The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The spiritual science of Anthroposophy, which I had the honor of speaking about here in The Hague last Tuesday and yesterday evening, does not just pursue cognitive goals, nor just the goal of deepening our knowledge of the human being in scientific, moral, and religious terms. It also has practical goals. And it was requested that I speak this evening about one of these practical goals, about the goal of education.

Since this spiritual science strives above all to achieve a true knowledge of the whole, the complete human being - the human being in relation to his physical, his soul and his spiritual being - it can also impart knowledge of human nature in practical life, knowledge of human nature in relation to all ages. And for the art of education, knowledge of human nature in relation to the child itself is, of course, essential.

The question of education is essentially a question of the teacher. It is a question of the teacher in so far as it concerns whether the teacher, whether the educator, is able to solve the human riddle in practice with the child. Perhaps it is in this riddle of childhood that we most clearly perceive the meaning of that ancient saying, which is written like a motto over human knowledge: the saying that the solution to the riddle of the world lies within man himself.

Many people are afraid that if a solution to the riddle of the world were pointed out, human knowledge would then have nothing more to do. But if one is of the opinion that man himself is the solution to all the countless secrets that the universe holds, so to speak, as the ultimate goal of this world development, then one knows that one has to seek the solution to the riddles of the world in man, but man himself, if one wants to get to know him, again requires immeasurable effort, immeasurable work, to gain insight into his nature.

If one is so inclined towards the human being in the world that an immortal is hidden in him, then one also comes to have the shy reverence for the child that one must have as a teacher and educator if one wants to approach this child in the right way.

Today, with regard to the knowledge of human nature, I will endeavor to refrain from the arguments that I have been making in recent days about the knowledge of the human spirit and the spirit of the world. I will try to express the spiritual-scientific content in the most popular terms possible, so that those of our honored listeners who were not present in the last few days can also follow the arguments.

The point is this: anyone who deepens their views on life through what can give them a real – not abstract – knowledge of the human soul and spirit sees, above all, major divisions in the life of the human being; they see that they have to structure the entire life of the human being into epochs. These epochs are not always regarded with the proper interest and deep insight that they deserve. But anyone who wants to have a truly human relationship with a child as an educator or teacher must have a thorough knowledge of these epochs.

We see such an epoch in the child's life coming to a close around the age of seven, when the child gets the second teeth. The person who is a judge of character regards these second teeth only as the external symbol of a significant change in the child's physical, mental and spiritual development. And anyone who is able to practise the art of education in a proper and professional manner will also see a change in the child's mental characteristics and spiritual abilities as the teeth change. Let us just consider the fact that a metabolic turnover also takes place in the human organism at a later age, that after eight or nine years we no longer have the same material composition, the same substances within us, that we had before. If we consider this, we must nevertheless say to ourselves: What happens in the seventh year during the change of teeth is a powerful development of strength that the organism does not repeat in later life and that is also not a one-off event or an event that occurs over a short period of time. Anyone who has an insight into the development of the human organism knows how everything is prepared in the most intimate metabolic processes during the first seven years of life, which then, so to speak, finds its conclusion, its end point, in the second teeth.

And with regard to the soul, we see how, for example, memory, but also imagination, works differently with these second teeth – above all in terms of its nature – than it did before. We see how memory previously developed to a high degree unconsciously, as if from the depths of the child's physical being, and how it later becomes more spiritual. These things must be delicately hinted at, for they hardly lend themselves to a rough approach.

But what is especially important for the educator above all is that the child in the first years of life, up to the change of teeth, is completely devoted to the outside world as an imitative being. The child's relationship to the outer world is based on the fact – I do not say this to express a paradox, but to describe something very real – that in the first seven years of life, almost in these seven years, the child is almost entirely a sensory organ, that it perceives the environment not only with its eyes and ears, but that its whole organism is given over to the environment, similar to the sensory organs in later life. And just as the images of external things and processes are prepared in the sense organs, which are then only mentally recreated within, so it is the case with the child's organism that the child, as an imitative being, wants to imitate inwardly everything it sees outside. It wants to give itself completely to the outside world. It wants to imitate within itself everything that presents itself outside. The child is a complete sensory organ. And if one were to look into a child's organism with the clairvoyant sense, with the exact clairvoyance of which I have spoken in recent days, one would perceive, for example, how taste, which for an adult is experienced on the tongue and palate, extends much further into the organism in a child. Thus, one does not err when one says: In the infant, for example, it is the case that he also experiences breast milk with his whole body according to the taste.

We must enter into such intimacies of the human physical life if we really want to gain the delicate knowledge necessary for the art of education.

And when we look at how the child is an imitator through and through, then we understand, I would say in every single aspect, how the child learns to speak. We can literally follow how the child is led to follow, step by step, through imitation, what is struck as a sound, and to make its own inner being similar to what is perceived externally. And we can look into all the details of the child and see everywhere how the child is completely a sensory organ, completely an imitator, completely devoted to the sensory world around it.

In this respect, we can understand the child in relation to certain things that should not be judged in the same way as in the older child or even in the adult. I will illustrate this with an example. A father once asked me - this really happened in real life -: “What should I do with my boy? He stole money from his mother.” I asked the father: How old is the child? The child was not yet six years old. I had to say to the father: He who really understands the child cannot speak of theft here; the child had – as it turned out in the conversation with the father – seen daily how the mother took money out of the drawer. The child is an imitator; it also took money because it saw her do it. The entire action is exhausted in imitation, because the child did not attach any importance to having some of the so-called stolen money himself. He bought sweets with it and even gave them to other children. Hundreds of such examples could be given.

The mental life of the child after the change of teeth presents itself differently. We see how the child begins to give itself not only to sensory impressions, but to live completely within these sensory impressions and to make itself inwardly similar to what it sees around it. The child now begins to listen to what is said to it in words. But what the child encounters in its environment is needed in such a way that it is carried by the human personality. Therefore, we may say: until the second dentition has changed, the child is an imitative being; from the second dentition onwards - and this essentially lasts until sexual maturity - it becomes a being that no longer imitates but follows what comes to it through the imaginations of the personalities around it. And the teacher and educator must above all ensure that what he says to the child actually becomes a norm and guiding principle for the child. With the change of teeth, the imitative life transitions into a life in which the child, through his natural sense of right and wrong, wants to follow self-evident authority.

All teaching and education in this second phase of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, must be geared towards this natural sense of authority. At this age, the child learns to recognize as true that which the beloved, authoritative personality presents as true. What is beautiful, what is good, is felt to be sympathetic by the child or followed in dependence, in authoritative dependence on the beloved educational personality. And if we want to teach a child something between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen that will be fruitful for the child throughout his or her life, then we must be able to clothe everything we teach the child during this time in this authoritative element.

My dear audience, anyone who, like me, was able to refer yesterday to his “Philosophy of Freedom”, written more than thirty years ago, will not assume that he wants to focus too much on the authoritarian principle. But anyone who loves freedom above all else, who sees in freedom the self-evident law of social life, must point out, based on a true understanding of the human being, that the period between the ages of seven and fourteen is the time when a child thrives solely by being able to draw strength and inspiration from a personality that it perceives as a self-evident authority. Thus we would like to say: in the first seven years of life – this is all approximate, more or less – the child is an imitative, intuitive creature; in the second seven years of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, the child is a being that listens to its human environment and naturally wants to be placed under an authority.

Anyone who, like the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here, follows the development of the human being in terms of body, soul and spirit, knows what an enormous significance it has for later life, and perhaps even for old age, if the human being was able to reverence, even if only in the form of a special education for a short time. For example, if one was able to hear about a personality highly revered in the family when one was eight or nine years old, and to really absorb some of that reverence through hearing about them. And then the day approaches when one is supposed to see them for the first time. That day when everything is clothed in shyness and reverence and one expectantly gets the door opened to see this personality for the first time. If one knows how such an experience works, when the soul, in relation to authority, is surrendered to the outer world, as in the first years of childhood the whole human being is surrendered as a sense being — then one knows what a benefit one does to the child during the sculptural age when one lets him experience a great deal of this shy reverence for the self-evident authority.

One must observe such things if one wants to become an educator or teacher out of knowledge of human nature. Then one will consider above all that the human being is not only a spatial organism, in which the individual limb of his body stands in spatial interaction with some other distant limb, but that the human being is also a temporal organism. Knowledge of human nature cannot be acquired without being oriented towards the human being as a time organism. If you take any limb of the right hand, it is in interaction with every other limb of this spatial organism in the human being through an inner overall organization. But if you look at what a person is first in childhood, then in later childhood, in the period of youth and maidenhood, in adulthood, in declining age, then in old age - then everything is intimately connected in time. And anyone who, as an educator and teacher, only looks at the child's present life, at the eight- to nine-year-old child, is not fully fulfilling their duty. Only those who know that what they do for the seven- to eight-year-old child continues to have an effect in the temporal organism, which is a unity - from the child, from the middle-aged person, from the elderly person - and that what that which is kindled in the soul during childhood continues to work, but becomes different, metamorphosed: only those who can form an idea of the way in which this changes, transforms, can educate in the true sense of the word.

I would like to give you an example. You see, it is considered so important that a child understand everything that is taught to him with his still-tender mind. This contradicts the principle of self-evident authority. But anyone who only wants to convey to the child what it can immediately grasp with its delicate mind does not consider the following example. It means a great deal if, in one's eighth or ninth year, one has accepted something as a matter of course and authority as true, beautiful, good, that an honored authority describes as beautiful, good, and true, and one has not yet fully understood it. In the thirty-fifth year, or perhaps even later, it comes up from the depths of the soul. One has become more mature in the meantime. Now one understands it, now one brings it up, now one illuminates it with mature life experience.

Something like this – when, at a later age, one understands out of maturity what one had previously accepted only out of love for authority, when one feels such a reminiscence coming up in later life and only now understands it – something like this signifies a flare-up of new life forces, an enormous principle in the soul, of which one is just not always fully aware.

In another way, I can make it even clearer what I actually mean by the principle that one should educate in such a way that what one brings up works for the whole of life. You know that there are people who enter into any environment where other people are and work like a blessing just by their presence. They do not need to exert themselves much in speaking, their words are breathed out, warmed through by something that has a blessing effect on other people. As a rule, these people will be of mature or advanced age, and will be able to exert such a blessing effect through their mere presence in a very special sense.

Those who study the human being not only in the present moment, but really throughout their entire life – which is a difficult study. In physiology, in the ordinary study of man, it is easier to study only the present moments or short periods of time. But those who whole human life, knows how such a blessing effect, which comes from later in life, is usually connected with the fact that the person in question was able to worship, to look, to look devoutly at another person as a child. And I would like to express it paradigmatically by saying that no one who has not learned to fold their hands as a child can effectively use them to bless in old age. Folded hands in children contain the spiritual seeds of hands that bless in old age. The human being is not only a spatial organism, but also a temporal one, and everything is connected in the temporal life, just as the individual limbs are connected in the spatial organism in interaction.

Anyone who fully understands this will also avoid teaching the child such concepts that cannot be changed in later life. It is so easy for the teacher or educator to be tempted to approach the child with the greatest possible certainty, to give him or her concepts and ideas with sharp contours. This would be just like putting the delicate hands of the child, which are still to grow and change, in brackets so that they cannot grow. Just as the child's physical organism must grow, so too must the forces of growth inherent in what the teacher, the educator, has taken into his soul. We can only bring this into the child if we also shape the education and teaching artistically during the compulsory school age.

By way of illustration, I would like to point out how we at the Waldorf School - which was founded a few years ago by Emil Molt in Stuttgart and which I run - incorporate this artistic principle into our teaching. I can only give you a brief sketch of it today.

For example, when teaching reading, we do not assume that we can directly teach the child what letters are. These letters are, after all, something quite alien to human nature. Just think of how, in earlier times, there was a pictographic writing, a pictographic writing that arose primarily from the fact that what had been perceived was imitated in the picture. In this way, writing was very close to what was perceived. Writing had something directly to do with the human being. In the course of the development of civilization, the forms of letters have become detached from the human being. There is no need to study history to such an extent that the old pictographic script is brought to life again in school. But it is good for the teacher to let their artistic imagination run free, to let the children draw and paint forms that reflect what the child feels, in which the child lives.

Thus, at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, we do not start with learning to read or learning to write in the usual way, but rather artistically, with painting and drawing. We develop the forms of the letters out of this drawing, and in fact we always develop out of the artistic realm first. We also let the children work with paints, even though this is more difficult and must be developed out of the dirty. We begin with the artistic realm and develop writing out of it, and only then reading. And in this way an artistic quality should permeate the entire lesson.

This can happen right up to the point when the children learn arithmetic, if the teachers are there for it, those teachers who have become experts through a real deepening of their own soul treasures by absorbing the guiding forces of a real anthroposophical spiritual science into their minds, into their knowledge, into their feelings, into their will. Those who have assimilated spiritual science in this living way can work from the spirit to transform all teaching into an artistic activity. But when the teacher of this childhood stage becomes completely artistic in his dealings with the child, then he works not so much through what he knows, but through the nature of his personality. He works through his individuality. And the child receives through this in his mind something that has the power of growth in it, just as the physical organism has the power of growth in it. Later on, in one's thirties or forties, one is then in a position not only to think back, as if remembering, to the fixed concepts one was taught at school and which one should recall. No, these concepts have grown with one, have changed. This is how we must work as teachers; we must be able to treat the child as an educator.

In this way we exercise authority, but at the same time we work in the truest sense of the word for the freedom of the child; for we must always be clear in our own minds that we are true educators only when we can also guide in the right way those people who will one day be more capable than we are as teachers. It could well be that we find ourselves teaching in a school, let us say in a class with two geniuses. And if we as teachers are not geniuses ourselves, we must educate the children in such a way that we do not hinder the development of their genius. If we educate in the sense and spirit that I have just mentioned, that we artistically bring to the child with our personality what it needs, just as in earlier years it needed to imitate what it perceived through the senses, so now it needs that what we ourselves are as teachers, then we will be no more of an obstacle to the forces that may not even be in us than a mother carrying the germ of a child within her is an obstacle to genius if she is not a genius herself. We become custodians of the child's qualities and will not be tempted to impose on the child what we ourselves are. That is the worst educational principle, to want to make children into an image of ourselves. We will not be tempted to do so if we acquire knowledge of human nature in the sense of spiritual insight, and if the child is a mystery for us to solve at every stage of life.

My only regret is that we cannot yet have a kindergarten so that younger children too can be educated in these principles. We are not yet able to do so for financial reasons. But those who are teachers at the Stuttgart Waldorf School feel how what is revealed in the human physical organism as soul and spirit through the gaze, through the physiognomy, through the word, through everything possible, makes use of the body — which is by no means neglected in this education — how it has descended from divine spiritual heights and united with what has become of it from the father and mother in the hereditary current through conception or through birth. Anyone who approaches the child with the feeling that this child has descended from the spiritual world to you, and that you are to solve its riddle from day to day, from hour to hour, has in his mind the loving devotion to the child's development that is necessary to guide this child through all possible imponderables on its path through life. And it is such imponderables – that is, those things that cannot be grasped in a rough and ready way – that are often involved in education and teaching. It is truly not only that which a systematizing educational science wants to accept as prevailing between the educator and the child.

I would like to illustrate what I mean with another example. Let us assume that a teacher has the task of teaching a child in a childlike, simple way about the immortality of the human soul. This must be taught to the child, who is between the change of teeth and sexual maturity and is preferably attuned to receiving images – not yet abstract concepts – and who wants to accept everything on the basis of self-evident authority, precisely through an image.

Now this image can be presented to the child in two ways. You can say: I, the teacher, am terribly clever. The child is still terribly foolish. I have to teach it about the immortality of the soul. I will use an image. I will say to the child: look at the butterfly chrysalis, the butterfly will crawl out of it. It will crawl out as a visible being. Just as the butterfly crawls out of the chrysalis as a visible being, so your soul will separate from the physical body at death, as from a chrysalis, and fly away into the spiritual world.

Of course I am not saying that this is philosophical proof. It is certainly not that. But a view can be taught to the child in this way. I can do it – as I said – the way I have just described it. I say, I know all this well, because I am clever and the child is stupid. I teach it to the child. It is a foolish comparison, but the child should believe it.

Now, my esteemed audience, you will not achieve anything by approaching the child in this way, because the child may remember it, but what you are supposed to achieve, raising the soul's level, filling the soul with a life-giving content, you cannot do that in this way. But it can be done in another way, if you do not say to yourself: You are clever as a teacher, the child is foolish, but if you say to yourself - forgive me for speaking so paradoxically -: Perhaps the child is even much cleverer than you are in the subconscious depths of his soul. Perhaps you are the foolish one and the child is cleverer. In a sense this is true, because who knows how the still unformed internal organs, namely the brain, are shaped by the still unconscious soul, the dreaming soul of the child, how an immensely significant wisdom is formed in the earliest years of childhood. Anyone who has an appreciation for such things, who is not a crude philistine and cannot appreciate such things, still says to himself: All the wisdom we acquire in life, no matter how beautiful machines it may produce, is not as far advanced as the unconscious wisdom of the child.

Teachers who work in anthroposophical settings believe that the butterfly can emerge from the chrysalis, because they say to themselves: I am not making this comparison, nature itself is making this comparison. What happens at a higher level, the release of the immortal soul from the body, is modeled in nature by the deity itself in the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. If I imbue what I hold in front of the child as an image with my own feelings, then I give the child what is right, I give it life force with it. Nothing that I do not myself believe in with all my might can have the right effect on the child. These are the imponderables that should be at work between the teacher and the child, the unspoken, that which lies only in the exchange of feelings, the supersensible in teaching. If that is not there, then, I would say, only the gross, not the imponderable, is at work, and then we do not give the human being what is right for the path of life.

I wanted to use these things to point out, above all, how an artistic element, I would like to say a pious mood towards the human being, belongs in education and teaching. This is particularly evident when we turn our attention to the religious and moral education that we want to give the child. And here anthroposophical spiritual science, which I have had the opportunity to speak about here in The Hague during the past few days, shows us how, precisely in relation to the religious and moral element present in the human being, this temporal organism has its great significance for the whole human being and his earthly life. If we can gain insight into the attitude of the very young child, who imitates everything, towards his whole external world, and if we can put ourselves in this child's place, then we cannot characterize it other than by saying that the child is completely given over to the external world; he loses himself to the external world. Just as the eye loses itself in the outer world of colors and light, so the child loses itself in the outer world. The inner world dawns only very gradually. Out of dreams that are still completely absorbed in the outer world, more definite ideas gradually emerge.

Now, my dear audience, when you have truly appreciated this mood in the child, do you know what it is? It is in truth the pious mood, it is in truth the religious mood, placed in the midst of the sense world. However strong a tomboy the child may be in other respects, in relation to its relationship to the sense world, in relation to its devotion to the sense world, the child is religiously minded. It wants to be itself wholly what it beholds in its surroundings. There is not yet any religion in which the child finds itself. But this mood, which is present in the child especially in the first years and gradually fades away until the change of teeth, this mood, which is no longer present when the self-evident sense of authority sets in with the change of teeth, reappears in a remarkable way later on for the insightful teacher.

When children reach primary school age between the ages of nine and ten, the truly insightful teacher and educator may be faced with their greatest challenge. For it is then that they will notice that most of the children entrusted to them approach them and have a particular need for them, that they do not always have explicit questions but often have unspoken ones, living only in their feelings. These questions can take on hundreds of thousands of forms. It is much less important to give the child a specific answer. Whether one gives one answer or another is not as important as the content of the answer. What is most important, however, is that you instill the right trust in the child with the right feeling, that you approach the child with the right feeling at just the right moment, which for children always occurs between the ages of nine and ten.

I can characterize this moment in the most diverse ways. When we teach the child, we notice that before this moment, which lies between the ages of nine and ten, he does not yet properly distinguish himself from his environment, does not properly experience himself as an ego - even if he has long been saying “I” to himself. In this moment of life, he really learns to distinguish himself from his environment. We can now no longer just influence the child with fairy tales and all kinds of lessons, in which we bring the outside world to life. We can now already draw attention to the fact that the child distinguishes himself from the outside world as “I”.

But something else of fundamental importance occurs, which is deeply connected with the moral development. This occurs: in the early days of that epoch of life in which the child is subject to authority, he takes this authoritative personality as it is. Between the ages of nine and ten – it does not even need to be conscious of this, it can happen deep within the feeling, in the subconscious, as it is called, but there it is – the child sees itself forced, through its development, to look through the authoritative personality at what this authoritative personality itself is based on. This authoritative personality says: This is true, this is good, this is beautiful. Now the child wants to feel and sense where this comes from in the authoritative personality, what the knowledge of the good, true and beautiful is, the will in the true, good and beautiful. This comes from the fact that what I would like to say in the depths of the soul has been retained during the change of teeth and even afterwards, which in early childhood was, if I may use the strange word, a sensual-pious surrender to the outside world, because that has disappeared there in the depths of the soul and now emerges spiritually as if from the depths of the human being. What was sensual in the infant until the change of teeth, what as sensual is the germ of all later religious feeling towards the world, that emerges soulfully between the ages of nine and ten, becomes a soul need.

Knowing this, and reckoning with the fact that, just as one lovingly tends the plant germ so that it becomes a plant, one now has before one, in soul form, that which was once prepared in the child in a sensually germinal way, and has to be cared for in soul form, gives one a special relationship with the child. And in this way one lays the religious germ in the child.

Then the educators will notice that in later life, towards the seventeenth or eighteenth year, what has emerged as a religious feeling in the soul, that then emerges spiritually, that it is absorbed into the will, so that the person builds up their religious ideals during this time.

You see, it is extremely important to understand these things at the fundamental level if we want to educate and teach in a meaningful, truthful and realistic way. After all, nature has taken care of the physical organism of the human being, otherwise we might not be sure whether - especially if the people concerned are modern futuristic painters - people might even think of putting their ear in the wrong place or something similar. Such things could well happen if nature had not provided for the whole corresponding organization of the human being. So we, as teachers and educators, must take care of the time organism. We must not try to cultivate the religious sense of the child's soul in any other way than in preparation for the moment between the ages of nine and ten. We must handle this time body of the child with care. We must say to ourselves: Whatever religious feelings and concepts you teach the child before that remains external to him; he accepts them on authority. But between the ages of nine and ten something awakens in him. If you perceive this and direct the feelings that then arise of their own accord out of the soul in the religious sense, you make the child into a religiously true human being. There is so little real psychology of the age today, otherwise people would know where the false religious feelings and sentiments that are present in social life today come from: because it is believed that anything can be developed in a person at any age, because it is not known what exactly needs to be brought out of the child's soul between the ages of nine and ten.

If we organize the entire curriculum in such a way that by the age of twelve the child has absorbed so much from the natural sciences – entirely in keeping with primary school education and teaching – that he has an overview of some physical and botanical concepts and so on, not in a scientific but in a thoroughly childlike sense, then at this age, around the age of twelve, we can look at the child and the child treated accordingly – that conflict that arises when, on the one hand, we look up to the divine governance of the world, to which the child can be guided between the ages of nine and ten, and that contrast that arises when we only take note of the external – not moral, not divine-spiritual – unfolding of forces in the natural phenomena that manifest themselves before us. These natural phenomena present themselves to us without appearing to be permeated by moral principles, without our directly perceiving the divine in them.

This is what brought modern people into the conflict in the first place, which on the one hand directs the mind to the religious sources of existence, and on the other hand to knowledge of nature. Around the age of twelve, our knowledge of human nature tells us that we can gently address these conflicts in the maturing child, but that we are also in a position - because the soul-religious feelings are still so strong, so fresh, so full of life, so youthful, as they can only be in a twelve-year-old child, then to be able to guide the child in the right way, so that in later life he does not need to see nature itself as divinized, but can find the harmony between nature and the divine-spiritual essence of the world.

It is important that one allows this conflict to arise around the twelfth year, again taking into account the right development of the temporal organism in man, because it can be most effectively bridged by the forces that are present in the human soul at that time.

In turn, for anyone who is able to observe social life today in truth — not lovelessly, but with a genuine psychology — the art of education offers the insight that many people cannot overcome the conflict mentioned because they were not led into this conflict at the right age and helped to overcome it.

The main thing is that the teacher and educator know about the life of the human being in general, so that when they encounter an individual child or young person, they can recognize what is right at the right time and know how to orient themselves at the right time.

Religious experience also lies within the human being itself. We cannot graft it into him; we have to extract it from the soul. But just as we cannot eat with our nose, but have to eat with our mouths, so we have to know that we cannot teach the religious to a person at any age, but only at the appropriate age. This is something we learn primarily through a true knowledge of the spirit: to bring the right thing to the child at the right age. Then the child takes that which is appropriate to his abilities.

And when we look at this child development and know how everything between the change of teeth and sexual maturity is geared to the personal relationship between teacher and child, and how there must be something thoroughly artistic in this personal relationship , then we will also see that for the child it must initially be a kind of pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy, which in turn develops out of imponderables in the face of self-evident authority.

The teacher either talks to the child in stories, in parables – there are hundreds of possible ways – about what he finds morally good and what he finds morally evil. If he is really able to develop an artistic education, then the artistic element between the educator and the child works in such a way that the child, precisely through this inclination towards the self-evident authority, learns to look with sympathy to good and antipathy to evil, and that between about seven and fourteen years of age a moral sense develops in the child out of pleasure and displeasure.

It is completely wrong to try to get the child to obey rules during these years. We either enslave the child or make it malicious, stubborn, and rebellious against the rules. It does not understand why it should follow the commandments. But it can like or dislike what the self-evident authority finds right or wrong, good or evil, and it can learn to follow it with sympathy or antipathy. And this sympathy and antipathy becomes the self-evident content of the soul.

What develops in a scholastic way during this period of life, what has been established in the child's moral sense between the ages of seven and fourteen in the manner indicated, only comes to the fore in the seventeenth or eighteenth year as a volitional impulse, provided that the personality is present later on who, through his own enthusiasm for moral ideals, for beautiful human ideals, shines forth for the young person as a later guide in life - as a volitional impulse only appears in the seventeenth or eighteenth year.

Just as the plant germ is not yet the plant, but the plant germ must first come into being for the plant to arise, so too must the moral will in a healthy way be able to become the ripe fruit of the moral person in the sixteenth or seventeenth year, with all its strength, if the moral feeling has developed between the seventh and fourteenth year, in the process of clinging to the self-evident authority.

And what is the safest way for us to develop this moral sense? If we direct all instruction, all education, in such a way that the child learns to develop a feeling above all else. If possible, the education of even the very young child, long before the change of teeth, can take care of this if we direct this child in such a way that it learns to develop feelings of gratitude towards everything it receives in life. The feeling of gratitude is underestimated today. This feeling of gratitude connects people with the world and allows people to recognize themselves as a part of the world. If a child is guided in such a way that it can develop a clear feeling of gratitude for the smallest of things, then the child does not shut itself away in selfishness, but becomes altruistic and connects with its surroundings. Then one arrives at directing the lessons in such a way, even at school age, that the child gradually receives its physical existence, its soul existence, its spiritual existence, so to speak, in gratitude from the powers of the world, from the physical, from the soul and from the spiritual powers of the world, and that this feeling of gratitude spreads into a feeling of gratitude towards the world from whose bosom one has sprung.

Thus can the feeling of gratitude towards parents, educators, towards all the environment, be transferred into the great feeling of gratitude towards the divine rulers of the world.

This feeling of gratitude must be there before any knowledge that a person can ever acquire. Any knowledge, no matter how logically justified, that does not at the same time lead to the feeling of gratitude towards the world, is detrimental to a person's development, and in a sense maims them mentally and spiritually.

This is shown by spiritual science, which I have had the honor of representing here these days: that every, even the highest, even the most exact knowledge, can lead to feelings, but above all to feelings of gratitude. And if you have planted the feeling of gratitude in the child, then you will see that you have planted the soil for moral education. For if one has cultivated this feeling of gratitude and this feeling of gratitude proves to be compatible with all knowledge, then the child's feeling easily becomes one of love, as one must have it for all other people, and ultimately for all creatures in the world. One will be able to develop love most surely out of the feeling of gratitude.

And in particular, one will be able – again from that point in time, which lies between the ninth and tenth year of life – to gradually transform authority into an authority imbued with love. The teacher's whole behavior must be organized in such a way that this authority, which at first, I would say, is neutral in the face of love, becomes a matter of course, a matter of obedience, a free obedience when the child is nine or ten years old, so that the child follows in love the self-evident authority, in a love that it already awakens in itself, in a love that it already understands.

If one has developed feelings of gratitude and love in the right way in one's soul, then later on one is also able to bring the moral sense of the child or young person to the point where the person now life really sees that which is the very basis of his human dignity to the highest degree: he sees that which elevates him above the mere sensual world, above the mere physical world, which lifts him up to a truly spiritual existence.

In these days I have tried to describe the spiritual world from a supersensible knowledge in certain respects. The spiritual researcher can acquire knowledge of this spiritual world. But with our moral inner life, we also stand in a spiritual way in our ordinary life at all times when we feel the moral with the necessary strength and the necessary purity. But we achieve this if we teach the child a very definite knowledge of human nature. And we should not dismiss any child from the school that is the general school of life, the general elementary school, without a certain knowledge of human nature. We should dismiss the child only when we have imbued it to a certain degree – and it is only possible to this degree – with the motto: “Know thyself”.

Of course, this “know thyself” can be brought to an ever higher level through all possible science and wisdom. But to a certain extent, every elementary school should teach the child to fulfill the “know thyself”. To a certain extent, the human being should recognize himself as body, soul and spirit. But this knowledge of the human being, as it follows from real knowledge of the spirit, establishes a true connection between good and between human beings.

Why does today's recognized science not go as far as to recognize this connection? Because it does not fully recognize the human being. But just as one would not be a complete human being if one lacked blood circulation in some organ - the organ would have to atrophy - so one learns, when one really looks at the whole human being in terms of body, soul and spirit, to recognize that good is what makes a human being human in the first place, and that evil is something that comes from the human being remaining incomplete.

A child who has been guided through life with gratitude and love ultimately comes to understand that a person is only complete when they see themselves as the embodiment of the divine order of the world, of good in the world, in their earthly existence. If one has based moral education on gratitude and thus overcome selfishness in a healthy way – not through mystical-moral declamation or sentimentality – if one has transformed gratitude into love in a healthy, non-sentimental way, then in the end one will be able to young person who loves the world to the realization that the person who is not good as a whole person in body, soul and spirit is just as crippled in the spiritual as someone who is crippled in having one leg missing. One learns to recognize the good in the imagination, in the etheric knowledge of the spirit as the complete human being.

And so, just as if you were to find a diagram of the nervous or circulatory system, a fleeting glance at which resembles a shadow of the human being itself, so too, when you form an image of the good through intuitive knowledge, this is the model for the whole human being.

But here moral education unites with religious education. For only now does it make sense that God is the source of good and man is the image, the likeness of God. Here, religious and moral education will lead to man feeling - and incorporating this feeling into his will - that he is only a true man as a moral man, that if he does not want the moral, he is not a real complete man. If you educate a person in such a way that he can honestly feel that he is being robbed of his humanity if he does not become a good, moral person, then you will give him the right religious and moral education.

Do not say that one can easily speak of these things, but that they must remain an ideal because the outside world can never be perfect. Of course the outside world cannot be perfect. He who speaks out of the spirit of spiritual science knows that quite certainly and quite exactly. But what can permeate us as an attitude, in that we teach or educate, what can give us enthusiasm in every moment and with this enthusiasm brings us to be understood by the childlike soul, that we find the way to the childlike will, that lies nevertheless in what I have just hinted at - in a true knowledge of human nature, which culminates in the sentence: The truly complete human being is only the morally good human being, and the religious impulses permeate the morally good human being.

Thus all education can be brought to a climax in moral and religious education. But here too we must realize that the human being carries within him a time organism, and that in order to educate the child we must, in a spirit of spiritual insight, learn to observe this time organism hour by hour, week by week, year by year. We must lovingly enter into the details.

I have thus indicated to you how guidelines can be obtained from a spiritual knowledge for a part of practical life, for education. I am not just describing something that exists in gray theory. I have already indicated to you that those educational principles which I could only sketch out very briefly have been applied for years at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, that from the outset what I have suggested here for religious education permeates the entire curriculum, a curriculum that is based on the pre-service training of the Stuttgart Waldorf School teachers. And I may add that now, looking back over the first years of the school's development, we can say, even if everything remains imperfect in the outer life, that it is possible to make these principles practical principles so that they reveal themselves in the unfolding of the child's life.

And so these impulses of religious and moral education also show themselves, just as the fruitfulness of the impulses of physical education shows itself on the other side, guided from the spiritual and soul side, for example in the application of the art of eurythmy in school. I mention this only because it has been shown how children naturally find their way into this eurythmic art, just as they find their way into speaking the sounds at an earlier age, and to show you that those who want to see religious and moral education practised in such a way, as discussed today, do not want to neglect physical education at all. On the contrary, anyone who looks at the life of the child with such reverence and spiritual activity does not neglect physical education either, because he knows that the spiritual and soul-like is expressed in the body down to the individual blood vessels and that anyone who neglects it is, so to speak, pushing the spirit back from the sensory world into which it wants to manifest itself.

Above all, the child is a unity of body, soul and spirit, and only those who understand how to educate and teach the child in this totality as a unit, based on genuine observation of human beings, are true teachers and educators.

This is what we are striving for at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart and what has already been practically proven to a certain extent in relation to what I have tried to show you today as just one side of education. But what must always be said with regard to this area and other areas of life – and it is obvious to turn our gaze to the whole of social life, which is stuck in so many dead ends today, it is obvious from the point of view of education – is this: social conditions today can only experience the desirable improvement if we place people in social life in the right way, not just by improving external institutions. When all this is considered, the importance of a true, realistic art of education becomes clear; and it is this kind of realistic art of education that Waldorf school education, Waldorf school didactics, wants to introduce into the world as a prime example of an art of education.

It has already experienced a great deal of success, and anyone who is enthusiastic about a realistic art of education based on spiritual science naturally wants it to be widely adopted. For it is built, I would say, on an archetypal truth. Education is also something that must be seen as part of the social life of human beings. For this social life is not only the coexistence of people of the same age, it is the coexistence of young and old. And finally, part of social life is the coexistence of the teacher, the educator, with the child. Only when the teacher sees the whole human being in the child and can, in a prophetic, clairvoyant way, see what depends on each individual educational and teaching activity that he undertakes in terms of happiness and destiny for the whole of life, will he educate in the right way. Because all life, and therefore also the life of education and teaching that takes place between people, must be based on the principle that Everything that happens between people only happens right when the whole person can always give themselves to the whole person in right love.

But this must also be true in the whole field of education. Therefore, in the future, the art of teaching will be based on a secure and realistic foundation when the teacher is able to bring his best humanity to the best humanity in the child, when the relationship between teacher and child develops in the most beautiful sense of the free relationship between human beings, but also in the relationship given in the necessity of the world.

Preliminary note: During the first three-week “Anthroposophical College Course” (September 26 to October 16, 1920 in Dornach), at which 30 representatives of various disciplines gave lectures in addition to Rudolf Steiner, Three evenings of conversation also took place, on October 4, 6 and 15, 1920. During these so-called “Conversations on Spiritual Science,” questions on any topic could be asked, to which Rudolf Steiner then responded in more or less detail. The stenographers did not record the conversation evenings in their entirety, and there are gaps in some of them.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! I imagine that today, in a kind of conversation, we will discuss all kinds of questions and the like that arise in one or other of the honored listeners in connection with what has been developed here in recent days as anthroposophy. Although, as I have endeavored to arrange, you will be offered a hundred lectures during these three weeks, it is not possible to do more than touch on individual topics in outline. What can be given to you here can only be suggestions at first, but these suggestions may perhaps show that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science meant here is no less well founded

Asa is more firmly grounded than that which is taken from the external life of today's strict science, yes, that it absorbs all the methodical discipline of this science and also perceives that which stands as a great demand of the time, the demand for further development. This demand for further development arises from the fact that those impulses of scientific life, in particular, which have produced great things in the past epoch, are now in the process of dying out and would have to lead to the decline of our civilization if a new impetus were not to come.

The suggestions that have now been made for such a new impact can certainly be expanded in a variety of directions in the context of a discussion such as the one taking place today, and I would now like to ask you to contribute to this expansion. Please ask questions, express your wishes and in general put forward anything you wish to say. The questions can best be put in writing, and I ask you to make good use of this opportunity.

Mr. Conrad: The question I have to ask relates to a therapeutic area. In his lectures, Dr. Steiner pointed to certain illnesses that are currently occurring very frequently. There are certain mental disorders in this regard for which I would be grateful for an answer about the deeper causes. These are mainly speech disorders. I would like to point out that I am not motivated by personal interests, but am only asking to the extent that pedagogical interests are involved. Teachers have often asked me what to do about speech disorders. However, since this question touches on the field of therapy, I do not want to encourage questions that only concern illnesses. I would be very grateful for an answer because this question seems to be very pressing at the moment.

Rudolf Steiner: Perhaps we can start by answering this question. When something specific like this comes up, we must of course bear in mind that such specific disturbances in the human organism can have the most diverse causes and that it is extremely difficult to talk about these things in general if we want to get to the real cause. In all such matters, my esteemed audience, it is actually a matter of using spiritual science to enable one to assess the individual case in the right way. And here I would like to say something that perhaps has a much more general significance than this question requires.

You see, we live in an age of abstraction, in an age when people love to reduce the manifold world, the multiform world, to a few formulas, when people love to establish abstract laws that encompass vast areas of existence. They can only do so in an abstract way, ignoring the individual. Spiritual science will have to bring about a significant change in this direction in particular. It will indulge less in simplifying the manifold existence and will bring insights about the concrete spiritual. But by approaching the concrete spiritual, one's soul is stimulated in such a way that the ability to observe and judge is strengthened and invigorated. This will become apparent in people's general social interaction. A large part of the social question today actually lies in the fact that we no longer have any inclination to really get to know the person we pass by, because our inner being does not have the kind of stimuli that enable us to properly grasp the individual, the particular. Here spiritual science will achieve something different. Spiritual science will enrich our inner life again, enabling it to grasp the particular. And so our powers of observation and discrimination and all that will be particularly developed. Therefore, we will have less desire for abstract generalizations, but more desire for the particular, the individual. In a sense, we will adhere more to the exemplary than to the abstract. And especially when dealing with something like physical disorders, with speech disorders, one must say: almost every single case is different – it is of course a slight exaggeration, but still generally valid – almost every single case is different, and at least one must distinguish typical ones.

We must be clear about the fact that some of the things that cause speech disorders are, of course, organically determined, that is, in a certain way, based on the inadequate development of this or that organ. But a whole series of such disorders in the present day are due to the fact that the human being's spiritual and soul forces are not being developed in the right way. And it may even be said that if a proper development of the spiritual and mental abilities of the human being can be achieved through education in childhood, at a time when the human organism is still pliable, then organic disorders can also be overcome to a certain extent; they can be overcome more easily than at a later age, when the body is more solidified. Our entire education system has gradually become more and more abstract. Our pedagogy does not suffer from bad principles. In general, if we look at the abstract treatment of pedagogical principles, we can see that we had great and significant achievements in the 19th century. And if you look at today's abstract way of applying how to do this or that in school, you have to say that 19th-century pedagogy really means something quite tremendous. But the art of responding to the individual child, of noticing the particular development of the individual child, is something that has been lost in modern times through the rush towards intellectuality and abstraction. To a certain extent, we are no longer able to strengthen the child's soul and spirit in the right way through abstract education. Do not think that when such a demand is made, it is only to point to a one-sided, unworldly education of soul and spirit – oh no. It may seem paradoxical today, but it is actually the case that materialism has had the tragic fate of being unable to cope with material phenomena. The best example of this is that we have such psychological theories as psycho-physical parallelism. On the one hand, we have human corporeality, which is only known from the point of view of anatomy, which only learns from the corpse; on the other hand, we have theories about the soul and spirit that are imagined up or even only live in words , and then one reflects on how this soul-spiritual, which bears no resemblance to the physical body, how this soul-spiritual is to affect the physical body. Spiritual science will lead precisely to the fact that one will be able to deal with the physical in a concrete way, that one will know such things as those which I already hinted at yesterday in the lecture and whose importance I would like to mention again here: From birth until the second set of teeth has come through, something is at work in us as human beings that we can call a sum of equilibrium forces that organize us thoroughly, and something that is mobile forces, that are life forces. This is particularly strong in our organism within this human age. What is at work in the human being is what really, I would say, pushes out the second teeth, what finds its conclusion in the pushing out of the second teeth, what, for its effectiveness in the organism, comes to a certain degree - it continues, of course - but comes to a certain degree to a conclusion with the appearance of the second teeth. It then transforms into what we can call mathematical, geometric thinking, what we can call thinking about the equilibrium conditions in space, thinking about the conditions of movement in space, what we can call finding oneself in the conditions of life in space and in time. We study what emerges from this, what passes, as it were, from a state of latency into a state of freedom, when it has just been released. There it is, as spiritual soul, as a very concrete spiritual soul, as we see it growing up in the child, when the change of teeth begins and continues into the later years of life. And now we look at this and see: what is spiritual and soul-like has an organizing effect in the body during the first seven years of life. And again, we study the connection between the spiritual and soul-like and the physical organization when we consider what the human being can then experience - albeit consciously only in inspiration - that is, what he experiences with ordinary consciousness, but still unconsciously, in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. It is more of an immersion into physical corporeality, where in its course, first of all, as the most important phenomenon – but there are others as well – it awakens the love instinct, where it marks the end, for example, with the change of voice in the male sex, and with somewhat broader effects in the female sex. What we recognize when we observe the development of the emotional world, and when we observe, for example, something like the development of the sense of music, especially at the time when the emotional world is developing, we study this again as the connection between the soul and spiritual life and the physical organization from the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth year.

In short, spiritual science does not ask the abstract question: How does the soul affect the body?, but rather it studies the concrete soul, it knows that one must look at the concrete soul at certain ages and how it affects the body in other ages. Thus it transforms the abstract and therefore so unsatisfactory method of treatment of today's psychology and physiology into very concrete methods. And in the further course, one then comes to the point where one can not only determine in general through spiritual science: in the first seven years of life, equilibrium, movement, and life force are at work; but one can also specialize in how this spiritual force expresses itself in the organs, how it works in the lungs, heart, liver, and so on; one has the opportunity to really look into the human body in a living way. In this way, the knowledge of the material turns out to be quite different from what materialism can [recognize]. The peculiar thing about materialism is that it devotes itself to a false, namely an abstract, a deducted spirituality. The peculiar thing about spiritual science is that it is precisely able to assess the material in the right way. Of course, it also goes in the right way to the spiritual on the other side. More and more clearly should we fight the opinion, which starts from nebulous mystics, that spiritual science is something that deals with phantasms in general talk. No, spiritual science deals precisely with the concrete and wants to provide a view of how the spiritual and soul life works down into the individual organs. For it is only by getting to know the workings of the spiritual in a concrete way in the material existence that one recognizes the material existence. But through such a concrete penetration into the human organism, one gradually acquires — through a kind of imagination, inspiration and so on — an ability, I would say a gift, to really see the individual and then to be able to judge where any particular fault lies, for example, when speech disorders are present. At a certain childlike age, it will be possible to influence the development of the speech organs through special speech exercises. The important thing is to be able to observe what physical disorders may be present at the right age. And although all kinds of obstacles are present simply due to external circumstances – after all, today only that which is officially certified in this direction is recognized and allowed to be practiced in any way – although all kinds of obstacles are present, we can still say that, for example, some beautiful results have been achieved in the case of speech disorders simply by rhythmic speech exercises were carried out, that the particular defect was recognized, and that the person with the defective speech organism was then allowed to recite things in this or that speech rhythm, always repeating them, and that he was then instructed to place himself in the rhythmic process of these or those tones, feeling them particularly. In this direction one can achieve very significant improvements or at least relief from such disorders. But something else is also possible. For example, in the case of speech disorders, one can work particularly on regulating the respiratory process, a regulation of the respiratory process that must, however, be completely individual. This regulation of the breathing process can be achieved by letting the person you are treating develop a feeling between the internal repetition, or perhaps just thinking, but broad thinking, slow thinking of certain word connections [and the breathing process]. The peculiar thing is that if you form such word connections in the right way, then, by surrendering to such a rhythm of thought or inner rhythm of words, you convey a feeling to the person being treated: With this word and its course, its slow or fast course, you notice it in your breathing, it changes in this or that way, and you follow that. In a certain way, you make him aware of what arises as a parallel phenomenon to breathing for speech. You make him aware of it. And when he can then tell you something about it, you try to help him further, so that once he has become aware of the breathing process, he gradually reaches the point where he can consciously snap into it himself, I would even say in word contexts that he forms during this breathing process, which he can now consciously follow in a certain way, in an appropriate manner.

So you have to think of it this way: by first giving rhythms, which, depending on how the matter lies, are to be thought inwardly, murmured, whispered or recited aloud, you cause the person in question to notice a change in breathing. Now he knows that the breath changes in this way. And now he is, in a sense, forbidden from using the very word or thought material that has been given to him. He is made aware that he is now forming something similar within himself, and then he comes up with the idea of consciously paralleling this entire inner process of thinking or speaking or inwardly hearing words with the breathing process, so that a certain breathing always snaps into an inner imagining or inner hearing of words. In this way, a great deal of what I would call a poor association between the processes that are more mental, more soul-like, in speaking, and those processes that take place in the organism as more material, as physical processes, is balanced out. All of this has a particularly favorable effect when applied in the right childhood period. And it can be said that if our teachers were better psychologists, if they really had a concrete knowledge of the human body from the spirit, they would be able to work with speech disorders in a completely different way, especially in a pedagogical way.

Now, what I have mentioned can also be developed into a certain therapy, and it can also be used to achieve many favorable results for later stages of life. But it seems to me to be of particular importance – and here we could already point to certain successes that have been achieved in this direction – that such things can be cured by a particularly rational application of the principle of imitation. But then one must have a much more intimate, I might say subjective-objective knowledge of the whole human organism and its parts.

You see, people speak to each other in life; but they are hardly aware of the, I would say imponderable, effects that are exerted from person to person when speaking. But these effects are there nevertheless. We have become so abstract today that we actually only listen to the other person's intellectual content. Very few people today have a sense of what is actually meant when a person with a little more psychic-organic compassion feels, after speaking to another, how he consciously carries the other person's speech to a high degree in his own speech organism. Very few people today have any sense of what is experienced in this respect when one has to speak in succession with four, five or six people, one of whom is coughing, the second hoarse, the third shouting, the fourth speaking quite unintelligibly, and so on, because one's own organism is also involved; it vibrates along with everything, it experiences it all. And if you develop this feeling of experiencing speech, you certainly acquire a strong feeling, I might say, for defense mechanisms too. The peculiar thing is that it is precisely in the case of such things, which are so closely connected with the subjectivity of the human being as speech disorders, that one then finds out how one has to speak to someone who suffers from speech disorders, how one has to speak to him so that he can achieve something through imitation. I have met stutterers; if you have been able to empathize with their stuttering and then spoken to them rhythmically by name, then you could get them to really achieve something like forgetting their stuttering, by running after what is spoken to them, so to speak. However, you then have to be able to develop human compassion to the point where it is organic. In therapy, an enormous amount depends on the ability to make the patient forget the subjective experience associated with some objective process. And in particular, for example, a real remedy for speech disorders is, if the time between the ages of seven and fourteen is used correctly, by lovingly encouraging those with speech disorders to engage in the kind of imitation just described. It is often the case that one experiences that stutterers sometimes cannot pronounce three words properly without stumbling, cannot say three words

properly one after the other. If you give them a poem to recite that they can become completely absorbed in, that they can love, and if you stand behind it as it were as an attentive listener, then they can say whole long series of verses without stuttering. Creating such opportunities for them to do something like this is something that is a particularly good therapeutic tool from a psychological point of view. It is a bad thing to point out such defects to people, no matter what the reason. I had a poet friend who always lost his temper when someone tactless pointed out his stammering. When someone tactfully asked him, “Doctor, do you always stammer like that?” he replied, “No, only when I am confronted with someone who is thoroughly unpleasant to me.” Of course, I would have had to stutter terribly now if I had really wanted to imitate the way this answer was given.

But then, little by little, one will recognize what a significant remedy can be found in eurythmy for such and similar defects in the human organism. Eurythmy can be studied from two sides, as it were. I always draw attention to this in the introductions to the performances. I show how the speech organism and its movement tendencies can be perceived through sensory and supersensory observation of the human being today, and how these are then transferred to the whole human organism. However, the reverse approach is no less important. For, as has been very well presented to you today from a different point of view by Dr. Treichler, in the development of speech, a primeval eurythmy of human beings undoubtedly and most certainly plays a very significant role. Things do not have the sound within them, as it were, in the sense that the bim-bam theory asserts, but there is a relationship between all things, between the whole macrocosm and the human organization, this microcosm, and basically everything that happens externally in the world can also be reproduced in a certain way in movement by the human organization. And so, basically, we constantly tend to recreate all phenomena through our own organism. We do this not only with the physical organism, but also with the etheric organism. The etheric organism is in a state of perpetual eurythmy. Primitive man was much more mobile than he is today. You know, this development from mobility to stillness is still reflected in the fact that in certain circles it is considered a sign of education to behave as phlegmatically as possible when speaking and to accompany one's speech with as few gestures as possible. It is “considered” a mark of certain speakers that they always keep their hands in their trouser pockets, so that they do not make any gestures with their arms, because it is considered an expression of particularly good speech delivery when one stands still like a block. But what is caricatured here only corresponds to humanity's progression from mobility to stillness. We have to recognize a transition from a gestural language, from a kind of eurythmy, to phonetic language at the very bottom of human development in primeval times. That which has come to rest in the organism has specialized in the organs of speech, and has naturally first actually developed the organs of speech. Just as the eye is formed by light, so the speech organ is formed by a language that is initially soundless. And if we are aware of all these connections, we will gradually be able to use eurythmy particularly well by introducing it properly into the didactic process, in order to counteract anything that could interfere with speech. And in this direction, if there is even a little leisure time, it will be a very appealing task to develop our current, more artistic and pedagogically trained eurythmy more and more towards the therapeutic side and to create a kind of eurythmy therapy that will then extend in particular to such therapeutic demands as the one we have been talking about here. I am not sure whether what I have said is already exhaustive, but I wanted to address it briefly. Of course, as questions accumulate, the level of detail in the answers will have to decrease.

A participant asks how the movement of eurythmy is meant in relation to the ether body, and whether, according to spiritual scientific research, it has the same form as the body. Is the ether body localized at the larynx?

Did the Hungarians, who were recently observed by Dr. Steiner playing cards in a Hungarian border town, themselves fall under the tables or only their etheric bodies? Was this a process that could only be observed in the etheric body?

Rudolf Steiner: Please understand me correctly. Eurythmy is such that it can be performed in the physical body and through the physical body, which otherwise only the etheric body of the human being can perform. The fact that a person as a eurythmist performs the movements studied in the ether body with his physical body does not mean that the person who stands there doing eurythmy when he has some horrible thought is not carrying out this horrible thought with his ether body. He can perform the most beautiful movements with his outer, physical body, and then the etheric body, following his emotions, may dance in a rather caricature-like manner. But those people I characterized the other day as being at the Hungarian border playing cards were, of course, characterized entirely on the basis of their physical behavior. I only said that one could study these passions in the soul and spirit, the passions that led them to do such things above and below the table, and that one could study these passions in the soul and spirit.

I would like to say the following. It is generally the case, when you look at a person at rest, that the etheric body is calm and only slightly larger than the physical body. But this is only because, schematically speaking, the physical body has a dilating effect on the etheric body of the human being in all directions. If the etheric body were not held in its form by the physical body, if it were not banished from the physical body, then it would be a very mobile being. The etheric body has the inherent possibility of moving in all directions, and in addition, in an awakened state, it is under the constant influence of the mobile astral, which follows everything of a spiritual nature. The etheric body in itself is therefore something thoroughly mobile. As a painter, for example, one has the difficulty when one wants to paint something ethereal, that one must paint, I would say, as if one could paint lightning. One must translate the moving into stillness. So at the moment when you step out of the physical world, at that moment the concept of distance also ceases to apply, along with all the things that actually only relate to resting space; all that ceases, and a completely different kind of imagining begins. A form of imagining begins that can actually only be characterized by saying that it relates to the ordinary imagining of spatial things as a suction effect relates to a pressure effect. One is drawn into the matter instead of touching it and so on. This is how it is with the relationship between the etheric body and the physical body.

A participant (also speaking for others): Dear attendees, prompted by discussions with many friends, I would like to ask a few questions that may express some of what has been going through many minds and hearts over the past week. We have heard that young students in particular can hear and learn many things here that need to be carried out into our people to build a new culture. Now, in the midst of all the problems that are being discussed here, the question of the fate of our German people often arises. How must our youth place themselves in the context of the fate of our German people if they want to fulfill their inner duties in the right way and of their own free will? Just as Fichte brought forth great and powerful thoughts a hundred years ago, so too are we receiving powerful thoughts today, the realization of which we long for. In wide circles, at least in those circles that are close to the threefold order, the view prevails today that this threefold order will also be realized without intensive work, that it can thus come about all by itself, so to speak, even if people contribute nothing to it.

Now I would like to raise the question: What will actually be the fate of our nation if this fatalistic attitude prevails in our circles – which is, of course, very easily explained from our overall cultural development – and if it is not replaced by the courageous will that is wanted from here? Today one often hears that it is possible that Bolshevism will spread even further, that it is possible that anarchic conditions in Germany will continue to spread. How should we position ourselves in the face of these questions, when this fatalistic element, which I have tried to describe, is confronted with the courageous, forward-storming will?

A second question: we are talking here about anthroposophy, about human wisdom. Now the question has been repeatedly asked in recent days: what would the whole world view actually look like if one did not start from the point of view of the anthroposophist, but if one started from the point of view of some other consciousness? We know from Dr. Steiner's lectures, but also from other lectures, that the three lower realms, that is, the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, are actually the brothers of man who have remained behind. How would this now present itself if we were to relate man again to the higher hierarchy, for example to the angelic beings? Is it conceivable that what is presented from a human point of view today as anthroposophy might be presented from the point of view of a higher consciousness, that is, from the point of view of an angelic consciousness - one could perhaps speak of an angeloisophy in this context - and how would the problems appear from this point of view? I ask this question because it has repeatedly come up in our conversations in recent days.

A third question: From the previous remarks by Dr. Steiner, it is clear that eurythmy is extremely important from a therapeutic point of view. Now I would like to point out that if we observe certain things today, things that appear to be trivial, we can see how absolutely necessary eurythmy is from a different point of view. Even in certain children's toys, we can see how certain forces appropriate to the present time want to come out, push towards manifestation. [There follows a reference to diabolo games and toys that were introduced by French and American soldiers in particular.] Do such toys not show certain forces that pull downwards? Is there not something in them that expresses forces that are polar to human nature, perhaps a hint of the devilish? And so I wanted to raise the question: Is it not possible that the harmful aspects of these or other materialistic games given to children today could be overcome through eurythmy? Just yesterday in children's eurythmy we had a living example of how children can respond to eurythmy in an ingenious way and then reject everything that is contained in such games.

Rudolf Steiner: I will try to answer the questions briefly, although each one would require a lecture in itself. However, I would ask you to bear in mind that if one says something in a brief answer to a question, it is of course easy for some inaccuracies or misunderstandings to arise.

First of all, the question of the fate of the German people: it is true that today an enormous sense of fatalism is emerging within broad sections of the German people. This fatalistic mood can be observed on a large scale and in detail. And this fatalistic mood was also, I might say tragically there when we began in April of last year in Stuttgart to seek understanding for the threefold social organism and for the upliftment of what lies in such a terrible way, that comes from this understanding. But on the other hand, it must be said that we have arrived at a very special point in the development of humanity. I must frankly admit that when I was invited by the Anthroposophical student group in Stuttgart to give a lecture for the students of the Technical University in their assembly hall, I was still under the impression of Spengler's book “The Decline of the West”. Yes, my dear audience, we have come to the point where today we can prove the decline in a strictly methodical way. Now, Spengler's book is by no means a talentless book. On the contrary, in many respects it is extraordinarily ingenious. What is presented there testifies to nothing other than this: if only the forces of which Spengler is aware were to be effective in the future – he is not aware of anthroposophy, but, as can be seen from some of his writing, he would probably turn red with rage just hearing about it — if only what Spengler knows remains effective, then the downfall of Western civilization would be absolutely certain well into the second millennium. Just let everything that has developed in humanity be effective — the downfall is certain. Just as a human being ages when he has reached a certain number of years and is heading towards death, so this culture is heading towards death. What people like Spengler do not know is what has developed in the successive cultural periods, which you will find described in my “Occult Science”.

In the first cultural period — I have called it the primeval Indian period — there was a primeval culture based on the wisdom of the time. Some of this has already been characterized in these lectures. From this there was an inheritance in the next age, in the ancient Persian, in the Zarathustra culture; from there, in turn, diluted into that age, what can be called the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the third period, which closes approximately in the 8th century BC before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then very little goes into the fourth period, where Plato still lets his teaching and his writings be steeped in ancient mystery wisdom, but where naturalism and intellectualism already begin with Aristotle. During this period, in which human original wisdom is already beginning to decline, Christianity is founded. The Mystery of Golgotha is still understood with the last original wisdom. But as this ancient wisdom itself fades, it finally becomes modern theology, which either degenerates into a material dogmatism and church belief or into a description of Jesus as a simple man from Nazareth, in whom the Christ, the Christ-being, has been completely lost. But of course a new understanding of Christianity itself must come. The origin of Christianity extends into this fourth period, and from the point of view of Primordial Wisdom, it extends a little into our fifth period. The fifth period is the one in which Primordial Wisdom disappears, is paralyzed, and in which man must find a new spirituality from within himself. All talk about this spirituality coming from outside is in vain for the future. In the future, the gods must speak through the human soul. Today, the question is not addressed to any other power of the soul than to our will alone. That is to say, today it is a matter for all mankind to thoroughly overcome fatalism and consciously absorb spirituality into the will. This mission has already fallen to the German people to a very considerable extent. Anyone who studies this in more detail, by looking at the great figures of the German people, will notice how this people in particular has the mission to reshape its world, I would say its social world, out of its will, despite all the hardship and all the terrible things that are now unfolding within this people. Only for the time being there is no awareness of the actual facts and the great world-historical context.

I would like to do as I sometimes like to do, not just give my own opinion, but refer to the opinion of someone else, Herman Grimm, who certainly cannot be said to have been a Bolshevik or anything of the sort. As early as the 1880s, Herman Grimm wrote that the greatness of the German people is not based on its princes or its governments, but on its intellectual giants. But it may also be said that this is precisely what has been most misunderstood and most forgotten. Today there is a significant fact that one must only properly observe. Take the general intellectual life, untouched by a real spiritual upsurge. Study it as it lives itself out in popular literature, be it in Berlin, Vienna or elsewhere – I am not just talking about after the war here, but long before the war. study how it is lived out in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, Bremen and so on, study it in popular literature, especially in newspaper literature, which can be said to represent the opinions of a very large number of people. Yes, especially during the war, it turned out that sometimes people also remembered that there was a Goethe, that there was a Schiller, that there was a Fichte – yes, even Fichte's sayings were quoted. But the fact of the matter is this: anyone today who has a feeling, a real receptivity for the inner structure, for the direction, for the whole signature of intellectual life, knows that what was written in the 20th century in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig was more similar to what was written in Paris, Chicago, New York, and London than to what a Herder, a Goethe, or a Fichte felt vibrating through their souls.

This fact is widely misunderstood. What Central Europe's greatness is actually based on has been forgotten. Once we describe figures like Frederick the Great according to the truth, not according to legend, then some of it will melt away in the face of the real intellectual greatness in Central Europe. And this must come. We must learn again, not just to quote the words of Fichte, not just to quote the words of Goethe, but to be able to live again in what lived at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. And we must become aware that only through the individual shaping of the peoples differentiated across the earth can something of what is to be achieved be achieved – not, however, by some unified culture emanating from some side, which is a Western culture, and one that is justified only for the West, has flooded Central Europe, not through the fault of the West alone, but above all because Central Europe allowed itself to be flooded and accepted everything. And this awareness of what is at stake is what must be spread today by those who mean well.

Dear attendees, I knew an Austrian poet; I met him when he was already very old: his name is Fercher von Steinwand. He wrote many important works that unfortunately have remained unknown.

I will just add what I wrote in my booklet [1895] about Nietzsche, a fighter against his time. Right at the beginning, I quoted a saying of Nietzsche that actually deserves to be better known: the saying that Nietzsche wrote down when he served in the Franco-Prussian War, albeit as a military hospital attendant. There he wrote [about the terrible, dangerous consequences of the victorious war and called it a delusion that German culture had also triumphed; this delusion posed the danger of transforming victory into complete defeat,] yes, into the extirpation of the German spirit in favor of the German Reich. In recent decades, when people spoke of the extirpation of the spirit, they understood little of this, if they spoke of the will to let this spirit flow in again.

And when all this is taken into account, it is necessary to recall what Fichte felt and what he expressed so magnificently in his “Addresses to the German Nation”: that the gods serve the will of men, that they work through the will of self-aware men.

And after Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and others, it is precisely this German nation that should be aware that the will must arise, but that will must be imbued with spirituality. What strange mental wanderings this German nation has gone through. There are many things that can be recalled that are only rarely presented in external history.

I advise everyone to buy the Reclam booklet by Wilhelm von Humboldt: “Ideas for an Attempt to Determine the Limits of the Effectiveness of the State”. You will see how much of it is already contained in the middle part of the threefold social organism, the legal, state part. Of course, the threefolded social organism is not in it, but what can be said about the state itself is there. In this writing, Wilhelm von Humboldt attempts to protect the individual against the state, against the increasing power of the state in the intellectual and economic realms. Wilhelm von Humboldt was Prussian Minister of Education from 1809 to 1819 – one almost dare not say this in view of what happened afterwards.

And so many more examples could be given. What is necessary, above all, is that those who feel this question before their soul really let history come to life in them. My dear audience, as an Austrian, one has a very special feeling for this when one gets to know the school history books of northern Central Europe. In 1889, I came from Vienna to Weimar to work on the publication of Goethe's works at the Weimar Goethe-Schiller Archive. And since I had previously been involved in education and teaching, I was also given the friendly task of guiding the director of the Goethe-Schiller Archive's boys a little. They were then in high school, and it was only then that I got to know their history books a little – I hadn't taken that into account before – starting with the creation of the world and going up to the development of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and only then the actual world history. Several textbooks presented it this way, one being roughly the same as the other. But is it not always a mere radicalism when speaking in this way, but sometimes it is also the right love for the German nation. And the right love, if it can really come through spiritual-scientific stimulation, will in turn give rise to a culture of the will from mere fatalism, and that is what matters. Unless we grasp this either/or, either destruction or ascent through our own will, we will not escape destruction. Of course, ascent will not come, but something quite different. Well, I could say a lot more about this topic, but perhaps that's enough for now. We'll see each other more often.

Regarding the question: What would our world view look like from the standpoint of a different consciousness, for example, an angelic consciousness?

Well, in a certain sense, spiritual science describes completely different forms of consciousness, such forms of consciousness that people had in the earlier stages of development, or such forms of consciousness that one can ascend to through inspiration or imagination. So, in a certain sense, one learns through spiritual science to recognize what the world view of another consciousness is. But as far as the question of an angelic consciousness is concerned, ladies and gentlemen, it is very important that we do not choose more abstract questions than are necessary for a certain, I would say elasticity, of our conceptual ability. Because, you see, we do not have our consciousness to satisfy ourselves with all kinds of sensational news from the most diverse worlds, but so that we can go through our overall human development through its development. And the angels have their consciousness precisely so that they can undergo angelic development. And if someone were to ask what the world would look like with a different consciousness, it would be like someone asking me how a person would eat if they had a beak instead of a mouth. It is a textbook example of moving out of concreteness and into abstraction. Anthroposophy is supposed to achieve precisely that, to remain within the realm of experience and to extend it only

extended only to the spiritual world, that one is always ready to broaden one's experience, but not that one constructs all kinds of questions out of pure abstractness. It is not at all necessary for us to speculate in any way about angelic consciousness or mammalian consciousness or the like, but it is necessary for us to simply abandon ourselves to experience. It gives us the input into our consciousness that we need for our orientation and for our further development in the world. And that is what we have to learn from anthroposophy: to remain within the sphere that concerns us as human beings, because that is where we make appropriate progress.

This is connected with the question I heard here just now, which is asked incredibly often: what is the ultimate goal of human development in the first place?

What is the ultimate purpose of human life, or rather of life?

You see, it is precisely in relation to such questions that spiritual science must be approached not in an abstract but in a concrete way. If you had no possibility of getting a timetable for the journey to Rome here in Dornach, but only as far as Lugano, and you knew that you could get a further timetable in Lugano to go on to Florence, and from there on to Rome, one would do well not to refrain from the journey or to speculate about how I have to organize the journey from here to Rome, but to travel first to Lugano, and then see how things go from there. It is the same with human life, especially if one knows that there are repeated earthly lives. If I now tell you something about the goal of all human life here with the abilities that one can have in this one earth life, then it could indeed be something more perfect next time and then one could answer more completely how one gets the timetable to Rome. So one has to take into account what is immediately given in the concrete, and one must know that human life is in a state of perpetual development. So one cannot ask about its ultimate purpose, but only about the direction of development in which one is moving. If you really look into it, there is truly a lot to be done for the physical, soul and spiritual life. And this path to Lugano is not quite close – I now mean the path in the development of humanity – and how that will continue, we want to leave that to the more fully developed abilities of the future. In short, it is a matter of remaining in the concrete, bit by bit, and of getting rid of the abstractness that also gives birth to such questions. Now, something else is needed here about eurythmy:

Can eurythmy, when used correctly, bring important achievements for our folk culture to light?

Yes, dear readers. From some of the comments I have already made about eurythmy, you will be able to see that eurythmy can have a great pedagogical-didactic significance. If you are convinced of this, and if you are not not only believe it but also recognize that it can even help to alleviate disturbances in life through appropriate eurythmic didactics, then there is much more that can be brought into the right channels in social life through healthy eurythmy. But of course one thing needs to be noted in this regard. You see, we should be able to take this eurythmy into children's play. The esteemed questioner spoke of children's toys and asked whether eurythmy could not be used for a lot of things. And it was also asked whether eurythmy can have a healing effect on children aged five to seven who suffer from epilepsy.

It can certainly do so if it is applied in the right way. Admittedly, we are only just beginning with eurythmy. But the continuation of this beginning does not always depend only on the intellectual momentum. For example, we had intended to build a kind of eurythmeum in Stuttgart to begin with, because of course the Waldorf School is there, and later here in the building itself. You really need opportunities if these things are to be developed bit by bit. You cannot pursue these things without practising them, without having the necessary premises and also the necessary connection with the rest of human culture; you cannot pursue these things out of the blue. It would have been terribly expensive to build a eurythmy in Stuttgart and we only had a small sum of money together. Perhaps I may say the following about this. In the first year, through the dedicated work of our Waldorf teachers, which cannot be sufficiently recognized, we really achieved everything possible for the Waldorf School in the first year. Although, in spiritual and psychological terms, everything that could be expected has been achieved – it is fair to say this without being immodest – this year began with extraordinary worries for those who were sincere about the Waldorf School. It is a fact that the Waldorf School had to be enlarged because a large number of children came from outside; the number of children has more than doubled compared to the previous year. We were facing a very considerable deficit, and the fund that we had for a eurythmy school was first eaten up by the Waldorf School. It is only natural that the Waldorf School should take this on, but it means that we cannot build a eurythmy school. What lets us down is people's lack of understanding. Nowadays people are willing to understand anything, except for work that comes out of the truly concrete soul and spiritual life. I do not want to be polemical here, but I could tell you many things that would show you the dilettantism and the philosophical emptiness that is added to it today, as it performs a few somersaults before all possible reactionary powers in the world. We do not easily find the understanding of those who could do something on the material side to help things move forward. And anyone who wants the didactic, pedagogical, and especially the folk-pedagogical side of eurythmy and other aspects of a spiritual-scientific art of education to be further developed must ensure that understanding of what is actually intended is drawn into as many minds and as many souls as possible, with what is asserted here as anthroposophical spiritual science.

Question: It is often mentioned in spiritual science that those or those of the higher hierarchies have gone through their stage of humanity in these or other circumstances. What does stage of humanity mean in this sense, that is, the goal of human development? Is the goal set as the development of the I, of freedom, which freedom is denied to the higher hierarchies? So what is the stage of humanity?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, I don't know who has denied the higher hierarchies the freedom in its special form of education. What is meant when I speak, for example, in 'Occult Science' or in the other writings of the human stage of other beings, is essentially characterized by degrees, by the different states of consciousness. In spiritual science, the term “stage of human development” is to be understood as follows:

Today, within human development in the broadest sense, we live in a state of consciousness when we are awake, which we can call object consciousness. This state of consciousness can be described as Dr. Stein described it to you in his lectures, according to his activity in imagination, concept, judgment. One can also add perception and the special kind of emotional effect, the volitional emotion, volitional impulses and so on. Then present-day humanity also still knows, but only in reminiscences, in chaotic images, the dream state, but this points back, it is an atavistic remnant of an earlier state of consciousness, of an ego-less image consciousness; this is therefore an underhuman consciousness. And it is preceded by two other states of consciousness, so that we can say: the present state of consciousness is the fourth in the series. It will be followed by a fifth, which we can anticipate today through imagination, inspiration and so on. We can also characterize this progression as future states of the sixth and seventh states of consciousness. The fourth, however, the one we have today, is in the narrower sense the state of consciousness of humanity as it is today. So when we speak of the human stage, we mean beings with object consciousness. Beings who do not perceive through such senses as human beings do, who have a special education, perhaps through very different senses, but who, in their inner being, depend on imagining and grasping and then, in a more or less subconscious activity, connecting perception with ideas and concepts. The higher, fifth state of consciousness would thus be one in which one consciously differentiates between the inner, spiritual realm, which one first grasps in pure thinking, as has been attempted in the Philosophy of Freedom, and then has perception as such as a phenomenon of development in its own right, into which one no longer mixes concepts and ideas, so that, as in the process of inhalation, in inhaling and exhaling, an inner interaction between perception and concept consciously takes place. That would be the next higher state of consciousness.

When we speak of other beings and say that they were at the human stage of development at different times, we mean that they had a perception of the external world in the past – regardless of which senses were involved – which they connected in a more or less conscious way with the inner soul life, so that at that time they were not yet at a stage that humanity will reach in the future, the stage of a separate experience of perception, of the spiritual soul realm, and a conscious synthesis. That is what needs to be said about this question.

Dear attendees, it is now 10 a.m., I think I will collect the questions that have yet to be asked and save them, and we can meet again in the next few days. I think we will be able to discuss the matters on the other notes better and with more focus if we don't rush through it in a few minutes, but instead come together again to answer these questions. I also think you will agree to this, after we have spent two hours having this conversation. So we will conclude today and continue in some way soon.

Dear attendees! When people of the present reflect on today's plight, today's misery, they first ask about the causes of this plight, this misery. And he also asks: How can we escape from the confusion, from the chaos of social human development that we have fallen into? Such questions will usually be directed towards the particular inclinations of today's man and towards the most immediate external causes, which lie in the terrible events of the last five to six years. Or their thoughts will be directed to measures that address the external factors in order to alleviate the suffering and chaos in which we find ourselves. However, many people will not be satisfied with what the very last few years can tell them. He will turn his attention to a longer period of time, to the last decades, perhaps centuries, during which, albeit less vividly for humanity, what has come to expression so terribly in recent years has prepared itself, as, figuratively speaking, a thunderstorm prepares itself over a long period of sultriness, and then suddenly discharges. But even here, we get stuck in seeking external causes and in seeking external measures to alleviate the misery. In a way, one-sidedly, with such thinking, with such a feeling, one is quite right. And to what extent one is right, what can fruitfully arise from an understanding of our world situation with regard to the external, I will take the liberty of talking about in more detail the day after tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen. Today, however, I would like to speak of those causes that were at work in the human inner life and that present humanity will have to consider changing if it wants to escape from the chaotic situation in which it finds itself.

Is it not, then, readily apparent to any observer who takes a somewhat closer and benevolent look at what is going on in humanity today, that we are in this age, in which we hear from so many hearts, from so many souls, we hear the call for a more social organization of our conditions than those we have had so far, is it not strange that, despite hearing this call, we see intense anti-social impulses prevailing everywhere in our present humanity? Yes, that is precisely the difficulty that confronts the serious observer of our world situation: the fact that one is supposed to direct one's energies towards a more social organization of our human life at a time when, from the depths of the soul, anti-social drives are rising up throughout our entire civilized world. This emergence of anti-social instincts is connected with the fact that it is very difficult for today's human being to fulfill a longing that is not even consciously, but more or less unconsciously, in his soul, but which, even if unconsciously, asserts itself so strongly in today's humanity that it often comes to the fore in a pathological way, both morally and even outwardly physically. The longing — as I said, it is not easily recognized, because for many people today it still expresses itself unconsciously — the longing is this: in a new way, in the way that people have been educated over the past decades, and even through the last three to four centuries, in the way of gaining a relationship to that which, as an inkling at least, if not as a fully articulated consciousness, lives in every soul, as an inkling of a superhuman being in our transitory, in our sensual human existence. One could say that today's human being is in search of the supersensible human being. And anyone who looks more deeply into the needs of our present time will, above all, feel that it is the first duty of the spiritual aspirant to meet this yearning and longing of contemporary humanity.

One of the most important tasks of our time is to satisfy this inner soul longing, which expresses itself in this yearning and longing. But the way in which people in the broadest circles still want to meet this longing today is not how I will speak to you this evening. What I will have to say to you is spoken from a point of view that I have been presenting for years now as anthroposophical spiritual science.

The task of anthroposophical spiritual science is to seek a path into the supersensible world for people who have absorbed the ideas, sensations, feelings and will impulses of modern times that have emerged from the scientific worldview. From this point of view, what can be said about present-day humanity is either found incomprehensible or unnecessary in the broadest circles today. The spiritual researcher is told: “You are offering something understandable; well, yes, but I won't be able to offer you anything that is so easy to understand, as many still offer today's people, who start from the inner comfort of the soul, which, with regard to the highest goals of spiritual human striving, exists in today's people. Everyone today admits that one must make some effort if one wants to get to know the scientific work that leads to knowing something, say, about the mountains of the moon or the moons of Jupiter; or about the cells of the organism. But when it comes to knowing something about the supersensible world, one rejects out of inner laziness the idea of going a similar difficult path. Today many still say: Man must come to the supersensible foundations of the human being and the world through simple confession or through simple, simple belief in the Bible. What anthroposophical spiritual science has to say is considered too complicated. But this is precisely one of the main problems of our time; one of the problems that underlie our confused social aspirations.

Those who are familiar with human life know that it is insufficient to remain at this simplicity of faith and confession; insufficient because if one cannot regard to the supersensible, if one remains in this comfort zone, then one cannot master the great questions of social life that are confronting humanity in our present time. We do not yet see it, but we will soon see how those who always want to remain with the “simple faith of the confession” cultivate the kind of thinking in humanity that is now manifesting itself in the social turmoil across Europe and in the civilized world in general.

They are calling on people to return to the simple faith of the confession, because they do not know that remaining with this simple faith has produced what appears today as chaos and confusion.

Therefore, anthroposophical spiritual science regards it as a first duty to speak to the present human being about these things from its very different point of view. When the present human being hears the intimation in his heart, in his soul, about the supersensible human being, then he looks up at himself in a kind of self-knowledge, away from the world. What presents itself to the human being, according to the state of the present consciousness? Today, when a person reflects on his own being, he expresses what presents itself to him when he reflects on his own being by saying: This human being consists of body and soul. And then the person believes that he gets to know his body by observing it with his senses; by then seeking to grasp the sensory observation with the thinking mind. And for that which man cannot attain by this path, he turns to current science, to natural science, to that which biology, physiology and so on have to say about the human body. And then man believes that he really knows something about the one part of the human being, about the human body, when he has taught himself in this way. And then he may also reflect on what lives in the depths of his soul as thinking, feeling and willing. But when he brings to consciousness what is in the depths of his soul, he is immediately confronted with the great mystery of the human being. For he must find that Yes, that which appears to me externally as my body is something quite different, something radically different, from that which reveals itself within my soul as thinking, feeling and willing. And then the human being asks: What is the relationship between what reveals itself to me inwardly as soul and what is external to me as body? And underlying this human puzzle lies something great and powerful in human nature. At the root of it lies the great question of the meaning of life; the question: How can I, if I believe that life should have a meaning, ever believe that what lives in what appears to me as the transient, sensual human body can arise and disappear with this external, sensual body? What is the relationship between the soul and this external, sensual body?

When this question confronts him, in most cases man cannot perceive it as anything other than a comprehensive mystery. And if he turns from his own, as a rule impotent, thinking about this question to those who, in accordance with today's thinking, want to scientifically determine the relationship between body and soul, he usually finds that they have no more to say than what he has already encountered in such a mysterious way: Philosophical and other worldviews leave the serious questioner in this field truly quite unsatisfied.

Spiritual science, as it is meant here, therefore takes completely different paths to the supersensible, and it cannot speak about this supersensible in any other way than in a way that is very different from the way of external science. For hardly anyone becomes a true spiritual researcher who has not learned, learned in his own way, how impossible it is to recognize anything about the supersensible human being through ordinary reflection and ordinary external science. Not only must one speak differently when discussing these things from the standpoint of anthroposophical spiritual science than what the senses and the mind offer to man, but one must also speak in a different way. And that is precisely why one is still little understood today because this way is unfamiliar. What is understood better, at least one believes this, is simple, unadorned faith. But this no longer satisfies humanity, which has been educated over the last three to four centuries. If you want to hear the spiritual researcher talk about the very first starting points of his spiritual science, you will hear something different from him than you hear from those who have gone through the external science of nature today.

Isn't it the case that when someone who has become a “specialist” in some field, as they say, tells us about what he has gone through in the laboratory, in the clinic, in the observatory, that he he speaks about everything he is talking about with a certain calmness, so that one can see that his state of mind was quite even while he was working on this or that scientific subject in the laboratory or in the clinic or in the observatory. The spiritual researcher cannot speak to you in this way about his way of knowing. Ask him how he arrived at his insights, and he will not be able to speak to you of that indifferent research that is of the kind I have just characterized. Instead, the spiritual researcher will have to speak to you of the inner soul struggles, the suffering and pain that his soul went through in surmounting them before he could take any step towards the insights we will be talking about this evening. The spiritual researcher who has come to real knowledge of the supersensible has repeatedly faced inner abysses in the face of which it seems as if the soul must plunge into nothingness. And he knows how to tell what it means to muster all one's strength in order to develop that in the soul which carries the soul into those regions in which the real supersensible human being, not just an illusion, can be seen.

This is what the spiritual researcher really has to go through within himself. For he must have a different relationship to external nature and to himself than the ordinary researcher. I do not wish to be misunderstood, my dear audience, so I will say from the outset: the one who has become a spiritual researcher in the sense meant here does not disdain the natural science of the present day, which has achieved such great triumphs. On the contrary, he regards it as the fundamental condition for his spiritual research that he has first familiarized himself with the great and powerful results of natural science of the last few centuries. And he fully recognizes this natural science. For only in this way does he know how to look beyond this natural science in order to penetrate into the spirit to which the human being also belongs.

The natural scientist is right to speak of certain limits to his knowledge of nature. And it is precisely the most cautious natural scientists who have said that natural science always leads people to concepts and ideas that cannot be taken further in the study of nature. Hasty people then speak of such limits as a restriction of human knowledge in general. The cautious natural scientist knows that he cannot go beyond these limits with natural research alone. He will therefore, as long as he remains a natural scientist, stop at these limits; let us say, at such concepts that present themselves to natural research as unbridgeable gaps, such as the essence of matter, the essence of force, and many others; the natural scientist stops there. The spiritual researcher cannot do that. The spiritual researcher begins his work precisely where the natural scientist must stop, by fighting out inner struggles with what is the limit of natural science. The whole inner life of the soul must be brought into activity. And while the natural scientist stops at such limits, the spiritual researcher begins to find his way vividly into ideas and concepts and perceptions and feelings of such limits. Then he experiences something by delving ever deeper into that which science cannot or should not say anything about; then he senses what it actually means to live with the limits of natural knowledge.

What I am going to say now, my dear audience, can of course be seen as not being logically provable in the usual sense. For it is not something that has been thought up. It is what spiritual research experiences at a certain point in its development.

In this inner, living experience, the spiritual researcher comes to a great, shattering conclusion by experiencing what can be experienced at the limits of natural knowledge: He has to give himself the answer out of inner experience, out of his own experience, that we as human beings could never become social beings in our physical-sensual life between birth and death if we were to transcend the limits of natural knowledge. In a remarkable way, we are adapted to the way of the world as human beings. We would not have something – this is recognized by the spiritual researcher in experience – we would not have something in our human nature if we were not stopped by limits when we want to explore nature; we would not have something very essential; we would not have that which is a basic condition of our social, human coexistence; we would not have in us the power of love.

You see, dear attendees, that is the first harrowing experience on the path into the supersensible world, that you get to know human nature in such a way that you say to yourself: We must be limited in our view of nature, then from us in looking at nature, the power that submerges into everything without limits; then we humans would pass each other by in physical life, could not develop sympathy and antipathy, could not develop the most diverse nuances of love, without which life cannot be. In order for man to live between birth and death, it is necessary that he be limited with regard to his knowledge of nature. Within this limit, the power of love can then arise. But this also points the way in which the path can nevertheless be followed, which, in a sense, leads to the knowledge of the supersensible world.

We have the power of love in ordinary life because we are physical human beings to a certain degree; and this degree is more or less sufficient for our external social life – admittedly very little in some epochs, as in the present – but when it is fully developed, it is sufficient for our external social life. What is necessary with regard to this power of love and other things in order to take the spiritual path into the supersensible, I have described in detail in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds'; today I can only hint at a few fundamental things, but that shall be done.

Above all, it is necessary that when one has gone through what I have just mentioned, one can be imbued with a certain inner state of mind that a person in ordinary life has only to a very limited extent; I would call this state of mind 'intellectual humility'. If you go through what I have described, you come to say to yourself: No matter how talented you are in terms of ordinary thinking and research skills, you have to admit to yourself: You cannot penetrate into the supersensible world at all with these ordinary thinking and research skills. That is what a person wants. That is why he is intellectually immodest in ordinary life.

But it is precisely this intellectual immodesty that must first be combated. We must be able to say the following, for example. Let us assume that a five-year-old child has a volume of Goethean poems in his hand. With his abilities, he will not be able to do with this volume of Goethean poems what should be done with it by virtue of the essence of this volume of poems. Just as this five-year-old child faces the essence of this book of poems, so — we must admit in intellectual modesty — we face the world and ourselves in relation to the supersensible essence with our ordinary abilities to think, feel and research. Just as a five-year-old child must first develop the abilities that will enable him to approach the essence of a book of poetry, so too, in full intellectual humility, must the human being, if he wants to become a spiritual researcher, first develop ordinary thinking, ordinary feeling and ordinary will. And just as the soul and physical abilities of a five-year-old child are developed from the outside through his education, so anyone who wants to know something about the supersensible world from direct perception must take his soul development into his own hands. But that means, my dear audience, that one must be able to make the confession in a real inner soul modesty: The strength you need to recognize the supersensible must be developed within yourself. And it must be developed in detail.

As a rule, one will not come to this development at all if one is not made aware of it through the experiences I have already described today, that no matter how deeply one has penetrated into the outer world of natural phenomena, that with this thinking, with the achievements about the outer natural phenomena, one can know nothing about what is going on in the human body, in order, for example, to gain a relationship to what we, as thinking, call an important soul activity. There one must first bring this thinking to a completely different level than it is in ordinary life. One must develop this thinking further. This can be done if one performs certain

of the soul that one does instinctively and unconsciously in ordinary life, if one gets into the habit of making these actions more and more conscious. I will pick out two things from the many things that the spiritual researcher has to do in this regard. The first is that the spiritual researcher must develop the powers of attention and interest in a completely different way than they are developed in ordinary life. In ordinary life, we become aware of something when our senses are drawn to it. We then direct our attention to the thing when we are made aware of it by external impressions.

But as a rule we do not exert ourselves out of the innermost power of our soul to strengthen the power of attention; something from outside awakens our interest. In ordinary life, it is always the case with a person that the interest aroused from outside makes his soul attentive. If a person now practices earnestly and worthily to be attentive, to pay constant and long attention to that which he wants to be attentive to only out of the inner power of thought, if he turns his interest to things that do not impose themselves on him, to which he turns out of his very own, innermost initiative , he does such exercises as I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” The path into the supersensible worlds is a long one, but if a person practices for a long time, he will finally notice that his thinking becomes quite different from what it is in ordinary life. He notices that this thinking begins to acquire an inner vitality. And he notices that he actually has a completely new kind of inner, living thinking in him, thinking that is set in motion from within. One really sees through what develops as a new thinking through effort, through a development; one really sees this when one patiently and gradually sees it arise in the soul: You have your old thinking; your thinking that more or less passively joins in with things, that continues even when you are not making an effort, when you are not somehow exerting your senses or your mind as the basis of this thinking. This thinking continues, it does not sleep. But as if standing above this thinking, observing it going on beside it, like a kind of dream, there then stands the other, the completely bright, never dreamy thinking, which one develops in the way I have just characterized.

Then one comes to an inner discovery, to an inner experience, which I would now like to describe as the second shattering event on the way into the supersensible worlds: one experiences inwardly that one's ordinary thinking cannot be distinguished from one's outer physical activity; but that the thinking that one develops through one's own power, that proceeds in such a way that one experiences it: It has nothing to do with any external physical activity; it has nothing to do with any nervous or other activity. When you think as I have just described, you know that you are moving in a purely spiritual element with your thinking, and you have your physical self beside you; you have really stepped out of your body. And now you realize that this human being, when it carries out its thinking in this way, when it carries out its inner soul activity, as it is often described in the everyday illusions of human beings. People also believe in many cases, based on today's popular science, that they are indulging in materialistic ideas: we have developed the nervous system into the wonderful brain; in this brain one can see how research in human development is progressing; with each stage of thinking, the brain develops further. And then people say: So thinking, imagining, arises through the activity of the brain, through the activity of the nervous system. And basically, people who know nothing of the independent bodiless thinking that I have just described to you cannot help it, if they are somehow religious, but think of the illusory body.

But the one who gets to know bodiless thinking knows from direct experience another. Let me give you an image: Imagine you are walking along a muddy path; on this path you find furrows; you find impressions in the softened soil that resemble human footsteps. Do you think that someone who now believes that down there, below the surface of the earth, there are forces at work that cause something like impressions of human footsteps to appear on the surface is saying something correct about this fact? No, the person who judges the situation correctly is the one who knows that the furrows have been pressed into the soft soil from the outside. The person who has come to know independent, bodiless thinking knows that the spiritual soul is as independent of the nervous system and the brain as the carriage rolling down the street is independent of the feet of the person walking down the street. Body-free thinking carves furrows into the brain. It is no wonder that, as thinking unfolds in the course of human development, the brain shows imprints of that which develops thinking everywhere. But it is a terrible illusion, one that misleads humanity, to believe that what the brain fears and thereby causes thinking in some way arises from within the nervous system. Only the living, body-free thinking that develops and unfolds out of intellectual modesty can provide insights into that which leads to the immortal human being.

Then, through this body-free thinking, one gets to know the first supersensible part of the human being, that which I have mentioned in my writings - names are not important, but one must have names for things - the etheric body or formative body. This is something that the human being carries within them, just as they carry their physical body, but it is something that cannot be grasped by the external senses and by ordinary thinking; it can be grasped when the human being develops this imaginative thinking - as I call it - which I have been talking about today. Then this imaginative thinking becomes a [mental organ] with which he sees the spiritual human content, the formative forces that permeate the human being, just as the human being has the physical body.

Thus one ascends to the first supersensible aspect of human existence. But one cannot ascend in this way without undergoing other experiences as one ascends to body-free thinking. From the relationship between the limits of knowledge and the power of love in the human being, of which I have spoken to you, you will be able to divine that there are deep, mysterious relationships between the powers of knowledge in the human being and social human life. If a person acquires supersensible thinking, as I have just described it, then he finds a new way in which social life, which takes place between human souls and human beings, is shaped.

We meet people in life. We develop a strong sympathy for some people and a less strong sympathy for others; we may even develop antipathy for some people. But a network of relationships with other people, shaped by the power of love, runs through our entire lives as we interact with others. If one learns to recognize the power of supersensible thinking, then this leads to the realization that the sympathies and antipathies we develop for the people we meet in the physical world come from the fact that we were already connected with these souls before we went through birth or conception. Through the development of thinking, the spiritual view of the world in which we have lived opens up from the physical life – we have lived spiritually and soulfully just as we live here physically and corporally – in which we have lived as in a spiritual world before we descended into the physical world through conception and birth. In our time, it is possible to see into the spiritual world from which we descended before our birth, through a powerful development of thinking out of intellectual modesty. It is neither speculation nor fantasy when we say from such knowledge: How you meet people here in life, soul to soul, is the continuation of how you met them, now entirely in the spirit, in the supersensible world, before those people who enter into relationships here descended into this sensual world. Just as man has been seeking out natural scientific connections in a new way for three to four centuries, so from today onwards he will have to seek them out - otherwise he will never feel his suspicions about the supernatural satisfied - he will have to seek out spiritual connections to the supernatural worlds.

It must be admitted that, when we speak in these terms today, we are still speaking of something quite incomprehensible and incredible to present-day humanity. But anyone who is familiar with the history of cultural development knows the significant way in which people relate to the great cultural advances. It was in the first half of the nineteenth century when a college of physicians and other scholars were asked whether railways should be built. They delivered the verdict – I am not telling a fairy tale, but something that is documented – that railways should not be built because they would undermine the health of those who travel in them due to the great vibrations during the journey. And if they are to be built after all, they said, if people are to be found who will travel in the railways, then at least large, high board walls must be erected to the left and right of the railway so that those who pass the railroad will not suffer from concussion. — Thus fear expressed itself against real progress.

Such fear lives unconsciously in humanity today before the supersensible. We will not be able to fight the anti-social instincts of humanity until we engage in this field, not believing that we get mental concussion when the supernatural is spoken of.

That, dear attendees, is the one link of the human being that looks into prenatal life.

In yet another way, man can take his development into his own hands through the modesty of his soul. This is when, as in the first case I described, he can further develop his thinking if he further develops his will. There is something again that the whole human being develops unconsciously in the course of his life. Let us just admit, my dear audience, that basically we change from week to week, from year to year, from month to month in the purely external development of the human being. We are always learning from life. Just look back at how different you are from ten or twenty years ago. But what we developed in ourselves then, we developed unconsciously. We did not learn to take our further development as human beings, our higher development as human beings, into our own hands. And again, there are methods – you can also read more about this in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' – by which one can learn continuously from life; whereby one looks at everything that presents itself in life in such a way that we intervene actively; then we say to ourselves: What we have done there – if we ourselves were higher, more maturely developed, we could do it better. If we constantly develop this modesty in relation to the will – our development can go on and on – and take the opportunity to take our will development into our own hands in the same way that we took our thinking development into our own hands in the way described above, then it turns out that we find our way into the supersensible world in a different direction. What we are now developing within us by further developing our willpower is that, as we go through life, we can always become our own spectator. We then become, as it were, as if we were floating above ourselves asleep at night and looking at our body lying in bed from the outside. Thus, through the inner development of the willpower of the soul, we learn to see ourselves in everything we do.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a strong human power. By immersing yourself in this power, you become independent of your body to a higher degree than simply by developing your thinking. In this way you get to know the higher supersensible being of the human being; that which I would like to call the body of movement, or - don't shudder back, it's just a name - the astral body of the human being. We learn to recognize what is supersensible in us by merely making an effort to move our hands, by working, by developing our will in our own growth, in our own human development. Then, in addition to the etheric body, we get to know the astral body of the human being, which, because we have it, uniquely and solely enables us to truly express the will in the outer world.

But when one experiences within oneself what willpower, developed in this way, actually is, then one looks into the supersensible world in a different direction. Then you first experience: You behave in one of two ways towards people you come into social contact with; you do them good or you do them little good; you do them something purposeful or inappropriate; you act towards them in such a way that they experience the consequences of your action. By developing the powers of will as I have just described, we learn to recognize that we experience what lives through the astral body, through the actual spiritual-soul. The expression 'body' is just an expression. What we develop there carries our supersensible being through the gate of death; and we will experience the continuation of what we have developed in our relationships with people here in the physical world in the manner just described in the spiritual world after death. That is to say, in the spiritual vision, there is an immediate insight into the world that we experience when we have passed through the gate of death. That which connects man with the spiritual world becomes visible when he develops the powers of his soul as I have described. But then, my dear audience, these two powers come together. The power that develops out of thinking, out of living thinking, and the power that develops out of the will, they enter into an inner marriage, as it were. And then, then the contemplation of one's own development becomes something new for man; then something quite new becomes what we call the history of mankind. Oh, the ordinary, external knowledge knows little about this history of mankind, only the external facts. But what is called history today is actually nothing more than a fable convenante. What lives in history, what advances humanity through history, is only really learned in its truth, with the forces that I have just described to you. There one learns to recognize how the spiritual rules in the historical development of humanity.

Now, I do not want to describe to you in abstract terms what I have to say in this field, but I would like to present to you what can have a direct bearing on the great tasks of humanity in the present day. The one who, as I am now doing, looks at more recent human history from the spiritually developed soul forces finds a significant turning point in the development of humanity in the middle of the fifteenth century.

You see, in life, things are often said that are actually illusions or one-sided truths. For example, it is often said that nature – and what is meant is basically the whole of world affairs – nature does not make leaps. In a sense this is true, but in another sense it is completely untrue. Nature is constantly making leaps. Look at a growing plant: the green leaf makes the leap to the colored petal, to the stamens, to the pistil and so on in further growth. So it has also happened in history, leaps and bounds continually; these leaps are not noticed because man does not follow the workings of history in a spiritual way, but only externally. The one who follows the development in history in a spiritual way can clearly see that since the middle of the fifteenth century the human spiritual condition in the civilized world has become quite different than before. We have to distinguish a long period of human development from our own, which began in the middle of the fifteenth century and in which we are still immersed in our developmental epoch. The immediately preceding developmental epoch began around the eighth century BC and lasted from the seventh century BC to the middle of the fifteenth century AD, which external history does not tell. If you look at history as I have described it today, it becomes clear that people were very different in the epoch that began in the eighth century BC and ended in the middle of the fifteenth century. People were so different then that I will briefly illustrate this with an image.

You all know, dear attendees, that today, as he develops in his childhood years, the human being goes through parallel stages with his soul and spirit in relation to his physical development. Just consider – and you can read about what this means in my little booklet 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science' – how deeply the change of teeth towards the seventh year intervenes in what is developing in the child. And for those who are able to observe well, how important it is that what intervenes in the life of the child intervenes in the soul and spirit much more intensively than people usually believe. This is the first epoch in which, alongside physical development, the human being undergoes a parallel development in relation to his soul and spirit. Man ends the second epoch with sexual maturity in the fourteenth or fifteenth year. Man develops quite differently between the seventh and fourteenth year. And again differently, but in such a way that he still has parallelism with physical development, up to the twenty-first year. And anyone who is able to observe closely in our time will see that today's humanity still shows a parallelism in terms of the spiritual and soul up to the age of twenty-seven. Then this parallelism ceases. Then, to a certain extent, we emancipate ourselves inwardly from the physical and bodily in relation to our spiritual and soul. Then these developments no longer go hand in hand. But what I am now describing as a characteristic of present human development, and on which everything that happens between human beings, everything in the human totality depends, was different before the middle of the fifteenth century, it was different throughout the whole long period, although it developed from the eighth century BC to the middle of the fifteenth century. For a much longer time, the human being was afflicted with a parallelism. Even into one's early thirties, one could still experience physical changes that corresponded to psychological changes, although not as strongly as during the change of teeth and sexual maturation. And anyone who really wants to understand what was there in the world with Greek culture, what entered human development with Greek culture, must know that what is usually called Greek human nature, what one perceives as the harmony of Greek culture, what has been felt in such a way that the offspring and also the aftermath of Greek culture are carried into our time, that this is based on this longer ascending developmental capacity of the bodily-physical of human nature. This goes parallel with that which the spiritual-soul qualities are. In the case of the Greeks and Romans, the spiritual-soul qualities were such that one can say: The powers of understanding and feeling developed more instinctively; instinctive feeling, instinctive logic, instinctive understanding, instinctive powers of research are found in that period.

Since the middle of the fifteenth century, the instinctive understanding has been replaced by the self-conscious powers of understanding and feeling. Everything in the state and in society, in the social organism, was different in the period from the eighth century BC to the fifteenth century AD than it can be in our age. From the innermost core of human development, that which stands for today's humanity in the outside world developed. The newer natural science with all that lies in the human soul could never have developed, the new industrialism could never have developed if, around the middle of the fifteenth century, something had not happened in human development that can be called the transition from instinctive to independent soul and emotional powers. Since the middle of the fifteenth century, therefore, man has wanted to place himself at the apex of his personality out of his inner nature. From these inner impulses of human development follows that which is outer economic life, which is economic, industrial order, which is also a scientific direction of knowledge; follows that which can be characterized in such a way that one says: Man, because he was to become self-conscious since the middle of the fifteenth century, had to develop a kind of materialism more or less in the realms of the intellect and also in the practical realm. To a certain extent, he had to be abandoned by the instincts of spiritual life. But today the time has come again when man, self-consciously, must also rise from the attainment of orientation in the material to the conscious grasping of spiritual life, as I have described it.

Now, the best way to see what has changed in the development of humanity is to turn one's gaze to the most significant event that has occurred within this development in the course of the entire human evolution on earth, to the event that gives the actual meaning to the evolution of humanity and the earth, when one turns one's gaze to the Mystery of Golgotha, through which Christianity was founded.

What did humanity, which developed its soul and physical powers as I have described from the eighth century BC to the fifteenth century AD, what did this humanity, which also remained capable of physical development, feel until the 1930s in the face of what mysteriously took place at the Mystery of Golgotha? With the powers of the soul that arise from the instinctive mind and instinctive soul, that arise from a body that, like ours, was only capable of development until the end of the 1920s, was capable of development until the 1930s, this humanity of the Greco-Latin age was able to look at the Mystery of Golgotha and feel a supersensible event in the event of Golgotha. This humanity of the Greco-Latin age could look at the mystery of Golgotha and feel a supersensible event in the event of Golgotha, which broke into human earthly development. In those days people instinctively understood that not just any man had lived in Nazareth or in Palestine at all, but that in this man Jesus of Nazareth a supersensible entity had lived, which the human beings before the development of Christianity could not look at because they were not yet connected with the earth. Through the event of Golgotha, a spiritual essence that had not previously been connected with human development on earth entered this human development through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Humanity, which was capable of development until the middle of the fifteenth century in the way I have described, understood this instinctively.

The development from the mid-fifteenth century to the present should have been different. There was no rule of instinctive understanding or instinctive powers of mind. Unlike the period up to the end of the 1920s, our bodies did not develop into our 30s; but instead of becoming independent today after about the 27th year, we develop the human personality to full freedom through the physical nature. But this education to freedom must find the spirit within itself. Therefore, it must look outward for a while and see only matter. If the spirit were to reveal itself to us through matter, we would have no need to educate ourselves to become spiritual. But under the influence of these human developmental impulses, even the truth of Golgotha has been subject to change. He who, inwardly, does not consider the prejudices of present-day external knowledge, but who inwardly considers the development of humanity's thoughts about Christianity throughout the centuries, knows that in the materialistic age that had to come over humanity since the middle of the fifteenth century, but that must be overcome again from today on, he knows that with that also the views on the mystery of Golgotha had to be materialized. We have already experienced it in the course of the nineteenth century and particularly at the beginning of the twentieth century that people, including theologians, were almost proud no longer to speak of Christ as a supersensible being who lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth; but they found it better, as they say, for the enlightened man of the present to speak merely of the 'simple man of Nazareth'. They have lost the Christ and describe the man of Nazareth in materialistic terms, as if the Christ had not lived in him as a supersensible, supermundane entity. They describe him only as a highly developed human being, but still only as a developed “human being”.

Modern humanity also had to go through this test. But it is a test, ladies and gentlemen. And by finding our way out of self-conscious reason, out of self-conscious powers of mind, out of intellectual modesty into the supersensible worlds, as I have described it, we will also find our way back to a supersensible understanding of Christianity. We will consciously learn to look at the Mystery of Golgotha as the people of the Greek era did, as people until the middle of the fifteenth century instinctively looked at the Mystery of Golgotha, which broke into human development after the first third of that Greek-Latin period as the earth's actual meaning. It will be a significant event in the more recent development of humanity when, through the conquest of the spiritual world, through the knowledge of the supersensible human existence, man will also find his way to the mystery of Golgotha in a new way.

Then this new knowledge of Christ will be able to take hold in the souls of the whole civilized world. Then this new Christ idea will overcome what today adheres to the conceptions of Christ out of conventional narrow-mindedness, even out of narrow-mindedness of religious creeds. People, however they may otherwise stand in terms of races and nations, if the path to the mystery of Golgotha is confidently found, they will find this path throughout the civilized world. Then, starting from this impulse, something will come that is being sought today, but from a utilitarian point of view. Today we hear of people who cling to the external, to the pursuit of a League of Nations. And one of those people, who unfortunately were also quite overestimated in Germany at a certain time, one of those who lead people into such abstractions, one of those people is Woodrow Wilson. When one speaks as he does about the founding of a League of Nations, one speaks about something for which one does not first create the conditions out of reality. Those who today speak of the fact that a League of Nations should arise from the aspirations of individual peoples speak in such a way that one can see that they have never grasped the great parable of the Tower of Babel. For what does he actually want? He wants to continue building the Tower of Babel. He wants to leave the nations as they are; he wants to found the League of Nations through the very thing by which they have become nations out of the unified whole. This will result in an illusion, in an abstraction. But it is the other way around. Through a new spiritual life, it is necessary to establish that which can be common to all human souls: the realization of the spiritual center of human development; the realization of the supersensible nature of the Mystery of Golgotha in its significance for all humanity, without distinction of religion and race and nationality. From this perception, from this looking to the Christ-event, the unique Christ-event, will come the real power for the new League of Nations. And people throughout the world, throughout the civilized world, will not find harmony until they have found the path to a new Christianity out of a new conquest of the spirit, a new Christianity that can unite people throughout the world. So we see: This provides the insight that I was able to describe to you, that it leads beyond birth and death to the eternal, supersensible nature of the human being. We see that this realization leads at the same time to such a penetration of human development that it must be one of the most important tasks of the present time. And if one grasps human nature at such a depth that one does not merely encounter the outer human being that today's outer scientific knowledge encounters, if one grasps the human being in such a way that one, out of intellectual modesty, the strength to develop further, as one has developed from childhood to the point where one has arrived in ordinary life, then one also finds the words that unite people.

A strong chaos lives over the civilized earth, a terrible confusion. In every soul must arise the longing to find the way out of such confusion, out of such chaos, confusion and chaos are great. The power that must be applied to escape from them must also be great; it must overcome strong, great prejudices. Even today, for many people, the prejudice that must be overcome may seem too strong, the path to the new understanding of the supersensible event of Golgotha must be taken. For humanity today has before it – we will now have to illuminate this from the outside in the next lecture – two paths. One path goes to the left, the other goes to the right. We can take a one-sided approach by letting the pendulum swing between the two, that which has developed in materialism, in the egoistic personality forces, since the middle of the fifteenth century. But we can also go to the right and consciously conquer the spirit again from our industrial and scientific age. If we learn to recognize that social, supersensible life is inherent in the development of humanity, then what many today still consider a superstition or an illusion will become a realization, that which Lessing pointed out, namely, repeated earthly lives. Lessing, the enlightened man, was the first to point out, as in the dawn of modern times, in his 'Education of the Human Race', that human beings go through repeated earthly lives as long as the earth is in its development. Between these repeated earthly lives, he lives in a spiritual-soul world from which he descends into the physical world through birth or conception, and from which he then ascends again through the gate of death. To find one's way into the great that has already begun with such thoughts with Lessing, with Herder, with Goethe and so on, leads in the right direction. And we in Central Europe, we must now, since the time of external adversity and external misery has perhaps begun for us, [that must] already be said in our difficult time, we must learn to tie in again with those steps that were taken in Central Europe by the great German minds that I have just mentioned, into the supersensible world. And we must have the courage to take further such steps, to go further into the supersensible world. Otherwise humanity will fall back into what can be characterized in the following way.

If humanity wants to go only to the left, then it will continue to develop that which had to come over humanity for a time so that the human being could develop his free personality. From a different point of view, I already described this in the early nineties in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom”. In order to achieve freedom, man had to develop what led him into the newer age in such a way that he mechanized his spirit. He only overlooks that which is machine-like in the outer world and comprehends it. If he stops at this, he cannot awaken his soul to what I have described today as awakening out of intellectual and volitional modesty; then, in addition to the mechanization of the spirit, there is the vegetarianization of the soul, the drowsiness of the soul. But then, because the body becomes ignoble if it is not glowed through by the spirit-illuminated soul, animalization occurs for the body in addition to the drowsiness of the soul. Then the social demands arise out of the animal instincts. This can be seen in the present. We have a mechanized spiritual life. But we also have the drowsy, plant-like soul, the vegetative soul, with regard to the supersensible human being. And we have what is currently emerging in Eastern Europe, on the large-scale Russian folk soul, as this folk soul is killing; emerging like a new set of social demands, but which is nothing more than the speech of animalized man. That is the third.

If we really want to find a way out of today's chaos and confusion, then we must look without prejudice at the fact that we in Central Europe, and that Western civilization have developed the mechanization of the mind and the drowsiness of the soul, and that as a result, in the East, the animalized passions , which man today only fears but must learn to understand in order to overcome them, so that he can come out of this illusionary, this corrupt socialism of the East and into a true socialism, which we want to talk about the day after tomorrow, a socialism that is permeated by the spirit and the soul. It is necessary for human beings not to go the way of mechanizing the spirit, of making the soul become like that of a vegetable, of animalizing the body, but to go the way that leads them to a penetration of the supersensible human nature and the supersensible nature of the world in general. That he may receive from his higher developed self-consciousness of modern times in his spirit the light, in his soul the warmth, the spiritual, and thereby in his body the ennobling that will lead to real social love, to genuine brotherhood. Only if we find the way to the illumination of the spirit, to the spiritualization of the soul, to the ennobling of the body, only then will we be able to enter into a better future. Then it will not be external matter, the economic process, but spirit and soul that will lead us into this new order. However, the spirit can only guide man if man meets the spirit halfway; if man allows his intellect to glow with humility through the spirit; if man allows the soul to be permeated by what he can experience as spirit. And do not believe that everyone in our time should become a spiritual researcher themselves, although to a certain extent anyone can become a spiritual researcher today; as I explained in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. But while in all other fields one can only look to the belief in authority of scientists in science, what people would like to claim is not true: that supersensible truths, when they are researched, can only be found to be true on the basis of belief in authority. No, human nature is so created that if it only removes the prejudices that the last four centuries have piled up before the human soul, then every single human soul, even if not yet today, will be able to look into the supersensible world and accept what the spiritual researcher has investigated. What the astronomer or the physiologist investigates is accepted by other people. Today, based on common sense, every soul can find the path into this supersensible world through the mere revelation of those who have researched this supersensible world. Then this soul will also find the path into a true social life. Because this social life can never be based on mere natural necessity, on mere external economic or economic necessity. The purified social life can only be based on freedom. But the freedom of external life can only be based on that highest freedom, which must be developed in the innermost part of the human soul. All external freedom may only be in the future, so that humanity may emerge from confusion and chaos. All external freedom may only be the direct announcement of the inner liberation of the human soul.

May man find the way to this inner liberation through the path of the spirit and of soul-searching, so that he can also find it to the outer social liberation.

In this winter series of lectures, I have taken the liberty of alternating purely spiritual lectures with those inspired by the great and significant events of the present. Today's reflections on the nature of the German national soul and its relationship to other national souls in Europe are also intended to be inspired by the feelings evoked by our time. Tomorrow, another reflection will follow, which is purely spiritual scientific. In the introduction to today's reflection, I will take the liberty of pointing out some things that have already been discussed from a different point of view in one of the previous lectures, which also dealt with the nature of the folk soul.

If one speaks of folk souls today, one encounters many misunderstandings if one takes the point of view that is to be adopted here. One is often reproached for thinking something purely fantastic. And that is basically quite in order; because our present-day world view cannot help but see a fantasy in what must be addressed as the folk soul, in addition to other real, concrete spiritual beings. It is therefore only natural that, when the folk soul, among other spiritual beings, was spoken of as a real being in my book 'Theosophy', this chapter in particular was found to be particularly strange. That is precisely what a purely externalistic world view will never admit: that alongside those entities that can be perceived by the senses, that can be grasped by the intellect and are connected with the brain, there are also other supersensible, invisible entities beings that can only be seen with what Goethe called the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. These beings have a reality, however, just as the beings of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms around us have reality. And so spiritual science also speaks of the German national soul as a real, actual entity. It speaks of this entity as conducting the dialogue — subconscious, unconscious dialogues with the individual human soul — already mentioned in the previous lecture on the supporting forces of the German spirit. It is impossible to give an indication of the nature of the real, true national soul without saying at least a few words about what spiritual research will eventually have to say to mankind about the nature of the individual human soul. The present official science of the soul, or psychology, approaches the human soul in such a way that it sees in it, I might say, a more or less chaotic but ordering unity, in which will, feeling and thinking act in confusion.

But now spiritual science must speak of this human soul in a sense that physics speaks of color and color nuances that arise from light. Physics is aware that it can only study the essence of light if it seeks out this light in its effects, which appear as the different color nuances of the rainbow, the spectrum. On the one hand, we have the reddish-yellow color nuances, in the middle the greenish ones, and on the other hand the violet-bluish color nuances. Just as physics now already admits that the nature of light can be fathomed by studying the effect of light through matter in the various color nuances, so the spiritual science of the future will most certainly have to distinguish in the human soul as a whole that which one could call the revelation of the human soul light, that this is lived in the human soul in three parts, as it were in the three distinct nuances, one of which must be called the nuance of the sentient soul, corresponding to the reddish-yellowish band of colors of the rainbow or the color spectrum; thus, one must speak of the soul of understanding or feeling, corresponding to the middle green color nuances of the rainbow; and thus one must speak of the soul of consciousness, corresponding to the bluish-violet color nuances of the rainbow. And it is not a matter of an arbitrary classification of the soul activities, but rather of something that has to do with the reality of the human soul, just as the colors have to do with the reality of light. For spiritual science shows that what on the one side of the spectrum of the soul must be recognized as the sentient soul reveals primarily those powers of the soul that stream out of the impulses of will and feeling and express themselves in a certain instinctive way in man ; but at the same time it shows, and this is the remarkable thing, that precisely in this instinctive nature of the soul, in this nuance of feeling of the human soul, is contained that which we shall show tomorrow to pass through births and deaths as the eternal of the human soul. It is mainly in this part of the human soul that the eternal essence of the soul is contained.

Then we have, as it were, the middle color nuance of the human soul, the intellectual soul. In this, soul expressions directed equally to the eternal and to the sensual-real, the transitory, can be found; instinctive tendencies and those which rise above them and look at the senses in order to spiritually comprehend the world of the senses.

Thirdly, we have the consciousness soul, which, in the present stage of human development, elevates man to his self-awareness, which makes it possible for man to stand in his soul in such a way that he can say: “Within me, even within my physicality, between birth and death, there dwells an I.” But at the same time, it is that which is in these powers, that which, for the present development of humanity, contains the feelings of the human soul life that are turned towards the transitory, the external, obvious reality. Just as light reveals itself in the different color nuances, so what is the unity of the human soul reveals itself in these different members of the human soul. And one can say: just as light lives in red, green and blue, so the human ego lives in all three aspects of the life of the human soul.

Now, for spiritual science, what is to be regarded as the folk soul is a real supersensible entity, not merely what a more materialistic world view sees, a totality of characteristics that climate, education or otherwise are peculiar to a nation, but for spiritual science the folk soul is a spiritual entity that works from the supersensible worlds into what are the functions of the human soul.

And now, according to the way in which the folk soul works in what is the work of the human soul, the basic character of the folk soul life can be seen through different European peoples. These are things that spiritual science has to say, so that one day it will form a science, just as the physics of color within natural science forms a real scientific discipline.

I would also like to make it clear this time that what I am going to say about the interaction of the national soul with the individual soul elements in the various European nations has not been caused or provoked by the current war events and the existing conditions of the European nations. Rather, many of the listeners here can confirm that I have been saying for years, based on spiritual science, that We are dealing, for example, when we consider the more southern peoples, when we consider the soul of the Italian people, with an interaction of this national soul with the individual human being in such a way that what the national soul does, what it has to accomplish in a dialogue with the individual soul, flows directly into the sentient soul. So that one can say: insofar as a member of the Italian nation is Italian, he expresses himself from the character of his nation in such a way that the forces of his national spirit tremble and have an effect in his sentient soul. It is with this sentient soul that the national spirit, the national soul, holds its dialogue. Of course, it must always be emphasized that the individual soul can rise and take on the general human character in every nation. What has been said here about the relationship between the national soul and nationality applies to the extent that the individual is connected to the national soul through the expressions of his life. And everything that the Italian national soul arouses in the individual sentient soul of the Italian is, in essence, Italian culture. Hence the Italian culture, which emerges directly from the passions, can be traced from the individual impulses of the people to the mighty painting that Dante created of the world. That is why what is called humanism was also imprinted on European culture from Italy. The connection of the whole human being with the sentient soul through what one feels, what one has in one's emotional impulses, insofar as that comes into its own, flows through the whole of Italian culture. Spanish culture is similar and related to this.

When we consider French popular culture, we have to say that it is the result of the direct interaction of the folk soul with what is called the rational soul. Hence the peculiarity of the French national character, which seeks to bring everything into a certain system, even if it is the system of feeling and art. A certain mathematical character is inherent in everything that belongs to this culture. You only have to surrender to the flow of a French poem or the course of a French drama to feel this result of the relationship between the soul of the people and the soul of the mind everywhere. If you look at it from a spiritual scientific point of view, this mathematical disposition of the French character becomes highly understandable.

And again, when we look at the English national character, we must bear in mind those relationships that develop between the national soul and the consciousness soul. That is to say, the English national character is primarily shaped as follows: through the consciousness soul, the English national character is directed outwards to the struggles and congruities of physical reality, to that which is transitory in life. Hence the empirical character, the outward-looking character of English culture, which can be traced right back to Shakespeare, despite the greatness of Shakespeare.

And if we then go to the center of Europe, preferably to German culture, we must point to a relationship to the folk soul, a relationship of the individual to the folk soul that can be expressed directly as a connection of the folk soul not with a single soul element, but directly with the self, with the I. Therefore, the impulses that the national soul has to stimulate flow directly into the individual Germans. And it can then express itself as the ego struggles to reveal itself not only in one direction, but through the various members of the soul life, alternately or cohesively. Hence what I had to say eight days ago about the supporting forces of the German spirit, the direct influence of the spiritual world on the individual human personality. Therefore, it is not the human passions, the human passions wrestling with something transcendental, nor the ratio, the intellect wrestling with the transcendental, nor the consciousness soul being active, but always the direct confrontation of the individual human being with his divinity, of the individual human being with the spirits of the transcendental world. But this brings about the peculiar thing in the whole German development, that the individual German must always take up the highest impulses of spiritual life. We have a German development in which we see individual great characters appear. Again and again, the individual great character has to start anew, so to speak, without being able to tie in with what is historically given, because he has to let what the soul of the people has to give him shine in his deepest inner being.

But there is another aspect to this: since the German is always compelled to establish a direct, elementary relationship with the folk soul, this folk soul must also have an ever-present effect on him with its elemental power, and he always again impelled to go back to the purest sources of popular life; and he feels strengthened and refreshed when he can sense his connection with this popular life.

That is what the German feels impelled to express when he wants to consider his relationship to the supersensible world. This is also what gives the German world poem, Faust, its special magic. We see Faust living in the midst of a culture that has grown old, as it were; we see how he has allowed the individual expressions of this culture to take effect in him, and how he now strives to go directly to the sources of all knowledge, to enter into a relationship with individual spirits, with the spirit of the earth, the world spirit. We see how he strives to achieve what could be called a rejuvenation of the whole human soul. There has even been mockery, at least contemptuous talk about what stands as a kind of rejuvenation scene at the beginning of the second part of “Faust”, where Faust is in a kind of sleep state and the spirits of the cosmos permeate him, in epochs, as the night passes, with what they have to give him. But anyone who knows that such things can only be depicted in images will not be able to succumb to such a misunderstanding. After Faust has first tried to rejuvenate what has grown old in him through sensory life and the world of external science, a relationship is established in him between the elemental forces of his soul life and the supersensible world, and through this he is rejuvenated so that he can then accomplish all that is presented to us in the second part of Faust: that he can enter the great world in order to work there as an active force; that he can take the path to the mothers, where he has to discover the primal forces of being in that sphere, of which the materialist will always say it is a nothing, of which the one who knows something about the spirit must always use Faust's words: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.”

But we also see in Faust how the rejuvenating powers of spiritual life work in him through the fact that he is portrayed as a German spirit. These rejuvenating powers work in him in such a way that in the end, when he goes blind, everything that could be called his connection to the physical-sensual world dies. And while it grows dark around him, a bright light shines within him. That is to say, he has come to the forces that Goethe really drew from the essence of the German national soul and that are awakened in him in such a way that he has sensed the rejuvenating power of true German life in the external culture that has grown old. These rejuvenating forces work in the soul in such a way that what his soul thinks and feels and does is seen directly in his inner being as the thoughts, feelings and will of the divine-spiritual beings themselves. spiritual beings themselves and feels connected to the spiritual world itself, which works in him as a rejuvenating force that does not allow his culture to grow old; which always gives him hope that, if any branch of culture has become spiritually dry, so to speak, the rejuvenating forces can bring about a new germ. This direct proximity of the national spirit to the individual soul of the human being, in turn, distinguishes the soul of the Central European from that of the Eastern European.

In a remarkable way, Russian Slavdom presents itself to spiritual science. The Russian has his national spirit as a ruling power, so that this national spirit does not, as with the Italian, for example, directly into the sentient soul or as with the Frenchman into the intellectual soul or as with the British into the consciousness soul nor does it dips into the ego; but that the folk soul, as a spiritual, hovers over the individual, to which it is looked up like to a cloud, while below, with their soul forces, the individual works, into whose soul forces the folk soul does not reach. Hence we see among these Eastern peoples that the individual soul powers, which have not yet been grasped in the stage of development, work together in an anarchic way. Because the national soul-life does not bring about their inner harmony, these three soul-forces work as if in anarchic confusion; they cannot find the possibility of being in harmony with each other. This is the peculiarity that seems strange to the Western European when he turns to the spiritual culture of the East. This lack of togetherness of the national soul in relation to the togetherness of the national soul with the individual human soul is what distinguishes the German from the Russian. And this distinction becomes particularly apparent when we turn our spiritual attention to the actual forces of the German national soul.

How does the development of German culture enter into the whole evolution of the world? After the Germans had had their encounters with the Romans and the southern peoples, German culture presents people who are directly seized by the power of the human in their being here in the world. To mention just one figure, we see Siegfried before us; we see the other figures of the Nibelungen before us. They carry the forces through which they are called to work in the world directly in their souls, and they feel that which they have there in their soul as that which guides, rules and sustains the world in general. What has been preserved in the popular mind, in the spiritual life, of this relationship between the soul of the people and the individual soul, as it already appears at the beginning of Central European culture, what has been preserved there, we can find it characteristically in a similar way to how the relationship to the spiritual world appears to us in mysticism. The mystic feels that which courses through him as the same that courses through the entire cosmos. He feels himself to be part of what he calls the Divine, the spiritual. One need only compare what pulses through Siegfried or the other figures, which are echoes of the oldest coexistence of the German folk soul with the individual soul, with the figure that has maintained great popularity within Russian folk life, the figure of Ilya Muromets. There we see how he, as a human being, feels the divine-spiritual in the distance, how he looks up to it, how it is something for him that is not directly in his soul, for which he can at most sacrifice himself and give as a champion. The courage, the strength in the Siegfried nature, the humility, the direct sacrifice in the Muromez nature.

And we can say: That which we see in the early days of the German flowering is like something that then disappears in the turmoil of the later times, succumbing to foreign influences. And then, in a wonderful way, from the twelfth, especially the thirteenth century onwards, we see a renewed effort of the German spirit shining through the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul.

Take figures such as Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. We see how figures and poetic subjects are indeed taken from the West, but how what is taken from the West is only the scaffolding and how an immediate connection with the most elementary forces of the supersensible world, for example, inspires Wolfram von Eschenbach to to make out of his Parzifal one who undergoes his journey to the Grail through the powers of his own soul; in that he seeks in the outer world, he wants to expand his soul powers with every step and to the same extent bring about a spiritualization in his soul. In this period, to which Wolfram von Eschenbach belongs, we see a deepening and at the same time a rejuvenation of the German character.

And then we see again how foreign influences gradually assert themselves; how, as it were, the German character ages. But we see the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul at work throughout all this aging. And we see these rejuvenating forces of the German national soul emerge in a remarkable way after Germany was made like a cultural desert by the enemies all around it in the Thirty Years' War; we see these forces glowing, we see a working out of the national forces, which in turn undergo a complete rejuvenation. Where do these rejuvenating forces come from? Here we must refer to Lessing, who in his works, in what is his spiritual testament, points to the immortal, the eternal in human nature – in that testament, however, in which the very clever do not want to believe. But at the end of his testament, he also pointed out how he sought knowledge, not the knowledge of the learned, who think they are at the pinnacle of education, but the knowledge of the simplest, most elementary forces of the people in primeval times. A rejuvenation, a refreshment of knowledge is what Lessing means when he says: Must every single person have traveled the path by which the human race achieves perfection in the same lifetime? Why could not every individual have existed more than once in this world? Is this hypothesis ridiculous because it is the oldest? Because the human mind, before it was dispersed and weakened by the sophistry of the school, immediately fell into it?

And so we have this deliberate immersion in the popular in order to arrive at the highest wisdom. Anyone who considers his connection with the development of the German people can only say: in Lessing we see an influx of the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul.

And again, in Herder and in Goethe, we see how they, the one supported by the other, delve into the German folk song, into German antiquity, and how they, stimulated by the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul, achieve an elevation of the poetic and cognitive potential within them. And we see how Goethe created his Faust out of what had arisen in the midst of the people – the Faust figure, which he first knew only through the puppet theater, that is, through what lived within the people. Goethe and Herder experienced a rejuvenation of their lives through their penetration into the impulses of the folk soul. It was Lessing who also placed the Faust problem in its time, who pointed out that what was fundamentally present in drama in his time – figures such as those that lived in the people in old plays – should be brought to the stage again. And he gave a scene that draws on an old folk tradition, that draws on the connection with the spiritual world.

And if we visualize the trend of the Romantics, who sought a connection with the spirit through immersion in German folklore and mysticism, we see, for example, in Novalis, a deep immersion into the spiritual world.

When we consider all these circumstances, many things can be explained that have certainly already been emphasized, that have been accepted as something that has been recognized through observation, but that have not been understood in their context. The extraordinarily brilliant Karl Hillebrand has beautifully juxtaposed the characteristics of Western and Central European peoples. What he has to say in his very beautiful treatise on the Western world view finds complete confirmation, but also a thorough illumination, through what spiritual science has to say. Hillebrand emphasizes that the Italians brought European culture, the Spaniards mathematism, the English empiricism. And now he ponders: What is it, then, that the German spirit has to contribute to the general spiritual process of humanity? And in his answer he really does come up with an excellent, precise characterization of what the German spirit has to bring to humanity: “The German spirit is the first to have found the idea of the organism.” For those who think only in a British way, the organism does not exist. The essential is viewed from the outside, but the direct organic life and weaving does not appear to the eye. The rationalist of the West seeks to understand reality through historical ideas; but to immerse oneself in the real so that life is grasped in the real — Hillebrand also knows that this is the peculiarity of the German mind. And so it is precisely through spiritual science that the misunderstandings prevailing among European nations with regard to Germanness will come to light more and more.

It must truly be said: It is understandable how the German spirit, in its struggle for an inner, elementary, direct connection with the soul of the people, can be so difficult to understand. That which characterizes him, that which is in his own nature, and that which exists within his nature, is something that is organically connected with the spirit, that he must experience directly in the objective connection with his soul, and that is so difficult for the spirit, for example, which in his soul life grasps the folk soul only with the consciousness soul. Herman Grimm, who had such a thorough and beautiful understanding of the workings of the German national soul, says a beautiful word about the Englishman Lewes' biography of Goethe, which is indeed outstanding in certain respects: “When one reads the biography, then, if one, as a German, experiences Goethe's nature directly, one must say: Yes, this Mr. Lewes, he writes about a person who was born in August born in Frankfurt in August 1749, who experienced a youth so similar to Goethe's, a person to whom Goethe's life events are attributed, to whom Goethe's works are ascribed, who dies in March 1832, but from whom nothing is noticeable that the German observer feels and strives to prove in his Goethe.

And it is, after all, very understandable that the most intimate German conception of the world, the comprehension of the organic-living, seems improbable to the Western people. And so it could come about that, in a grotesque misunderstanding, the French philosopher Bergson was able to give a lecture around Christmas time in which he said that the German essence lacked a living grasp of the organic-living in the present, that the whole German essence had become a mechanism.

One has the feeling that this French philosopher, Bergson, who certainly has many depths in his nature, which he owes precisely to German idealism – Schelling – and which he then expresses in his own way, is lacking in depth when it comes to the German nature.

One may find it strange that this philosopher views the German nature as mechanistic because he believes that the old idealistic life has vanished. He judges the German people by the fact that German cannons are now facing his people. It is just as if Bergson had expected the French to be met, not by rifles and cannons, but by Germans reciting Goethe or Schiller poems to them. Since they do not do this, people, including philosophers, notice nothing of the German spirit, but only see the German mechanism, which confronts them in rifles and cannons.

But in many other respects, too, what is most intimate in the German spirit is difficult for those to understand who do not want to get involved in the most intimate peculiarity of German intellectual life, in which the soul of the people and the soul of the individual interact. Because this seems to me to be quite characteristic, I would like to share three sentences that were born, so to speak, out of the deepest, most intimate peculiarities of German development; these sentences are formulated as if the German wanted to express the essence of his soul in them, as he has overheard it in his national spirit.

The first sentence: “In the mind lives the spark in which the world soul reveals itself in the human soul.” This sentence was spoken by Eckhart, the German mystic. It may well be said that it is truly spoken from the essence of the interaction of the folk soul with the individual soul. Now try to translate this sentence into any Western European language in such a way that it is really translated. You will not be able to do so because the folk spirit of another language does not produce what the translation of this sentence would be, which so correctly expresses the content of the sentence in the sense of German mysticism.

The second sentence: “The German does not want to remain in a closed state of being, he always wants to become.” The German thus regards his nationality as something that he sees as an ideal to strive for. Fichte says: One is Italian, one is French, but one becomes German by feeling one's Germanness intensively and effectively within oneself; just as Faust feels that which he “always strives for”. “The German becomes, he does not want to remain in a closed state of being.” Try to translate that again so that it conveys this intimate sense. You will see that you cannot.

The third sentence is one in which Hegel expresses what appears to him to be the connection between the supersensible and the individual human soul. Hegel says that in the transition from being to non-being, from non-being to being, lies the living becoming, in which Fichte also grasped the essence of man in the ego. Not in the rigid state of being, but in that which is always creating, which always has within it the potential for transition from non-being to being, from being to non-being. This third sentence is eminently German: “Being and non-being unite in becoming to form a higher unity.” Try to translate this sentence into a Western European language, and you will not be able to.

What is German in the sense indicated will be particularly difficult for Eastern Europeans and Russians to understand. And it must be right to focus on the nature of the Russian people in our present day. For it is precisely the infinite vilifications that come to us from all sides, including from the east, that show the greatest lack of understanding of the German character. For decades, the eastern European character has been preparing to erect a barrier, a chasm, to the central European character.

Of course, in Western Europe, people are trying to capture in strict logic what the German seeks in a variety of ways, including in a variety of back and forth ways, because he must always remain in living unity with the supersensible if he is a German in the truest sense of the word. But this logic is, after all, a strange logic. And it is especially apparent to us now, when, out of such strange logic, it is still being said, despite everything that has happened: Who wanted the war? and then the strange implication is made that the people of Central Europe wanted this war. These logical arguments are on the same logical level as the sentence: “It is your fault, Germans, that the present wars can be waged at all, because you invented gunpowder.” The reasons that sound out to us from the immediate events of the present are more or less the same. We can even be blamed for the fact that the war in the newspapers is being waged against us, because the Germans also invented the art of printing. If this had not happened in Central Europe, the invective and abuse of the West could not now befalling us.

Many currents must be emphasized, which, when viewed in their entirety, compose everything that comes to us like a spiritual atmosphere from the East. There we see how, after the first half of the last century, something arose in Russia that was called Slavophilism. If we consider Slavophilism as it has now developed, we can discern three aspects in present-day Pan-Slavism. The first aspect, which arose radically, is that Slavophilism believes that Western culture is corrupt, that it is ripe for decline, and that Russian culture must save European culture. That is the first aspect. The second is: in the West, individualism reigns. This is not entirely incorrect if one understands it correctly, because one can call that coexistence of the individual soul with the folk soul an individualism; the individual wants to experience his divine-spiritual directly with his own soul powers. But Slavophilism considers this individualism to be something harmful.

And as a third reason is given: that the Western European and the Central European live out their religious feelings out of the enthusiasm of their soul, not out of mere humble devotion to a spiritual element that hovers like a cloud above the people and above the individual. This is why Dostoyevsky, for example, said: “We Russians must form the synthesis; that is, we must synthesize, we must form the confluence of all European cultures. For just as we speak all languages and understand all civilizations, so we also understand everything that has influenced all cultures and can express it in all freedom. We also understand human life in such a way that man stands by his God as the one who humbly bows before what he recognizes as the God hovering above the individual. Therefore we do not let ourselves be bound by a legal system; that contradicts what the individual directly experiences in his childlike humility. Thirdly, Dostoyevsky cites the Orthodox religion, of which he says that it never appeared as a militant church like the Western European one.

What these three statements of Slavophilism express is basically what has inspired many, at least the important minds of the East, what has filled their souls and then also become popular, what has been passed down from leading personalities to the people, and what has an enormous effect. We can distinguish different phases in this Slavophilism. Take, for example, Khomyakov. He still approaches the matter from the standpoint of spiritual knowledge. Orest Miller, a thoroughly noble man who was deeply immersed in Russian folklore, turns away from the dark side of Slavophilism and takes up what Khomyakov also emphasized: that the Russian ideal is not yet alive in every individual Russian. Thus we read in this Slavophile: “Our fatherland condemns the yoke of bondage, godless flattery and servility, nauseating falsehood, soulless and disgraceful apathy, black lawlessness in the courts and all manner of shameful deeds.” Or: “We will be the democrats among the other nations of Europe and the heralds of humanitarian principles that promote the free and independent development of each tribe.”

Orest Miller, who is well known in Russian folklore, was also enthusiastic about such a national ideal. However, when Khomyakov increasingly began to deify the Russian people instead of seeking the divine in the heavens, Orest Miller dared to voice a few objections. The result was that he was dismissed. But we see how what has been smouldering in the East for a long time is now haunting the West and is taking shape entirely out of the Russian character.

Thus we see how perhaps the most outstanding Russian, Soloviev, takes it up in his own way, but idealizes it, one might say spiritualizes it, elevating it to the spiritual, how he ties in with Slavophilism. But not in the way that a German would say: If the power that lives in the folk soul is to take effect, it must take hold of the individual human being, it must work through the soul forces of the ego; the individual human being must be the channel of what the folk soul has to say to the world. Thus Solowjew does not stand by the forces of the national soul, but he stands so that he also points upwards to that cloud-like spiritual image which stands above the individual in a spiritual height, in a spiritual distance. And then he says to himself: This Divine-Spiritual will work on the national soul. This Divine-Spiritual has set itself the task of carrying out a certain mission through the Russian people. And it does not matter what the Russian people are like. Whatever the case may be, what has to happen will happen by a miracle. Sinful or not sinful, vicious or not vicious, foolish or wise – that can do nothing to help it; but that which is at work there, it works through a cosmic miracle, simply through people, however they are. These are Solovyev's own words:

“That power which will give a new and complete content to the history of mankind can only be a revelation of that higher, divine world; but the people in whom that power will reveal itself must become the mediator between the human race and the superhuman reality, the free, self-conscious instrument of the latter.”

The human race, by which he means his people, is to become the instrument for the divine miracle that will take place, without the national soul allowing the individual souls to receive the powers for what the Russian people will accomplish in the development of humanity.

When we see that one of the most significant and best seers is far removed from what constitutes the character of the German being, we understand that a man like Boris Chicherin, who died in 1904, was unable to penetrate very far when he wanted to place himself on the peculiar basis of German thinking, when he wanted to tie in with Hegel. In his great work 'Science and Religion', Boris Chicherin attempts above all to develop the idea of how the human soul, through the ideas and thoughts it can develop within itself, gradually finds its way up to a point where it can mystically grasp the great divine rule. He tried to carry out this idea in jurisprudence and political science. But he fell from favor and was dismissed as Mayor of Moscow after Alexander III came to power, when he gave a speech that was completely imbued with the idea that what man can grasp in his soul can truly merge with the Russian essence.

More and more, we see how Slavophilism takes hold of that which those who could see through it a little had to say: it is no longer about some ideal, about something conceptual, but about something quite different. It is about asserting not some supernatural, not some conceptual, but simply the immediate physical powers of a race. And I believe it is good if a Western European does not choose a star witness who is a Western European, but someone who could have known. And someone who could know, as we shall see in a moment, says of Slavophilism, after it had passed through the minds of Katkov and Aksakov and others: “Slavophilism had become a fairground commodity, filling with wild, animalistic shouting all the dirty streets, squares and back alleys of Russian life.”

But the man who said this, and who also said another telling word about what Slavophilism had gradually become, he knew! The other word he said, directing it against Danilevsky, was: “The Russian writer lacks the strength to rise above the gloomy present; he content himself with the task of summarizing the contradictions prevailing among humanity into a well-rounded system and to draw from this system some practical postulates for his own fraction of humanity to which he himself belongs.”

All this can be seen as a consequence of what has been said: that the individual soul forces work chaotically, inharmoniously, at the moment when the divine life hovering over the individual is not grasped, not grasped in the soul of the individual himself. And this is particularly emphasized by this knowledgeable spirit in these words. And who is the knowledgeable spirit? It is the same one about whom a well-known Russian speaks the following words:

The man of whom the Russian prince Trzbeizkos says these words spoke, as I have quoted it, in turn of Slavophilism, from which he himself also started, even if he idealized it; for it is Solowjew himself who speaks about Slavophilism in this way. What is important is that we hear from an informed source what has been brewing in the East and is now coming towards us.

But, you see, even at the highest level of Soloviev's thinking, there is still something anarchic in the soul of the Eastern man. For whereas Solowjew, as early as 1880, in his “Criticism of Abstract Principles,” expressed himself as I have quoted, he comes, at the end of the eighties, to realize how far what is reality, what surrounds him as reality, is removed from what he has dreamed. Then the demand arises in him that politics should become moral. In “Morality and Politics,” Solowjew says the following: “We must not delude ourselves: the politics of selfish interest, which in international and social relations has hatred in its train, is transformed into the politics of anthropophagy (he means man-eating), which in the end destroys all morality, even in private and family life. For man is a logical being and cannot long remain in the monstrous discord between the principles of private and political activity. We are preached about our special sublimity and mission, but let us remember that the resulting and mutually exclusive claims must ultimately, in the name of cultural sublimity, lead to a fight to the death and the right of violence."

Thus Solowjew himself, who must gradually look away from reality in order to live in peace, one might say in peace of mind, with what he has dreamed up as an ideal, a spiritual Slavophilism: “The Russian people are not only an ethnographic unit with its innate characteristics and material interests, but a people that feels that above these characteristics and interests the cause of God hovers; a people ready to sacrifice itself for this cause; a theocratic people by vocation and duty.

But Solowjew also sees that what he dreams of and sees has not yet become a duty, not even an awareness, in his people. And one may use his words when answering the question he raises: why Europe cannot love what is really going on in the East. Solowjew himself raises the question: Why does Europe not love us? And he gives the answer. It is at the same time the answer for much that comes to us from the East like a spiritual aura in our immediate present. He asks this question: Why does Europe not love us? And he answers it in 1888: “Europe looks at us with disgust, because it sees the decisive thing not in the power and mission of Russia, but in its sin.” So Solowjew. But there were also very hard realities that had to be faced by this soul in order for it to arrive at such a conviction. It was especially hard for him when he had to see what Slavophilism had gradually become, which he himself had to say had become a fairground commodity. And finally, he finds it only logical that this Slavophilism should have come about in the end, because the Russian people, without looking at what they themselves first wanted to make of themselves, were to give Europe directly what they are. Solowjew finds it consistent that the Moscow University professor Yarosh should have praised Ivan the Terrible as “the perfect model of the qualities of a Russian in general and of an Orthodox and a tsar in particular”. This was said not in jest but in complete earnest, and Solowjew finds it consistent. For, he argues, if you look at what the Slavophiles actually have in mind when they speak of the Russian people, then it basically comes out typically in Ivan the Terrible. Nothing else could have come out as the ultimate consequence, Solowjew argues. But now he asks himself the question: how does Slavophilism come to such strange forms? Solowjew saw before him how the Slavophiles gradually said: the West is rotten, we can't use anything from it; new, young life must flow from the West to the East, and this new, young life is to be found with us. Solowjew saw all this. But in a certain respect he is thoroughly a genuinely Russian man, such a Russian man that he had something left over, one would like to say, for those who at least had the courage to carry this last consequence through. Of Katkov he said: “He had the courage to strip rational religion of all ideal embellishment and to present the Russian people themselves as the object of religious worship, not in the framework of the supposed virtues of the people, but in the name of factual power, of which the state is the living word or the embodiment of the deified people.”

That is what Solowjew says. But he asks himself: Yes, but where does the Russian, who is full of humility, get it all from? That was a question for Solowjew. He wanted to examine where it actually is in the Russian that is shown by those who threw the provocative Slavophilism into the people as a firebrand. And lo and behold, he found a strange answer. He examined the works of Danilevsky, the successor of Katkov and Aksakov. And he found that the people who hurl and have hurled fiery torches against the West had initially borrowed them in the thought-forms, in the whole logic, from the French Jesuit pupil Joseph de Ma istre, Solowjew could prove that the whole stamp of thought of the Slavophiles is borrowed from the one who is a Western European spirit; that Western European spirit who at the beginning of the 19th century established the doctrine: People cannot come into the spiritual through what is within themselves, but only and alone through authority, and he means the papal authority. That which she decrees can lead people to the spiritual world. If you want to read about de Maistre, you need only read the beautifully written article that Georg Brandes, the all-rounder, wrote in his “Geistesströmungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts” (Spiritual Currents of the Nineteenth Century) – the same Brandes who who is, of course, less a gardener of intellectual culture, who does not like to plant, but who knows how to cut the flowers everywhere and put together fantasy bouquets that may seem very ingenious to people. But if you want to get an idea from these bouquets, you can easily get everything from Brandes.

Thus Solowjew had made a strange discovery, which was illuminating for him, though. That with which Europe is to be invaded and overcome from the east comes from the— as Solowjew says—Jesuit pupil, that is, from his thoughts into the thoughts of the Slavophiles. And so Soloviev has no choice but to say the characteristic words at the end: “A tiny morsel from the intellectual banquet of the West proved sufficient to nourish our national and political consciousness for half a century, and a single one of the countless twigs from the Western European tree of knowledge of good and evil were not only proudly contrasted with the whole tree from which they had been plucked, but even contrasted with it as the Russian tree of life, which should grow and embrace the whole world.

That was indeed a remarkable discovery. But Solowjew pursued the matter further. And finally he discovered a remarkable book by Bergeret: 'Principes de politique.' And he found that this reactionary spirit Bergeret also reappears with his thought forms in the Russian Slavophiles. And finally he discovered a German book written in 1857 by a 'strange fellow', Heinrich Rückert. I do not believe that there is a person here in this hall who knows anything about this book. I also do not believe that there is anyone in Berlin who knows anything about it, except perhaps scholars in this specialized field. The book is entitled: 'Textbook of World History in Organic Development'. But Solowjew says: Russian patriots have also copied from this book. Now he had it together. Now he knew the forces that had come together to be effective, to be led into the field against the West. Now he knew what had seduced even such fine minds as Orest Miller and others. And Solowjew spoke the words:

“Our patriots condemn various views because they are Masonic. In this case, their own view of Russia and patriotism is doubly condemnable, from our point of view and from theirs, because it is alien, un-Russian, slavishly transplanted from foreign soil.”

That was certainly an important revelation. And after this revelation, Solowjew did not find many friends among those who had been his friends before. But this Solowjew was really a strange person. After his first Slavophile period, after Alexander II had been murdered, he gave a fiery speech in which he advised the successor to prove himself to be truly Russian. Solowjew saw this “genuinely Russian” in the fact that Alexander II naturally had to pardon the murderers of his predecessor; the idea of the sublime must first be expressed in this. And they “behaved Russian” in response to this speech. Solowjew was chased away, he was chased out of his position. He had already had the fate of seeing that some of the things he had seen in his idealism were different in reality than he had dreamed them up.

Now, when you bring in such an impeccable star witness as this great philosopher is, you can see how, little by little over decades, a current bordering on megalomania has arisen in the East that must necessarily lead to arson in the end.

I have chosen to invoke Soloviev as a characterizer of the Russian character and the Russian national soul in contrast to the German national soul because we are particularly accused by Russia of not being able to understand the Russian character. Well, I think we can help ourselves by not characterizing it ourselves, but by having it characterized by someone who lived in such a way that he was interwoven with Slavophilism, albeit an ideal Slavophilism; that we call upon such a one, upon whom we may indeed call.

And if we now add this to what has been said about the relationship of Germans and Central Europeans to the outside world, then much of what has happened becomes understandable from its intellectual underpinnings. What is said about Germany in our times often coincides with nonsense and futility.

What the German feels to be his essential nature must be particularly offensive to him in this time; offensive for the very reason that from such a consideration what has been said from other points of view can also be derived: the great hope for the future of German activity and of the German spirit. This German spirit, when we consider its relation to the soul of the German people, appears as a spirit that tends to deepen the spiritual life of the whole cultural development of mankind.

If only those who so glibly speak of the German character from abroad would observe in detail the struggles of those souls who are truly gripped by the German national spirit. Then they would not, as I stated last time, depict something like Romain Rolland's “Schultze”, but they would see something different; because in many places something different can be seen, as I have only given a few examples of.

In this lecture, I wanted to point out how German idealism itself is still a germ, how it must develop into a flower, into fruit, into a complete grasp of the spiritual world, which is grasped in its true, concrete vitality, precisely because the German national soul is connected with the individual souls.

A personality comes to mind, a man who died as a grammar school headmaster in Bromberg in 1867. He is a very different kind of spirit in German intellectual life from this 'Schultze' of Romain Rolland. He is Johann Heinrich Deinhardt. His treatises are written from a thoroughly German way of thinking. They contain a remarkable passage. His treatises were published by his friend Schmidt, including a treatise on the immortality of the soul, which was written in a simple style to his friend, who was then his editor. In it, he wants to show how it occurred to him that man, even while he is here in life, is working on an immortal body; that everything he accomplishes serves to organize an immortal body that passes through the gate of death. — Thus we see this simple school teacher on the path of spiritual science.

And so much more might be cited. In such instances the co-working of the German national soul is fulfilled through what the individual strives for. In such matters it is revealed how this German national soul provides the individual soul with the impulses to work towards the very first sources of knowledge and to link the individual soul life of the human being to the eternal in the soul life. But we will continue this discussion tomorrow.

Today, however, I would like to summarize what I had to say about the supporting forces that are contained in Germanness and that are shown precisely in this ever-renewed connection to the very first sources of human knowledge and human experience; I would like to conclude the consideration that I have given to the German national soul in relation to other national souls, with the words of a little-known Austrian poet, who, from a truly German soul, one might say, from a dialogue with the German national soul, published his “German Sounds from Austria” in 1881. In these “German Sounds from Austria” by Fercher von Steinwand, we find a poem that shows so well how vividly the individual German can feel in it, in what lives and moves, always rejuvenating the German essence, as the German folk soul. It presents itself to us as in a vision. As if all those who are interested in it come to the Kyffhäuser mountain to see as guests the mystery of the Kyffhäuser, the mystery of Emperor Barbarossa resting within, who keeps the power of the German essence hidden like a mystery. And for Fercher von Steinwand, one of the guests who come here represents the German spirit: the spirit, as already mentioned, that Fercher von Steinwand, the poet of “Deutsche Klänge aus Österreich” (German Sounds from Austria), also feels as the spirit that constantly rejuvenates the soul of each individual because it always allows that which speaks from the world of the stars, from suns and moons, to shine within; the spirit that speaks to the heart in the most intimate sense, because it speaks of the vastness of the universe; this German spirit, this rejuvenating German spirit, is what the German poet from Austria, Fercher von Steinwand, lets speak with words, in which I would like to summarize what I have tried to hint at today in terms of my feelings about the German spirit, especially in comparison with other European national spirits:

What springs from the riddles of this earth,
What finds hearts, what masters minds,
What flows eternally speaking from the stars
And reveals an inimitable God,
What seemingly gets lost in time and the world
And yet shoots around us in a thousand streams:
That is the primal power of the German spirit,
And to speak it clearly is the oath it has sworn!

In the introductory lectures of this year's winter cycle, we have already often pointed out the sources of man's supersensible knowledge, the knowledge of which – and also of its relationship to the world in which we live – this entire lecture cycle is intended to deal with. It was pointed out how these sources of supersensible knowledge lie in the human soul, in every human soul itself, in it as dormant forces and abilities, which can be brought forth through appropriate means in intimate inner experience, so that the human being can become able to look into the spiritual worlds. The development of these abilities lying dormant in the soul is to be sketched out this evening. Further explanations of what is to be presented today will then arise in the next lectures.

If the aim is to make it clear how the soul's dormant powers of supersensory knowledge can be brought out, then one can always point to an occurrence, to a fact that happens to every human being in the course of twenty-four hours: to the alternation of sleep and waking. Man usually passes by those riddles of life that play into his life daily as something familiar, and the rare and, because of its rarity, oppressive will in most cases easily evoke a longing to be solved as a riddle. Such oppressive riddles of life will be discussed here in the next lecture. Today, however, we will start from a mystery that eludes man in its mysteriousness only because he is so accustomed to the phenomenon in question, namely the alternation of sleep and waking.

In order to sustain our lives, we must pass from a state of consciousness into one of unconsciousness every day. What happens when we pass into the unconscious state of sleep? The senses lose their capacity to perceive, the organic limbs lose their capacity to move, and thinking, which is bound to the activity of the brain when it is engaged in the external world, ceases. As we fall asleep, we feel all the activities and all the awareness that fill our day subside. It would be a logical impossibility for anyone who judges impartially to think that what surges up and down in our soul from morning to evening in our conscious state as our ideas, our feelings, sensations, affects, passions, yes, as our ideals and ideas, actually passes into “nothingness” each time we fall asleep and then arises again the next morning. Only logical prejudice can deny that man's spiritual and soul essence is also present while he is in the unconsciousness of sleep.

If we assume hypothetically for the moment – and the following lectures are intended to justify this assumption – that while man is in the unconsciousness of sleep, he has, as it were, withdrawn with his actual spiritual-soul core from his physical body and the forces animating this physical body, and that he then lives in a spiritual world , it is not far-fetched to assume that the reason for this lies within the person themselves: that when a person's spiritual and soul essence is withdrawn from their body, they cannot perceive their surroundings in the same way that they perceive them when they use their eyes, their other sensory organs and their brain in the physical world. It is not far-fetched, I say, to think that man's spiritual-soul powers are initially dependent on using the 'ordinary life of the senses and the brain' in order to have a world around them, and that when man, as in sleep, divests himself of the possibility of perceiving through these instruments, they are too low, too weak to really see, really feel and think what they could then perceive.

Such a supposition could only prove to be correct if there really were the possibility of actually drawing forth from their hiddenness the forces which one suspects as weak, for instance if one were able to condense and concentrate within oneself the soul forces which, as it were, are 'thin' in ordinary normal life concentrate them within oneself, so that what a person experiences in sleep would not have to occur when they stop using their senses or their brain, but that there could also be a state similar to sleep, and yet in a certain respect completely opposite to it. This state would have to be similar to sleep in that the person would not be forced, as when falling asleep, but would voluntarily, through his inner powers, through his will, cause himself to withdraw from the senses or from the brain , so that he could be completely awake but not see his surroundings through his eyes, nor perceive anything through the other senses, but bring his eyes and other senses to complete silence. In other words, he would have to be able to completely suppress all sensory activity through his will, and he would have to be able to suppress ordinary thinking, the kind of thinking that is activated in everyday life through ideas about the external physical world. Furthermore, if man could suppress by his own will what otherwise brings him to perceive, he would now be able, in his spiritual and soul essence, not to reach the unconsciousness of sleep, but to concentrate forces that are otherwise weak and thin, so that he can also properly act without his body, outside of his body.

The question arises as to whether what has just been said can be realized in some way. Of course, this can only be answered by the facts that the person evokes in himself, namely simply by the fact that he is able to apply means to his soul through which what has just been characterized occurs. Through the application of such means to the soul, one comes to supersensible knowledge. The path to supersensible knowledge is not one that leads through external means, that requires all sorts of machinations merely existing in the external world, but it is an intimate path of the soul, and everything that has to be done for it takes place in the depths of the life of the soul itself.

Now, if we want to ascend into the worlds that are to explain to us the outer world in which we live, if we therefore want to ascend into the supersensible worlds, there are three stages that we must pass through. A more detailed account of these three stages can be found in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Here, however, they will only be briefly outlined. When describing these three stages, I ask you not to be put off by the words. Some of the words are used today in everyday language for something quite different from what is meant here, and some of them do not sound good in the thinking habits of the present day because they are used for all kinds of things that are recognized imprecisely or unclearly, or even for those that are rightly rejected. This sometimes causes a kind of emotional emphasis when these words are heard. But it is easy to see that this must be so to a certain extent for the things to be discussed here, because our language is there for the external world. Therefore, the words for the designations must be borrowed from the external world and can therefore never fit exactly for what lies outside the external sense world for which language is created.

The first step of higher, supersensible knowledge is imagination, imaginative knowledge. To avoid the misunderstanding that has just been mentioned, I would ask you to understand by imagination only what I will characterize in a moment. The second stage of supersensible knowledge is inspiration, and the third stage is what, when the word is used as we shall characterize it later and not as it is often used inaccurately in ordinary life, can be called true intuition. Outer sense and intellectual knowledge, which we apply in ordinary life and also in the science of the outer world, is related to these three stages of supersensible knowledge as a kind of preliminary stage, so that, when the stages of supersensible knowledge are added, one can speak of four stages of human knowledge.

Now there are many means, and many means must also be applied when it is a matter of rising from ordinary sense and intellectual knowledge to the first stage of supersensible knowledge, imagination, and I will, because there is not would not have time, I will emphasize with all concreteness how the soul must, as it were, use one of the means – you will find others in “How to Know Higher Worlds” – to awaken the slumbering supersensible cognitive abilities in it. One of the means is the so-called meditation.

If we ask ourselves: What is meditation in the spiritual-scientific sense? — we must say: This meditation is the devotion to an idea, to a thought-feeling or to a volitional content in such an intense way and in such a way that it does not happen in ordinary life, but it is suitable for concentrating and condensing forces that are otherwise present in our soul life, as it were, in a diluted form. In this process, it is good, although the opposite is also possible, not to use concepts for such an understanding of the soul that one otherwise gains in ordinary life or in ordinary science. These concepts can certainly be used, but they are not as good to use. The most useful concepts for meditation are allegorical, symbolic concepts. I will develop such a symbolic concept here, which has already been presented to some of the listeners in other contexts. At first it may seem grotesque, paradoxical, that someone would be expected to let what is now being discussed take effect in his soul, but we will characterize later why it should happen. Let us assume that someone forms the idea that he has two glasses in front of him, an empty glass and one partially filled with water. Now he pours the water out of the full glass into the empty one and imagines that, by pouring the water out of the full glass into the empty one, the full glass does not become emptier and emptier, as it does in the external world, but fuller and fuller. This is indeed a paradoxical idea at first, but this idea is meant to be an allegory, and the spiritual researcher should be aware that it is an allegory. It is meant to symbolize, as it were, the nature and essence of human love for our soul. With human love and with everything that falls under the idea of love, it is certainly the case that this source of love is so infinitely deep and so infinitely rich that when we see the fact of love in the world, we must humbly admit at all times: This mystery of love in its true essence is most certainly unfathomable for every soul. And the more we have this sense of unfathomability, the better it is for the content and intensity of our lives. But there is one quality of real love that we can clearly know and emphasize: that is the quality that is symbolically represented to us by the image we have just spoken of.

The person who gives love and acts of love to another person never becomes poorer or emptier through what he does out of love, but always fuller and fuller, richer and richer in his soul life. This quality of love, emphasized, we have before us, as it were, when we imagine the image of two glasses and the pouring of water from one into the other.

We do something similar to what is done in another area of knowledge, and in doing so we arrive at important results for the external sense world. Let us assume that we have a circular plate made of some substance unknown to us. When we look at this circular plate, we can say that what it is as a substance, how the materials are welded together, is initially unfathomable to us. But there is one thing we can do if we want to know something about this disk: we can draw a circle in front of us. Then we have emphasized something about this disk, namely that it is circular, and this emphasized fact is absolutely certain, however little we know about the disk in general. If we think mathematically, we also do it in such a way – and all mathematics is symbolism in this respect – that we highlight some aspects symbolically. This process of creating images that are perceived by the senses and then held fast by the soul is the preparation for imaginative knowledge for soul-spiritual deeds and for soul-spiritual experiences.

If someone were to say: Then the spiritual researcher sets out to bring images and symbols to life in his soul that do not correspond to any truth at all, so he sets out from the outset to think untruth and to bring untruth to life in his soul – then the answer would have to be: But of course the true spiritual researcher is aware that what he brings to life in his soul as symbols does not correspond to any external reality! If for a single moment he could mistake a symbol for some kind of reality, then he would no longer be a human being on the way to supersensible knowledge, but on the way to illusion. These symbols are not meant to represent outer realities, but to live in our soul, to connect and blend with our soul life and to concentrate our soul life on them.

If we are now able to focus so strongly on such a symbol that we use all the power of our soul to let only this symbol live in our soul and to put aside everything that could penetrate us from external impressions, and to put aside all other thoughts , so that we bring only and alone such an image to the center of our consciousness, then such an image is better than an immediate impression of an external reality, because such an impression always draws us back to the external reality with our soul forces, distracting us from ourselves, as it were. But when we have formed a pictorial, arbitrary idea with full awareness that we have something purely constructed, to which we now surrender, it is something that retains reality only insofar as it is borrowed from it. Whatever images we form, we have taken the components for them from external reality. These images are presented in colors, shapes, etc., they are borrowed from external reality, but they do not refer to external reality. This is because it does not happen in external reality that a glass becomes fuller when you pour out the contents.

Such an exercise has the consequence that the soul must concentrate its powers in a completely different way than if it takes what it has otherwise experienced to help it. If the one who wants to go the way into the supersensible worlds has patience and perseverance to practice such concentrations of his soul life again and again, he will be able to have a very definite inner experience. Having this experience is the first step towards imaginative knowledge. He will experience that he has thereby inwardly changed his soul life, and that after some time he can become aware of how such images, such pictures, arise from his soul itself, without him first bringing them about, and arise in such a way that they present themselves to him with all the appearance of reality, as images otherwise only present themselves when we have made external perceptions and formed ideas from them.

In our ordinary external life, our soul's images arise as reflections of external reality, as it were. Through the exercises mentioned, however, images arise from the depths of our soul life, which are only pictures at first, of course. But this is where the elevation of the soul life lies: the soul now feels inwardly strong and can enter a state that is similar to, yet opposite of, the state of sleep. During sleep we abstract from all outer perceptions and also from brain-bound thinking, but we fall into unconsciousness. In imaginative cognition we also abstract from all outer perceptions and from all brain-bound thinking, because we suppress all that. But despite this, the soul does not become empty, does not become unconscious, but images arise from its depths, images that become richer and richer, more and more extensive, and then present themselves to the soul like a new world. This is the world of which it has already been indicated in these lectures that it can be confused by the layman, who is not familiar with such things, and its value can be mistaken for the world of morbid illusions, hallucinations, delusions and the like. But only someone who is ignorant of the facts in this matter, and judges only from the morbid life of the soul, can make such a mistake; for there is an enormous difference between the morbid, even the slightest morbid, representations of this kind, and those that have been rightly won by methodical soul-education.

Anyone who has learned even a little about what are called pathological soul phenomena, hallucinations, illusions or delusions, knows one thing: that those persons who are afflicted by such ideas ultimately believe in the reality of them so firmly that the faith they themselves have in the experiences of the external sense world is nothing in comparison. That is the characteristic of delusions and illusions, that those who are afflicted by them also develop an overwhelming belief in them. There is nothing more difficult than to talk a person out of their delusions – they don't even have to reach the degree of hallucinations, just ordinary delusions, paradoxical ideas. If, for example, a person begins to develop the morbid idea that other people are persecuting him, it is extremely difficult to get rid of this idea by mere persuasion, and it may happen that he constructs the most marvelous logical thought-constructions to prove how right all these delusions are. Man can become obsessed by these ideas, and he firmly believes in the objective reality of such conceptions.

If you now only take into account some of what is said in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, you will see that while man brings himself to let such images and imaginations take effect in his soul, at the same time everything is done through the right schooling of the spirit to ensure that, to the same extent as this world of images blossoms in the soul, the belief in them as in an objective reality is expelled from the soul, so that at no moment can the person training spiritually ever arrive at the idea that what arises in him as imaginations is an objective reality. All schooling of the spirit is wrong that does not at the same time evoke in the soul the clarity: What occasionally enters as marvels such as new worlds, has no objective reality in the way it comes over you. Everything is initially there only to inwardly revitalize the soul, to make it richer in itself and, if we want to use the paradoxical expression, more inwardly real, more fulfilled by the real. And that is the best, indeed the only true attainment of the disciple, that he knows: the imaginations that arise are nothing other than a reflection of his own being.

If the spiritual disciple is able to overcome all belief in the reality, in the objectivity of these imaginations of his, in the same moment when he receives them, then the spiritual training is the right one. Generally speaking, it is difficult for many people to accept the one with the other, because by applying the appropriate exercises in his soul, the human being is, so to speak, endowed with a new world, a world of sometimes magnificent ideas. But for many people this is an extraordinary satisfaction, an extraordinary pleasure, something that fills them with deep sympathy. And anyone who tried to make them believe, even in the slightest, that all this is not an objective reality but only a reflection of their own nature, that it is only their own nature expressing itself more meaningfully than before, would be regarded by them as an enemy, as a blasphemer of the most beautiful hopes of the soul. But it must be understood that such imaginations, as they first appear, are not at all suitable for giving real knowledge of the higher worlds, but that they are only a bridge for the soul. For now a completely different task begins for the soul, the task that gradually leads from imagination to inspiration. A struggle begins, as it were, between the soul and what appears as its imaginations. If I am to characterize how this struggle is waged, I must use a simile from ordinary life.

We experience time and again in ordinary life that we do not have all the contents of our soul in our consciousness. Imagine what it would be like if you suddenly had in your consciousness everything you had ever imagined! You could remember ideas that you might have had decades ago. These rest in the depths of your soul and are called up at some opportunity. That means that in ordinary life one has the possibility to forget and to bring the forgotten out of the soul again. One also has the possibility to bring out of consciousness what the consciousness experiences as ideas and to separate it from our conscious life so that it is somewhere in our soul independently of it. The content of consciousness can thus be lowered somewhere, so that it is then out of consciousness.

We must succeed in doing the same thing – even if it is different in this area – with all our imaginations when we become spiritual researchers. We must be able to extinguish every imagination that arises from our soul at will, we must be able to extinguish it at will and bring it into a state where it is thrown out of our consciousness in the same way as a forgotten idea is thrown out of our consciousness, which we can later retrieve. This is necessary. In the whole realm of our imaginations, we must be masters of every single one of them, and we must be able to make each one of them independent of us.

A conscientious spiritual researcher who undertakes such spiritual research and then conscientiously communicates it to the world, does this often and often, again and again, that he repeatedly pushes down what arises before his soul as an image, which has emerged, again and again, making it unconscious, erasing it. Then it comes again, and now not only through arbitrariness, but through something quite different: through an inner power of which we only become aware at this very moment if we are at the appropriate level. And not all imaginations come up, but we have the clear consciousness that there are imaginations that remain down there in an unknown, that cannot be brought up again, or if they do come up again, they show themselves as such, which we reject.

The images change when they come back to us; they are then also something completely different. They reach us in the same way that perceptions of things in the physical world reach us externally. For the same reasons that we, if we have common sense, can distinguish externally between something dreamed and something non-existent and something real and present, we can recognize in its reality and in its spiritual essence what emerges again as imagination.

The question was once asked, when such things were being discussed: How can a person be sure when his imaginations come back to him, which he first threw out of his subjectivity and handed over to objectivity, only to have them returned to him, how can he be convinced that they represent realities or unreality? We know that there are suggestions and imaginations that are so strong that they overwhelm a person, so that he perceives as reality what is not there at all. A vivid example was given: if someone is so sensitive that, without drinking lemonade, he has the taste of lemonade in his mouth just at the mere thought of it, that is an example of something being there that is not really there. So one can also be subject to a similar deception with what the reborn imaginations are.

Such an objection can always be made. It can also be maintained in a mere dialectic, in a mere play on words, but not in the face of reality. For anyone who develops his soul in the way described comes to the same possibility of distinguishing truth and error as one distinguishes truth and error in the external world, where one has nothing but a healthy soul to distinguish truth and error. Everyone can form a concept of this if they think, for example, of Schopenhauer's philosophy with the sentence: “The world around me is my idea.

I do not underestimate Schopenhauer's philosophy, otherwise I would not have published it myself and written an introduction to it. But great minds often make the simplest mistakes. For the sentence “The world is my imagination” is actually refuted by pointing out a completely trivial fact: if he imagines a piece of steel at 900 degrees Celsius and thinks of his fingers touching it, he will not get burned. He will never get burned by such an imagination, no matter how saturated it is. But if the real steel is in front of him, he will get burned. Thus, not through concepts or philosophies, but through experience, he will be able to distinguish reality from imagination. But there is no other distinction. And there is no other distinction in the supersensible realm either, except that through schooling one has acquired the right way of being with supersensible reality.

Therefore, it is necessary for our consciousness to know that When imaginations first arise, they have been created by our soul itself, and so they are only a reflection of our own nature. A person can have the most beautiful imaginations — at first he does best to interpret them in such a way that he says to himself: What hidden state of mind, what hidden passion, what belief or superstition is there in me that these or those images arise before my soul? If he sees nothing in the pictures but the reflection of himself, then he has acquired the right state of consciousness for walking the paths up into the supersensible world. He must then be able to be a fighter against himself, drawing on the inner strength of his soul. He must be able to uproot what he is often most tempted to believe in, what he loves most, what for many people could already mean bliss, and let it descend into a sphere of forgotten ideas. When he has so unselfishly torn from himself what his soul had first created and given it over to the world outside of himself, it comes back to him again as inspiration. Then he is able to live with those entities, real beings and facts of the supersensible world to which such imaginations belong.

At first, such imaginations appear quite familiar to us because we can explore how they are formed not differently than we ourselves are in our soul, how they are only a mirror image of the soul. One can always prove from the world of imaginations that these imaginations are so and so, depending on who we are and on our state of mind. But when they return, it is indeed different. The same images do not return, but different ones do, new ones that we have not been confronted with at all before, and which announce themselves as reality just as external realities announce themselves as such to us. Only one has a completely different feeling about them.

We face the things of the external world in such a way that we stand outside them. A table we look at is outside of us. It is there, and we cannot enter into things. When we have prepared ourselves in the way described, we immediately have the inner experience of consciousness when we encounter the facts and things of the higher worlds: we could only come to them by giving them something that we have first brought forth from the depths of our soul. It is truly the case that, as when an object lies before me and I want to grasp it: as I have to stretch out my hand and become aware of its reality, so too, through that which I first achieve through the method described, I have to separate what then confronts me as imagination from my own ego, and plunge it into oblivion. But in doing so, I extend my own being into a world that I can then grasp.

In the world, one experiences many refutations of what has just been said. But however much one looks around, however much one wants to familiarize oneself with these refutations, one thing always comes to mind: the people who refute what has just been said have not yet understood it. This is evident from the way they speak about it. And anyone who has understood it would never dream of wanting to refute it. Thus one encounters very frequently this supposed refutation, namely, that one hears it said: But these supersensible perceptions that you then have and that you take for impressions from beings that are supposed to inspire you, do not differ after all from quite ordinary illusions or hallucinations! They differ tremendously in that the true spiritual researcher has a different relationship to them, a relationship that allows him to maintain his common sense in relation to these things just as he does in relation to the things of the external world. Therefore, persons who are most unfit to become real investigators of the spirit are those who are superstitious or gullible, those who are termed visionaries in common parlance.

Those who readily accept a truth will certainly not be able to conduct proper spiritual research. Imagination and faith are the greatest enemies of genuine spiritual research, although what imagination is in art, for example, and what faith in reality is, can ultimately be the most wonderful gifts of spiritual research. For what can be investigated in the spiritual can be transformed into imagination and become a work of art. Likewise, when it is said that what spiritual researchers proclaim is something that only appeals to faith, the sentence must apply: the spiritual researcher certainly believes what he knows. But he would truly be a fool if he did not believe what he knows; yet he believes nothing but what he knows.

It has just been said that we have to tear what we have acquired out of our souls, so to speak, that we have to stretch out spiritual organs through them and get back the spiritual reality through them. As we become more and more immersed in such a soul life, we also grow more and more together with the beings and things of the spiritual world. Then there occurs what happens in our consciousness in such a way that we do not communicate with these beings as one person communicates with another through external organs, but through what speaks directly from being to being, what is directly perceived by the beings, in that our soul is directly with the being that perceives it, so that it is, so to speak, not outside of it but in it. Then intuition sets in, which is actually only the conclusion of supersensible knowledge, that supersensible knowledge that does not lead us into a blurred, nebulous spiritual life, but into a concrete, essence-shaped, reality-filled life. There is no other way to truly come together with the spirit and its existence than to merge with it, as it has now been described. But anything with which we do not merge can never be accepted as proof of the spirit, for there is no other proof than to find one's own experience coinciding with the experience of the spirit. Whoever wants to experience a spiritual being must bring his soul so far that he can let his own experience coincide with the experience of this spiritual being.

The entire process of spiritual experience, as it has been described, can make it clear – it would be of no use to obscure the facts, for they must be stated openly – that man can most easily can recognize pure spirits, if I may use the expression, through imaginative knowledge. These are spirits that only have a spiritual body and no other covering than a soul or spirit. Spiritual entities that do not come into embodiment and do not express themselves in outer natural phenomena can be recognized at the level of imagination, when we do not yet have the ability to penetrate to inspiration. This happens in such a way that the imaginations which we have sunk down into oblivion come back to us in a modified form, and we then recognize them as images for spiritual entities, which are as spiritual as our spiritual-soul life conceived without a body.

On the other hand, one must ascend to inspiration if one wants to recognize entities that are connected, for example, with the elements of nature, with the glow in nature, with the warmth in nature, and so on. In short, to recognize the powers and entities that lie behind the sensory world, which express themselves in the external world and can only be recognized there in their external expressions. This is only possible through inspiration. For this, what we have in our soul must be torn out more intensely, so that it dives down, than in the case of beings who have a mere spiritual existence. And the strongest powers of vision must be applied if one wants to recognize those creative powers, which the outer mind consciousness only addresses as the materialistic forces of nature, but which in truth are creative entities.

If we want to recognize these creative entities that lie hidden behind all external existence, then we must be able to tear our inner soul life out of us as strongly as it is the case when we have just ascended to intuition. That means that to recognize through supersensible knowledge the preceding incarnation of a human being in a concrete case is one of the most difficult tasks, for in a human being as he appears to us in the sense world, we are also dealing with something that manifests itself in natural and bodily effects.

Behind these physical effects lies something like creative powers. But for the spiritual seer, this is hidden behind the physical exterior just as the spiritual beings that are present in lightning and thunder and behind all nature are hidden behind them; and one is hardly easier to find than the other. Therefore, it will be found time and again that people who develop intuition tell all kinds of real illusions from past incarnations. Therefore, it is good to pay as little attention to them as possible. The true spiritual researcher knows that this is one of the most difficult things that even the most developed soul can do at any given moment.

What has been said so far relates to the investigation of the supersensible, of spiritual life and activity. By preparing his soul in the manner described, the soul itself becomes a tool for penetrating into the supersensible worlds. But for the spiritual researcher who wishes to communicate spiritual knowledge of the world, the most significant task is yet to come. For this insight into the spiritual worlds is mostly misunderstood and misjudged by people who do not know it in the right way. And this also belongs to the correct assessment of the paths of supersensible knowledge, that the human being is able to form an opinion about what real spiritual knowledge is and what is either nonsense, charlatanry or self-deception.

It must be said again and again: to research in the spiritual world, to seek out supersensible facts and entities, the soul must educate itself to do so. But when a spiritual researcher who has penetrated into the supersensible worlds in the right way describes his observations correctly, using concepts that correspond to a healthy human understanding and a right feeling for truth, then what the spiritual researcher describes can be understood in the right way by every person who does not allow himself to be prejudiced. The prepared soul is needed to investigate supersensible facts and beings, but never to comprehend them. This is, so to speak, the secret of the presentation of spiritual things: that they can be presented in such a way that every soul can understand them, after they have been investigated by the supersensible powers of knowledge.

Now there is a peculiarity: the human soul needs the results of spiritual research to understand the things we will talk about, for example, in the next lecture on 'Life's Questions and the Riddle of Death'. The human soul thirsts to have ideas and concepts about what goes beyond death, ideas and concepts to truly grasp the essence of the soul. And anyone who wanted to refuse to understand the nature of the soul could well suppress for a while what may be called the yearning of the soul for the solution of the riddles of the world. But then it becomes all the more apparent that we may well deny the soul spiritual nourishment, but we cannot suppress the hunger that arises and can drive the soul not only into despair but also into unhealthiness. Man needs, so to speak, for his welfare and for his safety in life, the results of spiritual research, and to make the soul happy in the right way with the results of spiritual research, for this it is only necessary to have common sense. The natural sense of truth is enough to grasp what the spiritual researcher imparts. As long as it is not investigated, it cannot be said. But when it has been investigated and formulated aright, it can be understood.

The truth of this can best be seen from the fact that the spiritual researcher himself has gained nothing for the happiness of his soul, for everything that he needs for his soul in general, from his “vision”. He has a new world. But this new world is of no use to him as long as he has not developed it to the point where it can be used to judge the soul life that we lead in everyday life, and which longs for the solution of the riddles of the world. What the spiritual researcher can get out of his research is of no use to him, quite unlike the other person to whom it is related and who grasps it with a natural sense of truth and common sense. But as regards what the soul needs for its life, the spiritual researcher has nothing through his research, but only and alone through what then comes out of the research and can be communicated to everyone. The spiritual researcher can only be of use to humanity as a whole if he is able to express the results of his research in such concepts and ideas that they can be grasped by the ideas of an age, provided that the latter are sufficiently unprejudiced and unbiased. This unprejudiced attitude is certainly still largely lacking in the present day because people believe that other ideas, for example those of natural science, contradict the results of spiritual science. But if one looks more closely at the results of spiritual scientific research, one will see everywhere that this is not the case.

But still another thing stands between the spiritual researcher and his audience. Precisely what the spiritual researcher is, in that he can see into the spiritual world, is actually widely misunderstood. People make serious mistakes about the spiritual researcher as such precisely when they want to approach or long for spiritual research. In order not to speak at too great length, I will merely remark that the greatest error, especially among well-meaning people, is that the spiritual researcher, because he has prepared his soul to see into the spiritual world, is regarded as a kind of “higher animal”, as being somewhat ahead of other people. But by such a view, the one who wants to come to supersensible knowledge, blocks the way to it the most. It very often happens that out of a certain goodwill, the view is formed that the spiritual researcher, because he can see into the spiritual world, is therefore superior to other people, is worth more than they are, that it is something particularly desirable for the human soul and its value to be able to see into the spiritual world. That in our time this striving occurs in the widest circles, stems from a fact that can be briefly characterized in the following way.

In earlier times we also find communications from spiritual research that were given to people. But mostly only the results were communicated. The methods were not spoken about as, for example, one can speak about them today, or as it can be spread in a public book today, as it is in «How to Know Higher Worlds?» or in my «Occult Science in Outline». For certain reasons, the methods were only spoken of to a few individuals whose certain qualities were quite certain. This was right for older times because there was feeling and sense and also a sense of truth for a larger audience, in order to allow the results to affect the soul and also to make the soul happy, but not enough to overcome the difficulties for the soul to enter the spiritual world.

Today, souls live differently. Today there is the possibility of a completely different way of thinking. Let us just compare how people today can think quite differently, not only through the advanced natural sciences, but also through the ever-advancing education that people learn to think quite differently than was the case in the past. As a result, the age has acquired the ability to judge things better. Therefore, things can be communicated. But this is only just beginning. Therefore, it is inevitable that errors will arise.

It is such an error to regard the spiritual researcher as something special. But man is never, by increasing his knowledge, as it has been described, something that stands out above humanity, which cannot have such knowledge. Just as the chemist is no different from the other people because he knows chemistry, so the spiritual researcher is no different from the other people. It is not through such things that the value of a person is determined, but it is determined within certain narrower limits by intellectuality, by the power of healthy thinking. One person is worth more if he can think well than another who can think badly. And in the most comprehensive sense, a person's value is determined by his morality, by the fact that he performs moral acts and has a moral state of mind. He is not ahead by virtue of a particular training of the soul, but solely by virtue of his intellectual and moral qualities.

For this reason the bad habit, which obscures the paths to supersensible knowledge, should be completely eradicated in those who wish to approach such knowledge: that one considers the spiritual researcher, who is able to see into the spiritual world, to be a special authority because he can do so, and regards him as something special. This gives rise to a belief in authority and a blind following, which are bad enough in other fields, but are most disastrous in the field of spiritual scientific research, for experience shows the following for the practice of spiritual research.

Those who, in the ordinary course of life, have acquired sound, straightforward, logical thinking, just as other people do in the ordinary course of life, also carry this logical, healthy thinking into the supersensible world and are thus able to judge what is real, what is right and what is true, and they alone can then pass on correct judgments to their fellow world from what they recognize. It is not by looking into the supersensible world that one forms correct judgments, but by going into it with correct intellect, with good logic. No matter how much a fool can see in the spiritual world, who sees a whole heap of all possible spiritual things, because he has in some way trained his soul for it, will also tell nothing but nonsense about what it is like in the spiritual world. Whether one comes to the truth depends on one's ability to judge. Therefore, even if a person with good sense is unable to see into the spiritual world, he is always able to judge whether what someone is saying, no matter how much he has “seen” it in the spiritual world, is nonsense or whether it has substance. If someone shows that he cannot think well, that he cannot connect things properly, then, instead of listening to the spiritual researcher, he should rather stand guard over his common sense, for then he will always know whether something comes from a wise or a foolish mind.

Even more important in this regard is the moral state of the soul. Anyone who approaches the spiritual world with bad passions, bad feelings and emotions, but especially with vanity and ambition, will see what is presented to him only in a distorted and untrue way. He will see the worst aspects of the spiritual, and these will present themselves to him in such a way that they do not tell him the truth, but create illusions. The spiritual seer's moral state determines what he can see in the spiritual world. To that extent, spiritual vision itself is not suitable for making people some kind of authority. Rather, we have to pay attention to the way in which spiritual research is prepared, and we must know that we will cause the greatest harm if we do not keep watch with our common sense and only look at what can be objectively judged.

This is the way to judge supersensible knowledge on the part of those who long for such knowledge for the salvation and happiness of their soul. If man relates to the spiritual researcher in this way, then truly this relationship of the world to the spiritual researcher is no different than the relationship of the world to other sciences. Just as not everyone can go to the observatory or the laboratory to conduct research there, so too, although a certain deepening into the spiritual world is always possible today, relatively few can see into it. But this is not necessary either, because the fruits of spiritual knowledge can be understood by unbiased comprehension when they are communicated. This can become the right relationship between the spiritual researcher and his audience, and this is also always the right one in the coexistence of people.

The more we succeed in not taking the spiritual researcher as an authority, but rather relying on our common sense, examining everything, and the more we measure everything the spiritual researcher says against how we see it when we compare it to life, when we apply our common sense in other words, the more we do that, the more we stand on healthy ground. We may well say that spiritual science, insofar as the world needs it, is accessible to every human being today, because it is comprehensible, even if one cannot see into the spiritual worlds. We are already at the point today where it is actually no longer denied to any soul to go the way into the spiritual world. Our age demands that people become more and more convinced that the path into the supersensible worlds can also be taken. This is the right thing to do, in contrast to what leads people to a blind belief in authority. But only what is right has value for the happiness and salvation of the soul.

These are a few suggestions regarding the paths to supersensible knowledge, to that knowledge that really leads us into a spiritual world that lies behind our sensory world and that also enables us to comprehend this spiritual world. The spiritual researcher himself has something of the spiritual world for his personality, for his being, only when he can not only see but can also grasp what he has seen. For everything seen is still of no value if it is not grasped. But when it is grasped, grasped by the characterized common sense and the natural sense of truth, then it digs itself into our soul, connects with it, and our soul feels directly what is in it, as the soul, when it comes before a picture, directly feels what is in the picture, even if it cannot make this picture itself. Just as it is not necessary to be a painter to benefit from a picture, it is equally unnecessary to penetrate into a knowledge that is also necessary for the soul to the highest degree, for example, of immortality or of the passage through repeated lives on earth, or to penetrate this knowledge sufficiently to be able to form these cognitions oneself in spiritual vision — although it would be good if more and more people were to penetrate into spiritual vision. But this is conquered by time, and more and more people will also do so because the necessary, insuperable need will arise to live one's way into the supersensible world. Souls will be more and more compelled to become seers, so to speak, to really grow together with the spiritual world.

But this gives - be it understood self-seeing, be it understood seeing of the other - the possession of supersensible truths, of supersensible knowledge, that our soul knows how we recognize through outer science, how all the outer substances that are present in the whole universe, so that we are embedded in the same that is spread throughout the whole universe. In this way, through spirit-comprehending research, he also learns to recognize that in everything that surges up and down in his consciousness or subconscious, he is connected to a world of spiritual beings that are truly more real than the substances with which the body is connected.

Thus, little by little, man feels the fruits of spiritual research in the peace of his soul, and also feels the power to work and be active in the spiritual universe, in the God- and spirit-imbued universe. But that is what makes man know what he is and have the necessary knowledge for him: that he lives and feels connected to and knows that he lives, resting and active, thinking, feeling and willing in the spirit-imbued universe. And that is what the soul cannot do without, what it seeks when it does not have it for a certain period of time. The soul needs this if it is not to become desolate within itself and, through this desolation, become incapable of working with humanity, so that it would not only despair of the divine but also fall into decadence. But the consciousness of belonging together with the supersensible worlds underlies what instinctively felt in Goethe when he says:

Were the eye not sun-like,
The sun could never behold it;
Were not in us the power of the Godhead,
How could we be enraptured by the Divine?

Well, the eye is solar! The same power that is in the sun is in the eye. Thus, as the ancient philosophers said, like can be recognized by like. There is a divine in man, the whole world is imbued with divinity: thus, the inner divine can grasp the outer divine. But Goethe also recognized that the opposite of this is a truth.

Schopenhauer, although he makes the whole world an appearance of will, is unable to see that what is within us is not only necessary for the knowledge of the external world around us, but that, conversely, the external world is also necessary for the existence of the internal world. According to Schopenhauer, the sun only exists because we have an eye. This is how the peculiar philosophy arose that regards the world as soundless, as cold, and so on, and that all this only begins when the human organs enter the world. But Goethe knew the right thing: that not only do we see things by having eyes, we hear sounds by having ears, but that an eye can only arise because the sun is there. From a once eyeless entity, man has become a seeing being because light fills space and brings forth the eye from an organism that did not yet have an eye. The power of the sun created the eye through the light it spread. So it is not important that we carry the divine within us and, for example, in Fexerbach's sense, we only project the divine that we have first created within us into the world, but we must know that we would not have this “sense of God” within us at all if the divine-spiritual did not fill the world and create a spiritual organ in us, just as the outer sun created the outer eye.

Therefore we can say: The consciousness of the belonging together of soul and world, which gives the soul strength and power and lets it rest and be active in the spiritual universe, is composed of two things, two things of which we can characterize one with the beautiful Goethean saying:

If the eye were not itself the sun,
The sun could it never see;
Were not in us the power of God himself,
How could we be delighted with the Divine?

But it is entirely in the Goethean sense when we, complementing this one-sided truth with the other, which only makes it the full truth, add the other saying, which may be:

If the world were not endowed with the sun,
How could the eyes of beings flourish?
If existence were not God's revelation,
How could people come to be filled with God?

Those who reflect on such questions of human mental life as those on our winter program this year, on character, conscience, on the healthy and sick soul, on life and death, mysticism and so on, those who reflect on such questions will perhaps be able to be reminded again and again of a saying of an old sage from the fifth century BC, Heraclitus, whom is called the “Dark” because of the significantly deep nature of his thinking. He, Heraclitus, spoke the words:

You cannot fathom the depths of the soul, even if you wanted to travel all the roads. The soul has such deep reasons.

We are reminded of this depth of the soul in many ways when dealing with matters of the soul. But only slowly and gradually, over the course of this winter, can we, so to speak, engage with the deeper questions of the soul life.

Today and tomorrow, we will deal with phenomena of human inner life that are perhaps no less interesting precisely because they are closer to the most everyday and because one thinks about them less. It is in such phenomena that the noblest and highest core of human inner life, which we call self-consciousness, is obscured for certain periods of time in a certain relationship, obscured by all kinds of feelings, but mainly by affects.

Today we will deal with one of these affects, which plays a significantly profound role in the human soul. We will deal with the force within us that underlies anger and everything related to it. When speaking of the soul qualities and expressions of the human soul, one can ask: How is it that the human soul, which is supposed to lift itself ever higher and higher intellectually and morally through its self-awareness, is repeatedly thrown back by impulses of the kind that anger is? Is a quality of the soul like anger a mere hindrance on the path of human beings upwards to the great ideals of life? And in a practical sense, too, such questions are of the greatest importance in our immediate lives.

The educator, anyone who is entrusted with the care of another person, will readily admit and will recognize how important it is to know what role an emotion like anger plays in the soul's life. Once we recognize such a thing, we can treat everything connected with it in a correspondingly tactful and wise manner. However, our present consideration of the soul life will encounter the greatest difficulties in dealing with such a question as the meaning of anger. Only a deeper penetration into the undercurrents of existence, into the winding paths of the spiritual life, allows us to provide some insights into such a question. So today we will first have to allow something to enter our soul that those of our revered listeners who are present at these lecture cycles have heard from a certain quarter, who have been present more often at these lecture cycles.

But it will be necessary again and again to allow the unique nature of the human being to enter our soul if we want to understand human expressions and effects of force. From a spiritual point of view, the mission of anger is to be considered today. Here we must consider man, not only as he presents himself to our outer senses, to the intellect that is bound to the instrument of the brain, and which is limited to processing the impressions that direct sense observation provides. For such a spiritual-scientific consideration, that which the senses see and which the human intellect, conscious in this sense, can comprehend, is only a part of the human being. That part of the human being that we can perceive with our senses – external science is only concerned with the physical body insofar as it is a science of nature, and in a certain respect it is right with this limitation – spiritual science calls the physical human being. But beyond that, it distinguishes the higher nature of the human being. What we call the physical body has the same composition of substances and forces as everything we call the mineral kingdom, the seemingly dead nature around us. The same world of forces is in our physical body as it is out there in the world.

But there is also a question that the ordinary human mind can ask and to some extent answer, namely, whether these forces and substances that are at work in the human body and that are the same as those in the rest of mineral nature act in the same way as they do in the rest of mineral nature. The answer is no, they do not. When the human physical body – and the physical body of any living being, for that matter – is left to itself, it follows the laws of the mineral world. We see this when the physical body is left to itself at the point of death. We see the way in which the composition of the physical body works when it is left to its own physical and chemical forces. That which, from the beginning of physical life to the end, fights against the physical and chemical forces so that they cannot follow their own path, which they only follow in death, we call the first link of higher human nature – do not be put off by expressions, stick to the concepts – we call the etheric body or the life body. With this, we ascend to the first supersensible link of human nature.

Even for someone who merely employs logic and the instrument bound to the physical, such a life body can be reasonably inferred. For someone who stands on the ground of spiritual science, this life body is a fact of the same reality as the world of sounds and colors. And the spiritual researcher can say to those who reply: “This etheric or life body does not exist at all.” It is not perceptible to the ordinary senses, just as color is not perceptible to someone who is blind. But it exists for the person who has developed the corresponding powers in his soul so that he can really perceive this life body as a fact.

All these things can be discussed in the course of winter in a different context. Today it must be left at that. — Then we come to the third link of the human being, which is called the astral body. This astral body is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of urges, desires and passions. This astral body is what humans have in common with animals, just as they have the etheric or life body in common with plants and the physical body in common with minerals. For reason, this astral body, if it is to make use of logic in an unbiased way, can be something that can be logically deduced. For spiritual research, it is a fact, something that is just as present for the perception of the spiritual researcher as color is for the eye and sound is for the ear. Thus, in the astral body we have a second link in the supersensible human being.

And if we ascend further in the composition of human nature, we come to what he no longer has in common with the other realms of nature around him, what we call human self-consciousness or its expression, the ego. This ego is that which, so to speak, every sensible human nature is surprised by when it perceives it for the first time. I would like to quote again the beautiful saying of Jean Paul, when he was still a boy and stood in the courtyard of his parents' house and felt the 'I' for the first time [gap]. From now on, the question of God and immortality was understandable to him. It would be so easy to arrive at the human 'I', at an understanding of it, if one were to say to oneself: There is something expressed in the I that is distinguished from all other concepts or names by the very fact that it is spoken. Anyone can call a table a 'table' and a chair a 'chair'. But when you say the word 'I', it denotes something that only refers to itself, but that has no meaning and cannot be applied to your higher self-awareness when it is spoken by another. Your “I” can never sound sweet to your ear if it is not meant to signify your own soul. This is truly the expression for the “shrouded sanctuary” of the human soul. This is the expression that, as in a short monologue, describes the essence of the human being within, or what can also be described as the divine in human nature.

We have thus placed the four aspects of the human being: physical body, etheric body, astral body and I, before your soul. When we look at the person as he stands before us, these four elements are what constitute his interaction, his mutual interpenetration. What is significant is that the human being is not a closed being, that he is not a being who is finished at any given moment, but a being who is in the process of living development, a being who progresses from this or that stage of progress to another stage.

What then is the nature of this human development? What is the interplay between these aspects of the human being, which we can call the wonder of human development? They interact in the way that presents itself to our minds when we consider what an astral body might look like in a person at a low level of cultural development, and in a person at a higher level of cultural development, in that he does not live in his wild desires and instincts, that he does not desire and crave everything that comes to him in terms of the senses, but that he has purified his urges and desires through the ideals of moral life. You can place two people side by side: the one whose senses are still covetous, who still desires what his senses present to him; and the other, with fine tact and a sense of duty, who shows that he has undergone a refinement of his soul, has purified and cleansed it.

What is this purification based on? It is based on the fact that the human being works from his ego on the other members of his being. The ego has done this, which has become out of instincts, desires and passions. The ego has purified the astral body, transformed instincts, desires and passions, made them into something different from what they were before. In spiritual science, the part of the astral body that the ego has already transformed – insofar as the ego has worked with full consciousness on the transformation of drives and passions, on its moral perfection, on the transformation of the astral body – is called the “spirit self”, or, in an expression of oriental philosophy, the “manas” of the human being.

In general, we can say that in present human development, the human ego has only just reached the point of working on the manas or spirit self, consciously working. In the future, the high spiritual ideal for human beings will be to consciously work not only on the astral body, on the purification of passions, instincts and desires, but also on the transformation of the etheric or life body. Today, human beings can only work unconsciously on this etheric body. What he once transformed in his life body is called the spirit of life or Budhi in spiritual science.

And now an even higher ideal in the sense of spiritual science arises before the human soul; this is an ideal in which the human soul today, when it has a sense of it, can be overcome by a sense of vertigo at the height and grandeur and sublimity of the future of human development. When man is able to work consciously on the physical body, then he will also rework the physical body from his ego or self-awareness.

Today, a person can only do this unconsciously. But you can see it happening in everyday life. You just have to look at life impartially. Imagine a person who feels shame, that is, he feels something in his soul as if he wanted to hide something about himself; a blush of shame rises to his face. What does that mean? A purely inner experience has triggered a physical process, a redistribution of the blood. It is the same when a person turns pale. The blood then moves from the surface to the inner parts. This is a process in the physical body that takes place unconsciously. What a person consciously works on in his physical body is referred to in spiritual science as the Atma or spiritual man.

If we describe the course of human development in this way, we can say that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an I. If the I transforms something of the astral body, the spirit self or manas arises. If something of the etheric body is transformed, the life spirit or budhi arises. And if the physical body is transformed, then the spiritual man or Atma arises.

But that is not the only thing that comes into consideration. When a person can also look at his ideal, in which he has completed the transformation of the astral body, then he has unconsciously already worked on this astral body from his I. He already has something within him that can be described by saying that the I lives in the astral body. That part of the astral body that is not consciously transformed by the I, but which - as we shall see is correct - is already an instrument of the I, is called the sentient soul by spiritual science.

But the etheric or life body has already been transformed to a certain extent by the I, and today it already serves the I as an instrument in a certain way. The I has already sent its power into the etheric or life body. Insofar as this body is merely an etheric body, it is connected with the forces of reproduction and growth. But insofar as the etheric body is transformed by the I, we call it the mind soul or emotional soul of the human being.

But the physical body of the human being is also transformed and becomes an instrument of the I. This physical body of the human being, insofar as it is an instrument of the I, serves precisely as a sensory organ; through the wonderful apparatus of the sensory organs, it serves the consciousness of the I. That is why we call that part of the physical body that is capable of being an instrument of the ego the consciousness soul, which thus dwells in the physical body.

Thus, in the sense of spiritual science, we first have three bodily members: the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body; then three soul members in which the ego lives to a certain extent: the sentient soul , the soul of feeling, and the soul of mind; and finally, by making use of these three members, the I works them over in a conscious way to become the spiritual self, the spirit of life and the spiritual human being.

This is a meaningful scheme. But it is not just a scheme, it is an active force. Only the one in whom it becomes so alive that he sees the forces of the individual human members interacting, comprehends human development. Yes, this human nature is deep, deep, as Heraclitus correctly said. Thus we see the human ego at its work, and within the human body we see the transformation of the inner soul-elements of the human being. If we want to understand this ego, we must ask ourselves, above all, what is the present stage of the human ego, what has it achieved, conquered by working, partly unconsciously, on its astral body? What it has conquered lies in what we can describe with the words: The I makes the human being a being capable of judgment, a being that judges from within, be it judgments of the intellect, feelings or will; this makes the human being a being capable of judgment.

This says a great deal when one says that it makes a human being a being capable of judgment, a being that can think, feel and want from reasonable judgments. It is said that one really learns to distinguish between what is the sensation of a physical being and what is the impulse of a human being. When we look at animals, we can find all the qualities of the human soul in animals to a certain extent. We find sympathies and antipathies in animals, even what is analogous to one of the highest feelings of the human soul, an analogy to love. We find analogies to what we call human intellectual activity. It is easy to observe in the animal kingdom how everything works similarly to that in humans; but who could fail to recognize the difference between what is present in humans and what is present as a quality in animals? We can say with certainty, based on the animal's organization and form, what it will be driven to do in this or that case. Necessity is quite different in the case of a human being who ponders the question: Should you do this or should you not do it? He weighs it up before coming to a decision. Only those who do not look closely at the matter can fail to see the enormous difference. In the course of his development, man has acquired the power of judgment through the interplay of his development, which has just been characterized.

If we want to place before our soul the highest ideal of this discerning human being in relation to an area, in relation to human coexistence, in relation to the way two people relate to each other, two things arise. If we look at the judgment that confronts people, it is the concept of justice and the concept of love. When the human being places the concept of justice before him, he will be able to say to himself: Justice is something that can be regarded as a higher ideal. This means harmony, balance in life's circumstances. One need only think of good and evil, right and wrong. But what is it that afflicts the human soul when it utters the word “justice,” when it surrenders to the concept of justice? It is something cold that the human soul experiences in its feeling when it surrenders to this concept. It feels justice as a necessity, as something that must be, as something that man must submit to based on his sound judgment.

The soul feels differently when it contemplates the concept related to justice, so to speak, the concept of love. Here the soul does not feel coldness, but inner warmth, something of what elevates human nature, because it must say to itself: That is only a truly human ideal when justice is no longer practiced because it is perceived as a necessity, but because one loves what is right, because one loves to do what should be done.

Thus, justice and love stand side by side as a cold ideal that is nevertheless recognized as necessary, and as a warm ideal that fills our soul with inner fire. And in them is contained what the human soul sees as the two ideals when it asks itself: In what direction must it develop its power of judgment first? That through her judgment, through her deliberations, through what lives in her, she experiences the coexistence of human beings in such a way that it is in the sense of justice and love. - In this sense, man looks up to justice and love as two lofty ideals of development, and he sees, enclosed in the interplay of his forces, that which leads to justice and love in coexistence.

That is how it is. But one cannot understand human development, or development in general, without another feeling, which provides insight into the actual nature of development. Development is something that, if it is to flourish, must include something else. And this other process can perhaps best be described by the word maturing. Maturation over time is something that cannot be separated from the concept of development. And we understand each other best when we apply the concept of maturation to the concept of the human ego itself.

Take the life of a single human being, take it in the sense that a serious observer of existence should take it. Is it possible to expect the same of a person in their third year as in their twelfth or sixteenth year? That is impossible. The same cannot possibly be expected of a developing being when the interplay of forces is such that it is developing. There is a time for every stage of development, and it is detrimental to the being's overall development to transgress this law of maturation. It is also detrimental to the individual's human development between birth and death to expect something of the ego at one stage of life that should only be expected at a different stage of life, according to the degree of maturity. But it is also unhealthy to expect a person at a lower stage of development, who has not yet sufficiently purified his passions and instincts, to do things that can only be expected of such an ego in a truly fruitful way after it has gone through the various stages of purification. This is how it is when the human ego sees such significant ideas as justice and love as ideals and says to itself: You must rise up — so that they work like two great guiding stars in the life of man. But the path must be traveled in the right way. If we now consider not the individual life, but the whole of human life over the course of centuries and millennia, how the human ego returns and works on the human being, then we will have a complicated fact before us, which is very compelling to draw attention to the maturing process. If – and this can only be stated today, but will be touched on from various points of view during the winter lectures – if the human being not only lives once between birth and death, but returns again and again, then what spiritual science recognizes as a necessary consequence of development, that the I does not live only once between birth and death, but returns again and again, then it is [conceivable] that spiritual science recognizes as a necessary consequence of development, that the I does not live only once in this life between birth and death, but undergoes successive embodiments.

During all these embodiments, the I works in such a way that it has worked in the distant past on the astral body, etheric body and physical body, so that the sentient soul, mind or mind soul and consciousness soul; let us continue to work so that spirit self, spirit of life and spiritual man will arise. The forces of this development permeate each other in interplay and unite in the ideals of justice and love. This work is done by the “I”. Thus, if we take the word experience in the right way, we must understand that at every moment of life – if we speak of different embodiments, in every single embodiment – the soul acts on the other members of the body in the right way, that the “I” works on every work on every single development, that it does not do too much in terms of acquiring justice and love; for the ego should never go further in relation to what is capable of judgment within it, and it cannot go further than its degree of maturity makes possible.

But what is the regulator in this relationship? What ensures that the ego does not go beyond the degree of maturity at certain stages? Do we understand what the regulator is, what ensures that the ego can at least do the right thing at each stage? What is said here can only be understood if we turn our attention to something that is becoming clearer and clearer to people through spiritual science: If we turn our attention to what man's knowledge, his insights, his ideas and concepts (to name briefly the means by which we know the world) give him, we see that these are not found in man alone, but are poured out over the whole world.

Man tries to understand the world by forming concepts and ideas about the world. Just as you cannot scoop water out of a glass that does not contain water, you cannot scoop wisdom out of a world that is not full of wisdom. Man draws wisdom out through his judgment, through his capacity for knowledge. He comprehends the plant because it is constructed in a way that is full of wisdom. He forms concepts. It is nonsense and foolish to believe that man could form a concept about the plant if the plant itself were not built according to this concept. What man draws out of the world is poured out into the world and underlies things. In the human soul, what is poured out in the rest of the world or in nature outside appears in a different form as wisdom.

If you want to visualize this, all you need to do is think about the following. It took a long time in the development of mankind for man to reach a certain stage of historical development, let us say, to produce paper. Try to imagine the sum of thoughts and work that were necessary to produce paper so that it could enter human development. One could say, if one wanted to speak grotesquely, that within the wasp world this paper was not invented thousands of years ago, but much longer before, because the wasp nest is built from the same material that we have as paper. We have real paper there. What man produces in his materials is worked out into the outer nature.

As such stages, you can realize how what man has acquired as wisdom is poured out into the world. The world is permeated by wisdom and built up of judgments. Wisdom is a rediscovery of judgments that are spread like a net over all existence in nature. Wisdom-filled furnishings are not only to be found in what human consciousness works out, what human beings shape in their souls; wisdom-filled furnishings can be found everywhere. They were already there when the human ego could not yet consciously work. And it was this wisdom-filled work that made it possible for the human ego to work on the physical body, the etheric and astral bodies, even before it was able to work consciously. But this wisdom must also be out there in life today. The human ego is not yet so far advanced that it can find the right thing all by itself, that which would correspond to a much higher power of judgment.

What I want to say becomes clear when you consider the following. Imagine a person standing before a child that he wants to educate. The child does something that it should not do. It becomes necessary for an action to take place; it can be punishment or something else. Such a thing is possible. One possibility is that the educator says that the pupil is doing something incorrectly. The educator dislikes this, and it is possible that he may become angry and that this anger may develop to a certain degree, in an impulse to a certain action. That is one possibility. The other possibility, however, is that the educator, although he has seen the injustice and felt displeasure, remains calm, feels composure and, based on mere judgment and a certain maturity of soul, does what is necessary as a punishment or otherwise in the case in question. Outwardly, the same can happen. The difference lies in the soul being filled with anger one time and with composure the other.

When we consider this difference, we will ask ourselves: Why is there anger in the one case and composure in the other? Would the person who looks at what the child is doing with anger be able to do the right thing in the case in question because of the maturity of his or her self? If you look at life, you will say to yourself that as a rule he will not be able to do the right thing. It takes a certain degree of maturity of the ego to do the right thing despite not feeling any emotion and remaining cold and calm, but still loving the matter at hand and loving what should be. A certain degree of maturity is required for this. And every person stands at a certain point in relation to this maturity. The human ego cannot always have the degree of composure that enables it to do the right thing despite not feeling any emotion. To do so, the human ego must develop to a certain level. What would the educator do if he were calm and did not feel anger? Then the educator would stand by with his composure, do nothing, and leave the matter be.

The wise order of the world ensures that the I is guided towards what is right, at least to some extent, by forces other than those to which it has not yet matured. Before the I is mature enough to act from serenity, it acts out of affect, out of anger. Here we see that in the course of development, the human ego does work on the human astral body, so that in the course of development the astral body develops in such a way that composure blossoms; but as long as the ego is not yet able to attain this maturity, it does not want to work on this composure, then the human being should be driven by something within him to do something. One such mechanism, and a very important one at that, which allows the ego to mature within the astral body and yet still drives it to enter into a certain relationship with its fellow human beings before it is mature, is anger. Just as, for example, the outer nature in its plant kingdom, in its animal kingdom, is wisely arranged, so is everything that we can call the astral nature of human beings wisely arranged. It is arranged in such a way that people enter into a relationship with each other before they can build themselves up completely on the basis of their ideals of justice and love, using their power of judgment. The forerunner of serenity is anger.

In development, it must be the case that what leads up to higher levels of development can also lead to error. If man did not now enter into error, he could not work his way to the truth. So even if anger gets out of hand, if we consider it in its full significance, we can see how it works. Take a young person in his youth, who is not yet able to develop certain ideals; but he sees this or that injustice in his environment; he comes to what one can call a noble anger. And what one can call noble anger at what he cannot approve of, that works in him to help the soul mature into working out in itself what the great ideals of life can become. Like a mother substance, the self, left to its own devices, is made mature through qualities such as anger. That the self is made mature can also be seen from other facts. Because the young man never sees his ideals realized in his environment in the case of things that he cannot yet have any concept of, he repeatedly feels the same noble anger at what displeases him. When people look into life, they can perceive that all the noble surges of anger in youth later come out as love and gentleness. He who views life in its entirety sees the transformation of youthful anger into the love and gentleness of old age.

Thus we see how love and justice, which stand before the human soul as lofty ideals, but which the ego must mature — for it takes an enormous effort to develop the system of human justice and the truth, the real of love, which is not burdened by clouded feelings, we see how justice and love, these high ideals, have set up wrath as a champion in the human social order. It is wrath's [mission] to prepare love.

This is understandable when you consider that what is supposed to become judgment in reality threatens to degenerate into extremism. If we consider the various embodiments, we can say that what a person brings with them in the way of justice and love goes back to a time when they were not yet able to recognize what the right balance should be, when they had no idea of the true feeling of love, but when what arises is anger. Like the dawn of the sun, so shines the nobility of anger, the noble anger that precedes love. In wisdom, the powers that rule the world have placed the nobility of anger in the astral body before a full consciousness of love can be developed, before love can become full justice in the soul.

In times when things were examined more closely than today, it was possible to determine what was in the soul members just by their names. If we go back to the great Greek philosopher Plato, we will find that Plato calls that which we call the consciousness soul, the reasonable soul. But what we call the intellectual or mind soul must be endowed with the ideals of justice and love, and Plato calls this the wrathful soul. What we call the sentient soul, Plato calls the desires soul.

If we turn to Aristotle, we find that he uses similar terms in a similar way; we can also see that they correspond exactly to the expressions of spiritual research. Why does Plato call the soul that precedes the consciousness soul, the wrathful soul? He calls it that because not only wrath but also all wisdom-filled institutions are written into this soul, because he found the wisdom that was poured out into the world also poured out in the human astral body, precisely as a wrathful soul.

In the case of those who have looked more deeply into the nature of the soul, we find that the essence is already indicated in the name. The person who, from the point of view of spiritual science, looks at what passes through the ages as legends and myths of the peoples, as a transmission of the peoples, makes a remarkable discovery in his soul. What might be called the “science of the green table” can answer when you ask where this or that myth comes from: “That is folk poetry.” Only someone who is unfamiliar with folk poetry can speak of folk poetry in this way. But anyone who delves deeper and shines a light into this or that saga or myth will make the remarkable discovery that it contains great wisdom. Before humanity was educated by logical judgment, by pondering and counting, as is right today, before this ability to judge led to the contemplation of truth, another, clairvoyant recognition led to it, to contemplate the truth. So the myths and legends are something quite different than they initially appear. They become an expression of profound truths.

A saga that leads us into the depths of the truth that interests us today was processed by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus in his “Prometheus Bound”. When we delve into the life of this poet, who lived two thousand years before us, we are seized by the world view that permeates his poetry, the world view that is poured out in the Greek myths, the world view of the Greek people.

I could fill the entire lectures over the winter if I wanted to tell you what there is to say about “Prometheus”. This poem ties in with the myths that the name Prometheus encompasses. You are all familiar with the Prometheus myth. Let us briefly recall it. When the Greeks looked back in time, they saw ancient generations of gods at work within our earthly nature, within our earthly and cosmic evolution. Today it is not intended to explain what is meant by this. Imagine that they are personifications of natural forces, or whatever and however you want; that is not the point today. The Greeks saw two ancient dynasties of gods: Uranus and Gaea; these ancient dynasties of heavenly gods, who brought about the first processes on our Earth, were replaced by the dynasty of Titans; the dynasty of Titans to which Cronus and Saturn belonged. Kronos was the son of Uranos. We are told that the Titans, with Kronos at their head, seized power and overthrew the old Uranos. We can assume from the outset – and this is pointed out, and it is true – that according to Greek belief, certain forms of life existed in ancient times that were subject to different rulers then than in later epochs of development. Anyone who is aware that the forms of events change over time will admire the ingenious view of Greek myth, which expresses the beginning of [earthly] development, that interplay of simple primal forces of the world, through the marriage between Uranus and Gäa, and then expresses a later epoch by saying that the Titans appear. The whole face of the earth changes, so that other forms of life, of happening and becoming are there. Thus, in the Titans, we have a second generation of gods, forces that work within the development of the earth. Why is the generation of Titans replaced by the generation whose leader is Zeus? He is, so to speak, a member of the youngest of the generations of gods. He therefore overthrew Kronos and his followers into an unknown world, a hidden world to which the Titans belong, and in which Zeus is the one who exercises world domination.

In Zeus's fight against the Titans, Prometheus, a descendant of the Titans, sided with Zeus. It was he who helped Zeus to achieve his goal. But Prometheus experiences a bitter disappointment, so to speak. He helped Zeus to achieve world domination. Within what the Greeks imagined as a succession of these three corporations of the gods: Uranus, Titans and Zeus's generation, human beings developed into various abilities, they developed into certain stages. When Zeus had taken over the rule, human beings had developed to the point where they could absorb the impressions of their surroundings into their consciousness.

If we understand this Greek myth in the right way, if we really engage with it in a spiritual-scientific way, then we find that the Greek genius, where it expresses itself mythically, takes the concept of development into account in a wonderful way. People who can see what is a few steps in front of their noses believe that as long as man and his consciousness have moved up from the animal to the human form in the sense of today's natural science, they have always been as they are today. So human consciousness is also in a state of development. It has only gradually taken on the forms it has today.

If we go back on the basis of research that is no longer accessible to external natural science, but [rather] to spiritual science, we would come to ancient stages of human consciousness where judgment and deliberation were not yet present. Instead, however, there was an image consciousness, an image consciousness that works differently, that works in such a way that when a person encounters an impression, an image arises within him. He knew directly through the images, through the impressions that the image made on his feelings, he knew in an old, dim consciousness that is preserved like an old relic, like a traditional heirloom in a dream. An old, dim, clairvoyant consciousness was there in those days. It was only into this consciousness that man first acquired the ability to conceptualize. Everything was in development; above all, human consciousness.

This is expressed in the fact that Zeus has taken power. Consciousness increasingly makes way for what is to develop into judgment and deliberation. The sure insight that was conveyed by images was lost. Man only began with the first facts of calculating and counting and considering. People were clumsy. They became dull in relation to their old consciousness. They could no longer grasp their environment. They lived in an almost inhuman way. But out of this dullness there developed more and more that which, as we have indicated, was present in the first beginnings and which worked in man in such a way that it gradually brought him to judge, brought him to posit out of his ego into the world something that was not there before. Call it power, call it essence. The Greek genius expresses it by saying: Prometheus works in human nature that sense which makes it possible for human nature to process the individual things of life into art productions by means of tools. Prometheus is the great benefactor of mankind who, in the name of love, has given humanity what it will continue to develop ever further. Zeus, that is the disappointment that Prometheus experiences, would only have developed in man what is independent of judgment, independent of calculation and deliberation, what has not led to the arts. Zeus had left man without fire.

Travelers will tell you that higher animals, for example monkeys, were spectators and saw travelers warming themselves by the fire. If the travelers leave the fire while it is still burning, they will also warm themselves; but what they do not do is to bring wood and make a fire themselves. This is closely related to the making of fire, to the foresight to bring about something that will serve one later. The foresight is interpreted in Prometheus, who is the forward thinker. The becoming is interpreted by the Greek genius in the form of Prometheus. In Zeus, we see that which is not active in the human ego, that which does not make the human being capable of judgment, but which only works in the human astral body. The Greeks focus on human nature, and they say to themselves: the threefold nature of man — whether they say it to themselves in this form or not is irrelevant — is made up of drives, desires and instincts. These must play against each other. What permeates the astral nature with wisdom was seen by the Greeks in Zeus. What penetrates the human I, what leads the I to a higher level, was seen in Prometheus.

Thus Zeus and Prometheus faced each other, like the I reflecting judgment and intellect and the astral body. Thus they fight against each other in the I, which purifies the astral body. When the Greek allows us to see the whole astral nature, he says to himself: When we look at the human being with his astral body and his I — he stands in the world, suffering pain and joy, doing good and evil; pain and joy, good and evil, are in need of balance. It causes displeasure in the human soul when good is unrewarded and without success, and evil goes unpunished or is successful in the wrong way. It is justice that brings about balance in suffering and joy, in good and evil.

But when we survey the world, says the Greek Genius, then we see that in the world, within human nature and the human astral body, justice is very limited. Man is powerless; that is how the Greek genius felt with regard to justice. Now he looks out into nature, sees and says: Development is what comes before our soul in the sunrise and sunset, in the rise and fall of the plant world; what comes before us is everything that does not comes up to the human astral body; that something is at work in it that is connected with human nature, that is connected with the whole world as something that is a far deeper justice than man in his powerlessness can realize. — He then looked up and said to himself: There must be hidden forces and powers after all, that are behind what we can see, and that have a balancing effect.

These powers are the ones that are powerful in the face of the human impotent being; they are the powers of justice, so that they prevail everywhere, that they can count on these powers that work with might and power to bring about balance and that do not succumb to human powerlessness. They are hidden, and there they must be. The Greek genius saw them and called them the Titans for the reason that they do not have human powerlessness; and Themis, the goddess of justice, belongs to the special female Titans.

Thus, before the eyes of the Greek genius, there is an all-pervasive justice in the realm of the Titans. But then it must transform itself into love. The warm feeling of love must absorb it. That is why it is not Themis who is worshiped as the figure who also penetrates into man, who leads him to the ideal of justice, to love, but the son of Themis, Prometheus. He is the one who takes hold of human beings in their very essence. While Zeus belongs to the realm that pours wisdom and balance into human knowledge on earth, insofar as the astral comes into consideration, Prometheus pours into the human I that which should bring this I ever further forward.

However, we can recognize a force in the individual human being that prevents the I from going too far in its development, a force that stands in its way. Just as anger precedes the still immature composure, the Greek genius saw the interplay of Prometheus' deed with Zeus' anger in the great cosmic context. Zeus is the one who has to watch over the human development of the self so that it does not advance too quickly. Therefore, he must create balances. Prometheus provides people with what is common to ordinary people: understanding, reason, feeling, that is, what comes from the ability to judge.

But this means that something else has emerged in human development. In the human being who has advanced from the earlier to this stage, his consciousness has narrowed. When man still had his old consciousness, the clairvoyant one, man saw through his image consciousness into his spiritual, at least into his soul world. This is connected with a conscious appearance of image forms, so that man can see into a soul world that is hidden from the mind and sense consciousness. Thus a world withdrew from human consciousness. The gaze was tied down on earth, while at the same time advancing to a higher level. What man had implanted as his ideals of justice and love had to pay the price of being banished to the outer sensual world, to earth.

This was the counteraction of the astral. As man developed his ego further, the astral worked like a counterblow. Whereas man could formerly see into the world of the soul, this counterblow obscured the view into the world of the soul, and the view remained limited to the outer physical world. He was chained to the world of the earth. What was in Prometheus chained him to the earth. And so Prometheus was chained to the earth in human nature through what works as a counterbalance in the astral nature in the realm of Zeus, through the wrath of Zeus, forged to the earth. He had developed a higher ability. But it was darkened by the wrath of Zeus.

There are all possible degrees between the brightness of consciousness that a person has during the day and the darkness during sleep. What occurs in affect is, to a certain degree, its darkness. And the cosmic degree of darkness was that human consciousness was chained to the physical world. The consciousness that should have looked into the spiritual world was paralyzed. This paralysis was the chaining of Prometheus to the rock.

The forward-looking in Greek human nature is precisely depicted in the myth in the Prometheus myth. And the Greek tragedian presents this in such a powerful way in the “Prometheus Bound”. If you let the nerve of this wonderful drama take effect on you, then you will see what confronts you in it; what you encounter is something of which one can say: it stands in the world like an old heirloom from earlier times. Certainly, man has developed in a certain way, but all development does not proceed in a straight line. There are always heirlooms from old developments; they do not fit into later times; they seem out of place. Imagine a being with the old image consciousness in our time – it is an impossible being; it cannot possibly find its way in today's world. It is not for nothing that the human soul's powers change. They change so that they are adapted to human conditions on earth.

The image consciousness is adapted to the earlier earth conditions. The mind consciousness corresponds to the present time. The artist presents this to us in the form of Io. She represents a being that has emerged from the level of consciousness of the ancients. What will become of this [image consciousness when it occurs in our time]? Madness! What is the image of the earlier time supposed to say? It may be that one also has the ability to say it, but these abilities are not good. They produce error and deception for the soul.

The Greek genius represents such an awareness, which has remained like an old heirloom, so that error and deception and illusion arise, by seeing the hundred-eyed Argus. Images confront her. But these are deceptions, illusions, that is illusion. Even if this consciousness, when it has seized the human soul abilities, when this consciousness would also fall into madness, one must not believe that it will not have a meaning. That which the developed consciousness has grasped has only grasped one part of the human being, the brain, and has made it its organ.

But the Io is still working on people today. This is human future development, that all the forces that can be there will appear in later times in new forms, like the Io with its consciousness in ancient times. So she is a madwoman. But how she will be when that in human nature which the subconscious works on connects with what is higher human nature, then human judgment will be conscious; the Prometheus in human nature will be redeemed. The Greek sets this whole thing in the past, and in a way it also refers to past events. Just as he was able to extract the meaning of each individual move of the drama from this train of Prometheus bound with Io, he could also extract it from the drama.

I could only hint at where the drama's nerve lies. I could show how the playwright's mind was filled with what is in human nature and how it interacts. That is why Aeschylus was able to show how anger arises from the astral body when the ego is bound in the cosmos, so that it can mature and develop the abilities that are appropriate to it, as it were, projected out of the cosmos into inner human nature. Through this powerful drama, we will see how anger has the mission of being a harbinger of love. In a certain respect, this is also what connects us with the noble word truth, which is related to human nature in a different way to anger.

We will see how Goethe has incorporated into his “Pandora” what he himself felt in his deepest soul about these riddles of life. But because humanity today is so far removed from spiritual science, from that which lives in the soul of a poet, the poems like “Pandora” were not understood. This was already the case in Goethe's time. That is why Goethe felt lonely at the height of his life. In this loneliness, he also felt many dangers – as people still say today: In his youth, Goethe still wrote understandably, but in his old age he came down and wrote [unintelligible]. – In contrast to this, Goethe once broke out in words that you will find spoken in his works: “There they praise my Faust and what else is in my works... and there the old rag-tag believes it is no longer.” That is how he felt about the misunderstood spiritual world. Especially when you are looking at the human soul and want to understand it practically, then you have to start from spiritual science. You have to be able to observe the interplay of forces and the meaning of the individual forces, as spiritual science presents them to us. Then we can look into the deep abysses of the soul in such a way that we can apply it practically. Only then do we understand as different fruits that which speaks to us spiritually from this point of view [through] Aeschylus in his drama [of] Zeus towards Prometheus, whom we will only understand when we understand what the mission of anger is in the astral body for the development of the I into the ability to love. The veil that we must lift if we want to penetrate to our satisfaction and to the right practical life is lifted so that we can say: Certainly, when we look at the soul in a spiritual scientific way, we feel how deep the fundamental tone is, and we also feel that we are on the way to penetrating into this ground. Spiritual science will first advise us to strive for the right thing little by little in order to penetrate the ideals and insights of the soul life that are to be attained; it will show us how to make the words of the ancient sage from the fifth and sixth century, whom we can remember when we explore the depths of the soul to find the boundaries of the soul, understandable in a new way, starting from these ideals. It will be difficult if we also travel a distance, because the soul's ground is infinitely deep.

Dear attendees! For quite a while now, I have been privileged to give lectures here in Vienna every year on topics from what I dare to call the spiritual-scientific worldview. The friends of our spiritual-scientific world view here in Vienna have been of the opinion that, even in these eventful and fateful times, it would not be inappropriate to hold two such lectures from this spiritual-scientific field this year, and this may well be because this spiritual-scientific field scientific field touches the deepest foundations of the human soul, those foundations in which the human soul is connected with the powers we call eternal, with those powers to which Goethe's words refer: “All that is transitory is only a parable.”

A consideration from the field of spiritual science is directed in particular to those foundations of the human soul, from which arise both life's harshest disappointments and its most difficult trials, as well as the admirable deeds that are being performed in such a significant way in our time for the salvation and progress of humanity. Spiritual science, dear attendees, is based on a view of life that is by no means one of the recognized ones in our present time, a view that is completely rejected by the most educated of our educated for a variety of reasons; rejected on the one hand because it is considered to be completely contradictory to everything that scientific world observation of our time, because, on the other hand, as we shall see, it is associated in a very misleading way with the shallows of human superstition, because, furthermore, it is erroneously regarded as a point of view that takes from many people that which gives them support and security in life, the right adherence to religious belief.

I hope, dear attendees, that all three misconceptions of the spiritual scientific point of view can at least be somewhat dispelled by what today's reflection will endeavor to offer. Nevertheless, it must be said from the outset that the opposition to spiritual science, and even the accusation that it completely contradicts what is even called common sense in the broadest circles today, that all these challenges and accusations are fully understandable to the person who stands completely on the ground of this spiritual science. And so understandable, so comprehensible are they to him that he must repeatedly remind people that in the course of human development, what appears to be self-evident to a bygone age, what alone corresponds to common sense, must be replaced by something completely opposite.

We must always be reminded of such a turnaround in human development, as it has been experienced at the present time, when the newer natural science has taken possession of the human world view. At the time when Copernicus introduced a new view of the spatial universe, people had to break with everything that for centuries, indeed one can say millennia, had been considered to be shown by the healthy five senses and understood by common sense. The human soul clings to that which it has become accustomed to in its thinking and imagining, just as there are people — although this is a grotesque example — who, after moving into a new apartment, still go home thinking about their old apartment in the evenings. Just as the people in this grotesque example show how they cling to their habits of thinking, so they also do so with regard to the great world-view questions and world-view standpoints. For centuries, humanity has been educated and has become accustomed to a world-view that is opposed to what spiritual science wants to bring to the present and the future. And so today one would be more surprised if, I would say, at the first hint, someone who has not yet heard of spiritual science in the sense in which it is meant here were to immediately agree with something, than if contradiction were to arise over contradiction at such a first encounter with this spiritual science.

In my last lecture here, I tried to illuminate the paths that lead to this spiritual science. Today, because I would like to touch on what the spiritual scientist can and may feel in our fateful time, I will only be able to briefly and sketchily hint at how spiritual science comes to its insights, to these insights that are just as contested and so difficult to understand today.

The first objection that must be raised, quite understandably, precisely in the souls of the present day, which are among the most educated, is that spiritual science seems to contradict everything that has been gained on the firm ground of natural science. It is difficult to realize that spiritual science, for our time and for the immediate future of humanity, seeks to achieve for the field of spiritual knowledge, for the knowledge of the soul, what natural science has achieved for external, spatial and temporal knowledge and its application in practical human life. It is also difficult to realize that this spiritual science, when examined thoroughly, is in complete harmony with all the remarkable advances that natural science has made in the course of the last few centuries. Indeed, spiritual science does not want to be anything other than the continuation of the natural scientific world view for the spiritual realm. Precisely because it aspires to this, the method of spiritual science must relate to all human activities, especially to the most intimate human activities of thinking, feeling and willing, quite differently than the external science recognized today.

The often-asserted claim that spiritual science is not in harmony with the religious feelings of man is also based on a complete misunderstanding. On the contrary, the opposite is true. Indeed, it can be said that while external natural science has often really alienated people from religious feeling, and has led many to believe that they are particularly enlightened when they reject everything religious, spiritual science, because it also scientifically points to the soul in the spiritual, will precisely strengthen religious life in people's minds. It will lead people back to religion in the most beautiful sense of the word, while external natural science has alienated them from it.

Above all, the path that spiritual science takes to its insights will be discussed. This path is described in detail above all in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” to which I must refer, since here I can only give a few, I might say charcoal strokes to sketch the path of spiritual science.

Human thinking and human imagination must be treated in a completely different way for the purposes of spiritual science than they are for the purposes of external science and external life. How do we behave, honored attendees, when we put thinking and imagining at the service of external science and external life? We behave in such a way that we form concepts, images and ideas about what surrounds us based on what our senses show us in our environment. And we are justifiably satisfied with this external view of the world when we come to the point where our ideas and images give us a picture of what is going on outside in nature and in human life. In the ordinary course of existence, people strive for a mental image of the life of nature and of historical life. But the power of thought, which is used in the manner indicated for ordinary science and ordinary life, must be used in a completely different way when the path of spiritual science, the path of spiritual research, is followed.

It is not a matter of the spiritual researcher thinking about what the senses externally reveal to man; it is not a matter of using thought to gain a picture of an external, perceived reality, but rather of using thought like a living force that lives in the pure inner life of the soul, I would say in a self-education applied to the soul. Thought is not used as a reflection of external reality; thought is used in such a way that it is experienced in consciousness. And it is experienced inwardly in such a way that the soul focuses on this thought, focusing in such a way that it turns its attention solely to one thought or a monotonous train of thought for a long, long time, so that what is thought , but what counts is the inner effort of the soul, the inner expenditure of the soul that one has to undergo when, through inner effort, through inner concentration, one focuses all one's attention on one inner point, on one thought, on one idea.

Where ordinary science, where the thinking of ordinary life ends, that is where the work of the spiritual scientist begins. What has to be kept in mind for ordinary science is taken up by the spiritual scientific method and is, as it were, sunk like a seed into the soil of the soul. You ask your own experience the question: What does your thought do, on which you have focused your entire soul life to the exclusion of paying attention to everything else? What does the thought do when you give yourself completely to it, when you forget everything you have ever you have perceived, what your habits, your experiences, your inclinations, your passions are, when you live solely and exclusively in this thought, when you completely immerse yourself in the life of your soul?

With this spiritual-scientific method, one comes to one's own relief when one does not even take a thought that is borrowed from the outer life. With such a thought, which reflects something from the realm of outer life, one is too tempted to look at this outer truth of the thought. But in this case it is not the external truth that matters, but what the thought brings about in us and what we experience when we allow the thought to take effect in our soul as a living essence. Therefore, it is best to fix a symbolic thought, a thought that does not depict anything external, inwardly, as it were. What I mean is this: the thought 'Wisdom shines in the light' is a simple thought; it is certainly not a truth in the sense of an external science. But that is not the point. What is important is that such a thought be placed at the center of the soul's life and that all the soul's powers, as I have just described, be directed towards this thought for a certain period of time. It is only with the experience of the thought, up to which external life and ordinary science go, that research in the spiritual realm begins. If one does not associate the word with any kind of mystical concepts in the bad sense, one calls such a life and weaving in thought, which must be continued for a long, long time with patience and perseverance and inner energy, a meditation in thought, a concentration on certain thoughts. These are, so to speak, technical expressions of the spiritual scientific method.

The spiritual researcher, esteemed attendees, when describing these things, cannot help but speak like the chemist when he briefly describes the methods he uses in his laboratory to eavesdrop on these or those natural forces and phenomena. The spiritual researcher must enter into an inner laboratory of the soul, in which he searches for everything connected with our soul's happiness, with our soul's upliftment, with all the deepest soul mysteries, soul pains and soul questions. And what he experiences in this purely inner laboratory is what he alone can speak of, the experiences of what cannot be presented in external vision, before the outer eyes, but only in the intimate inner, but objective, non-subjective inner experience. The task of spiritual science is to gradually incorporate the existence of such inner, spiritual laboratory work into the spiritual culture of humanity as a solid worldview.

Every single objection raised by the scientific worldview, honored attendees, is as well known to the spiritual researcher as what can be said against his research in general. For example, the spiritual researcher knows that it can be claimed that what the soul achieves by fixing its attention entirely on dwelling on thoughts in the intimate life of the soul is only that the soul can suggest itself, that everything the soul arrives at in this way is a kind of self-suggestion. Of course, the spiritual researcher knows this, but for someone who is not familiar with spiritual science and only knows what modern natural science has to say about the methods of suggestion, it is unknown that through the special way in which the spiritual researcher, purely inwardly, with all the soul forces that he has consciously developed, in full consciousness, directed towards some thought or other, towards some inner experience - it can also be an experience of the will -, [how] this spiritual researcher lives inwardly in that part of his soul that is put to sleep in hypnotic suggestion. It is precisely that which is put to sleep in hypnotic suggestion, while the outer physical, I might say imitates the soul functions, that is developed through the method of spiritual science. Precisely those forces are drawn from the innermost soul life, over which sleep and paralysis are spread in ordinary suggestion. All methods of spiritual research work towards making inner experience independent of outer physical experience, awakening in inner experience those strong forces through which thinking, imagining unfolds a life of its own.

And when the spiritual researcher has worked in the “laboratory of his own soul” for a sufficiently long time, then - and it is not a matter of making this happen, but of waiting for it to happen, as one must wait, as one must wait with a flowering, until its growth forces have developed through the objective world context to such an extent that it flowers - then what must appear fantastic, dreamy, absurd, and paradoxical to our present way of thinking occurs.

For what is achieved in this way, dear attendees, is a complete detachment of spiritual-mental experience from physical, bodily experience. As improbable as it may seem to someone who has never heard of chemistry that the water in front of you can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen by the forces of electricity or in some other way, that the hydrogen, which is quite different from water, can actually be extracted from water, as improbable as it must seem to anyone who has never heard of chemistry, unlikely as it must appear to anyone who has never heard of chemistry, so unlikely must it appear, of course, to someone who does not want to engage in spiritual science, that there are such inner, I might say inner-growing, thought processes through which that in man is released that is not subject to birth and death , is not subject to external life, but passes through birth and death as the eternal part of man, that this is truly detached from physical conditions and that it is scientifically grasped in its independence, in its eternal significance, of which “all that is transitory is only a parable”.

It is obvious that especially in our time, real objections arise at every turn against what is asserted in this way. It is quite natural that someone who is, so to speak, schooled in the newer, well-founded habits of thought, comes and says: Now here, here comes the spiritual researcher and talks about the fact that there are inner methods of spiritual experience by which the soul-spiritual can be released so that it appears in its original essence and independently of birth and death, just as hydrogen appears when it is released from water, from all its properties and its entire behavior.

Can we not see that this leads into the darkest depths of superstition, when science has so thoroughly demonstrated how mental and spiritual experience is dependent on physical experience, how this mental and spiritual experience grows as the human being develops through the years from childhood onwards? The soul and spiritual experience grows to the same extent that physical functions develop. We see how the spiritual life fades again in old age, when bodily functions decline or gradually become paralyzed. Furthermore, we see – and this is precisely thanks to the great advances in psychiatric research – how the mental functions are switched off with the injury of only one part of the human brain and nervous system. Do we not realize here how everything of a soul-spiritual nature is, in the most eminent sense, only an effect of the physical-corporeal? Now the spiritual researcher comes and explains that this spiritual-soul nature can be detached from the physical-corporeal.

Yes, dearest ones, if the spiritual researcher had to rebel against the well-founded assumptions of modern science, then he would have no hope of ever introducing his knowledge into the world view of mankind, because this newer science is based on good reasons, even if it still has this or that hypothetical or unfounded assertion among its assertions today. Its whole attitude, its whole inner tendency is fully justified and leads to the greatest achievements of mankind. Spiritual science will not deny this, but will admit it just as much as every natural scientist or anyone professing natural science must admit it.

But, dear attendees, spiritual science in the true sense of the word is not based on any different ground than natural science, not even with regard to everything that natural science can talk about. When we consider ordinary thinking in everyday life and ordinary science, how does it appear to the spiritual researcher? It appears to him that this ordinary thinking, that which man can muster in thinking and imagining in ordinary life and in ordinary science, is bound in the strictest sense to the life of the human body, in the narrower sense to the human nervous system. And in so far as natural science today is already beginning to show a knowledge in this direction, which promises to give much more in the future, the spiritual researcher stands completely on the ground of natural science. But for natural science it is only a matter of ordinary thinking, of the inner power of thinking that has not yet been detached from the physical. The spiritual researcher is well informed about the thoughts of everyday life, about what can be imagined in ordinary science. All this thinking of everyday life is just as bound to the physical if it is to come to consciousness in the human being as the image that is to appear to us of ourselves is bound to the mirror before which we stand.

Spiritual science in particular recognizes, through the connections it sees when it progresses along the paths that have been described, that what has now been described as a higher power in the power of thought, and to which spiritual science can arrive at, that this is actively mirrored in the organs of the bodily life and that nothing can enter into the life between birth and death in the consciousness as that which appears to the consciousness with the help of the physicality that mirrors the soul life. Just as a person stands before the image reflected back to him by the mirror and sees not himself but the image reflected back to him by the mirror, so the soul, endowed with the power that is first discovered on the path of spiritual research, stands behind the thinking that is everyday thinking; and everyday thinking is a fleeting reflection mirrored from the life of the body. All the knowledge that natural science can provide in its field is true because it deals with that which has not yet been demonstrated as the actual power that lies behind the ordinary life of consciousness and that passes through births and deaths, which belongs to a completely different world from the one we see with our senses.

Thus it can be said: spiritual science says no to nothing that science says; it only explains that one can go beyond this natural science just as one goes beyond the hand movements of ordinary life in scientific chemistry. And anyone who wants to turn against spiritual science from a scientific point of view does not turn against it because something scientific about spiritual science is doubted, but turns against spiritual science out of pure tyranny, out of the will to accept nothing but what he likes to accept. One must artificially assume the standpoint that no one is allowed to know anything other than what one knows oneself if one wants to reject spiritual science in its claim to continue the path of natural science.

But now, dear attendees, as I said, the spiritual researcher can, to a certain extent, allow the other person, who has not yet approached spiritual research, to see into his or her “soul laboratory”. For this life in the soul laboratory of the spiritual researcher brings about many things that are not known to ordinary experience and observation either. Spiritual research is not only connected with those experiences with which external science is connected, spiritual research is connected with the deepest upheavals of the soul life, with the innermost tragedy of the soul life, with the carrying of the soul to lonely, icy heights, with the falling of the soul into terrible abysses of existence.

Certainly, dear honored attendees, the first steps of spiritual research, as indicated in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,” can be taken by anyone, and anyone can thereby convince themselves of the correctness of the spiritual researcher's indications. But when one follows the path of spiritual research to its conclusion, it leads through experiences such as those just indicated. Above all, at the moment when, through the method described, one succeeds in detaching the inner power of thought from the support it has in the brain, at the moment when one's thinking in one's soul-spiritual experience rises out of one's body — I because it is literally correct — in the same moment when man's eternal powers are truly glimpsed in the soul, in this moment, a spiritual researcher feels as if, I would like to say, they could experience the growth of the plant.

Let us assume that the plant could experience, that it could experience all its own characteristics, all its own being, as it unfolds from leaf to leaf, to the flower, to the colorful flower, and then, having developed into the colorful flower, it would have to immerse itself with its entire being in the forces that form the seed, which is not at all destined for this life of the plant in the present, but is destined to carry this plant life beyond the present into the plant that will develop from this plant in the future. The plant would experience by concentrating all its powers of experience into this germ, as if, by gathering these powers together, it were developing precisely that which is like a killing, a dying off of the outer being that has developed in the leaves and in the colorful blossoms. She would experience how she would have to die herself, as what she was, so that she could live on through the seed. So the human soul must experience, if it really goes through what has just been sketched out in front of you with a few lines of charcoal.

Dear attendees, the spiritual researcher experiences how he becomes more and more absorbed in what connects his soul with what he has taken in through his thoughts. But this does not appear to him now in his soul life as if he were only experiencing something new, but as if he were now living in the forces that, through their inner peculiarity, would be killing forces for the outer life, that are connected with all that makes the outer life die, that paralyzes the outer life from day to day, from hour to hour. And so it is, as if one had stood in it in life, felt all joy, all zest in life, all justified joy, all justified zest in life, gladly applied all energy in life, and now, in order to recognize, must break out of this life, but must turn precisely to those forces that continually fight this life. One would like to say that one must leave the conviviality of life, the convivial togetherness with nature, its beauty and sublimity, and enter into solitude, where one is truly only with oneself, where one can only turn one's gaze to one's own innermost forces.

Now it might appear, esteemed attendees, that this whole process of spiritual research is highly unhealthy. But we must bear in mind that it is a cognitive process. Just as nothing in this room is changed in terms of its outward appearance by the fact that my eyes are directed towards this room and my thoughts are visualizing this room, so this knowledge changes nothing in this room. Everything that the spiritual researcher experiences is knowledge, and everything that he then beholds through his knowledge lies, unnoticed by the outer life, at the bottom of every soul life. Only through observation can the spiritual researcher be convinced of what really lives in every soul. In every soul live the powers that constantly draw on life from hour to hour, from minute to minute, from second to second, just as the plant germ draws on the present plant.

Only through this contemplation, esteemed attendees, only through this immersion in the powers that sustain life, does one become immersed in the realization of how, over and over again, that which is death is overcome. For as one sees that life is maintained by the forces being constantly active from birth to physical death, which the spiritual researcher experiences, so one also becomes convinced through spiritual research that these same forces also overcome death, which concludes physical life like a gate, and introduce man into the world of the spiritual. Spiritual science does not understand death in the way one would like to recognize it out of fear of death, out of the expectation of another life, but spiritual science recognizes it by leading the soul's spiritual powers of cognition to the of death and then sees how death works throughout a person's entire life, so that when it draws its conclusion, it can be overcome by the same forces that are always at the basis of our souls.

Yet another difficulty arises, honored attendees, for the one who thus explores the spiritual world, I would like to say again and again in an inner soul laboratory. This other difficulty is this: when thinking, when imagining, has thus detached itself from the physical, when the human being now knows: you now live in the spiritual-soul realm in such a way that you are not in your body, that you move purely in the fabric of the soul-spiritual itself, when man has developed to this degree in his inner spiritual laboratory, then he lives in soul-spiritual forces which are the least, the very least related to that which we call our memory powers. And when we consider what depends on our powers of memory, how our whole life could not exist in everyday life if we did not remember what we had experienced in the previous moment, if we did not remember in our whole life what brings coherence to our life brings coherence to our lives, when we consider what memory means, then we will be able to understand how differently those forces act on the soul that must almost stop before the power of memory, that appeal to nothing in the ordinary power of memory in everyday life.

Thus it is that at first, when the spiritual researcher reaches the point where he is truly liberated from the bodily life in his spiritual and soul life, his presentation hurries away like a dream that cannot be remembered, and only only when one continues patiently with the exercises mentioned, the exercises in meditation and concentration, does another power develop in place of the ordinary memory, which must not be involved in this. We could call this power an “inner force of habit”. We become capable of repeatedly performing, habitually, what we have thus appropriated as an inner experience. We perform the inner gesture again and again, as it were. Spiritual science cannot work on the basis of memory, but goes beyond this ordinary basic power of life, beyond memory, and imprints such habits on the spiritual-soul realm that has been freed from the physical, so that one can repeatedly carry out the inner tasks that need to be done in order to feel at one with one's free spiritual-soul realm in the spiritual world.

If I, dear attendees, may touch on something personal – just to make something clearer – then let it be this: When we talk about things that are experienced through the outer senses, then it is the case that if, for example, I have given a lecture once, I remember how I gave it, so that when I give it for the twelfth, for the thirtieth time, I present it from my inner being in a completely different way than the first, second, third time, when I have not yet fully memorized it. This is not the case when one speaks in all sincerity about matters of spiritual science, but rather, each time, through the inner gestures that have been acquired by the soul, what is the content of spiritual science must be brought forth anew. It makes no difference whether one speaks about something for the first time or for the hundredth time, because one's memory is basically more of a hindrance than a help. Of course, one can always recount from memory what one has spoken about the content of spiritual science, but the one who stands on the ground of genuine spiritual science, honestly and sincerely, feels an inner obligation to present in ever-renewed liveliness that which he himself experiences. Therefore, he must experience it again and again, for he presents it not from memory, not through knowledge, but through a skill that he has acquired.

But our entire inner soul life is changed in yet another way. When we proceed intimately in the manner described, again and again performing such inner, we can now say purely conceptual, acts of the will, through which we place simple thought-content at the center of our consciousness and become completely absorbed in it, then we also experience something through our will. But this life of the will is different from that which underlies outer actions. What underlies outer actions develops a life of the will in which the will is asleep. For the way in which the human being intervenes with his thoughts in his will – this is indeed an old riddle of philosophy, which will not be discussed further here – the connection between the thought and the outer action, is in the deep foundations of the soul life. But it is precisely into these deep layers of the soul that spiritual science must descend if it is to ascend to supersensible knowledge. And by repeatedly, repeatedly bringing to life inwardly that which is the object of meditation and concentration in thinking, by doing so again and again out of inner will, out of strong inner soul forces – repetition is important – other processes occur in the soul than those of outer action. Such activities occur in the soul that do not take place in the same way as external actions, where we always have to intervene with our thoughts, but rather those that repeat themselves with regularity, I would say internally, automatically.

This is often disturbing for those who deal with spiritual methods, that by practicing and repeatedly fixing their soul on this or that thought - but they have to do it repeatedly, patiently, patiently, energetically, persistently - it is often disturbing that the whole inner activity becomes as mechanical as breathing for the body, where we are also not aware of how the impulse of breathing intervenes. While on the one hand we lift ourselves up into the highest spiritual state of consciousness, of thought itself, which leads us to what is behind the thought, to the inner experience of the power of thought, the very tasks that we perform in perpetual repetition become as if they were mechanical, so that we gradually learn to feel how something takes place in this detached soul life, which is so peculiar to it, in rhythmic sequence, as breathing is peculiar to the body in rhythmic sequence. We experience our corporeality as external to us, and we experience our soul as being lifted out of the corporeal, but in such a way that it is as if it is in an inner action, but now faces the body with this inner action.

This, in turn, is linked, honored attendees, to what one might call: the deepest inner soul-shaking. Just as one descends into a loneliness, into a loneliness that kills all external world-witnessing, when one goes to the one side of mental power expressions, through which basically all our everyday life consists, so one descends on the other side as if to the automatic life, as to the life that takes place in us, but without our intervention. Just as we become fully active on the one hand, so active that we are not even supported by memory, on the other hand we become aware of something within us that is active by itself, which we can only look at, which we can only watch. Indeed, it is so that we feel as if bewitched, as if spellbound in such an automatism of life that goes with us through life, we feel all the faintheartedness of life, all that which shows the heaviness, the weight of life, all this can overcome us, and anyone who does not come to the stage of knowledge just mentioned with the right method and sufficient preparation can easily reach a point of complete despair in their inner life when they see what is in them.

For again, it is only through knowledge that we become aware of everything that is in us, that at the bottom of life is a life automatism, when one sees how one is placed in life and what through the human being like clockwork - but only in a spiritual way, not mechanically like clockwork - what is spread throughout the universe as the cosmic life forces. There one learns to empathize with the whole universe as one piece, as a part of this universe, but one feels in it as if one were completely alienated from oneself, as if one had become a petrification, a petrefact, in this life. Then one realizes that everything one experiences is only the realization of what is down there in the soul. And that is a perpetual struggle between what is petrified in us, as if striving for automatism, and on the other hand, as if rising into spiritual solitude for perpetual activity, an inner war, an inner life of struggle that is withdrawn from us in the sight of everyday life. What has been described is at the bottom of our soul. And from such an inner life of struggle, from a struggle that takes place in every soul, which the spiritual researcher only observes, from such a life of struggle, he draws his knowledge. And what you now find in the literature of spiritual science has been drawn from the depths of the soul, drawn from this life of struggle.

Of course, I say that anyone can go through the beginnings of spiritual research, and in this way everyone can be convinced today that what spiritual research presents is correct. But what one has to go through when one comes to decisive turning points in relation to spiritual knowledge comes from the soul's inner experiences, which are full of struggle, wild movement and tragedy. These experiences come from regions of the soul that stir up everything, everything, and one gains a respectful of life and of the wisdom that permeates life when one realizes that in everyday life, man has the grace of having a veil woven over all that is at the bottom of his soul.

But humanity is evolving, honored attendees. And the time of development in which people could only live in consciousness, deprived by a veil of that which rules and lives in the depths of the soul, these times are coming to an end, and the times are opening up in which humanity must, through the natural powers of the soul, become acquainted with that which lives and moves in the depths of the soul. Just as at a certain point in human development, people had to be disabused of the view, in line with earlier common sense, that the earth stands still and the starry sky and the sun move around it . It is within the bounds of earthly evolution that humanity must be disabused of the notion that all soul life is built upon such a foundation as that just described.

Humanity wants to recognize that the life concerns we carry with us, the life triumphs, the zest for life and suffering, the life force, the life disappointments and the life deeds we admire in our fellow human beings, that all this is achieved through a victory that takes place on the basis of subconscious soul experience. The fact that we live because forces are at work behind the world of the senses that are engaged in the most lively struggle to gain that which we rejoice in, that which gives our lives meaning, will give people invigorating soul strength in the future when they will know what must be fought for, what must be suffered, and what must be overcome in the world of the senses, through unknown powers. This will give man a living sense of his connection with the spiritual powers that stand behind the world of the senses.

And when man has an overview of the two battlefields of the life of thought, which is detached from the body, and the life of will, which is detached from the body, then he enters into that knowledge of repeated earthly lives, which today seems so fantastic to our way of thinking, although Lessing asserted it within the spiritual life of modern humanity. And he enters into the real connections of human destiny, which present us with so many riddles.

What I would like to touch on today is that when we look at life, this life appears to us with what it expresses in everyday life, as through victories and wars of unknown spiritual powers, but of recognizable spiritual powers; and so when we recognize life, we also recognize the great events of the times in a different way than usual.

We, honored attendees, are indeed standing in our fateful present in difficult events that also promise great things. The question can be raised: what effect can the things we are now experiencing – the daring deeds of courage, the daring deeds of overcoming fear of death, the noble deeds of willingness to make sacrifices – have on a soul that absorbs what spiritual research wants to give to humanity? We are not living in a small time! For months events in our surroundings have been presenting themselves to us in a way that, one might well say, has not been seen in all of human history, not in such magnitude and with such significance. If one adds up the various nationalities fighting on the side of the Central European powers, even leaving out minor tribal differences, one arrives at twenty-one different peoples from the most diverse parts of the world. And if we count the various nations fighting on the side of the Central European powers, we get, again leaving out minor tribal differences, fourteen fighting individual nations; so that we can say that over a large part of the inhabited earth, thirty-five nations, leaving out minor tribal differences, are fighting each other today. And if, from the point of view of spiritual science, we turn our eyes to that which is intervening in such a powerful historical way in our time, oh, there a very special nuance of feeling presents itself to us.

What does it actually mean that spiritual science basically only wants to be a continuation of natural science? Yes, honored attendees, what Goethe emphasized so much is that we will only arrive at a true science when we no longer look at nature, at that which visibly surrounds us, in terms of reasons of expediency, when we no longer ask, “Why does the ox have horns? So that he can gore,” but when one realizes that the ox gores because he has horns, when one regards everything in terms of cause, not in terms of expediency. If this is the peculiarity of the external world view, if the best minds have fought for this causal world view, asking about the causes everywhere, then spiritual science also stands on the ground of asking about the causes, but about the deeper causes that elude sensory perception.

In relation to what is going on around us, however, in terms of historical events, something else must develop as a counterpoint to spiritual science. If you see how the powerful play out around us, you see how humanity suffers and develops the boldest acts of heroism, then you are led by observing what human will unfolds to the feelings - you cannot prove this because it is based on a transformation of the whole life of feeling. Then one is led by the feeling to look at everything in this life in which one is placed, not in terms of how the causes prevail, but in terms of what must arise as goals, as effects, from what is fought for in hot struggle, what is achieved through great sacrifices. Just as in the life we are observing we have to look at the causes everywhere, so too in what we experience, as we experience today, we have to look at the effects everywhere. And these effects, oh, these effects, they become meaningful for us above all by enabling us to see from a spiritual-scientific point of view how what is called Central European spiritual life really forms a whole.

Oh, this Central European intellectual life, how it has basically been achieved and how it differs in its peculiarity – I do not want to make any value judgments now – from that intellectual life, from which it is now surrounded and besieged as if in a mighty fortress! For those who can grasp the spiritual connections, this peculiarity of Central European intellectual life is evident in full clarity. One can say that the blossoms reveal what is in the roots. And so let us turn our gaze, just as an example, to a flower of Central European intellectual life, to a flower that is well known to you, esteemed attendees, that you have all often let your soul dwell on, to that which, as if from all the depths of Central European intellectual life, the great spirit of modern times, Goethe, created in his “Faust”. And we shall point out only one passage in this Faust. We see Faust at the beginning of the story, having passed through life and learned everything that can be learned by ordinary thinking:

Now, alas! I have studied philosophy,
jurisprudence and medicine,
and unfortunately theology too!
very thoroughly, with great endeavor.
There I stand, poor fool that I am,
and am as wise as before.

Goethe wrote this in the 1770s, during the striving and yearning of his youth. What was achieved by people in external thinking and external research at that time affected his Central European mind. Now, let us follow the course of this Central European spiritual life after Goethe wrote this scene in Faust, which has become almost trivial today, but which, if you allow it to take effect on your soul in its elementary originality, is deeply moving. Since Goethe wrote this, has been through in his soul, there have been minds at work in Central European intellectual life that have tried to penetrate to the sources of life in a truly Faustian way, with bold intellectual courage, with bold philosophical courage.

Today, the great idealistic thinkers of Central Europe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and the others, are misunderstood. There is no need to go into what they created in terms of content; in the strictest sense, one can even be opposed to much of what they created in terms of content. However, one need only look at the innermost, most honest and sincere urge and path to truth , out of which they strove and which they were willing to go, and one needs only to look at how such thinkers have truly made this Faustian word come true, to expand one's own self to the self of the whole world, to witness that which is in the whole cosmos.

And so, how does a thinker who is rooted in Central European culture in the most eminent sense, like a Johann Gottlieb Fichte, stand before us? From the innermost nerve of human will and thought, from the will borne by thought, from the thought permeated by will, he seeks to grasp that in man by which man can connect himself in his own self with the eternal, divine self that rules and blows through the world. And so, as he also demanded, there was one thing in him that he lived and thought and philosophically strived for, so one that, when he was in the last hours of his feverish delirium from the illness of his wife, which she had acquired while caring for the warriors, that he received from his wife's illness, he, the most Central European of philosophers, still lived in the feverish delusion in the immediate life of his time, in the life through which Central Europe wanted to free itself from the tyranny of Western Europe, with Blücher's crossing of the Rhine, the philosopher Fichte lived. This great, powerful personality, who inwardly awakened life and strengthened his people at that time with his mighty “Speeches to the German Nation,” left his mark on his feverish fantasies.

We see them passing by, these thinkers. And we could say something similar about the others, even if we do not agree with the content of their thinking, with reference to their great and powerful striving. We see the best forces of Central European culture blossoming and passing by, the same forces that we may believe are now working in a completely different way for the benefit and progress of Central Europe on battlefields in the east and west. We see them pushing up into the spiritual light in the future.

And now we ask ourselves, honored attendees, let us assume that Goethe had still lived in 1840, had still lived at that time, when Fichte's intellectual feat, Schelling's wonderful artistic construct of the universe, Hegel's magnificent logical image of the universe had been cast over Central European culture - oh these thinkers , they truly brought philosophy in a new form to humanity and, if we consider that Fichte wrote a “natural right”, Hegel wrote a “natural right”, they also renewed jurisprudence, Schelling published a medical journal, immersed himself deeply in medicine, and theologians wanted them to be, basically, all these philosophers. But what would Goethe have done if he had started his Faust in 1840 instead of 1770? What would he have put at the beginning of the Faust saga? Certainly not this, despite the fact that these great, powerful thinkers have walked the spiritual skies of Central Europe. Despite this, he would certainly not have put:

Now, thank God, I have
studied philosophy with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel,
law and now also medicine,
and I stand here now, highly satisfied, I wise man!

No, again he would have begun in 1840:

Habemun, sch! Philosophy,
Jurisprudence and Medicine,
And unfortunately also Theology!
I have studied them all, with great zeal.
And now I stand, poor fool,
And am as wise as before.

That is what characterizes Central European culture! This Central European culture will only gradually be understood in its deepest peculiarity by those who live in it. This Central European culture is truly the expression of what is also written in “Faust”: “Whoever strives, we can redeem” - eternal striving. And when one stage of striving has been achieved, striving itself leads beyond this stage. One is born as a Frenchman, one is born as an Italian, one is born as an Englishman, and one knows what one is; but one must educate oneself to become what one is as a Central European, one must strive in one's soul not only once but continually to attain that which makes us a Central European. In this way, it becomes an individual in the highest sense, in this way it becomes one in which every human being must work directly, one that must always be achieved anew.

If I may, just to make something clear, touch on something personal, I can say that, as an Austrian, I lived in my childhood, in the sixties and seventies here in Austria, in a time when there was full opposition in Austria to everything that was going on in the German Reich, when it was still difficult for Austrians, including Austrian Germans, to look with satisfaction at what was happening in the German Reich. And then we lived contrary to that which had to be overcome first, out of German individualism, so that the Reich could be forged together, which is now fighting at Austria's side against the besiegers of the great Central European fortress.

Everything must be achieved for Central European culture. One would like to say, if the word is not misunderstood: in other nationalities, in other states, one is born into what one is; in Central Europe, one has to acquire everything – again according to a Goethean saying: “What you have inherited from your fathers, acquire it to possess it.” But this gives rise to an attitude that permeates all Central European culture like a magical breath, that forges together what is Central European, even forging together all national differences, that consciously strives towards what one is. And this also guarantees that everything that has already been achieved in Central Europe must always be increased and elevated in continued striving, that the spirit of striving, I would say the Faustian mood, must be continued.

Just as Faust would have said the same thing in 1840 at the starting point of his quest as in 1770, despite so much intellectual striving having been done about Central Europe, so too is that which has already been done constantly renewed by the Central European soulfulness. And so we stand, strengthened precisely by spiritual scientific feelings, full of hope for what must develop as goal and effect from blood and death, suffering and pain, from sacrifice and offering, from our time.

Oh, honored attendees, I cannot, of course, go into all the details of our fateful time. But if that which has conquered the world in a materialistic sense in recent times could only develop out of struggle, then that which must spread out of the spiritual life of Central Europe will develop more and more over the great world, over the territories of all the peoples who today still fight against this Central Europe. It must develop out of struggle and war. And the strengthening of the soul power, it will, if we consider that we can show through spiritual science how in individual human lives that which is the substance of life develops on the basis of what is the war and struggle in the depths of the soul, as we had to describe it.

Now, in the outer life, honored attendees, people are witnesses and participants in struggles over and over again, and these struggles must be there. Just as these struggles are veiled by a beneficent veil within the soul of the individual, so we must be placed in the outer, historical life in these struggles, from which that which is the outer, historical life must develop. Just as what Greek life became for the world developed in the struggle against the mighty Persian armies, and just as what was imported from Roman and Latin culture into world civilization developed on the basis of hard struggles, so what is in Faustian striving – and this Faustian striving also goes as far as those souls that know nothing of Faust – must spread out on soil that is soaked with the blood of our noblest, in an atmosphere that is permeated with the sentiments that can only develop today in our fateful time.

It has often been emphasized, especially in Germany recently, that it is due to the developmental conditions of modern times that this war is basically only being waged for external reasons, that it is being waged so that the infinite diligence of those in external industry and external trade can be applied freely in the world. Certainly, such statements are absolutely correct and should not be opposed in any way. We are living in a materialistic age, more or less, as regards our material life, and even the most difficult sacrifices we make are for the sake of material goods. But we are sure that from this Central Europe, even if only material culture is carried out into the world, through the gates opened by the struggle in the most diverse foreign areas, if perhaps not by the fathers themselves, then by the sons of those who go out into foreign areas in industry and trade , and which is carried everywhere by those who enter into industry and commerce. Everything that grows out of that spirit, which found its flower-like expression in that Faust who wants to “stand in an open space with an open people,” and who wants to attain freedom and life only by conquering them anew every day.

And if we look at the peculiarity of this Central European intellectual life, how it has forged the nations of Central Europe, if we look at this Faustian peculiarity, then we have to say: this Central European intellectual life is called upon to give the soul to the world-earth body, to incorporate soul into the earth development of humanity. It is very remarkable that, for example, we hear from the northwest - we can hear it every day, honored attendees - that those mighty external material conquests that the inhabitants of the British Isles, for example, have made, that these - as if mocking us, insulting us in Central Europe, such words are shouted over and over again from abroad, that everything that is to be undertaken is to be undertaken in the name of freedom, of the liberation of the peoples.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it cannot be denied that the inhabitants of the British Isles have made great conquests in the fields of external and material life. But look at what these conquests were made on account of! From 1856 to 1900, England waged 34 wars of conquest, conquered four million square miles of land, and made 57 million people new British subjects – that's over the course of about 44 to 45 years, 34 wars of conquest! The material culture that the British Empire alone could spread across the world has grown out of this. Out of blood and death, out of suffering and pain, out of numerous sacrifices, there must come forth that which, in the course of history, matures as the life-substance for humanity.

And if we want to shed light on Central European intellectual life in comparison with what spiritual science shows us for the individual, we will say: If we look at its effects, if we look at the goals that are hidden in what is watering the soil with blood today, we see that the threatened area must be reclaimed as such effects. Just as a person must continually re-conquer his body after a few years so that it may be an instrument for the soul, so too in the outer historical life must the people of Central Europe re-conquer their territory so that it is all the better equipped with the soul-like qualities through which this Central European humanity will be able to carry into the future that which is rooted in the depths of its soul life.

Oh, when we look at what we can see in the outer life of our fateful time, compared with what spiritual science says for the individual human life, then it becomes understandable not only for the mind, but for the whole heart, that we know what is being prepared for the future, because it can only be prepared through struggle and war, then we learn in a certain way - however painful it is in the individual case, which must take place around us - we learn to understand it as being in the service of the great development of humanity, in that we must feel that we are part of it with every moment of our lives. And so, through a true contemplation of individual life, the human being reconciles himself with the most fateful events that take place around him.

Allow me to summarize what I have just said in a few words, in which I express, I would like to say, what I have developed as individual results of spiritual research, in a way that is intuitive to me. I would like to express in a few words what spiritual science has to take hold of the human soul in its most intimate life, so that through this taking hold a basic feeling and a basic will can arise that understand and permeate life. What I took the liberty of saying can be summarized in the following words, which the soul strengthened by spiritual science can make the basic values of its own being:

Where sense knowledge ends,
There stands the gate,
The realities of life
To the soul's being opens;
The key creates the soul,
When she strengthens in herself
In the struggle, the world powers
On their own grounds
With human powers lead;
When it drives out of itself
the sleep that envelops the powers of knowledge
at the boundaries of its senses
with spirit.

Dear attendees! I will take the liberty of giving two lectures here, which have related content in a certain respect, so that some of what is said today will be followed by a special supplement tomorrow. However, for the sake of the esteemed audience, I would like to strive to present each lecture as a self-contained whole, which can be heard on its own.

If one speaks of spiritual science in the sense in which it is to be used here, one will, for the time being, meet with the strongest resistance and the sharpest misunderstandings. In particular, this resistance and these misunderstandings will come from those who believe that they are starting from the so-called completely safe, solid ground of the only true science, natural science, with regard to all far-reaching questions of world view.

Now, on the other hand, it must be said from the outset that the spiritual science meant here is not in the slightest contradiction to the most modern demands and achievements of modern natural science; indeed, that it wants to be a necessary supplement and a necessary conclusion to this modern natural science. If you only know natural science, it is very easy to become an opponent and rejecter of this spiritual science. If you are familiar with natural science, especially in its most important and comprehensive present-day results, and at the same time you know the spiritual science that is meant here, then, dear attendees, you are by no means an opponent of natural science.

The fact that today's scientific education is so dismissive of this spiritual science is primarily due to a very strange circumstance. And such things must be mentioned in the introduction, because it is very easy for someone who is hearing such discussions as are being held here for the first time to get the idea that what is being said here is unfounded and contrary to any truly scientific requirement. If I may make this personal comment, I would like to say that I myself, wherever natural science legitimately appears, go with that natural science against all amateurish or superficial endeavors in the field of spiritual science, but that precisely for this reason I have to represent spiritual science in the form in which I have to speak of it.

One may say that what is being achieved today in the field of the scientific way of thinking, of the scientific way of research, has, especially in recent years, struggled to achieve a great lack of prejudice compared to the very superficial materialism of the middle, the last third of the nineteenth century. Today, in contrast to the natural science romanticism of the past, we have something that is so objectively and convincingly presented, for example, in the recently published great work by Oscar Hertwig, “On the Nature of Organisms. A Refutation of the Darwinian Theory of Chance”. And one could cite many, many more similar examples if one wanted to speak in praise of natural science in the immediate present.

If we look at the attitude, the way of thinking and imagining that prevails among today's level-headed natural scientists, then these attitudes and this way of imagining are similar to those of the greatest biologist from the Haeckel school, Oscar Hertwig, who says that natural science to occupy itself only with the world of the senses, to investigate only the finite, and not to concern itself with the infinite; this must be left to – says a leading natural scientist of the present day – this supersensible, this spiritual must be left to metaphysics, to epistemology and so on. Again a saying to which hundreds and hundreds of level-headed natural scientists' sayings of the present day could be added. And one might believe that such attitudes, coming from such a quarter, would certainly pave the way for an unprejudiced approach to spiritual-scientific research. And yet this is not the case. For although this is said, on the other hand it is again tried to be made understandable, precisely from this quarter, that true science, genuine science, can only be that which stands squarely on the ground of mere external sensual facts. And so, on the one hand, only this ground of sense facts is investigated, the supersensible, the spiritual, is excluded; but at the same time it is pointed out, though quite covertly, that all that which is said about the spirit , about the supersensible, cannot actually be truly scientific, because it is implied that strict, serious scientific methods can only arise on the basis of sensory observation, of the finite.

It must be said: Indeed, these statements and thoughts are found in the narrower circles of natural scientists or those who build any kind of worldview on the foundation of natural science, and one might think that this does not particularly concern the great multitude of educated people. But that is not the case today. One must only be clear about the fact that today our many-branched educational and thinking life is nourished and satisfied through thousands and thousands of channels, and that such ideas, which in their place of origin are known only to those who familiarize themselves with scientific literature, that such statements are embedded and introduced into the way of thinking of the broadest audience in the most popular way. Hence the very widespread prejudice, which is habitually present in people's minds without them being aware of it, that anyone who talks about the spiritual, the supersensible, cannot be a true scientist.

In response to this, the following must be noted: Precisely when one is a true, but reasonable admirer of the modern scientific way of thinking, then one learns to recognize the methods and ideas on the basis of which this scientific way of thinking has achieved its great successes. But then one also learns to recognize that these scientific concepts, ideas and notions are highly suitable for the study of nature, and that they must achieve their brilliant successes on the basis of science, precisely when they are completely unsuitable to say anything about truths that relate to the spiritual or the soul life of man. Gradually, precisely those types of research have emerged on the basis of natural science that cannot be applied to the spiritual. That is why it is precisely because natural science has such brilliant, such penetrating ideas, because it can achieve such brilliant successes with these ideas, that it is necessary for its sake that a spiritual science be placed alongside natural science from a completely different side.

In earlier times, by observing nature, man, in his own conviction, received all kinds of spiritual knowledge from the realm of nature itself, through the concepts of natural science. Anyone familiar with older scientific ideas knows that with the concepts that were formed earlier, it was also convincingly accepted that nature is spiritualized everywhere. Natural science has rightly eradicated such concepts on its own ground. It has developed concepts that are only suitable for considering external natural existence without any spiritual element. Therefore, the necessity arises in the present day to explore the spirit from a different angle. It follows from the character of contemporary natural science that there must be a spiritual science alongside this natural science, if man is not to lose all connection with the greatest questions that must fulfill his soul's longing, with the questions, for example, for example, about human freedom, namely with the question of the eternal nature of the human soul, about the character, the essence of the human soul; all these questions culminating in the question of immortality.

Now I have given today's lecture the specific title: “Body, Soul and Spirit of Man”. This has a certain inner justification, for the reason, dear attendees, because – I cannot go into the details here – because since the ninth century it has gradually become customary, when speaking of the human being and his essence, not to speak of body, soul and spirit, but only to speak of body and soul. Anyone who has a clear understanding of the facts in this area knows that it is precisely the neglect of the spirit that has led to the inattention to the spiritual, that basically the knowledge of the nature of man has become completely obscured in recent centuries, that it must first of all be clarified again. If I may use the comparison, it is really the case today, even if one is familiar with everything that has been written in the field of philosophy, that it is as if a chemist has a compound substance and always starts from the preconception that two components must be found in it. He does not even assume that a third must be found in it. Therefore, when he experiments, he must constantly come up with the wrong concepts.

These are more or less the considerations that are made today from a philosophical point of view about the nature of man, especially about the eternal nature of man. It is assumed that one can only speak of the body and soul of man. One starts from the prejudice that the third, the spirit, must somehow be inherent in the soul, and one must therefore go wrong. To substantiate this latter point, and in particular to show provisionally how one has to speak rightly of body, soul and spirit, let us consider the following.

Those inner soul experiences that are most intimately connected with bodily conditions do not, however, provide any real insight into what is going on in the human body. I mean such inner experiences - one does not see them at all as soul experiences, but they are experienced by the soul - such experiences as hunger and thirst or other things that we perceive. He who only wanted to observe how one becomes hungry, how one becomes satiated, would not be able to arrive at what external natural science confirms: that while we are in a state of hunger or satiety, chemical changes in the blood are taking place in our body, or something else chemical or physical is happening.

But it must be said that the ordinary consciousness of the human being knows nothing of what is going on in the body while the person is experiencing hunger and thirst. It must be determined by special scientific methods, which relate to the examination of the human body, what happens when one feels hunger, satiety, thirst or the like. What we are aware of, what we experience through our everyday consciousness, is backed by something that our everyday consciousness knows nothing about, but only physical science can shed light on.

Consider, dear reader, how much a person in ordinary daily life actually knows about his body. He knows its outer form, knows that which is outwardly inclined. If you consider the relationship between what you know of the body and what you actually know, you will see that you know very little. But this is expanded and supplemented by what external physical science, anatomy and physiology have to offer. We can say that, on the side of the body, what anatomy, physiology and biology add to what we inwardly experience and feel initially remains unconscious.

The spiritual researcher now shows, as we shall see shortly, how we have different experiences on the other side of the human soul. These other experiences, these experiences of thinking, feeling, and willing, of which we already have a superficial awareness, that they are less inclined towards the bodily side than hunger and thirst, these other experiences - the spiritual researcher is the one who first of all addresses himself to these experiences when he wants to arrive at the other side with his science, from the soul to the spirit, just as the physical researcher arrives at the other side from the soul to the body in the way just described. That is the difference between the physical researcher, who follows what the person experiences mentally from the soul side to the body side, and the spiritual researcher, who follows what the person experiences mentally from the soul to the spirit side. Just as little as one can learn something about the physical being by only observing hunger, thirst or similar general physical moods, and just as little as one can know anything about the body by these means, but must penetrate into the body itself by special scientific methods, so it is also necessary and possible to do so on the spiritual side.

It is very often believed that the spiritual can be attained through what is commonly called “inner contemplation”. All kinds of mysticism are spoken of in this field. It is believed that if a person really immerses himself in his soul life, he must also gain insight into what underlies the soul as spiritual.

Without a special spiritual science, one achieves just as little insight in this way as one would achieve insight into the bodily side if one only ever observed hunger and thirst inwardly and immersed oneself in them. Mere mysticism, mere inner contemplation, can certainly be compared with brooding over hunger and thirst and breathing needs and so on. Just as one must follow these phenomena mentally, but then expand outward toward the body with the scientific methods of physical research, so one must be able to follow in the mind what one experiences through a certain deepening of the soul life in imagining, feeling, and thinking.

Now it may well be said: about the kind of research, how one comes from the soul to the spirit, how one comes to the body on the other hand, about this kind of research, one still has very few accurate ideas today. It is very easy to believe, dear ladies and gentlemen, chemistry, physiology, physiological chemistry are serious sciences, they have developed good methods. Every spiritual researcher will of course admit this. But compared to what appears to be quite simple, such as how to research spiritual life, everything that physiology, chemistry and anatomy have developed makes it seem so much easier, because everything that is the research of physical science can be more easily acquired. For no external manipulation, nothing that has its points of reference in the external world, can lead to knowledge of the spirit. It is a matter of that which one initially, although wrongly, calls inner life, being expanded, if I may use the pedantic expression, systematically expanded, that the threads are really drawn to the spirit.

Now I can only characterize the nature of the research that is necessary in broad terms. You can find more details about it in my books “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”, in the second part of “Occult Science”, “The Riddle of Man” and in the last book, which was published a few weeks ago, “The Riddle of Souls”, and so on. But what is described in detail in these books as the path to the spiritual worlds, I will characterize here at least in principle.

The point is that if one remains in ordinary consciousness, one cannot know anything at all about what underlies the human being as a spiritual being, and that if one takes a superficial approach, one is quite right to state a limit to knowledge at this point. If one wants to stop at what the ordinary consciousness gives, then one can say nothing other than that the spiritual realm is simply closed to man. But in truth it is not. Of course, for ordinary consciousness, the situation is such that what truly is soul and spirit is not known at all, that it is hidden at first and that one can only penetrate to the true soul and true spirit through very specific paths of research. What one experiences of the spirit is actually not much more than what one experiences of the body through the ordinary external way of looking at things without science. What we see of the body in everyday life is, as we said, only part of what constitutes the nature of the human body.

For ordinary consciousness, the spirit also presents itself from a certain perspective, but this ordinary consciousness knows no more about the spirit than it knows about the body when it only looks at it externally. What ordinary consciousness knows about the spirit is actually contained entirely in the simple, short word “I”. When one pronounces this little word “I” and at the same time feels and thinks through what is connected with this idea of “I”, then one has a part of that which underlies man as a spiritual being, but one has not much more than one has from the ordinary superficial way of looking at the body, without science.

The point is that when you go from the soul, from its experiences, hunger, thirst, need to breathe, to the body, you cannot help but actually kill or paralyze what the soul experiences, whether in the way you look at it or in reality. In this way you learn to recognize what underlies the soul experience. As a rule, we experience something through the body when we expel the soul from the body. In spiritual research, it is the other way around. The aim is not to paralyze what we experience in our soul, but to strengthen it, even when we undergo the much-vaunted mystical experience. And I would like to point out two inner activities that need to be strengthened.

In principle, the matter can be characterized as follows: If we look at the human will as it lives in ordinary consciousness, it is reflected in the life of ideas, but what underlies a volitional impulse is something of which we know nothing. You can find a discussion of this in an excellent book such as Physiological Psychology by Theodor Zichen, who excludes the will from the psychological point of view because, in his opinion, the will is not present in everything that can be found from an external point of view. What actually happens when a person executes any volitional decision, what happens when I just want to raise a hand, until the actual raising of the hand, remains unconscious, just as, for example, the experiences from falling asleep to waking up remain unconscious. We have ideas that underlie the motives of the will, but in our ordinary consciousness we have no idea of the process of the will itself. That is the one thing, the honored presence, that the spiritual researcher comes to, to be able to relate to the process of the will as such in the act of imagining, to be able to relate to the process of the will as one is otherwise able to relate to the external world.

I would like to give an example to illustrate what I mean. When we speak, it is a special volitional act. The fact that we produce images does not change what I have said. When we recite a poem that we have learned by heart, it is a continuous series of volitional impulses that gradually become habitual. Now everyone knows that if you try to recite a poem and at the same time make an effort to observe your own recitation of the poem as one would observe an external natural process, then you sacrifice the recitation.

This example in particular shows you, dear attendees, how impossible it is for the ordinary consciousness to observe itself. Self-observation in a higher sense than is usually meant – self-observation is what must be striven for. It is not enough for spiritual science to merely state: It is virtually impossible to recite a poem aloud or to recite it inwardly in thought and to observe oneself while doing so. Certainly, for the ordinary consciousness this is absolutely impossible; but the spiritual researcher must learn to do so. He must, just as the chemist applies his methods, also apply his methods; he must do everything possible - you will find a more detailed description in “How to Know Higher Worlds” . The spiritual researcher must do everything possible to be able to work through his will on the one hand, and on the other hand to observe at the same time what he carries out with his will, just as one observes an external natural process.

This is one of the things that can be said: It is easy to say; to actually carry it out requires a far greater effort than to acquire the methods of chemistry, physics, astronomy or a physiological science. Of course, it is not enough to observe oneself in such a case, but to learn to recognize that inner attitude of the soul, whereby one can simultaneously accomplish an act of the will and, on the other hand, face oneself while observing.

Only by coming to cultivate self-observation in this way, only by doing so, do we gradually come to distinguish between what is ordinary mental life and what is true mental life. For if one attains an inner practice in the way that has been indicated, in this self-observation, then one gradually comes to a completely different way of thinking. Thoughts such as one has in ordinary consciousness do not flourish in this way, but thoughts that have a much greater, inner, meaningful power, thoughts that have much more of what one can call a pictorial content, but which at the same time points to a reality. When one learns to observe oneself in this way, one comes to know something that is hidden in ordinary life, something that is part of this ordinary life but which, in this ordinary life, remains entirely unconscious, subconscious. Something emerges from the ordinary life of the soul that was previously unknown.

At first, one sees from the inner consequences how the matter actually stands. One learns, namely, only when one gradually learns to distinguish between the ordinary soul life and the true soul life, one learns more and more to find one's way up to the concept, which can then become a guiding concept for the contemplation of the actual human being. One learns to recognize that what we call the ordinary life of the soul is related to the true life of the soul, which one first discovers in this way, as the mirror image is to the real person standing before this mirror image. The important thing is that one acquires this great knowledge with reference to the soul life: that the outer soul life, known to ordinary consciousness, is the mirror image of the true inner soul life, which is unknown to ordinary consciousness.

The consequence of this is that we are only now beginning to gain an insight into the human body. Before seeking knowledge in this way, we cannot really know anything accurate about the human body. I will point out just one fact: The person who, in the sense of mere external natural science, fully recognizes its methods for [spiritual] science, even when they are applied in an outstanding way, as for example by Oscar Hertwig, who thus observes the external bodily life of man, he follows, among other things, for example, how the bodily life of a person leads back to the bodily life of the parents, grandparents and so on. One speaks of the inheritance of certain characteristics. Whenever we speak of heredity in the field of natural science today, we always have the view that we inherit something, but that in what we inherit as a body, the germs for the development of the I, for example, are also contained. It is said that, as the I develops into it, self-awareness, the I, arises in the course of life on the basis of the inherited characteristics. It is quite impossible for a different view of the matter to be formed while remaining on the ground of mere natural science.

But for someone who, in the manner described, learns to distinguish the true soul from its reflection, the ordinary soul life, such a view as that offered by natural science today is as if someone wanted to explain: Man stands in relation to the air through his lungs, and in the lungs is the origin of the air that man breathes out and in; the air comes from the lungs and returns to them. Such a person would be deluding themselves, as if what is air were somehow essentially connected to the lungs themselves, whereas air is in our environment and must be sought outside of the human being. If one is able to see through these circumstances correctly, then one will naturally not look for the origin of air in the lungs. But if you go through the spiritual path, you come to recognize in the soul and spiritual realm that the belief that the air comes from the child's body, as it develops according to the inherited characteristics from the parents, the I, the self, that this corresponds exactly to the belief that the air comes from the lungs.

One learns to recognize, through spiritual scientific methods, that the I is not something that can arise from the body, but one learns to recognize the independence of the I, one learns to recognize the coming of the I to that which comes from father and mother. These things must be emphasized today, for the reason that the opposite idea is so deeply rooted in the thinking and cognitive habits of the present that what must be said from the spiritual-scientific point of view seems quite absurd to some. Nevertheless, it can and must be said if one does not choose the starting point of amateurish inner observation, but rather a spiritual-scientific observation. In this way one learns to recognize that just as air enters the lungs from the outside, this I enters from a spiritual world into that which comes from the father and mother, that which is physically inherited. Just as the air does not disappear when it leaves the lungs, so this self, which has just as little to do with the life of the body as the lungs have to do with the air, passes through the gate of death.

If one then follows the path further, one comes indeed, precisely with regard to the point touched upon, via the bodily life to very definite, now truly scientific concepts, in relation to which even the fully appreciated results of natural science are amateurish. One arrives at this by learning to distinguish between what is the inner spiritual self and what is inherited. One arrives at forming a true picture of what one actually inherits from one's ancestors. These things can only be touched on today; I only want to encourage you and cannot give anything exhaustive. What we inherit is, in the deepest sense, our own bodily form. Anyone who is aware of how what we do in a certain sense in our ordinary mental life depends on the physiognomy of the body – by which I mean the inner structure of the body – will be able to imagine that the human being lives out his or her life in the inherited formations of the body, but the basis is always the inherited form. This inherited form, which in turn can shape the substance out of its structural forces from what we take in during our lives until we reach sexual maturity, so that this substance, which in turn passes on the inheritance to the offspring, now contains the form. This sentence, which spiritual science has to add to science: that only the form is inherited from the ancestors and that the form is inherited by the descendants through the substance, provides a supplement to natural science. It will be very informative with regard to a certain matter concerning the relationship to the higher aspects of the human being.

I have to progress in the consideration of the path of research into the spiritual worlds. I have first described how ideas must be added to the impulses of the will, how self-observation must occur in a higher sense. If one wants to get to know the being of the human being, the spiritual being of the human being, then not only must this self-observation be able to occur, but something else must happen: one must carry out that which, in one's soul, results in a strengthening of the soul life on another side, which, using a technical term, can be called “meditation”. You can find more details about this in the books mentioned; I can only give the principles here.

Just as we have seen that in the will and its impulses, the ideas must be led to self-observation, so on the other hand, the will must be introduced into the life of ideas. This is even more difficult. And precisely the introduction of the will into the realm of imagination, whereas otherwise we let the images run according to the sensory processes or let them run dreamily, for example in contemplation of what one has experienced. The person who wants to introduce the will into this world of imagination often needs years and years to achieve real results. The matter is by no means a simple one. Years and years are needed if one is to truly research the realm of spiritual life.

The point is to introduce the will into the life of the imagination, so that one learns, on the one hand, to direct the imagination as one directs the hands. The will must be introduced into the imagination. This is best achieved by trying to separate oneself from ordinary imaginative life and only reflecting on that which one introduces into one's consciousness through the will. Therefore, one should not introduce such ideas as are given from the external sense world or from the ordinary sensual world; but self-made ideas or ideas that have been suggested to one; these should direct the life of ideas. There it is the arbitrariness by which the life of ideas is directed. But it must not remain so, for then one would not come to spiritual research, but to dreaming. On the one hand – and this may sound paradoxical – the will, arbitrariness, must be introduced into the imaginative life; on the other hand, this will must be excluded, because otherwise one would enter into fantastic thinking, which must not be allowed.

But if you continue the meditative life with patience and energy, and keep trying to continue with the ideas you have put together yourself, whether they are symbolic or similar ideas, then you bring such content into your consciousness again and again. In doing so, you acquire an inner mastery of this imaginative life. One gets to know something that was previously impossible to get to know at all. One gradually learns that one can arrive at one mental image from another, even when nothing is taken up in these images from external sensory perception, through mere arbitrariness. Imagining at random is only the trial, only the path, but it gradually develops as a self-evident inner life process, in that one notices that just as one otherwise, when observing external ideas, does not arbitrarily place one idea after the other, one now notices that one must now follow something that flows into the ideas themselves; so that little by little, although one now follows the course of ideas inwardly, one cannot help but develop one idea from the other just as regularly, not arbitrarily, letting one idea follow the other, as one does when one follows the course of external sense observation. Just as one is subject to necessity there, so one is gradually subject to a purely spiritual, inner necessity. Just as the external sense world prevails in the external perceptions, so an inner spirituality gradually prevails in the imagination that one has thus developed.

Just as the other method I have described ascends from the outer soul to the true soul, so in this way one ascends from the imagination to the spirit, by discovering the spirit as something objective, just as the external sense world is objective. One knows very well whether one is merely stringing together dream-like images or... gaps in the transcript]. And as a spiritual researcher, you know exactly whether you... or whether you are going through the inner process that... not arbitrarily stringing one idea after another, but developing one idea from the other as the spirit demands this sequence of ideas. In this way, through meditative life, one ascends to a real observation of the spirit.

Again, if you want to carry this out in its strictness, it is a work that lasts for years and requires much more devotion and willingness to sacrifice than astronomical or chemical work, but which leads to inner observation of the spirit just as strictly as astronomical, chemical, physiological methods lead to the observation of external laws.

He who, as a spiritual researcher, has experienced in countless cases how one often begins a path of research in certain areas of spiritual life, and who has then seen how this path of research leads through a spiritual necessity just as much as through sensual necessity , the one who has experienced how what one has followed from a certain starting point turns out differently than one had actually expected, quite differently than what one had assumed, may well speak of an inner necessity of the inner spiritual path. There is no arbitrariness here. One experiences it only too clearly when one is truly a spiritual researcher, that before one begins to research, one has false ideas, that the inner necessity of the path brings one to ideas that one could not have arrived at through sensory observation. One may say: When one really progresses on the path of spiritual research, things usually turn out quite differently than one expects. And if one does not want to form arbitrary ideas in the sense of exploring the spiritual world - one expects something completely different and something completely different comes. And one is as surprised by it as one would be by an unexpected experience in the outer world.

These things are not dealt with because it is expected that everyone should go through them – although it would be desirable that as many people as possible in the present day would follow the path of spiritual research to the extent that one can follow my books, so that they can bear witness from their own experience that the spirit and man's share in the spirit is a reality. But to make spiritual science part of our culture, to assimilate what spiritual research brings to light, does not depend on one's being a spiritual researcher oneself. That which is to be researched in the spirit must be researched through those inner paths - in truth they are outer paths - which you will find described in my books; but once the things have been researched, anyone with ordinary common sense can find them confirmed.

I would like to say: Although today, to a certain extent, anyone can become a seer – you don't need to be a seer to recognize spiritual research as such, but rather, you can put what spiritual research brings to light into the service of life, just as you can put what chemistry and physics bring into the service of life, without being a chemist or a physicist yourself. I would like to use a comparison to characterize what is to be characterized: Not everyone can be a watchmaker, but most people will recognize the watch. Not everyone can be a seer; but what the seer science can research about the nature of man is of importance for the life of every human being. When someone goes into a watchmaker's workshop, he sees that the watch has not come together by chance. You can see that in the watch. When the seer shows the spiritual powers and beings from which life and its facts, its entities, flow, the life and the fact of life are present for every person. And just as one can tell, without having seen the watchmaker at work, from the way the watch is made that it was put together by the watchmaker, so after the seer says that the life has come from the spirit, one can judge whether what the shearer says is correct or incorrect. Furthermore, it is not the case that the seerical development comes before humanity without saying how it comes to its results. For everyone can observe whether what the shearer has to say is reasonable, how he comes to his results. And that which is found in the course of spiritual research will gradually have to become part of our culture, for the very reason that advanced science, in particular, does not have the methods to arrive at spiritual knowledge itself, because on the other hand, this makes it necessary to have a different way of arriving at spiritual knowledge. And even if many prejudices against spiritual science still exist today, they will be dispelled by the fact that people will increasingly recognize how life confirms what the spiritual researcher has to say.

I would like to briefly mention at least one point: recently, a well-known personality here in this city, Dr. Rittelmeyer, has pointed out the religious significance of spiritual science, as it is meant here, in a number of beautiful articles in the “Christian World”. He has also forcefully and appropriately characterized the very nature of this spiritual practice to come to the spirit. Recently objections have been raised against these statements in the “Christian World” from another side that is also highly esteemed. I do not want to touch on these objections any further, I just want to point them out. It is said that a major mistake of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is that one does not rely on mere grace, that the spirit would come to one, so to speak, that one would be graced as one is gifted with a talent, with genius, but that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would try to lead the soul into the spiritual world, the spiritual realm, through arbitrary exercises. This is characterized as a particular mistake; it shows that nothing other than that this side, which is so highly esteemed by those who rebel against Pastor Rittelmeyer, simply does not understand what is important.

If one advances from the soul to the spirit, yes, if one advances only from the ordinary soul experience to the true soul, then one comes into nothing but activity, and that would be precisely the wrong thing if one wanted to remain passive in relation to the spirit. For everything that comes to one in a passive state makes one dependent on the body. To live independently in the spirit must be a free act, an act that arises entirely from the arbitrariness of the human being. Without entering the spiritual world by free decision, one cannot enter it. Anyone who speaks of spirit as something that can be attained without this free entry into the spiritual world does not know what spirit is; they only know the soul life, which, in a more or less refined and sophisticated way, is nevertheless dependent on the body.

Thus one sees how today, even in the most influential circles, there is not the slightest conception of what the spirit really is. This real spirit is an active spirit, it is not something with which one can connect merely passively. At most, one comes out of the essence of the spirit; one denies a spirit when one only develops that which behaves passively. The difficulty in entering the spiritual realm lies precisely in the fact that one enters it arbitrarily on the one hand, but that it can only be a trial, that one comes upon other necessities, that everything turns out quite differently than one had expected. One develops the will into the life of imagination, but in the end one knows that one can only develop this will by turning one's eyes from one point to another. But the will must prevail in everything that is to truly enter the mind. That is the essential.

And when we learn to recognize through direct contemplation what the true soul is in relation to the mirror image of this true soul, then we learn to know the soul - I have shown before how to recognize the I as something that is taken up by the body - we learn to know the true soul in relation to what are only the ordinary soul experiences. Getting to know this true soul, coming to the contemplation of this true soul, leads at the same time to knowing that this true soul essence is not enclosed within the boundaries between birth and death. Above all, one learns to recognize how this true soul essence is actually extinguished by the life of the body, how it can be seen in its true form through the consciousness that has been expanded, as I have characterized it, can be seen before birth or conception and after the person has passed through the gate of death. One learns to recognize that external life on earth is not at all as one thinks in ordinary life.

In ordinary life, one has the idea: well, what one experiences between birth and death comes to one in this way. Chance brings one thing, brings another; life is merely configured from the sensual outside world. It cannot be otherwise than to have this idea in ordinary life. But this idea alone brings one into a certain calamity when one can consider the life of the soul. If you have this sense, then you know that you would actually extinguish this soul life itself if you were to extinguish external experiences. The word “soul”, the abstract concept “soul”, is not important; what is important is the real, meaningful soul life.

But ask yourself, when you turn 40, what this really concrete, true content of your soul life actually is. It is actually what your experiences are. You cannot separate experiences from your soul life. Think about what you have in your soul and how it would be different if you had gone through different experiences. It is you yourself, and these experiences have become you. When experiences come up, as is the case, then you are saying that your soul has actually come up to you, as is the case. Observation of the true soul shows that this is not the case; it leads us out into the distance, as a telescope leads us out into the distance, it leads us out beyond birth and death. We see into worlds in which we are before birth or conception, in which we will be after death. We see into these worlds and we know: What we experience here from the moment we become conscious until death, when we lose our earthly consciousness and acquire a different one, what approaches us is not random. It is because we, let us say, lived from 1872 to 1925, but because we have previously lived in a spiritual world and have united with what we have inherited as a body from the spiritual world and have been led down from the spiritual world through the inner longings of the soul in order to live through the series of experiences that can be lived through in the place and time into which we are born. What external experiences of life are, what approaches us as longing, as the will to experience that, it exists in us before this life.

These external experiences are definitely connected with what we have lived through in the spiritual realm before we proceeded to conception or birth. And what we experience as inner soul experiences: We grow inwardly, spiritually with our outer experiences, we develop certain habits, we acquire ideas that guide our lives, and so on. This inner experience between birth and death, one can truly ask: What significance does it have for the world outside of us? One can ask that. And a contemporary philosopher who is strangely obsessed with complaining about philosophy – he says: Man has no more philosophy than an animal, and differs from the animal only in that... [gap] – who is a professor of philosophy at the university, he looks at the inner life of man and says: The natural life, the life in the great world, actually runs its course without concerning itself with the inner life. And he uses the expression, this philosopher: Nature is great and admirable, and we are moping!

One could easily come up with this thought if one has no connection with the spiritual world. One could ask oneself: Why, in addition to the events that take place in the cosmos, does something else take place that resembles an image of the cosmos? The truth is this: While the outer soul experiences are longed for from our spiritual existence before birth, the inner experiences, the gradual becoming of the soul, that which grows within us as a sense of life - that is what we carry over into the spiritual world through death; that is the germ of this inner experience to that which we experience after death.

Thus we are led beyond birth and death into a spiritual world, not by speculation, but by seeking first to develop the faculty of observation, by which we can grasp the eternal in our mind's eye. It develops the perspective into that world in which we really are. Spiritual science leads us to the contemplation of the spiritual world, to the development of what, in an extended sense, can be called, with Goethe, “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears”.

And again, the destiny of man, to extract something specific from the abundance of the matter, when you consider what we ourselves are and what our destinies are – and yet, the ordinary consciousness is again of the opinion: It happens as it happens, this fate; on the one hand it is a sum of coincidences that group together into a whole, on the other hand the fact that we ourselves are this fate, if we really consider not only abstract terms. When we consider this, we again come to a disharmony between what ordinary consciousness sees in fate and what fate actually is for what we essentially are as human beings.

When a person rises by experiencing the inner necessity, as I have described it, in his or her imagination, by being able to observe the mind, he or she learns to recognize that the body is a reflection of the mind, just as the ordinary soul is a reflection of the true soul. But also what we experience as fate is in a certain respect a reflection of the spirit, only something is at work in our life that is hidden from the ordinary consciousness. It has an effect when we see our fate approaching us – spiritual observation shows this – it has an effect on our present life that radiates as forces from earlier earth lives. That is the mystery of the will, the mystery of the fact that the will, without our knowing it - because it is in the unconscious - that this will, just as hunger feels drawn to food, feels drawn to that which then bears its destiny. The reason why we know so little about this will in our present life is that what now works as the will to fashion our destiny does not work at all in ordinary life. Just as the seeds of the outer experiences of the soul lie in the prenatal life, so the will that shapes our destiny lies in past earthly lives. And the wisdom that develops within the soul, which is hidden in old age, goes with us through the gateway of death, growing from the imagination to the will for the next life on earth.

Not only can we see through the soul if we are able to extend our ideas by drawing threads from the soul life to the spiritual life, but we can see through the whole course of the human eternal through births and deaths. We first learn through the first degrees of self-observation that the I is something that connects to the inherited body. We learn that our experiences of the soul are drawn from the spiritual world, which we pass through before birth. We learn to recognize that destiny, the wisdom of life, is what leads to repeated and repeated earthly lives.

I could only give you a few hints today, you can read more in my books. I will have a few more special things to say tomorrow. The indications I have given should above all characterize the fact that spiritual science is not about dreaming or creating concepts of the world, but that spiritual science is based on genuine, true research, on a kind of research that is just as strictly inward as the external natural sciences are strict in their field - yes, even stricter. Those who have followed the spiritual path can say this. And that this spiritual science can also shed light on scientific fields, you can see from the last chapter of my book 'Von Seelenrätseln'.

It may be said, dearest attendees, that what is explored as spirit actually sheds light on what surrounds us as nature. This does not invalidate natural science, but it is as limited as the view someone has when feeling their way around a dark room compared to the view someone has when they light a lamp and illuminate the objects. Of course, when you feel for the objects in the dark, the one, the second, the third – you always feel for the same thing. It is therefore not surprising that the room merely felt for is described the same by everyone. Because natural science conducts research in spiritual darkness, the concepts are always the same by themselves, but because when you light a light, you can shine it here and there, the configuration will be different from the different points. Hence the easily found, but by no means apt objection that one usually makes, that one spiritual researcher speaks this and the other that. That is the case, but it is the case for the reason that the spiritual researcher first also ignites the light spiritually from a certain point of view.

But there is a way out. And it is precisely the direction that I myself represent that seeks this way out. People shy away from the inner drama of the soul, from the drama of knowledge that one has to go through, because they fear getting into the subjective. This is a transitional phase, but then you enter a realm where the spirit is objective, where the spirit can be described from all sides in the same way as the world of the senses can be described. If you light a light in a room, you only have a certain aspect of the room. If you turn the light around, the impressions contradict each other; the room looks different from each place, but you gradually get an objective overview of the whole room.

In particular, the spiritual scientific direction that I am striving for seeks to apply the spiritual research methods and to illuminate everything with the light of the spirit, but it tries to do so from different points of view. This results in a different misery, but that is not too bad, that while one otherwise says that a spiritual researcher who takes the different points of view contradicts himself. He contradicts himself, but he does it in order to gradually characterize. This is the basis of the recently so popularized criticisms of my world view, where contradictions are sought. These contradictions are not worth more than four photographs of four sides of a room. The spiritual researcher must contradict himself in a certain way by characterizing life from different points of view. Only unwise people may come – precisely because of the presence of different images that the spiritual researcher gives, he wants to show his objectivity.

In the ordinary physical sense world, it is indeed the case that one need not be exposed to this if one merely describes external facts. But it is different in the spiritual. The spirit is a living thing, and the living has its contradictions. In fact, anyone who is familiar with spiritual science and then carefully and conscientiously immerses themselves in the way of thinking of natural science as it is developed in the present day will find that natural science not only does not contradict spiritual science in any of its details, but is a complete confirmation of everything that spiritual science has to say.

Therefore, I would like to say: the spiritual researcher does not shy away from having his point of view checked, indeed, from having his point of view strictly checked by the most diverse spiritual schools of thought that otherwise exist. Just check what the spiritual researcher has to say against true natural science, not against superficial natural science. After 30 years, monism still represents what natural science has overcome. If you test what the spiritual researcher has to say against true natural science, you will find it confirmed. The spiritual researcher does not shy away from real scientific scrutiny. Thus I shall never advise anyone who feels drawn to what I call spiritual science to believe in the power of superstition, to refrain from testing, to give in to blind faith. No, no one should believe what is said, no one should accept something on authority. But he would understand it all the more, the more conscientiously he tests it in the natural life of the present.

It can be tested in the same way in religious life. It is clear to those who stand on the ground of spiritual science that religious life - as Dr. Rittelmeyer shows - gains a firm support, a security, through what can be experienced from spiritual science, a support that is needed today. One must not succumb to this misunderstanding: spiritual science is not opposed to religious life. It does not say: Don't go to church! No, religion is not to be replaced by spiritual science, and spiritual science is not to be a new religion, but it wants to be something that stands alongside scientific research as a scientific research, but which, for those who approach religious life from a spiritual scientific point of view, enriches and more firmly establishes this religious life. Spiritual science does not say: Go to spiritual science and do not go to church! But: Go to spiritual science and you will see what religious life has to say in a new light.

And life itself, social life, ethical life, legal life, all of life, even the immediate practice of life, can all be enriched by spiritual science in that those who do not become sceptical themselves get their ideas in such a way that they better conform to reality, so that one does not think you are a practical person but are really a dreamer, but rather ideas that are imbued with reality, a feeling that has inner certainty, a will that can find its bearings in life, that can find the paths through life, that is what people can find from spiritual research.

Spiritual research should not be understood as a theory, but as something that goes through life like an essence, that makes people useful and strong for life. So you can go to science, you can go to religion, to life itself – spiritual science will not keep anyone from doing so. It will be glad to be examined by science, by religion, by life itself. For he who is grounded in its soil knows that these tests will not refute it, but that these tests, if carried out seriously, will always confirm it.

Not that one cannot err in the field of spiritual science, but error is possible in every field. That is not the point. The spiritual researcher does not demand blind faith in authority. He says: Go and test spiritual science; it will only gain in science, in religion, in life. Go ahead and test spiritual science against Johannes Müller's world view, for that matter; and spiritual science has no fear of losing anything by doing so. I will not in any way hurl back at Johannes Müller the accusation that he hurled at me in response to Pastor Rittelmeyer's articles: that spiritual science is something tempting, that it represents a new temptation for people. That would be cowardice; then people may let themselves be tempted if the anthroposophical world view should be a temptation - they will recognize by themselves, when they are not suggested that they are being tempted, but when it is said to them: Go to science, go to religion, go to life, even go to Johannes Müller – you will find that spiritual science is not refuted by this, but confirmed by science, by religion, by life and even by Johannes Müller. For this spiritual science – as I have been able to sketch out – tomorrow I want to say something about the conditions in the spiritual world itself – this spiritual science wants real science, wants conscientiously gained knowledge. And above all, it has to be introduced into cultural life in such a way that it can withstand the impact coming from the natural sciences.

Du Bois-Reymond, a physiologist whom I hold in high esteem, has in his famous studies on animal electricity and in other brilliant speeches explained a great deal about how to characterize the newer natural science. But at the same time he said: this natural science can only extend to the world of the senses, for beyond that, science must cease. That was a dictum. And today a wide circle of humanity is under its influence. But what this dictum means – let me express it by way of a comparison: someone sees a tree growing out of the ground. How it is rooted in the ground, you cannot see inside; that bothers you. The tree grows and grows: what is in the ground has something to do with it. You now want to look at the tree with the means at your disposal, you dig it up; you put its roots in the air. It dies, it is killed because it is uprooted. In more recent times, because people did not want to move from human knowledge about the external sensory world to what is at the root of all knowledge in the spiritual world, attempts were made to uproot knowledge about nature, as one uproots a tree. Just as the tree dies, so too does knowledge die when it is torn from the soil, the spiritual soil.

In the future, spiritual science should provide more and more evidence that, when we are torn from the soil of spiritual life, we can only develop mechanical, materialistic science. Instead of Du Bois-Reymond's dictum, “We seek science, but where the supersensible life begins, science ends” – instead of this dictum, there must be the insightful saying, the attitude: When knowledge and science are wrenched out of the soil of truly spiritual life, then science dies out. Not that science must cease where the supersensible world begins, but when science is sought outside the supersensible world, then genuine science dies out, is uprooted and killed. This will be a conviction that connects people to the spiritual world in terms of their attitudes, and this conviction – which spiritual science seeks to achieve – should become the conviction of as many people as possible in the future.

German philosophy before Schopenhauer

[ 1 ] The years 1781 and 1807 mark an era of fierce battles within the development of German science. In 1781, Kant woke his contemporaries from their philosophical slumber with his "Critique of Pure Reason" and presented them with riddles which the cognitive power of the nation's best minds endeavored to solve over the next quarter of a century. A philosophical excitement of the highest order can be observed among those involved in these intellectual battles. In rapid succession, one school of thought replaced another. The shallow intellectual clarity that had prevailed in the books of philosophical literature before Kant was replaced by scientific warmth, which gradually grew into the captivating eloquence of Fichte and the poetic verve with which Schelling was able to express scientific ideas. An examination of this intellectual movement reveals an incomparable intellectual wealth, but also a restless, hasty rush forward. Some ideas entered the public domain prematurely. The thinkers did not have the patience to allow their ideas to mature. This restless development ended with the publication of Georg Wilh. Friedr. Hegel's first major work, the "Phenomenology of Spirit", in 1807. Hegel did the last work on this book in Jena in the days when the terrible turmoil of war in 1806 broke over the city. The events of the following years were not conducive to philosophical battles. Hegel's book did not immediately make such a strong impression, challenging the minds to cooperate, as Fichte and Schelling did when they first appeared. But even their influence gradually waned. For both of them, the period of their activity at the University of Jenens was the most brilliant of their lives. Fichte taught at this university from 1794 to 1799, Schelling from 1798 to 1803. The former moved from Jena to Berlin because the accusation of atheism brought against him by envious and unreasonable people had brought him into conflict with the Weimar government. In the winter of 1804/s he gave his lectures on the "Fundamentals of the Present Age" in Berlin, in which he effectively advocated idealistic thinking, and in the winter of 1807/8 his famous "Speeches to the German Nation", which exerted a powerful influence on the strengthening of national sentiment. As a champion of national and liberal ideas, in the service of which he placed his thinking and his eloquence, he achieved a more powerful effect during this period than through the philosophical lectures he gave at the University of Berlin from its establishment in 1810 until his death in 1814. Schelling, who did not make the transition from philosophical to political activity, was soon completely forgotten after his time in Jenens. He moved to Würzburg in 1803 and then to Munich in 1806, where he worked on expanding his ideas, which few people were still interested in. At the end of the first decade of our century, there was no longer any sign of the lively philosophical debate that Kant's revolutionary act had provoked: Fichte and Schelling's time was over, Hegel's era had not yet dawned. Hegel led a quiet existence from 1806 to 1808 as editor of a Bamberg newspaper and then until 1816 as principal of the Nuremberg grammar school. His enormous influence on German intellectual life only began with his appointment to Berlin in 1818.

[ 2 ] This characterizes the circumstances that Arthur Schopenhauer found himself in when, after an eventful youth, he began his philosophical apprenticeship in 1810. He heard echoes of Fichte's, Schelling's and above all Kant's views from the pulpits and from the works of contemporary philosophers. The way in which Schopenhauer turned the views of his great predecessors, especially Kant and Fichte, into elements of his own system of ideas can be understood by examining the period of his life that preceded his preoccupation with philosophy.

Schopenhauer's youthful life

[ 3 ] Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig on February 22, 1788. His father, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, lived in this city as a wealthy merchant. He was a man of thorough professional training, great worldly experience, rare strength of character and a sense of independence that nothing could overcome. His mother Johanna Henriette, née Trosiener, was a fun-loving, artistic woman who was extremely open to intellectual pleasures and had a strong penchant for socializing, which she could easily satisfy with her intelligence and intellectual alertness. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer was 41 and Johanna 22 years old when Arthur, their first child, was born from their marriage in 1785. He was followed in 1797 by the second and last, Adele. The philosopher's parents had not been driven to marry by rapturous passion. But the relationship, based on mutual respect, must have been a very happy one. Johanna speaks about it with the words: "I could be proud to belong to this man, and I was. I feigned ardent love for him just as little as he laid claim to it."

[ 4 ] In 1793, the previously free city of Danzig was incorporated into the Prussian state. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer did not like the idea of becoming a Prussian subject. He therefore emigrated to Hamburg with his wife and child. In the years that followed, the small family traveled frequently. The reason for this was Johanna's longing for a change in living conditions, for ever new impressions, and her husband's intention to give his son the widest possible knowledge of the world based on his own experience. Arthur's father had decided that he should become a capable merchant and a man of the world. All educational measures were undertaken with this in mind. The boy received his first lessons at a private institute in Hamburg. At the age of ten, he embarked on a long journey with his father to France, where he spent the next two years of his life. After Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer had shown his son Paris, he took him to Havre to leave him with a business friend, Grégoire de Blésimaire. The latter had the young Schopenhauer educated together with his own son. The result of this education was that Arthur returned, to his father's great delight, as a perfect young Frenchman who had acquired a great deal of appropriate knowledge and had forgotten his mother tongue to such an extent that he could only make himself understood with difficulty in it. But the twelve-year-old boy also brought back the most pleasant memories from France. In his 31st year, he said of this stay: "I spent by far the happiest part of my childhood in that friendly town on the Seine estuary and the sea coast." After returning to his parents' home, Arthur Schopenhauer attended a private educational establishment run by Dr. Runge and attended by the sons of wealthy Hamburgers. At this school, pupils were taught what was needed to turn them into capable and socially educated businessmen. Latin was taught for one hour a week, just for the sake of appearances. Arthur Schopenhauer enjoyed these lessons for almost four years. What he was taught here in the sciences was presented to him in a form appropriate to the practical goals of the future merchant. But it was enough to awaken in him a powerful inclination towards a scholarly career. His father did not like this at all. In his opinion, he found himself in the embarrassing position of having to choose between two things: the present wishes of his beloved son and his future happiness. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer thought that the academic profession could only bring a man poverty and worry, not happiness and contentment. Forcing his son into a profession was contrary to the nature of his father, who considered freedom to be one of man's greatest possessions. However, he considered a ruse to be appropriate and expedient to dissuade the young man from his inclination. Arthur had to decide quickly: either to go on a long pleasure trip through a large part of Europe, which his parents wanted to undertake, and on his return to devote himself definitively to the mercantile profession, or to stay behind in Hamburg to begin his Latin studies immediately and prepare himself for the learned profession. The wonderful expectations that the thought of the journey aroused in the young Schopenhauer caused him to repress his love of science and choose the profession that appealed to his father. This was a decision that his father foresaw, as he was well aware of his son's desire to see the world. Arthur Schopenhauer left Hamburg with his parents in the spring of 1803. The next destination was Holland, then the journey continued to England. After a stay of six weeks in London, Arthur was left behind in Wimbledon for three months to learn the English language thoroughly with Mr. Lancaster. During this time, his parents traveled to England and Scotland. The stay in England engendered in Schopenhauer the hatred of English bigotry that remained with the philosopher throughout his life, but it also laid the foundation for the thorough mastery of the English language that later made him appear as such in conversation with Englishmen. Life in Lancaster's boarding house did not suit Schopenhauer very well. In letters to his parents, he complained of boredom and the stiff, ceremonial nature of the English. He was overcome by a general mood which, it seems, could only be dispelled by a preoccupation with fine literature, especially the works of Schiller. We can see from his mother's letters that she was worried that her son's fondness for poetic reading might blunt him to the seriousness of life. "Believe me," she wrote to him on July 19, 1803, "Schiller himself would never be what he is if he had only read poets in his youth." From England, the Schopenhauer family traveled to France via Holland and Belgium. They visited Havre again and spent some time in Paris. In January 1804, the journey continued to the south of France. Schopenhauer got to know Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nimes, Marseille, Toulon, the Hyeric Islands and Lyon. From Lyon, the travelers turned to Switzerland, then to Swabia, Bavaria, Vienna, Dresden and Berlin. The impressions that Schopenhauer received during the course of the journey were profound. In Paris, he saw Napoleon shortly before he forced his way to the imperial crown (May 18, 1804). In Lyon, his mind was stirred by the sight of several places that recalled the atrocities of the Revolution. And everywhere it was especially the scenes of human misery that he viewed with deep sympathy for the unfortunate and oppressed. For example, he was seized with an unnameable sense of pain when he saw the terrible fate of six thousand galley slaves in the Bagno of Toulon. He thought he was looking into an abyss of human misfortune. But he was also filled with joy when he saw the magnificent works of nature during his journey, a feeling that increased in Switzerland at the sight of Mont Blanc or the Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen to the point of rapture at the sublimity of nature's workings. Later, in Book 3 of Volume II of his main work, he compared genius to the mighty Alpine mountain, because the frequently noted gloomy mood of highly gifted spirits reminded him of the summit, which is usually shrouded in a veil of clouds, and the peculiar cheerfulness that occasionally emerges from the general gloomy mood of genius reminds him of the magical glow of light that becomes visible when the veil of clouds breaks early in the morning and the summit becomes clear. The Krkonoše Mountains in Bohemia, which were visited on the way from Vienna to Dresden, also made a significant impression on Schopenhauer. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer started his journey home from Berlin, while Arthur traveled with his mother to his native city of Danzig, where he was confirmed. In the early days of 1805, the now seventeen-year-old young man arrived back in Hamburg. He now had to keep his father's word and dedicate himself to the commercial profession without refusal. He was apprenticed to Senator Jenisch in Hamburg. Once awakened, his love of the sciences could not be stifled. The merchant's apprentice felt unhappy. After the long journey, on which new images had been presented to the onlooker's eye every day, he could not bear the monotony of his professional work; after the relaxed lifestyle of the past years, the necessary regularity in his 'activities seemed like servitude to him. Without any inner involvement in the duties of his profession, he only did the bare minimum. On the other hand, he used every free moment to read or to indulge in his own thoughts and reveries. He even resorted to cunning pretenses towards his teacher when he wanted to have a few free hours to attend the lectures on craniology given by Doctor Gall, who was in Hamburg at the time.

[ 5 ] This was Arthur Schopenhauer's situation in April 1805, when his father's life ended suddenly when he fell from a loft. Whether the man, who was suffering from memory loss in his final weeks, sought 'death' himself or found it by chance is still unclear today. The son's gloomy mood was heightened by this event to such an extent that it was little short of true melancholy. The mother moved to Weimar with her daughter in 1806, after the business had been liquidated. She thirsted for the intellectual stimuli of this city of art. Arthur's striving for liberation from torturous circumstances now met with no external resistance. He was his own master. His mother exercised no coercion. Nevertheless, there were reasons that prevented him from throwing off the hated shackles immediately after his father's death. He loved his father dearly. It was contrary to his feelings to take a step that the deceased would never have approved of. Also, the overwhelming pain of the sudden loss had so paralyzed his energy that he could not make a quick decision. To all this was added the fact that he believed himself too old to be able to undertake the preliminary studies necessary for the scholarly profession. His ever-increasing aversion to the commercial profession and the belief that he was wasting his life's energies in vain filled his letters to his mother in Weimar with miserable complaints, so that she considered it her duty to ask her friend, the famous art writer Fernow, for advice on what to do in the interests of her son's future happiness. Fernow wrote to her friend with his opinion. He considered the age of eighteen to be no obstacle to devoting oneself to the sciences; indeed, he claimed that it was at this happy age that "memory and judgment unite in the maturing power of the mind, so that what is undertaken with firm resolution can be carried out more easily and quickly, and knowledge can be acquired sooner than in an earlier or later period of life". Schopenhauer, to whom his mother sent Fernow's letter, was so shocked by its contents that he burst into tears after reading it. Fernow's lines brought about what was otherwise not in his nature: to make a decision quickly. The time from the spring of 1807 to the fall of 1809 was enough for Schopenhauer to acquire the knowledge he needed to attend university. He lived in Gotha until the beginning of 1808, where Döring taught him Latin and Jacobs German. He spent the rest of his time in Weimar, where Fernow introduced him to Italian literature. In addition to the old languages, in which the philologist Passow and the grammar school director Lenz were his teachers, he studied mathematics and history. On October 9, he entered the University of Göttingen to study medicine. A year later, he swapped medicine for philosophy.

The student years. Relationship with Kant and Fichte

[ 6 ] As a personality whose character traits were already sharply defined, who had already formed firm opinions on many things on the basis of substantial experiences and a rich knowledge of the world, Schopenhauer entered the study of philosophy. At the beginning of his time at university, he once said to Wieland: "Life is a miserable thing; I have resolved to do mine by thinking about it." Life made him a philosopher. It also determined the philosophical tasks he devoted himself to solving. In this he differs from his predecessors: Kant, Fichte and Schelling, as well as from his antipode Hegel. These were philosophers for whom their tasks arose from the consideration of other people's views. Kant's thinking was given a decisive impetus by delving into Hume's writings, Fichte's and Schelling's work was given direction by Kant's critiques, Hegel's thoughts also developed from those of his predecessors. The ideas of these thinkers are therefore links in a continuous series of developments. Even if each of the philosophers mentioned sought in the foreign systems of thought that inspired him those germs whose further development corresponded precisely to his individuality, it is still possible to trace the series of developments described purely logically, without taking into account the personal bearers of the ideas. It is as if one thought had brought forth another without any human being having been active in the process. For Schopenhauer, on the other hand, a large number of individual doubts and puzzles arose from his experiences, from the direct observation of human conditions and natural events, to which his travels gave him the opportunity, before he knew what others thought about the life of the spirit and the workings of nature. The questions posed to him by his experiences had a thoroughly individual and often coincidental character. This is why he occupies an isolated position in German philosophy. He took the elements for solving his tasks from everywhere: from contemporaries and from philosophers of the past. The question as to why these elements have become elements of a body of thought can only be answered by examining Schopenhauer's individual personality. Fichte's, Schelling's, Hegel's philosophical systems arouse the feeling that they had to follow Kant's because they were logically demanded by it; of Schopenhauer's, on the other hand, it is quite easy to imagine that we would have missed it entirely in the history of philosophy if the creator's life had taken a different turn by some accident before his productive period. The peculiar charm of Schopenhauer's world of ideas is due to this character. Because it has its sources in individual life, it corresponds to the philosophical needs of many people who, without seeking special expertise, nevertheless want to hear an opinion on the most important questions of life.

[ 7 ] Some of Schopenhauer's philosophical statements are merely views wrapped in a scientific garment, which life before his philosophical studies had produced in him. His starting point is not a principle from which all philosophical science can be derived, but rather individual basic views on various aspects of world events emerge from the whole of his personality, which only later coalesce into a unity. Schopenhauer therefore compares his world of thought to a crystal whose parts shoot together from all sides to form a whole.

[ 8 ] One of these basic views developed in Schopenhauer as a result of the influence that his Göttingen teacher Gottlob Ernst Schulze had on him. The latter described Kant and Plato to the young philosopher as the thinkers he should adhere to first and foremost. Schulze himself had appeared as an opponent of Kant in his 1792 publication "Aenesidemus". Schopenhauer had the good fortune to have Kant pointed out to him by a man who also had the ability to draw attention to the philosopher's contradictions.

[ 9 ] Kant endeavored to seek out the conditions under which the human striving for knowledge can arrive at truths of unconditional and necessary certainty. The Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy, of which Kant was a follower until his in-depth study of Hume's writings, believed that such truths could be spun out of pure reason through purely conceptual thinking. It contrasted these pure rational truths with the knowledge of experience gained through observation of the outer life of nature and the inner life of the soul. According to this view, the latter are not made up of clear, transparent concepts, but of confused and dark ideas. Therefore, this philosophical way of thinking wanted to develop the most valuable insights into the deeper connection of natural events, the nature of the soul and the existence of God from pure concepts of reason. Kant professed these views until he was completely shaken in his convictions by Hume's remarks on the concepts of cause and effect. Hume (1711 to 1776) sought to prove that we can never gain insight into the connection between cause and effect through mere reason. According to Hume, the concept of causation comes from experience. We perceive the emergence of fire and then the heating of the air surrounding it. We have observed the same sequence of these perceptions countless times. We get used to it and assume that we will always observe the same thing as soon as the same conditions are met. But we can never gain an objective certainty about this, for it is impossible to see with the help of mere concepts that something must necessarily follow because something else precedes it. Experience only tells us that up to a certain point in time a certain event has always resulted in a certain other event, but not that the one must result in the other, i.e. that it will not be different in the future. All our knowledge about nature and about the life of our soul is made up of complexes of ideas that have formed in our soul on the basis of observed connections between things and events. Reason can find nothing in itself that gives it the right to connect one idea with another, i.e. to make a cognitive judgment. From the moment Kant recognized the significance of Hume's investigations, his thinking took on a completely new direction. But he arrived at different conclusions from Hume himself as a result of Hume's considerations. He agreed with Hume that we cannot gain any information about a connection lying in things from mere reason. What laws things have in themselves, our reason cannot decide; only the things themselves can teach us. He also agreed with Hume that there is no unconditional and necessary certainty in the information that experience gives us about the connection between things. But on this, Kant maintained, we have perfect certainty that things must stand in the relation of cause and effect and in other similar relations. Kant did not lose his belief in absolutely necessary knowledge about reality as a result of Hume's statements. The question arose for him: How can we know something absolutely certain about the connection between things and events in reality, even though reason cannot decide how things relate to each other by their very nature and experience does not provide any absolutely certain information? Kant's answer to this question was: The necessary connection in which we see the things and phenomena we perceive does not lie in these things themselves, but in our organization. It is not because one event necessarily follows from another that we notice such a connection, but because our mind is so organized that it must connect things according to the concepts of cause and effect. Thus it does not depend on the things at all, but on us, in what relations they appear to us. Kant allows only sensations to be given by an external power. Their arrangement in space and time and their connection through concepts such as cause and effect, unity and multiplicity, possibility and reality, is, in his view, only accomplished by our mental organism. Our sensuality is such that it can only look at sensations in space and time, our intellect such that it can only think of them in certain conceptual relationships. Kant is therefore of the opinion that our sensuality and our intellect prescribe the laws of their connection to things and events. Whatever is to become the object of our experience must obey these laws. An examination of our organization reveals the conditions under which all objects of experience must necessarily appear. From this view arose for Kant the necessity of attributing to experience a character dependent on the human faculty of cognition. We do not know things as they are in themselves, but as our organization makes them appear to us. Our experience therefore contains only appearances, not things in themselves. Kant was led to this conviction by the train of ideas that Hume stimulated in him.

[ 10 ] Schopenhauer describes the change brought about in his mind by these thoughts as a spiritual rebirth. They fill him with all the greater satisfaction as he finds them in full agreement with the views of the other philosopher to whom Schulze had pointed him, those of Plato. The latter says: "As long as we relate to the world merely perceptively, we are like people who sit in a dark cave so tightly bound that they cannot turn their heads, and see nothing but by the light of a fire burning behind them, on the wall opposite them, the shadowy images of real things passing between them and the fire, and indeed of each other, and each of themselves only the shadows. Just as these shadows relate to the real things, so our objects of perception, according to Plato's conviction, relate to the Ideas, which are the objects of perception. The objects of perception arise and pass away, the ideas are eternal. Schopenhauer found the same view in Kant as in Plato: that the visible world has no true being. Schopenhauer soon regarded this as an incontrovertible, indeed as the first and most universal truth. For him it took the following form: I gain knowledge of things insofar as I see them, hear them, feel them, etc., in a word: insofar as I imagine them. An object becomes my object of knowledge means: it becomes my imagination. Heaven, earth, etc., are therefore my conceptions, for the thing in itself that corresponds to them has become my object only because it has assumed the character of conception. Schopenhauer took from the thought worlds of Kant and Plato the germ of those parts of his philosophical system in which he treats the world as imagination.

[ 11 ] Schopenhauer considered the distinction between appearance and "thing-in-itself" to be Kant's greatest merit; however, he found Kant's remarks on the "thing-in-itself" itself to be completely misguided. This error also gave rise to Schulze's fight against Kant. According to Kant, things in themselves are the external causes of the sensations that occur in our sensory organs. But how do we arrive at the assumption of such causes, asks Schulze and with him Schopenhauer. Cause and effect are connected merely because our organization demands it, and yet are these concepts to be applied to a realm that is beyond our organism? Can the laws of our organism also be decisive beyond it? These considerations led Schopenhauer to seek a different path to the "thing-in-itself" than the one taken by Kant.

[ 12 ] Such a path is outlined in J. G. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. It took its most mature form in the lectures that Fichte gave at the University of Berlin between 1810 and 1814. Schopenhauer went to Berlin in the fall of 1811 to continue his studies. "He listened very attentively to Fichte lecturing on his philosophy," he later said in the description of his curriculum vitae, which he submitted to the Faculty of Philosophy in Berlin when he wanted to become a private lecturer. We learn the content of Fichte's lectures from his "Sämtliche Werke Vol. 2 und aus seinem Nachlaß Vol. i". The doctrine of science is based on the concept of knowledge, not that of being. For man can only learn something about being through his knowledge. Knowledge is not something 'dead, finished, but a living becoming. The objects of knowledge arise through its activity. It is characteristic of everyday consciousness that it notices the objects of knowledge, but not their emergence. Insight into this emergence comes to those who reflect on their own activity. Such a person sees how he himself creates the entire world existing in space and time. According to Fichte, this creation is a fact that one notices as soon as one pays attention to it. However, one must have an organ that is capable of overhearing knowledge as it is produced, just as one must have an eye in order to see colors. To him who has this organ, the perceptible world appears as a creature of knowledge, arising and passing away with knowledge. Its objects are not permanent beings, but passing images. Everyone can only observe the production of these images in themselves. Through self-perception, each person recognizes in the things given to his knowledge a world of images created by himself. This is only a subjective appearance whose meaning does not extend beyond the individual human being. The question arises: Are these images the only thing that exists? Are we ourselves nothing but this activity that creates the appearance? The question can be answered by reflecting on man's moral ideals. Of these it is clear without further ado that they are to be realized. And it is also absolutely certain that they must be realized not only by this or that human individual, but by all men. This necessity is inherent in the content of these ideals. They are a unity that embraces all individuals. Every human being perceives them as ought. They can only be realized through the will. But if the expressions of the will of the individuals are to harmonize into a unified world order, they must be founded in a single universal will. What wills in any individual is in essence the same as what wills in all others. What the will accomplishes must appear in the corporeal world; it is the scene of its activity. This is only possible if its laws are such that it can absorb the activity of the will into itself. There must be an original correspondence between the driving forces of the corporeal world and the will. The doctrine of science thus leads to a unified world principle, which manifests itself in the physical world as force and in the moral order as will. As soon as man finds the will within himself, he gains the conviction that there is a world independent of his individual. The will is not the knowledge of the individual, but the form of being. The world is knowledge and will. In the realization of moral ideals, the will has a content, and insofar as human life participates in this realization, it acquires an absolute value that it would not have if it existed merely in the images of knowledge. Fichte sees the will as the "thing in itself" independent of knowledge. All we recognize of the world of being is that it is will.

[ 13 ] The view that the will that man encounters in himself is a "thing in itself" is also Schopenhauer's view. He, too, is of the opinion that in our knowledge we have given only the images produced by us, but in our will we have given a being independent of us. The will must remain when knowledge is extinguished. The active will shows itself through the actions of my body. When the organism does something, it is the will that drives it to do it. Now I also learn about the actions of my body through my knowledge, which creates a picture of it for me. Schopenhauer says, according to the expression into which he has put Kant's basic view (cf. p. 245): I imagine these actions. This imagination of mine corresponds to a being independent of me, which is will. What we know of the activity in our own bodies, Schopenhauer also seeks to prove of that of the rest of nature: that it is, according to its being, will. This view of the will is the second of the links that make up Schopenhauer's philosophy.

[ 14 ] In the absence of historical evidence, it is impossible to determine how much of Schopenhauer's doctrine of will was influenced by Fichte. Schopenhauer himself denied any influence on the part of his Berlin teacher. He disliked the way Fichte taught and wrote. Given the striking agreement between the views of the two philosophers and the fact that Schopenhauer listened "attentively" to Fichte's lectures and even once had a lively discussion with him during a consultation, it is difficult to reject the idea of such influence. It was therefore in Göttingen and Berlin that Schopenhauer was first inspired when he based his system of thought on the two principles: "The world is my imagination" and "The world is will."

The influence of Goethe

[ 15 ] In the spring of 1813, Schopenhauer left Berlin due to the unrest of the war and went to Weimar via Dresden. He did not like the conditions in his mother's house, so he initially settled in Rudolstadt. In the summer of 1813, he worked on part of his theory of ideas. All our ideas are objects of our cognizing subject. But nothing existing and independent on its own, nor anything separate and torn off, can become an object for us. The ideas stand in a lawful connection which is given to them by our cognitive faculty and which can be recognized in form from its nature. The ideas must stand in such a relation to each other that we can say: one is grounded in the other. Reason and consequence is the general form of the connection between all ideas. There are four kinds of grounding: the ground of becoming, of cognition, of being and of volition. In becoming, one change is justified by another in time; in cognizing, one judgment by another, or by an experience; in being, the position of one part of time or space by another; in willing, an action by a motive. Schopenhauer gave a detailed account of what he had to say about these propositions in his essay "On the Fourfold Root of the Theorem of the Sufficient Ground", which earned him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Jena on October 2, 1813. In November of that year he returned to Weimar, where he remained until May 1814 and lived in close contact with Goethe. Goethe had read Schopenhauer's first work and was so interested in the author that he personally introduced him to the theory of colors. Schopenhauer found that his philosophical convictions and Goethe's Theory of Colors were in perfect agreement. He decided to justify this in a special treatise, which he began to write after moving to Dresden in May 1814. His thoughts on the nature of sensory perception also developed in the process. Kant was of the opinion that sensations arise from the excitation of the senses by "things in themselves"; these are the simple impressions of color, light, sound, etc. As these come from outside, they are not yet arranged in space and time. For this order is based on an arrangement of the senses. The outer senses arrange the sensations in space, the inner sense in time. This gives rise to perception. According to its nature, the intellect then arranges the perceptions according to the concepts of cause and effect, unity and multiplicity: Cause and effect, unity, multiplicity, etc. In this way a coherent experience is formed from the individual perceptions. Schopenhauer finds the senses quite unsuitable for the production of perception. The senses contain nothing but sensation. The sensations of color, for example, arise through an effect on the retina in the eye. They are processes within the organism. They can therefore only be perceived directly as states of the body and within it. The inner sense initially arranges the sensations in time so that they gradually enter consciousness. They only acquire spatial relationships when they are perceived as effects and an external cause is inferred from them. The arrangement according to cause and effect is a matter for the intellect. It regards sensations as effects and transfers their causes into space. It takes possession of the material of sensation and constructs the views in space from it. These are therefore the work of the intellect and not of the senses*. Since the objects that are seen and felt in space are derived from the senses ¹ Since the colors are first built up from the semantic perceptions, they cannot be derived from them. Therefore, colors, which are sensations, cannot be derived from objects, as Newton does. They are created by the eye and must be explained by the eye's equipment. It must be shown how the retina produces colors. Only the cause of colors, light, which is still entirely uncolored, can be transferred to the outside. Goethe also assumes the uncolored light in his Theory of Colors. Schopenhauer's work "On Sight and Colors" was published in 1816. Goethe had already received the manuscript from the author for review in 1815.

The main work

[ 16 ] Schopenhauer stayed in Dresden until September 1818, a period dedicated to the completion of his main work "The World as Will and Representation". New ideas were added to those developed in Göttingen, Berlin and Weimar and initially recorded in short aphorisms. Frauenstädt published a number of these aphorisms in his book "Aus Schopenhauers Nachlaß". Schopenhauer lived in particularly happy circumstances while he was writing them. His creative energy was stimulated by his contact with men of letters, who held him in high esteem for his abilities. The picture gallery and the collection of antique statues satisfied his aesthetic needs. They stimulated his thinking about art and artistic creation. From March 1817 to March 1818, he summarized the individual ideas of his philosophy into a whole. The remarks on perception, which were already contained in the work on colors, also form the beginning of "The World as Will and Representation". The intellect creates the external world and brings its phenomena into a context according to the law of cause and consequence, which has the four forms indicated. Kant ascribed twelve modes of connection (categories) to the intellect; Schopenhauer can only recognize those of reason and consequence (causality). Through the intellect we have given the vivid world. In addition to the intellect, reason is also active in man. It forms concepts from the views. It seeks out what different views have in common and forms abstract units from them. In this way it brings larger parts of experience under one thought. As a result, man does not merely live in his immediate present view, but can draw conclusions about the future from past and present events. He gains an overview of life and can also organize his actions accordingly. This distinguishes him from the animal. The latter has views, but no concepts of reason. Its actions are determined by the impressions of the immediate present. Man is guided by his reason. But reason cannot generate content on its own. It is only the reflection of the visual world. Therefore, it cannot produce moral ideals that are independent of experience and that shine before action as an unconditionally commanding ought, as Kant and Fichte claim. The rules according to which man organizes his actions are taken from his life experiences. Understanding and reason have their organ in the brain. Without the brain there are no views and no concepts. The whole world of imagination is a phenomenon of the brain. In itself there is only the will. This contains no moral ideals; we know it only as a dark urge, as an eternal striving. It gives rise to the brain and thus to understanding and reason. The brain creates the objective world, which man surveys as experience subject to the law of reason. The ideas are arranged spatially and temporally. They form nature in this order. The will is non-spatial and non-temporal, for space and time are created by the cognizing consciousness. The will is therefore a unity in itself; it is one and the same in all phenomena. As an appearance, the world consists of a multiplicity of things or individuals. As a thing in itself it is a wholeness. The individuals arise when consciousness confronts the object as subject and observes it according to the law of the ground. But there is another way of looking at it. Man can go beyond the mere individual. He can seek in the individual thing that which is independent of space, time and causality. In every individual there is something permanent that is not limited to the individual object. A particular horse is conditioned by the causes from which it emerged. But there is something in the horse that remains, even if the horse is destroyed again. This something that remains is not only contained in this particular horse, but in every horse. It cannot be produced by the causes which only bring about the creation of this one particular horse. That which remains is the idea of the horse. The causes embody this idea only in a single individual. The idea is therefore not subject to space, time and causality. It is therefore closer to the will than the individual. The idea is not directly contained anywhere in nature. Man only sees it when he looks away from the individual nature of things. This happens through the imagination. The material embodiment of ideas is art. The artist does not copy nature, but imprints on matter what his imagination sees. Music is an exception. It does not embody ideas. For even if ideas are not directly contained in nature, the imagination can only extract them from nature by searching for what remains in individuals. These are the models of art. Music, however, has no model in nature. Musical works of art do not depict anything in nature. Man creates them out of himself. But since there is nothing in him, apart from ideas and concepts, that he could represent other than the will, music is the direct image of the will. It speaks so much to the human mind because it is the embodiment of that which constitutes the innermost essence, the true being of man. This view of music is rooted in ideas that we find in Schopenhauer long before he became involved in philosophy. As a Hamburg merchant's apprentice, he wrote to his mother: "How did the heavenly seed find room on our hard soil, on which necessity and shortcomings fight for every little place? We are banished from the primal spirit and are not meant to reach it.... And yet a compassionate angel has implored the heavenly flower for us and it is rooted high in full glory on this soil of misery. - The pulsations of the divine art of music have not ceased to beat through the centuries of barbarism, and a direct echo of the eternal has remained in it, comprehensible to every sense and elevated even above vice and virtue." This idea of youth confronts us in philosophical form in Schopenhauer's main work.

[ 17 ] The same passage in the letter also contains a thought that took on a scientific form in the last section of the book "The World as Will and Representation": that of a general end of the world and of the nothingness of existence. The will is an eternal striving. It is in its nature that it can never be satisfied. For when it reaches a goal, it must immediately continue on to a new one. If it ceased to strive, it would no longer be will. Since human life is by its very nature will, there is no satisfaction in it, but only eternal longing for such satisfaction. Deprivation causes pain. This is therefore necessarily connected with life. All joy and happiness can only be based on illusion. Satisfaction is only possible through illusion, which is destroyed by reflecting on the true nature of the world. The world is void. Only those who fully realize this are wise. The contemplation of eternal ideas and their embodiment in art can for a moment take us beyond the misery of the world, for the aesthetically pleasurable person immerses himself in the eternal ideas and knows nothing of the particular sufferings of his individual. He behaves in a purely recognizing way, not wanting, and therefore not suffering. Suffering, however, returns immediately when he is thrown back into everyday life. The only salvation from misery is not to will at all, to kill the will within oneself. This is done by suppressing all desires, by asceticism. The wise man will extinguish all desires within himself, completely negate his will. He knows no motive that could compel him to will. His striving is directed towards only one thing: redemption from life. This is no longer a motive, but a quest. Every individual will is determined by the general will and is therefore unfree; only the universal will is not determined by anything and is therefore free. Only the negation of the will is an act of freedom, because it cannot be brought about by an individual act of will, but by the one will itself. All individual willing is the willing of a motive, hence the affirmation of the will.

[ 18 ] Suicide does not bring about a negation of the will. The suicide destroys only his particular individual; not the will, but only a manifestation of the will. Asceticism, however, does not merely annihilate the individual, but the will itself within the individual. It must ultimately lead to the complete extinction of all being, to redemption from all suffering. If the will disappears, then every appearance is also destroyed. The world has then entered into eternal rest, into nothingness, in which alone there is no suffering, thus bliss.

[ 19 ] The will is a unity. It is one and the same in all beings. Man is only an individual in appearance, in being only the expression of the general will of the world. One human being is not in truth separate from the other. What the latter suffers, the latter must also regard as his own suffering, he must suffer with it. Compassion is the expression of the fact that no one has a particular suffering, but that everyone feels the general suffering. Compassion is the basis of morality. It destroys egoism, which only seeks to alleviate one's own suffering. Compassion causes people to act in a way that is aimed at eliminating the suffering of others. Morality is not based on the principles of reason, but on compassion, i.e. on a feeling. Schopenhauer rejects all rational morality. Its principles are abstractions that only lead to moral, non-egoistic action through connection with a real driving force: compassion.

[ 20 ] Schopenhauer's doctrine of salvation and compassion emerged from his doctrine of the will under the influence of Indian views: Brahmanism and Buddhism. Schopenhauer studied Indian religious ideas as early as 1813 in Weimar under the guidance of the Orientalist Friedrich Majer. He continued these studies in Dresden. He read the work "Oupnek' hat", which a Persian prince translated from Indian into Persian in 1640 and of which a Latin translation was published by the Frenchman Anquetil Duperron between 1801 and 1802. According to Brahmanism, all individual beings have emerged from a primordial being to which they return in the course of the world process. Through individualization, the evils and the end of the world have arisen, which will be destroyed as soon as the existence of the individual beings has ceased and only the primordial being will still exist. According to Buddhism, all existence is linked to pain. This would not be destroyed even if there were only one single primordial being. Only the destruction of all existence through renunciation and suppression of the passions can lead to salvation, to nirvana, that is, to the destruction of all existence.

[ 21 ] At the end of 1818 (with the date 1819), "The World as Will and Representation" was published by Brockhaus in Leipzig. In the same year, Hegel was appointed to Berlin. Hegel held a completely opposite view to that of Schopenhauer. What for Schopenhauer could only create a reflection of the real, reason, was for Hegel the source of all knowledge. Through reason, man grasps being in its true form, the content of reason is the content of being; the world is the appearance of the rational, and life is therefore infinitely valuable because it is the representation of reason. This doctrine soon became the philosophy of the age and remained so until it had to give way to the rule of the natural sciences around the middle of the century. The latter did not want to justify anything from reason, but everything from experience. The flourishing of Hegelian philosophy prevented any influence of Scho penhauer's philosophy. It remained completely unnoticed. In 1835, Schopenhauer received the following information from Brockhaus in response to an inquiry about the sales of his main work: the work had not been distributed at all. A large part of it had had to be turned into waste paper.

Stay in Berlin

[ 22 ] After completing "The World as Will and Representation", Schopenhauer left Dresden and went to Italy. He saw Florence, Bologna, Rome and Naples. On his return journey, he received news from his sister in Milan that the Hamburg trading house in which his mother and sister had invested their entire fortune, and Schopenhauer himself only part of his fortune, had stopped making payments. This experience made it seem advisable for him to look for a new source of income, as he did not want to depend on his uncertain fortune. He returned to Germany and habilitated at the University of Berlin. He announced the following lecture for the summer semester of 1820: "The whole of philosophy, that is the doctrine of the nature of the world and of the human spirit". He was unable to exert any influence as an academic teacher or as a writer alongside Hegel. For this reason, he did not give any more lectures in the following years, although he continued to announce such lectures in his catalog until 1831. He felt unhappy in Berlin; the location, climate, surroundings, way of life, social conditions: he disliked everything. In addition, he was completely disintegrating due to the property issue with his mother and sister. He himself had lost nothing through his skillful appearance; his mother and sister, on the other hand, had lost 70 percent of their fortune. Embittered by the lack of recognition, loneliness and the rift with his relatives, he left Berlin in May 1822 and spent several years traveling. He went through Switzerland to Italy, spent a winter in Trier, a whole year in Munich and only returned to Berlin in May 1825. In 1831 he moved to Frankfurt am Main. He fled from the cholera that prevailed in Berlin at the time and which he was particularly afraid of because he had a dream on New Year's night from 1830 to 1831 that seemed to point to his imminent death.

The creation of the last writings and the growing Rubm

[ 23 ] With the exception of the period from July 1832 to June 1833, when Schopenhauer sought recovery from an illness in Mannheim, he spent the rest of his life in Frankfurt in complete solitude, filled with deep resentment at his age, which showed so little understanding for his creations. He lived only for his thoughts and his work, aware that he was not working for his contemporaries, but for a future generation. In 1333 he wrote in his manuscript book: "My contemporaries must not believe that I am now working for them: we have nothing to do with each other; we do not know each other; we pass each other by as strangers. - I write for the individuals who are like me, who live and think here and there in the course of time, communicate with each other only through the works they have left behind and are thus each the consolation of the other."

[ 24 ] The publication of "The World as Will and Representation" marked the end of Schopenhauer's production of ideas. What he published later does not contain any new basic ideas, but only expansions of what is already contained in the main work, as well as arguments about his position towards other philosophers and views on particular questions of science and life, from the standpoint of his world view.

[ 25 ] Schopenhauer believed he recognized an ally in the battle for his ideas in the natural sciences. At the universities of Göttingen and Berlin, in addition to his philosophical education, he acquired a thorough education in the natural sciences and later informed himself in detail about all advances in the knowledge of nature. On the basis of these studies, he formed the opinion that natural science was moving in such a direction that it must one day arrive at the results that he himself had found through philosophical thinking. He attempted to provide proof of this in his work "The Will in Nature", published in 1836. All research into nature consists of two parts, the description of the forces of nature and the explanation of the laws of nature. The laws of nature, however, are nothing other than the rules that the imagination gives to phenomena. These laws can be explained because they are nothing but the forms of space, time and causality, which stem from the nature of the cognizing subject.The forces of nature cannot be explained, but only described as they present themselves to observation. If we follow the descriptions that natural scientists give of the forces of nature: gravity, magnetism, heat, electricity, etc., we see that these forces are nothing more than the forms of action of the will at various levels.

[ 26 ] In the same sense as Schopenhauer gave a more detailed exposition of the doctrine of the will in "Will in Nature", so in "The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics" he expanded the views contained in the main work on the freedom of the will and the basis of morality. The book is composed of two prize papers: one on the "Freedom of the Will", which was crowned by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences in 1839, and the other on the "Foundation of Morals", which was carried out at the instigation of the Danish Academy, but was not crowned by it.

[ 27 ] What Schopenhauer still had to say to the world is contained in his last book, "Parerga und Paralipomena", which appeared in 1851. It contained a series of treatises on philosophy, psychology, anthropology, religion and wisdom in a presentation that captivates the reader, because he does not merely read assertions and abstract proofs, but sees through to a personality whose thoughts arise not only from the head, but from the whole person, and who seeks to prove his views not only through logic, but also through feeling and passion. This character of Schopenhauer's last work and the work of some of his followers, whom the philosopher had already won in the forties, made it possible for him to say of himself in the evening of his life: My time has come. Unnoticed for decades, he became a widely read writer in the second half of the century. As early as 1843, F. Dorguth published a pamphlet entitled "The False Root of Ideal Realism", in which he called Schopenhauer "the first real systematic thinker in the entire history of literature". This was followed in 1845 by another by the same author: "Schopenhauer in his truth". Frauenstädt also worked as a writer to spread Schopenhauer's teachings. He had "Letters on Schopenhauer's Philosophy" published in 1854. However, an article by John Oxenford in the "Westminster Review" from April 1853, which Otto Lindner had translated and published in the Vossische Zeitung under the title "Deutsche Philosophie im Auslande", made a particular impression. In it, Schopenhauer is described as a philosophical genius of the first rank; his depth and wealth of ideas are sought to be proven by reprinting individual passages from his works. Lindner himself became an enthusiastic apostle of Schopenhauer's teachings through the "Parerga und Paralipomena", to which he was able to render great service through his position as editor of the Vossische Zeitung. David Asher in particular promoted the understanding of Schopenhauer's ideas on music through essays in German and English journals. And it was these ideas about music that made one of Schopenhauer's most ardent admirers, Richard Wagner, the man who showed the art of music new paths. For him, these ideas were like a new gospel. He saw them as the most profound philosophy of music. The artist, who wanted to express the deepest secrets of existence in musical language, felt a spiritual affinity with the philosopher who declared music to be the image of the will of the world. In December 1854, the sound poet sent the thinker in Frankfurt the text of his "Ring der Nibelungen" with the handwritten dedication: "Out of admiration and gratitude", shortly after Schopenhauer had refused to visit Wagner in Zurich.

[ 28 ] Schopenhauer was able to watch his fame grow for about a decade. On September 21, 1860, he died suddenly as a result of a lung attack.

Bibliography and text treatment

[ 29 ] The last editions of his works published during Schopenhauer's lifetime are: Die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde, 2nd edition 1847; Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 3rd edition 1859; Der Wille in der Natur, 2nd edition 1854; Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, 2nd edition 1860; Parerga und Paralipomena, i. edition 1851; Das Sehn und die Farben, 2nd edition 1854. Schopenhauer produced a Latin translation of the latter work in 1829 for the "Scriptores ophthalmologici minores", which was published in the third volume of this journal in 1830 under the title "'Theoria colorum physiologica". After Schopenhauer's death, Julius Frauenstädt, in accordance with the philosopher's last will and testament, produced new editions of the works, for which he used the manuscript bequest. This consists of manuscript books and hand-copies of the works. The manuscript books are Reisebuch (begun September 1818), Foliant (begun January 1821), Brieftasche (begun May 1822), Quartant (begun November 1824), Adversaria (begun March 1828), Cholerabuch (written while fleeing from cholera, begun September 1831), Cogitata (begun February 1830), Pandektä (begun September 1832), Spicilegia (begun April 1837), Senilia (begun April 1852) and the lectures Schopenhauer gave in Berlin. In these manuscript books, as well as on the pages pasted through the manuscript copies, are Schopenhauer's additions which he intended to include in later editions of his works, as well as remarks on philosophical works, aphorisms, etc.. Frauenstädt published what could not be used for the new editions of the works in 1864 under the title: "Aus Arthur Schopenhauers handschriftlichem Nachlaß. Treatises, Notes, Aphorisms and Fragments". After Frauenstadt's death in 1879, the manuscript books passed into the possession of the Royal Library in Berlin, while the hand-copied copies were passed into private hands. For any complete edition of Schopenhauer's works, Frauenstadt's principle must generally be followed: "I have ... I have proceeded in such a way that I have only included the additions in the text, whether they were written down or quoted from the manuscript books, when, after careful consideration, I found a place for them where they fit in without constraint, not only in terms of content but also in terms of form, i.e. diction; in all other cases, however, where either the strict sequence of thought or the pleasing sentence structure of the text did not permit their inclusion in the same, I have placed them in the most appropriate place either as notes below or as appendices after the text. " However, Frauenstädt sometimes did not apply this principle strictly enough. Therefore, in the present complete edition, all those additions that Frauenstädt included in the text have been removed from the text and relegated to the notes, of which it can be assumed that Schopenhauer, in accordance with the strict demands he placed on style, would never have added them to his works in the first version, but only after a complete reworking. As far as the arrangement of the writings in a complete edition is concerned, several statements by Schopenhauer should be taken into consideration: A letter to Brockhaus dated August 8, 1858, in which, should a complete edition become necessary, he speaks of the following order: i. World as will and imagination. 2. parerga. 3. fourfold root; will in nature; basic problems of ethics; sight and colors. On September 22 of the same year, he was already of a different opinion. He wanted to place the Parerga at the end and let the writings listed earlier under 3. precede it. As you can see, Schopenhauer was vacillating with regard to the order. The present Complete Edition therefore follows the statement he made in the draft of a preface to the Complete Edition about the order in which his works should be read. The following arrangement corresponds to this statement: i. Fourfold root of the proposition of the sufficient ground. 2 World as will and imagination. 3. will in nature. 4. basic problems of ethics. 5. parerga and paralipomena. These writings are followed by the work on "Sight and Colors", which Schopenhauer says in the same passage "goes for itself". Next is the aforementioned Latin translation of this work, followed by what has been published from his estate. The four short descriptions of his life written by Schopenhauer himself form the end of the edition: i. The one attached to his application for the doctorate. 2. the Curriculum vitae, which he sent to Berlin for the purpose of his habilitation. 3. the biography he sent to Eduard Erdmann in April 1851 for use in his History of Philosophy, 4. the one he provided for the Meyersche Konversationslexikon in May of the same year.

[ 30 ] A biography of the philosopher was provided by Gwinner in 1862: "Arthur Schopenhauer aus persönlichem Umgange", which was published in 1878 under the title "Schopenhauers Leben" in a second, revised and much enlarged edition. This biography is an invaluable monument to Schopenhauer's personality due to the wealth of material it contains and its vivid portrayal of Schopenhauer's personality, despite the obvious differences in Gwinner's and Schopenhauer's views. In 1893, Kuno Fischer published an account of Schopenhauer's life, character and teachings as the eighth volume of his "History of Modern Philosophy".

• 1. I have provided a critique of this view in my book "Die Philosophie der Freiheit. Outlines of a modern world view". 1894.

My dear Friends,

I would like today to centre our study around a scene from a play of Hamerling's that can serve to illustrate many things that I have been explaining. A course of lectures on a subject of this kind is necessarily all too short, and I can in any case do no more than make a few suggestions in the hope that these may stimulate you in your work. None the less, although our time is short, I propose to use the present hour to throw light by practical example upon the importance of what I have said about developing, in preparation for speaking on the stage, a feeling for word and a feeling for sound, in contradistinction to the feeling for sense and idea. today, therefore, we will take this practical demonstration as a basis for our study; and it is my intention to speak the parts in such a way as will enable you to glean at least an elementary understanding of how a reading rehearsal should go, if it is to prepare the ground for the actual performance of the play on the stage. Thus, having in the first part of our course given our attention to the forming of the speech, we shall now be considering all that has to do with production as such, with the right forming of the stage-picture.

It goes without saying that before any such rehearsal, the explanations I have been giving of what is required for an artistic way of speaking must have already taken root in the unconscious, and be present there as artistic instinct. Where mention is made of these matters at all in rehearsal, it will be presumed that in those who are to take part, the feeling for sound and the feeling for word have, by long practice, become a complete matter of habit. It will, in fact, be of quite other matters that one will have to speak there, alluding only as need arises to the fundamental principles of speech formation; for of these the actor should bring with him an intimate knowledge, no less surely than a pianist who is preparing himself—or, maybe, a pupil—for a concert brings with him the faculty he has acquired for piano-playing.

The scene I propose to take is the opening scene of a drama of Robert Hamerling, entitled Danton and Robespierre, a play that is concerned, as the title tells us, with the French Revolution. I have chosen it because I think the moods that come into consideration for this scene—and I need not remind you how important it is for the moods to find clear expression in the performance—are such as can easily be conveyed to the minds and hearts of people in general. For they are unmistakable and sharply distinguishable in their colouring. The scene is moreover also valuable for us, in that the moods give opportunity for transforming, by stage technique, even the most prosaic content into an artistic formation of sound and word.

We are here transported into an important moment in the history of the French Revolution, when the mood of the public was undergoing a change. That stage in the revolution is just being reached when the popularity of Danton is beginning gradually to give way before the popularity of Robespierre. A great number of people are on the point of transferring their loyalty and devotion from the one to the other.

Let us first of all see that we understand the true nature of the people's loyalty to Danton. Some were loyal to him out of a sincere and faithful devotion, in others their loyalty was prompted rather by their own political aspirations; but all might be said to regard him with what I may almost call a savage admiration. Consequently, we find permeating the scene something of the sound- and word-feeling—I am speaking here from the point of view of stage technique—that results from the working together of a (wonder and admiration for Danton) and o (a certain rude affection for the man). The scene is pervaded by an a-o (ah-oh) mood, in the sense in which I have explained this to you in the earlier lectures. Tune your feeling to the sounds a-o, and you will have the mood that prevails at the beginning of the scene.

Loyalty to Robespierre was of quite another kind. At first it only reached men's hearts in a fitful, spasmodic way. The lean and lanky man, looking so like a schoolmaster, whose words cut like knives, did not easily inspire admiration in his fellowmen; he had to seize on every opportunity to win it. In fact, the first stage of Robespierre's popularity was marked by a kind of wariness and caution. In the case of individuals as well as of the masses, it was out of a certain defensive attitude that admiration for Robespierre was born. Translated into feeling for sound, it is a sounding together of e (ay in ‘say’) and a. So that in the people's feeling for Robespierre we have the mood that you can hear in e-a.

In this scene, therefore, which evinces throughout a delicate instinctive feeling on Hamerling's part for sound and word, we have to find the transition in the whole speaking of the parts from a-o to e-a. And we shall be able to do so if we look into the scene carefully. That is indeed the reason I have chosen it, because of all we can learn from it.

Hamerling built up the scene with an instinctive discernment for what is required in dramatic art. I shall draw attention, as we go along, to features that would require to be noted in the reading rehearsals. My remarks will naturally be rather sketchy; in actual rehearsals, the various points would need to be further elucidated. For we have here a scene that can provide us with an excellent lesson in the very things we are concerned with in these lectures.

Note how we are introduced, first of all, to a countryman who had been in Paris fifteen years before and never once since. The man has been deaf during the last six years, and on this account it has easily come about that he has as good as slept through whatever echoes of the big events penetrated into the provinces; he has heard nothing of all that went on. He was treated for his deafness by the village barber who was also something of a surgeon, as was still usual in those days, but with no particular success; and he was advised to go to Paris. One can certainly have one's doubts as to whether even in Paris the cure would be such an easy matter! However, here he is again in Paris, cured of his deafness and bearing his part in the change-over of moods that I have described—but all the time as one who has only just become able after six years to hear what is being said around him. You will find at once the basic tone for this man's speaking if you give yourself up to an a feeling that is tinged with o. Let us see what this will mean. For throughout the first part of the scene, the countryman will be the chief figure. The whole attention of the audience will be centred upon him. It might even be said that the other characters are present only in order to give colour and variation to the main interest that attaches throughout to this man. Actually, the success of the play as a whole will depend to a great extent upon how the part of the countryman is played in this first scene.

We know of course that a signifies wonder and admiration. The mood is a little modified in this character of the countryman, but the actor will do the part well if he takes pains to speak, as much as he can, with his mouth open. (I shall be dealing with gesture and mime in the later lectures; today I will confine my remarks to the speaking.) This will allow the a mood, which is the prevailing mood of the scene, to pass almost imperceptibly into o, which is what the part requires.

From the very outset, we sense also that a change of mood is imminent; we are moving towards the transition from the a-o to the e-a mood. This is portrayed for us with wonderful artistic skill. You can feel here with what a delicate touch Hamerling works; and that is what I want you to notice before all else—the artistic achievement, quite apart from the prose content of the scene. The countryman is put there on purpose that we may be still hearing the echo of the mood connected with Danton, while at the same time having our expectation aroused for the gradual transition to the mood that is connected with Robespierre, the mood that we can clearly detect in the second part of the scene where the conversation of the various characters goes clanging back and forth like sounding brass.

So much for a rough sketch of the mood in which you will have to experience this scene if you want to take part in it and form your speaking in the right way.

The scene is laid in an open space in front of Notre-Dame.

DER LANDMANN. Wenn ich nur erfahren könnte, warum sie den steinernen Bildern überall rote Mützen aufsetzen... Ich finde mich nicht mehr zurecht in diesem verwünschten Paris, obgleich ich vor fünfzehn Jahren einmal dagewesen.

(Zwei Bürger treten auf.)

ERSTER BURGER. Auf dem Stadthause wimmelt's bereits wie in einem Ameisenhaufen.—

ZWEITER BURGER. Mein Nachbar, der Barbier Rabaud, hat soeben die Göttin der Vernunft frisiert.

---

COUNTRYMAN. If only I could find out why the statues everywhere have red caps on their heads.... I no longer know my way about in this accursed Paris although I was once here fifteen years ago.

(Enter two citizens.)

FIRST CITIZEN. The Town Hall's already swarming like an ant-heap?

SECOND CITIZEN. My neighbour, the barber Rabaud, has just been dressing the hair of the Goddess of Reason.

These citizens are fellows of quite another stamp than our countryman. They are Parisians, who exhibit to the full the mood that was then uppermost in Paris; and they give a new colouring to the countryman's words that have set the motif at the beginning of the scene. We are to think of the first citizen as having a kind of i (ee) mood, and the second a rather quieter and more serious ii (French ü in ‘du’) mood. You will remember how I explained these in the earlier lectures.

‘ZWEITER BÜRGER: Mein Nachbar, der Barbier Rabaud, hat soeben die Göttin der Vernunft frisiert.’

Yes, you are right! The audience will laugh at these words; but they must be spoken with all the seriousness of one who is taking a responsible part in a revolution. And that is a seriousness of an altogether different stamp from the seriousness with which we are accustomed to approach everyday affairs.

You have to picture the countryman saying those first words of his alone, to himself. Then the citizens come an the scene. They stand at a little distance from him, and now he goes up to them.

DER LANDMANN. (sich nähernd) Auf ein Wort, ihr Herren—

ERSTER BÜRGER. ‘Ihr Herren?’—Da seht die ländliche Unschuld!—Es gibt keine Herren mehr, Bauerntölpel!

DER LANDMANN. Um Vergebung, wie komm' ich von hier in die Königstrasse?

ERSTER BÜRGER. Es gibt keine Könige mehr. Die Strasse heisst jetzt Sansculottenstrasse.

LANDMANN. Finde mich nicht mehr zurecht hier in Paris, obgleich ich vor fünfzehn Jahren dagewesen. Alle Plätze, alle Strassen anders.—Heut' Morgen komm' ich an einer Kirche vorüber, denke: trittst ein, hörst eine Messe. Da seh' ich ein Gedräng' von Leuten, und auf der Kanzel steht ein Mann, der predigt. Komme gerade recht zum Worte Gottes, denk' ich und hör' andächtig zu. Da merk' ich aber, dass der Mann auf der Kanzel entsetzlich fluchte, obgleich ich ihn nicht recht verstand. War so ein schneidiges, gelbes, dünnes Männchen, meinte jeden Augenblick, es werde ihm der Schaum vor den Mund treten. Als er aufhörte zu reden, da fingen die Leute wüst zu schreien an und taten wie besessen und klatschten gar mit den Händen, dass mir die Ohren gellten.—Ich schlug ein Kreuz und ging.

ZWEITER BÜRGER. (lachend) Armer Tropf, du bist unter die Frommen der Jacobinerkirche geraten.—

LANDMANN. Darauf kam ich in eine andere Kirche.
Da sah ich einen Heiland auf dem Kreuz:
dem war ein grosser Schnurrbart
angestrichen, und eine rote Mütze aufgesetzt,
und drunter stand geschrieben: ‘Jesus Christ
von Nazareth, der erste Sansculotte’.
Weiss denn die Obrigkeit von solchem Unfug nichts?

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Mensch, hör' einmal, wie kommt's, dass du so wenig Wind hast vom neuesten Weltlauf? Sitzt ihr Bauern auf den Ohren?

LANDMANN. Ich bin sechs volle Jahre taub gewesen. Vorige Woche—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Dekade sagt man jetzt—DekadeLANDMANN. Ei, wie? Dekade muss ich sagen? Also vorige Dekade—doch nein, es war noch Ende April—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Floreal, du verwünschter Kerl, Floreal—

LANDMANN. Floreal? Potztausend! Ihr habt eine verwunderliche Art zu reden in Paris!—Nun also im Floreal sagte ich zu unserem Dorfbader: ‘Herr’, sagte ich, `ihr versteht den Teufel von der Sache; ich gehe nach Paris und lasse mich dort heilen!’ Gesagt, getan. Ich ging, als ich das Reisegeld beisammen hatte, und verwichenen Sonntag—

ERSTER BÜRGER. Es gibt keinen Sonntag mehr.

LANDMANN. Was? keinen Sonntag?

---

COUNTRYMAN. (approaching) A word, gentlemen—

FIRST CITIZEN. ‘Gentlemen?’ Hark to his innocence! There aren't any gentlemen nowadays, you country bumpkin!

COUNTRYMAN. Beg pardon, how do I get to King Street?

FIRST CITIZEN. There aren't any more kings. The street's called Sansculotte Street now.

COUNTRYMAN. Oh, I'm properly astray in your Paris although I was here fifteen years ago. All the squares, all the streets, different.—This morning I came to a church and thought to myself: let's go in and hear Mass. Inside I find a crowd of folk and a man in the pulpit preaching. Just in time to hear God's word, think I, and listen all devout. But then I notice that the man in the pulpit is using terrible language, though I didn't understand him well. He was such a sharp-spoken, yellow, lean little bit of a man; it seemed every moment as if he was going to foam at the mouth. As soon as he stopped talking the people began to cry out wildly, behaved as if possessed, and clapped their hands enough to break my ear-drums.—I crossed myself and came out.

SECOND CITIZEN. (laughing) Poor simpleton, you landed up among the pious worshippers at the Jacobins' Church.—

COUNTRYMAN. Thereupon came I to another Church
And there I saw a Saviour on the Cross:
A great moustache was daubed upon His face,
A red cap had been set upon His head,
While underneath was written ‘Jesus Christ
Of Nazareth, the first of sansculottes’.
Do those who rule know nothing of such shame?

SECOND CITIZEN. Listen, you man. How comes it that you know so little of what's going on now in the world? Do you peasants stop up your ears?

COUNTRYMAN. I've been deaf over six years. Last week—

SECOND CITIZEN. We say decade now—decade

COUNTRYMAN. Eh? Decade have I got to say? Well, last decade–but no, it was still April—the end of April—

SECOND CITIZEN. Floreal, confound you, Floreal

COUNTRYMAN. Floreal? Zounds! You have an odd way of talking in Paris !—So in Floreal I said to our village barber, Sir,' say I,’ you don't understand a damned thing about it. I'm going to Paris to be cured.' No sooner said than done. Directly I'd got together the journey money, I started; and last Sunday—

FIRST CITIZEN. There's no Sunday any more.

COUNTRYMAN. What? No Sunday?

The name of the month is not after all a matter that touches him very nearly; that he can accept. Now he is called upon to grasp the further fact that there are no longer any Sundays!

ERSTER BÜRGER. Quintidi, guter Freund, wenn Euch Euer Leben lieb ist—

LANDMANN. Nun meinetwegen! Am Crainte de Dieu also kam ich hier in Paris an, und heute, Gott sei Dank—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Gott sei Dank? Mensch, du nennst da ein bankrottes Haus! Die Firma Gott und Sohn mit der Prokuraführung des heiligen Geistes hat falliert—

LANDMANN. Was? auch keinen Gott? da soll ja doch—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Räsoniere nicht, Mensch, und schweig, und lass' deine Füsse, so geschwind sie können, dich wieder nach deinem Dorfe zurücktragen. Du könntest Unglück haben auf dem Pflaster von Paris. Du könntest hier deinen Kopf verlieren, unversehens, wie einen Knopf von deinen Hosen. Mach' dich auf die Beine, Mensch—du bist verdächtig—

LANDMANN. Wieso verdächtig? Was nennt ihr denn verdächtig?

ZWEITER BURGER.Verdächtig? Sieh', das ist zum Beispiel einer,
der Lilien in seinem Garten pflanzt—
auch einer, dessen Bruder oder Vetter
ins Ausland ging mit einem Emigranten
als Kammerdiener—oder einer, der
im Traum das Wörtlein König flüstert—oder
der bleich wird, wenn sie seinen Nebenmenschen
an die Laterne hängen—

Mach', dass du fortkommst, sonst lassen sie dich den Karpfensprung machen auf dem Grèveplatz—

LANDMANN. Ich verstehe euch nicht.

ZWEITER BURGER. Ich will sagen, sie werden dich durchs rote Fenster gucken lassen—

LANDMANN. Ich verstehe euch noch immer nicht.

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Dummkopf! sie werden dich (macht eine bezeichnende Geberde) mit dem grossen Nationalrasiermesser rasieren! Verstehst du's noch nicht ?—Du wirst das grosse Los in der Lotterie der heiligen Guillotine gewinnen! Verstehst du's jetzt?

LANDMANN. Hol' mich der Geier, wenn ich diese Heilige jemals im Kalender gelesen habe.

ERSTER BÜRGER.
Das ist eine wunderliche Heilige.—
So eine Art von Eisenjungfrau, scharf
verseh'n mit Schneidezähnen—Denke dir
zwei Galgenhölzer und ein blankes Beil
Querbalkengleich von oben—nun, du legst
den Kopf auf einen Block—das Beil fällt nieder,
ein wenig von der Seite—so—und sichelt
den Kopf im Hui so glatt und reinlich dir
herunter, dass es eine Lust zu sehn. Der Kopf
merkt gar nicht, dass er keinen Rumpf mehr hat,
und niest deshalb auch manchmal unbefangen,
als wäre nichts geschehn, noch in dem Sack,
in welchen ihn der Knecht des Büttels wirft—
als hätt' er etwa nur’ne starke Prise
geschnupft.—Guillotinieren heisst man das:
's ist’ne schöne, sanfte Todesart.

LANDMANN. Guillotiniert man viel?<

ERSTER BÜRGER. So ein Schock täglich; auch mehr, wenn schönes Wetter ist.

---

FIRST CITIZEN Quintidi, friend, if you value your life—

COUNTRYMAN. Oh, well, it's all the same to me! So in the fear of God I came here to Pans, and today, thank God—

SECOND CITIZEN ‘Thank God?’ Why, man, that firm's gone bankrupt! The house of God and Son, with its junior partner the Holy Ghost, has failed—

COUNTRYMAN. What? No God either? But then—

SECOND CITIZEN. No arguing, man. Shut up, and let your feet carry you back to your village as quick as they can. You might come to harm in the streets of Paris. You might lose your head unexpectedly like a button off your breeches. Make off, man, you're a suspicious character—

COUNTRYMAN. What d'you mean, suspicious? What d'you call suspicious?

SECOND CITIZEN.
Suspicious? Hark, this man, for instance, is:
The one who lilies in his garden plants—
And also one whose brother or whose cousin Follows some emigrant as serving-man
To foreign parts—or then again a man
Who whispers in his dreams the small word ‘King', Or turns a chalky white to see them hang
One of his fellows to the lamp-post?

Make haste and be off, otherwise you will come to a sorry end on the Place de Grève?

COUNTRYMAN. I don't understand you.

SECOND CITIZEN. I'm wanting to tell you that they'll make you look through the’ red window'—

COUNTRYMAN. I still don't understand.

SECOND CITIZEN. Blockhead! They'll do this (makes a descriptive gesture), they'll shave you with the great national razor! Don't you understand yet ?—You'll win the big prize in the lottery of Saint Guillotine. Now do you understand?

COUNTRYMAN. The devil take me if I've ever seen that saint in the Calendar.

FIRST CITIZEN.
This is a very funny kind of saint,
This maiden made of iron and well provided
With finely sharpened teeth that bite. Just think,
Two gallows posts and then a shining axe
In cross-beam fashion from above—you lay
Your head upon a block, the axe comes down
A little from one side, like this, and mows
Your head inside your hat so smoothly down,
So neatly off—a pleasure 'tis to see!
Your head marks not that it has lost its trunk
And therefore sometimes sneezes, quite unmoved,
Just as if nought was wrong, e'en in the sack
As if it had, p'raps, taken a good pinch
Of snuff—it's guillotining that the people call it.
It is a fine and easy way o' dying.

COUNTRYMAN. Do they do much guillotining?

FIRST CITIZEN. Quite a lot, every day, and more when the weather's fine.

And now a sansculotte makes his appearance. When you come to look carefully at this sansculotte, you will find you can best enter into his part by combining the a mood with the i mood. For he has undoubtedly wonder and astonishment, and these have fired him with enthusiasm; but he has at the same time, as it were in the background, the pleasure and enjoyment that his own self-consciousness affords him.

(Ein Schwarm von zerlumpten Männern und Weibern kommt gezogen, voran ein Sansculotte, der ein Beinkleid auf einer Pike trägt.)

Wüstes Geschrei: Ça ira! Ça ira!

DER SANSCULOTTE. (zu dem LANDMANN und den beiden BÜRGERN) Angeschlossen, Patrioten! angeschlossen und eingestimmt! Ça ira! Zu Ehren der Hose da, die wir eben einem Aristokraten abgezogen, weil er auf keine andere Weise ein Sansculotte werden wollte. Ça ira!

WEIBER. (den LANDMANN umringend) Komm auf ein Tänzchen, Bäuerlein! Komm, wir tanzen die Carmagnole!

SANSCULOTTE. (zum LANDMANN, ihm ins Ohr schreiend) Ça ira gesungen, du Schelm, Ça ira!

LANDMANN. (ängstlich) Verzeiht, ich bin gar nicht musikalisch!

SANSCULOTTE. Höre, Kerl! wenn du nicht dümmer bist als die Rinder in deinem Stall, so musst du Ça ira brüllen können, so gut als einer—

LANDMANN. Verzeiht, ihr Herren—

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Ihr Herren!’ Habt ihr's gehört? An die Laterne mit dem Schuft!

---

(A swarm of ragged men and women come straggling along, led by a sansculotte holding aloft a pair of breeches on his pike.)

Wild shouting of the song ‘Ça ira, Ça ira!’

SANSCULOTTE. (to the COUNTRYMAN and the two CITIZENS)
All united and all of one mind, patriots! All united and all of one mind! Ça ira! Do honour to the breeches here that we've taken off an aristocrat, because he wouldn't be a sansculotte anyhow else! Ça ira!

WOMEN. (surrounding the COUNTRYMAN) Come and dance, peasant! Come along with you, we're dancing the carmagnole!

The sansculotte has noticed that the countryman does not hear very well.

SANSCULOTTE. (to the COUNTRYMAN, shouting in his ear)
Ça ira's being sung, you knave. Ça ira!

COUNTRYMAN. (anxiously) Excuse me, I'm not a bit musical!

SANSCULOTTE. Listen, fellow! If you're not more stupid than your own oxen you must be able to roar out Ça ira as well as a—

COUNTRYMAN. Excuse me, gentlemen?

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Gentlemen!’ Did you hear that? To the lamp-post with the blackguard!

In those days anyone who dared in Paris address a man as ‘gentleman’ was hung up on the nearest lamp-post.

ERSTER BURGER. Lasst ihn laufen; er ist volle sechs Jahre taub gewesen and erst heute wieder geheilt worden.

SANSCULOTTE. Dann hätte das erste, was er hörte, sein sollen, dass es keine Herren mehr gibt. Nicht einmal der Mainzer Nachtwächter singt mehr: ‘Lobet Gott den Herrn!’ sondern: ‘Lobet Gott den Bürger!’—Schlingel! kein Franzose benennt jetzt mehr den anderen Herr, sondern—

LANDMANN. Ich begreife, man sagt jetzt Kerl, Tropf, Schlingel, Schelm, und so dergleichen—

SANSCULOTTE. Was?

LANDMANN. Ihr tituliert mich so—

SANSCULOTTE. Dummkopf! das ist was anderes. Bürger sind jetzt alle Franzosen, hörst du! nicht mehr, noch weniger!

LANDMANN. So sind wir's draussen auch in der Provinz, so gut als ihr, und können ein Wort mit drein reden?

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Dreinreden?’ Hört ihr, Leute ? Der Kerl ist ein Föderalist! Ein verlaufener Girondistenknecht! er faselt von Autonomie der Provinz!

---

FIRST CITIZEN. Let him be; he's been deaf for six years and only just cured today.

SANSCULOTTE. Then the first thing he ought to have heard is that there are no more gentlemen. Not even the night watch at Mainz calls out any more ‘Praise God, gentlemen!’ but ‘Praise God, citizens!’—You clown, no Frenchman calls another ‘gentleman’ any longer, but—

COUNTRYMAN. I know. Now you say fellow, booby, clown, scoundrel, and things like that—

SANSCULOTTE. What?

COUNTRYMAN. That's what you call me—

SANSCULOTTE. Blockhead! That's a different matter. All we French now are just citizens, d'you hear that? Neither more nor less!

COUNTRYMAN. And are we in our province just as good as you, and can we put in our say?

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Put in our say?’ D'you hear that, folk? The fellow is a federalist, a runaway Girondist! He's drivelling about the autonomy of the provinces!

The day of the Girondists is past and over. The sansculotte imagines that the countryman is thinking of the autonomy that was enjoyed by the provinces when they were in power.

WEIBER. Hängt ihn, hängt ihn! er ist ein Föderalist! (Man will ihn ergreifen.)

LANDMANN. (ängstlich schreiend) Scharwache! Polizei! Zu Hilfe!—Mörder! Räuber! Diebe! Zu Hilfe! (Einige lachen.)

WEIBER. Er nennt Sansculotten Räuber und Mörder! An die Laterne!

ALLGEMEINES GESCHREI. An die Laterne! (Man ergreift ihn.)

DER SANSCULOTTE. (dazwischen tretend) Einen Augenblick, Bürger! Keine blinde Wut!—Wenn man Septembermann gewesen, wie ich, so weiss man, wie das rechte Verfahren in solchen Dingen ist.—Höre, Schlingel!

LANDMANN. Was hab' ich denn verbrochen?

SANSCULOTTE. (würdevoll) Mit dieser Frage verteidigt sich kein französischer Bürger und Patriot. Ob Föderalist oder nicht, ich will dir beweisen, dass du zehnmal gehängt zu werden verdienst, auch wenn du der republikanischen Freiheit nie ein Haar gekrümmt haben solltest. Ich frage dich bloss: Was hast du getan für die Freiheit? Wie hast du dich kompromittiert für die Freiheit? Was hast du getan, um gehängt zu werden, wenn eine Reaktion.einträte und die Gemässigten ans Ruder kämen?

LANDMANN. Ich? O—wartet nur, ich besinne mich ja seht, es fällt mir etwas ein.—Ich fand einmal im Wald einen halbverhungerten Mann unter einem Haufen dürrer Streu versteckt—der machte mir solch jämmerlich flehende Zeichen (denn hören konnt' ich nur wenig von wegen der Taubheit) dass ich ihn mit nach Hause nahm, ihn labte und in aller Stille beherbergte. Als er abzog, vergass er in der Dachstube etliche zerknitterte Papiere, aus welchen ich ersah, dass es ein gar wichtiger Mann gewesen sein musste, einer von denen, die jetzt hier in Paris regieren—so einer aus eurem—wie heisst's doch gleich? hab' heute davon gehört—aus eurem Nationalkonvent.—Sah auch aus den Papieren, wie er hiess. Er hiess Bri—ha, es fällt mir schon ein, Brissot.?

(Grosse Sensation im Volke, dann wildes Geschrei: Verräter! Verräter! Schurke!)

SANSCULOTTE. Still!—(Zum LANDMANN) Unglückseliger! du hast das Haupt der dem Henker verfallenen Girondisten und Föderalisten, der Gemässigten, der heimlichen Volksverräter bei dir beherbergt!—Mensch, deine Sache ist eine verlorene. Dir ist nicht mehr zu helfen! Hängt ihn!

VOLK. An die Laterne!

ERSTER BÜRGER. Ach, lasst ihn doch! Ihr seht ja, dass er ein Dummkopf ist, und sechs Jahre lang ist er taub gewesen.

EINIGE STIMMEN. Was? der Gewürzkrämer verteidigt ihn? Auch ein Verräter!

ERSTER BÜRGER. Bin ich nicht ein guter Patriot? Hab' ich nicht kürzlich bei der grossen Hungersnot meinen Zuckervorrat pfundweise ans Volk verteilt, ohne Entgeld?

EIN FISCHWEIB. Du betrogst uns mit dem Gewicht! Als ich mein Pfund zu Hause nachwog, da fehlte dran ein halbes Lot!

WEIBER. Hängt sie alle beide!

EINER AUS DEM VOLKE. Hier vor dem Bücherladen des wackeren Patrioten Momoro!

(Man zerrt den Bauer gegen den Laternenpfahl, der vor Momoros Laden steht.)

MOMORO. (tritt aus der Tür, sein Käppchen, das er auf dem kahlen Kopfe trägt, lüftend) Guten Morgen, Sansculotten! Was belieben die freien Männer und edlen Bürger zu treiben hier vor meiner Tür?

---

WOMEN. Hang 'im, hang 'im! He's a federalist! (They make as if to setze him.)

COUNTRYMAN. (shouting in alarm) Watchman! Police! Help! Murder! Robbers! Thieves! Help! (Some laughter.)

WOMEN. He's calling sansculottes robbers and murderers! To the lamp-post!

GENERAL CRY. To the lamp-post! (He is seized.)

SANSCULOTTE. (stepping between them) One minute, citizens! No blind rage!—When one's been a September man, like me, one knows the right way to act in these matters.—Listen, Clown!

COUNTRYMAN. What have I done wrong?

SANSCULOTTE. (with dignity) No citizen and patriot of France stands up for his rights by asking that question. Whether you're federalist or not, prove to you that you deserve ten times over to be hanged, even if you've done nothing to hurt republican freedom. I simply ask what you've done for freedom? Have you euer compromised yourself for freedom? What have you done to risk hanging if reaction sets in and the moderates come to power?

COUNTRYMAN. I? Oh—Wait a bit, I'm calling to mind—yes, it's just coming back to me. Once in a wood I found a half-starved man under a heap of dry straw—he made such pitiful, beseeching signs to me, for I couldn't hear much on account of my deafness, that I took him home and gave him something to eat and kept him in hiding. When he went off he forgot some scraps of paper in the attic; from these I saw that he must have been a very important man, one of those who rule now here in Paris, one of those belonging to your—what d'you call it, I've heard the name today—to your National Convention—even saw from the papers what he called himself. His name was Bri—yes, it comes back to me, Brissot—

(Great Sensation among the people, then a wild shout: Traitor, traitor, villain!)

SANSCULOTTE. Silence!—(To the COUNTRYMAN) Wretched man! You sheltered the chief of the Girondists and federalists who have fallen to the hangman, chief of the moderates, of the secret betrayers of the people!—Man, it's all up with you. Nothing can help you now! Take him and hang him!

PEOPLE. To the lamp-post!

FIRST CITIZEN. Oh, leave him alone. See what a blockhead he is, and he's been deaf for six years—

VOICES IN THE CROWD. What? The grocer sticks up for him? He's a traitor too!

FIRST CITIZEN. I'm not a good patriot, then? Didn't I, a short time ago, during the great famine, divide up all my sugar and give it to the people by the pound, and that gratis ?

FISHWIFE. You didn't give us fair weight! When I got home it was live grammes short!

WOMEN. Hang both of them!

A VOICE FROM THE CROWD. Here, in front of the bookshop of the honest patriot Momoro!

(The peasant is dragged towards the lamp-post in front of Momoro's shop.)

MOMORO. (comes out of the door, raising the Linie cap that covers his bald head) Good morrow, Sansculottes! What does it please our free men and noble citizens to do here in front of my door?

Momoro is a citizen too, and moreover, as we shall see, a man of some importance who stands with the whole force of his personality right in the immediate moment of the revolution. He is, however, at the same time, beginning to feel that the ground under his feet is getting a bit shaky.

Fresh people now come forward and prepare the way for a new mood, the mood that I characterised as reminiscent of sounding brass. We are, in fact, at the moment when loyalty to Danton is passing away, in favour of loyalty to Robespierre. We must accordingly watch for die transition from the a—o mood to the e—a mood. Loyalty to Robespierre is quietly stealing in, and that fact must find expression in the whole mood of the scene from now on.

EINER AUS DEM VOLK. Guten Morgen, Bürger Momoro. Wir hängen einen Föderalisten, einen Girondistenknecht—

MOMORO. Gerade hier vor eines Patrioten Tür? Lasst das bleiben, ehrenwerte Bürger der Republik! Wozu haben wir denn das Revolutionstribunal, das ja ohnedies im ganzen wenig zu wünschen und zu hängen übrig lässt? Und überhaupt, tut mir den Gefallen, hängt keinen, bevor er die neuesten Broschüren gelesen hat, die in meinem Buchladen soeben erschienen. Wenn ihr einen solchen Menschen tötet, so verfault der Kerl unnütz unter der Erde und labt höchstens die Würmer. Wenn ihr ihm aber Zeit lasst, die neuesten Broschüren zu lesen, so könnt ihr den widerhaarigsten Aristokraten in einen feuerspeienden Patrioten verwandeln, der hingeht und sich mit Freudentränen in den Augen jeden Augenblick für die Republik totschlagen lässt. Ich frage: was ist besser?—Da seht einmal (er weist einen Pack Flugblätter und Broschüren vor): ‘Neueste Trauerrede auf den Tod des göttlichen Marat’—‘Laternenpfahl und Guillotine; fliegende Blätter für Freiheit, Gleichheit und allgemeine Menschenliebe’—‘Neuer und unfehlbarer Plan, royalistische Städte binnen drei Tagen mit Nelkenöl in die Luft zu sprengen’—

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Good morrow, Citizen Momoro. We're hanging a federalist, a Girondist?

---

MOMORO. What? Just here at the door of a patriot? Wait a bit, honourable citizens of the Republic. What is the Revolutionary Tribunal for, which on the whole leaves us very little to wish for and very few people to hang? At least do me the favour not to hang anyone till he has read the latest pamphlet that has just appeared in my shop. When you kill a man of this sort the fellow rots uselessly in the ground and at best feeds the worms. But when you give him time to read the latest pamphlet, you may change the most cross-grained aristocrat into a fire-spitting patriot who goes off ready to die at any moment for the Republic. I ask you, which is the better? Just look (he points to a pile of broadsheets and pamphlets): ‘Latest Funeral Oration on the Death of the Godlike Marat’—‘Lamp-post and Guillotine'; leaflets on liberty, equality and universal human love.’ New and infallible Plan to blow up Royalist Towns with Oil of Cloves’?

Momoro talks the most naturally of them all, and helps to lead over to the new phase of the revolution. He is, at the moment, in high esteem, and this must be apparent to the audience.

VOLK. Hoch Momoro, der Patriot!

MOMORO. Es lebe die Republik!—Alles für wenige Sous!(Viele drängen sich herbei, die Blätter zu kaufen.)

SANSCULOTTE. Du verkaufst deine Scharteken zu teuer, Bürger Momoro!

MOMORO. Keinen Sou verdien' ich dran. Ihr kennt mich!

IN ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER. Der ‘Vater Duchêsne’! Der ‘Vater Duchêsne' von heute! Zwei Sous das Blatt!—Er ist verzweifelt wild heute, der Vater Duchêsne!—Kauft das Journal des gefeierten Patrioten Hebert!—in 30 000 Exemplaren verbreitet! Er ist verzweifelt wild heute, der Vater Duchêsne!—

MOMORO. (nachspottend) ‘Er ist verzweifelt wild heute der Vater Duchêsne!’ So ruft er alle Tage. 30 000 Exemplare? Allen Respekt vor dem Bürger Hebert, aber ich habe mir sagen lassen, dass ganze Stösse seines Journals gratis in die Gasthöfe wandern—für die ‘Bedürfnisse’ der Reisenden! hahaha! für die ‘Bedürfnisse’ der Reisenden!—Das Gediegenste, was aus den Federn der Patrioten fliesst, findet man doch immer noch bei Momoro. In meinem Hinterstübchen haben schon unter dem Königtum die radikalsten Männer Klub gehalten und halten da noch Klub heutigen Tages.—

ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER. (spottend) Ja, Graukopf, sie halten Klub bei deinem jungen Weibchen.

MOMORO. Tropf! sie bringen ihr den neuen republikanischen Kalender bei, der den Weibern so schwer in den Kopf will. Und mehr! noch mehr! 0, die Patrioten wissen den alten Momoro zu schätzen, und um ihn zu ehren, haben sie, müsst ihr wissen, keine andere als eben sein Weibchen zur Göttin der Vernunft erkoren. Schon am frühen Morgen ist sie heut' abgeholt worden auf das Stadthaus, damit man für das Fest sie würdig herausputze. Nun ihr werdet sehen! Auf diesem selben Platze wird sie prangen.

ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER. Und dir werden zur Feier des Tages die Hörner vergoldet?

VOLK. Es lebe Momoro und sein Weibchen!

MOMORO. (zu einem Manne, der ein Plakat an die Mauer klebt) Mensch, du klebst ja dein Plakat hier über ein anderes.

DER MANN. Ach, das alte ist ein gemässigtes; das da aber ist von der Kommune.—

VOLK. (das sich indes immer zahlreicher gesammelt) Von der Kommune? lasst doch sehen!

EINER AUS DEM VOLKE. (lesend) ‘Hebert und Chaumette laden das souveräne Volk zum heutigen Feste der Vernunft, das denkwürdig bleiben wird für alle Zeiten!’—

VOLK. Hoch Hebert! Hoch Chaumette! Hoch die Republik! Ça ira! (Die Weiber tanzen)

EIN STELZFUSS. (im Gedränge) Heissa! springt und brüllt, wie ihr wollt, aber tretet einem verdienten Krieger der Republik sein hölzernes Bein nicht weg!

---

PEOPLE. Cheers for Momoro the patriot!

MOMORO. Long live the Republic! Any one of these for a few sous!

(Many of the crowd press round him to buy the leaflets.)

SANSCULOTTE. You sell your trash too dear, Citizen Momoro!

MOMORO. Why, I don't make a sou on them. You know me!

NEWSPAPER-VENDOR. ‘Father Duchêsne’! ‘Father Duchêsne’ ! today's ‘Father Duchêsne’! He's desperately savage today is Father Duchêsne! Buy the paper of the good old patriot Hebert! 30,000 copies given out! He's desperately savage today is Father Duchêsne!—

MOMORO. (ridiculing him) ‘He's desperately savage today is Father Duchêsne.’ That's what he calls out all day. 30,000 copies? With all due respect to Citizen Hebert I venture to say that whole stacks of his paper find their way into the inns gratis—‘For the requirements of travellers’ ! Ha! Ha! Ha! ‘For the requirements of travellers’!—What is of value from the pens of the patriots is still always to be found at Momoro's. In my room behind the shop, even under the King, all the most radical men used to meet, still meet today?

NEWSPAPER-VENDOR. (mockingly) Yes, old fellow, the club meets where your young wife is.

MOMORO. Booby! They explain to her the recent Republican Calendar which takes so long to get into the head of a woman! What's more, what's more—Oh, the patriots know how to appreciate old Momoro, and how to do him honour; you must know they have chosen no one else but his little wife to be the Goddess of Reason. today, quite early, she was taken to the Town Hall to be all properly decked out for the festival. You'll see. She'll be on show in this very square.

NEWSPAPER-VENDOR. And will your horns be gilded for the occasion?

PEOPLE. Long live Momoro and his little wife!

MOMORO. (to a man sticking a placard on the wall) Hi, you, you're sticking that on top of another—

THE MAN. Oh, that old thing is one of those moderates, but this, here, comes from the Commune—

PEOPLE. (gathering round in their numbers) From the Commune, let's see!

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. (reading aloud) ‘Hebert and Chaumette invite the sovereign people today to the Festival of Reason which will remain in memory for all time!’

PEOPLE. Cheers for Hebert! Cheers for Chaumette! Cheers for the Republic! Ça ira! (The women dance.)

MAN WITH WOODEN LEG. (among the crowd) Hurray! Jump and shout as much as you like but don't stamp off the wooden leg of a deserving soldier of the Republic!

For at this point, in order to show how the mood is changing, moving all the time in the direction of the note that has been sounded by Robespierre, a new speaker steps forward from among the crowd, who is under a certain disability—a man with a wooden leg. The crowd, we shall find, is gradually working its way free of the completely different mood that has hitherto prevailed and beginning to enter into the mood that is connected with Robespierre. The i (ee) mood that belongs to him, begins to be heard.

SANSCULOTTE. (auf ihn zugehend) Was seh' ich? Battiste, du wieder in Paris? Verflucht—dein Bein

STELZFUSS. Hainbuchenes Kernholz—

SANSCULOTTE. Brav gefochten für die Republik? Nicht Tod noch Teufel gefürchtet ? Nie in Gefangenschaft geraten?

STELZFUSS. Bin ein einziges Mal von feindlichen Reitern allein überfallen worden, and da waren ihrer bloss vier—

SANSCULOTTE. Viele Strapazen ausgestanden?

STELZFUSS. Donnerwetter! Ihr habt es leicht, hier im warmen Paris als Ohnehosen herumzulaufen: aber im Feld kampieren und auf Vorposten stehen, ohne Schuh', in einer Kälte, bei welcher die Kinder im Mutterleibe erfrieren, so dass wir Schiesspulver in den Branntwein tun mussten, um uns den Magen zu erwärmen? Dann wieder tagelang fechten in der Sonnenglut—

SANSCULOTTE. Ach, was schadet das dem Krieger im Eifer des Gefechts?

STELZFUSS. Natürlich, wenn dir eine Kanonenkugel den Kopf wegreisst, so stirbst du nicht am Sonnenstich—

EINER AUS DEM VOLKE. Bist du nicht der, den sie als jungen Burschen den kleinen Barbier nannten—Gehilfe beim Barbier Flatte in der Strasse Pompadour?

STELZFUSS.
Der bin ich und habe mein Handwerk nicht verlernt—
Zu Lille, wenn eine Bombe niederflog
und vor mir platzte, griff ich eine Scherbe
vom Boden auf, gebrauchte sie als Schüssel
mit Seif' und Wasser und rasierte dann
so zwanzig Kameraden auf dem Fleck.
Ei, das gefiel euch wohl hier in Paris,
wenn die Armee mit den geschwungenen Fahnen
wegwedelte von Frankreichs Leib des Auslands
Schmeissfliegenschwarm, der zahllos ihn umschwirrt—
Wenn ihr vernahmt, dass wir so Sieg auf Sieg
erfochten, dachtet ihr da hinterm Ofen
wohl auch daran, wie oft wir barfuss liefen
und nichts zu beissen hatten als Patronen,
und oft nicht einmal die?

SANSCULOTTE. Was? lassen nicht die Weiber von Paris ihre Männer zerrissen laufen, um Zelttücher und Uniformen für euch zu nähen? Behelfen wir uns nicht statt der klingenden Münze mit lumpigen wertlosen Assignaten? Was? Wir nicht an euch gedacht? Und sind wir etwa müssig gewesen, indess ihr im Felde standet? In den Septembertagen hättest du hier sein sollen?

STELZFUSS. Kann mir's denken—erinnere mich noch recht gut, wie du vor drei Jahren einmal bei einem Volksfeste dem Pferde des Generals Lafayette, ohne dass es der General merkte, den Schweif an einen Laternenpfahl bandest, weil die Stute damit immer dir und anderen, die hinter dir standen, ins Gesicht flunkerte?

SANSCULOTTE. Possen! Aber in den Septembertagen...

STELZFUSS. Ist es denn wahr, dass ihr in diesen Septembertagen zuletzt auch die sämtlichen seltenen Tiere in der Menagerie von Versailles habt über die Klinge springen lassen?

SANSCULOTTE. Was? Die sämtlichen seltenen Tiere? Nein, nur die Löwen und Adler, weil das die Könige der Tiere sind, und dann was die sogenannten Wappentiere sind, wie sie die Aristokraten in ihren Wappen hatten?

STELZFUSS. Teufelskerle! Wie kam euch denn das so auf einmal?

SANSCULOTTE. Weiss nicht. Auf einmal, sagst du? Gar nicht auf einmal Es kam so nach und nach, wie der Appetit mit dem Essen?

STELZFUSS. Was sagten denn die Gemässigten?

SANSCULOTTE. Kein Wort. Hinter den Sansculotten stand die Kommune, und diese selber deckte der breite Rücken Dantons, der sich damals eben zum erstenmal aufgerichtet hatte als ein brüllender Leu. Gegen den waren die anderen nur ein Rudel bissiger Hunde. Jetzt ist er träg geworden und überhaupt, wie alles grosse Getier, nicht so beständig munter und beisslustig wie die kleineren Kläffer—

EINER AUS DEM VOLK. Ah, diesem Simson haben's auch die Weiber angetan?

SANSCULOTTE.
Ja, ja, doch sag ich euch,
steht der noch einmal auf, so lang er ist,
stösst er die Decke durch und reisst die Säulen
im Tempel um, grad' wie der Simson auch—

EIN ANDERER. Ach was, der steht nicht wieder auf. Den hat der andre unter’sich gebracht. Und dieser andre ist schlau?

STELZFUSS. Wer?

SANSCULOTTE. Ei wer? Hast du von Robespierre im Lager nicht gehört?

STELZFUSS. Robespierre? Robespierre? Ist das das kleine steife Männchen, das man spottweise das’ Talglicht von Arras’ nennt, weil er von Arras kam und gern glänzen wollte, aber nicht heller flackerte als eine Talgkerze? Sie lachten ihn immer aus, wenn er in der Nationalversammlung sprechen wollte.

SANSCULOTTE. Das war damals. Der führt jetzt im Nationalkonvent, im Wohlfahrtsausschuss, im Jacobinerklub das grosse Wort.

STELZFUSS. Ich sah ihn einmal—nur von fern. Trägt er nicht Brillen?

SANSCULOTTE. Nein.

STELZFUSS. Es kam mir doch so vor.

SANSCULOTTE. Er hat ein gelbes Gesicht und bläulich- gräuliche Ränder um die Augen—die wirst du in deiner Einfalt aus der Entfernung für Brillen gehalten haben?

STELZFUSS. Bleich im Gesicht?

SANSCULOTTE.
Gelb—grau—nein, eigentlich—wie soll ich sagen?
Graugrün, wenn man's genau nimmt—tiefe Augen
und widerhaar'ge Braun—ein schlichtes Männchen;
nichts gegen Danton! Aber wenn vor dir
hier Danton steht, der mächtige Koloss,
und dort das schneid'ge Männchen Robespierre
sprichst du mit dem frei von der Leber weg
wie mit dem jovialsten Kameraden,
und vor dem andern stockt die Rede dir
im Schlund—nicht grad' als ob er dich so dreist
ansäh', im Gegenteil, sieht eher etwas schüchtern
und unbehilflich aus vor vielem Volk—
doch geh' nur einmal auf die Galerie
des Nationalkonvents, sobald er spricht:
da kennst du ihn nicht mehr. Wenn festen Schritts
er steigt zur Rednerbühne, wird's so still,
dass du die Mäuschen pfeifen hören kannst
in ihren Löchern. Steht er anfangs dann
aufrecht und ruhig droben wie ein Pfahl
und spricht gelassen, denkst du: nun, er spricht nur eben
wie ein Schulmeister, oder wie ein Pfaff
spricht auf der Kanzel—plötzlich aber wirft
er ein paar Worte hin mit einer Stimme,
so kalt und scharf wie Stahl—in einem Ton,
dass dir ein Schauer über'n Rücken läuft-
Und fängt dann gar der Winkel seines Mundes
zu zucken an, und ruft er bittersüss
in seiner scharfen, schneidigen Manier:
‘Du armes Volk!’ und’ Tugendhaftes Volk!’
da packt dich was im Herzen wie ein Krampf:
du legst die Hand ans Messer, wenn du eins
verbirgst an deiner Brust, und möchtest gern
dich vor ihm niederwerfen und ihn fragen,
wen du zuerst von den verfluchten Feinden
der Republik damit durchstossen sollst—
Zuweilen aber schweigt er wochenlang
und lässt die anderen reden. Es geschehe
viel Dinge noch, von welchen man nicht weiss,
ob sie ihm lieb sind oder leid. Zuweilen
laviert er bloss und wartet auf den Wind.

Eben in letzter Zeit ist er wieder sehr schweigsam geworden?

---

SANSCULOTTE. (going up to him) What? You, Battiste, back in Paris? Damn it all—your leg—

WOODEN LEG. The prime cut of a hornbeams

SANSCULOTTE. Well fought for the Republic? No fear of death or the devil and never taken prisoner?

WOODEN LEG. Only once, fallen upon by enemy cavalry and then they were four to?

SANSCULOTTE. Stood up to plenty of hardship?

WOODEN LEG. By Jupiter! You've an easy time here in warm Paris, running around as sansculottes; but to camp out in the fields and to be on outpost duty without shoes in a cold that's enough to freeze a baby in its mother's womb, so that we had to put gunpowder in our brandy to warm up our stomachs? Then the whole day long to fight in the blaze of the sun?

SANSCULOTTE. Oh! What does that matter to anyone in the heat of the battle?

WOODEN LEG. Naturally if a cannonball takes off your head you can't be said to die of sunstroke—

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Are you the one they used to call the little barber when you were a bit of a thing—used to help Barber Hatte in Pompadour Street?

WOODEN LEG. That's me, and I've never forgotten my trade—
Once when a bomb came down at Lille and burst
In front of me I seized a fragment up
From off the ground and used it as a dish,
And then with soap and water, on the spot,
Gave a good shave to twenty of our lads.
Ha, this pleased you all right well in Paris here
When our brave army with its colours flying
Swept from our France the dirty foreign flies
Which in a countless swarm did buzz around.
When you did hear of all the victories
That we were gaining, from beside your stoves
Had you a thought how often with bare feet
We went about and nothing had to eat
But cartridges—not even those at times?

SANSCULOTTE. What? Don't the wives of Paris let their men go in rags while they stitch at tent-cloths and uniforms for you? Don't we have to put up with dirty, worthless paper in place of ringing coins? What? We don't think about you? And are we idle when you're fighting? You should have been here in the September days—

WOODEN LEG. I can imagine—I remember quite well how three years ago on a people's holiday, without the General noticing it, you bound the tail of Lafayette's mare to the lamp-post because it cavorted about in your very faces?

SANSCULOTTE. Buffoonery! But in those September days...

WOODEN LEG. Is it true then that in those September days you put to death the whole collection of rare animals in the menagerie at Versailles?

SANSCULOTTE. What? The whole menagerie? No, only the lions and eagles because they are the kings among the animals; besides they're what are in the so-called coats-of-arms that aristocrats used to bear.

WOODEN LEG. You devils! How did that suddenly come into your heads?

SANSCULOTTE. I don't know. Suddenly, did you say? It wasn't a bit sudden. It came gradually—like appetite comes with eating—

WOODEN LEG. What said the moderates?

SANSCULOTTE. Not a word. The Commune is behind the sansculottes, and that's protected by Danton's broad back, and just at that time he was beginning to roar like a lion. Compared with him the others were only a pack of biting dogs. He's become lazy nowadays and like all the great beasts not always so full of vigour and lust for using his teeth as the small curs are—

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Ah! This Samson too has been bewitched by the women!

SANSCULOTTE. Yes, yes, but I would have you know
When upright he does stand he is so tall
He'd push the ceiling through, break down the pillars,
Just as did once your Samson in the temple—

ANOTHER. Oh well! He no longer stands at his full height. He's under the other now, and this other is crafty—

WOODEN LEG. Who?

SANSCULOTTE. Who Haven't you heard of Robespierre in your camp ?

WOODEN LEG. Robespierre? Robespierre? Is that the stiff little man they call in fun the ‘tallow candle of Arras' because he came from Arras and wanted to shine but gave no more light than a flickering tallow candle? They laughed him out of court when he wanted to speak in the National Assembly.

SANSCULOTTE. That was in those days. He leads now in the debates in the National Convention or in the Committee of Public Safety—in the Jacobin Club too.

WOODEN LEG. I saw him once—only from a distance. Doesn't he wear spectacles?

SANSCULOTTE. No.

WOODEN LEG. It looked as if he did.

SANSCULOTTE. He has a yellow face and a blue-grey rim round his eyes, which you in your ignorance may at a distance have taken for spectacles—

WOODEN LEG. Pasty-faced?

SANSCULOTTE. Yellow—grey—no indeed, what shall I say?
Grey-green, to be exact, with deep-set eyes
And stubborn brow—a simple, little
man, Nothing compared with Danton! But if here
That great Colossus Danton were to stand
And there the little sharp-edged Robespierre,
With Danton one could speak out at one's ease
As with the friendliest among one's mates,
But with the other all your talk would be
Stuck in your throat; not that he's arrogant,
Quite on the contrary for he seems shy
And at a loss before a lot of folk—
But hear him at the National Convention!
You will not know him; when with a firm step
He goes up to the rostrum, all's so still
That you can hear the piping of the mice
Inside their holes. He to begin with stands
Upright and cool above us like a pillar
And speaks so calm, you think: well, now he talks
Just like a schoolmaster, or like a priest
Talks in a pulpit—then, quite suddenly
He hurls out a few words, but with a voice
As cold and sharp as steel, and in a tone
That sends a shudder running down your back;
And then the corner of his mouth begins
To twitch and he cries' out, so bittersweet,
In that sharp way so full of energy,
‘O you poor folk’ and ‘O you virtuous folk!’
And something seizes on your heart like cramp,
And if you have a knife concealed about you
You grasp it firmly, with the strong desire
To throw yourself before him and to ask
Which, to begin with, of the cursed foes
Of the Republic you should plunge it in.
But sometimes he is silent weeks on end
Letting the others speak. Many things occur
Of which one does not know whether they please
Or do not please him. Then too there are times
When he just tacks and waits upon the wind.
He's been quite silent recently again—

Note the skilful way in which the personality of Robespierre is introduced. The sansculotte abandons his role as sansculotte, and suddenly shows himself as a marvellous portrayer of character. If this moment in the scene is rendered with the colouring that it has been my intention to give to it in my reading, then in this speech that the sansculotte addresses to the people around him, the audience will eel the swing-over of loyalty of which we have spoken. The critical moment of transition has come; and as we go on, I shall indicate here and there some of the points that it would be important for a producer to have in mind The second mood is now upon us, it overwhelms the scene as though with a confused and deafening noise; I compared it, you will remember, to the clash of sounding brass.

EIN SCHREIBER DER KOMMUNE. (erscheint mit Handlangern, die Bretter und Handwerksgeräte mit sich tragen) Platz da! Platz, Sansculotten! Das Gerüst für die Göttin der Vernunft und für die Redner wird aufgeschlagen! Der Festzug wird in kurzer Zeit da sein.

---

CLERK TO THE COMMUNE. (appears with workmen carrying planks and tools) Make way there; make way, sansculottes. The stand is to be put up for the Goddess of Reason and the orators. The procession will shortly be here.

Here we have the ö (French eu in ‘feu’) mood. It has to be spoken forward; we must let the speaking strike on to the front part of the palate.

VOLK. Ça ira! Es lebe die Göttin der Vernunft!

SCHREIBER. (zu den Handlangern) Hierher, ihr Leute! in der Mitte des Platzes! Notre-Dame gerade gegenüber! (Die Handlanger machen sich an die Arbeit.)

---

PEOPLE. Ça ira. Long live the Goddess of Reason!

CLERK. (to his men) Here, you people! In the middle of the square! Over there by Notre Dame! (The men set to work.)

From now on, the women speak more in the ei (as in ‘height’) mood. With the entry of Robespierre into the conversation, the revolutionary impulses begin to be imbued with a sort of coy and affectionate enthusiasm—e a.

EIN WEIB. Seht nur, dass es nicht wieder so geht, wie im vorigen Jahre bei dem grossen Feste, wo sich ein paar Kerle unter den Brettergrund des Gerüstes versteckten—vermutlich um die Männer und Frauen, die darauf standen, in die Luft zu sprengen, bis man sie entdeckte, hervorzog und totschlug—

DER SCHREIBER. (schäkernd) Ach, das waren bloss ein paar Verehrer eures Geschlechts, die durch die Ritzen herauf- blinzelten... Was läge daran, wenn man heute der Vernunft ein wenig nach den Waden guckte? Sein Augenmerk auf die Vernunft und all ihr Detail zu richten, ist ja fortan Bürgerpflicht!

WEIBER. (ihn umringend) Du Schelm!—Werden sie bald da sein?

SCHREIBER. Sogleich.

WEIBER. Heissa, gleich werden sie da sein! Es lebe Hebert und Chaumette! Es lebe die Kommune! Es lebe der Konvent! Es lebe Danton! Es lebe Robespierre!

A WOMAN. Look to it that what happened last year at the great fête doesn't happen again, when a few fellows hid underneath the platform—as it was thought, to blow up the men and women on it—till they were discovered and pulled out and killed—

---

CLERK. (waggishly) Aha! They were simply one or two worshippers of your fair sex squinting through the crevices. ... What of it if today, too, someone has a peep at the Goddess of Reason's legs? To make Reason in all her details his aim, is henceforth one of the obligations of a citizen!

WOMEN. (pressing round him) You rogue! Will they soon be here?

CLERK. They're just coming.

WOMEN. Hurray! They're just coming! Long live Hebert and Chaumette! Long live the Commune! Long live the Convention! Long live Danton! Long live Robespierre!

(Translated by V. E. W.)

I wanted to show you by practical example how a scene like this should be treated. I have laid on the colouring a little more strongly than would be necessary in a performance, because I wanted you to have a particularly clear picture of how the different moods come severally to expression in the treatment of sound. We saw, for example, that the countryman has to be spoken throughout with the mouth open, for he is to reveal the a mood; a slight intoning of a should even be audible in every sound he utters. Similarly, you will find the clerk has to speak so that something of an i enters into each one of his sounds. His voice is always in front of that i-boundary in the mouth, of which I was speaking the other day, and is continually striking the front part of the palate. It is by paying careful attention to details like this, that we can gradually learn to give form and style to our speaking on the stage.