since we first perceive most clearly of all, so to speak, the things which lie further off, and only gradually the things in closer proximity, we are able to see as far as the point of our death in a preceding life. As described in my Theosophy this perception of our pre-existent, pre-natal life, enables us to give a description of man's experiences after death. We then describe things, as it were, from a reversed perspective. And thus all the descriptions which I have given you on man's conditions and experiences after death, are based upon that spiritual perception which can be attained in the manner I described yesterday and again to-day.

One can say that it is impossible to gain any direct experience of the higher worlds unless we first acquire it through an earnest striving after knowledge. Through the strengthening of thought, as described yesterday, we must create the possibility of being outside the body in a fully conscious state and of looking back upon it. This can only be attained by intensifying our thinking power. But we must also learn to make distinctions. Everything which comes from a preceding life lies open to our perception, but everything which pertains to the future is only accessible to inner experience.

These inner experiences are meagre in comparison with the mighty super-sensible tableau of pre-existent life which confronts us, for our prenatal existence can really form the content of a fully developed science. But anything which we can gather concerning the future will very much depend upon the inner strengthening of our sentient-volitional being, when it is outside the body. This sentient-volitional being can also be observed in its course of development during the physical life on earth, as it gradually matures for a higher state of existence after death. Differences become evident, if we first observe that part of man which ordinarily abandons him unconsciously during sleep, in a more youthful stage of life and then observe it in a maturer stage. The sentient-volitional being which abandons the body of a younger person during sleep, is more filled with a reflective, thoughtful element. We observe that it unconsciously reverberates the thoughts which the human being harbours. When a person grows older, he no longer carries out of his physical body so many thoughts when crossing the portal of sleep, but he takes out with his sentient-volitional being into the external world, forces of character, forces contained in his developed impulses of the will.

We can therefore say: During our earthly life, we gradually change from a being in whom thoughts are the predominant element, into a being who manifests in his soul-spiritual part more the echo of forces which constitute his character. Essentially speaking, we do not pass through the portal of sleep with our thoughts, for we leave them behind when we fall asleep and they shine forth through the physical body. We leave behind the thoughts which animated us during our earthly life from birth to death. We learn to look upon them as external thought-forces of the world; later on, after death, we learn to know them as an external world. We pass through the portal of sleep with these forces which have formed our character, which constitute our inner moral development. If we wish to interpret rightly every phase in the perspective which appears to us in the world of our pre-existent life, we must first gain this capacity through the development of our normal soul-forces.

In the previous lecture, I have already described to you that when a person intensifies his life of thought through meditation and concentration, so that he can live in thoughts in the same way in which he ordinarily lives in sensory impressions, in an inner life of thoughts as powerful, living and intensive as the life of the soul when it surrenders to sensory impressions, then he attains to imaginative knowledge. This inner thought-life intensified to the stage of imaginative consciousness, now enables him to confront not only the memory tableau of his past earthly life up to the present moment, but he surveys everything pertaining to his physical earthly organism, shaped and moulded by the body of formative forces. His first super-sensible experience is to look back from the present moment upon his whole earthly life, as far as childhood, in the form of a mighty tableau.

I already mentioned in my last lectures that the tableau which can thus be experienced, resembles in some points a fact which even serious scientists discuss to-day, for it is sufficiently attested that such a picture arises when a person is in mortal danger, with hardly any hope of escape. A drowning person, for instance, may experience in a great tableau that which constitutes the etheric time-body of formative forces; he looks upon this body.

Supersensible knowledge enables us to obtain this same survey, which constitutes the first experience after death through the right interpretation of the perspective described to you of our pre-existent, pre-natal life.

Then we recognise the fact that when the human being passes through the portal of death, he perceives for a short time, lasting only a few days (approximately as long as a person is able, in accordance with his organisation, to do without sleep for a few days) a kind of tableau, giving him a survey of his past earthly life in a kind of thought-web, but consisting of pictures. We obtain, for a short time, this survey of our earthly life, when we pass through the portal of death. I might say, that we face our earthly life without the participation of our feelings and of our will, purely in a kind of passive survey; after death, we learn to know this first condition as I have described it.

We must first gain this experience through super-sensible knowledge, through meditation and concentration, etc. But we require another kind of training if we wish to interpret rightly in this tableau the connection between our past earthly life and the life after death.

In our earthly life, and even in ordinary science, we generally surrender ourselves passively to the external world with our thoughts, feelings and will-impulses. We keep pace with the external world. We experience the Yesterday, then in connection with it the To-day, and a little later, the To-morrow. And the inner reflections of our thoughts, feelings and will-impulses, developed within the soul, are connected with the external course of time, as a continued natural experience. This, as it were, gives our ordinary thinking and feeling a kind of support, but man's thinking cannot reach the required degree of intensification, enabling it to make super-sensible investigations, if it passively submits to the external course of time. Other exercises are now needed; we must try—if I may use this expression—to think backwards. When the day is over, we should pass in review all that we have seen during the day, but we should not do this in the form of thoughts, nor critically, but in the form of pictures; we should, as it were, see everything once more, in the same way in which we see things through our phantasy but from evening to morning in reversed sequence. We should acquire a certain practice in this thinking backwards in the form of pictures. It is relatively easy to think backwards larger portions of the day, but in order to have a reversed picture of the day's course, atomistically small portions must also be surveyed backwards, and this must be practised for a long time.

We can then advance to other exercises; for instance, we can seek help by trying to experience a drama backwards, from the Fifth Act back to the First, try experiencing melodies inwardly, by hearing, as it were, soul-spiritually. We can thus attain the capacity of looking upon our life's memories (this is something different from the life-tableau described above) by conjuring them up before our soul backwards, in the form of imaginative pictures, so that our whole life stands before us, from the present moment back into the past. By making such exercises, we emancipate our thinking from the external course of time. The deeply rooted habit of following the course of time with our thinking and feeling must be overcome. By forcefully thinking backwards we are gradually enabled to make use of a far greater and stronger capacity of thinking than that employed for a merely passive thinking. Our thinking power can be essentially strengthened just by this way of thinking backwards.

And we then discover something which undoubtedly seems paradoxical to the normal consciousness and to the ordinary understanding. But in the same way in which one looks upon the physical world with conceptions flowing in the stream of time, so one gradually comes to look upon the spiritual world, when one's thinking has been emancipated from its connection with the external course of time.

This produces a further capacity which enables one to observe the new experiences and to interpret rightly, from the perspective already described, the things connected with the life-tableau which one sees for a few days after death.

After this life-tableau, we can see how man once more passes through his life, by living through it backwards in very real and vivid pictures. Man experiences, as it were, the soul-world before experiencing the spirit world. He lives backwards through life, from his death to his birth, but more quickly than during his earthly existence from birth to death. He lives through this life backwards.

The capacity to perceive this is acquired by the already mentioned exercises of thinking backwards. And now we gain a conception of how after death man experiences in this reversed course of soul-life everything that he experienced here on earth in his physical body. But he now experiences all these things with his soul, and he can see everything that harmed his progress morally. By this very living backwards through time, he can now survey from a higher standpoint what he would like to change in life. For he can see how certain moral defects handicapped his development towards perfection. But since he now experiences all this in a living way, it does not remain in the realm of thought. In this reversed course of soul-life—I might say, in this soul-life which he develops backwards, thought does not remain abstract, for abstract thoughts were left behind with death; thought now develops as a thinking force. It becomes an impulse which leads the human being to make amends during his next earthly life, in some way to experience facts which are opposite to those which now come before his soul. In the soul there develops something which in the next life appears in the form of subconscious longings to approach this or that experience in life. In this living backwards through our past life, we develop the desire to experience in our next earthly life events or facts which counterbalance those which we have gone through in the past. And so this reversed course of development contains the seed of something which we unconsciously bring with us when we are born again, something which can be described somewhat in the following way.

This is generally not accessible to the ordinary consciousness; nevertheless it lives in man. But observe merely with your plain common sense something which super-sensible research establishes as a fact—namely, how we approach some decisive fact in life.

Let us suppose that during one of our earthly lives we meet another human being in our 30th or 35th year (I will take a decisive event) and that he becomes our life-companion with whom we wish to share our further destiny in life, that we discover that our souls harmonise. An ordinary materialistic person will say that this was pure chance. Deeper minds—there are many, and they can be traced in history—have however reflected a little over this problem: If we now look back in life from this decisive event, if we survey what preceded it, what came before that, and still further back ... we find that the course of our life tending towards this event followed a definite plan. Sometimes we discover that an event which we thus experience in our life, a fact having such an incisive influence upon our life, appears like the organic conclusion of a well defined plan.

If we have first constructed such a plan hypothetically and lead it back as far as our birth, and if we then survey it with the aid of cognitive forces developed through meditation, retrospective thinking, will-exercises, we must really say to ourselves: This hypothetical plan which you constructed, may sometimes appear like a mere phantasy, but it is not always so. Precisely for decisive facts in life, it often reveals itself as of greatest importance that the human being carries within him from his birth a subconscious longing, and that guided by this longing, which he perhaps interprets quite differently in the various epochs of his life, he makes the first step, the second step and all the steps which finally lead him to the event which he formed as a seed during his retrospective experience after death and which carries him through his new earthly life as an undefined longing. We thus shape our destiny ourselves in an unconscious way. This enables us to recognise what we encounter during our earthly existence, this destiny or Karma, as it was designated in the ancient, instinctive, clairvoyant wisdom of the Orient. This destiny, on which our happiness and unhappiness, our joy and pain in life depends, we can learn to recognise by looking upon the sequence of our earthly lives.

A man will naturally very soon be inclined to say: How do matters then stand in regard to freedom,?—For if man is guided by destiny, how do matters stand in regard to human freedom?—Indeed, a solution of the question of destiny can only be gained by striving earnestly with the problem of freedom. At this point allow me to insert something personal, for it undoubtedly has an objective significance. In the early nineties of the past century I wrote my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The task of this book was to establish the experience, the fact of freedom. From man's own inner experiences I sought to characterise the consciousness of freedom as an absolute certainty. And the subsequent explanations which I have tried to give as a partial solution of the problem of destiny, such as the sketch which I gave you now, I consider to be in entire harmony with the descriptions of human freedom. Those who study my book Philosophy of Spiritual Activity will find however I was obliged to renounce speaking of freedom of the human will at first, and to speak instead of a freedom experienced in thought, in pure thinking emancipated from the senses. In thoughts which consciously arise in the human soul as an ethical, moral ideal, in thoughts which have the strength to influence the human will and to lead it to action, in such thoughts there is freedom. We can speak of human freedom when we speak of human actions shaped by man's own free thinking, when he reaches the point, through a moral self-training, of not allowing his actions to be influenced by instincts, passions, emotions or by his temperament, but only by the devoted love for an action. In this devoted love for an action, can develop something which proceeds from the ideal strength of pure ethical thinking. This is a really free action.

Spiritual science now enables us to discover that during sleep thinking as such, the thinking which lies at the foundation of free ethical actions, remains behind in the mirroring physical body. It is thus something that man experiences between birth and death. Even if human life were not of immense value also from other aspects, the inclusion of the impulse of freedom in our experiences between birth and death renders our life on earth valuable in itself. In our physical existence on earth we attain freedom by developing thought as such, when thought loses the plastic force which it still has within the etheric body and is developed as pure thinking in the consciousness which we have in ordinary life.

In the early nineties of the past century I was therefore obliged to set forth a very daring thought in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. I had to speak of moral impulses in the form of ethical ideas and had to explain that these do not come to us from Nature, but through intuition. At that time I spoke of “moral phantasy.” Why?—In my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I explained that these ethical motives stream into man from the spiritual world, but at first in the form of pictures. He receives them from the spiritual world as intuition.

But we thus come, as it were, to the other pole of what we experience here, in the physical world. Everywhere in the realm of Nature we discover necessity, if we look out into it with our sound common sense and with a scientific mentality. If we look into the world of moral impulses, then we discover freedom, but to begin with, freedom in the form of mere thought, of pure thinking, in the intuition that lives in the thinking activity. At first we do not know how these moral forces enter the will, for we perceive ethical intuitions unconsciously. So we have on the one hand Nature, to which we belong through our actions, and on the other hand our ethical experience. Through natural science alone, we should lose the possibility to ascribe reality and world-creative forces to these ethical intuitions. We experience Nature as it were, in its whole dense grossness, in its necessity. And then we experience freedom, but we experience it in the finely-woven impulses of thinking which reach the imaginative stage, and since these do not form part of Nature and can be experienced in free activity, we know that they come from the spiritual world, as I have indicated in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.

But something must now be inserted between these intuitions which are entirely of a picture-nature and unreal and which only acquire reality through ethical life, between these intuitions and the objective cognition of Nature and its laws. It is imagination and inspiration, which arise in the way I have described, that now insert themselves. In that case intuition too undergoes a change. The impulse which first appeared only in pure thinking, becomes as it were condensed into a spiritual reality.

In this newly acquired intuition, gained through imagination and inspiration, we do not learn to know our present Ego, but the Ego that passes through repeated lives on earth and that carries our destiny through these repeated earthly lives. In passing through these repeated earthly lives which moulded our destiny, we are not free. Yet we can always insert free actions into this web of destiny during our different lives on earth. Just because the imaginative intuition enables us to experience ethical impulses (not as realities, but as something which we can freely accept), we can weave freedom into the web of destiny during a definite earthly life. The fact that destiny bears us from one earthly life into another, does not render us less free than the fact that a steamer can carry us from Europe to America. Our future is determined by the decision to travel arrived at in Europe; yet within certain limits we are always free, and we can move about freely while we are in America. This is how destiny is borne from one earthly life into another. But to the world of facts which we thus experience during our repeated lives on earth, we can insert what wells up out of freedom during a definite life.

And so we see that those who struggle with the problem of freedom and see the solution in the contemplation of ethical ideas which can at first only be grasped through moral phantasy, but which penetrate from the spiritual world into the physical world of man,—we see that those who in this way acquire an understanding for the problem of freedom, have prepared themselves thereby for the comprehension of destiny, which enters human life almost like a necessity.

If we attain this intuition and understand the interweaving of destiny and freedom and thus intensify still further the forces acquired through meditation, concentration, retrospective thought, etc., we are able to contemplate, that is to interpret further the facts which appear to us in the spiritual perspective.

What now is attached to this retrospective experience is a life which takes its course in a purely spiritual sphere in which we now live towards a subsequent life on earth. In this spiritual sphere our experience is just the reverse of our experience during our earthly life. Here on earth, our inner experiences can, to begin with, only be perceived inwardly, as pictures. We do not experience our inner being with our ordinary consciousness, for our waking consciousness makes us experience the external world. We look out, as it were, from our own centre into the environing spatial world, into the spatial sphere, the external world. We are within ourselves and the external world is outside.

During our existence between death and a new birth this conception is just reversed: We are now centred in a world which constituted our external world here on earth, and the external world on earth now becomes a kind of inner world.

The inner world of human nature, which was not accessible to us during our earthly life, can now be experienced as an external world. And during our life between death and a new birth, our inner being becomes the world! And the world becomes our Ego.

And inasmuch as we experience something which is now higher than the world which surrounds us here on earth (for man is the crown of creation, he bears within himself a sphere which is higher than the surrounding world), we have within us a more valuable world during our existence between death and a new birth. The world which we thus experience as our own environment, but which is actually the mysterious world of man's inner being, is experienced creatively. In the spiritual world we experience these forces creatively, in common with higher spiritual Beings that surround our soul-spiritual being, in the same way in which the kingdoms of Nature, the plants, the animals and the minerals, surround our physical being on earth.

In communion with these spiritual Beings, we experience the forces out of which we gradually mould not only our destiny, the seed of our destiny, but also our prototype in the soul-spiritual world. This is the real prototype, that soul-spiritual being, which after a certain time is filled with the longing to incorporate again, to send down the prototype into a physical body, the prototype which it first shaped in living thoughts in the spiritual world. And since it must become united with a physical body, since it can only reach perfection in a physical body, this soul-spiritual being is filled with the impulse and longing to reincarnate here on earth. Out of the spirit comes that being from an existence lying before birth, or before conception, and unites with the physical body.

A true conception of the way in which man develops here on earth as a physical being (more exact details will be given the day after tomorrow) can only be gained if we can grasp the fact that what develops in the mother's body is only something which receives from a higher world the real being of man.

Natural science has a certain ambition and dream, consisting in the hope to discover one day the complicated chemical structure of cells, indeed of the most perfect cells, the reproductive cells, the germ cells of the human embryo. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy approaches this same problem, but with quite different means and from entirely different points of view. And Anthroposophy is able, in a certain way, to point out the direction in which to seek that which develops in the mother's body as germinative cell of the human embryo. Here we do not come across complicated chemical combinations, but in reality with a chaotic state of matter. We do not have before us a highly complicated chemical combination or some molecular structure, but a chaotic condition, a chaotic vortex of the ordered structure which exists in a crystal and in a chemical molecule. In the germinative cell matter is not developed to a further organisation, but it is pushed down into chaos, and from the corresponding substance, from the substance which becomes chaotic, then develops something which can now receive what comes down to it from above; the super-sensible man coming from the spiritual worlds.

The development of physical man will only be grasped if physical research is brought to the point of being able to see how the physical human germ by leading matter back to chaos, becomes capable of receiving the soul-spiritual germ which comes down from pre-existence. Only in this way it is possible to understand how the soul-spiritual part descending from the soul-spiritual world becomes united through conception and up to birth with what has de-materialised itself in the germ, in the early embryonic stage. All who carefully study the form and development of the embryo can find, even in its physical development, the confirmation of to-day's description, whereas this embryonic development will always remain a riddle to those who cannot consider it in this way.

To be sure, if we really wish to know man's true being we must receive from super-sensible research what also belongs to man. On earlier occasions, I have, for instance, pointed out that in the science dealing with the lower kingdoms, people would everywhere consider foolish things which are looked upon as wisdom in the investigation of the human being.

I already gave you the example of a magnet-needle, with one of its ends pointing North and the other one South. Now it would certainly not enter anyone's mind to say that the forces which it manifests are only contained in the magnet needle, in the space occupied by that needle. One looks upon the earth itself as a great magnet which exercises its influence upon the magnet-needle and which determines its direction. The magnet-needle is included in the structure of the whole earth-organism.

In this case one transcends the single thing, in order to recognise the great comprehensive whole and its inter-relation with the single object. Yet in the case of man one seeks to recognise everything pertaining to man by studying the development of the germ cell through the microscope and by contemplating only what is enclosed within the human skin! Just as little as the forces of the magnet can be explained through the magnet, just as little is it possible to know what develops in the human being if one does not bring him in relation with the whole world, not only with the spatial world, but also with the world of time; it is not possible to understand the' human being unless one goes back to his pre-existent, pre-natal being, revealing itself, as described, to super-sensible vision. We learn to know this pre-existent being when man lays aside his physical body here on earth, when we see his etheric body dissolving in the cosmic ether—we see this pre-existent being passing once more through the portal of death in order to begin a new cycle leading to a further adjustment of life's facts and to a higher perfection.

This is how man stands within the evolution of the world, if we look upon his essence as such. What we now receive, inasmuch as we bear our soul-spiritual being down to earth, pertains to the evolution of the world and must be included in the cosmic development, as we shall see in the next lecture. The human being will only be understood if what has been explained to-day is at the same time inserted into the being and becoming, that is, into the whole cosmic development. For man can only recognise the world by recognising himself. And what constitutes the universe is reflected in earthly life, and the human being lives through it after death and before birth. From this sphere he takes the forces which he himself incorporates with his physical body at birth or conception. The universe and man belong together not only outwardly, but also inwardly. Man bears the world within himself; the world as a totality forms man's being. The question which we have raised is therefore partially answered to-day; it will be fully answered, to the extent allowed to-day by science, in my next lecture.

In conclusion let me say a few more words. I want it to be really understood that the facts explained by the spiritual-scientific investigator are based upon the development of forces which ordinarily remain unconscious to the soul, but that from the anthroposophical standpoint, the spiritual-scientific investigator proceeds in such a way that he clothes the facts obtained through super-sensible vision in the thoughts which are ordinarily used in science. Everywhere he takes his thoughts with him. For his research-work must always be accompanied by that pendulum swinging from the super-sensible to the physical world. He must always stand as his own critic by the side of his higher being endowed with super-sensible vision. Consequently even those who have not made such exercises can really examine and test with their own thinking all the facts brought forward by the spiritual investigator; they can test them with their own thinking, if only they follow in an unprejudiced way their own sound common sense. It is really not true that only a spiritual investigator could test the facts brought forward by spiritual research. In the present time, we have grown too accustomed to the manner of thinking connected with external matter, with the external sequence of natural facts, and we find that a spiritual investigator cannot supply proofs valid for this' way of thinking. But those who penetrate into all the circumstances, understand the connection existing between the ordinary sound common sense and the methodically developed understanding of science, of external science. And those who think critically, and with sufficient lack of prejudice test all the facts advanced by the spiritual investigator, will be able to do this, even though they themselves are not endowed with super-sensible vision. The spiritual investigator brings forward everything in such a way that it can be tested. Those who say that a spiritual investigator merely relates what he sees through his own super-sensible vision without supplying any proofs, resembles a person who is accustomed to think that everything which he finds on earth stands upon a firm ground, and when someone explains to him a solar system immediately asks: What then does that rest upon?

Perhaps he does not perceive that it rests upon itself, that it is freely borne by its own forces. A person who asks for proofs resembles one who asks: On what foundation does a solar system stand then? He resembles such a person if he asks for ordinary proofs and means such proofs as can only be asked for the external sensory world, where it is possible to discover, without any proof, the things which the senses perceive, the existence of which can be proved through the senses.

But human thinking does not only exist for this purpose; human thinking can also rise to things which are demonstrable not only through sound common sense upon the foundation of sensory experience, but to things which are carried by their own inner forces, like a spiritual planetary system. Try to examine in this way, by applying it to anthroposophical spiritual investigation, the results obtained by such a self-supporting, self-demonstrating thinking; you will then find that the facts advanced by a spiritual investigator are inwardly just as surely founded—even without the so-called external supports—as a planetary system supports itself freely in cosmic space, and that a supporting foundation is only needed by what is terrestrial and heavy. This however must be remembered: that thinking must also become really free, it must become something which can carry itself inwardly, if sound human intelligence is to find a proof for the facts which spiritual research advances in connection with the being of man and the evolution of the world. That from this standpoint it is possible to prove everything, I shall hope to develop in my next lecture on the nature of world evolution, following the explanations now given on the nature of man.

The thoughts which I have been putting before you, will show you that the acquisition of real super-sensible knowledge entails above all, with the aid of the exercises already described, that the two sides of human nature which are usually inexactly designated as man's inner and outer being should be distinctly separated. Perhaps it may be pointed out that in ordinary consciousness one does not make an exact distinction between man's inner and outer being, when speaking of these. The way in which I characterised the going out of man's sentient and volitional being during sleep and the becoming conscious in super-sensible knowledge outside the physical body, shows us that just this super-sensible knowledge enables us to separate distinctly those parts which are usually described vaguely in ordinary consciousness as man's outer and inner being.

I might say that by this separation man's inner world becomes his outer world, and what we usually consider as his outer world becomes his inner world.

What takes place in that case? During sleep, man's sentient and volitional being abandons what we have called his physical body and etheric body, or the body of formative forces, and then this sentient-volitional being looks back upon the physical body and the etheric body as if they were objects. We showed that in this retrospection the whole web of thought appears outside man's inner being. The world of thought which fills our ordinary consciousness and which reflects the external world, does not go out with man's true inner being in falling asleep, but remains behind with the physical body, as the true forces of the etheric body. In this way we were able to grasp that during our waking state of consciousness we cannot grow conscious of that part which goes out during sleep and which remains unconscious for the ordinary consciousness. (Self-observation can easily convince us that during our ordinary waking consciousness the world of thoughts produces this waking state of consciousness).

In that part of the human being which goes out of the physical and the etheric bodies during sleep, there is a dull twilight-life, and we only learn to know this inner being of man when super-sensible knowledge fills it, as it were, with light and with warmth, when we are just as conscious within this inner being as we are ordinarily conscious within our physical body. But we also learn to know why we have an unconscious life during our ordinary sleeping condition. Consciousness arises when we dive down into our physical and etheric bodies at the moment of waking up. And by diving down into the physical body, we make use of the senses which connect us with the external world. As a result, the sensory world awakes and we thus grow conscious in it.

In the same way we dive down into our etheric or life-body, that is to say, into our world of thoughts, and we grow conscious within our thoughts. Ordinary consciousness is therefore based upon the fact that we use the instruments of our physical body, and that we make use, so to speak, of the etheric body's web of formative forces. In ordinary life, man's true inner being, woven out of feeling and will, is not in a position to attain consciousness, because it has no organs. By making the thought- and will-exercises of which I have spoken, we endow the soul itself with organs. This soul-element, which is at first indistinct in our ordinary consciousness, acquires plastic form, even as our physical body and our etheric body acquire plastic form in the senses and in the organs of thought. Man's real soul-spiritual being therefore obtains a plastic form.

In the same measure in which it is moulded plastically and acquires (if I may use this paradoxical expression) soul-spiritual sense-organs, the world of soul and spirit rises up round our inner being. That part of our being which ordinarily lives in a dull twilight existence and which can only perceive an environing world, namely the physical world, when it uses the physical and etheric organs of perception, thus acquires plastic form and enters into connection with a world which always surrounds us, even in our ordinary life, though we are not aware of it, a world in which we lived before descending into our physical being through birth or conception, as described the day before yesterday; a world in which we shall live again when we pass through the portal of death, for then we shall recognise it as a world which belongs to us and which is not limited by birth and death. But there is one thing which rises up before us when we enter the spiritual world. We cannot enter this world in the same abstract theoretic manner with which we can live in the physical world and in the world of thoughts or of the intellect. In the physical world and in the world of thoughts we use ideas and thoughts, which as such, leave us cold. With a little self-observation anyone can discover that when he ascends to the sphere of pure thinking, when he surrenders to the external sensory world without any special interest or a close connection with it, the external physical world, as well as the world of ideas, really leaves him cold. We must learn to know this in detail from particular examples in life. We should note, for instance, how different are the inner feelings with which we consider our home, from those with which we look upon any other strange country which is indifferent to us. This will show us that in order to have a living interest for the environing world, our feeling and our will must first be drawn in through special circumstances. Feeling will indeed always dive down into the physical world when we awake, obtaining from this physical world a connection with the senses and the understanding. The fact that love or perhaps hate are kindled in us when we encounter certain people in the physical world, the fact that we feel induced to do certain things for them out of compassion, all this demands the inclusion of our feelings and of everything which constitutes our inner being, when we come across such things in the external physical world. How conscious we are of the fact that our inner life grows cold, when we rise up to spheres which are generally called the spheres of pale, dry thought and of theoretic study!

The being which lives in a dull twilight state from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, must, as it were, connect itself during the waking daytime condition with thoughts and with sensory experiences through an inner participation in these processes, thus giving rise to the whole wealth of interest in the external world.

And so we recognise that in life itself feeling and will must first be drawn into the sense world and into the world of thoughts. But we perceive this in the fullest meaning of the word only when through super-sensible knowledge, we become free from the physical and etheric bodies, and have experiences outside them within our sentient-volitional being.

And hence it is evident that we must begin to speak of the world in a different way from how we speak in ordinary life, in ordinary consciousness. The dry ideas, the laws of Nature which we are accustomed to find in science and which interest us theoretically, though they leave us inwardly cold, these should be permeated with certain nuances and expressions which characterise the external world differently from the way in which we usually characterize it.

Our inner life acquires greater intensity through super-sensible knowledge. We penetrate more intensively into the life of the external world. When we try to gain knowledge, we are then no longer able to submit coldly to inner ideas. No doubt one is then exposed to the reproach that the objectivity may suffer through a certain inner warmth, through the awakening of feeling and of a subjective sense. But this objection is only raised by those who are not acquainted with the circumstances.

The things perceived through super-sensible knowledge make us speak differently of the super-sensible objects of knowledge. These do not change, they do not become less objective, for in fact they are objective. When I look upon a wonderfully painted picture, it does not change through the fact that I look upon it with fire and enthusiasm; I should be a cold prosaic person if I were to face one of Raphael's Madonnas or one of Leonardo's paintings with a purely analytical artistic understanding, quite coldly and without any enthusiasm. It is the same when the spiritual worlds rise up in super-sensible knowledge. Their content does not change through the fact that we connect ourselves with these worlds with inner feelings, far stronger than those which usually connect us with the external world and its objects.

When speaking from a knowledge of the higher worlds, many things will therefore have to be said differently, the descriptions will have to be different from those which we are accustomed to hear in ordinary life. But this does not render these worlds less objective. On the contrary, one could say: The subjective element which now breaks forth from the physical and etheric bodies becomes more objective, more selfless in its whole experience. And so the first experience which we have when going out of the physical body and experiencing our inner being consciously (whereas otherwise we always experience it unconsciously) is a feeling of absolute loneliness.

In our ordinary consciousness we never have the feeling that by dwelling only within our inner self, independently of anything in the world pertaining to us, complete loneliness fills our soul, that we ourselves, with everything which now constitutes our soul-spiritual content, must rely entirely upon ourselves.

The feeling of loneliness which sometimes arises in the physical world, but only as a reflection of the real feeling, though it is painful enough for many people, becomes immeasurably intensified when we thus penetrate into the super-sensible world. But we then look back upon that which reflects itself as the spiritual environment in the mirror of the physical and etheric body which we left behind. We grow aware, on the one hand, of a complete feeling of loneliness, which alone enables us to maintain our Ego in this world ... for we should melt away in this world of the spirit, if loneliness would not give us this Ego-feeling in the spiritual world, in the same way in which our body, our bodily sensation, gives us our Ego-feeling here on earth. To this loneliness we owe the maintenance of the Ego in the spiritual world. We then learn to know this spiritual world as our environment. But we know that we can only learn to know it through the inner soul-spiritual eye, even as we see the physical world through our physical eyes.

It is the same when the human being abandons his physical and etheric bodies by passing through the portal of death, and in this connection I shall enlarge the explanations already given yesterday. It is true that in this case the physical body is given over to the elements of the earth and that the etheric body dissolves, as I described, in the universal cosmic ether. But what we learned to know as our physical world, through our feeling and will, the world in which we experienced ourselves through the ordinary consciousness between birth and death, this world remains to man. The physical body filled with substance and the body of formative forces permeated by etheric forces, are laid aside with death, but what we experienced within them remains as a mirroring element.

From the spiritual world we look back through death, through which we have passed, into our last earthly life. Just because we have before us this last earthly life as a firm resistance which mirrors everything, just because of this, everything which surrounds us as we pass through the soul-spiritual world between death and a new birth, can also reflect itself. Through these experiences we perceive everything rising up in a far more intensive life than the one which we learned to know here in the physical world. And we first perceive as a soul-spiritual being everything with which we were in some way connected through our destiny, through our Karma. The people we loved, stand before us as souls. In our super-sensible vision we see all that we experienced together with them.

Those who acquire spiritual, super-sensible knowledge, already acquire imaginative vision here in the physical world, through everything which I described to you. Those who pass through the portal of death in the ordinary way, acquire this faculty, though it is somewhat different from spiritual vision on earth, they acquire it after having passed through the portal of death. From the sheaths of the physical and etheric bodies which were laid aside, emerges everything with which we were connected by destiny, or otherwise, in this earthly life—it undoubtedly arises in a different way when those whom we left behind still live on the earth, where the connection with them is more difficult, but when they follow us through death, this connection exists in the free, soul-spiritual life. Everything in our environment with which we were connected as human beings rises up before us. To super-sensible knowledge, the fact that people (if I may now express myself in words of the ordinary consciousness) who belonged together here in the physical world find each other again in the soul-spiritual world, after having passed through the portal of death, is not a belief to be accepted as a vague premonition, but it is a certainty, a fact just as certain as the results of physics or chemistry. And this is in fact something which the spiritual science of Anthroposophy can add to the acquisitions of modern culture.

People have grown accustomed to a certain feeling of certainty through the gradual popularisation of a scientific consciousness. They strive to gain some knowledge of the super-sensible worlds, but no longer in the form of the old presentiments handed down traditionally in the religious beliefs, for they have been trained to accept that certainty which the external world can offer. In regard to that which lies beyond birth and death the spiritual science of Anthroposophy seeks to pave the way to this same kind of certainty. It can really do this. Only those who tread the path already described, the path leading into the spiritual worlds, can carry the knowledge acquired in physics or chemistry further, out into the worlds which we enter when we pass through the portal of death.

Not everything of course, appears to us in this way when we look back upon our physical body through super-sensible knowledge outside the body. There is one thing which then appears to us very enigmatic, and this enigma can show us best of all that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy does not translate the truths which it includes in its spheres of knowledge into a prosaic, dry rationalism. It leads us to spiritual vision, or by communicating its truth it speaks of things which can be perceived through spiritual vision. But in being led to spiritual vision, we do not lose full reverence towards the mysteries contained in the universe, towards everything in the universe which inspires reverence and which can now be clearly perceived, whereas otherwise they are at the most felt darkly. This enigmatic something which I mean and which appears to us, is that we now learn to know man's relationship with the earth, particularly his relationship with the physical mineral earth.

I have already explained to you from many different aspects how our web of thoughts, which is connected with the physical body, remains behind, and in addition to what has been described to you, in addition to what reflects itself and leads us to a knowledge of man's eternal being, we can also recognise the nature of this mirror itself which we have before us.

One might say: Even as in the physical world we face a mirror and in this mirror the environing world appears simultaneously with our own self, so in super-sensible knowledge the spiritual world appears through this mirror. But just as we can touch the material mirror with its foil and investigate its composition, so we can also investigate this mirror of the super-sensible—namely, our physical body and our etheric body—when we are outside with our real soul-spiritual being.

And there one can see that during his earthly life man constantly takes in substances from the external world, in order to grow and to sustain his whole life. We certainly absorb substances from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but all these substances which we absorb from the animal and vegetable kingdoms also contain mineral substances. Plants contain mineral substances, for the plant builds itself up from mineral substances. By taking in vegetable nourishment we therefore build up our own body out of mineral substances.

By looking back upon our physical body from outside, we can now perceive the true significance of the mineral substances which we absorb. For now spiritual vision reveals something of which our ordinary consciousness has not the faintest inkling, namely the activity of thinking. We have, as you know, left behind our thinking. Our thoughts continue, as it were, to glimmer and to shine within the physical body. Thus we can now observe the effects of thoughts in the physical body from outside, as something objective. And we perceive that the effect of thoughts upon man's physical body is a dissolution of its physical substances, which fall asunder, as it were, into nothing.

I know that this apparently contradicts the law of the conservation of energy, but there is no time now to explain more fully its full harmony with this law. The nature of my subject obliges me to express myself in somewhat popular terms. But it is possible to understand that the purely mineral in man, what he bears within him as purely mineral substances, must be within him because it must be dissolved by his thoughts. For otherwise his thoughts could not exist—this is the condition for their existence—his thoughts could not exist if they did not dissolve mineral, earthly substances, a fact also revealed by the spiritual sciences of earlier times, based more on intuitive feeling. This dissolution, this destruction of physical substances constitutes the physical instrumentality of thinking.

When our sentient-volitional part, our true inner being, lives within the physical body and within the etheric body and is filled by the activity of thinking, we now learn to recognise that this activity takes its course through the fact that physical substance is continually destroyed. We now learn to recognise how our ordinary consciousness really arises. We are not conscious because forces of growth hold sway in us, forces which develop in the rest of the organism through nutrition. For in the same measure in which the forces of growth are active within us, thinking is dulled. When we wake up, thinking must, so to speak, have a free hand to dissolve physical substances, to eliminate them from the physical body. To the spiritual science of Anthroposophy, the nervous system appears as that organ which mediates this secretion of mineral-physical substances throughout the whole body. And in this secretion of the mineral-physical develops just that thought-activity which we ordinarily carry with us through the world.

You therefore see that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy not only enables us to recognise the eternal in man, but also to know of the way in which this eternal works within the physical body; that, for instance, thought can only exist through the fact that man continually develops within himself the mineral substances, that is, something dead.

And so we can say: If we learn to know man from this aspect, we also learn to know death from another aspect. Ordinarily death confronts us as the end of life, as a moment in life, as an experience in itself. But when we throw light upon man's physical and etheric body in this way we learn to know the gradual course of death, or the separation of physical-mineral substance,—for death in fact, is nothing but the complete liberator of man's mineral-physical substance—we learn to know the continuous secretion of a dead, corpse-like element within us.

We recognise that from birth onwards, we are really always dying and only when with the whole body we accomplish that which we ordinarily accomplish through the nervous system, in a small part of the body, only then do we die.

We therefore learn to contemplate the moment of death by seeing it on a small scale in the activity of thinking in the human organism. And throughout the whole time that we pass through after death, we can only look back upon our physical body because the following fact exists: Whenever a thought lights up within you during your ordinary life, this is always accompanied by the fact that physical matter is secreted in the physical body, in the same way in which, for instance, physical substance separates from a precipitated salt-solution. This lighting up of thought you owe as it were, to this opaqueness, to this separating off of physical mineral substances. Inasmuch as you abandon the physical body, there is summed up in a comparatively brief space of time what lives in the continual stream of your thoughts. You confront the fact that in death you see lighting up as if all at once that which slowly glimmered and shone throughout your whole earthly life, from birth to death.

And through this powerful impression, in which the life of thoughts illuminates the soul like a mighty flash of lightning, man acquires the memory of his physical lives on earth. The physical body may be cast off, the etheric body may dissolve completely in the universal ether, but through the fact that we obtain in one experience this powerful thought-impression (to mathematicians I might say: this thought-integral in comparison with thought-differentials, from birth to death), we always have before us, throughout the time after death, as a mirroring element, our physical life on earth, even though we have laid aside our physical and etheric parts. And this mirroring element reveals everything which we experience when the human beings with whom we were connected by destiny in love or in hate, gradually come up, when the spiritual Beings who live in the spiritual world and do not descend to the earth, whose company we also now share, rise up before us.

The spiritual investigator may state this with a calm conscience, for he knows that he does not speak on the foundation of illusionary pictures; he knows instead that to super-sensible vision, when super-sensible vision arises through the organ of the physical and etheric bodies which are now outside, these things are just as real, can be seen just as really as physical colours are ordinarily perceived through physical eyes, or physical sounds through physical ears.

This is how the evolution of humanity forms part of the evolution of the world. If we study the development of the world, for instance, the mineral life on earth, we understand why there should be mineral, earthly laws. They exist so that they might also exist within us, and thinking is therefore bound up with the earth. But in perceiving how the Beings who have bound their thinking with the earth emerge from that which produces their thought, we also learn to recognise how man in his true being lifts himself above the merely earthly. This is what connects the development of the world with the development of humanity and unites them.

We learn to know the human being and at the same time we learn to know the universe. If we learn to know man's physical body and its mineralization through thinking, we also learn to know through man's physical body the lifeless mineralised earth. This created a foundation for a knowledge of the evolution of the world from its spiritual aspect also.

When we thus learn to know man's inner being, we can consider the development of the world in the light of the ordinary earthly experiences through which we have passed since our birth.

If you draw out of your memory-store an experience which you had ten years ago, a past event which you have gone through rises up before your soul as an image. You know exactly from the circumstances of life that it rises up as a picture. Yet this picture conveys a knowledge of something which really existed ten years ago.

How does this arise? Through the fact that in your organism certain processes remained behind which now summon up the picture. Certain processes have remained behind in your organism and these summon up in you the picture enabling you to re-construct what you experienced ten years ago. But super-sensible knowledge leads us deeper into man's inner nature. We can perceive, for instance, that the physical body becomes mineralised during the thinking process; we perceive this in the same way in which we learn to know some past experience of our earthly life through the traces which it left behind within us.

In the same way the development of the earth can be understood from the development of man; through the activity of the mineral in man we learn to know the task of the mineral kingdom within the development of the earth. And if, as already set forth, we learn similarly to know (I can only mention this, for a detailed description would lead us too far) how the vegetable kingdom is connected with man, and how the animal kingdom is connected with him (for this too can be recognised), then the development of the world can be grasped by setting out from the human being.

And within the development of the world we can then see something which is again of the same importance to those who are interested in modern civilisation, as are the facts which I explained in connection with a knowledge of the human being, of the eternal inner kernel of man.

We know that modern civilisation has succeeded, at least up to a certain point, in so regarding man's relationship to the development of the world as to attach him to the evolution of the animals,—even though the corresponding theories, or the hypotheses, as some people say, still contain much that is unclear, requiring completion and modification. We follow the development of the simplest organic beings up to the higher animals, and if we continue this line of observation we come indeed to the point of placing man at the summit of animal development. One person does it in this way, and the other in that way, one more idealistically, and the other more materialistically in accordance with Darwin's theory of evolutionary descent, but methodically, it can hardly be denied that if we wish to study man's physical nature according to natural-scientific methods, we must rank him with the animal kingdom,—as has been done for some time.

We must investigate how his head has changed in comparison with the heads of the different animal-species; we must investigate his limbs, etc., and we thus obtain what is known as comparative anatomy, comparative morphology, comparative physiology, and we then also form concepts as to how man's physical form has gradually developed out of lower beings in the course of the world's evolution. But in so doing we always remain in the physical sphere. On the one hand people take it amiss to-day if the anthroposophical spiritual investigator speaks of the spiritual world as I have taken upon myself to do in this lecture; from many sides this is viewed as pure fantasy, and although many people believe that it is well-meant ... they nevertheless look upon it as something visionary and fanciful.

Those who become acquainted to some extent with what I have described, those who at least try to understand it, will see that the preparations and preliminary conditions for it are just as serious as, for instance, the preparations for the study of mathematics, so that it is out of the question to speak of sailing into some sort of fanciful domain. But just as on the one hand people take it amiss if one describes the spiritual world as a real visible world, so they take it amiss on the other hand if in regard to man's physical development one fully accepts those who follow man's development Darwinistically, with a natural-scientific discipline, along the animal line of descent, as far as man. No speculations should enter the observations made in the physical sphere and all sorts of things sought for there, as is done for instance, to-day in Neo-vitalism. This is full of speculations; the old vitalism was also full of speculative elements. But whenever we consider the physical world, we must keep to the physical facts.

For this reason, the anthroposophical spiritual investigator who on the one hand ventures to speak in a certain way of the conditions after death and before birth, as I have done, does not consider it as a reproach (i.e. he is not affected by it) when people tell him that his description of the physical world is completely that of a modern natural scientist. He does not bring any dreams into the sphere which constitutes the physical world. Even though people may call him a materialist when he describes the physical world, this reproach does not touch him, because he strictly separates the spiritual world, which can only be observed with the aid of a spiritual method, from the physical-sensory world, which has to be observed with the orderly disciplined methods of modern natural science.

A serious spiritual-scientific investigator must therefore feel particularly hurt and pained at reproaches made to him with regard to certain followers of spiritual science who sometimes rebuke natural science out of a certain pride in their spiritual-scientific knowledge and out of their undoubtedly shallow knowledge of natural science. They think that they have the right to speak negatively of science and of scientific achievements but the spiritual investigator can only feel deeply hurt at their amateurish, dilettantish behaviour. This is however not in keeping with spiritual science. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy is characterised by the fact that it deals just as strictly and scientifically with the external physical world, as with the spiritual world, and vice versa.

With this preliminary condition, the anthroposophical spiritual investigator stands entirely upon the ground of strictest natural-scientific observation in regard to the study of the world's development, but at the same time he turns his gaze towards the soul-spiritual world. And even as he knows that not only a physical process is connected with man's individual embryonic origin in the physical world, but that a soul-spiritual element unites with the human embryo, with the human germ, so he also knows that in the whole development of the world—though to the physical body it appears as a tapestry of sensory objects, and though it manifests itself to the web of thoughts, i.e. to the etheric body, in laws of Nature—he also knows that the physical world is permeated and guided in its whole development by spiritual forces, under the sway of spiritual Beings, that can be known through the methods I have described.

The anthroposophical investigator therefore knows that when he contemplates the external physical world in the sense of genuine science, he comes to the right boundary, where he may then begin with his spiritual investigation.

If we have conscientiously traced evolutionary development through the animal kingdom up to man, as Darwin or other Darwinians or Haeckel did, and if we have gone into its scientific justification we can then continue this in a spiritual-scientific direction, after having reached the boundary to which we are led by natural science.

We now discover that contemplation of the form into which we penetrate through super-sensible knowledge, shows us the whole significance of forms, as they appear in the kingdom of man on the one hand, and in the animal-kingdom on the other; we discover the whole significance of these forms.

Equipped with the knowledge supplied by super-sensible research, we see how the animal (this is at least the case with most animals, and exceptions can be easily explained) stands upon the ground with its four limbs, how its spine is horizontal, parallel with the surface of the earth, and how in regard to the spine, the head develops in an entirely different position from that of man. We learn to know the animal's whole form, as it were, from within, as a complex of forces, and also in relationship with the whole universe. And we thus learn to make a comparison: We perceive the transformation, the metamorphosis in the human form, in the human being whom we see standing upon his two legs, at right angles, so to speak, with the animal's spine, with his own spine set vertically to the surface of the earth and his head developing in accordance with this position of the spine.

By penetrating into the inner art of Nature's creative process, we learn to distinguish the human form from the animal form; we recognise this by entering into the artistic creative process of the cosmos. And we penetrate into the development of the world by rising from otherwise abstract constructive thoughts to thoughts which are inwardly filled with life, which form themselves artistically in the spirit.

The important thing to be borne in mind is that when it seeks to know the development of the world, anthroposophical spiritual research changes from the abstract understanding ordinarily described—and justly so—as dry, prosaic, systematic thought, or combining thought, into more concrete, real thought. Not for the higher spiritual world, in which concepts must penetrate by the methods described, but for the physical world, the forms in world-development should first be grasped through a kind of artistic comprehension, which in addition develops upon the foundation of super-sensible knowledge.

By thus indicating how science should change into art, we must of course encounter the objection raised by those who are accustomed to think in accordance with modern ideas: “But science must not become an art!” Now this can always be said, as a human requirement. People can say: Now I forbid the logic of the universe to become an art, for we only learn to know reality by linking up thought with thought and by thus approaching reality. Yes, if the world were as people imagine it to be, one could refuse to ascend to art, to an artistic comprehension of forms; but if the world is formed in such a way that it can only be comprehended through an artistic comprehension, it is necessary to advance to such an artistic comprehension. This is how matters stand. That is why those people who were earnestly seeking to grasp the organic in the world-development really came to an inner development of the thinking ordinarily looked upon as scientific thinking, they came to an artistic comprehension of the world. And as soon as we observe with an artistic-intuitive eye the development of the world, beginning with the point where the ordinary Darwinistic theory comes to a standstill, we perceive that man, grasped as a whole, cannot simply be looked upon by saying that once there were lower animals in the world, from which higher animals developed, that then still higher animals developed out of these, and so forth, until finally man arose.

If we study embryology in an unprejudiced way, it really contradicts this conception. Although modern scientists set up the fundamental law of biogenetics and compare embryology with phylogeny, they do not interpret rightly what appears outwardly even in human embryology, because they do not rise to this artistic comprehension of the world's development. If we observe in a human embryo how the limbs develop out of organs which at first have a stunted aspect, how everything is at first actually head, we already obtain the first elements of what is revealed by the artistic comprehension of the human form as I meant it. It is not possible to range the whole human being with the animals. One cannot say: The human being, such as he stands before us to-day, is a descendant of the whole animal species. No, this is not the case. Just those who penetrate with genuine scientific conscientiousness into scientific Darwinism and its modern description of the development of the world, will discover that through a higher understanding it is simply impossible to place man at the end, or at the summit of the animal-chain of development; they must instead study the human head as such, the head of the human beings. This human head alone descends from the whole animal kingdom. Though it may sound strange and paradoxical, the part which is generally considered as man's most perfect part, is a transformation from the animal kingdom.

Let us approach the human head with this idea and let us study it carefully. Observe with a certain morphological-artistic sense how the lower maxillary bones are transformed limbs, how also the upper maxillary bones are transformed limbs, how everything in the head is an enhanced development of the animal form; you will then recognise in the human head that upon a higher stage it reveals everything which has been developed in the animal under so many different forms. You will then also understand why it is so.

When you observe the animal, you can see that its head hangs upon one extremity of the spine and that in the typical animal it is entirely subjected to the law of gravity. Observe instead the human head, observe how the human being stands within the cosmos. The human head is set upon a spine which has a vertical direction. It rests upon the remaining body in such a way that the rest of man protects the head, as it were, against being subjected to the force of gravity alone. The human head is really something which rests upon the remaining organism with comparative independence. And we come to understand that through the fact that the human head is carried by the remaining body, it really travels along like a person using a coach; for it is the rest of the body which carries the human head through the world. The human head has its transformed limbs which have become shrivelled, as it were, and it is set upon the rest of the organism. This remaining organism is related to the human head in the same way in which the whole earth with its force of gravity is related to the animal. In regard to the head, the human being is “membered” into his whole remaining body in the same way in which the whole animal is “membered” into the earth.

We now begin to understand the human being through the development of the world. And if we proceed in this knowledge of the human form with an artistic sense and understanding, we finally comprehend how the human head is the continuation of the animal-series and how the remaining body of man developed later, out of the earth, and was attached to the human head. Only in this way we gradually learn to understand man's development.

If we go back into earlier times of the past, we can only transfer into these primordial epochs that part of man which lies at the foundation of his present head-development. We must not seek the development of his limbs or of his thorax in those early ages, for these developed later. But if we observe the development of the world by setting out, as I described, from the human being, if we observe it in the same way in which we look upon some past experience through memory, we find that the human being had already begun his development in the world at a time when our higher animals, for instance, did not as yet exist. There were however other animal forms present at that time from which the human head has developed, but the higher animals of to-day were not in existence.

We can therefore say: (let us now take a later epoch of the earth) In the further course of his development, man developed his head out of earlier animal-beings through the fact that his spiritual essence animated him. That is why he could bring his head to a higher stage of development. He then added his limbs, which developed out of the regular forces of the earth. The animals which followed, could only develop to the extent to which man had developed with the exclusion of his head. They began their development later, so that they have not come as far as the human development of the head; they remain connected with the earth, while the human being separates himself from it.

This proves that it has a real meaning to say: Man is organised into the development of the universe in such a way that while he is connected with the animal kingdom, he rises above it through his spiritual development. The animals which followed man in their development could only develop as much as man had developed in his limbs and thorax ... the head remained stunted, because a longer time of development should have preceded it, such as that of man, in order that the real head might develop.

Through an artistic contemplation of the forms in the world's development, the conscientiously accepted Darwinistic theory is transformed, in so far as it is scientifically justified to-day. And we recognise that in the development of the world the human being has behind him a longer time of development than the animals,—that the animals develop as their chief form that part which man merely adds to his head. In this way man reaches the point of lifting one part of his being out of the force of gravity, whereas the animals are entirely subjected to it. Everything which constituted our head with its sense-organs, is raised above the force of gravity, so that it does not turn towards heavy ponderable matter, but towards the ether, which fills the sensory world. This is the case above all with the senses; we should see this, if we were to study them more closely. In this way, for instance, the human organ of hearing depends upon an etheric structure, not only upon the air structure.

Through all this, the human being forms part not only of the material world, of the ponderable physical world, but he forms part of the etheric outer world. Through the etheric world he perceives, for instance, what the light conjures up before him in the world of colours, etc., etc. Even through his external form he rises above heavy matter, up to the free ether, and for this reason we see the development of the world in a different way when we ascend from natural science to spiritual science.

But when we rise up to an artistic conception, we also perceive the activity of the soul-spiritual in man, and we must rise up to such a conception if we wish to understand the human being. We should, for instance, be able to say: In regard to his soul-spiritual, sentient-volitional being, we must speak of loneliness and of a life in common with others, as if these were theoretical concepts, as I described to-day; we must rise up to the moral world and finally we come to the religious world. These worlds are interwoven and form a whole.

If we study the human being in accordance with a natural-scientific mentality and in the sense of modern civilisation, we find on the one hand the rigid scientific necessity of Nature into which the human being is also inserted, and on the other hand, we find that man can only be conscious of his dignity and can only say: I am truly man, if he can feel within him the moral-religious impulses. But if we honestly stand upon the foundation of natural science, we have pure hypotheses as to the beginning and the end of the earth, hypotheses which speak of the Kant-Laplace nebula for the beginning of the earth and of a heat-death for the end of the earth.

If in the face of the natural-scientific demands we now consider, in the sense of modern civilisation, the moral-religious world which reveals itself intuitively (I have shown this in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity), if we consider this world we must say: We really delude ourselves, we conjure up before us a fog. Is it possible to believe that when the earth passes through the death by heat, that there should still exist anything else in the sense of natural science than the death too of all ideals?

At this point spiritual science, or Anthroposophy steps in, and shows that the soul-spiritual is a reality, that it is working upon the physical and that it has placed man in the human form, into the evolution of the world. It shows that we should look back upon animal-beings which are entirely different from the present animals, that it is possible to adhere to the methods of modern science, but that other results are obtained. Anthroposophy thus inserts the moral element into the science of religion, and Anthroposophy thus becomes moral-religious knowledge.

Now we no longer merely look towards the Kant-Laplace nebula, but we look at the same time to an original spiritual element, out of which the soul-spiritual world described in Anthroposophy has just as much developed as the physical world has developed out of a physical-earthly origin. And we also look towards the end of the earth and since the laws of entropy are fully justified, we can show that the earth will end through a kind of death by heat. But we look towards the end just as from the anthroposophical standpoint we can view the end of the single human being: his corpse is handed over to the elements, the human being himself passes over into a spiritual world. This is how we envisage the end of the earth. The scientific results do not disturb us, for we know that everything of a soul-spiritual nature which men have developed will pass through the earth's portal of death when the earth no longer exists; it will pass over into a new world-development, even as the human being passes over into a new world-development when he passes through death.

By surveying the development of the earth in this way, we perceive in the middle of its development the event of Golgotha. We see how this event of Golgotha is placed in the middle of the earth's development, because formerly, there only existed forces which would have led man to a kind of paralysis of his forces. We really learn to recognise (I can only allude to this at the end of my lecture) that in the same way in which through the vegetable and animal fertilization a special element enters the fertilised organism, so the Mystery of Golgotha brought something into the evolution of the world from spiritual worlds outside the earth, and this continues to live, it accompanies the souls, until at the end of the earth, they pass on to new metamorphoses of earthly life. I should have to describe whole volumes were I to show the path leading in a strictly conscientious scientific way from what I have described to you to-day in connection with the evolution of humanity and of the universe, to the mystery of Golgotha, to the appearance of the Christ-Being within earthly existence.

But through a spiritual-scientific deepening many passages in the Gospel will appear in an entirely new light, in a different way from what it has hitherto been possible for Western consciousness. Let us consider only the following fact: If we take our stand fully upon a natural-scientific foundation, we must envisage the physical end of the earth. And those who continue to stand upon this scientific foundation, will also find that finally the starry world surrounding the earth will fall away; they will look upon a future in which this earth below will no longer exist and the stars above will no longer exist. But spiritual science gives us the certainty that just as an eternal being goes out of the physical and etheric body every evening and returns into them every morning, so an eternal being will continue to live on when its individual body falls away. When the whole earth falls away from all the human soul-spiritual beings, this eternal part will continue to live and it will pass over to new planetary phases of world evolution.

Now Christ's words in the Gospels resound to us in a new and wonderful way: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away, and connected with these words are those of St. Paul: Not I, but Christ in me. If a Christian really grasps these words, if one who really understands Christianity inwardly and who says, “Not I, but Christ in me,” understands Christ's words, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away,” that is, what lives within my everlasting Being shall not pass away,—these words will shine forth from the Gospel in a remarkable way, with a magic that calls forth reverence, but if one is really honest they cannot be directly understood without further effort.

If we approach such words and others, with the aid of spiritual science and in the anthroposophical sense, if we approach many other sayings which come to us out of the spiritual darkness of the world-development, of the development of the earth and of humanity, a light will ray on to them. Indeed, it is as if light were to fall upon such words as “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away”—light falls upon them, if we hear them resounding from that region where the Mystery of Golgotha took place, that event through which the whole development of the earth first acquires its true meaning.

Thus we see that spiritual science in the sense of Anthroposophy strives above all after a conscientious observation of the strict methods of the physical world, but at the same time it seeks to continue these strict scientific methods into regions where our true eternal being shines out towards us, regions where also the spiritual being of the world-development rays out its light towards us, a light in which the world-development itself with its spiritual forces and Beings appears in its spiritual-divine character.

At the conclusion of my lecture let me express the following fact: Spiritual-scientific Anthroposophy can fully understand that modern humanity, particularly conscientious, scientifically-minded men, have grown accustomed to consider as real and certain the results of causal natural-scientific knowledge, the results of external sense-observation, intellectual combinations of these sensory observations, and experiments. And by acquiring this certainty, they acquired a certain feeling in general towards that which can be “certain.” Up to now no attempt has been made to study super-sensible things in the same way in which physical things are studied. This certainty could therefore not be carried into super-sensible regions. To-day people still believe that they must halt with a mere faith at the thresh-hold of the super-sensible worlds, that feelings full of reverence suffice, because otherwise they would lose the mystery, and the super-sensible world would be rationalised. But spiritual science does not seek to rationalise the mystery, to dispel the reverent feeling which one has towards the mystery: it leads man to these mysteries through sight. Anthroposophy leaves the mystery its mystery-character, but it sets it into the evolution of the world in the same way in which sensory things exist in the sphere of world-evolution.

And it must be true that men also need certainty for the spheres transcending mere Nature. To the extent in which they will feel that through spiritual science in the sense of Anthroposophy they do not hear some vague amateurish and indistinct talk about the spiritual worlds, but something which is filled by the same spirit which comes to expression in modern science, to this same extent humanity will also feel that the certainty which it acquired, the certainty which it is accustomed to have through the physical world, can also be led over into the spiritual worlds. People will feel: If certainty exists only in regard to the physical world, of what use is this certainty, since the physical world passes away? Man needs an eternal element, for he himself wants to be rooted in an eternal element. He cannot admit that this certainty should only be valid for the transient, perishable world. Certainty, the certainty of knowledge, must also be gained in regard to the imperishable world.

This is the aim pursued in greatest modesty (those who follow the spiritual science of Anthroposophy know this) by Anthroposophy. Its aim is that through his natural certainty man should not lose his knowledge of the imperishable; through his certainty in regard to perishable things he should not lose the certainty in regard to imperishable things. Certainty in regard to the imperishable, that is to say, certainty in regard to the riddle of birth and death, the riddle of immortality, the riddle of the spiritual world-evolutions, this is what Anthroposophy seeks to bring into our civilisation.

Anthroposophy believes that this can be its contribution to modern civilisation. For in the same measure in which people courageously recognise that certainty must be gained also in regard to imperishable things, and not only in regard to perishable things, in the same measure they will grow accustomed to look upon Anthroposophy no longer as something fantastic and as an idle individual hobby, but as something which must enter our whole spiritual culture, like all the other branches of science, and thereby our civilisation in general.

In our lecture today I should like to remind you how easy it is to misunderstand the real nature of the Mystery of Golgotha because we fail to recognize how difficult it is to achieve a deeper insight into that Mystery with our present mode of cognition. We may readily believe, for example, that through mystical contemplation, by turning inwards to seek the divine within, we shall find the Christ. The majority of those who have followed the path of mysticism have not found the Christ. We shall not find the Christ if we maintain, as many Theosophists maintain, that we must first become aware of the divine within and we shall then experience the Christ. That is not so. What, at most, under these circumstances may suggest the presence of an inner light, can never, if rightly understood, be called the Christ, but might be called a Universal Divine Being. And because we are not accustomed to differentiate today, even theoretically, many mystics believe that they can find the Christ through what is usually called mysticism, through a mysticism that is relatively uncontrolled. This is a delusion. And it is important to bear this in mind, just as it is important to note that the philosophies of the late nineteenth century down to our own times have developed, as subsidiary branches of philosophy, philosophies of religion which imagine that they are in a position to speak of the Christ. In effect, they portray—and can only portray—what may be called a Universal Divine Being, but not the Christ. The philosopher Lotze, for example, who attempted to probe deeply into this question speaks of such a Universal Being, but he would never dream of calling this Divine Being the Christ. Neither the mystical path nor the path followed by such philosophers can lead to an understanding of the true nature of the Mystery of Golgotha. In order to arrive at a fuller understanding of this Mystery I propose to call attention to certain characteristics of the conceptions attaching to it. Let us regard these conceptions in the first place purely as expressions of opinion.

It pertains to the essence of the Mystery of Golgotha, if it is to answer to the historical evolution of mankind, that Christ, by His death on the Cross, has thereby established a relationship with the whole cosmic order. If we deny the universality of Christ we are no longer in touch with Him. We may, in that event, speak of some kind of Universal Divine Being, but we cannot speak of the Christ.

There are many problems to be elucidated in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha and I propose to refer to some of them today. If we are to understand this Mystery aright we must come to terms with the problem: what did Christ Jesus mean by faith or trust? We have a far too theoretic, a far too abstract conception of faith today. Consider for a moment man's usual conception of faith [original note 1] when he speaks of the antithesis between faith and knowledge. Knowledge is that which can be demonstrated or proved; faith is that which is not susceptible of proof, and yet is held to be true. It is a question of the particular way in which we know or understand something. It is only when we speak of knowledge as faith or belief that we think of it as something which is not susceptible of final proof.

Compare this idea of faith with the conception which Christ Jesus preached. Let me refer you to this passage in the Gospels: “If ye have faith and doubt not ... but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.” (Matt. XXI, 21.) How great is the contrast between this conception of faith, paradoxically yet radically expressed in the words of Christ, and the present-day conception which in reality sees in faith simply a substitute for knowledge. A little reflection will show what is the essence of Christ's conception of faith. Faith must be an active force, a force that accomplishes something. Its purpose is not simply to evoke an idea or to awaken knowledge. He who possesses faith shall be able to move mountains. If you refer to the Gospels you will find that wherever the words “faith” or “trust” appear, they are associated with the idea of action, that one is to be granted a power through which something can be effected or accomplished, something that is productive of positive results. And this is extremely important.

I should like to draw your attention today to another important question. The Gospels often speak of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God or the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. In what sense do they speak of mysteries? It is somewhat difficult to grasp this idea. Those who have made a careful study of the Gospels from the occult standpoint are increasingly of the opinion that every sentence in the Gospels is immutable, every detail is of the greatest moment. All criticism is reduced to silence as one penetrates ever more deeply into the Gospels from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. Now before speaking of the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven I must draw your attention to something that is highly characteristic.

In my earlier lectures on the Gospels I referred to that important passage which deals with the healing, or, one might call it, the raising of the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus. Since we can speak openly here, I am able to refer to the deeper medical knowledge of an occult nature which is disclosed to those who study this miracle of healing from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. Christ went into the ruler's house and took Jairus’ daughter who was thought to be dead by the hand in order to heal her (Matt. IX, 22-25; Mark V, 22; Luke VII, 41). Now I must remind you that we can never arrive at an understanding of such matters if we do not relate the passage in question to the earlier and later passages. People are only too ready to detach certain passages from their context and study them in isolation, whereas they are interdependent. You will recall that as Jesus was summoned to the daughter of Jairus, a woman who was diseased with an issue of blood for twelve years came behind Him and touched the hem of His garment and was healed. Christ felt that “virtue” had gone out of Him. He turned round and said: “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole.” We can understand these words only if we grasp in the right way the idea of faith referred to above: “Thy faith (or trust) hath made thee whole.” Now this passage in the Gospels has deep implications. The woman had suffered from an issue of blood for twelve years. Jairus’ daughter was twelve years old. She was sexually retarded and was unable to develop the maturity of the woman who had suffered from hemorrhage for twelve years. When Christ healed the woman He felt that “virtue” or power had issued from Him. When He entered the ruler's house He took the girl by the hand and transferred this power to her and so enabled her to reach sexual maturity. Without this power she must have wasted away. And thus she was restored to life. This shows that the real living Being of Christ was not confined to His person, but was reflected in His whole environment, that Christ was able to transfer powers from one person to another by virtue of His selfless regard for others. He was able to surrender the self in active service for others and this is reflected in the power which He felt arise in Him when the woman who had great faith touched the hem of His garment.

This mystery is related to the observation He frequently made to His disciples: “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God; but unto them that are without all these things are done in parables.” (Mark IV, 11.) Let us assume that the mystery of which I have just spoken—I do not mean simply the theoretic description I have given of it, but the power that was necessary before this transference could be effected—had been imparted to the Scribes and Pharisees. What would have happened if they had been able to transfer powers from one person to another? They would not always have transferred them wisely. It is evident from the Gospels that Christ did not expect the Pharisees, still less the Sadducees, to act responsibly. When transferring this force from one person to another they would have abused it, for such was their mentality, and would have caused untold harm. This mystery therefore had to remain a secret of the Initiates.

There are three significant factors to be considered in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. I could mention many others. I will say more about this in my next lecture but for the moment I will confine myself to the essentials.

We must have a clear idea of what is meant by the expression: the Mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven. This has a quite precise meaning, as I was able to show in the example I quoted. Now when John the Baptist was about to baptize Jesus in the Jordan. he said: “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Here is the idea I want you to grasp. What did John the Baptist do? We are told—and this is clear from the context—that he baptized with water, as he himself said because the Kingdom of Heaven was nigh. He baptized with water for the remission of sins, saying “There cometh one mightier than I ... I have indeed baptized you with water, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost” (Mark I, 7 and 5). What is the difference between the baptism of John and the baptism with the Holy Ghost?

We cannot understand what is meant by the baptism with water, nor what it alludes to—I have often described the manner in which the ceremony was performed—unless we summon to our aid the teachings of Spiritual Science. For many years I have been at great pains to elucidate this mystery by means of spiritual investigation.

It suddenly dawned on me that the way in which John the Baptist is presented to us in the Gospels carries most important implications. What was the significance of baptism with water? Externally, of course, John the Baptist baptized with the waters of Jordan. We know that the candidates for baptism suffered total immersion. During the immersion they experienced a kind of loosening of the etheric body, which bestowed on them a temporary clairvoyance. This is the real significance of the baptism by John and of similar baptisms. But when John spoke of baptism with water he was referring not only to this form of baptism, but more especially to the passage in the Old Testament which says: “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” What was the purpose of the baptism with water in Jordan? It was intended that through the loosening of their etheric bodies and the experiences they underwent the candidates for baptism should feel themselves transposed into the condition of consciousness of the time before the “Fall”. Everything that had occurred since the Fall was to be erased from their consciousness. They were to be restored to their pre-lapsarian state in order that they might experience the condition of man before the Fall. They were made aware that through the Fall man had entered upon a wrong path and that to continue on this path would be to court disaster. He had to return to his original state of innocence, to cleanse his soul of the evil which this aberration had brought.

Many people at that time felt an urge to return to the age of innocence—history is far from accurate on this question—to forgo their errant ways, to start life afresh as it had been before the Fall; to refuse participation in the changes and developments of the social order and national life which had taken place since the Fall up to the time of the Roman Empire or the time of Herod the Tetrarch when John the Baptist preached in the wilderness. Those who felt that they must break with the past withdrew from the world and became anchorites. John the Baptist is a case in point. We are told that his meat was locusts and wild honey and his raiment was of camel hair (Matt. III, 4). He is depicted as the typical desert father, the typical anchorite.

Compare this with a widespread movement of the time which reflected in various ways what was indicated in the Gospel of St. John. People declared that one must renounce the world and follow the life of the spirit. An echo of this desire to “withdraw from the world” is still to be found in Gnosis and in monachism. Now why did this powerful impulse of the Baptist which was a comparatively recent development become so widespread? The answer is found in the words: “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

At this point we must recall what was said in the last lecture about the soul—that since the Fall it had progressively deteriorated, was less and less fitted to perform its function as intermediary between the spirit and the body. This continuous decline could persist for a certain period of Earth evolution but ultimately had to be arrested. This moment will arrive when Divine evolution takes over Earth evolution. Men such as John the Baptist had a prophetic intimation of this moment. The time is now at hand, he felt, when souls can no longer be saved, when souls must perish without some special dispensation. He realized that either the souls of men would have to withdraw from life as it had been since the Fall, the cause of their corruption—and in that event Earth evolution would have been in vain—or something else must supervene. And this realization found expression in the following words: “He that cometh after me shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.” John felt that only by withdrawing from the world could man be saved from the consequences of the Fall. Christ wished to save mankind in another way: he wished them to remain in the world and yet find salvation. He had no wish that mankind should return to the time before the Fall, but that they should experience the further stages of Earth evolution and yet participate in the Kingdom of Heaven.

A further question calls for an answer: What was Christ's real intention? His purpose breathes through every page of the Gospels and we must seek to feel and experience it with all the earnestness at our command. Despite apparent contradictions in the Gospels each contains a core of facts and truths which were announced or proclaimed by Christ Jesus; but the core of each Gospel has its own particular atmosphere. I must remind you of what I said in reference to Richard Rothe, namely, that we must change our whole approach to the reading of the Gospels. We must read them in the spirit that breathes through them, become responsive to the atmosphere that pervades them. People who read the Gospels today invest them with their own preconceived picture of a generalized human ideal. The age of “enlightenment” envisaged Christ Jesus as an enlightened man. Protestant groups or sects have created an image of Jesus which depicts Him as a typical representative of nineteenth-century Protestantism. Ernst Haeckel even managed to depict Jesus as a thorough-going monist of his own brand. Now these are attitudes which mankind must learn to outgrow. It is important that we should really respond to the contents of the Gospels in the atmosphere and setting of their own time.

Let us take first of all the Gospel of St. Matthew and ask ourselves: what is the purpose of this Gospel? It is so fatally easy to be misled by all kinds of things which we readily accept in the Gospels, but which we interpret falsely. We find, for example, the statement that “not one jot or tittle of the law shall be changed”. In spite of this statement, perhaps even because of it, the fact remains that the Gospel of St. Matthew was written to discredit traditional Judaism. It is a polemic against Judaism, a challenge to traditional Judaism, and the author declares that it was the will of Christ that it should be suppressed.

Now the Gospel of St. Mark, on the other hand, was written for the Romans. It was directed against the Roman Empire, the “kingdom of the world”. It was an attack upon the legal ordinances of the Empire and its social order. The Jews realized full well what they meant, or rather what they felt, when they said: We must kill Him, otherwise our people will follow Him and then the Romans will come and seize our land and our kingdom. The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark were directed therefore against Judaism and Romanism respectively. They were broadsides directed not against the real essence of Judaism or Romanism, but against their outward forms as “kingdoms of the world”, in contradistinction to the “Kingdom of Heaven”. The special characteristics of these two Gospels are not taken today with the seriousness they deserve. A few years before the War, the Czar, who has now been deposed, wrote in his own hand on one of his edicts the following words: “Intellectual giants, giants of action will appear one day—of this I am firmly convinced—and bring salvation to Russia and provide for her greatest good.” Had these giants of thought and action in whom the Czar had implicit confidence, materialized, you can well imagine that he would promptly have imprisoned them in the Peter and Paul Fortress, or have exiled them to Siberia. So much for the reliance we can place upon words today. With such an attitude we cannot fathom the inner meaning of the Gospels.

Let us now turn to the third Gospel, the Gospel of St. Luke. Its real meaning becomes apparent if we study the passage where Jesus went into the synagogue: “And there was delivered to him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book he found the place where it was written: The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” (Luke IV, 17-18.)

Jesus then explained the deep inner meaning of these words, contrasting their spirit with the spirit which He found in the world around Him. He wished to contrast the Kingdom of Heaven with the kingdom of the world and characterized this difference in these words when He addressed the assembled Jews in the synagogue: “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of these was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.” (Luke IV, 23-27.)

None of the Jews was healed by Elias or Eliseus, but only the Gentiles. This was the interpretation Jesus gave to His words in order to distinguish between the Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdom of the world. What was the result?—“And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way.” (Luke IV, 28-30.)

Here is the essential difference between the Luke Gospel and the other Gospels. Here the Jews are not condemned as in Matthew, nor the Romans as in Mark, but this Gospel condemns the passions and emotions of mankind as reflected in those who were associated with Christ Jesus. We must therefore give heed to that powerful and significant impulse behind the words of Christ Jesus, an impulse that was not of this world, but which proceeded from the Kingdom of Heaven.

The John Gospel aims to go much further. In this Gospel it is not simply a small nation such as the Jews which is condemned, nor a great nation such as the Romans, nor even the whole of mankind with the negative characteristics it has developed since the Fall, but this Gospel is directed against those spirits behind the physical world in so far as they have turned aside from the true path. The Gospel of St. John can only be rightly understood when we realize that, as the Gospel of St. Matthew is concerned with the Jews, the Gospel of St. Mark with the Romans and the Gospel of St. Luke with all those who had succumbed to the Fall, so the Gospel of St. John is concerned with the spirits of men and those spirits bordering on humanity who fell along with man, whilst Christ Jesus is concerned with the spiritual world itself. It is very easy for our materialistic epoch to say that whoever holds these views is a fanatic. We must be prepared to put up with this criticism. Nevertheless what I have said is the truth; and we are the more convinced of this, the more closely we look into these things.

This powerful impulse which found fourfold expression in the Gospels shows that Christ was destined to introduce into the world something that had not existed before. The world disapproves and has always disapproved of change, but a new impulse must be given from time to time. It is amply demonstrated in the Gospels that we can only understand the message of these Gospels aright if we see it in the context of the entire Cosmos, as an expression of cosmic events. This is best illustrated—I refer you to the Mark Gospel, the shortest and most pregnant of the Gospels—if we turn to this Gospel for an answer to the question: who were the first to recognize that Christ Jesus had given to the world that sublime impulse which I have described above? Who first recognized this? One might be tempted to answer: John the Baptist. But he divined it rather, and this is clearly seen in the description of the meeting between Christ Jesus and John in the fourth Gospel. Who, then, were the first to recognize Him? None other than those that were possessed with devils whom Christ had healed. They were the first to cry out, saying, “Thou art the Son of God”—or “Thou art the Holy One of God. And Christ suffered not the devils to speak because they knew Him.” Spiritual beings therefore were the first to recognize Him, and we are here shown the connection between the word of Christ and the spiritual world. Out of their super-sensible knowledge the demons revealed Christ's contribution to the world long before mankind had the slightest inkling of it. They knew it because He was able to cast them out.

Let us now relate the concrete case described above (the raising of Jairus’ daughter) to the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven to which Christ owed His powers of healing. If we employ the usual technique of modern historical research in order to explore the source of the special supernatural power through which Christ worked, we shall never find an answer, for times have changed much more than people imagine. Today they assume that three or four thousand years ago men were to all appearances much the same as they are now, that though they have become far cleverer, they have changed very little on the whole. Such people then count back in time until they arrive at millions of years. As I mentioned recently in a public lecture, they count the millions of years ahead until they reach the end of time. They have calculated to a nicety the nature of individual substances millions of years hence: milk will be solid and luminous—I wonder how this milk will be obtained, but we will not go into that now—albumen will be used to decorate the walls so that it will be possible to read the newspaper in its phosphorescent light. Dewar put forward this idea a few years ago in a lecture before the Royal Institute when he discussed the end of the world as envisaged by physicists. At the time I made use of the following comparison in referring to these calculations. I said that if someone were to observe the changes that occur in the human stomach and heart over a period of two or three years, were then to multiply the figure arrived at and calculate the changes that would occur in two hundred years and what the body would look like in two hundred years’ time, then this would be comparable to the calculations of the physicists. Such calculations maybe ingenious, but in two hundred years the person will long have been dead. The same applies to the Earth. Those confident calculations on the part of physicists as to what will happen millions of years hence may be mathematically correct, but physically the inhabitants of the Earth will have perished long before this time. To estimate the geological conditions of the Earth millions of years ago on the same principle is comparable to deducing from the condition of a child's stomach at the age of seven what its condition had been seventy-five years before. People simply fail to realize how confused their thinking is, for man as a physical entity did not exist in that primordial time to which geologists look back. Because strong measures are necessary to combat the many errors of our time which have the weight of authority behind them, one must not be afraid on occasions to react strongly against such methods. One retorts to such people: you calculate from the organic changes in the human organism today what it will be like two hundred years hence. But in two hundred years, of course, the human organism will have ceased to exist. One can also reply that from the results of purely occult investigations—I am aware of course that modern science will regard this as nonsense, but it is none the less true—man as he is today cannot possibly exist six thousand years hence, any more than it is possible for a man who is now twenty years old to be alive in two hundred years time. We can discover through occult investigation that in the sixth millennium women as they are constituted today will become sterile and that an entirely different reproductive process will exist by that time. I realize that this will sound the purest nonsense to those who think along the lines of modern science; nevertheless the fact is undeniable. In our present materialistic age people have very confused ideas about history and historical evolution. Therefore we no longer understand even subtle indications transmitted by external history of differences in the constitution of the human soul which have taken place in relatively recent times.

There is a very fine passage in the writings of the Church Father Tertullian (note 1) at the turn of the second century, that touches upon this problem. He writes that he himself had seen the pulpits of the Apostles from which their successors had read aloud the epistles that were still in the Apostles’ handwriting. Whilst these epistles were being read, Tertullian tells us, the assembly of the faithful seemed to hear once again the living voices of the Apostles and when they examined the epistles, the features of the Apostles seemed to rise up before them. For those who investigate these matters clairvoyantly, these are not empty words. As they sat before the pulpit the faithful felt that they detected in the timbre of the voices of the Apostles’ successors the voices of the Apostles themselves and that from the handwriting of the Apostles they were able to picture the actual features of the Apostles. Thus, at the beginning of the third century, people were still able to evoke a living image of the Apostles and, metaphorically speaking, to hear their voices. And Clement I who occupied the Papal See from A.D. 92 to 101 also knew personally those pupils of the Apostles who had seen Christ Jesus. At this time, therefore, a continuous tradition was already in existence. And in this passage from Tertullian we catch an echo of something that can be investigated clairvoyantly. Those pupils of the Apostles who listened to the Apostles could detect from the tone and modulation of their voice the manner in which Christ Jesus spoke. This is something of great importance. We must bear in mind this tone of voice, this peculiar timbre characteristic of Christ's speech if we are to understand why those who heard Him spoke of the magic power that lay in His words. When He spoke, something akin to an elemental force gripped His listeners. His words possessed an elemental power that had never been known before. How is one to account for this?

I have already referred to Saint-Martin. He was one of those who still recognized the evocative or magical power of the words—(the Freemasons of the nineteenth century of course no longer had any understanding of this)—of that language which was once upon a time common to all mankind before it was split into separate languages and which was closely related to the “inner word”. Christ, of course, had to express Himself externally in the language of His day; the inner word which He felt within His soul however, differed from the spoken word of ordinary speech; it was imbued with the power which words have lost, with the power that the universal language once possessed before it was split into separate languages. Unless we are able to form some conception of this power which is independent of these separate languages and which is found in those whose words are fully inspired, we cannot understand the power that dwelt in Christ, nor the significance of what is meant when we speak of Christ as the incarnated “Word” through which He worked and by which He performed His acts of healing and cast out evil spirits. The loss of the “Word” was inevitable, for it was in accordance with human evolution after the Mystery of Golgotha. We must endeavour to recover the “Word” that has been lost. But meanwhile we have reached a stage of evolution which holds little prospect that our efforts will be rewarded.

I would like to remind you of an important fact that is evident in all the Gospels, namely, that Christ Jesus never committed anything to writing. Indeed scholars have disputed amongst themselves whether He could write at all. Those who claim that He could write can only quote the passage from the story of the woman taken in adultery: “And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.” (John VIII, 6.) But apart from this one instance there is no evidence that Christ could write. The fact remains that in contrast to other founders of religion, He never recorded His teachings in writing. This is not fortuitous but is inwardly connected with the full and inexhaustible power of the word.

The fact that Christ confined His message to the spoken word and left no record in writing applies only in His case, but such limitation would be totally unacceptable to our epoch. If Christ had written down His words and translated them into the current language of the day, Ahrimanic forces would have entered into them, for all set forms are Ahrimanic. The written word has a different effect from that of the spoken word when a group of pupils is gathered together and is entirely dependent upon the power of the spirit. One must not imagine that the author of the John Gospel sat beside Christ when He was speaking and recorded His words in shorthand like our stenographers who are recording this lecture. That this did not occur is of immense significance. We only realize the full significance of this when we learn from the Akashic Chronicle what really lies behind Christ's condemnation of the Scribes, of those who derived their knowledge from documents. He objected to the Scribes because their knowledge was derived from documents, because their souls were not directly in touch with the source from which the living word flowed. And this led, in Christ's opinion, to the debasement of the living word.

But we miss the significance of this if we think of memory at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha as that “psychic sieve” which passes for memory today. Those who heard the words of Christ cherished them faithfully in their hearts and knew them verbatim. For the power of memory was totally different at that time; so too was the constitution of the soul. It was essentially a period when, in a brief space of time, great changes had taken place. We completely overlook the fact that the history of the East was written in such a way that men saw it either in terms of the present or at best in terms of borrowings from Greek history. The course of Greek history was very similar to that of the Jews, but oriental history followed a different course, because in the East the soul was differently constituted. Hence people have no idea of the great changes that have taken place in a short space of time, that the abnormally retentive memory was rapidly lost in the age of declining atavistic clairvoyance, so that of necessity men had to record the words of Christ in writing. In consequence, the words of Christ suffered the same fate that Christ Jesus suffered at the hands of the Scribes whom He opposed. And I leave it to your imagination to picture what would happen if some disciple, even remotely resembling Christ Jesus, were to speak today with the same impulse with which Christ spoke. Would those who call themselves Christians today act in any way differently from the high priests at that time? I leave you to judge.

Bearing these assumptions in mind, let us now look more closely into the mystery of the incarnation of the Christ in Jesus. Let me remind you of what I said earlier, that we must retrace our steps along the path we have followed since the time of the Eighth Ecumenical Council and rediscover the tripartite division of man into body, soul and spirit. Unless we recognize this we cannot understand the Mystery of Golgotha.

First let us consider the physical body. We only know the body as an object in the external world. We can observe it only from without. We owe our perception of the external world to the body. And it is with the body that science—or what is commonly called science—is concerned.

Let us now turn to the soul. I tried to indicate the nature of the soul when I referred you to Aristotle. In speaking of the soul we must realize that Aristotle's ideas were not far removed from the truth, for the psychic life, that which pertains to the inner life, originates more or less with each individual. Aristotle, however, lived in an age when he could no longer fully comprehend the soul's relationship to the Cosmos. He declared that with the birth of a human being a new soul is created. He was an advocate of “creationism”, but accepted that after death the soul continues to survive in some undefined way. He did not enter into further details because in his day knowledge of the soul had already become somewhat nebulous. The manner in which the soul lives after death is in fact bound up with what is called, more or less symbolically, “original sin”—or whatever we prefer to call it, the terminology is not of the slightest importance—for “original sin” has undoubtedly modified the whole life of the soul. Consequently, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the souls of men were in danger of such wholesale corruption that they could not find their way back to the Kingdom of Heaven. They were chained to earthly existence, to the destiny of the Earth. This psychic life therefore follows its own separate path which will be described in further detail later.

The third member of man's being is the spirit. The physical or corporeal is expressed in the line of descent from father to son. The son becomes a father and this son in his turn becomes a father and so on through the generations. In this way inherited characteristics are transmitted from one generation to another. The psychic life as such is created with the birth of the individual and persists after death. Its destiny is determined by the extent to which the soul can remain in touch with the Kingdom of Heaven. The spirit persists through repeated incarnations on Earth and everything depends upon the kind of bodies it can find in the course of its successive lives on Earth. On the one hand there is the line of descent on the physical plane, in which the spirit participates; but the line of descent is permeated with physically inherited characteristics. What potentialities the spirit finds in the course of its successive incarnations depends upon whether mankind has progressed or deteriorated. Out of the spirit one cannot create bodies to order; one can only select those which are relatively best suited to the spirit that is about to incarnate; one cannot tailor them to measure.

I tried to express this in my book Theosophy, in which I described the three paths leading to the spirit—the paths of body, soul and spirit. This is something that must be clearly understood. For if we follow to its conclusion the path of sense-perception alone, if we recognize only the physical or corporeal, then we arrive at the idea of a Universal God, an idea that was known only to the philosophers and mystics whom I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture. If, however, we wish to study the soul, then we must needs follow the path that leads to that Being whom we call the Christ who is not to be found in nature, although He is related to nature. He must be found in history as an historical being. If we follow the path of self-observation, this leads to the spirit and to the repeated incarnations of the spirit.

Study of the cosmos and nature leads to a knowledge of the Universal Being to whom we owe our incarnation: Ex Deo Nascimur.

The study of true history, if pursued in sufficient depth, leads to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, to the knowledge which is necessary if we wish to know the destiny of the soul: In Christo Morimur.

Inward contemplation, experience of the spirit, leads to the knowledge of the fundamental nature of the spirit in repeated lives on Earth and, when united with the spiritual element in which it dwells, leads to the intuitive perception of the Holy Ghost: Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

Not only does the trichotomy of body, soul and spirit lie at the root of an understanding of man, but a trichotomy determines the path we must follow if we really wish to arrive at an understanding of the universe. Our epoch which is so chaotic in thought does not easily grasp such ideas and for the most part is indifferent to them. As you know, there are atheists, those who deny the existence of God; there are also deniers of Jesus; and there are materialists, deniers of the spirit. To be an atheist is possible only for those who are wholly insensitive to the phenomena of external nature. For if the physical forces in us are not blunted, we are continually aware of the presence of God. Atheism is really sickness of the soul, a disease of the human personality. To deny Christ is not a sickness; we must make every effort to find Him in the unfolding of human evolution. If we do not find Him we are lost to the power that redeems the soul from death. This is a misfortune of the soul. Atheism is a sickness of the soul, of the human personality. To deny Christ is a misfortune of the human soul. Note the difference. To deny the Spirit is to be guilty of self-deception.

It is important to meditate upon these three conceptions. Sickness of the soul, misfortune of the soul, deception of the soul, i.e. self-deception—these are the three significant aberrations of the human soul.

It is necessary to be aware of all this if we are to develop an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, for we must learn to recognize the relationship of Christ to the human soul. We must carefully follow the destiny of the soul itself in the course of terrestrial evolution. We must also bear in mind the reaction upon the human spirit of the impulse that Christ transmits to the human soul.

To conclude my lecture today I can perhaps best offer you a few suggestions in order to prepare the ground for what is to follow, so that we can all meditate upon them and so arrive at a deeper understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Today man approaches nature in the light of the education he has received. Nature proceeds in obedience to natural laws. We think of the birth, maturity and death of the Earth in terms of natural laws. Everything is seen from the standpoint of natural laws. In addition to the laws of nature there is the moral law. We feel—and especially the Kantians, for example—that we are subject to the categorical imperative, that we are an integral part of the moral world order. But think how anaemic has become the idea today that this moral world order has, like nature, its own objective reality. After all, even Haeckel, even Arrhenius and others, for all their materialism, were convinced that the Earth was moving towards a new glacial epoch or towards entropy. But they also believed that the little “idols” they called atoms are dissociated and cannot be destroyed—hence the conservation of matter! This accords more or less with the modern scientific outlook. But these ideas about matter ignore the following problem: if, one fine day, the Earth becomes glaciated or reaches total entropy, what becomes of the moral world order? It has no place in Earth conditions of this nature! Once the human species has died out, what becomes of the moral order? In other words, the moral ideas which man feels to be an integral part of himself, the source of his moral values and the goal of his conscience, appear to be a necessity; but if we are really honest, moral ideas are unrelated to the natural order, to that which natural science regards as fundamental realities. Moral ideas have become emasculated. They are powerful enough to determine men's actions and the dictates of conscience; they are not strong enough, however, to give the impression that what one imagines to be a moral idea today is a concrete, vital force in the world. Something more is needed to realize this. Who is it that can awaken our moral conceptions to vigorous and active life? It is the Christ! This is one aspect of the Christ Being.

Though all that lives in stone, plant, animal and the human body, all that lives in the elements of warmth and air, may perish (as science foretells), though all human bodies will taste of death at the end of time—for according to natural science all our moral values must ultimately become—one cannot say dust and ashes, for that would be going too far—yet, according to Christian belief there lives in the Christ Being a power that lays hold of our moral conceptions and creates out of them a new world: “Heaven and Earth may pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” This is the power that will carry over to Jupiter the moral element developed on the Earth.

Now picture the Earth as an organism, like a plant, the moral law as the seed which is formed within the organism, and the Christ force as the impulse which stimulates the seed to grow into the future Earth, into Jupiter. We then have a totally new conception of the Gospels from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

But how can this be? How can that which belongs solely to the realm of thought according to the materialist, which is only an idea or theory towards which one feels a moral obligation—how can that be tranformed into real force such as the one which burns in coal or which causes the bullet to fly through the air? How can such ideas which are so tenuous possess solid reality? To achieve this transformation a new impulse is needed and these moral ideas must be inbued with the impulse. What impulse is this? You will recall that we said earlier that faith must not be merely a substitute for knowledge: it must be an active agent that effects something. It must make our moral ideas a reality, lift them to a new plane and create a new world out of them. It is important that our articles of faith are not simply a form of unverified knowledge, a blind faith, but that our faith has the power to transform the seed “morality” into a cosmic reality. It was the mission of the Mystery of Golgotha to imbue Earth evolution with this power. This power had to be implanted in the souls of the disciples. At the same time they were reminded of the loss suffered by those who possessed only the written records. It is the power of faith which is of paramount importance. And if we do not understand what we owe to Christ when one so often hears the words “faith” or “belief”, then neither do we understand what entered Earth evolution at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

You will now realize that the Mystery of Golgotha has cosmic significance. That which belongs to the natural order is subject to the laws of nature. And just as at a certain stage of its evolution a plant bears seed, so too at a certain point of time the Mystery of Golgotha will bring a new impulse in preparation for the new Jupiter evolution in which the future incarnation of man can participate.

From our study of the unique nature of the Christ Being I have indicated the relation of this Being to the whole Cosmos and how, at a definite point in time, Earth evolution was imbued with a new vitalizing force, which is revealed from time to time with impressive effect, but only to those who can apprehend such manifestations intuitively. The author of the Mark Gospel, for example, was a case in point. When Christ was led away after the betrayal by Judas and the author of that Gospel had a clairvoyant vision of the scene, he saw, among the multitude that had forsaken Him, a certain young man clad only in a linen cloth. The linen cloth is torn from him, but he wrests himself free and flees from them naked (Mark XIV, 51). This was the same young man who, according to the Mark Gospel was sitting clothed in a long white garment on the right of the sepulchre and announced: Christ is risen. This is the account given in the Gospel of St. Mark as the result of Imaginative cognition. Here is portrayed the encounter between the former body of Christ-Jesus and the “seed” of a new world order as seen by Imaginative cognition.

Try to feel this in connection with what I said recently—and on this note I propose to conclude my lecture today—namely, that the human body, in virtue of its original constitution, was destined for immortality. Compare this with the fact that the animal is mortal by virtue of its organization, whilst this does not apply to man. He is mortal because of the corruption of his soul and this stain will be washed away by Christ. If you reflect upon this you will understand that the physical body must be transformed by the living force that streams into Earth evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. When Earth evolution comes to an end the power which has been lost through the “Fall” and which brought death to the body will be restored through the power of Christ, and the body of man will be seen in its true physical form. If we recognize the trichotomy of body, soul and spirit, then the “ressurrection of the body takes on meaning also, otherwise it cannot be understood. The modern rationalist will no doubt regard this as a most reactionary idea, but he who derives his knowledge of reincarnation from the wellspring of truth is also aware of the real significance of the resurrection of the body at the end of time. And when Paul rightly said: “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (Cor. I.XV. 14), we know from the investigations of Spiritual Science that he bore witness to the truth. If this dictum of Paul be true, then it is equally true to say: if earthly evolution does not lead to the conservation of the corporeal form which man can perfect in the course of evolution, if the human form were to perish, if man could not rise again through the power of Christ, then the Mystery of Golgotha would have been in vain and vain also the faith that it inspired. This is the necessary complement of the words of Paul.

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Original Note:

Note 1. St. Anselm's remark is interesting in this context: “Credo ut intelligam” (I believe in order that I may understand).

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Tertullian (A.D. 150–c. 220). Son of a Roman centurion, he was a convert to the African Church. His writings are doctrinal, apologetic and practical. In A.D. 202 he joined the Montanist sect which practised prophesying, a form of extempore preaching which was connected with ecstasy and trance. Tertullian wrote six books on ecstasy which are lost. His “Rule of Faith” was substantially the Apostles’ Creed. He believed that the Twelve Apostles had founded Apostolic Churches. All teaching which agrees with these Churches must be accepted as the truth since it is received from Christ. He believed that the soul derives from God, is immortal, corporeal, is endowed with free will, thinks and wills. The body is its necessary counterpart and swill rise again, but does not return to Earth. Though we are all infected with original sin, there is no total corruption. Tertullian was a voluminous writer, a bitter polemicist and inclined to fanaticism. To him we owe the famous sayings: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”, “Christ is truth, not custom”, “Credo quia absurdum, certum est quia impossible”. He was the first of the three great Church Fathers of the African Church; the others were Cyprian and Augustine.

In the lecture yesterday we turned our attention to the life of Jesus of Nazareth from about his twelfth year to approximately the end of his twenties. You will certainly have realised from what I was able to tell you, that during this period many things took place of profound significance not only for the soul of Jesus of Nazareth but for the whole evolution of mankind. For your theosophical studies will have brought you the knowledge that everything in the evolution of humanity is interconnected, and that an event of such importance in the life of a human soul so deeply bound up with the destiny of mankind is also of importance for the whole of evolution. From many different points of view we are learning to realise what the Event of Golgotha signified for the evolution of humanity. In this particular course of lectures we are learning to realise it by studying the actual life of Christ Jesus. And so having turned our minds yesterday to the period described, we will turn once again to the soul of Jesus of Nazareth and ponder what lived in this soul after the significant events had taken place which led up to his twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth years.

We may perhaps begin to glimpse something of what was living in this soul, from the description of a scene which took place when Jesus of Nazareth was approaching the end of his twenties. This scene which I have to relate concerns a conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and his mother—she who since the amalgamation of the two families had for long years been his mother. For all these years there had been a very deep and intimate understanding between Jesus and this mother, a far closer understanding than prevailed between him and the other members of the family in the house. Jesus himself could have understood them but they, on their side, did not quite know what to make of him. Even in earlier years he had spoken with his mother about many of the impressions that had gradually taken shape within him. But in this particular period of his life there took place a memorable conversation which lets us see very deeply into his soul. The experiences through which he had passed had brought him increasing wisdom; infinite wisdom was stamped upon his very countenance. But as is often the case on a lesser scale, a certain inner sadness had come over him. The first fruit of this wisdom had been that the penetrating insight with which he could behold those around him brought him deep sorrow. Added to this, in hours of quietude at the end of his twenties, his thoughts turned more and more to one particular event in his life—to the great inner change, the revolution that had taken place in his twelfth year as the natural result of the transference of the Zarathustra-Ego into his own soul. During the subsequent years he was aware only of the inexhaustible riches of the Zarathustra-Ego within him. At the end of his twenties he still did not know that the Zarathustra-Ego had reincarnated in him, but he knew well that in his twelfth year a tremendous change had come about in him. And now he often felt: Ah! how different was my life before that change! His thoughts often went back to the preceding years and to the infinite warmth of heart that had characterised his life. As a boy he had lived entirely aloof from mundane affairs; he had been keenly sensitive to everything that speaks to man from the world of nature, to the whole greatness and splendour of nature. But he had little talent for the treasures amassed by human wisdom, human learning. Scholarship as such interested him little. It would be a complete mistake to imagine that up to his twelfth year this Jesus child was, in the outward sense, especially gifted. He had an inner gentleness, a profound understanding of human life, deep and sensitive feelings, tenderness, an angelic quality of being. Then, in his twelfth year, it seemed as if all this had been driven out of his soul. And now he was often mindful of how, before his twelfth year, he had lived in the most intimate communion with the deeper spirit of the universe, how open his soul had been to the infinitudes. Then his thoughts went back to what his life had been since his twelfth year, how he had found himself able to assimilate Hebrew learning which seemed, however, to well up quite spontaneously in his soul, how his journeys had then acquainted him with the heathen cults, with heathen knowledge and religion; he thought of how between his eighteenth and twenty-fourth years he had been brought into contact with the external treasures accumulated by humanity, of how, in about his twenty-fourth year, he had entered into the community of the Essenes and had there become acquainted with a secret doctrine and with men whose lives were dedicated to this doctrine. Many a time his thoughts turned to those years. But he also knew that it was only the store of learning accumulated by men since days of antiquity that had risen up into his soul-treasures of human wisdom, of human culture, great moral achievements. And he often thought of what he had been before his twelfth year, when he felt as if he were united with the divine ground of existence, when everything in him was pristine, spontaneous, welling up from a warm and loving heart and flowing into other forces of the human soul.

All these feelings led to a memorable conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and the mother. The mother loved him very deeply and had often spoken with him about all the beauty and greatness of the gifts that had shown themselves in him since his twelfth year. But he had concealed from his mother in earlier years the inner schism caused within him, so that she had seen only what was great and beautiful. Therefore in this conversation which was really like a full confession, much was new to her; but she received it with a warm and tender heart. She had a profound and intimate understanding of his mood of soul, of his yearnings for all that he had been before his twelfth year. And so she tried to comfort him by speaking of all the noble and splendid gifts of which he had shown evidence since then. She reminded him of the revival of the great Jewish doctrines, the Jewish wisdom-teachings and codes of the law. She spoke of all that had revealed itself through him. But his heart grew heavy while his mother was speaking in this way, prizing so highly what he himself felt had been surmounted. And he replied: Be that as it may. If through me or through another it were possible to-day to bring new life to all the spiritual treasures of ancient Hebrew wisdom, what significance would it have for mankind? All this is, in reality, meaningless. If among the humanity around us to-day there were any with ears still able to hear the wisdom of the ancient prophets, then a revival of that wisdom would be of value. But if Elias himself were to come to-day—so said Jesus of Nazareth—and were to proclaim to our humanity the greatest of his experiences in the realms of heaven—there are no men who would listen to the wisdom of Elias, of the older prophets, even of Moses, and back to Abraham. Everything these prophets might proclaim to-day would fall upon deaf ears. Their words would be preached to the winds. Everything that I believed had been bestowed upon me is valueless for the world to-day.—

This was the sense in which Jesus of Nazareth spoke. He also spoke of a man who had been a great teacher and whose words had only lately ceased to be effective. For—so said Jesus of Nazareth—although the good old Hillel [Hillel lived from 75 B.C. to A.D. 4.] could not rank as an equal of the ancient prophets, nevertheless he was a great and profound teacher. Jesus knew well what the aged Hillel had meant for very many souls in the Jewish world even during the days of Herod when it was hard for any teacher to gain authority. He knew how profound had been the words spoken by Hillel. It was said of Hillel: The Thorah [The Thorah is the collection of the oldest and most important Jewish laws.] has disappeared within the Jewish people and Hillel has established it once again. To those who understood him, Hillel seemed as one who had revived and restored to life the primal, original Hebrew wisdom. Hillel was a teacher who, like other teachers of the wisdom, journeyed about the land. He came among the Jewish people like a kind of new Messiah. All this is narrated in the Talmud and can be confirmed by external scholarship. The people were full of praise for Hillel and had much good to say of him. I can only single out one story in order to indicate the mood and vein in which Jesus of Nazareth spoke of Hillel to his mother ... Hillel is described as a man of gentle and mild disposition, who achieved mighty things through this very gentleness and loving-kindness.

One story that has been preserved about him is deeply indicative as showing him to have been a man of infinite patience with everyone who came to him. Two men once laid a wager about the possibility of rousing Hillel's anger; for it was known that nobody could ever make him angry. Having laid a wager, one of the two men said: I will go to any lengths to make Hillel angry. In this way he sought to win his wager. Just at the time when Hillel was most fully occupied, when he was deeply engrossed in preparations for the Sabbath, this man knocked at Hillel's door and shouted rudely, without any form of deferential address—although as chief of the highest ecclesiastical court Hillel was accustomed to be addressed with respect—Hillel, come out, come out quickly! Hillel threw on his garments and came patiently out. The man said brusquely: I have something to ask thee! Hillel answered: What then hast thou to ask me, dear son? I wish to ask why the Babylonians have such narrow heads? Hillel replied gently: The Babylonians have narrow heads because their midwives have so little skill. The man went off. Hillel had remained unruffled. After a few minutes the man came back again and called out gruffly: Hillel, come out, I have something to ask thee! Hillel threw on his mantle, came out, and said: Now what hast thou to ask, dear son? I wish to ask why the Arabs have such small eyes? Hillel answered gently: The vastness of the desert makes their eyes small; the eyes get small because they are always gazing at the great desert. The man who had laid the wager now grew very uneasy. Hillel returned to his tasks. But after a few minutes the man was back again and called out gruffly for the third time: Hillel, come out, I have something to ask thee! Hillel put on his mantle, came out, and asked as gently as before: Now what hast thou to ask me? I wish to ask why the Egyptians have such flat feet? Because the ground there is so swampy, answered Hillel, and went inside the house again. After a minute or two the man returned and said to Hillel that now he had nothing to ask—he had laid a wager that he would make him angry but he saw this was impossible. Hillel answered mildly: Dear son, better it is that thou shouldst lose thy wager than Hillel his temper ...

This legend is told as evidence of Hillel's patience with everyone who importuned him. Such a man—so said Jesus of Nazareth to his mother—is in many respects like one of the prophets of old; many utterances of Hillel sound like a revival of the ancient wisdom of the prophets. He cited many beautiful sayings of Hillel and then he said: The people say of Hillel that he is like an ancient prophet who has come again. Moreover it is dawning upon me that the knowledge I possess does not come from Judaism alone. And in fact Hillel was born in Babylon and only later found his way into Judaism. But Hillel was a descendant of the House of David, was connected from very early times with the House of David from which Jesus of Nazareth and his kinsmen also traced their descent. And Jesus said: Even if I too, as a son of the House of David, could speak as the great Hillel spoke ... to-day there is nobody to listen; such teachings are untimely. In olden days men would have listened to them but there are no longer any ears to hear. It is useless and meaningless to speak of these things. And as it were gathering together what he had to say on this subject, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother: The revelation of ancient Judaism is no longer suitable for the earth, for the old Jews have passed away; the ancient revelation is worthless on the earth as it is now. With strange feelings in her heart the mother listened to what Jesus was saying about the worthlessness of what she held most sacred. But she loved him tenderly and was aware only of her infinite love. Therefore deep understanding of what he was saying welled up in her heart. Then, leading the conversation further, he spoke of how he had wandered into places where heathen rites were performed and of what he had experienced there. Remembrance came to him of how he had fallen to the ground while standing at the heathen altar, how he had heard the Bath-Kol in its altered form. And then there flashed up within him something that was like a renewal of the old Zarathustrian teachings. He did not yet know with certainty that he bore the Zarathustra-soul within him, but the Zarathustrian teaching, the Zarathustrian wisdom, the Zarathustrian impulse rose up within him during the conversation—and in communion with his mother he experienced the reality of this mighty impulse. All the beauty and glory of the ancient Sun-wisdom came up into his soul. And he reminded himself of the words of the Bath-Kol as I rendered them yesterday, and repeated them to the mother:

AUM, Amen!

Es walten die Übel,

Zeugen sich lösender Ichheit,

Von andern erschuldete Selbstheitschuld,

Erlebet im täglichen Brote,

In dem nicht waltet der Himmel Wille,

Da der Mensch sich schied von Eurem Reich

Und vergass Euren Namen,

Ihr Väter in den Himmeln.

AUM, Amen!

The Evils hold sway,

Witness of Egoity becoming free,

Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred,

Experienced in the Daily Bread,

Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule,

In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdom

And forgot Your Names,

Ye Fathers in the Heavens.

And with these words came a realisation of all the greatness of the Mithras worship. He spoke to his mother at length about the grandeur and the glory of what had been contained in the ancient Mysteries of the different peoples, and of how much of this had merged into the Mystery-cults scattered over Asia Minor and Southern Europe. But at the same time his soul remembered how this worship had gradually deteriorated and fallen prey to demonic powers which he himself had experienced in his twenty-fourth year. All that he had experienced at that time came back to him. The ancient Zarathustra-wisdom itself seemed to him to be something which the people of his day could no longer assimilate. And then he made the second significant utterance: Even if all the ancient Mystery-cults were united into one and all that former greatness could be revived, there are no longer any to respond. Those things are of no avail! And if I were to go forth and proclaim to men what I have heard as the altered voice of the Bath-Kol, if I were to disclose the secret of why it is that in their physical life men are no longer able to live in communion with the Mysteries, no human beings would understand. To-day it would all be distorted into demonic teaching. Even if I were to proclaim it, it would neither be heard nor understood. Men have ceased to be able to hear what was once heard and accepted.—For Jesus of Nazareth knew that what he had heard as the altered voice of the Bath-Kol gave expression to a sacred, primeval teaching and had been an all-powerful prayer in the Mysteries everywhere, a prayer once offered by men in the Mystery-Centres but now forgotten. This prayer had been revealed to him when he had fallen to the ground at the heathen altar. But at the same time he realised and emphasised in that conversation that there was no possibility of making it comprehensible to men. And then in this conversation with the mother he went on to speak of what he had learned among the Essenes. He spoke of the beauty, the greatness and the grandeur of the Essene doctrine, of the gentleness and meekness of the Essenes themselves. Then, however, he made the third mighty utterance, arising from his converse with the Buddha in a vision: that it is neither possible nor is it meet for all men to become Essenes. Hillel spoke words of profound truth when he taught: Sever not thyself from the community but toil and labour in the community: for if I stand alone, what am I! But that is what the Essenes do; they separate themselves from men who thereby suffer unhappiness.—And then Jesus spoke memorable words to his mother, telling her of the experience I described in the lecture yesterday. He said: Once when I was leaving after an intimate and most significant conversation with the Essenes, I saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing from the gate. Since then I have known that by their mode of living and their secret doctrine the Essenes protect themselves in such a way that Lucifer and Ahriman must flee from their gates; but thereby the Essenes send Lucifer and Ahriman to other human beings, in order that they themselves may live in blessedness. These words struck with tremendous force into the tender, loving heart of the mother. And she felt as if she herself were transformed, she felt as if her very being had become one with his. And Jesus of Nazareth felt as if with this conversation everything he had hitherto borne within him had passed away. He was aware of this and the mother, too, perceived it. The more he spoke and the more the mother listened, the more deeply did she discern all the wisdom that had been alive within him since his twelfth year. But from him it all seemed to have departed. He had laid as it were into the heart of the mother what had lived within him and what he had experienced.

And he too, after that conversation, was as if transformed—so greatly changed that the stepbrothers and other kinsmen around him began to think that he had lost his senses. It is sad, they said, for his knowledge was so great. True, he was always very silent but now he has completely lost his senses. He was given up as hopeless. And indeed for days he went about the house as if lost in dream. The Zarathustra-Ego was on the point of leaving this body of Jesus of Nazareth. And his last resolution took the form of impelling him to leave the house as if mechanically and to make his way to John the Baptist with whom he was already acquainted.

And then there took place the event I have often described—the Baptism by John in the Jordan. At that conversation with the mother, the Zarathustra-Ego had withdrawn. The being whom Jesus of Nazareth had been up to his twelfth year was present once again, but now with an added greatness. And at the Baptism in the Jordan the Christ Being sank into this body. At the moment of this Baptism in the Jordan, the mother too was aware of something like the climax of the change that had come about in her. She was then between her forty-fifth and forty-sixth years. She felt as though pervaded by the soul of that mother who had died—the mother of the Jesus child who in his twelfth year had received the Zarathustra-Ego. Thus the spirit of the other mother had come down upon the mother with whom Jesus had held that conversation. And she felt herself as the young mother who had once given birth to the Jesus child of St. Luke's Gospel.

Let us try to picture the infinite significance of this event! Let us try to feel it deeply and also to realise that an absolutely unique Being was now living upon the Earth: the Christ Being within a human body, a Being who until now had never lived in a human body, had had no earthly life, had dwelt only in spiritual realms, to whom the worlds of Spirit were known, not the world of Earth! Of the earthly world this Being knew only what had been garnered as it were in the three bodies: physical body, ether-body and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christ Being sank into these three bodies, into what these bodies had grown to be under the influence of that life of thirty years. He therefore passed through His first earthly experiences as a Being completely free of all antecedents.

The Akasha Chronicle and the Fifth Gospel reveal to us that the Christ Being was led, first of all, into “the loneliness.” Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body the Christ Being dwelt, had abandoned everything that had previously connected him with the rest of the world. The Christ Being had just come down to the Earth. To begin with, He was drawn to the impressions, engraved paramountly in the astral body, which had been made upon that body and had remained as it were in the memory. It was as though the Christ Being said to Himself: This is the body which experienced the fleeing of Ahriman and Lucifer, the body which perceived that the Essenes, by their very aspirations, drive Ahriman and Lucifer to other human beings. It was to these other human beings who had been delivered into the power of Ahriman and Lucifer that the Christ Being felt Himself drawn; for it is with these powers that men have to battle. And so the Christ Being, living for the first time in the body of a man, went out into the loneliness to the contest with Ahriman and Lucifer.

I believe that the following description of the Temptation scene is very largely correct. But it is very difficult to observe such things in the Akasha Chronicle and I therefore emphasise that one point or another could be slightly modified. But the essentials hold good. The Temptation scene is, of course, included in other Gospels but it is narrated there from different standpoints, as I have often stressed. I have made great efforts to investigate this scene of the Temptation and will relate it as it actually transpired.

First of all, the Christ Being within the body of Jesus encountered Lucifer in the loneliness—Lucifer with all his power and influence, who draws near to men when they prize the Self too highly and are lacking in humility and self-knowledge. Lucifer's aim is to play upon the false pride, the tendency to self-aggrandisement in man. Now he confronted Christ Jesus and spoke approximately as recorded in the other Gospels: Behold me! The other kingdoms into which man's life has been set, the foundations of which were laid by the primeval Gods and Spirits—these kingdoms have grown old. I will establish a new kingdom. If thou wilt enter my realm I will give thee all the beauty and the glory contained in these old kingdoms. But thou must sever thyself from the other Gods and acknowledge me! And Lucifer described all the glories of his world, everything that makes an appeal to the human soul whenever an iota of pride exists. But the Christ Being came from the spiritual worlds and knew who Lucifer is, knew how souls on earth must act if they desire to resist the temptation of Lucifer. Untouched as He was by this temptation, the Christ Being knew how the gods are truly served—and He had the power to repel the onslaught of Lucifer. Then Lucifer made a second attack but called Ahriman to his support and both addressed the Christ. The one, Lucifer, desired to goad His pride; the other, Ahriman, to play upon His fear. Therefore it came about that the one Being said to Him: If thou wilt acknowledge me, through my spiritual power, through what I can give to thee, thou wilt be able to dispense with what is now essential for thee inasmuch as thou, the Christ, hast entered into a human body. This body subjugates thee, compels thee to obey the laws of gravity. But I have power to cast thee down, since the human body prevents thee from breaking through the law of gravity. If thou wilt acknowledge me, I will nullify the effects of the fall and no harm will come to thee! Ahriman said: I will keep thee from fear: cast thyself down! And both set upon Him. But as in their onslaught the one held the balance against the other, Christ Jesus could save Himself from them. He found the strength that man must find on earth if he is to stand firm against Lucifer and Ahriman. Then Ahriman spoke: Lucifer, I cannot use thee, thou dost but hinder me, thou hast not enhanced my power but weakened it. Then Ahriman bade Lucifer depart, made the final attack as Ahriman alone, and spoke words of which the Gospel of St. Matthew contains an echo: Turn mineral substance into bread! Turn the stones into bread if thou wouldst boast of Divine power! Then said the Christ Being: Men do not live by bread alone, but by the spiritual forces which come from the spiritual worlds. None knew this better than He for He had just descended from the spiritual worlds. Then Ahriman said: Thou mayest indeed be right but that cannot prevent me from keeping a certain hold upon thee. Thou knowest only how the Spirit acts, the Spirit who descends from the heights; thou hast not yet lived in the world of men. There below, in the human world, there are men who must perforce makes stones into bread, who cannot draw their nourishment from the Spirit alone. That was the moment when Ahriman communicated to Christ something that could indeed be known on earth but that the God who had for the first time come to earth could not yet know. He did not know that there below it was necessary to turn mineral substance—metal—into money, into bread. Ahriman had said that men on the earth below must nourish themselves by means of “gold.” That was the point where Ahriman still retained power. And he said: I shall use this power. That is the true account of the Temptation. And so one thing remained unsolved at the Temptation. The questions were not all of them finally solved: the questions of Lucifer, yes; but not the questions of Ahriman. For that, something more was necessary.

When Christ Jesus went out of the loneliness He felt transported above everything He had experienced and learned from His twelfth year onwards; He felt that the Christ Spirit had united with all that had been alive in Him before His twelfth year. He felt no longer any connection with what had become old and withered in humanity. He was indifferent even to the speech used in His environment—and to begin with, he kept silence. He wandered around Nazareth and still further afield, visiting many places He had known previously as Jesus of Nazareth. And then a very singular thing happened.—Remember, please, that I am relating the contents of the Fifth Gospel and there would be no point in looking for contradictory passages in the other four Gospels. I am narrating from the Fifth Gospel.—In quiet reticence, as if having nothing in common with the environment, Christ Jesus wandered, to begin with, from one dwelling-place to another, working among the people and with the people wherever He went. Ahriman's words concerning bread had left a deep impression upon Him. And everywhere He found people who already knew Him, with whom He had worked before. They recognised Him and He found among them those to whom Ahriman actually had access, simply because it was necessary for them to turn stones into bread—to turn money, metals, into bread. His presence was not, after all, essential among those who observed the moral precepts given by Hillel or by other teachers. Christ Jesus consorted with those whom the other Gospels call the publicans and the sinners for it was their lot to make stones into bread. He was constantly among these men.

But now this strange thing happened. Many of these men had known Him in the period preceding his thirtieth year, for He had already been among them. They had come to know His gentle, tender wisdom when He had gone about as Jesus of Nazareth, and in every house, in every dwelling, He had been deeply loved. This love had remained. In these dwellings the people spoke much of the man Jesus of Nazareth who was so dear to them, who had visited their houses and villages. And the following happened—as if through the operation of Cosmic Law. I am narrating scenes which were very frequent and are revealed again and again to clairvoyant investigation. There were families among whom Jesus of Nazareth had worked and who after their labours would sit together after sunset, liking to speak of the man who as Jesus of Nazareth had come among them. They spoke constantly of His love and gentleness, of how their own hearts and souls had warmed when He had lived under their roof. In many of these dwelling-places, when for hours together they had been talking in this way, it would happen that the picture of Jesus of Nazareth appeared to them in the room, as a vision shared by every member of the family. He came to them in the Spirit, or they, on their side, conjured up a spiritual picture of Him. You can imagine how deeply such families were moved when He appeared to them in a vision in which they all shared, and what it meant to them when after the Baptism in the Jordan He came back again and they recognised His outward form ... only now the light in His eyes was stronger; they gazed at the radiant countenance that had once been so dear to them and the Being whom they had seen among them as a spiritual Presence. You can imagine, too, what an extraordinary stir was created among such families, among the publicans and sinners whose karma had brought them into an environment where all the demonic beings held sway at that time! And now, through the presence of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, the change in this Being was revealed very clearly to these particular men. In earlier years they had felt His love, His goodness, His gentleness; but now a magic power went forth from Him. If in former days they had merely felt comforted by His presence, now they felt that they were actually healed. They went to their neighbours when they too were in distress and brought them to Christ Jesus. And so it was that after He had conquered Lucifer and only the sting of Ahriman remained in men under Ahriman's domination, Christ Jesus was able to perform the deeds described in the Bible as the expulsion of the devils. Many of the demonic beings He had seen when He was lying as if dead at the heathen altar, now departed from the people when He stood before them as Christ Jesus. The demons recognised their adversary. And as He passed in this way through the land, the behaviour of the demons in the souls of men reminded Him ever and again of how He had lain at that ancient altar where instead of gods, demons had gathered and where He had not been able to perform the sacrificial rites. Inevitably His thoughts turned to the Bath-Kol which had proclaimed to Him that ancient Prayer of the Mysteries of which I have spoken to you. And the middle line of the Prayer, especially, came into His mind: “Experienced in the Daily Bread.” These men among whom He sojourned were compelled to turn stones into bread; there were many who depended for their sustenance on bread alone. And the words from that ancient, heathen Prayer, “Experienced in the Daily Bread,” engraved themselves deeply in His soul. He realised and felt the whole process of man's incorporation into the physical world. He felt that because physical embodiment was a necessity in the evolution of humanity, men were prone to forget the “Names of the Fathers in the Heavens,” the names of the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies. And He felt that there were no longer any ears to hear the voices of the old prophets. Now He knew that what had severed men from the Heavens, what must inevitably drive men into egoism and lead them into the clutches of Ahriman, was the life that is bound up with the “Daily Bread.”

As with these thoughts He went about the country, those who were most deeply aware of the change that had come about in Jesus of Nazareth became His disciples and followed Him. From many dwelling-places one or another went with Him, followed Him—followed Him because of the feeling and conviction I described. And so very soon a band of such disciples had gathered together. In these disciples He had around Him people who in their whole mood and attitude of soul were new beings, who had become, through Him, quite different from those men of whom He had once been compelled to say to His mother that they had no longer any ears capable of listening to the ancient wisdom.

And then there dawned in Him ... it was the earthly experience of the God: What I have to tell human beings is not how the gods prepared the path from the Spirit to the Earth but how men can find the path leading upwards from the Earth to the Spirit. And now there came back to Him the voice of the Bath-Kol, and He knew that the ancient supplications and prayers must be re-cast, made new; He knew that now man must seek the path into the spiritual worlds from below upwards. He transposed the last line of the old Prayer, adapting it to the needs of men living in the new era and making it bear reference now not to the multiple spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies but to the one supreme Spirit: “Our Father in Heaven.” And the second line He had heard as the penultimate line of the Mystery-Prayer: “And forgot Your Names,” He transposed into: “Hallowed be Thy Name” as the words must run for men of the new era. And the third line from the end of the old Prayer: “In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdoms,” He transposed into: “To us may Thy Kingdom come.” And the line: “Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule,” He transposed into the form suitable for the ears of men now, since they had no ears to hear the old setting of the words—He transposed them because the direction of the path leading into the spiritual worlds was to be completely reversed: “Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” And the mystery of the Bread, of incarnation in the physical body, the mystery of the sting of Ahriman which had now been fully revealed to Him, He transposed so that men should discern the truth that the physical world too issues from the spiritual world even if this truth is not within their immediate ken. He made this line concerning the Daily Bread into a supplication: “Give us this day our Daily Bread.” And the words: “Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred,” He transposed into: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.” The line which came second in the old Mystery-Prayer: “Witness of Egoity becoming free,” He transposed into: “But deliver us,” and the first line: “The Evils prevail,” He changed into: “From the evil. Amen.” And so the altered voice of the Bath-Kol heard by Jesus of Nazareth when he fell at the heathen altar, was transposed into the “Lord's Prayer” known to Christianity ... it was the Prayer of the new Mysteries taught by Christ Jesus, it was the new Lord's Prayer. In a similar manner—and much remains to be said about this—arose the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings given by Christ Jesus to His disciples.

Christ Jesus worked upon His disciples in a strange and wonderful way. Please remember that I am simply relating what is to be read in the Fifth Gospel. As Christ Jesus went about, His environment was affected in a strange way. He was together with the Apostles and disciples and in communion with them, but—because He was the Christ Being—not as if He were merely present there in the body. As He went about the country, many a one felt as if He, Christ Jesus, were reigning within his own soul, as if this Being were actually within him, and he would begin to speak words which, in reality, only Christ Jesus could have spoken. This band of disciples went about and came into contact with the people ... and the one who spoke was by no means always Christ Jesus, but was often one of the disciples, for everything—even His wisdom—was shared with the disciples. I must confess that I was astonished in the highest degree when I discovered that the words in the conversation with the Sadducees related in St. Mark's Gospel were not spoken by Christ Jesus out of the body of Jesus but out of the lips of one of the disciples. It was a frequent phenomenon, too, that sometimes when Christ Jesus left the band of disciples, He was nevertheless still among them. He either went about with them spiritually or He appeared to them in His ether-body while He was actually far away. His ether-body was among them and also went about the land; and often it was not possible to distinguish whether He was present in the physical body or whether it was the ether-body that had become visible. Such was the manner of the intercourse with the disciples and with individuals among the people when Jesus of Nazareth had become Christ Jesus.

The experience He Himself underwent was as I have indicated. Whereas in the first periods the Christ Being had been comparatively independent of the body of Jesus of Nazareth, He had more and more to become one with it. And the longer His life continued, the more closely was He knit with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In the last years, the union with the body of Jesus of Nazareth—which had itself become increasingly frail—caused Him deep suffering. Nevertheless a great multitude now accompanied Christ Jesus as He went about the country. Here or there one among the band of the Apostles would speak—here or there, another—and the people might easily believe that the speaker was Christ Jesus, for He spoke through all of them. One can listen to the scribes speaking together to this effect: It would be possible, after all, to pick out any one of these followers and put him to death in order to frighten the people; but it might be the wrong one, for they all speak alike. Such an act would be of no use to us, for the real Christ Jesus might still be living. We must find which one He really is.—Only the disciples themselves could distinguish Him but they most certainly did not divulge to the enemy who was the right one. But because of the question that had remained unsolved, the question that Christ could not solve in the spiritual worlds but only on the earth, Ahriman had gained sufficient power. As a result of the most terrible of all deeds, Christ must experience what it means to turn stones into bread. For Ahriman made use of Judas from Karioth. On account of the way Christ worked, there would have been no spiritual means of discovering among the men who revered Him which was, in truth, the Christ. For wherever the Spirit was working, wherever even a trace of convincing power was working, He could not be taken. Only where there was one who employed the means which Christ did not know, which He could only learn to know as the result of the most terrible deed wrought on earth—only where Judas was working could He be seized. The only means of recognising Him was through one who placed himself in the service of Ahriman, who in actual fact betrayed Him for the sake of money alone. Christ Jesus was connected with Judas because at the Temptation there remained something which, in a God, is comprehensible—He did not know that it is only true in the heavens that stones are not needed for bread. Because Ahriman had retained this sting, the Betrayal took place. And then Christ must come perforce under the dominion of the Lord of Death—and Ahriman is the Lord of Death. Such is the connection of the story of the Temptation and the Mystery of Golgotha with the Betrayal by Judas.

Much more could be said about the contents of this Fifth Gospel than has been said here. But as the evolution of humanity proceeds the other portions of this Gospel will assuredly also come to light. What I have tried to do by means of the narratives selected is rather to give you an idea of its character. At the conclusion of these lectures there comes before me what I said at the end of the first, namely, that it is a necessity of the times to speak now of this Fifth Gospel. And I would beg you, my dear friends, to treat what has been said as it should be treated. We have quite enough enemies to-day already and the way they act is really very curious. I do not propose to enlarge upon this for you probably know about it from the News Sheets. You are certainly aware of another strange fact. There are people who have been saying for a long time that the teaching I give is tainted by every kind of bigoted Christian dogma, even by Jesuitism. This malicious allegation is made chiefly by certain devotees of “Adyar Theosophy” as it is called and they talk sheer, unscrupulous nonsense. But our teachings have also been indescribably falsified from a quarter which had violently attacked the intolerance, the distortions and the allegations. A man from America who spent weeks and months getting to know our teachings, transcribed and carried them off in a watered-down form to America, where he has given out a plagiarised “Rosicrucian Theosophy.” True, he says he learnt a good deal from us over here but that he was afterwards summoned to the Masters and learnt more from them. He keeps silence, however, about the source of the deeper information contained in the then unpublished lecture-courses. When something like this happens in America, one may of course emulate the aged Hillel and be lenient; nor need one stop being lenient when these things make their way across to Europe. In a quarter from which the most violent attacks were launched, a translation was made of what these circles in America had taken from us and it was said in an introduction to this translation: True, a Rosicrucian conception of the world is making its appearance in Europe too, but in a bigoted, Jesuitical form; this kind of thought can really only thrive in the pure air of California. Well ... here I will pause! Such are the methods of our opponents. We may regard these things with leniency and even with compassion—but we should not shut our eyes to them. When things like this happen it behoves even those who for years have been remarkably forbearing with people who acted so unscrupulously, to be wary. Perhaps one day everyone will have their eyes opened. If the service of truth did not demand it, I should much prefer not to speak about these matters, but they must be faced fairly and squarely.

Even if on the one side these allegations are spread by others, we are not protected, on the other side, against the battle waged by people—and such there are—who find these things displeasing for rather more honest reasons. I will not bother you with all the foolish stuff which between them these two parties have written. The curious writings of Freimark, Schalk, Maack and others now being published in Germany may be ignored, for they are really too second-rate. But there are people who cannot bear the very thought of anything that resembles the nature of this Fifth Gospel. And perhaps no hatred was as sincere as that voiced by the critics who at once rose up in arms when something of the mystery of the two Jesus children—which also belongs to the Fifth Gospel—reached the outside world. True Anthroposophists will treat this Fifth Gospel which has been given in good faith, as it should be treated. Take it with you, speak about it in the groups, but also say how it ought to be treated! See that it is not irreverently bandied about among those who may scoff at it!

With things of this nature, based as they are upon the clairvoyant investigation that is necessary for our time, we stand opposed to the whole present age, above all to the kind of learning by which the age is dominated. Of this too we have tried to be mindful. Those of us who were together when the Foundation Stone of our Building was laid, tried to envisage the urgent need for spiritual teachings to be proclaimed with faithful observance of truth. We tried to picture what a wide distance separates the culture of our times from this search for the truth. It can verily be said that the cry for the Spirit rings through the age but that men are either too arrogant or too limited to be willing to know the actual truths of the Spirit. The sense of truth in the degree essential for understanding the proclamation of the Spirit, has yet to grow. For in spiritual culture as it is to-day, this sense of truth is not present in the requisite degree and—what is worse—its absence is not noticed. Treat what has been given here in connection with the Fifth Gospel in such a way that it is treated reverently in the groups. This we must ask, not out of egoism but for quite other reasons. For the Spirit of Truth must abide in us and the Spirit must stand before us in Truth. People to-day talk of the Spirit but even when they do so, they have no inkling whatever of the realities of the Spirit. There is a man—and why should names not be given—who has won great respect simply because he is forever talking about the Spirit. I refer to Rudolf Eucken. He talks the whole time of Spirit, but when one reads through all his books (just try it sometime) one finds ad infinitum: The Spirit exists, we must experience the Spirit, commune with the Spirit, be mindful of the Spirit ... and so on, in endless phrases running through every one of these books. Spirit, Spirit, Spirit! This is how men speak of the Spirit to-day because they are too lazy or too arrogant to go to the very wellsprings of the Spirit. And such men are greatly respected nowadays. For all that, it will be difficult in the modern age to make headway with anything drawn from the Spirit in such a concrete form as was necessary in describing the contents of the Fifth Gospel. Earnestness and an inner sense of truth are required for this. One of Eucken's most recent publications is a volume entitled: Können wir noch Christen sein? [Leipzig, 1911. An English translation, Can we still be Christians? was published in 1914.] Pages and pages follow one another merely reiterating Soul and Spirit, Spirit and Soul, and so it goes on through many volumes. For one gains immense repute and authority if one declares to the people that one knows something about the Spirit. In their reading, however, people do not perceive the inner untruthfulness of it all ... One would like to think that ultimately people really will learn how to read ... On one of the pages we find the sentence: Humanity to-day has passed beyond the stage of believing in daemons; one cannot any longer expect people to believe in daemons! But at another place in the same book there is this remarkable sentence: The daemonic arises when Spirit touches Soul. Here the man is speaking seriously of daemons, after having spoken, on another page of the same book, the words I quoted. Is not this the very deepest inner untruth? The time must come at last when such inwardly untruthful teachings about the Spirit are refuted. But I have never noticed that many of our contemporaries are alive to this inner untruthfulness.

And so when we serve the truth of the Spirit to-day we stand opposed to the times. This has to be remembered in order that we may see clearly what we have to do in our hearts if we would be co-bearers of the proclamation of the Spirit, co-bearers of the new life of the Spirit that is essential for mankind. When efforts are made through spiritual teaching to lead the souls of men to the Christ Being, how can one hope for much response in face of contemporary thought which contents itself with truths put forward to-day by all the shrewd philosophers and theologians: that there was a Christianity in existence before Christ! Evidence is produced to show that the cult and also certain typical narratives were already current in the East in pre-Christian times. And then these clever theologians explain to everyone who will listen to them that Christianity is simply the continuation of what was already there before. This kind of literature commands great respect, really tremendous respect among our contemporaries and they have not the slightest inkling what the real relationship is. When the Christ is said to have come down to the Earth as a Spiritual Being and then, later on, is found to be worshipped in forms of cult the same as those connected with the worship of heathen gods—and when such arguments are used, as they are to-day, to disavow the Christ Being ... this is a kind of logic of which the following is an illustration. Somebody or other goes into a house and leaves his clothes behind. It is known that the clothes belong to this particular man. A little later, such a man as Schiller or Goethe comes to the house and owing to certain circumstances is obliged to put on these clothes. Then he comes out in the clothes belonging to the other. And now somebody who has seen Goethe in these clothes, goes about saying: What are people talking about? Why is he supposed to be a man of special importance? I have examined the clothes minutely and I know that they belong to so-and-so who is a person of no importance whatever. Because the Christ Being made use of the garments, so to speak, of the ancient cults, there come these clever people who do not understand that the Christ Being clothed Himself in these forms as a garment only, and that the spiritual reality present in these old ritualistic forms now, is the Christ Being Himself.

And now—look through whole libraries, look through the countless dissertations of scientific monism to-day. All this kind of literature brings evidence concerning the garment around the Christ Being—and moreover the evidence, in itself, is correct! Dabblers in the field of the evolution of culture stand in high repute to-day and their science is accepted as profound wisdom. This is the picture we must have before us if we desire to realise not only intellectually but also in our feeling, what the communication of this Fifth Gospel means. It means that together with the truth known to us we must be alive to how and where we stand in the world to-day, realising how impossible it is to make the new tidings of the Spirit comprehensible to the thought-life of the past. And so when we have again to take leave of one another, reference may be made to words from the Gospel. With the way of thinking now prevailing in humanity, no progress is possible in the coming phase of spiritual evolution. Therefore this way of thinking must be changed, must be given another direction! Those who like to compromise and are unwilling to form a clear picture of things as they are and must be in the future, will not be able to contribute much to the spiritual teachings and spiritual service necessary for mankind.

It was my duty to speak of the Fifth Gospel which is very sacred to me. And I take leave of your hearts and souls with the wish that the bond created between us by many other things, may have been strengthened through this spiritual investigation of the Fifth Gospel—for this investigation is precious to me. Your hearts may perhaps be warmed by the thought that even if we are physically separated in space and in time, nevertheless we will remain together and feel together what we must inwardly assimilate and what is demanded by the duty laid upon the souls of men to-day by the Spirit. May the labours of every individual soul further our aims in the right way.

We live in grievous, destiny-burdened days. Only few souls wait with full confidence what these destiny-burdened days will bring to us earth people. Above all, the significance of that what expresses itself by the events of these days, does not speak with full strength in the souls. Some human souls attempt to experience the impulses more and more that spiritual science demands to be implanted into the cultural development. They should know being connected with their deepest feeling with that which, on one side, takes place around us so tremendously and, on the other side, so painfully.

Something takes place that is matchless not only according to the way but also according to the degree within the conscious history of human development, that is deeply intervening and drastic in the whole life of the earth's development. One needs to imagine only what it means—and this is the case today with every human being of the European and also of many parts of the other earth population—to be in the centre of the course of such significant events. We have to feel that this is just a time which is not only suitable but also demands that the soul frees itself from merely living within the own self, and should attempt to experience the common fate of humankind. The human being can learn a lot in our present if he knows how to combine in the right way with the stream of the events. He frees himself from a lot of pettiness and egoism if he is able to do this. Such great events take place that almost anybody caring for himself ignores the destinies of the other human beings.

In particular the population of Central Europe—which immense questions has it to put to itself about matters that it can learn basically only now! The human being of Central Europe can perceive how he is misunderstood, actually, how he is hated. And these misunderstandings, this hatred did not only erupt since the outbreak of the war, they have become perceptible since the outbreak of the war. Hence, the outbreak of the war and the course of the war can be even as it were that what draws attention of the Central European souls to that how they must feel isolated in a certain way more or less compared with the feeling of those people who stand on all sides around this Central European population really not with understanding emotions. If anybody could arouse deeper interests in the big events of life in the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science—this would be so desirable, especially now—events that lead the soul from the ken of its ego to the large horizon of humankind! Then one were able to deepen the look, the whole attitude of the souls who recognise the encompassing forces, because they have taken up spiritual science in themselves, and release them from the interest in the narrow forces that deal only with the individual human being! If one hears the world talking today, in particular the world which is around us Central Europeans, if one reads which peculiar things there are written about the impulses which should have led to this war, then one has the feeling that humankind has lost the obligation to judge from larger viewpoints in our materialistic time, has lost so much that you may have the impression, as if people had generally learnt nothing, but for them history only began on the 25th July, 1914.¹

It is as if people know nothing about that what has taken place in the interplay of forces of the earth population and what has led from this interplay of forces to the grievous involvements which caught fire from the flame of war, finally, and flared up. One talks hardly of the fact that one calls the encirclement by the previous English king who united the European powers round Central Europe, so that from this union of human forces around us, finally, nothing else could originate than that what has happened. One does not want to go further back as some years, at most decades and make conceptions how this has come what is now so destiny-burdened and painful around us.

But the matters lie still much deeper. If one speaks of encirclement, one must say: what has taken place in the encirclement of the Central European powers in the last time, that is the last stage, the last step of an encirclement of Central Europe, which began long, long ago, in the year 860 A. D. At that time, when those human beings drove from the north of Europe who stood as Normans before Paris, a part of the strength, which should work in Europe, drove in the west of Europe into the Romance current which had flooded the west of Europe from the south. We have a current of human forces which pours forth from Rome via Italy and Sicily over Spain and through present-day France. The Norman population, which drives down from the north and stands before Paris in 860, was flooded and wrapped up by that which had come as a Romance current of olden times. That what is powerful in this current is due to the fact that the Norman population was wrapped up in it. What has originated, however, as something strange to the Central European culture in the West, is due to the Romance current. This Romance current did not stop in present-day France, but it proved to be powerful enough because of its dogmatically rationalistic kind, its tendency to the materialistic way of thinking to flood not only France but also the Anglo-Saxon countries. This happened when the Normans conquered Britain and brought with them that what they had taken up from the Romance current. Also the Romance element is in the British element which thereby faces the Central European being, actually, without understanding. The Norman element penetrated by the Romance element continued its train via the Greek coasts down to Constantinople. So that we see a current of Norman-Romance culture driving down from the European north to the west, encircling Central Europe like in a snake-form, stretching its tentacles as it were to Constantinople.

We see the other train going down from the north to the east and penetrating the Slavic element. The first Norman trains were called “Ros” by the Finnish population which was widely propagated at that time in present-day Russia. “Ros” is the origin of this name. We see these northern people getting in the Slavic element, getting to Kiev and Constantinople at the same time. The circle is closed! On one side, the Norman forces drive down from the north to the west, becoming Romance, on the other side, to the east, becoming Slavic, and they meet from the east and from the west in Constantinople. In Central Europe that is enclosed like in a cultural basin what remained of the original Teutonic element, fertilised by the old Celtic element, which is working then in the most different nuances in the population, as German, as Dutch, as Scandinavian populations. Thus we recognise how old this encirclement is.

Now in this Central Europe an intimate culture prepares itself, a culture which was never able to run like the culture had to run in the West or the culture in the East, but which had to run quite differently. If we compare the cultural development in Central Europe with that of the West, so we must say, in the West a culture developed—and this can be seen from the smallest and from the biggest feature of this culture—whose basic character is to be pursued from the British islands over France, Spain, to Sicily, to Italy and to Constantinople. There certain dogmatism developed as a characteristic of the culture, rationalism, a longing for dressing everything one gets in knowledge in plain rationalistic formulae. There developed a desire to see things as reason and sensuousness must see them. There developed the desire to simplify everything. Let us take a case which is obvious to us as supporters of spiritual science namely the arrangement of our human soul in three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, and consciousness-soul. The human soul can be understood in reality only if one knows that it consists of these three members. Just as little as the light can be understood without recognising the colour nuances in their origin from the light, and without knowing that it is made up of the different colour nuances which we see in the rainbow, on one side the red yellow rays, on the other side the blue, green, violet ones, and if one cannot study the light as a physicist. Just as little somebody can study the human soul what is infinitely more important. For everybody should be a human being and everybody should know the soul. He, who does not feel in his soul that this soul lives in three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, consciousness-soul, throws everything in the soul in a mess. We see the modern university psychologists getting everything of the soul in a mess, as well as somebody gets the colour nuances of the light simply in a mess. And they imagine themselves particularly learnt in their immense arrogance, in their scientific arrogance throwing everything together in the soul-life, while one can only really recognise the soul if one is able to know this threefolding of the soul actually.

The sentient soul also is at first that what realises, as it were, the desires, the more feeling impulses, more that in the current earth existence what we can call the more sensuous aspect of the human being. Nevertheless, this sentient soul contains the eternal driving forces of the human nature in its deeper parts at the same time. These forces go through birth and death. The intellectual soul or mind-soul contains half the temporal and half the eternal. The consciousness-soul, as it is now, directs the human being preferably to the temporal. Hence, it is clear that the nation, who develops its folk-soul by means of the consciousness-soul, the British people, after a very nice remark of Goethe, has nothing of that what is meditative reflection, but it is directed to the practical, to the external competition. Perhaps, it is not bad at all to remember such matters, because those who have taken part in the German cultural life were not blind for them, but they expressed themselves always very clearly about that. Thus Goethe said to Eckermann²—it is long ago, but you can see that great Germans have seen the matters always in the true light—when once the conversation turned to the philosophers Hegel, Fichte, Kant and some others: yes, yes, while the Germans struggle to solve the deepest philosophical problems, the English are directed mainly to the practical aspects and only to them. They lack any sense of reflection. And even if they—so said Goethe—make declamations about morality mainly consisting of the liberation of slaves, one has to ask: which is “the real object?”—At another occasion, Goethe wrote³ that a remark of Walter Scott expresses more than many books. For even Walter Scott admitted once that it was more important than the liberation of nations, even if the English had taken part in the battles against Napoleon, “to see a British object before themselves.” A German philologist succeeded—and what does the diligence of German philologists not manage—in finding the passage in nine thick volumes of Napoleon's biography by Walter Scott to which Goethe has alluded at that time. Indeed, there you find, admitted by Walter Scott, that the Britons took part in the battles against Napoleon, however, they desired to attain a British advantage. He himself expresses it “to secure the British object.”—It is a remark of the Englishman himself, one only had to search for it. These matters are interesting to extend your ken somewhat today.

You have to know, I said, that the human soul consists of these three members, properly speaking that the human self works by these three soul nuances like the light by the different colour nuances, mainly in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. Then one will find out that the human being, while he has these three soul nuances, can and must assign each of these soul nuances to a great ideal in the course of human progress. Each of these ideals corresponds to a soul nuance not to the whole soul. Only if people can be induced by spiritual science to assign the corresponding ideals to the single soul members, will the real ideal of human welfare and of the harmonious living together of human beings on earth come into being.

Because the human being has to aim at another ideal for his sentient soul, for that which he realises as it were in the physical plane, at another soul ideal for that what he realises in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, and again another ideal in his consciousness-soul. He improves a soul member through one of these ideals; the other soul members are improved through the others. If one develops the soul member in particular through brotherliness of the human beings on earth, one has to develop the other one through freedom, the third through equality. Each of these three ideals refers to a soul member. In the west of Europe everything got muddled, and it was simplified by the rationalists, by that rationalism, which wants to have everything in plain formulae, in plain dogmas, which wants to have everything clearly to mind. The whole human soul was taken by this dogmatism simply as one, and one spoke of liberty, fraternity, equality. We see that there is a fundamental attitude of rationalising civilisation in the West. We could verify that in details. For example, just highly educated French can mock that I used five-footed iambi in my mystery dramas⁴ but no rhymes. The French mind cannot understand that the internal driving force of the language does not need the rhyme at this level. The French mind strives for systematisation, for that what forms an external framework, and it says: one cannot make verses without rhyme.

However, this also applies to the exterior life, to everything. In the West, one wants to arrange, to systematise, and to nicely tin everything. Think only what a dreadful matter it was, when in the beginning of our spiritual-scientific striving many of our friends were still influenced by the English theosophical direction. In every branch you could find all possible systems written down on maps, boards et cetera, on top, nicely arranged: atma, buddhi, manas, then all possible matters in detail which one systematises and tins that way. Imagine how one has bent under the yoke of this dogmatism and how difficult it was to set the methods of internal development to their place, which we must have in Central Europe, that one thing ensues from the other, that concepts advance in the internal experience. One does not need systematising, these mnemonic aids which wrap up everything in certain formulae. Which hard work was it to show that one matter merges into another, that you have to arrange matters sequentially and lively. I could expand this account to all branches of life; however, we would have to stay together for days.

We find that in the West as one part of the current which encircled Central Europe. If we go to the East, then we must say: there we deal with a longing which just presents the opposite, with the longing to let disappear everything still in a fog of lacks of clarity in a primitive, elementary mysticism, in something that does not stand to express itself directly in clear ideas and clear words. We really have two snakes—the symbol is absolutely appropriate,—one of them extends from the north to southeast, the other from the north to southwest, and both meet in Constantinople. In the centre that is enclosed what we can call the intimate Central European spiritual current, where the head can never be separated from the heart, thinking from feeling, if it appears in its original quality.

One does not completely notice that in our spiritual science even today, because one has to strive, even if not for a conceptual system, but for concepts of development. One does not yet notice that everything that is aimed at is not only a beholding with the head. However, the heart and the whole soul is combined with everything, always the heart is flowed through, while the head, for example, describes the transitions from Saturn to the Sun, from the Sun to the Moon, from the Moon to the earth et cetera. Everywhere the heart takes part in the portrayal; and one can be touched there in the deepest that one ascends with all heart-feeling to the top heights and dives in the deepest depths and can ascend again. One does not notice this even today that that what is described only apparently in concepts one has to put one's heart and soul in it at the same time if it should correspond to the Central European cultural life. This intimate element of the Central European culture is capable of the spiritual not without ideal, not to think the ideal any more without the spiritual. Recognising the spirit and combining it intimately with the soul characterises the Central European being most intensely. Hence, this Central European being can use that what descends to the deepest depths of the sensory view and the sensory sensation to become the symbol for the loftiest. It is deeply typical that Goethe, after he had let go through his mind the life of the typical human being, the life of Faust, closed his poem with the words:

Alles Vergängliche
All that is transitory

Ist nur ein Gleichnis
Is only a symbol;

and the last words are:

Das Ewig-Weibliche
The eternal feminine draws

Zieht uns hinan
Us up to higher levels.

A cosmic mystery is expressed through a sensory picture, and just in this sensory picture the intimate character of the Central European culture expresses itself. We find this wonderfully intimate character, for example, so nicely expressed and at the same time rising spiritually to the loftiest just with Novalis. If you look for translations of this last sentence: “Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan,” in particular the French translations, then you will see what has become of this sentence. Some French did explain it not so nicely, but they do not count if it concerns the understanding of Faust.

The Central European being aims at the intimacy of spiritual life most eminently, and this is that what is enclosed by the Midgard Snake in the East and the West. So far we have to go to combine completely in our feeling with that what happens, actually. Then we gain objectivity just from this Central European being to stand in front of the present great events with the really supranational human impulses, and not to judge out of the same impulses which are applied by the East and the West. Then we understand why the Central European population is misunderstood that way, is hated by those who surround them. Of course, we have to look at the mission of Central Europe for the whole humankind with all humility. We are not allowed to be arrogant, but we must also protect the free look for what is to be done in Central Europe.

The Central European population has always gone through the rejuvenating force of its folk-soul. It arrived at the summit in the ideals of Lessing, Schelling, Hegel, and Grimm. However, everything that already lived there lived more in a striving for idealism. Now this must gain more life, more concrete life. The profound ideas of German idealism have to get contents from spirituality, by which they are raised only from mere ideas to living beings of the spiritual world. Then we can familiarise ourselves in this spiritual world. The significance of the Central European task has now to inspire German hearts, and also the consciousness of what is to be defended in all directions, to the sides where the Midgard Snake firmly closes the circle. It is our task in particular because we are on the ground of spiritual science to look at the present events in such a higher sense. We cannot take the most internal impulse of our spiritual science seriously enough if we do not familiarise ourselves with such an impersonal view of the spiritual-scientific striving if we do not feel how this spiritual-scientific striving is connected in every individual human being with the whole Central European striving as it must be united with the whole substantiality of this Central European striving. We have to realise that something of what we have in mind exists only in the germ, however, that the Central European culture has the vocation to let unfold the germs to blossoms and fruits.

I give you an example. When the human being tries to further himself by means of meditation and concentration, by the intimate work on the development of his soul, then all soul forces take on another form than they have in the everyday life. Then the soul forces become as it were something different. If the human being works really busily on his development, by concentration of thought and other exercises as I described them in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, the human being begins to understand vividly, I would like to say to grasp vividly that he does no longer think at the moment, when he approaches the real spiritual world, as he has to think in the everyday life. In the everyday life, you think that the thoughts start living in you. If you face the sensory world, you know: that is me, and I have the thoughts. You connect one thought with the other and you thereby make a judgment, you combine the thoughts and let them separate. In my writing which is entitled The Threshold of the Spiritual World, I have compared somebody developing thoughts to one putting his head into a world of living beings.

The thoughts start internally prickling and creeping, they become, if I may say so, living beings, and we are no longer those who connect one thought to the other. One thought goes to the other, and frees itself from the other, the life of thoughts starts coming to life. Only when the thoughts start as it were becoming shells and containers which contract in a small room and extend then again largely, bag-like, then the beings of the higher hierarchies are able to slip into our thoughts, then only! So our own way of life, the whole thinking changes when we settle in the spiritual world. Then you start perceiving that on the other planets other beings live not human beings like on the earth. These other beings of the other planets, they penetrate as it were our living thinking, and we do no longer think about the beings of the other worlds and world spheres, but they live in us, they live combined with our selves. Thinking has become a different soul-force; it has developed from the point on which it stood to another soul-force, to that force which surpasses us and becomes identical with that world, the spiritual world.

Here we have an example of that what humankind has to conceive if it should develop the condition in which it now lives to a higher one for the earth future. This must really become common knowledge that such thinking is possible, and that only by such a thinking the human being can get to know the spiritual world. Not every human being has to become a spiritual researcher, just as little as everybody needs to become a chemist who wants to understand the achievements of chemistry. However, even if there can be few spiritual researchers, everybody can see the truth of that using unbiased thinking and understand what the spiritual researcher says. But it must become clear that there are unnoticed soul forces in the human being during life which when the human being goes through the gate of death become the same forces as an initiate has. When the human being goes through the gate of death, thinking becomes another soul-force: it intervenes in the being. It is as if antennas were perpetually put out, and the human being experiences the higher worlds which are in these antennas.

There was a witty man setting the tone in the 19th century, who contributed to the foundation of the materialistic world view: Ludwig Feuerbach.⁵ He wrote a book Thoughts on Death and Immortality, and it is interesting to read the following in a passage of this book. Feuerbach says there for instance: the summit human being is able to reach is his thoughts. He cannot develop higher soul forces than thinking. If he could develop higher soul forces than thinking, some effects and actions of the inhabitants of the star worlds would be able to penetrate his head instead of thoughts.—This seems so absurd to Ludwig Feuerbach that he regards everybody as mentally ill who speaks of such a thing at all. Imagine how interesting this is that a person—who just becomes a materialist because he rejects higher soul forces—gets on that the soul-force is that which represents the higher development of thinking. He even describes it, but he has such a dreadful fear of this development that just because it would have to be that way, as he suspects, he declares this soul-force a matter of impossibility, a fantasy.

The spiritual development in the 19th century comes so near to that what must be aimed at, but it is so far away at the same time because it is pushed, as it were, from the inside to that what should be aimed at, but cannot penetrate the depths, because it must regard it as absurd, because it is afraid of it really, fears it quite terrifically. As soon as it only touches what should come there, it is afraid. The Central European cultural life has to come back to itself, then we will attain that this Central European cultural life just develops and overcomes this fear. That has become too strong what wants to suppress this Central European spiritual light.

Some examples may also be mentioned. Hegel, the German philosopher, raised his voice in vain against the overestimation of Newton. If you today hear any physicist speaking—you can read up that what I say in many popular works,—then you will hear: Newton set the tone in the doctrine of gravitation, a doctrine through which the universe has only become explicable.—Hegel said: what has Newton done then, actually?—He dressed that in mathematical formulae what Kepler, the German astronomer, had expressed. Because nothing is included in Newton's works what Kepler did not already say. Kepler worked out of that view with which the whole soul works not only the head. However, Newton brought the whole in a system and thereby all kinds of mistakes came into being, for example, the doctrine of a remote effect of the sun which is not useful for the judgment of planetary motion. With Newton it is real that way, as if the sun had physical arms, and stretches these arms and attracts the planets.—However, the German philosopher warned in vain that the Central European culture would be flooded by the British culture in this field.

Another example: Goethe founded a theory of colours which originated completely from the Central European thinking and which you only understand if you recognise the connections of the physical with the spiritual a little bit. The world did not accept the Goethean theory of colours, but the Newtonian theory of colours.—Goethe founded a teaching of evolution. The world did not understand it, but it only accepted what Darwinism gave as a theory of evolution, as a theory of development in a popular-materialistic way. You may say: the Central European human being who is encircled by the Midgard Snake has to call in mind his forces. It concerns not to bend under that what rationalism and empiricism brought in.

You see the gigantic task; you see the significance of the ideal. One does not notice that at all because it still passes, I would like to say, in the current of phenomena if one asserts the Central European being. I do not know how many people noticed the following. When for reasons which were also mentioned yesterday in the public lecture⁶ our spiritual-scientific movement had to free itself from the specifically British direction of the Theosophical Society and when long ago as it were that happened beforehand in the spiritual realm what takes place now during the war—and preceded for good reasons,—I have discussed and explained the whole matter in those days on symptoms. There are brainless people who want to judge about what our spiritual-scientific movement is and have often said: well, also this Central European spiritual-scientific movement has gone out from that which it has got from the British theosophical movement.

I say the following not because of personal reasons, but because it characterises the situation, the whole nerve of the matter in a symptom, I would like to remind you of the fact that I held talks in Berlin which were printed then in my writing Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Spiritual Life, before I had any external interrelation with the British theosophical movement. In this writing nobody will find anything of western influence, but there everything is developed purely out of the Central European cultural life, from the spiritual, mystic movement of Master Eckhart up to Angelus Silesius. When I came to London the first time, I met one of the pundits of the theosophical society in those days, Mr. Mead.⁷ He had read the book which was immediately translated in many chapters into the English, and said that the whole theosophy would be contained in this book.—So far as people admitted that they could go along with us, so far we could unite with the whole object, of course; but nothing else was done.

What matters is that we reflect on our tasks of the Central European spiritual culture and that we never deviate from them. The one or the other sent the medals, certificates and the like back to the English. That is, nevertheless, less important. The important thing will be first to send back Newtonianism, the English coloured Darwinism, that means to release the Central European cultural life from it. Something is to be learnt from the way how—free of other influence—the Central European cultural life has made itself noticeable just as spiritual science. But you have to call to mind the essential part once and to stand firmly on this ground. It is very peculiar how mysteriously matters work.

Imagine the following case: Ernst Haeckel has taken care basically through his whole life to direct the German world view to the British thinking. The British thinking, the British empiricism flows into Ernst Haeckel's writings completely. He now rails against England the most. These are processes which take place in the subconscious of the soul of the Central European; these are also matters which are tightly connected in such a soul with karma. Consider please what it means that Haeckel places himself before the world and says, he himself has accomplished the first great action of the great researcher Huxley, while he stamped the sentence of the similarity of the human bone and the animal bone; that he, Haeckel, then has pointed to the big change in the view of the origin of the human being, and that he accepted nothing in the evolution theory but what came from the West.—Then one sees that he is urged now to rail against that what has constituted his whole intellectual life. It is the most tragic event of the present for such a soul which can be only thought. It is spiritual dynamite, because it bursts, actually, all supporting pillars on which such a soul stands.

Thus you can, actually, look into the depths of the present dreadful events. Only if you really consider the matters that way, are you able to consider them beyond a narrow horizon under which they are often considered today. You will be able to learn a lot—and this will be the nicest, at the same time the most humiliating and the loftiest teaching. For this teaching the prevailing active world spirit determined the Central European human being who is now embraced by the Midgard Snake, enclosed like in a fortress, surrounded by enemies everywhere. If the events become a symbol of the deepest world weaving and world being, then only we release ourselves from a selfish view of the present grievous, destiny-burdened events. Then we feel only that we must make ourselves worthy of that what, for instance, Fichte also spoke about in a time in which Germany experienced destiny-burdened days in his Addresses to the German Nation. There he wanted to speak, as he expresses it himself, “for Germans par excellence, of Germans par excellence,” and he spoke like one had to speak of the German par excellence to the German par excellence in those days. But like in those days Fichte spoke of the German mission, of the German range of tasks, we have today to experience the seriousness as the sunrise of the Central European consciousness within the containment by hating enemies. Indeed, a word which is found at the end of Fichte's addresses may be transformed: the spiritual world view must flow into the souls for the sake of humankind's welfare. The world spirit is looking at those who live in Central Europe that they become a mouthpiece for that what he has to say and bring to humankind in continuous revelation.

Without arrogance, without national egoism one can look at that which the sons of Germany and Central Europe have to defend with body, blood and soul generally. However, one has also to realise that. Then only from the immense sacrifices, which must be brought from the sufferings, must that result what serves the welfare of humankind. We stand at a significant threshold. One may characterise this threshold in the human development that one says: in future the abyss must be bridged between the physical and the spiritual worlds, between the physically living and the spiritually living human beings, between the earthly and that what lies beyond the earthly death. A time must come to us as it were when not only the souls are alive to us which walk about in physical bodies, but when we feel being integrated to that bigger world to which also the souls belong living between death and new birth disembodied in our world. The view of the human being has to turn beyond that which sensory-physical eyes are only able to see. Indeed, we are standing at the threshold of this new experience, of this new consciousness. What I said to you of the widening of the consciousness, of the ascending development of the consciousness, this must become a familiar view. The Central European culture prepares itself to make this a familiar view; it really prepares itself for that.

I have shown you how the best heads of the 19th century are afraid even today to get into their consciousness what the soul has in its depths; only its earthly soul forces cannot yet turn the attention to it. That thinking exists, into which the supersensible forces and supersensible beings extend, and this thinking also opens straight away after the human being has gone through the gate of death. The materialists are afraid of admitting that the human consciousness can be extended that really the barrier between the physical and the spiritual experience can fall, between that what lies on this side of death and beyond death. Because they are afraid, they reject it as something fantastic, dream-like, nay as mentally ill. However, one will recognise that the human being when he has gone through the gate of death develops only the forces which he also has now already between birth and death. Only they work in such depths that he does not behold them. They cause processes in him which are done, indeed, in him, but escape his attention in the everyday life. With the forces of thinking, feeling and willing, about which the human being knows, he cannot master the physical-earthly life. If the human being could only think, feel and will, as well as now he is able to do it, he would be never able to develop his body, for example, plastically that the brain matched its dispositions. Formative forces had to intervene there. However, they already belong to that what the soul does no longer perceive in the physical experience what belongs to a more encompassing consciousness than to the segment of consciousness which we have in the everyday life.

When the human being goes through the gate of death, he has not a lack of consciousness, but then he lives at first in a consciousness which is much richer and fuller of contents than the consciousness here in the physical life. Because from a more encompassing consciousness the body cuts out a piece and shows everything that can be shown only in a mirror. However, what is in the body and the human being bears through the gate of death that has an encompassing consciousness in itself. When the human being has gone through the gate of death, he is in this encompassing consciousness. He then does not have not enough, but on the contrary too much, too rich a consciousness. About that I have spoken in my Vienna cycle⁸ at Easter 1914. The human being has a richer consciousness after death. When the often described retrospect, caused by the etheric body, is over, he enters into a kind of sleeping state for a while. However, this is not a real sleeping state, but a state which is caused by the fact that the human being is in a richer consciousness than here on earth. As our eyes are blinded by overabundant light, the human being is blinded by the superabundance of consciousness, and he only must learn to orientate himself. The apparent sleep only consists in the fact that the human being orientates himself in this superabundance of consciousness that he then is able to lessen the superabundance of consciousness to that level he can already endure according to the results of his life. This is the essential part. We do not have not enough, but too much a consciousness, and we are awake when we have lessened our sense of direction to the level we can endure. It is reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the endurable level what takes place after death. You must get such matters clear in your mind by the details of the Vienna cycle.⁹

I want to illustrate that today only with the help of two obvious examples. I could state many such examples, because many of our friends have gone through the gate of death recently and also before. But as a result of characteristic circumstances, just by the fact that it concerns the last deaths, these considerations are more obvious. I would like to take the starting point from such examples to speak to you of that which makes our hearts bleed because it has happened in our own middle out of the circle of our spiritual-scientific movement.

Recently we have lost a dear friend (Sibyl Colazza) from the physical plane, and it was my task to speak words for the deceased at the cremation. There it turned out to me automatically by the impulses of the spiritual world, in such a case speaking clearly enough, as a necessity to characterise the qualities of this friendly soul. We stood—it was in Zurich—before the cremation of a dear member of our spiritual-scientific movement. Because her death occurred on a Wednesday evening and the cremation took place in the early Monday morning, it is comprehensible that the retrospect of the etheric body had already stopped. Actually, without having wanted it, I was induced by the spiritual world to begin and close the obituary with words which should characterise the internal being of this soul. This internal being of the friend deceased in the middle of life was real that I had to delve in this being and to create it spiritually by identification with this being. That means to let the thinking dive in the soul of the dead and that what wove in the soul of the dead let flow into the own thoughts. Then I got the possibility to say as it were in view of this soul how the soul was in life and how it is still now after death. It has turned out by itself to dress that in the following words. I had to say the subsequent words at the beginning and at the end of the cremation:

You walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes—
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being—
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words—
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.

The being of this soul appeared to me that way during the days before the cremation, when I identified myself with it, after the retrospect of the etheric body was over. The soul was not yet able to orientate itself in the superabundance of consciousness. It was sleeping as it were when the body was about to be cremated. The above-mentioned words were spoken in the beginning and at the end of the cremation. Then it happened that the flame—that what looks like the flame, but it is not—grasped the body, and while the body was grasped from that what looks like the flame what is, however, only the ascending warmth and heat, the soul became awake for a moment. Now I could notice that the soul looked back at the whole scene which had taken place among the human beings who were at the cremation. And the soul looked particularly back at that what had been spoken, then again it sank back into the superabundance of consciousness, you may say: in the unconsciousness. A moment later, one could perceive when such a looking back was there again. Then such moments last longer and longer, until finally the soul can orientate itself entirely in the superabundance of consciousness.

But one can recognise something significant from that. I could notice that the words spoken at the cremation lighted up the retrospect, because the words have come from the soul itself which had something awakening in them. From that you can learn that it is most important after death to overlook your own experience. You have to begin as it were with self-knowledge after death. Here in the life on earth you can miss self-knowledge, you can miss it so thoroughly that is true what a not average person, also a not average man of letters, but a famous professor of philosophy, Dr. Ernst Mach¹⁰—not Ferdinand Maack, I would not mention him—admits in his Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, a very famous work: as a young man I crossed a street and saw a person suddenly in a mirror who met me. I thought: what an unpleasant, disgusting face. I was surprised when I discovered that I had seen my own face in the profile.—He had seen his own face which he knew so little that he could make this judgment. The same professor tells how it has happened to him later when he was already a famous professor of philosophy that he got in a bus after a long trip, surely exhausted, there a man also got in from the other side—there was a big mirror opposite,—and he confesses his thoughts quite sincerely, while he says that he thought: what a disagreeable and down-and-out schoolmaster gets in there?—Again he recognised himself, and he adds: so I recognised the type better than the individual.—This is a nice example of how little the human being already knows himself by his external figure in life if he is not a flirtatious lady who often looks in the mirror.—But much less the human being knows the qualities of his soul. He passes those even more. He can become a famous philosopher of the present without self-knowledge. But the human being needs this self-knowledge when he has passed through the gate of death.

The human being must look back just at the point of his development from which he has gone through death, and he must recognise himself there. As little the human being, who stands in the physical life and looks back with the usual forces of life is able to see his own birth, as little this stands before the usual soul-forces—there is no one which can look back with the usual soul-forces at the physical birth,—in the same way it is necessary that the moment of death is permanently there at which one looks back. Death stands always before the soul's eyes as the last significant event. This death, seen from the other side, seen from beyond, is something different than that from the physical side. It is the most beautiful experience which can be seen from the other side, from the side of the life between death and new birth. Death appears as the glorious picture of the everlasting victory of the spiritual over the physical. Because death appears as such a picture, it wakes up the highest forces of the human nature permanently when this human nature lives in the spirituality between death and new birth. That is why the soul looking back or striving for looking back must look at itself at first. Just in these cases which we have gone through recently it was clear in which way the impulse originated to characterise this soul. The so-called living human being works together with the so-called dead that way. More and more such a relation will come from the so-called living to the so-called dead.

We experienced another case in the last time, that of our dear friend Fritz Mitscher. Even if Fritz Mitscher is less known to the local friends, nevertheless, he worked by his talks among many other anthroposophists, by that what he performed wonderfully from friend to friend by the way he familiarised himself with the anthroposophical life. His character has just to be regarded as exemplary, because he whose soul forces were directed to go through a learnt education was keen to take up and collect everything in himself according to his disposition of scholarship, to embrace it intimately in his soul-life, to insert it then in his spiritual-scientific world view. We need this kind of work, in particular, while we want to carry the spiritual-scientific ideals into future in a beneficial way. We need human beings, who try to penetrate the education of our time with understanding to immerse it in the stream of spiritual education; who offer that as it were as a sacrifice. Also there—and I speak only of matters that resulted from karma with necessity—karma caused that I had to speak at the cremation. Out of internal necessity it turned out that I had to characterise the being of our dear friend again in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech. I had to characterise this being:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life' s true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

In the following night the soul which was not yet able to orientate itself returned of own accord something like an answer what is connected with the verses, which were directed to its being at the cremation. Such words like those are spoken that the own soul writes them down really without being able to add a lot. The words are written down while the soul oriented itself to the other soul, out of the other soul. It was unclear to me at all that two stanzas are built in a quite particular way, until I heard the words from the friend's soul who had gone through the gate of death:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

I could only know now, why these stanzas are built that way; I spoke them exactly the same:

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

However, any “you” came back as “I,” any “your” came back as “my;” thus they returned transformed, expressed by the soul about its own being.

This is an example in which way the correspondence takes place, in which way the mutual relation already exists between the world here and the world there in the time after death. It is connected with the meaning of our spiritual-scientific movement that this consciousness penetrates the human souls. Spiritual science will give humankind the consciousness that the world of those who live between death and a new birth also becomes a world in which we know ourselves connected with them. Thus the world extends from the narrow area of reality in which the human being lives provisionally. However, this is connected intimately with that what should be in Central Europe. Somebody who has well listened finds just in the words directed to Fritz Mitscher's soul what is deeply connected with this meaning of our spiritual-scientific movement, because the words are spoken from a deep internal necessity:

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

Sometimes one may doubt, even if not in reality but concerning the interim period, whether the souls, which are embodied in the flesh here on earth, do really enough for the welfare of humans and earth what must necessarily be made concerning the spiritual comprehension of the world. However, somebody who is engaged completely in the spiritual-scientific movement may also not despair. For he knows that the forces of those who ascended into the spiritual worlds are effective in the current, in which we stand in this incarnation. In their previous lives those souls felt stronger here because they had taken up spiritual science in themselves. It is as if one communicates with a friend's soul who has gone through the gate of death if one says to him what one owes to the friend's force for the spiritual movement, if one is able to communicate as it were with the soul to remain united with its forces. We have it always among us, so that it always works on among us. We take up not only ideas, concepts and mental pictures in our spiritual science, that does not only concern, but we create a spiritual movement here on earth to which we really bring in the spiritual forces.

It suggests itself to us just at this moment, out of the sensations which perhaps inspire our local friends to turn the thoughts to the soul of somebody who has always dedicated his forces to this branch. We want to feel united also with him and his forces, after he has gone through the gate of death; therefore, we get up from our seats. The Leipzig friends know of which friendly soul I am speaking, and they have certainly turned their thoughts to this soul with moved hearts.

It was my responsibility to bring these ideas home to you today, while we were allowed to be together. These words were inspired through the consciousness that the grievous and destiny-burdened days in which we live must be replaced again with such which will pass in peace on earth in which the forces of peace will work. But a lot will be transformed, nay, must absolutely be transformed by that what happens now in the earthly life of humankind. We who bear witness to spiritual science must particularly keep in mind how much it depends on the fact that must take place on the ground—for which so much blood flows for which so often now souls go through the gate of death on which so many fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters are mourning—what can be done by those whose souls can be illumined through the forward-looking thoughts of spiritual science.

Those thoughts which come from the consciousness of the living relationship of the human soul with the spiritual world have to ascend from the earth into the spiritual heights. Souls now enter these spiritual worlds, and there will be spiritual forces which are produced just by our destiny-burdened days. Imagine how many people go through the gate of death in the prime of their lives in this time. Imagine that the etheric bodies of these human beings who go between their twentieth and thirtieth years, between their thirtieth and fortieth years through the gate of death are etheric bodies which could have supplied the bodies still for decades here in the physical life. These etheric bodies are separated from the physical bodies; however, they keep the forces still in themselves to work here for the physical world. These forces keep on existing in the spiritual worlds, separated from the unused etheric bodies of the souls which went through the gate of death. The bright spirituality of the unspent etheric bodies of the heroic fighters turns to the spiritual welfare and progress of humankind. However, that what flows down there has to meet the thoughts coming from the souls which—aware of spirit—they can have by spiritual science. Hence, we are allowed to summarise the thoughts of which we made ourselves aware today in some words showing the interrelation of the consciousness based on spiritual-scientific ideas with the present events. They express how for the next peacetime the room has to be filled with thoughts which have ascended from souls to the spiritual worlds, from souls which experienced spiritual science. Then that can flourish and yield fruit in the right sense what is gained with so big sacrifices, with blood and death in our time, if souls are found, aware of spirit, which turn their senses to the realm of spirits. That is why we are allowed to say taking into account the grievous and destiny-burdened days today:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Serbia refuses the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary
• 2. conversation with Eckermann, 1st September 1829
• 3. letter to Zelter, 20th February 1828
• 4. cf. the lecture On the Mystery Dramas “The Portal of Initiation” and “The Soul's Probation” 19th December 1911, Steiner's Collected Works volume 127
• 5. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872): the censorship confiscated his writing Thoughts on Death and Immortality (Nuremberg, 1830)
• 6. The Bearing Force of the German Spirit. Lecture of the same title in Berlin, 25th February 1915, in Steiner's Collected Works volume 185
• 7. George M. S. Mead: last private secretary of H. P. Blavatsky. He left the Theosophical Society later.
• 8. Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth, eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153
• 9. Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth, eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153
• 10. Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Austrian physicist and philosopher

Anyone who chooses to address the themes that I shall address tonight and again on the 27th knows that many people today long for a new element in contemporary spiritual life, an impulse that could revitalize and transform important aspects of our present civilization. Such longings live especially in those who try to look deeply into their own inner being, stirred by the various signs in contemporary society indicating that, unless present trends change, our civilization is heading for a general collapse. These signs themselves, of course, are a result of many characteristic features of the cultural stream of Western Europe over the last few centuries.

What may be said about the supersensible worlds today may therefore be said to every human soul. It may be said even to a hermit, a recluse, who has withdrawn from the world. Above all, however, it may be said to those who stand fully and firmly in life: for what we are talking about is every human being’s concern.

But this is not the only point of view from which I wish to speak today and again on the 27th. I want to talk about how, if we let them work upon our souls, the fundamental issues facing our civilization affect our attitudes. Those who feel called upon to lead their fellow human beings will find much that is inwardly disturbing here and much that makes them yearn for a renewal of certain aspects of spiritual and cultural life.

If we consider humanity’s present cultural, spiritual situation, we may trace it back to two fundamental issues. One shines out in contemporary science and in the way in which scientific life has developed during the last three or four hundred years. The other shines out from the practical sphere of life, which, naturally, has been largely influenced by modern science.

To begin with, let us look at what science has brought in its wake more recently. At this point, to avoid any misunderstanding, let me state clearly that anthroposophical spiritual science—as I shall represent it here—must in no way be thought of as opposing the spirit of modern science, whose triumphant and important successes the exponents of spiritual science fully recognize. Precisely because it wishes to enter without prejudice into the spirit of natural science, anthroposophical spiritual science must go beyond its confines and objectives. Natural science, with its scrupulous, specialized disciplines, provides exact, reliable information about much in our human environment. But, when a human soul asks about its deepest, eternal being, it receives no answer from natural science, least of all when science searches in all honesty and without prejudice. This is why we find many people today who out of an inner religious need—in some cases more, in others less—long for a renewal of the old ways of looking at the world.

The outer sciences, and anthropology in particular, already draw our attention to the fact that our forebears, centuries ago, knew nothing of what splits and fragments many souls today; namely, the disharmony between scientific knowledge on one hand and religious experience on the other. If we compare our situation today with what prevailed in ancient times, we find that the leaders of humanity who cultivated science then—however childlike their science might appear to us now—also kindled the religious spirit of their people. There was certainly no split between these two spiritual streams.

Today, many souls long for the return of something similar. Yet one cannot say that a renewal of ancient forms of wisdom—whether Chaldean, Egyptian, Indian, or any other—would benefit our present society. Those who advocate such a return can hardly be said to understand the significance of human evolution, for they overlook its real mission. They do not recognize that it is impossible today to tread the same spiritual paths that were trodden thousands of years ago. It is an intrinsic feature of human evolution that every age should have its own particular character. In every age, people must seek inner fulfillment or satisfaction in appropriate though distinctly different ways. Because we live and are educated in the twentieth century, our soul life today needs something different from what people living in distant antiquity once needed for their souls. A renewal of ancient attitudes toward the world would hardly benefit our present time, although knowledge of them could certainly help in finding our bearings. Familiarizing ourselves with such attitudes could also help us recognize the source of inner satisfaction in ancient times. Now, this inner satisfaction or fulfillment was, in fact, the result of a relationship to scientific knowledge fundamentally different from what we experience today.

There is a certain phenomenon to which I would like to draw your attention. To do so is to open myself to the accusation of being either paradoxical or downright fantastical. However, one can say many things today that, even a few years ago, would have been highly dangerous to mention because of the situation that prevailed then. The last few catastrophic years [1914–1918] have brought about a change in people’s thinking and feeling about such things. Compared with the habits of thought and feeling of the previous decade, people today are readier to accept the idea that the deepest truths might at first strike one as being paradoxical or even fantastical.

In the past, people spoke of something that today—especially in view of our scientific knowledge—would hardly be acceptable. This is something that will be discussed again in a relatively short time, probably even in educated, cultured circles. I refer to the Guardian of the Threshold. This guardian stands between the ordinary world of the senses, which forms the firm ground of orthodox science and is where we lead our daily lives, and those higher worlds in which the supersensible part of the human being is integrated into the spiritual world. Between the sensory world—whose phenomena we can observe and in which we can recognize the working of natural laws with our intellect—and that other world to which we belong with our inner being, between these two worlds, the ancients recognized an abyss. To attain true knowledge, they felt, that abyss had first to be crossed. But only those were allowed to do so who had undergone intensive preparation under the guidance of the leaders of the mystery centers. Today, we have a rather different view of what constitutes adequate preparation for a scientific training and for living in a scientific environment. In ancient times, however, it was firmly believed that an unprepared candidate could not possibly be allowed to receive higher knowledge of the human being. But why should this have been the case?

An answer to that question can be found only if insight is gained into the development of the human soul during the course of evolution. Such insight goes beyond the limits of ordinary historical research. Basically, present historical knowledge draws only on external sources and disregards the more subtle changes that the human psyche undergoes.

For instance, we do not usually take into account the particular condition of soul of those ancient peoples who were rooted in the primeval oriental wisdom of their times, decadent forms of which only survive in the East today. Fundamentally speaking, we do not realize how differently such souls were attuned to the world. In those days, people already perceived external nature through their senses as we do today. To a certain extent, they also combined all of the various sense impressions with their intellect. But, in doing so, they did not feel themselves separated from their natural surroundings. They still perceived an element of soul and spirit within themselves. They felt their physical organization permeated by soul and spirit. At the same time, they also experienced soul and spirit in lightning and in thunder, in drifting clouds, in stones, plants, and beasts. What they could divine within themselves, they could also feel out in nature and in the entire universe. To these human beings of the past, the whole universe was imbued with soul and spirit.

On the other hand, they lacked something that we, today, possess to a marked degree, that is, they did not have as pronounced and intensive a self-consciousness as we do. Their self-awareness was dimmer and dreamier than ours today. That was still the case even in ancient Greece. Whoever imagines that the condition of soul—the psychic organization—of the ancient Greeks was more or less the same as our own can understand only the later stages of Greek culture. During its earlier phases, the state of the human soul was not the same as it is today, for in those days there still existed a dim awareness of humanity’s kinship with nature. Just as a finger, if endowed with some form of self awareness, would feel itself to be a part of the whole human organism and could not imagine itself leading a separate existence—for then it would simply wither away—so the human being of those early times felt closely united with nature and certainly not separate from it.

The wise leaders of the ancient mystery schools believed that this awareness of humanity’s connection with nature represented the moral element in human self-consciousness, which must never be allowed to conceive of the world as being devoid of soul and spirit. They felt that if the world were to be conceived of as being without soul and spirit—as has now happened in scientific circles and in our daily lives—human souls would be seized by a kind of faintness. The teachers of ancient wisdom foresaw that faintness or swooning of the soul would occur if people adopted the kind of world-view we have today.

You might well wonder what the justification for saying such things is. To illustrate that there is a justification, I would like to take an example from history—just one out of many others that could have been chosen.

Today, we feel rightfully satisfied with the generally accepted system of the universe that no longer reflects what the eye can observe outwardly in the heavens, as it still did in the Middle Ages. We have adopted the Copernican view of the universe, which is a heliocentric one. During the Middle Ages, however, people believed that the earth rested in the center of the planetary system—in fact, in the center of the entire starry world—and that the sun, together with the other stars, revolved around the earth. The heliocentric system of the universe meant an almost complete reversal of previously held views. Today, we adhere to the heliocentric view as something already learned and believed during early school days. It is something that has become part of general knowledge and is simply taken for granted.

And yet, although we think that people in the Middle Ages and in more ancient times believed uniquely in the geocentric view as represented by Ptolemy, this was by no means always the case. We only need to read, for instance, what Plutarch wrote about the system of Aristarchus of Samos, who lived in ancient Greece in the pre-christian era. Outer historical accounts mention Aristarchus’ heliocentric view. Spiritual science makes the situation clear.

Aristarchus put the sun in the center of our planetary system, and let the earth circle around it. Indeed, if we take Aristarchus’ heliocentric system in its main outlines—leaving aside further details supplied by more recent scientific research—we find it in full agreement with our present picture of the universe. What does this mean? Nothing more than that Aristarchus of Samos merely betrayed what was taught in the old mystery centers. Outside these schools, people were left to believe in what they could see with their own eyes. And why should this have been so? Why were ordinary people left with the picture of the universe as it appears to the eyes? Because the leaders of those schools believed that before anyone could be introduced to the heliocentric system, they had to cross an inner threshold into another world—a world entirely different from the one in which people ordinarily live. People were protected from that other world in their daily lives by the invisible Guardian of the Threshold, who was a very real, if supersensible, being to the ancient teachers. According to their view, human beings were to be protected from having their eyes suddenly opened to see a world that might appear bereft of soul and spirit.

But that is how we see the world today! We observe it and create our picture of the realms of nature—the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms—only to find this picture soulless and spiritless. When we form a picture of the orbits and the movements of the heavenly bodies with the aid of calculations based on telescopic observations, we see a world empty of soul and spirit. The wise teachers of the mystery centers knew very well that it was possible to see the world in that way. But they transmitted such knowledge to their pupils only after the pupils had undergone the necessary preparations, after they had undergone a severe training of their will life. Then, they guided their pupils past the Guardian of the Threshold—but not until they were prepared. How was this preparation accomplished? Pupils had not only to endure great deprivations, but for many years they were also taught by their teachers to follow a moral path in strict obedience. At the same time, their will life was severely disciplined to strengthen their self-consciousness. And only after they had thus progressed from a dim self-consciousness to a more conscious one were they shown what lay ahead of them on the other side of the threshold: namely, the world as it appears to us in outer space according to the heliocentric system of the universe. At the same time, of course, they were also taught many other things that, to us, have merely become part of our general knowledge of the world.

Pupils in ancient times were thus carefully prepared before they were given the kind of knowledge that today is almost commonplace for every schoolboy and schoolgirl. This shows how times and whole civilizations have changed. Because external history knows nothing of the history of the development of the human soul, we tend to be under a misapprehension if we go only by what we read in history books.

What was it then, that pupils of the ancient mystery centers brought with them before crossing the threshold to the supersensible world? It was knowledge of the world that, to a certain extent, had arisen from their instinctual life, from the drives of their physical bodies. By means of those drives or instincts, they saw the external world ensouled and filled with spirit. That is now known as animism. They could feel how closely a human being was related to the outer world. They felt that their own spirit was embedded in the world spirit. At the same time, in order to look on the world as we learn to do already during our early school days, those ancient people had to undergo special preparations.

Nowadays, one can read all kinds of things about the Guardian of the Threshold—and the threshold to the spiritual world—in books whose authors take it upon themselves to deal with the subject of mysticism, often in dilettantish ways, even if their publications have an air of learnedness about them. Indeed, one often finds that, the more nebulous the mysticism, the greater attraction it seems to exert on certain sections of the public. But what I am talking about here, what is revealed to the unbiased spiritual investigator concerning what the ancients called the threshold to the spiritual world, is not the kind of nebulous mysticism that many sects and orders expound today and many people seek on the other side of the threshold. Rather, it is the kind of knowledge which has become a matter of general education today.

At the same time, we can see how we look at the world today with a very different self-consciousness than people did in more ancient times. The teachers of ancient wisdom were afraid that, unless their pupils’ self-consciousness had been strengthened by a severe training of the will, they would suffer from overwhelming faintness of soul when they were told, for example, that the earth was not stationary but revolved around the sun with great speed, and that they too were circling around the sun. This feeling of losing firm ground from under their feet was something that the ancients would not have been able to bear. It would have reduced their self-consciousness to the level of a swoon. We, on the other hand, learn to stand up to it already in childhood.

We almost take for granted now the kind of world-view into which the people of ancient times were able to penetrate only after careful preparation. Yet we must not allow ourselves to have nostalgic feelings for ancient ways of living, which can no longer fulfill the present needs of the soul. Anthroposophical science of the spirit, of which I am speaking, is a renewal neither of ancient Eastern wisdom nor of old Gnostic teachings, for if such teachings were to be given today, they would have only a decadent effect. Spiritual science, on the other hand, is something to be found by an elementary creative power that lives in every human soul when certain paths that I will describe presently are followed. First, however, I want to draw attention to the fact that ordinary life, and science in general, already represents a kind of threshold to the supersensible world or, at any rate, to another world.

People living in ancient times had a quite different picture of life on the other side of the threshold. But what do we hear, especially from our most conscientious natural scientists, who feel thoroughly convinced of the rightness of their methods? We are told that natural science has reached the ultimate limits of knowledge. We hear such expressions as “ignorabimus,” “we shall never know,” which—I hasten to add—is perfectly justified as long as we remain within the bounds of natural science. Ancient peoples might have lacked our intense self-consciousness, but we are lacking in other ways.

To what do we owe our intense self-consciousness? We received it through the ways of thinking and looking at the world that entered our civilization with people like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Bruno, and others. The works of such thinkers not only provided us with a certain amount of knowledge but, through them, modern humanity underwent a distinct training of soul life. Everything that the mode of thinking developed by these personalities has achieved in more recent times tends to cultivate the powers of intellect. There is also a strong emphasis on scientific experimentation and on accurate, conscientious observation. With instruments such as the telescope, the microscope, X-rays, and the spectroscope, we examine the phenomena around us and we use our intellect mainly in order to extract from those phenomena their fundamental and inherent natural laws. But what are we actually doing when we are engaged in observing and experimenting? Our methods of working allow only the powers of reasoning and intellect to speak.

It is simply a fact that, during the last centuries, it has been primarily the intellect that has been tapped to promote human development. And a characteristic feature of the intellect is that it strengthens human self-consciousness, hardening it and making it more intense. Due to this hardening, we are able to bear what an ancient Greek could not have born; namely, the consciousness of being moved around the sun on an earth that has no firm ground to uphold it. At the same time, because of this strengthened self-consciousness that has led to the picture of a world devoid of soul and spirit, we are deprived of the kind of knowledge for which our souls nevertheless yearn. We can see the world with its material phenomena—its material facts—as the ancients could never have seen it without appropriate preparation in the mystery centers, but we can no longer perceive a spiritual world surrounding us. This is why conscientious scientists confess “ignorabimus” and speak of limits to what we can know.

As human beings, we stand in the world. And, if we reflect on ourselves, we must inevitably realize that, whenever we ponder various things or draw conclusions based on experiment and observation, something spiritual is acting in us. And we must ask ourselves, “Is that spirit likely to live in isolation from the world of material phenomena like some kind of hermit? Does that spirit exist only in our physical bodies? Can it really be that the world is empty of soul and spirit, as the findings of the physical and biological sciences would have us believe and, from their point of view, quite rightly so?”

This is the situation in which we find ourselves at the present time. We are facing a new threshold. Although that circumstance has not yet penetrated the consciousness of humanity as a whole, awareness of it in human souls is not completely absent either. People might not be thinking about it but, in the depths of their souls, it lives nevertheless as a kind of presentiment. What goes on in the realm of the soul remains mostly unconscious. But out of that unconsciousness arises a longing to cross the threshold again, to add knowledge of the spiritual world to present self-consciousness.

No matter what name we might wish to give these things—that in most cases are felt only dimly—they nevertheless belong to the deepest riddles of our civilization. There is a sense that a spiritual world surrounding all human beings must be found again and that the soulless, spiritless world of which natural science speaks cannot be the one with which the human soul can feel inwardly united.

How can we rediscover the kind of knowledge that also generates a religious mood in us? That is the great question of our present time. How can we find a way of knowing that also, at the same time, fulfills our deepest need for an awareness of the eternal in the human soul? Modern science has achieved great and mighty things. Nevertheless, any unprejudiced person must acknowledge that it has not really produced solutions, but rather—one would almost have to say—the very opposite. Yet we should accept even this both willingly and gladly.

What can we do with the help of modern science? Does it help us to solve the riddles of the human soul? Hardly, but at least it prompts us to ask our questions at a deeper level. Contemporary science has put before us the material facts in all purity; that is, free from what a personal or subjective element might introduce in the form of soul and spirit. But, just because of this, we are made all the more intensely aware of the deep questions living in our souls. It is a significant achievement of contemporary science to have confronted us with new, ever deepening riddles. The great question of our time is therefore: what is our attitude toward these deepened riddles? What we can learn from the spirit of a Haeckel, Huxley, or Spencer does not make it possible to solve these riddles; it does, however, enable us to experience the great questions facing contemporary humanity more intensely than ever before.

This is where spiritual science—the science of the spirit—comes into its own, for its aim is to lead humanity, in a way that corresponds to its contemporary character, over the new threshold into a spiritual world. How this is possible for a modern person—as distinct from the man or woman of old—I should now like to indicate, if only in brief outline. You can find more detailed descriptions in my books How to Know Higher Worlds and Occult Science, and in other publications of mine.

First, I would like to draw attention to the point of departure for anyone who wishes to engage in spiritual research or become a spiritual researcher. It is an inner attitude with which, due to present circumstances, a modern person is not likely to be in sympathy at all. It is an attitude of soul that I would like to call intellectual modesty or humility. Despite the fact that the intellect has developed to a degree unprecedented in human evolution during the past three or four hundred years, a wouldbe spiritual researcher must nevertheless achieve intellectual humility or modesty. Let me clarify what I mean by using a comparison. Imagine that you put a volume of Shakespeare’s plays into the hands of a five-year-old. What would the child do? The child would play with the book, turn its pages, perhaps tear them. He or she would not use the book as it was meant to be used. But, ten-to-fifteen years later, that young person would have a totally different relationship to the same volume. He or she would treat the book according to its intended purpose. What has happened? Faculties that were dormant in the child have meanwhile developed through natural growth, upbringing, and education. During those ten to fifteen years, the child has become an altogether different soul being.

Now, an adult who has achieved intellectual humility, despite having absorbed the scientific climate of the environment by means of the intellect, might say: my relationship to the sense world may be compared with the relationship of a five-year-old child to a volume of Shakespeare’s plays. Faculties that are capable of further development might lie dormant within me. I too could grow into an altogether different being as far as my soul and spirit are concerned and understand the sense world more deeply.

Nowadays, however, people do not like to adopt an attitude of such intellectual modesty. Habits of thought and the psychological response to life as it is steer us in a different direction. Those who have gone through the usual channels of education might enter higher education, where it is no longer a question of deepening inner knowledge and of developing faculties of will and soul. For, during a scientific training of that kind, a person remains essentially at the level of his or her inherited capacities and what ordinary education can provide. Certainly, science has expanded tremendously by means of experimentation and observation, but that expansion has only been achieved by means of those intellectual powers that already exist in what is usually called modern culture. In furthering knowledge, the aim of science has not been to cultivate new faculties in the human being. The thought would never have occurred that anyone already in possession of our present means of knowledge, as given both by ordinary life and by science, might actually be confronting the world of nature in a way similar to how a five-year old responds to a volume of Shakespeare. Allowance has not been made for the possibility that new faculties of cognition could develop that would substantially alter our attitude toward the external world. That such new faculties are possible, however, is precisely the attitude required of anyone who wishes to investigate the spiritual world of which anthroposophy, the science of the spirit, speaks. Here, the aim is to develop human faculties inherent in each person. However, in order to bring these potentials to a certain stage of development, a great deal must be experienced first.

I am not talking about taking extraordinary or even superstitious measures for the sake of this soul development. Rather, I am talking about the enhancement of quite ordinary, well known faculties that play important roles both in daily life and in the established sciences. However, although those faculties are being applied all the time, they are not developed to their full extent during the life between birth and death. There are many such faculties, but I would like to characterize today the further development of only two of them. More detailed information can be found in the books mentioned previously.

First of all, there is the faculty of remembering or memory, which is an absolute necessity in life. It is generally realized—as anyone with a particular interest in these matters will know from books on psychology and pathology—how important it is for a healthy soul life that a person’s memory should be unimpaired and that our memory should allow us to look back over our past life right down to early childhood. There must not exist periods in our past from which memory pictures cannot rise to bring events back again. If someone’s memory were to be completely erased, the ego or I of such a person would be virtually destroyed. Severe soul sickness would befall such an individual. Memory gives us the possibility for past experiences to resurface, whether in pale or in vivid pictures. It is this faculty, this force, that can be strengthened and developed further. What is its characteristic quality? Without it, experiences flit by without leaving any lasting trace. Also, without memory, the concepts formed through such experiences would be only fleeting ones. Our memory stores up such experiences for us (here, I can give only sketchy indications; in my writings and published lectures you will find a scientifically built-up treatment of memory).

Memory gives duration to otherwise fleeting impressions. This quality of memory is grasped as a first step in applying spiritual-scientific methods. It is then intensified and developed further through what I have called meditation and concentration in the books that I have mentioned. To practice these two activities, a student, having sought advice from someone experienced in these matters or having gained the necessary information from appropriate literature, will focus consciousness on certain interrelated mental images that are clearly defined and easy to survey. They could be geometrical or mathematical patterns that one can clearly view and that one is certain are not reminiscences from life, emerging from one’s subconscious.

Whatever is held in consciousness in this way must result from a person’s free volition. One must in no way allow oneself to become subject to auto suggestion or dreaming. One contemplates what one has chosen to place in the center of one’s consciousness and holds it for a longer period of time in complete inner tranquility. Just as muscles develop when engaged in a particular type of work, so certain soul forces unfold when the soul is engaged in the uncustomary activity of arresting and holding definite mental images. It sounds simple enough. But, in fact, not only are there people who believe that, when speaking about these things, a scientist of the spirit is drawing on obscure influences, but there are others who believe it simple to achieve the methods that I am describing here, methods that are applied in intimate regions of one’s soul life.

Far from it! These things take a long time to accomplish. Of course, some find it easier to practice these exercises, but others have to struggle much harder. Naturally, the depth of such meditation is far more important than the length of time spent over it. Whatever the case might be, however, one must persevere in one’s efforts for years. What one practices in one’s soul in this way is truly no easier than what one does in a laboratory, in a lecture hall for physics, or an astronomical observatory. It is in no way more difficult to fulfill the demands imposed by external forms of research than it is to practice faithfully, carefully, and conscientiously what spiritual research requires to be cultivated in the human soul over a period of many years.

Nevertheless, as a consequence of such practice, certain inner soul forces, previously known to us only as forces of memory, eventually gain in strength and new soul powers come into existence. Such inner development enables one to recognize clearly what the materialistic interpretation is saying about the power of memory when it maintains that the human faculty of remembering is bound to the physical body and that, if there is something wrong with the constitution of the nervous system, memory is weakened, as it is likewise in old age. Altogether, spiritual faculties are seen to depend on physical conditions. As far as life between birth and death is concerned, this is not denied by spiritual science. For whoever develops the power of memory as I have described knows through direct insight how ordinary memory, which conjures up pictures of past experiences before the soul, does indeed depend on the human physical body. On the other hand, the new soul forces now being developed become entirely free and independent of the physical body. The student thereby experiences how it becomes possible to live in a region of the soul in such a way that one can have supersensible experiences, just as one has sense-perceptible experiences in the physical body.

I would now like to give you an explanation of the nature of these supersensible experiences.

Human life undergoes rhythmical changes between waking and sleeping. The moments of falling asleep and awakening, and the time spent in sleep, are interspersed with waking life. What happens in this process? When we fall asleep, our consciousness is dimmed down, in most cases to a zero point. Dreams sometimes “bubble up” from half-conscious depths. Obviously, we are alive during this condition for, otherwise, as sleepers, we would have to pass away every night and come to life again every morning. The human soul and spirit are alive but, during sleep, our consciousness is diminished. This diminution of consciousness has to do with our inability to employ our senses between when we fall asleep and when we wake up, and also with our lack of access to impulses that derive from our physical organs of will.

This dimming down of consciousness can be overcome by those who have developed the new higher faculty of which I have spoken of their given faculty of memory. Such people reach a condition, as they do in sleep, in which they no longer need eyes in order to see, nor ears in order to hear. They no longer need to feel the physical warmth of their environment, nor to use will impulses that under ordinary conditions work through the muscles and through the human physical organization generally. They are able to switch off everything connected with the physical body. And yet their consciousness does not diminish as is usually the case in sleep. On the contrary, they are able to surrender themselves in full consciousness to conditions normally pertaining only to the sleeping state. A spiritual researcher remains completely conscious. Just as a sleeping person is surrounded by a dark world of nothingness, so a spiritual researcher is surrounded by a world that has nothing to do with the sense world but is nevertheless as full and intense as the sense world. In the waking state, we confront the sense world with our senses. But when they are able to free themselves from the physical body in full consciousness—that is, when they can enter, fully consciously, the state normally gone through between falling asleep and waking up—spiritual researchers confront a supersensible world.

They thus learn to recognize that a supersensible world always surrounds us, just as the sense world surrounds us in ordinary life. Yet there is a significant difference. In the sense world, we perceive outer facts through our senses and, through those facts, we also become aware of the existence of other beings. Outer facts predominate while beings or existences make their presence felt within the context of these outer facts. But, when the supersensible world is opened to us, we first encounter beings. As soon as our eyes are opened to behold the supersensible world, real beings surround us. To begin with, we cannot call this world of concrete and real supersensible beings in which we now find ourselves a world of facts. We must gain such facts for ourselves by means of yet something else.It is an achievement of the modern anthroposophical science of the spirit that it enables human beings to cross a threshold once more and enter a world different from what usually surrounds us.

After one has learned to experience the state of independence from the physical body, one finally comes to realize not only that the soul during sleep lifts itself out of the body only to return to it upon awakening, but also that this return is caused by the soul’s intense desire for the physical body. Supersensible cognition enables us to recognize the true nature of the soul, whose re-entry into the physical body upon awakening is due to a craving for the body as it lies asleep. Furthermore, if one can make this true conception of falling asleep and awakening one’s own, one’s understanding expands to such an extent that one eventually learns to know the soul before it descends—through conception and birth—from the spiritual world into the physical body offered by heredity.

Once one has grasped the nature of the human soul, and has learned to follow it outside the body between falling asleep and waking up—at the same time recognizing the less powerful forces pulling it back into the body lying in the bed—then one also begins to know what happens to the soul when it is freed from the body and passes through the portal of death. One learns to understand that the reason why the human soul has only a dim consciousness during sleep is because it has a strong desire to return to the body. It is this craving for the body that can dull human consciousness into a state of total impotence during the time between falling asleep and awakening. On the other hand, once the soul has passed through death, this desire for the physical body is no longer there.

And once, through the newly developed faculty of enhanced memory, we have learned to know the human soul, we can follow its further progress beyond the portal of death. One then learns to recognize that, since it is no longer bound to a physical body and is therefore freed from the desire to return to it, the soul is now in a position to retain a consciousness of its own while in the spiritual world, a consciousness that differs from what is given through the instrument of the physical body. One comes to recognize that there were forces in the soul before birth that drew it toward a physical body while it was still in the spiritual world. That physical body, however, was as yet quite indeterminate; it cast a certain light toward the descending soul. Then one begins to see how the soul develops a strong desire to re-enter physical, earthly life. One learns to know—but in a different language—the eternal being of the human soul. This being becomes clear and, through it, one learns to understand something else as well.

One learns to cognize in pictures the soul’s eternal being as it goes through births and deaths. I have called those pictures imaginations. And one comes to recognize that, just as the body belongs to the sensory world, so too does the soul belong to a supersensible world; and that, just as one can describe the sense world with the help of the physical body, so can one likewise describe the supersensible world with its spirituality. One comes to know the supersensible world in addition to the sensory world. But, in order to attain this faculty, it is necessary to cultivate another soul quality, the mere mention of which—as a way of gaining higher knowledge—is enough to make a modern scientist wince. Certainly, one can fully respect the reasons for this, but what I have to tell you about the enhancement of this second soul faculty is nevertheless true.

As I said, the first power to be developed is the faculty of memory, which then becomes an independent force. The second power to be developed is the power of love. In ordinary life, between birth and death, love works through the physical organism. It is intimately connected with the instincts and drives of human nature and only in sublime moments does something of this love free itself from human corporeality. In those moments, we experience being freed from our narrow selves. Such love is a state of true freedom, in which one does not surrender to inborn instincts, but rather forgets the ordinary self and orients one’s actions and deeds toward outer needs and facts. It was because of this intimate connection between love and freedom that I dared to state publicly in my book, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path (first published in 1892 and in which I tried to found a new sociology in philosophical terms), that, far from making people blind, love makes them see; that is, free. Love leads us beyond what otherwise blinds us by making us dependent on personal needs. Love allows us to surrender to the outer world. It removes whatever would hinder our acting in full freedom. The modern spiritual investigator must therefore develop such love—love that shines actively into ordinary life in truly free deeds. Gradually, love must be spiritualized, in the same way as the faculty of remembering had to be spiritualized. Love must become purely a power of the soul. It must make the human individual as a soul being entirely independent of the body, so that he or she can love free from blood ties and from the physical organization as a whole. Love of this kind brings about a fusion of the self with the external world, with one’s fellow human beings. Through love, one becomes one with the world.

This newly developed power of love has another consequence. It makes us “co-workers” in the spiritual world that we have been able to enter through the newly developed faculty of memory. At this point, we learn to know real beings as spiritual facts. When describing the external world, we now no longer speak of our present planetary system as having originated from some primeval cosmic nebula and of its falling into dust again—or into the sun again—in some remote future. We do not contemplate nature as being thus alienated from the world of spirit. And, if people today are honest, they cannot help becoming aware of the dichotomy between what is most precious in them on one hand, and the interpretation of the world given by natural science on the other. How often has one come across oppressed souls saying, “Natural science speaks of a world of pure necessity. It tells us that the world originated from a primeval mist. This condensed into the natural kingdoms—the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms and, finally, also the human kingdom. And yet, deep inside us, something rises that surely is of fundamental importance and value, namely, our moral and religious world. This stands before our souls as the one thing that makes us truly human. But an honest interpretation of the world of natural science tells us that this earth, on which we stand with our moral ideas like hermits in the universe, will disintegrate, will fall back again into the sun, it will end up as one vast cinder. A large cemetery is all that will be left and all of our ideals will be buried there.”

This is the point at which spiritual science enters, not just to grant new hope and belief, but resting entirely on its own sure knowledge, developed as I have already described. It states that the natural-scientific theory of the world offers only an abstract point of view. In reality, the world is imbued with spirit, and permeated by supersensible beings. If we look back into primeval times, we find that the material substances of the earth originated in the spiritual world, and also that the present material nature of the earth will become spirit again in future times. Just as, at death, the human being lays aside the physical body to enter, consciously, a spiritual world, so will the material part of the earth fall away like a corpse and what then is soul and spirit on earth and in human beings will arise again in future times, even though the earth will have perished. Christ’s words—taken as a variation of this same theme—ring true: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Human beings thus can say, “Everything that our eyes can see will perish, just as the body, the transient part of the human individuality, does. But there will rise again from this dying away what lived on earth as morality. Human beings will perceive a spiritual world around them; they will live themselves into a spiritual world.”

In this way, deepening knowledge with spirit, anthroposophical spiritual science meets the needs of our present civilization differently from external science. It deepens knowledge and cognition to the level of deeply felt piety, of religious consciousness, giving human beings spiritual self-awareness.

Fundamentally speaking, this is the great question faced by contemporary civilization. But, as long as human beings lack the proper inner stability, as long as they feel themselves to be material entities floating about in some vacuum, they cannot develop a strong inner being, nor play a vigorous part in social life. Outer planning and organization, directly affecting social conditions, must be created by people themselves. Such outer social conditions are of great significance to the questions of present and future civilization—questions that lead us to search for true consciousness of our humanity. But only those with inner stability, which has been granted them through being anchored in the spirit, will be able to take their proper place in social life.

Thus, a first question is, how can people place themselves into present social conditions with inner firmness and certainty regarding matters of daily life? A second question concerns human relationships or what we could call our attitude toward our fellow human beings: the way in which each person meets his or her fellow human being. Here we enter a realm where, no less than in the realm of knowledge, modern civilization has brought us new riddles rather than new solutions. Only think of how the achievements of modern natural science have expanded the scope of technology! The technology, commerce, and transportation that surround us every hour of the day are all offspring of this new, grandiose way of looking at the sense-perceptible world. And yet we have not been able to find an answer in this age of technology to what has become a new, vital question; namely, how are we, as human beings, to live in this complex technical, commercial and traffic-ridden world? This question has become a by-product of modern civilization itself. The fact that it has not yet been resolved can be seen in the devastating political movements, the destructiveness of which increases the farther east we go, even right into Asia. Due to a working out of human instincts, nothing noble or elevating is being put into the world there. Rather, because the burning questions of our day have not been solved, havoc and destruction rule the day. There is no doubt that modern civilization would perish if what is emerging in the East were to spread worldwide. What is lurking there, intent on bringing about the downfall of modern civilization, is far more horrific than people living in the West can imagine. But it also testifies to the fact that something else is needed for the solution of the problem of contemporary civilization.

It is not enough for us to work within the bounds of modern technology, which is a child of the modern world outlook. We must also work toward attainment of another possibility. Human beings have become estranged from their old kinship to nature. In their practical activities and in their professional lives, they have been placed into a soulless, spiritually empty, mechanistic world. From cooperating with nature, they have been led to operating machines and to dealing with spiritless and mechanical means of transportation. We must find the way again to give them something to take the place of the old kinship to nature. And this can only be a world-view that speaks to our souls with a powerful voice, making us realize that there is more to human life than what can be experienced outwardly. Human beings must become inwardly certain that they belong to a supersensible world, to a world of soul and spirit, that always surrounds them. They must see that it is possible to investigate that world with the same scientific accuracy as the physical world, which is being studied and explored by outer science and which has led to this technological age. Only such a new science of the supersensible can become the foundation for a new, right relationship between people. Such a science not only will allow them to see in their fellow human beings what appears during the life between birth and death, but will make them recognize and respect what is immortal and eternal in human beings through their humanity’s close links with a spiritual world. Such a deepened knowledge will surely bring about a change for the better in how one individual perceives another.

Here is yet a third point of importance. It is the recognition that human life is not fully exhausted within the boundaries of birth and death, as the “ideology of the proletariat” would have us believe. Rather, what we are doing every moment here on earth is of significance not only for the earth, but for the whole of the universe. When the earth will have passed away, what we have carried into our daily tasks out of moral, soul-and-spiritual depths will arise to live in another world. Transformed, it will become part of a general spiritualization. Thus anthroposophical spiritual science approaches the problems of our time in a threefold way. It enables us to become aware of our spirituality. It helps us see in our fellows other beings of soul and spirit. And it helps us recognize that our earthly deeds, however humble and practical, have a cosmic and universal spiritual meaning.

In working towards these aims, spiritual science has been active not only in theory; it has also entered the sphere of practical life. In Stuttgart, there is the Waldorf school, which was founded by Emil Molt and which I was asked to direct. It is a school whose pedagogical principles and methods are based on insights gained through the science of the spirit I am speaking of here. Furthermore, in Dornach, near Basel, lies the Goetheanum, which houses our High School of Spiritual Science. This Goetheanum in Dornach is still incomplete, but we were already able to hold a large number of courses in the unfinished building during the autumn of last year.

Some time ago, on a previous occasion, I was also asked to speak about spiritual science here in Holland. At that time, I could say only that it existed as a new method of research and that it was something inherently alive in every human being. Since then, spiritual science has taken on a different form. It has begun to establish its own High School in Dornach. Last spring, I was able to show how what I could only sketch tonight as the beginning of spiritual-scientific research can be applied in all branches of science. On that occasion, I showed doctors and medical students how the results of spiritual science, gained by means of strict and exact methods, can be applied to therapeutics. Medical questions, which can often touch on other problems related to general human health, are questions that every conscientious doctor recognizes as belonging to the facts of our present civilization. They have become riddles because modern science will not rise from observing only what is sense perceptible and widen its investigations to include the supersensible, the spiritual world. During that autumn course, specialists drawn from many fields—including law, mathematics, history, sociology, biology, physics, chemistry, and pedagogy—tried to show how all branches of science can be fructified by anthroposophical spiritual science. Representatives of the arts were also present to demonstrate how spiritual science was inspiring them to discover new developments in their professions. Then there were others, too, drawn from such spheres of practical life as commerce and industry. These could show that spiritual science not only lifted them out of the old routines that led the world into the catastrophe of the last war, but also that it can help relate people to practical life in a higher sense. The courses were meant to show how spiritual science, far from fostering dilettantism or nebulous mysticism, is capable of entering and fructifying all of the sciences and that, in doing so, it is uplifting and linking each separate branch to become a part of a comprehensive spiritual-supersensible conception of the human being.

I shall have more to say next time about the practical applications of spiritual science, particularly with regard to education and the social question. Once I have done so, you will appreciate that anthroposophical spiritual science is not striving for some vague mysticism, removed from daily life, but wishes to grasp the spirit consciously. It wishes to do so for two main reasons—first, because it is essential for human beings to become aware of how they are related to their true spiritual origin and, second, because spiritual powers are intent on intervening in the practical and material affairs of daily life. Anyone, therefore, who tends to combine a life devoid of spirit with a truly practical life, or combine a spiritual attitude with isolation from daily life, has certainly not grasped the real nature of anthroposophical spiritual science, nor recognized the paramount needs of our present age.

We have found people who understand what the High School of Spiritual Science seeks to accomplish for the benefit of humanity along the lines already indicated. We have found people who appreciate the necessity of working in this way in view of the great problems facing our present civilization. Yet, due to difficult local circumstances, the completion of the Goetheanum has been greatly delayed. This building is still in an unfinished state and its completion will largely depend on continued help from friends who have the heart and the understanding to give their support for the sake of human evolution, so needed today. Nevertheless, despite these difficulties, more than a thousand people were assembled at the opening of our courses. Visitors can see in Dornach that spiritual science seeks to work out of the whole human being, that it does not wish to appeal only to the head. They can witness that it seeks to move ahead not only through what can be gained by experimentation and observation, but also by striving for truly artistic expression, free from empty symbolism or pedantic allegory. This is the reason why we could not possibly use just any arbitrary style for our building in Dornach. Its architecture, too, had to flow from the same sources from which spiritual science itself flows. Because it endeavors to draw on the whole human being, spiritual science is less one-sided than the other sciences, which work only on the basis of experimentation and observation. It is as exact as any other science could be and, in addition, wants to speak to the whole human being.

About the practical aspects, I shall have more to say next time. Today, I wanted to prepare the ground by showing how spiritual research leads us right into our present situation. When dealing with the practical side, I hope to show how our times are in need of what anthroposophical spiritual science has to offer. Such spiritual science seeks to complement the conscientious and methodical research into the world of matter, which it acknowledges more than any other spiritual movement. It is also capable of leading to a religious deepening and to artistic impulses, as did the old, instinctive science of the mystery centers, renewal of which, however, would no longer serve our present needs.

When dealing with the practical aspects, I shall have to show that spiritual science is in no way either antireligious or anti- Christian. Like all other true and religious aspirations toward an inner deepening, spiritual science strives toward the spirit.

This gives us the hope that those who still oppose spiritual science will eventually find their way into it because it strives toward something belonging to all people. It strives toward the spirit, and humanity needs the spirit.

Today, seeing that from a living grasp of the anthroposophical world-conception there results something for the whole human being, for man in his totality, we would like to put forward something taken from the art of recitation. As I have mentioned already, there is a certain fear in artistic circles, especially among poets, reciters and so on, that everything approaching the conceptual, everything which takes a “scientific” form, is really foreign to art – and actually inimical to the original and vital in it, choking instinctive and intuitive art. And as regards that intellectuality which has arisen in the course of recent centuries of human development this is absolutely the case. Yet this very intellectuality is also connected with an inclination toward what is present in external, physical reality: our very languages have gradually adopted a certain form – what might be called a tendency towards materialism. In our words and their meaning lies something which points directly to the external sense-world. Hence this intellectuality, which possesses only picture-being and is all the more authentic the less it contains of life and reality from man’s inner nature – this intellectuality will indeed have little in common with the primordial vitality that must lie at the root of all art. But the reinvigoration of spiritual life to which Anthroposophy aspires means precisely the reimmersing of intellect in the primordial forces of man’s soul life. The artistic will not then appear in the so-much-dreaded gloom of intellectual pallor; imagination will not be drawn down through Anthroposophy into logic and materialism, but will on the contrary be made to bear fruit. From living together with the spiritual it will be nourished and bear fruit. An enhancement of art is to be hoped for just through its being pervaded by Anthroposophy and the anthroposophical way of thinking – the whole bearing and demeanour of Anthroposophy.

What applies to the arts as a whole we will show today with reference to recitation and declamation. Over the last decades recitation and declamation have been steered more and more into a predilection for endowing with form the meaning-content of the words. A stress on the word-for-word content has become increasingly conspicuous. Our times have little understanding for such a treatment of the spoken word as was characteristic of Goethe, who used to rehearse the actors in his plays with special regard for the formation of speech, standing in front of them like a musical conductor with his baton. The speech-formation, the element of form that underlies the word-for-word content – it is really this which inspires the true poet as an artist. The point must be emphasized: Schiller, when he felt drawn by inner necessity to compose a poem, to begin with had something in the way of an indeterminate melody, something of a melodic nature as the content of his soul; something musical floated through his soul and only afterwards came the word-for-word content, which had really only to receive what was for the poet, as an artist, the essential thing – the musical element of his soul. So we have on the one hand something musical, which as such would remain pure music; and on the other, the pictorial, painterly element to which in declamatory-recitative art we must return. To say something merely as an expression of the prose-content – it is not for this that true poetry exists. But to mould the prose-content, to re-cast it into measure and rhythm into unfolding melody – into what really lies behind the prose-content – for all this the art of poetry exists. We would surely not be favoured with such a mixed bag of poetry if we did not live in unartistic times when in neither painting nor sculpture, nor poetry nor its recitative-declamatory rendering, is true artistry to be found.

If we look at the means by which poetry is brought to expression, which in our case is recitation and declamation, then we must naturally refer to speech. Now speech bears within it a thought- and a will-element. The thought tends toward the prosaic. It comes to express a conviction; it comes to express what is demanded within the framework of conventions of a social community. And with the progress of civilization language comes to be permeated more and more with expressions of conviction, with conventional social expression and to that extent becomes less and less poetic and artistic. The poet will therefore first have to struggle with the language to give it an artistic form, to make it into sornething which is really speech-formation.

In my anthroposophical writings I have drawn attention to the character of the vowels in language. This character man experiences in the main through his inner being: what we live through inwardly from our experience in the outer world finds expression in the vowel-sounds. Occurrences that we portray objectively, the essential forms of the external world, come to expression in the consonants of a language. Naturally, the vocalic and consonantal nature of language varies from language to language. Indeed from the way in which a language deploys its consonants and vowels can be seen the extent to which it has developed into a more or less artistic language. Some modern languages, in the course of their development, have gradually acquired an inartistic character and are falling into decadence. When a poet sets out to give form to such a language, he is called upon to repeat at a higher level the original speech-creative process. [Note 17] In the construction his verses, in the treatment of rhyme and alliteration (we shall hear and discuss examples of these later) he touches upon something related to the speech-creative process. Where it is a matter of bringing inner being to expression, the poet will be drawn, by virtue of his intuitive and instinctive ability, to the vowels. The result will be an accumulation of vowels. And when the poet needs to give form to outward things or events, he will be drawn to the consonants. One or the other will be accumulated, depending an whether something inward or something external is being expressed. The reciter or declaimer must take this up, for he will then be able to re-establish the rhythm between inner being and the outer world. On this kind of speech-formation, on the bringing out of what lies within the artistic handling of speech, the formation of a new recitative and declamatory art-form will largely depend.

We will now introduce a few shorter poems to show how recitation and declamation must be guided by speech-formation.

MÄCHTIGES ÜBERRASCHEN

Ein Strom entrauscht umwölktem Felsensaale,
Dem Ozean sich eilig zu verbinden:
Was auch sich spiegeln mag von Grund zu Gründen,
Er wandelt unaufhaltsam fort zu Tale.

Dämonisch aber stürzt mit einem Male –
Ihr folgten Berg und Wald in Wirbelwinden –
Sich Oreas, Behagen dort zu finden,
Und hemmt den Lauf, begrenzt die weite Schale.

Die Welle sprüht und staunt zurück und weichet
Und schwillt bergan, sich immer selbst zu trinken:
Gehemmt ist nun zum Vater hin das Streben.

Sie schwankt und ruht, zum See zurückgedeichet;
Gestirne, spiegelnd sich, beschaun das Blinken
Des Wellenschlags am Fels, ein neues Leben.

—A Sonnet by Goethe.

[We encounter a similar movement and transition in style in the course of this English sonnet:

Devouring time blunt thou the Lyons pawes,
And make the earth devoure her owne sweet brood,
Plucke the keeneteeth from the fierce Tygers jawes,
And burne the long liv’d Phoenix in her blood,
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do what ere thou wilt swift-footed time
To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
But I forbid thee one most hainous crime,
O carve not with thy howers my loves faire brow,
Nor draw noe lines there with thine antique pen,
Him in thy course untainted doe allow,
For beauties patterne to succeding men.
Yet doe thy worst ould Time dispight thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616).]

Das Tier, die Pflanze, diese Wesen hatten
noch die un-menschliche Geduld der Erde;
da war ein Jahr, was heut nur noch Sekunde.

Jetzt geht ihr nichts mehr rasch genug von statten.
Der Mensch begann sein ungeduldig Werde.
Sie spürt: ‘Jetzt endlich kam die grosse Stunde:

auf die ich mich gezüchtet Jahrmillionen!
Jetzt brauch ich meinen Leib nicht mehr zu schonen,
jetzt häng ich bald als Geist an Gottes Munde.’

—A Ritornello by Christian Morgenstern.

[A series of three-line stanzas with recurring rhymes is a comparatively simple representative of a poetic form that is capable of being extended almost indefinitely. Our first poem is a relatively uncomplicated example; a second shows something of what can be achieved by a poet working within very strict limitations.

THE COVENANT

The covenant of god and animal,
The frieze of fabulous creatures winged and crowned,
And in the midst the woman and the man –

Lost long ago in fields beyond the Fall –
Keep faith in sleep-walled night and there are found
On our long journey back where we began.

Then the heraldic crest or nature lost
Shines out again until the weariless wave
Roofs with its sliding horror all that realm.

What jealousy, what rage could overwhelm
The golden lion and lamb and vault a grave
For innocence, innocence past defence or cost?

—Edwin Muir (1887-1959).

The highly-developed, courtly poetry of the late Middle Ages provides many examples of this type of elaborate and difficult structure. This Balade is a moderately ambitious and very beautiful instance:

TO ROSEMOUNDE

Madame, ye ben of al beaute shryne
As fer as bercled is the mappemounde;
For as the cristal glorious ye shyne,
And lyke ruby ben your chekes rounde.
Therwith ye ben so mery and so jocounde,
That at a revel whan that I see you daunce,
It is an oynement unto my wounde,
Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.

For thogh I wepe of teres ful a tyne,
Yet may that wo myn herte nat confounde;
Your seemly voys that ye so smal outtwyne
Maketh my thoght in joye and blis habounde.
So curteisly I go, with love bounde,
That to my-self I sey, in my penaunce,
Suffyseth me to love you, Rosemounde,
Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.

Nas never pyk walwed in galauntyne
As I in love am walwed and y-wounde;
For which ful ofte I of my-self divyne
That I am trewe Tristam the secounde.
My love may not refreyd be nor afounde;
I brenne ay in an amorous plesaunce.
Do what you list, I wil your thral be founde,
Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.

—Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400).]

WELTENSEELENGEISTER

Im Lichte wir schalten,
Im Schauen wir walten,
Im Sinnen wir weben.

Aus Herzen wir heben
Das Geistesringen
Durch Seelenschwingen.

Dem Menschen wir singen
Das Göttererleben
Im Weltengestalten.

—Poem in form of a Rondeau by Rudolf Steiner.

A scene will next be presented from my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. What we have here is a representation of experiences connected with the spiritual world. One might be tempted to look upon something like this as contrived by the intellect, as though we were going after some sort of “symbolic” art – but that would not really be art at all. What will be spoken here, despite the psychic-spiritual nature of the events, was actually seen, in concrete form. Everything was there, down to the very sound of the words. Nothing had to be manufactured, or put together, or elaborated allegorically: it was simply there. We have attempted to give form to man’s manifold experiences in relation to the spiritual worlds; we have tried simply to give form to soul-forces, to what man can experience inwardly as differentiated soul-forces. Something results from this quite spontaneously, that is not shaped by any intellectual activity. As it is here a matter of purely spiritual contents, it is especially important to realize that it is not a matter of giving information or the prosaic word-for-word content, but of giving form to the actual spiritual contents. On the one hand a musical element will be perceptible – at the very point where one might suspect an intellectualising tendency – and on the other we will have a pictorial element, which must be particularly brought out whenever we are giving form to some kind of event. [Note 18]

From The Portal of Initiation, Scene 7.

MARIA: You, my sisters, at this hour
be once again my helpers,
as you have often been before, –
that I may make world-ether
resound within itself.
It shall ring out in harmony
and, ringing, permeate
a soul with knowledge.
I can behold the signs
that lead us to our task.
So shall your work
unite itself with mine.
Johannes, in his striving,
shall through creative deeds of ours
be raised to true existence.
The brothers in the temple
held council
how they could lead him
out of the depths to light-filled heights.
And they expect of us
that we arouse within his soul
the strength for soaring flight.
And so, my Philia, breathe in
clean essence of the light
from wide-flung spaces;
be filled with tones, enticing,
from souls’ creative power,
that you can hand to me
the gifts you gather
from spirit grounds.
Then I can weave them
into the stirring dances of the spheres.
And you, too, Astrid,
beloved mirror-image of my spirit,
create the power of darkness
in streaming light,
that colours may shine forth.
Bring harmony to tonal being
so that world-substance, weaving,
can live and sound.
I can entrust then spirit feeling
to seeking human senses.
And you, O sturdy Luna,
you are as firm within
as is the living heart
that grows within the tree;
join with your sisters’ gifts
the image of your own uniqueness,
that certainty of knowledge
be granted to the seeker.

PHILIA: I will imbue myself
with clearest essence of the light
from worldwide spaces.
I will breathe in sound-substance,
life-bestowing,
from far ethereal regions,
that you, beloved sister, with your work
may reach your goal.

ASTRID: And I will weave
into the radiant light
the clouding darkness.
I will condense
the life of sound,
that glistening it may ring
and ringing it may glisten,
that you, beloved sister,
may guide the rays of soul.

LUNA: I will enwarm soul-substance
and will make firm life-ether.
They shall condense themselves,
they shall perceive themselves,
and in themselves residing
guard their creative forces,
that you, beloved sister,
within the seeking soul
may quicken certainty of knowledge.

MARIA: From Philia’s horizons
shall stream forth joyfulness.
The undines’ power
of ever-changefulness shall rouse
a sensitivity of soul,
that the awakened one
can then experience
the world’s delight,
the world’s despair.
From Astrid’s weaving
shall spring forth love’s desire.
The airy life of sylphs
shall stir up in the soul
the urge for sacrifice,
that he, the consecrated one,
revive and quicken
those who are sorrow-laden,
those who are joy-entreating.
From Luna’s strength
shall stream forth firmness;
the power of fire-beings
can actively create
soul-certainty,
so that the knowing one
can find himself
in soul-life-weaving,
in world-life-breathing.

PHILIA: I will entreat the spirits of the worlds
that they, with light of being,
enchant soul feeling,
that they, with tone of words,
charm spirit hearing,
that he whom we must waken
may rise
upon soul paths
to heavenly heights.

ASTRID: I will guide streams of love,
that fill the world with warmth,
into the heart
of him, the consecrated one,
that he can bring
the grace of heaven
to earthly work
and mood of consecration
to sons of men.

LUNA: I will from primal powers
beseech both strength and courage,
and will imbed them deep
within the seeker’s heart,
that confidence
in his own self
may be with him
throughout his life.
He shall then feel himself
secure within himself.
And he shall pluck
each moment’s ripened fruit,
to draw from them their seeds
for all eternity.

MARIA: With you, my sisters,
united for this earnest work,
I shall succeed
in what I long to do.
There penetrates the cry
of him, who’s been so sorely tested,
into our world of light.
Trans. Ruth and Hans Pusch.

When we come to the sonnet it is, of course, to be taken for granted that a sonnet does not arise from the intention to compose a sonnet, but by necessity from the working out of inner experiences. It is evident that the sonnet tends toward something visual or pictorial that lives in the language – we have an experience which is in some way twofold. Such an experience presents itself, and we wish to give it a form, such as appears in the first two strophes. But we are then thrown into a contradiction of inner experience. The second strophe confronts the first wave, so to speak, like a counter-wave. And in the last two strophes we feel the contradictions that govern the universe. The human heart and the human mind strive for a unison, a harmonious association, so that they may resolve in harmony what found expression in discord and overcome the material dissonance through the spirituality of harmony. This is manifested even in the rhyme-scheme of the first two strophes and in the linked rhymes of the concluding strophes. In as far as there is not such a necessity of inner experience, a sonnet cannot arise; for it must manifest itself even down to the rhyme-scheme as a picture-form. And now, the musical element infiltrates this pictorial form: a musicality that depends principally on vowel sounds, and on what enters the vowel from the consonant – for every consonant has its vowel-element. This gives what one might call musical substance to the primarily pictorial form taken by the sonnet. What is present within the sonnet, shaping it, is metrical and, in the art of speaking, metre is brought to expression specifically through recitation: something the Greeks managed to bring to a certain eminence. The Greeks lived in the metre; that is to say, in the plastic element of the language. If, on the other hand, we look at what comes to us from the Nordic or Central European, Germanic tradition, we see how into the plasticity of speech there enters something musical from within. Here we have something which streams out more from the will, more from the personality whereas with the Greeks everything flows from metrical clarity of vision. With the Greeks it was primarily the art of recitation that attained a certain peak, whereas among the Germanic peoples it was declamatory art, drawing on the musical principle and flowing into themes and rhythms and cadences, which stirred into activity. And whereas in recitation we have to do with something in speech that in one sound broadens, in another makes ‘pointed’, forming it pictorially – in musicality we have what endows language with a melodic quality. It is in fact something like this that we can see in the sonnet and its treatment in the several regions of Europe. We can see how the declamatory united with the recitative, how the Germanic later united with the Greek feeling for measure. [Note 19] It is of some importance for us to realise the musical as well as the plastic quality inherent in speech-formation, for us to learn to introduce into declamation and recitation something which essentially leads us from what has significance for the senses to what is moved by the spirit. For this, it is once again necessary to have a feeling for poetic form as such – the form of a ritornello or a rondeau, for instance. This does not in truth make for a poetry wanting in thought; it simply expresses thought, not through abstractions, but through its productive creativity. If it is to adapt itself to forms created in this way, the art of speaking must be restored to a life in the actual waves of speech – the recitative with its pure formation; and the high or low intonations, the melodic forms of declamation. And if a dramatic touch has to be added, as in the scene you have just heard, which dealt with purely spiritual experiences, the intellectual significance or literal meaning must be completely overcome, completely transformed from a literal communication of prose fact into actual speech-formation. We thus have in immediate presentation the same experience as when in a prose piece we pass from prosaic understanding to a vision of what is represented in the prosaic. The pleasure of the prosaic is indirect: we must first understand, and through understanding we are then led to visualisation. This entails from the first something inartistic, for the aesthetic quality lies in immediacy. The art of speech-formation must have direct expression. What is actually presented (and not an intellectual imitation of it) must show itself and be given form. In our times we often see so-called poets working up intellectual imitations, rather than those immediate responses which make themselvesfelt in speech-formation. Goethe, who expresses so beautifully a living apprehension of tranquillity – a tranquillity preceding that of sleep – gives it utterance in these lines:

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh;
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

Compare Shelley, “Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa.”

The sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
The bats are flitting fast in the grey air;
The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,
And evening’s breath, wandering here and there
Over the quivering surface of the stream,
Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.

There is complete accord between the feeling for the summits and the tree-tops and what goes on in our own heart. A harmony lies in the sounds, in the very word-formation, so that what is mediated to us through the outer world sounds again – especially if we really listen to the poem – in the word- and speech-formation. All our experience of the outer world has passed over into the speech-formation itself. That would be the ideal of true poetry: to be able to present an experience received from outside in the very treatment of the language. The mere repetition of external experience, simply trying to express external experience in words – this is not poetry. The art of poetry only arises when something experienced in the outer world is reconstituted out of the life of the human soul in terms of pure speech-formation. [Note 20]

We can observe this in a truly artistic poet like Goethe, when he feels the need to recreate an identical prose-content out of a different mood and feeling. From living with the Gothic and the mood it transmitted to him, from the feeling let us say for the pointed arches striving upwards, which he felt most deeply in his appreciation of Strasbourg Cathedral, Goethe had gained at the beginning of his time in Weimar a sensibility which, when given poetic form, became something like inner declamation. Thought and feeling took such a form in him that we can experience directly in speech-formation something also to be found in contemplating a Gothic cathedral. We can see something striving upwards, something unfinished, in a Gothic cathedral; and this was Goethe’s mood in Weimar when he conceived his Iphigeneia. Driven by a deep longing for the fulfilment of his poetic disposition, Goethe set out, but in the course of his journey south he was gradually overcome by another mood – by a longing for measure. Faced with the Italian art that confronted him there, he felt a kind of echo of Greek art. He writes to his Weimar friends: “I suspect that the Greeks created their works of art in accordance with the very laws by which nature proceeds.” Looking at the Saint Cecilia, at Raphael’s works, the essence of metre became clear to him; and this became an inner recitation. He no longer felt the form of his first Iphigeneia to be a personal truth: he forged his play anew, so that we now have a Nordic and a southern Iphigeneia. Any consideration of the Nordic Iphigeneia must treat of it in terms of declamatory art, where it is preeminently the vowels that hold sway and that give form in the sounding of speech. In the Roman Iphigeneia recitation must predominate: what is relevant here is the plastically formed presentation of experience in a speech-formation comparable to the presentation in Raphael’s work. In two short passages we shall now compare the two versions of Iphigeneia and have before us what goes on in a poet when he really lives in aesthetic form and has to recreate his artistic forms out of inner necessity. Recitation and declamation must strive to follow poetry such as this.

In the first instance, therefore, we will present the Gothic-German Iphigeneia as Goethe originally conceived it – the Weimar Iphigeneia. [Note 21]

[Blake’s earlier poetry was strongly influenced by Romantic interest in northern “Bardic” verse, and something of its powerful declamatory nature can still be felt in this “Introduction” to Songs of Experience:

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future, sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walk’d among the ancient trees,

Calling the lapsed Soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might controll
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!

‘O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.

Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The wat’ry shore,
Is giv’n thee till the break of day.’

—William Blake (1757-1827.]

And now Goethe wished to introduce into these verses something fundamentally alien to the north. These verses express what I have just claimed as emerging straight from the whole mood living in Goethe. It can be said, of course, that anyone who does not enter into the genuinely aesthetic will lack the deep sense of necessity that Goethe felt in Italyof forging his favourite subject, Iphigeneia, anew. Not only was he subject in Italyto impressions of what he regarded as Greek art, but the sun there has a different effect. A differently coloured heaven arches over us, and the plants struggle up from the earth in a different way. All this made its mark on Goethe, and we can trace how in every line he is again compelled to rewrite and adapt the substance of his Iphigeneia to a quite different mood. It was Hermann Grimm who first showed a really sensitive understanding for these matters. In his lectures on Goethe he stressed the radical difference between the German and the Roman Iphigeneia, demonstrating how Goethe transformed what at first lived in the dimension of depth, so to speak – where there is a tendency to make the tone too full, too bright, or too dull, in order to achieve a spiritual expression of the literal prose content; he showed how Goethe transformed this into something that lives in the plane of speech, as it were, in the metre, and how he tried to introduce into his Iphigeneia the symmetry he believed himself to have found in Greek art.

In order to characterise what Goethe experienced in artistic speech, therefore, it becomes necessary to work from the declamatory into the recitative when producing his Roman Iphigeneia – the recitative which, as we have said, the Greeks brought to perfection. [Note 22]

[To a much greater extent than Goethe, Blake consistently reworked his poetry into ever different forms as he matured and changed as a poet. By the time he came to write “Night the Ninth” of The Four Zoas he had extended his range to include a classically derived pastoral verse with a much more recitative quality. The visionary scene from the earlier “Introduction” appears again there – though after a more thorough metamorphosis than was the case with Goethe’s play. This is The Four Zoas ix, 386-409:

And thus their ancient golden age renew’d; for Luvah spoke
With voice mild from his golden Cloud upon the breath of morning:

‘Come forth, O Vala, from the grass & from the silent dew,
Rise from the dews of death, for the Eternal Man is Risen.’

She rises among flowers & looks toward the Eastern clearness,
She walks yea runs, her feet are wing’d, on the tops of the bending grass,
Her garments rejoice in the vocal wind & her hair glistens with dew.

She answer’d thus: ‘Whose voice is this, in the voice of the nourishing air,
In the spirit of the morning, awaking the Soul from its grassy bed?
Where dost thou dwell? for it is thee I seek, & but for thee
I must have slept Eternally, nor have felt the dew of thy morning.
Look how the opening dawn advances with vocal harmony!
Look how the beams foreshew the rising of some glorious power!

The sun is thine, he goeth forth in his majestic brightness.
O thou creating voice that callest! & who shall answer thee?’

‘Where dost thou flee, O fair one? where doth thou seek thy happy place?’

‘To yonder brightness, there I haste, for sure I came from thence
Or I must have slept eternally, nor have felt the dew of morning.’

‘Eternally thou must have slept, not have felt the morning dew,
But for yon nourishing sun; ’tis that by which thou art arisen.
The birds adore the sun: the beasts rise up & play in his beams
And every flower & every leaf rejoices in his light.
Then, O thou fair one, sit thee down, for thou art as the grass,
Thou risest in the dew of morning & at night art folded up.’

—William Blake.

It may be that in the case of an artist like Goethe, we shall find what it is that flows over into form only if we can understand with full intensity how, when he himself spoke his Iphigeneia, tears would roll down his cheeks. Goethe found his way from the Dionysian – to use the Nietzschean expression – into the Apollonian, into metrical form. Because the Greeks in their soul-life stirred the will to this metrical formation, they achieved something in this Apollonian realm, and of this Nietzsche felt that here art is exalted above outer sense-reality. He felt that art could elevate us above the pessimism of a humanity confronting the tragic in the immediate reality of physical perception. What holds sway here as the inner, the essentially human – though conforming to measure and the Apollonian principle – this was what particularly attracted Goethe once he had entered this element, and induced him to attempt the creation of something in Greek metre, in an inwardly recitative-declamatory style rather than his former purely declamatory one.

We will now give an example, from Goethe’s “Achilleis”, of the aesthetic form that Goethe conceived after he had sunk himself in the metrical, inwardly recitative style of the Greeks. [Note 23]

[In their attempts to recapture the feeling of the original Greek some translators have been driven to adopt a hexameter verse, as in this rendering of Odyssey VI, 85ff:

Now when at last they arrived at the beautiful stream of the river,
Here the perennial basins they found where waters abundant
Welled up brightly enough for the cleansing of dirtiest raiment.
So their mules they unloosened from under the yoke of the waggon,
Letting them wander at will on the bank of the eddying river,
Browsing on clover as sweet as the honey, and then from the carriage
Bearing within their arms to the deep dark water the garments
Cast them in trenches and trod them in rivalry one with another.
So, when the raiment was washed and was thoroughly cleansed of the dirt-stains,
All on the shore of the ocean in order they spread on the shingle
Where it is washed by the tides of the sea as they sweep to the dry land.
There did they bathe and anointing themselves with the oil of the olive
Set them adown to the midday meal on the bank of the river,
Leaving the garments to dry on the beach in the glare of the sunlight,
Now when in food they had fully delighted, both she and her maidensj
Casting aside their scarfs with a ball they betook them to playing,
White-armed Nausicaa with the choral melody leading.
E’en as descending a height moves Artemis, darter of arrows,
Either on Taygetus long-ridged or on huge Erymanthus,
Taking delight in the chase of the boar and of timorous roe-deer,
Whilst all around her the daughters of Zeus, who beareth the aegis,
Nymphs of the woodland, play – and Leto sees it rejoicing;
Even as over the rest uplifting her brows and her forehead
Easily known in her beauty she stands, though fair be the others,
Thus shone forth in her beauty the maiden amidst her attendants.
Now when at last it was come to the moment of homeward returning,
After the mules were yoked and folded the beautiful garments,
Other was then the device of the grey-eyed goddess Athene,
E’en that Odysseus awaking and seeing the fair-faced maiden
Her might follow as guide and reach Phaeacia’s city.
Seizing the Ball, at the maiden among her attendants the princess
Flung it, but missing the maiden it fell in a bottomless eddy.
Piercingly all of them shrieked; and godlike Odysseus, awakened,
Sat straight up and pondered thereon in his heart and his spirit:
‘Ah me! what is the folk whose country I now am arrived at?
Dwell here savages wanton and wild, despisers of justice?
Have they a love for the stranger and hearts that revere the immortals?
Lo, how piercing a cry as of maidens ringeth around me,
Nymphs peradventure that dwell on precipitous summits of mountains,
Or by the fountain springs of the rivers and leas of the lowlands;
Else, maybe, I am near to a folk of articulate language.
Nay, go to, I will test for myself this matter and view it.’

Trans. H.B. Cotterill.

With such poetry Goethe tried to find his way back to Hellenism. He believed himself, as he felt at a certain period of his life, nearer to the original source of poetry than he could ever have been had he not gone back to the Greeks. We have to look at Goethe’s instinctive artistic life, when he sought Greek metre and what the Greeks had formed plastically in inner recitation. As with the other art-forms, true poetry was to be sought where the fountain-head of art sprang more abundantly – in primitive humanity, in unaccommodated man and his inner experience, not yet shrouded by the thick veil of materialistic civilisation. In Greek, we can observe the measured flow of the hexameter; we observe how the dactyls are formed. What do we really have in this verse-measure? Now we must remember, speaking more theoretically, how something lives in man which strives inwardly toward a certain rhythm or harmony of rhythms.

Let us take, on the one hand, the breathing-rhythm: in a normal person of average age, about 18 breaths per minute; while in the same space of time we have 72 pulse-beats, four beats coinciding with each breath. This is an inner harmonising of rhythms in human nature. Let us picture the four pulse-beats taking place in each breath and consider their ratio, their harmony with the breath. Let us bring the first two pulse-beats together into one long syllable, and the remaining two pulsebeats into two short syllables. We then have the verse-measure underlying the hexameter. We can also produce the hexameter for ourselves by examining the harmony of the four and the one: the first three feet and, as the fourth, the caesura – all being related to the one breath. What is formed in this way we derive from man’s own being: we create out of man’s being, embodying in speech an expression of human rhythms. Now the fourfold rhythm of the blood can, of course, struggle with the unitary breathing-rhythm, separating and reuniting as they strive toward harmony. They separate in this or that direction, and then flow together again. In this way are revealed the several forms of verse and prosody. But each time it is an overflowing of what lives in man himself into speech. In the formation of Greek metres man unfolds his own being; something of man’s most intimate morphology comes to his lips and forms itself into speech. Here then lies the mystery: the Greeks strove for vocal expression of the most intimate, even organic life of man’s rhythmic system.

Goethe felt this. The Greeks by their very nature (and let us not misunderstand this) were striving after thought. Not for mere abstract thought, but something that led them away, through thought, into concrete speech-formation – the pictorial that is active in man. For what occurs in man through the confluence of the blood- and breathing-rhythms is transmitted to the brain and transformed into thought-content. The process is even vaguely recognisable in prose. This is really thought that has been stripped of everything that lay hidden in Greek recitative metre. The Greeks spoke of the music of Apollo’s lyre, meaning man himself as a work of art: a rhythmic being in the harmony of his breathing- and blood-rhythms. Here are uttered unfathomable cosmic mysteries which tell us more than any prose language can.

Into all this sounds the will. As we turn to the north we meet once more with the declamatory. The general inclination of Nordic language, Nordic speech-formation, is to make the will predominant. It is mainly breathing which lives in Greek rhythm (being closer to thought than the blood-circulation), but the experience of blood-circulation was rightly regarded by ancient spiritual researchers as the immediate expression of human personality, the human ego. And this is what lives in the Nordic treatment of speech. Here we see how the blood-rhythm strikes in and the breathing rhythm recedes. We see in addition how the blood-rhythm is connected with the mobility of the entire man. Looking back, we see how in the Nibelungenlied Nordic man could sense the wave-beat of his blood, instigated by a will-impulse and then subsiding into thought: in this way alliteration comes into being. We begin with a will-impulse, which then strikes up against the form, like a wave building up and then subsiding again into the repose of rhythm. This was felt as something constituting the whole man. Whereas the Greeks wanted to penetrate inwards into the breathing-system, Nordic man was inclined towards depth of personality and the life of the blood-rhythm. Nordic-Germanic poetry is spiritualised human blood. Here the will lives and gives itself form. We must imagine the will-working of Wotan, moving on waves of air or welling up in man as blood and forming the human personality. [Note 24]

The primal element of will, the human being as a whole, finds expression in Nordic-Germanic poetry. We can see this welling-up and surging in the epic Nibelungenlied. And even in more recent times, Wilhelm Jordan has tried to imitate the alliterative style, such as lived in Nordic declamation, and has tried in the speech-formation of his own epic to restore to life the things I have described. What lives in Jordan’s Nibelunge, therefore, we must not simply declaim by extracting and stressing the prose content. Rather, there must sound forth that wave-motion drawn from the inner nature of man. In Wilhelm Jordan’s alliteration, these Wotan-waves must sound forth as they did when he himself recited them. This he actually did; those who were still able to hear him will know how he tried, through a declamatory verse-technique, to draw out what is latent in alliteration.

We shall conclude by giving an example from the beginning of the Nibelungenlied, where the Nordic element (as opposed to Greek metre) is in evidence. This will strike a contrast to what Goethe, particularly in his later years, received from Greek culture. From there he derived the finest quality that lived in him, while yet wishing to unite it, together with the Nordic, into a single whole.

And finally, a short passage of alliterative verse from Wilhelm Jordan’s Nibelunge – his attempt at a re-creation of ancient German poetry.

From The Nibelungenlied.

I. Äventiurde

Uns ist in alten maeren wunders vil geseit
von heleden lobebaeren, von grôzer arebeit;
von freude und hôchgezîten, von weinen unde klagen,
von küener recken strîten möget ir nu wunder hoeren sagen

Ëz wuohs in Buregonden ein vil edel magedîn,
daz in allen Landen niht schoeners mohte sîn,
Kriemhilt geheizen, diu wart ein schoene wîp;
dar umbe muosen dëgene vil verliesen dën lîp

Der minneclîchen meide trüejen wol gezam:
ir moutten küene recken, niemen was ir gram.
âne mâzen schoene sô was ir edel lîp:
der juncfrouwen tugende zierten anderiu wîp.

Ir pflâgen drî künige edel unde rîch,
Gunther unde Gêrnôt die recken lobelîch,
unt Gîselher dër junge, ein waetlîcher dëgen;
diu frouwe was ir swëster, die helden hetens in ir pflëgen.

Ein rîchiu küneginne frou Uote ir muoter hiez;
ir vater dër hiez Dancrât, dër in diu erbe liez
sît nâch sîme lëbene, ein ellens rîcher man,
dër ouch in sîner jugende grôzer êren vil gewan.

Die hërren wâren milte, von arde hôhe erborn,
mit kraft unmâzen küene die recken ûzerkorn.
dâ zën Burgonden sô was ir lant genannt.
si frümten starkiu wunder sît in Etzelen lant.

Ze Wormze bî dëm Rîne si wonten mit ir kraft;
in dienten von ir landen vil stolziu ritterschaft
mit lobelîchen êren unz an ir endes zît.
si sturben jaemerlîche sît von zweier frouwen nît.

Die drî künige wâren, als ich gesaget hân,
von vil hôhem ellen; in wâren undertân
ouch die besten recken, von dën man hât gesaget,
starc unt viel küene, in scharpfen strîten unverzaget.

Daz was von Tronege Hagene, unt ouch dër bruoder sîn
Dancwart dër snëlle, von Metzen Ortwîn,
Die zwêne marcgrâven, Gêre unt Eckewart,
Volkêr von Alzeie, mit ganzem ellen wol bewart,

Rûmolt dër küchenmeister, ein ûzerwelter dëgen,
Sindolt unde Hûnolt; dise hërren muosen pflëgen
dës hoves unt dër êren, dër drîer künige man.
si heten noch manigen recken, dës ich genennen nienen kan.

Dancwart dër was marschalc; dô was dër nëve sîn
truhsetze dës küniniges von Metzen Ortwîn.
Sindolt dër was schenke, ein waetlîcher dëgen;
Hûnolt was kameraere: si kunden, hôher êren pflëgen

Von dës hoves êre unt von ir wîten kraft,
von ir vil hôhen wërdekeit unt von ir ritterschaft,
dër die hërren pflâgen mit freuden al ir lëben,
dësn künde iu ze wâre niemen gar ein ende gëben.

In disen hôhen êren troumte Kriemhilde,
wie si züge einen valken starc, schoene unt wilde,
dën ir zwên’ arn erkrummen; daz sie daz muoste sëhen,
irn kunde in dirre wërlde leider nimmer geschëhen.

Dën troum si dô sagete ir muoter Uoten.
sine kundes niht bescheiden baz dër guoten
‘dër valke, den du ziuhest, daz ist ein edel man;
in enwëlle got behüeten, du muost in schiere vloren hân.’

‘Waz saget ir mir von manne, vil liebiu muoter mîn?
âne recken minne sô wil ich immer sîn;
sus schoene ich wil belîben unz an mînen tôt,
daz ich von recken minn sol gewinnen nimmer nôt.’

‘Nune versprich ëz niht ze sêre,’ sprach ir muoter dô.
‘soltu immer hërzenlîche zër wërlde wërden vrô,
daz kümt von mannes minne; du wirst ein schoene wîp,
ob dir got gefüeget eins rëhte guoten ritters lîp.’

‘Die rede lât belîben, vil liebiu frouwe mîn;
ëz ist an manigen wîben vil dicke worden schîn,
wie liebe mit leide ze jungest lônen kan;
ich sol sie mîden beide, sone kan mir nimmer missegân.’

Kriemhilt in ir muote sich minne gar bewac.
sît lëbete diu vil guote vil manigen lieben tac,
daz sine wësse niemen, dën minnen wolde ir lîp
sît wart si mit êren eins vil wërden recken wîp.

Dër was dër sëlbe valke, dën si in ir troume sach,
dën ir beschiet ir muoter. wie sêre siu daz rach
An ir naehsten mâgen, die in sluogen, sint!
durch sîn eines stërben starp vil maniger muoter kint.

[Langland’s Piers Plowman is among the masterpieces of the English “Alliterative Revival” of the fourteenth century. This extract is from the C-text version, Passus IX, 152-191:

A Brytonere com braggynge a-bosted Peers al-so;
‘Wolle thow, ne wolle thow we wolleth habbe oure wil,
Bothe thy flour and thy flessh fecchen when ous lyketh,
And make ous myrye ther-myd maugre ho bygruccheth!’
Peers the plouhman tho pleynede to the knyght,
To kepe hym and hus catel as covenent was bytwyne hem:
‘Awreke me of these wastours that maken thys worlde dere;
Thei counte nat of cursing ne holy kirke dreden;
Ther worth no plente,’ quath Peers ‘and the plouh ligge.’
Curtesliche the knyght then as hus kynde wolde,
Warned Wastour and wissed hym betere,
‘Other ich shal bete thy by the lawe and brynge the in stockes.’
‘Ich was nat woned to wirche,’ quath Wastour and ich wolle nat now bygynne,’
And let lyght of the lawe and lasse of the knyght,
And sette Peers at a pese pleyne hym wher he wolde.
‘Now, by Crist,’ quath Peers ‘y shal apeyre yow alle!’
And hopede after Hunger that herde him at the ferste.
‘Ich praye the,’ quath Peers tho ‘pur charite, sire Honger,
Awreke me of these wastours for the knyght wol nat.’
Honger hente in haste Wastour by the mawe,
And wrang hum by the wombe that al waterede hus eyen.
He buffated the Brutener a-boute the chekes,
That he loked lyk a lanterne al hus lyf after.
He bet hem so bothe be barst neih hure guttes,
Ne hadde Peers with a peese-lof prayede hym by-leve.
Honger, have mercy of hem,’ quath Peers and let me yeve hem benes;
And that was bake for bayarde may be here bote.’
Tho were faitours a-fered and flowen to Peersses bernes,
And flapten on with flailes fro morwe til evene,
That Honger was nat hardy on hem for to loke,
For a potful of potage that Peersses wyf made.
An hep of eremites henten hem spades,
Spitten and spradde donge in despit of Hunger.
Thei corven here copes and courtepies hem made,
And wenten as workmen to weden and mowen;
Al for drede of here deth such dyntes yaf Hunger.
Blynd and brokeleggede he botnede a thousande,
And lame men he lechede with longen of bestes.
Preestes and other peple to Peers thei drowen,
And freres of alle fyve orders al for fere of Hunger.

William Langland (c.1331- ?).

From Die Nibelungen.
“Hildebrand’s Homecoming”, Canto 17:

Schon drängten sich draussen mit dröhnenden Tritten Zu jedem der Tore der Krieger tausend; Schon hob sein Hifthorn der Hunnenkönig, Um Sturm zu blasen. Doch stumm noch blieb es. Ob sein Herz auch zermalmt war, er musste horchen, Und gramvoll beseufzte die grosse Seele Verloren Grund begrabener Hoffnung In des stolzen Germanen Sterbegesang:

‘Erwacht! In den Wolken
Ist Waffengerassel.
Erwacht, es gewittert,
‘Als wieherten Rosse.
Walkürien kommen
Zum Kampf geflogen
In glänzenden Brünnen,
Von Brautlust glühend.
Sie lenken herunter
Die luftigen Renner,
Um Tapfer zu kiesen
Mit tötendem Kuss.

Erwachet! Es warten
Die Wodanswölfe,
Es rufen die Raben
Ihr Mahl zu rüsten.
Um der Seele die Pforte
Zum Sonnenpfade
Weit aufzuschliessen,

Ist Eisen geschliffen.
Das Leben ist Schlaf nur,
Erlösung der Schlachttod.
Erwachet zum Sterben,
Und Sterbend erwacht.

Erwachet! Es winken
Von Walhalls Schwelle
Die erkorenen Gäste
Des Götterkönigs.
Da lebt ihr in Leibern
Aus Licht gewoben;
Da ist Kampf nur Kurzweil
Und Wunde Wollust.
Da labt das Gedenken
Erduldeter Leiden,
Da schildert ihr scherzend
Der Niblunge Not.’

Wilhelm Jordan

[In the absence of any modern English attempt to restore alliteration in its full-blooded form, there may be a certain interest here in the following piece. The chiming effect of the alliterations serves in this instance rather to embellish and lend spice to the recitative flow of the verse, not aspiring to become the ordering principle of the poem:

EUROPA AND THE BULL

Naked they came, a niggling core of girls
Maggoting gaily in the curling wool
Of morning mist, and careless as the lark
That gargled overhead. They were the root
Of all that writhing air, the frothing rock
Of that grey sea in whose vacuity
Footless they stood, nor knew if it or they
Were moving now. Yet, even as they gazed,
Cave after cave of light calved out of gloom,
As on they glided through the muddling veils
Roof rose on roof, laugh laddered into laugh
Into the motionless meadow, clear as stone,
Interminably domed.
Nothing supernal here; only cow-parsley:
Any place was convenient velvet,
And everwhere was peace, pin-drizzled by
Bird-song; the bay bare lake a gong
Unbruised. Easy at the sea’s edge the rocks
Breathed up and down.
The Inland hills stood still
Like hoardings to be stared at. Happy place!
And happy happy day! How giddily then
They sleeked along the sand with smoking heels.
Some frayed off with fountain-fling of arms
To play and plunge, staccatoing the water
And some more slowly followed, picking the deep flowers
Out of the fume and underdrone of bees: green-kneed
They rose and fell in waves delightedly: new sights
Consumed them; new mites and motes of smell
Held and incensed them: crumbs of booty glowed
In every foot-dent, eiderdowntrodden.
And all among them moved the moon-like cows
Grazing light tracks across the long night-grass.

But look! the Bull! indubitably bull,
Elbowing slowly through the obeisant herd,
Blazing and bellowing. His massy head,
Laden like a dahlia, dallied and swung,
And his vast eye slid to and fro as sharp
And glaucous as sea-holly, salting all
Their thoughts with suddenness. They hardly knew
What most to admire; but most his hub of power
And circumambience of gentleness
Delighted them. Arms curved and craved to stroke
His milky sides, insidiously veined
With watery blues and bloody ivyings.
But how describe him? words can only add
To lightning the thunder’s redundancy.
He was most godlike and most temperate.

Slow, slow, slow, with bubble-pause and slide
He paced before Europa there, and she
As if with shivering drew her shoulders now
Shyly about her, yet she shivered still.
Never did shadow so shimmer with midges
As she with switherings. Should she go?
Or no? Body and soul see-sawed in her.
As slowly the swan comes forward, in advance
Bearing its bellying tray of effusive plumes,
Yet backward rears its head and huffs its glance
As if it fended off its offering that presumes:
Swollen with slowness and undertowed by longing
It grows on the water, close, thundery, and thronging,
Till suddenly beside us, without fuss,
Immense it blossoms like a cumulus –
So slowly rose Europa, slowly she
Opened her fan-like self and mounted him
And spread her valances.
O how his reticence reined and trounced him then,
Lifting his feet into flounces of flight
And ratchet-edges of agitation,
Chawing each gentle step. To have and to hold –
How he would love to have but feared to hold
Her who as srnooth as metal sat and smiled.
And how his silver slaverings flowed, and now
His chattering hooves danced under him like stones....

In the lectures given here during the course on history¹ several things were mentioned which, particularly at the present time, it is especially important to consider. With regard to the historical course of humanity's development, the much-debated question mentioned to begin with was whether the outstanding and leading individual personalities are the principal driving forces in this development or whether the most important things are brought about by the masses. In many circles this has always been a point of contention and the conclusions have been drawn, more from sympathy and antipathy than from real knowledge. This is one fact which, in a certain sense, I should like to mention as being very important.

Another fact which, from a look at history, I should like to mention for its importance is the following. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt² appeared with a definite declaration, stipulating that history should be treated in such a way that one would not only consider the individual facts which can be outwardly observed in the physical world but, out of an encompassing, synthesizing force, would see what is at work in the unfolding of history—which can only be found by someone who knows how to get a total view of the facts in what in a sense is a poetic way, but in fact produces a true picture. Attention was also drawn to how in the course of the nineteenth century it was precisely the opposite historical mode of thought and approach which was then particularly developed, and that it was not the ideas in history that were pursued but only a sense that was developed for the external world of facts. Attention was also drawn to the fact that, with regard to this last question, one can only come to clarity through spiritual science, because spiritual science alone can uncover the real driving forces of the historical evolution of humanity.

A spiritual science of this kind was not yet accessible to Humboldt. He spoke of ideas, but ideas indeed have no driving force [of their own]. Ideas as such are abstractions, as I mentioned here yesterday³ And anyone who might wish to find ideas as the driving forces of history would never be able to prove that ideas really do anything because they are nothing of real substantiality, and only something of substantiality can do something. Spiritual science points to real spiritual forces that are behind the sensible-physical facts, and it is in real spiritual forces such as these that the propelling forces of history lie, even though these spiritual forces will have to be expressed for human beings through ideas.

But we come to clarity concerning these things only when, from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, we look more deeply into the historical development of humanity and we will do so today in such a way that, through our considerations, certain facts come to us which, precisely for a discerning judgement of the situation of modern humanity, will prove to be of importance.

I have often mentioned⁴ that spiritual science, if it looks at history, would actually have to pursue a symptomatology; a symptomatology constituted from the fact that one is aware that behind what takes it course as the stream of physical-sensible facts lie the driving spiritual forces. But everywhere in historical development there are times when what has real being and essence (das eigentlich Wesenhafte) comes as a symptom to the surface and can be judged discerningly from the phenomena only if one has the possibility to penetrate more deeply from one's awareness of these phenomena into the depths of historical development.

I would like to clarify this by a simple diagram. Let us suppose that this is a flow of historical facts (see diagram). The driving forces lie, for ordinary observation, below the flow of these facts. And if the eye of the soul observes the flow in this way, then the real activity of the driving forces would lie beneath it (red). But there are significant points in this flow of facts. And these significant points are distinguished by the fact that what is otherwise hidden comes here to the surface. Thus we can say: Here, in a particular phenomenon, which must only be properly evaluated, it was possible to become aware of something which otherwise is at work everywhere, but which does not show itself in such a significant manifestation.

Let us assume that this (see diagram) took place in some year of world history, let us say around 800 A.D. What was significant for Europe, let us say for Western Europe, was of course at work before this and worked on afterwards, but it did not manifest itself in such a significant way in the time before and after as it did here. If one points to a way of looking at history like this, a way which looks to significant moments, such a method would be in complete accord with Goetheanism. For Goethe wished in general that all perception of the world should be directed to significant points and then, from what could be seen from such points, the remaining content of world events be recognized. Goethe says of this⁵ that, within the abundance of facts, the important thing is to find a significant point from which the neighbouring areas can be viewed and from which much can be deciphered.

So let us take this year 800 A.D. We can point here to a fact in the history of Western European humanity which, from the point of view of the usual approach to history, might seem insignificant—which one would perhaps not find worthy of attention for what is usually called history—but which, nevertheless, for a deeper view of humanity's development, is indeed significant. Around this year there was a kind of learned theological argument between the man who was a sort of court philosopher of the Frankish realm, Alcuin,⁶ and a Greek also living at that time in the kingdom of the Franks. The Greek, who was naturally at home in the particular soul-constitution of the Greek peoples which he had inherited, had wanted to reach a discerning judgement of the principles of Christianity and had come to the concept of redemption. He put the question: To whom, in the redemption through Christ Jesus, was the ransom actually paid? He, the Greek thinker, came to the solution that the ransom had been paid to Death. Thus, in a certain sense, it was a sort of redemption theory that this Greek developed from his thoroughly Greek mode of thinking, which was now just becoming acquainted with Christianity. The ransom was paid to Death by the cosmic powers.

Alcuin, who stood at that time in that theological stream which then became the determining one for the development of the Roman Catholic Church of the West, debated in the following way about what the Greek had argued. He said: Ransom can only be paid to a being who really exists. But death has no reality, death is only the outer limit of reality, death itself is not real and, therefore, the ransom money could not have been paid to Death.

Now criticism of Alcuin's way of thinking is not what matters here. For to someone who, to a certain extent, can see through the interrelations of the facts, the view that death is not something real resembles the view which says: Cold is not something real, it is just a decrease in warmth, it is only a lesser warmth. Because the cold isn't real I won't wear a winter coat in winter because I'm not going to protect myself against something that isn't real. But we will leave that aside. We want rather to take the argument between Alcuin and the Greek purely positively and will ask what was really happening there. For it is indeed quite noticeable that it is not the concept of redemption itself that is discussed. It is not discussed in such a way that in a certain sense both personalities, the Greek and the Roman Catholic theologian, accept the same point of view, but in such a way that the Roman Catholic theologian shifts the standpoint entirely before he takes it up at all. He does not go on speaking in the way he had just done, but moves the whole problem into a completely different direction. He asks: Is death something real or not?—and objects that, indeed, death is not real.

This directs us at the outset to the fact that two views are clashing here which arise out of completely different constitutions of soul. And, indeed, this is the case. The Greek continued, as it were, the direction which, in the Greek culture, had basically faded away between Plato and Aristotle. In Plato there was still something alive of the ancient wisdom of humanity; that wisdom which takes us across to the ancient Orient where, indeed, in ancient times a primal wisdom had lived but which had then fallen more and more into decadence. In Plato, if we are able to understand him properly, we find the last offshoots, if I can so call them, of this primal oriental wisdom. And then, like a rapidly developing metamorphosis, Aristotelianism sets in which, fundamentally, presents a completely different constitution of soul from the Platonic one. Aristotelianism represents a completely different element in the development of humanity from Platonism. And, if we follow Aristotelianism further, it, too, takes on different forms, different metamorphoses, but all of which have a recognizable similarity. Thus we see how Platonism lives on like an ancient heritage in this Greek who has to contend against Alcuin, and how in Alcuin, on the other hand, Aristotelianism is already present. And we are directed, by looking at these two individuals, to that fluctuation which took place on European soil between two—one cannot really say world-views—but two human constitutions of soul, one of which has its origin in ancient times in the Orient, and another, which we do not find in the Orient but which, entering in later, arose in the central regions of civilization and was first grasped by Aristotle. In Aristotle, however, this only sounds a first quiet note, for much of Greek culture was still alive in him. It develops then with particular vehemence in the Roman culture within which it had been prepared long before Aristotle, and, indeed, before Plato. So that we see how, since the eighth century BC on the Italian peninsula a particular culture, or the first hints of it, was being prepared alongside that which lived on the Greek peninsula as a sort of last offshoot of the oriental constitution of soul. And when we go into the differences between these two modes of human thought we find important historical impulses. For what is expressed in these ways of thinking went over later into the feeling life of human beings; into the configuration of human actions and so on.

Now we can ask ourselves: So what was living in that which developed in ancient times as a world-view in the Orient, and which then, like a latecomer, found its [last] offshoots in Platonism—and, indeed, still in Neoplatonism? It was a highly spiritual culture which arose from an inner perception living pre-eminently in pictures, in imaginations; but pictures not permeated by full consciousness, not yet permeated by the full I-consciousness of human beings. In the spiritual life of the ancient Orient, of which the Veda and Vedanta are the last echoes, stupendous pictures opened up of what lives in the human being as the spiritual. But it existed in a—I beg you not to misunderstand the word and not to confuse it with usual dreaming—it existed in a dreamlike, dim way, so that this soul-life was not permeated (durchwellt) and irradiated (durchstrahlt) by what lives in the human being when he becomes clearly conscious of his 'I' and his own being. The oriental was well aware that his being existed before birth, that it returns through death to the spiritual world in which it existed before birth or conception. The oriental gazed on that which passed through births and deaths. But he did not see as such that inner feeling which lives in the `I am'. It was as if it were dull and hazy, as though poured out in a broad perception of the soul (Gesamtseelenanschauung) which did not concentrate to such a point as that of the I-experience. Into what, then, did the oriental actually gaze when he possessed his instinctive perception?

One can still feel how this oriental soul-constitution was completely different from that of later humanity when, for an understanding of this and perhaps prepared through spiritual science, one sinks meditatively into those remarkable writings which are ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite.⁷ I will not go into the question of the authorship now, I have already spoken about it on a number of occasions. 'Nothingness' (das Nichts) is still spoken of there as a reality, and the existence of the external world, in the way one views it in ordinary consciousness, is simply contrasted against this [nothingness] as a different reality. This talk of nothingness then continues. In Scotus Erigena,⁸ who lived at the court of Charles the Bald, one still finds echoes of it, and we find the last echo then in the fifteenth century in Nicolas of Cusa⁹ But what was meant by the nothingness one finds in Dionysius the Areopagite and of that which the oriental spoke of as something self-evident to him? This fades then completely. What was this nothingness for the oriental? It was something real for him. He turned his gaze to the world of the senses around him, and said: This sense-world is spread out in space, flows in time, and in ordinary life world, is spread out in space, one says that what is extended in space and flows in time is something.

But what the oriental saw—that which was a reality for him, which passes through births and deaths—was not contained in the space in which the minerals are to be found, in which the plants unfold, the animals move and the human being as a physical being moves and acts. And it was also not contained in that time in which our thoughts, feelings and will-impulses occur. The oriental was fully aware that one must go beyond this space in which physical things are extended and move, and beyond this time in which our soul-forces of ordinary life are active. One must enter a completely different world; that world which, for the external existence of time and space, is a nothing but which, nevertheless, is something real. The oriental sensed something in contrast to the phenomena of the world which the European still senses at most in the realm of real numbers.

When a European has fifty francs he has something. If he spends twenty-five francs of this he still has twenty-five francs; if he then spends fifteen francs he still has ten; if he spends this he has nothing. If now he continues to spend he has five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five francs in debts. He still has nothing; but, indeed, he has something very real when, instead of simply an empty wallet, he has twenty-five or fifty francs in debts. In the real world it also signifies something very real if one has debts. There is a great difference in one's whole situation in life between having nothing and having fifty francs' worth of debts. These debts of fifty francs are forces just as influential on one's situation in life as, on the other side and in an opposite sense, are fifty francs of credit. In this area the European will probably admit to the reality of debts for, in the real world, there always has to be something there when one has debts. The debts that one has oneself may still seem a very negative amount, but for the person to whom they are owed they are a very positive amount!

So, when it is not just a matter of the individual but of the world, the opposite side of zero from the credit side is truly something very real. The oriental felt—not because he somehow speculated about it but because his perception necessitated it he felt: Here, on the one side, I experience that which cannot be observed in space or in time; something which, for the things and events of space and time, is nothing but which, nevertheless, is a reality—but a different reality.

It was only through misunderstanding that there then arose what occidental civilization gave itself up to under the leadership of Rome—the creation of the world out of nothing with `nothing' seen as absolute `zero'. In the Orient, where these things were originally conceived, the world does not arise out of nothing but out of the reality I have just indicated. And an echo of what vibrates through all the oriental way of thinking right down to Plato—the impulse of eternity of an ancient world-view—lived in the Greek who, at the court of Charlemagne, had to debate with Alcuin. And in this theologian Alcuin there lived a rejection of the spiritual life for which, in the Orient, this `nothing' was the outer form. And thus, when the Greek spoke of death, whose causes lie in the spiritual world, as something real, Alcuin could only answer: But death is nothing and therefore cannot receive ransom.

You see, the whole polarity between the ancient oriental way of thinking, reaching to Plato, and what followed later is expressed in this [one] significant moment when Alcuin debated at the court of Charlemagne with the Greek. For, what was it that had meanwhile entered in to European civilization since Plato, particularly through the spread of Romanism? There had entered that way of thinking which one has to comprehend through the fact that it is directed primarily to what the human being experiences between birth and death. And the constitution of soul which occupies itself primarily with the human being's experiences between birth and death is the logical, legal one—the logical-dialectical-legal one. The Orient had nothing of a logical, dialectical nature and, least of all, a legal one. The Occident brought logical, legal thinking so strongly into the oriental way of thinking that we ourselves find religious feeling permeated with a legalistic element. In the Sistine Chapel in Rome, painted by the master-hand of Michelangelo, we see looming towards us, Christ as judge giving judgment on the good and the evil.

A legal, dialectical element has entered into the thoughts concerning the course of the world. This was completely alien to the oriental way of thinking. There was nothing there like guilt and atonement or redemptinn. For [in this oriental way of thinking] was precisely that view of the metamorphosis through which the eternal element [in the human being] transforms itself through births and deaths. There was that which lives in the concept of karma. Later, however, everything was fixed into a way of looking at things which is actually only valid for, and can only encompass, life between birth and death. But this life between birth and death was just what had evaded the oriental. He looked far more to the core of man's being. He had little understanding for what took place between birth and death. And now, within this occidental culture, the way of thinking which comprehends primarily what takes place within the span between birth and death increased [and did so] through those forces possessed by the human being by virtue of having clothed his soul-and-spirit nature with a physical and etheric body. In this constitution, in the inner experience of the soul-and-spirit element and in the nature of this experience, which arises through the fact that one is submerged with one's soul-and-spirit nature in a physical body, comes the inner comprehension of the 'I'. This is why it happens in the Occident that the human being feels an inner urge to lay hold of his 'I' as something divine. We see this urge, to comprehend the 'I' as something divine, arise in the medieval mystics; in Eckhart, in Tauler and in others. The comprehension of the 'I' crystallizes out with full force in the Middle (or Central) culture. Thus we can distinguish between the Eastern culture—the time in which the 'I' is first experienced, but dimly—and the Middle (or Central) culture—primarily that in which the 'I' is experienced. And we see how this 'I' is experienced in the most manifold metamorphoses. First of all in that dim, dawning way in which it arises in Eckhart, Tauler and other mystics, and then more and more distinctly during the development of all that can originate out of this I-culture.

We then see how, within the I-culture of the Centre, another aspect arises. At the end of the eighteenth century something comes to the fore in Kant¹⁰ which, fundamentally, cannot be explained out of the onward flow of this I-culture. For what is it that arises through Kant? Kant looks at our perception, our apprehension (Erkennen), of nature and cannot come to terms with it. Knowledge of nature, for him, breaks down into subjective views ( Subjektivitäten); he does not penetrate as far as the 'I' despite the fact that he continually speaks of it and even, in some categories, in his perceptions of time and space, would like to encompass all nature through the 'I'. Yet he does not push through to a true experience of the 'I'. He also constructs a practical philosophy with the categorical imperative which is supposed to manifest itself out of unfathomable regions of the human soul. Here again the 'I' does not appear.

In Kant's philosophy it is strange. The full weight of dialectics, of logical-dialectical-legal thinking is there, in which everything is tending towards the 'I', but he cannot reach the point of really understanding the 'I' philosophically. There must be something preventing him here. Then comes Fichte, a pupil of Kant's, who with full force wishes his whole philosophy to well up out of the 'I' and who, through its simplicity, presents as the highest tenet of his philosophy the sentence: `I am'. And everything that is truly scientific must follow from this `I am'. One should be able, as it were, to deduce, to read from this 'I am' an entire picture of the world. Kant cannot reach the 'I am'. Fichte immediately afterwards, while still a pupil of Kant's, hurls the `I am' at him. And everyone is amazed—this is a pupil of Kant's speaking like this! And Fichte says:¹¹ As far as he can understand it, Kant, if he could really think to the end, would have to think the same as me. It is so inexplicable to Fichte that Kant thinks differently from him, that he says: If Kant would only take things to their full conclusion, he would have to think [as I do]; he too, would have to come to the 'I am'. And Fichte expresses this even more clearly by saying: I would rather take the whole of Kant's critique for a random game of ideas haphazardly thrown together than to consider it the work of a human mind, if my philosophy did not logically follow from Kant's. Kant, of course, rejects this. He wants nothing to do with the conclusions drawn by Fichte.

We now see how there follows on from Fichte what then flowered as German idealistic philosophy in Schelling and Hegel, and which provoked all the battles of which I spoke, in part, in my lectures on the limits to a knowledge of nature.¹² But we find something curious. We see how Hegel lives in a crystal-clear [mental] framework of the logical-dialectical-legal element and draws from it a world-view—but a world-view that is interested only in what occurs between birth and death. You can go through the whole of Hegel's philosophy and you will find nothing that goes beyond birth and death. It confines everything in world history, religion, art and science solely to experiences occurring between birth and death.

What then is the strange thing that happened here? Now, what came out in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel—this strongest development of the Central culture in which the 'I' came to full consciousness, to an inner experience—was still only a reaction, a last reaction to something else. For one can understand Kant only when one bears the following properly in mind. (I am coming now to yet another significant point to which a great deal can be traced). You see, Kant was still—this is clearly evident from his earlier writings—a pupil of the rationalism of the eighteenth century, which lived with genius in Leibnitz and pedantically in Wolff. One can see that for this rationalism the important thing was not to come truly to a spiritual reality. Kant therefore rejected it—this `thing in itself' as he called it—but the important thing for him was to prove. Sure proof! Kant's writings are remarkable also in this respect. He wrote his Critique of Pure Reason in which he is actually asking: `How must the world be so that things can be proved in it?' Not 'What are the realities in it?' But he actually asks: 'How must I imagine the world so that logically, dialectically, I can give proofs in it?' This is the only point he is concerned with and thus he tries in his Prologomena to give every future metaphysics which has a claim to being truly scientific, a metaphysics for what in his way of thinking can be proven: `Away with everything else! The devil take the reality of the world—just let me have the art of proving! What's it to me what reality is; if I can't prove it I shan't trouble myself over it!'

Those individuals did not, of course, think in this way who wrote books like, for example, Christian Wolff's¹³ Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt (Reasoned Thoughts an God, the World, and the Soul of Man, and All Things Generally). What mattered for them was to have a clean, self-contained system of proof, in the way that they see proof. Kant lived in this sphere, but there was still something there which, although an excrescence squeezed out of the world-view of the Centre, nevertheless fitted into it. But Kant had something else which makes it inexplicable how he could become Fichte's teacher. And yet he gives Fichte a stimulus, and Fichte comes back at him with the strong emphasis of the 'I am'; comes back, indeed, not with proofs—one would not look for these in Fichte—but with a fully developed inner life of soul. In Fichte there emerges, with all the force of the inner life of soul, that which, in the Wolffians and Leibnitzites, can seem insipid. Fichte constructs his philosophy, in a wealth of pure concepts, out of the 'I am'; but in him they are filled with life. So, too, are they in Schelling and in Hegel. So what then had happened with Kant who was the bridge? Now, one comes to the significant point when one traces how Kant developed. Something else became of this pupil of Wolff by virtue of the fact that the English philosopher, David Hume,¹⁴ awoke him, as Kant himself says, out of his dull dogmatic slumber. What is it that entered Kant here, which Fichte could no longer understand? There entered into Kant here—it fitted badly in his case because he was too involved with the culture of Central Europe—that which is now the culture of the West. This came to meet him in the person of David Hume and it was here that the culture of the West entered Kant. And in what does the peculiarity [of this culture] lie? In the oriental culture we find that the 'I' still lives below, dimly, in a dream-like state in the soul-experiences which express themselves, spread out, in imaginative pictures. In the Western culture we find that, in a certain sense, the 'I' is smothered (erdrückt) by the purely external phenomena (Tatsachen). The 'I' is indeed present, and is present not dimly, but bores itself into the phenomena. And here, for example, people develop a strange psychology. They do not talk here about the soul-life in the way Fichte did, who wanted to work out everything from the one point of the 'I', but they talk about thoughts which come together by association. People talk about feelings, mental pictures and sensations, and say these associate—and also will-impulses associate. One talks about the inner soul-life in terms of thoughts which associate.

Fichte speaks of the 'I'; this radiates out thoughts. In the West the 'I' is completely omitted because it is absorbed—soaked up by the thoughts and feelings which one treats as though they were independent of it, associating and separating again. And one follows the life of the soul as though mental pictures linked up and separated. Read Spencer,¹⁵ read John Stuart Mill¹⁶ read the American philosophers. When they come to talk of psychology there is this curious view that does not exclude the 'I' as in the Orient, because it is developed dimly there, but which makes full demand of the 'I'; letting it, however, sink down into the thinking, feeling and willing life of the soul. One could say: In the oriental the 'I' is still above thinking, feeling and willing; it has not yet descended to the level of thinking, feeling and willing. In the human being of the Western culture the 'I' is already below this sphere. It is below the surface of thinking, feeling and willing so that it is no longer noticed, and thinking, feeling and willing are then spoken of as independent forces.

This is what came to Kant in the form of the philosophy of David Hume. Then the Central region of the earth's culture still set itself against this with all force in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. After them the culture of the West overwhelms everything that is there, with Darwinism and Spencerism.

One will only be able to come to an understanding of what is living in humanity's development if one investigates these deeper forces. One then finds that something developed in a natural way in the Orient which actually was purely a spiritual life. In the Central areas something developed which was dialectical-legal, which actually brought forth the idea of the State, because it is to this that it can be applied. It is such thinkers as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel who, with enormous sympathy, construct a unified image (Gebilde) of the State. But then a culture emerges in the West which proceeds from a constitution of soul in which the 'I' is absorbed, takes its course below the level of thinking, feeling and willing; and where, in the mental and feeling life, people speak of associations. If only one would apply this thinking to the economic life! That is its proper place. People went completely amiss when they started applying [this thinking] to something other than the economic life. There it is great, is of genius. And had Spencer, John Stuart Mill and David Hume applied to the institutions of the economic life what they wasted on philosophy it would have been magnificent. If the human beings living in Central Europe had limited to the State what is given them as their natural endowment, and if they had not, at the same time, also wanted thereby to include the spiritual life and the economic life, something magnificent could have come out of it. For, with what Hegel was able to think, with what Fichte was able to think, one would have been able—had one remained within the legal-political configuration which, in the threefold organism, we wish to separate out as the structure of the State¹⁷—to attain something truly great. But, because there hovered before these minds the idea that they had to create a structure for the State which included the economic life and the spiritual life, there arose only caricatures in the place of a true form for the State. And the spiritual life was anyway only a heritage of the ancient Orient. It was just that people did not know that they were still living from this heritage of the ancient East. The useful statements, for example, of Christian theology—indeed, the useful statements still within our materialistic sciences—are either the heritage of the ancient East, or a changeling of dialectical-legal thinking, or are already adopted, as was done by Spencer and Mill, from the Western culture which is particularly suited for the economic life.

Thus the spiritual thinking of the ancient Orient had been distributed over the earth, but in an instinctive way that is no longer of any use today. Because today it is decadent, it is dialectical-political thinking which was rendered obsolete by the world catastrophe [World War I]. For there was no one less suited to thinking economically than the pupils of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. When they began to create a State which, above all, was to become great through its economy, they had of necessity (selbstverständlich) to fail, for this was not what, by nature, was, endowed to them. In accordance with the historical development of humanity, spiritual thinking, political thinking and economic thinking were apportioned to the East, the Centre, and the West respectively. But we have arrived at a point of humanity's development when understanding, a common understanding, must spread equally over all humanity. How can this come about?

This can only happen out of the initiation-culture, out of the new spiritual science, which does not develop one-sidedly, but considers everything that appears in all areas as a three-foldness that has evolved of its own accord. This science must really consider the threefold aspect also in social life; in this case (as a three-foldness) encompassing the whole earth. Spiritual science, however, cannot be extended through natural abilities; it can only be spread by people accepting those who see into these things, who can really experience the spiritual sphere, the political sphere and the economic sphere as three separate areas. The unity of human beings all over the earth is due to the fact that they combine in themselves what was divided between three spheres. They themselves organize it in the social organism in such a way that it can exist in harmony before their eyes. This, however, can only follow from spiritual-scientific training. And we stand here at a point where we must say: In ancient times we see individual personalities, we see them expressing in their words what was the spirit of the time. But when we examine it closely—in the oriental culture, for example—we find that, fundamentally, there lives instinctively in the masses a constitution of soul which in a remarkable; quite natural way was in accord with what these individuals spoke.

This correspondence, however, became less and less. In our times we see the development of the opposite extreme. We see instincts arising in the masses which are the opposite of what is beneficial for humanity. We see things arising that absolutely call for the qualities that may arise in individuals who are able to penetrate the depths of spiritual science. No good will come from instincts, but only from the understanding (that Dr. Unger also spoke of here)¹⁸ which, as is often stressed, every human being can bring towards the spiritual investigator if he really opens himself to healthy human reason. Thus there will come a culture in which the single individual, with his ever-deeper penetration into the depths of the spiritual world, will be of particular importance, and in which die one who penetrates in this way will be valued, just as someone who works in some craft is valued. One does not go to the tailor to have boots made or to the shoemaker to be shaved, so why should people go to someone else for what one needs as a world-view other than to the person who is initiated into it? And it is, indeed, just this that, particularly today and in the most intense sense, is necessary for the good of human beings even though there is a reaction against it, which shows how humanity still resists what is beneficial for it. This is the terrible battle—the grave situation—in which we find ourselves.

At no other time has there been a greater need to listen carefully to what individuals know concerning one thing or another. Nor has there been a greater need for people with knowledge of specific subject areas to be active in social life—not from a belief in authority but out of common sense and out of agreement based on common sense. But, to begin with, the instincts oppose this and people believe that some sort of good can be achieved from levelling everything. This is the serious battle in which we stand. Sympathy and antipathy are of no help here, nor is living in slogans. Only a clear observation of the facts can help. For today great questions are being decided—the questions as to whether the individual or the masses have significance. In other times this was not important because the masses and the individual were in accord with one another; individuals were, in a certain sense, simply speaking for the masses. We are approaching more and more that time when the individual must find completely within himself the source of what he has to find and which he has then to put into the social life; and [what we are now seeing] is only the last resistance against this validity of the individual and an ever larger and larger number of individuals. One can see plainly how that which spiritual science shows is also proved everywhere in these significant points. We talk of associations which are necessary in the economic life, and use a particular thinking for this. This has developed in the culture of the West from letting thoughts associate. If one could take what John Stuart Mill does with logic, if one could remove those thoughts from that sphere and apply them to the economic life, they would fit there. The associations which would then come in there would be exactly those which do not fit into psychology. Even in what appears in the area of human development, spiritual science follows reality.

Thus spiritual science, if fully aware of the seriousness of the present world situation, knows what a great battle is taking place between the threefold social impulse that can come from spiritual science and that which throws itself against this threefoldness as the wave of Bolshevism, which would lead to great harm (Unheil) amongst humanity. And there is no third element other than these two. The battle has to take place between these two. People must see this! Everything else is already decadent. Whoever looks with an open mind at the conditions in which we are placed, must conclude that it is essential today to gather all our forces together so that this whole terrible Ahrimanic affair can be repulsed.

This building stands here,¹⁹ incomplete though it is for the time being. Today we cannot get from the Central countries that which for the most part, and in addition to what has come to us from the neutral states, has brought this building to this stage. We must have contributions from the countries of the former Entente. Understanding must be developed here for what is to become a unified culture containing spirit, politics and economics. For people must get away from a one:sided tendency and must follow those who also understand something of politics and economics, who do not work only in dialectics, but, also being engaged with economic impulses, have insight into the spiritual, and do not want to create states in which the State itself can run the economy. The Western peoples will have to realize that something else must evolve in addition to the special gift they will have in the future with regard to forming economic associations. The skill in forming associations has so far been applied at the wrong end, i.e. in the field of Psychology. What must evolve is understanding of the political-state element, which has other sources than the economic life, and also of the spiritual element. But at present the Central countries lie powerless, so people in the Western regions—one could not expect this of the Orient—will have to see what the Purpose of this building is! It is necessary for us to consider What must be done so that real provision is made for a new culture that should be presented everywhere in the university education of the future—here we have to show the way. In the foundation of the Waldorf Schools the culture has proved to be capable of bringing light into primary education. But for this we need the understanding support of the widest circles.

Above all we need the means. For everything which, in a higher or lower sense, is called a school, we need the frame of mind I have already tried to awaken at the opening of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart.²⁰ I said in my opening speech there: `This is one Waldorf school. It is well and good that we have it, but for itself it is nothing; it is only something if, in the next quarter of a year, we build ten such Waldorf schools and then others'. The world did not understand this, it had no money for such a thing. For it rests on the standpoint: Oh, the ideals are too lofty, too pure for us to bring dirty money to them; better to keep it in our pockets; that's the proper place for dirty money. The ideals, oh, they're too pure, one can't contaminate them with money! Of course, with purity of this kind the embodiment of ideals cannot be attained, if dirty money is not brought to them. And thus we have to consider that, up to now, we have stopped at one Waldorf school which cannot progress properly because in the autumn we found ourselves in great money difficulties. These have been obviated for the time being, but at Easter we shall be faced with them again. And then, after a comparatively short time, we will ask: Should we give up? And we shall have to give up if, before then, an understanding is not forthcoming which dips vigorously into its pockets.

It is thus a matter of awakening understanding in this respect. I don't believe that much understanding would arise if we were to say that we wanted something for the building in Dornach, or some such thing—as has been shown already. But—and one still finds understanding for this today—if one wants to create sanatoria or the like, one gets money, and as much as one wants! This is not exactly what we want—we don't want to build a host of sanatoria—we agree fully with creating them as far as they are necessary; but here it is a matter, above all, of nurturing that spiritual culture whose necessity will indeed prove itself through what this course²¹ I has attempted to accomplish. This is what I tried to suggest, to give a stimulus to what I expressed here a few days ago, in the words 'World Fellowship of Schools' (Weltschulverein).²²

Our German friends have departed but it is not a question of depending on them for this 'World Fellowship'. It depends on those who, as friends, have come here, for the most part from all possible regions of the non-German world—and who are still sitting here now—that they understand these words 'World Fellowship of Schools' because it is vital that we found school upon school in all areas of the world out of the pedagogical spirit which rules in the Waldorf School. We have to be able to extend this school until we are able to move into higher education of the kind we are hoping for here. For this, however, we have to be in a position to complete this building and everything that belongs to it, and be constantly able to support that which is necessary in order to work here; to be productive, to work on the further extension of all the separate sciences in the spirit of spiritual science.

People ask one how much money one needs for all this. One cannot say how much, because there never is an uppermost limit. And, of course, we will not be able to found a World Fellowship of Schools simply by creating a committee of twelve or fifteen or thirty people who work out nice statutes as to how a World Fellowship of Schools of this kind should work. That is all pointless. I attach no value to programmes or to statutes but only to the work of active people who work with understanding. It will be possible to establish this World Fellowship—well, we shall not be able to go to London for some time—in the Hague or some such place, if a basis can be created, and by other means if the friends who are about to go to Norway or Sweden or Holland, or any other country—England, France, America and so on—awaken in every human being whom they can reach the well-founded conviction that there has to be a World Fellowship of Schools. It ought to go through the world like wildfire that a World Fellowship must arise to provide the material means for the spiritual culture that is intended here.

If one is able in other matters, as a single individual, to convince possibly hundreds and hundreds of people, why should one not be able in a short time—for the decline is happening so quickly that we only have a short time—to have an effect on many people as a single individual, so that if one came to the Hague a few weeks later one would see how widespread was the thought that: 'The creation of a World Fellowship of Schools is necessary, it is just that there are no means for it.' What we are trying to do from Dornach is an historical necessity. One will only be able to talk of the inauguration of this World Fellowship of Schools when the idea of it already exists. It is simply utopian to set up committees and found a World Fellowship—this is pointless! But to work from person to person, and to spread quickly the realization, the well-founded realization, that it is so necessary—this is what must precede the founding. Spiritual science lives in realities. This is why it does not get involved with proposals of schemes for a founding but points to what has to happen in reality—and human beings are indeed realities—so that such a thing has some prospects.

So what is important here is that we finally learn from spiritual science how to stand in real life. I would never get involved with a simply utopian founding of the World Fellowship of Schools, but would always be of the opinion that this World Fellowship can only come about when a sufficiently large number of people are convinced of its necessity. It must be created so that what is necessary for humanity—it has already proved to be so from our course here—can happen. This World Fellowship of Schools must be created.

Please see what is meant by this Fellowship in all international life, in the right sense! I would like, in this request, to round off today what, in a very different way in our course, has spoken to humanity through those who were here and of whom we have the hope and the wish that they carry it out into the world. The World Fellowship of Schools can be the answer of the world to what was put before it like a question; a question taken from the real forces of human evolution, that is, human history. So let what can happen for the World Fellowship of Schools, in accordance with the conviction you have been able to gain here, happen! In this there rings out what I wanted to say today.

• 1 . These were the lectures given by Dr Karl Heyer on 14, 15 and 16 October 1920, during the first course of the School of Anthroposophy at the Goetheanum with the theme: 'The Science of History and History from the Viewpoint of Anthroposophy' ('Anthroposophische Betrachtungen Ober die Geschichtswissenschaft und aus der Geschichte'). These are printed in Kultur und Erziehung (the third volume of the Courses of the School of Anthroposophy), Stuttgart, 1921.
• 2 . See Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835): Über die Aufgabe des Geschiclztsschreibens (The Task of the Historian) in Volume IV of Humboldt's Works published by Leitzman, Berlin 1905 (see pages 35-56). Some relevant passages taken from these are as follows:
  
  "The business of the historian, in the last but simplest analysis, is to portray the striving of an idea to attain existence in reality. For it is not always that it succeeds in this at the first attempt; and it is not so rare that the idea degenerates because it is unable to master in a pure way the matter counteracting it."
  
  "The truth of everything that happens lies in the addition of the above-mentioned invisible part of every fact, and thus the history writer must add this to the events. Seen from this angle he is self-acting and even creative—not, indeed, by producing what does not already exist, but by forming out of his own inner strength that which, as it is in reality, he could not perceive through mere receptivity. In different ways, but just like the poet, he must in himself transform the scattered fragments into a whole."
  
  "It may seem dubious to allow the realm of the history writer and that of the poet to meet, even at only one point. But the activity of both is undeniably related. For if the historian, like the poet, can achieve truth in his presentation of past events only by completing and linking the incomplete and disjointed elements of direct observation, then he does so, like the poet, only through imagination. Because, however, he places imagination subordinate to experience and the fathoming of reality, there is a difference here which cancels out all danger. Imagination does not work, at this lower position, as pure imagination, and is therefore more properly called an intuitive faculty and a talent for finding links."
  
  "Of necessity, therefore, the historian too, must strive; not, like the poet, to give his material over to the dominion of the form of necessity but to hold steadily in consciousness the ideas which are its laws, because, permeated only by, these, he can then find their trace in the pure research of the real in its reality."
  
  "The historian encompasses all the threads of earthly activity and all varieties of supersensible ideas; the sum-total of existence, more or less, is the object of his work and he must therefore also follow all avenues of the mind and spirit. Speculation, experience and poetry, however, are not separate, opposed and mutually-limiting activities of the mind, but different planes of its radiance."
  
  "Apart from the fact that history, like every scientific activity, serves many subsidiary purposes, work on history is no less a free art, complete in itself, than philosophy and poetry."
  
  "Just as philosophy strives for the first foundation of things, and art for the ideal of beauty, so history strives for a picture of human destiny in faithful truth, living abundance and pure clarity that are perceived by the warm inner-being [of the historian] in such a way that his personal views, feelings and demands are lost and dissolved away. It is the final purpose of the history-writer to awaken and nourish this mood, which, however, he only attains when he pursues for his fellow human beings the simple presentation of past events with conscientious faithfulness."
• 3 . See the final words of Rudolf Steiner, on 16 October 1920, after the close of the first course of the Anthroposophical School, in Die Kunst der Rezitation and Deklamation (First Edition) Dornach, 1928, page 118.
• 4 . See i>Geschictliche Symptomatologie (GA 185), nine lectures given in Dornach in 1918, only two of which are translated in From Symptom to Reality in Modern History.
• 5 . See Bedeutende Fordnis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort in Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited and with a commentary by Rudolf Steiner in Kürschner's Deutsche National-Literatur, Volume II, page 34 (GA lb). Goethe says here:
  
  "I do not rest until I find a significant point from which a great deal can be deduced or, rather, which of its own will brings forth a great deal and presents this to me, and which I then, with attention and receptivity, work on further faithfully and carefully. If, in my experience, I find some phenomenon which I cannot deduce, I simply let it lie as a problem; and I have found, in my long life, this way of doing things to be very beneficial. For when I was not able for a long time to unravel the origin or connection of some phenomenon but had to put it to one side, I found that, years later, it all suddenly became clear in the most beautiful way."
• 6 . Alcuin (also Alhuin or Alchwin, i.e. 'Friend of the Temple') was rector of the monastery school at York around 735 to 804. In 782 he followed the summons of Charlemagne and took on the headship of the court school. He encouraged the sciences in the monasteries and raised to the central seat of the sciences the monastery school of St Martin at Tours, which he founded and whose Abbot he became in 796.
  
  The debate with the Greek is described in Karl Werner's book Alcuin and sein Jahrhundert (Alcuin and His Century) Vienna 1881, Chapter 11. page 166, as follows:
  
  Thus Charlemagne once wanted to know from Alcuin what should be made of the view of a Greek scholar, who presumably was a member of a Byzantine legation at Charlemagne's court, who had expressed the opinion to the emperor that Christ had paid the expiation for our sins to death. Alcuin found this manner of expression and the idea behind it to be inadmissible, for Christ was not—death's debtor and could not become so—the price of our redemption was paid by Christ to our divine Father, to whom, in dying, He commended His soul. Death [so Alcuin argued] is in no way a reality of being and substance but, to his way of thinking, was something purely negative, the mere absence or 'Carence' (Church Latin: the interval before benefits become available) of life; it is nothing existing in itself, and thus cannot receive anything, no payment can be paid to it. On the contrary, in the person of Christ, death itself, which God did not create, became the ransom for our debt and won life for us thereby, which He Himself gives us in His saviour power.'
• 7 . Rudolf Steiner drew attention at different times to the fact that the content of the writings of 533 A.D., attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, do indeed stem from the person of this name mentioned in The Acts of the Apostles 17, 34. See the lectures on 17 and 25 March 1907 in Christianity Began as a Religion and Festivals of the Seasons respectively.
• 8 . Johannes Scotus Erigena (c. 810–877) translator of the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite into Latin (see note 7).
• 9 . Nicolaus of Cusa (or Kures) (1401–1464), cardinal.
• 10. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): Critique of Pure Reason, 1781; Prolegemena, 1783.
• 11. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) Erste und zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre und Verstwh einer neuen Darstellung der Wiyenschaftslehre (First and Second Introduction into the Doctrine of Knowledge and an Attempt at a New Presentation of the doctrine of Knowledge).
• 12. Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis (Limits to a Knowledge of Nature (GA 322)—eight lectures given during the first course (Hochschulkurs) of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, 27 September to 3 October 1920 (GA 322).
• 13. Baron Christian von Wolff, philosopher and mathematician, Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, 1719.
• 14. David Hume (1711–1776), philosopher.
• 15. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), philosopher.
• 16. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), philosopher.
• 17. Towards Social Renewal, 1919, (GA 23).
• 18. In the third week of the first course (of the School of Spiritual Science), Dr Carl Unger (1822–1929) gave lectures under the title of 'Rudolf Steiner's Works'. These six lectures, edited by Unger, can be found in Volume I of Carl Unger's Writings, Stuttgart, 1964.
• 19. The first Goetheanum building, begun in 1913, was already put into use in 1920, although still under construction supervised by Rudolf Steiner and with the interior not yet finished. On New Year's Eve 1922–3 it was destroyed by fire.
• 20. The Free Waldorf School was founded in Stuttgart in the spring of 1919 by Dr Emil Molt for the children, to begin with, of the employees of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. The school was under the supervision of Rudolf Steiner who appointed the teachers and gave the preparatory seminar courses.
• 21. The first anthroposophical course of the Free School for Spiritual Science took place at the Goetheanum from 26 September to 16 October 1920. See also notes 1,3,12, and 18.
• 22. i.e., a form of international support body for Waldorf Schools. Rudolf Steiner suggested the founding of a World Fellowship of Schools during an assembly of teachers on 16 October 1920. There is no available transcript of this talk.