The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today we want to undertake a consideration that may seem out of place in the series of considerations we have been pursuing here, but which will nevertheless be useful for understanding the whole.

It is an ancient question as to how man can bring that which is really in the world outside into his knowledge, into his world of ideas. For us, the question is not as urgent as it must be for people outside our spiritual-scientific stream, because we know that it is possible to live one's way up into the spiritual worlds and to gain certainty about a true being, about a true reality behind the external reality that is present on the physical plane, by penetrating into the spiritual worlds. But only from the present into the future will humanity in general be able to rise to such a point of view of extra-bodily knowledge, as it were, and for a long time to come the question will have an infinitely great significance, how one can get into the knowledge, into the world of ideas of existence, of reality.

It is important for us to have some knowledge of this question because we must try to pave the way for an understanding with those who are still somewhat outside or even very much outside our spiritual movement. We must be able to provide information about the riddles and questions that those who have not yet come closer to this spiritual movement feel when they hear one or the other of the results of spiritual research. The question I have in mind is truly the most profound, the most tragic question that humanity has ever asked itself. For however much philosophical and other scientific investigation has been carried out, the question I have indicated arises from a state of mind and has an effect on the whole state of mind and mood of the person.

Man, let us approach the matter from this point of view, wakes up in the morning from a world that must remain unknown and mysterious to him if he does not penetrate into spiritual science, and he makes his thoughts about the world into which he enters when he wakes up. In these thoughts, he then wants to obtain what can be called a world view. The person who truly approaches these things with all their soul senses something of the weakness of the life of thought, of the life of ideas. He senses, one could say, this: that he is condemned in his inner being to live in ideas about the nature of the processes of the outer world, to make such ideas for himself; and he finds, again, that these ideas are, so to speak, only ideas after all, that they are not strong enough to absorb real being into themselves.

We feel this weakness of the imaginative life particularly when we reflect on the memory images. We bring up from past epochs of life what facts and experiences we have gone through. We bring them up by imagining them afterwards, perhaps after a long time. We must keep saying to ourselves: Yes, we have the experience only in our imagination, and the imagination does not have the power to conjure up reality anew.

This is one way in which we can truly feel how powerless the human being is, so to speak, in the face of the full-bodied, full-bodied reality of his imaginative life. The other is when we enter the world of the creative imagination. In this world of the creative imagination, we can conjure up beautiful and satisfying images in our minds, and we can feel how we are unable to somehow penetrate into real existence with what we conjure up in our imagination. The more materialistically minded people assume that the feelings that one can have towards this world of fantasy images. They say: When you form ideas about a higher spiritual world, about God and the spiritual world, what guarantees do you have that these ideas you form are anything other than figments of the imagination? What guarantees do you have that with these ideas, even if they give you the deepest bliss, you are penetrating into a world of genuine reality? What underlies the feelings in the face of this powerlessness of imagining, of forming ideas, has led to the, one might say, millennia-old philosophical struggle with regard to the question: How can man, with his concepts, his ideas, penetrate into a reality?

There are enough schools of philosophy, even if we disregard the most extreme skepticism, which believe that a satisfactory answer to this question, a satisfactory solution to this mystery of the human mind, has not yet been found. Certainly, people can pass over these world mysteries, these questions, with a certain mental complacency. But even those who pass by with their consciousness and live their lives in this way will still feel that this dissatisfaction with the riddles of the world makes waves in their astral body and evokes certain moods towards the world, melancholic moods; moods that one might try to overcome with cynicism can arise. But such a passing by of the world's riddles can certainly not lead to real satisfaction in the inner soul life, to the harmony of the soul.

For us, it is necessary to approach these riddles of the world in the same way that we have to approach many things; it is necessary for us to look into the essence of human nature and ask where this riddle comes from, why it exists. That it can be experienced as infinitely tragic has been shown by certain philosophers who have almost despaired in the solution of this riddle and have spoken of a deity that, as it were, misleads humanity in the chaos of world phenomena and has created human nature in such a way that it cannot arrive at a satisfactory world view.

Now let us recall something that has been discussed often in this or that context, but which can be useful to us precisely in the face of these world riddles. We have often spoken about what our life of thoughts, senses and ideas actually is. I have said that basically it is a kind of reflection. It is indeed the case - I have dealt with this particularly clearly here - that in the case of human beings we are dealing with what I will schematically indicate here: This is the physical body. Outside of this physical body, there lives, as it were, in the infinite universe, that which is the actual soul-spiritual essence of the human being. In the waking life of the day, this spiritual-soul essence extends into the bodily-soul essence. This creates a reflection, and this reflection is actually what we perceive as the content of our waking life. Truly, our body is like a mirror, and just as we do not see the mirror, but rather what is reflected in the mirror, so when a person is awake, we do not see what is actually happening in the body, but we see the reflection, what is reflected in it from the external physical world.

But to the extent that we are in the waking consciousness of the day, our I, that which we are as spiritual beings, is also in this world of mirror images. For the world around us is Maja, it is a sum of mirror images. Our waking self is in this sum of mirror images, and basically, as beings on the physical plane, we are nothing more than a mirror image among mirror images.

Let us just realize that for a moment. What remains of our entire imaginative life, in so far as we are on the physical plane, when we extinguish our day-consciousness? Then the I is also extinguished. When it is not mirrored, as is the case in deep, dreamless sleep, then the I is also extinguished. And when we wake up and have the world of mirror images before us, then our I is also in this world of mirror images; so that, insofar as we live on the physical plane, we can have nothing of ourselves but a mirror image.

We go through the world as beings of the physical plane and never have anything of ourselves but a mirror image. We live in the world; but insofar as we are conscious, we have before us, not the living fact, but the reflection of this living fact. We live as mirror images among mirror images; and what we learn to recognize through spiritual science – that we live as mirror images among mirror images, as Maja among the components of the great Maja – is what man feels when he feels the powerlessness of all spiritual experience in the face of the fully-fledged reality. In everyday life, a person does not say to himself, “I am a reflection among reflections,” but he does feel it, and he feels it most keenly when he asks himself, “How can I, with this reflection, attain the real, fully-substantial existence?”

Let us try to understand what is going on here. Imagine you have a reflective wall in front of you; it reflects what is spread out in the room, for example a table. However, you do not see the table, but you see the reflection. Imagine you wanted to go into the reflection, take the table out and place something on it. You would not be able to do that because you cannot place plates or soup bowls on the mirrored table. Just as it is impossible to place plates and soup bowls on the mirrored table, it is equally impossible to derive the essence of the soul's immortality from what a person experiences on the physical plane and has around him between birth and death in a waking state. For the real soul is immortal, not its reflection, which we experience on the physical plane. Just consider that very clearly.

Man longs to recognize that which continually eludes him and which, while he lives on the physical plane, only continually presents him with a mirror image. The philosophies of all times have endeavored to deduce reality from the mirror images, to prove immortality from the mirror images. They have undertaken the task, symbolically speaking, of taking the table out of the mirror image, putting it in the room and placing plates and bowls on it.

If you go through the philosophies that are not fertilized by spiritual science, they appear to you as such a futile endeavor. Basically, if you try to go through my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, you will find in it the story of how, since the beginning of mankind's philosophical struggle, philosophy has, as it were, tried to get the table out of the mirror and put plates and bowls on it. Therefore, now that we do have such a spiritual-scientific movement, a final chapter had to be added to the book, which shows that what was there before must be supplemented by spiritual science, which is not concerned with mirror images but with realities. Now you might say: Then the book is certainly one that we do not need to read, because why should we concern ourselves with the futile struggle of humanity? Why should we take philosophy into consideration at all, since it is only concerned with the futile efforts of humanity? Yes, it is not like that at all, it really is not! What we do when we immerse ourselves in this struggle, which is indeed futile from a certain point of view, is nevertheless something infinitely meaningful, something that cannot be replaced by anything else. Philosophy will certainly always remain fruitless for the knowledge of the immortal soul nature, for the knowledge of the spiritual world and also of the divine being, but it will not remain fruitless for the development of certain human powers, for the development of certain human abilities. Precisely because philosophy as such proves unsuitable for attaining the things mentioned, because it remains, as it were, insensitive to them, it strengthens all the more the powers of the human soul. And even if it cannot convey knowledge, it does, by being a concentrated life of thought, prepare the soul to make itself suitable for penetrating into the spiritual world. What we gain by working out philosophy lifts us into the spiritual world more than anything else. Precisely because no forces are lost in acquiring real knowledge, therefore all forces are applied to the elevation of human abilities. But we must accept precisely from this consideration that experiencing on the physical plane, because it is an experience in images, has something unreal, something unreal, and that basically, by immersing ourselves in the philosophical world, we are experiencing something unreal in soul and spirit. But does it have a meaning, does it have a significance, that we experience soul and spirit on the physical plane as something unreal? Can we find a wisdom of the world order in this? We have to ask ourselves such a question, and to answer it, we have to bring some insights of spiritual science to mind.

When a person has progressed a little through meditation, through concentration, in short, through intensifying his spiritual-soul experience, he enters into an experience that is, as it were, an alert sleep, a living in the spiritual world. And the first experience that a person has when he is, as it were, at the starting point of the initiation, is such that the person experiences moments when the spiritual world enters his consciousness in a dream-like, shimmering, flickering way. He only realizes this afterwards, when he says to himself: Now you have experienced something of the spiritual world. Usually, disciples of initiation pay too little attention to this experience, otherwise they would progress more easily.

If man did not lose consciousness during sleep, he would live in this spiritual world during the whole time, from falling asleep to waking up. He is really in it the whole time in a world of objective weaving of thoughts. Those who carefully follow the instructions in “How to Know Higher Worlds” will find that, when they wake up, they know: you emerge as if you had been swimming under the sea and now you are emerging into the air; you emerge as if you had been weaving with your soul experiences in a world of thoughts. It is as if you were to catch the last shreds of this experience when you wake up.

This can make a great impression, although it is immediately lost and usually very difficult to hold onto in the memory. But it is important for those who want to move forward to catch just such moments of awakening, because that is when consciousness arises: Before you woke up, you were in a weaving objective world of thought with your astral body, and by immersing yourself in your physical body, you encounter your physical body, which reflects back to you what you have lived through all night, at first in such a way that it glitters in the soul. This awareness can arise and should be noted, and it is extremely important that it arises. When one has such an awareness, one begins to know why it is difficult to really get the thoughts one experiences during sleep and also during initiation into the physical world, into physical thinking; for one lives with one's thoughts quite differently out of the body than in the body.

To make this clear, let us consider the moment of waking up and being awake. When you wake up, you and your spiritual being dive into your physical body. It is not surprising that you continue to live in the weaving of thoughts, because you have been living in the weaving of thoughts throughout the whole night while you were asleep. What happens is as follows. Imagine – I will draw it schematically – you enter your physical body from the outside. While you are not yet inside, but still outside, you are in a wonderful world of weaving thoughts, in which the spirits of the next higher hierarchies develop their activity. Before you wake up, you are in the world of the angeloi, the archangeloi, the archai and so on with your soul-spiritual experiences. Just as you are in the physical world among animals, plants and minerals, you are in the world of the higher hierarchies during sleep. And this being-in, this working of the higher hierarchies on your soul being, that happens precisely with the powers of thought that prevail there. And now you dive into your physical body. By diving into the physical body, you concentrate your thoughts by being captivated by the small part of the body that your head encloses. There you have to concentrate and draw together what is spread out outside. What happens is that the life of thought moves in and submerges into the nervous system. The life of thought actually moves through the senses into the nervous system. And what happens then? It actually happens that the physical substance is continually seized by the thought experience, first the substance of the etheric body, then also the physical substance. And indeed, when you stuff a thought into the physical, it has a kind of killing effect; by grasping a thought in your physical body, you actually kill something in your nervous system. “Killing” is actually the right word for it.

We now think something – and after some time we reflect on what is inside us. So many nerve corpses as we have cherished thoughts are now in us. What remains when we have thought something is really nothing but corpses, so that when we fall asleep at night, we have to leave our physical body to itself so that it can dispose of the thought corpses that we have created during the day through our thinking.

Do these thought corpses have to be there? Yes, they have to be there, because these thought corpses are actually the imprints of thinking; and if we could not form these thought corpses, we would be just as unable to consciously grasp a thought during the day as we are at night. During the night we are involved in the weaving of thoughts in the spiritual world. We do not have a physical body at our disposal into which we could press the thought corpses. During the night, the thought passes away and dissolves in the universal life of thought. The difference is that during the day we can hold on to thoughts by turning them into corpses that we can bury in the physical body. There the life of thought hardens, and this hardening has the effect that we can have the life of thought consciously.

This is the more exact process. Here we have another example of how materialism fails to explain everything. The materialist believes that he must look for the cause of thinking in what goes on inside, in the process of putting corpses into the ground. But what actually takes place are processes of secretion of thought, processes of the dead body. And the nervous system is there so that the process of secretion can be produced through the activity of thought. What thought leaves over, what it cannot use, what it expels, is examined by physical physiology. But during the waking hours of the day something takes shape that can be called the dying away of thinking in the physical body. The powers of thought that one develops are used to produce, as it were, casts or imprints of oneself. The forces go into these casts. During the night they do not go into such casts, for then we live, as it were, in the general ocean of spiritual existence. But because we cannot form such impressions in normal life without initiation, our thoughts also dissolve in this general sea. When we want to grasp them in the morning, they have simply dissolved; not even memory can hold on to them.

So if we grasp the process very precisely, we can say: some thought process develops. As it enters our body, it produces those secretions in the nerves. But before it produces these secretions, it reflects itself. Before it passes into the body and the bodily activity, it first reflects itself; the evocation of this activity is a reflection.

Imagine looking at an object with your eyes or hearing a sound with your ears or tones resonating. The sound resonance is outside. This sound enters the ear. A process begins in the auditory nerves, namely this cadaverization and secretion. And what you hear is therefore the reflected sound, actually an inner echo.

In this way, in our everyday experience, we are completely in a world of mirror images, and our own being is interwoven into this world of mirror images. For we would grasp our true being if we felt ourselves floating outside our body in the spiritual realm, if we felt: Now one of the angeloi seizes you; now you are weaving in the angeloi, you merge into the realm of the archangels, into the realm of the primal forces and so on. - Then we would feel carried into the realms of the higher beings. We would feel the immortality of the soul and know: just as these beings carry the happenings in the world from world age to world age, so they carry us with them from world age to world age. But in ordinary life, man does not perceive this. He is immersed in the physical body, and the experience of one's own self in true being dies during life in the physical body, and only the world of mirror images remains.

We can therefore shine a deep light into the process of knowledge, and one would wish that an awareness of the nature of this process of knowledge would truly take hold of the age. For this recognition of the world as a sum of mirror images, and the recognition that the actual being lies behind it, that is already an ascent to what humanity is really meant to be led to through spiritual science. We can therefore say no more and no less than: Man enters the physical plane, and by entering the physical plane, he is actually transferred from the world of reality into a world of unreality, into a mere world of images. And we must feel the full gravity of this realization, that we stand within a world of images when we think on the physical plane, when we perceive and imagine.

Thus we can say that the spiritual entities, by handing us down to the physical plane, have taken us out of the world of real reality and placed us in a world of unreality. And we recognize this at first as a fact of the spiritual world, even if it is not yet the world plan. We only recognize it as a fact of the world plan when we raise the question: Why are we, insofar as we are beings of the real physical world, placed in a world of unreal images? Why? - Suppose we were not, suppose we were placed on the physical plane in such a way that we had not images but realities. What does that actually mean? It would mean that we perceive the physical world; for example, we hear a sequence of sounds. The effect of this sequence of sounds goes into our ear, into our auditory nerves, and causes a change there. If we were only able to enjoy what is going on in the auditory nerves and were unable to project it up into our imaginations, then we would be in reality; we would have realities, not images. But that is not the case. We are really thrown out of the world of realities and placed in a world of images, in a world of unrealities. If we were really in the world of realities, in a world of reality, then we could never have the opportunity to give reality to a world ourselves, because we cannot give reality to what we experience as reality. An object that I take in my hand from the outside is something. It is not just an image, the object is something. Just as I cannot push the table that I see in the mirror, I cannot do anything real with the world that is only given to me in images. But if it is a matter of us creating realities ourselves, then it is just right that we live in a world of images, because then the images have no reality, but we can give them reality. Do we do that?

Yes, my dear friends, we do, in one area of our lives we do that. We do that when we act morally. In the moment when moral impulses flash through our mental life, in that moment we create something in the world that would not be there without us. When we imagine the world, we have only images; when we act morally, we place realities into the world. We would never be able to live with our morality in a world that would already appear to us as real. For then we would encounter the world everywhere with what we want to do morally.

Take animals, for example. They experience the world quite differently from human beings. They do not experience it as a world of images, but as a world of real realities. This is why animals cannot develop morality. Human beings can develop morality because they can place moral impulses into the world themselves, which is otherwise only a world of mirror images. What man lets flow into the world as moral impulses flows into the world as a reality that comes from him. The gods have placed us on the physical plane and made our spiritual experience a world of unreality, so that we may be in a position to place moral impulses as reality into this unreality. There you have creation out of nothing, creation into nothing through images that are only pictures, only unrealities.

If we look again at the sleeping person, we can say: insofar as this sleeping person is outside of his physical body and his etheric body, he experiences the world of weaving thoughts, into which the beings of the higher hierarchies are interwoven. But something else also permeates and flows through this world. What is it? The beings of the higher hierarchies are not merely thought beings; they are real beings, they have substance, and what they have as substance we do not experience in our thoughts, but in our will, namely in the will that is permeated by love. In our will, by placing the moral impulses into the world, which is otherwise only a world of images for us, we bring down the substance of the higher beings into our world. What we really do out of moral impulses is nothing other than bringing down the substance of the beings of the higher hierarchies into our world.

Our thoughts, when we live with our spiritual and soul being in our physical body after waking up, are mirrored in a part of our body: so to speak, the products of the deposit of our waking thought life are formed in the nervous system. The nature of moral impulses, which basically come from the nature of the higher hierarchies, goes into our whole body, permeating our whole being, our whole organism, not just the nervous system; so that the human being can be seen as twofold: as a nervous human being, and alongside that, the whole of the rest of the physical human being, into which everything that is experienced in the person's moral impulses flows. But we come out of the world of spiritual realities by immersing ourselves in our physical body. As we immerse ourselves in our physical body, emerging from the worlds of thought, they flicker and glitter, reflecting back, forming the corpses of thoughts in the nervous system. We just do not perceive this flickering and glittering in our ordinary lives. Thoughts live in us, but they are not living beings in us; they are reflected, and what we perceive is a kind of reading of the dead thoughts. But these thoughts that reflect themselves are a living thing, and that has great significance in the order of the world. When a person stands before you and you look at this person and are aware: he perceives, he thinks, what is in his mind as a web of thoughts goes into his nervous system, is reflected in everything perceptible, in sounds and colors - what happens to the spiritual light that goes into him, that makes impressions on his nervous system? What happens to the impressions that arise? You see, the cherubim come, collect this light and use it for the further world order, and we are all the candlesticks that are set up in the world order. By thinking, perceiving and imagining, we are the candlesticks of the cherubim in the world order. Just as this light here in the physical world illuminates space, so we are the candlesticks in the spiritual world for the cherubim. When we think, light arises in us; the light of thought radiates out from us and illuminates the world in which the cherubim live.

When we carry into our body from the world of hierarchies those substances from which moral impulses are born and these penetrate our entire organization, our volitional impulses, our actions, take place. Everything we do is the result of these volitional impulses being active in us. It is not just what happens externally in the world through us, but, insofar as it is moral action, this moral action is gathered by the seraphim, and this moral action is the source of warmth for the whole cosmic order. Under the influence of people who act immorally, the seraphim freeze, that is, they receive no warmth with which they can heat the whole cosmic world. Under the influence of moral action, the seraphim acquire the powers by which the cosmic world order is maintained, just as physical warmth maintains the physical world order.

You see, the worldview that spiritual science gives us becomes very real. It brings us to the realization: When you think, when you imagine, you are the kindled light of the cherubim. When you act, when you do something, when you unfold the will, then you are the source of warmth, the source of fire of the seraphim. We stride through the world, conscious that we are not useless good-for-nothings in it, but stand in the world order for the benefit of the whole world order, and conscious that it is also in our power to be a source of darkness in the world. For if we want to be dull and stupid and not think, then we increase the darkness, and the consequence of this is that the cherubim have no light. If we are bad and immoral, we increase the coldness in the whole world order, and the seraphim have no warmth.

Spiritual science does not give us mere theories, as external science can do if it is not a practical science and leads to technical application. Spiritual science gives us something through which we first learn to know what we as human beings are in the whole order of the world. What follows from spiritual science, the essential, is what is important. It is a heightened sense of responsibility towards our humanity. One feels what tasks one has towards the cosmos by being human. One feels that one can be human in the right sense and can be human in the wrong sense, that one can give one's all to darkness and cold or to light and warmth in the world order.

With this practical goal in mind, one would like to bring spiritual science into the world so that it can take hold of hearts. For one can be sure that spiritual science will then really be able to create a new human soul condition and thus a completely new form of human experience on earth and further in the universe, that it is not just a matter of passing on knowledge, but a source of true, genuine life forces. It is so ardently desired that this be grasped, be grasped so very deeply by those who today feel the urge for this spiritual science! For this spiritual science is still too much taken as something external, still too much so that it, like other knowledge, is to satisfy curiosity or, let us say, the thirst for knowledge. But the seriousness with which spiritual science is placed in life must grow. That is what our time so urgently needs: not just belief in the spiritual world, but the possibility of relating to the spiritual world in such a way that the human soul truly draws near to the spiritual world. And as the child draws nourishment from its mother's breast, so does the human soul draw the substance of life for a new form of earthly experience, of earthly activity, of knowing itself in the spiritual order of the world, from what spiritual science is able to reveal to it.

Only when the relationship of people to spiritual science is imbued with this magical breath of feeling and perception will spiritual science be understood in its true, innermost core. But it will be necessary for it to take root in particular among those who participate in a common work of spiritual scientific endeavors.

What else should our building be if not something in which we all participate – especially those who are working on it – participate as a community, in a confluence of attitudes that spiritual science awakens! That is the tremendously important and significant thing. If the building is erected in this spirit, then it will not only be this dry building with its forms, but will be something that radiates far out into the world; it will be what those who worked on it have created in loving, genuine collaboration. Whatever they have poured into the structure, whatever they have left behind in it, no matter how loosely it may be connected with the structure, if it is directed in love towards what the structure should be, then it may be the smallest activity. And if it flows from the human attitude that seeks to merge with the cosmic order, then this structure will be something that is not just dead, but alive, truly alive.

That is the secret of our thought corpses, that we can always revive them again for a certain time. And the other side, that of remembrance, I discussed last time: that which thoughts have produced in us as thought corpses and which remains in its form, just as human corpses remain on earth, can be revived by later soul forces. And when a memory emerges, that which is only a thought corpse will shine again in us for a while in a living way.

Let us work to ensure that our building is similar in the human order, so that those who come to see it are unconsciously transported into the sphere of love with which it is built! For then it will not be merely a collection of dead forms, but something that comes to life when you look at it, like the thought-corpses of memory. And then, for all future time, the way we work on it will determine whether this structure will be something that can be revitalized again and again by those who encounter it.

By allowing these thoughts to work on our soul, we gain a living relationship to this building of ours, the living relationship that humanity really needs by living from the present into the future. For much will not be allowed to remain dead, but will have to live, but will only be able to live through the emergence of that new attitude that must be a result of spiritual science and spiritual knowledge.

In our examination of the Wrangell brochure on “Science and Theosophy”, we have tried to consider various ideas that show how someone who wants to stand firmly on the ground of modern science is nevertheless pushed towards the recognition of knowledge of spiritual life. And as you have seen, we have fewer objections to Wrangell's pamphlet than the fact that we have only had additions to make in the sense of spiritual science. So in this pamphlet there is, as it seems at first, a subjective judgment about how the path of the modern scientist to spiritual science is, how, in other words, one can be a modern scientist and still find the path to spiritual science.

It is important to consider this train of thought, because it seems to me to be absolutely necessary that those who stand on the ground of spiritual science clearly recognize that the objections of so-called scientists are not at all really scientific, but come from the fact that today one can be an excellent scientist who knows how to use materialistic scientific methods quite well in some field of science and can be a complete amateur in all other world-view questions.

Now today, so to speak, in continuation of the thoughts developed on the basis of the brochure, I would like to develop some other thoughts that are important for us. I would like to show how the present development of humanity has reached a point that should suggest to the insightful scientist, to the one who really takes science seriously and appreciates it, that he should engage in spiritual scientific study and not do it the way it has been done so far: to regard it as something to be rejected from the outset.

I have, as some of you may recall, in the context of the considerations related to the Wrangell brochure, in some respects actually sung the praises of the materialistic scientific method. I have said that it has produced great and significant results in recent times, that one need only gain a correct point of view in relation to this materialistic scientific method and one will appreciate it and not underestimate it. We will familiarize ourselves with its results, precisely if we necessarily intend to draw the threads between it and spiritual science.

Now, I would first like to start from a kind of scientific train of thought that can show us how the thinking scientist — precisely when he understands himself in the right way — should knock on the door of spiritual science. I would like to draw attention to a chapter of modern natural science that also has great significance in socio-ethical terms, but which cannot achieve this in a way that is satisfying for the human being until and unless natural science has found the path to spiritual science. I would like to discuss some of the lines of thought in so-called criminal anthropology.

One of the great researchers in criminal anthropology is Professor Dr. Moriz Benedikt, whom I have mentioned before. He was one of the first to examine the brains of criminals in a thoroughly modern and systematic way, by dissecting criminals, especially murderers who had been sentenced to death. The results were so surprising compared to many of the pre-existing theories that, at first, after the first few examinations, he thought he was dealing with a kind of scientific adventure and not at all with something on the trail of the truth. When he examined the brains of criminals, then, those familiar with the configuration and structure of the normal human brain would always see very specific internal structures with very specific characteristics that differ from the structure of the brain of a person who is not a criminal. And so that we don't go too far afield, I will stick to the main feature.

It was found that a certain part of the human brain, called the occipital lobe, which covers the cerebellum, is too small in the case of criminals, so that it only covers the cerebellum sparsely or not at all, whereas it would otherwise cover it completely.

Now imagine dissecting the brain of a criminal and finding that this criminal brain differs from a normal brain in that the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum. Then you have to come to the conclusion that If you are born in such a way that you cannot possibly develop the occipital lobe to such an extent that it covers the cerebellum, then no matter what you do in life, you will become a criminal and consequently you cannot help it. And if you now examine ape brains, the same peculiarity can be seen: the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum. So you have to say: In the various developmental stages on the way from ape to man, it should also be noted that man has progressed beyond the ape's development and has become a more perfect being because his occipital lobe has grown and completely covers the cerebellum. This means that when a person becomes a criminal, he falls back into the ape's organization. In the criminal, then, we have to do with an outspoken atavism. This means nothing other than that there are individuals among human beings who, in the structure of their brains, have atavistically reverted to the ape-like image. These atavistic individuals become criminals.

Now think of the ethical and social consequences of such a view and then you will know what it means to have to accept these facts under the auspices of the current materialistic world view – I do not mean the prevailing natural science. For the facts are there and only a fool could deny them. So anyone who allows themselves to be guided by the materialistic worldview is confronted with the challenge: just look at the brains of criminals and you will see that the structure of the brain regresses to that of an ape. So you can clearly see how what is revealed in man in terms of morality is simply a consequence of the material organization of the physical. There you see it quite clearly. The man who had this brain had become a criminal precisely because he had this brain. With the same necessity with which the clockwork serves us, if it is working properly, to catch the ten o'clock train, while a clockwork that is not working properly, which perhaps only shows seven o'clock, makes us late for the train, with the same necessity a brain that has not fully developed the occipital lobe indicates a criminal person who is retarded. Since you would certainly not be able to bring yourself to fantasize a demon into the clock that drives the hands around, you will also not be able to bring yourself to dream the demon “soul” into the brain. |

To resist the proven results of criminal anthropological investigations of criminal brains so readily is to pursue an ostrich-like policy in science, to simply refuse to reckon with those things that have been absolutely researched.

Now, as you know, there is still a philosophy besides materialistic science. But if you look at this philosophy, perhaps especially at those who are often counted among its most important representatives today, you will find that this philosophy is completely powerless in the face of materialistic methods. The concepts that philosophers arrive at either boil down to, as I showed you with Otto Liebmann, who is a very astute person and who says that one cannot get beyond certain points, that one cannot cross certain boundaries. I gave you the example of the chicken egg. Or take the philosophy of Rudolf Eucken in Jena, and you can see how they talk around it and dress up the words nicely, but how the concepts that are developed cannot approach the materialistic methods. They are like the actions of someone who is standing on one bank of a river and is making every possible effort to get to the other bank, but cannot get there.¹ Over there is the materialistic scientific method, but he cannot get over to it; therefore, philosophizing remains just beating about the bush.

What is actually going on here? Well, let us go back to something we have known for a long time; let us go back to the division of the human being into physical body, etheric body, astral body and I. Let us start with this roughest classification, as it has presented itself to us in the course of our spiritual scientific investigations, and ask ourselves: What happens when we look at something external and sensual – and a criminal mind is also something external and sensual – what happens then? The external sensuality acts on our sense organs. These are in the physical body. That is where sensual perception comes about. Nobody denies this. We would be fools if we, as spiritual scientists, were to deny it. It would be foolishness if we did not concern ourselves with the results I have cited from criminal anthropology. We cannot deny their validity either, for they prove conclusively that the criminal has the brain of an ape and the normal human being no longer has this ape-like brain. So when we philosophize, as today's philosophers do, what are we doing? In which regions of the human being do we then move? Then we move in the sphere of the I. Today, all philosophical concepts are there. And you will see that even those who are most astute in their philosophy today are all swimming in the region of the I, as it were. You can find scientific proof of this in the introductory chapter of my Rätsel der Philosophie (Puzzles of Philosophy), where I have shown how philosophy in our time tends to be essentially a swimming in the I. But between natural science and philosophy there is a wide distance, that is the river over which philosophy cannot cross, that is, the philosophical concepts are on one side - inwardly in man - and all sensual perceptions are outside, on the other side.

I once had a clear, if only symptomatic, insight into the abyss between philosophy and scientific perception – but I ask you to bear in mind that this is only meant to be symptomatic – when the sixtieth birthday of Ernst Haeckel was celebrated. I took part in the celebration in Jena. Various people spoke there, supporters of Haeckel and so on. Now it was interesting for me to see what would happen if Haeckel's philosophical colleagues, among whom was Dr. Rudolf Eucken, would propose a so-called toast during the lunch, as is so common, because then one could somehow see how the representatives of philosophy of a university relate to the representatives of natural science and sensory perception. The toast – proposed by Eucken – had the following content; I will only give the main idea. Eucken said something like: at a birthday party like today's, it is customary to say what particularly characterizes the birthday child. Now, I have tried to think of what could particularly characterize our birthday child, but I have not found anything special in my own thinking. So I asked the daughter of our guest of honor and she told me that it is one of the characteristic peculiarities of our guest of honor that he cannot manage his tie, for example, when he wants to turn it down. - In this tone the toast continued.

Now, as I said, what the representatives of philosophy at a university had to say about the representative of sensual, scientific perceptions was symptomatic of what I encountered. It is really symptomatic, because there is no real bridge between today's philosophy and science, because the concepts of philosophers are very thin and the sensual facts that science brings to light are beyond their reach. You cannot cross over with philosophical concepts.

Now I have already drawn your attention to the fact that there is a possibility of bringing the facts of natural science into play, of really bringing them into play. This possibility consists in really engaging with the spirit of Goethe's scientific observations. Just remember that I explained to you how Goethe came to regard the skull bones, despite their quite different external form from the vertebrae, as transformed spinal vertebrae. I called your attention to this theory of transformation when I told you that our boiler house is only a transformation of our main building, in that it is enlarged on the one hand and stunted on the other. I also pointed out to you in another lecture that when one ascends from ordinary concepts to spiritual-scientific concepts, one has to set the concepts in motion. I recommended reading Goethe's poems about the metamorphosis of plants and animals. There you will see how mobile the concepts are, and how he has shaped all of this.

If you take what I have said on various occasions and combine it with what we need to be guided by today, then you will say to yourself: If I take the sensory perceptions directly, they are more limited, but if I move on to the Goethean worldview, then such a vertebral bone appears to me to be more elastic, softer, so that it gradually becomes part of the skull. I look into the creative nature. I see how, for example, the individual skull bones in fish are very similar to the dorsal vertebrae, and how the transition to humans occurs by developing the dorsal vertebrae into skull bones... *

You can only follow this mentally, however; you cannot see it with your senses. If you wanted to see it with your senses, you would have to observe for thousands, millions of years, how one passes into the other. So you have to spiritualize the observation, the sensory perception.

You see, Goethe instinctively did this spiritualization of sensory perception correctly. I have often referred to the momentous conversation between him and Schiller when they once walked out of the Natural History Society in Jena after a lecture by the botanist Batsch. Schiller said that he had found everything only side by side in Batsch's lecture. Goethe then drew his archetype, which one gets when one moves from one plant form to another. Schiller said: “But that is not a perception, that is an idea.” Goethe replied: “Then I have my ideas before my eyes.” He was aware that he not only saw the individual transformations, but that he saw a plant in all its parts. This is based on the fact that Goethe instinctively observed everything not only with his physical senses, but by immediately capturing physical perception in the observation of the etheric body. That is, Goethe takes the metamorphosing perception - and this is a continually moving perception - into his view of nature. As a result, the whole sensory world comes into motion for him. The particular is then only a special expression of a very general one, but not of a general one as abstract philosophers make it, but of a general one that winds its way through the individual sensory perceptions. There you see a raising of sensory perception into the imaginative that arises in man when one does not disdain to add his etheric body to sensory perception.

You will not understand what Goethe wrote about animals and plants if you do not consider that he included the etheric body. Now you have already pushed it a little higher. We would have done something if we had pushed the philosophical concepts over here as well, so that they could approach [the perceptions] (...).²

Now take what we have often considered over the years. It is part of the first step of “How to Know Higher Worlds”: that one can raise physical, objective perception to a higher level, to imaginative perception. But do you remember the characteristic that I have given over and over again - in countless places in our cycles it says - what this imaginative view consists of? It consists of the fact that the I works its way back into the etheric body. As long as one only forms objective concepts, as the philosopher also does - for the fact that he works in the spirit is only his megalomania - one does not get any further. One must pass from the objective to the imaginative, that is, as soon as life enters into the concepts, one passes from the mere ego back into the etheric body. One works the astral body into the spirit-self, that is, one can say that the philosophical concepts become imaginative concepts or ideas, if one can still apply the word “concept” there.

But now things have come together: the imaginative concepts are no longer separated from the metamorphosing perceptions by a gulf, but are immediately adjacent.

We will now see that while philosophy and sense perception are separated by a gulf and cannot come together because physical perception takes place in the physical body and the philosopher in the ego , here, however, [it was apparently drawn again] the imaginative concepts and the perceptions come together because the objective concept is in the physical body and the metamorphosed concepts are in the etheric body. So there is a deepening in both directions. On the one hand, we have to approach the world with the whole human being, and on the other hand, we have to deepen the concepts by bringing them to life, by transforming them into imagination.

Philosophers want to avoid this. They cannot engage with the concept of imagination, and natural scientists cannot engage with the metamorphosing perception. But spiritual science brings this about. Our entire spiritual science is precisely an answer to the question: How does the rational human being, living in his astral body, perceive the metamorphosing perceptions living in his etheric body? How does he think them? That is what is so important, that we really know that we bring the outer world closer to the inner world, that they approach each other, that we bring them together.

Now we can gain a ray of hope with regard to the reality of criminal anthropology. Of course, someone who is born with a occipital lobe that does not properly cover the cerebellum will have to walk around with such an ape-like occipital lobe for their whole life. But where does such an ape-like occipital lobe come from? From a spiritual science point of view, it arises as a result of the previous life, because what a person used to be in the past creates their physical development from the inside out. This is how they create the structure of their body and brain, and thus also of their occipital lobe. We can therefore say: If a person walks around with an atrophied occipital lobe, then in his previous life he did not gain enough strength to form the occipital lobe normally. This is not really a consolation, because there is always the possibility that such a person will become a criminal, because the occipital lobe cannot become enlarged. One could say that people are then divided into two parts: those who have a too small occipital lobe and who are born to be criminals, and those who have a fully developed occipital lobe and who do not become criminals. For the materialistic world view, there is hardly any error here. It will come to this conclusion. Theoretically, there is no other answer for spiritual science either, but since it knows that the physical body is not the only body, but also carries an etheric body within it, the situation changes for it. For if a person is born with an atrophied occipital lobe, that is, with an unfavorable disposition, then we can still educate this person properly. We can shape the education in such a way that we teach him the appropriate moral and ethical concepts. Although the physical body cannot be changed in the present incarnation, the etheric part of the occipital lobe can. It can be enlarged by what a person is taught through proper education. Thus, it is possible to help a person who, due to a previous incarnation, has a occipital lobe that is too short, by means of a suitable education. By educating such a person correctly, we make the etheric part of the occipital lobe larger and the person in question can thus be saved from becoming a criminal.

Now, given the fact that those who have become criminals have a too-short occipital lobe, one would also have to do the reverse experiment. One would have to dissect normal people and prove that they all had normally developed occipital lobes; and in doing so, one might discover that even in normally developed people, some have occipital lobes that are too small, but nevertheless have not become criminals, precisely because their etheric occipital lobes have grown larger through appropriate education.

Ethical education adds something to the etheric, not to the physical, constitution. However, education must be organized in such a way that it corresponds to spiritual laws. If you take what has been developed as an educational principle in the small publication “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”, you will find that the principles of development from seven to seven years have been followed. When one begins to grasp these laws and to implement them in appropriate measures, then one intervenes more deeply than with the purely rationalistic educational methods that have been common practice for a long time. One does not get any further with what has emerged as Froebelism. With all the educational methods that are practiced today, one only gets to the I. But as long as you only reach the I, you cannot do anything, the occipital lobe remains too small. But if you eavesdrop on the secrets of spiritual existence and turn them into educational measures, you will enter the etheric body. There you really normalize the etheric body, that is, with spiritual science you gain powerful concepts, concepts that really have power over the human being, that can change him. If you take the concepts that can be gained today - whether from observation of the world of sensory perception, or from abstract talk, which comes only from the ego - you will not get any educational principles or principles for social life that really have an effect on people. The concepts remain powerless. You can search through whole libraries - and enough has been written about education - but all of it is a will to rule out of the ego, whether you believe you are educating more theoretically or otherwise. As long as it is not eavesdropped on the secret of human nature and the spiritual principles of education and thereby made effective into the etheric body, as long as it remains powerless against what grows in the human being. As we approach the world with concepts that are becoming more powerful, we also approach what is becoming and growing in the world, so that we do not incorporate anything theoretical. If we go from philosophical to imaginative concepts, as spiritual science does, and if you go from sensory perception to metamorphosing perception, we approach our principles to the spiritual, and then we will gain appropriate measures and principles from spiritual science.

From what I have said, you can see how right and how necessary it is in our time - after centuries of development have pointed the world to mere sensory perception and thereby pushed it back to mere comprehension in the ego - how necessary it is to bring external perception and inner soul life closer together again, both for contemplation and for practical life. With spiritual science, we gain powerful concepts that intervene in life, concepts that really have something to do with life. Concepts such as those of Eucken's philosophy never intervene in real life. With spiritual science, we touch reality, we touch it where it is more real than sensory perception.

When we approach reality with our ordinary concepts and with ordinary sensory perception, we look at what is on the surface; we look with our sensory tools. For example, we look at the mountain with its plant world. And now there are two types of people: some look at the mountain with its plant world and forget themselves (Haeckel), while others look at nothing of the external world, but only talk in terms and stare into space; as a result, philosophy becomes empty (Eucken's philosophy). Spiritual science approaches reality with metamorphosing perception and thus looks at something that is not expressed on the surface, but at something that lies beneath. But even when it looks at the human being, it goes from the mere sensory perception of the physical sense organs back to the metamorphosing perception (etheric body) and from the mere philosophical concept to the imaginative conception and thus has something like an underground channel between the mere sensory perception (physical sense organs) and the mere philosophical concept (I). Now you will also understand that a bleak world view must arise if spiritual science does not take hold, because philosophy will naturally be completely powerless with its concepts in the face of the human being. Sensory perception cannot be denied; it will become less and less possible to deny it. So it is natural that the materialistic world view will say: What can you do about becoming a criminal? What can you do about having a short occipital lobe? Imagine what this must do to the concept of responsibility and to legal concepts! We must face up to this prospect. It is cowardly not to face it.

However, there is a way to go beyond this by working on the etheric body from within through appropriate good education, so that the etheric occipital lobe is developed. But this education must be an education of the heart and of love, as shown in the essay 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science'. When one realizes this, one says to oneself: Of course, a person with a short occipital lobe will walk around with the shortened occipital lobe his whole life and be tempted. But by developing the etheric occipital lobe, he will always be able to find the necessary balance. Spiritual science will thus become a great factor when those who only know the achievements of the materialistic world view knock at the door of spiritual science.

Secondly, I would like to show you another thing that can be taken from the life of the soul. Especially in our time, we have the opportunity to see that feelings, for example feelings of hatred, are spreading throughout entire communities. Now someone who still has a naive worldview, when asked why they hate, will of course not know exactly why something is hateful because they still have a naive worldview. They might say, “I hate because I find it hateful.” Now there is a psychological world view today that goes beyond this naivety, that knows more than that one hates something because it is hateful, just as the criminal anthropologist knows more than the person who believes that a person became a criminal because he was a bad guy and did not improve; because the criminal anthropologist knows that the person in question has a occipital lobe that is too small. And so it is also a naive judgment to say: I hate this or that because it is hateful. Now, there too, people have already risen to a correct judgment. If you take a closer look at human nature, you can see how the feelings that are developed in the soul belong to the soul's tools, to its living conditions. And if one does not look naively but with real observation of the facts at the world of the soul today, one comes to the conclusion that a certain amount of need to hate is stored up latently in man without it becoming visible. He must hate. And when so much hatred has accumulated that the barrel overflows, so to speak, he seeks an object for his power to hate. Now consider the way in which a person comes to a worldview. We endeavor to show how one can come to a spiritual-scientific worldview in an objective way. But one does not always come to a spiritual-scientific worldview, or even to a materialistic worldview, because of this, but because one is emotionally predisposed to it. What logically speaks for a worldview comes into consideration only in the second or even third place. Go, for example, to the meetings of the Communists or materialists and examine what they present to logically found their worldview, then you can see that it is not their logic but their feeling that is predestined. And so it is with the spiritual worldview. Perhaps you have the mystical worldview because it appeals to your feelings and does you more good than a materialistic worldview. The emotional and affective factor plays an enormous role here. It is the same with hatred of the outside world. When a person hates something, the psychologist will not ask: What is the object like? but rather: What is the person like? The need for hatred is in him and the object arises by itself. He must hate, as one must eat at certain times. This is a realization that contemporary psychology has already achieved.

I have in my hand a copy of the journal “Die Zukunft” from September 25, 1915. It contains an essay by Franz Blei entitled “Truths.” It discusses something like what I have done now. It then explains what Avenarius - Franz Blei is a student of Avenarius - has established in his empirical criticism. This is summarized in individual sentences and there you will find very beautifully expressed in these sentences what can already be understood today as the results of psychological research: “Pure feelings are to be assumed theoretically as preexisting feelings laden with ideational components and not experienceable. Practically, we know of no feeling that has no ideational component.” This sentence does not exactly concern what we need, so we do not want to dwell on it. It is not necessary for us to peel it apart, otherwise we would have to go into the concepts that were used. But another sentence may be more important for us, namely: “Pure ideas are to be assumed to preexist humanly conceived ideas and cannot be experienced purely. Practically, we know of no idea (thought, image) that has not already served as a component of a feeling.

So, when an idea arises in us, we must ask ourselves: what feeling has driven us to this idea? The idea arises in one person: the world can be broken down into atoms. What feeling drove him to this? In another, the idea arises: the world has a hierarchy, a ladder. - What feeling drove him to that? So the component of feeling is in it everywhere. And when someone hates, what feeling drives him to it? Blei says: “It is not ideas that evoke feelings, but pure feelings take possession of ideas that can satisfy those feelings.” For example: the Social Democrat hates the bourgeois. He hates him because he needs a quantity of hate and he turns that against the bourgeois. Or the anti-Semite needs hate and the Jew presents himself for the purpose. Franz Blei says in point 8: “It is not the truth of an idea in itself that decides whether it is accepted by people, but its affective content.”

So you see, he already knows that too! You don't become a materialistic monist because you see the truth, but because you are predestined by your feelings, and you don't become a spiritualist because it is true, but because you are predestined by your feelings.

The essay continues: “Ideas are accepted whose probability is zero, others together again and at the same time with those that are the opposite of the first. Think of the multiplicity of the ”Thou shalt not kill!” Here only the believer is allowed an objection, to which Hegel once gave the expression of the “cunning of the idea”, which uses our passions for its realization, in that people think they are working for themselves, while in reality they are doing it for the “world spirit. The Christian believer speaks of the inscrutability of God's ways.

The whole essay is therefore about the fact that it is not the ideas, the so-called truths, that take hold of people, but the emotional content.

Anyone who looks at the world today, at how it has gradually developed, will find this quite right and it is very significant that a school of philosophy like Avenarius' has come to realize that the social democrat hates the bourgeois not because he finds him hateful, but because he himself needs a certain amount of hate. So Avenarius' school of philosophy has already come to understand this today.

But let us consider what social consequences this has. Imagine for a moment – and one would say that this point of view, if one still has any real feelings at all, must become the very bitterest of soul-pills – that you seriously accept these things as truths. Then you will have to say to yourself: In this case, truth no longer decides anything, but emotions do. I am admitted to a worldview, but only because I do not know the truth. This leads to absolute desolation. There is no escape. Just as there is no escape in criminal anthropology from admitting that a short occipital lobe makes a criminal, so there is no escape from external psychology from the fact that people are driven by their affects to what they call truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche has attempted to express this most clearly, most significantly and most convincingly in the most diverse variants of his world view. All of Nietzscheanism is based on this. I have quoted the passage myself in my book “Friedrich Nietzsche, a fighter against his time”. The question there is: What is truth? And because Nietzsche did not accept the correctness of this sentence because of the truth, but rejected it because of the whole preparation of human subjectivity, Nietzsche wanted to put an end to fantasy [of the will to truth], that is, also to Christianity. Therefore, he wrote “Antichrist”, the next one was to be “The Immoralists” and the whole thing was then to be “The Will to Power”.

Desolation and absolute nihilism is what such schools of philosophy lead to, with their realization that those who are predisposed to believe that they can best relate to the world by adhering to matter, become materialists; and those who believe that they live through a dependence on the spiritual world become spiritualists out of their affect.

- Now, my dear friends, all you have to do is take one thing, you just have to open the last chapter of “Theosophy”, where the path to knowledge is described, and take the fact that is taken as a starting point. It is not based on the idea that one should logically speculate in order to arrive at these truths, but it is based on the idea that it is necessary to develop and shape the whole affective world of the human being, the direction of feeling, in a certain way. It deals with what underlies the search for truth. It tackles what psychology points to, but does not know how to deal with. Why do we not refute materialism with logical arguments, why do we not establish spiritualism with logical arguments? Because all this means nothing. Rather, something else is to be shown. It is to be shown: You have to do this and this with your affects so that you are no longer guided by the subjective, but... . [space].

Take this chapter of “Theosophy” and you will see that everything depends on an objectivization of the affective life, and then you can see how this intervenes in the impasse of the modern worldview... [The final sentences are no longer decipherable in shorthand.]

• 1. was obviously drawn on the blackboard; however, the drawing has not been handed down.
• 2. Here are a few more lines in the original shorthand that do not reveal any coherent meaning.

Dear attendees! Before I begin with the lecture, I would like to apologize to the esteemed attendees: My voice has suffered a little lately due to a very common cold. It could be that it suffers disturbances during the lecture and would do all sorts of somersaults. I kindly ask for your understanding in this regard. I hope that my voice will improve during the lecture.

What I would particularly like to emphasize in the first part of these reflections on social issues is the true nature of what actually lives in the social demands of the present. For a discerning person, when he considers human affairs, especially the affairs of the human life itself, it very, very soon becomes clear how that which man actually wills and strives for in the most comprehensive sense masks and hides itself externally in all sorts of forms that do not directly represent that which actually lives as an impulse in the soul.

Therefore, one must particularly try to explore the true nature of what actually lives in human souls when faced with social phenomena.

Social issues – no one, esteemed attendees, will be able to deny that they have been discussed for decades, not only discussed within circles in which one discussed this or that more or less seriously, that they were discussed by the world parties, world classes, world destinies. Much, much has been achieved in the second half of the nineteenth century in terms of what can be taught to solve these pressing issues that have become truly burning in the present.

In particular, however, it is the terrible catastrophe that has befallen humanity in recent years, which, with regard to what is alive in the social question, could have a galvanizing, enlightening effect on many a human soul.

One could see, dear honoured attendees, how the social question played into this war catastrophe, one could say, right where the most immediate causes of this war catastrophe came into question. Much of what is connected with the starting point of this war catastrophe will, one may still doubt today, be the subject of a social pathology, or rather, the subject of a social psychiatry. But much of the mental state of personalities who had a part, a living part, in the initial currents of this catastrophe can be traced back to their fear, to their whole relationship in general, to what they saw coming as the modern proletarian, social movement.

They understood little of what was alive in this social movement; but they saw it coming. What had a determining influence on those judgments, which were partly responsible for this terrible catastrophe, was not so much what was alive in this social movement, which had only just emerged in 1914, as what had become established in some of the souls of leading personalities under the influence of the emerging social movement.

Then again, esteemed attendees, on the one hand we see many things developing during the last four and a half years. So that, I would say, certain leading circles continued to fear the approaching social movement. But on the other hand, we see how hopes are being raised that what could not come from other world currents might perhaps come from the international socialist world movement, a balancing of the disharmonies that have come to light in this catastrophe. And now, now that this catastrophe has developed into a crisis, which short-sighted minds may mistake for an end, but which is by no means an end, now a large part of educated Europe is faced with the historical, with the actual necessity of taking a stand on what is hidden in the social problem. And must one not, when one follows these things with an unprejudiced eye, must one not say: something tragic is befalling the minds of precisely those who must now feel compelled to comment on the social problem from the immediate present? For decades, through diligent thought and diligent observation of social phenomena, some believed they had grasped a judgment, a power of judgment. Now that the question has become urgent, now that the question in the life of facts, let us say, is growing more urgent with each passing day: unbiased observation cannot say otherwise! And so at least one thing seems to emerge, especially from the role that social movement has played in the last catastrophic events of humanity – one thing seems to emerge from all this: that for a long, long time, people of all classes, of all professions, will have to deal seriously with what is today called social demand. This may justify, esteemed attendees, that I, who has been allowed to speak about subjects in spiritual science for years here in Bern, take the opportunity to speak about this social problem in the narrower sense, based on the foundations of this spiritual scientific research. If I may start with a personal comment, I would just like to say this: it is certainly not, as some might believe, from a purely theoretical method of knowledge, but rather from a theoretical work of knowledge that I would like to speak here about the social problem, as this social problem came to me when I through years among proletarians teachers at a workers' training school was, and from there, to teach and work had just among the proletarian population itself in the trade union, in the cooperative and also within the political movement, instructing, teaching.

Yes, esteemed attendees, I had the opportunity to observe what I believe is of primary importance to observe if one wants to understand the social question. Above all, I had the opportunity to observe, to witness, what I would call the proletarian state of mind.

Those who get to know this proletarian state of mind may be struck by the following conviction: You see, dear attendees, much that is urgent, astute and industrious has been written precisely the field of socialists and non-socialists in the course of the last few decades - actually already in the second half of the nineteenth century, and then through the twentieth century, as far as we have progressed in this twentieth century. This extensive literature expresses what is being thought within the modern proletariat as a social question.

If we compare what is expressed in the literature with what an unbiased observation of life reveals to those who can observe this life, we first discover a strange, highly conspicuous and instructive contradiction within the modern proletarian social movement.

Nothing is heard more often in literature, in speeches, in articles by socialist writers and agitators than a certain underestimation of everything intellectual, everything spiritual! The socialist side in particular emphasizes that everything that man thinks, everything that man somehow works out spiritually in himself, that this is nothing more than, so to speak, I would say, the cloud that rises from the great, only realities of the economic struggles of mankind.

How the individual classes struggle with each other economically, what takes place in economic life, that is the only true reality. Like clouds, those formations that develop as human thoughts arise, arise as that which is called knowledge, that which is called art, and so on.

Am I saying something particularly new to anyone who has somehow dealt with these things when I express this assertion in relation to all socialist literature and all socialist work? Because, dear attendees, a vivid observation shows that within the entire historical development of humanity, there has never been a party movement, a class movement, that has started from thinking, from knowledge, as intensely as the particular proletarian-socialist movement! Yes, it can be said, without exaggeration, that the modern socialist movement is the one that seeks to rest, in a quite unique way, on what is scientifically based. However strange it may sound, the modern socialist movement is the one that, in contrast to all other similar movements in world history, starts from a scientific basis in the most eminent sense, from a foundation of ideas!

As there are so many contradictions in life, indeed, as life itself consists of the interaction of contradictions, so – one could say – it is also there. People consciously say: We think nothing of thoughts; in the unconscious lie the reasons from which this movement has emerged: from thought. One has only to observe with true love for the facts and with true love for the observation of human nature to see how the proletarian soul was touched by an understanding of such difficult, such exact precision - at least an attempt at exactness is made - such exact thought work as that of Karl Marx ; one must see with love for the facts, with love for the observation of human nature, how the proletarian mind has been tried in an astute way to understand where Karl Marx, the leader of the modern proletarian movement, the theoretical leader, was actually mistaken.

It can be said that if you were a little tired of the superficiality of so-called bourgeois intellectual circles within contemporary human society and entered the circles of the proletariat, you could already notice the transition – the transition from the superficial, lightly veiled scientificity of an education that is only superficially constructed, to the intense striving to get behind the secrets of the immediate life that surrounds you in the modern proletarian world. One sensed, I would say, the approach of a terrible disaster, by the fact that one saw how little inclination there was, especially among the intellectual, leading people, to find understanding for what really lives in the proletarian soul.

One could feel a pang of heartache when one saw the paths the leading class of humanity took to look into the proletarian soul: they went to the theater to see Hauptmann's “Weavers.” Aesthetic enjoyment of proletarian situations – that was what they sought as understanding.

They had little conception of this – or they sought little conception. The real secret is that the modern proletariat has been penetrated by the strictest scientific thinking, the heaviest scientific artillery, which many intellectuals today avoid because it is uncomfortable for them, and this thinking has been able to penetrate the modern proletarian soul; one seeks little thought about the fact that this is so. If one took things seriously, one could feel for decades that there was too little understanding for what was emerging as the looming disaster.

Now, esteemed attendees, what is the reason for the contradiction that I have indicated, that on the one hand the thought is almost denied by the modern proletarian and that, however, this proletariat is entirely based on thoughts, has a sense and interest and attention for the thought life - what is the reason for this contradiction? I believe that observation of life shows that this contradiction lies in the fact that this movement is not so much concerned with what people imagine, what these economic or social goals are, but that it is more a matter of what the soul of the living person who belongs to the modern proletariat actually is.

And I must say: No word has spoken more intensely to my soul than all the astute discussions of economic issues, which I believe I can dignify; but more indicative of what lives in the time, has always seemed to me to be a word that can be heard everywhere within the modern proletarian movement: it is the word that says: the modern proletariat has advanced in the development of humanity to class consciousness. What does it actually mean, as the word is used directly? It wants to say: the modern proletarian does not live instinctively as—say—in the old patriarchal life, in the old craft life, as an apprentice or journeyman; the modern proletarian worker does not live instinctively within the social structure; but he lives in such a way that he knows what he means within this social structure, how he is a special class—precisely the class of employees in relation to the other classes, the classes of the employers. That he does not merely live instinctively within this social structure, in the way he knows he is placed within it, but has something of class consciousness, is what the word “class-conscious proletariat” is initially intended to express.

But when you get right down to it, the term “class-conscious proletariat” is just a mask for something else entirely. We would recognize this other thing if it were not for the fact that modern humanity has lost not only the ability to recognize the full reality of the course of human events, but also the concepts that necessarily had to be discarded. Today, I would say, people are almost obsessed with a very comfortable instinct for knowledge. This instinct for knowledge aims to link cause and effect in the simplest possible way everywhere: there is the cause - there is the effect; the effect follows from the cause. And then it continues, possibly in a very subjective way, perhaps adding to justify this straightforward progression of knowledge along the thread of cause and effect: “Nature doesn't make leaps.” Of course, anyone with even a little insight knows that nature makes leaps everywhere. But such a word is simply used up. Nature does develop successive green color leaves after green color leaves; but then it makes the leap to the green sepal, and then the even greater leap to the petal, then to the stamens and so on. And so one would notice refutations of the convenient sentence “Nature does not make leaps” in all of life, in all of nature's processes.

Where would we end up if we were to observe human life in such a bare way as it develops in the physical world, so bare that we follow events in a straight line according to the immediately preceding cause and the immediately following effect? Do we not see in the individual human life how a particular crisis occurs when the teeth change around the seventh year? Do we not see how a significant crisis occurs when a person reaches sexual maturity? Do we not see how, in between, there is more of a calm succession of cause and effect? And how then, at the change of teeth, at sexual maturity - there are also other crises in later years, even if they are less noticeable - all these things show how, in such times, nature truly makes leaps. In this respect, an unbiased observer of natural processes will still have a great deal to do in the future. By throwing overboard, and rightly so, what belongs to ancient metaphysics, one has at the same time lost the possibility of viewing historical development in such a way as to see and perceive the real impulses contained in it, just as one can perceive such changing impulses as they assert themselves in the human tooth change, in human sexual maturity.

For the truly impartial observer, it is evident from the course of human historical development that there are special times when the human soul undergoes a transformation and new impulses enter into the human soul.

One such age was the one that roughly coincides with the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In this respect, the history as it is presented in schools is in many ways a “convenient fable”. It does not point to the magnificent transformations that have taken place in the soul conditions of human beings in successive ages. Once we move from the blinkered history that prevails today to an unblinkered history, we will see how very different the inner soul state of a person in the eleventh or twelfth century AD was from that of a person in the sixteenth, seventeenth or eighteenth century! History cannot be viewed in such a way that one can simply trace cause and effect in a straight line; but such crises – crises that are fundamentally connected with the organization of the whole of humanity – such crises must be acknowledged, as one must acknowledge such crises, such fundamental upheavals, in the partial development of the human natural organism.

And that which lives there, I would say, as an elementary impulse in the modern development of humanity, has not been portrayed anywhere except in the field of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which I represent. On the other hand, however, modern development has been repeatedly and justifiably presented in such a way that modern life as a whole, and economic life in particular, has undergone a transformation on the one hand through modern technology, and on the other hand through the advent of the capitalist economic order, as it emerged in the wake of modern technology.

I do not need to characterize these two impulses in the development of modern humanity in more detail here, because this has often been presented: modern technology and modern capitalism – many sides have aptly described what these two impulses of modern development mean with regard to the emergence of this modern proletarian consciousness. But this modern proletarian consciousness must not only be traced back to these two economic impulses: to modern technology, to modern machine production, to modern capitalism – but it must be seen as that which, as a kind of partial phenomenon, had to emerge in a very elementary way in the development of man. It is the result of those revolutions in the organism of human development, that inner revolutionary impulse of which I said that it manifested itself in the development of modern humanity around the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth centuries. The other classes have taken relatively little part in what broke into modern humanity. The modern proletarian has been pushed by his very necessities of life, especially in his state of mind, to take up this impulse, which arose from the forces of human development in the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth centuries, this impulse into his soul.

What was this impulse? Well, this impulse cannot be characterized in any other way than to say: Much of, indeed, all of what has been thought and felt and invented by people in earlier times more instinctively, more from the subconscious, intuitive powers of the human soul, is consciously being lived through by humanity from this crisis in the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth century. The conscious inner clarity of the human soul is developing more and more. This is what the human personality has been relying on since that time.

The transition from an instinctive life to a conscious life was particularly true of the modern proletariat. Just observe how this modern proletariat is separated from what is natural and what is humanly produced. Contrast this with the old crafts, with the old relationship of man to nature, with the direct, natural, original production, where man is connected with what he works, what he does, how a personal relationship develops between man and his labor.

It is an interesting study to see how the modern age has torn apart what used to be connected: man and his work. And most of all, the modern proletarian experiences this, who is placed in front of the machine, next to the machine! There is now an extremely impersonal relationship between man and the thing with which he works! And in the most impersonal way, he is placed in the whole social organism, in that he is a member of an economic order that does not arise from the impulses of personalities, that does not arise from the personal impulses of human individuals, but that arises, one might say, objectively, from the workings of capitalism itself. Man is torn away from what used to constitute his joy in his occupation, what used to constitute his zeal, his enthusiasm for his occupation, what constituted the honor that he associated with his occupation, and so on; and a completely abstract, sober relationship between man and his occupation has arisen. Because this is not the case for the other estates and classes, because this in particular comes out, comes into its own among the proletarians, that is why it is the proletarian above all who is pointed out, in his soul the actual impulse of modern times, consciousness, to develop.

Behind the saying “class-conscious proletariat” lies the other fact that the proletarian, above all, through his world position, through his being placed in human development, aspires particularly to modern human consciousness, to consciousness of human dignity. The old estates are not so detached from what used to be their joy, used to be their thoughts of human dignity and honor from their actions. The modern proletarian, because no interest can connect him with his means of labor, is thrown back on himself as a mere human being. It is in him that this impulse of the transition from unconsciousness, from the instinctive social life to the conscious social life, develops.

One could say, esteemed attendees, how Christianity broke out in an unknown province of the Roman Empire, how it spread first to the educated countries, Greece and Rome, but took much less root there than it did among the barbarian peoples with their simple – as one often says from a haughty point of view, childlike – state of mind, and how Christianity in the simple minds of the Germanic and other tribes descending from the north, the most significant impulse of human development, the transition from instinctive life to life in full human consciousness, cannot develop most intensely in the other classes, but most intensely – even if the other classes may otherwise have greater prerequisites for intellectuality and so on: What the new impulse actually is in the development of humanity can develop most intensely in the modern proletarian precisely because of the proletarian's unfavorable position in general human development. The modern proletariat is moving against the educated world of today, just as the Germanic Christians once moved against the Roman and Greek world. One can say that human consciousness, consciousness of human dignity, is actually hidden behind the words: “class-conscious proletariat”.

Thus, dear attendees, for those who can observe life, it is not just any economic demand, it is not just some abstract notion, it is not just some one-sided economic impulse, but the living human being is at the center of this modern social proletarian movement, the modern proletarian himself with a special way of consciously striving for the realization of true human dignity. And it is from this deeper class consciousness that the true form of social demands develops, which are often masked behind mere economic disputes and economic demands.

If you know this modern proletariat, dear attendees, one thing stands out above all. It is striking that this proletariat is the aspiring population, the more educated classes, which, as I mentioned at the beginning, can truly be said to It is founding a social movement that is based entirely on science and on thought. In his class consciousness, in his striving for conscious human dignity, the modern proletarian also strives for real knowledge, for real inner thought deepening.

But where does this deepening of thought lead him? Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a point that the modern proletarian himself, being more devoted to external work, does not really notice – but it is noticed by someone who may justifiably call himself a spiritual proletarian – and it is a point that provides a particularly deep insight into the state of mind of the modern proletariat , and actually into the whole structure of modern socialism: the fact is that everything spiritual, everything that man acquires in terms of concepts, artistic experiences and otherwise, is perceived by the modern proletarian, and also by the theoretical leaders of the modern proletariat, as - as they themselves always say - as “ideology”; ideology - a spiritual life that is not convinced that among the real forces and entities that pulsate and interweave the world, there is also objective, real spirit - no: a spiritual life that is nothing more than the subjective reflection of external material and economic reality. Not that an effective spirit penetrates into our humanity, which leads us not only to have a kind of brain digestion, but to have thoughts and feelings within this brain digestion, it is not a real spirit that leads us to develop a life of thought, a different inner spiritual life - no: this spiritual life is mere ideology. Nothing of spiritual reality corresponds to it. All that lives in ideas is only the mirror of material processes, economic processes.

One could even say that the modern proletarian is, in a sense, inwardly happy in theory that he can be such an enlightened person, no longer believing in old metaphysical entities, but knowing that everything that is spiritual life for people is ideology, bubbles that rise from the material and economic world of facts. And yet, what the modern proletariat brings into the whole social structure depends in many ways on its perception and recognition of intellectual life as ideology in the way I have described.

But why is that so? Of course, the proletarian himself thinks that in doing so he has made a special contribution of his own to human development. But that is not the case. The modern proletarian has inherited only what the other classes were able to hand over to him in this particular field. At the same point in time that I mentioned to you – the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth century – when humanity went through a significant crisis, moving from a mere instinctive life to an inwardly soulful conscious life. At the same time, a phenomenon can be observed in the leading classes and leading personalities: spirituality loses its driving force in relation to what the human being can think and research further.

In this way, we touch on a very significant secret of the whole of recent human development. We must look back, esteemed attendees, to those times when everything that man researched, everything that man thought about the individual facts of nature and human life, how all of this was incorporated into an overall world view, which was also permeated by religious impulses into the most minute branches of human knowledge and research, how a common impulse spreads through what was a central religious feeling and what wanted to know and research about individual parts of the world.

In the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth centuries, with the advent of modern times, the spirituality of man loses its momentum. Just imagine what it means, for example, for the Church, which, out of its own initiative and on the basis of its last old impulses, very commendably founded universities and all sorts of other institutions, that this Church, out of the old world view, has no momentum that could fruitfully spread beyond what the Brunos and the Galileis have produced. Outer knowledge, knowledge of the world and its facts, comes to the fore. And the old spirituality does not possess the impetus to place the center of the human being, the center of the human soul and spirit, in a truly appropriate, human relationship to this new spiritual life. And so it is not religious, not general human impetus, not real spirituality that lives in this science, in this wide universe, that lives. Under the influence of this loss of spirituality, the newer spiritual life becomes ideology.

And the modern proletarian has inherited the fate of those times when there was no proletariat in the modern sense, to inherit the spiritual world only in the form of ideology, to inherit the spiritual world in such a way that in the relationship of man to the spiritual world no longer lives the recognition of the real spiritual forces and entities that permeate and animate the world.

This is the great, perhaps tragic error of the modern proletariat: it believes that it has a special proletarian achievement in interpreting spiritual life as an ideology, but that it has precisely the peculiar inheritance of the old class in it. The modern proletariat has adopted the particular way in which people relate to science from the bourgeoisie and the other classes!

But it turns out that because the other classes have certain old traditions, the modern proletarian is at the top of his personality, it turns out that the modern proletarian must take the impulses more seriously, and to a quite different degree. Here again lives a significant social problem, which will not be exhaustively illuminated by popular science and popular observation of such things for a long time to come.

Of course, the other classes, too, if they are Christian, have only one ideology in their spiritual lives today. But they are not so honest; they still believe they have something of the old religious impulses, of the old driving force that emanates from the center of the soul and penetrates into that which man researches and recognizes beyond the individual facts. The modern proletarian has simply taken an extremely radical view of ideology. The consequence of this is that the appreciation of this spiritual life is, after all, a very superficial one. And this way of relating to the spiritual life is the reason for the feeling that this spiritual life is actually only something that seems to be an addition to the serious life of man, but that it consists only of materialistic and economic processes.

Must not a view that takes the spiritual life seriously as an ideology, must not this view think quite differently about everything spiritually achieved in the course of human development than the other classes, who, still arising from other impulses, have recognized this spiritual life?

There is a terribly revolutionary element in the view of spiritual life as an ideology, the consequences of which, one might say, people today still dare not dream of! There could be a very uncomfortable awakening from this oversleeping of what is revealed in this point in relation to the social question. The loss of a living, real spirituality, the descent of spiritual life to a mere ideology, that is the first thing I would like to mention among the true forms of social demands.

The second, however, dear attendees, lies in the realm of public political life. Again, one could say: In the consciousness of the proletarian lives a kind of mask; in the depths of the soul lives something completely, completely different.

What has struck people, and also the modern proletariat, most of all in the more recent development of humanity is the inundation of all conditions by modern machine technology and by modern capitalism. Certainly, it is these things that have struck the modern proletarian most of all at first. As if by historical suggestion, his attention was fixed on this. And he understood that Karl Marx, in a special study of economic processes, also wanted to explain to the modern proletarian how he actually comes to his social position.

And yet, the second essential form of social demands that now arises cannot be understood from economic life alone. It is not the economic structure, not the economic conditions that drive this second true form of social demand into the soul of the proletarian, but this second social demand lies in the direct further development of that which, some time ago, already led to the abolition of of the old slavery, which later led to the abolition of serfdom, and which must necessarily lead to the end of something that the modern proletarian, economically misinterpreting it, perceives as the most degrading in his position.

What was the essential thing about the slave? He was not recognized in his full human dignity; he was considered a commodity by his master. And in a certain way, serfdom in feudalism is also still a commodity. In the most insistent way, one could say that the last remnant of this unworthiness of the human being lives in the consciousness of the modern proletarian, in that it is clear to him what his labor power is. No longer is he as a human being in serfdom, as in slavery, but rather that which is his labor power is a commodity in the modern social process.

Just as one otherwise buys this or that commodity within the capitalist economic system, in that the commodities come onto the market, circulate through the market according to supply and demand, so too does one buy the commodity “labor power” on the labor market. Nothing has been more forcefully absorbed by the modern proletarian from the Marxist doctrine than this perception that his labor power is equal in relation to the economic process, equal to the commodity.

The same impulses that led to the abolition of slavery, the same impulses that led to the end of serfdom, live in a different form in the modern proletariat and actually strive towards a possibility of divesting human labor of the character of a commodity within the human social structure.

I know a great many people in the present day – when I explain to them what I have just said about human labor power and its relationship to the commodity, they say they cannot understand how it should be possible, through any measures, to divest the labor power of the craftsman of the character of the commodity, of the character of a commodity.

Plato and Aristotle, the most enlightened Greeks, the great philosophers, could not imagine a human society without slaves in it. In the Middle Ages, certain people could not imagine a human society without serfs in it. Today, many people still cannot imagine a humane social structure without labor power being included as a commodity. How this can be achieved will be discussed by me tomorrow, dear attendees, as part of the attempts at a solution that I will try to characterize. Today I just want to point out that the second demand in its true form within modern proletarian social life is that human existence requires that human labor no longer be a commodity, that it can no longer be bought by capitalists in such a way that they give money for a certain amount of labor, which the worker must then make available to him, just as the farmer makes available the goods that he, the farmer, obtains from his field, just as the merchant makes available as capital what he has in his shop. The modern proletarian feels – he may not express it clearly, he may present it in some national scientific guise, but that is how the modern proletarian feels – that it cannot continue to be the case that human labor power has its commodity price in the economic structure of human society. That is the second link.

The third link is that the modern course of human development has led to an overestimation of the external, economic life, just as it has led to an underestimation of the spiritual life by decreeing that spiritual reality is a mere ideology. Precisely because of this, I might say, because of a certain lack of balance, economic life has leaped upward on the other side. As if by a mighty suggestion of world history, people's attention was directed to economic life itself. And so it happened: people were drawn away from everything else and devoted their attention entirely to economic life.

From ancient times, a certain spiritual life has emerged. But this spiritual life, as I have shown, has lost its momentum and has degenerated into ideology. What else has emerged from ancient times? Certain state, as they are called, political connections of the public legal system; how man can find a relationship to man within a certain territory as a citizen or as something else within the social structure. Furthermore, a certain economic order has emerged. This economic order, however, has been given its special character by modern technology, by the modern circulation of commodities in the sense of the capitalist economic order.

This is what has broken into modern life in such an overwhelming way, overwhelming all else. That – as I said – the gaze of modern man was fixed only on this economic life, as if hypnotized, dulled the spiritual life in him, on the one hand, to ideology. On the other hand, state life, public legal life, loses all content for him if it is not filled with what is the only reality for him: material economic life.

Under the influence of this third real form of modern social demands, we see the call for nationalization, for socialization, first of all of the means of production, then of the enterprises and so on, and so on. Simply, the state has also more or less lost its content in the old sense in the eyes of modern man, who is hypnotized by economic life.

Thus we see that in recent times it has become desirable for certain classes to nationalize certain branches of public work, as they say. Then, in theory, the modern proletariat next proceeds radically to demand the socialization of the whole of economic life, and thus of life itself.

And so we see that these three figures emerge as the true ones within the social demands of modern times, out of the necessities of life. On the one hand, we see what the life of feeling goes through when the spiritual is reduced to mere ideology. We see how there is a tendency to hypnotically focus on mere economic life and to want to radically merge the state, the political realm and economic life because only then does the state have content for those who believe that all social reality is exhausted in economic reality when the state is a large economic system.

But we see, I want to say, how three sparks of light complement what we see as the proletarian movement: we see three real figures, three social demands: one that shines forth from the spiritual life; the second, it shines forth from the life of public law, from which only the real relationship of the equal human being to the equal human being can arise, from which the position that labor must have in the social structure must also follow. And thirdly, we see the economic body itself.

Thus, from the real three forms of social demands, we see the threefold form of the social question arise at the same time. This threefold nature of the social question can only be a spiritual, a political, and an economic one. And only by considering these three, which have acquired a very specific configuration within modern proletarian consciousness, can we arrive at possible solutions for what is going through the world today as a social impulse, so that for a long time to come people of all professions, people of all walks of life, people of all social classes will have to deal with it.

A consideration of the true nature of social demands, as we have practiced it today, can only lead us to seek solutions to the social question from the full, unbiased reality of intellectual, state, and economic life.

This more important part of the social question of the present day will now occupy us tomorrow, when I will try, just as I have tried today, to characterize the true form of the social demands, when I will try to present possible social solutions to you.

[ 1 ] We have seen from the foregoing chapters that the being of man is built up of four members: physical body, life-body, astral body, and the bearer of the Ego. The I or Ego of man works in the three other members and transforms them. Through this transformation arise at a lower stage sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul, while at a higher stage of man's existence Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man are evolved. These several members of man's nature stand in the most varied relations to the whole Universe. Their evolution is connected with the evolution of the Universe, and by a study of the latter we can gain insight into the deeper secrets of the being of man.

[ 2 ] It can easily be seen that the life of man is related in many different directions to the environment, to the dwelling place wherein he evolves. External science has already by its own recognized facts and data been driven to the conclusion that the Earth—this dwelling-place of man in the widest sense of the word—has itself undergone evolution. It can tell us of conditions that once prevails in the Earth, where man in his present form did not yet exist upon our planet, and can then go on to show how humanity has evolved, slowly and gradually, from quite simple conditions of civilization to those that obtain today. Thus has external science too been led to the idea that there is a connection between the evolution of man and that of the heavenly body on which he lives—the Earth.

[ 3 ] Spiritual science¹ traces this connection by means of a cognition that derives its facts from a perception that has been quickened by the spiritual organs. It follows man back on the path of his development, and perceives how the real, inner, spiritual being of man has passed through a succession of lives upon this Earth; and as it continues to pursue these researches, it arrives at length at a far distant point of time, when the inner being of man first entered upon an outward life (in the present-day meaning of the word.) It was in that earliest earthly incarnation that the I or Ego first began its activity within the three bodies—astral body, life-body and physical body; and it took with it, on into the life that followed, the fruits of this activity.

[ 4 ] When we go back in the way thus indicated, we become aware that at that distant point of time the Ego finds the Earth in a condition wherein the three bodies of man are already evolved and have a certain connection with one another. Now for the first time the Ego unites with the entity that consists of these three bodies, and from this point onwards partakes in their further evolution. Hitherto, they have been evolving without a human Ego and have in this way reached the stage at which the Ego finds them.

[ 5 ] Spiritual science must go still further back with its researches if it would find an answer to the question: How did the three bodies reach a stage of evolution such as enabled them to receive into themselves an I, and then too to the further question: How did the I itself come into being and how did it acquire the ability to work within the bodies?

[ 6 ] An answer to these questions is possible only by tracing the rise an devolution of the Earth-planet itself in the light of spiritual science. By means of such research we arrive at a beginning of this Earth-planet. The mode of thought which builds on the facts of the physical senses alone, cannot pursue its inferences far enough to deal at all with this beginning of the Earth. There is a theory which, by inferences of this kind, arrives at the result that all the substance of the Earth has evolved from a primeval nebula. There is no occasion for us to enter her into a discussion of such ideas as this. For spiritual research as to consider not merely the material processes of Earth evolution, but before all the spiritual causes which lie behind all matter and substance. If we see before us a man in the act of lifting up his hand, this can start us on two different lines of thought. We may investigate the mechanism of the arm and of the remained of the body with the intention of describing how the action takes place as a purely physical process. But we can also direct our mind's eye to that which is going on in the man's soul and constitutes his motive for lifting up his hand. In a similar way the scientist trained in spiritual perception sees spiritual processes behind all the processes of the world of the physical senses. For him, all the changes in the material nature of the Earth-planet are manifestations of spiritual forces which are there behind the material. And as his spiritual observation reaches farther and farther back in the Earth's life, he comes at length to a point in evolution where the material first begins to be. The material evolves out of the spiritual; until then, the spiritual alone existed. By the exercise of spiritual observation we perceive the spiritual, and note how, as time goes on, it partially condenses, so to speak, to the material. We watch this taking place and, but that the process is on a higher level, it is very much as though we might be looking at a vessel filled with water, where by a finely regulated cooling process, lumps of ice were gradually taking shape. We see the ice condense out of what was water through and through. Similarly, by spiritual observation we can trace how the material things, events and entities condense, as it were, out of a previous existence which was spiritual through and through.

Thus the Earth-planet has evolved out of a cosmic spiritual entity. Everything material connected with the planet has condensed out of what was once united with it spiritually. But we must not imagine that a time ever came when all spiritual being had been transformed into material. That which confronts us in the latter is never more than part of the original and spiritual. Even throughout Earth's material evolution, the spiritual always remains the guiding and directing principle.

[ 7 ] It stands to reason that the way of thought which would hold fast to the physical, sense-perceptible processes alone—and to what the intellect is able to infer from these—can say nothing whatever about the spiritual of which we are here speaking If a being could exist, endowed with senses to perceive only the ice and not the finer state of water from which the ice on cooling separates itself, then for such a being the water would not be there; he could perceive nothing of it until some of it was changed into ice. So too for the man who will admit only what presents itself to the physical senses, the spiritual which underlies the earthly processes must ever remain hidden. And if form the physical facts that he perceives today he is able to form correct conclusions as to earlier conditions of the planet, he will still reach back only to that evolutionary point where the spiritual began its partial condensation to the material. His mode of thought will not perceive the spiritual that preceded that process, any more than it can perceive the spiritual substance which even now holds sway, invisibly, behind the world of matter.

[ 8 ] Not until the later chapters of this book will it be possible to speak of the paths whereby man attains the faculty to look back, in spiritual perception, to the earlier conditions of the Earth with which we are now dealing. Suffice it for the moment to point out that for spiritual research the facts of the most distant early times are not obliterated. When a creature has come into bodily existence, its bodily nature are not obliterated in the same way. They leave behind their traces, nay their exact images, in the spiritual foundation of the world. And if we are able to raise our faculty of perception and look through the visible world to the invisible, we arrive at length at a point where we have before us what may be compared to a mighty spiritual panorama wherein all the past events of the world are displayed. These abiding traces of all spiritual happenings may be called the “Akashic Records,” denoting as “Akasha-essence” that which is spiritually permanent in the world process, in contrast with the transient forms. Here once again it must be emphasized that researches in the supersensible realms of existence can only be made with the help of spiritual perception—that is to say, as regards the region we are now considering, by actual reading of the Akashic Records. Nevertheless here too, what has been said already in similar connections holds good: to investigate and discover the supersensible facts is possible only by supersensible perception; once found however, and communicated in the science of the supersensible, these facts can be understood with man's ordinary faculty of thought. There must only be the readiness to approach the subject with an open mind In the following pages the evolutionary conditions of the Earth according to the science of the supersensible will be communicated. The transformations of our planet will be followed down to the state of life in which it is today. Let anyone consider what he has before him today in pure sense-perception, and then give his attention to what supersensible knowledge tells of how this present has evolved from the primeval past. If he be truly open-minded, he will then be able to say to himself: In the first place, what this science tells is inherently logical; secondly if I assume the truth of what is communicated from supersensible research, I find I can understand how it is that things have eventually come to be such as they appear before me now.

The use of the word “logical” in this connection does not of course imply that errors in logic can never be contained in any particular statement from supersensible research. We are using the term here in no other way than it is used in ordinary life in the physical world, where logicality of statement is universally demanded—although some individual describing a particular set of facts may now and again be guilty of mistakes in logic. The situation is just the same in supersensible research. It may even happen that an investigator, able to perceive in supersensible domains, stumbles into errors in respect of logical description, and that a man who does not himself perceive supersensibly but has a good reasoning faculty, is subsequently able to correct him. As logic, however, no objection can be raised against the logic that is applied in supersensible research. Nor should it be necessary to emphasize that exception can never be taken to the facts themselves on merely logical grounds. Just as in the realm of the physical world one can never prove by logic whether or no a whale exists, but only by inspection, so it is with supersensible facts; they can be apprehended by spiritual perception and by that alone.

If cannot, however, be sufficiently stressed that for the student of supersensible realms it is a necessity, before he tries to approach the spiritual worlds with his own perception, to make sure that he is doing so from the right standpoint—the standpoint, that is, that he can reach through the above-mentioned logic and—what is no less important—through having come to recognize that, assuming the statements of Occult Science to be correct, the world wherever it is revealed to the senses appears intelligible. In effect, all conscious experience in the supersensible world remains uncertain, nay dangerous, a kind of groping in the dark, if the student disdains to undergo this preparation. And it is for this reason that the present book, before dealing with the actual path to supersensible knowledge, will communicate first the supersensible facts of Earth evolution.

One other point needs to be borne in mind in this connection. Someone who with pure thinking finds his way into what supersensible knowledge has to relate, is by no means in the same position as a man who listens to an account of some physical process which he is unable to witness for himself. Pure thinking is itself already a supersensible activity. True, inasmuch as it belongs to the life of sense, it cannot of itself take us to the supersensible events. But when applied to the supersensible events that are told out of supersensible perception, pure thinking does of itself grow into the supersensible world. Indeed one of the very best ways to attain perception of one's own in supersensible domains, is to grow into the higher world by thinking over what supersensible knowledge communicates. For with this way of entry the greatest clarity is ensured. Hence a certain school of spiritual-scientific research regards pure thinking as the soundest kind of first step in any spiritual-scientific training.

It will be readily understood that this book cannot set out to show, in connection with every detail of the Earth's evolution as perceived in the spirit, how the supersensible finds again and again its confirmation in the outwardly manifest. This certainly was not implied when we said that the hidden can everywhere be shown and proved in its manifest effects. Rather did we mean that everything man meets in life can become clear and intelligible to him, step by step, if he will but place the manifest events into the light that is made possible for him by Occult Science. Only in a few characteristic instances will reference be made in these pages to the confirmation of the hidden in the manifest, in order to show by a few examples how it is possible to find on every hand such confirmation in the practical pursuit of life, have we but the will to do so.

[ 9 ] Following back the evolution of the Earth with spiritual-scientific research, we come to a spiritual condition of our planet. If however we pursue the investigation still further, we find that this spiritual has already been in a kind of physical embodiment before. That is to say, we encounter a past physical planetary condition which afterwards became spiritual and then, becoming material once more, was at length transformed into our Earth. Our Earth thus appears as the re-embodiment of a primeval planet. But spiritual science is able to go even further back, and as it does so it finds the whole process repeated again twice over. Thus our Earth has passed through three previous planetary conditions, with intermediate states of spiritualization in between. The physical proves to be more and more fine and delicate, the farther back we trace the Earth's embodiment.

[ 10 ] Against the descriptions that will now follow it may quite naturally be objected: How can any reasonable person entertain the postulate of world-conditions so immeasurably remote? The answer is, that to a man who can look with understanding at the spiritual that is there now, hidden within what is manifest to the senses, insight also into former sates of evolution, however distant, cannot appear essentially impossible. If we do not recognize the hidden spiritual existence that is around us even at the present time, then it will indeed be meaningless to speak of an evolution such as is here in mind. But once we are able to recognize the presence of the spiritual here and now, we shall find the earlier condition given or implied in the immediate vision of the present, just as the condition of the one-year-old infant is implied in the appearance of a man of fifty. Yes, someone may say, but in this instance we have among us, beside people of fifty, children of a year of—and all the intermediate stages too. That is quite true; but the same is also true of the evolution of the spiritual to which we here refer. Anyone possessing clear insight and discrimination will recognize that a complete observation of the present—which will necessarily include its spiritual part too—cannot but perceive there also are evolutionary conditions of the past, preserved side by side with those stages of existence which have reached the present evolutionary level. Just as children of a year old are present side by side with men and women of fifty, so within all that goes on upon Earth at the present time we can still behold primordial happenings, if only we are able to hold distinct from one another the diverse stages of evolution.

[ 11 ] Man, in the form and figure in which he is now evolving, does not emerge until the fourth of the above planetary embodiments—the Earth proper. The essential feature of man's present form is that he consists of the four members: physical body, life-body, astral body and Ego. This form however could not have emerged at all, had it not been prepared by the preceding facts of evolution. The preparation took place through the gradual evolution, during the earlier planetary embodiment, of beings who had already three of the four members of the present human being, namely physical body, life-body and astral body. These beings, whom we may call in a certain respect the ancestors of man, had as yet no I, but they evolved the other three members and the mutual connections of these three up to the point where they were ripe, subsequently to receive the I. Thus on the preceding embodiment of the planet, man's ancestor had reached a certain degree of maturity in three members. With this he passed into the state of spiritualization, out of which the new planetary condition—that of the Earth—subsequently arose. In this Earth were contained, like seeds, the thus far matured ancestors of man. By undergoing entire spiritualization and re-appearing in a new form, the planet could give the seeds it contained within it, with their physical body, life-body and astral body, not only the opportunity to evolve again up to the height which had been theirs before, but the further possibility, having attained this height, to go beyond it by receiving in addition the I. Earth evolution falls accordingly into two parts. In the first the Earth appears as a re-embodiment of the earlier planetary condition, although by virtue of the spiritualized condition it has meanwhile undergone, this recapitulation represents a higher stage than that of the former embodiment. Within it the Earth contains the seeds of the ancestors of man which have come from the earlier planet. To begin with, the seeds evolve up to the level on which they were before. When they have reached it, the first period is at an end. And now, since its own evolution is at a higher stage, the Earth can bring the seeds also to a higher level; it can make them capable of receiving the I. Thus the second period of Earth evolution is characterized by the unfolding of the I in physical body, life-body and astral body.

[ 12 ] Through Earth evolution man is thus lifted a stage higher in his development. Now this was also the case in the former planetary embodiments. For something of the human being was already in existence on the very first of these. In order therefore to come to a clear understanding of man's present nature, we have to trace his evolution back to the far primeval past—to the above-mentioned first planetary embodiment. In supersensible research this first planetary embodiment may be called Saturn, the second may be designated Sun and the third, Moon; the fourth is the Earth. One thing, however, must be strictly borne in mind in regard to these designations. They must not, to begin with, be associated in any way with the identical names as applied to the members of our present solar system. “Saturn,” “Sun” and “Moon” are here intended simply as the names for past evolutionary forms which the Earth has gone through. As to the relation of these pristine worlds to the heavenly bodies that constitute our present solar system—that will emerge in the further course of our studies. Then too the reason for the choice of the names will become evident.

[ 13 ] The conditions on the four planetary embodiments will now be described. It can only be done in merest outline; for the events, the Beings and their destinies were truly no less manifold on Saturn, Sun and Moon than they are on Earth itself. Attention will be drawn to a few characteristic features that can help to illustrate how the present conditions of our Earth have evolved out of the former ones. The farther we go back in evolution, the less will the conditions be found to resemble those of the present time. Yet they can only be described by resorting to ideas and images derived from present conditions. Thus when we speak in this connection of light, warmth and the like, it must not be forgotten that what is thus referred to is not precisely the same as what we now call light and warmth. The notation is justified nevertheless, for the observer in the supersensible perceives in the earlier stages of evolution something from which the present light, warmth, etc. have come to be. And anyone who carefully follows the descriptions will be well able to gather, from the whole context into which things are placed, the kind of conceptions he will need in order to have pictures and images that truly convey the character of the events that took place in those remote ages of the past.

[ 14 ] The difficulty is, however, undeniably great for those planetary conditions which precede the Moon embodiment. For the conditions of the Moon period still show a certain likeness to those of the Earth, and in attempting to describe them these similarities with the present day give one a point of contact and enable one to express in clear ideas what has been supersensibly perceived. It is a very different matter when we come to describe the Saturn and Sun evolutions. What confronts the clairvoyant observer here is as different as possible from the things and beings that now belong to the horizon of man's life. This makes it exceedingly difficult even to bring the corresponding facts into the domain of the supersensible consciousness at all. But since the present human being cannot be understood without going back to the Saturn state, some description of it must none the less be given. And the description will not be misunderstood if it is borne in mind that the difficulty exists, and that many of the things here said are to be taken not so much as an exact description but more as a hint and indication of the facts.

[ 15 ] What has just been said, as well as what will be said in the following pages, might not unnaturally be held to contradict the statement made previously as to the persistence of the earlier conditions within the present. Nowhere, it might be said, is there a former Saturn, Sun or Moon condition existing side by side with the present Earth condition, still less a form of human being such as is here described as having existed in those earlier conditions. It is quite true: there are not Saturn, Sun or Moon men running about among Earth men in the way that little children of three run about among the men and women of fifty. But within the hum an being as he is on Earth these earlier conditions of mankind are indeed perceptible—supersensibly. To recognize that this is so, we need only have acquired a power of discernment extending to the full horizon of the facts of life. As the child of three is present beside the man of fifth, so are present, beside the alive and waking man of Earth, the corpse, the man asleep, and the dreaming man. Granted that these various forms of manifestation of man's being do not immediately reveal, as we see them before us, the several stages of his evolution, nevertheless clear and objective contemplation will behold in them the corresponding stages.

[ 16 ] Of the four present members of the human being the physical body is the oldest. Moreover it is the physical body which has attained the greatest perfection in its kind. Supersensible research shows that this member of the human being existed already in Saturn evolution. It is true, as will emerge in these descriptions, that the form it had on Saturn was utterly different from man's present physical body. The physical body of man as it is on Earth can only exist in its proper nature inasmuch as it is connected with a life-body, an astral body and an Ego, as has been described in earlier chapters of this book. On Saturn, there was ads yet no such connection. The physical body was passing through its first stage in evolution without a human life-body or astral body or Ego being incorporated in it. During Saturn evolution it was only maturing towards the stage of receiving a life-body, and before this could happen, Saturn had first to pass into a spiritual state and then be re-incarnated as the Sun. In the Sun embodiment of the Earth, what the physical body had become on Saturn unfolded once more, as from a seed. Only then could it be permeated with an etheric body. Through receiving into it an etheric body, its nature was changed: the physical body was raised to a second level of its perfection. A like thing happened during the Moon evolution when the ancestor of man, having evolved from Sun to Moon, received into himself the astral body. The physical body was thereby changed again; this time it was raised to a third level of perfection. The life-body too was changed; henceforth it stood upon its second level of perfection. On Earth, into the ancestor of man consisting now of physical body, life-body and astral body, the Ego was incorporated. Therewith the physical body reached its fourth degree of perfection, the life-body is third, the astral body its second; while the Ego even now is only at the first stage of its existence.

[ 17 ] If we really set out to consider man with an open mind, we shall have no difficulty in forming a right idea of the varying degrees of perfection of the several members. Compare, for example, the physical body with the astral in this respect. The astral body, it is true, being of the nature of “soul,” stands at a higher level in evolution than the physical; and when in future time the astral body has come to perfection, it will signify far more for man's whole being than the present physical body. Yet the latter in its kind has attained no mean height of development. Consider the structure of the heart, planned as it is in accordance with the highest wisdom! Or look at the miraculous structure of the brain; or at that of a single part only of some bone—the upper end of the thigh-bone, for example. We find there a network or scaffolding of tiny rods, arranged according to an inner principle. The structure of the whole is so compact as to produce with the minimum use of material the best possible effect at the joint-surfaces—the best distribution of friction, for example, hence affording the right kind of mobility. So do we fined in different parts of the physical body arrangements that give evidence of the working of a deep wisdom. And if we go on to observe the harmony that prevails in the co-operation of the parts within the whole, we shall surely agree that this member of the human being has reached a certain perfection of its kind. The fact that here and there seeming inefficiencies appear, or that disturbances in structure or in function can occur, is unimportant in comparison. Nay more, we can even find that such disturbances are in a sense only the necessary shadows cast by the light of a wisdom which is poured out over the organism as a whole.

And now compare with this the astral body as the bearer of joy and sorrow, of cravings and passions. How full of uncertainty it is in its joy and sorrow! What manifold cravings and passions work themselves out in it that are adverse to the higher aims of man, and are often meaningless! The astral body is only on the way to the achievement of that harmony and self-containedness which we see already before us in the physical. So too it could be shown how the etheric body in its kind proves more perfect than the astral body, but less so than the physical. And the same line of thought will show with no less certainty that the real kernel of man's being, namely the I or Ego, is now only at the beginning of its evolution. For how much has the Ego yet accomplished of its task, which is to transform the other members until these become a revelation of itself?

For one acquainted with spiritual science, the insight arrived at in this way by external observation is intensified by something else. It might well be argues that the physical falls a pretty to disease. Now spiritual science is able to show that a large proportions of illnesses are due to some fault or failing in the astral body being transmitted to the etheric, and, through the latter, disturbing the harmony of the physical body, which in itself is perfect. This deeper connection—which can here be no more than indicated—and with it the essential cause of many a disease, eludes that mode of science which would restrict itself to physical and sense-perceptible facts. More often than not, the connection is as follows. Injury to the astral body is followed by morbid symptoms in the physical, not in the same life in which the injury is done, but in a subsequent life. Consequently the laws that prevail here are significant only for those who are ready to admit the repetition of man's life on Earth. But even if one did not wish to concern oneself with these deeper realms of knowledge, common observation would reveal only too clearly that man gives himself up to cravings and enjoyments which undermine the harmony of the physical body. Now cravings, passions, enjoyment and the like have their seat not in the physical but in the astral body. In effect, the latter is in many respects still so imperfect that it can actually mar the perfection of the physical body.

Here again let it be emphasized that the connections indicated are by no means intended to prove the statements of spiritual science as to the evolution of the four members of man's being. The proofs are derived in every case from spiritual research, which reveals that the physical body has behind it a fourfold transformation to higher stages of perfection, and the other members less, as has been explained. It was only desired to point out that these communications from spiritual research are related to facts of which the consequences are even outwardly observable, in the degrees of perfection of physical body, life-body and the remaining members.

[ 18 ] If we would form an idea—pictorial, but approximating to reality—of the conditions during Saturn evolution, we must bear in mind that of the things and beings now belonging to the Earth and included in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of Nature, virtually nothing was in existence then. The beings of these three kingdoms arose only in later periods of evolution. Of the beings of the Earth which are physically perceptible today man alone was present at that time, and of him only the physical body. But even now there are, belonging to the Earth, not only the beings of the mineral, plant and human kingdoms, but other beings too, who do not manifest in physical corporeality. Such beings existed also in the Saturn evolution, and their activity upon the scene of Saturn resulted in the subsequent evolution of man.

[ 19 ] If we turn, first of all, with spiritual organs of perception, not to the beginning or end but to the middle period of evolution of the Saturn embodiment of the Earth, we find a condition consisting essentially of “warmth” alone. There is nothing to be found of gaseous or liquid, let alone of solid constituents. It is only in the later embodiments that these other states emerge. Let us assume that a human being with present-day sense-organs were to approach this Saturn as an observer. Of all the sense-impressions of which he is capable, nothing would meet him there, save the sensation of warmth. Imagine him approaching ever nearer and nearer. The most he would perceive as he reached it would be that the part of space occupied by Saturn was in a different warmth-condition from the remaining spatial environment. Nor would he find the Saturn space itself uniformly warm. Warmer and cooler portions would be alternating with one another in the most diverse ways. Along certain lines, radiant warmth would be perceived. Such lines would not simply go on and on in one direction; irregular figures would be arising from the differences of warmth. Thus he would have before him a kind of heavenly body, a being in the cosmos, inwardly organized and differentiated, appearing in manifold and constantly changing states, and composed of warmth alone.

[ 20 ] It will be difficult for man of today to imagine something that consists of warmth alone, for is not accustomed to recognize heat or warmth as existing in itself; he is accustomed only to perceive it in connection with hot or cold gaseous, liquid or solid bodies. To one who has entirely adopted the physical conceptions of our time it will appear senseless to speak of “warmth” in the way we have done. He may well reply that there are solid, liquid and gaseous bodies, but “heat” or “warmth” denotes no more than a condition pertaining to one or other of these three. When the smallest particles of a gas are in motion, he will say we perceive this motion as warmth, but where there is no gas there can be no such motion, therefore no warmth.

The researcher in spiritual science sees the matter differently. Warmth, to him, is something of which he can speak in the same sense as of a gas, or of a liquid or solid body. It is only a yet finer substance than gas. Moreover, to him the gas itself is none other than warmth condensed, in the sense in which a liquid is condensed vapor or a solid body condensed liquid. Thus the spiritual scientist speaks of warmth-bodies, just as he speaks of gaseous and vaporous bodies.

To follow the spiritual researcher into this sphere, it is only necessary to admit the existence of a perception belonging entirely to the soul. In the world that is presented to the physical senses, warmth undoubtedly appears as a condition of what is solid, liquid or gaseous. But this is no more than the external side of warmth, or we may say, its effect. And it is really of this effect of warmth alone that physicists speak, not of its inner nature. Let us try for once to look away from the warmth-effects that we receive from outside and fix out attention purely on the inner experience we have when we say the words: “I feel warm,” or “I feel cold.” It is this inner experience alone that can give an idea of what Saturn was in the above-described period of its evolution. We might have passed right through the part of space it occupied; there would have been no gas to exert pressure, no solid or liquid body from which impressions of light could be received. But at each point of space we should have felt, inwardly and without impressions from outside: “Here there is this or that degree of warmth.”

[ 21 ] In a heavenly body of this kind there are not the conditions for the animal, plant or mineral creation of our present world. (Hence it can hardly be necessary to remark that the suggested assumption could not possibly take place in fact. A man of the present day could not, just as he is, confront Old Saturn as an observer. The suggestion had only an explanatory purpose.)

The beings of whom supersensible cognition becomes aware when observing Saturn were at a very different stage of evolution from the present, sense-perceptible beings of the Earth. Beings appear there, to begin with, who had not a physical body like the body man has today. When “physical body” is spoken of, we must beware of thinking of man's present physical corporeality. For we have carefully to distinguish between physical body and mineral body. A physical body is one that is governed by the physical laws that are observable today in the mineral kingdom. The present physical body of man is not only governed by the physical laws; it is also permeated with mineral substance. On Saturn there can bas yet be no question of physical-mineral body of this kind. There, there is only a physical corporeality, governed by physical laws—which laws express themselves solely in warmth-effects. Thus the physical body on Saturn is a delicate, tenuous, ethereal body-of-warmth. And the entire Saturn consists of these warmth-bodies. They are the first beginnings of the present physical-mineral body of man, which has evolved out of the old warmth-body by receiving into it the gaseous, liquid and solid substances that developed only at a later stage.

Among the Beings who come before the supersensible consciousness in the moment when it is confronted by the Saturn stage of evolution, and of whom we may speak as dwellers upon Saturn in addition to man, there are for instance some who had no need of a physical body at all. On the other hand they had one member beyond the members of man's being. Man has the Spirit-Man as his highest member; these Beings have a still higher one, and between etheric body and Spirit-Man they have also all the other members that we find in man: astral body, Ego, Spirit-Self, and Life-Spirit. As our Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere, so too was Saturn, only with Saturn the atmosphere was of a spiritual kind.¹ For it consisted of Beings—those already mentioned, and other Beings too. And there was a continual interaction between these Beings and the warmth-bodies of Saturn. The Beings let down the members of their nature into Saturn's physical warmth-bodies. And while in these themselves there was no life, the life of the Beings that dwelt in their encircling sphere expressed itself in them. The warmth-bodies might indeed by compared to mirrors; only it was not the above-named Beings themselves that were mirrored in them, but their life-conditions. In Saturn itself one could not have discovered anything that was alive, and yet Saturn had a vivifying influence on its environment in the heavenly spaces, for it rayed back—sent back, as it were—an echo of the life which was sent down to it. The whole of Saturn appeared like a mirror of the heavenly life. Certain sublime Beings whose life Saturn rays back, may be called Spirits of Wisdom. (In Christian spiritual science they bear the name Kyriotetes, i.e. Dominions.) Their activity on Saturn does not be any means begin with the middle epoch of evolution which is here being described. Indeed in a certain sense it is by then already at an end. Before they could become conscious of the reflection of their own life, proceeding from the warmth-bodies of Saturn, they had first to make these bodies capable of bringing about such a reflection. Hence their activity began soon after the commencement of Saturn evolution, at a time when the Saturn corporeality was still chaotic substance which could not have reflected anything.

In setting out to contemplate this chaotic, undifferentiated substance, we have already transplanted ourselves in spiritual observation to the beginning of Saturn evolution. What can be observed there does not by any means bear the later character of warmth. To characterize it, we can only speak of a quality which may be compared to the human Will. Through and through, it is nothing else than Will. Here therefore we are dealing with a condition that is purely of the nature of the soul. If we look for the source of this Will, we find that it arises from the outpouring of sublime Beings who had, by stages scarcely to be even dimly divined, brought their evolution to such a height that when the Saturn evolution began, they were able to let Will pour forth from Their own being. When the outpouring has lasted for a certain time, the activity of the Spirits of Wisdom unites with the will, with the result that the Will, which up to now might be said to have no inherent properties of its own, gradually acquired the property of raying forth Life, raying it back into the heavenly spaces.

The Beings who find Their blessedness in pouring out Will at the beginning of Saturn may be called “Spirits of Will.” (In Christian esoteric science they are called the Thrones.)

When by the working together of Will and Life a certain stage of Saturn evolution has been reached, other Beings too begin to work. They also are in the surrounding sphere of Saturn. We may call them Spirits of Movement; in Christian terminology they are Dynamis or Mights. They have no physical body and no life-body; their lowest member is the astral body. When the Saturn bodies have attained the faculty of reflecting life, the life which is thus rayed back can become permeated with the properties which have their seat in the astral bodies of the Spirits of Movement. As a result, it appears as though expressions of emotion, feeling, and other soul-forces were being hurled out from Saturn into the heavenly spaces. The entire Saturn seems like a being that is ensouled, manifesting sympathies and antipathies. But these manifestations are not its own; they are but the reflection of the soul-activities of the Spirits of Movement.

When this too has lasted through a certain epoch, the activity of yet other Beings begins, whom we will call Spirits of Form. Their lowest member is also an astral body, but it is at a different stage in evolution from the astral body of the Spirits of Movement. The manifestations of feeling which the Spirits of Movement communicate to the life that is rayed back from Saturn are of a general kind, whereas the astral body of the Spirits of Form (in Christian language Exusiai or Powers) works in such a way that it seems as though manifestations are being hurled out into cosmic space from many single beings. The Spirits of Movement, we might say, make Saturn as a whole appear as an animate being endowed with soul. The Spirits of Form divide this life of Saturn into so many separate living entities, so that eventually it appears like a conglomeration of soul-beings.

Picture to yourself a mulberry or a blackberry, composed as it is of ever so many tiny berries. To the supersensible observer Saturn looks like this in the evolutionary epoch here described. It is composed of the single Saturn beings who have no life or soul of their own, but ray back the life and soul of the Beings that dwell around them.

And now at this stage in the evolution of Saturn certain Beings intervene, who again have the astral body for their lowest member, but have brought it on so far in its evolution that it works like a human I of the present time. Through them the I looks down from the surrounding spaces on to Saturn, and communicates its nature to the single “live” beings. Hence something is sent forth from Saturn into the heavenly spaces, that resembles the impression made by human personality in our present cycle of life. The Beings who bring this about may be called “Spirits of Personality” (in Christian terminology they are the Archai, First Beginnings, or Principalities.) These Beings communicate to the particles of the Saturn body a semblance of the character of personality. The Spirits of Personality have their real personality in the surrounding sphere. They cause their own being to be rayed back to them from the Saturn bodies, and this very process bestows upon the Saturn bodies the fine substantiality which was described above as “warmth.” Throughout the whole of Saturn there is no inwardness; but the Spirits of Personality behold and recognize the image of their own inwardness, in that it streams out to them as warmth from Saturn.

[ 22 ] While all this is happening, the Spirits of Personality are at the stage at which the human being is today. They are going through their “human” epoch. To see this fact in its true light, we must be ready to conceive that a being can be a “human” being without necessarily having the form and figure man has today. The Spirits of Personality are “men” upon Saturn. Their lowest member is not the physical body but the astral body with the Ego. Therefore they cannot express the experiences of their astral body in a physical and an etheric body in the same way as can the man of today. Nevertheless they not only have an I or Ego but are aware of it, for the warmth of Saturn, by raying back this Ego, brings it home to their consciousness. They are, in effect, “human beings” under conditions differing from the earthly.

[ 23 ] In the further course of Saturn evolution, facts of quite another kind ensue. Hitherto it was all a reflection of life and feeling that were outside; henceforth there is a kind of inner life. A life of light begins, flickering here and there within the Saturn world and dying down again. At some places a quivering of glowing light will appear, at others something more like rapid lightning-flashes. The Saturn warmth-bodies begin to glimmer and glisten, even to radiate light. The attainment of this stage affords once more the possibility for certain Beings to unfold their activity. These are the Beings who may be designated “Fire Spirits” (in Christian terminology, Archangeloi, Archangels.) They have an astral body of their own at this stage of their existence but they cannot by themselves give it any stimulus. They would be quite incapable of arousing any feelings or sensation were it not for the fact that they can work upon the warmth-bodies which have reached the stage here indicated. Working in this way makes it possible for them to perceive their own existence; they perceive it by the influence they exercise. They cannot say to themselves “I am,” rather would they have to say: “My environment enables me to be.” They have perception; indeed their perceptions consist in the above-described light-effects on Saturn. These are in a certain sense their I. This gives them a peculiar form of consciousness. We may describe it as a picture-consciousness. It may be conceived as of the nature of man's dream-consciousness; only we must imagine it far more vivid, far more animated than human dreaming. Nor is it a mere meaningless ebb and flow of pictures; the dream-pictures of the Fire Spirits and the warmth-bodies of Saturn, the seeds of the human sense-organs are first implanted in the stream of evolution. The organs whereby today man perceives the physical world light up in their first, delicate ethereal beginnings. Phantoms-of-man, revealing as yet no other outward sign than these “light” archetypes of the sense-organs, become perceptible in Saturn to the faculty of clairvoyance. Man's sense-organs are thus the fruits of the activity of the Fire Spirits. But these are not the only Spirits concerned in their creation. Simultaneously with the Fire Spirits, other Beings appear upon the scene—Beings so far advanced in evolution that they are able to make use of the seeds of the sense-organs for witnessing the cosmic processes of Saturn's life. These are the Beings whom we may designate “Spirits of Love” (In Christian language, Seraphim.) Were it not for them, the Fire Spirits could not have the consciousness above described; for they gaze upon the processes taking place in Saturn with a consciousness that enables them to transmit pictures of these processes to the Fire Spirits. For themselves they forgo all the advantage they might have through witnessing the Saturn events. They renounce every enjoyment it could afford them, every delight; they give that all up, so that the Fires Spirits may have it.

[ 24 ] These events are followed by a new period in Saturn's existence. To the play of light another thing is added. It may well seem quite made to many people when we tell what now confronts supersensible cognition. Within the Saturn body something like sensations of taste begin to go surging to and fro. Sweet, bitter, sour, etc. are perceived at diverse places in the interior of Saturn; while in the heavenly spaces without, all this gives the impression of sound, a kind of music. And in these processes, once more, Beings find it possible to unfold their activity on Saturn. These Beings may be called the “Sons of Twilight,” or “Sons of Life” (in Christian language they are the Angeloi or Angels.) They begin to interact with the surging, eddying forces of taste in the interior of Saturn, and by this means their etheric of life-body develops an activity that we may designate as a kind of metabolism. They bring life into the interior of Saturn; processes of nutrition and excretion begin to take place there. Not that the Beings themselves bring about these processes directly; the processes arise indirectly, through their activity. And now this inner life makes it possible for yet other Beings to enter the heavenly body. Let them be called the “Spirits of the Harmonies” (in Christian terminology called the Cherubim.) These Beings transmit to the Sons of Life a kind of dim consciousness of man today. It is like the consciousness that belongs to man in dreamless sleep, which is of such a low degree that in a manner of speaking it does not “come to consciousness” at all; man remains unaware of it. Yet it is there. It differs from day-consciousness in kind as well as in degree. Our present-day plants possess this “dreamless sleep” consciousness. It affords no perceptions of an outer world in the human sense of the word, but it regulates the life-processes and brings them into harmony with those in the outer Universe. At the Saturn stage with which we are here dealing, the Sons of Life cannot perceive the regulations; but the Spirits of the Harmonies perceive it. They therefore are the real regulators.

All this life goes on in what we have described as the phantoms-of-man. These therefore appear to the spiritual eye as though they were alive; and yet their life is but a semblance of life. It is the life of the Sons of Life who as it were make use of these phantoms in order to live out their own life.

[ 25 ] Let us now direct our attention to these phantoms-of-man with their semblance of life. During the period with which we have been dealing, they are of ever-changing form. Now they will resemble one shape, now another. In the further course of evolution the shapes become more definite, and sometimes even last for a while. This is due to their being now permeated by the influences of the Spirits who were at work in the very beginning of Saturn evolution, namely the Spirits of Will (the Thrones.) As a result, the phantom-of-man appears to be endowed with the simplest, darkest form of consciousness. We must conceive it as being yet more dim than that of dreamless sleep. Under present-day conditions, the minerals possess this consciousness. It brings the inner nature of the object or being into unison with the physical external world. On Saturn it is the Spirits of Will who regulate this unison, with the result that man appears like an impress of the Saturn life itself. What the Saturn life is on a large scale, man is now at this stage on a small. And with this the first seed is given of what is still only in the seedling stage even in the man of today, namely Spirit-man (Atman.) Inwardly—within Saturn—this dull human will manifests itself to the faculty of supersensible perception by effects which may be compared to “smells.” Outwardly—out into the heavenly spaces—there is a manifestation as of personality, a personality, however, that is not guided by an inner I, but regulated from outside like a machine. It is the Spirits of Will who regulate it.

[ 26 ] Surveying the above, we see that form the middle condition onward the stages of Saturn's evolution could be characterized by comparing their effects with sense-impressions of the present time. Thus it was possible to say: Saturn evolution manifests as warmth; afterwards a play of light is added, then a play of taste and sound, until at length there appears what reveals itself inwardly—to the interior of Saturn—in sensations of smell, and outwardly like a human I working in a machine-like way. How is it then with the manifestations of Saturn evolution before the state of warmth is reached? They cannot be compared with anything whatsoever that is accessible to outer sensation. The warmth-condition is preceded by one which man today experiences only in his inner being. When he gives himself up to ideas which he forms for himself within his soul without the occasion being thrust upon him by any impression from outside, then he has within him something which no physical senses can perceive—something which is accessible, as a perception, to higher spiritual sight alone. The warmth-condition of Saturn is in effect preceded by manifestations which exist only for one who can perceive the supersensible. Three such conditions may be named: pure warmth-of-soul, not outwardly perceptible; purely spiritual light, which outwardly is darkness; and spiritual being which is complete in itself. Pure inner warmth accompanies the appearance on Saturn of the Spirits of Movement, pure spiritual light that of the Spirits of Wisdom, while pure inward being is connected with the first outpouring of the Spirits of Will. Thus with the appearance of the Saturn warmth, our evolution first emerges from an inner life of pure spirituality, to an existence manifesting outwardly.

[ 27 ] One more thing must be added, with which the present consciousness may find it still more difficult to come to terms. With the warmth-conditions of Old Saturn there also first emerges what we call Time. The previous conditions are in fact not temporal at all. They belong to the realm which, in spiritual science, may be named Duration. All that is said in this book of conditions in the Realm of Duration must therefore be understood in this sense. It must be borne in mind that any expression implying time-relationships is used only for the sake of comparison and exposition. In human language even those things which, in a manner of speaking, precede time, can only be characterized with words in which the time-conception is implicit. We must remember that though the first, second and third Saturn states did not take place “one after the other” in the present-day sense of the words, we cannot, after all, avoid describing them in sequence. Moreover, in spite of their duration of simultaneity, they depend on one another, and the dependence is such as to be comparable with a succession in time.

[ 28 ] With this reference to the earliest evolutionary states of Saturn, light is also thrown on all further questionings as to the “whence” of these conditions. In a purely intellectual way it is possible, of course, in the case of every given origin, to ask again after its origin. But in relation to the facts this will not do. We can easily bring it home to ourselves by a comparison. If we see ruts in a road we may ask, “Whence do they come?” We may receive the answer, “From a carriage.” Then we can ask again, “Where did the carriage come from, and where was it going?” Here again an answer founded on facts is possible. We can still go on to ask, “Who was in the carriage? What were the intentions of the person using it? What was he doing?” But we shall at length reach a point where our questioning is brought to a natural conclusion by the facts themselves. And if we go on asking questions beyond this point, we are departing from the purpose of the original question; we only prolong the questioning, as it were, mechanically. In cases like the one here cited as an illustration, we can readily see where the facts themselves will put a natural end to questioning. With the great questions of the Universe it is not so easy. None the less, if we think it over carefully, we shall recognize that all questions of “Whence” must come to an end with the Saturn conditions we have been describing. For we have here reached a sphere where the beings and processes are no longer to be accounted for by reference to that from which they take their origins, but by what they are in themselves.

[ 29 ] The eventual result of Saturn evolution is to be seen in the fact that the seed of man has grown an developed to a certain point. It has attained the low, dim state of consciousness which was described above. We must not imagine that this began to evolve only in the last stage of Saturn. The Spirits of Will are working throughout all the conditions, but it is in the last period that the result of their activity is most apparent to supersensible perception. Altogether, no hard and fast line can be drawn between the activities of the several groups of Beings. When it is said: first the Spirits of will are active, then the Spirits of Wisdom, and so forth—it does not mean that they are active at that stage only. They work throughout the whole of Saturn evolution; their working is, however, most readily observed in the times thus indicated, when the several Beings have as it were their periods of leadership.

[ 30 ] The whole of Saturn evolution thus appears as an elaboration, by the Spirits of Wisdom, Movement, Form, etc. of that which was poured out in the beginning by the Spirits of Will. The spiritual Beings themselves undergo evolution in the process. The Spirits of Wisdom, for example, after having received their life rayed back to them from Saturn, are at another stage than before. Their own faculties have advanced to a higher level, and there follows for them something not unlike what sleep is for the human being. Periods of activity on Saturn are followed by times when they are living as it were in other worlds; and then their activity is turned away from Saturn. Consequently, supersensible perception sees in the Saturn evolution here described, a rise and fall. The former lasts until the state of warmth has developed and matured. Then, with the play of light, a waning process begins. And when through the working of the Spirits of Will the phantoms-of-man have taken shape and form, the spiritual Beings have by then all gradually withdrawn. Saturn evolution dies away into itself, and disappears as such. A kind of interval of rest begins. The germ or seed of man passes as it were into a state of dissolution; not that it vanishes entirely—rather it is in the condition of a plant seed which, resting in the Earth, will ripen by and by into a new plant. So does the seed of man rest in the bosom of the world, there to await a new awakening. And when the time for its awakening has come, then the spiritual Beings have on their part acquired—under different conditions—the faculties to work still further upon the seed of man. The Spirits of Wisdom have in their etheric body attained the power to do more than enjoy the reflection of Life—as on Saturn; they are now able to pour Life out of themselves, endowing other beings with it. The Spirits of Movement are now as far advanced as were the Spirits of Wisdom upon Saturn. Their lowest member upon Saturn was the astral body; henceforth they have in addition an etheric or life-body of their own. And the other spiritual Beings too have reached a further stage in their evolution. Hence in the further evolution of the seed of man these spiritual Beings can all work in quite another way than they did upon Saturn.

But now at the end of Saturn evolution the seed of man had, as it were, dissolved; and in order that the Spirit-beings—more highly evolved as they now are—may continue where they left off before, it must briefly recapitulate the stages it went through on Saturn. And this is precisely what shows itself to supersensible perception. Emerging once more from its hidden state, the seed of man begins to unfold by its own inherent faculty—by virtue of the forces with which it was imbued on Saturn. It comes forth out of the darkness as a being-of-will, and raises itself to the semblance of life, of soul-likeness and so forth, until it reaches the manifestation of machine-like personality which belonged to it at the close of Saturn evolution.

The second of the great evolutionary periods—the Sun stage—uplifts the human being to a higher level of consciousness than he attained on Saturn, although compared with man's present consciousness, his condition on the Sun might still be called unconsciousness. For it is well-nigh equivalent to the state in which he now finds himself in absolutely dreamless sleep. We might also compare it with the low degree of consciousness in which our world of plants is slumbering today. For supersensible perception there is, as a matter of fact, no such thing as unconsciousness there are but differing degrees of consciousness. Everything in the world is conscious.

Man attains this higher state of consciousness in the course of Sun evolution through the fact that the etheric or life-body is now incorporated in him. But this cannot take place until the Saturn conditions have been recapitulated. Such recapitulation has a quite definite meaning. When the interval of rest is over, what was previously Saturn emerges from the “cosmic sleep” as a new world-entity—as Sun. But the whole situation within which evolution takes place is now changed. The Spirit-beings whose working upon Saturn we described have progressed to new conditions. The seed of man, however, as it emerges on the newly formed Sun, appears, to begin with, just as it become on Saturn. It has accordingly first of all to transmute the several evolutionary stages it underwent on Saturn, in order to adapt them to the conditions on Sun. Hence the Sun epoch begins with a repetition of the Saturn events, but a repetition adapted to the changed conditions—the Spirits of Wisdom begin their work of pouring the etheric or life-body into the physical. The higher stage that man attains upon Sun may be characterized as follows. The physical body, formed already upon Saturn in its germinal beginnings, is raised to a second level of perfection, in that it now becomes the bearer of an etheric or life-body. The etheric or life-body itself attains, during the Sun evolution, the first degree of its perfection. But for these stages of perfection to be achieved—the second for the physical and the first for the life-body—the intervention of other Spiritual-beings too is needed, just as it was for the Saturn stage.

[ 32 ] When the Spirits of Wisdom begin with their inpouring of the life-body, the Sun entity, which until now was dark, begins to radiate light. Simultaneously the first signs of an inner quickening appear in the seed of man: life begins to be. What on Saturn had to be described as a mere semblance of life, is now becoming real life. The inpouring goes on for a time, and then an important change comes over the seed of man; it differentiates into two parts. Hitherto, the physical body and life-body have been in intimate union as a single whole; now, the physical begins to separate off as a distinct part—although it still remains permeated with the life-body. Thus we now have to do with a twofold human being. One part of man is physical body, permeated through and through with life-body; the other consists of life-body alone. This severance takes place during an interval of rest in the Sun life, when the light-radiance which had begun to appear dies down again. It happens during what may be called a “cosmic night.” This interval of rest is however far shorter than the aforesaid interval between the Saturn and Sun evolutions. When it is over, the Spirits of Wisdom continue for a while to work upon the two-fold human being, just as they worked on him before, when he was single and undivided. Thereafter, the Spirits of Movement come in with their activity; they permeate with their own astral body the life-body of the human being. The life-body thus attains the faculty to carry out certain inner movements in the physical—movements that are comparable to those of the saps and fluids in a plant of the present day.

[ 33 ] The whole of Saturn consisted of warmth alone. During Sun evolution this warmth-substance condenses to a state which may be likened to that of our present gas or vapor. It is the condition we can denote as Air. The first beginnings of it show themselves after the Spirits of Movement have come in with their activity. To supersensible consciousness the following appears. Within the warmth-substance delicate, tenuous structures emerge, which are brought into regular movement by the forces of the life-body. These structures make manifest the physical body of the human being as it is at this stage in its evolution. They are permeated through and through with warmth, and are also enveloped as if by an integument of warmth. Warmth-creations with air-forms incorporated in them, the latter engaged in regular and constant movement—so may be describe the human being, physically speaking, at this stage. If we want to maintain the suggested comparison with the plant of the present day, we must remember that we are not dealing with a compact plant but with a form consisting of air or gas, the movements of which are not unlike those of the sap in the present plant.¹

This evolution is then carried further. After a time an interval of rest once more ensues; and when this is over, the Spirits of Movement continue with their work, until it is supplemented by that of the Spirits of Form, as a result of whose activity the gaseous structures, hitherto constantly changing, now assume more permanent shape. This too is brought about through the Spirits of Form pouring their forces in and out of the life-body of the human beings. Previously, when the Spirits of Movement alone were working upon them, the gaseous bodies were in incessant motion; only for a moment did they ever maintain their shape. Henceforward they will now assume, for a time, distinguishable forms.

Once more, after a certain time, comes an interval of rest; and when that is over, the Spirits of Form resume their activity. Then, however, altogether new conditions appear within Sun evolution.

[ 34 ] For now the point is reached where Sun evolution has attained its middle epoch. It is the time when the Spirits of Personality, who reached their human level upon Saturn, rise to a higher stage of perfection, thus transcending the stage of humanity. They attain a consciousness which, in the regular course of evolution, present-day man does not yet possess. He will attain it when the Earth—the fourth of the planetary stages in evolution—has reached its goal and the next planetary period will have begun. At that time, man will no longer perceive around him merely what the present physical senses communicate to him; he will be able to observe in pictures the inner soul-condition of the beings that surround him. He will have picture-consciousness, still however retaining full self-consciousness. For in his picture-vision, there will be nothing dim or dreamlike. He will perceive things of the soul—in pictures it is true, yet so that the pictures will express realities just as physical colors and tones do today. In our time it is only by spiritual-scientific training that man can raise himself to this kind of seership. The training will be dealt with in a later chapter.

Such seership the Spirits of Personality attain as their normal gift of evolution in the middle of the Sun stage. And it enables them, during Sun evolution, to work upon the newly formed life-body of the human being in the same way as they worked upon his physical body during Saturn. As upon Saturn the warmth rayed back to them their own personality, so now the gaseous forms ray back to them in shining light the picture-visions of their seership. They behold—supersensibly—what is now taking place on Sun. Nor is their seeing by any means mere observation. For in the pictures that stream outward from the Sun, it is as though something of that force which man on Earth denotes as Love were making itself felt. And as we look—in soul—more closely, we find the cause of this. Into the light as it rays outward from the Sun, sublime Beings have mingled their activity. These are the “Spirits of Love” (in Christian language, Seraphim) already named in the preceding pages. Henceforth they work upon the human etheric body (or life-body) in co-operation with the Spirits of Personality. The combined activity of these Beings enables the life-body to take a further step on its path of evolution. It becomes capable not only of transforming the gaseous structures which are within it, but of so working upon them that the first suggestions of a reproductive process appear in the living human entities. Secretions are as it were driven forth—or we might say, “perspired”—by the already-formed gaseous organisms, and assume form in their turn in the likeness of their mother-organism.

[ 35 ] Before we can go on to describe the further evolution of the Sun, we must point to a fact which is of the greatest importance in the whole cosmic process. In the course of a given epoch not all the beings attain the goal of their evolution. Some fall short of it. During Saturn evolution, for example, not all the Spirits of Personality attained the “human” stage appointed for them. Nor did all the human physical bodies that developed upon Saturn reach the degree of maturity which could enable them to become the bearers on Sun of an independent life-body. As a result, beings and structures are present on the Sun, unsuited to the conditions that obtain there. These must now make good what they have missed on Saturn. During the Sun stage spiritual perceptions can therefore observe the following. When the Spirits of Wisdom begin with their in-pouring of the life-body, the whole body of the Sun becomes as it were clouded. For it is interspersed with structures which belong essentially to Saturn—warmth-structures that are unable to condense in the proper way to air. These are the human entities which have remained behind at the Saturn stage. They cannot become bearers of a normally developed life-body.

What is thus left behind of Saturn's warmth-substance, divides on the Sun into two portions. One is as it were absorbed by the human bodies, and constitutes henceforth, within the human being, a kind of lower nature. Thus on Sun the human being receives something into his bodily nature that corresponds in reality to the Saturn stage. Now as the Saturn body of man made it possible for the Spirits of Personality to rise to their “human” level, so on the Sun does this Saturn part of man render a like service to the Fires Spirits. These rise to their human stage by pouring their forces in and out of it, just as the Spirits of Personality did on Saturn. This too takes place during the middle epoch of Sun evolution, for then the Saturn part of the human being is sufficiently mature for the Fire Spirits (The Archangeloi) to pass through their human stage with its assistance.

Another portion of the Saturn warmth-substance separates off and comes to an independent existence alongside of and among the Sun human beings, constituting thus a second kingdom, developing a fully independent, but purely physical body—a body of warmth. There is therefore in this second kingdom no independent life-body to receive the activity of the fully evolved Spirits of Personality. But now certain Spirits of Personality have also stopped short at the Saturn stage; they did not attain there the level of humanity. Between them and this second kingdom of the Sun, there is a bond of attraction. They must now relate themselves to this retarded kingdom in the same way as their more advanced companions related themselves upon Saturn to the human beings. For upon Saturn these too had developed only a physical body. But on the Sun itself there is no possibility for this work to be done by the backward Spirits of Personality. They therefore separate themselves from the Sun and form an independent heavenly body outside it. From this heavenly body that has left the Sun, the retarded Spirits of Personality work upon the creatures of the second Sun kingdom.. The single cosmic entity that Saturn was before, has thus become two. Henceforth the Sun has a second heavenly body in its environment, representing a kind of re-birth of Saturn—as it were, a new Saturn. From this new Saturn the second kingdom of the Sun is endowed with the character of personality. Its beings have no personality upon the Sun itself; but they reflect to the Spirits of Personality on the new Saturn their personality. In among the human beings on the sun, supersensible consciousness can observe forces of warmth, whose working intermingles with the regular evolution of the Sun. Herein we have to perceive the Spirits of the new Saturn wielding their power.

Observation of the human being during the middle epoch of Sun evolution reveals it to be divided into a physical body and a life-body. The latter is the scene of activity for the more advanced Spirits of Personality, in unison with the Spirits of Love. The physical body is now intermingled with a portion of the retarded Saturn nature, and here the activity of the Fire Spirits is at work. In what the Fire Spirits achieve in this retarded Saturn nature, we have to recognize the forerunners of the present sense-organs of Earth man. (It will be remembered that already upon Saturn the Fire Spirits were concerned in elaborating within the warmth-substance the seeds of the human senses.) On the other hand, in that which is accomplished by the Spirits of Personality in union with the Spirits of Love (the Seraphim,) we have to perceive the first beginnings of man's present glandular organs.

But now the work of those Spirits of Personality who dwell on the new Saturn is not exhaustively described in what was said above. Their activity goes beyond the second kingdom of the Sun; they also establish a kind of connection between this second kingdom and the human senses. The warmth-substances of this second kingdom stream through the human senses in their germinal condition, pouring continually in and out of them. In this way the human being rises on Sun to a kind of perception of the lower kingdom that is there beside him. It is, in the nature of the case, a very dim perception—corresponding in all respects to the dull Saturn consciousness of which we spoke before. And it consists essentially in varying effects of warmth.

[ 38 ] All that has here been described as pertaining to the middle epoch of Sun evolution, lasts for a certain time; and then, once more there is an interval of rest. After the interval, things go on for awhile in the same way as before, until a point is reached in evolution when the human etheric body is mature for a united working of the Sons of Life (The Angeloi) and the Spirits of Harmony (the Cherubim.) To supersensible consciousness manifestations now appear within the human being which may be likened to perceptions of taste, and which reveal themselves outwardly as sounds. It will be remembered that we resorted to a similar comparison in our description of Saturn evolution. Here however, on Sun, all that does on in the human being is far more inward, is full of a more independent life.

The Sons of Life hereby attain the dim picture-consciousness which the Fire Spirits reached on Saturn. The Spirits of Harmony (Cherubim) are their helpers in this. They behold in spirit what is now taking its course in Sun evolution; but they deny themselves all the fruits of this their contemplation, all feeling of the Wisdom-filled pictures that arise there, and pour them like wondrous magic scenes into the dream-consciousness of the Sons of Life. These in turn weave the forms they behold into man's etheric body, which rises thereby to higher and higher stages in its evolution.

[ 39 ] Again there is an interval of rest. Again the whole arises out of the “sleep of worlds” and, after it has continued its course for a time, the human being is mature enough to be able to arouse within him the forces of his own. These are the forces which were poured into his being by the Thrones during the last epoch of Saturn evolution. The human being now continues his evolution in an inner life which, in its manifestation to consciousness, may be likened to an inward sensation of smell. Outwardly, over against the heavenly spaces, he reveals himself as a personality. We have already seen how at the end of Saturn evolution, personality manifested like a machine. Moreover, as at that time the first seed was developed of what is still in a seedling state even in the man of today, namely Spirit-Man or Atma, so now and in like manner the first seed is formed of Life-Spirit or Budhi.

After all this has gone on for a certain time, there is once more an interval of rest And, as has happened before, after the interval the former activity of the human being is resumed for a while. Then new conditions enter in, arising out of a fresh intervention on the part of the Spirits of Wisdom. Through this the human being becomes able to feel the first traces of sympathy and antipathy with his environment. It is as yet not real feeling; nevertheless, it is a forerunner of feeling. For the inner activity of life, the manifestations of which could be described as resembling perceptions of smell, reveals itself outwardly as if in a kind of primitive speech. When an agreeable smell or taste, glimmer of light, or other manifestation is inwardly perceived, the human being makes it known outwardly by a sound. Similarly too with an inwardly distasteful perception. And now, as a result of all these developments, the true meaning of Sun evolution for the being of man has been attained. He has reached a higher level of consciousness than was his Saturn. It is the consciousness of sleep.

After a while the point has also been reached when the higher Beings connected with the Sun stage must pass to other spheres, there to assimilate the potentialities they have implanted in themselves by the work they have done on the human being. A greater interval of rest supervenes, such as there was between Saturn and Sun. All that has been evolved on Sun passes into a condition like that of a plant when its forces of growth are resting in the seed. But as these come forth again to the light of day in a new plant, so after the interval of rest is over, all that was life upon the Sun emerges again out of the bosom of the worlds and a new planetary existence begins. We shall well understand the meaning of such an interval of rest or “sleep of worlds” if we turn our thought for a moment to some one of the above-named groups of Beings—the Spirits of Wisdom, for example. On Saturn, these Beings were not yet so far advanced as to be able to pour forth from themselves an etheric body. The experiences they underwent there served however to prepare them for this activity. During the interval they transmitted what had been prepared in them, into the actual faculty, with the result that on Sun they were ready to let the life stream out from them and so endow the human being with a life-body of his own.

When the interval of rest is over, what formerly was Sun comes forth again from the “sleep of worlds.” That is to say, it becomes perceptible once more to those powers of spiritual sight which had formerly been able to observe it but from which it vanished in the interval of rest. The planetary being emerging now in its new form shall be designated “Moon”—but we must not confuse it with that fragment of it which constitutes the present Moon, the satellite of the Earth. Two things are to be noted, as it re-emerges. In the first place, the new Saturn, which separated off during Sun, is now again within the planetary being. During the interval of rest, it has re-united with the Sun. The whole content of the original Saturn comes forth again to begin with as a single cosmic entity. Secondly, the life-bodies of the human beings, that were formed upon Sun, have been absorbed during the interval of rest by the planet's spiritual envelope—for such, as a sense, it is. Hence at this point of time the life-bodies do not appear in union with the human physical bodies; these emerge, to begin with, by themselves. Though bearing in their nature all that has been achieved in them on Saturn and on the Sun, they are still without the etheric or life-body. Nor indeed would they be able to receive it at once, for in the interval of rest the etheric body itself has undergone an evolution to which they are not yet adapted. And so now, at the beginning of Moon evolution, another repetition of the Saturn events takes place, in order to achieve this adaptation.

The physical life of man passes in recapitulation through the stages of Saturn evolution, but under altogether changed conditions. For on Saturn the forces of a warmth body alone were at work in it, whereas now there are also those of the gaseous body which it has assimilated. The latter do not however emerge at once. In the beginning of Moon evolution it is as though the human being consisted of warmth-substance alone, with the gaseous forces still asleep within it. Then follows a period when these emerge in their first indication. And at length, in the last period of the Saturn repetition, the human being has already the appearance he had when he was alive on Sun. Yet all “life” at this stage proves to be no more than a mere semblance of life. For there must first be an interval of rest, like the short intervals of rest during Sun evolution. Then begins once more the inpouring of the life-body, for which the physical body has now made itself mature. This inpouring takes place, as did the Saturn repetition, in three distinct epochs. In the second of these, the human being is so far adapted to the new Moon conditions that the Spirits of Movement can bring into action the faculty they have acquired. Out of their own nature they can now pour the astral body into the human beings. For this work they prepared themselves during Sun evolutions, and in the interval of rest between Sun and Moon they have transmuted what they had prepared into the actual faculty. This inpouring of the astral body lasts for a certain time, and then again one of the smaller intervals of rest ensues; after which the inpouring is continued, until the Spirits of Form enter with their activity. Through the Spirits of Movement pouring into him the astral body, the human being acquires his first qualities of soul. The processes that take place in him by virtue of the life-body—which in Sun evolution were still of a plant-like character—these he now begins to follow with sensation, feeling pleasure in them or disliking them. But the sympathies and antipathies thus aroused remain in ever-changing ebb and flow, until the Spirits of Form come in and play their part. Thereupon the ever-changing feelings become so transformed that there emerges in the human being what we may regard as a first sign of wish and craving. He strives for a repetition of what gave enjoyment, and seeks to avoid what roused a feeling of antipathy. Since however the Spirits of Form do not communicate their own nature to the human being but only cause their forces to pour in and out of him, this craving is without inwardness or independence. It is guided by the Spirits of Form, and gives the impression of being purely instinctive.

[ 40 ] On Saturn the physical body of the human being was a body of warmth; on Sun there was a condensation to the gaseous condition, to “air.” Now, in Moon evolution, when the Astral is poured in, the moment is reached when the physical attains a further stage of condensation. It comes into a condition comparable to that of a liquid in our time. This new state may be designated “water,” meaning however not our present water but any liquid form of existence. The human physical body comes now gradually to assume a form composed of three organic structures, distinct form one another in their substance. The densest is a “water body;” this is permeated through and through by airy currents, and warmth effects continue also to pervade the whole.

[ 41 ] But now, as on Saturn, so in the Sun stage too, not all the forms attain the corresponding maturity. Hence we find upon Moon, forms which are even now still at the Saturn stage, and some also which have reached but remain at the stage of Sun. Two other kingdoms thus emerge, beside the properly developed human kingdom. One consists of beings which, having remained at the Saturn stage, have physical body alone; and this physical body is not yet able, even now on Moon, to become the bearer of an independent life-body. These beings form the lowest kingdom. A second kingdom is composed of beings who have stopped short at the Sun stage, and are accordingly not ready on Moon to incorporate within them an independent astral body. They constitute an intermediate kingdom, between the aforesaid and the normally advanced human kingdom.

[ 1 ] A further event has now to be noted. The substances with forces of warmth alone, those also that have stopped short as forces of air, permeate the human beings too. These, therefore, on Moon, bear within them a Saturn and a Sun nature. Thereby a kind of split has come about in human nature, and in consequence of this, an event of great significance takes place in Moon evolution. Soon after the Spirits of Form have come in with their activity, a severance begins to be prepared for in the heavenly body of the Moon. A portion of the substances and beings is split off from the remainder. Out of the single heavenly body, two separate ones evolve. The first is taken for their dwelling-place by certain higher Beings, hitherto more intimately united with the heavenly body in its single state. The second is occupied by man, together with the two lower kingdoms above-mentioned and also certain higher Beings who do not pass over to the first. The former heavenly body, with the higher Beings, appears now as a Sun re-born and at the same time refined; the latter is henceforth the essentially new creation—“Old Moon,” as it has to be called—the third planetary embodiment of our Earth, following on the Saturn and Sun embodiments.

[ 1 ] Of the substances that have come into existence on Moon, the new-born Sun, as it goes forth, takes with it only warmth and air; while on the remained which is left behind as Moon, beside these two the watery state is also to be found. In consequence of the severance, the Beings who have gone forth with the new-born Sun are no longer hampered in their evolution by the denser beings of the Moon. They are now able to progress untrammeled in their own becoming, and they attain thereby the greater strength to work—now from without, from their dwelling-place, the Sun—upon the beings of the Moon. Thus do the Moon beings too attain new possibilities of evolution. What is for them particularly significant is that the Spirits of Form have remained united with them. These establish more firmly the desire-nature of the human being, and by degrees this comes to find expression in a further condensation of the physical body. Where hitherto it has been but watery, it begins to assume a more viscous form, and the structures of air and of warmth are densified to correspond. Similar changes take place also in the two lower kingdoms.

[ 42 ] In consequence of having separated from the Sun, the Moon is now related to the Sun in the same way as once was Saturn to the whole of the surrounding cosmic evolution. Saturn was formed out of the body of the Spirits of Will (Thrones.) From the Saturn substance rayed back into cosmic space all that was experienced in consciousness by the Spirit-beings in its environment. And through the events that followed, this raying-back gradually work to independent life. Such is the essence of all evolution. Independent being is first separated out from the life of the environment, then the environment engraves itself—as it were, by reflection—upon the separated being, and then the latter evolves further, independently.

So did the Moon body sever itself from the Sun, and, to being with, simply reflect the life of the Sun body. If, therefore, nothing else had happened, the situation in the cosmos would have been as follows. There would have been a Sun body, where spiritual Beings well adapted to its nature had their experiences in the elements of warmth and air. Over against it would have been a Lunar body, wherein other Beings were evolving, living a life of warmth and air and water. And the progress from the Sun to the Moon embodiment would have meant for the Sun Beings that in what was happening on Moon they would have beheld their own life as in a mirror, and would in this way have been able to receive it and enjoy it, which during the Sun embodiment had not yet been possible. But evolution took another turn. Something took place which was of the very deepest significance for all succeeding evolution. Certain beings, who were adapted to the Moon body, possessed themselves of the element of Will (a heritage from the Thrones) which stood at their disposal, and evolved therewith a life of their own, that grew up independently of the Sun life.

[ 43 ] Alongside the experiences on Moon which were entirely subject to the Sun's influence, independent experiences now arose—states of rebellion, as it were, or of opposition to the Sun Beings. And the various kingdoms that had arisen on Sun and Moon—above all, the kingdom of the forefather of man—became involved in these new conditions. Spiritually and materially, the Moon body contained now within it two kinds of life—one that was in intimate union with the Sun's life, and another which, having “fallen” from this, went on its own independent way. This division into a twofold life comes to expression in all the succeeding events of the Moon embodiment.

[ 44 ] That which presents itself to supersensible consciousness at this epoch in evolution, can be described in the following picture. The ground mass of the Moon was formed of a semi-live substance, which was in constant movement, sometimes sluggish, sometimes quick and lively. There is as yet no solid mineral mass like the rocks and other constituents of the Earth on which man treads today. We might describe it as a kind of plant-mineral kingdom. Only, we have to imagine the whole ground and body of the Moon consisting of this plant-mineral substance, just as the earth today consists of rocks and stones, arable soil, etc. As here and there rocks protrude from the Earth today, so in the Lunar mass, harder portions also were embedded. These might be likened to forms made of hard wood or horn. Moreover, as plants today spring from the mineral soil, so was the ground of the Moon bedecked, and also penetrates, by a second kingdom, consisting of a kind of plant-animal. The substance of this kingdom was softer than the ground and more mobile in itself. It spread over the lower kingdom like a turgid sea. And as for man himself, he might be described as animal-man. He had in his nature the constituents of the two other kingdoms; but his being was permeated through and through by a life-body and an astral body, upon which the forces of the higher Beings on the Sun were working, thereby ennobling his form and figure. The Spirits of form gave him a form and figure that adapted him to the Moon life; the Sun Spirits, on the other hand, made him a being that was lifted beyond this life. With the faculties bestowed on him by these Spirits, man had the power to ennoble his own nature; he could even lift up on to a higher level that within him which was akin to the lower kingdoms.

Seen in their spiritual aspect, these developments may be described as follows. Man's ancestor had also been ennobled by beings who had fallen away from the Sun kingdom. Their ennobling influence extended, above all, to everything that could be experienced in the watery element. Upon this element, the influence of the Beings of the Sun was not so great; they were rulers in the elements of warmth and air. The outcome of all this was that a twofold nature began to declare itself in man's organism. One part of it was permeated through and through by the influence of the Sun Beings; while in the other, the fallen beings, the Moon beings, were working. The latter part was thus more independent. In the former, no other states of consciousness could arise than those in which the Beings of the Sun were living, while in the latter there lived a kind of cosmic consciousness, such as had belonged to the Saturn state, but on a higher level. Through it man's ancestor saw himself as an “Image of the Universe,” while in the “Sun” part of his being he would feel himself only as an “Image of the Sun.”

These two natures in man began now to come into a kind of conflict. And for this conflict a balance was established by the influence of the Sun Beings making transient and frail the more material part of man's organism whereby he was enabled to have the independent World-consciousness. Henceforth this part had to be thrown off from time to time. During the process and for some while after, man's ancestor was a being subject to the Sun influence alone. His consciousness became less independent; he lived in utter devotion to the Solar life. Thereupon the independent—Moon—part would be renewed once more; and after a while the whole process be repeated. This happened time and again. Thus did the ancestor of man live on the Moon in alternating states of consciousness—now duller, now clearer; and the alternation was accompanied by a changing and renewal of his being in its material aspect. From time to time he would lay aside his Moon body, then after awhile put it on once more.

[ 45 ] Seen in their physical aspect, the aforesaid kingdoms of the Moon show great variety. The mineral-plants differ from one another, group by group; so do the plant-animals and the animal-men. This we shall readily understand if we recall that certain structures have remained behind at each of the preceding stages. Forms very varied in quality will thus had been embodied. Some there are which still reveal the initial properties of Saturn; others, those of its middle epoch; others again, those of its end. So too for all the successive evolutionary stages of the Sun.

[ 46 ] Nor is it only the forms and structures belonging to the heavenly body that remain behind as it goes forward in its evolution. The same applies to many of the Beings connected with it. With the advance of evolution to Moon, a number of different ranks of such Beings are to be found. There are Spirits of Personality who even on Sun did not attain their human level, while there are others who made good there what they and missed before, and rose to the human stage. The same with the Fires Spirits who should have become human beings on Sun: a number of these have also remained behind. And as in Sun evolution certain Spirits of Personality, having remained behind, withdrew from the Sun and made Saturn arise anew as a distinct heavenly body, so too in the course of Moon evolution do the Beings aforesaid remove themselves on to separate heavenly bodies. So far, we have spoken only of the separation into Sun and Moon, but in the same manner other heavenly forms were also separated from the Moon body which emerged after the great interval between the Sun and Moon stages of evolution; so that we have in time a whole system of heavenly bodies, the most advanced of which, as will readily be seen, must be the new Sun. And now, as in Sun evolution there was a bond of attraction between the backward Saturn kingdom and the Spirits of Personality on the new Saturn, so, in like manner, bonds of attraction now arise between the several heavenly bodies and the corresponding Moon beings. It would lead us much too far afield to trace here in detail all the heavenly bodies that emerged. Let is suffice to have pointed out the reason why, as time went on, from the single heavenly body which arose as Saturn in the beginning of human evolution, a whole number of heavenly bodies detached themselves one after another.

[ 47 ] After the Spirits of Form have come in with their activity, Moon evolution continues for a time along these lines. Then there is once more an interval, during which the coarser parts of the three Moon kingdoms remain in a kind of quiescent state, while the finer parts—and notably the astral bodies of the human beings—free themselves from these coarser structures. They come into a condition where the higher forces of the sublime Beings of the Sun can work upon them with peculiar intensity.

After this interval of rest, the finer portions penetrate once more into the parts of the human being that are of coarser substance. What with the strength they have acquired in their free condition during the interval, they can now make these coarser substances ready to receive the influence which, after a time, the normally progressive Spirits of Personality and the Fire Spirits will bring to bear on them.

[ 48 ] The Spirits of Personality have risen meanwhile to a stage at which they have the consciousness of Inspiration. Not only can they, as in their former picture-consciousness, perceive in picture form the inner states of other beings; they can behold their very inwardness, expressed in a language as it were of spiritual music. Meanwhile the Fire Spirits have risen to the consciousness which the Spirits of Personality possessed on Sun. Both kinds of Spirits are thus able to enter, and play their part in, the now more ripened life of the human being. The Spirits of Personality work on his astral body, the Fire Spirits on his etheric body. The astral body receives thereby the character of personality. Henceforth it not only experiences pleasure and pain, it also relates them to itself. Not yet does it rise to the full consciousness of “I” which says to itself “I am;” Rather does it feel sustained and sheltered by other beings in its environment. Turning its gaze upward, as it were, to these, it can exclaim: “This my environment upholds me in existence.”

Meanwhile the Fire Spirits work upon the etheric body. Under their influence the motion of the forces in this body becomes gradually more and more of an inward life activity. It finds physical expression in a movement of the saps and fluids and in phenomena of growth. The gaseous substances have been condensed to watery, and we may now begin to speak of a kind of nutrition—in the sense that what is received from without is inwardly transmuted and assimilated. If we imagine something intermediate between the nutrition and the breathing of today, we shall have a fair idea of what was taking place in this direction. The human being derived his “food-stuffs” from the animal-plant kingdom. These animal-plants we must imagine hovering and floating in a surrounding element (or sometimes also loosely rooted in the ground,) rather as the lower animals of today live in the water, or the terrestrial animals in the air. But the element in which the animal-plants lived was neither water nor air in the present sense; it was something intermediate between the two—a kind of dense vapor wherein the most diverse substances, being as it were dissolved in it, moved hither and thither in manifold currents. The animal-plants seemed like forms within this element that were only rather more regular and condensed. Physically they were often but little different from their surrounding element. Besides the process of nutrition, there was also a breathing process. But it was not as it is on Earth; it was more like an in-drawing and out-pouring of warmth. To the supersensible observer of these processes, it is as though organs were opening out and drawing to again, while a warmth-giving stream pours in and out of them, and air and water substances are conveyed inwards and outwards. And since the human being has already at this stage an astral body of his own, both breathing and nutrition are accompanied by inner feelings. A kind of pleasure is experienced when substances that are helpful for building the human being, are absorbed; discomfort is felt when harmful substances flow in, or even when they only come too near.

Now as the breathing process was during Moon evolution nearly related to that of nutrition, so was the process of ideation—the forming of mental images—to the reproduction process. The things and begins in Moon man's environment exercised no immediate effect on any human senses. Man's mental life was rather of the following character. In this dim twilight consciousness, pictures were called up by the presence of these things and begins; and the pictures were far more intimately related to the real inner nature of the environment than are our sense-perceptions, which reveal—in colors, sounds, smells, etc.—merely its outer aspect. To gain a better idea of Moon man's consciousness we should imagine him steeped in the vapor-like environment above described. Manifold processes are taking place within it. Substances are combining, substances are separating; some parts grow more condensed, others thin out, become more tenuous. All this goes on in such a way that though the human beings do not directly see or hear it, it calls forth pictures in their consciousness. These may be likened to the pictures of our dream-consciousness today. Let us say, an object falls to the floor. The sleeper does not perceive the real process, but instead some arbitrary picture—for example, he thinks a shot is being fired. The pictures of Moon consciousness, however, unlike our dream-pictures, are not arbitrary. Though they are not copies but symbols only of outer processes, nevertheless they correspond to them. For a particular outer process one picture will arise and no other. Moon man is thus in a position to order his conduct according to the pictures, just as today man orders his conduct according to his perceptions. Only, observe the difference; conduct based on our perceptions is subject to free choice whereas action under the influence of these pictures takes place as though impelled by a deep inner urge.

We must not however imagine that in this picture-consciousness we have no more than a symbolization of outer physical processes. Through the pictures, the spiritual Beings holding sway behind the physical facts—these spiritual Beings and their activities are also presented to consciousness. Thus in the creatures of the animal-like kingdom the Spirits of Personality are as it were made visible, while the Fires Spirits appear behind and within the mineral-plant beings. Other beings too appear, whom man can conceive without connection with anything physical; he beholds them rather as ethereal and soul-like forces. These are the Sons of Life.

The mental pictures of Moon consciousness being not copies but symbols of the outer beings, their influence on the inner life of the human being was on this very account all the greater; it was far greater than that of the mental pictures man has today, that are communicated by external perception. The pictures of Moon consciousness were capable of arousing his whole inner life to movement and action. The inner processes took shape to accord with them, they were formative forces in the true sense of the word. The human being became even as they formed him. He became, so to speak, the image of his own processes in consciousness.

[ 49 ] But now the farther evolution goes on in this way, the more does it entail a deeply incisive change for the human being. The power proceeding from the pictures in consciousness grows gradually less and less to extend over his whole bodily nature. Some members are subject in their formation to the formative plastic influences of the picture-consciousness, and become to a large extent an image of the mental life in the way that has been indicated; but there are other organs that withdraw themselves from this influence. In part of his being, man is as it were too dense—determined too much by other laws—for him to follow the pictures he has in his consciousness. These organs withdraw from his influence. But they come under another; they come under the influence of the sublime Sun Beings themselves. This stage in evolution is however seen to be preceded by an interval of rest, wherein the Sun Spirits gather up their forces, in order to work upon the beings of the Moon under these quite new conditions.

After the interval of rest, the human being is seen to be divided into two natures. One is withdrawn from the independent working of his picture-consciousness. It takes on a more definite shape and comes under the influence of forces which, though they proceed from the body of the Moon, can only arise there through the influence of the Sun Beings. This portion of man's being partakes increasingly in the life that is kindled by the Sun. The other rises out of this one, like a kind of head. It is mobile and pliable, shaping itself so as to express and sustain the dream-like consciousness in which man lives. The two portions are however intimately bound up with one another. They send each other their respective fluids, and the members of each extend into the other.

[ 50 ] While all this has been taking place, a relationship of Sun and Moon has arisen, which accords with the trend of this evolution. A significant harmony is thereby brought about.

It has already been shown how the spiritual Beings, as they go forward through the stages of their evolution, detach from the great cosmic mass various heavenly bodies, to be their dwelling-places. It is the Beings who radiate the forces by which the cosmic substances are organized and differentiated. The separation of Sun and Moon was thus a necessary event, to lead up to the provision of proper dwelling-places for the several spiritual Beings. But this determination of substance and of its forces by the Spirit goes still farther. For it is the spiritual Beings who give rise to certain movements of the heavenly bodies, revolutions one about another, with the result that the heavenly bodies change their relative positions; and every change in their relative position of one heavenly body to another means a change in the mutual influences of the Beings.

This is what happened with regard to Sun and Moon. A movement of the Moon about the Sun is induced, which at certain times brings the human begins more into the sphere of the Sun's influence, while at other, alternative times they are enabled to turn away from it and so be thrown more upon their own resources. The movement is an outcome of the above-mentioned “fall” of certain beings of the Moon, and of the balance established in settlement of the conflict which ensued. It is simply the physical expression for the spiritual relationship of forces that was engendered by the “fall.” Through the one heavenly body moving around the other, there arise in the Beings who inhabit them such alternative states of consciousness as were described above. It can indeed be said that the Moon alternatively turns her life towards the Sun and away from it. There is a sun time and a planetary time. During the latter the Moon Beings grow and evolve on a side of the Moon which is turned away from the Sun. It must however be added that something else comes into play on the Moon, beside this motion of the heavenly bodies. Supersensible consciousness, as it looks back, can see the Moon Beings themselves migrating round their planet at regular intervals of time. Sometimes they seek the regions where they can give themselves up to the Sun's influence, at other times they journey to regions where they are not subject to it—where they can, as it were, muse upon their own life and being.

[ 51 ] To complete the picture, it is moreover to be observed that in this epoch the Sons of Life attain their human stage. We have seen how the first beginnings of the human senses came into being upon Saturn. Even now on Moon, moan cannot yet use these senses for his own perception of external objects; at this stage, however, they can become instruments for the Sons of Life. The Sons of Life use them in order through them to have perception. Thus these senses, that belong to the physical body of man, enter into mutual relation with the Sons of Life. For the Sons of Life do not merely make use of them; they also work upon them and perfect them.

[ 52 ] Through these alternating relations to the Sun, recurring changes arise, as we have seen, in the life-conditions of man himself. It happens in the following way. Each time that he is subjected to the influence of the Sun, man devotes himself to the Sun life and its manifestations rather than to himself. At such times he feels the greatness and majesty of the Universe as expressed in the shining of the Sun. He inhales, at it were, sublime and cosmic greatness. It is then that the lofty Beings, who have their dwelling on the Sun, are exerting their influence upon the Moon. And the Moon, in turn, is working—not upon the whole human being, but chiefly upon those parts of him which have withdrawn from the influence of the pictures he has in his consciousness. The physical body and the life-body especially attain at these times a certain magnitude and a certain perfection of form. In the manifestations of consciousness, on the other hand, there is a decline. But when the life of the human being is turned away from the Sun, he occupies himself more with his own nature. Then inner life and mobility begin in the astral body, while the outer figure grows less comely, less perfect in formation.

There are therefore during Moon evolution two alternating states of consciousness, quite distinct from one another. The one during the Sun period is more dim; the other—in the epoch when life is thrown more on its won resources—is clearer. The former condition, while it is dimmer, is at the same time more selfless, for man then lives more in devotion to the outer world—to the Universe as reflected in the Sun This alternation in states of consciousness may be compared, in the man of the present day, both to the alternation of sleeping and waking, and also to that of life between birth and death on the one hand and, on the other, the more spiritual existence between death and a new birth. Man's awakening on Moon, when the Sun time draws to a close, might thus be described as something intermediate between the awakening of present-day man each morning, and his birth. So too the gradual dimming of consciousness as the Sun time approaches is like an intermediate state between our dying and our falling asleep; for it must not be supposed that an Old Moon there was yet a consciousness of birth and death such as man has today. In the Sun time the human being abandoned himself to the enjoyment of a kind of Sun-life. He was lifted away form his own life and lived more spiritually. We can do no more than attempt an approximate and comparative description of what he then experienced. He felt as if the very forces of the Universe, as if all their influences were streaming in upon him, throbbing through his being. He felt intoxicated by the cosmic harmonies in which his life participated. At such times his astral body was in a way freed from the physical, and with it part of the life-body too was drawn away; and this entity of astral body and life-body was like a delicate and wonderful musical instrument, upon the chords of which the cosmic Mysteries resounded. And the members of that part of man on which his consciousness had little influence were then shaped and molded in accordance with the harmonies of the Universe. For in these harmonies the Beings of the Sun were working. This part of man was thus in very truth shaped and formed by the tones of spiritual, cosmic sounds.

The transition from the brighter state of consciousness to the duller one was not so marked as in the transition from the waking condition to the dreamless sleep of man today. The picture-consciousness was not, indeed, as bright as waking consciousness today, neither was the other state of consciousness as dull as our dreamless sleep. Man had a certain apprehension, though a dim one, of the playing of the cosmic harmonies in his physical body and in that part of his etheric body which had remained united with the physical. And when the Sun was, as it were, no longer shining for him, the mental pictures came into his consciousness in place of the cosmic harmonies. Life was then kindled more in those members of the physical and etheric bodies which were subject to the direct influence of his own consciousness, while the other parts of man—the formative, creative forces no longer working on them from the Sun—went through a kind of withering and hardening process. And as the Sun time drew near once more, the old bodies fell away. They detached themselves from the human being, and out of his old bodily nature, as though out of a grave, man came forth once more—new-formed within, though crude as yet in outer shape and stature. The life-process in him had undergone renewal. After this, the new-born body—under the influence of the Sun Beings with their cosmic harmonies—grew and unfolded to its perfect state once more, and then the whole process was repeated.

Man felt this renewal like the putting-on of a fresh garment. He had not, with the kernel of his being, gone through an actual birth or death. He had but passed from a spiritual consciousness of cosmic Sound—when he was in a state of devotion to the outer Universe—to a consciousness that was directed upon his own inner being. He had cast his skin. The old body having grown unfit for use had been laid aside—and renewed.

Herewith we have also indicated more precisely what was characterized above as a kind of reproduction that was closely related to the life of ideation—the forming of mental images. In respect of certain parts of the physical and etheric body it is true to say that the human being brought forth his kind. But this does not mean that we have then a daughter-being fully distinct from the parent-being. The kernel of the latter passes over to the former, thus bringing forth—not a new being—but itself in a new shape. When the Sun time draws near, his mental pictures grow fainter and fainter, a sense of blissful devotion fills him, and in the peace and silence of his inner being the universal harmonies resound. Towards the end of this period the pictures in the astral body become alive again; man begins to be increasingly aware of himself. He feels as though he were awakening form the blissful rest in which he has been immersed during the Sun time. Another significant experience meets him here. With the renewed lighting-up of the pictures in consciousness, the human being sees himself enshrouded as it were within a cloud, which has descended on him like a Being from the great Universe. This Being, he feels, belongs to him, is a kind of completion of his own nature. He it is, he feels, that grants him his existence, that grants him his I. The Being is one of the Sons of Life. Man's feeling towards him can be expressed somewhat as follows—“In him I lived, even in the Sun time when I was given up to the sublime glory of the Universal All. Only, then he was not visible to me; now he is becoming visible.” And it is this Son of Life from whom the force proceeds that enables man to work upon his own bodily nature during the Sun-less time. Then, when the Sun time draws near once more, man feels as though he himself were becoming one with the Sun of Life. Even then he does not see him, but he feels deeply and inwardly united with him.

[ 53 ] The relation of the human beings to the Sons of Life was not such that each single human being had his Son of Life to himself, but a whole group would feel that a Son of Life belonged to it as a group. Men lived, on Moon, separated in this way into groups, and each group felt in common “group-Ego” in a Son of Life. The different between the groups made itself felt notably in the etheric body, which had a special form in each group. Since however the physical body takes its form from the etheric, the differences in the latter were impressed upon the former, and the several groups may be regarded as so many human species. When the Sons of Life looked down upon the human groups belonging to them, they saw themselves manifolded, as it were, in so many single human beings. And that gave them the feeling of their own Ego-hood. They saw the reflection of themselves in the human beings. Herein too lay the function of the human senses at that time. We have already seen that the senses did not yet transmit any perceptions of external objects, but at this stage they reflected the being of the Sons of Life. What the Sons of Life perceived through this reflection, gave them their “I” consciousness. And what was kindled in man's astral body by the same reflection—was none other than the picture-content of his dim Moon consciousness. The effect of this activity of man in mutual interaction with the Sons of Life finds expression in the physical body in the beginnings of the nervous system. The nerves make their appearance there like prolongations of the senses into the inward parts of the body.

[ 54 ] From all this a clear picture emerges of how the three kinds of Spirits—the Spirits of Personality, the Fire Spirits and the Sons of Life—worked upon Moon man. Fixing our attention on the main period—the middle epoch—of Moon evolution, we may say: The Spirits of Personality implant independence, the character of personality, in the human astral body. It is due to this that man is able, in the times when—so to speak—the Sun is not shining for him, to turn in upon himself and labor at his own formation. The Fires Spirits are at work in the etheric body, in so far as the same independent character becomes impressed upon it too. It is owing to their influence that after each renewal of this body man feels himself still the same being. This is because the etheric body is endowed by them with a kind of memory. The Sons of Life work on the physical body. They make it possible for the physical body to become an expression of the new independent astral body—to become, as it were, a physiognomical image of it. On the other hand, higher spiritual Beings are also working into the physical and etheric bodies in so far as in the Sun periods these bodies grow and develop apart from the independent astral body. This applied especially to the Spirits of Form and the Spirits of Movement. Their intervention takes place form the Sun, as has been described.

[ 55 ] Amid all these various influences, the human being matures to the point where he begins to develop within him the seed of Spirit-Self, just as the seed of Spirit-Man arose in the second half of Saturn evolution and the seed of Life-Spirit on Sun. And now all the conditions on Moon undergo change. Through the successive metamorphoses and renewals the human beings have been growing every nobler, purer and finer in their nature; at the same time they have also gained in strength. Hence they are able increasingly to preserve the picture-consciousness even on into the Sun periods, with the result that this consciousness gains influence on the formation of the physical and the etheric bodies, which formerly was effected through the working of the Sun Beings alone. All that happens upon Moon through the agency of the human beings and the Spirits connected with them, comes more and more to resemble what was formerly brought about by the Sun and the higher Beings that belong to it. In consequence of this, the Sun Beings are able to apply their forces more and more to their own evolution. The Moon too grew ready after a time to be united again with the Sun.

Spiritually regarded, these processes reveal themselves as follows. Little by little, the “fallen” Moon Beings have been overcome by the Sun Beings and must henceforth come into line with them. The deeds of the Moon Beings must become part and parcel of the deeds of the Sun Beings, to whom they are now subordinate. This change requires long epochs of time, during which the Moon periods grow ever shorter and shorter and the Sun periods longer and longer. And then there comes once more a period of evolution during which Sun and Moon form a single cosmic entity. The physical human body has now become entirely ethereal. When this is said, it must not however be imagined that under such conditions there is no physical body. That which has been evolved as physical body during the times of Saturn, Sun and Moon, remains as such. The fact is, we must not limit our recognition of the physical to where it manifests in an outwardly physical form. The physical can also exist in such a way as to present outwardly the form of the etheric, nay even of the astral. We must distinguish here between outward appearance and inner law and principle. A physical can become ethereal and astral, while still retaining the physical laws in its inner nature. And this is what happens when on the Moon the physical body of man has reached a certain stage in its perfection. It becomes ethereal in form. But when the supersensible consciousness that can perceive such things, turns its attention to this body, then, although ethereal in form, it shows itself to be imbued with the laws, not of the etheric but of the physical. In effect, the physical has then been received into the etheric, to rest in it as in a mother's womb and to be nurtured there. Afterwards it will emerge in a physical form once more, but on a higher level. If the human beings of Moon had had to maintain their physical bodies in gross physical form, the Moon could never have been reunited with the Sun. By assuming etheric form, the physical body becomes more akin to the etheric body, and is thus able to be imbued again more intimately with those portions of the etheric and astral bodies which had to be withdrawn from it in the Sun-time epochs of Moon evolution. Man, having appeared like a twofold being during the severance of Sun and Moon, now grows once more into a single whole. The physical takes on more of the quality of soul; and the soul-life is at the same time more bound up with the physical.

Upon this human being, single and coherent, the Spirits of the Sun into whose realm he has now entered can work quite differently than they could before, when they were sending their influences tot he Moon from without. Man is now living in an environment that is more of the soul and spirit. This enables the Spirits of Wisdom to come in with an activity of deep significance. They imbue man with Wisdom—ensoul him with Wisdom. Thereby he becomes in a sense an independent soul. Then to their influence is added that of the Spirits of Movement, who work above all upon the astral body. Under the influence of these high Beings, the astral body develops within it quickness of soul and a Wisdom-filled life-body. This Wisdom-filled etheric body is the germ of what was described in an earlier chapter—in respect of the man at present time—as intellectual soul, while the astral body, animated as it now is by the Spirits of Movement, is the seed and beginning of the sentient soul. And since all this is brought about in the human being at a time when his independence is enhanced, these beginnings of intellectual soul and sentient soul appear as the expression of the Spirit-Self. We must not make the mistake of imagining the Spirit-Self to be, in this period of evolution, a separate entity beside the intellectual and the sentient souls. The latter are only the expression of the Spirit-Self, which in its turn signifies their higher union and harmony.

[ 56 ] The intervention of the Spirits of Wisdom in this epoch is of peculiar significance. For they intervene not only for the human beings but for the other kingdoms too, which have developed upon Moon. When Sun and Moon are joined again, these lower kingdoms are also drawn into the realm of the Sun. All that was physical in them is etherealised. So now there are in the Sun not only human beings, but also mineral-plants and plant-animals. These other beings still maintain however their own nature, their own laws of being. Consequently they feel themselves strangers in their new surroundings. For they emerge there with a nature which is scarcely in accord with their environment. Since, however, they are etherealised, they too are accessible to the influence of the Spirits of Wisdom. Indeed, all that has come over from Moon into Sun is now permeated with the forces of these Spirits. That which the Sun-Moon entity has become during this time in evolution may accordingly be called “Cosmos of Wisdom.”

When after an interval of rest the system of our Earth emerges as the successor to this Cosmos of Wisdom, and the created beings that have come over from Moon as seeds come alive again on Earth, then all these beings reveal themselves as filled and permeated with Wisdom. And now we see how it is that Earth man, as he contemplates the things around him, is able to discover Wisdom in their very nature. We can admire the Wisdom in every leaf, in every bone of animal or man, or again in the marvelous construction of the brain and the heart. If man needs Wisdom to understand the things—if, that is, he can examine them and draw forth Wisdom from them—it proves that Wisdom is inherent in them. Try as he will to understand the things of the Earth with Wisdom-filled ideas, man could extract no Wisdom from them if Wisdom had not first been implanted in them. Anyone who would presume to grasp by Wisdom things of which he thinks that they have not first received that Wisdom, may just as well suppose that he can draw water form a glass into which water has not first been poured. Earth—as will be shown later—is Old Moon reborn. And it manifests as a creation filled with Wisdom, because in the epoch here described the Spirits of Wisdom imbued it with their forces.

[ 57 ] It will readily be understood that in the above account of Moon conditions it has only been possible to depict a few transient forms of this whole stage of evolution. Out of the whole course of events we have had to lay hold, as it were, on certain elements, singling them out for description. One might feel dissatisfied with a method of exposition that can give no more than isolated pictures, and regret that Moon evolution had not been brought into a nexus of well defined concepts. If objection is taken on this ground, all one can say is that these descriptions have purposely been given in concepts less sharp and definite. For the intention here is not so much to provide speculative concepts and built-up scheme of thought, but a mental picture of what can actually appear before the spiritual eye when supersensible vision is directed to the facts. And for Moon evolution this has far less of sharp and clear-cut outline than have our perceptions on Earth. In the Moon epoch we have to do much more with changing, varying impressions, with fleeting, mobile pictures and their transitions from one to another. It must moreover be borne in mind that we are considering an evolution that continues through long, long ages, and in any description of it we can after all do no more than hold fast momentary pictures here and there.

[ 58 ] The culminating point of the Moon epoch is reached at the moment when the human being, through the astral body which has been implanted in him, has advanced so far in evolution that his physical body gives to the Sons of Life the means to attain their human stage. For at this point the human being has also attained all that the Moon epoch can give him for himself, for his own inner begin, on his forward path. The ensuing time—the second half of Moon evolution—may therefore be described as a waning period. Yet in this time, as we have seen, something of great importance is nevertheless achieved, both for man's environment and also for man himself. Wisdom is implanted into the heavenly body of Sun-Moon. Moreover it is in this declining period that the seeds are sown of the intellectual and the sentient souls. Their unfoldment, however, and that of the spiritual soul—and withal, the birth of the I in free self-consciousness—does not take place until the Earth. At the Moon stage the intellectual and sentient souls do not by any means appear as though the human being were already expressing himself through them; rather do they seem like instruments for the Sons of Life who are associated with Man's being. If one wanted to describe how man felt in this respect on Old Moon, one would have to express his consciousness in some such words as these—“In me and through me lives the Son of Life. Through me he beholds the Lunar environment, the Moon; in me he thinks upon the things and beings that Moon contains.” Moon man, in fact, feels himself overshadowed by the Son of Life. He feels himself as the tool or instrument of this higher Being. During the severance of Sun and Moon, in the times when he is turned away from the Sun, he feels, it is true, more independent; he also feels as thought the I belonging to him—which in the Sun times vanished from his picture-consciousness—for so we may describe it—gives the human being on Moon the feeling: “In the Sun time my Ego soars away with me to higher realms, to Beings lofty and sublime; then it descends with me, when the Sun vanishes, into deeper worlds.”

[ 59 ] Moon evolution proper was preceded by a preparatory stage; a kind of repetition of Saturn and Sun evolutions took place. And now, in this declining period, after the reunion of Sun and Moon, we can similarly distinguish two epochs, during which there were to some extent even physical condensations. So do physical soul-spirited conditions of the Sun-Moon body alternate with one another. In the physical epochs the human being, and also the beings of the lower kingdoms, appear as though foreshadowing in “set forms that are without independence, what they will afterwards become in a more independent way during the Earth time.

Thus we have two preparatory epochs of Moon evolution and again two epochs in the declining time, Such epochs may be called “cycles” or “rounds.” In the intervening time, after the two preparatory epochs but before the epochs of decline—in the time, that is to say, when Moon and Sun are severed—we shall be able to recognize three distinct epochs. The middle one is the time when the Sons of Life reach their human stage. It is preceded by an epoch when the conditions are all leading up to this central event, and it ids followed by another, wherein the Sons of Life enter more fully into the new creations and carry their development further. These three epochs when taken together with the two of preparation and the two of decline, make seven rounds in all. Moon evaluation as a whole may therefore be said to take its course in seven rounds. Between the rounds are intervals of rest, such as we have already had frequent occasion to describe. But if we want to have a true picture of what happens, we must not imagine an abrupt transition from activity to interval of rest. The Sun Beings, for example, gradually withdraws from their activities on the Moon. A time begins for them which, seen from without, appears as their interval of rest, while on the Moon itself, quick, independent activity continues. In this way the period of activity for one kind of Being will often extend into the period of rest for another. Taking this into account, we may speak of a rhythmic waxing and waning of forces in cyclic epochs. Nay more, a similar division is also recognizable within each of the seven Moon cycles above indicated. The whole of Moon evolution may be described as one great—or planetary—cycle; the seven divisions within it as small cycles, and their sub -divisions are still smaller ones. This seven times sevenfold division can be observed also in Sun evolution, and even in the Saturn epoch there is a suggestion of it. It should however be borne in mind that the dividing lines are to some extent obliterated in the Sun epoch and still more so in Saturn. They grow increasingly distinct, the farther evolution proceeds towards the Earth epoch.

[ 60 ] At the close of the Moon evolution that has been described in outline in the foregoing pages, all the forces and Begins connected with it pass into a more spiritual form of existence, that is on an entirely different level both from the form of existence during the Moon period and also from that during the Earth evolution which follows. A being with faculties sufficiently highly developed to be able to perceive all the details of Moon and Earth evolutions, will not necessarily be able to see what takes place in the interval between the two. For him, the Beings and forces would, at the close of the Moon period, vanish as it were into the void, and then after a lapse of time emerge again from the dim twilight of the cosmic womb. Only a being with far higher faculties could trace the spiritual events that are enacted in the intervening time.

[ 61 ] When the interval is over, the Beings who took part in the evolutionary processes on Saturn, Sun and Moon reappear, endowed with new faculties. By their former deeds, the Beings who stand above man have attained the power to bring his evolution so far forward that in the Earth epoch which follows on the Moon he will be able to develop a new mode of consciousness, that stands at a stage higher than the picture-consciousness he had in the Moon epoch. But man must first be prepared to receive this new gift. During the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions he has incorporated into his being the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. But these members received only those faculties and forces which enabled them to live for a picture-consciousness. The organs, and also the whole form and figure which would enable them to perceive a world of external objects are lacking. Just as a new plant will unfold no more than is contained, as potentiality, in the seed that comes from the old one, so too, at the beginning of the new stage in evolution, the three members of man's nature emerge with forms and organs such as allow of the development only of a picture- consciousness. For the unfolding of a higher stage in consciousness they will have first to be prepared.

The preparation takes place in three stages. During the first, the physical body is lifted to a height of development such as enables it to undergo the necessary change into a form and figure which can provide the basis for objective consciousness. This preliminary stage of Earth evolution may be described as a repetition of the Saturn period on a higher level. For in this period, as in the Saturn time, higher Beings are working upon the physical body alone. When the evolution of this physical body is far enough advanced, all the Beings have to pass once more into a higher form of existence, before the life-body can advance in its turn. The physical body has, as it were, to be re-cast, in order to be able to receive, when it unfolds again, the more highly evolved life-body. After this interval devoted to a higher form of existence, there follows a kind of recapitulation of Sun evolution on a higher level, for the further development of the life-body. And then—after a further interval—the like is done, in a recapitulation of Moon evolution, for the astral body.

[ 62 ] Let our attention now be turned to the events of evolution after the close of the third of these repetitions. All the Beings and forces have become spiritualized once more, rising during the process of spiritualization into far higher worlds. The lowest of the worlds where something of them is still to be perceived is the very world where man now sojourns between death and new birth—the several regions, namely, of Spiritland. Thereafter the Beings gradually descend once more into lower worlds. Before the physical evolution of the Earth begins, they have come down so far that their lowest manifestations can be beheld in the astral or soul-world.

[ 63 ] All that exists of man during this period is still in astral form. For a right understanding of this stage in his development it is important to realize that although man has in him physical body, life-body and astral body, the physical body is not yet present in a physical form. What makes this physical body physical at this stage is not physical form but the fact that while possessing astral form it bears within it physical laws. It is an entity with physical laws and principles in a form that is of the nature of soul—and the like holds good of the life-body.

[ 64 ] To the eye of the spirit the Earth at this stage in its evolution appears at first as a world-entity which is all soul and spirit—that is to say, in which even the physical and living forces show a soul-like form. In this world-entity is potentially contained all that is destined subsequently to metamorphose into the creatures of the physical Earth. It radiates light; but the light is not yet such as physical eyes could have perceived—even if they had existed then. It shines only for the opened eyes of the seer, shines for him in the light that is of the soul.

[ 65 ] Within this soul-entity there now takes place what may be described as a condensation, with the result that after a time in the very midst of the soul-entity a form of fire makes its appearance, even such a fiery form as Saturn was in its densest state. This form is woven-through with the influences of the various Beings who are partaking in the evolution. Like a surging forth and a diving down into the fiery sphere of the Earth—such is the interplay we can observe between the Beings and the heavenly body. We are not therefore to think of this fiery sphere of the Earth as being of the same substance throughout. Rather it is like an organism that is permeated with soul and spirit. As to those beings who are destined to become on Earth human beings in their present form, they can take very little share in this diving down into the fire-body. They are still in a condition that obliges them to remain almost entirely in the uncondensed surrounding sphere, where they are within the womb of higher spiritual Beings. At this stage they touch the fire-Earth with a single point only of their soul-form, with the result that the warmth condenses a portion of their astral form. Thereby Earth life is kindled in them. For the most part, their being still belongs to worlds of soul and spirit; only through this contact with the earthly fire does warmth of life begin to play around them. If therefore we would make us a picture—at once sensible and supersensible—of man at this beginning of the physical Earth, we must conceive a soul-form of egg-like shape, contained in the encircling sphere of Earth, and surrounded at its lower surface in the way an acorn is by a cup; only, the substance of this “cup” consists entirely of warmth or fire. Now as a consequence of this envelopment by warmth, not only is life kindled in the human being, but at the same time a change takes place in his astral body. Into it is implanted the first beginning of that which afterwards becomes the sentient soul. We may say therefore that, at this stage, man consists of sentient soul, astral body, life-body, and of a physical body that is woven of fire. In the astral body are surging up and down the spiritual Beings who partake in his existence. Through the sentient soul man feels himself bound to the Earth. He has in this time a predominating picture-consciousness where the spiritual Beings in whose womb he lies reveal themselves; and only like a point within this consciousness is the sensation man has of the body that belongs to him. It is as though he were looking down from the spiritual world upon an earthly possession, of which he feels: “That is thine.”

Stage by stage the condensation of the Earth continues, and the above-described differentiation in man grows gradually more distinct. Then comes a moment in evolution when the Earth is so far condensed that only a part of it remains fiery, while another part has assumed a form of substance that may be described as “gas” or “air.” With man too a change is brought about. Henceforth not only is he touched by the warmth of Earth, but air-substance too begins to be imparted to his fire-body. And as the warmth kindled the life in him, so does the air as it plays around him evoke within him what can be described as—spiritual—sound. His life-body rings forth with sound. Simultaneously, a portion of his astral body becomes separated out as the first germinal beginning of the intellectual soul that emerges later.

To envisage what is going on at this time in the soul of man, we must remember that the higher Beings are continuously surging up and down in the air-and-fire body of the Earth. In the fire-Earth it is, to begin with, the Spirits of Personality that are of importance for man. And while he is being called to life by the Earth-warmth, his sentient soul says to itself: “These are the Spirits of Personality.” In the air too, higher Beings are in like manner making themselves known. They are the ones we have already named, following Christian esoteric usage, the Archangels; and it is their influence that man feels as inward sound when the air is wafted round him. Then does his intellectual soul say to itself: “These are the Archangels.” For what man perceives at this stage through his connection with the Earth does not yet consist of so many physical objects. He lives in the sensations of warmth that rise up to him, and in sounds; and within these streams of warmth and surging waves of sound he feels the presence of the Spirits of Personality and the Archangels. He cannot yet perceive these Beings directly, only through the veils, as it were, of warmth and sound. While the perceptions of warmth and sound are penetrating into his soul, pictures of the higher Beings in whose sheltering care he feels himself to be, are continually rising and falling within him.

[ 66 ] And now evolution continues, its progress finding expression once again in a further condensation. Watery substance is incorporated into the Earth-body, which consists now of three members: the fiery, the airy and the watery. But before this, an important event takes place. Out of the fire-air Earth an independent heavenly body splits off, which will in its further course become the present Sun. Hitherto Earth and Sun have been a single body. After the severance of the Sun , Earth still contains within it, to begin with, all that is in and on our present Moon. The separation of the Sun takes place because higher Beings—for their own evolution and for that which they have yet to do for the Earth—can no longer endure the matter which is now condensed as far as water. Out of the whole Earth-mass they separate the substances which alone are suited to their use, and take their departure to make themselves a new dwelling-place in the Sun. Henceforth they work on to the Earth from without, from the Sun. Man, on the other hand, needs for his further evolution a scene of action where matter will condense still more.

[ 67 ] Hand in hand with the incorporation of watery substance into the Earth-body, once again a change is wrought in man himself. Henceforth not only does the fire pour into him, and the air play around him, but watery substance too is incorporated into his physical body. Simultaneously his etheric part undergoes a change; he now begins to perceive it as a delicate body-of-light. Formerly, man felt streams of warmth rise upward to him from the Earth, while tones made him conscious of air being wafted towards him; now, his body is penetrated also by the watery element, whose inpouring and outpouring he beholds as waxing and waning light. Moreover, in his soul too a change has taken place. To the first beginning of sentient and then of intellectual soul, that of the spiritual soul has been added. In the element of water work the Angels; they are the real kindlers of light. For man it is as though they were appearing to him in light.

Certain higher Beings who were formerly in the Earth-body itself now act upon it from the Sun. In consequence of this, all influences that are at work on the Earth are changed. Man, fettered to the Earth, would no longer have been able to feel within him the influences of the Sun Beings, were his soul turned perpetually towards the Earth from which his physical body is derived. Henceforth he is brought into alternating states of consciousness. At certain times the Sun Beings tear his soul away from the physical body; so that he is now alternately in the lap of the Sun Beings in a pure life of soul and then again in a condition where, united with the body, he receives the influences of the Earth. When he is in the physical body, the streams of warmth flow up towards him, the airy masses resound around him, the waters pour in and out of him. When he is outside the body, the pictures of the higher Beings, in whose womb he is, go surging through his soul.

Earth at this stage of evolution lives through two alternating times. At one time it can play around the human souls with its substances and enwrap them with bodies; at another, the human souls have withdrawn from it and only the bodies are left. Earth with its human beings is then in a state of sleep. It is by no means out of keeping with the facts to say that in those pristine ages the Earth underwent a day-time and a night-time. (In terms of physical space this can be expressed as follows. Through the mutual influence of the Beings of Sun and Earth, the Earth comes into movement in relation to the Sun, and in this way the alternation of the above-described periods of night and day is brought about. It is day when the surface of the Earth where man is evolving is turned towards the Sun; when it is turned away it is night—that is, the time during which man's life is entirely a life of soul. But we must not imagine that the movement of the Earth around the Sun in that primeval age was like the movement it describes today. Conditions were altogether different. Nevertheless, it is good already at this point to begin to sense that the movements of the heavenly bodies into such relative movements and positions as enable the spiritual conditions to work themselves out in the physical.)

[ 68 ] Turning out gaze upon it during its nocturnal time, the body of the Earth would look to us like a corpse. For it is largely composed of the disintegrating bodies of human beings whose souls are in another form of existence. The watery and aeriform organic structures of which the human bodies consist disintegrate in the night and are dissolved in the remaining mass of the Earth. That part alone of the human body which was formed from the very beginning of Earth evolution by the interaction of fire with the human soul, and which then in course of time grew ever denser and denser—that part alone remains, but quite inconspicuous, like a seed. It will easily be seen that we must not imagine the “periods of day and night” here described as bearing very much resemblance to what these terms denote for the present Earth. When at the beginning of the day-time the Earth again comes under the immediate influence of the Sun, the human souls press forward into the region of physical life. Touching the seeds, they cause these to sprout and grow into an outer form which looks like an image of the human being such as he is in his soul-nature. Something not unlike a tender act of fertilization takes place here between man's soul and the seed-like body. Then do the souls thus incarnated begin once more to draw to themselves the air and water-masses and incorporate them into their bodies. The differentiated body expels and inhales the air—a first beginning of the later breathing process. The water too is absorbed and expelled; nutriment in a primeval form begins. These processes, however, are not yet perceived as outward happenings. Only in the case of the above-described “fertilization” do we find the soul engaged in a kind of external perception. As it touches the seed which the Earth is holding out towards it, the soul is dimly aware of awakening to physical existence. What it then perceives may be conveyed approximately in the words: “That is my form.” This feeling—we might also describe it as a dawning sensation of I—remains with the soul throughout the time of its union with the physical body. The absorption of the air, on the other hand, is still experienced in an entirely spiritual way. It appears in the form of sound-pictures surging and dying away, which “form” the seed that is undergoing differentiation. Surrounded on all hands by surging waves of sound, the soul feels how it is forming and shaping its own body according to the forces of these sound-tones. At this stage in evolution, human forms and figures begin to take shape, the like of which cannot be observed by present-day consciousness in any outer world. They evolve like plant and flower-forms of the most delicate texture; being inwardly mobile they give rather the appearance of waving, fluttering flowers. During his time on Earth, man lives through a blissful feeling of being fashioned into such forms as these. The absorption of the watery parts of the Earth is felt in the soul as an access of force, as an inner strengthening. Outwardly it appears in the physical entity of man as growth. As the direct working of the Sun declines, the human soul loses the power to control these processes. Little by little, they are cast aside. Only those parts remain, which bring about the maturing of what we described as the seed. Man himself deserts his body and returns into the spiritual form of existence. (Not all parts of the Earth are used up in the construction of the human bodies. We must not imagine that the Earth in its nocturnal time consists entirely of disintegrating corpses and seeds which await their re-awakening. These are embedded in other forms, fashioned out of the substance of Earth, the nature of which will be revealed later.)

[ 69 ] And now the condensation-process goes still further. To the watery element is added the solid—we may call it the element of “earth.” Man too begins during his Earth time to incorporate the earth-element into his body. And then it immediately becomes evident that the forces which his soul brings with it from the body-free condition no longer have the same power as heretofore. Formerly the soul fashioned its body from the fiery, airy and watery elements, according to the tones that rang out from them and the pictures of light that they set playing all around. Now that the form is solidified, the soul can no longer do this. Other powers enter into the forming process. That which remains behind when the soul departs from the body is no longer merely like a seed, to be kindled to life by the returning soul. Henceforth it actually contains within itself the quickening power. The soul at its departure leaves not merely its image behind on Earth but, implanted in the image, a portion also of this quickening power. At its reappearance upon Earth, it is no longer able ton its own to awaken the image to life. The calling-to-life must take place within the image itself. Henceforth the spiritual Beings who work on to the Earth from the Sun maintain the quickening force in the human body even when man himself is not upon the Earth. Now therefore the reincarnating soul is aware not only of the sounds and pictures-of-light that surge around, wherein it feels the higher Beings who are immediately above it; in receiving the earth-element the soul experiences the influence of those still higher Beings who have established their scene of action on the Sun.

Formerly, man felt himself belonging to the Beings of soul and spirit with whom he was united when free of the body. His I was still sheltered within their womb. From now on, the I confronted him during physical incarnation, along with all the other things that were around him. Independent images of man's soul and spirit existed henceforth on Earth. Compared to the present human body they were fine and delicate in substance. For only in a very rarefied state did “earth” enter into their composition—rather as when the man of today receives into his organ of smell the finely distributed substances of some outer object. The human bodies were like wraiths, like shadows. Distributed as they were over the whole Earth, they came under different kinds of Earthly influence at different parts of the Earth's surface. While the bodily images, being in accordance with the soul of man that quickened them, were heretofore essentially alike over the whole Earth, diversity began now to appear among the human forms. Thus was the way prepared for what afterwards showed itself in variety of race.

Now that the bodily man had grown more independent, the former intimate union between the Earthly human being and the world of soul and spirit was to some extent dissolved. Henceforth, when the soul left the body, the latter experienced something like a continuation of life.

Had evolution gone on in this way, the Earth would needs have hardened under the influence of its solid element. Supersensible cognition, looking back upon these conditions, sees the human bodies, when their souls depart from them, growing more and more solid. After a time, human souls returning to Earth would no longer have found any suitable material with which to unite. It would all have been used up in filling the Earth with the lignified relics of their incarnations.

[ 70 ] At this juncture an event took place which gave to the whole of evolution a new turn. Everything that could conduce to a permanent hardening in the solid substance of the Earth was eliminated. This was the time when our present Moon left the Earth. The influences that contributed to permanence of form and had hitherto worked directly from within the Earth, worked henceforth indirectly in a weakened manner from the Moon. The higher Beings upon whom this “forming of form” depends, had resolved to let their influences come no longer from within the Earth but from without As a result, there now appeared in the human bodily organisms a diversity which may rightly be regarded as the beginning of the separation into male and female. The delicately constituted human forms that previously inhabited the Earth had brought forth the new human form, their descendant, by the interaction within them of two forces—the seed-force and the life-giving, quickening force. These descendants now underwent a change. In one group of them worked more of the seed-force of the soul and spirit; in the other, more of the quickening seed-force. This was due to the fact that with the departure of the Moon from the Earth, the earth-element had toned down its power. The working of the two forces on upon the other now became more gentle, more tender than it had been when it took place within a single living body. Consequently the descendant organism too was more tender, more delicate. Entering upon its life on Earth in this tender condition, it only gradually assimilated the more solid parts. Thus, for the human soul returning to Earth, the possibility of union with the body was restored. The soul no longer called the body to life from without, for now the quickening process took place on Earth; but it united with the body and made it grow—although a certain limit was set to the body's growth. Owing to the separation of the Moon the human body became plastic for a while; but the longer it continued to grow on Earth, the more did the hardening forces gain the upper hand, until at length the soul could partake but feebly in its organization. Thereupon the body fell into decay, while the soul ascended to other—spiritual—modes of lie.

[ 71 ] Stage by stage, while this configuration of the Earth is proceeding, the forces man has been acquiring during Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, begin gradually to partake in his further development. First, the astral body—still containing the life-body and the physical body dissolved within it—is kindled by the Earthly fire. Then it separates into a finer, specifically astral part—the sentient soul—and a coarser, etheric part which will from now on be touched also by the earth-element. The etheric of life-body, hitherto latent, makes its appearance. And while in the astral man the intellectual and the spiritual soul are developing, the coarser parts, receptive to sound and light, are separated out in the etheric body.

Finally, in the moment when the etheric body condenses still more, so as to become—from a “light” body—a fire body, or body-of-warmth, the stage in evolution is reached when the solid earth-element begins to be incorporated in the human being. Having condensed to fire, the etheric body can now unite—by virtue of the forces of the physical body that have been implanted in it—with the substances into the body, which has in the meantime grown more solid. And this is where the higher Beings come in who dwell on the Sun. They breathe into man's body the air. Whereas by virtue of his past, man has within him the power to permeate himself with the Earth's fire, higher Beings have to guide the breath of air into his body. Before the hardening took place, the life-body of man, as the receiver of sound, guided the stream of air and permeated the physical body with life. Now man's physical body begins to receive a life that comes from outside. The consequence is that this life grows independent of the soul part of man. The soul of man, when withdrawing from Earth, leaves behind not a mere seed of his form, but a complete living image of himself. The Spirits of Form remain united with the image; they carry over to the descendants, when the soul has left the body, the life which they have bestowed. In this way what we may call “heredity” develops. And when the soul of man appears again on Earth, he feels himself within a body whose life has been transmitted from the ancestors. To such a body he feels especially attracted. Something like a memory evolves of the progenitor with whom the soul feels at one. Through the sequence of the descendants this memory continues like a common consciousness. The I flows downward through the generations.

[ 72 ] At this stage in his evolution man felt himself an independent being during his time on Earth. He felt the inner fire of his life-body united with the outer fire of the Earth. The warmth, as it flowed through him, he could feel as his own I. Here in these streams of warmth, woven through and through with life, we have the first beginnings of the circulation of the blood. But in the air that streamed into him man did not altogether feel his own being. For in the air the forces of higher Beings were at work. Nevertheless, part of the forces and influences within the air that poured through him still remained his own, namely, that portion which had already become his own through the etheric forces he had formerly developed. Man had, therefore, a portion of the airy currents under his command. Inasmuch as this was so, not alone higher Beings but he himself was working at his formation and configuration. He shaped the airy parts within him in accordance with the picture in his astral body. While air was streaming into his body from without, to become there the foundation of his breathing life, a portion of the air was differentiated off within him, into an organism inherent in his own nature. This became the basis of the later nervous system. Thus through warmth and air did man at this time have his connection with the surrounding world of the Earth.

On the other hand he was not sensible at all of the assimilation of the solid earth-element. Though this element also played its part at his incarnation, he could not perceive its introduction directly but only in a dimly conscious picture form, as a manifestation of Beings far above him—the entry into his body of the fluid element of Earth. Now that his earthly form has become denser, these pictures have undergone a change in his consciousness. The solid element being now mingled with the fluid, the introduction of that too must needs to be felt as proceeding from the higher Beings, working from without. Man can no longer have the power in his own soul to guide this assimilation, for the body which it has now to serve has been built up from outside. He would indeed spoil its form if he attempted to do so. Thus what he assimilates from without appears to him as guided by edicts proceeding from the higher Beings who work at the formation of his body. Man feels himself as an Ego; he has within him, as a part of his astral body, his intellectual soul, through which he experiences inwardly in pictures what is going on outside him, and with which he permeates his delicate nervous system. He feels himself as a descendant of forefathers, by virtue of the lie streaming through the generations. He breathes—and feels his breathing as brought about by the higher Beings who have been described as the Spirits of Form. To these he also feels beholden for all that through their impulses is brought to him from without, as nourishment. Darkest of all to him is his origin as an individual. The nearest he comes to any feeling of it is a sense of having an influence from the Spirits of Form, as they manifest in the forces of the Earth. Man is guided and directed in his relation to the outer world. This comes to expression in that he is conscious of activities of soul and spirit that are going on behind his physical world. He does not perceive the spiritual Beings in their own form, but he experiences sounds and colors and the like within his soul and knows that in this world of ideal images live the deeds of spiritual Beings. What they communicate sounds forth to him; what they reveal appears to him in pictures of light. The most inward feeling Earth man has of himself comes to him through the conceptions he gains of the element of fire or warmth. He can already distinguish his own inner warmth from the streams of warmth in his environment. In the latter the Spirits of Personality reveal themselves. But man has no more than a dim consciousness of what is there behind thee outer streams of warmth. He feels in them the influence of the Spirits of form. When mighty activities of warmth manifest in his environment, then the feeling arises in the soul: “Now, glowing through the Earth's horizon are the spiritual Beings, a spark of whose fire has detached itself to become the warmth that fills my inner being.”

In the workings of light, man does not yet distinguish in quite the same way an outer and an inner. When pictures of light emerged in his environment, they did not always give rise to the same feeling in the soul of man. There were times when he felt them as coming from outside. This was when he had descended from the body-free condition and entered into incarnation—periods, that is, of his growth on Earth. But as the time drew near, when the seed of the new Earth man was taking shape, the pictures faded and man retained no more than something like inner memories of them. In these pictures of light, the deeds of the Fire Spirits (Archangels) were contained. The Fires Spirits appeared to man as ministering spirits of the Warmth-Beings who planted a spark of fire in his inner nature. When these outer manifestations faded, man experienced them as mental images (as memories) within him. He felt united with their forces; and so indeed he was. For by virtue of what he had received from them he was able to work upon the sphere of air that surrounded him. Under his influence it began to ray forth light. That was a time when Nature forces and human forces were not yet separate from one another as they afterwards became. Whatever took place upon Earth proceeded still to a large extent from the forces of human beings. An observer, looking from beyond the Earth upon the events of Nature that were taking place there, would not have seen in these mere outer processes, independent of man; he would have recognized in them the influence also of human beings.

The perceptions of sound took yet another form for Earth man. From the very beginning of his Earthly life, he perceived them as coming from without. And while the light-pictures were so perceived only until the middle period of his existence on Earth, external sounds could still be heard even after this middle period. Only towards the end of his life did Earth man become insensitive to these; and then there remained to him still the inner memories of them. The sounds bore within them the manifestations of the Sons of Life (the Angels.) When towards the end of his life man felt himself inwardly united with these forces, he could then, by imitating them, call forth mighty activities in the water-element of the Earth. Under his influence arose a surging of the waters—within the Earth and over its surface.

Only in the first quarter of his Earthly life did man have any conscious experience of taste, and even then it appeared to his soul like a memory of experiences in his body-free condition. So long as he had the sense of taste, the solidification of his body by the absorption of outer substances continued. In the second quarter of his Earthly life, though growth might still continue, man's form and figure was already fully developed. At this period, he could only perceive other living beings beside himself through the warmth, light and sound. Effects that they produced. For he was not yet able to form any conception of the solid element. Of the watery he received only, in the first quarter of his life, the taste effects above mentioned.

[ 73 ] A reflection of this inner soul-condition of man could be seen in his external, bodily form. Those parts which contained the beginning of what afterwards became the form of the head, were the most perfectly evolved. The remaining organs appeared only as appendages, and were shadowlike and indistinct. But not all Earth men were alike in form and figure. Some there were in whom, according to the conditions under which they lived, the “appendages” were more, or less, developed—the variation depending upon their dwelling-place on Earth. Where they became more deeply involved in the Earth world, the appendages appeared more prominent. There were also human beings who at the beginning of the physical development of Earth had, by virtue of their preceding evolution, been the most mature and had accordingly experienced the contact with the fire-element at the very outset, when Earth had not yet condensed to air, and who were now able to develop more perfectly the beginnings of the head. These were, in their inner life, of all human beings the most harmonious. Others had not been ready for contact with the fire-element until the Earth had evolved within it also the air; they were more dependent on external conditions. The former kind were clearly aware through the warmth, of the Spirits of Form, and their feeling of themselves in Earthly life was as though they retained a memory of belonging to the Spirits of Form, of having been united with them in the body-free condition. The others had the memory of the body-free condition only to a lesser degree; they were chiefly aware of their membership of the spiritual world through the light-effects of the Spirits of Fire (Archangels.)

There was in addition a third kind of human being, still more deeply entangled in Earthly existence. These had not been able to be touched by the fire-element until such time as the Earth, already separated from the Sun, had received into it the element of water. The feeling they had of belonging to the spiritual world was slight, notably at the beginning of their Earthly life. Only when the working of the Archangels, and more especially of the Angels made itself felt in their inner mental life, did they become aware of it. On the other hand, at the beginning of their Earthly time they were full of eager impulse for action—for such actions, namely, as could be performed within the conditions of the Earth itself. In such human beings the other organs (the appendages) were especially developed.

[ 74 ] In the time when, before the separation of the Moon, the Moon forces were bringing about in the Earth a constantly increasing measure of solidification, it befell that among the descendants of the “seeds” left behind by men on Earth, there were some in whom the human souls returning from the body-free condition could no longer incarnate. Their form was much too hardened, and under the influence of the Moon forces had grown all too unlike the human figure to be able to receive the soul. This meant that certain human souls no longer found it possible to return to Earth. Only the most mature, only the strongest felt themselves equal to the task of so transforming the Earthly body during its growth that it could blossom forth into the true human form. Hence but a portion only of the human bodily descendants became vehicles for Earth men. Another portion, owing to their hardened form, could only receive souls that were at a lower level than the souls of men. Some of the human souls, on the other hand, being thus compelled to cease partaking in Earth evolution during that epoch, were brought into a different kind of life-history. Even at the time of the separation of the Sun, there had already been souls who could no longer find a place on Earth. These were transplanted for their further evolution to another planet. Under the guidance of cosmic Beings, this planet wrested itself free of the general World-substance which had been united with the physical evolution of Earth at its beginning, and out of which the Sun itself had also separated. This was the planet whose physical expression is known to external science as Jupiter. (Here we are speaking of heavenly bodies and planets and of their names, in precisely the same way as was customary in a science of former times. The meaning will e clear from the context. The physical Earth is but the physical expression for an organism of soul and spirit, and the same is true of every other heavenly body. He who perceives the Supersensible does not mean by the name “Earth” the mere physical planet, nor by “Sun” the mere physical fixed star. And in like manner, when he speaks of Jupiter, Mars, etc., he is referring to far-reaching spiritual complexes. Naturally, the heavenly bodies have since the times of which we are here telling undergone fundamental changes in their form and purpose—in a certain respect, even in their position in the heavenly spaces. Only one who is able to follow back their evolution into far distant ages, can recognize the connection of the present planets with their forebears.)

It was thus on Jupiter that such souls continued their evolution. Later one, when then Earth was inclining still more to the solid state, another dwelling-place had to be created for souls who, though able for a time to inhabit the hardened bodies, could no longer do so when the hardening had gone too far. For these, there arose in Mars a dwelling suited to their further evolution. Then again there were souls who at a still earlier time, when the Earth was united with the Sun and was incorporating in itself the air element, proved unadapted to partake in its evolution. These souls were affected too strongly by the Earthly corporeal form. They had therefore to be withdrawn, already at that time, from the immediate influence of the Sun forces. The Sun forces must work upon them from without. They found on Saturn a place for their further evolution. Thus in the course of its evolution the number of human forms on Earth steadily decreased. Forms began to appear in which human souls were not incarnated—forms which were able to receive only astral bodies, even as man's physical body and life-body had done on Old Moon. While Earth was growing waste and void as to human inhabitants, these beings now established themselves upon it. In the last resort, all human souls would have had to leave the Earth—had it not been for the severance of the Moon. This made it possible for human forms which at that time could still be humanly ensouled, to withdraw the human seed or embryo during their Earthly life from the Moon forces emanating directly from the Earth, and let it mature within themselves up to the point where it could safely be exposed to these forces. This meant that, while the seed or embryo was taking shape within the human being, it came under the influence of those Beings who guided by the Mightiest among them, had severed the Moon from the Earth, so as to carry Earth's evolution forward over a critical point.

[ 75 ] When the Earth had developed the air-element within it, there were astral beings in the sense of the above description—as relics from the Old Moon—who had remained farther back in the evolution than the lowest of human souls. These became the souls of the forms which had to be deserted by man even before the separation of the Sun, and were the forefathers of the animal kingdom. In course of time, they evolved especially those organs which in man existed as appendages. Their astral body had to work upon the physical and the life-body in the same way as was the case with man on Old Moon. This, then, is how the animals originated; and they had souls which could not dwell in the single creature. The soul extended its being to the descendant of the parent form. Animals that are in the main descended from a single form, have one soul together. Only when, as a result of special influences, the descendant departs from the parent form, does a new animal-soul come into incarnation. And it is in this sense that in spiritual science we speak of specific (or generic) souls, or “group souls” of the animals.

[ 76 ] Something not unlike this took place at the time of the separation of the Sun from the Earth. Out of the watery element forms emerged which were no farther on in their development than man had been before his evolution on Old Moon. Such forms were only able to receive an astral influence when it worked upon them from without; and this could not happen until after the departure of the Sun from the Earth. Each time that the Sun period of the Earth set in, the Astral of the Sun roused up these forms to build themselves their life-body from out of the Ethereal of the Earth. Then, when the Sun was turned away from the Earth, this life-body was dissolved once more in the common body of the Earth. As a result of this working together of the Astral of the Sun and the Ethereal of the Earth, physical forms arose out of the watery element which were the forebears of the present plant kingdom.

[ 77 ] Man has become on Earth an individualized soul-being. His astral body, poured into him on Old Moon by the Spirits of Movement, has been organized on Earth into the sentient, the intellectual and the spiritual soul. When his spiritual soul was so far developed as to be able, during Earth life, to build itself a body well adapted to contain it, the Spirits of Form endowed him with a spark of their own fire. The I was kindled in him. Every time he left the physical body, man was in the spiritual world, where he encountered the Beings who had given him his physical body, his life-body and his astral body during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and had perfected these up to the Earth level of development. But now that the spark of fire of the I had been kindled in his life on Earth, a change had come about in the body-free life as well. Before this moment in his evolution, man had no independence in relation to the spiritual world. He did not in that world feel himself as a separate, single being, but as membered into the sublime organism composed of higher Beings above him. Now, however, the “I” experience on Earth began to work on into the spiritual world; there too, man began to feel himself as a single unit. Yet at the same time he also felt he was eternally united with that world. In the body-free condition he found again in a higher aspect the Spirits of Form whom he had perceived in their manifestation upon Earth through the spark of his own I.

[ 78 ] The severance of the Moon from the Earth involved also new experiences for the body-free soul in the spiritual world. For it was only through the transference from the Earth to the Moon of a portion of the form-building forces that it was made possible still to develop upon Earth such human forms as could receive a soul's individuality. Thereby the individuality of man was brought into the realm of the Moon Beings. And even in the body-free condition, the after-echo of Earthly individuality could only be effective inasmuch as there too the soul remained within the realm of those mighty Spirits who had brought about the separation of the Moon. It happened in the following way. Immediately after leaving the Earth, the soul could only see the sublime Beings of the Sun as it were in a reflected radiance cast by the Beings of the Moon. But until it had been sufficiently prepared by beholding this reflected radiance, did the soul come face to face with the sublime Sun Beings themselves.

[ 79 ] The mineral kingdom of the Earth also arose by being thrust out from the evolution of mankind. Its structures represent what was still left in a hardened condition when the Moon was separated from the Earth. The soul-nature that felt drawn to these structures was of a kind which, having remained at the Saturn stage, was fitted to create only physical forms. All the events of which we are speaking here—or will be speaking in the sequel—are to be thought of as taking place in the course of immense epochs, the precise determination of which is beyond our present scope.

[ 80 ] The above descriptions have given a picture of the evolution of the Earth from its external aspect. Seen from the aspect of the Spirit, the following emerges. The spiritual Beings who drew the Moon away from the Earth and bound up their own existence with it—becoming in this way Beings of the Earth's Moon—sent down their forces from that heavenly body to Earth and thereby determined the form and structure of man's organization. Their influence was directed to the I or Ego which man had by then acquired; it made itself felt in the interplay of the I with the astral, etheric and physical bodies. It was due to these Beings that the possibility arose in man, consciously to mirror in himself the wisdom-filled configuration of the World, and to portray it, as by reflection, in an act of knowledge. Let the reader recall here the description that was given of how in the Old Moon time, through the Moon's severance from the Sun, man had attained a certain independence in his organization—a freer state of consciousness than could proceed directly from the Sun Beings themselves. During the period of Earth evolution we are now describing, this free and independent consciousness appeared again—a heritage from Old Moon evolution. Under the influence of the Moon Beings, it could have been harmonized once more with the great Universe, and made into a faithful image of it. And this would indeed have come to pass had no other influence intervened. Man would have become a being with a consciousness whose content mirrored back the Universe in the pictures of the life of knowledge, as by natural necessity, not be his own free intention. But it did not happen so. At the very time of the Moon's severance, certain spiritual Beings intervened in human evolution, who had retained so much of their own Moon nature that they could not partake in the departure of the Sun from the Earth, while on the other hand they were also excluded from the influences of the Beings who worked on to the Earth from the Moon. These Beings with an Old Moon nature were banished, as it were, by an abnormal evolution, to the Earth. In their Moon nature was contained precisely that quality which had rebelled against the Spirits of the Sun during Old Moon, and had at that time been of real benefit to man, inasmuch as it had brought him to a free and independent consciousness. As a consequence of their peculiar evolution during the Earth epoch, they now became the opponents of those who, working from the Moon, desired to make man's consciousness an infallible knowledge-mirror of the World. The very same thing which on Old Moon had helped man to a higher level, proved itself now a factor of resistance to the new conditions that had been made possible in the course of Earth evolution. The opposing powers had brought with them from their Old Moon nature the faculty to work upon the human astral body in such manner as to make it—in the sense of the above descriptions—independent. This faculty they used; they gave the astral body—for the Earth epoch too—a certain independence, as against the unfree consciousness determined by necessity, that was being induced in it by the Beings of Earth-Moon.

It is not easy to express in ordinary language what the influence of these spiritual Beings was like in that primeval time. We must not conceive it to have been like the present-day influences of Nature, not yet like the influence of man on man, when by his words one man awakens in another forces of inner consciousness, whereby the other learns to understand something or is moved to some virtue or vice. The primeval influence to which we here refer was not a “natural” influence at all, but a purely spiritual one. It worked also in a spiritual way: it was transmitted, as a spiritual influence, from the higher Spirit Beings to the human being in a manner that accorded with his state of consciousness at that time. If we imagine it like an influence of Nature, we completely fail to perceive its real essence. If on the other hand, we say that the Beings with the Old Moon nature approached man with intent to win him over for their aims by “tempting” him, then we are using a symbolical expression, which is all right, so long as we are aware of its symbolic nature and realize that behind the symbol lies a spiritual fact.

[ 81 ] This influence on man, proceeding from Spirit-beings who had remained behind in the Old Moon condition, entailed for him a twofold consequence. His consciousness was divested of the character of a mere mirror of the Universe, for there was kindled in the human astral body the power to regulate and control the pictures in consciousness. Man became the master of his own faculty of cognition. On the other hand, since it was the astral body which was made the source of this control, the Ego, in spite of being in reality above the astral, fell into a state of perpetual dependence on it. This meant that for the future man was exposed to the constant influence of a lower element in his own nature. It was now possible for his life to sink beneath the high level on which the Earth-Moon Beings had placed him in the cosmic process. And in the sequel there remained the constant influence upon his nature of the abnormally developed Beings of the Moon. These latter may be called—in contrast to those who from Earth-Moon formed man's consciousness to be a mirror of the Universe, yet gave him no free will—the Luciferian Spirits. They brought man the power to unfold a free activity in his own consciousness, but brought him at the same time the possibility of error and of evil.

[ 82 ] As a result of these events, man came into a different relation to the Sun Spirits than was predestined for him by the Earth-Moon Beings. The latter wanted to evolve the mirror of his consciousness in such a way that the influence of the Sun Spirits would predominate in his entire life of soul. But this intention of theirs was frustrated, and in the human beings an opposition was set up between the influence of the Sun Spirits and the influence of the Spirits who were undergoing an irregular Moon evolution, with the result that man was rendered incapable of recognizing the physical influences of the Sun for what they were; they remained hidden from him behind the earthly impressions of the outer world. Filled with these impressions, the astral in man was drawn into the domain of the I. Had it not been for this, the I of man would have been content simply to feel the spark of fire bequeathed him by the Spirits of Form, remaining subject to their commands in all that appertained to the outer fire. But now the I began to use the fire-element, with which it had itself been informed, to influence the phenomena of warmth in the surrounding world. Thus a bond of attraction was established between the I and the Earth fire, and man became entangled, more than had been predestined for him, in the realm of earthly matter. Previously he had had a physical body, consisting as to its main parts of fire, air and water, and with only a shade or, as it were, a phantom of earth substance added. Now the body became more densely compact of earth. Previously, man had moreover been living—as a being rather delicately organized—in a kind of floating, soaring movement above the solid ground of Earth; now he had to descend from the surrounding sphere to the parts of Earth which were already more or less solidified.

[ 83 ] That such physical effects were possible as a direct outcome of spiritual influences, is explained by the fact that these influences were of the kind we have described. They were not Nature influences nor were they like the influences of soul that work from man to man. The latter do not extend their effects so far into the bodily as did the spiritual forces with which we are dealing here.

[ 84 ] Because man exposed himself to the influences of the outer world under the guidance merely of his own ideas, subject as these were to error, because moreover he lived by cravings and passions which he did not allow higher spiritual influences to regulate, the possibility of illness arose. And another marked effect of the Luciferian influence was the following. Henceforth man was unable to feel his single life on Earth as a continuation of body-free existence. He now received such Earthly impressions as he could experience through the astral element with which he had been inoculated, and these impressions joined themselves on to the forces that destroy life. Man experienced this as the doing away of his Earthly life. Death, brought about by human nature itself, now made its appearance. Here we touch a significant secret of man's nature—the connection of the human astral body with illness and death.

[ 85 ] Peculiar conditions now arose for the life-body of man. If was placed in such a position between the physical and astral bodies as to be withdrawn to a certain extent from the faculties man had acquired through the Luciferian influence. A portion of the life-body remained outside the physical body, and was accordingly controllable by higher Beings who, under the leadership of one of their sublime number had left the Earth at the separation of the Sun, to occupy another dwelling-place. Had this portion of the life-body remained united with the astral body, man would have seized on supersensible forces which had belonged to him before, and put them to his own use; he would have extended the Luciferian influence to these supersensible forces. In so doing man would in time have severed himself completely from the Beings of the Sun, and his Ego would have become an entirely Earthly Ego. For at the death of the physical body (or even during its disintegration) the Earthly Ego would have been obliged to take up its abode in another physical body—in a descendant body—without first passing through a time of union with higher spiritual Beings in a body-free condition. Man would thus have attained the consciousness of his I, but only as an Earthly I.

This result was averted by the special development described above in connection with the life-body, a development that was brought about by the Earth-Moon Beings. The true individual Ego was thereby loosed from the merely Earthly Ego, so that man during this earthly life felt himself only partly as his own I, while at the same time he felt that his Earthly Ego was a continuation of the Earthly Ego of his forefathers through the generations. Thus during life on Earth the soul felt a kind of Group Ego reaching back to distant ancestors, and the individual man felt himself a member of the group. It was only on entering into the body-free condition that the individual Ego could feel itself a single being. And even this individualization was impaired inasmuch as the Ego was still burdened with the memory of the Earthly consciousness—the consciousness, that is, of the Earthly Ego. This memory clouded man's vision of the spiritual world, which began to be veiled over between death and birth, as it was already for man's physical vision upon Earth.

[ 86 ] The many changes that took place in the spiritual world while human evolution was passing through these conditions, found physical expression in the gradual regulation of the mutual relationships of Sun and Moon and Earth—and, in a wider sense, of other heavenly bodies too. One consequence of these relationships may here be singled out: the alternation of day and night. (The movements of the heavenly bodies are regulated by the Beings who inhabit them. The movement of the Earth whereby day and night arise, was brought about by the mutual relations of the higher Spirit-Beings above humanity. And it was in like manner that the Lunar motion came about; for after the severance of Moon from Earth, the rotation of the former about the latter enabled the Spirits of Form to work upon the physical body of man in the right way—in the proper rhythm.) By day the Ego and astral body of man were working in the physical body and the life-body. By night this work ceased; the Ego and astral body left the physical and the life-body. During this time they were entirely within the domain of the Sons of Life (Angels,) the Fire Spirits (Archangels,) the Spirits of Personality and the Spirits of Form. The physical body and life-body were also received into their sphere of influence by the Spirits of Form, and in addition by the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom and the Thrones. In this way the harmful influences which had been brought to bear on man during the day through the aberrations of the astral body could be made good again.

[ 87 ] Human beings now began to multiply again on Earth, there was no longer any reason why human souls should not proceed to incarnate in the descendants. For the way in which the Earth-Moon forces were now working enabled the human bodies to take such shape as adapted them perfectly for the embodiment of human souls. Now therefore the souls, formerly translated on to Mars, Jupiter, etc., were guided once more to the Earth. For ever human descendant born in the sequence of the generations, a soul was thus made available. And so it went on or a long time: the coming of fresh souls to settle on the Earth corresponded to the increase in the population. And when these souls left the body through Earthly death, they retained like a memory, in the body-free condition, the echo of their Earthly individuality. This memory worked in such a way that when a body proper for its habitation was born again on Earth, the soul would incarnate in it once more. Thus is came about that among the progeny of men, there were some with souls coming from outside—appearing again on Earth for the first time since the primeval ages of its evolution—and others with souls that were not reincarnating. As evolution continued, the “young” souls appearing for the first time grew ever less and the reincarnated more in number. Nevertheless, for long ages of time the human race still consisted of these two kinds of human beings.

Henceforth, on Earth man felt himself united with his forefathers through the common Ego of the group. But the experience of the individual I was correspondingly intense in the body-free condition between death and a new birth. The souls who came fresh from heavenly spaces to take up their abode in human bodies were in a different situation from those who had one or more Earthly lives behind them. The former brought with them to physical life on Earth only those conditions of soul which they owed to the influence of the higher spiritual world and to the experiences they had undergone outside the Earth's domain. The others had, in earlier lives on Earth, added conditions of their own making. The destinies of the former souls were determined entirely by facts that lay outside the new Earth conditions, while those of the reincarnated souls depended also on what they themselves had done in their former lives under the conditions that prevailed on Earth. And so it came about that along with reincarnation, individual human Karma began to show itself.

Through the withdrawal of the human life-body from the influence of the astral body—in the way indicated above—the relationships of reproduction remained outside the horizon of man's consciousness, and were subject to the guidance of the spiritual world. Whenever a soul had to descend into the Earth sphere, the impulses for reproduction arose in man on Earth. For Earthly consciousness the whole process was veiled to some extent in mystery and darkness.

But now also during Earthly life this partial separation of the life-body from the physical had its results. Spiritual influence was able to effect a notable enhancement of the faculties inherent in the life-body, which manifested in a peculiar development of the power of memory. Independent logical thinking was only in its very first beginnings in that period of man's existence. But the power of memory was almost unlimited. Another effect showed itself in a more outward manner in the fact that man had an immediate “feeling” knowledge of the potent virtues of all living things. He could enlist in his own serve the forces of life and reproduction inherent in animal, and more especially in plant natures. He could withdraw from the plant the force that impels it in its growth, and use this force, just as nowadays forces are taken from lifeless nature—the latent force of coal, for instance—and used to set machines in motion. (Further details on this subject will be found in my book on Atlantis and Lemuria)¹

[ 1 ] Man's inner life of soul was also altered in diverse ways through the Luciferian influence; many kinds of feelings and emotions could be cited which owed their origin to it. Mention may here be made of a few of these changes. Previously the human soul, in whatever it had to do and create, worked in accordance with the aims of higher spiritual Beings. The plan for what had to be achieved was settled in advance. And in the measure in which his consciousness was evolved, man could even foresee how, in pursuance of the preconceived plan, things must necessarily develop in the future. This forward-seeing consciousness was lost when a veil of earthly perceptions was woven across the revelations of the higher Beings and hid from man's view the real forces of the Sun Beings. The future now became uncertain, and this meant that the possibility of feeling fear was implanted in the soul. Fear is a direct consequence of error.

[ 1 ] At the same time we see how with the Luciferian influence man became independent of certain forces to which he had hitherto been entirely subject. Henceforth he could make resolves—quite on his own. Freedom is thus the result of this influence. Fear, and feelings akin to fear, are but concomitant phenomena of man's evolution towards freedom.

[ 88 ] There is a spiritual aspect to this emergence of fear. Within the forces of the Earth, under whose influence man had been brought by the Luciferian powers, other powers were at work—powers which had begun to evince irregularity far earlier in evolution than the Luciferian. Along with the Earth forces, man began now to receive into his being the influences of these other powers. They instilled into feelings which without them would have worked quite differently, the quality of fear. We may name them here the Ahrimanic beings; they are the same as are called by Goethe, Mephistophelian.

[ 89 ] Now although at first the Luciferian influence made itself felt only in the most advanced human beings, it soon began to extend over others too. The descendants of the more advanced mingled with those of the less advanced, with the result that the Luciferian force penetrated also to these. Moreover the life-body of the souls returning from the planets could not be protected to the same extent as the life-body of the descendants of those who had remained on Earth. The protection of the latter was the work of a sublime Being who had the leadership in the Cosmos at the time when the Sun separated from the Earth. In connection with the development we are here considering, this Being appears as the Ruler in the kingdom of the Sun. With Him there journeyed to the Solar dwelling-place such sublime Spirits as had attained the necessary maturity in their cosmic evolution.

But there were also Beings who at the separation of the Sun had not reached this height of development. They had to look for other scenes of action. And these are the Beings through whom it had come to pass that Jupiter and other planets split off from the common World-substance which was in the physical organism of the Earth in the beginning. Jupiter became the habitation of Beings who had not matured to the level of the Sun. The most advanced among them became the leader of Jupiter. As the leader of the Sun evolution became the higher Ego, working in the life-body of the descendants of the human beings who had remained on Earth, so did the Jupiter leader become the higher Ego which passed like a common consciousness through other human beings—those, namely, who traced their descent to a mingling of the offspring of the men who had remained on Earth with those who had only appeared on Earth at the time of the air element and had then gone off to Jupiter. The latter may accordingly be named in spiritual science “Jupiter men.” They were those human descendants who in that ancient time had still been receiving human souls—souls, however, which at the beginning of Earthly evolution had not yet been mature enough to partake in the first contact with the fire-element. These were souls between the human and the animal kingdoms.

And there were still other Beings, who—once more under the leadership of a Highest among them—had separated Mars out of the common World-substance as their dwelling-place, and they exercised their influence upon a third kind of human being who had also arisen by intermingling, the “Mars men.” (This kind of knowledge throws light on the fundamental causes and origins of the planets in our solar system. All the heavenly bodies of this system have come into being through the varying degrees of maturity of the Spirits who inhabit them. Naturally. we cannot enter here into all the details of these cosmic differentiations.)

Those human beings on the other hand, who beheld the presence in their life-body of the high Being of the Sun Himself, may be called “Sun men.” The Being who lived in them as a higher Ego—only in the generations, needless to say, not in the single individuals—is the One to whom diverse names were subsequently given, when men acquired conscious knowledge of Him. To the men of the present time He is the One in whom the relation of the Christ to the Cosmos is revealed.

We can also distinguish “Saturn men.” In them there appeared as higher Ego a Being who, with his companions, had to leave the common substance of the World even before the separation of the Sun The Saturn men were a type of human being in whom, not only in the life-body but in the physical body too, there was a portion which remained withdrawn from the Luciferian influence.

[ 90 ] But now it was so, that in the lower kinds of human beings the life-body was after all too little protected, and could not sufficiently resist the encroachments of the Luciferian nature. Such human beings could so far extend the arbitrary power of the fiery spark of the I which was within them as to be able to call forth in their environment mighty workings of fire, of a harmful nature. This led eventually to a stupendous Earth catastrophe. A great portion of the then inhabited Earth was destroyed in these fire-storms, and with it perished also the human beings who had fallen into error. Only a very small number of them, having remained comparatively untouched by error, could save themselves by taking refuge on some region of the Earth that had so far been protected from the harmful influence of men. One land in particular proved suitable as such a dwelling-place for the new humanity. It was situated at the part of the Earth's surface which is now covered by the Atlantic Ocean. The portion of mankind that had remained most pure from error migrated thither. Other parts became inhabited only by stray remnants. The continent which then existed between the present Europe, Africa and America may be called in spiritual science, Atlantis. (The above-described period of human evolution, preceding the Atlantean, is dealt with from a certain aspect in the relevant literature. It is there called the Lemurian epoch of the Earth, whereas the time when the Moon forces had not yet unfolded their most powerful effects may be called the Hyperborean age. This epoch was preceded by yet another, which coincides with the very earliest time of physical Earth evolution. In Biblical tradition the time before the entry of the Luciferian beings is referred to as the time of Paradise, and the descent on to the Earth—man's entanglement in the world of the senses—as the expulsion from Paradise.)

[ 91 ] It was during evolution in the region of Atlantis that the actual separation of humanity into the men of Saturn, Sun, Jupiter and Mars took place. Previously, no more than the initial tendencies in this direction had shown themselves. The division also into the waking and the sleeping state now entailed yet other important consequences, which came strongly into evidence in Atlantean humanity. During the night, man's astral body and Ego were in the realm of the Beings above him, reaching as far as to the Spirits of Personality. Through the portion of his life-body which was not united with the physical he could have perception of the Sons of Life (the Angels) and the Fire Spirits (the Archangels.) For he could remain united, during sleep, with this portion of the life-body. His perception however of the Spirits of Personality remained indistinct, and this was directly due to the Luciferian influence. But with the Angels and Archangels, other beings also became visible to man in this condition. These were being who, having remained behind on Sun and Moon, had not been able to enter upon Earth-existence at all; they had had perforce to remain in the world of soul and spirit. Under the Luciferian influence, however, man drew them into the realm of his own soul when it was separated from the physical. Thus he came into touch with beings whose influence upon him was in the highest degree seductive. They multiplied in his soul the impulses that led him astray, especially the impulse to misuse the forces of growth and reproduction, which now stood at man's disposal owing to the partial separation of the physical body from the life-body.

[ 92 ] Now there were individual human beings of the Atlantean epoch who were to a large extent enabled to avoid entanglement in the world of the senses. Through them the Luciferian influence was changed from a hindrance in man's evolution into a means for his higher progress. For with its help they were enabled to unfold a knowledge of the things of Earth sooner than would otherwise have been possible, and in so doing, they strove to remove error from their mental life and to bring to light from out of the world's phenomena the primal intentions of the Spirit-Beings. They kept themselves free from impulses and cravings of the astral body directed merely to the world of the senses. Thus they became less and less liable to error, and were brought in this way into conditions of consciousness whereby they had perception purely in that part of the life-body which was separated from the physical. At these times it was as though the physical body's power of perception were extinguished and the body itself dead. But through the life-body these human beings were wholly united with the kingdom of the Spirits of Form, and could learn from them how they were led and guided by the sublime Being who had been the Leader in the severance of Sun and Earth, and through whom the understanding for the “Christ” was subsequently revealed to man. Such men were Initiates. But because the human individuality had now, as we have seen, come into the domain of the Moon Beings, even the Initiates could not, as a rule, be touched directly by the Sun Beings. He could be revealed to them only, as it were in reflection, through the Moon Beings. Thus they beheld not the Sun Being Himself, but His reflected radiance. These Initiates became the leaders of the rest of mankind, to whom they were able to communicate the secrets they saw. They trained up disciples, teaching them the paths to the attainment of the condition that leads to Initiation. The knowledge of what had formerly manifested through “Christ” was attainable only by such as belonged to the Sun humanity in the sense above described. These cultivated their secret knowledge and the ministrations which led up to it, at a special sanctuary which shall here be named the Christ—of the Sun—Oracle. (Oraculum meaning a place where the intentions of spiritual Beings are perceived.)

What is here said in reference to the Christ will be misunderstood unless the following is borne in mind. Supersensible knowledge has to recognize, in the appearance of Christ on Earth, an event to which those men of earlier ages who knew the meaning and purpose of Earth evolution could point, as to an event that was to come in the future. It would be a mistake to presume in those Initiates a relationship To Christ which has only been made possible by the event they prophesied. This much they could prophetically understand and bring home to their disciples: “Who so is touched by the might of the Sun Being, sees the Christ coming towards the Earth.”

[ 93 ] Other Oracles were called into life by the members of Saturn, Mars and Jupiter humanity, whose Initiates carried their vision no farther than to those Beings who could be revealed to them—as “higher Egos”—in their life-bodies. Thus there arose the adherents of the Saturn, the Jupiter and the Mars Wisdom. Beside those modes of Initiation, there were again still others, for human beings who had received into themselves too much of the Luciferic nature to permit of so great a part of the life-body being separated from the physical as was the case with the Sun humanity; more of it is held back there by the astral body. Human beings of this type were not able, even in their more advanced states of consciousness, to reach through to the prophetic Christ Revelation. Their astral body being more under the influence of the Luciferian principle, they had harder experiences to undergo in preparation, before they could receive, in a less body-free condition than the others, not indeed the revelation of the Christ Himself, but that of other sublime Beings; for there were Beings who, though they had left the Earth at the time of the separation of the Sun, were not upon so high a level as to be able to partake continuously in the Sun's evolution. After the severance of Sun and Earth they went forth again from the Sun, taking with them another separate dwelling-place and this was Venus. Their leader was the Being who now became the “higher Ego” for the above-described Initiates and their followers. A similar thing happened with the leading Spirit of Mercury in connection with still another kind of human being. And so there arose the Venus and the Mercury Oracles.

There was moreover a further class of human beings who had absorbed most of all the Luciferian influence. They could only reach up to a Spirit-Being who with his associates had been thrust forth again soonest of all from the evolution of the Sun. This Being has no special planet in the cosmic spaces but lives to this day in the surrounding sphere of the Earth itself, with which he re-united after his return thither from the Sun. The human beings to whom he revealed himself as their higher Ego may be called adherents of the Vulcan Oracle. Their vision was more directed than that of all the other Initiates to the phenomena of Earth. They laid the first foundation for what afterwards arose among men as arts and sciences. The Mercury Initiates, on the other hand, founded the science of things more supersensible; and to a still higher degree the Venus Initiates did the same. The Vulcan, Mercury and Venus Initiates differed from the Saturn, Jupiter and Mars Initiates in the following way. The latter received their secrets more as a revelation from above, more in a finished state, while the former were already receiving knowledge more in the form of thoughts and ideas that were their own. The Christ-Initiates stood between the two; together with the direct revelation, they received at the same time the faculty to clothe their secrets in the form of human concepts. The Saturn, Jupiter and Mars Initiates had to express themselves more in symbolic pictures; the Christ, Venus, Mercury and Vulcan Initiates could make their communications more in the form of ideas and thought-pictures.

[ 94 ] All that was given to Atlantean humanity in this way, came to them through their Initiates, but the rest of mankind also received special faculties through the working of the Luciferian principle, inasmuch as the great cosmic Beings turned to good what might otherwise have been quite detrimental. One such faculty is that of speech. Speech came to man through his condensation into physical materiality and through the separation of a part of his life-body from the physical body. In the times that followed the separation of the Moon, man, to begin with, felt himself united with his physical forefathers through the Ego of the group. But in course of generations this common consciousness, uniting descendants with their forefathers, was gradually lost. Thus with the later descendants the “inner memory” reached back only to a fairly recent ancestor, not any longer to the more ancient forefathers. It was only in conditions resembling sleep, where men came in contact with the spiritual world, that the memory of this or that ancestor would emerge. Then would a man often deem himself one with some such ancestor, whom he believed to have reappeared in himself. This was, in fact, a mistaken idea of reincarnation, which arose especially in the last period of Atlantis. The true teaching about reincarnation was to be found only in the schools of the Initiates. For the Initiates were able to behold how the human soul passes in the body-free condition from incarnation to incarnation. They alone could implant the truth to their pupils.

[ 95 ] In the far distant past of which we are here speaking, the physical form and figure of man was as yet very different from what it is today. It was still to a great extent the expression of qualities of soul. The human being was of a finer, softer materiality than he afterwards became. Where his members are now quite rigid, they were plastic, soft and pliable. A man more filled with soul and spirit was of gentle build, mobile, expressive. One who was less spiritually developed had coarser bodily forms, immobile, not so plastic. Improvement in the life of the soul tended to draw man's members together; such a man would remain small in stature. Backwardness of soul, entanglement in sensuality, came to expression in gigantic bodily proportions. While man was still in his period of growth, the body took shape according to what was growing in the soul—and this to an extent which must seem fabulous, indeed quite fantastic, to present-day ideas. Depravity of passion, or of instinct or desire brought with it a monstrous enlargement of the material in man. The present human form has arisen by the contraction, condensation, and rigidification of Atlantean man. Before the time of Atlantis, man had presented a faithful image of his soul, of his inner being, but the very events and processes that took place in Atlantean evolution contained the inner causes which led to the human being of post-Atlantean time, who in his physical form and statue is firm and well-established, comparatively little dependent on his qualities of soul. (The animal kingdom grew dense in its forms, in far earlier epochs than man.) The laws which at the present time underlie the molding and shaping of forms in the kingdoms of Nature can certainly not be extended to the more remote ages of the past.

[ 96 ] Towards the middle of the Atlantean period of evolution, a great calamity began gradually to overwhelm mankind. The secrets of the Initiates should have been carefully protected from those human beings who had not by due preparation purified their astral bodies from error. For is such attained insight into the hidden knowledge—into the laws whereby the higher Beings guided the forces of Nature—they might enlist these laws in the service of their own mistaken needs and passions. The danger was all the greater, since, as we have seen, men were coming into the realm of lower spirit-beings who were themselves unable to partake in the regular evolution of the Earth and therefore worked against it. These beings were perpetually influencing men, imbuing them with interests which worked against the true welfare of mankind. And then too, the men of that time still had the faculty to place at their own disposal the forces of growth and reproduction in animal and human nature.

Nor was it only the ordinary run of human beings, but some of the Initiates too succumbed to the temptations of lower spirit-beings, and even went so far as to employ the above-named supersensible forces for an end that was directly opposed to the evolution of mankind. For this purpose they gathered round them as associates men who were uninitiated and who applied the secrets of the supersensible working of Nature for decidedly lower ends. A widespread corruption of humanity ensued. The evil grew to greater and greater dimensions.

Now the forces of growth and reproduction, when torn from their mother-soil and independently employed, stand in a mysterious relationship to certain forces that work in air and water. Mighty and ominous powers of Nature were thus let loose by the deeds of men, leading eventually to the gradual destruction of the whole territory of Atlantis by catastrophes of air and water. Atlantean humanity—the portion of it, that is, which did not perish in the storms—was compelled to migrate. As a result too of the great storms, the whole face of the Earth changed. Europe, Asia and Africa on the one hand, and America on the other, began gradually to assume their present shape. Vast numbers of human beings migrated into these countries. For us in our time those above all are of importance who went eastward from Atlantis. Europe, Asia and Africa gradually became colonized by descendants of the Atlanteans. Peoples of many kinds took up their abode in these countries, people that stood at many different levels of evolution—and also of corruption. And in their midst went the Initiates, the Guardians of the secrets of the Oracles. In various regions the Initiates established holy places where the services of Jupiter, Venus, etc. were cultivated in a good—or in an evil—sense. Most detrimental of all was the betrayal of the Vulcan secrets. For the adherents of the Vulcan Mysteries had their attention concentrated upon things of Earth. By this betrayal was brought into a state of dependence upon spiritual things who in consequence of their preceding evolution were disposed to reject all that came from the spiritual world that had evolved through the separation of the Earth from the Sun. Such was the tendency they had developed, and they worked in accordance with it, precisely in that element which was arising in man inasmuch as he had sense-perceptions in the physical world—perceptions behind which the spiritual remained hidden. These beings now attained great influence over many of the human inhabitants of Earth, and the immediate outcome of it was to deprive man more and more of any feeling for things spiritual.

In those times, the size, form and plasticity of man's physical body were still largely determined by qualities of soul. Hence the results of the betrayal appeared in changes of this very kind in the human race. Where supersensible forces were placed in the service of lower instincts, passions and desires—where, that is, the prevalent corruption took this particular form—human figures would arise that were monstrous and grotesque in size and shape. These could not, however, survive beyond the Atlantean epoch; they died out. Physically speaking, post-Atlantean humanity evolved form Atlantean forebears whose bodily figure had already become firm enough not to give way to the soul-forces which had grown to be so contrary to their true nature. There was a period in Atlantean evolution when the laws prevailing in and around the Earth were such as to subject the human figure precisely to those conditions under which it had to grow firm. Human racial forms which had hardened before this time could continue to propagate themselves for a good while to come, but by degrees the souls incarnating in them found themselves so restricted that these races too had to die out. Many of the forms were nevertheless able to maintain themselves right into the post-Atlantean times; indeed, some of them that had remained mobile enough, survived in a somewhat altered condition for a very long time. On the other hand, the human forms which had retained their plasticity beyond the above-mentioned period, became bodies for those souls in particular who had suffered in a high degree the harmful influence of the betrayal. Such forms were destined to die out early.

[ 97 ] In consequence of these developments, other beings had, since the middle of the Atlantean time, been making themselves felt in the realm of human evolution, owing to whose influence man was induced to enter the world of the physical senses in an unspiritual manner. So much so that in place of the true form of this world, hallucinations could appear to him, phantasms, and delusions of all kinds. Man was thus exposed not only to the Luciferian influence but also to that of these other beings, to whose existence we have already alluded. The leader of them may be called after the name he received later on in the ancient Persian civilization, Ahriman. (Mephistopheles is the same being.) Through this influence man came after his death among powers which caused him to appear even there as a being whose inclination was entirely towards the things of Earth and of the life of the senses. The free and open outlook into all that was going on in the spiritual world—of this he was deprived more and more. He had to feel himself in the grip of Ahriman and to a certain extent excluded form community with the spiritual world.

[ 98 ] One Oracle sanctuary was of peculiar importance. Amid the general decline this sanctuary had preserved the ancient service in the purest form. It belonged to the Christ Oracles, and was accordingly able to preserve not only the secret of the Christ Himself but those of the other Oracles as well. For in the manifestation of the supreme Spirit of the Sun, the leaders of Saturn, Jupiter, etc. were also unveiled. In the Sun Oracle was known the secret of producing, in one or other human beings, life-bodies such as the best of the Initiates of Jupiter, Mercury, etc. had possessed. By means which they had in their power, but into which we cannot enter in further detail here, the Initiates of the Sun Oracle caused the impress of the best life-bodies of the old Initiates to be preserved, and then stamped on chosen human beings of a later time. The Venus, Mercury and Vulcan Initiates could also do the like with astral bodies.

[ 99 ] A time came when the leader of the Christ-Initiates saw himself left alone with a few associates, to whom he could, to a very limited degree, impart the secrets of the world. For they were men in whom, owing to their natural endowment, there was least of all of the separation between physical body and life-body. In that age of time such men were altogether the best suited for the further progress of mankind in those times. Conscious experiences in the realm of sleep were coming to them less and less. More and more did the spiritual world become closed to them. They also lacked understanding for all that had been revealed in more ancient times when man was not in his physical but only in his life-body which had formerly been separated from it. This reunion was now gradually taking place in mankind ads a whole, as a result of the transformation which their Atlantean dwelling-place and the Earth in general had undergone. The physical body and the life-body of man were tending more and more to coincide. This meant that the formerly unlimited powers of memory were being lost, and the life of thought was beginning. The portion of the life-body that had now united with the physical transformed the physical brain into the essential instrument of thought. And now at last did man really begin to feel his I within the physical body; now at last did self-consciousness awaken there. To begin with, this happened with a small portion only of mankind, first among whom were the companions of the leader of the Sun Oracle. The remaining masses of mankind, spread over Europe, Asia and Africa, preserved in varying degrees remnants of the ancient states of consciousness. They had therefore immediate experience of the supersensible world.

The companions of the Christ Initiate were men of highly developed intellect, while of all the people of that time they had the least experience in the supersensible domain. The Christ-Initiate journeyed with them from West to East, to a region of central Asia. He wanted to protect them as far as possible from contact with men who were less advanced than they in the evolution of consciousness. He educated them according to the hidden things that were to him open and visible, and worked in this way especially on their descendants. Thus did he train up a group of human beings who had received into their hearts the inner impulses that responded to the secrets of the Christ-Initiation. Out of this group he chose the seven best, that they might be able to have life-bodies and astral bodies corresponding to the impressions of the life-bodies of the seven best Atlantean Initiates. In this way he trained up a successor to each of the Christ, Saturn, Jupiter, etc., Initiates. These seven Initiates became the teachers and guides of those who in the time after Atlantis had settled in the South of Asia, more particularly in ancient India. Endowed as they were with after-images of the life-bodies of their spiritual predecessors, what these great teachers had in their astral bodies—namely, the knowledge and understanding which they had themselves assimilated and made their own—did not come up to what was revealed to them through their life-bodies. For these revelations to speak to them, they had to silence their own faculty of cognition. Then did there speak, from them and through them, the sublime Beings who had also spoken for their spiritual forebears. Save in the times when these great Beings were speaking through them, they were simple, unassuming men, endowed merely with such culture of intellect and heart as they had themselves acquired.

[ 100 ] In India there was living at this time a type of human being that had preserved to a marked degree a living memory of the ancient Atlantean soul-condition that permitted of conscious experience in the spiritual world. In very many of them remained also a strong urge of heart and mind towards such experiences in the supersensible world. By a wise guidance of destiny the main portion of this type of mankind, who were from the best of the Atlantean population, had found their way into Southern Asia. They were then joined by others who migrated thither at different times. Such was the complex of humanity to which the Christ-Initiate assigned his seven great disciples to be their teachers. These gave their wisdom and their commandments to this ancient Indian people. In many a one among these ancient Indians only slight preparation was required to kindle in him the scarcely extinct faculties that could lead to observation in the spiritual world. Indeed the longing for that world was to the Indian a fundamental, ever-present mood of soul. Within that world, he felt, was the primeval home of mankind. Man had been transplanted from it into this world which can endow him with external sense-perception and the intellect connected with it; but he felt the supersensible world as the true one and the sense-world as a fallacy of man's perception—an illusion, a maya—and strove by every means in his power to gain insight into the true world. In the illusory world of the senses he could summon up no interest—or only in so far as it manifests as a veil of the supersensible.

The power that could go out from the seven great Teachers to human beings such as these was tremendous. All that could be revealed through them entered deeply and livingly into the Indian soul. Gifted moreover as the Teachers were, by virtue of the life-bodies and astral bodies that had been bequeathed to them, with high spiritual forces, they were able also to work magically on their pupils. They did not really teach; they worked as though by magic from man to man. Thus arose a civilization permeated through and through with supersensible Wisdom. What is contained in the Wisdom-books of the Indians (the Vedas) reproduces, not the lofty Wisdom-teachings in their primal form—guarded as these were and cared for by the great Teachers in those ancient times—but only a faint echo of the same. The eye of seership alone, as it looks back, can detect behind the written, an unwritten, pristine Wisdom. One feature which especially emerges in this primal Wisdom is the harmonious sounding-together of the diverse Wisdoms of the Oracles of Atlantean time. Each of the great Teachers could unveil the Wisdom of one of these Oracles, and the different aspects of Wisdom gave together a perfect harmony, for behind them stood the fundamental Wisdom of the prophetic Christ-Initiation. The Teacher who was the spiritual successor of the Christ-Initiate did not, it is true, show forth what the Christ-Initiate did not, it is true, show forth what the Christ-Initiate himself had been able to unveil. The latter remained in the background of evolution. He could not, to begin with, transmit the high office to any member of post-Atlantean mankind. The Christ-Initiate who was with the seven Indian Teachers differed from him in this respect: he had been able, as we know, completely to assimilate to human concepts and ideas his vision of the Mystery of Christ. Whereas the Indian Christ-Initiate could but present a reflected radiance of this Mystery in signs and symbols, such power of ideation as he had been able to attain by his own effort being inadequate to comprehend it. Nevertheless, out of the union of the seven Teachers there arose in a sublime Wisdom-picture a knowledge of the supersensible world, only single parts of which had been able to be revealed in the ancient Atlantean Oracle. The Guiding Powers of the great cosmic world were unveiled; men learned, as it were in whispered tones, of the one great Sun Spirit, the Hidden One, enthroned above the Spirits who manifested through the seven Teachers.

[ 101 ] What is here to be understood by the term “ancient India” is not coincident with what the words are generally taken to mean. Of the time of which we are speaking no outer documentary records exist. The people now commonly known as Indians belong to a stage of historic evolution which developed long afterwards. We have thus to recognize a first post-Atlantean period of the Earth, in which the civilization here described as Indian was dominant. After it a second post-Atlantean period took shape, in which the civilization hereafter referred to as the ancient Persian became dominant. Still later, there evolved the Egypto-Chaldean civilization, also to be described in the following pages. During the development of these second and third post-Atlantean culture-epochs, ancient India lived through a second and a third epoch of its own, and the third is the one usually spoken of as “ancient India.” We must accordingly not confuse it with the description given here.

[ 102 ] Another feature of the ancient Indian culture was what subsequently led to the division of men into castes. The dwellers in ancient India were descendants of Atlanteans who belonged to the diverse kinds of humanity—Saturn men, Jupiter men, etc. The supersensible teachings they received made it quite plain to them that a soul has not been placed by chance into this or that caste, but by its own self-determination.

Nor was it difficult for the men of ancient India to accept this teaching, inasmuch as in many of them what has been described as “inner harmony” of their ancestors could still be called to life. Such memories were, however, also apt to lead all too easily to a mistaken idea of reincarnation. As in the Atlantean age, it had been through the Initiates alone that the true idea of reincarnation could be attained, similarly in ancient India it was attainable only by direct contact with the great Teachers. And it is undeniable that the erroneous idea became widely prevalent among the peoples who were scattered over Europe, Asia and Africa in consequence of the downfall of Atlantis. The Initiates who had gone astray during the Atlantean evolution had communicated this secret too to immature persons, and so it came to pass that men tended increasingly to confuse the true idea with the mistaken one. It must not be forgotten that a kind of dim clairvoyance had remained to these people as a heritage from Atlantean time. As the Atlanteans had in sleep entered into the region of the spiritual world, so did their descendants experience the same spiritual world in abnormal states, intermediate between sleeping and waking. Pictures then arose in them of that olden time to which their ancestors had belonged; and they believed themselves reincarnations of human beings of that time. Teachings on reincarnation, that were incompatible with the true ideas possessed by the Initiates, spread over the whole Earth.

[ 103 ] As a result of the prolonged migrations from West to East ever since the beginning of the Atlantean catastrophe, a group of peoples had settled in the regions of Western Asia, the descendants of whom are known to history as the Persians and kindred races. Supersensible knowledge must however look back to far earlier times than those of which history tells. We are here concerned with very early forefathers of the later Persians. Among these arose, following upon the Indian, the second great civilization-epoch of post-Atlantean evolution. The people of this epoch had a different task. Their longs and inclinations were not directed solely to the supersensible world. They were a people well fitted for the physical world of the senses. They learned to love the Earth. They valued what man can win for himself on Earth and what he can then also acquire by making use of its forces. Their achievements as a warlike nation and the means they invented to possess themselves of the treasures of the Earth, correspond with this trait in their character. Theirs was not the danger of yearning so intensely for the supersensible as to turn right away from the “illusion” of the physical world. Rather they were in danger of cherishing so strong a feeling for this physical world that their souls might lose all connection with the world of the supersensible. The Oracle-sanctuaries too, which had been transplanted hither from the ancient land of Atlantis, shared in the general character of the people. Of all the forces which men had once been able to acquire by conscious experience in the supersensible world and which—in certain lower forms—were still at their command, this people cultivated the power so to direct the phenomena of Nature that these may serve the personal interests of man. They still possessed great power over Nature-forces that subsequently withdrew from the control of human will. The Guardians of the Oracles were in command of inner forces connected with fire and other elements. They may indeed rightly be called magicians. The heritage of supersensible knowledge and supersensible forces which they had preserved from ancient times was feeble, no doubt, compared with what men had been able to attain in the far distant past. Nevertheless, it found expression in a multitude of forms, from noble arts which had in mind only the true weal of man, down to the most abominable practices. The Luciferian nature worked in these men in a peculiar way. It had brought them into connection with all that can divert man from the intentions of those higher Beings who, had Lucifer not intervened, would have had the sole guidance of human evolution. Some of them, who were still gifted with relics of the old clairvoyance that belonged to the condition between waking and sleeping, felt themselves strongly attracted to the lower beings of the spiritual world. A strong spiritual impulse needed to be given to this whole people, to counteract these qualities in their character. From the same fountain-head from which the ancient Indian spiritual life had proceeded, a leader was given them by the Keeper of the secrets of the Sun Oracle.

[ 104 ] The leader, whom the Guardian of the Sun Oracle assigned to the ancient Persian spiritual culture, may be called by the name that is familiar to us in history as Zoroaster or Zarathustra. It must however be emphasized that he belonged to a far earlier time than history attributes to the bearer of the name. Here, as you know, we are not concerned with outer historical research, but with spiritual science. Whoever feels bound to associate the bearer of the name Zarathustra with a later date, will be able to find himself in harmony with what spiritual science tells, when he realizes that he is thinking of a successor of the first great Zarathustra—one who took his name and labored in the spirit of his teaching.

The impulse Zarathustra had to give to his people may be described as follows. He showed them that the world of the physical senses is not void of spirit, as it appears to be when man allows himself to fall exclusively under the influence of the Lucifer Being. To this Being man owes his personal independence and his sense of freedom, but Lucifer has to work in him in harmony with the opposite spiritual Being. For the ancient Persians it was of first importance that they should keep alive their feeling for this opposite spiritual Being. Owing to their inclination to the physical world they were in danger of merging altogether into the Luciferian beings. Now Zarathustra had received form the Guardian of the Sun Oracle an Initiation that made it possible for the revelations of the sublime Beings of the Sun to be vouchsafed him. In special states of consciousness, to which he had been brought by his training, he could behold the Leader of the Sun Beings, who had taken the human life-body under His protection in the way that has been described. He knew that this Being had charge of the spiritual guidance of the evolution of mankind, but that the right time must be awaited before He would be able to descend from cosmic space on to the Earth. To this end it was necessary that He should be able to live in the astral body of a human being, even as He had worked in the life-body since the entry of the Luciferic influence. A human being must appear on Earth who had restored the astral body to a stage of development such as it would have attained, had it not been or Lucifer, at an earlier point of time—namely at the middle of the Atlantean evolution. Had Lucifer not come, man would have attained this stage more quickly, but without personal independence and without the possibility of inner freedom. Now he as to reach it even with the possession of these qualities.

Zarathustra in his moments of vision foresaw that a time would come in man's evolution when there would be a human being possessing an astral body of this kind. He knew also that until that time the spiritual forces of the Sun could not be found on Earth, but that supersensible vision could perceive them within the spiritual realm of the Sun; he himself could behold them when he looked upward to the Sun with the eye of seership. And he proclaimed to his people the nature of these forces which, although in the meantime they are discoverable in the spiritual world alone, are yet destined in the future to descend to Earth. Such was Zarathustra's prophecy of the great Sun Spirit of Spirit of Light (Ahura Mazdao, Ormuzd, the Aura of the Sun.) To Zarathustra and his disciples the Spirit of Light revealed Himself as the Being who from the spiritual world inclines His countenance to man and works within mankind, preparing the future. It was the Spirit revealing the nature of Christ before His appearance upon Earth, whom Zarathustra proclaimed as the Spirit of Light. In Ahriman (Angra mainyu) on the other hand, he described a Power whose influence, if man blindly gives himself up to it, works harmfully upon the life of soul. This Power is none other than the one described above, who had attained particular dominion on the Earth since the betrayal of the Vulcan secrets.

Together with his message of the God of Light, Zarathustra taught also of those spiritual Beings who are revealed to the pure vision of the seer as the companions of the Light-Spirit, in contrast to the tempters who become manifest to the unpurified remnants of the clairvoyance preserved from Atlantean time. For it had to be made clear to the Persian people of that olden time, how in the soul of man, in so far as he directs his energy to doing work in the physical world, a battle is raging between the power of the God of Light and the power of His Opponent; and man had to be shown how he must bear himself, so that the Adversary may not lead him down to the abyss, but on the contrary his evil influence be turned to good by the forces of the God of Light.

[ 105 ] A third civilization-epoch of post Atlantean time was born among people who in the great migrations had eventually come together in Asia Minor and Northern Africa. It evolved among the Chaldeans, Babylonians and Assyrians on the one hand, and among the Egyptians on the other. In these people the feeling for the physical world was developed in still another way than in the ancient Persians. They had received far more than other people of the spiritual predisposition which provides the right foundation for the development of thought, of that gift of intelligence that had begun to manifest in man since later Atlantean times. It is, as we know, the essential task of post-Atlantean mankind to unfold those faculties of soul which can be gained through awakened forces of thought and mind and feeling, forces not stimulated directly by the spiritual world, but arising out of the fact that man observes the world of sense, lives his way into it and works upon it. The conquest of the physical world by his own human faculties must be regarded as the mission of post-Atlantean man. Stage by stage the conquest advances. Even in ancient India the condition of man's soul was already such as to direct his attention to this world; but he still regarded it as illusion, and his spirit inclined towards the supersensible world. The ancient Persian people made the endeavor to conquer this physical world of the senses. To a large extent, however, they still relied on forces of soul that remained to them as heritage from a time when man was able to reach right up into the supersensible world. In the peoples of the third epoch, these supersensible faculties were by then in great measure lost to the soul. Man had now to search out in the world of sense that lay around him the manifestations of the Spiritual and continue his soul's development by discovering and inventing the means of civilization in what this world provides.

As man learned to elicit from the physical world of sense the laws of the Spiritual that underlies it, the sciences came into being; and as he came to recognize and manipulate the forces of this world, arts and crafts arose; man began to have his tools and his technique. To a man of the Chaldean and Babylonian peoples the world of the senses was no longer an illusion. In its various kingdoms, in mountain and ocean, in wind and water, it was a revelation of the spiritual deeds of Powers that were there behind it, whose laws he was studying to apprehend. To the Egyptian, the Earth was a field for his labor, given to him in a condition which it was his task so to transform by his own faculties of intelligence, that it might bear the stamp of man's ascendancy. The sanctuaries which had been transplanted from Atlantis into Egypt came chiefly from the Oracle of Mercury. There were, however, also others—Venus Oracles for instance. Into all that could be nurtured in the Egyptian people from these sacred places, a new seed of civilization was implanted. This was the work of a great leader, who had been trained within the Persian Mysteries of Zarathustra. (He was the reincarnation of a disciple of the great Zarathustra.) We may call him Hermes, taking once more an historic name. What he received form the Zarathustra Mysteries, enabled Hermes to find the right way of giving guidance to the Egyptian people In their life on Earth between birth and death they had been turning their minds towards the physical world so as to recognize in it the laws and workings of the underlying Spirit-world, but their immediate vision of the latter was decidedly restricted. The spiritual world could not therefore be described to them as a world into which they might find their way while living on Earth. In place of this, however, they could be shown how in the body-free condition after death man would be living in the world of Spirit-beings who during his time on Earth appear through their counterparts in the physical and sense-perceptible realm. Hermes taught them: In so far as man employs his forces upon Earth to work in it in accordance with the aims of the Spirit Powers, he fits himself to be united with these Powers after death; and those who between birth and death have worked the most zealously in this direction, will be united with Osiris, even with the sublime Being of the Sun.

On the Chaldean and Babylonian side of this stream of civilization, the inclination of men's minds towards the physical and sensible was stronger than it was on the Egyptian. They investigated the laws of this world; and although they turned their gaze from the sense-perceptible images or prototypes to the spiritual archetypes, these peoples remained in many ways entangled in the world of sense. Instead of the Spirit of the star, the star itself was placed in the foreground; instead of other Spirit-beings, their earthly images or idols. It was only the leaders who attained genuine and deep knowledge of the laws of the supersensible world and of its connection with the sensible. More so than anywhere else did a contrast make itself felt here between the wisdom of the Initiates and the mistaken beliefs of the people.

[ 106 ] Utterly different were the conditions that prevailed in those regions of Southern Europe and Western Asia where the fourth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization grew and blossomed. We may define it as the Graeco-Latin epoch. In these countries, descendants of human beings from the most diverse regions of the more ancient world had come together. Here were Oracle-sanctuaries, successors to the various Atlantean Oracles. Here too were men who inherited as a natural gift fragments of old clairvoyance, and others who by special training could with comparative ease attain the same. At select places not only were the traditions of the old Initiates preserved, but worthy successors to them arose, and the disciples who were trained by these were able to rise to high levels of seership. Moreover these people had in them an impulse to create within the world of sense a realm which should express the spiritual in the physical in perfect form. Among many other things, Greek Art was an outcome of this impulse. We have only to look with the eye of the spirit at a Grecian temple, and we can perceive how in this wonder-work of Art the sense-perceptible material has been so formed and fashioned by man that in its every detail it gives expression to the spiritual. The Grecian temple is a veritable “home of the spirit.” In its forms we behold what can otherwise be apprehended only by the spirit-vision of one who sees the supersensible. A temple of Zeus (or Jupiter) was so formed as to present to the outer eye a visible worthy abode for what the Guardian of the Zeus (or Jupiter) Initiation saw with the eye of the spirit. And it is the same with all the Art of Greece. The wisdom-treasures of the Initiates flowed by mysterious paths into the poets, artists and thinkers. In the cosmologies and philosophic edifices of the Greek thinkers we find again the secrets of the Initiates, in the form of concepts and ideas.

Manifold influences of the spiritual life—secrets of Asiatic and African places of Initiation—found their way into these peoples and their leaders. The great teachers of India, the associates of Zarathustra, the followers of Hermes, had all of them trained up disciples; and these disciples, or their successors, now founded places of Initiation in which the old wisdom-treasures came to life again in a new form. Such were the “Mysteries” of antiquity. Here pupils were prepared, so as to be brought in due time into those states of consciousness where they could attain vision into the spiritual world. (Some details concerning these Mysteries of antiquity will be found in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact. More will also be said about them in later chapters of the present work.) From these centers of Initiation flowed treasures of wisdom to those who in Asia Minor, in Greece and in Italy guarded the spiritual secrets. Within the Grecian world important centers of Initiation arose in the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries. In the Pythagorean School of Wisdom the mighty wisdom-teachings and methods of primeval times worked on. Pythagoras himself had in course of his great journeys been initiated into the secrets of the most diverse Mysteries.

[ 107 ] In post-Atlantean time the life of man between birth and death has had its influence also on the body-free condition after death. The more man turned his interest to the physical world, the greater was the possibility for Ahriman to find his way into the soul during earthly life, and then maintain his power over it after death. In the peoples of ancient Indian the danger was as yet very slight. During their life on Earth they had felt the world of the physical senses as an illusion; thereby they withdrew themselves after death from the power of Ahriman. The danger was correspondingly greater for the ancient Persian people, who in the time between birth and death had turned their gaze with interest upon the physical world. They would all too readily have fallen a prey to the snares of Ahriman, had not Zarathustra, with his teaching of the God of Light , impressed it so earnestly upon them that behind the world of the physical senses is the world of the Spirits of Light. According to the measure of what their souls received of the whole world-of-ideas which these teachings were capable of arousing, in such measure did they withdraw themselves from the clutches of Ahriman during earthly life and therewith also for their life after death, in which they would have to prepare themselves for a new life on Earth. In Earthly life the power of Ahriman misleads man into regarding the sense-perceptible, physical existence as the one and only reality, thus shutting himself off entirely from any kind of outlook into a spiritual world. In the spiritual world, Ahriman brings man to complete isolation, leading him to center all his interest upon himself alone. Men who at death are in the power of Ahriman are born again as egoists.

[ 108 ] In the spiritual science of our time, life between death and a new birth can be portrayed, such as it is when Ahriman's influence has to a certain extent been overcome. It has been so described by the present writer in other works, and in the first chapters of this book. And it is important that this should be done, so that man may be shown what he can indeed experience in yonder form of existence if he has gained the clarity of spiritual vision to behold what is actually present there. Whether a given individual experiences more or less, will depend upon how far he can overcome the Ahrimanic influence. Man is gradually approaching more nearly to what he can be in the spiritual world. How this, that he can be, is marred by other influences, must none the less be clearly envisaged when we are studying mankind's evolutionary course.

[ 109 ] Among the Egyptian people Hermes saw to it that men should prepare themselves during earthly life for communion with the Spirit of Light. In that time, however, the interests of men between birth and death were already such that they were able only to a slight extent to look through the veil of the physical. Consequently, the spiritual vision of their souls was apt to remain clouded after death. Their perception of the World of Light was dim.

But the overclouding of the spiritual world after death came to a climax for the souls who passed into the body-free condition out of a body of the Graeco-Latin culture. In earthly life they had cultivated the physical life of the senses so that it blossomed forth under their hands. In so doing they had condemned themselves to a shadow-like existence after death. Hence the Greek felt life after death as an existence of the Shades. It is no empty phrase but a real feeling of the truth when the Hero of that time, devoted to the healthy life of the senses, exclaims: “Better to be a beggar upon Earth than a king in the realm of Shades.” All this was still more marked in those of the Asiatic peoples who had in their very reverence and worship concentrated on the sensual images alone instead of on the spiritual archetypes. Such was indeed the situation of a great part of mankind during the Graeco-Latin epoch. The fact is here brought home to us that man's mission in post-Atlantean time—the conquest of the physical world—could not but lead to his estrangement from the spiritual world—could not but lead to his estrangement from the spiritual world. Thus is greatness on the one hand necessarily bound up with decline upon the other.

Man's connection with the spiritual world was meantime nurtured in the Mysteries. There the Initiates were able to special states of soul to receive revelations from the spiritual world. In greater or less degree, they were successors to the Atlantean Guardians of the Oracles. To them was unveiled what had been veiled by the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. Lucifer concealed from man all that of the spiritual world which had, until the middle of the Atlantean time, been pouring into the human astral body without any participation on his part. If the life-body had not been partially separated from the physical, man could have experienced within him this region of the spiritual world as an inner revelation of the soul. Owing to the Luciferian intervention it was only in special states of soul that he could do so. A spiritual world then appeared to him in the garment of the astral. The Beings of this world revealed themselves in forms that possessed the members only of man's higher nature, and made manifest in these, in astrally visible pictures, their several spiritual virtues. Superhuman Beings revealed themselves to man in this way.

After the intervention of Ahriman another kind of Initiation was added. Ahriman had, since the middle of the Atlantean epoch, veiled all that of the spiritual world which would, but for his intervention, have appeared behind the perceptions of the physical senses. This was now unveiled to the Initiates, inasmuch as they practiced in their souls all the faculties man had acquired since that time, beyond the measure needed for bringing about the clear impressions of the physical and sense-perceptible world. It was revealed to them that spiritual Powers underlay the forces of Nature. They could tell of spiritual Beings behind outer Nature. It was given them to behold the divine creative Powers underlying the forces that are at work in the realms of Nature beneath man. All that had worked on from Saturn, Sun and Moon, forming man's physical body, life-body and astral body, as well as the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of Nature—all this made up the content of one kind of Mystery-secrets. These were the secrets over which Ahriman held his hand. What had led, on the other hand, to the sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul, was made manifest in a second kind of Mystery-secrets. But there was something of which the Mysteries could only tell prophetically, namely that in the fullness of time a human being would appear with an astral body such that, in spite of Lucifer, the Light-world of the Spirit and the Sun would come to consciousness in him through the life-body, apart from any special states of soul. And the physical body of this human being would be such that for him the realms of the spiritual world which Ahriman is able to conceal until physical death occurs would become manifest. Physical death can alter nothing in this human beings' life, will have no power over it. In such a human being the I shines forth with so strong a radiance that even in his physical life the spiritual comes to full manifestation. Such a being is the bearer of the Spirit of Light, to whom the Initiates had two ways of ascent, in that they were led in special states of soul either to the spirit of the superhuman realm or to the very essence of the powers of external Nature. Inasmuch as they foretold that in course of time such a human being would appear, the Initiates in the Mysteries were prophets of the Christ.

[ 110 ] One particular prophet in this sense arose within a nation who possessed by natural inheritance the qualities of the peoples of Western Asia, and by education the teachings also of the Egyptians. This was the nation of the Israelites, and the prophet to whom we refer was Moses. So abundantly had the influences of Initiation been received by Moses that in certain states of soul the Being revealed himself to him who had undertaken, from the Moon, a long while ago in the normal course of Earth's evolution, the function of shaping human consciousness. In thunder and lightning Moses recognized not mere physical phenomena but the manifestations of this Spirit. And at the same time the other kind of Mysteries had also worked upon his soul. These enabled him to behold in astral visions the Superhuman, and perceive how it becomes the human through the I. Thus He who was to come revealed Himself to Moses from two sides, as the highest form of the I.

[ 111 ] With Christ there appeared in human form and figure what the high Being of the Sun had prepared as the great pattern for humanity on Earth. And with this Appearance, all the wisdom of the Mysteries had in a certain respect to assume a new form. Hitherto this wisdom had existed only to enable man to bring himself into a state of soul where he could behold the realm of the Sun Spirit beyond the confines of Earthly evolution. From now on, the wisdom-contents of the Mysteries had a different mission; they had to make man capable of recognizing Christ-become-Man, and then of learning to understand—from this center of all wisdom—both the natural and the spiritual worlds.

[ 112 ] In the moment of His life when His astral body had within it all that which is capable of being veiled by the Luciferian intervention, Christ Jesus began to come forward as a Teacher of mankind. From this moment on, the possibility was implanted in human evolution of receiving the wisdom whereby the physical goal of Earth can gradually be attained. And in the moment when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled, another faculty was instilled into mankind—the faculty whereby the influence of Ahriman can be turned to good. Out of his lie on Earth man can henceforth take with him through the Gate of Death that which will free him from isolation in the spiritual world. Not only for the physical evolution of mankind is the Event of Palestine the center and focal point; the same is true for the other worlds to which man belongs. When the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, when the Death on the Cross had been suffered, then did the Christ appear in the world where the souls of men sojourn after death, and set limits to the power of Ahriman. And from this moment on, the region which the Greeks had called the “realm of Shades” was shot through by a spiritual lightning-flash announcing to its dwellers that Light was now returning to it again. What was achieved for the physical world through the mystery of Golgotha shed its light also into the spiritual world.

Hitherto the post-Atlantean evolution of mankind had meant for the physical world an ascent—but at the same time a decline for the spiritual world. Everything that flowed into the world of the senses came from sources that had existed in the spiritual world from the most ancient times. Since the Event of Christ, human beings who lift themselves to the Christ Mystery can carry with them into the spiritual world what has been gained here in the world of the senses. And from the spiritual world it flows back again, forasmuch as the human beings, when they reincarnate, bring with them what the Christ Impulse has become for them in the spiritual world between death and new birth.

[ 113 ] All that was conferred upon human evolution through the coming of Christ, has been working in it like a seed. Only by degrees can the seed ripen. Up to the present, no more than the minutest part of the depths of the new wisdom has found its way into physical existence. We are but at the beginning of Christian evolution. In the successive epochs that have elapsed since His appearance, Christian evolution has been able to unveil only so much of its inner essence as men and nations were capable of receiving, capable also of assimilating to their power of understanding. The first form into which this recognition could be case, may be described as an all-embracing ideal of life. As such it showed itself in striking contrast to the forms of life which had evolved in contrast to the forms of life which had evolved in post-Atlanteans humanity. We have described the conditions under which the evolution of mankind had been going forward since the re-population of the Earth in the Lemurian epoch. We saw how the human beings have to be traced back in their soul nature to diverse beings who, coming down from other worlds, incarnated in the bodily descendants of the old Lemurians. The varieties of race are a consequence of this. And when the souls reincarnated, all kinds of different interests arose in them, as an outcome of their Karma. While all this was working itself out, there could not exist for man the ideal of a “universal humanity.” Mankind went forth from unity in the beginning, but Earth evolution hitherto had led to diversity. In the figure of Christ live also the forces of the sublime Being of the Sun, and in these forces every human I will find its source and its foundation. Even the Israelites still felt themselves as a nation, with each man merely as a member of the nation. As man came to understand—to begin with, purely in thought—that in Christ Jesus lives the ideal Man, unaffected by any and every tendency to separation, Christianity became the ideal of universal brotherhood. Beyond all separate interests and kinships there arose the feeling that the inmost Self of man has in every one the same origin. (Beside all earthly ancestors appear the common Father of all men. “I and the Father are One.”)

[ 114 ] In the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries A.D. a new civilization-epoch was preparing in Europe. The actual beginning of it was in the fifteenth century, and we are still living in it now. Intended as it was by slow degrees to replace the fourth, the Graeco-Latin, this is the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The peoples who after manifold wanderings and destinies came forward as the bearers of this epoch, were descended from those Atlanteans who had been least affected by what had taken place meanwhile in the four preceding epochs. They had not penetrated to the countries where the civilizations of these earlier epochs took root. They had instead transmitted the heritage of Atlantean civilizations in their own way. Among them were many who had preserved in large measure the heritage of the old dim clairvoyance—the intermediate state between waking and sleeping. Such men knew the spiritual world from their own experience and could tell their fellow-men of what goes on there. In this way there arose a world of stories about spiritual beings and events. The fairy-tales and sagas of the peoples came originally from these real experiences in the spirit; for in many human beings the dim clairvoyance lasted on into times by no means remote from the present. Others there were who, though they had lost the old clairvoyance, developed the new faculties in relation to the physical experiences of clairvoyance. And beside all this, the Atlantean Oracles also had their successors here; centers of the Mysteries were to be found on every hand. The Initiation-secret chiefly developed in these centers was of the kind that leads to the revelation of that spiritual world which Ahriman keeps hidden. The spiritual Powers underlying the elemental forces of Nature were revealed. In the mythologies of the European peoples can be found traces of what the Initiates in the Mysteries were able to make known to men. Yet these mythologies also contain the other secret, though in a less perfect form than either the Southern or Eastern Mysteries. The superhuman Beings were known in Europe too; but they were seen in perpetual warfare with the associates of Lucifer. The God of Light was indeed proclaimed, but not in such form and figure as would enable one to say with assurance that He would conquer Lucifer. Nevertheless these Mysteries too were irradiated by the figure of the Christ that was to come. Of Him it was prophesied that His Kingdom would replace the kingdom of that other God of Light. (The sagas that tell of the Twilight of the Gods, and kindred legends, originated in this knowledge of the European Mysteries.)

Influences such as these tended to produce in the man of the fifth civilization-epoch a duality of soul—a duality that has lasted on to this day and shows itself in many ways. From olden time these souls had preserved the leaning towards the spirit, yet not so strongly as to be able to maintain the inner link between the spiritual world and the world of the senses. They cherished the connection only in the devotion of the heart, in the life of feeling—not as an immediate beholding of the Supersensible. Meanwhile man's vision was increasingly directed to the world of the senses and to its conquest. And the forces of intellect awakened towards the close of the Atlantean epoch—all those forces in man, whose instrument is in the physical brain—were developed with this end in view: the understanding and the mastery of the world of the senses. Two worlds have been evolving, as it were, in the human breast.¹ The one is devoted to physical and sense-perceptible existence, the other is receptive to the revelations of the Spirit and though lacking direct vision, is ready to permeate the spiritual with feeling and emotion.

The inner tendencies to this duality of soul were already present when the Christ teaching found its way into the countries of Europe. The people received this new message of the Spirit into their hearts and drank it in with deep feeling, but could not build the bridge from it to what the intellect, directed to the senses, was discovering in outer physical existence. What we know today ad the antagonism between external science and spiritual knowledge is nothing but a consequence of this fact. The Christian mysticism of Eckhart, Tauler and others is an outcome of the permeation of heart and feeling with Christianity. The science that is directed solely to the outer world of sense and to the results that follow its application in life, is a consequence of the other tendency that lives in the soul. The achievements of our time in outer material civilization are unquestionably due to this division of tendency. Through being turned in a one-sided way towards the physical, those faculties of man whose instrument is in the brain could be so far enhanced as to make possible the science and technical civilization of today. And it was among the European peoples alone that this material civilization could originate. For they, among all the descendants of the Atlanteans, did not develop into actual faculties the inclination towards the physical world of sense until the inclination had reached maturity. Letting it slumber until then undisturbed, they lived on their inheritance of clairvoyance from Atlantis and on the communications of their Initiates. While outwardly their spiritual culture was devoted entirely to these influences, their aptitude for the material conquest of the world was all the time slowly ripening.

[ 115 ] And now, at the present time, the dawn of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch is already making itself felt. For whatever is to emerge at a certain time in human evolution, will always be slowly maturing in the preceding time. One thing can even now begin to evolve in its initial stages, namely the finding of the thread which will unite the two spheres that claim man's devotion—the material civilization, and life in the spiritual world. To this end it is necessary on the one hand that the results of spiritual seership be received and understood, and on the other, that in man's observations and experiences of the sense-world the revelations of the Spirit be recognized. The sixth civilization-epoch will bring to full development the harmony between the two.

Herewith the studies in this book have reached a point where we may turn from the perspectives of the past to those of the future. But it will be better to precede the latter by a study of the Knowledge of Higher Worlds and of Initiation. Then, after this study and in connection with it, we shall be able to indicate in brief the outlook for the future, in so far as that can be done within the framework of this book.

• 1. The term ‘spiritual science’ is here used—as will be evident from the whole context—with the same meaning as ‘Occult Science’—that is to say, the Science of the Supersensible.
• 1. If one wanted to express more precisely the inner experience one has in spiritual investigation, one would have to say not “Saturn was surrounded by an atmosphere” but “when the supersensible consciousness becomes aware of Saturn, there also appears before it an atmosphere of Saturn,” or “other Beings appear, of such and such kind.” To translate this into the wording ”this or that is there” is assuredly permissible, for in the last resort the very same change is made in applying the ordinary usages of speech to what the soul experiences in sense-perception. This point should nevertheless be borne in mind throughout the following description. It is indeed implicitly contained in the context.
• 1. The gas appears to supersensible consciousness through the light-effects which it sends forth. Hence we might also speak of forms of light presenting themselves to spiritual vision.
• 1. See the volume entitled Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man, published in 1959 by Rudolf Steiner Publications Inc., Englewood, New Jersey, U.S.A. The title of the corresponding volume in German is Aus der Akasha Chronik. (Note by Translators.)
• 1. An allusion to the line in Goethe's Faust: “Two souls, alas, reside within my breast.”

Let us transport ourselves in imagination toRammenau in Oberlausitz, a spot not far from Kamenz in Saxony, the birthplace of Lessing. The year is 1769. A house of no great size stands beside a brook. The generations inhabiting this house, as records show, had been engaged in the ribbon-weaving industry, from father to son, ever since the period of the Thirty Years' War. The standard of life prevailing at this time in the house was not even as high as tolerable comfort, indeed it was very near to poverty. By the brook that flowed past the house, in this year of 1769, stood a seven-year-old boy, fairly small, rather sturdily built for his age, with red cheeks and expressive eyes, that at this moment were showing signs of deep distress. The boy had just thrown into the brook a book that was floating away. At this juncture his father appeared on the scene from the house and must have spoken to the boy more or less to the following effect: “Why, Gottlieb, whatever are you thinking of? You are flinging into the water what your father bought for you with hard-earned money to give you pleasure!” The father was very angry, for just before this he had given the book as a present to his son Gottlieb, who till then had had no acquaintance with books apart from the Bible and the hymn book.—Now what had really happened? Hitherto young Gottlieb had received with the most serious attention whatever had been taught him of the contents of the Bible and hymn book, and he was a boy good at his lessons at school. Wishing to please him, his father bought him one day for a present the book of folk tales called Der Gehörnte Siegfried (The Horned Siegfried). Gottlieb plunged deeply into the study of this book, with the result that he had to be scolded for his forgetfulness and inattention to all his lessons, which he had till then found so interesting. That went to the boy's heart. He was so fond of the Gehörnte Siegfried, his newly acquired book; it aroused in him such deep interest and sympathy. But on the other hand this thought was vividly present to his mind: “You have neglected your duty.” Such were the thoughts in the mind of the seven-year-old boy. So he went off to the brook and forthwith flung the book into the water. He was punished for it, because though he could tell his father the facts, he could not explain the real underlying reason.

Let us now follow the boy Gottlieb at this stage of his life into other situations. For instance, we catch sight of him one afternoon on a lonely moor far away from his parents' house, standing there from 4 o'clock onwards and gazing into the distance, utterly absorbed in the view of the solitary spaces surrounding him. And thus he was still standing at five and at six o'clock and even when the bell sounded for evensong. Then a shepherd came by, and seeing the boy standing there, gave him a cuff and told him to come along home.

Two years after this time, in 1771, Baron von Miltitz was visiting the landowner in Rammenau. He had come over from his own estate in Oberau one Sunday, in order to dine with the neighbouring squires and enjoy their society; and before the meal he had intended to hear the morning sermon. However, he arrived too late to hear the clergyman of Rammenau, well known to him as a worthy man; for much to his regret the sermon was already over. When the visitors, his host and the other persons present were talking amongst themselves about this, somebody made the suggestion: “Oh there is a boy in the village who might perhaps repeat the sermon by heart; it is known that he can do so.” And so Gottlieb, now nine years of age, was fetched, and came along in his blue peasant smock. A few questions were put to him which he answered briefly with “yes” and “no.” He felt very ill at ease in this high-class society. Then it was suggested to him to repeat the sermon which he had heard just before. He paused to meditate and then, speaking as it were from the depth of his soul, as if he felt intimately every word, he repeated from beginning to end the sermon which he had heard, in the presence of the visiting landowner and the company. And he repeated it in such a way that all felt as if everything that he said were proceeding directly out of his own heart; he seemed to have so imbibed it that it had become part of himself. Thus with inward fire and animation, which increased as he went on, the nine-year-old Gottlieb recited the whole sermon. ... This nine-year-old Gottlieb was the son of Christian Fichte, the ribbon-weaver. The landowner von Miltitz was profoundly astonished at this experience, and declared that he must himself take charge of the boy's education. In view of the straitened circumstances of the boy's parents, the relief from such a responsibility was bound to be extremely welcome to them, even though they deeply loved the boy. For after Gottlieb many other children had come, till they were now a large family; and so they had no choice but to grasp the helping hand which Baron von Miltitz so generously offered. And Baron von Miltitz was so strongly impressed by his encounter with the boy that he wanted to take young Gottlieb away with him immediately. And so he took him away to his own home at Oberau near Meissen. ... Young Gottlieb, however, felt by no means at home in the mansion, which formed so great a contrast with everything to which he had been accustomed in the poor ribbon-weaver's cottage. He felt indeed altogether unhappy over the whole affair, till he was sent to Niederau nearby to a clergyman named Leberecht Krebel. And there Gottlieb grew up in an environment full of intimacy and affection, in the household of this excellent minister Krebel. With his unusual gifts the boy found himself deeply attracted by all the gleams of truth which he divined in his talks with the worthy pastor. And when Gottlieb reached the age of thirteen he was able, with the support of his benefactor, to enter the Schulpforta School.

He was transferred to the strict discipline of Schulpforta, which did not by any means suit him. He observed that the manner in which the pupils lived together involved much concealment towards the teachers and officials, and much duplicity in behaviour. Further he was altogether out of harmony with the system by which the older boys were set in authority over the younger as prefects. Gottlieb had already at that time absorbed Robinson Crusoe and many other tales, and had been influenced by them. At first this school life seemed intolerable to him. He could not reconcile it with his conscience that there should be—as he felt—concealment, duplicity, deceit in any place intended to promote spiritual growth. What was to be done? He resolved to escape secretly into the world outside. Accordingly, he made ready and simply ran away. On the way there arose in his mind, prompted by his innermost feelings, the thought: “Have you done right? ought you to do this?” Where should he now turn for counsel? He fell upon his knees, addressed a prayer to Heaven and waited for a sign to be given him from the spiritual worlds as to what he should do. The sign from within urged him to turn back, and he willingly did so. Very fortunately there was then at Schulpforta an unusually sympathetic headmaster, by name Geisler, who persuaded young Gottlieb to relate the whole affair to him and showed deep understanding. Instead of punishing him, he even made it possible for Gottlieb to be on happier terms with himself and his environment, as happy indeed as he could wish. He was able also to make friends with the most gifted among the staff.

It was not easy for him to obtain satisfaction for his intellectual needs. Already aspiring, even at that age, towards the highest, he was not free to study the authors of whom he had heard so much; for Goethe, Schiller, and in particular also Lessing, were at that period forbidden fruit at Schulpforta. However, there was one of the masters who obtained for him a remarkable book, Lessing's Anti-Goeze, that inspired polemic against Goeze, which contained the whole substance of Lessing's profession of faith, his lofty and valiant outlook, expressed in free and outspoken language.

Thus Gottlieb in these early years imbibed from this Anti-Goeze all that it was able to give him. It was not only the ideas which he appropriated, indeed that was the least important part; he also made his own the manner of approach towards the highest things and the attitude towards various views of the world.

And so Gottlieb's schooldays went by at Schulpforta. When he had to write his examination thesis on leaving, he chose a literary subject. It was a remarkable piece of work. It was altogether lacking in the quality characteristic of many young people who introduce all kinds of philosophical ideas into their school compositions. This essay contained no trace of philosophy or of philosophical ideas and notions. On the other hand it already betrayed the fact that the young man made it his special aim to observe human beings, to look into the depth of their heart; and it was this acquired knowledge of men which found expression above all in this school essay.

In the meantime his benefactor Baron von Miltitz had died. The funds so generously supplied for the young man stopped. Fichte passed his final examination at Schulpforta, went to Jena, and had to live there in the direst poverty. He could take no share at all in anything that then made up the student life of Jena. Day by day he had to earn by hard toil what he required for his bare subsistence. And he could only find in rare hours the opportunity of nourishing the aspirations of his spirit. Jena proved to be too small, so that Fichte was unable to find his spiritual food there. It struck him that he would have better facilities at Leipzig, a larger city, and went there to try. He tried to prepare himself there for the situation in life which was the ideal of his father and mother, deeply god-fearing people; namely for the Saxon ministry, for a post as minister and preacher. Indeed one may say he had shown himself predestined for the office of preacher. He had proved so capable of assimilating the truths of Holy Writ that even in his father's house he was frequently invited to make comments on this or that passage in the Bible, and similarly while he was living with the good clergyman Leberecht Krebel. And whenever he was able to visit his home for a short time, in the place which contained his parents' unpretentious cottage, he was allowed to preach there, for the local minister was a friend of his. And he would preach in such a way, prompted as it were by a sacred enthusiasm, that what he was able to impart was the very word of God, in a version that was at once individual and yet altogether in conformity with the Bible itself.

So he went on trying, at Leipzig, to train himself for his calling as a country pastor. But it proved difficult. It was hard for him to secure any teaching position which he thought himself able to fill. He occupied himself with correcting work, with tutoring, but this life became very hard for him. And above all he found himself in the course of it unable to make any progress with his own intellectual aims. He was already twenty-six, and these were hard times for him. One day he had no more resources left and no prospect of securing anything during the next few days; no prospect either that, if things were to go on in the same way, he could ever secure entry to even the most modest profession which he had set himself as an aim. His people at home could support him only to a very meagre extent; for, as I have said, it was a family abundantly blessed with children.

And so one day he stood at the edge of an abyss and in his soul, like a desperate temptation, the question arose: “Have I no prospects for this life of mine?” Though it may not have been quite present to his consciousness, yet in the background of his mind was the idea of a voluntary death. Then, just at the opportune moment, appeared the writer Weisse, who had become one of his friends. Weisse offered him a post as tutor at Zurich and took steps to ensure that he should really be able to take up this post within three months. And so from the autumn of 1788 onwards we find our Fichte at Zurich. Let us try once more to picture him with the mind's eye, as he stood in the pulpit in the Zurich Minster, now completely possessed with his own conception of the Gospel of St. John, already quite intent on the endeavour to reproduce the teachings of the Bible in a form of his own. He did this in such a way that those who heard his inspiring words resound through the Zurich Cathedral must have thought that a man had arisen who was capable of rendering the scriptures with quite a new eloquence, in a new way, with a fresh inspiration. Many, doubtless, who heard him then in the Cathedral at Zurich, must have carried away this impression.

And now we can follow him again into a new situation. He became a tutor in the Ott household, in the inn “Zum Schwert” at Zurich. There he encountered a peculiar narrow-minded outlook to which he could only partially adapt himself. He succeeded in getting on good terms with his pupil, but less so with the parents. And we can trace what Fichte really was in the following incident. One day the pupil's mother received a singular letter from her son's tutor, who was living in the house. What were the contents of this letter? Roughly as follows. Education was a task, the writer said, to which he, Fichte, would willingly lend himself. What he knew of his pupil gave him an assured prospect of being able to do great things with him. But the process of his education would have to be developed in one particular point: it was essential above all to educate his mother! For a mother who behaved in such a way towards a pupil was the greatest obstacle to any education under her roof! I need not dwell upon the peculiar feelings with which Frau Ott read this epistle. However, the incident was passed over, and up to the spring of 1790, that is for about eighteen months, Fichte was able to pursue a fruitful activity in the Ott household at Zurich.

But Fichte was not by any means the man to circumscribe within the limits of his profession the thoughts which filled his soul. It was not in his nature to avert his attention from the spiritual processes taking place around him. Through his inner zeal and the close interest he felt for all the spiritual changes going on around him, he became closely absorbed also in what was going on in his own environment. There in Switzerland his thoughts turned to the ideas which were then filling the minds of all men, to the mental reactions provoked by the outbreak of the French Revolution. We can, so to speak, overhear him discussing at Olten, whenever he found any specially gifted people to talk to, the questions which were then dominating France and the world with their imperious significance; making up his mind that those were the ideas which deserved primary attention, and associating all the preoccupations derived from his deep religious feeling and acute intellect with the new ideas of human happiness, human rights and the high ideals of humanity.

Fichte was no egoist, capable only of developing his soul rigidly from within. This soul of his grew in communion with the outer world. His soul knew unconsciously the duty of existing for something beyond one's self, of standing as a personification of the world's purpose in the age in which one lives. That was one of Fichte's deepest convictions. And thus, just at the period when his spirit was most sensitively aware of the processes at work in his environment, he developed in close communion with the Swiss element. And we always find that this German-Swiss element left a permanent mark on the whole personality of Fichte in his later life and work.

It is necessary to understand the deep-seated difference between Swiss life, and life a little further north, in Germany, in order to grasp the impression which the Swiss environment, the Swiss character and endeavour made upon Fichte. For example, this Swiss element is distinguished from other forms of German life especially by the way in which it infuses a kind of self-conscious element into all the intellectual life, so that all cultural activity acquires a political expression; everything is so conceived that the current conceptions serve to put the individual into touch with immediate action, with the world. For this German-Swiss character art, science, literature are only separate tributaries of the whole river of life.

It was this element which appealed so happily to Fichte's own spiritual character. He too was a man who could not conceive any human activity or any human endeavour in isolation. For him too every individual factor had to be linked with the entirety of man's action, meditation and feeling and with man's whole philosophy. Moreover, in Fichte his capacity for achievement was intimately linked with his ever unfolding personality. No one who reads Fichte to-day, who approaches those writings of his which often seem so arid in their substance, or those particular writings and treatises which radiate intelligence, can have any notion of what Fichte must have been when he poured into his discourse, upon a cause which he deeply felt and espoused, all his inner fire and intensity. For into his discourse there passed also what he was. He even attempted at that time—it was an abortive attempt—to establish at Zurich a school of public speaking. For he believed that through the manner in which spiritual things are set before men a different and more effective influence could be exerted than merely through the ideas themselves, however excellent these may be.

At Zurich, in the household of a Swiss named Rahn, then well-to-do, a brother-in-law of Klopstock, Fichte found stimulating society which made a strong impression upon him. He formed a deep attachment to the daughter, Johanna Rahn. With this niece of Klopstock he formed a close intimacy, at first a friendship, which developed gradually into love. By now his position as tutor at Zurich was no longer really tenable, and he needed to look further afield. He did not want at that moment, before he had made his way in the world—as he frequently remarked at the time—to enter the Rahn household as a member of it, and perhaps live on its resources. He wanted to make his way further in the world—with him we cannot say his “fortune”—but his way.

He returned again to Germany, to Leipzig. He thought of remaining there for a while, hoping to find what his real vocation might be, to find that form of spiritual expression which he sought as his object in life. He intended then to return after a while, to work out in freedom what he had brought into harmony within himself. But then an unexpected event happened which upset all his plans. Disaster overtook Rahn, for he lost his whole fortune. Fichte was now not only tormented by the knowledge that the people dearest to him had sunk into poverty, but he himself was compelled to resume his wanderings through the world, abandoning the cherished plans which he had nursed in his innermost heart.

The first thing that offered was a post as tutor at Warsaw. However, as soon as he arrived and presented himself there, the aristocratic lady whose house he was to enter formed the impression that Fichte's manners, which then and subsequently struck many people as downright and vigorous, were really uncouth and that he had no talent for adapting himself to social life. When this was pointed out to him, he could not endure it and took his departure.

His way now led him to that place where he might expect to find a man whom he revered more than anybody, not only among his contemporaries but in his whole generation, towards whom he had been drawn when for a while he was immersed in the study of Spinoza and his philosophy; a man towards whom he had been drawn while studying his writings, with which he was now wholly in accord. As at an earlier date his thoughts were filled with the Bible and other works, so now the writings of this man, Immanuel Kant, confronted him as a new creation. So he made his way to Königsberg and sat at the feet of the great teacher. And he found himself altogether in harmony with the image reflected in his soul of this teaching, which he held to be the greatest ever bestowed upon mankind. And in Fichte's soul, all the ideas derived from his own devout nature, from his meditation on the divine guidance of the world and on the way in which the mysteries of this guidance have been revealed throughout eternity to mankind—all this was blended with what he learned and heard from Kant. And he projected all that arose in his soul into a work which he entitled Kritik aller Offenbarung (A Critique of all Revelation). This was in 1792, when Fichte was thirty years of age. Then a remarkable thing happened. Kant immediately recommended a publisher for the book, which aroused his enthusiasm. It went out into the world without the author's name, and nobody supposed it to be anything but a work by Immanuel Kant himself. Thus favourable criticisms were showered upon it from every quarter. Meanwhile Fichte, again through Kant's intervention, had secured in the excellent Krockov household near Danzig a tutoring post which this time was very congenial to him, and in which he could freely cultivate his spiritual aspirations; and it was intolerable to him so to appear before the world that the public, when discussing his book, in fact associated it with another author. He could not endure that; and when the first edition, which was soon exhausted, was followed by a second, he published his name. And now he had a singular experience. A great many critics at least found it impossible to say the exact contrary of what they had said before; but the judgment at first passed upon the book was now toned down. This was for Fichte yet another lesson in his study of human psychology.

After he had spent some time in the Krockov household he felt able, in view of his present status in the world, not indeed in a mundane sense, but intellectually—for he had proved that he was capable of something—he felt able to prepare for his return to the Rahn household. Only thus had he resolved to win Klopstock's niece, and now he could do so. So in 1793 he went back again to Zurich, and Klopstock's niece became his wife.

He set to work now, with the utmost intensity, not only to develop in himself the ideas he had assimilated from Kant, but also to immerse himself more deeply in all that had occupied his mind during his first stay at Zurich, in all those ideas about the aims and ideals of humanity which were now permeating the world. And he mingled the substance of his own thoughts about human ideals and endeavours with the ideas now passing through the world. He was so independent a nature that he could not refrain from communicating to the world his inevitable conclusions on the ideas about human progress then held by the most radical thinkers. The book now published by him in 1793 was entitled: Beiträge zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische Revolution (Suggestions for the Enlightenment of Public Opinion on the French Revolution).

Simultaneously with the elaboration of this book there went on in his mind a perpetual revision of those views of the world which he had formed for himself from contact with the outlook of Kant. There must be, he said to himself, a philosophy of life which, in the light of a supreme impulse, could illuminate the whole domain of knowledge for the human mind. And this philosophy, aspiring so strongly towards the highest that no higher ideal of knowledge could ever be found, was the ideal which now hovered before Fichte's eyes.

By a singular concatenation of circumstances, while he was still engaged in working out his ideas within himself, he received a message from Jena. The impression made there by Fichte's achievement was such that on the strength of it he was invited, when Karl Leonhard Reinhold resigned his post at Jena University, to succeed him there as Professor of Philosophy. Those who were then directing the intellectual life in that University welcomed with the utmost satisfaction the idea of introducing into this famous College (then the highest in prestige of any in Germany) the remarkable personality who, while in one aspect he struck them as a hot-head, in another made the impression of a man striving, especially in his quest for a philosophy of life, towards the highest levels of thought.

And now let us just attempt to view him in imagination as he discharges the duties of his new appointment. He desired to transmit to those who now from 1794 onwards were his pupils, the outlook on the world which had formed itself within him. But Fichte was not a teacher like any other. Let us first consider the results of his spiritual evolution. It would take too long to explain this in his own words, but it can be characterized out of his own spirit as follows. He aspired towards a supreme ideal of such a kind that the human spirit might apprehend the stream and mystery of the world at a point where the spirit is directly one with this stream and mystery. So that man gazing into this mystery of the universe might be able to link his own existence with it, that is to say, to know it. This result could not be attained in any exterior sensuous existence. It could not be reached by any eye, any ear, any other sense, nor by everyday human understanding either. For all that can be apprehended outwardly by the senses must first be co-ordinated by human intelligence; it has its existence in the outer world. It can only be considered as real when its existence is, so to speak, confirmed by the observations of the senses. But that is no real existence; or at least no opinion can be formed at first about the real existence of what is only apprehended by the senses. The source of all knowing must rise in the depth of the Ego itself. That cannot be a something complete in its existence, for a completed existence in the inner self would be equal to what appears as completed existence within the outer senses. It must be a creating reality. This is the Ego itself, that Ego which recreates itself every moment, that Ego which is grounded not on a completed being, but on an inward activity. This Ego cannot be deprived of its being, since that being consists in its creation; in its self-creation. And into this self-creation flows everything that has real being. Away then with this Self out of the world of the senses, and into those spheres where the spirit moves and has its being, where the spirit works as creator; we must lay hold of this spiritual life and act from the point where the Ego unites with the spiritual processes of the world. We must plunge into that current which is not external complete being, but which from the source of the divine world- existence creates the Ego, first as Ego and then as human ideals, as the great conceptions of Duty.

Such was the form which the Kantian philosophy had assumed in Fichte's soul. And thus he did not want to present his hearers with a ready-made doctrine; with that this man was not concerned. With Fichte it was not a lecture like another lecture, a doctrine like another doctrine. No; when this man took his place at the lecturer's desk, then what he had to say there, or rather to do there, was the fruit of a long meditation of many hours during which in thought he saw inwardly the divine being, the divine spiritual ebb and flow streaming through the world, and permeating in its course the Ego which ever recreates itself, by a sublime process above and beyond all sensuous existence. After having brooded long in self-imposed debate as to what the world's spirit had to impart to the soul about world mysteries, then, and only then, did he come before his audience. But then he was not concerned to convey his message, but to create an atmosphere of communion between himself and his hearers. His endeavour was that what had come to life in his soul concerning the world mysteries should come to life likewise spontaneously in the souls of his listeners. His purpose was to awaken spiritual activity and spiritual being. From the souls of his hearers, as they hung upon his words, he sought to call forth a self-renewing spiritual activity. He did not merely communicate ideas. The following is an instance of what he sought to give to his hearers; one day he was attempting to illustrate this self-renewing faculty of the Ego, how all mental activity can arise in the Ego and how man can only reach a real grasp of world mysteries by laying hold of this self-renewing faculty within himself; and when he was attempting to illustrate this, entering the spiritual world with his hearers, and, as it were, taking each one by the hand to guide him into the spiritual world, he said: “Now may I ask you just to fix your attention for a moment upon the wall. Well, you have now, I hope, formed a mental picture of the wall. The wall is now present in your minds as an image. And now think of a person thinking of the wall. Detach your minds altogether from any thought of the wall itself. Fix your attention entirely on the person thinking of the wall.”

This direct manner, this direct relation which Fichte sought to establish with his hearers made many of them uneasy, but at the same time impressed them profoundly. The spirit at work in Fichte had to come to grips with the spirit of his hearers.

Thus for several years the man worked on, never repeating the same lecture, but continually creating anew. For he did not care about imparting in sentences this or that information, but strove ever and again to awaken a new response in his hearers. This is evident from his oft-repeated assertion: “It matters nothing that what I have to say to men should be repeated by this person or that, but rather the essential is that I succeed in kindling a flame in men's souls, a flame which shall induce every one to think for himself. Let no one repeat my words after me, but let each one be stimulated by me to deliver his own message.” Fichte's aim was to produce, not pupils, but original thinkers. If we follow out the history of Fichte's influence, we can understand how it was that this man, the most German of the German philosophers, did not train any real students of philosophy. He founded no school of philosophy. But the direct relationship which he established with his pupils again and again produced men of mark.

Now Fichte was aware—inevitably, since he sought to lead the minds of men up to a direct contact with creative spiritual reality—he was aware that he must speak in quite a special way. Fichte's whole style was indeed hard to follow. None of those who attended any of his courses at Jena had ever come into contact with such teaching before. Schiller himself was astonished at it, and Fichte once discussed with Schiller how his, Fichte's, teaching activity and his manner of presentation appeared to himself. For example, Fichte remarked; “Of course, if people just read what I have said, then it is impossible, as people read to-day, that they should comprehend what I am trying to say.” Then, taking up one of his books, he attempted to illustrate how, in his judgment, his work should be read aloud. Then he said to Schiller: “You see, people nowadays do not know how to recite inwardly. But people can only grasp the inner meaning of my lectures by really reciting them mentally, otherwise it is lost.” Certainly Fichte's own rendering of his lectures was no mere reading, it was direct speech itself. Therefore even to-day we ought in studying Fichte to recite his words mentally against the background, as it were, of his whole spiritual life, which merits our attention as representing the spiritual life of the whole German people. Even to-day we ought still to train ourselves in reciting and listening inwardly to those passages of Fichte which otherwise seem so dry and so bare.

We have now reviewed in our minds Fichte's spiritual development and reached one of the peaks of his spiritual life. It is right therefore to glance back for a moment over this remarkable evolution. We first visualised Fichte as he stood before Baron von Miltitz in his blue peasant smock, a sturdy red-cheeked peasant boy who had no other education than that open to his class, but who, even as a nine-year-old child, had assimilated that education till it had become the most fundamental possession of his soul. In him we have an example of a soul grown to maturity wholly out of the midst of the German people, without at first receiving any culture other than that which belongs to the common every-day life of the German people. We have followed this spirit through difficult phases; this spirit—whose ideal it really is to remain within the people, but yet is bound to yield to the deepest motives of his being—can be followed in his course as he rises to the loftiest heights of inner spiritual growth and work, until at last he becomes, as we have been able to illustrate, a moulder of men. We are following the road traversed by a German spirit growing directly out of the people and climbing by its own strength alone to the topmost peaks of spiritual being.

Thus up to the spring of 1799 Fichte discharged the duties of his teaching post at Jena. Even before that time all sorts of dissensions had arisen, for it must be admitted that Fichte was not by any means the kind of man who is easy in intercourse, the kind of man willing for the sake of friendly relations to use roundabout methods and facile gestures in his dealings with other people. But here we come to an important point, which has significance for the whole of the German life of that epoch.

One person in particular felt deep satisfaction—a feeling which Goethe also shared—at having been able to call Fichte to his University at Jena: this person was the Duke, Karl August. And we may well, I think, record here the singular tolerance shown by Karl August in calling to his University the man who had most freely applied the Kantian philosophy in criticism of revealed religion; and moreover in inviting to his University the man who had most boldly and outspokenly taken a stand for the freest ideals of human development. It would be, I feel, a failure to do justice to Karl August, that noble spirit, if we passed on without pointing out what unusual broad-mindedness this German prince must then have needed, in calling Fichte into his service. This invitation was described by Goethe as a piece of audacity; and I should like to remind you of the world of prejudices which Karl August and Goethe, who in the nature of things were bound to be the chief authors of this invitation, had to face in taking it on themselves to bring Fichte to Jena. As I say, it would be almost an injustice not to point out Karl August's remarkable freedom from all prejudice. And to illustrate this I should like to read out a passage from Fichte's book entitled: Suggestions for the Enlightenment of Public Opinion on the French Revolution:

“They (Fichte is referring to the European princes, including those of Germany) are for the most part brought up in indolence and ignorance, or if they know anything it is a kind of knowledge specially concocted for them; it is a notorious fact that once they are on the throne they neglect to go on with their education, that they read no new works except perhaps shallow sophistries and that they are invariably behind their times by at least as many years as they have reigned.”

That passage is from the last book which Fichte had then written—yet the Duke Karl August invited this man to his University!

Anyone who gives a little attention to the whole situation of Fichte and those who had sent for him will come to this conclusion: that those people who held the view of the great and magnanimous Karl August and Goethe had undertaken a campaign against the people of their immediate circle, who were altogether and absolutely in disagreement with the idea of sending for Fichte. And this was a campaign which was not easy to undertake; for as already stated, it was not possible with Fichte to make use of manoeuvres such as are so generally practised in the world. Fichte was a man who by his awkwardness, by his bluntness often offended the very people whom it was most desirable to avoid offending. He was not a man to make smooth gestures: he was a man who, if something did not please him, would strike out with his fist against the world. And the manner in which Fichte was then using his whole energy to impart his message to the world was admittedly such as to cause Goethe and Karl August some distress; it was not easy for them, it was very hard for them to put up with it, and they were distressed.

And so little by little the storm-clouds gathered. First of all, Fichte wanted to give a course of ethical lectures, those which are printed under the title “Lectures on the Morality of the Scholar.” The only suitable hour that he could find was on Sunday. But this was a shocking suggestion to all who held that it would be a profanation of the holy day to address the Jena students on a Sunday on the subject of morality as Fichte conceived it. And protests of every sort and kind poured in upon the Weimar Government, upon Goethe and Karl August. The whole Senate of Jena University passed a unanimous resolution to the effect that a deplorable sensation and infinite mischief would result if Fichte were to deliver lectures on morals in the University on Sundays—he had selected the hour of the afternoon church service. In this affair Karl August was forced for the time being to leave Fichte's adversaries in possession of the field. But once again it would not be right to pass on without drawing attention to the manner in which he did it. The following is an extract from the letter sent by Karl August to the University of Jena:—

“In accordance with your request we have resolved that the above-mentioned Professor Fichte shall be permitted to continue his moral lectures on Sunday only after the close of the afternoon church service.” However, Karl August was brought to this decision only on account of “a circumstance so unusual as the arrangement of lectures of this kind during the hours appointed for Divine Service.” In the official decree sent by the Duke to the University Senate he wrote in reference to these lectures:—“We have been glad to assure ourselves that if his (Fichte's) moral lectures resemble the accompanying admirable essay from his pen, they may well prove to be of the highest value.”¹

But the attack was pressed home. The enemy never afterwards let go their hold. And so, in 1799, came about that unhappy controversy over the charge of atheism, as a result of which Fichte had to relinquish his position as lecturer at Jena. A younger man named Forberg had contributed to the periodical Fichte was then editing, an article which incurred from a certain quarter a charge of atheism. Fichte, for his part, thought that what this young man had written was rather imprudent, and wished to add marginal comments. Forberg disagreed with this suggestion; so that Fichte in that lofty manner of his which he used not alone in great matters but also in the smallest ones, would not hear of rejecting the article because he disagreed with it, and would not add marginal notes against the author's will; however, he wrote in the form of a preface some lines about the basis of the belief in the divine governance of the world. These lines of his were wholly imbued, through and through, with the spirit of genuine and deeply-felt reverence and piety, exalted to that spiritual level of which Fichte said that it was the only true reality, that we can only grasp reality when the Ego feels itself moving in the sphere of the spirit, immersed in the spiritual stream of the world. We must not, therefore, he added, apprehend the existence of God by any external revelation or external knowledge whatever. We must apprehend the existence of God in the living process of creation. We must sense the creative process of the world by standing in the stream of it, ourselves ceaselessly creating and so attaining our own immortality.

But in consequence of this article the charge of atheism was now turned against Fichte himself. It is impossible to relate here the full details of this controversy. It is indeed grievous to observe how Goethe and Karl August, against their will, had to take sides against Fichte; who, however, would never be restrained, when he felt impelled to communicate his appointed message to the world, from retorting to an attack by a direct blow. So matters went on till Fichte heard that steps were to be taken against him, that he was to be reprimanded. Goethe and Karl August would have preferred to see the matter settled by a reprimand. But Fichte said to himself that to accept a reprimand for ideas drawn from the deepest sources of the human spirit, would mean an offence against honour, not his personal honour, but that of the spiritual life itself. And so he then wrote a private letter, which however was viewed as an official communication and filed among the official documents, to the Minister Voigt at Weimar, to the effect that he would never accept any reprimand, no, rather he would take his departure! And whenever Fichte wrote about matters of this kind he wrote as he spoke. It used to be said of him that he had a sharp tongue when necessary; and in correspondence too he could be cutting towards anybody, whoever it might be. Thus the authorities had no alternative, unless everything were to be turned upside down at Jena, but to accept the resignation which Fichte had not really meant to tender, for his private letter had been treated as an official communication. At any rate that was how it came about that Fichte had to give up his post as teacher at Jena, which had been blessed with such fruitful influence.

Shortly afterwards we see him appear at Berlin. He has now approached from a fresh angle the position of the Ego in the ever-moving stream of the world-spirit. The book which he then wrote (and which can now be bought cheaply in Reklam's Universal Library) was called Die Bestimmung des Menschen (The Destiny of Man). Into the composition of this work he threw his whole being and energy. In it he strove to show how those who only view the world of the senses from outside, co-ordinating it with the understanding, can only point the way towards a meaningless view of the world. The gist of Part I is to show how in this fashion one arrives only at a dream-reflection of life. The object of Part II is to show how the mind thus comes to regard the world as a chain of exterior necessities. And in Part III we come to the enquiry as to how the soul fares when it seeks not merely an image but a direct participation in that great creative process of all existence. After putting the finishing touches to the work, Fichte wrote to his wife, whom he had then left behind at Jena: “I have never before looked so deeply into religion as during the composition of the last part of this work, The Destiny of Man.”

Apart from a short interval in 1805, which he spent at the University of Erlangen, Fichte passed the remainder of his life in this world at Berlin. At first he gave private lectures at the various houses in which he lived, lectures of an impressive character; subsequently he was invited to assist in the newly-founded University, to which we must now turn our attention.

As I said, apart from the short interlude in 1805 at Erlangen, his work now lay in Berlin. He was still drawing from ever fresh sources in his soul the ideas which he had to impart to the public. So at Erlangen, continually recasting his ideas in a fresh mould, he presented his theory of knowledge, his outlook on the world. Strangely enough, whereas at Jena he had from the beginning of his course a fair audience which steadily increased, and similarly in Berlin, the number of his hearers in Erlangen dwindled by one half in the course of the term. Everyone knows how professors generally take such a falling-off; anyone who has any experience knows that they simply have to accept it. But Fichte did not react to it in that way. One day when his audience at Erlangen had diminished to one half, he referred to it, taking for granted that his words would reach also those who had stayed away, in one of those thundering tirades in which he demonstrated to people that, if they would not hear what he had to say, then they were good only for external historical knowledge, not for intellectual knowledge. And after going on to discuss what a man should become in life if in his spiritual strivings he rejected this intellectual kind of knowledge, he continued as follows:—“Now as to the time of my lectures. I have heard how much dissatisfaction is felt at the choice of time. I will not consider this strictly according to principles which are really self-evident and which would have to be applied here. I will take it that the persons concerned are only misinformed, and will try to put them right. No doubt they may say that there is a tradition in this matter dating from long ago. Supposing that this were the fact, I should have to reply that grave abuses must have existed in the university from the earliest times. ... I myself have held at Jena from six to seven o'clock in summer and winter a course such as this, attended by hundreds, whose numbers used to increase considerably towards the close. I must say openly that when I arrived here I selected this hour because no other was available. Now that I have realised the point of view adopted towards it, I shall select it deliberately for the coming summer.

“At the back of all these difficulties we find a deep-seated incapacity in people to occupy themselves and a great deal of shallowness and ennui, so that after a meal has been taken, by God's grace, at midday, people find it unendurable to stay any longer in the town. And even if you were to give me proofs—which I hope it would be impossible to supply—that such has been the custom at Erlangen since its foundation, in the whole of Franconia, indeed throughout South Germany, then I would not hesitate to answer that in that case shallowness and futility must have made their headquarters at Erlangen and the whole of South Germany.” Whatever one may think of such outbursts as this, it is truly characteristic of Fichte as regards his intense concentration on the spiritual message which he was trying to deliver to mankind. Whenever he spoke he did not seek merely to say something but to do something for men's souls, to lay hold on them; thus every soul who stayed away was a real loss, not for himself but for the purpose which he was trying to realise for mankind. For Fichte the word was also an act. Since he himself dwelt within the spiritual world, it was possible for him through spiritual communion to gather others around him within that world, because he was himself within it and was no mere theoretical champion of the principles he professed when he said: “Reality is not in the outer world of the senses but in the spirit; and whoever knows the spirit can perceive behind all sensuous existence the spiritual reality.”

And to him this was no mere theory, it was also a practical reality, as was proved at a later date at Berlin by the following incident. One day when his audience was assembled in the lecture hall, which was near the Spree Canal, a terrible message was brought. Some children, with Fichte's son among them, had been playing down there; a boy had fallen into the water and it was thought to be Fichte's son. Fichte and a friend set out, and in the presence of all his students, they pulled the boy out of the water. Although the boy bore a close resemblance to Fichte's son, it was not in fact he. Yet for a moment Fichte had been convinced that it was his son. He did what he could for the child, who however was dead when taken from the water. Anybody who knows the intimate family affection in Fichte's household between him, his wife Johanna and their only son, will realise something of what Fichte went through at that moment; the terrible shock that he underwent and then the transition from this shock to the deepest joy when he was able to clasp his son in his arms. When he had done this and changed his clothes, he proceeded to deliver the remainder of his two-hour lecture just as he always did, that is, wholly intent on his subject.

This was not a unique instance. Often and often did Fichte give similar proofs of his integral loyalty to the world of the spirit. For example, it was at this period at Berlin that he delivered public lectures which were intended as a criticism and a severe indictment of his age. He passed in review one by one the various epochs of history. But it was, he said, the age in which he lived, which had brought selfishness to the extreme limit. And in that age of selfishness he found himself confronting the personality of Napoleon, in whom, in his view, this selfishness was incarnate. During all this period when the Napoleonic chaos was enveloping north and central Germany, Fichte never in his heart viewed himself otherwise than as Napoleon's spiritual antagonist. And so we get his character study of Napoleon, of which it may be said that an image of the Emperor, profoundly German in its approach and in its vigour and based on the loftiest philosophical standpoint, had shaped itself in the mind of this German thinker who had grown out of that peasant boy in a blue smock of whom earlier we had a glimpse. We have come now to a state of human existence at the present time, said Fichte, in which people have lost their consciousness of the spiritual influence which pulsates through the world and also through human existence and evolution, and which, in the form of the moral impulses, carries mankind forward from epoch to epoch; of the truth that in the march of history man is only of value in so far as he is sustained by what is permanent from age to age in the moral impulses and the moral order of the world. Of all this people no longer know anything. We have arrived at an epoch in which we see one generation succeed another like links in a chain. Even the best minds, said Fichte, have forgotten the moral principles which must pervade these links. And in such a world we encounter the personality of Napoleon, an inexhaustible source of energy indeed, but a man who, though he may have had in his soul occasional glimpses of freedom, has never formed any true notion of the real all-embracing ideal of freedom as it works from age to age in men's moral aspirations and in the moral framework of the world. And from this fundamental deficiency that a personality which is only a shell, without any true spiritual core, can yet wield such immense force, from this phenomenon Fichte traced the personality, the whole “catastrophe” as he expressed it—Napoleon.

In mentioning this and in placing side by side these two personalities—Fichte, the most forceful exponent of the German outlook with his view of Napoleon, and on the other side Napoleon himself—reference should be made to an observation attributed to Napoleon at St. Helena, after his downfall; for it is only in this light that the whole situation can be clearly grasped. At St. Helena, after his downfall, Napoleon expressed himself as follows: “Everything would have gone all right. I should not have fallen before all the Powers which ranged themselves against me. With one factor only did I fail to reckon, and it is this that really brought about my downfall, namely—the German philosophers!” Let narrow minds say what they will about the value of philosophy; this piece of self-revelation from Napoleon's own lips has more weight, I think, than all the objections that might be raised against Fichte's idealism, which indeed had a thoroughly practical aspect.

Finally, it is possible to adduce another proof, a proper historical proof, that it is not so difficult for an idealist such as Fichte to be practical when occasion demanded. It had become necessary for him to enter as a partner into his father's business, which had now been taken over by his brothers. We see him accordingly as a partner in the family ribbon-weaving business. His parents were still alive; and we may note that he proved to be a good and prudent business man, capable of lending valuable assistance to his brothers, who had remained simply men of business. A man such as Fichte has many critics who say: “Oh these idealists, they dwell in a dream-world, they understand nothing of practical life!” But it may well be imagined that Fichte from the depth of his being, and especially in his lectures on Die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (The Vocation of the Scholar), had something to say which cannot be too often repeated in the face of those who point to the unpractical nature of idealism, of the spiritual world altogether. In the introduction to this course of lectures Fichte made the following observations:—

“That ideals cannot be demonstrated in the actual world is a fact which we know perhaps as well as our critics, perhaps better. We merely assert that reality must be judged with reference to these ideals and must be modified by those who feel in themselves the strength to do so. Supposing however that our critics cannot even concede so much; well, seeing that they are what they are, this inability will mean small loss to them, and none to the world. It will simply mean that they do not count in the process towards the ennoblement of mankind, which anyway will go forward without any doubt; as to these others, may kindly nature have them in her keeping, granting them in God's good time rain, sunshine, wholesome nourishment and proper circulation of the blood, and, in addition to all these—right thoughts!”

The significance of ideals, the significance also of practical life, was something already quite clear to the mind of this German. But then Fichte's was a nature which stood by itself. He may be called one-sided; but this one-sidedness must occur sometimes in life, just as there are certain forces which must occasionally overshoot the mark in order to achieve the best results.

Undoubtedly Fichte's behaviour often had a rough side to it, as when apart from his lectures on the principles of morality, he attempted to take practical steps at Jena against the tyranny of routine, and against drinking and loafing ways among the students. He had by now a certain following in student circles. Further, as a result of his influence, petitions had been presented to the authorities asking for the abolition of this or that society which was particularly given to disorder. As we have seen, Fichte was a rugged nature, not skilful in making smooth gestures, but quite likely, metaphorically of course, to strike out fiercely with his fist now and then; and indeed matters came to such a pass that the majority of the Jena students were altogether opposed to Fichte and his practical moral influence. So they banded themselves together and smashed his windows. To Goethe, though he respected Fichte and was respected by him, the incident suggested a humorous comment. “Why yes,” said Goethe, “that is the philosopher who derives everything from the Ego! It is truly an inconvenient way of being assured of the existence of the non-ego, to have one's windows smashed; that was not what one assumed as the contrary of the Ego.”

All this, however, does not mean that there was any lack of harmony between Fichte's and Goethe's philosophical outlook. And Fichte was profoundly right in the feeling he expressed in a letter to Goethe on 21st June, 1794, soon after the beginning of his lectures at Jena, when sending to Goethe the proofs of his work on the Theory of Knowledge:

“I regard you, and have always done so, as representing the purest spirituality of feeling at the point so far reached by human progress. Philosophy rightly turns towards you, for your feeling is its best criterion.”

And Goethe wrote to Fichte, after receiving the pages of the Theory of Knowledge: “There is nothing in your work which is not altogether in line with my own customary way of thinking.” Again, in another letter to Fichte, referring also to the Theory of Knowledge: “These ideas are indeed now in harmony with nature; but men's minds must also come into harmony with them and I believe that you will be able to present them in the right way.” And if anyone to-day should assert that he finds this Theory of Knowledge, as then published by Fichte, dry and unlike Goethe, or that Goethe would have had no taste for such things, one must reply to this criticism as I replied when publishing the letters of Fichte to Goethe, in the Weimar Schiller-and-Goethe Archives, in the Goethe Year-Book of 1894.² In the Goethe-Schiller Archives there are extracts from Fichte's Theory of Knowledge in Goethe's own hand, accompanied sentence by sentence by the ideas inspired in him reading Fichte; and after all it is intelligible that Goethe, one of the most German among Germans, out of the pure spirituality of feeling with which he sought for a fresh outlook on the world, should inevitably hold out his hand to the man who as the most German of all Germans was in quest of a philosophical outlook based on the force of pure reason alone. Goethe once also, by the way, expressed very aptly his relationship towards the philosophy of Kant. What he said was—not word for word, but in substance—as follows: Kant had argued that, by turning his attention outward upon the world, man can only arrive at sense-knowledge. But his sense-knowledge is nothing but appearance, merely something which man himself by his point of view introduces into the world. Knowledge must be deposed from its seat, for it is only by a belief that it is possible to arrive at freedom, at infinity, at a conception of the divine spiritual existence. And this attempt to arrive not at a belief, but at a direct insight into the spiritual world, this attempt to bring the individual creative process into communion with the creativeness of the divine world spirit, this attempt which Kant believes to be impossible, would be, as he terms it, the “venture of reason” and Goethe's comment on this is: “Very well then, an attempt must certainly be made to undertake, undaunted, this venture of reason! And assuming that a man has no doubts of the spiritual world but believes in freedom and immortality in God, why should he not face this venture of reason and with the creative element of the soul transport himself into the heart of the creative process which ebbs and flows through the world?” In Fichte, Goethe found a conception of the same venture, only imagined in another way.

And indeed it had to emerge sooner or later, albeit in a rugged form, this urge towards spirituality, towards the apprehension of the all-creating world-intelligence, towards the state where the creative Ego indwells in the creative world-being and is one with it. And in Fichte's view the impulse in this direction was to be given by his Theory of Knowledge. In this theory the very spirit of the German people produced before the world what it had to utter about life and the world and the aims of mankind; it was as it were a direct gesture from the German people, from out of which we see Fichte's soul mount upwards to the heights. Indeed he himself was aware that his philosophy was always rooted in his living intercourse with the spirit of the German people. This spirit found here, it is true, only such expression as it could, seeing that it had first to emerge through the medium of such a rough-hewn personality as Fichte's. No, truly, his was not a personality easy to deal with. Of this we find again another illustration in the following connection. When a University was to be founded at Berlin, and it fell to Fichte to work out a scheme for it, his plan, worked out to the smallest details, showed what his conception of a University was like. And what was his idea? In this University to be started at Berlin he wanted to build something so fundamentally novel, especially for the beginning of the nineteenth century, that—we may say it without the slightest fear of contradiction—this novelty is as yet unrealised anywhere in the world, and the world is still waiting for it. Needless to say, Fichte's scheme was not put into practice, though indeed he was aiming at nothing else than, as he expressed it, to make the University into a “School of training in the scientific application of intelligence.” What was this University to become? A place of nurture, which might be termed a school of training for the scientific use of the intelligence! Accordingly, it was to turn out, not specialists in this subject or that, such as philosophers or natural scientists or physicians or jurists, but human beings so closely fitted into the structure of the world as to have entire command over the art of using their intelligence. Only imagine what a blessing it would mean if such a University really existed anywhere in the world! if actually we could find realised anywhere a school that would turn out people who have made their inner soul so vital that they could move freely within the essential logic of existence!

But truly this personality was not easy to deal with! It was something massive which existed in order to leave a distinctive mark on history. Fichte became the second Rector of the new University. He filled the position so energetically that he was only able to remain Rector for four months; for neither the students nor the authorities concerned could tolerate any longer what he was attempting to accomplish. All this however, just as with Fichte himself, is typical of German national feeling. For when he delivered his Reden an das deutsche Volk (Addresses to the German People), to which, and indeed to the whole great phenomenon of Fichte, I have already repeatedly referred here, not only during the war but also before it—when he delivered these Addresses he knew that he was trying to communicate to the German people what he had, so to speak, overheard in his meditative conversations with the world-spirit. The only response at which he was aiming was to arouse in their souls whatever can be aroused out of the deepest sources of the German being. This manner which Fichte adopted towards his time and towards those whose souls he hoped to raise to a level sufficient for the tasks of the wider universe, all this was unlikely to make any impression on idlers or superficial people, except perhaps to excite their curiosity. But this latter response was the last which Fichte sought to evoke. Needless to say, when such an intellectual phenomenon as Fichte appears in the world, the very easiest course is to turn it into ridicule; there is nothing easier than to play the critic and to laugh at it. People did this a good deal, and the result was sometimes to place Fichte in difficult situations. For example, immediately after his arrival at the University of Jena, he found himself in quite a serious dilemma through his inability to agree with others who after all were also philosophers. Thus there was at the Jena University a man who was the traditional professor of philosophy, a man by the name of Schmid. This man had expressed such vehement condemnation of Fichte's previous work that it was really outrageous that Fichte was now to become his colleague. Thereupon Fichte in turn published a few remarks in the periodical in which Schmid's criticism had appeared. And so the affair went on, backwards and forwards. Fichte assumed his position at Jena just at the time when he was writing in the Jena periodical to which Schmid had contributed “I declare that for me Herr Schmid will no longer exist in this world.” It was a serious matter to take his place beside his colleague in such an atmosphere. A less serious, but no less characteristic incident, was as follows: at that time there was appearing at Berlin a periodical called Der Freimütige (The Independent) directed by the “celebrated” German writer Kötzebue and another man. It was impossible to make out (indeed I believe that even by the most intimate clairvoyance it would not have been possible) the reason why this Kötzebue attended Fichte's lectures. But these doubts lasted only for a while, and presently the reason became clear when Der Freimütige, then a very prominent magazine at Berlin, began to publish the most vicious attacks upon Fichte's lectures. One day Fichte found it more than he could stand. Thereupon he took a number of this magazine Der Freimütige and dissected it before his audience, ridiculing the opinions expressed in the article with the inimitable humour which he had at his command. The countenance of one member of the audience, whose presence there so far had been unexplained, grew longer and longer. And finally Herr Kötzebue stood up with a very long face and announced that he did not see why he should listen to this any longer; so he went off and did not return. But Fichte was heartily glad to be rid of him.

Through the way in which he adapted himself in practice to life, when he was trying to remould the innermost depths of human existence, Fichte knew how to find the tone precisely adapted to the situation before him. Even though he dwelt altogether in the spiritual world, he was yet no otherworldly idealist, but he was a man standing altogether by himself and was accustomed to pay earnest heed to what he felt to be the innermost promptings of his own nature. Accordingly, at a certain time when Napoleon had conquered Berlin and the French were in occupation, he was unable to remain in the city. He did not choose to remain in a city which was under the French yoke. He went therefore first to Königsberg, subsequently to Copenhagen, returning only when he was ready to come forward as the German who could put before his compatriots the very soul of his nation and its national characteristics, in his Addresses to the German People.

Fichte is rightly regarded as a direct expression of German national sentiment, as an expression of that spirit which eternally and profoundly—in so far as we are able to apprehend the spirit of German nationality—dwells in our midst—and not merely in thought. A philosopher, Robert Zimmerman, by no means in accord with Fichte in his philosophical outlook, has finely characterised this aspect of Fichte in the following passage:

“As long as there beats in Germany a heart capable of feeling the shame of foreign domination, so long will the memory of this brave man persist among us; at a moment of the deepest humiliation, amid the ruins of the monarchy of Frederick the Great, in the midst of the French occupation of Berlin, within sight and hearing of the enemy, surrounded by spies and informers, there was a man who yet undertook the task of regenerating from within by the spirit the energies of the German people which had been broken from without by the sword; and at the very moment when Germany's political existence seemed as if annihilated for evermore, this man undertook to recreate it for future generations by the inspiring thought of universal culture.”

It is true that to-day we may think quite differently as to the substance of many of the ideas expressed in the Addresses to the German People, and indeed in Fichte's other writings; but that, as I should like to repeat once more, is not the main question. The main thing is that we should feel the German spirit which pervades his productions, and the renewal of the German spirit in its relations with the world at large, the revival which breathes forth from the Addresses to the German People. The main thing is that we should feel this as the spirit which is now alive amongst us and which we can perceive only in this one instance of Fichte, who has thus taken his place in German evolution—at first, indeed, in a style which attracted widespread notice. Power and energy combined with profound introspection—such were the qualities with which this soul strove to take his place in world evolution. Accordingly, at the period when the end of his life was approaching, in the autumn of 1813, Fichte again found an opportunity of repeating in the most intimate form before his Berlin audiences his whole Theory of Knowledge, after remoulding and recasting it, as a result of further meditations, till it embodied his deepest thoughts. In these Addresses, once more penetrating the souls of his hearers in the way described earlier, he considered again the impossibility for man to go behind the veil of his existence unless he be willing to embrace this existence in the spirit, beyond all sensuous reality. But to those men who believe themselves able to apprehend the truth of existence through the sense-world and the results of sense-experience alone, to these people Fichte proclaimed in these lectures, which are among his last:

“All their knowledge only leads to misunderstanding and vain words; and for that they praise themselves and think all is well. For example, as regards sight: the image of an object is thrown on the retina. Similarly the image of an object is reflected in the surface of still water. Do we therefore hold that the surface of the water can see? What is that further factor which makes the difference between that image in the water and real seeing, the factor which exists in us but not in the water? But these people have not even an inkling of this, for their minds do not reach so far.”

We must become aware, says Fichte, of a special sense, a new sense within one's self, if we mean to experience that existence in the spirit which alone makes all other existence intelligible. “I am, and I am with all my aims only in a supersensuous world.” These words are Fichte's own, and they run like a leitmotiv through all Fichte's utterances throughout his life, which he again confirmed in another way in that autumn of 1813. And what was it that he spoke of then? Of the necessity for men to become conscious that with the outlook on things and the world current in ordinary life and ordinary knowledge one could never get behind the reality of being. We must, he said, become aware that a supersensuous mind dwells in every one of us, and that man can merge his being in a world beyond the senses, and with this supersensuous mind can become, as a creative Ego, one with the stream of the creative pervading world-spirit. It is, he says, as though a seeing man comes to a world of the blind and tries to explain to the inhabitants colour and form, and the blind people deny that these exist. Even so the materialist denies, because he does not possess the requisite sense, like the man who knows: “I am, and I am with all my aims and deeds in the supersensuous world.”³ And with such emphasis did Fichte then impress upon his hearers this existence in the supersensuous, this life in the spiritual, that he said: “Accordingly the new sense is the sense of the spirit; the sense for which only spirit and nothing else whatever has being, and for which also that other, the every-day existence assumes the form of spirit and is transformed into it, for which therefore being as such has actually disappeared.”

It is a glorious fact that in German spiritual development there should have been someone to bear witness in this way to the life of the spirit, in the presence of those who were eager to hear what the German nation, on its highest level, and speaking from the depth of its being, has to utter. For that is what this German nation communicated through Fichte, and it is true of Fichte more than of any other man, that he represented the German soul speaking, at the level it had then reached, to the German nation itself.

Whether we consider this Fichte externally, or whether we look with the inner eye into his soul, always he appears to us as the most direct expression of German nationality itself, not that which is present only at a particular time within the German people, but what is ever present, what is ever there in our midst, if we only know how to perceive it. Through his personality Fichte presents himself to us in such a way that we desire to have his image as if plastically before our souls; and with the mind's eye clearly to see him and hear him as he creates that atmosphere which rises as he speaks between his soul and that of his hearers, so that we seek to draw quite close to him. The result is that we can feel his presence, as I would put it, like that of a legendary hero, a hero of the spirit, who with the eyes of the spirit can always be seen as a leader of his people, if this people only know itself aright! His own people can visualize him, by bringing his image plastically before their souls as one of their chief spiritual heroes.

And to-day, in this age of deeds, in this age when the German people is wrestling as never before for its very existence, we shall do well to evoke with the vision of the spirit the image of this man, who was able to depict German nature and character from the loftiest point of view, but also in the most vigorous individual style, so that of him more than of any other we may believe that, if we understand him rightly, we still have him actually among us. For everything in him is cast so wholly in one mould, he comes forward so directly towards us that as we look at him, he seems to stand before us in his fashion as he lived; whether each single feature stands out from his complete being, or whether we let ourselves be influenced by the most intimate aspects of his soul, in either case he stands before us as a whole. We cannot comprehend him else, for otherwise we comprehend him only blunderingly and superficially.

Yes, we can catch a glimpse of him at his work of kindling among his compatriots the souls of men to surrender themselves, creative in the stream of creation, to the vital forces of the world; ascending, in company with those others, to spiritual experience and entering as a living influence into the process of development of his people. We need but to open the eyes of the spirit. It is only thus plastically that he can be understood; but if we open the eyes of the spirit to his greatness as a national figure, then we shall find him standing in our midst. He endeavoured, as we have seen, to produce effects different from those of other teachers by using language as a medium of doing rather than saying when he came before his audience; in such a way that it was indifferent to him what he said, because he aimed solely at kindling the hearer's soul to deeds of his own, because something had to take place in the souls of his hearers to make them undergo a change between entering and leaving the hall. All this has the quite unusual result that we find his living image, that of a man of the people moulding his fellows, present to our minds; and that we seem to hear him transforming into the words which are themselves deeds those thoughts overheard, as it were, in the solitary meditations and dialogues with the world-spirit, whereby he prepared himself for every single lecture; so that when he had finished speaking, he dismissed his audience as changed people. They had become other beings, not through his strength but through the awakening and kindling of their own. If we understand him rightly in such a way, then we may believe that we hear him clairaudiently as he strives to reach with the sharp edge of his words the spirit which he has already apprehended in the soul, seeking ever—as was said of him—to send out into the world, through his cultivation of the soul, not merely good but great men.

If we indeed form within us a living image of what he was, we cannot fail to hear his words, those words which seemed to be but using this Fichte to communicate a message from the heart of the world, kindling as it came fire and warmth and light. Fortitude vibrated in his words, and moral energy emanated from them. In others too fortitude was kindled by his words as they poured through the ears into the souls and hearts of those who heard him, and from these utterances streamed out into the world a flow of moral energy, when Fichte's followers, with their souls thus aflame with the fire of his eloquence, went out into the world, as we so often learn from contemporaries, as the most capable men of their time. By opening the ears of the spirit we can hear Fichte, if we understand him at all, directly as if he were a living presence speaking out of the heart of his people. And whoever has any ear for such national greatness will hear it still in our midst. It is rare indeed to find ourselves confronted with any spirit in whom we can trace all that he is into every single act of his life. That sense of duty, of the moral order the world, which he embodied at the climax of his philosophical development, can it not already be noted in the seven-year-old boy who threw the Gehörnte Siegfried into the water, because he had conceived a passion for it which he felt to be in contradiction to his duties? The brooding man preparing by meditation for his lectures, with his spirit intent on the mysteries of the world, can he not be found already in embryo in the boy who stood for hours on the moor with his eyes fixed in one direction, lost in the mysteries of nature till the shepherd passed and led him home? That intense fire which inspired Fichte in his teacher's chair at Jena and later when, as he said, he was speaking to the representatives of his whole nation in the Addresses to the German People—can we not feel it already in the incident when he so impressed Baron von Miltitz by his reproduction of the country clergyman's sermon? And if we possess even a little spiritual divination, can we not feel this spirit very near to us in every single act, even in the slightest act of his life? Can we not feel how fortitude of soul, moral energy stream out from this spirit throughout the whole subsequent German development? Can we not feel the lasting vitality, even if we can no longer agree with the ideas in detail, in the Addresses to the German People? Although the work was twice confiscated by the censorship in 1824, it could not be killed; it is alive more than ever to-day, and is destined to live on in men's souls.

How clearly we can see him, this Fichte, standing in our midst! How clearly we can hear him, if we understand him rightly! If we use our spiritual sense we can feel how he thrilled the hearts of his followers, and beyond that of the whole German people in all its subsequent evolution; and we can feel that what he created, the stream of spiritual energy which he contributed to the ever-moving current of his nation's development, must remain something imperishable! We cannot help ourselves, if we understand him aright, we must feel this spirit of Fichte to be

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner: Sonderdruck aus dem Goethe-Jahrbuch, fünfzehnter Band 1894: Neue Mitteilungen. Sieben Briefe von Fichte an Goethe. Zwei Briefe von Fichte an Schiller. (Reprint from the Goethe Year-Book, Vol. 15: New Communications. Seven Letters from Fichte to Goethe. Two Letters from Fichte to Schiller.)
• 2. See Rudolf Steiner: Reprint from the Goethe Year-Book, Vol. 15, 1894: Further Communications; Seven Letters from Fichte to Goethe; Two Letters from Fichte to Schiller. That Goethe was keenly interested in Fichte's philosophy and by no means adopted a negative attitude towards it, is proved by a passage in a letter to Fichte of 24th June, 1794, in which he says about the first sheets of the Theory of Knowledge: “There is nothing in the pages you have sent me which I do not understand or at least believe that I understand, nothing which cannot be easily assimilated to my accustomed way of thinking.” Further evidence of this can be seen in the fact that Goethe made long extracts from this work, still preserved in the Goethe Archives.
• 3. “Imagine a world of people blind from birth, for whom therefore only those things and their relationships are known which can be apprehended by touch. Go among these, and talk to them of colour and the other relationships which are present only through light to the sense of sight. You will be talking to them of nothing, and it is all the better if they say so; for thus you will soon perceive your error and, unless you have the power of opening their eyes, you will desist from useless explanation.”

[ 1 ] The mystic sought within himself for forces, for beings which remain unknown to man so long as he is limited by the ordinary conception of life. The mystic formulates the great question about his own spiritual forces, which go beyond lower nature, and their laws. With his ordinary materialistic, logical conception of life, man creates gods for himself, or if he gains insight into this creation he disowns them. The mystic perceives that he creates gods; he perceives why he creates them; he can, so to speak, see beyond the natural laws of the creation of gods. It is the same with him as it would be with a plant if it suddenly acquired knowledge and learned to know the laws governing its own growth and development. The plant develops in innocent unconsciousness. If it knew its own laws it would have to acquire an entirely new relationship to itself. The plant which has acquired knowledge would have before it as an ideal what the poet experiences when he sings about it, what the botanist thinks when he investigates its laws. The same is true of the mystic with respect to his laws and the forces working within him. As one who knows, he must create beyond himself a divine element. This was the attitude of the initiates toward what the people had created beyond nature. This was their attitude toward the popular world of gods and myths. They wished to perceive the laws of this world of gods and myths. Where the people had a divinity, a myth, there they sought a higher truth. Let us consider an example: The Athenians were compelled by the Cretan King Minos to deliver to him seven boys and seven girls every eight years. These were thrown as food to the Minotaur, a fearful monster. When for the third time the sad consignment was to leave for Crete, the king's son, Theseus, traveled with them. When he arrived in Crete, King Minos' own daughter, Ariadne, took his part. The Minotaur lived in a labyrinth, a maze from which, once one had wandered into it, he could not find his way out again. Theseus wished to free his homeland from the disgraceful tribute. He had to enter the labyrinth, into which the monster's prey was usually thrown. He wished to slay the Minotaur. He undertook this task; he overcame the fearful foe and again reached freedom with the aid of a ball Of thread which Ariadne had given him. The mystic had to recognize how the creative spirit of man comes to form such a tale. As the botanist contemplates the growth of a plant to discover its laws, so the mystic wished to contemplate the creating spirit. He sought truth, wisdom, where the people had set up a myth. Sallustius discloses the attitude of a mystic-sage toward such a myth: “The universe itself can be called a myth, since bodies and material objects are apparent in it, while souls and minds are concealed. Furthermore, to wish to teach all men the truth about the gods causes the foolish to despise, because they cannot learn, and the good to be slothful, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the former from despising philosophy and compels the latter to study it.”⁵⁴

[ 2 ] The mystic was conscious that by seeking the truth contained in a myth, he was adding something to what was present in the consciousness of the people. It was clear to him that he was placing himself above this consciousness of the people just as a botanist places himself above the growing plant. He said something quite different from what was present in the mythological consciousness, but he looked upon what he said as a deeper truth which was symbolically expressed in the myth. Man confronts the material world as if it were a monstrous enemy. To it he sacrifices the fruits of his personality. It devours them. It does so until the conqueror (Theseus) awakens in man. His cognition spins for him the thread by which he finds his way when he enters the maze of the material world to slay his foe. The mystery of human cognition itself is expressed in this conquering of the material world. The mystic knows this mystery. It indicates a force in the human personality. Ordinary consciousness is unaware of this force. But the latter works within it nevertheless. It engenders the myth which has the same structure as the mystical truth. This truth is symbolized in the myth. What then are myths? They are a creation of the spirit, of the unconsciously creative soul. The soul is governed by entirely definite laws. It must work in a definite direction in order to create beyond itself. On the mythological level it does this in pictures, but these pictures are built up according to the laws of the soul. We could also say that when the soul progresses beyond the plane of mythological consciousness to the deeper truths, these bear the same stamp as the myths did before, because one and the same force is active in their creation. The Neoplatonic philosopher, Plotinus (204–269 A. D.), referring to the Egyptian priest-sages, speaks thus about this relationship between the way of thinking common to pictorial myths and higher cognition:

[ 3 ] “The wise of Egypt—whether in precise knowledge or by a prompting of nature—indicated the truth where, in their effort toward philosophical statement, they left aside the writing, forms that take in the details of words and sentences—those characters that represent sounds and convey the propositions of reasoning—and drew pictures instead, engraving in the temple-inscriptions a separate image for every separate item: thus they exhibited the thought-content in which the Supreme goes forth. For each manifestation of knowledge and wisdom is a distinct image, an object in itself, an immediate unity, not an aggregate of discursive argument and detailed discussion. Later from this wisdom in unity there appears, in another form of existence, an image, already less compact, which announces the original in an outward stage and seeks the causes by which things are such that the wonder arises how a created world can be so excellent.”⁵⁵

[ 4 ] Whoever wishes to become acquainted with the relationship between mysticism and mythological tales, must see how mythology is dealt with by the world conception of those whose wisdom accords with the method of thinking of the Mysteries. Such accord exists to the fullest extent in Plato. His interpretation of myths and his use of them in his exposition, may be taken as a standard. In the Phaedrus, a dialogue about the soul, the myth of Boreas is introduced. This divine being, which was seen in the rushing wind, once glimpsed the beautiful Orithea, daughter of the Greek King Erechtheus, as she was picking flowers with her playmates. He was seized with a passion for her, abducted her and took her to his cave. In this dialogue Plato causes Socrates to reject a purely rational explanation of this myth. According to such an explanation an external, natural fact is supposed to be related symbolically in the tale. A gale is supposed to have seized the king's daughter and flung her down from the cliff. “Such explanations,” says Socrates, “are very subtle and may be very entertaining ... But when one has once begun to give a rational explanation to one of these mythological figures, one must go on and look at all the others with the same scepticism and reduce them one after another to the rules of probability ... This sort of explanation would be the business of a life. If anyone disbelieves in these mythological figures, and, with a rustic kind of wisdom, undertakes to explain each in accordance with probability, he will need a great deal of leisure. But I have no leisure for such inquiries ... So I dismiss these matters and, accepting the customary belief about them as I was saying just now, I investigate not these things, but myself, to know whether I am a monster of a more complicated structure and more savage than Typhon, or a gentler and simpler creature, whose nature partakes of divinity.”⁵⁶ From this we see that a rationalistic, intellectual interpretation of myths was unacceptable to Plato. This must be considered together with the manner in which he himself makes use of myths to express his meaning through them. Where he speaks of the life of the soul, where he leaves the paths of the transitory and seeks out the eternal in the soul, where, therefore, the ideas supported by material perception and intellectual thought are no longer present, there Plato makes use of the myth. The Phaedrus speaks of the eternal in the soul. Here the soul is represented as a team of two many-winged horses with a charioteer. One of the horses is patient and wise, the other stubborn and wild. When the team encounters an obstruction in its path, the stubborn horse makes use of this to hinder the intentions of the good one and thwart the charioteer. When the team arrives at the point where it should follow the gods over the heavens, the bad horse brings it into a state of confusion. Whether the bad horse is overcome by the good and the team is able to enter the supersensible realm beyond the obstruction, depends on the power of the bad horse. So it happens that the soul is never able to raise itself unhindered to the realm of the divine. Some souls raise themselves to this vision of eternity in a greater degree than others. The soul which has seen the beyond remains safe until the next traverse; the soul which—because of the wild horse—has seen nothing, must make the attempt on a new traverse. By these traverses are meant the various incarnations of the soul. One traverse denotes the life of the soul in one personality. The wild horse represents the lower nature, the wise horse the higher nature, and the charioteer the soul longing for its apotheosis. Plato makes use of the myth to show the path of the eternal soul through various stages. Similarly, in other writings of Plato, myth or symbolical narrative is used to show the inner being of man, the part not perceptible to the senses.

[ 5 ] Here Plato is in full accord with the manner of expression by myth and parable used by others. In ancient Indian literature we find a parable attributed to Buddha. A man much attached to life, who on no account wishes to die, who seeks for sensual pleasure, is pursued by four serpents. He hears a voice which commands him to feed and bathe the four serpents from time to time. The man runs away for fear of the evil serpents. Again he hears a voice. This draws his attention to five murderers who are coming after him. Again the man runs away. A voice draws his attention to a sixth murderer who wishes to strike off his head with a drawn sword. Again the man flees. He comes to a deserted village. He hears a voice which tells him that thieves will shortly plunder the village. As he continues to flee he comes to a great expanse of water. He does not feel safe on this shore; he makes a basket for himself out of straw, sticks and leaves; in this he reaches the further shore. Now he is safe; he is a Brahmin. The sense of this parable is that man must pass through the most varied conditions to attain to the divine. In the four serpents may be seen the four elements, fire, water, earth and air. In the five murderers may be seen the five senses. The deserted village is the soul which has fled from the impressions of the senses, but is not yet safe when alone with itself. If the soul inwardly takes hold of its lower nature only, it must perish. Man must fashion a boat for himself which will carry him over the waters of the transitory from one shore, material nature, to the other, the eternal and divine.

[ 6 ] Let us consider the Egyptian mystery of Osiris in this light. Gradually Osiris had become one of the most important Egyptian divinities. His representation supplanted other representations of gods in certain parts of the country. A significant series of myths formed itself around the figures of Osiris and his consort Isis. Osiris was the son of the sun god; Typhon-Set was his brother and Isis his sister. Osiris married his sister. With her he reigned over Egypt. The evil brother, Typhon, plotted the destruction of Osiris. He caused a casket to be made of the exact size of Osiris. At a banquet the casket was offered as a gift to anyone who exactly fitted into it. No one succeeded in this but Osiris. He laid himself in it. Then Typhon and his accomplices hurled themselves upon Osiris, closed the casket and threw it into the river. When Isis received the dreadful news she was desperate and wandered everywhere searching for the corpse of her husband. When she had found him, Typhon again gained power over him. He tore him into fourteen pieces, which were scattered far apart in different districts. Various tombs of Osiris were shown in Egypt. Here and there in many places pieces of the god were said to have been laid to rest. Osiris himself ascended from the nether world and conquered Typhon; a ray from Osiris then fell upon Isis, who bore him the son Harpokrates or Horus.

[ 7 ] Now let us compare this myth with the way the world was understood by the Greek philosopher Empedocles (490–430 B. C.). He assumes that the single archetypal being was torn into the four elements, fire, water, earth and air—into the multiplicity of existence. He sets in opposition to each other two powers which affect growth and decay within the world of existence: love and strife. Empedocles says of the elements:

[ 8 ] “There are these alone; but, running through one another, They become men and the tribes of beasts. At one time all are brought together into one order by Love; At another, each is carried in different directions by the repulsion of Strife.”⁵⁷

[ 9 ] Then from Empedocles' standpoint what are the things of the world? They are the elements, variously mixed. They could come into existence only through the tearing apart of the archetypal One into the four entities. This archetypal One is diffused into the elements of the world. All the things that meet us partake of the diffused divinity, but this divinity is hidden within them. It first had to die, so that the things could come into existence. And what are these things? They are mixtures of portions of the god, influenced in their structure by love and hate. Empedocles says this distinctly:

[ 10 ] “This is manifest in the mass of mortal limbs. At one time all the limbs that are the body's portion Are brought together by Love in blooming life's high season; At another, severed by cruel Strife, They wander each alone by the breakers of life's sea. It is the same with plants, with fish that live in waters, With beasts living on hills, with seabirds sailing on wings.”⁵⁸

[ 11 ] Empedocles must take the view that the sage rediscovers the divine archetypal unity which is spellbound in the world, interwoven with love and hate. But if man is to find the divine he himself must become divine, for Empedocles takes his stand on the basis that only equals can recognize each other. His conviction of the laws of cognition is expressed in Goethe's saying, [ 12 ] “If the eye were not of the nature of the sun how could we see the light? If God's own power did not live within us how could we strive for the divine?”

[ 13 ] In the myth of Osiris the mystic is able to find these thoughts about the world and man, which transcend the experience of the senses. The divine creative force is diffused in the world. It appears as the four elements. The god (Osiris) has been slain. Man, with his cognition, which is of a divine nature, is to wake him again; he is to find him again as Horus (Son of God, Logos, Wisdom) in the antithesis of Strife (Typhon) and Love (Isis). Empedocles expresses his basic conviction in Greek form with ideas reminiscent of the myths. Aphrodite is Love; Neikos, Strife. They bind and release the elements.

[ 14 ] Such an exposition of the content of a myth must not be confused with a merely symbolical or allegorical interpretation. This is not intended here. The pictures comprising the content of a myth are not invented symbols for abstract truths, but real soul experiences of the initiate. He experiences the pictures with spiritual organs of perception as a normal man experiences the representations of material things with his eyes and ears. Just as the representation is of little value by itself if it is not activated by perception of the external object, so the mythological picture is of little value without its activation through real occurrences in the spiritual world. It is only with respect to the material world that man at first stands outside the activating things; on the other hand, he can experience the mythological pictures only when he stands within the corresponding spiritual events. To be able to stand within the latter, in the opinion of the ancient mystics, he must have passed through initiation. There the spiritual events which he sees are illustrated as it were, by the mythological pictures. Whoever is unable to take mythology as such an illustration of true spiritual events, has not yet advanced to a comprehension of mythology. For the spiritual events themselves are supersensible, and pictures whose content is reminiscent of the material world are not in themselves spiritual, but are merely an illustration of the spiritual. Whoever lives only in pictures, lives in a dream; he lives in spiritual perception only when he has reached the point of experiencing the spiritual in the picture, just as in the material world one experiences the rose through the representation of the rose. This is also the reason why the pictures presented by myths cannot have only a single meaning. Because of their illustrative character the same myths can express various spiritual facts. It is, therefore, no contradiction when interpreters of myths apply them now to one spiritual fact and again to a different one.

[ 15 ] From this point of view a thread can be found running through the manifold Greek myths. Let us consider the legend of Hercules. The twelve labors imposed on Hercules are seen in a higher light when one reflects that before the last and most difficult one he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. At the command of King Eurystheus of Mycenae he was to fetch Cerberus, the hound of hell, from the nether world, and take him back there again. To be able to undertake a journey into the nether world, Hercules had to be an initiate. The Mysteries led man through the death of the transitory and thus into the nether world; through initiation they wished to save the eternal element in him from destruction. As a mystic he could overcome death. Hercules overcame the dangers of the nether world as a mystic. This justifies the interpretation of his other deeds as stages of the inner development of the soul. He overcame the Nemean lion and brought him to Mycenae. This means that he became master of the purely physical force in man; he tamed it. Next he slew the nine-headed Hydra. He overcame it with firebrands, dipping his arrows in its gall so that they would never miss their mark. This means that he overcame lower knowledge, the knowledge of the senses, through the fire of the spirit, and out of what he had gained from this lower knowledge he drew the strength to see the lower world in the light belonging to the spiritual eye. Hercules caught the doe of Artemis. The latter is the goddess of the chase. Hercules hunted down what the free nature of the human soul can offer. The other labors can be interpreted in a similar way. We cannot follow them in every detail here; our intention is only to show how the general sense of the myth itself points to inner development

[ 16 ] A similar interpretation is possible for the voyage of the Argonauts. Phrixus and his sister Helle, children of a Boeotian king, suffered greatly at the hands of their stepmother. The gods sent a ram with a golden fleece to them, which carried them away through the air. As they crossed the straits between Europe and Asia, Helle was drowned. Hence the straits are called the Hellespont. Phrixus reached the king of Colchis on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. He sacrificed the ram to the gods and presented the fleece to the King Aetes. The latter had it hung in a grove and guarded by a frightful dragon. The Greek hero, Jason, together with the other heroes, Hercules, Theseus and Orpheus, undertook to fetch the fleece from Colchis. Jason was charged with difficult tasks before he could reach the treasure of Aetes. But Medea, the daughter of the king, who was versed in magic, helped him. He tamed two fire-breathing bulls; he ploughed a field and sowed dragons' teeth, so that armed men grew out of the earth. On the advice of Medea he threw a stone among the men, whereupon they murdered one another. By means of a magic potion from Medea, Jason put the dragon to sleep; then he was able to obtain the fleece. With this he embarked upon the return journey to Greece. Medea accompanied him as his wife. The king pursued the fugitives. To delay him, Medea slew her little brother Absyrtus, scattering his limbs upon the sea. Aetes was delayed in gathering them up. Hence the couple were able to reach Jason's home with the fleece. Here every single fact demands a deeper explanation. The fleece is something belonging to man, something of infinite value to him; in ancient times it was separated from him and its recapture involves the overcoming of terrible powers. So it is with the eternal in the human soul. It belongs to man. But he finds himself separated from it. His lower nature separates him from it. Only when he overcomes this lower nature, puts the latter to sleep, can he regain it. This is possible when his own consciousness (Medea) comes to his aid with its magic force. Medea becomes for Jason what Diotima, as the teacher of love, was for Socrates. Human wisdom possesses the magic force to reach the divine after overcoming the transitory. Out of the lower nature can come only a lower human element, the armed men, which is overcome by the force of the spiritual element, the advice of Medea. Even when man has found his eternal element, the Recce, he is not yet safe. He must sacrifice a part of his consciousness (Absyrtus). This is demanded by the material world, which we can conceive of only as manifold (torn to pieces). We could penetrate still more deeply into the description of the spiritual events lying behind these pictures, but here we intend only to indicate the principle of myth formation.

[ 17 ] Of particular interest in relation to such an interpretation is the saga of Prometheus. Prometheus and Epimetheus were the sons of the Titan, Japetos. The Titans were the children of the oldest generation of the gods, of Uranos (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth). Kronos, the youngest of the Titans, dethroned his father and seized the rulership of the world. For this, together with the remaining Titans, he was overpowered by his son Zeus. And Zeus became supreme among the gods. In the battle with the Titans, Prometheus stood at the side of Zeus. On his advice Zeus banished the Titans into the nether world. But the Titans' attitude of mind continued to live in Prometheus. He was only half a friend to Zeus. When Zeus wished to destroy men for their presumption, Prometheus took their part, teaching them the art of numbers and writing, as well as other things leading to culture, especially the use of fire. Because of this Zeus was angry with Prometheus. Hephaestus, the son of Zeus, was commissioned to fashion the image of a woman of great beauty, which the gods adorned with all kinds of gifts. This woman was known as Pandora, the all-gifted. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, brought her to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. She brought him a casket as a gift from the gods. Epimetheus accepted the gift, despite the fact that Prometheus had advised him on no account to accept a gift from the gods. When the casket was opened, out flew all kinds of human plagues. Hope alone remained inside, and that only because Pandora quickly closed the lid. Therefore Hope has remained as the doubtful gift of the gods.—At the command of Zeus, Prometheus was chained to a rock in the Caucasus because of his relationship with men. An eagle constantly fed upon his liver, which continually renewed itself. Prometheus had to pass his days in tortured solitude until one of the gods voluntarily sacrificed himself, that is, dedicated himself to death. The tortured one bore his suffering steadfastly. He had learned that Zeus would be dethroned by the son of a mortal woman if he did not marry her. Zeus was anxious to know this secret; he sent the messenger of the gods, Hermes, to Prometheus to discover something about it. Prometheus denied him any information. The legend of Hercules is linked with that of Prometheus. During his travels Hercules also came to the Caucasus. He killed the eagle which was consuming the liver of Prometheus. The centaur, Chiron, who could not die, although suffering from an incurable wound, sacrificed himself for Prometheus. Then the latter was reconciled with the gods.

[ 18 ] The Titans are the force of will streaming from the original cosmic spirit (Uranos) in the form of nature (Kronos). Here we must not think of merely abstract forces of will, but of real beings of will. Prometheus belongs among the latter. This characterizes his being. But he is not entirely a Titan. In a certain sense he sides with Zeus, the spirit who assumed the rulership of the world after the unbridled nature-force (Kronos) had been tamed. Prometheus, therefore, represents those worlds which have given man that forward-striving, which is a force half of nature, half of spirit—the will. On the one side the will is directed toward good, on the other side toward evil. Its destiny is formed according to whether it inclines toward the spiritual or the transitory. This destiny is the destiny of man himself. Man is chained to the transitory. The eagle gnaws at him. He must endure it. He can only attain the heights when he seeks his destiny in solitude. He has a secret. Its content is that the divine (Zeus) must marry a mortal, human consciousness itself, which is bound to the physical body, in order to bring forth a son, human wisdom (the Logos), who will redeem the god. Through this, consciousness becomes immortal. Man may not betray this secret until a mystic (Hercules) approaches him and removes the power which continually threatens him with death. A being, half animal, half human—a centaur—must sacrifice himself to redeem man. The centaur is man himself, the half animal, half spiritual man. He must die so that the purely spiritual man may be redeemed. What Prometheus, the human will, despises, is taken by Epimetheus, the intellect, shrewdness. But the gifts offered to Epimetheus are only troubles and plagues. For the intellect clings to nothingness, to the transitory. And only one thing remains—the hope that out of the transitory, one day the eternal may be born.

[ 19 ] The thread running through the legends of the Argonauts, Hercules and Prometheus, also holds good for the poem of the Odyssey by Homer. The use of this method of interpretation in studying the latter work, may appear forced. But upon a closer examination of everything that has to be considered, even the most hardened doubter must lose his misgivings about such an interpretation. Above all, it must surprise us to find it related of Odysseus also that he descended to the nether world. Whatever we may think of the author of the Odyssey in other respects, it is impossible to credit him with causing a mortal being to descend to the nether world without bringing him into relationship with all that the journey to the nether world signified in the Greek world conception. It signified the overcoming of the transitory and the awakening of the eternal in the soul. That Odysseus achieved this must, therefore, be admitted. With this his experiences, like those of Hercules, gain a deeper meaning. They become a description of something which does not belong to the material world, a description of the soul's path of development. In addition, the Odyssey is not related as one would expect of a sequence of external facts. The hero makes voyages on magic ships. Actual geographical distances are treated in a most arbitrary way. Material reality is simply irrelevant. This becomes comprehensible if the actual events are related only in order to illustrate spiritual development. Furthermore, the author himself states in his introduction to the work, that it deals with the search for the soul: [ 20 ] “Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had reached the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own soul and the return of his comrades.”⁵⁹

[ 21 ] Here we have a man seeking for the soul, the divine element, and his wanderings in search of this divine element are related. He comes to the land of the Cyclops. These are ungainly giants with one eye in their foreheads. Polyphemus, the most terrible of them, devours several of his companions. Odysseus saves himself by blinding the Cyclops. Here we are dealing with the first stage of life's pilgrimage. Physical power, the lower nature, must be overcome. Whoever does not deprive it of its strength, whoever does not blind it, will be devoured by it.—Odysseus then reaches the island of the witch Circe. She transforms some of his companions into grunting swine. She also is conquered by him. Circe represents the lower spiritual force which clings to the transitory. Through abuse of this force she can thrust humanity only deeper into its animal nature. Odysseus must overcome her. Then he can descend into the nether world. He becomes a mystic. Now he is exposed to the dangers which beset a mystic on his ascent from the lower to the higher stages of initiation. He reaches the Sirens who lure passing travelers to their death with sounds of enchanting sweetness. These are the images produced by the lower fantasy, the first things to be followed by anyone who has freed himself from the material world. He has come as far as free creative activity, but not as far as the initiated spirit. He chases after illusory images and must free himself from their power. Odysseus must traverse the awesome passage between Scylla and Charybdis. In his early stages the mystic wavers between spirit and sensuality. He is still unable to grasp the full content of the spirit, but sensuality has already lost its earlier value. All Odysseus' companions perish in a shipwreck; he alone saves himself and finds the nymph Calypso, who receives him in friendship and cares for him for seven years. At last, at the command of Zeus, she releases him to return to his home. The mystic has reached a stage at which all who are striving with him, fail, except Odysseus, who alone is worthy. In peace this worthy one enjoys gradual initiation for a period defined by the mystically symbolical number seven. Before Odysseus reaches his home, however, he comes to the island of the Phaeacians. Here he is hospitably received. The king's daughter is interested in him and King Alcinous himself entertains him and does him honor. Once again Odysseus encounters the world and its pleasures, and the spirit which cling to the world (Nausicaä) awakens in him. However, he finds the way home to the divine. At first nothing good awaits him at home. His wife, Penelope, is surrounded by numerous suitors. To each she promises marriage when she has finished a certain piece of weaving. She avoids keeping her promise by unraveling at night what she has woven during the day. The suitors must be overcome by Odysseus so that he may be reunited with his wife in peace. The goddess Athene transforms him into a beggar so that he will not be recognized at once upon entering his house. Then he overcomes the suitors. Odysseus seeks his own deeper consciousness, the divine forces of the soul. He wishes to be united with them. Before the mystic finds them he must overcome everything which lays claim to this consciousness in the form of a suitor. This crowd of suitors comes from the world of lower reality, of transitory nature. The logic applicable to this world is a weaving which continually unravels itself after it has been spun. Wisdom (the goddess Athene) is the sure guide to the deepest forces of the soul. She transforms man into a beggar, i.e. she divests him of all that is derived from the transitory.

[ 22 ] The Eleusinian Festivals, celebrated in Greece in honor of Demeter and Dionysus, appear steeped in Mystery wisdom. A sacred road led from Athens to Eleusis. It was marked with secret signs which could bring the soul into a mood of deep reverence. In Eleusis were secret temple buildings which were served by priestly families. Dignity and the wisdom with which this dignity was connected, were inherited in these priest families from generation to generation. (Information concerning these places of worship may be found in the book, Ergänzungen zu den letzten Untersuchungen auf der Acropolis in Athen by Karl Bötticher, Philologus, Suppl. Vol. 3 Section 3.) The wisdom making it possible for services to be enacted there, was the Greek Mystery wisdom. The festivals, celebrated twice yearly, displayed the great cosmic drama of the destiny of the divine in the world and the destiny of the human soul. The Minor Mysteries were celebrated in February, the Major Mysteries in September. Initiations were connected with the festivals. The symbolical presentation of the drama of man and the cosmos formed the concluding act of the initiations undertaken there. The Eleusinian temples were erected in honor of the goddess Demeter. She is a daughter of Kronos. She bore a daughter, Persephone, to Zeus, before his marriage to Hera. Once while Persephone was playing, she was kidnaped by Pluto, the god of the nether world. Demeter, lamenting, hastened to search for her all over the earth. In Eleusis the daughters of Keleus, a local ruler, found Demeter sitting on a rock. Taking the form of an old woman she entered the service of Keleus' family as nurse to the son of the ruler's wife. She wished to endow this son with immortality. Therefore she hid him every night in the fire. When the mother once observed this, she wept and lamented. Henceforth the bestowal of immortality was impossible. Demeter left the house. Keleus built a temple. Demeter's sorrow for Persephone was limitless. She caused famine to spread over the earth. To avoid disaster the gods were obliged to placate her. Pluto was persuaded by Zeus to allow Persephone to return to the upper world. Before this, however, the god of the nether world gave her a pomegranate to eat. Because of this she was compelled to return to the nether world again and again at regular intervals. From then on she spent one third of the year in the nether world and two thirds in the upper world. Demeter was reconciled; she returned to Olympus. But in Eleusis, the place of her anguish, she founded the service of the festivals to commemorate her fate for ever.

[ 23 ] The meaning of the Demeter-Persephone myth is not difficult to recognize. It is the soul which alternates between the lower and the upper world. The eternity of the soul and its eternal transformation through birth and death, is represented pictorially. The soul is descended from Demeter, the immortal. But it is carried off by the transitory and becomes destined to share in the fate of the transitory. It has eaten the fruit in the nether world; the human soul is satiated with the transitory and therefore cannot dwell continually in the divine heights. It must always return to the realm of the transitory. Demeter represents that being from which human consciousness has sprung; but this consciousness must be thought of as having been able to come into existence through the spiritual forces of the earth. Thus Demeter is the archetypal being of the earth, and her gift to the earth in the form of the forces in the seeds and the produce of the fields, only indicates a still deeper aspect of her being. This being wishes to endow humanity with immortality. Demeter hides her nursling in the fire at night. But man cannot endure the pure power of fire (the spirit). Demeter must desist. She can only found the temple service through which man may participate in the divine insofar as he is able to do so.

[ 24 ] The Eleusinian Festivals were an eloquent acknowledgment of belief in the eternity of the human soul. This acknowledgment found pictorial expression in the myth about Persephone. Dionysus was celebrated in Eleusis, together with Demeter and Persephone. As in Demeter was worshiped the divine creatrix of the eternal in man, so in Dionysus was worshiped the divine element, ever changing in the whole world. The god who had been diffused into the world and had been torn to pieces in order to be re-born spiritually, had to be celebrated together with Demeter. (A splendid presentation of the spirit of the Eleusinian Mysteries is to be found in the book, Sanctuaires d'Orient by Édouard Schuré. Paris, 1898.)

• 54. Sallust the Platonist, De Diis et mundo, Concerning Gods and the Universe, Par. III. Translated by A. D. Nock, Cambridge University Press, 1926.
• 55. Plotinus, 5th Ennead, The Divine Mind, 8th Tractate, On Intellectual Beauty, 6. Plotinus (204–269 A.D.) was born of Roman parents in Egypt. Studied under Ammonius Saccas at Alexandria, attempted to go to the East to study philosophy there, but finally reached Rome where he established himself as a teacher of philosophy. He attracted a circle of distinguished pupils, including the Emperor Gallienus and his wife. Not long before his death, Plotinus collected his writings and arranged them in a series of 6 Enneads, later edited by his famous pupil, Porphyry. The Enneads “are the most authoritative exposition of Neoplatonism.”
• 56. Plato, Phaedrus, 229 D, E, 230 A.
• 57. Empedocles, Fragment 26.
• 58. Empedocles, Fragment 20.
• 59. Homer, Odyssey, Book I, 1–5.

The concept “tree” is conditioned for our knowledge by the percept “tree.” There is only one determinate concept which I can select from the general system of concepts and apply to a given percept. The connection of concept and percept is mediately and objectively determined by thought in conformity with the percept. The connection between a percept and its concept is recognized after the act of perception, but the relevance of the one to the other is determined by the character of each.

In willing the situation is different. The percept is here the content of my existence as an individual, whereas the concept is the universal element in me. What is brought into ideal relation to the external world by means of the concept, is an immediate experience of my own, a percept of my Self. More precisely, it is a percept of my Self as active, as producing effects on the external world. In apprehending my own acts of will, I connect a concept with a corresponding percept, viz., with the particular volition. In other words, by an act of thought I link up my individual faculty (my will) with the universal world-process. The content of a concept corresponding to an external percept appearing within the field of my experience, is given through intuition. Intuition is the source for the content of my whole conceptual system. The percept shows me only which concept I have to apply, in any given instance, out of the aggregate of my intuitions. The content of a concept is, indeed, conditioned by the percept, but it is not produced by it. On the contrary, it is intuitively given and connected with the percept by an act of thought. The same is true of the conceptual content of an act of will which is just as little capable of being deduced from this act. It is got by intuition.

If now the conceptual intuition (ideal content) of my act of will occurs before the corresponding percept, then the content of what I do is determined by my ideas. The reason why I select from the number of possible intuitions just this special one, cannot be sought in an object of perception, but is to be found rather in the purely ideal interdependence of the members of my system of concepts. In other words, the determining factors for my will are to be found, not in the perceptual, but only in the conceptual world. My will is determined by my idea.

The conceptual system which corresponds to the external world is conditioned by this external world. We must determine from the percept itself what concept corresponds to it; and how, in turn, this concept will fit in with the rest of my system of ideas, depends on its intuitive content. The percept thus conditions directly its concept and, thereby, indirectly also its place in the conceptual system of my world. But the ideal content of an act of will, which is drawn from the conceptual system and which precedes the act of will, is determined only by the conceptual system itself.

An act of will which depends on nothing but this ideal content must itself be regarded as ideal, that is, as determined by an idea. This does not imply, of course, that all acts of will are determined only by ideas. All factors which determine the human individual have an influence on his will.

In a particular act of will we must distinguish two factors: the motive, and the spring of action. The motive is the conceptual factor, the spring of action is the perceptual factor in will. The conceptual factor, or motive, is the momentary determining cause of an act of will, the spring of action is the permanent determining factor in the individual. The motive of an act of will can be only a pure concept, or else a concept with a definite relation to perception, i.e., an idea. Universal and individual concepts (ideas) become motives of will by influencing the human individual and determining him to action in a particular direction. One and the same concept, however, or one and the same idea, influences different individuals differently. They determine different men to different actions. An act of will is, therefore, not merely the outcome of a concept or an idea, but also of the individual make-up of human beings. This individual make-up we will call, following Edward van Hartmann, the “characterological disposition.” The manner in which concept and idea act on the characterological disposition of a man gives to his life a definite moral or ethical stamp.

The characterological disposition consists of the more or less permanent content of the individual's life, that is, of his habitual ideas and feelings. Whether an idea which enters my mind at this moment stimulates me to an act of will or not, depends on its relation to my other ideal contents, and also to my peculiar modes of feeling. My ideal content, in turn, is conditioned by the sum total of those concepts which have, in the course of my individual life, come in contact with percepts, that is, have become ideas. This, again, depends on my greater or lesser capacity for intuition, and on the range of my perception, that is, on the subjective and objective factors of my experiences, on the structure of my mind and on my environment. My affective life more especially determines my characterological disposition. Whether I shall make a certain idea or concept the motive for action will depend on whether it gives me pleasure or pain.

These are the factors which we have to consider in an act of will. The immediately present idea or concept, which becomes the motive, determines the end or the purpose of my will; my characterological disposition determines me to direct my activity towards this end. The idea of taking a walk in the next half-hour determines the end of my action. But this idea is raised to the level of a motive only if it meets with a suitable characterological disposition, that is, if during my past life I have formed the ideas of the wholesomeness of walking and the value of health; and further, if the idea of walking is accompanied by a feeling of pleasure.

We must, therefore, distinguish (1) the possible subjective dispositions which are likely to turn given ideas and concepts into motives, and (2) the possible ideas and concepts which are capable of so influencing my characterological disposition that an act of will results. The former are for morality the springs of action, the latter its ends.

The springs of action in the moral life can be discovered by analyzing the elements of which individual life is composed.

The first level of individual life is that of perception, more particularly sense-perception. This is the stage of our individual lives in which a percept translates itself into will immediately, without the intervention of either a feeling or a concept. The spring of action here involved may be called simply instinct. Our lower, purely animal, needs (hunger, sexual intercourse, etc.) find their satisfaction in this way. The main characteristic of instinctive life is the immediacy with which the percept starts off the act of will. This kind of determination of the will, which belongs originally only to the life of the lower senses, may however become extended also to the percepts of the higher senses. We may react to the percept of a certain event in the external world without reflecting on what we do, and without any special feeling connecting itself with the percept. We have examples of this especially in our ordinary conventional intercourse with men. The spring of this kind of action is called tact or moral good taste. The more often such immediate reactions to a percept occur, the more the agent will prove himself able to act purely under the guidance of tact; that is, tact becomes his characterological disposition.

The second level of human life is feeling. Definite feelings accompany the percepts of the external world. These feelings may become springs of action. When I see a hungry man, my pity for him may become the spring of my action. Such feelings, for example, are modesty, pride, sense of honour, humility, remorse, pity, revenge, gratitude, piety, loyalty, love, and duty. [A complete catalogue of the principles of morality (from the point of view of Metaphysical Realism) may be found in Edouard von Hartmann's Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins. ]

The third and last level of life is to have thoughts and ideas. An idea or a concept may become the motive of an action through mere reflection. Ideas become motives because, in the course of my life, I regularly connect certain aims of my will with percepts which recur again and again in a more or less modified form. Hence it is, that with men who are not wholly without experience, the occurrence of certain percepts is always accompanied also by the consciousness of ideas of actions, which they have themselves carried out in similar cases or which they have seen others carry out. These ideas float before their minds as determining models in all subsequent decisions; they become parts of their characterological disposition. We may give the name of practical experience to the spring of action just described. Practical experience merges gradually into purely tactful behaviour. That happens, when definite typical pictures of actions have become so closely connected in our minds with ideas of certain situations in life, that, in any given instance, we omit all deliberation based on experience, and pass immediately from the percept to the action.

The highest level of individual life is that of conceptual thought without reference to any definite perceptual content. We determine the content of a concept through pure intuition on the basis of an ideal system. Such a concept contains, at first, no reference to any definite percepts. When an act of will comes about under the influence of a concept which refers to a percept, i.e., under the influence of an idea, then it is the percept which determines our action indirectly by way of the concept. But when we act under the influence of pure intuitions, the spring of our action is pure thought. As it is the custom in philosophy to call pure thought “reason,” we may perhaps be justified in giving the name of practical reason to the spring of action characteristic of this level of life. The clearest account of this spring of action has been given by Kreyenbuhl (Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. xviii, No. 3). In my opinion his article on this subject is one of the most important contributions to present-day philosophy, more especially to Ethics. Kreyenbuhl calls the spring of action, of which we are treating, the practical a priori, i.e., a spring of action issuing immediately from my intuition.

It is clear that such a spring of action can no longer be counted in the strictest sense as part of the characterological disposition. For what is here effective in me as a spring of action is no longer something purely individual, but the ideal, and hence universal, content of my intuition. As soon as I regard the content as the valid basis and starting-point of an action, I pass over into willing, irrespective of whether the concept was already in my mind beforehand, or whether it only occurs to me immediately before the action, that is, irrespective of whether it was present in the form of a disposition in me or not.

A real act of will results only when a present impulse to action, in the form of a concept or idea, acts on the characterological disposition. Such an impulse thereupon becomes the motive of the will.

The motives of moral conduct are ideas and concepts. There are Moralists who see in feeling also a motive of morality; they assert, e.g., that the end of moral conduct is to secure the greatest possible quantity of pleasure for the agent. Pleasure itself, however, can never be a motive; at best only the idea of pleasure can act as motive. The idea of a future pleasure, but not the feeling itself, can act on my characterological disposition. For the feeling does not yet exist in the moment of action; on the contrary, it has first to be produced by the action.

The idea of one's own or another's well-being is, however, rightly regarded as a motive of the will. The principle of producing the greatest quantity of pleasure for oneself through one's action, that is, to attain individual happiness, is called Egoism. The attainment of this individual happiness is sought either by thinking ruthlessly only of one's own good, and striving to attain it even at the cost of the happiness of other individuals (Pure Egoism), or by promoting the good of others, either because one anticipates indirectly a favourable influence on one's own happiness through the happiness of others, or because one fears to endanger one's own interest by injuring others (Morality of Prudence). The special content of the egoistical principle of morality will depend on the ideas which we form of what constitutes our own, or others' good. A man will determine the content of his egoistical striving in accordance with what he regards as one of life's good things (luxury, hope of happiness, deliverance from different evils, etc.).

Further, the purely conceptual content of an action is to be regarded as yet another kind of motive. This content has no reference, like the idea of one's own pleasure, solely to the particular action, but to the deduction of an action from a system of moral principles. These moral principles, in the form of abstract concepts, may guide the individual's moral life without his worrying himself about the origin of his concepts. In that case, we feel merely the moral necessity of submitting to a moral concept, which, in the form of law, controls our actions. The justification of this necessity we leave to those who demand from us moral subjection, that is, to those whose moral authority over us we acknowledge (the head of the family, the state, social custom, the authority of the church, divine revelation). We meet with a special kind of these moral principles when the law is not proclaimed to us by an external authority, but comes from our own selves (moral autonomy). In this case we believe that we hear the voice, to which we have to submit ourselves, in our own souls. The name for this voice is conscience.

It is a great moral advance when a man no longer takes as the motive of his action the commands of an external or internal authority, but tries to understand the reason why a given maxim of action ought to be effective as a motive in him. This is the advance from morality based on authority to action from moral insight. At this level of morality, a man will try to discover the demands of the moral life, and will let his action be determined by this knowledge. Such demands are (1) the greatest possible happiness of humanity as a whole purely for its own sake, (2) the progress of civilization, or the moral development of mankind towards ever greater perfection, (3) the realization of individual moral ends conceived by an act of pure intuition.

The greatest possible happiness of humanity as a whole will naturally be differently conceived by different people. The above mentioned maxim does not imply any definite idea of this happiness, but rather means that every one who acknowledges this principle strives to do all that, in his opinion, most promotes the good of the whole of humanity.

The progress of civilization is seen to be a special application of the moral principle just mentioned, at any rate for those to whom the goods which civilization produces bring feelings of pleasure. However, they will have to pay the price of progress in the destruction and annihilation of many things which also contribute to the happiness of humanity. It is, however, also possible that some men look upon the progress of civilization as a moral necessity, quite apart from the feelings of pleasure which it brings. If so, the progress of civilization will be a new moral principle for them, different from the previous one.

Both the principle of the public good, and that of the progress of civilization, alike depend on the way in which we apply the content of our moral ideas to particular experiences (percepts). The highest principle of morality which we can conceive, however, is that which contains to start with, no such reference to particular experiences, but which springs from the source of pure intuition and does not seek until later any connection with percepts, i.e., with life. The determination of what ought to be willed issues here from a point of view very different from that of the previous two principles. Whoever accepts the principle of the public good will in all his actions ask first what his ideals contribute to this public good. The upholder of the progress of civilization as the principle of morality will act similarly. There is, however, a still higher mode of conduct which, in a given case, does not start from any single limited moral ideal, but which sees a certain value in all moral principles, always asking whether this or that is more important in a particular case. It may happen that a man considers in certain circumstances the promotion of the public good, in others that of the progress of civilization, and in yet others the furthering of his own private good, to be the right course, and makes that the motive of his action. But when all other grounds of determination take second place, then we rely, in the first place, on conceptual intuition itself. All other motives now drop out of sight, and the ideal content of an action alone becomes its motive.

Among the levels of characterological disposition, we have singled out as the highest that which manifests itself as pure thought, or practical reason. Among the motives, we have just singled out conceptual intuition as the highest. On nearer consideration, we now perceive that at this level of morality the spring of action and the motive coincide, i.e., that neither a predetermined characterological disposition, nor an external moral principle accepted on authority, influence our conduct. The action, therefore, is neither a merely stereotyped one which follows the rules of a moral code, nor is it automatically performed in response to an external impulse. Rather it is determined solely through its ideal content.

For such an action to be possible, we must first be capable of moral intuitions. Whoever lacks the capacity to think out for himself the moral principles that apply in each particular case, will never rise to the level of genuine individual willing.

Kant's principle of morality: Act so that the principle of your action may be valid for all men—is the exact opposite of ours. His principle would mean death to all individual action. The norm for me can never be what all men would do, but rather what it is right for me to do in each special case.

A superficial criticism might urge against these arguments: How can an action be individually adapted to the special case and the special situation, and yet at the same time be ideally determined by pure intuition? This objection rests on a confusion of the moral motive with the perceptual content of an action. The latter, indeed, may be a motive, and is actually a motive when we act for the progress of culture, or from pure egoism, etc., but in action based on pure moral intuition it never is a motive. Of course, my Self takes notice of these perceptual contents, but it does not allow itself to be determined by them. The content is used only to construct a theoretical concept, but the corresponding moral concept is not derived from the object. The theoretical concept of a given situation which faces me, is a moral concept also, only if I adopt the standpoint of a particular moral principle. If I base all my conduct on the principle of the progress of civilization, then my way through life is tied down to a fixed route. From every occurrence which comes to my notice and attracts my interest, there springs a moral duty, viz., to do my tiny share towards using this occurrence in the service of the progress of civilization. In addition to the concept which reveals to me the connections of events or objects according to the laws of nature, there is also a moral label attached to them which contains for me, as a moral agent, ethical directions as to how I have to conduct myself. At a higher level these moral labels disappear, and my action is determined in each particular instance by my idea; and more particularly by the idea which is suggested to me by the concrete instance.

Men vary greatly in their capacity for intuition. In some, ideas bubble up like a spring, others acquire them with much labour. The situations in which men live, and which are the scenes of their actions, are no less widely different. The conduct of a man will depend, therefore, on the manner in which his faculty of intuition reacts to a given situation. The aggregate of the ideas which are effective in us, the concrete content of our intuitions, constitute that which is individual in each of us, notwithstanding the universal character of our ideas. In so far as this intuitive content has reference to action, it constitutes the moral substance of the individual. To let this substance express itself in his life is the moral principle of the man who regards all other moral principles as subordinate. We may call this point of view Ethical Individualism.

The determining factor of an action, in any concrete instance, is the discovery of the corresponding purely individual intuition. At this level of morality, there can be no question of general moral concepts (norms, laws). General norms always presuppose concrete facts from which they can be deduced. But facts have first to be created by human action.

When we look for the regulating principles (the conceptual principles guiding the actions of individuals, peoples, epochs), we obtain a system of Ethics which is not a science of moral norms, but rather a science of morality as a natural fact. Only the laws discovered in this way are related to human action as the laws of nature are related to particular phenomena. These laws, however, are very far from being identical with the principles on which we base our actions. When I, or another, subsequently review my action we may discover what moral principles came into play in it. But so long as I am acting, I am influenced not by these moral principles but by my love for the object, which I want to realize through my action. I ask no man and no moral code, whether I shall perform this action or not. On the contrary, I carry it out as soon as I have formed the idea of it. This alone makes it my action. If a man acts because he accepts certain moral norms, his action is the outcome of the principles which compose his moral code. He merely carries out orders. He is a superior kind of automaton. Inject some stimulus to action into his mind, and at once the clock-work of his moral principles will begin to work and run its prescribed course, so as to issue in an action which is Christian, or humane, or unselfish, or calculated to promote the progress of culture. It is only when I follow solely my love for the object, that it is I, myself, who act. At this level of morality, I acknowledge no lord over me, neither an external authority, nor the so-called voice of my conscience. I acknowledge no external principle of my action, because I have found in myself the ground for my action, viz., my love of the action. I do not ask whether my action is good or bad; I perform it, because I am in love with it. Neither do I ask myself how another man would act in my position. On the contrary, I act as I, this unique individuality, will to act. No general usage, no common custom, no general maxim current among men, no moral norm guides me, but my love for the action. I feel no compulsion, neither the compulsion of nature which dominates me through my instincts, nor the compulsion of the moral commandments. My will is simply to realize what in me lies.

Those who hold to general moral norms will reply to these arguments that, if every one has the right to live himself out and to do what he pleases, there can be no distinction between a good and a bad action, every fraudulent impulse in me has the same right to issue in action as the intention to serve the general good. It is not the mere fact of my having conceived the idea of an action which ought to determine me as a moral agent, but the further examination of whether it is a good or an evil action. Only if it is good ought I to carry it out.

In reply I would say that I am not talking of children or of men who follow their animal or social instincts. I am talking of men who are capable of raising themselves to the level of the ideal content of the world. It is only in an age in which immature men regard the blind instincts as part of a man's individuality, that the act of a criminal can be described as living out one's individuality in the same sense in which the embodiment in action of a pure intuition can be so described.

The animal instinct which drives a man to a criminal act does not belong to what is individual in him, but rather to that which is most general in him, to that which is equally present in all individuals. The individual element in me is not my organism with its instincts and feelings, but rather the unified world of ideas which reveals itself through this organism. My instincts, cravings, passions, justify no further assertion about me than that I belong to the general species man. The fact that something ideal expresses itself in its own unique way through these instincts, passions, and feelings, constitutes my individuality. My instincts and cravings make me the sort of man of whom there are twelve to the dozen. The unique character of the idea, by means of which I distinguish myself within the dozen as “I,” makes of me an individual. Only a being other than myself could distinguish me from others by the difference in my animal nature. By thought, i.e., by the active grasping of the ideal element working itself out through my organism, I distinguish myself from others. Hence it is impossible to say of the action of a criminal that it issues from the idea within him. Indeed, the characteristic feature of criminal actions is precisely that they spring from the non-ideal elements in man.

An act the grounds for which lie in the ideal part of my individual nature is free. Every other act, whether done under the compulsion of nature or under the obligation imposed by a moral norm, is unfree.

That man alone is free who in every moment of his life is able to obey only himself. A moral act is my act only when it can be called free in this sense.

Action on the basis of freedom does not exclude, but include, the moral laws. It only shows that it stands on a higher level than actions which are dictated by these laws. Why should my act serve the general good less well when I do it from pure love of it, than when I perform it because it is a duty to serve the general good? The concept of duty excludes freedom, because it will not acknowledge the right of individuality, but demands the subjection of individuality to a general norm. Freedom of action is conceivable only from the standpoint of Ethical Individualism.

But how about the possibility of social life for men, if each aims only at asserting his own individuality? This question expresses yet another objection on the part of Moralism. The Moralist believes that a social community is possible only if all men are held together by a common moral order. This shows that the Moralist does not understand the community of the world of ideas. He does not realize that the world of ideas which inspires me is no other than that which inspires my fellow-men. I differ from my neighbour, not at all because we are living in two entirely different mental worlds, but because from our common world of ideas we receive different intuitions. He desires to live out his intuitions, I mine. If we both draw our intuitions really from the world of ideas, and do not obey mere external impulses (physical or moral), then we can not but meet one another in striving for the same aims, in having the same intentions. A moral misunderstanding, a clash of aims, is impossible between men who are free. Only the morally unfree who blindly follow their natural instincts or the commands of duty, turn their backs on their neighbours, if these do not obey the same instincts and the same laws as themselves. Live and let live is the fundamental principle of the free man. He knows no “ought.” How he shall will in any given case will be determined for him by his faculty of ideas.

If sociability were not deeply rooted in human nature, no external laws would be able to inoculate us with it. It is only because human individuals are akin in spirit that they can live out their lives side by side. The free man lives out his life in the full confidence that all other free men belong to one spiritual world with himself, and that their intentions will coincide with his. The free man does not demand agreement from his fellow-men, but he expects it none the less, believing that it is inherent in human nature.

There are many who will say that the concept of the free man which I have here developed, is a chimera nowhere to be found realized, and that we have got to deal with actual human beings, from whom we can expect morality only if they obey some moral law, i.e., if they regard their moral task as a duty and do not simply follow their inclinations and loves. I do not deny this. Only a blind man could do that. But, if so, away with all this hypocrisy of morality! Let us say simply that human nature must be compelled to act as long as it is not free. Whether the compulsion of man's unfree nature is effected by physical force or through moral laws, whether man is unfree because he indulges his unmeasured sexual desire, or because he is bound tight in the bonds of conventional morality, is quite immaterial. Only let us not assert that such a man can rightly call his actions his own, seeing that he is driven to them by an external force. But in the midst of all this network of compulsion, there arise free spirits who in all the welter of customs, legal codes, religious observances, etc., learn to be true to themselves. They are free in so far as they obey only themselves; unfree in so far as they submit to control. Which of us can say that he is really free in all his actions? Yet in each of us there dwells something deeper in which the free man finds expression.

Our life is made up of free and unfree actions. We cannot, however, form a final and adequate concept of human nature without coming upon the free spirit as its purest expression. After all, we are men in the fullest sense only in so far as we are free.

This is an ideal, many will say. Doubtless; but it is an ideal which is a real element in us working up to the surface of our nature. It is no ideal born of mere imagination or dream, but one which has life, and which manifests itself clearly even in the least developed form of its existence. If men were nothing but natural objects, the search for ideals, that is, for ideas which as yet are not actual but the realization of which we demand, would be an impossibility. In dealing with external objects the idea is determined by the percept. We have done our share when we have recognized the connection between idea and percept. But with a human being the case is different. The content of his existence is not determined without him. His concept (free spirit) is not a priori united objectively with the perceptual content “man,” so that knowledge need only register the fact subsequently. Man must by his own act unite his concept with the percept “man.” Concept and percept coincide with one another in this instance, only in so far as the individual himself makes them coincide. This he can do only if he has found the concept of the free spirit, that is, if he has found the concept of his own Self. In the objective world a boundary-line is drawn by our organization between percept and concept. Knowledge breaks down this barrier. In our subjective nature this barrier is no less present. The individual overcomes it in the course of his development, by embodying his concept of himself in his outward existence. Hence man's moral life and his intellectual life lead him both alike to his twofold nature, perception (immediate experience) and thought. The intellectual life overcomes his twofold nature by means of knowledge, the moral life succeeds through the actual realization of the free spirit. Every being has its inborn concept (the laws of its being and action), but in external objects this concept is indissolubly bound up with the percept, and separated from it only in the organization of human minds. In human beings concept and percept are, at first, actually separated, to be just as actually reunited by them. Some one might object that to our percept of a man there corresponds at every moment of his life a definite concept, just as with external objects. I can construct for myself the concept of an average man, and I may also have given to me a percept to fit this pattern. Suppose now I add to this the concept of a free spirit, then I have two concepts for the same object.

Such an objection is one-sided. As object of perception I am subject to perpetual change. As a child I was one thing, another as a youth, yet another as a man. Moreover, at every moment I am different, as percept, from what I was the moment before. These changes may take place in such a way that either it is always only the same (average) man who exhibits himself in them, or that they represent the expression of a free spirit. Such are the changes which my actions, as objects of perception, undergo.

In the perceptual object “man” there is given the possibility of transformation, just as in the plant-seed there lies the possibility of growth into a fully developed plant. The plant transforms itself in growth, because of the objective law of nature which is inherent in it. The human being remains in his undeveloped state, unless he takes hold of the material for transformation within him and develops himself through his own energy. Nature makes of man merely a natural being; Society makes of him a being who acts in obedience to law; only he himself can make a free man of himself. At a definite stage in his development Nature releases man from her fetters; Society carries his development a step further; he alone can give himself the final polish.

The theory of free morality, then, does not assert that the free spirit is the only form in which man can exist. It looks upon the freedom of the spirit only as the last stage in man's evolution. This is not to deny that conduct in obedience to norms has its legitimate place as a stage in development. The point is that we cannot acknowledge it to be the absolute standpoint in morality. For the free spirit transcends norms, in the sense that he is insensible to them as commands, but regulates his conduct in accordance with his impulses (intuitions).

When Kant apostrophizes duty: “Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name, that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission,” thou that “holdest forth a law ... before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly counter-work it,” [Translation by Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 180; Critique of Pure Practical Reason, chap. iii.] then the free spirit replies: “Freedom! thou kindly and humane name, which dost embrace within thyself all that is morally most charming, all that insinuates itself most into my humanity, and which makest me the servant of nobody, which holdest forth no law, but waitest what my inclination itself will proclaim as law, because it resists every law that is forced upon it.”

This is the contrast of morality according to law and according to freedom.

The Philistine who looks upon the state as embodied morality is sure to look upon the free spirit as a danger to the state. But that is only because his view is narrowly focused on a limited period of time. If he were able to look beyond, he would soon find that it is but on rare occasions that the free spirit needs to go beyond the laws of his state, and that it never needs to confront them with any real contradiction. For the laws of the state, one and all, have had their origin in the intuitions of free spirits, just like all other objective laws of morality. There is no traditional law enforced by the authority of a family, which was not, once upon a time, intuitively conceived and laid down by an ancestor. Similarly the conventional laws of morality are first of all established by particular men, and the laws of the state are always born in the brain of a statesman. These free spirits have set up laws over the rest of mankind, and only he is unfree who forgets this origin and makes them either divine commands, or objective moral duties, or the authoritative voice of his own conscience.

He, on the other hand, who does not forget the origin of laws, but looks for it in man, will respect them as belonging to the same world of ideas which is the source also of his own moral intuitions. If he thinks his intuitions better than the existing laws, he will try to put them into the place of the latter. If he thinks the laws justified, he will act in accordance with them as if they were his own intuitions.

Man does not exist in order to found a moral order of the world. Anyone who maintains that he does, stands in his theory of man still at that same point, at which natural science stood when it believed that a bull has horns in order that it may butt. Scientists, happily, have cast the concept of objective purposes in nature into the limbo of dead theories. For Ethics, it is more difficult to achieve the same emancipation. But just as horns do not exist for the sake of butting, but butting because of horns, so man does not exist for the sake of morality, but morality exists through man. The free man acts because he has a moral idea, he does not act in order to be moral. Human individuals are the presupposition of a moral world order.

The human individual is the fountain of all morality and the centre of all life. State and society exist only because they have necessarily grown out of the life of individuals. That state and society, in turn, should react upon the lives of individuals, is no more difficult to comprehend, than that the butting which is the result of the existence of horns, reacts in turn upon the further development of the horns, which would become atrophied by prolonged disuse. Similarly the individual must degenerate, if he leads an isolated existence beyond the pale of human society. That is just the reason why the social order arises, viz., that it may react favourably upon the individual.

With reference to my presentations I would like to ask you to take these four lectures as a unit. This means the content of one lecture is not to be taken as independent and judged this way. The relative theme is so comprehensive that it can only be manageable by doing a number of lectures.

In today's lecture I would like to make a provisional outline for possible solving techniques distilled from actual knowledge of the being of the social organism, of such solution possibilities for the social question which do not come out of some one-sided remark about some or other class, some or other state, but coming from appropriate reality, coming from the properly observed evolutionary forces of humanity and in particular those evolutionary forces which are the most pronounced at present and valid for the near future of humanity. If one tries to find a solution for the social question through the aspirations or the demands of a state, of a class, out of some part of the social organism, then one does nothing other than undermine the other elements of the social organism by calling on yet another class which in some way or other restrict development or healthy living conditions.

For our time here, it is relevant to reveal and substantiate my indications of truths in the following lectures. In modern life, or it could be called the modern social organism, quite a particular form is experienced through expressions characteristic of modern life, through technology, through the technical operation of economic life and its relationships and through the capitalistic process which organises this economic enterprise. Not necessarily only those with a conscious focus observe this modern technology and modern capitalism as they were introduced into life, but their focus was on the more or less conscious or the more or less instinctive, actively organised forces within the social structure of the human community.

The characteristic, particular form of the social question coming to the fore in modern times can be expressed as follows: economic life supported by technology and modern capitalism have worked in a natural self-evident way and brought order into the modern community. Besides this claim for human awareness towards technology and capitalism, the awareness was deflected by other branches, other spheres of the social organism, where awareness should have become as necessary as the health of the social organism as it was with the economic field.

Perhaps I may use a comparison to clearly communicate what I could call the nerve of a comprehensive, many-sided observation of the social question. Please consider that with a comparison I don't mean anything other than a support of human understanding in order to orientate it towards the healing of the social question. Whoever wants to consider what we know as the most complicated organism—that of the human being—needs to pay attention to the existence of three operative systems working side by side in the human form. These three cooperative systems can be characterised in the following way. One could say in the human, natural organism a system works incorporating the nerves and senses. One could call the most important member of this system where the nerves and senses are centralized, the head organisation.

As to the second member of the human organism, in order to develop a real understanding of this organism it is necessary to consider what I would like to call the rhythmic system, in relationship with breathing, blood circulation and everything expressed as rhythmic processes. As a third system, one can recognise all the organs whose actions relate to metabolism. In these three systems are the combined effects, when they interact in a healthy way, of all that is contained in the human organism. I have tried, in full agreement with all the research science has claimed, to characterise this threefold aspect of the human being as an outline in my book Riddles of the Soul I am clear about all the aspects to be introduced in the future by biology, physiology and science regarding the human organism which will see how this threefold head-, circulation-, (or chest system) and digestive systems are maintained—that these members each work in a particular independent way which indicates it is not an complete centralisation of the organism. These three systems each have a particular relationship to the outer world; the head system through the senses, the circulation or rhythmic system through breathing and the digestive system through the nutritional organs. In relation to scientific methods we have not progressed as far as these ideas I'm indicating here, out of spiritual scientific foundations for natural science as I've tried to use, in order to present it in scientific circles as a general statement and in a way, make it desirable for the evolution of knowledge. This means however that our thinking habits, the entire way we imagine the world to be has not completely been adjusted to the example of the human organism as it is presented in its natural processes. In a way one could say yes, science can wait, they may gradually rush to their ideals, they will soon come to the view that such observations are their own. However, regarding the examination and especially the processes of the social organism, one can't wait. Not with some or other expert but for every human soul—because every human soul shares in the work of the social organism—at least must take part in the work of the social organism—at least by an instinctive knowledge of the necessities of this social organism. Healthy thought and experience, a healthy will and desire in relation to the expression of the social order can only develop when people—whether more or less instinctive—can understand that this social organism, if it is to be healthy, must be a natural threefold organism.

Now I am at the point where I need to be very careful not to be misunderstood. Since Schäffle wrote a book about the social organism, there have been repeated attempts at establishing an analogy between a natural organization, let's say an organisation of people, and on the other side, a human community as such. So many efforts have been made to determine the cell of the social organism, where the cell structure exists, what the tissues could be and so on! Recently a book appeared by Aleray, Weltmutation (mutation of the world), in which certain scientific facts and scientific laws are simply transferred on to, what they call, the social organization. With all these analogy games, nothing relates to what we are considering here. Those who at the end of this lecture could say: ‘Oh, here we have yet again such a game of analogy between the natural organism and the social organism’—would prove that the real spirit within the meaning has not been penetrated by the listener. This I don't want—some or other scientific facts adjusted as truth and transplanted on to the social organisation. What I want is for human thinking, human feeling to learn through observation of the natural organism that this method, this way of sensing can in turn be applied to the social organization. When you simply take the belief you learnt about natural organisms and apply that to social organism, like Schäffle has done, like others have done too, likewise with Weltmutation then it shows you are unwilling to develop a capability to consider the social organism as independent, to examine it as such, to research it according to its own laws, just as you do with natural organisms. In order for you to understand me I have made this comparison with a natural organism. The very moment you continue, like the researcher in nature, objectively meeting the natural organism, as you would place yourself before the independence of the social organism in order to learn about its laws, in that moment the game of analogy regarding the earnestness of your observation, will stop.

I want to call your attention now to how this play of analogies must come to an end. The examination of the social organism—here it involves something becoming, something which must come into existence first—in as far as it must be healthy, leads to the three members of this social organism, but they both can only be recognised as independent as such, when considered objectively. On the one side, you can distinguish three members of the human organism, on the other side the objective, independent members of the social organism. If you look for analogies, then you most likely will experience the following. You would say that this human head- or nerve-system relates to human spiritual life with its spiritual abilities; the circulatory system rules the relation with this spiritual system with the crudest system, and the materialistic system with the digestive system. The digestive system could be considered through certain fundamental experiences as the crudest of systems in the human organism. What then, if you continued the game of analogy, would be the next thing? The next thing would be to say the social organism divides into three branches.

Spiritual life develops within a person. That is one member. Within a person his actual political life develops too—we will speak about this division of branches afterwards—and also his economic or business life develops within. You could, if you wanted to play the analogy game, believe that spiritual life as in spiritual culture in the social organism is subject to the same kind of laws which allow a comparison with the laws in the nervous and sense systems. The system considered as unrefined, the most materialistic, the digestive system, can in the game of analogy probably be compared with what one calls the crude system of material business life. Whoever can consider things for themselves and stay far away from the mere game of analogy will know that in reality, things are actually reversed in comparison with what comes out of mere analogy. See, the social organism lies opposite the economic production and consumption, opposite the economic circulation of goods at the basis of life's rules, just like the natural human organism's laws are at the foundation of the nerves- and sense-life, which is its spiritual system. Certainly the life of public law, the actual political life, life which is often too all-encompassing, which can be described as the actual civil life, allows itself to be between the two systems of the digestive and the nerve-sense systems where the rhythmic system lies, the regulating system of the breathing and heart. Only by comparing how the human organism has, between its digestive and nerve-systems the central circulation or rhythmic systems, so between the public rights and the economic system stand the actual life of spiritual culture. This life of spiritual culture, this spiritual life of the social organism has no laws which can be thought of as analogous to laws of human talents, laws of human sense and nerve existence but the spiritual life in the social organism has laws which can only be compared with laws in the crudest system, the metabolic system.

This leads to an objective observation of the social organism. Regarding this particular point the assumption must be clear in order for no misunderstanding to arise in a belief that the physiological or biological elements are simply transferred on to the social organism. The social organism must be considered as an independent organism throughout for its success towards recovery to take place. In various areas in central and eastern Europe the word “socializing” is heard. This socializing will not become a healing process but a fake process in the social organism, perhaps even a disturbing process if the human heart, the soul does not have insight with instinctive knowledge of the necessity for a threefoldness in the social organism. This social organism has in every case, if it is to work in a healthy way, three members. The first member, to begin with from the one side—one could understandably also start on the side of the spiritual life but for now we will start on the economic side as this obviously controls the rest of life through modern technology in modern capitalism—therefore, the first member of the social organism as business life, or economic life, will be looked at. This economic life, we will partly today and partly in the course of these lectures see it has to be an independent member within the social organism just as in comparison, the nerve- sense system is relatively independent in the human organism. Our economic life is connected to all that takes place in the production, circulation and consumption of goods. With everything connected to these three things, economy is linked. We will soon consider its characteristics in order to understand it more closely.

As a second member of the social organism we observe the life of public law, the actual political life, for the purposes of the old constitutional state it could be called the actual life of the state. Meanwhile economic life involves the business of everything which the human being brings out of nature as his own production, because the economic life involves the circulation and consumption of goods, so this second member of the social organism is involved with everything with a human foundation with its relationships of people with people. This I ask you to consider comprehensively, because it is important for knowledge of the members of the social organism to know the difference between public laws which relate to the foundation of one human being to another, while in the economic system it involves the production, circulation and consumption of goods. One must be able to distinguish between the natural human system in relation to the lungs and outer air, the processing of this outer air, how this differs from the manner and way nourishment is transformed in the third natural system within the human being.

As a third member which must be placed independently from the others, there has to be a distinction from everything in the social order which involved spiritual life. More precisely the name ‘spiritual culture’ does not cover everything connected to spiritual life; it should be everything flowing into the social organism which depends on the natural gift of individuals, the natural spiritual and physical talents coming from single individuals. Similar to the first system, the economic system which needs to exist for humanity to relates and regulates the outer world, the second system which must exist in the social organism, relates to everything happening between one person and another; there we have the third system. In order for this third system to have a name it will be called the spiritual system, involved with everything which is created out of the single human individuality and needing to be incorporated into the social organism.

Even as true as it is that modern technology and modern capitalism have given a stamp to our modern community life, it actually is so necessary for the wounds of humanity beaten from this side to be healed and thus enable people and communities to develop the right relationship to the threefold social order I am characterizing here.

Economic life has in our modern time taken on particular forms. It has so to speak penetrated human life with its own rules. Both the other members of the social organism are in the position to bring their own independent laws in the right way into this social organism. For them it is necessary that people out of independence and from a point of awareness carry out the social membership, each in its place, where it is positioned. For the purpose of finding solutions to the social question which we are considering, every single person has a social task in the present and near future. The first member of the social organism, the economic life, rests primarily on a natural background. Just as each individual depends for his learning and his education on the talents of his spiritual and physical organs, on those gifts and talents given to him, likewise economic life depends on certain natural foundations. This natural basis gives economic life—and through this the totality of the social organism—its character. However, these natural foundations are there without having to be discovered through some social organisation, some or other socializing of its original form. This needs consideration. Just as with the education of humanity the various gifts they have need consideration, in natural bodily and spiritual abilities, so every attempt at socializing community living by giving it an economic form as well, need consideration out of its natural foundations. All circulation of goods and also all human labour and any spiritual cultural life lie at the foundation of the first elementary origins chained by human beings to a particular part of nature. Here one needs to really think about the social organism's relationship with the natural foundation, for instance as in individuals in regard to learning and education, in relation to their gifts in thinking. This can be made clear by taking extreme examples.

For instance, you can imagine how in various parts on earth, locally produced bananas present a source of nourishment, how bananas qualify in the community to be displaced from their point of origin and be made into a consumable product at a specific destination. Compare the human labour involved in making bananas into consumables for the community with the work of making wheat into a consumable product in the vicinity of Central Europe, it is clear the work needed for the bananas, modestly calculated, is three hundred times less. The work necessary to make the wheat consumable is, lightly calculated, three hundred times bigger.

This is indeed an extreme example. Such differences regarding the measure of work necessary in relation to its natural origin exist in our production line also, under the production line which is represented in some or other social organism in Europe. Not as radical a difference as between bananas and wheat, but the differences are there. Just as the economic organism is founded on the relationship between human beings and their consumption of nature, the measure of the work talents in reality dependent on the natural origin, so the being of a person is dependent on his natural physical or spiritual gifts. One can make a comparison. In Germany, in the region of middle profit abilities, the sowing of wheat has a crop return of seven to eight times at the harvest. In Chile this becomes twelve times, in north Mexico seventeen times and in Peru twenty times, south Mexico twenty-five times up to thirty-five times. For different regions of the earth the return in wheat productivity is in relation to the earth, to the yield of the earth. This actually affects the measure of labour needed to bring the wheat in an appropriate manner into the economic life.

Just as one can make such data for the measure of labour needed to process the wheat into a consumable item in different regions, so comparisons can be made for the labour needed in the most varied production lines, raw materials with different production lines made consumable within the economic sphere of a social organism.

This whole interconnected being found in the preliminary processes at the beginning of the relation of people to nature, which continue in every human action by transforming products of nature into consumables for the community, all these processes which are involved as a whole from the natural foundations up to consumables, all these processes, and only these, are included in a healthy social organism as a pure economic member of the social organization. This economic member of the social organisation must be—I will in the course of the lectures give more details with proof—with just such an independence be positioned in the whole social organism as the human head organisation stands in relation to the entire human organism.

Independently standing beside the economic system another system must exist and that is the relationship between one person and another. Living within the purely economic system is the relationship which needs to be established between people and objective goods. A healthy social life needs to develop as a second member of the social organism which regulates everything in relationships between one person and another.

People have neglected achieving the correct difference between the two members of the social organism through the hypnotic belief that modern technology and ancient thinking habits in modern times are the economic forces and processes necessary, either for single regions or in the radical social sense, which can be transformed into the totality of economic life, applied to what I have here as the second member, as the actual state region in a narrower sense, as the region of public law, as the area of relationships between one person to the other.

This region of the state can only then develop in a healthy way when the conflicting streams of development cut in, which are considered by some as correct. Many people believe that healing the social organism is only achievable through nationalization as much as possible; with the greatest degree of association with nationalism—but it involves far more the necessity for complete autonomy, acknowledged and applied to all the separate branches of life, which must step in between economic life—with all its laws on the one side—and the narrower life of the state on the other side—again with its own laws.

I can well imagine how many people there are who say: ‘For Heavens' sake, these things are becoming so complicated! Things which are brought together out of necessities for new developments are now to be separated from one another by various systems!’ Whoever speaks in this way, unable to consider origins developing in a natural way, would even refuse to understand that the human organism can only be alive as a result of the relative autonomy of the rhythmic life, the vital breathing and hart in the breast, concentrated, centralized in the breathing and in the heart system. The entire human organism is dependent on such systems being closed in and yet working together. The health of the social organism depends on the economic life having its own laws, that the legal life, the life of public law and public security, everything fitting the narrower description of political, has its own laws and its own proficiencies. Only then will both these spheres work in the right way, in the social organism. May it come about with some, who believe certain requirements have finally been accomplished, while others may well raise a shoulder, that it can eventually be said: no healing in the central management of the social organism, as within a party, can happen without cooperation between economic life and political life. If this does happen we will see it is valid for the third member as well. It is necessary nonetheless, that just as the circulatory system has its own lungs, just as the nerve-sense system has its own brain system, so in a single management system its own management, an autonomous replacement system or party or other representation is there for the economic and political or public legal systems, and then again for the third domain, an autonomous area for spiritual life.

These three spheres have a valid autonomy in a healthy organism and relate to one another through their independent representative, enabling this mutual relationship between the three members of the social organism. This corresponds to them in the same way as the independent relationship is produced by the three members of the natural human organism. It turns out that essentially those representations and administrations produced out of the economic members of the organism, that these essentially work towards the economic organism building an associated foundation for itself, a cooperative, trade unionism, but in a higher form. This cooperative trade unionism will only work with the laws of production, work with the circulation and consumption of goods. This is what creates the foundation, builds the content for the economic member of the social organism. It will depend on the vitality of association. It will depend on those who have given the necessary inequality produced from natural foundations, to balance it out. I have pointed out how many variations exist in the amount of human labour needed according to different relationship of the natural source of a member's production. All this enters into an unnatural social organization, when such cooperation is achieved as it has been up to now, of nature, human labour and capital. In a most chaotic way nature, human labour and capital are infused into a unified state or remain outside lawlessly, outside this unitary state. Even though the life of spiritual culture which is dependent on people's physical and spiritual talents for their expression, so also the chosen public and political laws of life must be acknowledged for their need to develop an independent life for themselves, such as the economic system.

I could, to make myself better understood as far as it is needed today, include the following. Besides other foundations out of which we live today, there is also a surfacing out of mankind's deep, natural foundations for a renewal of the social organism, in which can be heard the three words: brotherhood, equality, freedom. Whoever is unprejudiced towards a healthy human experience for all that is really human, will not feel anything but the deepest sympathy and deepest understanding for the meaning in the words, brotherhood, equality, and freedom. Nevertheless, I know of extraordinary thinkers, deep astute thinkers who repeatedly in the course of the 19th Century took the trouble to show how impossible it is to make a united social organism comprising brotherhood, equality and freedom, a reality. An astute Hungarian searched for proof that these three things, but when they are realized, when they penetrate human social structure, they will contradict themselves. Shrewdly he referred to the example of how impossible it is to instil equality into social life because every human being also wants the necessity for freedom to be valid. He found these three ideals to be contradictory. Interestingly, one can't but agree that there is a contradiction and one can't but sympathise out of a general human experience regarding these three ideals. Why these?

Because as soon as the true sense of these three ideals become clear, it will be recognised as necessarily a threefold social organism. The three members should not be an abstract, theoretical parliament or some unit assembled and centralized, they should be living reality and through their lively activity side by side be brought together in a unit. When these three members are independent they contradict one another in a certain way, just like the metabolic system is at variance with the head and rhythmic systems. However, in life, contradictions are just what work together in a unit. Through an understanding of life one is able to figure out the real gesture of the social organism. A realization will arise that brotherliness must be active in order for cooperation within economic life, where rules are needed among one another regarding particulars, are to be created in this first social member. In the second member of public law where it deals with the relationship of one person to another, only in as far as a human being is a person, it works with the activation of the idea of equality. In the spiritual sphere, where again it has to exist independently in the social organism, it deals with the idea of freedom. Now suddenly the three golden ideals gain their real value when it is known that they may not reach success through an inter-scrambled mixture but that they are orientated according to laws within the threefold organism in which each single one of the three members can achieve its applicable ideal of freedom, equality and brotherhood.

Today I can only propose the structure of the social organism in the form of a sketch. In the following lectures, I will substantiate and prove each one individually. Adding to what has been said is a third member of a healthy social organism with everything arising out of the human individuality, on the foundation of freedom and based on the physical and spiritual gifts of individuals. Here again an area is touched which causes quiet shudders when things are truthfully defined. To continue with this healthy organism, a third area is added which encompasses everything which relates to the religious life of humanity, everything related to schools and education in the widest sense which includes spiritual life, the practice of art and so on. While I only want to mention this today, in the next lectures I will create an extensive foundation regarding everything which belongs to this third sphere—which is not related to public law which belongs in the second sphere—but which is related to private law and criminal law. I found with those to whom I've explained this threefold social organism and who have understood some of it, that they could not grasp the idea that public law, the law which relates to the security and equality of people, should be separated from the right towards law breaking, or towards the private relationships between people; that this could be regarded as separate, and private law and criminal law must be included in the third, in the spiritual member of the social organism.

Modern life has unfortunately turned away from considering these three members of the social organism. Just like the body of economics with its concerns have penetrated into the government, into actual political life, penetrated its concerns into the representative body of political life, the result has clouded the possibility for the second member of the organism to be formed in which human equality can be realized, so too the economic and public life have absorbed the possibility which can only develop itself in a freer form. Out of a certain instinct, out of an erroneous instinct however, modern social democracy has tried to separate religious life from the life of the public state: “Religion is a private affair”; unfortunately, not out of particular care for religion, not out of a special evaluation accessible through the religious life, but out of disregard, out of complacency towards religious life linked to the content I presented in my previous lecture, the day before yesterday. This progression is right for the separation of religious life from the other spheres, from the formation of the economic life and from the formation of political life. Just as necessary as the separation of the lower and higher educational systems are, so too is the spiritual life actually from the two other members. A really healthy social organism can only develop when within these entities they ensure equality of all people before the law, when only out of these entities it is ensured that free human individualities develop schools, religious and spiritual life, when it is ensured that life is developed in freedom and no claim is made according to economic or state rules placed on school, educational and spiritual life.

That sounds radical today. Such radicalism must be expressed as soon as it is detected. Spiritual life, inclusive of education, inclusive of jurisdiction in public and criminal matters, actually underlies the complete freedom flowing out of single individuals which both the other members of the social organism can have no influence upon in its configuration, upon its forms.

Yesterday I only offered a sketch towards the direction thinking can move in the search for solutions of the social question, attempts at solutions based on necessities of life, not based on abstract demands of a single party, of a single class, but based on the powers actually developing in modern people.

I wish to say I can understand every objection raised but ask you to wait with objections until my sketch has been carried to completion in my coming lectures. Particularly today I can understand objections being raised as I'm just trying to characterise; the evidence of the World Trade Organization is not yet clear. I must say I can understand every objection coming out of various experiences which I want to represent here with ideas which I believe I can recognise in frequently misjudged spiritual science as the actual foundations of life which I have related to these things.

Behind us lie a time containing the most terrible human catastrophe. Within the life we had to lead within this catastrophic time, we have not had the human heart in the right place if our vision did not contain the power and ability to say: ‘Where can we find help out of this terrible chaos into which we have been driven?’—I told you the day before yesterday I would speak about the particular relationships of these wars to their causes and their unfolding in relation to the social question in both my following lectures. Today I would like to say it is clear to me, as we are going to be within these events for a long time to come, events now having entered a crisis which some short-sighted thinkers believe are soon at an end, that out of these things, out of chaos, out of the terrible catastrophe in some or other area of the civilized world it is possible to find the correct thoughts, the correct picture of more truthful, more realistic impulses for the human social organism. Towards various personalities who have been active and advisory during the last years within these terrible events, I have proposed what is also the vein of my various presentations here: I have tried to make it clear to these personalities who are involved, how different events would have been if from an authoritative place in the world it was said: ‘We want to head towards a healthy social goal.’—The entire interrelationship of states would have been different if, instead of mere laws and state programs being introduced, a comprehensive program for people in the way indicated here, had been introduced.

One can say that these things have been understood in a certain theoretical way. The content of my lectures has appeared to some in a really sympathetic way. The bridge which needs to be established between understanding such content and the will to actually do something to make it a reality in actual life, each in its own place, this bridge is quite another matter. This would mostly have an uncomfortable effect. For this reason, they compose themselves and say: ‘It all sounds a bit like a dream to me, quite impractical.’—They remain calm only because they don't have the will forces to really involve themselves with the course of events. Not a revolutionary course of events is meant here, not something which should happen from one day to the next, but a direction in which all single measures of public and private life should be brought for healing, to form a healthy social organism. The content of my lecture the day before yesterday, I have brought in another form to some people on whom one wanted to depend during these difficult times, addressed in the following way: Today, I would say for example, we are in the most terrible time of the war. Expressing the social necessity in this, the most terrible time of The War, it would be to say: People who are committed to this or that state into giving humanity a worthy self-realization which will become a reality for humanity, will enable this terrible course of events to take on quite a different, healing direction than merely the sword, the cannons and such like, or offer nothing through existing regional politics. I say they have the choice to either acknowledge what is offered here out of the developmental conditions and developmental forces within humanity, or to stand alone.

Today we stand, because during the last decade humanity has somehow missed acknowledging the essence of these things, today we stand in front of the most terrible catastrophe which has broken out like a plague, an illness attacking an organism which has failed to live according to its natural laws. This war catastrophe should now clearly reveal what is necessary for the healing of the social organism of humanity. This indication could have been perceived before the war but then it was not so clear, not even recognised. To some I have said: You have been given these indications regarding human evolution in the social sphere which will be brought into a reality in the next twenty to thirty years in the civilized world. I'm not talking about a program or ideal but it is the result of observation of those who want to make a reality of the seed towards an inclination already in humanity today, towards the next ten, twenty or thirty years. You have only to choose, I say, either to work through to its realization with reason, or to face revolutions of social cataclysms, terrible social upheavals. No third choice is possible. The war will probably be the time—so I say to some—where reason is acceptable. After that it could be too late. It is not a program which can be implemented or left undone, but involves recognising something which needs implementation through people, because in it lie their necessary historical growth forces for the future.

Another particular obstacle towards understanding is some or other belief that these things only relate to an inner structure of some state or some human territory. No, such social thoughts are at the same time the basis for the real necessary transformation of outer politics of states under one another. Just like the human organism turns each of its particular organs to the outside world, so also can a state only accomplish it when—if I might use this whole expression—such a social organism can shift its three members into outer activity. Relationships between one individual state and another appear quite different when a centralized government and administrations no longer remain in connection with one another but when one socially educated representative with a spiritual life relate to another representative with a spiritual life in another social state; whether it be an economic or a political representative, corresponding to the representative in the other state. When there is an intermixing, a confused mess due to the three members working outwardly in such a way to create an ensuing conflict at its boundary through the chaos of this intermixing of the three members, then, when across the boundary an independent state with threefold representatives working independently, the process of one member in the international relationship will not only be disrupted by the other, but by contrast, will balance out and be corrected.

This is what I wanted to sketch for you today to support the idea that it doesn't merely involve an assertion of inner social structure of one state but involves the international and social life of humanity. I have already tried to make all these things clear while we are in the middle of these horrific catastrophic events. At the moment, terrible misfortune has broken out over many people in central and eastern Europe, terrible misfortune for every individual, for every perceptive person the rest of the world indicates threatening misfortune. This must take place in relation to the real understanding of humanity for their tasks in the present and future: whoever wants to bring about a healing of life out of the actual evolutionary elements in humanity must take this up, not as an impractical ideal but as an actual practical application in life.

The obvious form modern life has taken on through technology and capitalism has to stand in opposition to the most inner human initiative forms of the spiritual, independent spiritual culture and independent state culture, which bring about in actual fact an equality between one person to another and which also, as we will soon see, could regulate labour and wage relations in a desirable way for the Proletariat.

The question about the form or human labour, about the liberation of labour from goods will only become detachable when threefoldness enters the social organism. The desire of the modern socialist is certainly legitimate as a desire; what they consider a remedy would work the least effectively as a remedy when it transforms outer reality in the way they want it to be.

This I need to stress yet again: I am not trying to come from some one-sided class or party position but from the side of the observation of human developmental forces in order to speak about what some call social integration and others call the healing of social life and others the reawakening of a healthy political sense, and so on.

What we are dealing with here is not some random program but the deepest true impulses coming to the fore in the next decades in humanity's evolution, it is actually the very foundation of the entire meaning and intention which I want to make into a reality with these lectures; it doesn't relate to the opinion of a person from this standpoint, but it relates to the expression of the deepest wishes in mankind for the next decades. This I would like to found and implement and prove in my lectures during the week ahead.

The whole cycle of these talks is dedicated to the knowledge of spirit, and if one wants to speak about the knowledge of spirit and soul, this happens, because we can come to an understanding with each other about the concept of the spirit relating it to the concept of the soul. Since for those who deal with spiritual science it is especially annoying that one mixes up the concepts “soul” and “spirit” considering the human being.

You all probably know that we have a so-called psychology or soul science that is today conducted to a relatively high degree just like in school. In the schedules of lectures at the universities, you find lectures on psychology that is literally the doctrine of the soul. One has to note that with all people who talk of psychology or soul science in such a way no distinct consciousness exists of the fact that one has to speak of soul and mind with the human being. One summarises the human inner life—thinking, feeling, and willing—under the concept of the soul. Soul is almost considered as the contrast to the bodily and physical, and one says—if one deigns generally to such a thing, if one is not completely addicted to the materialistic way of thinking—the human being consists of body and soul.

At first, we want to regard those opinions only that have the point of view that the soul is a real being. If one says that the human being consists of body and soul, one is mostly not aware of the fact that one falls a victim to dogmatics that relatively late, in the course of the Christian development originated. Even the older Christianity that has still gone out from the teachings of wisdom distinguished, as all teachings of wisdom of the different times and people did, body, soul and mind of the human being. Only later decisions of Councils have abolished, so to speak, the mind, and only since the (fourth) Council of Constantinople (869/870), one speaks of body and soul. The modern scholarship which deals with such a thing which thinks not materialistically believes to stand on the ground of absolutely free research and has no idea that it has taken up this later Christian concept of the soul, which refrains from the mind, as a prejudice, as a preconceived opinion. This applies to many concepts generally which play a role in our scholarship and are accepted as if they were results of research, while they signify only an ancient prejudice.

We will now have a look at the general psychology in the most different directions. However, I do not criticise here, but only characterise. Psychology has suffered—we are allowed to state this—mostly and most thoroughly from the materialistic attitude and way of thinking. Not only the outer science of the sensory phenomena has lost the concept of mind gradually, but also psychology has even lost the concept of soul, that is its own object. The cultural life went through an interesting development there.

A daring researcher and thinker who performed many quite extraordinary things in some fields had the courage to pronounce what is, so to speak, only a basic attitude and basic sensation within the modern psychology with others. This daring thinker was Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–1875, German philosopher). You can buy cheap his History of Materialism (1866) from Reclam's Universal Library. It is an excellent book because just someone who studies it thoroughly must come to the conviction—I have explained it in the last talk—that materialism as a worldview is to be compared to a man who draws himself upwards with his own shock of hair. This Friedrich Albert Lange has pronounced in relation to psychology something that can be summarised in three words: “psychology without soul.” This is from Friedrich Albert Lange. Other researchers did not dare to pronounce this consequence; but they act and do psychological research in such a way, as if a concept of the soul did not concern them. Also today, you find all kinds of concepts about the soul in the most famous works of the academic psychology. However, if you want to get to know something about the soul, you ask for advice in vain, because this psychology has lost—this should be no criticism, but only a characteristic—the concept of the soul completely even if this is not always pronounced. Whether you ask advice from Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832–1920, German physiologist, psychologist, philosopher) or another about those questions in which the human beings are interested concerning the soul life, you nowhere get information. You find all kinds of questions answered about the way in which the human being perceives objects in his surroundings. You also find all kinds of speculations about the relation of perception to consciousness.

For example, one asks, how long does it last, until the human being becomes aware of it, after he has received a stimulus? You find questions about attention, questions in which way the human being judges in which way he compares the things with each other, how he remembers and so on. However, who could deny that the impartially feeling soul—in the usual sense—if it asks for its own being has in mind above all: what is the nature of my soul? Does it share the fate of the physical to disintegrate and to end if death occurs? Does it only take share in the life of the sensuous surroundings or does it take share in a far higher one, in an extrasensory life that does not wear out itself in the physical world? You will search these questions in vain, which are vital matters for the human being in the modern psychology even as questions. Everything in the human life points to them; but if the real nature of the soul is considered, one says, this goes beyond the limits of human knowledge.

If you have a little bit patience and have a look at such psychology, you become aware of the fact that it applies quite the same methods of research as the natural sciences. If one applies these methods, just nothing else can result than what faces us in this psychological literature. More than in any other field it concerns in the soul research who does these researches. Where one thinks materialistically, one has come more and more to the conviction that the research results can be only of the kind that they face everybody from the outside. Who does understand the sense of the nice Goethean saying completely and thoroughly still today?

Unless the eye were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own strength were in us,
How could delight us the divine?

Nothing faces us in the outside world if we are not related to the concerning thing or being or to the concerning force in the outside world if we do not carry something related in ourselves. Thus, only someone can investigate the soul who searches something beyond his self that he has experienced in himself. Not everybody—this must be stressed in particular in relation to psychology—can be a psychologist; for the human being notices only so much of the secrets of the other souls as he has experienced in himself.

Spiritual science deals with the spirit as such, as we said at the beginning. All the talks are dedicated to the consideration of the spirit. Howsoever the titles are called in detail, the spirit has to be searched everywhere. As it arises already from the talk, which I have held two weeks ago here, spiritual science has to show that behind everything that faces us the spirit lives and works.

What is matter to spiritual science? It is only another form of the spirit. If spiritual science speaks of matter, material, and body, it speaks of it in such a way as it speaks of ice and water. Ice is water in another form. Now, however, somebody could come and say, then spiritual science denies the matter and corporeality if it asserts that everything is spirit—and then there is no matter for spiritual science. Spiritual science stands on this weird point of view by no means. We remain with our comparison of ice and water. What come into consideration for life are not empty words, not empty definitions, but effects that you meet in life. Even if one says, ice is water in another form—and one is right with it completely-, are, nevertheless, the effects of the water different from those of ice as everybody can perceive if he puts a piece of ice on his hand instead of pouring water on it.

Someone who wanted to deny that ice is water in another form would make a fool of himself. Thus, spiritual science does not dream of denying the matter. It exists; it is only spirit in another form. In which form? In the form, that one can observe it from the outside by the senses. These are the essentials of matter. This talk links to the talk eight days ago where we could show how any materialistic view disintegrates into nothing before the progress of the natural sciences as the fantastic concept of the matter dissolves in smoke and fog due to the new researches. Concepts like ether, matter scatter today in light of the other researches. What remains to us of that which approaches us in the outside world? What we see and hear, tone, colour, warmth et cetera: what we perceive. We should soar the view that behind the warmth, behind the tone, behind the light nothing is of this terribly crude whirl of atoms that was the only real during the long time of materialism. Real is in this sense what we see what we hear what we feel as warmth. If we look behind the colour, behind the tone, behind the warmth, as we feel it, what do we find behind them? We find behind them if we take the tone, as long as it remains in the sensuous world, moved air. However, we are not allowed to go behind the sensuous world with our speculations. We have to stop in the sensory world. Someone pronounced something most important whom the scholars did not take seriously, who was not only a poet but also a great thinker: “Never search anything behind the phenomena; they themselves are the teachings.”

If we go behind the tone, behind the light, we do not find material atoms that dive into our retina, which impregnate it and create the mental picture of the colour and the light. If we really look behind, what do we find there?—Spirit! Colour relates to the spirit like ice to water. Tone relates to the spirit like ice to water. Instead of that fantastic world of whirling atoms the true thinker and spiritual researcher finds spirit, spiritual reality behind that what he sees and hears, so that the question of the nature of matter loses all sense. For how does the question of the nature of matter answer itself for the spiritual researcher? What surrounds us outdoors in the world and appears to us as matter? It is spirit! We know the spirit! We must visit its nature in ourselves. What we are in our innermost being, these are all things outdoors in the world, only in other forms. They are it in such form that one can look at them from the outside if the spirit gives itself a surface. Let me pronounce something that every scientist regards as madness: if the spirit goes outwardly, he appears as colour, tone. Nothing else is colour and tone than spirit; it is completely the same what we find in ourselves if we properly understand each other. Thus, every mineral is spirit to us in spiritual science. The true being of the lowest member of the human being, the physical body, is spirit for us in the form in which it exists just also in the apparently lifeless nature.

In what way does the human spirit differ from the spirit that faces us outdoors as mineral and plant, as mountain, as thunder and flash, as trees and bodies of water et cetera? By the fact that this spirit in the narrower sense appears as mind in its very own figure, in the figure that is due to itself as mind. What one normally calls nature, indeed, is spirit, but spirit, which turns its outside to the senses, and what one calls spirit or mind in the narrower sense, is exactly the same. According to its form, nature is what turns to the core of our being. If we search the spirit outdoors in nature, we find it lifeless in the minerals, animated in the plants and feeling in the animals. The human being combines this triple figure of the spirit in himself in three members of his being, as we know them from the point of view of spiritual science. Thereby only, you come to a real knowledge of the human being that you look at his complex nature and are not content with the abstract differentiation between body and soul, but ask yourselves, how is the human being built up?

At first spiritual science distinguishes the physical body of the human being that he has in common as materials and forces with the entire so-called lifeless nature. In the physical body of the human being are the same materials and forces that we find outdoors in the mineral world. However, he has a second member, which we call etheric body or life body. If we speak of ether, it has nothing to do with the fantastic ether that has played a role in science so long and that one will dethrone in the next time. In relation to the etheric body, we cannot get involved in the methods of the higher beholding. However, we understand the etheric body best of all saying: if we take a plant, an animal, the human being, the physical body has the same materials and forces, but in an endlessly complex mixture and variety, so that these materials cannot form the physical body by themselves. No plant body can be what it is by the physical forces, no animal body, and no human body. There is the complication, the variety of the mixture that would make the body destroy if it were left to its own physical and chemical forces. At every moment of life, its so-called etheric body or life body works against the decay of the physical body. A permanent struggle takes place in it. At the moment of death when the etheric body or life body separates from the physical body, the materials and forces of the physical body follow their own principles. Hence, spiritual science says, the physical body is physically and chemically an impossible mixture, it cannot survive. The etheric body is that which struggles against the decay of the physical body permanently.

The third member of the human being is that which we have often called the bearer of desire and pain, of joy and grief, of instincts and passions. If the life starts becoming internal, then we start in spiritual science speaking of an astral body. This is the third member of the human being and of the animal.

Today one has such an unclear concept of that what constitutes the single being that certain researchers cannot make a distinction between an animal and a plant. Of course, there are transitions; but they do not interest us here. You can read in the popular works that are otherwise very meritorious that the plant shows the same manifestations as an animal or a human being, and one talks there about a “plant soul” in the usual sense. One confuses the animal soul and the human soul with simple manifestations of life in the plant. When do we speak of an animal or human soul or of an astral body? If to the outer appearance inner life, inner experience is added. It depends on the inside. If you see a plant, if you touch it, and it contracts its leaves, a stimulus is exercised on the plant, and this shows a certain response to this stimulus. Calling this answer a soul manifestation is the most unbelievable dilettantism. One is not allowed to speak already of soul or astral body if any counter-effect takes place; otherwise, you must also attribute a soul to the litmus paper if it turns red in the acid. It does not depend on any outer reaction, but on the fact, whether anything happens inside of such a being.

If you push a being and it shows a change of form or, otherwise, any outer reaction, you may call that a manifestation of life. However, talking of sensation or soul in this case means to turn all concepts upside down. One can speak of soul or astral body only if to that what goes forward outside a new event, a new fact is added inside if because of a push or pressure pain or because of another stimulus joy is experienced. The outer manifestations do not make a being a soul being, but the processes which it experiences in its inside. Only where sensation starts where life itself is transformed internally into joy and sorrow where any object outdoors not only exercises an attraction on any being, but where inside of the being an experience appears in relation to the outer object, only there we can speak of soul or astral body. If a plant twines spirally round a rod, an effect responds to the stimulus, it is a manifestation of life. Even if it seems with some plants that—if you bring a finger in their nearness—it follows the finger and not the rod, you are not concerned with an inner process. It can be talk of such a thing only if a desire inside of the being exists and it follows the stimulus because of this influence. He who does not distinguish these matters strictly is incapable to rise to the concept of the soul, the astral body. The human being has this in common with the animals, however, not with the plants.

Then we have, as often mentioned, the fourth member by which the human being experiences something in himself that makes him the crown of the earth creation, that what we call “I” or ego. It is an exceptionally important matter for any knowledge to recognise this ego in its nature. In former talks, I have drawn your attention to the fact that there is in our entire language only one word, one name that differs from all other names. You can call any other object with its name, the clock, the table, the notebook. You cannot call that in such a way that is the “I” with its name. Try to say “I” to another being! You can say I only to yourselves. Any being is “you” for the other, and for any being is the other “you.” Should the name I be pronounced, this name must sound from the core of the being. The religions that were based on spiritual science felt this too, and, therefore, said correctly: here the divinity speaks the first tone, the first word in the human soul in its very own figure, and thus the expression for the ego was something holy for them. They called it the ineffable name of God. What the Hebrew religious doctrine called with the expression Yahveh is nothing else than for the ego which calls itself. This is the fourth member of the human being.

Considering this four-membered being—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego—we have to say: with these four members, which no other being has on earth than the human being, everybody faces us, the uneducated savage and the high developed human being. In what way do the individual human beings differ on earth, if they all have four members? This is because the one has worked more, the other less on his three members from his ego. If we compare the savage who follows any desire, any passion with a high-minded moralist who has pure holy moral concepts and follows these who only accepts that of his desires and passions to which the mind is able to say “yes.” In which way do both differ? By the fact that the high-minded man worked on his astral body from his ego. The uneducated savage has worked less on his astral body; he has it still in such a form as he has received it from nature, from the divine powers. The high-minded moralist and idealist has transformed and purified it.

An astral body consists of two parts; of one part that the human being has got without his co-operation, and the other part that is the work of his ego. Human beings who stand on such a height as for example Francis of Assisi have brought the whole astral body under the control of the ego, so that nothing happens in their astral body that the ego does not control. How does such a human being differ from the savage? In the savage, everything happens without the ego; in the high-minded human being, everything happens by what he has done from his astral body. As much as the ego has transformed the astral body, as much spirit self or manas exists in the human being.

We have five members of the human being now: physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego and spirit self. Then we have the possibility to transform, to purify and to improve not only our astral body, not only the sum of our desires and instincts but we have also the bigger ability to transform our etheric body. In the usual life, the human beings work in the spiritual development on improving their astral bodies gradually, already with the usual impulses of life, the moral concepts, the intellectual mental pictures. Everything that we learn transforms the astral body. If we want to imagine the contrast of the transformation of the astral body and the transformation of the etheric body by the ego, we must remember how we were as eight-year-old children. Then we did not know many a thing that we know today. We have learnt a lot. With the sensations which we have taken up in such a way the astral body has transformed itself, it has incorporated the spirit self or manas. However, everything that constituted our temperament, our inclinations etc. when we were eight years old have not transformed themselves in the same way. If you were a hot-tempered contrary child at the age of eight years, you are probably hot-tempered or contrary sometimes even today. The change of the temperament and the inclinations advances much slower. One can compare the progress of the astral body to the advance of the minute hand and the progress of the etheric body to the advance of the hour hand. However, the inclinations change only if the etheric body changes, and stronger impulses are necessary than for the change of the astral body. The human being who stands in spiritual science has such strong impulses and can already have them if he exposes himself to the impression of a piece of art, behind which he realises the infinite sense, we say of Wagner's Parsifal or of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. These impulses not only have effects on the astral body, but they are so strong that the etheric body is purified and transformed. The same applies standing before a picture of Raphael or Michelangelo, and an impulse of the everlasting penetrates us due to the colours. However, the strongest impulses are the religious ones. They have transformed the human being so strongly that they have seized their etheric bodies, so that the human beings bear two parts of their etheric bodies in themselves, the untransformed one, received from nature, and the transformed one. One calls the transformed part life spirit or buddhi.

If that approaches the human being which we get to know in the talk on the initiation, it becomes more prominent what transforms the etheric body. The initiation consists in giving the means to the human being to transform the etheric body more and more. Hence, it also applies to the student of occultism that any intellectual learning, everything that he can take up just like in school is only a preparation. More important than any intellectual taking up is for that who submits himself to a spiritual-scientific training to transform only one single inclination consciously into another, and if it is only a movement of the hand. Transforming such a thing has more value than any acquired theoretical knowledge. The initiation consists in the impulses that purify the human etheric body. Then these impulses go on purifying the physical body, and this is the highest that the human being can attain in this life.

One could say that the physical body is the lowest; if the human being works on the physical body, is this something particular.—Just because the physical body is the lowest member, one has to apply the strongest forces to transform it into its original form, into the form of the pure spirit. The purification of this physical body begins with certain methods to adjust the respiratory process. Therefore, one calls the part that is converted atman or the spirit man; atman means breathing (German atmen). When the body is transformed—which keeps being as before—the spiritual-scientific training takes place on the highest level. Then the human being attains not only the ability to live consciously in his physical body, to know any blood corpuscle, any nerve he also attains the ability to work on the big nature, to become a human being having an effect on the forces of the universe from a human being that was enclosed in his skin before. Thus, the human being changes into that stage by which he becomes one with the universe. Any other talk of becoming one with the universe that does not happen on the way of proper training and development is gossip and phrase. The human being thereby becomes one with the universe transforming his astral body first, then the etheric body and, finally, the physical body. He becomes one with the entire universe, as the small finger is one with the physical body. This is a quite regular course of the human development which many human beings have gone through, which we all experience already to a certain degree, and which all human beings experience in the future.

What happens there, actually? Let us visualise it: what is the astral body? It is nothing else than the sum of desires, drives and passions, of joy, sorrow, and pain. Everything that co-operates there in the human being is a phenomenon of the spirit, spirit in any form, because everything is spirit. In what way is it possible that the ego works on the astral body? It is possible because the spirit discloses itself to the ego in its very own figure. In the passions, drives and desires the spirit is hidden, there it appears in its phenomena. It flows into the ego in its very own figure, and the ego lets flow it again into the astral body, so that the ego mediates between the very own figure of the spirit and its manifestations. The same applies to the etheric body and, finally, also to the physical body, and thus a perpetual spiritualisation takes place during the transformation of the three human bodies or members. As true it is that any mineral is spirit—but spirit in its outer effect-, as true it is that the human being is on the way to spiritualisation by that which his ego pours into the lower being. Only because the ego is between these manifestations of the spirit, his physical, etheric and astral bodies, and the members of the spirit, which illumine the three bodies, this transition of the spirit into the three bodies is possible. The ego has to be in between. Then the upper can work on the lower.

In what way did we get to know the nature of the ego? We got to know it already in its name. The name of the ego can never sound from the outside to our ear if it means us. With it, one says more than with all phrases that you read in the books of the usual psychology. If one understood substantially what the ego is because this name can never come from the outside to us, then one would have performed more than any academic psychology. The philosopher Fichte already said: the human being as an ego is the nicest. However, most people would prefer to regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an ego because they need own energy to look at it.

We shall see in the talk on the animal soul that the animal also has an ego, but not in the physical world. The human being thereby differs from the animal that he has his ego in the physical world. The ego is something that lets the spirit flow from the inside into another form of spirit, into the different matters, even into the soul, into the astral body. Hence, we can call the being of the ego almost an internalisation. This internalisation is only prepared with the animal. Because we will still speak of the animal soul, I only suggest this today. One must not forget that also the animal has an ego, but not the single animal, but the animal species. All lions together, all tigers together have an ego, and this ego is in the supersensible world. It is in such a way, as if from an animal, which belongs to a species, invisible ropes or threads run to the common group soul in the supersensible world. Such a group soul has become the individual human soul. Any individual human being has what an entire animal group has.

Hence, the internalisation only prepares itself with the animal. We realise it if we study the so-called animal soul, the astral body. The real internalisation of this soul, the first irradiating of the spirit is possible in our world where the ego exists as an individual soul. The soul that has the ego in itself is thereby able to let the spirit flow into the matter. Thus, we see how mind and body or also spirit and matter are two beings; however, one being is the same as the other, only in another form. Matter and body are spirit in other form. They are different from each other in the world generally as ice and water. They are different, even though they are the same. In the middle, the soul exists. It connects mind and body. Hence, we understand the human being only if we understand him in this tripartite composition, consisting of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and consisting of nascent spirit: manas, buddhi, and atman or spirit self, life spirit and spirit man. The soul is the being that transforms one into the other that participates in the body and in the mind. We can understand the soul in the right light only if we see it working from the mind on the body. If we study it from this viewpoint, spiritual science answers just those questions that the human being must put to the real soul being. We realise that the human soul is positioned between body and mind at every moment. With the savage, the soul is only able to take up a droplet of the spirit in his body. Hunger and thirst, the manifestations of the etheric body, almost animal instincts, and desires still completely influence him. The soul of the sophisticated idealist, as for example of Schiller or Francis of Assisi, tends to the spirit, attains a higher consciousness, and frees himself from the material existence. Spiritual science shows that there is transformation of forms what we call matter. That often will meet us in the winter talks but nobody can expect that he can absorb all concepts of spiritual science in one talk.

If we look at the world round ourselves from this spiritual-scientific viewpoint, it appears in a continual transformation as also nature appears in a continual transformation. We see the flower arising from the seminal grain in the spring. In autumn, we see it wilting, but the being is preserved in the seminal grain to arise again. Thus, spiritual science also shows how the spirit builds up the body, and how the being of this spirit is preserved as a spiritual seed when the body disintegrates. It appears again and again.

We can transform ice into water and water into ice. Similarly, spirit also changes into body. The body disintegrates, but the spirit remains and appears in always-new forms. There we are led to the principle of transformation in the human life. The human being lives here in the physical, etheric and astral bodies. However, he still has a second life that existed before this life and will be after this life. There he lives, as well as he lives here in these three bodies, in the spiritual world. From there he brings the forces that build up his bodies, which give him that form which he has, even if the life in spirit is different. We get to know this if we understand spiritual science in the right way.

It becomes apparent that the human being leads a life by turns: a life in the body between birth and death and a life in the spiritual between death and a new birth, until he prepares himself for a new incarnation. What lives here in the body and there in spirit and changes between the life in the body and the life in spirit is the soul. However, every time when it has gone through an incarnation, the human being has worked on his body and comes back to the spirit land as a soul enriched with the fruits of the earth-life. The soul keeps on developing higher and higher. Hence, it is also the mediator between spirit and body. Thus, we are led to the border which shows us—considering mind, soul and body correctly—how the relation of the three human parts is to each other. We get to know everything that disintegrates that scatters as a transformation of that which constitutes the innermost being of the soul as we recognise everything temporal as a form of the everlasting. Spiritual science leads to a science, which really the questions of the temporal and of the everlasting answers and of the human destiny after death. The human heart has these questions generally if it wants to know something about such a science. A science that sets limits to itself cannot see the most important. Hence, our academic psychology is limited. In a certain sense, it is important to learn what it offers. Spiritual science does not disdain it, but it finds it insufficient, as long as one does not go into the being of the spirit and the soul. This is the right way to the knowledge of the spirit and the soul: the soul is connected with its bodies in the temporal life, it is involved in these bodies, and that which attracts it to these bodies is that part which is an obstacle for the pure, purified life in spirit between death and a new birth. There we learn to understand gradually where the obstacles of the soul are for the new birth. We also learn to understand that the soul must free itself completely not only from the body—by death—but from the longing for the body. By the right concepts of mind, soul, and body, we also come to the destiny of the soul during its bodily and spiritual pilgrimage.

I have today tried to show how one gets correct concepts of the soul and spirit using the ordinary human mind. I did it without taking into account what one can attain by the methods of clairvoyance and initiation. I speak about them in the next talks. We must hold on this: what faced us in the course of this winter will be results of the spiritual research. One can only discover them with the methods as I gave them in the talks on initiation et cetera. However, one can understand them by the ordinary logic and thorough thinking. Someone who says, what does the spiritual science concern me, because I am no clairvoyant? He turns away from the spiritual science not because of lack of clairvoyance, but, because he does not apply his thinking thoroughly and extensively enough to it. Just psychology has suffered a lot in our time of materialism—which some people regard as finished and is also dismissed in philosophy, but flourishes just in the way of thinking of psychology. Today the concepts of soul and spirit have suffered mostly from this materialism. Spiritual science has the mission to bring pure, purified concepts of the soul and the spirit again to humanity. Thereby it will be the best servant of the high religious traditions that distinguish between the human mind and the world enclosing spirit that the religious traditions call the Holy Spirit. We understand these scriptures as means of understanding only if we comprehend them deeply enough and consider everything in great enclosing pictures which are the expression of facts.

We spiritual scientists still know many things that humanity knows in future and only anticipated due to its most significant spirits in former times. Many strange feelings go through the human soul, if it immerses itself in the spiritual activities. Some people say to the spiritual scientist: you give us something for the mind, but nothing for the soul; we search soul and you give us spiritual achievements. They do not know that they reject just that which gives the soul what they require. They covet the will impulses of the soul. However, the soul can be only happy if it lets the spirit flow in itself and develops the bodies from the spirit.

What faces us from the outside is formed spirit, and what shapes the matter flows from the spiritual world down. What the eye sees in the figure as colour is, so to speak, compressed spirit, and the force that causes the figure in the matter comes from the everlasting. Thus, someone who does not have the clearness of spiritual-scientific concepts but feels and anticipates the surrounding world says. everything appears to me as shaped by the spiritual world. The figure appears to me as the holy that flashes in the mere matter, and if I see the figure, it seems to immerse itself in the matter and to withdraw again from the matter. The poet anticipated this of spiritual science when he put up the contrast between the body, the human soul, and the spirit that both work creatively in the body. Schiller (Friedrich Sch., 1759–1805, German poet) anticipated how the soul lets the spirit flow in the matter in reality whereby the matter disappears to the view. Considering this, he let the sensation flow out in the nice words:

Only the body appertains to those powers that braid the dark destiny. However, far from any temporal power, the playmate of blessed spirits walks aloft in the acres of light, divine among divinities: the shape.

Translator Unknown, revised

It may well be said that the anthroposophical conception of the world is distinguished from any other we may meet because it can satisfy to such a great extent the desire for knowledge. In the present time we so often hear that it is impossible to gain knowledge of certain things—that our capacity for knowledge has limits and cannot rise above a certain height. On becoming acquainted with modern philosophical research we constantly hear of such limits to knowledge, especially among those schools of philosophy which owe their origin to Kant. The understanding of anthroposophists and of those who practice mysticism is distinguished from all such doctrines through never setting limits to man's capacity for knowledge, but rather looking upon it as capable of being both widened and uplifted. Is it not, to a certain extent, the greatest arrogance for anyone to regard his own capacity for knowledge, from the point at which it stands, as something decisive, and then to say that with our capacities we cannot go beyond definite limits of knowledge? The anthroposophist says: “I stand today at a certain point in human knowledge, from which I am able to know certain things and not others. But it is possible to cultivate the human capacity for knowledge, to heighten it.” What is called a school of initiation has as its essential aim to raise to a higher stage this human capacity for knowledge. So it is quite correct if one from a lower stage of knowledge says that there are limits to his knowledge and that certain things cannot be known. One can, however, raise oneself above this stage of knowledge and press on to a higher stage, so that it becomes possible to know what at a lower stage was impossible. This is the essence of initiation, and this deepening or heightening of knowledge is the task of the initiation schools. This means raising man to a stage of knowledge to which nature has not brought him, but which he must acquire for himself through long years of patient exercise.

In all ages there have been these initiation schools. Among all peoples, those having a higher kind of knowledge have arisen from these initiation schools. And the essential nature of such schools—and of the great Initiates themselves, who have soared above the lower stages of the human capacity for knowledge and, through their inspirations, have been acquainted with the highest knowledge accessible to us in this world—finds expression in Initiates giving to the various peoples on earth their various religions and world-conceptions.

Today we wish with a few strokes to illuminate the essential being of these great Initiates. As in every science, in every spiritual process one must first learn the method through which one penetrates to knowledge. This is also the case in the initiation schools. And here too it is a matter of our being led through certain methods to the higher stages of knowledge, about which we have spoken precisely. I shall now briefly refer to the stages that here concern us. Certain stages of knowledge can only be attained in the intimate schools of initiation where there are teachers who have themselves in their own experience gone through each school, have devoted themselves to every exercise, and have really pondered every single step, every single stage. And one must entrust oneself only to such teachers in the initiation schools.

In these schools there is, it is true, no hint of authority, nothing that smacks of dogmatism; the governing principle is entirely that of counsel, the imparting of advice. Whoever has gone through a certain stage of learning, and has himself acquired experiences of the higher, super-sensible life, knows the inner way that leads to this higher knowledge. And it is only one such as this who is qualified to say what one must do. What is necessary is simply that there be trust between pupil and teacher in this sphere. Whoever lacks this trust can learn nothing; but whoever has it will very soon perceive that nothing is recommended by any occult, mystic, or mystery teacher other than what the teacher has himself gone through. What concerns us here is that, of the whole being of man as he stands before us today, it is essentially only the outward visible part already within human nature that is today complete. This must be made clear to anyone aspiring to become a student of the mysteries—that man as he stands before us today is by no means a completed being, but is in the process of developing so that in the future he will reach many higher stages.

That which today has attained to an image of God, that which has arrived at the highest stage in man, is the human physical body, that which we can see with our eyes and perceive in any way with our senses. That is not, however, the only thing that man has. He has still higher members of his nature. To begin with, he further possesses a member that we call his etheric body. This etheric body can be seen by anyone who has cultivated his soul organs. Through this etheric body man is not simply a creation in which work chemical and physical forces, but a living creation, a creation that lives and is endowed with capacities for growth, life, and propagation. One can see this etheric body, which represents a kind of archetype of man, if, with the methods of the art of clairvoyance—which will be characterized still further—one suggests away the ordinary physical body. You know how, by the ordinary methods of hypnotism and suggestion, the point can be reached when, if you say to anyone that there is no lamp here, he actually sees no lamp. So you can also, if you develop in yourself sufficiently strong willpower—a willpower that shuts out, entirely shuts out, all observation of the physical body—so you can, in spite of seeing into space, completely suggest away physical space. Then you see space not empty but filled by a kind of archetype. This archetype has practically the same form as the physical body. It is, however, not of the same nature through and through, but is fully organized. It is not only interlaced with fine veins and streams but it also has organs. This creation, this etheric body, produces man's essential life. Its color can only be compared with the color of the young peach blossom. It is no color that is contained in the sun spectrum; but it is something between a violet and a reddish tinge. This is then the second body.

The third body is the aura, which I have often described—that cloud-like formation of which I spoke last time when describing man's origin, in which man is as if in an egg-shaped cloud. In this is expressed all that lives in man as lust, passion, and feeling. Joyful self-sacrificing feelings express themselves in this aura in luminous streams of color. Feelings of hate, physical feelings, express themselves in dark color tones. Sharp, logical thoughts express themselves in sharply outlined forms. Illogical, confused thoughts come to expression in figures with blurred outline. Thus, we have in this aura an image of what is living in man's soul as feeling, passion, and impulse.

As man has now been described, so he was set down on the earth—from the hand of nature, so to speak—at the point of time that lies approximately at the beginning of the Atlantean race. Last time I described what is to be understood by “the Atlantean race.” At the moment when the fertilization by the eternal spirit had already taken place, man confronts us with the three members—body, soul, and spirit. Today this threefold nature of man has taken a somewhat different form, as since that time, since nature has released him, since he has become a being with self-consciousness, man has worked on his own being. This work on himself means the refining of his aura; it also means sending light into the aura out of this self-consciousness. A man who stands at a very low stage of development and has never worked on himself—let us say a savage—has the aura which nature has provided him. But all those within our civilization, our cultural world, have auras on which they themselves have helped to work, for in so far as man is a self-conscious being he works upon himself and this work comes into expression first through changing his aura. All that man has learned through nature, all that he has absorbed since he was able to speak and think self-consciously, is a recent acquisition in his aura brought about by his own activity.

If you put yourself back into the Lemurian age, in which man had already had warm blood flowing in his veins for some time, and in which, in the middle of this Lemurian age, his fertilization with the spirit had taken place, man then was not yet a being capable of clear thinking. All this occurred at the beginning of evolution when the spirit had just taken possession of the corporeality. At that time the aura was still completely a consequence of forces of nature. One could then perceive—as one still can with men at a very low stage of development—how at a certain place in the interior of the head (that is to say, a place that we have to seek in the interior of the head) there exists a smaller aura of a bluish color. This smaller aura is the outer auric expression of the self-consciousness. And the more a man has developed this self-consciousness through his thought and through his work, the more this smaller aura spreads itself over the other, so that often in a short time both become totally different. A man who lives in outer culture, a refined man of culture, works on his aura in the particular way that this culture impels him. Our ordinary knowledge, which they offer in our schools, our experiences that life brings us, are absorbed by us and they are perpetually transforming our aura. But this transformation must be continuous if a man wishes to enter into practical mysticism. Then he must make a special effort to work upon himself. For then he must not incorporate into his aura only what culture offers him, but must exercise an influence upon it in a definite, orderly manner. And this happens through so-called meditation. This meditation, this inner immersion, is the first stage which a student of initiation must undergo.

Now in what does this meditation take an interest? Just try to bring to mind and reflect upon the thoughts that you shelter from morning to night, and upon how these thoughts are influenced by the time and the place in which you live. See whether you can hinder your thoughts, and ask yourself whether you would have them if you did not happen by chance to be living in Berlin at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, men did not think in the same way as men do today. If you consider how the world has changed in the course of the last century, and what kind of changes time has brought about, you will see that what passes through your soul from morning to night is dependent upon time and space. It is different when we give ourselves up to thoughts that have an eternal worth. Actually it is only certain abstract, scientific thoughts to which men have given themselves up, the highest thoughts of mathematics and geometry, that have an eternal worth. Twice two is four holds good at all times and in all places. It is the same with the geometrical truths that we accept. But leaving aside a certain fundamental stock of such truths, we may say that the average man has very few thoughts that are not dependent on time and space. What is thus dependent unites us with the world, and only exerts a trifling influence upon that essence which is in itself enduring.

Meditation means nothing other than surrendering oneself to thoughts which have eternal worth, in order to raise oneself up in a conscious way to what lies above both space and time. Such thoughts are contained in the great religious writings: the Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, the Gospel of John from the thirteenth chapter to the end, and the “Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas a Kempis. He who sinks himself with patience and perseverance so that he lives in such writings; he who deepens himself anew every day—perhaps working for weeks on one single sentence, thinking it through, feeling it through—will gain unlimited benefit. Just as each day one learns more nearly to know and love a child with all its individual characteristics, so one can daily draw into one's soul an eternal truth of the kind that flows from the great Initiates, or from inspired men. This has the effect of filling us with new life. Very significant also are the sayings in the “Light on the Path” that have been written down by Mabel Collins, under the instruction of higher powers. Actually in the first four sentences there is something that, when applied with patience in the appropriate way, is capable of so seizing upon man's aura that this aura is completely shot through with new light. One can see this light in the human aura shining and glistening. Bluish shades arise in the place of the reddish or of the reddishbrown shimmering shades of color, and, in the place of yellow, clear reddish ones arise, and so on. The whole coloring of the aura transforms itself under the influence of such eternal thoughts. The student cannot yet perceive this in the beginning, but he gradually begins to notice the deep influence that emanates from the greatly transformed aura.

If a man, in addition to these meditations, consciously and in a most scrupulous way practices certain virtues, certain achievements of the soul, then, within this aura, his sense-organs of the soul develop. We must have these if we want to see into the soul-world, just as we must have physical sense-organs to be able to see into the material world. As the outer senses were planted into the body by nature, so must man, in a regular way, implant the higher sense-organs of the soul into his aura. Meditation leads man to become ripe from within outwards, forming, developing, and interweaving the available capacities of the soul's senses.

But if we wish to cultivate these sense organs we must turn our attention to quite definite accomplishments of the soul. You see, man has a series of such organs in his organization. We call these sense organs the so-called Lotus flowers because the astral image, which man begins to evolve in his aura when he is developing himself in the way described, takes on a form that may be compared with that of a Lotus flower. It goes without saying that this is only a comparison, just as one can speak of the wings of the lung, which also bear only a resemblance to wings. The two-petalled Lotus flower is found in the middle of the head above the root of the nose, between the eyes. Near the larynx is the sixteen-petalled Lotus flower, while in the region of the heart there is the twelve-petalled one, and in the region of the pit of the stomach the one with ten petals. Still farther down are found the six-petalled and four-petalled Lotus flowers. Today I want to talk only about the Lotus flowers that have sixteen petals and twelve petals.

In Buddha's teachings you are given an account of the so-called eightfold path. Now ask yourselves once why Buddha offered precisely this eightfold path as particularly important in the attainment of the higher stages of man's development. This eightfold path is: right resolve, right thinking, right speech, right action, right living, right striving, right memory, right self-immersion, or meditation. A great Initiate such as Buddha does not speak out of a vaguely felt ideal, but out of knowledge of human nature. He knows what influence the practice of such exercises of the soul will have on the future development of the body. If we look at the sixteen-petalled Lotus flower in the average man of today we actually see very little. If I can so express it, it is in the process of flaring up again. In the far-distant past this Lotus flower was once present; it has gone backward in its development. Today it is appearing again, partly through man's cultural activity. In the future, however, this sixteen-petalled Lotus flower will come again to full development. It will glisten vividly with its sixteen spokes or petals, each petal appearing in a different shade of color; and finally, it will move from left to right. What everyone in the future will possess and experience is today being cultivated by those who seek in a conscious way their development in the school of initiation, in order to become leaders of mankind. Now eight of these sixteen petals have already been formed in the far-distant past; today eight have still to be developed, if the mystery pupil wishes to have the use of these sense-organs. These will be developed if man treads the eightfold path in a conscious way, observantly and clearly, if he consciously practices these eight soul activities given by Buddha, and if he arranges his whole life of soul so that he takes himself in hand, practicing these eight virtues as vigorously as he can only do when sustained by his meditation work, thus bringing the sixteen-petalled Lotus flower not only into bloom but also into movement, into actual perception.

I will now speak of the twelve-petalled Lotus flower in the region of the heart. Six petals of this flower were already developed in the far-distant past, and six must be developed by all men in the future, by present-day Initiates and their pupils. In all anthroposophical handbooks you can find reference to certain virtues in the forefront of those that should be acquired by anyone aspiring to the stage of Chela, or pupil. These six virtues which you find mentioned in every anthroposophical handbook concerned with man's development are: control of thought, control of action, tolerance, steadfastness, impartiality, and equilibrium, or what Angelus Silesius calls composure. These six virtues, which one must practice consciously and attentively in conjunction with meditation, bring to unfolding the six further petals of the twelve-petalled Lotus flower. And these are not gathered blindly in the anthroposophical textbooks, nor are they stamped by haphazard or individual inner feeling, but they are spoken out of the great Initiates' deepest knowledge. Initiates know that whoever really wishes to evolve to the higher super-sensible stages of development must bring about the unfolding of the twelve-petalled Lotus flower. And to this end he must today develop, through these six virtues, the six petals that were undeveloped in the past. Thus you see how the great Initiates essentially gave their directions for life out of their own deeper knowledge of the human being. I could extend these remarks to still other organs of knowledge and observation, but I only wish to give you a brief sketch of the process of initiation, and for that these indications should suffice.

When the pupil has progressed so far that he begins to form the astral sense-organs, when he has progressed so far that he is capable of perceiving not only the physical impressions in his surroundings but also what belongs to the soul—in other words, to see what is in the aura of man himself as well as what is in the aura of animals and plants—he then begins a completely new stage of instruction. No one can see in his environment that which has to do with his soul before his Lotus flowers revolve, just as one without eyes can see no color and no light. But when the barrier is pierced, when the pupil has gone beyond the preliminary stages of knowledge so that he has insight into the soul-world, then true “pupil-ship” first begins for him. This leads through four stages of knowledge. Now what happens in this moment, when man has passed beyond the first steps and has become a Chela? We have seen how all that we have just described related to the astral body. This is organized throughout by the human body. Whoever has undergone such a development has a totally different aura. When man out of his self-consciousness has illuminated his astral body, when he himself has become the luminous organization of his astral body, then we say that this pupil has illuminated his astral body with Manas. Manas is nothing other than an astral body dominated by self-consciousness. Manas and astral body are one and the same, but at different stages of development.

One must understand this if, in the practice of mysticism, one wishes to apply in a practical way what is given in anthroposophical handbooks as the seven principles. Everyone acquainted with the mystic path of development, everyone who knows something about initiation, will say that these have a theoretical value for study but for the practicing mystic they have value only if the relation existing between the lower and the higher principles is known. No practicing mystic recognizes more than four members: the physical body, in which work chemical and physical laws, the etheric body, the astral body, and finally the self- or Ego-consciousness, called at the present stage of development Kama-Manas, the self-conscious thinking principle. Manas is nothing other than that which has been worked into the body by the self-consciousness. The etheric body in its present form is deprived of any influence of the self-consciousness. We can indirectly influence our growth and nourishment, but not in the same way as we cause our wishes, our thoughts and ideas to proceed from self-consciousness. We cannot ourselves influence our nourishment, digestion, and growth. In men, these are without connection to the self-consciousness. The etheric body has to be brought under the influence of the astral body, the so-called aura. The self-consciousness of the astral body has to penetrate the etheric body—to be able to work out of itself upon the etheric body—as man, in the way already shown, works upon his astral body, his aura. Then, when man through meditation, through inner immersion, and through practicing activities of the soul, which I have described, has come so far that the astral body has organized itself, then the work extends to the etheric body, and the etheric body receives the inner word. Then man not only hears what lives in the world around him, but there resounds in him his etheric body, the inner meaning of things.

I have often said here before that the essentially spiritual in things is a resounding. I have drawn your attention to how the practicing mystic, when speaking in a correct sense, talks of a sound in the spiritual world in the same way as of a light in the astral world, or world of desire. Not for nothing does Goethe say, when guiding his Faust to heaven: “Die Sonne tönt nach alten Weise im Bruderspharen Wettgesang ...” (“The sun resounds in ancient fashion, contending with his brother spheres”). Nor are the words of Ariel empty when Faust is being escorted by the spirits into the spiritual world: “Tönend wird für Geistesohren schon der neue Tag geboren” (“Hear the new day being born, Spirit ears can hear its ringing”).

This inner sounding which, of course, is not at all a sound perceptible to the outer physical ear, this inner word through which things can express their own nature, is an experience that man has when he becomes able to influence his etheric body from his astral body. Then he has become a Chela, a real student of the great Initiates. Then he can be led further upon this path. A man who has thus ascended this step is called a homeless man, because fundamentally he has found the connection with a new world, because it rings to him out of the spiritual world, and because he thereby no longer has his home, so to speak, in this physical world. One must not misunderstand this. The Chela who has reached this stage is just as good a citizen and family man, just as good a friend, as he was before he had reached the stage of Chela. He need not be torn away from anything. What he has experienced is an evolution of the soul, thus acquiring a new home in a world lying behind this physical one.

What then has happened? The spiritual world sounds within man, and through this sounding of the spiritual world man overcomes an illusion, the illusion which takes in all men before they begin this stage of development. This is the illusion of the personal self. Man believes himself to be a personality separate from the rest of the world. Mere reflection could teach him that even physically he himself is not an independent being. Bear in mind that if the temperature in this room were 200 degrees higher than it now is, none of us would be able to survive as we now survive. As soon as the outer situation changes, the conditions for our physical existence are no longer there. We are simply a continuation of the external world, and are as separate beings absolutely inconceivable. This is still more the case in the world of the soul and of the spirit. Thus we see that man conceived of as a self is only an illusion—that he is a member of the universal divine spirituality. Here man overcomes the personal self. Here arises what in the mystic chorus of Faust Goethe has expressed in the words: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis.” (“All that is transitory is but a likeness.”) What we see is only a picture of an eternal being. We ourselves are only a picture of an eternal being. When we have surrendered our separate being—for we live a separate life through our etheric body—then we have overcome our outer, separate life, we have become part of universal life.

There arises in man something which we have called Buddhi. Buddhi is now practically reached as a stage in the development of the etheric body, that etheric body which no longer occasions a separate existence but enters into universal life. The man who has attained this has arrived at the second state of Chela-ship. Then all doubts and reservations fall away from his soul; he can no longer be superstitious any more than he can be a doubter. Then he has no more need to secure the truth in order to compare his ideas with the outer environment; then he lives in tone, in the word of things; then what it is sounds and resounds out of its being. And there is no more superstition, no more doubt. This is called the surrendering of the keys of knowledge to the Chela. When he has reached this stage, within it there sounds a word from the spiritual world. Then his own words no longer proclaim an echo of what is in this world, but his words are an echo of what stems from another world, which works into this world, but which cannot be perceived with our outer senses. These words are messengers of the Godhead.

When this stage is passed beyond, a new one comes. This is entered by man gaining influence over what is done directly by his physical body. Before this, his influence only extended to his etheric body, but now it extends to his physical body. His actions must set the physical body in motion. What man does is incorporated into what we call his karma. Man, however, does not work on this consciously; he does not know how each of his deeds causes a consequence. It is only now that he begins in a conscious way so to fulfill his actions in the physical world that he consciously works on his karma. Thus, through his physical actions, he wins influence over his karma. And now there is not only a sounding from the objects in his environment, but he has come far enough to be able to utter the name of all things. Man lives in our present stage of culture in such a way that he is only able to utter one single name. That is the name he gives himself: “I.” That is the only name man can really give to himself. (Whoever immerses himself in deeper knowledge can arrive at depths of which psychology does not dream.) It is the only instance in which you yourself can give the name in question. No one else can say “I” to you, only you yourself. To everyone else you must say “you,” and they in return must say the same. There is something in everyone to which only they themselves can apply the name “I.” On this account the Jewish mystery teachings speak also of an inexpressible name of God. That is something which is immediately a proclamation of God in man. It was forbidden to utter this name unworthily, sacrilegiously; hence the sacred awe, the significance and reality when the Jewish mystery teachers uttered this name. “I” is the one word that says something to you that can never approach you from the outer world. So now, as the average man alone names his “I,” so the Chela in the third stage gives to all things in the world names which he has received out of intuition. That means he has passed into the world “I.” He speaks out of the world “I” itself. He may call everything by its most profound name, whereas the man today standing at the average stage can only say “I” to himself. When the Chela has arrived at this stage, he is called a Swan. The Chela who has been able to raise himself to the point of naming all things is called Swan because he is the messenger of all things.

What lies beyond these three stages cannot be expressed in ordinary language. It demands knowledge of a special script only taught in mystery schools. The next stage is the stage of what is veiled. And beyond this lie the stages which belong to the great Initiates, those Initiates who at all times have given the great impulses to our culture. They were Chelas to begin with. To begin with they acquired the keys of knowledge. Next they were led further to the regions where were disclosed to them the universal and the names of things. Then they raised themselves to the stage of the universal, where they could have the deep experiences through which they were qualified to found the great religions of the world.

But it was not only the great religions that came forth from the great Initiates; it was every mighty impulse, all that is important in the world. Let us take just two examples that show the kind of influence that has been exercised on the world by the great Initiates who have gone through the schooling. Let us go back to everyday life at the time when the pupils of the initiation schools were guided under the leadership of Hermes. This guidance was in the end an ordinary, so-called esoteric, scientific instruction. I can sketch for you in only a few strokes what such instruction contained. It was shown how the Cosmic Spirit descended into the physical world, incarnated himself here, and how he began afresh a material existence, how he then reached the highest stage of man and celebrated his resurrection. Paracelsus in particular has expressed this very beautifully in the following words: “The individual beings we meet in the outer world are the single letters, and the word that is formed from them is MAN.” Outwardly we have all contributed human virtues or failings to this creation. Man, however, is the fusion of all this. It was taught as esoteric instruction in the Egyptian mystery schools, in all detail and with great richness of spirit, how there lives in man, as microcosm, the fusion of the rest of the macrocosm.

After this instruction came the Hermetic instruction. What I have said one can grasp with the senses and the understanding. But what is offered in the Hermetic instruction can only be grasped if one has attained the first stage of Chelaship. Then one can learn that special script which is neither arbitrary nor a matter of chance, but which gives us the great laws of the spiritual world. This script is not, like ours, an external picture arbitrarily fixed in single letters and parts; it is born out of the spiritual law of nature itself, because the man who becomes versed in this script is in possession of this natural law. All his conception of soul and astral space itself thus becomes regulated by law. What he conceives is conceived in the sense of the great signs of this script. He is capable of this when he has renounced his self. He unites himself with primal everlasting law. Now he has his Hermetic instruction behind him. Henceforward he himself can be admitted to the first stage of a still deeper initiation. Now, as the next stage, he should experience something in the astral world, the essential soul world, that has a significance reaching beyond the cosmic cycles. After he has acquired the capacity for the astral senses to be fully effective, so that they work right down into the etheric body, then for three days he is ushered into a deep mystery of the astral world. In that astral world he then experiences what last time I described to you as the primal origin of the Earth and man. He has before him and he experiences this descent of the spirit, this separation of Sun, Moon, and Earth, and the coming forth of man—this whole series of phenomena. And at the same time they form themselves into a picture before him. And then he emerges. After he has this great experience in the mystery school behind him, he goes among the people and relates what he has experienced in the soul and astral world. And what he relates runs approximately like this:

“There was once a divine couple who were united with the earth, Osiris and Isis. This divine pair were regents of everything that happens on earth. But Osiris was pursued by Typhon and cut into pieces, and Isis had to search for the corpse. She did not bring it home, but graves of Osiris were distributed among the various parts of the earth. So he was brought completely down into the earth and buried there. But a ray from the spiritual world fell upon Isis, fertilizing her through immaculate conception with the new Horns.”

This picture is nothing other than a mighty representation of what we have come to know as the exit of Sun and Moon, as the separation of Sun and Moon and as the dawning of mankind. Isis is the image of the Moon; Horns stands for earthly mankind, the earth itself. Before man was endowed with warm blood, before he was clothed with his physical body, he felt in mighty pictures what proceeded in the soul world. In the beginning of the Lemurian, of the Atlantean and the Arian evolutions, man was always prepared by the great Initiates to receive the mighty truths contained in such pictures. For this reason, the truths were not simply represented but were given in the pictures of Osiris and Isis. All the great religions we meet in antiquity are from what the great Initiates experienced in astral space. And the great Initiates emerged from these experiences and spoke to each particular people in the way they could understand, that is to say in pictures of what the Initiates themselves had experienced in the mystery schools. This was so in ancient times. Only through being in such a school of initiation could one rise to higher astral experience.

All this was changed with the coming of Christianity. It cut into evolution with great significance. And since the appearance of Christ it has been possible for man to be initiated as an initiate of nature, just as one speaks of a poet of nature. There have been Christian mystics who by grace have received initiation. The first who was called to carry Christianity into all the world under the influence of the words: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” was Paul. The appearance on the road to Damascus was an initiation outside the mysteries. I cannot go into further detail here.

It was the great Initiates who gave the impulse to all great movements and founding's of culture. From medieval times there comes a beautiful myth that may be said to show us this in a time when one did not yet demand materialistic foundations. The myth arose in Bavaria and has, therefore, assumed the garb of Catholicism. What then happened we will make clear as follows. There arose at that time in Europe the so-called civic culture—modern citizenship. The onward development of man, the progress of each soul to a higher stage, was understood by the mystic as the advancing of the soul, of the womanly element in man. The mystic sees in the soul something womanly that was fertilized by the lower sense impressions of nature and by the eternal truths. In every historical process the mystic sees such a process of fertilization. For those who see more deeply into man's path of development, for those who see the spiritual forces behind physical appearances, the great and deep impulses for the progress of mankind are given by the great Initiates. Thus the man with a medieval world outlook ascribed to the great Initiates the raising up of the soul to higher stages during the new period of culture that was brought about by means of cities. This city-development was attained by souls making a sudden move forward in history. And it was an Initiate who brought about this move. All mighty impulses were ascribed to the great lodge of Initiates surrounding the Holy Grail. From there came the great Initiates who are not visible to ordinary men. And the Initiate who at that time provided the civic culture with its impulse was called, in the Middle Ages, Lohengrin. It is he who was the missionary of the Holy Grail, of the great lodge; and Elsa of Brabant stands for the soul of the city, the womanly element that was to be fructified through the great Initiate. The mediator is the swan. Lohengrin was brought by the swan into this physical world. The Initiate must not be asked his name. He belongs to a higher world. The Chela, the Swan, has been the mediator of this influence.

I have merely been able to indicate how this great event has again been symbolized for the people in a myth. It is in this way that the great Initiates have worked and have put into their teachings what they have to make known. And in this way worked all those who have founded man's early culture—Hermes in Egypt, Krishna in India, Zarathustra in Persia, Moses among the Jewish people. Orpheus continued the work—then Pythagoras, and finally the Initiate of all Initiates, Jesus, who bore within Him the Christ.

Here only the greatest of Initiates are mentioned. We have tried in these descriptions to characterize their connection with the world. What has been described here will still remain remote to many people's thoughts. But those who have become aware of something of the higher worlds in their own souls have always raised their eyes not only to the spiritual world but also to the leaders of mankind. It was only from this standpoint that they have been able to speak in as inspired a way as Goethe. But you find among others, too, something of the divine spark leading towards the point to which spiritual science should again bring us. You find it in the case of a German, a young, intelligent German poet and thinker, whose life has all the appearance of a blessed memory of some former existence as a great Initiate. Those who read Novalis will notice something of the breath that guides us into the higher world. There is something in him that also contains the magic word, though not expressed as explicitly as usual. Thus he has written the beautiful words about the relation of our planet to mankind that convey as much to the lowly and undeveloped as they do to the Initiate:

“Mankind is the sense of our earth-planet, mankind is the nerve that binds the earth-planet with the higher worlds; mankind is the eye through which this earth-planet lifts its gaze to the heavenly Kingdoms of the Cosmos.”